A coelo Salus  
Religio▪ Medici.  
Printed for Andrew Crook. 1642. Will▪ Marshall●s●u:    

Religio Medici.  

FOr my Religion, though there be several circumstances that might persuade the world, that I have none at all, as the general scandal of my profession, the natural course of my studies the indifferency of my behaviour, and discourse in matters of Religion, neither violently defending one, nor with that common ardo●r of contention opposing another; yet in despite hereof I dare, without usurpation, assume the honourable stile of a Christian: not that I merely owe this stile to the Font, my education, or the clime wherein I was borne, as being bred up either to confirm those principles my Parents instilled into my unweary understanding; or by a general consent proceed in the Religion of my country: But having, in my riper years, and confirmed judgement, seen and examined all, I find myself obliged by the principles of Grace, and the law of my ●wn reason, to embrace no other name but this; neither doth herein my zeal so far make me forget the general charity I owe unto humanity, as rather to hate than pity Turks, Infidels, and (what is worse) Jews, rather contenting myself to enjoy that happy stile, than maligning those who refuse so glorious a title. But because the name of a Christian is become too general to express our faith, there being a Geography of Religions as well as of Land, and every Clime distinguished not only by their laws and limits, but circumscribed by their doctrines and rules of Faith: To be particular, I am of that reformed new-cast Religion, wherein I dislike nothing but the name, of the same belief that our Saviour taught, the Apostles disseminated, the Fathers authorized, and the Martyrs confirmed; but by the sinister ends of Princes, the ambition and avarice of Presbyters, and the fatal corruption of times so decayed, impaired, and fallen from its native beauty, that it required the careful and charitable hand of the times to restore it to its primitive integrity: now the accidental occasions whereon the slender means whereby the low & abject condition of the person by whom ●o good a work was set on foot, which ●n our adversaries beget contempt and ●corn, fills me with wonder, and is the ve●y same objection the insolent Pagans first cast against Christ and his Disciples.  
Yet h●ve I not shaken hands with those desperate resolver's, who had rather ven●ure at large their decayed bottom, then bring her in to be new trimmed in the dock; who had rather promiscuously retain all, then abridge any, and obstinately be what they are, than what they have been, as to stand in diameter and swords point with them: we have reformed from them, not against them; for omitting those improperations and terms of scurrility betwixt us, which only difference our affections, and not our cause, there is betwixt us one common name, and appellation, one faith, and necessary body of principles common to us both; and therefore I am not scrupulous to converse and live with them, to enter their Churches in defect of ours, and either pray with them▪ or for them: I could never perceive any rational consequ●nce from those many texts which prohibit the children of Israel to pollute themselves with the Temples of the Heathens; we being all Christians, and not divided by such detested impieties ●s might profane our prayers, or the place wherein● we make them; or that a resolved conscience may not adore her Creator anywhere, especially in places devoted to his service; where if their devotions offend him, mine may please him, if theirs profane it, mine may hallow it; holy water and the Crucifix (dangerous to the commonpeople) deceive not my judgement, nor abuse my devotion at all: I am I confess, naturally inclined to that, which misguided zeal terms superstition, my common conversation I do acknowledge austere, my behaviour full of rigour, sometimes not without morosity; yet at my devotion I love to use the civility of my knee, hat, and hand, with all those outward and sensible motions, which may express, or promote my invincible devotion; I should cut off my arm, rather than violate a Church window, than deface or demolish the memory of a Saint or Martyr; at the sight of a cross or Crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but not with the thought or memory of my Saviour; I cannot laugh at the fruitless journeys of Pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of friars; For though misplaced circumstances, there is something in it of devotion: I could never hear the Ave marry Bell without an occasion, or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one circu●stance, for me to err in all, that is in silence and dumb contempt; where therefore they directed their devotions to her, I offe●ed mine to God, and rectified the errors of their prayers by rightly ordering mine own; at a solemn procession I have wept abundantly, while my consorts blind with opposition and prejudice, have fallen into an excess of scorn and laughter: there are questionless both in Greek, Roman and Africa Churches, solemnities, and ceremonies, whereof the wiser zeals do make a Christian use, and stand condemned by us; not as evil in themselves, but as allurances and baits of superstition to those vulgar heads that look asquint on the face of truth, and those unstable judgements that cannot consist in the narrow point and centre of justice, without a reel or stagger to the circumference. As there are many Reformers, so likewise many Reformations; every country proceeding in a particular way and Method, according as their natural interest with their constitution and clime inclined them, some angrily and with extremity, others calmly, and with mediocrity, not rending, but easily dividing the community, and leaving an honest possibility of reconciliation, which the peaceable Spirits do desire, and may conceive that revolution of time, and mercies of God may effect; yet that judgement that shall consider the present antipathies between the two extremes, their contrarieties in affection and opinion, may with the same hope expect an union in the poles of Heaven; but to difference myself nearer, and draw into the lesser circle: There is no Church whose every part so squares unto my conscience, whose articles, constitutions, and customs seems so consonant unto reason, and as it were framed to my particular devotion, as this whereof I hold my belief, the Church of England, to whose faith I am a sworn subject, and therefore in a double obligation, subscribe unto her Articles, and endeavour to observe her constitutions: no man shall retch my faith unto another Article, or command my obedience to a Canon more: whatsoever is beyond us, as points indifferent, I observe according to the rules of my private reason, or the humour or fashion of my devotions, neither believing this, because Luther affirmed it, or disproving that, because Calvin hath disavouched it: I condemn not all things in the council of Trent, nor approve all in the Synod of Dort: In brief, where the Scripture is silent, the Church is my Text, where that speaks, it is but my comment, where there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my Religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason. It is an unjust scandal of our adversaries, and gross● error in ourselves, to compute the Nativity of our Religion from Henry the eighth, who though he rejected the Pope, confuted not the faith of Rome, and effected no more than what his own predecessors de●ired and assayed in ages past, and was conceived the State of Venice would have attempted in our days.  
It is as uncharitable a point in us to fall upon those popular scurrilities and opprobrious scoffs of the Bishop of Rome, to whom as to a temporal Prince, we owe the duty of a good language: I confess there is cause of passion between us; by his sentence I stand excommunicated, heretic is the best language he affords me; yet can no ●are witness I ever returned to him the name of Antichrist, man of sin, or whore of Babylon; It is the method of charity to suffer without reaction: those usual satyrs, & invectives of the Pulpit may perchance produce a good effect on the vulgar, whose ears are opener to rhetoric than logic, yet do they no wise confirm the faith of wiser believers, who knows that a good cause needs not to be patronised by a passion, but can sustain itself upon a temperate dispute.  
I could never divide myself from any upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgement for not agreeing with me in that, from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent myself: I have no Genius to disputes in Religion, and have often thought it wisdom to decline them, and especially upon a disadvantage, or when the cause of Truth might suffer in the weakness of my patronage: where we desire to be informed, it is good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and establish our opinions, it is best to agree with judgements below our own, that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in ourselves an esteem, and confirm opinion of our own. Every man is not a proper Champion for Truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of Verity: Many from the Ignorance of their maxims, and an inconsiderate zeal to Truth, have too rashly charged the troubles of error, and remain as trophies to the enemies of Truth: A man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a City, and yet be forced to surrender; 'tis therefore far better to enjoy with peace, than to hazard her on a battle: If therefore there rise any doubts in my way, I do forget them, or at least defer them, till my better settled judgement, and more manly reason be able to resolve them; for I perceive every man's own reason is his best Oedipus, and will upon a reasonable truce, find a way to lose those bonds wherewith subtleties of error have enchained our more flexible and tender judgements. In Philosophy where truth seems double forced, there is no man more paradoxical than myself; but in Divinity I keep the road, and though not in an implicit, yet in an humble faith, follow the great wheel of the Church, by which I move; not reserving any proper poles or motion from the epicycle of my own brain; by this means I leave no gap for Heresies, schisms, or Errors, of which at present, I shall injure Truth to say I have no taint or tincture; I must confess my greener studies have been polluted with two or three, not any begotten in the latter Cen●uries, but old and obsolete, such as could never have been revived, but by such extravagant and irregular heads as mine; for indeed Heresies perish not with their Authors, but like the River Arethusa, though they lose their currents in one place, they rise up again in another: one general council is not able to extirpate one single heresy, it may be cancelled for the present, but revolution of time and the like aspects from heaven, will restore it, when it will flourish till it be condemned again; for as though there were a M●te●p●ucho●is, and the soul of one man passed into another, opinions do find after-revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat them. To see ourselves we need not look for Plato's year, every man is not only himself; there have been many Diog●nes, and as many Timon's, though but few of that name; men are lived over again, the world is now as it was in the age past, there was none then, but there have been some since that parallels him, and is as it were his revived self. Now the first of mine was that of the Arabians, that the souls of men perished with their bodies, but yet should be raised again at the last day; not that I did absolutely conceive a mortality of the soul; but if that were, which faith, nor Philosophy can throughly disprove, and that both entered the grave together, yet I hold the same conceit thereof that we all do of the body, that it shall rise again; surely it is but the merits of our unworthy natures, if we sleep in darkness until the last alarm. A serious reflex upon my own unworthiness did make me backward from challenging this prerogative unto my soul: so I might enjoy my Saviour at the last, I would with patience be nothing almost unto eternity. The second was that of the Chiliast, that God would not persist in his vengeance for ever, but after a definite time of his wrath he would release the damned souls from torture; which error I fell into upon a serious contemplation of the great attribute of God's mercy, and did a little cherish it in myself, because I found therein no malice, and a ready weight to sway me from the other extreme of despair, whereunto melancholy and contem●lative natures are too easily disposed. A ●hird there is which I did never positively maintain or practice, but have often wished it had been consonant to Truth, and not offensive to my Religion, and that is the prayer for the dead, whereunto I was inclined by an excess of charity; whereby I thought the number of the living too small an object of devotion; I could scarce contain my prayers for a Friend at the ringing of a Bell, or behold his corpse without an oration for his soul: It was a good way me thought to be remembered by Posterity, and far more noble than a History. These opinions I never maintained with pertinacy, or endeavoured to inveigle any man's belief to mine, nor so much as ever revealed or disputed them with my dearest friends: by which means I neither propagated them in others, nor confirmed them in myself, but suffering them to flame upon their own substances, without addition of new fuel, they went out insensibly of themselves; therefore those opinions, though condemned by lawful counsels, were not Heresies in me, but bare Errors, and single Lapses of my understanding, without a joint depravity of my will: those have not only depraved understandings, but diseased affections, which cannot enjoy a singularity without a heresy, or be the author of an opinion, without they be of a Sect also; this was the villainy of the first schism of Lucifer, who was not content to err alone, but drew into his faction many Legions of Spirits; and upon this experience he tempted only Eve, as well understanding the communicable nature of sin, and t●at to deceive but one, were tacitly & upon consequence to delude them both. As for the wingy mysteries in Divinity, & airy subtleties in Religion, which have ●nhinged the brains of better heads, they never stretched the P●a Mater of mine; methinks there be not impossibilities enough ●n Religion for an active faith; the deepest mysteris ours contains, have not only been illustrated, but maintained by syllogism, and the rule of reason: I love to lose myself in a mystery to pursue my reason to my ob altitudo. It is my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those ●n●olved aenigmas and riddles of the Trini●y, incarnation and resurrection. I can an●wer all the objections of Satan, & my re●ellious reason, with that odd resolution I ●earned of Tertullian, Certum est quia impossi●ile est. I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point, for to credit ordinary and visible objects is not faith, but persuasion. Some believe the better for seeing Christ his Sep●lchre, and when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not of the miracle. Now contrarily I bless myself, and am thankful that I lived not in the days of miracles, that I never saw Christ not his Disciples; I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea, nor one of Christ's Patients, on whom he wrought his wonders; then had my faith been thrust upon me, nor should I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not. 'tis an easy and necessary belief to credit what our eye and sense hath examined: I believe he was dead, and buried, and rose again, and desire to see him in his glory, rather than to contemplate him in his Coenotaphe, or Sepulchre. Nor is this much to believe as we have reason, we owe this faith unto History: they only had the advantage o● a bold and noble faith, who lived befor● his coming, who upon obscure prophe●sies and mystical Types could raise a belief, and expect apparent impossibilities● 'tis true, there is an edge in all firm belief, and with an easy Metaphor we may say the sword of faith; but in those obscurities I rather use it, in the adjunct the Apostle gives it, a Buckler; under which I perceive the wary combitant may lie invulnerable. Since I was of understanding to know we knew nothing, my reason hath been more pliable to the will of faith; I am now content to understand a mystery without a rigid definition in an easy and Platonic description. That allegorical description of Hermes pleaseth me beyond all the metaphysical definitions of Divines, where I cannot satisfy my reason, I leave to hammer my fancy; I had as leive you tell me that anima est angelus homini●, est Corpus Dei as Entelechia, Lux est umbra Dei, as actus perspicui: where there is an obscurity too deep for our reason, 'tis good to set down with a description a periphrasis, or adumbration; for by acquainting our reason how unable it is to display the visible and obvious effect of nature, it becomes more humble and submissive to the subtleties of faith: and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoop unto the lure of faith. I believe there was already a tree whose fruit our unhappy parents tasted, though in the same Chapter, when God forbids it, 'tis positively said, the plants of the field were not yet grown; for God had not caused ●t to rain upon the earth. I believe that the Serpent (if we shall literally understand it from his proper form and figure) made his motion on his belly before the curse: I find the trial of the Pucillage and Virginity of women, which God ordained the Jews, is very fallible; experience, and History informs me, that not only many particular women, but likewise whole Nations have escaped the curse of childbirth, which God seems to pronounce upon the whole Sex; yet do I bel●eve that all this is true; indeed my reason would persuade me it is false; and this I think is no vulgar part of faith to believe a thing not only above, but contrary to reason, and against the arguments of our proper senses.  
In my solitary and retired Imagination, Neque enim cum porticus aut melectulus accipit, desum mihi; I remember I am not alone and therefore forget not to contemplate him and his attributes who is ever with me, especially those two mighty ones, his wisdom and eternity; with the one I recreate, with the other I confound my understanding: who can speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without an ecstasy? Time we may comprehend, it is but five days ●lder than ourselves, and hath the same Horoscop●; but to retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning▪ to give such an infinite start forward, as to conceive an end in an essence that we affirm hath neither the one nor the other; it is reason to Saint Paul's Sanctuary; my Philosophy dares not say the Apostles can do it; God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him; it is he privilege of his own nature; I am that ● am, was his own definition unto Moses; ●nd it was a short one, to con●ound morta●ity, that durst question God, or ask him ●hat he was; indeed he only is what o●hers have and shall be; but in eternity no ●istinction of senses; and therefore that ●errible term Predestination, which hath ●roubled so many weak heads to con●eive, & the wisest to explain, is in respect to God ●o prescious determination of our estates ●o come, but a definitive blast of his will ●lready fulfilled, and at the instant that he ●irst decreed it; for to this eternity which ●s indivisible, the last Tru●pe is already ●ounded, the reprobates in the slam●, and the blessed in Abraham's bosom.  
Saint Peter speaks modestly, when he ●aith; a thousand years to God are but as one day; for to speak I●ke a Philosopher, ●hose continued▪ instances of time which ●low into a thousand ye●res, make not to ●im one moment; what to us is to come, ●o his Eternity is present, his whole dura●ion being but one permanent point without successions, parts, flux, or division; there is no Attribute that adds more difficulty to the mystery of the Trinity, where though in a relative way of Father & Son, we must deny a priority. I wonder how Aristotle could conceive the world eternal, or how he could make good two eternity's; his similitude of a Triangle, comprehended in a square, doth somewhat illustrate the Trinity of our souls, and that the Triple Unity of God; for there is in us not three, but a Trinity of souls, because there is in us, if not three distinct souls▪ yet differing faculties, that can, and do subsist in different subjects; and yet in us are so united as to make but one soul and substance; if one soul were perfectly three di●stinct bodies, that were a pretty Trinity conceive the distinct number of three, no● divided nor separated by the intellect, bu● actually comprehended in its unity, and that is a perfect Trinity. I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magic of numbers; Beware o● Philosophy, is a precept not to be received in a narrow sense; for in this mass of nature there is a set of things, that carry in ●heir front, though not in capital letters, yet in stenography, and short Characters, something to Divinity, which to wiser rea●ons serve as Luminaries in the abyss of knowledge, and to judicious belief, as ●scales and roundles to mount the pinnacles and highest pieces of Divinity. The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the Philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein as a portrait, things are not true●y, but in equivocal shapes; and as they counterfeit some more real substance in that invisible fabric. That other attribute wherewith I recreate my devotion, is his wisdom, in which I am happy; and for the contemplation of this only, do not repent me that I was bred in the way of study: The advantage I have of the vulgar, with the content and happiness I conceive therein, is an ample recompense for all my endeavours, in what part of knowledge soever: I know he is wise in all, wonderful in what we conceive, but far more in what we comprehend not, for we behold him but a squint upon reflex or shadow; our understanding is diviner than M●ses his eye, we are ignorant of the backparts, or lower side of his Divinity; therefore to pry into the maze of his Counsels, is not only folly in Man, but presumption in Angels, like as they are his servants, not servators; he holds no council, but that mystical one of the Trinity, wherein though there be three persons, there is but one mind that decrees, without contradiction, nor needs he any; his actions are not begot with deliberation, his wisdom naturally flowers, what best; his intellect stands ready fraught with the superlative & purest ideas of goodness▪ consultations & election, which are two motions in us, are but one in him, his actions springing from his power, at the first touch of his will.  
These are Contemplations Metaphysi●all, my humble speculations have another Method, and are content to trace and discover those expressions he hath left in his creatures, & the obvious effects of nature, there is no danger to propound those mysteries, no Sanctum Sanctorum in Philosophy: The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: it is the debt of our reason we owe to God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts; without this the world is as though it had not been, or as it was before at the first, when there was not a creature that could conceive, or say there was a world. The wisdom of God receives no honour from the vulgar heads, that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity, admire his works; those only magnify him whose judicious enquiry into his acts, and deliberate▪ research into his creatures, return the duty of a learned and devout admiration. There is but one first, & four second causes of all things; some are without efficient, as God, others without matter, as Angels, some without form, as the first matter, but every Essence, created or uncreated, hath its final cause, and some positive end both of its essence and operation: This is the cause I grope after in the works of nature, on this hangs the providence of God; to raise so beauteous a structure, as the world and the creatures thereof, was but his Art, and their sundry divided operations with their predestinated ends, are from the treasury of his wisdom. In the causes, nature, and affection of the Eclipse of the Sun and Moon, there is most excellent speculation; but to propound farther, and to contemplate a reason why his providence hath so disposed and ordered their motions in that vast circle, as to conjoin and obscure each other, is a sweet piece of reason, and a diviner point of Philosophy; therefore there appears to me as much divinity in Galen his book De usu partium,; as in Suarez metaphysics: had Aristotle been as curious in the enquiry of this cause as he was of the other, he had not left behind him an imperfect p●ece of Philosophy, but an absolute tract of Divinity.  
Natura nihil agit frustra, is the only and indisputable axiom in Philosophy, there is no Grotesco in nature, nor any thing framed to fill up empty cantons, and unnecessary spaces in the most imperfect creatures, such as were not preserved in the ark, but having their seeds and principles in the womb of nature, are everywhere, where the power of the Sun is; in those is the wisdom of his hand discovered: Out of this rank Solomon chose the object of his admiration; indeed what wisdom may not go to school to the wisdom of Bees, Aunts, and Spiders? what wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us? while ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature, as Elephants; Dromedaries, and Camels; these I confess, are the Colossus and majestic pieces of her hand; but in these narrow Engines there is more curious mathematics; and the civility of these little Citizens, more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker; Who admires not Regio-Montanus his Fly beyond his Eagle, or wonders not more at the operation of two souls in those little bodies, than but one in the trunk of a Cedar? I could never content my contemplation with those general pieces of wonders, the flux and reflux of the Sea, the increase of Nile, the conversion of the Needle of the North and have studied to match and parallel those in the more obvious and neglected pieces of Nature, which without further travel I can do in the Cosmography of myself; we carry with us the wonders▪ we seek without us: There is all Africa, and all her prodigies within us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely, learns in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume. Thus there are two books from whence I collect my Divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant Nature, that universal and public Manuscript, that lies exposed to the eyes of all; those that never saw him in the one, have discovered him in the other: This was the Scripture and Theology of the Heathens; the natural motion of the sun made them more admire him, than his supernatural station did the Children of Israel; the ordinary effect of nature wrought more admiration in them, than in the other all his miracles: surely the Heathens knew better how to join and read these mystical letters, than we Christians, who cast a more common eye on those hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck Divinity from the flowers of nature; nor do I forget God, as to adore the name of Nature, which I define not with the schools, the principles of motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained to guide the actions of his creatures, according to their several kinds: to make a revolution every day is the nature of the Sun, because that necessary course which God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve, by the faculty of the voice which first did give it motion. Now this course of Nature God seldom altars or perverts, but like an excellent Artist hath so contrived his work, that with the self same instrument,▪ without a new creation, he may effect his obscurest designs. Thus he sweeteneth the water with a wood preserveth the creatures in the Ark, which the blast of his mouth might have as easily created: for God is like a skilful Geometrician, who when more easily, and with one stroke of his compass, he might describe, or divide a right line, had yet rather do this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and aforesaid principles of his Art: yet this rule of his he doth sometimes pervert, to acquaint the world with his Prerogative, lest the arrogancy of our reason should question his power, and conclude he could not; and thus I call the effects of Nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument she only is; and therefore to ascribe his actions also unto her, is to devolve the honour of God, the principal agent, upon the instrument; which if with reason we may do, then let our Hammers rise up, and boast they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honour of our Writings. I hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no deformity in any kind or species of creatures whatsoever: I cannot tell by what logic we call a Toad, a bear, or an Elephant, ugly, they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their internal forms; and having past that general visitation of God, who saw ●hat all that he had made was good; that ●s, conformable to his will, which abhors deformity, and is the rule of order and beauty; there is no deformity but in monstrosity, wherein notwithstanding there is a kind of beauty, Nature so ingenuously contriving the irregular parts, as they become sometimes more remarkable than the principle fabric. To speak yet more narrowly, there was never yet any thing ugly, or misshapen, but the Chaos, wherein notwithstanding to speak strictly, there was no deformity; because no form by the voice of God: Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of his providence: Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixt day, there were yet a Chaos: Nature hath made one world, & Art another. In brief, all things are artificial, for nature is the Art of God: This is the ordinary and open way of his providence, which art and industry have in a good part discovered, whose effects we may foretell without an Oracle; To foreshow these is no prophecy, but Prognostication. There is another way full of Meanders and Labyrinths, whereof the devil and Spirits have no exact Ephemerides, & that is a more particular & obscure method of his providence, directing the operations of individuals and single Essences; this we call Fortune, that serpentine and crooked line, whereby he draws those actions that his wisdom intends in a more unknown & secret way; this cryptick and involved method of his providence have I ever admired▪ nor can I relate the history of my life, the occurrences of my days, the escapes of dangers, and hills of chance with a B●zo los Manos, to Fortune, or a bare Gramercy to my stars: Abraham might have thought the Ram in the thicket came thither by accident; human reason would have said that mere chance conveyed Moses into the ark to the sight of Pharaoh's daughter; what a Labyrinth is there in the story of Joseph, able to convert a Stoics? surely there are in every man's life some rubs and 〈◊〉 which pass a while under 〈…〉, but at the last, well 〈…〉 the mere and of God: It was not a mere chance ● discover the or ●owder Treason by a miscarriage of the ●etter. I like the victory of 88 the better ●r that one occurrence which our ene●ies imputed to our dishonour, and the ●artiality of Fortune, to wit, the tempests ●nd contrarieties of winds. King Philip did ●ot detract from the Nation, though he ●aid, he sent his Armado to fight with men ● not to combat with the wind. Where ●here is a manifest disproportion between the powers and forces of two several a●ents, upon a maxim of reason we may ●romise the victory to the superior; but when unexpected accidents slip in, and un●hought of occur●ences intervene, these must proceed from a power that owes no ●bedience to those axioms: where, as in the writing upon the wall, we behold the hand ●ut see not the spring that moves it. The ●uccess of that petty Province of Holland, ● of which the Gra●d seignior proudly ●aid, That if they should trouble him as ●hey did the Spaniard, he would send his men with shovels and pickaxes and throw it into the Sea) I cannot altogether ascribe to the ingenuity and industry of the peopl● but to the mercy of God, that hath dispo●sed them to such a thriving Genius; and to the will of his providence, that disposet● her favour to each country in their pre●ordinate season. All cannot be happy a● once; because the glory of one State de●pends upon the ruin of another: ther● is a revolution and vicissitude of thei● greatness, and must obey the swing o● that wheel, not moved by their intelli●gences, but by the hand of God, whereby all Estates rise to their Zenith and vertical● points, according to their predestinated periodss For the lives not only of men▪ but of commonweals, and the whole world, run not upon an Helix that still enlargeth, but on a Circle, where arriving to their Meridian, they decline in obscurity, and fall under the Horizon again. Thes● must not therefore be named the effects o● nature, but in a relative way, as we term the works of nature. It was the ignorance of man's reason that begat this very name▪ and by a careless term miscalled the providence of God: for there is no liberty For causes to operate in a loose and strag●ing way, nor any effect whatsoever, but hath its warrant from some universal or superior cause. It is not ridiculous devo●ion, to say a Prayer before a game at Tables; for even in the sortilegies and matters of the greatest uncertainty, there is a settled and preordered course of effects; 'tis we that are blind, and not fortune: because our eye is too dim to discover the mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint her blind and hood winked; that is the providence of Almighty God. I cannot justify the contemptible proverb, That fools only are fortunate; or that insolent Paradox, That a wise man is out of the reach of fortune; much ●esse those opprobrious Epithets of Poets, Whore, bawd, and Strumpet: It is I confess the common fate of men, and singular gift of mind, to be destitute of fortune; which doth not any way deject the spirit of wi●er judgements, who throughly understand the justice of this proceeding; and being en●iched with higher donatives, cast a more careless eye on the vulgar parts of felicity. It is a most unjust ambition, to desire to ●ngrosse the mercies of the Almighty, nor to be content with the goods of the mind without a possession of those of body or fortune▪ and it is an error worse than heresy, to adore the complemental and circumstantial piece of felicity, and undervalue those perfections and essential points of happiness, wherein we resemble our Maker. To wiser desires it is satisfaction enough to deserve, though not to enjoy the favours of fortune; let providence provide for fools: It is not partiality, but equity in God, who deals with us but as our natural parents: those that are able of body and mind, he leaves to their deserts; to those of weaker merits he imparts a larger portion, and pieces out the defect of the one with the excess of the other. Thus have we no just quarrel with nature, for leaving us naked, or to envy the horns, hooves, skins, and furs of other creatures, being provided with reason, that can supply them all. We need not labour with so many arguments to confute judicial Astrology; for if there be a truth therein, it doth not injure Divinity; if to be borne under Mercury disposeth us to be witty, under Jupiter to be wealthy, I do not owe a knee unto these, but unto that merciful hand that hath ordered my indifferent and uncertain nativity unto such ●enevolous aspects. Those that hold that all things were governed by fortune had not erred, had they not persisted there: The Romans that erected a Temple to Fortune, acknowledged God therein, though in a ●lind way, somewhat of Divinity; for in ● wise man's supputation all things begi● and end in the Almighty. There is a nearer way to heaven than Homer's chain; an ea●ie logic may conjoin heaven and earth ●n one argument, and with less than a So●ites resolve all things into God. For ●hough we christian effects by their most ●ensible and nearest causes, yet it is God the true and infallible cause of all, whose ●oncourse though it be general, yet doth ● subdivide itself into the particular acti●ns of every thing, and is that spirit, by which each singular essence nor only sub●●●ts, but performs its operation. The bad construction and perverse comment on those pair of second causes, or visible hands of God, have perverted the devotion of many unto atheism; who forgetting the honest advices of faith, have listened unto the conspiracy of Passion and Reason. I have therefore always endeavoured to compose those feuds and angry dissensions between affection, faith, and reason: For there is in our soul a kind of Triumvirate, or triple government of three competitors, which distract the peace of this our commonwealth, not less than did that other the State of Rome.  
As Reason is a rebel unto Faith, so Passion unto Reaso●: As the proportions of Faith seem absurd to Reason, so the Theorems of Reason unto Passion, and both unto Reason; yet a moderate and peaceable discretion may so state and order the matter, that they may be all Kings, and yet make but one Monarchy, every one exercising his sovereignty and Prerogative in a due time and place, according to the restraint and limit of circumstance. There is, as in Philosophy so in Divinity, sturdy doubts, and boisterous objections, wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us. More of these no man hath known than myself, which I conf●sse I conquered, not in a martial posture, but on my knees: Neither had these ever such advantage of me, as to incline me to any desperate points or positions of atheism; for I have been these many years of opinion there was never any. Those that held Religion was the difference of man from beasts, have spoken probably, and proceed upon a proposition as inductive as the other: That doctrine of Epicur●s, that denied the providence of God, was no atheism, but a magnificent and high-strained conceit of his Majesty, which he deemed too sublime to mind the ●riviall actions of those inferior creatures: That fatal necessity of Stoics, is nothing ●ut the immutable Law of his will. Those that heretofore denied the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, have been condemned but as heretics; those that now deny our Saviour (though more than heretics) are not so much as Atheists: for though they deny two persons in the Trinity, they hold as we do, that there is but one God.  
That villain and secretary of hell, that composed that miscreant piece of the three Impostors, though divided from all Religions, and was neither Jew, Turk, nor Christian, was not a positive Atheist. I confess every Country hath its Machiavelli, every age its Lucian, whereof common heads must not hear, nor more advanced judgements too rashly censure on▪ it is the rhetoric of Satan, and may pervert a loose prejudicate belief.  
I confess I have perused them all, and can discover nothing that may startle a discre●t belief; yet are there heads carried off with the wind and breath of such motives. I remember a Doctor of physic in Italy, who could not perfectly believe the immortality of the soul, because Galle● seemed to make a doubt thereof. I was familiarly acquainted in France with a Divine, a man of singular parts, that on the same point was so plunged and gravelled with three lines of s●neca, that all our an●idotes, drawn from both Scripture and Philosophy, could not expel the poison of his error. There are a set of heads, that can credit the relations of Mariners, yet question the restimonies of Saint Paul; and peremptorily believe the traditions of Aelian or Pliny, yet in the Histories of Scripture, raise Queries and objections, believing no more than they can parallel in human Authors.  
I confess there are in Scripture stories that do exceed the fable of Poets, and to a captious Reader found like Garagantua or Bevis: For search all the Legends of times past, & the fabulous conceits of the present, and it will be hard to find one that deserves to carry the buckler unto Samson, yet is all this of an easy possibility, if we conceive a divine concourse or influence but from the little finger of the Almighty. It is impossible that either in the discourse of man, or in the infallible voice of God, to the weakness of our apprehensions, there should not appear irregularities, contradictions, and antinomies: myself can show a catalogue of doubts, never yet imagined nor questioned, as I know, which are not resolved at the first hearing, not fantastic Quere's, or objections of the air: For I cannot hear of Atoms in Divinity. I read the history of the Pigeon that was sent out of the Ark, and returned no more, yet not question how she found out her ma●e that was left behind: That Lazarus was raised from the dead, yet not demand where in the interim his soul awaited; or raise a Law-case, whether his heir might lawfully de●aine his inheritance, bequeathed unto him by his death; & he, though restored to life, have no Plea for his former possessions. Whether Eve was framed out of the left side of Adam, I dispute not; because I stand not yet assured which is the right side of a man, or whether there be such distinction in Nature. Whether Adam was an Hermaphrodite, as the rabbins comment upon the letter of the Text; because it is contrary to all reason, that there should be an Hermaphrodite before there was a woman, or a composition of two natures, before there was a second composed. Likewise, whether the world was created 〈◊〉 autumn, Summer, or the Spring; be●ause it was created in them all; for what●oever sign the sun possesseth, those four ●easons are actually existent: It is the ●ature of this Luminary to distinguish the several seasons of the year, all which it makes at one time in the whole earth, and successively in any part thereof. There are a bundle of curiosities, not only in Phi●osophy but in Divinity, proposed and discussed by men of most supposed abilities, which are not worthy of our vacant hours much less our serious studies; Pieces only fit to be placed in Pantagrucle Studies, or bound up with Tartaretus de modo coecandi; these are nice●ies that become not those that peruse so serious a Mystery. There are others more generally questioned and called to the bar, yet methinks of an ea●ie, possible truth. It is ridiculous to put off, or drown the general flood of Noah in that great particular inundation of Deucalion: that there was a Deluge once, seems not to me so great a miracle, as that there is not one always. How all the kinds of Creatures, not only in their own bulks, but with a competency of food and sustenance, might be preserved in one Ark, and with the extent of three hundred cubits, to a reason that rightly examines it, will appear very difficult. There is another secret, not contained in the Scripture, which is more hard to comprehend, and puts the honest Father to the refuge of a Miracle and that is, not only how the distinct pieces of the world, & divided I●ands should be first planted by men, but inhabited by tigers, Panthers and bears. How America abounded with beasts of prey, & noxious Animals, yet contained not in it that necessary creature, a Horse. By what passage those, not only Birds, but dangerou● and ●unwelcome Beasts came over: How thereby creatures are there, which are not found in the triple Continent; all which must needs be strange unto us, that hold but one Ark, and that the creatures bega● progress from the mountains of Ararat They who to salve this would make the Deluge particular, proceed upon a principle that I can no way grant; not only upon the negative of holy Scriptures, but 〈◊〉 own Reason, whereby I can make ● probible, that the world was as well peo●led in the time of Noah as in ours, and fifteen hundred years to people the world as full a time for them, as four thousand ●eers since hath been to us.  
There are other assertions and common ●enents drawn from Scripture, and gene●ally believed as Scripture; whereunto, notwithstanding, I would never betray the l●●erty of my reason. It is a Paradox to me, ●hat Methuselah was the longest lived of all the children of Adam, and no man will be ●ble to prove it; when from the process of the Text I can manifest that it is otherwise. That Judas hanged himself, there 〈◊〉 no certainty in Scripture, though in one place it seems to affirm it, & by a doubtful word hath given occasion to translate 〈◊〉 yet in another place, in a more punctu●l● description, it makes it improbable, and ●eemes to overthrow it. That our Fathers, ●fter the flood, ●rected the Tower of Ba●●ll, to preserve themselves against a second ●eluge, is generally opinioned and bele●●ed; yet is there another intention of theirs expressed in Scripture: Besides that, it i● improbable, from the circumstance of the place, the plain in the land of Shinar These are no points of Faith, and therfor● may admit a free dispute. There are yet others, and those familiarly concluded from the Text, wherein (under favour) I see n● consequence, as, to prove the Trinity from the speech of God, in the plural number Faciamus hominem, Let us make man, whic● is but the common stile of Princes, & me● of Eminency: he that shall read one o● his majesty's Proclamations, may with the same logic conclude, there be two Kings in England.  
The Church of Rome confidently prove● the opinion of Tutelary Angels, from tha● answer wh●n Peter knocked at the door, 〈◊〉 is not he but his Angel; that is to say, hi● M●ssenger, or some body from him; fo● so the original signifies, and is as likely to be the doubtful Families meaning This supposition I once suggested to ● young Divine, that answered upon thi● point, to which I remember the Francisca● Opponent replied no more, but, That 〈◊〉 ●as a new and no authentic interpretati●n.  
These are but the conclusions & fallible ●iscourses of man upon the word of God, ●or such I do believe the holy Scriptures; ●et were it of man, I could not choose butsay ● was the singularest, and superlative Piece ●hat hath been extant since the Creation; were I a Pagan, I should not refrain the Lecture of it; and cannot but commend the judgement of Ptolemy, that thought the ●lcoran of the Turks (I speak without ●rejudice) is an ill composed Piece, con●aining in it vain and ridiculous errors in ●hilosophy, impossibilities, fictions, and ●anities beyond▪ laughter, maintained by ●vident and open sophisms, the policy of Ignorance, deposition of Universities, ●nd banishment of Learning, that hath ●otten foot by arms and violence; This without a blow doth disseminate itself ●hrogh the whole earth. 'tis not unremark●ble what Philo first observed, That the Law of M●ses continued two thousand ●eares without the least alteration; where●s, we see, the Laws of other commonweals do alter with occasions; and eve● those that pretended their original from some Divinity, to have vanished withou● trace or memory. I believe, besides Zoroafter, there were divers that writ befor●Moses, who notwithstanding have suffered the common fa●e of time. Men's Work● have an age like themselves; and though they outlive their Authors, yet have a stin● and period to their duration: This only is a Work too hard for the teeth of time and cannot perish but in the general● flames, when all things shall confess thei● ashes.  
I have heard some with deep sighs lam●nt the lost lines of Cicero; others with as many groans deplore the combustion● of the Library of Alexandri●; for my par● I think there be too many in the world and could with patience behold the urne● and ashes of the Vatican, could I, with ● few others, recover the perished leaves o●Solomon. I would not omit a Copy of E●nochs Pillars, had they any better Autho● than Josephus, or did not relish too muc● of the Fable. Some men have written more than others have spoken; Pineda●otes more authors in one work, than ●e necessary in a whole world. Of those ●ree great Inventions in Germany, there ●e two which are not without their in●mmodities, and it is disputable, whether ●ey exceed not their use and comedies. It is not a melancholy Utinam of ●ine own, but the desires of better heads, ●●at there were a general Synod; not to ●●ite the incompatible difference of Reli●ion, but, for the benefit of learning, to re●uce it as it lay at first in a few and solid authors; and to condemn to the fire ●hose swarms and millions of rhapsodies, ●egotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgements of Scholars, and to ●aintaine the Trade and Mystery of typographers. I cannot but wonder with what exceptions the Samaritans could ●on●ine their belief to the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses. I am ashamed at the rabbinical Interpretation of the Jews, ●pon the Old Testament, as much as their ●efection from the New: and truly it is ●eyond wonder, how that contemptibl● and degenerate issue of Jacob, that are●● devoted to ethnic Superstition, and 〈◊〉 easily seduced to the Idolatry of the Neighbours, should now in such an obstnate and peremptory belief, adhere unt● their own Doctrine, expect impossibilities, and in the face and eye of the Churc● persist without the least hope of conversion: This is a vice in them, that were a virtue in us; for obstinacy in a bad cause, 〈◊〉 but constancy in a good. And herein must accuse those of our Religion; for ther● is not any of such a fugitive faith, such a● unstable belief, as a Christian; none tha● do so oft transform themselves, not unto several shapes of Christianity and o● the same Species, but unto more unnatural and contrary forms, of Jew and Mahometan, that from the name of Saviou● can conde●cend to the bare term of Prophet; and from an old belief that he is come, to fall to a new expectation of his coming: It is the promise of Christ to make us all one flock; but how and when the union shall be, is as obscure to me as the last day. Of those four members of Religion we hold a proportion, there are I confess some new additions, yet small, to those which accrue to our Adversaries, and those only drawn from the revolt of Pagans, men but of negative impieties, & such as deny Christ, but because they ne●er heard of him: But the Religion of the ●ew is expressly against the Christian, and the Mahometan against both; for the Turk, ●n the bulk he now stands, he is beyond ●ll hope of conversion; if he fall asunder ●here may be conceived some hopes, but ●ot without strong improbabilities. The ●ew is obstinate in all fortunes; the perse●ution of fifteen hundred years hath but ●onfirmed them in their error: they have ●lready endured what soever may be in●licted, and have suffered in a bad cause, ●ven to the condemnation of their ene●ies. Persecution is a bad and indirect way ●o plant Religion; It hath been the un●appy method of angry devotions, not on●y to confirm honest Religion, but wick●d Heresies, and extravagant Opinions. It was the first stone and Basis of our Faith, ●one can more justly boast of persecutions and glory in the number and valour of Martyrs; for, to speak properly, those are true and only examples of fortitude: Those that fetch it from the Field, or draw it from the actions of the camp, are not 〈◊〉 truly precedents of valour and audacity and at the best attain but to some bastard piece of fortitude. If we shall strictly examine the circumstances and requisites which Aristotle requires to true and perfect valour, we shall find the name only in his Master Alexander, and as little in the Roman Worthy, Julius Caesar; and if any, 〈◊〉 that easy and active way, have done so nobly as to deserve that name, yet in the passive and more terrible piece those have surpassed, and in a more heroical way may claim the honour of that Title. It is not in the power of every honest faith to proceed thus far, or pass to Heaven through the flames; every one hath it not in the ful● measure, nor in so audacious and resolute a temper, as to endure those terrible test● & trials, who notwithstanding in a peaceable way do truly adore their Saviour, and have (no doubt) a Faith acceptable in the eyes of God: Now as all that die in war are not termed soldiers, so neither can I ●roperly term all those that suffer in matters of Religion Martyrs. The council of Constance condemns John Husse for an heretic, the Stories of his own party ●ile him a Martyr; it is false Divinity if I ●ay he was neither one nor other: there are ●any (Questionless) canonised on earth, ●hat shall never be Saints in Heaven; and ●ave their names in Histories and Marty●ologies, who in the eyes of God are not ●o perfect Martyrs as was that wise Hea●en, Socrates, that suffered on a fundamental point of Religion, the unity of God, have pitied the miserable Bishop that ●uffered in the cause of Antipodes, yet can●ot choose but accuse him of as much madness, for exposing his life on such a trifle, ●s those of ignorance and folly that con●emned him. I think my cons●●ence will ●ot give me the lie, if I say, there is not a ●an extant that in a noble way fears the ace of death less than myself, yet from ●●e moral duty I owe to the Commande●ent of God, and the natural respects that I tender unto the conservation of my essence and being, I would not perish upon a Ceremony, politic points, or indifferency: nor is my belief of that untractable temper, as not to bow at their obstacles, or connive at matters that are not manifest impieties: The leaven therefore and ferment of all, not only civil, but Religious actions, is wisdom; without which, to commit ourselves to the flames is Homicide, and (I fear) but to pass through one fire into another. That Miracles are ceased I can neither prove, nor absolutely deny, much less define the time and period of their cessation; that they survived Christ, is manifest upon record of Scripture; that they outlived the Apostles also, and were revived at the conversion of Nations, many years after, we cannot deny, if we shall not question those Writers whose testimonies we do not controvert, in points that make for our own opinions; therefore that may have some truth in it that is reported by the Jesuits, of their Miracles in the Indies, I could wish it were true, or had any other testimony than their own pens: they may easily believe those Miracles abroad, who daily conceive greater at home; the transinutation of ●hose visible elements into the visible body and blood of our Saviour: for the conversion of water into wine, which he wrought in Can●, or what the devil would ●ave had him done in the wilderness, of stones into Bread, compared to this, scarce deserves the name of Miracle: Though ●ndeed, to speak properly, there is not one Miracle greater than another, they being the extraordinary effect of the hand of God, to which all things are of an equal facility; and to create the world as easily as one single creature. For this is also a miracle, not only to produce effects against or above Nature, but before Nature; and to create Nature as great a miracle as to contradict or transcend her; We do too ●arrowly define the power of God, restraining it to our capacities. I hold that God cannot do all things but sin; how he could work contradictions I do not understand, yet dare not therefore deny. I cannot see why the Angels of God should question Esdras to recall the time past, if it were beyond his own power; or that God should pose mortality in that, which ●e was not able to perform himself. I will not say, God cannot, but he will not perform many things, which we plainly affirm he cannot: this I am sure is the mannerliest proposition, wherein notwithstanding I hold no Paradox. For strictly his power is the same with his will, and they both with all the rest do make but one God.  
But above all things, I wonder how the curiosity of wiser heads could pass that great and indisputable miracle, the cessation of Oracles: and in what swoon their reasons lay, to content themselves, and sit down with such farfetched and ridiculous reasons as Plutarch allegeth for it. The Jews that can believe the supernatural solstice of the Sun in the days of Joshuah have yet the impudence to deny the Eclipse, which every Pagan confessed at their death: but for this it is evidentt beyond all contradiction, the devil himself confessed it. Certainly it is not a warrantable curiosity, to examine the verity of Scripture by the concordance of human history, or ●eeke to confirm the Chronicle of Hester or Daniel, by the authority of Megasthenes or Herodotus: I confess I have had an unhappy curiosity this way, till I laughed myself out of it with a piece of Justine, where he delivers that the children of Israel for being scabbed were banished out of Egypt. And truly since I have understood the occurrences of the world, and know in what counterfeit shapes and deceitful vizards the time represents on the stage things past I do believe them little more than things to come. Some have been of opinion, and endeavoured to write the History of their own lives; wherein Moses hath outgone them all, and left not only the story of his life, but of his death also. It is a riddle to me, how this story of Oracles hath not wormed out of the world that doubtful conceit of Spirits and Witches; how so many learned heads should so far forget the metaphysics, and destroy the Ladder and scale of creatures, as to question the existence of Spirits: for my part I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are Witches; they that doubt of these do not only deny them, but Spirits; and are obliquely, not consequently, a sort, not of Infidels, but Atheists.  
Those that to confute their incredulity desire to see apparition, shall questionless never behold any, nor have the power ever to be so much as Witches; the devil hath them already in a heresy as capital● as Witchcraft, and to appear to them, were but to convert them: Of all the delusions wherewith he deceives mortality there is not any that puzleth me more the● the legerdemain of Changeilng; I do no● credit those transformations of reasonable creatures into beasts, or that the Devil● hath the power to transplant a man into ● horse, who tempted Christ (as a trial of his Divinity) to convert stones into bread I could believe that Spirits use with man the act of carnality, and that in both sexes● I conceive they may assume, steal, or contrive a body wherein there may be action enough to content d●crepit lust, or passion to satisfy more active veneries; yet in both without a possibility of generation: and ●herefore that opinion, that Antichrist should be borne of the Tribe of Dan by conjunction with the devil, is ridiculous, and a conceit fitter for the Rabbins than Christians.  
I hold that the devil doth really possess some men, the spirit of melancholy others, the Spirit of delusion others; that as the devil is concealed and deemed by some, so God and good Angels are pretended by others, whereof the late defection of the Maid of Germany hath left pregnant example. Again, I believe that all that use sorceries, incantations, and spells, are not Witches, or as we term them, Magicians; I conceive there is a traditional magic, not learned immediately from the devil, but at second hand from his scholars; 〈◊〉 having once his secret betrayed, are able, and do empirically practise without his advice, they both proceeding up●n the principles of nature: their actives actively conjoined to disposed passives, will under any Master produce their effects. Thus I think at first a great part of Philosophy was Witchcraft, which b●ing afterward derived to another, proved but Philosophy, and was indeed n●●●ore but the honest effects of Nature: W●●at invented by us is Philosophy, learn●● from him is magic. We do surely ●we the discovery of many secrets to the discovery of good and bad angels. I could never pass that sentence of Paracelsus without an asterisk or annotation; Acce●dens constellatum multa revelat quaerentibus animalia naturae, i. e. opera Dei. I do think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions, have been the courteous revelation of Spirits; for those noble essences in heaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellow●natures on earth; and therefore believe that those many prodigies and ominous prognostics which forerun the ruins of States, Princes, and private persons, are the charitable premonitions of good Angels, which more careless inquiries term but the effects of chance and nature. Now besides these particular and divided Spirits, there may be (for aught I know) an universal common Spirit to the whole world. It was the opinion of Plato, and it is yet the hermetical Philosophers; if there be a common nature that ●●nties and ties the scattered and divided individuals into one species, why may there not be one that unites them all? However, I am sure there is a common spirit that plays within us, yet makes no part of us, and that is the Spirit of God, and scintillation of the noble and mighty Essence, which is the life and radical heat of spirits; and those essences that know not the virtue of the sun's fire, qu●te contrary to the fire of Hell: This is the gentle heat that brooded on the waters, and in six days hatched the world; this is that irradiation that dispels the mists of Hell, the clouds of horror, fear, sorrow, and despair; and preserves the region of the mind in serenity: whatsoever feels not the wa●me gale and gentle ventilation of this Spirit (though I feel his pulse) I dare not say he lives; for truly without this, to me, there is no heat under the tropic; nor any light, though I dwell in the body of the Sun.  
As when the labouring Sun hath wrought his track  
Up to the top of lofty Cancers back,  
The icy Ocean cracks, the frozen pole  
Thaws with the heat of the celestial coal;  
So when the absent beams begin t' impart  
Again a Solstice on my frozen heart,  
My Winter's o'er, my drooping spirits sing,  
And every part revives into a Spring.  
But if thy quickening beams a while decline,  
And with their light bless not this orb of mine,  
A chilly frost surpriseth every member,  
And in the midst of June I feel December.  
Keep still in my Horizon, for to me,  
'tis not the Sun that makes the day, but thee.  
O how this earthly temper doth debase  
The noble soul, in this her heavenly place!  
Whose win●y nature ever doth aspire,  
To reach the place whence first it took its fire.  
Those flames, I feel, which in my heart do dwell,  
Are not thy beams, but take their fire from Hell:  
O quench them all, and let thy light divine  
Be as the Sun to this poor orb of mine:  
And to thy sacred Spirit convert those fires,  
Whose earthy fumes choke my devout aspires.  
Therefore for Spirits I am so far from denying their existence, that I could easily believe, that not only whole countries, but particular persons have their Tutelary, and Guardian Angels: It is not a new ●pinion of the Church of Rome, but of Py●●agoras and Plato; there is no heresy in 〈◊〉, and if not manifestly defined in Scrip●ure, yet is an opinion of a good and ●holesome use in the course and actions ●f a man's life, and would seem as an Hy●othesis to salve many doubts, whereof ●ommon Philosophy affordeth no resolu●●on: Now if you demand my opinion ●nd metaphysics of their natures, I con●esse them very shallow, most of them in a ●egative way, like that of God; or in a ●omparative, between ourselves and fel●ow creatures; for there is in this Universe 〈◊〉 Staire, or manifest Scale of creatures, ri●ing not disorderly, or in a confusion, but with a comely method and proportion: ●etweene creatures of mere existence and things of life, there is a large disproportion of nature; between two plant-animals or creatures of sense, a wider diffe●ence; between them and man, a far greater: and if the proportion hold on, ●etweene manand Angels there should be ●et a greater.  
We do not comprehend their natures who retain the first definition of Porphiry, and distinguish them from ourselves by immortality; for before his fall, man also was immortal; yet must we needs affirm that he had a different essence from the Angels: having therefore no certain knowledge of their natures. it is no bad method of the schools, whatsoever perfection we find obscurely in ourselves, in a more complete and absolute way to ascribe unto them. I believe they have an extemporary knowledge, and upon the first motion of their reason do what we cannot without study or deliberation; they know things by their forms, and define by specifical difference, what we describe by accidents and properties; and therefore probabilities to us may be demonstrations unto them; that they have knowledge no● only of the specifical, but numerical forms of ●ndividuals, and understand by what reserved difference each single Hypostasis (besides the relation to its species) becomes its natural self.  
That as the soul hath a power to move ●●e body it informs, so there is a Faculty 〈◊〉 move any, though inform none; ours ●pon restraint of time, place, and distance.  
But that invisible hand that conveyed ●abakkuk to the lion's den, or Philip to ●zotus, infringeth this rule, and hath a ●e●ret conveyance, wherewith mortality is ●ot acquainted; if they have that intui●ive ●nowledge, whereby as in reflection they ●ehold the thoughts of one another, I can●ot peremptorily deny but they know a ●reat part of ours. They that to refute the ●nvocation of Saints, have deemed that ●hey know not our affairs below, have ●roceeded too far, and must pardon my ●pinion, till I can truly answer that piece ●f Scripture, At the conversion of a sinner all the Angels of heaven rejoice. I cannot with ●hat great Father securely interpret the ●orke of the first day, Fiat lux, to the cre●tion of Angels, though (I confess) there ●s not any creature that hath so near a ●lympse of their nature, as light in the ●unne and Elements, while we style a bare ●ccident, but where it subsists alone, a spi●tuall Substance, and may be an Angel: in brief, conceive light invisible, and that i● a Spirit, those are certainly the magisterial and masterpieces of the Creature the Flower (or as we may say) the best part of nothing actually existing what we are but in hopes, & probabilities we are only the amphibious piece betwee● a corporal and spiritual essence, that middle form that links those two together and makes good the method of God & nature, that jumps not from extremes, bu● unites the incompatible distances by som● middle and participating natures; that w● are the breath and similitude of God, it i● indisputable, & upon record of holy Scripture, but to call ourselves a microcosm▪ or little world, I thought it only a pleasan● trope of rhetoric, till my near judgement and second thoughts told me there was ● real truth therein: for first we are a rud● mass, and in the rank of creatures, which only are, and have a dull kind of being not yet privileged with life, or preferre● to sense or reason; next we live the life o● plan●s, the life of animals, the life of men and at last the life of spirits, running on i●●ne mysterious nature: those five kinds of ●xistences which comprehend the crea●ures not only of the world, but of the Universe; this is man the great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to ●ive not only like other creatures in divers ●lements, but in divided and distinguished worlds; for though there be but one to sens●, ●here are two to reason; the one visible, the other invisible, whereof Moses seems to ●ave left description, and of the other so obscurely, that some parts thereof are yet 〈◊〉 controversy; & truly for the last chap●er of Genesis, I must confess a great deal of obscurity, though Divines have to the ●ower of human reason endeavoured to make all go in a literal meaning, yet ●hose allegorical interpretations are also ●robable, & perhaps the mystical method of Moses bred up in the hieroglyphical schools of the Egyptians.  
Now for the immaterial world methinks we need not wander so far as the first movable, for even in this material fabric the spirits walk as freely exempt from the ●ffection of time, place, and motion, as beyond the extremest circumference: do● but extract from the corpulency of bodies or resolve things beyond their first matter and you discover the habitation of Angels, which if I call the ubiquitary, and omnipresent essence of God, I hope I sha●● not offend Divinity; for before the Creation of the world God was really al● things. For the Angels he created no ne● world, or determinate mansion, and therefore they are everywhere, where his essence is, and do live at a distance even i● himself: that God made all things fo● man, is in some sens● true, yet not so farr● as to subordinate the creation of those pu●rer creatures to ours, though as ministring● spirits they do, and are willing to fulfil● the will of God in these lower and sublu●nary affairs of man; God made all thing● for himself, and it is impossible he shoul● make them for any other end than hi● own glory; it is all he can receive, and al● that is without himself, for honour being an external adjunct, and in the hono●er, rather than in the person honoured, 〈◊〉 was necessary to make a creature, from whom he might receive this homage, and that is in the other world Angels, in this it is man, which when we neglect we forget the very end of our creation, and may justly provoke God, not only to repent that he hath made the world, but that he hath sworn ●hat he would not destroy it. That ●here is but one world, is a conclusion of Faith. Aristotle with all his Philosophy hath not been able to prove it; and as weakly that the world was eternal; that dispute much troubled the pen of the ancient Philosophers, but Moses decided that question, and salved all with a new term of creation, a production of something out of nothing, and that is whatsoever is opposite to something more exactly, that which is truly contrary unto God, for he ●●nely is, all other have an existence, with depending, and are something but by di●tinction.  
The whole Creation is a mystery, and ●articularly that of man, at the blast of his mouth were the rest of the creatures made ●nd at his bare word they started out of nothing: but in the frame of man (as the Text describes it) he played the sensible operator, and seemed not so much to create, as make him; when he had separated the materials of other creatures, there consequently resulted a form and soul, but having raised the walls of man, he was driven to a second and harder creation of a substance like himself, an incorruptible and immortal soul. For the two asser●ions we have in Philosophy, and opinion of the Heathens, the flat affirmative of Plato, and not a negative from Aristotle: there is another scruple cast in by Divinity (concerning its production) much disputed in the German auditories, and with that indifferency and equality of arguments, as leave the controversies undetermined.  
I am not of Paracelsus mind, that boldly delivers a receipt to make a man without conjunction, yet cannot but wonder at the multitude of heads that do deny traduction, having no other argument to confirm their belief, then that Rhetorical● sentence, and Antanaclasis of Augustine, cre●ando infunditur, infundendo creature, either opinion will stand well enough with religion, yet I should rather incline to this, did not one objection haunt me, not wrung from speculations and subtleties, but from common sense, and observation, not picked from the leaves of any other, but bred amongst the weeds and tares of mine own brain. And this is a conclusion from the equivocal and monstrous production in the copulation of man with beast; for if the soul of man be not transmitted and transfused in the seed of the parents; why are not those productions merely beasts, but have also an impressure and tincture of reason in as high measure as it may demonstrate itself in those improper organs? nor truly can I reasonably deny, that the soul in this her sublunary estate, is wholly inorganical, but that for the performance of her ordinary actions, is required not only a symmetry and proper disposition of Organs, but a Crasis and temper correspondent to its operation; yet is not this mass of flesh and visible structure the instrument and proper corpse of the soul, but rather of sense, and that the nearer Ubi of reason. In our study of Anatomy there is a mass of mysterious Philosophy, and such as reduced the very Heathens to Divinity; yet amongst all those rare discoveries, and curious pieces, I find in the fabric of man, I do not so much content myself, as in that I find not any proper Organ or instrument for the rational soul; for in the brain, which we term the seat of Reason, there is not any thing of moment more than I can discover in the cranny of a beast. Thus we are men, and we know not how, there is something in us, that can be without us, and will be after us, though it is strange that it hath no history, what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it entered in us.  
Now for the walls of flesh, wherein the soul doth seem to be immured before the restauration, it is nothing but an elemental composition, and a fabric that may fall to ashes; All flesh is grass, is not only metaphorically, but literally true, for all those creatures we behold, are but the herbs of the field, digested into flesh ●n them, or more remotely carnified in ourselves. Nay further, we are what we ●ll abhor, Anthropophagi and Cannibals, devourers not only of men, but of our ●elves; and that not in an allegory, but a ●ositive truth; for all this mass of flesh which we behold, came in at our mouths: ●his frame we look upon, hath been up●n our trenchers. In brief, we have de●oured ourselves. I cannot believe that wisdom of Pythagoras did ever positively, ●nd in a literal sense, affirm his Metem●suchosis, or impossible transmigrations of the souls of men into beasts: of all Metamorphoses or transmigrations, I believe ●nely one, that is of Lot's wife, for that of Nabuchadnezzar proceeded not so far; ●n all others I conceive there is no further ●erity than is contained in their implicit ●ense and morality: I believe that the whole frame of a beast doth perish, and is ●eft in the same state after death, as before ●t was materialled unto life; that the sou●●● of men know neither contrary nor 〈◊〉 ●ruption, that they subsist beyond 〈…〉, and outlive death by the 〈…〉 their proper natures, and without a miracle; that the souls of the faithful, as they leave earth, take possession of Heaven: tha● those apparitious, and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls o● men, but the unquiet walks of Devils● prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and villainy, instilling and stealing into our hearts; that the blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, bu● wander solicitous of the affairs of the world; that those phantasms appear often, and do frequent cemeteries, charnel houses, and Churches, it is because those are the dormitories of the dead, where the devil like an insolent Champion holds with pride the spoils and Trophies of his victory in Adam.  
This is the dismal conquest we all deplore, that makes us often cry, O Adam quid fecisti? I thank God I have not those strait ligaments, or narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on life, or be convulst and tremble at the name of death. Not that I am insensible of the dread and horror thereof, or by raking into the bow●ls of the deceased, continual sight of Anatomies, Skeletons, or Cadaverous relics, like Vespilloes, or Grave-makers, I am become stupid, or have forgot the apprehension of mortality, but that marshalling of the horrors, and contemplating the extremities thereof, I find not any therein able to daunt the courage of a man much less a resolved Christian, and therefore am not angry at the error of our first parents, or unwilling to bear a part of this common fate; and like the best of them to die, that is, to cease to breathe; to take a farewell of the elements, to be a kind of nothing for a moment, to be within one instant a spirit: When I take a full view and circle of myself, but with this reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, death, I do conceive myself the miserablest person extant, were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of the world should not entreat a moment's breath from me; could the devil work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive that very thought, I have so abject a thought of this common way of existence, this retaining to the Sun and elements, I cannot think this to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of my nature, in expectation of a better; I can with patience embrace this life, yet in my best meditations do often desire death, I honour any man that contemns it, nor can I love any that is afraid of it; this makes me naturally love a soldier, and honour those tattered and contemptible Regiments that will die at the command of a Sergeant. For a Pagan there may be some motives to be in love with life, but for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this Dilemma, that he is too sensible of this life, or careless of the life to come.  
Some Divines count Adam 30. years old at his creation, because they suppose him created in the perfect age & stature of man; & surely we are all out of the computation of our age, every man is some months' elder than he bethinks him; for we live, move, and have a being, and are subject to the actions of the elements, and the malice of diseases in that other world, the ●ruest microcosm, the womb of our mo●her: for besides that general and common existence that we are conceived in our Chaos, and whilst we sleep within the bosom of our causes, we enjoy a being ●nd life in three distinct worlds, wherein we receive most manifest gradations: In ●hat obscure world and womb of our mo●her, our time is short, computed by the moon; yet longer than the days of ma●y creatures that behold the sun, our ●elves being not yet without life, sense, and reason; the manifestation of its actions, it awaits the opportunity of ob●ects; and seems to live there but in its ●oote and soul of vegetation, entering af●erwards upon the scene of the world, we ●rise up and become another creature, performing the reasonable actions of man, and obscurely manifesting that part of Divinity in use, but not in compliment and perfection, till we have once more cast our secondine, that is, this flough of flesh, and are delivered into the last world, that ●s, that ineffable place of Saint Paul, that ●bi of spirits. The smattering that I have of the philosopher's stone, which is nothing else but the perfectest exaltation o● gold, hath taught me a great deal of Divinity, and instructed my belief, how tha● immortal spirit and incorruptible substance of my soul may lie obscure, and sleep within this house of flesh. Thos● strange and mystical transmigrations tha● I have observed in silkworms, turned my Philosophy into Divinity. There is i● these works of nature, which seem to puzzle reason, something Divine, and hat● more in it then the eye of a common spectator doth discover. I am naturally bashful, nor hath conversation, age, or travel, been able to effront or harden me yet I have one part of modesty, which I have seldom discovered in another that is, to speak truly. I am not s● much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof to the very disgrace and ignominy of ou● natures, that in a moment can so disfigur● us that our nearest friends, Wife, & Children stand afraid and stare at us. The Birds and Beasts of the field that before i● a natural fear obeyed us, forgetting allegiance begin to prey upon us; this very ●nceit hath in a tempest disposed and left ●e wisling to be swallowed up in the a●ysse of waters, wherein I had perished, ●s●ene, unpitied, without wondering eyes, ●ares of pity, Lectures of mortality, and one had said, Quantum mutatus ab illo! ●ot that I am ashamed of the Anatomy ●f my parts, or can accuse nature for play●●g the bungler in any part of me, or my ●wne vicious life for contracting any ●●amefull disease upon me, whereby I ●ight not call myself as wholesome a ●orsell for the worms as any. Some up●n the courage of fruitful issue, wherein, ●s in the truest Chronicle, they seem to ●utlive themselves, can with greater pati●nce away with death. This conceit and ●ounterfeit subsisting in our progenies ●eemes to me a mere fallacy, unworthy the desir●s of a man, that can but con●eive a thought of the next world; who, ●n a noble ambition, should desire to live ●n his substance in Heaven. And therefore at my death I mean to take a Totall ●diew of the world, not caring for a Monument, History, or Epitaph, not so muc● as the bare memory of my name to b● found anywhere but in the universal Register of God: I am not yet so cynical, a● to approve the Testament of Diogenes, no● do altogether allow that Rodomantado o●Lucian.  
— Coelo tegitur, qui non habet urnam.  
He that unburied lies, wants not a hearse,  
For unto him a tombe's the universe.  
But commend in my calmer judgement those ingenuous intentions that desire to sleep by the urns of their Fathers, an● strive to go the nearest way unto corruption. I do not envy the temper of crows▪ nor the numerous and weary days of ou● Fathers before the flood. If their be any truth in Astrology, I may outlive a jubilee, as yet I have not seen one revolution o●Saturne, nor have my pulse beat thirty years, and excepting one, have seen the ashes, and left under ground, all the King● of Europe, have been contemporary to three Emperors, four Grand signiors▪ and as many Popes; me thinks I have outlived myself, and begin to be weary of the same, I have shaken hands with de●ight in warm blood and Canicular days, ● perceive I do participate the vices of ●ge, the world to me is but a dream, or mock-show, and we all therein but Pan●alones or antics to my severer con●emplation.  
It is not, I confess, an unlawful Pray●r to desire to surpass the days of our Saviour, or wish to outlive that age wherein he thought fittest to die, yet, if (as Divinity affirms) there shall be no grey hairs in Heaven, but all shall rise in the perfect state of men, we do but out●ive those perfections in this world, to be ●ecalled by them, by a greater miracle in the next, and run on here but to retrograde hereafter. Were there any hopes to out●ive vice, or a point to be superannuated from sin, it were worthy on our knees to ●mplore the age of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify, but incurvate our natures, ●urning bad dispositions into worser ha●its, and (like diseases) bring on incura●le vices; for every day, as we grow weak ●n age, we grow strong in sin, and the number of our days doth but make o●● sins innumerable. The same vice committed at sixteen, is not the same, thoug● it agree in all other circumstances, at forty but swells and doubles from the circumstance of our ages, wherein besides the constant and inexcusable habit of transgressing, it hath the maturity of our Judgement to cut off pretence unto excuse o● pardon: every sin, the oftener it is committed the more it acquireth in the quality of evil; as it succeeds in times, so it proceeds into degrees of badness, for as they proceed they ever multiply, and like figure● in arithmetic, the last stands for mor● then all that went before it: the course an● order of my life, would be a very death to● others: I use myself to all diets, humours● airs, hunger, th●rst, cold, heat, want plenty, necessity, dangers, hazards; when I am cold, I cure not myself by heat when sick, not by physic, those tha● know how I live, may justly say, I regar● not life, nor stand in fear of death; I am much taken with two verses of Lucan, sinc● I have been able not only as we do a● school, to construe, but understand it: 

Victurosque Dei celant ut vivere durent, Felix essemori.   

So are we all deluded, vainly searching ways,  
To make us happy by the length of days,  
For cunningly it makes protract the breath  
The Gods conceal the happiness of Death.    
There be many excellent strains in ●hat Poet, wherewith his stoical Genius hath liberally supplied him; and truly ●here are singular pieces of Philosophy of Zeno, and doctrine of the Stoics, which I perceive, delivered in a Pulpit, pass for current Divinity, yet herein are they ex●reame that can allow a man to be his own assassin, and so highly extol the end of Cato, this is indeed not to fear death, but ●et to be afraid of life. It is a brave act of ●alour to contemn death, but where life ●s more terrible than death, it is then the ●ruest valour to dare to live, and herein Religion hath taught us a noble example: For all the valiant acts of Curtius Sc●vola▪ or Godrus▪ do not parallel or match tha● one of Job; and sure there is no torture to the rack of a disease, nor any Poneyar● in death itself like those in the way o● prologue unto it.  
Emorinolo, sed me esse mortuum nihil curo● I would not die, but care not to be dead Were I of Caesar's Religion I should be o● his desires, and wish rather to be torture● at one blow, then to be sawed in pieces by the grating torture of a disease. Now be●sides this literal positive kind of death there are others whereof Divines mak● mention, and those I think, not merely metaphorical, as Mortification, dyin● unto sin and the world; therefore I say every man hath a double Horoscope, on● of his Humanity, his birth; another o● his Christianity, his baptism, and from this do I compute or calculate my Nativity, yet not-reckoning of those Horae com● bustae, and odd days, or esteeming myself any thing, before I was my Saviours and enrolled in the Register of Christ whosoever enjoys not this life, I coun● him but an apparition, though he wear●●●out him the sensible affection of the ●●sh.  
In those moral acceptions, the way be immortal is to die daily, nor can ●hinke that I have the true Theory of ●●ath, when I contemplate a skull, or ●●hold a Skeleton, which those vulgar ●aginations cast upon it; I have there●●re enlarged that common Memento ●ori, into a more Christian memoran●m, Memento quatuor novissima, those ●ure inevitable points of us all, Death, ●udgement, Heaven, and Hell. Neither ●d the contemplations of the Heathens ●st in their graves, without a further ●ought of Radamanth or some judicial ●●oceeding after death, but in another ●ay, and upon suggestion of their natu●ll reasons. I cannot but marvel from ●hat sibyl or Oracle they stole the pro●hesie of the worlds destruct on by fire, ●r whence Lucan learned to say, 
●omunis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astr● Misturus.—  
〈…〉  
Wherein our bones with stars shall make one pire.   
I believe the world grows near it● end, and yet is neither old nor decayed nor will ever perish upon the ruins o● its own principles. As the work o● Creation was above nature, so its ad●versary, annihilation, without whic● the world hath not its end. Now wha● force should be able to consume it, thu● far without the breath of God, whic● is the truest consuming flame my Philosophy can inform me? I believe tha● there went not a minute to the world creation, nor shall there go to its de●struction; Those fix days so punctually described, make not to me one moment, but rather seem to manifest the method and Idea of the great work o● the intellect of God, than the manne● how he proceeded in its operation. ● cannot dream that there should be a● the last day any judicial proceeding, o● calling to the bar, as indeed the Scripture seems to imply, and the litera●●ommentators do conceive: for un●eakeable mysteries in the Scriptures ●e often delivered in a vulgar and illu●rative way, and being written unto ●an, are delivered, not as they truly ●e, but as they may be understood, ●herein notwithstanding the different ●terpretations according to different ●●pacities they may stand firm with ●ur devotion, nor be any way prejudi●all to each single edification. Now to ●etermine the day and year of this invitable time, is not only convincible ●nd statute madness, but also manifest ●npiety; How shall we interpret Elias●000. years, or imagine the secret ●ommunicated to the Rabbi, which God hath denied to his Angels?  
It had been an excellent quaere, to ●ave posed the devil of Delphos, and ●ust needs have forced him to some ●range amphibology; it hath not only ●●ocked the predictions of sundry astrologers in ages past, but the Philoso●hy of many melancholy heads, in the ●resent, who neither understanding reasonable things past, nor present, pretend a knowledge of things to com● heads ordained only to manifest the incredible effects of melancholy, an● to fulfil old prophecies, rather than b●●uthour of new.  
[In those days there shall come wa● and rumours of wars] to me seems n● prophecy, but a constant truth, in a● times verified since it was first pro●nounced: There shall be signs in the moon and stars, how comes he the● like a thief in the night, when he give an item of his coming? That commo● sign drawn from the revelation of An● tichrist, the philosopher's stone in Divi●ity, for the discovery and inventio● whereof, though there be prescribe● rules, and probable inductions, ye● hath no man attained the perfect discovery thereof. That general opinion tha● the world grows near at an end, hat● possessed all ages past as nearly as ours● I am afraid that the souls that now de●part, cannot escape the lingering expo● stulation of the Saints under the Altar 〈◊〉 Domine? How long, O Lord? ●nd groan in the expectation of the ●reat Jubilee. This is the day that must ●ake good the great attribute of God's ●ustice, that must reconcile those unan●●erable doubts that torment the wisest ●nderstandings, and reduce those seem●g inequalities, and respective distribu●●ons in this world, to an equality and ●●compensive Justice in the next.  
This is that one day, that shall include ●nd comprehend all that went before it, ●herein as in the last scene, all the 〈◊〉 must enter to complete and make ●p the Catastrophe of this great piece. ●his is the day, who●e only memory hath power to make us honest in the ●arke, and to be virtuous without a ●itnesse. Ipsa sui pretium virtus sihi, that ●ertue is her own reward, is but a cold ●rinciple, and not able to maintain our ●ariable resolutions in a constant and ●etled way of goodness. I have practi●ed that honest artifice of Seneca, and ●my retired and solitary imaginations, ●o detain me from the foulness of vice, have fancied to myself the presence of my dear and worthiest friend before whom I should lose my head, rather than be vicious, yet herein I foun● that there was nought but moral honesty, and this was not to be virtuous fo● his sake who must reward us at the la●● day. I have tried if I could have reached that great resolution of his, to be honest without a thought of Heaven o● hell; and indeed I found upon a natural inclination, and inbred loyalty unto virtue, that I could serve her without a li● very, yet not in the resolved venerabl● way, but that the frailty of my nature upon an easy temptation, might be induced to forget her. The life therefor● and spirit of all our actions, is the resu●●rection, and stable apprehension. tha● our ashes shall enjoy the fruit of our p●ous endeavours; without this, all Religion is a fallacy; and those impieties o●Lucian and Euripedes, are no blasphe● mies, but subtle verities, and Atheist have been the only Philosophers. Ho● shall the dead arise? is no question o● my faith, to believe only possibilities, ●s not faith, but mere Philosophy, many things are true in Divinity, which ●are neither inducible by reason, nor confirmable by sense, and many things in Philosophy confirmable by sense, yet not inducible by reason. Thus it is impossible by any solid or demonstrative reasons to perceive a man to believe the conversion of the Needle to the North; though this be possible, and true, and easily credible, upon a single experiment of the sense. I believe that our estranged and divided ashes shall unite again, that our separated dust after so many pilgrimages and transformations into the parts of Minerals, Plants, Animals, Elements, shall at the voice of God return into their primitive shapes, and join again to make up their primary and predestinate forms. As at the Creation, there was a separation of the confused mass into its species; so at the destruction thereof shall be a separation into its distinct individuals. As at the Creation of the world, all that distinct species that we behold, lay involved in one mass, till the fruitful voice of God separated this united multitude into its several species: so at the last day, when those corrupted relics shall be scattered in the wilderness of forms, and seem to have forgot their proper habits, God by a powerful voice shall command them b●cke into their proper shapes, and call them out by their single and individuals: Then shall appear the fertility of Adam, and the magic of that sperm that hath dilated into so many millions; what is made to be immortal, Nature cannot, nor will the voice of God destroy.  
Those bodies that we behold to perish, were in their created natures, immortal, and liable unto death but accidentally, and upon forfeit, and therefore they owe not that natural homage unto death, as other bodies do, but may be restored to immortality with a lesser miracle, as by a bare and easy revocation of course return immortal. I have often beheld as a miracle, that artificial resurrection and vivification of Mercury, how being mortified in a thousand shapes, it assumes again its own, and returns into its numerical self.  
Let us speak naturally, and as Philosophers, the forms of alterable bodies in those sensible corruptions perish not; nor as we imagine, wholly quit their mansions, but retire and contract themselves into those secret and unaccessable parts, where they may best protect themselves against the action of their Antagonists. A plant or vegetable consumed to ashes, to a contemplative and school Philosopher seems utterly destroyed, and the form to have taken his leave for ever: But to a subtle Artist the forms are not perished, but withdrawn into their combustible part, where they li● secure from the action of that devouring element. This I make good by experience, and can from the ashes of a plant revive the plant, and from its cinders r●cal it to its stalk and leaves again. What the Art of man can do in these inferior pieces, what blasphemy is it to imagine the finger of God cannot do in those more perfect and sensible structures? This is that mystical Philosophy, from whence no true scholar becomes an Atheist, but from the visible effects of nature, grows up a real Divine, and beholds not as in a dream, as Ezekiel, but in an ocular and visible object the types of his resurrection. Now, the necessary Mansions of our restored self, are these two contrary incompatible places we call Heaven and Hell; to define them, or strictly to determine what and where these are, surpasseth my divinity. That elegant Saint, which seemed to have a glimpse of Heaven, hath left but a negative description thereof; Which neither eye hath seen, nor ear hath heard, nor can enter into the heart of man; he was translated out of himself to behold it, but being returned into himself could not express it. Saint John's description by Emeralds, Chrysolites, and precious stones, is too weak to express the material Heaven we behold. Briefly therefore, where the soul hath the full measure, and compliment of happiness, where the bound●esse appetite of the spirit remains completely satisfied, that it can neither desire addition nor alteration; that I think is truly Heaven: and this can only be in the enjoyment of that essence, whose infinite goodness is able to terminate the desires of itself, and the unsatiable wishes of ours; where ever God will thus manifest himself, there is Heaven, though within the circle of this sensible world.  
Thus the sense of man may be in Heaven anywhere within the limits of his own proper body, and when it ceaseth to live in the body, it may remain in its own soul, that is its Creator. And thus we may say that Saint Paul, whether in the body, or out of the body, was yet in Heaven. To place it in the Empyriall, or beyond the tenth Sphere, is to forget the world's destruction; for when this sensible world shall be destroyed, and shall then be here as it was there, an Empyriall Heaven, a quasi vacuity, when to ask where Heaven is, is to demand where the presence of God is, or where we have the glory of that happy vision. Moses that was bred up in all the learning of the Egyptians, committed a gross absurdity in Philosophy when with the eyes of flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his Maker, that is truth itself, to contradiction. Those that imagine Heaven and Hell neighbours, and conceive a vicinity between those two extremes, upon consequence of the Parable, where Dives discoursed with Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, do too gros●ely conceive of those glorified creatures, whose eyes shall easily outsee the sun, and behold without a Perspective, the extremest distances: for if there shall be in our glorified eyes, the faculty of sight and reception of objects, I could think the visible species there to be in as unlimitable a way as now the intellectuals. I grant that two bodies placed beyond the tenth sphere, or in a vacuity, according to A●istotles Philosophy, could not behold each other, because there wants a body or Medium to have and transport the visible rays of the object unto the sense, but when there shall be a general defect of either Medium to convey, or light to prepare and dispose that Medium, and yet a perfect vision, we must suspend the rules of our Philosophy, and make all good by a more absolute piece of optics. I cannot tell how to say that fire is the essence of hell, I know not what to make of Purgatory, or conceive a flame that can neither prey upon, nor purify the substance of a soul; those flames of sulphur mentioned in the Scriptures, I take not to be understood of this present Hell, but of that to come where fire shall make up the compliment of our tortures, and have a body or subject wherein to manifest its tyranny: Some who had the honour to be Text. in divinity, are of opinion it shall be the same specifical fire with ours. This is hard to conceive, yet can I make good how even that may prey upon our bodies, and yet not consume us: for in this material world, there are bodies that passed invincible in the powerfullest flames, and though by action of the fire they fell into ignition and liquation, yet will they never suffer a destruction: I would know how Moses with an actual fire calcind, or burned the golden calf into powder: for that mystical mettle of gold, whose solary and celestial nature I adore, exposed unto the violence of fire, grows only hot and liquifies, but consumeth not: so when the consumable and volatile pieces of our bodies shall be refined into a more impregnable and fixed temper like gold, though they suffer from the action of the flames, they shall never perish, but lie immortal in the arms of fire.  
And surely if this frame must suffer only by the action of this element, there will many bodies escape, and not only Heaven, but earth will not be at an end, but rather a beginning; For at present it is not earth, but a composition of fire, water, earth, and air; but at that time ●poyled of those ingredients, it shall ap●eare in a substance more like itself, its ashes. Philosophers that opinioned the world's destruction by fire, did never dream of annihilation, which is beyond the power of sublunary causes; for the ●ast and proper action of that element is ●ut vitrification, or a reduction of a body ●nto glass, and therefore some of our chemics factiously affirm; yea, and ●rge Scripture for it, that at the last fire all shall be crystallized and reverbera●ed into glass, which is the utmost action of that element. Nor need we fear ●his term annihilation, or wonder that God will destroy the works of his Creation: for man subsisting, who is, and then truly appears a microcosm, the world cannot be said to be destroyed. For the eyes of God▪ and perhaps also of our glorified selves, shall as real●y behold and contemplate the world in ●ts Epitome or contracted essence, as ●ow it doth at large in its dilated substance. In the Syen of a Plant to the eyes of God, and to the understanding of man, there exist, though in an invisible way, the perfect leaves, flowers, and fruit thereof: for things that a●e in poss● to the sense, are actually existent to the understanding. Thus God beholds all things, who contemplates as fully his works in their Epitome, as in their full volume, and beheld as amply the whole world in that little compendium of the sixth day, as in the scattered and dilated pieces of those five before. Men commonly set ●orth the torments of Hell by fire, and the extremity of corporal afflictions, and describe Hell in the same method that Mahomet doth Heaven. This indeed makes a noise, and drums in popular ears: but if this be the terrible piece thereof, it is not worthy to stand in diameter with Heaven, whose happiness consists in that part that is best able to comprehend it, that immortal essence, the translated divinity of God, the soul. I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of hell, nor never grew pale at the description of that place; I have so fixed my contemplations on Heaven, that I have almost forgot the Idea of Hell, and am afraid rather to lose the joys of Heaven, then endure the misery of Hell; to be deprived of them is a perfect Hell, and needs me thinks no addition to complete our afflictions; that terrible ●erme hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof: I fear God, yet am not afraid of him, his mercies make me ashamed of my sins, before his judgements afraid thereof: these are the forced and ●econdary method of his wisdom, which ●e useth but as the l●st remedy, and upon provocation, a course rather to detain the wicked, then to incite the god●y to his worship. I cannot think there was ever any scared into heaven, they go the fairest way to heaven, that would serve God without a hell, other mercenaries that crouch unto him in fear of ●ell, though they term themselves the servants, are indeed but the slaves of the Almighty: and to be true and speak my soul, when I survey the occurrences of my life, and call into account the finger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies, either in general to mankind, or in particular to myself, and whether out of the prejudice of my own affections, or an inverting and partial conceit of his mercies, I know not, but those which others term crosses, afflictions, judgements, misfortunes, to me who inquire farther into them then visible effects, they both appear, and in effect have ever proved the secret and dissembled favours of his affection. It is a singular piece of wisdom to apprehend truly, and without passion the work of God, and so well to distinguish his justice from his mercy, as not miscall those noble attributes; yet it is likewise an honest piece of logic, to dispute and argue the proceedings of God, as to distinguish even his judgements into mercies. For God is merciful unto all, because to the worst, that the best deserve, and to say he punisheth none in ●his world, though it be a Paradox, is no absurdity. To one that hath committed murder, if the Judge should say, only ordain a Fine, it were a madness to call this punishment, and to repine at the sentence, rather than admire the clemency of the Judge. Thus our offences being mortal, and deserving not only death, but damnation, if the goodness of God be content to tra●verse and pass them over with a loss, misfortune, or disease; what frenzy were it to term this a punishment, ra●her than an extremity of mercy, to ●groane under the rod of his judgements, rather than admire the sceptre of his mercies? therefore to adore, honour, and admire him, is a debt of gratitude due from the obligation of our nature, ●states, and conditions, and with these thoughts, he that knows them best, will not deny that I adore him; that I obtain heaven, and the bliss thereof, is accidental, and not the intended work of my devotion, it being a felicity I can neither think to deserve, nor scarce in modesty to expect. For these two ends of us all, either as rewards, or punishments, are mercifully ordained, and disproportionally disposed unto our actions, the one being far beyond our deserts, the other so infinitely below our demerits▪ There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ, that is, say some since his Nativity, and as Divinity affirmeth before also, which makes m● much apprehend the end of those honest Worthies and Philosophers which died before his Incarnation. It is hard to place those souls in hell whose life doth teach us virtue on earth; methinks amongst those many subdivisions of hel● there might have been one Limbo left for those: What strange vision will it be to see their poetical fictions converted into verities, and their imagined and fancied furies, into real devils? how strange to them will sound the History of Adam, when they shall suffer for him they never heard of? when they that derive their Genealogy from the gods, shall know they are the unhappy issue of sinful man? It is an insolent part of reason to controvert the works of God, or question the justice of his proceedings; Could humility teach others, as it hath instructed me, to contemplate the infinite and incomprehensible distance betwixt the Creator and the creature, or did we seriously perpend that one principle of Saint Paul, Shall the vessel say to the Potter, Why hast thou made me thus? it would prevent the arrogant disputes of reason, nor would we argue the definitive sentence of God, either in heaven or hell. Men that live according to the right rule and law of reason, live but in their own kind, as beasts do in theirs▪ who justly obey the prescript of their natures, and therefore cannot reasonably demand a reward of their actions as only obeying the natural dictates of their reasons. It will therefore, and must at last appear, that all salvation is through Christ; which verity I fear those great examples of virtue must confirm, and make it good, how the perfectest actions of earth have no title or claim unto heaven: nor truly do I think the lives of these or of any other were ever correspondent or in all points conformable unto their doctrines; it is evident that Aristotle transgressed the rule of his own ethics; the Stoics that condemn passion, and command a man to laugh in Phalaris his Bull; could not endure without a groan, a fit of the stone or colic. The sceptics that affirm they knew nothing, even in that opinion confute themselves, and thought they knew more than all the world. Diogenes I hold to be the most vainglorious man of his time, and more ambitious in refusing all honours, than Alexander in rejecting none. Vice and the devil put a fallacy upon our reasons, and provoking too hastily to run from it, entangle and profound us deeper in it. The Duke of Venice, that yearly weds himself unto the Sea, by casting thereinto a ring of Gold, I will not argue of prodigality, because it is a solemnity of good use and consequence in the State. But the Philosopher that threw his money into the Sea to avoid avarice, was a notorious prodigal. There is no road or ready way to virtue, it is not an easy point of ●●rt to disentangle ourselves from this ●iddle, or web of sin: To perfect virtue, ●s to Religion, there is required a Pano●●lia or complete armour, that whilst we lie not at a close ward against one ●vice we lie open to another: And indeed wiser discretions that have the ●●hred of reason to conduct them, offend without a pardon; whereas under heads may stumble without dishonour. There go so many circumstances to piece up one good action, that 'tis a lesson to be good, and we are forced to be virtuous by the book. Again, the practice of men holds not an equal pace, yea, and often runs counter to their Theory; we naturally know what is good, but naturally pursue what is evil: the rhetoric wherewith I persuade another, cannot persuade myself: there is a depraved appetite in us, that will with patience hear the learned instructions of Reason; but yet perform no farther than agrees to its own irregular humour. In brief, we all are monsters, that is, a composition of man and beast, wherei● we must endeavour to be as the poet's fancy that wise man Chiron, that is, to have the Region of Man above that o● Be●st, and sense to fit but at the foot o● reason. Lastly, I do desire with God▪ that all, but yet affirm with men, that few shall know salvation, that the bridge is narrow, the passage straight unto life, ye● those who do confine the Church o● God, either to particular Nations, Churches, o● Families, have made it far narrower than ever our Saviour meant it. 〈◊〉 believe many are saved, who to man● seem reprobated, and many are reprobated, who in the opinion and sentence of man stand elected; there will appear at the last day, strange, and unexpected examples, both of his Justice and mercy, and therefore to desire either, is folly in man, and insolency even in the devils; those acute and subtle spirits cannot divine in all their sagacity, who sha●● be saved, which if they could prognosticate, their labour were at an end; no● need they compass the earth, seeking whom they may devour. Those who upon rigid application of the Law, sentence Solomon unto damnation, condemn not only him, but themselves, and the whole world; for by the letter, and written Word of God, we are without exception in the state of death, but there is a prerogative of God, and an arbitra●y pleasure above the letter of his own Law, by which alone we can pretend unto salvation, and through which Solomon might be as easily saved as those who condemn him.  
The number of those who pretend un●o salvation, and those infinite swarms who think to pass through the ●ye of a Needle, have much amazed me. That name and compellation of little Flock, doth not com●ort but deject my devotion, especially when I reflect upon mine own unworthiness, wherein, according to my humble apprehensions, I am ●elow them all: I believe there shall never be an Anarchy in Heaven, but as ●here are Hierarchies amongst the Angels, so shall there be degrees of priority amongst the Saints. Yet is it (I protest) beyond my ambition to aspire unto the first ranks, my desires only are, and 〈◊〉 shall be only happy therein, to be bu● the last man, and bring up▪ the rear i● Heaven.  
Again, I am confident, and fully persuaded, yet dare not take my oath o● my salvation; I am as it were sure and do believe, without all doubt, that there is such a City as Constantinople, yet for me to take my oath thereon, were a kin● of perjury, because I hold not infallible warrant from my own sense to confirm●● me in the certainty thereof. And truly, though many pretend an absolute certainty of their salvation, yet when an humble soul shall contemplate her own unworthiness, she shall meet with many doubts and suddenly find how much we stand in need of the precept of Saint Paul, work out your salvation with f●are and trembling. That which is the cause of my election, I hold to be the cause of my salvation, which was the mercy, and beneplacity of God, before was, or the foundation of the world: ●efore Abraham was, I am; is the saying of Christ, yet is true, if I say it of my ●elfe, for I was not only before myself, ●ut Adam, that is, in the Idea of God, and the decree of that Synod held from ●ll Eternity. And in this sense I say, the ●orld world was before the Creation, ●nd at an end before it had a beginning.  
Insolent zeals that destroy good ●orkes and rely upon faith, take not a●ay merit: for depending upon the ef●icacy of their faith, they enforce the ●ondition of God, and in a more sophi●ticall way do seem to challenge Heaven. It was ordered by God, that one●y those that leapt in the water like dogs ●hould have the honour to destroy the Midianites, yet could none of those just●y challenge, or imagine he deserved the ●onour: Thereupon I do not deny, but that true faith, and such as God requires, ●s not only a mark or token, but also a means of our Salvation, but where to find this, is as obscure to me, as my last end. And if our Saviour could object unto his own Disciples, and favourites a faith, that to the quantity of a grain of Mustard seed, is able to remove mountains; surely that which we boast of, is not any thing, or at the most, but a remove from nothing.  
This is the Tenor of my belief, wherein, though there be many things singular, and to the humour of my irregular self, yet, if they square not with maturer Judgements, I disclaim them, and do no further father them, than the learned and best Judgements shall authorise them.   

The Second part.  
NOw for the other virtue of Charity, without which faith is a mere notion, and of no existence, I have ever endeavoured to nourish this merciful disposition, and human inclination, which I borrowed from my Parents, and regulate it to the prescribed laws of Cha●ity; and if I hold the true Anatomy of ●y self, I am delineated and naturally ●ramed to such a piece of virtue, for I am ●f a constitution so general, that it con●orts, and sympathizeth with all things; 〈◊〉 have no antipathy, or rather Idio-syn●rasie, in diet, humour, air, any thing; wonder not at the French, for their ●ishes of frogs, snails, and toadstooles; Nor at the Jews for Locusts, & grasshoppers, but being amongst them, make ●hem my Common viands. And I find ●hey agree with my stomach as well as theirs; I could digest a salad ga●hered ●n a churchyard, as well as in a Gar●en. I cannot start at the present of a Serpent, Scorpion, Lizard, or Salaman●er; at the sight of a Toad, or Viper, I ●inde in me no desire to take up a stone ●o destroy them. I feel not in myself ●hose common antipathies that I can ●iscover in others: Those national re●ugnancies do not touch me; nor do I ●ehold with prejudice, the Flemish, I●alian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but where I find their actions in balance with my Country men's; I honour, love, and embrace them in some degree; I was born● in the eighth Climate; but seemed forty beframed and constellated unto all; 〈◊〉 am no plant that will not prosper out o● a Garden. All places, all ages, make● unto me one Country; I am in England everywhere, and under any meridian I have been shipwrackt, yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I can study play, or sleep in a tempest. In brief▪ I am averse from nothing, neither Plant▪ animal, nor Spirit; my Conscience would give me the lie, if I should say 〈◊〉 absolutely detest, or hate the devil, or at least abhor him, but that we may come to composition. Is there any thing among those common objects of hatred that I can safely, I do contemn and laugh at? That great inquiry of reason, virtue, and Religion, the multitude, that numerous piece of monstrosity, which taken asunder, seems the reasonable Creatures of God; but confused together make but one great beast, and a● monster, more prodigious than Hydra; ●t is no breach of Charity to call those ●ooles, it is the stile all holy Writers ●ave afforded them, set down by Solomon in the holy Scripture, and a point of our faith to believe so. Neither in the name of multitude do I only include the base and minor sort of people; there ●s a rabble even amongst the Gentry, a ●ort of Plebeian heads, whose fancy move with the same wheel as these men, even in the same level with Me●hanickes, though their fortunes do ●omewhat guild their infirmities, and ●heir purses compound for their follies. But as in casting account, three or four men together come short in account of ●ne man placed by himself below them: So neither are a troop of those ignorant ●oradoes, of that true esteem and va●ue, as many a forlorn person, whose condition doth place them below their ●eet. Let us speak like Politicians, there ●s a Nobility without Heraldry, a natural dignity, whereby one man is Ranked with another, and Filed before him, according to the quality of his desert, and pre-eminence of his good parts: though the corruption of these times, & the by a● of this present practice wheel anothe● way: thus it was in the first and privitiv● commonwealth, and is yet in the integrity and Cradle of well-ordered polities, till corruption getteth ground, ruder desires labouring after that whic● wiser considerations contemn, every on● having a liberty to amass and heap u● riches, and therewith a licence or faculty to do or purchase any thing. The general and indifferent temper of mine doth more nearly dispose me to thi● noble virtue. It is a happiness to b● borne and framed unto virtue, and t● grow up from the seeds of nature, rathe● than the inoculation and forced graffe● of education, yet if we are directed only by our particular Natures, and regulate our inclinations by no higher rul● than that of our reasons, we are but Moralists; Divinity will still call us hea●thens. Therefore this great work o● Charity, must have other motives, ends and impulsions: I give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my Brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the Will and Command of my God; I draw not my purse for his sake that demands it, but his that enjoined it; I relieve no man upon the rhetoric of his miseries, nor to con●ent mine own commiserating disposi●ion, for this is still but moral Charity, ●nd an act that oweth more to passion ●hen reason. He that relieves another ●pon the bare suggestion and bowels of ●ity, doth not so much for his sake as ●or his own: for by compassion we make ●thers miseries our own, and so by re●ieving them, we relieve ourselves al●o.  
It is an erroneous conceit to redress ●ther men's misfortunes upon the common considerations of merciful natures, that it may be one day our own case, ●or this is a sinister, and politic kind of Charity, whereby we seem to be speak the pities of men in the like occasions; ●nd I have observed that those profes●ed Eleemosynaries, though in a crowd or multitude, do yet place their petitions on a few and selected persons.  
There is surely a Physiognomy, which those experienced and Master Mendicants observe, whereby they instantly discover a merciful aspect, and will single out a face, wherein they spy the signatures and marks of pity: for there are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that can read A. B. C. may read our natures. I behol● moreover that there is a Phistognomy or Physiognomy, not only of men, bu● of Plants, and Vegetables; and in every one of them, some outward figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward forms.  
The finger of God hath left an inscription upon all his works, not graphical or composed of Letters, but o● their several forms, constitutions, parts and operations, which aptly joined together, make one word that doth express their natures. By those Letters God calls the Stars by their names, and by this Alphabet Adam assigned to every nature, a name peculiar to its Nature. Now there are besides these Characters in our faces, certain mystical figures in our hands, which I dare not call mere dash strokes, a Lavole, or at random, because delineated by a pencil, that never works in vain; and hereof I take the more particular notice, because I carry that in mine own hand, which I could never read of, nor discover in another. Aristotle, I confess, in his acute, and singular book of Physiognomy, hath made mention of Chiromancy, yet I believe the Egyptians, who were ever addicted to those abstruse and mystical sciences, had a knowledge therein, to which those vagabond and counterfeit Egyptians do yet pretend, and perhaps retain a few corrupted principles, which sometimes may verify their prognostics.  
It is a common wonder of all men, how among so many millions of faces, ●here should be none alike; Now con●rary; I wonder as much how there should be any, he that shall consider how many thousand several words have been carelessly and without study composed out of 24. Letters; withal how many hundred lines there are to be drawn in the fabric of one man; shall easily find that this variety is necessary. And it will be very hard that they shall so concur as to make one portrait like another. Let a Painter carefully limb out a Million of faces, and you shall find them all different, and after all this art there will remain a sensible distinction from the pattern of every thing in the perfectest of that kind; wherefore we shall still come short, though we transcend or go beyond it, because herein it is wide and agrees not in all points unto its copy, nor doth the similitude of Creatures disparage the variety of nature, nor any way confound the works of God. For even in things alike there is a diversity, and those that do seem to accord, do manifestly disagree. And thus is Man like God, for in the same things that we resemble him, we are utterly different from him. There was never any thing so like another, as in all points to concur, there will be ever some reserved difference slip in, to prevent the Identity without which, two several things would not be alike, but the same, which ●s impossible. But to return from Philo●ophy to Charity, I hold not so narrow a conceit of this virtue, as to conceive ●hat to give alms, is only to be chari●able, or think a piece of Liberality can comprehend the Totall of Charity; divinity hath wisely divided the act thereof into many branches, and hath taught ●s in this narrow way, many paths unto goodness; as many ways as we may do good, so many ways we may be charitable, there are infirmities, not one●y of body, but of soul, and fortunes, ●hich do require the merciful hand of our abilities.  
I cannot contemn a man for ignorant, ●ut behold him with as much pity as I do Lazarus. It is no greater Charity to clothe his body, than apparel the nakedness of his soul. It is an honourable object to see the reasons of other men were our Liveries, and their borrowed understandings do homage to the bounty of ours. It is the cheapest way of beneficence, and like the natural charity of the sun illuminates another without obscuring itself. To be reserved in this part of goodness, is the sordidest piece of covetousness, and more contemptible than the pecuniary avarice. To this (as calling myself a scholar) I am obliged by the duty of my condition, I make not therefore my head a grave, but a treasury of knowledge, I intend no Monopoly, but a Community in learning, I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves. I envy no man that knows more than myself▪ but I pity them that know less. I instruct no man as an exercise of my knowledge, or with an intent rather to nourish and keep it alive in mine own head, then beget and engender it in his; in the midst of all my endeavours there is but one thought that dejects me, that my acquired parts must perish with myself, nor can be legacied among my honoured Friends. I cannot fall out or contemn a man for an error, or conceive why a difference in opinion should divide our affections: for controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in Philosophy, & in Divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of Charity in all disputes; so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose, for then reasons, like a bad hound spends upon a false sent, and forsakes the question first started. And this is one reason why controversies are never determined, for though they be amply proposed, they are scarce at all handled, they do so wander with unnecessary Digressions, and the Parenthesis of the party, is often as large as the main discourse upon the Subject. The Foundations of Religion are already established and the principles of Salvation subscribed unto by all, there remains not one controversy that is worth a passion, and yet never any disputed without, not only in Divinity, but in inferior Arts: What a {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, and hot skirmish is betwixt S. and T. in Lucian? so doth Grammarians hack and slash for the Genitive case in Jupiter. How many Synods have been assembled and angrily broke up again about a line in Propria quae Maribus? How do they break their own pates to salve that of Priscian? Si foret in terris rideret Democritus. Yea, even amongst wiser militants, how many wounds have been given, and credits shamed for the poor victory of an opinion or beggarly conquest of a distinction? Scholars are men of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than Actius his razor, their pens carry farther, and give a louder report than thunder; I had rather stand in the stroke of a Basilisco then in the fury of a merciless pen. It is not mere zeal to learning, or devotion to the Muses, that wiser Princes Patron the Arts, and carry an indulgent respect unto scholars, but a desire to have their names eternised by the memory of their Writings, and a fear of the revengeful pen of succeeding ages: for these are men, that when they have played their parts, and had their exits, must step out and give the moral of their Scenes, and deliver unto posterity an Inventory of their virtues and vices. And surely there goes a great deal of conscience to the compiling of an History, and there is no reproach to the scandal of a Story. It is such an authentic kind of falsehood that with authority belies our good names to all Nations and Posterities.  
There is another offence to Charity, which no Author hath ever written of, and few take notice of, and that is the ●eproach, not of whole professions, my●teries and conditions, but of whole nations, wherein lie opprobrious Epithets ●hat we must call each other, and upon ●ncharitable logic from a disposition ●n a few conclude a habit in all.  
●e mutin Anglo●s et le Brenach Escossois,  
●e bougre Italion & l● fol Francois,  
Le poltroon Roman et le carron Gascoin,  
Le Espagnol superb et le Almain jurogn.  
S. Paul that calls the Cretians lyer● doth it but indirectly and upon quotation of their own Poet. It is as bloody 〈◊〉 thought in one way as Nero's was in naother.  
For by a word we wound a thousand and at one blow assassins the Honour o● a Nation. It is a complete piece of madness to miscall and rail against the times, or think to recall men to reason, by a fit of passion: Democritu● that thought to laugh the times into goodness, seems to me as deeply Hypochondriack, as Heraclitus that bewailed them; it moves not my spleen to behold the multitude in their proper humours, that is, in their fits of folly and madness, as well understanding that wisdom is not common to the world, and that it is the privilege of a few to be virtuous.  
They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet in life of one another. Thus virtue (abolish vice) is an Idea; again, the community of sin doth not desparage goodness, for when vice gains upon the major part, virtue, in whom it remains, becomes more excellent, and being lost in some, multip●●●s its goodness in another which remain untouched, and persists entire in the general inundation. I can therefore behold vice without a feature content, only with an admonition, or instructive apprehension; for Noble natures, and such as are capable of goodness, are not railed into vice, and maintain the cause of injured truth: no man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another.  
This I perceive in myself, for I am in the dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud; those that know me but superficially, think less of me than I do of myself; those of my near acquaintance think more; God, who truly knows me, knows that I am nothing, for he beholds me, and all the world, who looks not on us through a divided ray, or a trajection of a sensible species, but beholds the substance without the helps of accidents, and the forms of things, as we their operations. Further, no man can judge another, because n●●man knows himself, for we censure others but as they disagree from that humour which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrateand consent with us. So that in conclusion, all is but that we all condemn, self-love, which is the general complaint of these times, and perhaps of those past, that charity grows cold; which I perceive most verified in those which most do magnify the fires and flames of zeal; for it is a virtue that best agrees with coldest natures, and such as are complexioned for humility: But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? and charity begins at home, in the voice of the world, yet is every man his own grea●est enemy, and as it were his own executioner. Non occides, is the commandment of God, yet scarce observed by any man, for I perceive every man is his own Atropos, and lends a hand to cut the thread of his own days. Cain was not therefore the first murderer, but Adam, who brought in death; whereof he beheld the practice and example in his own son Abel, and saw that verified in the experience of others, which faith could not persuade him in the Theory of himself.  
There is no man that apprehends his own miseries less than myself, and no man that so nearly apprehends another's. I could lose an arm without a ●eare, and with few groans, me thinks, be quartered into pieces; yet can I weep most seriously at a Play, and receive with a true passion, the counterfeit griefs of those known and professed impostures. It is a barbarous part of inhumanity to add unto any afflicted parties misery, or endeavour to multiply in any man a passion, whose single nature is already above his patience, and this was the greatest affliction of Job, and those oblique expostulations of his friends, a deeper injury than the down-right blows of the devil. It is not the tears of our own eyes only, but of our Friends also, that do exhaust the current of our sorrows, which falling into many streams, run more peaceably and are contented with a narrow channel. It is an act within the power of charity, to translate a passion out of one breast into another, and to divide a sorrow almost out of itself; for affliction like a dimension may be so divided, as if not indivisible, at least to become insensible. Now with my friend I desire not to share or participate, but to engross his sorrows, that by making them mine own, I may more easily discuss them; for in mine own reason, and within myself I can command that which I cannot entreat without myself, and within the circle of another. I have often thought those noble pairs and examples of friendship not so truly Histories of what had been, as fictions of what should be, but I now perceive nothing in them, but easy possibilities, nor any thing in the heroic examples of Damon and Pythias, Achilles and Patroclus, which I could not perform within the narrow compass of myself.  
That a man should lay down his life for his friend, seems strange to vulgar affections, and such as confine themselves within that worldly principle, Charity begins at home. For mine own part I could never remember the relations that I held unto myself, nor the respect that I owe unto mine own nature, in the cause of God, my Country, and my Friends. Next to these three, I do emprace myself; I confess I do not observe that order that the schools or●aine our affections, to love our Parents, wives, Children, and then our Friends, ●or excepting the injunctions of Religion, I do not find in myself such a ne●essary and indissoluble Sympathy to ●hose of my blood. I hope I do not ●reake the fifth commandment, if I confess I love my Friend before the nearest of my blood, even those t● whom I owe the principles of life; I ne●ver yet cast a true affection on a Woma● but I have loved my Friend as I do ve●tue, my soul, my God. From hence m● thinks I do conceive how God love man, what happiness there is in the lo●● of God. Omitting all other, there a● three most mystical unions.  

1. Two natures in one person.  
2. Three persons in one nature.  
3. One soul in two bodies.   
For though indeed they be really d●●vided, yet are they so united, as the● seem but one, and make rather a duality then two distinct souls.  
There are wonders in true affections it is a body of enigmass, mysteries an● riddles, wherein two so become one, 〈◊〉 they both become two; I love my frien● before myself, and me thinks I do● not love him enough; some few month● hence my multiplied affection wi●● make me believe I have not loved hi● at all, when I am from him, I a● dead till I be with him, when I am with him, I am not satisfied, but would still be nearer him: united souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be ●ruly each other, which being impossible, their desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction. Another misery there is in affection, that whom we truly love like our own selves, we forget their looks, nor ●an our memory retain the Idea of their ●aces; and it is no wonder, for they are ourselves, and our affections makes ●heir looks our own. This noble affection f●ls not on vulgar and common ●onstitutions, but on such as are marked ●or virtue, he cannot love his friend ●ith this noble ardour that will in a com●etent degree affect all. Now if we can ●ring our affections to look beyond the ●ody, and cast an eye upon the soul, we ●ave found out the true object, not on●y of Friendship but Charity; and the greatest happiness that we can bequeathe the soul, is that wherein we all do place ●ur last felicity, salvation, which though it be not in our power to bestow, it is in our charity, and pious invocations to desire, if not procure and further. I cannot frame a Prayer for myself in particular, without a catalogue for my friends, nor request a happiness wherein my sociable disposition doth not desire the fellowship of my Neighbour. I never hear the Toll of a passing Bell though in my mirth, and at a tavern, withou● my prayers and best wishes for the departing spirit; I cannot go to cure the body of my Pati●nt, but I forget my profession, and call unto God for hi● soul; I cannot see one say his Prayers but instead of imitating him, I fall int● a zealous oration for him, who perhap● is no more to me then a common nature: and if God hath vouchsafed a● ear to my supplications, there are surely many happy that never saw me, an● enjoy the blessing of mine unknown● devotions. To pray for enemies, that is for their salvation is no harsh precept but the practice of our daily & ordinar● devotions. I cannot believe the story o● the Italian, our bad wishes and uncharitable desires proceed no further than this life; it is the devil, and the uncharitable votes of hell, that desire our misery in the world to come.  
To do no injury, nor take none, was a principle, which to my firm years, and impatient affections, seemed to contain enough of morality, but my more settled years, and Christian constitution have salne upon more securer resolutions. I hold there is no such thing as injury, that if there be, there is no such injury as revenge, and no such revenge as the contempt of an injury; that to ●hate another, is to malign himself, that the truest way to love another, is to despise ourselves. I were unjust unto mine own conscience, if I should say I am at variance with any thing like myself, I find there are many pieces in this our own fabric of Man; and this frame is raised upon a mass of Antipathies: I am one me thinks, but as the world wherein notwithstanding there are a swarm of distinct essences, and in them another world of contrarieties which carry private and domestic enemies within, public and more hostile adversaries without.  
The devil that did but buffet Sain●Paul, plays me thinks at sharp with me: Let me be nothing, if within the compass of myself, I do not find th●● battle of Lepanto, passion against passion, reason against faith, faith against the devil, and my conscience against al●● There is another man within me, rebukes, commands, and dastards me. 〈◊〉 have no conscience of Marble to resis● the hammer of more heavy offences nor yet too soft and waxen, as to tak● the impression of each single peccadill● or scape of infirmity: I am of a strang● belief, that it is as easy to be forgive● some sins, as to commit some others▪ For my original sin, I hold it to b● washed away in my baptism; for my actual transgressions I compute and reckon with God, but from my last repentance, Sacrament, or absolution: An● therefore am not te●●ifyed with the sin● or madness of my youth. I thank the goodness of God I have no sins that want a name, I am not singular in offences, my transgressions are epidemical, and from the common breath of our corruption, ●et even those common and quotidian infirmities that so necessarily attend me, and do seem to be my very nature, have so dejected me, so broken the estimation that I should have otherwise, that I repute myself the most abjectest piece of mortality, that I detest mine own nature, and in my retired imaginations cannot withhold my hands from violence on myself: Divines prescribe a fit of sorrow to repentance, there goes indignation, anger, sorrow, hatred, into mine, passions of a contrary nature, which neither seem to suit with this action, nor my proper constitution. It is no breach of charity to ourselves to be at variance with our vices, nor to abhor that part of us, which is an enemy to the ground of charity, our God; wherein we do but imitate our great selves the world, whose divided antipathies and contrary faces do yet carry a charitable regard to the whole by their particular discords, preserving the common harmony, and keeping in fetters those powers whose rebellions once Masters, might be the ruin of all. I thank God, amongst those millions of vices that I do inherit and hold from Adam, I have escaped one, and that is a mortal enemy to charity, the first and Father sin, not of man, but of devils, Pride, a vice whose name is comprehended in a Monosillable, but in its nature circumscribed with a world; I have escaped it in a condition that can hardly avoid it: those petty acquisitions and reputed perfections that advance and elevate the conceits of other men, add no feathers unto mine; I have seen a Grammarian, tower, and plume himself over a single line in Horace, and show more pride in the construction of one Ode, than the Author in the composure of the whole book. For my own part besides the Fargon and Patonis of several Provinces, I understand no less than six Languages, yet I protest I have no higher conceit of myself then had our Fathers before the confusion of Babel, when there was but one Language in the world, and none to boast himself either Linguist or critic. I have not only seen several Countries, beheld the nature of their climes, the Chorography of their Provinces, Topography of their Cities, but understood their several laws, customs and Policies; yet cannot all this persuade the dulness of my spirit unto such an opinion of myself, as I behold in nimbler & conceited heads, that never looked a degree beyond their nest. I know the names, and somewhat more, of all the stars in my Horizon, yet I have seen a prating Mariner that could only name the Points and the North star, out-talk me, and conceit himself a whole sphere above me. I know almost all the Plants of my time, and of those about me; yet me thinks I do not know so many as when I did but know an hundred, and had scarcely ever Simpled further than Cheapside: for indeed heads of capacity, and such as are not full with a handful, or easy measure of knowledge, think they know nothing, till they know all, which being impossible, they fall upon the opinion of Socrates, and only know they know not any thing; I cannot think that Homer pined away upon the riddle of the Fisherman, or that Aristotle, who understood the uncertainty of knowledge, and confessed so often the reason of man too weak for the work of nature, did ever drown himself upon the flux, and reflux of Euripus: we do but learn to day, what our better advanced judgements will teach to morrow: and Aristotle doth instruct us, as Plato did him; that is, to confute himself. I have run through all sorts, and find no rest in any; though our first studies and junior endeavours may style us peripatetics, Stoics, or academics, yet I perceive the wisest heads prove at last, almost all sceptics, and stand like Janus in the field of knowledge. I have therefore one common and authentic Philiosophy I learned in the schools, whereby I discourse and satisfy the reason of other men, another more reserved and drawn from Experience, whereby I content mine own self. Solomon that complained of ignorance in the height of knowledge, hath not only humbled my conceits, but discouraged my endeavours. There is yet another conceit that hath made me shut my books, which tells me it is a vanity to waste our days in the blind pursuit of knowledge, it is but attending a little longer, and we shall enjoy that by instinct & infusion which we endeavour all here by labour and inquisition: it is better to sit down in a modest ignorance, and rest contented with the natural blessing of our own reasons, then buy the uncertain knowledge of this life, with sweat and vexation, which death gives, every fool gains, and is an accessary of our glorification.  
I was never yet once, and am resolved never to be married twice, not that I disallow of a second marriage; as neither in all cases of Polygamy, which considering the unequal number of both sexes may be also necessary. The whole world was made for man, but the twelfth part of man for woman: man is the whole world and the breath of God, woman the rib only, a crooked piece of man. I could wish that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgular way of coition; It is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there any thing that will deject his cold imagination more, than when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed; I speak not in prejudice, nor am averse from that sweet sex, but naturally amorous of all that is beautiful; I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an Horse. It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony, and since there is music even in the beauty, and the silent notes which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the vocal found of an instrument. For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order or proportion, and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres, for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound to the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony.  
Whatsoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against our Church music. For myself, not only for my Catholic obedience, but my particular genius, I am obliged to maintain it, for even that vulgar and tavern music which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of my Maker; there is something in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers. It is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world, & Creatures of God, such a melody to the ear, as the whole world well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony, which intellectually sounds in the ears of God, it unties the ligaments of my frame, takes me to pieces, dilates me out of myself, & by degrees, methinks, resolves me into heaven. I will not say with Plato, the soul is Harmony, but harmonical, hath its nearest sympathy unto music: thus some, whose temper of body agrees, and humours the constitution of their souls, are borne Poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined unto rhyme. This made Tacitus in the very first line of his story, fall upon a verse; and Ciccro, the worst of Poets, but disclaiming for a Poet, fall in the very first sentence upon a perfect Hexameter. I feel not in me those sordid, and unchristian desires of my profession, I do not secretly implore and wish for Plagues, rejoice at famines, revolve Ephemerides, and almanacs in expectation of malignant effects, fatal conjunctions, and Eclipses: I rejoice not at unwholesome Springs, nor unseasonable Winters, my Prayer goes with the husbandman's; I desire every thing in its proper season, that neither men nor the times be out of temper.  
Let me be sick myself, if sometimes the malady of my patient be not a disease to me, I desire rather to cure his infirmities then my own necessities, where I do him no good me thinks it is no honest gain, though I confess it to be the worthy salary of our well-intended endeavours: I am not only ashamed, but heartily sorry, that besides death, there are diseases incurable, yet not for my own sake, or that they be beyond my art, but for the general cause & sake of humanity whose common cause I apprehend as mine own: And to speak more generally, those three Noble professions which all civil commonwealths do honour, are raised from the fall of Adam, & are not any exempt from their infirmities; there are not only diseases incurable in physic, but cases indissoluble in laws, Vices incorrigible in Divinity: if general counsels may err, I do not see why particular Courts should be infallible, their perfectest rules are raised upon the erroneous reasons of Man, and the laws of one, do but condemn the rules of another; as Aristotle the fourth figure, because, though agreeable to reason, yet was not consonant to his own rules, and the logic of his proper principles. Again, to speak nothing of the sin against the Holy Ghost, whose cure not only, but whose nature is unknown; I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than Divinity, Pride, or Avarice in others. I can cure vices by physic, when they remain incurable by Divinity, and shall obey my pills, when they contemn their precepts. I boast nothing, but plainly say, we all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all diseases. There is no Catholicon or universal remedy I know but this, which though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to prepared appetites is Nectar and a pleasant potion of immortality. For my conversation, it is like the Sun without all men, and with a friendly aspect to good and bad. Me thinks, there is no man bad, and the worst, best; that is, w●ile they are kept within the circle of those qualities, wherein they are good, there is no man's mind of such discordance, and of so jarring a temper to which a tuneable disposition will not strike a harmony.  
Magnae virtutes, nec minora vitia, it is the posy of the best natures, and may be inverted on the worst, there are in the most depraved and venomous dispositions, certain pieces which remain untouched, which by an Antiperistasis become more excellent, or by the excellency of their antipathies are able to preserve themselves from the contagion of their enemy vices, and persist entire beyond the general corruption. For it is also thus in natures. The greatest balsams do lie enveloped in the bodies of powerful Corrasives: I say moreover, and I ground upon experience, that poisons contain within themselves their own Antidotes▪ and which preserve them from the venom of themselves, without which they were not deletorious to others only, but to themselves also. But it is the corruption that I fear within me, and the contagion of commerce without me. It is that unruly Regiment within that will destroy: It is I that do insert myself the man without a navel, who yet lives in me. I feel that original canker corrode and devour me, and therefore Defienda me Dios de me, Lord deliver me from myself, is part of my litany, and a first voice of my retired imaginations: there is no man alone, because every man is a microcosm, and carries the whole world about him, Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus, though it be the apothegm of a wise man, is yet true in the mouth of a fool; for indeed, though in a wilderness, a man is never alone, not only because he is with himself, and his own thoughts, but because he is with the devil, who ever consorts with our solitude, and is that unruly rebel that musters up those disordered motions, which accompany our sequestered imaginations: and to speak more narrowly, there is no such thing as solitude, nor any thing that can be said to be alone, and by itself, but God, who is his own circle, and can subsist by himself, all others besides those dissimilary and Heterogeneous parts, which in a manner multiply the natures, cannot subsist without the concourse of God, and the society of that hand which doth uphold ●heir natures. In brief, there can be nothing truly alone, and by its self, which is not truly one, and such is only God: All others do transcend an unity, and so by consequence are many.  
Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not a History, but a piece of Poetry, and would sound to common ears like a fable; for the world, I count it not an Inn, but an Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in. The world that I regard is myself, it is the microcosm of mine own frame, that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my Globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation.  
Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders. Let me not injure the felicity of others, if I say I am the happiest man alive; I have that in me that can convert poverty into riches, adversity into prosperity. I am more invulnerable than Achilles, fortune hath not one place to hit me; Coelum ruat, come what will, Fiat voluntas tua, salves all, so that whatsoever happens, it is but what our daily prayers desire. In brief, I am content, and what should providence add more? Surely this is it we call happiness, and this do I enjoy, with this I am happy in a dream, and as content to enjoy a happiness in a fancy, as others in a more apparent truth and reality. There is surely a nearer apprehension of any thing that delights each of us in our dreams, than in our waked ●enses; with this I can be a King without a crown, rich without Royalty, in heaven, tho on earth, enjoy my friend and embrace him at a distance, without which I cannot behold him, without this I were unhappy, for my awaked judgement discontents me, ever whispering unto me, that I am from my friend, but my friendly dreams in the night requite me, and make me think I am within his arms. I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do for my good rest, for there is a reflection in them to reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happiness; and surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this world, and that the conceits of this world, are as mere dreams to those of the next, as the phantasms of the night; to the conceit of the day. It is an equal delusion in both, & the one doth but seem to be the emblem or picture of the other; we are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of our souls. It is the ligation of our ●ense; but the liberty of reason, our awaking conceptions do not march the fancies of our sleeps. At my Nativity, my Ascendant was the earthly sign of Scorpio, I was borne in the Planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that Leaden Planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action in one dream, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof; were my memory as faithful as my reason is there fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devotions, but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls, a confused and broken tale of that that hath been past. Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not throughly defined it, no● yet Galen, though he seem to have corrected it, for those Noctea●nbulones, though in their sleep, do yet enjoy the action of their senses: we must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of Morpheus; and that those abstracted & ecstarick souls do walk about in their own corpse, as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are destitute of senses, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them. Thus I observe that men oftentimes upon the hour of their departure, do speak and reason above themselves. For than the soul begins to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality. We term death a sleep, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life. It is that death by which we may be literally said to die daily, a death which Adam died before his mortality; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death▪ in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu unto the world; it is a fit time for devotion: I cannot therefore lay me down on my bed without an oration, and without taking my farewell in a colloquy with God.  
The night is come like to the day,  
Depart not thou great God away.  
Let not my sins, black as the night,  
Eclipse the lustre of thy light.  
Keep still in my Horizon, for to me,  
The Sun makes not the day, but thee.  
Thou whose nature cannot sleep,  
On my temples sentry keep;  
Guard me● 'gainst those watchful foes,  
Whose eyes are open, while mine close.  
Let not dreams my head infest,  
But such as Jacob's temples blessed.  
While I do rest, my soul advance,  
Make me sleep a holy trance:  
That I may take my rest being wrought,  
Awake into some holy thought.  
And with as active vigour run  
My course, as doth the nimble Sun.  
Sleep is a death, O make me try,  
By sleeping what it is to die.  
And down as gently lay my head.  
On my Grave, as now my Bed.  
Howe'er refreshed, great God let me  
Awake again at last with thee.  
And thus assured, behold I lie  
Securely, or to wake or die.  
These are my drowsy days, in vain  
I do now wake to sleep again.  
O come that hour, when I shall never  
Sleep thus again, but wake for ever.  
This is the dormitory I take to bedward, use no other Laudanum to sleep, after which I close mine eyes in security, content to take my leave of the Sun, and to sleep unto the Resurrection.  
The method I would use in distributive justice, I also observe in commutative, and keep a geometrical proportion in both, whereby becoming equable to others, I become unjust to myself, and supererogate that common principle, do as thou wouldst be done unto thyself.  
I was not borne unto riches, neither is it my star to be wealthy; or if it were, the freedom of my mind, and frankness of my disposition, were able to contradict and cross my fates: for to me avarice seems not so much a vice, as a deplorable piece of madness; to conceive ourselves Urinals, or be persuaded that we are dead, is not so ridiculous, nor so many degrees beyond the power of Hellebore, as this.  
The opinions of theory and positions of men are not so void of reason, as their practised conclusion: some have held that Snow is black, that the earth moves, that the soul is air, fire, water, but all this is Philosophy, and there is no De●irium, if we do but speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avari●e to that subterraneous Idol, and God of the earth. I do confess I am an Atheist, I cannot persuade myself to honour that the world adores, whatsoever virtue its prepared Sublime may have within my body, it hath no influence nor operation without; I would not entertain a base design, or an action that should call me villain, for the Indies, and for this only do I love and honour my soul, and have, me thinks, two arms too few to embrace myself. Aristotle is too severe, that will not allow us to be truly liberal without wealth, and the bountiful hand of fortune; If this be true, I must confess I am charitable only in my liberal intentions, & bountiful well-wishes. But if the example of the Mite be not only an act of wonder, but an example of the noblest charity, I can justly boast I am as charitable as some who have built Hospitals, or erected Cathedrals: I have a private method which others observe not, I take the opportunity of myself to do good, I borrow occasion of charity from mine own necessities; I supply the wants of others, when I am in most need myself, when I am reduced to the last tester, I love to d●vide it to the poor, for it is an honest statagem to take the advantage of ourselves, and so to husband the acts of virtue, that where they are defective in one circumstance, they may repay their want, and multiply their goodness in another. I hath not Peru in my desires, but a competence and ability to perform those good works to which the Almighty hath inclined my nature. He is rich, who have enough to be charitable, & it is hard to be so poor, that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness. He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord, there is more rhetoric in that one sentence then in a Library of Sermons, & indeed if those sentences were understood by the Reader, with the same Emphasis as they are delivered by the Author, we need not those volumes of instructions, but might be honest by an Epitome. Upon this motion only I cannot behold a beggar without relieving his necessities with my purse, or his soul with my prayers; the scenical and accidental differences between us cannot make me forget that common & untouched part of us both, the soul being of the same alloy with our own, whose Genealogy is God as well as ours, and in as fair a way to salvation, as ourselves. Statists that labour to conceive a commonwealth without poverty, do take away the object of charity, not understanding only the commonwealth of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecy of Christ.  
Now there is another part of charity, which is the Basis and Pillar of this, and that is the love of God, for whom we love our neighbour: for this I think charity, to love God for himself, and our neighbour for God.  
All that is truly amiable is God, or as it were a divided piece of him, that retains a reflex or shadow of himself. Nor is it strange that we should place affection on that which is invisible, all that we truly love is thus, what we adore under affection of our senses, deserves not the honour of so pure a title. Thus we adore virtue, though to the eyes of sense she be invisible. Thus that part of our loving friends that we love, is not that part that we embrace; but that insensible part that our arms cannot embrace. God being all goodness, can love nothing but himself, he loves us but for that part, which is as it were himself, and the traduction of his holy Spirit. Let us call to assize the lives of our parents, the affection of our wives and children, and they are all dumb shows, and dreams without reality, truth, or constancy; for first there's a strong bond of affection between us and our parents, yet how easily dissolved we betake ourselves to a woman, forgetting our mothers in a wife, and the womb that bare us in that that shall bear our image? This woman blessing us with children, our affections leaves the level it held before, and sinks from our bed unto our issue and picture of posterity, where affection holds no steady mansion. They growing up in years desire our ends, or applying themselves to a woman, take a lawful way to love another better than ourselves. Thus I conceive a man may be buried alive, and behold his grave in his own issue.  
I conclude therefore, and say that there is no happiness under (or as Copernicus will have it, above) the Sun, in that repeated verity and burden of all the wisdom of Solomon, All is vanity and vexation of spirit; there is no felicity in that the world adores. Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the Ideas of Plato, falls upon one himself, for his summum bonum, is a Chimaera, and there is no such thing as his Felicity. That wherein God himself is happy, the holy Angels are happy, in whose defects the devils are unhappy; that dare I call happiness: whatsoever conduceth unto this, may with an easy Metaphor deserve that name, what soever else the world terms happiness, is to me a story, or apparition, or neat delusion, wherein there is no more of happiness than the name.  
Bless me in this life with the peace of my conscience, command of my affections, the love of my dearest friends, and I shall be happy enough to pity Caesar.  
These are O Lord happiness on earth wherein I set no rule or limit to thy providence, dispose of me according to the justice of thy pleasure. Thy will be done, though in mine own damnation.  
FINIS.