OBSERVATIONS UPON ANTHROPOSOPHIA THEOMAGICA, AND Anima Magica Abscondita.  
By ALAZONOMASTIX PHILALHTHES  
Psalm.  
They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end.  
Printed at Parrhesia, but are to be sold, by O. Pullen at the Rose in Paul's Churchyard, 1650.   

To Eugenius Philalethes the author of Anthroposophia Theomagica, and Anima Magica Abscondita.  
SIR,  
THE Great deserved fame that followed this noble work of yours (the due recompense of all eminent performances) engaged me to peruse the same, with much eagerness of mind, and yet with no less attention; I being one of those, that profess themselves much more willing to learn, then able to teach. And that you may see some specimen of the fruits of your labour and my proficiency, I thought fit to present you with these few Observations. Which, considering the barrenness of the Matrix, (as you chemists love to call it) in which they were conceived, may be termed rather many than few: And that imputed to the alone virtue, or magical Multiplication, or theomagical fecundity of your Divine Writings, not at all to the sterility of my disfurnished brain. Which now notwithstanding, having gathered both warmth and moisture from the heat and luxuriancy of your youthful fancy, finds itself after a manner transformed into your own complexion, and translated into the same temper with yourself. In so much that although I cannot with the height of a protestation in the presence of my glorious God (as yourself has gallantly done (in pag. 50. lin. 17. of Anthropos. Theomag.) affirm that the affection and Zeal to the truth of my creator has forced me to write, yet I dare profess in the word of an honest man, that nothing but an implacable enmity to immorality and foolery, has moved me at this time to set pen to Paper. And I confess my indignation is kindled the more, having so long observed that this disease is grown even epidemical in our Nation. viz. to desire to be filled with high-swollen words of vanity, rather than to feed on sober truth, and to heat and warm ourselves rather by preposterous and fortuitous imaginations, then to move cautiously in the light of a purified mind and improved reason. Wherefore I being heightened with the same zeal of discountenancing of vanity and conceitedness, that yourself is of promoting the truth, you will permit to me the same freedom in the prosecution thereof. For as we are grown near akin in temper and complexion, so we ought mutually to allow each other in our actings alike, according to our common temper and nature, and the accustomed liberty of the Philalethean Family. In confidence whereof, till we meet again in the next page, I take leave and subscribe myself,  
A Chip of the same Block Alazonomastix Philalethes.   

Observations upon Anthroposophia Theomagica, and Anima Magica Abscondita.  
AND now, brother Philalethes; that we are so well met, let us begin to act according to the freeness of our tempers, and play the Tom Telltroths. And you indeed have done your part already. My course is next. Which must be spent, in the Observations I told you of, upon those profound Treatises of yours, Anthroposophia Theomagica, and Anima Magica Abscondita.  
And my first and general Observation is this, That the genius of my brother Eugenies magical discourse is such, that Simon Magus-like, he seems to have a very liquoursome desire to be thought to be {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, some great man in the World. And for the prosecution of this main end, he lays himself out chiefly in these three subordinate designs. First, to be thought to have found out some new concerning truths, hitherto undiscovered. Secondly, to be more learned and knowing than Aristotle, that great light of these European parts for these many hundred years together: and not only so, but to be so far above him, that he may be his Master, that he may tew him, and lug him, and lash him more cruelly, than any Orbilius or choleric Pedagogue, his puny scholars. Thirdly and lastly, that he may strike home for the getting of a fame of profound learning indeed, he does most affectedly and industriously raise in the Reader a strong surmise and suspicion that he is very deeply seen in Art magic, and is a very knowing Disciple of Agrippa, and puts in as far for the name of a Magician, as honesty will permit, and safety from that troublesome fellow, Hopkins the Witch-finder.  
And indeed the very clatter of the title of his Book, Anthroposophia Theomagica, sounds not much unlike some conjuration, or charm, that would either call up, or scare away the devil. And Zoroaster forsooth, at the bottom of the page, that old reputed Magician, must stand as an assistant to this preludiall Exorcism; with this Oracle in his mouth, {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, Audi ignis vocem. That is in plain English, Hear the voice or noise of fire. Methinks I smell out a Gunpowder-plot. What can this voice of fire be? Why! how now Anthroposophus! you intend certainly to make the Rosy Brotherhood merry with squibs and crackers. For certainly your mysteriousness does not mean those lesser or greater fire-squirts, Carbines or Cannons. So might the Fratres R. C. be received with like solemnity that those Apostles at Rome, the Cardinals. But the word {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, (which implies a subsultation, or skipping this way and that way) which is in the context of this Oracle, seems to allude to, and prognosticate of fire-crackers and squibs rather than Cannons or Carbines. But how ever if this dogtrick fail, Anthroposophus has another as puerile and innocent a present, to entertain that Reverend Fraternity. And that's a very quaint and trim Latin Epistle, which he, like a good schoolboy, to show them what a good Proficient he is grown in his Latin Grammar, presents to their assembled Gravities. 'Tis a good child, Anthroposophus! and 'tis well done. Qui necit obedire nescit imperare. He that knows not how to submit himself in the form of a breeching boy to the Fratres R. C. how can he know so unmercifully to whip and domineer over poor Aristotle?  
Surely, Anthroposophus! when the Rosy brethren, ride swooping through the Air in their theomagical chariots, they will hail down sugar plums, and Carua's on thy blessed pate, if thou haft but the good hap at that time, to walk abroad with thy hat off, to cool thy heated noddle.  
But stay a while, I am afraid I am mistaken. It may well be, that Anthroposophus rides along with them, as being the prolocutor of their Assembly. For he writes himself Oratoris vestri. How can that belong to a short Epistle, unless it were some title of office? But it may be my Gentleman, being not so dextrous and quick in Latin as in English, measured the length o● it more by his labour then the lines, and thought that that which took him so much pains could not prove so little as an Epistle; and therefore would insinuate that it was an Oration made to the Fratres R. C. I suppose at their meeting at friar Bacon's brazen head in Oxford.  
Well! be it what it will be, my observation here, Anthroposophus, is, that you would also by your address to the Fratres R. C. make the world believe, that you are now mellowing apace, and are not much unripe for admission into that Society. And then Anthroposophus would be a rare Theomagician indeed. But enough of this vein of mirth and levity.  
Now Philalethes! your brother tell-troth, intends to fall more closely on your bones, and to discover whether you have not a greater mind to seem to be wise then to be so indeed, or to make others so. But yet you may assure yourself, I will only find flaws not make any in you; but rather candidly pass over what may receive any tolerably good interpretation, nor touch the soar anywhere, but where I may hope to heal it, either in yourself or others. And that this may be done without any tedious taking a pieces of what you have put together, I shall fairly pass from page to page without any Analytical Artifice.  
And truly from the first page to middle of the fourth page of you to the Reader, there be many pretty, smart, elegant, humorous contextures of phrases and things. But there, presently after friar Bacon's Fool and his fellow, you fall upon our peripatetics as such superficial Philosophasters, because they cannot lay open to you the very essence of the soul. Why! Anthroposophus! can you tell the very essence of any substantial thing? Hereby you show yourself very raw and unexercised in meditation, in that you have not yet taken notice what things are knowable, what not. And thus may you have as ill a trick put upon you, for want of this discerning, as the old dim and doting woman had, that with her rotten teeth endeavoured to crack a round pebble stone instead of a nut, which was a thing impossible. Nor will any man's understanding, be it as sharp as it will, enter the bare essence of any thing. But the nearest we can get, is, to know the powers, and operations, the respects and fitnesses that things have in themselves or toward others. Which is so true, that any man in a little search, will presently satisfy himself in the evidence thereof.  
From the middle of this fourth page to the middle of the six, is continued a dance of antics, or various ridiculous shiftings and postures of fancy, to make Aristotle and his followers contemptible. But such general railings, as they are misbeseeming the Writer, so they teach the Reader nothing but that the author of them is a Mome, or a mimic, and more like an Ape by far than him that he compares to one. If this man clap the wings so when he has really got the foil (for hitherto he has charged Aristotle with no particular piece of ignorance, but of what is impossible to be known) what would he do if he had the victory?  
The second particular taxation (for generals I hold nothing, Dolosus ambulat in universalibus) is that the peripatetics fancy God to have made the World, as a Carpenter of stone and timber. But this is false: because they give an inward principle of motion to all natural bodies, and there is one continuity of all, as much as of the parts of water among themselves. But their grand fault is, that they do not say the World is Animate. But is not yours far greater, Anthroposophus! that gives so ridiculous unproportionable account of that Tenet? The whole World is an Animal, say you, whose flesh is the earth, whose blood is the water, the air the outward refreshing spirit in which it breathes, the interstellar skies his vital waters, the Stars his sensitive fire. But are not you a mere Animal yourself to say so? For it is as irrational and incredible, as if you should tell us a tale of a Beast whose blood and flesh put together, bears not so great a proportion to the rest of the more fluid parts of the Animal, suppose his vital and animal spirits, as a mite in a cheese to the whole globe of the earth. And beside this, how shall this water which you call blood, be refreshed by the air that is warmer than it? And then those waters which you place in the outmost parts towards his dappeld or spotted skin the coelum stellatum, what over-proportionated plenty of them is there there? In so much that this creature you make a diseased animal from its first birth, and ever labouring with an Anasarca. Lastly, how unproperly is the air said to be the outward refreshing spirit of this Animal, when it is ever in the very midst of it? And how rashly is the Flux and Reflux of the Sea assimilated to the pulse, when the pulse is from the heart not the brain, but the flux and reflux of the Sea from the Moon not the Sun, which they that be more discreetly fantastical than yourself, do call Cor Mundi. Wherefore, Anthroposophus! your fancies to sober men, will seem as vain and puerile, as those of idle children that imagine the fortuitous postures of spaul and snivel on plaster-walls, to bear the form of men's or dogs' faces, or of lions and what not.  
And yet see the supine stupidity and senselessness of this man's judgement, that he triumphs so in this figment of his as so rare and excellent a truth, that Aristotle's Philosophy must be groundless superstition and popery in respect of it, this the primevall truth of the creation; when as it is a thousand times more froth, than His is vomit. My friend Anthroposophus! is this to appear for the truth in a day of necessity? Certainly she'll be well holp at a dead lift, if she find no better champions than yourself.  
Verily Philalethes if you be no better in your Book then in your Preface to the Reader, you have abused Moses his Text beyond measure. For your Principles will have neither heaven nor earth in them, head nor foot, reason nor sense. They will be things extra intellectum, and extra sensum, mere vagrant imaginations seated in your own subsultorious and skip-jack fancy only. But what they are we shall now begin to examine, according to the number of pages.  

Anthroposophia Theomagica.  
Pag. 2.  
Lio. 11. So have all souls before their entrance, &c. But hear you me Mr. Anthroposophus! are you in good earnest that all souls before their entrance into the body have an explicit methodical knowledge? and would you venture to lose your wit so much by inprisoning yourself in so dark a dungeon, as to be able to write no better sense in your Preface to the Reader? But I'll excuse him, it may be he was riding before his entrance into the body on some theomagical jade or other, that stumbled and flung him into a mystical quagmire against his will, where he was so soused and doused and bedaubed and dirtied, face and eyes and all, that he could never since the midwife raked him out all wet and dropping like a drowned mouse, once see clearly what was sense and what nonsense to this very day. Wherefore we will set the saddle on the right Horse; and his Theomagick Nag shall bear the blame of the miscarriage.   

Pag. 3.  
Lin. 3. I took to task the fruits of one Spring, &c. Here Anthroposophus is turned Herbalist for one whole Spring, damned to the grass and fields like Nabuchadnezzar when he went on all four among the Beasts. But see how slow this Snail amongst the herbs is, in finding out the truth; when he confesses it was the work of one whole Spring to find out, that the Earth or seeds of flowers are nothing like the flowers. There's not any old Garden-weeder in all London, but without a pair of spectacles will discover that in four minutes, which he has been a full fourth part of a year about. But certainly, he intends a great deal of pomp and ceremony, that will not take up such a conclusion as this, (viz. That things that are produced in Nature are out of something in Nature which is not like the things produced) but upon the full experience and meditation of one entire Spring. And now after this whole Springs meditation and experience, he is forced to turn about to him whom he so disdainfully flies, and confess two of the three principles of the Aristotelean physics, viz. Matter and Privation, that homo is ex non homine, arbour ex non arbore, &c. But this Matter, he says (and it is the wisest word he has spoken yet) he knows not what it is. But presently blots his credit again with a new piece of folly, intimating he will find it it out by experience. Which is as good sense as if he should say, he would see it when his eyes are out. For it is alike easy to see visibles without eyes, as to see invisibles with eyes. But he flies off hence, and is in quest after a substance which he smells out like a nosegay in nature's bosom. Which substance he hopes to see by Art. Why! Eugenius are you so sharp sighted that you can see substances? A kind of philosophic Hog, he can see the wind too I warrant you. But how can you hope to see that substance when Nature only exposes it to her own vital celestial breath? And tell what this Breath is, and do not amaze us with strange words, or else keep your breath to yourself to cool your poctage.   

Pag. 4.  
Here a fit of devotion has taken him, and I am neither so irreligious nor uncivil as to interrupt him. But now Sir you have done, I hope it will not be any offence to address my discourse to you again. And it will not be unseasonable to tell you, that truth is not to be had of God Almighty for an old song, no nor yet for a new one. And that no man is to measure his wisdom by his devotion, but by his humility & purity of mind and unprejudicate reason; nor that any man is wiser by making others seem more contemptibly foolish, as your juvenility has thought good to deal with poor Aristotle, and his Orthodox Disciples all this time. Nay, and that you may not take Sanctuary at Moses his Text, let me also tell you, that before you prove any thing thence, you ought first to make good, that Scripture is intended for natural Philosophy as well as a divine life. But we need not arm ourselves so well yet; for from the fourth page to the eight page nothing is said, but that God from a knowing Principle made the World. Which Aristotle also seems to assert, while he is so frequent in telling the ends of natural things, which could not be sense, unless he supposed that Nature was guided by a knowing Principle, which is to acknowledge a God after the best manner. And that subtle Philosopher Julius Scaliger uses no contemptible arguments to prove, that Aristotle's Philosophy furnisheth us also with the knowledge of a Trinity in God, so that Anthroposophus is very unkind and uncivil to so good a Master.   

Pages 8. and 9  
What an Aristotelean would dispatch in a word or two, viz. that life is always accompanied with a natural warmth, he is mysteriously sumbling out and drailing on to the length of almost two whole pages.   

Pag. 9  
Lin. 10. the divine light pierced the bosom of the matter, &c. This compared with what is at the bottom of the fourth page, we see that this rare philosopher tells us, that the matter is an horrible empty darkness. And methinks his description is an hideous empty fancy, and conveys not so much to the understanding as Aristotle's description of the Matter, which he would describe to be, The first subject out of which every thing is. This latter is more clean and sober, the other more slabby and fantastical. And to call it Primitive waters 〈…〉 s but yet metaphors and poetry. For you do not mean waters such as we wash our hands in. But they must be waters and dark, that you may bring in the conceit of the light shining in them that like rivers and pools the images of trees and birds, and clouds and stars, and what not, may be seen in them. And this must help us coconceive, that upon the breaking through of the light, the divine ideas shone in the waters, and that the holy Spirit, not being able to see till then, by looking then upon those images, framed the matter into form. But I pray you tell me, Mr. Anthroposophus! that would be so wise as if you stood by while God made the world, do not you think that God can now see in the dark or behold his own ideas in the depth of the Earth? You'll say you do not mean this natural light but a divine light. If so, was ever the matter so stiff and clammy dark, as to be able to keep it out? So that the divine ideas shone in the water so soon as God was, and the Spiritus Opifex could see to begin his work ab cmni retro aeternitate. And it could never be dark in your blind sense. Is it not so Anthroposophus?  
Lin. 25. Si plantam quasi momento nasci, &c. If Anthroposophus had such a device a 〈…〉 this in a glass, what a fine gew-gaw would it be for the lad? What fine sport would he make with his companions? He would make them believe then that he was a Conjurer indeed. But what other use there would be of it, Anthroposophus! truly I do not know. For it would not state one controversy in Philosophy more than what may be done without it. For whether there be any such things as rationes seminales, or whether these forms visible arise from heat, which is motion, and the conspiracy of fitted particles, is as well and safely determined from your experiments of one spring, as from this strange whimwham in a glass. But weak stomachs and weak wits long most after rarities.   

Pag. 10.  
Lin. 4. twofold idea, divine, natural, &c. Anthroposophus! Your natural idea, is but an idea of your own brain. For it is no more an idea than a sheath is a knife, or the spital that wets the seal the seal, or the grease the Saw, or the water the Grindle-stone. But you must strike betwixt this and the divine idea, or else you will miss of your natural one. And so will be forced to do that of penury, which he did of choice, and for brevity sake, divide your Text into one part. But your quotation of Moses here near the bottom of the page, is either nothing to your natural idea, or if you mean it of the divine is no new notion, but nimmed out of Philo the Jew. And yet in the beginning of the following page you magnify yourself, as one that concerning this primitive supernatural part of the Creation as you call it, though you have not said so much as you can say by far, (as being a Nip-crust and Niggard of your precious speculations) yet you have produced not a little new.   

Pag. 11.  
Lin. 5. Some Authors, &c. And the reason why the world is beholden to this Gentleman more than to any for new discoveries of mighty truths, is, that whereas some Authors have not searched so deeply into the centre of Nature, and others not willing to publish such spiritual mysteries, this new Writer is the only man, that is both deeply seen into the centre of Nature, and as willing also to publish these spiritual mysteries. So that he goes beyond them all. O brave Anthroposophus! What a fine man would you fain appear to the World?  
In the residue of this page, Anthroposophus his fancy is pudled so and jumbled in the limbus or Huddle of the matter, that he cannot distinguish betwixt God and the Creature. For he knows not whether the Chaos be created or uncreated. How much wiser are you now then Aristotle, Mr. Eugenius! that made the World eternal. If you can admit this; by the rule of proportion, you might swallow the greatest Gudgeon in Aristotle without kecking or straining.   

Pag. 12.  
Lin. 11. Fuliginous spawn of Nature. A rare expression! This Magician has turned Nature into a Fish by his Art. Surely such dreams sloat in his swimmering brains, as in the Prophets, who tells us so authentic stories of his delicious Albebut.  
Lin. 12. The created Matter. Before the Matter was in an hazard of not being created but of being of itself eternal. Certainly Eugenius! you abound with leisure that can thus create and uncreate, do and undo, because the day is long enough.  
Lin. 21. A horrible confused qualm, &c. Here Nature like a child-bearing woman, has a qualm comes over her stomach, and Eugenius like a man-midwife stands by very officiously to see what will become of it. Let her alone, Eugenius! it is but a qualm, Some cold raw rheune. Margaret will escape well enough. Especially if her two handmaid's Heat and Siccity do but help, with their Aquavitae bottles. What a rare mode or way of Creation has Eugenius set out? Certainly it cannot but satisfy any unreasonable man, if there be any men without reason. And I begin to suspect there is, for Eugenius his sake, such as feed as savourly on the pure milk of fancy, as the philosopher's ass on Sow-thistles.   

Pag. 13.  
This page is spent in extracting from the Chaos, a thin spiritual celestial substance to make the Coelum Empyreum of and the body of Angels, and by the by, to be in stead of a Sun for the first day. But then in the second Extraction was extracted the agile air fitting all betwixt the mass and the Coelum Empyreum. But here I have so hedg●ed you in Mr. Anthroposophus that you will hardly extricate yourself in this question. The empyreal substance encompassing all, how could there be Morning and Evening till the fourth day? For the mass was alike illumined round about at once. And for your interstellar water you do but fancy it employed in Moses text, and can never prove that he drives at any thing higher in the letter thereof, than those hanging bottles of water, the clouds.   

Pag. 14.  
Lin. 12. A rumbling confused Labyrinth. 'Tis only Erratum Typographicum. I suppose you mean, a rumbling Wheel-Barrow, in allusion to your wheelwork and Epicycles aforementioned. But why small diminutive Epicycles? Eugenius! you are so profound a Magician, that you are no Astronomer at all. The bigness of them is as strong a presumption against them, as any thing. They are too big to be true.  
Lin. 26. This is cribrum Naturaes'. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} I warrant you. The very sieve that Jupiter himself pisses through, as Aristophanes sports it in his Comedies.   

Pag. 15.  
Lin. 20. Equally possessed the whole Creature. Therefore again I ask thee, O Eugenius! how could there be Evening and Morning, the light being all over equally dispersed?  
Lin. 29. Like a baffled giant. poetical Eugenius! Is this to lay the sober and sound principles of Truth and Philosophy?   

Pag. 16.  
Lin. 1. A Black Bag. I tell thee Eugenius! Thy fancy is snapped in this female Black-bag, as an unwary Retiarius in a Net. Does Madam Nature wear her Black-bag in her middle parts? (for the Earth is the centre of the World) or on her head as other Matrons do? That Philalethes may seem a great and profound Student indeed, he will not take notice whether a black-bag be furniture for ladies' heads or their haunches: Well! let him enjoy the glory of his affected rusticity and ignorance.  
Lin. 5. Good Lord deliver us. How the man is frighted into devotion by the smut and griminess of his own imagination!  
Lin. 15. Earth and water, &c. Concurrunt elementa ut Materia, ergo duo sufficiunt, says Cardan. 'Tis no new-sprung truth, if true, Mr. Eugenius! But seeing that AEtherial vigour & celestial heat with the substance thereof (for, Coelum pervadit omnia) is in all things, and the air excluded from few or no living Creatures, if we would severely tug with you, Mr. Anthroposophus! you will endanger the taking of the foil.   

Pag. 18.  
Lin. 22. Both in the same bed. Why did you ever sneak in, Eugenius, and take them, {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} in the very act? {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} as the Lawyers speak? This is but poetical pomp in prose. And Ovid Philosophizes better in verse, where speaking of heat and moisture, he expresses himself apertly and significantly. 

Quip ubi temperiem sumpsere humorque calorque  
Concipiunt, & ab his generantur cuncta duobus.    
Lin. 27. Spiritus aquae invisibilis congelatus melior est quam terra Universa. Now as you are Philalethes, tell me truly if you understand any determinate and useful sense of this saying. If you do, why do you not explain it? if you do not, for ought you know, it may be only a charm to fox fishes. And I pray you, Philalethes! make trial of the experimrnt.   

Pag. 19  
Lin. 29. It is the magician's backdoor. Here I cannot but take notice at the great affectation of Philalethes to appear to be deeply seen in magic. But I suppose if he were well searched, he would be found no Witch, nor all his backdoor of air worth the wind of an ordinary man's backdoor.   

Pag. 20.  
Lin. 2. The air is our Animal oil, the fuill of the vital. Now Eugenius! you are so good natured as to give Aristetle one of his two elements again, that you wrested from him. If this be our animal oil, and fuel of the vital, it is plain our animal and vital spirits are from the air, and that the air is one element amongst the rest. And your moist silent fire that passes through all things must be a principle of all things, and may well be attempered heat to your forenamed oil. So that Aristotle and you that before seemed as disagreeing as fire and water, now in a love fit again embrace as close as your Apuleius his Psyche and Cupid. But why will you be thus humorous Mr. Eugenius! and be thus off and on to the trouble of others and yourself?   

Pag. 21.  
Lin. 9 Performed an exposition of the World. An excellent performance! Which if a man take a narrow view of, he will find to amount to no more than this, That God made a dark mass of Matter, out of which he extracted, (Chemist like) first an empyreal body, than an aereal, &c. Which is a very lank satisfaction to the noble reason of man. Nay, Anthroposophus! I believe you have spoke such stuff that will amount to little better than a contradiction to free reason. For you make as if the mass did contain in a far less compass above all measure, all that was after extracted. Where fore there was, (for these are all bodies) either a penetration of dimensions then, or else a vacuum now: and the ascending particles of the mass, lie some distance one from another. Besides I observe that in you, that I do in all others, that fantastically and superstitiously force Philosophy out of the sacred Writ (which is intended curtainly for better purposes) For like Ovid in his Metamorphoses, (who after a long pursuit of a Fabulous story, at last descends to something in Nature and common use, as that of Daphne turned into a laurel, which tree is in Nature and according to the accustomary conceit of the Heathens, was holy to Apollo) so these running a Wild-Goose chase of Melancholy imaginations and fancies, think it evidence enough for what they have said, to have the thing but named in some Text of Scripture. Nay even those that are so confident they are inspired, and live of nothing but the free breathings of the Divine Spirit, if you observe them, it is with them as with the Lark, that is so high in the air, that we may better hear her then see her, as if she were an inhabitant of that Region only and had no alliance to the Earth, yet at last you shall see her come down and pick on the ground as other birds. So these pretended inspired men though they fly high, and seem to feed of nothing but free truth, as they draw it from God's own breathing, yet they took their ground first from the Text, though they ran a deal of phansyfull division upon it, and if a man watch them, he shall find them fall flat upon the Text again, and be but as other mortals are for all their free pretensions, and extraordinary assistences. But let's leave these Theosophists (as they love to be called) to themselves, and trace on the steps of our Anthroposophus!   

Pag. 22.  
He exhorts us in the foregoing page to be curious and diligent in this subsequent part of his discourse, as being now about to deliver the fundamentals of Science. But Anthroposophus! you are so deeply magical that you have conjured yourself down, below the wit of an ordinary man. The fundamentals of Science should be certain, plain, real and perspicuous to reason; not muddy and imaginary as all your discourse is from this to your 28 page. For in this present page and the former, setting aside your superstitious affectation of Trinities and Triplicities, which teach a man nothing but that you are a very fantastical and bold man, and lift at that which is too heavy for you, you do nothing but scold very cholerickly at the Colliers and Kitchen-maides, and like a dog return again to the Vomit, I mean that vomit you cast awhile ago on Aristotle. Is that so elegant an expression that you must use it twice in so little a space? where is your manners Anthroposophus!   

Pag. 23.  
Lin. 14. & 24. The Magnet, the Mystery of Union. Not one of ten thousand knows the substance or the use of this Nature. Yet you tell it us in this page, that it will attract all things physical or metaphysical, at what distance soever. But you are a man of ten thousand, Anthroposophus! and have the Mystery, questionless, of this Magnet. Whence I conclude you King or Prince of the Gypsies, as being able at the farthest distance to attract mettle out of men's purses. But take heed that you be not discovered, lest this Jacob's Ladder raise you up with your fellow pickpockets to Heaven in a string.   

Pag. 24.  
This page is filled with like Gipsy gibberish, as also the 25th. yet he pretends to lend us a little light from the Sun and Moon. Which he calls the great Luminaries and conservators of the great World in general. How great, Anthroposohus! do you think would the Moon appear if your magic could remove you but as far as Saturn from her? will she not appear as little as nothing? Besides, if Fugenius ever tooted through a Galileo's Tube, he might discover four Moons about Jupiter, which will all prove competitors with our Moon for the Conservatour-ship of the Universe. But though Eugenins admits of but one great broad-faced Sun and Moon, yet he acknowledgeth many Mimules or monkey-faced Suns and Moons, which must be the Conservatricules of the many Microcosms in the great World. Certainly Anchroposophus! the speculum of your understanding is cracked, and every fragment gives a several reflection, and hence is this innumerable multitude of these little diminutive Suns and Moons. But having passed through much canting language, at the bottom of the page we at last stumble on the philosopher's Stone, which he intends I suppose to fling at Aristotle and brain the Stagirite at one throw.  
Lin. ult. A true Receipt of the Medicine, R. Limi coelestis partes, &c. Come out TomFool from behind the hangings, that peaks out with your devil's head and horns, and put off your vizard and be apert and intelligible, or else why do you pretend to lay the fundamentals of Science, and crave our diligence and attention to a non-significant noise and buzz? Unless you will be understood, it may as well, for aught any knows, be a plaster for a galled horses back, or a Medicine for a Mad-dog, as a receipt of the philosopher's Stone.   

Pag. 27.  
In this page Magicus prophesies of a vitrification of the Earth, and turning of it into a pure diaphanous substance. To what end? Magicus! That the Saints and Angels at each pole of the Earth may play at Boe-peep with one another through this crystallized Globe? Magicus has rare imaginations in his noddle.   

Pag. 28.  
At the end of this page Magicus begins to take to task the explication of man's nature. But Magicus you must first learn better to know yourself, before you attempt to explain the knowledge of man to others.   

Pag. 29.  
Lin. 10. The philosophical Medicine. This is the philosopher's stone. And they that are ignorant in this point are but Quacks and pisspot Doctors. Ho! Dr. H. Dr. P. Dr. R. Dr. T. and as many Doctors more as will stand betwixt London and Oxenford, if you have not a slight of Art to Metamorphize yourselves into Triorchises, and have one stone more than Nature has bestowed upon you (which is forsooth the philosopher's Stone) have amongst you blind Harpers, Magicus will not stick to teem Urinals on your heads, and crown you all one after another, with the pisspot, and honour you with the Title of quacksalvers. What? Magicus! Is it not sufficient that you have no sense nor wit, but you will have no good manners neither?   

Pag. 30.  
This thirtieth page teaches that the soul of man consists of two parts, Ruach and Nephesh, one Masculine and the other Feminine. And Anthroposophus is so tickled with the Application of the conceit unto Marriage, which he very feelingly and savourly pursues, that he has not the patience to stay to tell us how these two differ, he being taken up so with that powerful charm and thence accrueing Faculty, of Crescite & Multiplicamini.   

Pag. 31.  
This page has the same Legend that the Alcoran has concerning the envy of the Angels. But all goes down alike with him, as if every thing printed were Gospel. In so much that I am persuaded, that he doubts not but that every syllable of his own Book it true, now it has passed the press.   

Pag. 32.  
This page ridiculously places Peter Ramus amongst the Schoolmen against all logic and Method. And at the last line thereof bids us arrigere aures, and tells us he will convey some truth never heretofore discovered, viz. That the sensitive gust in a man is the forbidden fruit: with the rest of the circumstances thereof. Which Theory is so far from being new, that it is above a thousand years old. It is in Origen and everywhere in the Christian Platonists.   

Pag. 38.  
Lin. 27. It is part of Anima Mundi. Why! is Anima Mundi (which you say, in men and beasts can see, feel, taste and smell) a thiug divisible into parts and parcels? Take heed of that Anthroposophus! lest you crumble your own soul into Atoms, indeed make no soul, but all body.   

Pag. 39  
Lin. 22. Blind peripatetical forms. What impudcnce is this O Magicus! to call them so, unless you make your Anima Mundi more intelligible. This is but to rail at pleasure, not to teach or confute.   

Pag. 40.  
Lin. 2. As it is plain in dreams. Blind men see in their sleep it seems, which is more than they can do when they are awake. Are you in jest Eugenius! or in good earnest? If you be, I shall suspect you having a faculty to see when you are a sleep, that you have another trick too, that is, to dream when you are awake. Which you practised I conceive very much in the compilement of this book, there being more dreams than truth by far in it.  
Lin. 11. Represent the eyes. How phansiful and poetical are you Mr. Magicus! I suppose you allude to the herb Euphrasia or Eye-bright. Which yet sees or feels as little light or heat of the Sun, as your soul does of reason or humanity.  
Lin. 27. angelical or rational spirit. does not this see and hear too in man? If it do not, how can it judge of what is said or done? If it does; then there is two hearing and seeing souls in a man. Which I will leave to Anthroposophus his own thoughts, to find out how likely that is to be true.   

46, 47, 48, 49. Pages.  
Truly, Anthroposophus! these pages are of that nature, that though you are so unkind to Aristotle, as to acknowledge nothing good in him, yet I am not so inveterate a revengeful assertor of him, but I will allow you your lucida intervalla. What you have delivered in these pages, bating a few Hyperboles, might become a man of a more settled brain then Anthroposophus. But while you oppose so impetuously what may with reason be admitted, and propound so magisterially what is not sense, I must tell you Anthroposophus! that you betray to scorn and derision even those things that are sober in the way that you affect, and hazard the soiling of the highest and most delicate truths, by your rude and unskilful handling of them: And now the good breath that guided you, forthese four pages together, is spent, you begin to rave again after the old manner, and call Galen Antichrist in   

Pag. 50.  
And quarrel again with the peripatetics, and provoke the School-divines. And then you fancy that you have so swinged them, that in revenge they'll all fall upon you at once, and so twerilug you: when as they good men feel not your strokes, and find themselves something else to do, then to refute such crazy discourses as this. It is only, it is I, your brother Philalethes, that am moved with pity towards you, and would if I could by carefully correcting you in your distempers, bring you to a sober mind, and set you in your right sense again. And I beseech you brother Philalethes! forbear this swearing, An honest man's word is as good as his Oath. nobody will believe you more for swearing, than he would do without it, but think you more melancholic and distracted.  
Lin. 21. Whiles they contemn mysteries, &c. In this heat all that Philalethes writes must be termed holy mysteries. His project certainly is, now neither Episcopacy nor Presbyteri can be settled, to get his book established jure divino. A crafty colt! Ha, ha, he. Philalethes, Are you there with your bears?  
Lin. 29. Next to God I owe all I have to Agrippa. What? more then to the Prophe 〈…〉 and Apostles, Anthrosophus? The business is for your fame-sake, you have more desire to be thought a Conjurer than a Christian.   

Pag. 53, 54.  
Great glorious penman! A piping hot p 〈…〉 per of verses indeed Anthroposophus! But say truly! What can you do in or out of this heat more than other men. Can you cure the sick? Rule and counsel States and kingdoms more prudently for the common good? Can you find bread for the poor? Give a rational account of the phenomena of Nature, more now then at another time? or more than other men can do? Can you tell me the Nature of light? the causes of the Rainbow? what makes the flux and reflux of the Sea? the operations of the Loadstone, and such like? Can you tell us in a rational, dependent, and coherent way the nature of such things as these, or foretell to us what will be hereafter, as certainly and evidently as the Prophets of old? But if there be neither the evidence of Reason, nor the testimony of notable effect, you can give us, you must give me leave Anthroposophus! to conjecture; That all this is but a frisk and dance of your agitated spirits, and fieriness of your fancy, of which you will find no fruit, but a palsied, unsteady apprehension, and unsound judgement.   

Pag. 55.  
From this page to the 62. your theomagical Nag has been pretty sure-footed, Philalethes! And it is a good long lucidum intervallum you have ambled out. Nay and you have done very well and soberly in not plainly pretending any new thing there. For they are both old and well seasoned, if the Church be so pleased to esteem of them. But what you have toward the latter end of the 62 page, that is, a word of yourself, and another of the common Philosophy, has in it a spice of the old malady, pride and conceitedness: as if you had now finished so famous a piece of work, as that all the world would stand amazed, and be inquisitive after you, asking who is this Philalethes, and what is he? Presbyterian or Independent? Sir, may it please you, He is neither Papist, though he bade fair enough for purgatory in his Exposition of St. Peter in the foregoing page; nor Sectary, though he had rather style himself a Protestant than a Christian: but be he what he will be, he is so great in his own conceit, that though you have not the opportunity to ask his judgement, yet he thinks it fit unasked to set himself on the seat of Judicature, and disgorge his sentence on our ordinary Philosophy He means you may be sure the Aristotelean in use for so many hundred years in all the Universities of Europe. And he pronounces of it, that it is An inconsistent hotchpotch of rash conclusions, built on mere imagination without the light of Experience. You must suppose he means chemical experiments, for you see no small pretensions to that in all his Treatise. And his very Title page, the first of the book, has the privilege to be first adorned with this magnificent term of Art, Protochymistry. But tell me, Mr. alchemist! in all your skill and observation in your Experiments, if you have hit on any thing that will settle any considerable point controverted amongst Philosophers, which may not be done as effectually at less charges. Nay, whether you may not lose Nature sooner than find her by your industrious vexing of her, and make her appear something else than what she really is: Like men on the rack or overwatched witches, that are forced many times to confess that which they were never guilty of. But it being so unsatisfactory to talk in general, and of so tedious purpose to descend to particulars, I will break off this discourse. Only let me tell you thus much Mr. Philalethes! that you are a very unnatural son to our mother Oxenford, and to her sister University; for if they were no wiser than you would make them, you would hazard them and all their children to be begged for fools. And there would be a sad consequent of that. But your zeal and heated melancholy considers no such things, Anthroposophus!   

Pag. 65.  
Lin. 3. I have now done, Reader! but how much to my own prejudice I cannot tell. Verily nothing at all Philalethes! For you have met with a friend that hath impartially set out to you your own follies and faults. And has distorted himself often into the deformities of your postures, that you may the better see yourself in another, and so for shame amend.  
Lin. 8. Paint and trim of rhetoric. How modest are you grown Philalethes! Why? this affectation of humour and rhetoric is the most conspicuous thing in your book. And shines as oriently, as false gold and silver lace on a linsey-woolsey coat.  
Lin. 22. Of a brother's death. Some young man certainly that killed himself by unmerciful studying of Aristotle. And Philalethes writ this book to revenge his Death.  
Lin. 18. I expose it not to the mercy of man, but to God. See, the man affects an absolute Tyranny in Philosophy. He'll be accountable to none but God. You no Papist Philalethes? Why! you would be a very Pope in Philosophy, if you would not have your Dictates subject to the canvas of man's reason.    

Observations upon his Advertisement to the Reader.  
THe first thing you require is, that he that attempts your book, should make a plain and positive Exposition of all the passages. Why man? that is more assuredly than yourself can do. For you are so weak and supine in many things that are intelligible that I am confident you are worse in tha: which you have made less intelligible. For as Socrates reading an obscure author, when he found all things he understood very good, did charitably conclude, what be understood not was much better: so I finding in this obscure Treatise of yours, many things very ill, I also in charity will think you had the wit, to conceal those things which are the worst; or which will serve the turn, that you understand them not yourself. But have an itching desire that some Reader skilfuller than yourself, should tell you whether you have wrote seuse or nonsense. Like the Country clown, that desired his young Master to teach him to write, and being asked how he would be able to read his own writing, being as yet never acquainted somuch as with the Christcross-row, made answer, he would get some body else to read it for him. And so you Philalethes! though you can read your own writing, yet you desire to get some body else to understand it for you, or to interpret to you what you have writ.  
Your second Request is not much unlike the former, and too big a business for yourself to do, and therefore you beg it of another.  
Your third Request is, to have your book handled after your own manner and method. Which is as ridiculous, as if you should request your enemy to smite softly, or to strike after such a fashion, and at such a part as you will appoint him. Can it be reasonable for you to expect from an Aristotelean (for you must think it would be they of all men that would fly about your ears first) when you have used their Master Aristotle, as they would not, to be used of them as you would? But notwithstanding Philalethes! you see I have been very fair with you, and though provoked I shall continue the same candour in my observations on your following piece. But before I pass, I must take notice of your two admonitions to the ingenuous Reader, for I suppose you mean me, Philalethes! The first is, that I would not despise your endeavours, because of your years, for they are but few. Why man! who knew that but yourself, if you could have kept your own counsel? Your name is not at your book, much less your age. But indeed many things are so well managed of you, that if you had not told us so, we might have shrewdly suspected, you have scarce reached the years of discretion. But you are so mightily taken with your own performance, that to increase admiration, and for the bringing in a phrase or sentence out of Proclus, you could not withhold from telling us that you are but a young man, and so we easily believe it. But the more saucy boy you to be so bold with Reverend Mr. Aristotle, that grandevall Patriarch in points of Philosophy. For the second admonition, it is little more than a noise or clatter of words, or if you will, a mere rattle for a boy to play with. And so I leave it in your hand to pass away the time, till I meet you again in your Anima Magica Abscondita.   

Upon the Preface to the Reader.  
NOw God defend! what will become of me! In good faith, Philalethes! I do not know what may become of you in time. But for the present, methinks, you are become a fool in a play, or a Jack-pudding at the dancing on the Ropes, a thing wholly set in a posture to make the people laugir. Fie! Fie! Philalethes! do these humorous and mimical schemes of speech, become so profound a The magician, as yourself would seem to be? Does this ridiculous levity become a man of your profession? You do not a little disparage yourself by these boyish humours, my good Philaletbes!  
For mine own part I am neither so lightheaded nor light-footed, as to dance the Morisco with you measure to measure, through this whole toy of yours to the Reader. I shall dispatch what I have to say at once. Your main drift here is to prove Agrippa's Dogs no devils, and their Master no Papist, and consequently yourself no unlawful Magician or Conjurer.  
And truly if the Assembly of Divines be no more suspicious of you then myself, I am abundantly satisfied, that you are rather a giddy fantastic than an able Conjurer. So that without any offence to me you may take Wierus his office if you will, and for want of better employment, lead about Agrippa's beagles in a string. In the mean time I shall busy myself almost to as little purpose in the perusal of your Anima Magica Abscondita.  

Upon Anima Magica Abscondita.  
And here Philalethes! in the very threshold you begin to worry the poor peripatetics more fiercely than any English mastiff, and bark and scold into the air (that is in general) more cursedly and bitterly then any butter-quean, but at last in the 25. line of the second page, you begin to take to task some particular Documents of Aristotle's. viz. The Description of Nature, of Form, and of the Soul. Whereby we shall understand of what great judgement and perspicacity you are in other points of Philosophy. And first of the Definition of Nature, which you say is defined, Principium motus & quietis. A little thing serves your turn, Anthroposophus! Is this the entire Definition of Nature, in Aristotle? But what you unskilfully take no notice of, I willing lie wink at, and will deal with you only about those things that you produce and oppose.  

Pag. 3.  
Lin. 19 Nature is a Principle. Here you cavil that Nature is said to be a Principle, because you cannot find out the thing defined by this general intimation. But here, Philalethes! you are a pitiful Logician, and know not so much in logic as every Freshman in our University doth, viz. that that part of the Definition which is general does not lead us directly home unto the thing defined, and lay our hand upon it, but it is the difference added, that does that. As if so be we should say only that, Homo est animal, that assertion is so floating and hovering, that our mind can settle on nothing, which it may safely take for a man, for that general notion belongs to a flea or a mite in a cheese as well as to a man; but adding rationale, than it is determined and restrained to the nature of man. And your allegation against the difference here annexed in the Definition of Nature, is as childish. For you only allege that it tells us what nature does, not what it is. My dear Philalethes! Certainly thou hast got the knack of seeing further into a millstone, than any living mortal else. Thou hast discovered, as thou thinkest, Dame Nature stark naked, as Actaeon did Diana; but for thy rash fancy deservest a pair of ass's ears, as well as he did his Bucks-horns for his rash sight. Can any substantial form be known, otherwise then by what it can do or operate. Tell me any one substantial form that thou knowest any better way than this, & Phyllida solus habeto, take Phyllis to thyself, and her black-bag to boot. Thou art, good Anthroposophus! I perceive a very unexperienced novice in the more narrow and serious search and contemplation of things.   

Pag. 4.  
Lin. 23. This is an express of the office and effect of forms but not of their substance or essence. Why! Philalethes! as I said before, have you ever discovered the naked substance or essence of any thing? Is colour, light, hardness, softness, &c. is any of these or of such like, essence and substance itself? If you be so great a Wizard, show some one substantial form in your theomagical glass. Poor Kitling! how dost thou dance and play with thine own shadow, and understandest nothing of the mystery of substance and truth!   

Pag. 5.  
Here in the third place you cavil at Aristotle's Definition of the Soul, and by your slubbering and barbarous translating of the term {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} smother the fitness of the sense. What more significant of the nature of a soul, than what this term {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} is compounded of? viz. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} and {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} 
— Totosque insusa per artus Mens agitat Molem.   
Or if we read the word as Cicero, {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} it will be more significant, as being made up of {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} And that which does inwardly pervade and penetrate, that which does hold together and yet move this way and that way, and lastly still moving possess and command an organical body, &c. what is this but a Soul, or what better Definition can be given of it it then this? But here this peremptory opposer, does still inculcate the same cavil, that the naked substance or essence of the soul, is not set out by this, but its operations. But still out of the same ignorance, supposing that a substantial form can be better known then by its proper operations. And this ignorance of his makes him so proud, that he does Fellow at every word, if not, sirrah, Prince Aristotle, because he has not done that which is impossible to do, unbare to us the very substance of a Form. What an imperious boy is this! a rangling child in Philosophy, that screams and cries after what is impossible, as much as peevish babes, after what is hurtful. And in this humorous straining and wriggling, bemarres both his Mother and his Aunt, both the Universities at once, casting dirt and filth upon their education of youth, as if they taught nothing, because they cannot teach what is impossible to be learned.   

Pag. 8.  
Here Anthroposophus begins to be something earnest and rude with Nature, not content any longer to use his adulterous fancy, but to break open with his immodest hands her private closet, search her cabinet, and pierce into her very centre. What rare extractions he will make thence I leave to himself to enjoy. Sure I am, that if any skilful Cook, or chemists should take out Philalethes brains, and shred them as small as mincemeat, and tumble them never so much up and down with a trencher-fork, he would not discover by this diligent discussion any substantial form of his brains whereby they may be distinguished from what lies in a calves head. Nay, if they were stewed betwixt two dishes, or distilled in an Alembeck, neither would that extraction be any crystalline mirror to see the substantial form stark naked in, and discover the very substance of that spirit, that has hit upon so many unhappy hallucinations. But you are a youth of rare hopes, Anthroposophus!   

Pag. 9  
Lin. 20. Where by the way I must tell you, &c. viz. That the heavens are not moved by Intelligences. Who can not tell us that? But indeed you are forward to tell us any thing, that does but seem to sound high, or make any show. There's nobody now but would laugh to hear, that a particular angel turns about every Orb as so many dogs in wheels turn the spit at the fire. So that it seems far below such a grand Theomagician as you are, to tell us such incredible fopperies as these to be false.   

Pag. 10.  
Lin. 10. For the author's credit and benefit of the Reader. Good Philalethes! What credit do you expect from your scribbling, though it be the only thing you aim at in all your Book? when yet nothing of truth but this aim of yours is understood in all this writing: saving that you are also a confident fantastic and vaunting Mountebank. This is your greatest credit, and the greatest profit of the Reader, to observe you to be so.  
Lin. 15. This Anima retained in the matter and missing a vent, &c. A similitude, I suppose, taken from the bunghole of a barrel; or more compendiously from bottled bear; or it may be from the corking up close the urine of a bewitched party, and setting it to the fire. For Anthroposophus will not be less than a Magician in all things, nor seem less wise then or witch or devil. But methinks, Anthroposophus! your expression of the nature of this Anima, that must do such fine feats in the world, by the efformation of things and organizing the matter into such useful figuration and proportion in living creatures, had been as fitly and as much to your purpose expressed; if you had fancied her tied up like a pig in a poke, that grunting and nudling to get out drove the yielding bag out at this corner and that corner, and so gave it due order and disposition of parts. But, Oh thou man of mysteries! tell me I pray thee, how so subtle a thing as this Anima is, can be either barreled up or bottled up, or tied up in a bag, as a pig in a poke! when as the first material rudiments of life be so lax and so fluid, how can they possibly hopple or incarcerate so thin and agile a substance as a Soul? so that the union betwixt them is of some other nature, than what such gross expressions can represent, and more theomagical than our Theomagician himself is aware of.   

Pag. 11.  
Here Anthroposophus tells us rare mysteries concerning the soul, that it is a thing slitched and cobbled up of two parts. viz. of aura tenuissima, and lux simplicisfima. And for the gaining of credence to this patched conceit, he abuses the authority of that excellent Platonist and Poet Virgilius Maro, taking the fag end of three verses which all tend to one drift, but nothing at all to his purpose. AEneid. 6. 

Donec long a dies perfecto temporis orbe  
Concretam exemit labem, purumque reliquit  
AEthereum sensum, atque aurai simplicis ignem.    
This is not spoken of the soul itself but of the aethereal Vehicle of the soul, and so is nothing to your purpose Mr. Philalethes! You tell us also in this page in what shirts or sheets the souls wrap themselves when they apply to generation, (as your phrase is) as if you were groom of their bedchamber if not their pander. You tell us also of a radical vital liquour, that is of like proportion and complexion with the superior interstellar waters, which is as learnedly spoken, as if you should compare the sack at the Globe-Tavern, with certain supernal Wine-bottles hung round Orion's girdle. Which no man were able to smell out, unless his nose were as Atlantic as your rauming and reaching fancy. And yet no man that has not lost his reason, but will think this as grave a truth in Philosophy as your interstellar waters. But Interstellar, indeed, is a pretty word and sounds well, and it is pity but there were some fine philosophic notion or other did belong to it. But now, Philalethes! if I would tyrannize over you as you do over Aristotle, for the manner of your declaring the nature of the Soul, where you pretend to show us the very naked essence of it and first principles whereof it doth consist, you have laid yourself more bare to my lash, than you endeavoured to lay bare the soul to our view. For you do plainly insinuate to us, That either the soul is Light, or else a thin Air, or that it is like to them. If only like these bodies of light and air, how pitifully do you set out the nature of the Soul, when you tell us the principles of it only in a dry metaphor Is not the nature of the Soul far better known from the proper operations thereof (as Aristotle has defined it) then from this fantastical metaphorical way? But if you will say that the soul is properly Light or Air, then be they never so thin, or never so simple (Unless you will again use a metaphor) the Soul must be a Body. And how any corporeal sustance thick or thin, fluid or dry, can be able to think, to reason, to fancy, &c. nay to form matter into such cunning and wise frames and contrivancies as are seen in the bodies of living Creatures, no man of less ignorance and confidence than yourself will dare to endeavour to explain, or hold any way probable.   

Pag. 12.  
In this page you are curiously employed in making of a chain of Light and Matter, surely more subtle and more useless than that that held the Flea prisoner in the mechanics hand. But this is to hold the Anima, the passive Spirit and celestial water together. Our Theomagician here grows as imperious, as wrathful Xerxes. Will you also fetter the Hellespont Philalethes? and bind the wind and waters in chains? But let's consider now the links of this miraculous chain of his, Light.  Matter.  Anima of 3 of 1 portions Passive spirit 2 2 Celestial waters 1 3  
This is your chain, Philalethes! Now let's see what Apish tricks you'll play with this your chain. The three portions of light must be brought down by the two, the two, (if not indeed five, the two and three being now joined) brought down by one, and so the whole chain drops into the water. But would any Ape in a chain if he could speak, utter so much incredible and improbable stuff, with so much munky and mysterious ceremony? His very chain would check his both thoughts and tongue. For is it not far more reasonable that three links of a chain should sway down two, and two or five one, then that one should sway two or five, or two, three? Or do we find when we fling up a clod of earth, that the whole ball of the Earth leaps up after that clod, or the clod rather returns back to the Earth, the greater ever attracting the less, if you will stand to magnetical Attraction. But truly Philalethes! I think you do not know what to stand to, or how to stand at all; you are so giddy and intoxicated with the steam and heat of your disturbed fancy and vain mind.   

Pag. 13.  
Lin. 8. But methinks Nature complains of a prostitution, &c. Did not I tell you so before, that Philalethes was a pander? and now he is convinced in his own conscience and confesses the crime, and his ears ring with the clamours and complaints of Madam Nature, whom he has so lewdly prostituted. Sad Melancholist! thou art affrighted into the confession of crimes that thou art not only not guilty of, but canst not be guilty of if thou wouldst. Is there never a one of our City Divines at leisure to comfort him and compose him? I tell thee, Madam Nature is a far more chaste and discreet Lady, then to lie obnoxious to thy prostitutions. These are nothing but some unchaste dreams of thy prurient and polluted fancy. I dare quit thee of this fact, Philalethes! I warrant thee, Thou hast not laid Madam Nature so naked as thou supposest, only thou hast, I am afraid, dream'c uncleanly, and so hast polluted so many sheets of paper with thy nocturnal conundrums, which have neither life, sense, nor shape, head nor foot that I can find in them.   

Pag. 14.  
Here Philalethes is taken like a Fly in a spider's Web. He is altogether for subtleties. But spins but a thick thread from them, such as any rustics hand would draw out as well as his one. viz. That Spiders have some light of knowledge in them. Who knows not that Philaletbes? But in the   

Pag. 15.  
He is so lavish, of what he has so little of himself, that he bestows it on every plastic material From; and not a Rose can grow in Nature but some seeing and knowing Hyliad with his invisible pencil must draw it, and thus by his mere rash dictate does he think he has dashed out that long and rational dogma in Philosophy of the particular {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} or rationes seminales. Whose fondness in this groundless assertion it were easy to confute, but he that will not bring any reasons for what he says, is not worthy to have any reasons brought against him. For as for that only slight reason which he intimates, that the matter being contrived into such a rational or artificial disposure of parts, the immediate Artificer thereof must have animadversion and reason in it, is only said, not proved, and will reach no further, but that the ratio seminalis, must at least proceed from something that is knowing, and be in some sense rational, but not have Reason and Animadversion in itself. The like confidence and ignorance is repeated and insisted upon in the 16 and 17 pages: but I let them pass.   

Pag. 18, 19  
These pages contain a certain preachment, which would have done well if it had been from some one that had more wit in knowing when to preach and when to hold his peace, and more charity to abstain from such undeserved chidings of Aristotle. But your unmeasureable and unmerciful chastisings of him, and so highly advancing and soothing up yourself in your own windy conceits and fluttering follies make all your serious applications ridiculous and neffectuall.   

Pag. 20.  
Petition of St. Augustine, A logica libera nos Domine, lin. 7. Assuredly, Philalethes ever since the Church Litanie was put down has used this of St. Augustine, and that with such earnestness and devotion that he has even extorted from Heaven the full grant of his Petition, and has become as free and clean from all sense and reason, as he is luxuriant and encumbered with disturbed and unsettled fancies and undigested imaginations.   

Pag. 21.  
Lin. 3. These three Principles are the Clavis of all magic, &c. Here Philalethes like the angel of the bottomless Pit, comes jingling with the keys of magic in his hands. But he opens as Hokus Pokus does his fists, where we see that here is nothing and there is nothing. But something he will seem to say, viz. That the first Principle is one in one, and one from one. he that has so many years so devoutly prayed against logic, do you expect when he speaks to hear reason? This is as much as to say nothing. One in one and one from one? Suppose a ripe Apple should drop into the rotten hollow of the tree that bore it. Is this Apple your mysterious Magical principle? It may be that as well as any thing else by this description. For it is one Apple in one hollow, from one tree. O but he adds. It is a pure white Virgin. Some religious Nun I warrant you. No she may not be a Nun neither. For she is uxor Dei & stellarum. It seems then, there is a kind of Plato's commonwealth, betwixt God and the Stars, and they have community of wives amongst them. But if she be so pure a Virgin wife as you make her, how come some of her Husbands to wear horns as they do, viz. Aries, Capricorn and others? But is this to Philosophize or to play the Theomagician, Philalethes! thus to tell us of virgins, or wives with white petticoats, or to tell us that from this one there is a descent into four, &c. This is but idle treading of the air, and only a symptom of a light swimmering fancy that can have patience to write such hovering undeterminate stuff, as this, that belongs either almost to any thing, or nothing. You even weary your Reader out, Philalethes! with such metaphysical dancings and airy fables.   

Pag. 22.  
Lin. 5. This is a Labyrinth and wild of magic where a world of Students have lost themselves, And you, Philalethes! have not scaped scot-free. For you have lost your reason before as I told you, and your so much and so confidently conversing with mere Unities and Numbers, which in themselves design nothing, will teach you in time, to speak words without any inward phantasm of what you say. So that you shall bid fair for the losing of your fancy too, and then you will be as you are near it already, Vox, praeterea nihil a mere noise and clatter of words.  
Lin. 13. It moves here below in shades and tiffanies, &c. What a description is this of the magician's fire? I suppose you mean the Magicians Thais. It moves in shades, that is, (for the text is very dark and wants a Commentary) in the Evening or Twilight. Tiffanies, is plain English, but white etherial vestures, must be white petticoats and white Aprons, or else white Aprons upon blue petticoats, and that she is exposed to such a public prostitution passing through all hands every one having the use of her body; this theomagicians' fire seems to me to be no other, than some very common strumpet. But if you mean any thing but a Strumpet, you have a wondrous infected fancy, that dresses up your theomagical notions in such whorish attire. But of a sudden my Theomagician has lest those more gross and palpable expressions, and now dances very high in the air quite out of the Ken of our eye, like some chemical Spirit that has broke its hermetical prison, and flown away out of the Artist's sight and reach: being far more invisible and thin now, than the finest Tiffany that ever took his sight, and more arid and slight, than the faintest shade. I tell you once more; Anthroposophus! that Ternaries, and Quaternaries, and decades, and Monads, and such like words of number have no useful sense nor signification, nor virtue, if unapplyed to some determinate substance or thing. But our great Theomagician having no project in this writing that I see, but to amaze the world, contents himself only to rattle his chain, and to astonish the rude and simple as if some Spirit or Conjurer was at hand, and so those words that are most sonorous and consist of the greatest number of syllables, please him better, then what have more solid signification, and a more settled and sober sense.   

Pag. 24.  
Lin. 17. he with the black spaniel. As for your adored Magus with the black spaniel, and that dark Disciple of Libanius Gallus, what I have said to you already will serve here too. But my controversy is with you only, Philalethes! a sworn enemy of Reason and Aristotle, and methinks you are very like yourself still in the   

27 Pag.  
Lin. 22. I am certain the world will wonder I should make use of Scripture to establish Philosophy, &c. Here, Philalethes, you seem self-condemned even from your own speech, being conscious to yourself, that all the world will be against you in this superstitious abuse of the Scripture. For are you wiser than all the world beside in this matter, because you have prayed away all your logic in St. Augustine's litany? What profane boldness is this to distorted that high Majesty of the holy Scripture to such poor and pitiful services, as to decide the controversies of the World and of Nature? As well becoming it is, as to set pies and pasties into the oven with the sacred leaves of the bible? This is but a fetch of imperious Melancholy and hypocritical superstition, that under pretence of being more holy would prove more tyrannical, and leave the understanding of man free in nothing at all, but bring in a philosophy too, Jure Divino! And I can further demonstrate to you (beside what I have intimated from the transcendency of the Scripture and high scope and aim thereof) that the Scripture teacheth no secret or principle of Philosophy, of which there is any doubt amongst men in their wits. For either (as where it seems to speak ex prefesso of any such things) it does it so obscurely that men rather father their own notions fetched from elsewhere, upon the Scripture; or else if it speak more plainly and literally, yet it being allowed by all sober men as well Jews as Christians, (as it is indeed undeniably evident from the passages themselves in Scripture) that it speaks so ordinarily according to the rude and vulgar use and apprehension of men, there can be no deciding collections in matters of Philosophy safely gathered out of it. Though I will not deny but that some philosophic truths may have an happy and useful illustration and countenance from passages in Scripture. And their industry is not to be vilified that take any pains therein. But I do not believe that any man that has drove the proper use of the Scripture home to the most full and most genuine effect of it in himself, but will be so wise and so discreet, that he will be ashamed in good earnest to allow any such philosophic abuse of. But questionless the Scripture is the beginner, nourisher and emprover of that life and light which is better than all the Philosophy in the world. And he that stands in this light the firmer and fuller he is possessed of it, he is the more able to judge both of Nature, Reason, and Scripture itself. But he that will speak out of his own rash heat, must needs run the hazard of talking at randum, And this I make the bolder in charity to pronounce, because I observe that the reverential abuse, and religious misapplication of the holy Writ to matters of Philosophy, for which it was not intended, does in many well-meaning men eat out the use of their reason, for the exercise whereof Philosophy was intended. And hence so much spurious and fantastic knowledge multiplies now adays, to the prejudice of man's understanding, and to the entangling him in vain and groundless imaginations, fortuitously sprung up from uncircumspect Melancholy, dazzled and stounded with the streamings and flashes of its own pertinacious fancy. Which sometime is so powerful as to overmaster the Melancholist into a credulity, that these flarings of false light in his dark Spirit are not from himself, but from a Divine Principle, the Holy Ghost. And then bidding a dieu to Reason, as having got some Principle above it, measnres all truth merely by the greatness and powerfulness of the Stroke of the phantasm. What ever fills the imagination fullest, must be the truest. And thus a rabble of tumultuary and crass representations must go for so many Revelations, and every heaving up by an Hypochondricall flatulency must be conceited a rapture of the Spirit; they professing themselves to receive things immediately from God, when they are but the casual figurations of their anxious fancy, busily fluttering about the Text; which they always eye (though they dissemble it) as hawks and Buzzards, fly they never so high, have their sight bent upon on the Earth. And indeed if they should not forge their fancies into some tolerable suitableness with the letter of the Scripture, they would never be able to believe themselves, or at least to beget belief in others, that they are inspired. And so that high conceit insinuated into them by that wonderful yet ordinary imposterous power of Melancholy would fall to nothing, and they appear not so much as to themselves either Prophets or inspired. But this I have touched upon elsewhere. I will let it go. Only let me cast in thus much: that he that misbelieves and lays aside clear and cautious reason in things that fall under the discussion of Reason, upon the pretence of hankering after some higher principle, (which a thousand to one proves but the infatuation of Melancholy and a superstitious hallueination) is as ridiculous as if he would not use his natural eyes about their proper object till the presence of some supernatural light, or till he had got a pair of Spectacles made of the Crystalline Heaven, or of the Coelum Empyreum, to hang upon his Nose for him to look through. The truth is, he that lays aside Reason, casts away one of the most sovereign Remedies against all melancholic impostures. For I conceive it would be very hard for men either to be deluded themselves, or to delude others by their conceited inspirations, if they would expect that every Revelation should be made good either by sound Reason, or a palpable and conspicuous Miracle. Which things if they were demanded of the inspired people when they come to seduce, surely they would sneak away like the common fiddlers, being asked to play a Lesson on the Organs, or on the Theorbo.   

Pag. 28, 29.  
In the former page you could not part till you had made God and Nature mysteriously kiss. In this, you metamorphize Mercury and Sulphur into two Virgins, and make the Sun to have more Wives than ever Solomon had Concubines. Every Star must have in it, Vxor Solis. But what will become of this rare conceit of yours if the Stars themselves prove Suns? And men far more learned than yourself are very inclinable to think so. But now he has fancied so many Wives he falls presently upon copulation helter skelter, and things done in private betwixt Males and Females, &c.  
Verily, Anthroposophus! if you had but the patience to consider your own Book seriously, and examine what philosophic truth you have all this while delivered since your contemning of Aristotle's definition of Nature, Form, and Soul, you shall find in stead of his sober description from the proper operations and effects of things, nothing but a dance of foolish and lascivious words: almost every page being hung with Lawns and Tiffanies, and such like Tapestry: with black Shadowing hoods, white Aprons and petticoats, and I know not what. And this must be a sober and severe Tractate of Anima Abscondita. As if the Soul were dressed in woman's apparel, the better to be concealed, and to make an escape. And to as much purpose is your heaps of liquorsome Metaphors, of Kissing, of Coition, of ejection of Seed, of Virgins, of Wives, of Love-whispers, and of silent Embraces, and your magician's Sun and Moon, those two universal Peers, Male and Female, King and Queen regen, always young and never old; what is all this but a mere Morris-dance and May-game of words, that signify nothing, but that you are young, Anthroposophus! and very sportful, and yet not so young but that you are marriageable, and want a good wife that your sense may be as busy as your fancy about such things those, and so peradventure in due time, the extravagancy of your heat being spent, you may become more sober.   

Pag. 30.  
Lin. 8. It is light only that can be truly multiplied. But if you tell us not what this light is, we are still but in the dark. I do not mean whether Light be a Virgin or a Wife, or whose Wife, or what clothes she wears, Tiffanies or Cobweblawns, but in proper words what the virtue and nature of it is. Whether Corpin or Spiritus, Substance or Accident, &c. But, Anthroposophus! you do no desire at all to be understood, but pleas yourself only to rant it in words' which can procure you nothing but the admiration of fools. If you can indeed do any thing more than another man, or can by sound reason make good any more truth to the World than another man can, than it is something; if not, it is a mere noise and buzz for children to listen after.   

Pag. 31.  
From this 31 page to the 41, you have indeed set down the most courageous and triumphant testimonies, and of the highest and most concerning truth that belongs to the soul of man, the attainment whereof is as much beyond the philosopher's Stone, as a Diamond is beyond a pebble stone. But the way to this mystery lies in a very few words, which is, a peremptory and persistent unravelling and releasing of the soul by the power of God, from all touch and sense of sin and corruption. Which every man by how much the more he makes it his sincere aim, by so much the more wise and discreet he will appear, and will be most able to jndge what is sound and what is flatuous. But to deal plainly with you, my Philalethes! I have just cause to suspect that there is more wind than truth as yet in your writings. And that it is neither from reason nor from experience, that you seem to turn your face this way; but high things, and fiery and sonorous expressions of them in Authors, being suitable to your youthfulness and poetical fancy, you swagger and take on presently, as if, because you have the same measure of heat, you were of the same Fraternity with the highest Theo magicians in the World. Like as in the story, where the Apples and Horsdung were carried down together in the same stream, the Fragments of Horsdung cried out, Nos poma natamus. Pardon the homeliness of the comparison. But you that have slung so much dirt upon Aristotle, and the two famous Universities, it is not so unjust if you be a little pelted with dung yourself.   

Pag. 42.  
Lin. 12. I know some illiterate School-Divines, &c. He cannot be content to say any thing that he thinks is magnificently spoken, but he must needs trample upon some or other by way of triumph and ostentation, one while clubbing of Aristotle, another while so pricking the Schoolmen and provoking the orthodox Divines, that he conceits they will all run upon him at once, as the Jews upon the young Martyr St. Steven, and stone him for his strange mysteries of his Theomagick stone. Truly, Anthrosophus there are some good things fall from you in your own style, and many cited out of considerable Authors, but you do so soil and bemar all with your juvenile immoralities and phantastries, that you lose as much in the one as you get in the other.   

Pag. 44.  
Lin. 4. The Scripture is obscure and mystical, &c. And therefore say I, Philalethes! a very uncertain foundation to build a Philosophy on; but indeed such a mystical Philosophy as you would build, may be erected upon any ground, or no ground, may hang as a castle in the air.   

Pag. 45.  
Lin. 3. I never met in all my reading but with six Authors, &c. But how do you know that these six did perfectly understand the Medicine, and this stupendious mystery, unless you understood it perfectly yourself? So that you would intimate to the world that you do perfectly understand it.  
Lin. 25. After this the material parts are never more to be seen. This is the Nature of the Medicine, not to rectify a visible body but to destroy it. Like the cure of the head ache, by cutting off the neck. Death indeed will cure all diseases. But you will say this is not death but a change or translation. Nor the other a medicine, but Spiritus medicus. So that in multitude of words you do but obscure knowledge.   

Pag. 46.  
Lin. 5. Boy me out of countenance, &c. Here Philalethes is mightily well pleased to think that one of his greenness of years should arrive to this miraculous ripeness and maturity of knowledge in the most hidden mysteries of Theosophy. And comparing himself with the Reverend doctors, finds the greatest difference to be this, that they indeed have more beard, but he more wit. And I suppose he would intimate unto us, that they have so little wit that they know not the use of their own limbs. For if he make their beards their crutches, they cannot scape going on their heads, as if they were not inverted but rightly postured Plants, or walking Stipites. In good truth you are a notable Wagg, Philalethes!  
Lin. 10. Let me advise thee I say not to attempt any thing rashly. And I commend your wit, Anthroposophus! in this point. For you are so wary of putting your finger into the fire, that like the Monkey you will rather use the cat's foot then your own, as you will evidently show anon.  
Lin. 22. Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano. Keep yourself there Philalethes! 'Tis a great deal better piece of devotion then that of Augustine, A logica libera nos Domine.   

Pag. 48. 49.  
Lin. 22. This is the Christian Philosophers Stone, And, this is the white Stone. Which you, Philalethes! have covered over with so much green moss, that you have made it more hidden then ever before. Having little will and less power to show it, but in all likelihood a great purpose of ostentating yourself.   

Pag. 49.  
Lin. 10. But Reader! be not deceived in me, I am not a man of any such faculties, &c. I warrant you, Anthroposophus! I am not so easily deceived in you. You have walked before me in very thin transparent Tiffanies all this while; or, if you will, danced in a net. I suspected you from the very first that you would prove so good and so wise as you now plainly profess yourself. But that you are no better than you are, you say is because God is no debtor of yours. Why! does God Almighty run so much in some men's Arrears that he is constrained to pawn to them that precious jewel, or to give them the White Stone to quit scores with them? How far is this from Popery Philalethes! that you seem elsewhere so much to disclaim?  
Lin. 13. I can affirm no more of myself, &c. Right! Philalethes! Right! Your fancy was never so happy as in transsiguring yourself into a Wooden Mercury, that points others the way, which itself knows not, nor can ever go, but stands stock still.  
Lin. 18. show me but one good Christian, &c. Why then! it seems Philalethes! that you are no good Christian yourself, and uncapable of the secret you are so free to impart to others. Or it is your discretion to attempt nothing yourself rashly, but as I said before, to do as the Ape or Monkey, take the 〈◊〉 foot to 〈◊〉 the chestnut out of the 〈◊〉. But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 solicitous of seeming a profound 〈…〉 ralist than a good Christian, he tells us in the   

50 Pag.  
An obscure enigmatical story of attaining the natural celestial Medicine, and that without any retractation, as if he himself had been a potent and successful operator in the mystery. But let me once more take notice of the soundness of this affected obscurity in words, that no man be any whit taken with that slight of Imposture, and become guilty of that passion of fools, causeless admiration. For the most contemptible notion in the World, may be so uncertainly and obscurely set out by universal and hovering terms taken from arithmetic and Geometry, which of themselves signify no real thing, or else from the catachrestical use of the terms of some more particular and substantial Science, that the dark dress thereof may bring it into the creditable suspicion of proving some venerable mystery, when as, (if it were but with faithfulness and perspicuity discovered and exposed to the judgement and free censure of sober men) it would be found but either some sorry inconsiderable vulgar truth, or light conjectural imagination, or else a ghastly prodigious lie. But say in good sadness, Philalethes! is not all this that you tattle in this page, a mere vapour and tempestuous buzz of yours? made out of words you meet in Books you understand not? and casual fancies sprung from an heedless Brain? Is it any thing but the activity of your desire to seem some strange mysterious Sophist to the World? And so to draw the eyes of men after you? Which is all the Attraction of the Star-fire of Nature you aim at, or can hope to be able to effect. Did your Sculler, or shittle Skull ever arrive at that Rock of crystal you boast of? Or did you ever saving in you fancy, soil that bright Virgin Earth? did your eyes, hands or Experience ever reach her? Tell me what giant could ever so lustily show you Lincoln-Galves, or hold you up so high by the ears, as to discover that Terra Maga in AEthere Clarificata? Till you show yourself wise and knowing in effect, give me leave to suspect you a mere ignorant boaster from your Airy unsettled words. And that you have nothing but fire and wind in your Brains, what ever your magical Earth has in its belly.   

Pag. 51.  
Lin. 6. he can repeal in particular. Now, Anthroposophus! you make good what I suspected, that is, that you do not tell us any thing of this celestial natural Medicine, of your own Experience. For you being conscious to yourself of being no good Christian, as you confessed before, and God having not given so full a charter to the Creature but he may interpose and stop proceedings, surely at least you had so much wit, as not to try where there was so just cause of fear of frustration and miscarriage. So that you go about to teach the World what you have not to any purpose learned yourself.  
Lin. 27. And who is he that will not gladly believe, &c. A most rare and highly raised notion. You resolve then that holy expectance of the Saints of God concerning the life to come, into that fond kind of credulity and pleasant self-flattery, Facile credimus quod fieri volumus, and yet you seem to unsay it again toward the end of this Period. And we will permit you, Anthroposophus! to say and unsay, to do and undo; for the day is long enough to you, who by your magic and colestial Medicine are able to live till all your friends be weary of you.   

Pag. 52.  
In this whole page Anthroposophus is very gnomical, and speaks Aphorisms very gracefully. But as moral as he would seem to be, this is but a prelude to a piece of poetic ostentation, and he winds himself into an occasion of showing you a Paper of verses of his. If you do but trace his steps, you shall see him waddle on like some Otter or Water-Rat & at last flounce into the River Vsk. Where notwithstanding afterward he would seem to dress himself like a Water-Nymph at those crystal streams, and will sing as sweet as any Siren or mermaid. And truly, Master Anthroposophus! if that heat that enforces you to be a Poet, would but permit you in any measure to be prudent, cautiously rational, and wise, you would in due time prove a very considerable Gentleman. But if you will measure the truth of things by the violence and overbearing of fancy and windy Representations, this Amabilis insania, will so intoxicate you, that to sober men you will seem little better than a refined Bedlam. But now to the Poetry itself.   

Pag. 53.  
'Tis day my crystal Vsk, &c. Here the Poet begins to sing, which being a sign of joy is intimation enough to us also to be a little merry. The four first verses are nothing else but one long-winded good-morrow to his dear Yska. Where you may observe the discretion and charity of the Poet, who being not resaluted again by this Master of so many virtues, the River Usk, yet learns not this ill Lesson of clownishness, nor upbrayds his Tutor for his Rusticity. Was there never an echo hard by, to make the River seem affable and civil, as well as pure, patient, humble and thankful?  
Lin. 17. And weary all the Planets with mine eyes. A description of the most impudent stargazer that ever I heard of, that can outface all the Planets in one Night. I perceive then, Anthroposophus! that you have a mind to be thought an Astrologian as well as a Magician. But methinks, an Hill had been better for this purpose than a River. I rather think that your head is so hot, and your mind so ill at ease, that you cannot lie quiet in your bed as other Mortals do, but you sleeping waking are carried out, like the Noctambuli in their dreams, and make up a third with Will with the Wisp, and Meg with the lantern, whose natural wanderings are in marish places, and near Rivers sides.  
Lin. ultima. Sure I will strive to gain as clear a mind. Which I dare swear you may do at one stroke! would you but wipe at once all your fluttering and fortuitous fancies out of it. For you would be then as clearly devoid of all show of knowledge, as Aristotle's Abrasa Tabula, or the wind, or the flowing water of written characters.   

Pag. 54.  
Lin. 3. How I admire thy humble banks! Why! be they lower than the River itself? that had been admirable indeed. Otherwise I see nothing worthy admiration in it.  
Lin. 4. But the same simple vesture all the year. This River Yska than I conceive, according to your Geography, is to be thought to crawl under the aequator or somewhere betwixt the Tropics. For were it in Great Britain or Ireland, certainly the palpable difference of seasons there, would not permit his banks to be alike clad all the year long. The fringe of reed and flags, besides those gayer Ornaments of herbs and flowers, cannot grow alike on your Yskaes' banks all Summer and Winter. So that you fancy him more beggarly than he is, that you may afterward conceit him more humble than he ought to be.  
Lin. 5. I'll learn simplicity of thee, &c. That's your modesty, Anthroposophus! to say so: For you are so learned that you may be a doctor of Simplicity yourself, and teach others.  
Lin. 9 Let me not live, &c. How mightily the man is ravished with the contemplation of an ordinary watercourse. A little thing will please you I perceive, as it does children, nay amaze you. But if you be so much enamoured on your Yska, do that out of love that Aristotle did out of indignation, embrace his streams, nay drown yourself, and then you will not live. You are very hot Anthroposophus! that all the cool air from the River Yska will not keep you from cursing yourself, with such mortal imprecations.  
Lin. 11. Why should thy floods enrich those shores, &c. Why! how now! what's the matter, Philalethes! that you and the banks no better agree? If you could so soon fall into the River as you fall out with the shore, you would to your great honour, like Aristotle, be drowned indeed. In good truth you a very fickle-headed Gentleman, Philalethes! thus in a moment to reproach what you did so highly admire even now, viz. the banks of Yska, which you then made so simple, so humble, and so innocent, that you fancied them an eximious pattern of those virtues for yourself to imitate. But now all of a sudden, your poetical rapture I suppose spoiling your memory, you fling dirt on those banks that before you looked on as holy ground; and accuse them of injury, tyranny, and cruelty against the streams of your beloved Yska. But any ordinary Advocate may easily make good the Banks part against the River. For I say unto thee, O thou man of light imaginations! that the banks of Yska are just, in keeping but the ground that ever was allotted them; but where ever they have lost ground, it is the violence and the usurpation of the injurious River, that has worn them away and overrun them in an hostile manner. Besides I say, that the banks aforesaid are very charitable and pious as well as just, and do not return revenge for injury. For whereas the aforesaid River, both by open force and secret undermining, doth daily endeavour to wear away and destroy the Banks and encroach upon the neighbouring ground, (which attempt is as sottish and foolish as unjust, for so the River would be lost and drunk up by the Earth, Nor can there be any River without banks, more than an Hill without a valley;) yet notwithstanding all this provocation of the River aforesaid, the banks are so patient, charitable, and of so Christian-like nature, that they preserve in being and good plight their inveterate enemy, and keep up that carefully and stoutly in its right form and perfection that daily practices and plots their expected destruction. What do you answer to this Philalethes! All that virtue and piety which you fancy in the River, you see now plainly growing upon the banks. So that you may gather it, if you have a mind to it, without wetting your finger.  
Lin. ultima. Help me to run to Heaven, as thou dost there. Ha, ha, he! Why! I pray thee, does Yska run to Heaven there? No it runs down into the Sea, as the devils and the Heard of Swine did; whither I hope you do not desire to go for company, Philalethes! But I wonder you being a whole day and a night on the banks of Yska, that no fish not so much as a small Stittlebag has leapt up into your fancy all this time. You might have learned many rare Lectures of morality from them too. As for example; instead of due vigilancy you might learn from the fishes eyes never closing, to sleep and dream waking; or instead of being as mute as a fish when you have nothing to say, to say nothing to the purpose, or to express yourself as unintelligibly as if you had said nothing. But these and the like accomplishments naturally growing in you, you wanted no outward emblems to remind you of them, so that I hold you here excusable. But before I leave this rare Poem of yours, let me only take notice thus far: that your Levity and Phantastry does much eclipse the glorious suspicion of your theomagical Faculty. For it will seem very incredible that so light and phansifull a Poet, should ever prove a grave and wonder-working Magician.   

Pag. 55.  
Lin. 1. This is the way I would have thee walk in &c. viz. In majestic Groves, and Woods, and by River sides. You are not than I perceive, an Anti-Peripatetick, Philalethes! though you be so violent an Anti-Aristotelean. But with such pompous gravity to give such slight Precepts as of walking by Rivers sides and in Groves, &c. argues more than enough of moping distempered Melancholy in you, and that it may, if you take not heed, make you indulge so much to delusive fancy, that you will be never able to set your eye again upon solid Reason, but range and ramble like one lost in a Wood.  
Lin. 9 To trust no Moderns but Mich Sendivow, and Physica Restituta. How mightily are these two beholden to you, Philalethes! if you had but so many grains of judgement and discretion as to make you able to pass sentence upon any considerable author. But what do you mean by trusting? To give faith and credence to them as to Holy Writ? If so, I perceive you have also a Triplicity of Bibles, viz. the usual one, Mich. Sendivow, and Physica Restituta. But we ordinary mortals hope to be as wise and as happy with our single one, as you with your advantage of three.  
Lin. 13. With the whimsies of Descartes. This young man, has as little manners as wit, to speak thus reproachfully of the most admirable Philosophy, that ever yet appeared in these European parts since Noah's flood. Certainly, Anthroposophus! you are set upon it to demonstrate yourself a pure pitiful Novice in Knowledge, whom only Ignorance makes so magisterially confident. But for thy want of due sagacity, I will take thee by the Nose, O Philalethes! with this one Dilemma, which shall pinch thee as hard, as St. Dunstan did the roaring Fiend with a red-hot pair of tongs. Thus; Either thou hast read Descartes his natural Philosophy, or thou hast not. If thou hast read it, thus to contemn it and term it a Whymzie, (whereas there was never any thing proposed to the World, in which there is more wary, subtle, and close contexture of reason, more coherent uniformity of all parts with themselves, or more happy conformity of the whole with the phenomena of Nature) is to proclaim to all that understand DesCarte's Philosophy, that thou hast a very broken, impatient, and unsteady Apprehension, or a very dull and slow wit, and such as cannot discern when it lighteth upon what is most exactly rational, and when not. But what is most exactly rational, as his Philosophy indeed is to any competent Judge of Reason, is least of all whymzicall; but whymzies more naturally lodge in their brains that are loosely phansifull, not in theirs that are Mathematically and severely wise. So that this reproach returns upon thine own addle pate, O inconsiderate Philalethes! But if thou didst never read his Philosophy, and yet pronouncest thus boldly of it; that is not only impudently uncivil, but extremely and insufferably unjust.   

Pag. 56.  
Lin. 6. I will now withdraw and leave the Stage to the next actor. Exit Tom Fool in the play.  
Lin. 8. Some Peripatetic perhaps whose Sic probo shall serve me for a comedy. So it seems if a man had seriously argued with you all this time, you would only have returned him laughter instead of a solid answer, and so from Tom Fool in the Play, you would have become a natural Fool. But we have had the good hap to prevent you, and instead of Sic prob's to play the Fool for company, that is, to answer a fool according to his foolishness, that is, to rail and call names, and make ridiculous. Into which foolish postures as often as I have distorted myself, so often have I made myself a fool that you may become wise, and amend that in yourself, that you cannot but dislike in me. Nor would I ever meddle with you, as merry as I seem, but upon this and the like serious intentions. And must needs reckon it amongst the rest of your follies, that you expected that some severe Peripatetic would have laid battery against you, with syllogism upon syllogism, and so all confuted your Book, that there had not been left one line entire. But assure yourself Philalethes! the peripatetics are not altogether given so much to scolding, that they will contest with a shadow, or fight with the wind. Nor so good marks-men as to level at a wild goose flying. You are so fluttering and unsettled in your notions, and obscure in your terms, that unless you will be more fixed, and sit fair, & draw your woodcock's head out of the bush or thicket, they will not be able to hit your meaning. Which I suspect you will never be persuaded to do, that you may keep yourself more secure from Gunshot.  
Lin. 13. And the best way to convince fools, &c. How wise Anthroposophus is to what is evil! Here he makes sure of calling him fool first who ever shall attempt to write any thing against his Book. But it is no such mischief, Anthroposophus! to be called fool. The worst jest is when a man is so indeed. And if you had but the skill to winnow away all the chaff of humorous words, and uncouth freaks and fetches of fancy, and affected phrases, which are neither the signs nor causes of any wisdom in a man, all that will be left of this learned discourse of yours; will prove such a small moiety of that knowledge your presumptuous mind conceited to be in herself, that you would then very sadly of your own accord (which would be your first step to become wise indeed) confess yourself a Fool. And this I understand of your knowledge in Nature. Now for that in Morality; It is true you often take upon you the gravity to give precepts of life, as especially in the 52 and 55 pages of this Tractate. But you do it so conceitedly, with such chiming and clinching of words, Antithetall Librations, and Symphonicall rappings, that to sober men you cannot but seem rather like some idle boy playing on a pair of Knick-knacks, to please his own ear and fancy, than a grave Moralist speaking wholesome words and giving weighty counsel of life and manners. So that the best that you do, is but to make the most solemn things ridiculous, by your Apish handling of them. I suppose because a Religious Humour has been held on in some Treatises, with that skill and judgement, or at least good success, that it has won the approbation and applause of most men, an eager desire after fame has hurried you out upon the like attempt. And though you would not call your Book Religio Magici, as that other was Religio Medici: yet the favourable conceit you had of your own Worth, made you bold to vie with him, and in imitation of that, you have stuffed your Book here and there with a tuft of Poetry, as a Gammon of Bacon with green herbs, to make it taste more savourly. But all will not do, poor Magicus! For now your design is discovered, you are as contemptible as any Juggler is before him, that knows all his tricks aforehand. And you run the same fortune that Aesop's ass, who ineptly endeavouring to imitate the Courtship and winning carriage of his Masters fawning and leaping spaniel, in stead of favour found a club for his rude performance. But you, Magicus! do not only paw ill-favouredly with your forefeet, but kick like mad with your hinder-seets, as if you would dash out all the Aristoteleans brains. And do you think that they are all either so faint-hearted, that they dare not, or so singularly moralised, that Socrates like, if an ass kick, they will not kick again? Yes certainly next to yourself they are as like as any to play the Asses, and to answer you kick for kick, if you will but stand fair for them. But you have got such a magical slight of hiding of your head, and nipping in your buttocks, like the hobgoblin that in the shape of an Horse dropped the children off one by one of his tail into the water, that they cannot find you out nor feel where about you would be, else certainly they would set a mark upon your hinder parts. For if I, my dear Eugenius! who am your brother Philalethes, am forced out of care and judgement to handle you so seeming harshly and rigidly as I do, what do you think would become of you, saint incideres in ipsas Belluas, if you should fall amongst the ireful Aristoteleans themselves? would you be able to escape alive out of their hands? Wherefore good brother Philaletbes! hereafter be more discreet, and endeavour rather to be wise then to seem so, and to quit yourself from being a fool, then to fancy the Aristoteleans to be such.  
FINIS.     

Upon the Authors generous design, in his Observations, of discovering and discountenancing all mysteriously masked nonsense, and impostorous fancy; the sworn Enemies of Sound-Reason, and Truth.  

NObly designed! let not a Sunday suit  
Make us my Gasser and my Lord salute:  
Nor his Saints clothes deceive, O comely dress!  
Like to a Long-Lane Doublets wide excess.  
How like a Sack it sits? Less far would fit,  
Did he proportion but his garb and Wit.  
The Wight mistakes his size, each Wiseman sees  
His men's fourteenes shrink to a children's Threes.  
Fill out thy title, man! think'st thou canst daunt  
By pointing to the sword of John of Gaunt?  
Thou canst not wield it yet; an empty name  
Does no more feats than a mere painted flame.  
Rare Soul! whose words refined from flesh and blood  
Are neither to be felt nor understood:  
But if they sacred be, because not sense,  
To Bedlam, Sirs! the best Divines come thence.  
Your new-found Lights may like a falling star  
Seem heavenly Lamps, when they but jellies are.  
And high swollen Wombs bid fair, but time grown nigh  
The promised birth proves but a Tympanic.  
Should Superstition, what it most doth fly,  
Seek to take shelter in Philosophy?  
And Sacred Writ, sole image of sure truth,  
Be pulled by th' nose, by every idle youth?  
And made to bend as seeming to incline  
To all the fooleries he'll call Divine?  
Find out the Word in Scripture; all is found:  
Swarms of Conceits buzz up from this one ground,  
As if the cobbler all his crade would show  
From mention made of Gibeon's clouted shoe:  
Or Bakers their whole Art at large would read  
From the 〈◊〉 record of the mouldy Bread,  
Is this the Spirit? thus confusedly mad?  
Antipodall to him the Chaos had?  
Fell boisterous blast! that with one magic puss  
Turns the Schools Glory to a Farthing snuff:  
And 'gainst that ancient Sage the World adores,  
Like to a Lapland whirlwind loudly roars.  
Yet from thy Travels in the search of things,  
Ridiculous Swain! what shallow stuff thou bringest!  
What clothes they wear, Vaiss, tiffanies, dost relate,  
Thou art Philosophies Tom Cortat.  
Else brave Des, whom fools cannot admire,  
Had ne'er been singed by thy wild whimsy fire.  
Poor Galen's Antichrist, though one Purge of his  
Might so unmagick thee as make thee wise.  
Physic cures frenzy, knows inspired wit  
Oft proves a mere Hypochondriack fit.  
Agrippa's Dog sure kennels in thy weambe,  
Thou yelpest so and barkest in a dream;  
Or if awake, thou dost on him so fawn,  
And bite all else, that hence his Dog th' art known.  
But I will spare the lash! 'twas my friend's task  
Who rescuing Truth engaged, put on this mask.  
Thus does some careful Prince disguised go,  
To keep his Subjects from th' intended blow;  
Nor could his lofty soul so low descend  
But to uncheat the World; a noble end!  
And now the night is gone, we plainly find  
'T was not a Light but rotten Wood that thinned.  
We owe this day (my dearest friend) to thee,  
All Eyes but Night-birds now th' Imposaure see.   
J. T.  
FINIS.