THE SECOND LASH OF ALAZONOMASTIX laid on in mercy upon that stubborn youth Eugenius Philalethes: OR A Sober Reply to a very uncivil Answer to certain OBSERVATIONS upon Anthroposophia Theomagica, and Anima magica abscondita.  
Proverb. He that reproves a scorner, gets to himself a blot.  
Ecclesiastic. Be not proud in the device of thine own mind, lest thy soul rend thee as a Bull.  
Printed by the Printers to the University of Cambridge. 1651.   

THE SECOND LASH OF Alazonomastix: containing a solid and serious REPLY to a very uncivil Answer to certain OBSERVATIONS upon Anthroposophia Theomagica, and Anima Magica Abscondita.  
Proverb. He that reproves a scorner, gets to himself a blot.  
Ecclesiastic. Be not proud in the device of thine own mind, lest thy soul rend thee as a Bull.  
Printed by the Printers to the University of Cambridge. 1651. A   

To his singularly accomplished friend Mr. John Finch.  
SIR,  
I Know that your modesty cannot but be much amazed at this unexpected Dedication. But the causes once discovered admiration will cease. Eugenius, as little children use to do (who fallen into the dirt by their own folly, commonly make a lamentable complaint to their Father or Mother against them that help them up, as if they had flung them down) has told a hideous story to his tutor, as if I had soiled him and dirtied him, when as I only reminded him that he lay in the dirt, which in this case is all one as to help him out of it. Wherefore, that I might hold up the humour every way of opposing my Adversary (as I must for fashion-sake call him) he making his false and grievous Accusation to his tutor, I thought fit to direct this my true and pleasant Reply to you my Pupil.  
But if I should say, that this is so much as the least part of what moved me to this act, I confess I should dissemble. For to say nothing of the nobleness of your Descent, which is held ordinarily a sufficient ground for such a respect as this: it is indeed the Sweetness and Candour of your nature, your great civility and pleasantness of Conversation, your miraculous proficiency in the choicest parts of Philosophy, your egregious Perspicacity and kindly Wit, your generous freedom of spirit, and true Nobleness of mind (whom the surly countenance of sad Superstition cannot awe, but the lovely face of virtue, and radiant beauty of Divine Knowledge do most potently command to approve and prosecute what is really best) that has extorted this Testimony of love and respect from  
Your affectionate friend to serve you, Alaz. Philalethes.   

To his learned Friend Alazonomastix Philalethes, upon his Reply.  

DEar friend! as oft as I with care peruse  
This strange Reply of thine, I cannot choose one.  
But wonder at thy rare Complexion,  
Where Wit, Mirth, Judgement thus conspire in  
Where Inspirations which make others mad  
Unto thy Reason, grace and credit add;  
And Passion, that like dungeon dark, does blind  
Proves the free fiery chariot of thy mind.  
Go surly Stoic, with deep-furrowed brow,  
Nature's rude Pruner, that wilt not allow  
What's right & good. Here nought too much appears  
Unless on thy shorn head thine own large ears.  
Since Mastix merry rage, all now believe  
Passion's an arm of man, no hanging sleeve.  
Brave generous Choler! whose quick motions pierce  
Swift like the lightning through the Universe;  
And in their hasty course as on they fare  
Do cleanse men's souls of vice, as that, the Air.  
Noble Contention! which like brushing winds  
That sweep both Land and Sea, doth purge our minds.  
It is thy free and ever-active fire  
That rooseth men from snorting in the mire:  
Androozed, thy awe makes them to tread the stage  
In a due Order and right Equipage.  
Thy hiss more dreadful is then wounding sting  
Of serpent's teeth, that certain death do bring:  
And conscious souls start at thy laughter loud  
As at a thunderclap broke from a cloud,  
When Jove some flash of world-rebuking wit  
Lets fly, and faultless Gods all laugh at it:  
For so ridiculous vice in ugly guise  
Is made the sport and pastime of the wise.  
But when fond men themselves to their own face  
Have their foul shapes reflected, the disgrace  
And conscience of deformity so stings  
Their gauled minds, and fretted entrails wrings,  
That even grown wild with pain in vain they tire  
Themselves, to shake off this close searching fire;  
That sticks like burning pitch, and makes them wood  
As Hercules wrapped in the Centaurs blood.  
This is thy fate, Eugenius! Thy odd look  
Reflected to thyself from Mastix book,  
Has so amazed thee with the sudden glance,  
That all thy wits be struck into a trance.  
But Grief and Vengeance thou dost so revive,  
As if to them alone thou wert alive.  
And only takest care with language foul  
To soil his person, that would cleanse thy soul.  
Thus the free cheerful Sun with his bright rays  
Shines upon dnnghils, fens, and foul highways,  
While they return nought back for his pure beams  
But thick unwholesome mists & stinking steams.  
But yet at length near his Meridian height  
dispels the Morning-fogs by fuller light.   

Go on brave Mastix then, those noisome fumes  
Thy first appearance raised, sure this consumes.   
Joannes Philomastix.   

To the Reader.  
Reader,  
IF thou hast perused my Observations upon the two magical Treatises of Eugenius Philalethes, and his Answer to them, I do not doubt but that seeming and personated sharpness of mine will now seem just nothing at all, to thy indifferent judgement; if thou compare it with his unchristian bitterness and inhuman railings against me. For mine own part, I was so far from all malice, that if I have trespassed, it was from that over-pleasantness of temper I was in, when I wrote: which made me perhaps too heedless how much I might displease the party with whom I dealt, being secure of the truth of that saying in the Poet,  — Ridentem dicere verum Quis vetat?— 
But I find that I have so nettled him unawares, as if his senses lay all in his backside, and had left his brains destitute. Which hath made him very ill-favouredly wrong both himself, the Rod, and the corrector. Verily if I had thought his retentive faculty had been so weak, I would not have fouled my fingers with meddling with him. Nor would I now lay on this second gentle lash (I seeing the disposition of my young Eugenius) if it were not as well to wipe myself, as to whip him. I could have been content to have been represented to the world as ignorant of Nature and Philosophy, as he hath by his bold and very bad speeches to me, endeavoured to represent me. For I am not bound in conscience to know Nature, but myself; nor to be a deep Philosopher, but to be and approve myself a plain and honest Christian. This forced me to this Reply. But I thought fit to cast in also, what will prove me no less a Philosopher, than no railer.  
But I am not contented to justify myself only from the success; but to thy further satisfaction, I shall not think much to acquaint thee with my purposes and principles. The truth is, Eugenius, though he be so highly conceited of himself, that he thinks his worth is great enough to contract my envy; yet he is so little in my eyes, and myself (I thank God) so little envious, that in this regard he is not at all considerable to me. But my drift was to whip that Genius and dispensation he is for the present under, upon Eugenius his own back, as having deserved to be an instrument to so good an end. And I persuade myself there are those parts and that freedom in some measure already in this young Philosopher, that in a little time he will say that he deserved this correction, & will laugh for company at the merry punishment, and will freely confess that I am his brother Philalethes, a lover of him and of Truth: And that he that whipped the money changers out of the Temple, is as much the first Mastix, as Adam the first Magicus. But for the present he is under that dispensation which is as pernicious to the nature of man and Christianity itself, as it is, to the sober and wife, ridiculous. For he is even in a feverish thirst after knowledge and fame, & (as he hath made it manifest to the world) more after fame by far than knowledge. Wherefore, I observing in his theomagical tumour and loftiness nothing but confident misapplying or conceitedly interpreting the holy Writ, the drift and meaning whereof is far above all natural Philosophy or tricks of magic whatsoever: and then a slighting and scorning those that, I dare say, he doth not understand, who yet are very rational and intelligible, I mean such as Descartes: and down right railing against the Aristoteleans and Galenists, who yet have many sober and useful truths amongst them: Moreover, I noting a melancholic, flatuous and heedless fancy to appear in his writings, clothed with sonorous and amazing terms, such as might rather astonish the ignorant, then teach the docible: Add unto all this, that it is too too common a disease now adays to be driven by heedless intoxicating imaginations under pretence of higher strains of Religion and supernatural light, and by bidding adieu to sober reason and a purified mind, to grow first fanatical; and then atheistical and sensual, even almost to the height of abhorred gnosticism: I thought in good earnest it was very fit, out of my indignation to Foolery and Imposture, out of my detestation to beastliness, atheism, and Sensuality, and lastly, out of that honourable respect and tender affection I bear to the plainness and Simplicity of the life of Christ and true divine wisdom, to take occasion to write in such a manner as I did, and to discountenance that Genius, that defaces the new appearing face of Christendom, and is a reproach to that just liberty that belongs to all those that seek after God in sincerity and truth.  
I but you will say, This indeed may be well meant: But what title or right have you to intermeddle, or to correct another man's follies? This is usurpation and incivility. To this may many things be answered. It is true; The inward rottenness of men hath made very smooth laws to themselves in favour of their own follies and vices, and mutual connivance at what is bad is held the best manners; as if mankind packed and conspired together to keep wickedness warm in her usurped seat by never taking the boldness to examine her title. But to judge more charitably of the generations of men, I think it is more out of self-love, then love to her, and out of a tender dotage toward this imposturous knot of Atoms, our earthly Personality. Which yet I thought I was more favourable to here, having to do only with fictitious names not any known Person. But it doth not follow, Though this be the mode, that therefore it is the right fashion: and Quando ego non curo tuum, ne cura meum, is but surlely said of the old man in the Comedy. That's the principle of Cain, Am I my brother's keeper? There was more divine generosity in that noted cynic, then in civility itself, when it is so soft, that it will not prick nor hurt vice. He would not spare to speak where things went amiss, however he sped for it; tanquam Pater omnium, tanquam Frater omnium, as they report of him. And I think I have sped ill enough for my but seasonable speaking.  
But if this be to appeal to too high a law, I answer further, that Eugenius had forfeited his privileges he might claim by the laws of civility, he himself having so uncivilly dealt with others, that are above all comparison better than he. Ay but you'll say, Why do you make him so ridiculous in your reproving him? Single reproof had been enough. I answer, I did not make him ridiculous, but found him so. He put on himself the pied coat, and I only drew aside the curtain. Did not the Thracian Girl rightly laugh at Thales when she see him stumble into a ditch, whiles he was staring up at the stars? And are not they as ridiculous, that pretend to seraphic mysterious Theories, and are not masters yet of common sense, and plainest truths of Christianity? That stumble at the threshold, or rather grope for the door as the blinded Sodomites? All the faculties of man are good in themselves, and the use of them, is at least permitted to him, provided that with seasonable circumstances and upon a right object. And I have made it already manifest that my Act was bounded with these cautions  
I but there is yet something behind unsatisfied. Though Eugenius be ridiculous; yet is it not ridiculous, for one that pretends so much to the love of Christianity as yourself, so publicly to laugh at him? That pinches indeed. Why! am I so venerable a Personage? I am sure I never affected to seem any such to the world yet. I wear no satin ears, nor silk cap with as many seams as there are streaks in the back of a lute. I affect neither long prayers nor a long beard, nor walk with a smooth-knobbed staff to sustain my Gravity. If I be a Precisian, as Eugenius would have me, it must be from hence that I precisely keep myself to the naked truth of Christianity. As for Sects, Ceremonies, superstitious Humours, or specious garbs of Sanctimony, I look on them all, if affected, as the effects of Ignorance, or masks of hypocrisy. And thus am I {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, a Gentleman in querpo, a mere man, a true man, a Christian. One that never thinks himself so great, as to grow unwieldy & unready to put himself into any shape or posture for a common good. And I prithee, Reader, why may not such a Christian as this laugh? Or tell me, Who is he in Heaven that laughs them to scorn, that has the opposers of the reign of Christ in derision? God is not a man that he should laugh, no more than cry or repent, as much as concerns the Divine Essence itself: But as God is in a Deiform man he may be said to laugh, and he can be said to laugh nowhere else. And if he might, yet that which is attributed to God, though {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, cannot misbecome a good man. Thus, Reader, is your argument against laughing as solidly argued as sportingly laughed out of countenance; and affected austerity made ridiculous by the plain and unaffected reasonings of Eugenius his merry Adversary, but  
Your sober and serious friend Alazonomastix Philalethes.   

To Eugenius Philalethes.  
Eugenius,  
THe reason why you heard not from me sooner, is because yours arrived to my hands later than I expected. It was so hot it seems, that none of my acquaintance had so hard and brawny fingers as to endure the dandling of this glowing coal till its conveyance where you would have it. It is a brand from that fire, that hath not only calcined, but so vitrified Eugenius, that it hath made him transparent to all the world. All men may see now through his glassy sides how unevenly and disorderly his black heart beats & pants; they need not feel his pulse to find his distemper. Aesop's fair water but a little warmed hath proved a very effectual emetic for thee, O Philalethes, and hath made thee vomit up thy shame and folly in the sight of the world, as his Accuser did the figs before his Master. So that that which you falsely supposed me to have endeavoured, you have fatally brought upon yourself, above the desire, I should think, of your bitterest enemies, I am sure beyond the expectation of me that am your real friend. I did not endeavour your personal disgrace, but the discountenancing of that, which in my judgement is the disgrace of your person, and many other persons besides. And now that you have done me the greatest despite you can imagine, and showed your malice to the full, so that in the court of Heaven and according to the doctrine of Christ you are no better than a murderer, yet for all this I am benignly affected to you still, and wish you as much good, as I do those, that never endeavoured to provoke me. And really I speak it from my soul, if it lay in my power to do it, you should find it. But for the present, I could in my judgement do nothing more proper, considering all circumstances, than what I have done, and still do, in advertising you of what is for the best. And truly, (looking upon you in some sort as a Noctambulo, one that walks in his sleep) that book which hath proved so mischievous a scandal, I intended only for a stumble to wake you, (that you might shrug and rub your eyes, and see in what a naked condition you are,) not stone of offence for you to fall upon and hurt you But you are fallen and hurt, and yet do not awake as if Mercury's rod, or 1 know not what other force of magic still held fast your eyes. You only mutter against the present disturbance, as one shogged while he dreams upon his pillow, but you still sleep. You cry out as one cramped in your bed, but your closed sight can not discern whether it be a friend in sport or for better purpose, or whether it be your foe to torture you. Awake Eugenius! Awake, Behold, it is I, your sportfully troublesome friend, or what you will in due time acknowledge, though in this present drowsy humour you puff at it, and kick against it,  
Your careful and vigilant brother ALAZONOMASTIX PHILALETHES.   

¶ The second Lash of Alazonomastix.  
ANd now, Eugenius, if it be as lawful for me to speak to one asleep, as it was for Diogenes to talk to Pillars and Posts that are not in a capacity of ever being awake: Let me tell you (to begin with your Title-page first) that you do very much undervalue and wrong yourself, that you being a gentleman of that learning and parts that you are, you will thus poorly condescend to that contemptible trade of a Mous-catcher: And that you are not content to abuse yourself only, but you do abuse Scripture too, by your ridiculous applying St. Paul's fighting with beasts at Ephesus, to your combating with, and overcoming of a mouse. Truly, Philalethes, I think, they that have the meanest opinion of you, would give you their suffrage for a taller office than this, and adjudge you at least worthy of the place of a Rat-catcher.  
As for your Epistle Dedicatory, I conceive you have a very indulgent tutor, else you would not be so bold to utter so foul language in his hearing. You have a very familiar friend of him, if you can without breach of civility thus freely vomit up your figs into his bosom,  
But for P. B. of Oxenford his verses, I will only set this one verse of Virgil's against them all;  Qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina, Maevi. 
Thus you see how gladly I would rid myself of all your foul language and fooleries. I have nimbly run through these, I shall leap over the rest as so many dirty ditches. Your slovingly speeches and uncivil railings, you must seek an answer for them in Billingsgate, or amongst the Butchers;  Nobis non licet csse tam disertis. 
But where you bring any thing that bears any show of reason with it, I will (though it be far below me to answer so foul a mouth) return what in the judgement of the sober, I hope will not fail to be approved as satisfactory.  

Pag. 4, and 5.  
In these pages you accuse me of very high incivility and immorality. And it is an accusation worth the answering, especially being set off with that great aggravation of being committed against one that is a Christian. But verily, Philalethes, I do not meet with any man now that takes you to be such, after this specimen, as I call it, of your Kainish and unchristian dealing with me, whom indifferent judges will not think to have deserved the hundredth part of this revenge. I tell thee, Eugenius, there is no Christian but who is partaker of the holy unction, {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} of the divine Nature, and of that pure and peaceable love. But if thou thinkest thy mere baptism will make thee a Christian (while in the mean time thy heart is possessed of uncleanness and hatred, which the law of Christ interprets murder) the heathen Poet is able to show thee thy gross error in this point;  Ah nimiùm faciles! qui tristia crimina caedis Flumineâ tolli posse putatis aquâ, 

Oh fools and credulous! that think you may  
By water wash sad guilt of blood away.   
But to the accusation and charge itself: which is this; That I say you are Simon Magus-like, a Heated noddle, a Mome, a mimic, an Ape, a mere Animal, a Snail, a Philosophik hog, a Nip-crust, a pickpocket, a Niggard, Tom fool with a devil's head and horns, one that desires to be a Conjurer more than a Christian. This is the first part of your charge. But before I answer to the particulars of it, or proceed to the other, these two things are to be noted; First, that you have drained all the sharper humour that was but thinly dispersed through the body of my book into two narrow places, that you may make them appear like two angry boils, or malignant bushes in the body; which if it were done in the soundest body that is, there would be the like seeming distemper. Secondly, it is to be considered that I did profess that I would put myself in some seeming posture of harshness and incivility, that I might show you your own real miscarriage to others, by imitating and personating the same toward yourself. But the thing that I contend for now, is, that this personated incivility and harshness of mine is nothing so harsh and uncivil as you do here make it, as will appear from the causes or occasional circumstances of this hard language you have thus culled out. For to begin with the first: You having a design to seem no small thing in the world, and also pretending to magic; how easily, how naturally does it fall into the mind of a man, to compare you to Simon Magus in these regards? And if you did not walk as all touchy proud men do, as it were with their skins flean off, such a light thing as this would not smart nor hurt you so sore.  
Heated noddle. That's the only mischief of it that it is true, and your flame and smoke is as conspicuous as that of Aetna and Vesuvius:  — Quis enim celaverit ignem? Enitet indicio prodita flamma suo. 

For who can fire conceal? whose flame shoots out  
And shining shows itself to all about.   
As your heat and fire has sufficiently done, especially in this your last against me, to your great credit: I am sure to mine, for you have writ so as if you intended to save me from all suspicion of being mistaken in you.  
A Mome, a mimic, and an Ape. I only said that you were more like those than Aristotle: And if you distrust my judgement, I pray you ask anybody else.  
And to call you a mere Animal occasionally in our dispute, Whether the world be an Animal or no: what rudeness is there in it: worse than this is held no incivility betwixt those two famous Philosophers Cardan and Scaliger, whom your magisterialness has made bold to use at least as coursely, as I seem to have used you. But you would it seems have the whole Monopoly of reprehension to yourself. And much good may it do you Engenius. My generous liberty of speech has been so well entertained by some in the world, that I shall take up that prudential resolution for the future, Si populus decipi vult, decipiatur.  
A Snail. But that a poor snail should stick in your stomach so, Philalethes, I much wonder at it. Certainly as fair as you bid for a Magician, yet I perceive you will be no Gipsy by your abhorrency from this food.  
But a Philosophic Hog, There's a thwacking contumely indeed. Truly you are young, Eugenius: and I pray you then please yourself, if you had rather be called a philosophic pig. But than you would be afraid that some Presbyterian may click you up for a tithe-pig, and eat you. (This is a pig of your own sow, Phil. a piece of your own wit.) But being a philosophic pig you may be secure: That's too tough meat for a country Presbyter. But I prithee Phil. why art thou so offended at the term of philosophic Hog? The meaning is only, That thou wouldst pretend to see invisible essences, as that creature is said to see the wind. Does Christ call himself thief, when he says that his coming shall be as a thief in the Night: Peace, for shame Caviller, peace.  
Niggard and Nip-crust, viz. of your theomagical notions. That's all I said: And I am such a Nip-crust and Niggard of my speech, that I will say no more.  
pickpocket. To this I answer fully at Observat. 26. pag. 64. where I show that there being no suspicion at all of any such fact in you, it makes the conceit harmless and without scurrility. And as little scurrilous is that which follows, viz. Tom-fool, with the devil's head and horns. For my speaking of it in such sort as I did, implies only that I look upon you as a merry wag playing the child and fooling behind the hangings, and putting out your head by fits with a strange vizard to scare or amaze you● familiar comrades and companions. And I pray you, what bitterness is in all this? But you have made the foulest, ugliest vizard for me in this your book, and put it on my head, to make the world believe that I were both fool and devil incorporate into one person. And this you have done out of malice Magicus, and implacable revenge. But I wish you had some black bag or veil, to hide your shame from the world: That is the worst I wish you.  
One that desires to be a Conjurer more than to be a Christian: If you like not Conjurer, write Exorcist. That's all I would have meant by it. There is a Conjuring out as well as a Conjuring up the devil. And I wish you were good at the former of these, for your own sake.  
But now to apply my Emollient to the other boil you have made in the body of my little book. You have made the sharp humour swell into this second bunch by your unnatural draining. A fool in a play, a Jack-pudding, a Thing wholly set in a posture to make the people laugh, a giddy fantastic Conjurer, a poor Kitling, a Calfshead, a vaunting Mountebank, a Pander, a sworn enemy to reason, a shittle scull, no good Christian, an Otter, a wa●er-Rat, Will with the wisp, and Meg with the lantern, Tom-fool in a play, a natural Fool.  
A fool in a play, a Jackpudding, &c. Let the Reader consult the place if there be not a seasonable occasion of reminding you of your over much lightness, you taking so grave a task upon you as to be a public professor of theomagicks'.  
A giddy fantastic Conjurer. No Conjurer there but a fantastic. I admit in you the lesser fault to discharge you of the greater. Is this to revile you, or befriend you?  
A poor Kitling. Poor Kitling! Take it in to thy lap, Phil. and stroke it gently: I warrant thee it will not hurt thee. Be not so shy why thou art akin to it, Phil. by thy own confession. For thou art a Mouse-catcher which is near akin to a Cat, which is also a catch of mice: and a Cat is sire to a Kitling.  
A Calfshead. I did not call thee Calfshead Eugenius, but said that no chemist could extract any substantial visible form out o● thy brains, whereby they may be distinguished from what lies in a Calfshead. And 〈◊〉 vaunting Mountebank is no more, than vaunting like a Mountebank. And there is a vast difference in simply calling you Pander, and calling you Pander to Madam Nature: who, a● you confess, complains of your prostitutions.  
A sworn enemy to reason. Why, Do you not pray against reason, A logicâ liber a ● Domine? And I think anybody would swear you are a real enemy to that you pray against, unless your devotions be but a mockery.  
A shittle skull. My words were, Did your sculler or shittle skull. I hope you do not think, that I meant your skull was so slew and shallow that boys might shittle it, and make ducks and drakes on the water with it, as they do with oyster-shels: Or that yourself was so magical, that you could row to the crystal rock in it, as witches are said to do on the seas in an eggshell. Excuse me, Phil. I meant no such high mysteries. It was only a pitiful dry clinch, as light as a nutshell: something like that jingle of thine, Nation and Indignation.  
No good Christian. In that place you bade us show you a good Christian, and you would &c. There I infer, that (you being at all other times so ready to show yourself, and here you slinking back;) you were conscious to yourself that you were no good Christian.  
Otter and water-Rat. I said only that you did waddle on toward the river Usk like an Otter or water-Rat.  
Will with the wisp, and Meg with the lantern. I do not call you Will, nor Meg: but tell you, If you walk by River sides and marish places, you may well meet with such companions there as those, to take a turn or two with you.  
Tom-fool in a play. Why, is not your name Tom? They tell me it is Tom Vaughan of Jesus college in Oxford. Well then Tom, Do not you make yourself an actor in a play? For these are your words: I will now withdraw and leave the stage to the next actor. So here is Tom in the play. But where is the fool? say you. Where is the wisest man? say I. myself says Tom Vaughan, I warrant you. Why, then say I, Tom Vaughan is Tom fool in the play. For the fool in the play is to be the wisest man, according to the known proverb.  
But how will you wipe off that aspersion of calling me natural fool, says wise Tom. That indeed I confess impossible, because it was never yet laid on. I said only, if you had answered the Aristoteleans sic probo's, with mere laughter, you would have proved yourself a natural fool. But he hath not done so, nor is Tom Vaughan a natural fool I dare swear for him. He has too much natural heat to be a natural fool. Bless thee from madness, Tom, and all will be well.  
But there is yet something else behind' worse then all this: That all these terms of incivility must proceed from spite and provocation. And this you place betwixt the two bilious tumors you have raised, as a ductus communis, or common channel to convey the sharp malignant humour to swell them to the full. It is true, my words run thus; That I have been very fair with you, and though provoked, &c. But this was spoken in the person of an Aristotelean, whom your scornful usage of their Master Aristotle you may be sure did and does provoke. But in good truth, Philalethes, you did not provoke me at all with your book, unless to laugh at you for your Puerilities. I but you have an argument for it, that I was provoked, viz. Because your theomagical discourse has so outdone or undone my ballad of the Soul (as you scornfully call it) that my ignorance in the Platonic Philosophy has now appeared to the world. O rem ridiculam! Thou art a merry Greek indeed, Philalethes, and art set upon't to make the world sport. Thou dost then profess openly to all the world, that thou hast so high a conceit of thy Anthroposophia, that it may well dash me out of countenance with my philosophical Poems; and that through envy, I being thus wounded, I should by my Alazonomastix endeavour for the ease of my grief, to abate thy credit. What a Suffenus art thou in the esteeming of thy own works, O Eugenius? and of what a pitiful spirit dost thou take Alazonomastix to be? I do profess ex animo, that I could heartily wish that myself were the greatest Ignaro in the world, upon condition I were really no more ignorant than I am: So little am I touched with precellency or outstripping others. (But thou judgest me to have wrote out of the same intoxicating Principle that thou thyself hast, that is, vain glory.) Or however if there was any thing of that when I wrote those Poems, which, I thank God, if any, was very little; yet long ago (I praise that power that enabled me) I brought it down to a degree far less than thy untamed Heat for the present can imagine possible. But you'll say, This is a mystery above all magic. What then was the Impulsive of writing against your book? I have told you already, but you are loath to believe me: Mere enmity to immorality and foolery. But if it were any thing that might respect myself, it was only this; That you so carelessly and confidently adventuring upon the Platonic way, with so much tainted heat and distemper, that to my better composed spirit you seemed not a little disturbed in your fancy, and your blood to be too hot to be sufficiently rectified by your brain, I thought it safe for me to keep those Books I wrote out of a spirit of soberness from reproachful mistake: For you pretending the same way that I seem to be in, as in your bold and disadvantageous asserting, The soul to pre-exist, and to come into the body open-eyed as it were, that is, full fraught with divine notions; and making such outrageously distorted delineaments of that {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, as the Stoics call it, the enlivened Universe, with sundry other passages of like grossness, I was afraid that men judging that this affectation of Platonism in you, might well proceed from some intemperies of blood and spirit; and that, there nobody else besides us two dealing with these kinds of notions, they might yoke me with so disordered a companion as yourself: Reasoning thus with themselves; Vaughan of Jesus in Oxenford holds the pre-existency of the Soul, and other Platonic Paradoxes, and we see what a pickle he is in: What think you of More of Christ's, that writ the Platonical Poems? Nay, what think you of Platonism itself? Surely, it is all but the fruit of juvenile distemper and intoxicating heat. But I say, it is the most noble and effectual Engine to fetch up a man's mind to true virtue and holiness, next to the Bible, that is extant in the world. And that this may not suffer, I have suffered myself to observe upon you what I have observed, my young Engenius. This is true, my Friend, to use your own phrase: And that the world may know that I have not wrote like some bestrid Pythonick or hackneyed enthusiastic, let them look & read under what light I 〈◊〉 and sung that divine Song of the Soul.   


But yet, my Muse, still take an higher flight,  
Sing of Platonic Faith in the first Good,  
That Faith that doth our souls to God unite  
So strongly, tightly, that the rapid flood  
Of this swift flux of things, nor with foul mud  
Can stain, nor strike us off from th' Unity  
Wherein we steadfast stand, unshaked, unmoved,  
Engrafted by a deep vitality.  
The prop and stay of things is God's Benignity.   

All's is the rule of His economy,  
No other cause the creature brought to light,  
But the first Goods pregnant secundity:  
He to himself is perfect full delight.  
He wanteth nought. With his own beams bedight  
He glory has enough. O blasphemy!  
That envy gives to God, or sour despite.  
Harsh hearts! that feign in God a Tyranny  
Under pretence to increase his sovereign Majesty.   

When nothing can to God's own self accrue,  
Who's infinitely happy; sure the end  
Of His Creation simply was to show  
His flowing goodness, which He doth outsend  
Not for himself: for nought can Him amend,  
But to his Creature doth his good impart.  
This infinite Good through all the world doth wend,  
To fill with Heavenly bliss each willing heart.  
So the free Sun doth light and' liven every part.   

This is the measure of God's providence,  
The Key of knowledge, the first fair Idee,  
The eye of Truth, the spring of living Sense,  
Whence sprout God's secrets, the sweet mystery  
Of lasting life, eternal Charity, &c.   
And elsewhere in my Poems.  

When I myself from mine own self do quit,  
And each thing else; then an all-spreaden love  
To the vast Universe my soul doth fit,  
Makes me half equal to all-seeing Jove.   

My mighty wings high stretched then clapping light,  
I brush the stars and make them shine more bright.   

Then all the works of God with close embrace  
I dearly hug in my enlarged arms,  
All the hid paths of heavenly love I trace,  
And boldly listen to his secret charms,  
Then clearly view I where true light doth rise,  
And where eternal Night low-pressed lies, & c   
This, Philalethes, is that lamp of God in the light whereof my Reason and fancy have wrought thus many years. This is that true chemical fire that has purged my soul and purified it, and has crystallized it into a bright Throne, and shining Habitation of the divine Majesty. This free light is that, which having held my soul in itself for a time; taught me in a very sensible manner, that vast difference betwixt the truth and freedom of the Spirit, and anxious impostures of this dark Personality & earthly bondage of the body. This is my Oracle, my counsellor, my faithful instructor and Guide, my Life, my Strength, my Glory, my Joy, my communicated God. This is that heavenly flame and bright Sun of righteousness, that puts out the light, and quenches the heat of all worldly imaginations, and desires whatsoever. All the power and knowledge in Nature that is, all the feats and miraculous performances done by Witches, Magicians, or Devils, they be but toys and tricks, and are no solid satisfaction of the soul at all (yea, though we had that power upon lawful terms) if compared with this. And as for divine knowledge, there is none truly so called, without it. He that is come hither, God hath taken him to his own familiar friend, & though he speak to others aloof off in outward Religions and Parables, yet he leads this man by the hand, teaching him intelligible documents upon all the objects of his Providence; speaks to him plainly in his own language; sweetly insinuates himself, and possesses all his faculties, Understanding, Reason, and Memory. This is the Darling of God, and a Prince amongst men, far above the dispensation of either Miracle or prophecy. For him the deep searchers and anxious solicitors of Nature drudge and toil, contenting themselves with the pitiful wages of vain glory or a little wealth. Poor Gibeonites! that hew wood and draw water for the Temple. This is the Temple of God, this is the Son of God, whom he hath made heir of all things, the right Emmanuel, the holy mystery of the living members of Christ. Hallelujah.  
From this Principle which I have here expressed, have all those Poems I have wrote had their original: and as many as are moved with them aright, they carry them to this Principle from whence they came. But to those, whose ignorance makes them contemn them, I will only say to them what our Saviour said to Nicodemus; The wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof, but knowest not from whence it comes nor whither it goes.  
But I am afraid I have stood all this time in a little too high a station for thee, my Philalethes: I descend now and come a little nearer to thee. And now I tell thee further, that thy rash and unworthy abuse of Descartes did move me to write so as I did, more than any personal regard else whatsoever. For I love the Gentleman for his excellent and transcendent natural wit, and like his Philosophy as a most rational, coherent, subtle piece, and an Hypothesis accurately and continuedly agreeing with the phenomena of Nature. This is he whom thou callest my fellow fool, to thy own great disparagement. But this is he that I call the wisest Naturalist that ever came to my hands. And having not had the good hap to light on such a rare piece of my own invention, I thought it was the best office I could do the world to bestow my judgement and censure of his. And so now you will say I am become so great a Cartesian that I begin to think but meanly of Platonism. A wise inference! as if divine and natural knowledge were inconsistent. I tell thee no, Philalethes: Nor am I become cold to my own Poems. For I say that that divine spirit and life that lies under them, is worth not only all the magic that thou pretendest to, but all that thou art ignorant of beside, yea, and Descartes his Philosophy to boot. I say it is worth all that a thousand times told over. Descartes Philosophy is indeed a fine neat subtle thing, but for the true ornament of the mind bears no greater proportion to that Principle I told you of, than the dry bones of a snake made up elegantly into a hatband, to the royal clothing of Solomon. But other natural Philosophies in respect of Descartes his, are even less than a few chips of wood to a well erected fabric. But I say that a free divine universalized spirit is worth all. How lovely, how magnificent a state is the soul of man in, when the life of God inactuating her, shoots her along with himself through Heaven and Earth, makes her unite with, and after a sort feel herself animate the whole world, as if she had become God and all things: This is the precious clothing and rich ornament of the mind, far above reason or any other experiment. And in this attire thou canst not but dance to that music of the Sibylle.  

{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}   

I am Jehovah, (well my words perpend)  
Clad with the frory sea, all mantled over  
With the blue Heavens, shod with the Earth I wend,  
The stars about me dance, th' Air doth me cover.   
This is to become Deiform, to be thus suspended (not by imagination, but by union of life, {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, joining centres with God) and by a sensible touch to be held up from the clotty dark Personality of this compacted body. Here is love, here is freedom, here is justice and equity in the superessential causes of them. He that is here, looks upon all things as one, and on himself, if he can then mind himself, as a part of the whole. And so hath no self-interest, no unjust malicious plot, no more than the hand hath against the foot, or the ear against the eye. This is to be godded with God, and Christed with Christ, if you be in love with such affected language. But you, O ye cages of unclean birds, that have so begodded yourselves, that you are grown foul and black like brutes or devils, what will become of you? O you sinks of sin! You that have heretofore followed religion to excuse you from real righteousness and holiness, and now have found a trick to be abominably wicked without any remorse of conscience. You are God's and Goddesses every bit of you, and all actions in you divine. He leads you up into the bed of a whore, and uncases you both for the unclean Act. And when you tell obscene stories in a rapture, you are caught up into God. O you foul mouths! You blebs of venery, you bags of filth! You dishonour of Christendom and reproach of men! Is not all this righteously come upon you, because you never sought after Religion, as a thing within you, holy, and divine; but as an excuse to save you from wrath, and yet to remain in your sins? But that cannot be: You are in the fuel of wrath while you are in your sins, and that fuel will be set on fire some time or other. But that you may be secure of wrath you say there is no sin, but that it is only a conceit and a name. Is it not a sin to be less happy ten thousand times then God would have you? Doth not both sense and reason discover to you, (I am sure it doth to others) that you walk in the ways of Hell and death? But you are still secure, you yourselves are as much God as any thing else is, and so you may make your Hell as favourable to yourselves as you please. But O you fools and blind! I see you cannot, but you are entangled with the cords and snares that the divine Nemesis hath laid for the wicked in all the parts of the world. But you are not yet any thing moved, O ye dead in trespasses and sins! For there is no God, say you, more than a dog or a horse is God. Behold, O ye forlorn wretches and miserably mistaken! Behold, He is come down to you: nay, He is ever with you and you see him not. Ask of him, and He shall answer you. Demand of him, and He shall declare unto you, not in obscure words or dark sayings, not in enigmatical speeches or parables; but He will speak unto your own reason and faculties which he hath given you: propound therefore unto him why you think the soul of man is mortal, and why you deny an omnipotent and omniscient God distinct from Nature & particular Beings: propound unto Him, and He will plainly answer you. But alas! alas! you are neither fit to hear nor able to propound, for you have destroyed those faculties that he hath given you by sinning against the light of them, and now you have drunk out your eyes, you swear there is no Sun in the Firmament: and now you have whored away your brains, you are confident there is no God. O sunk and helpless generation! how have you soped and soaked, overflown and drowned the highest seat and Acropolis of your soul, that through your sensuality it is grown as rotten and corrupt as a dunghill? You have made yourselves as fit to judge of reason as if your heads were stuffed with wet straw. These things hath the divine Indignation uttered against you, but more for reproof then reproach. But your sin hath made you sottish, and your sottishness confident and secure. But his anger burns against you; O you false Religionists! and the wrath of God will overtake you when you are not aware: and your shame shall ascend up like the smoke of the bottomless pit, and your stink shall be as the filthiness in the valley of the children of Hinnom. This will be the portion of all those that barter away sound reason and the sober faculties of the soul for boisterous words of vanity, and unsettled conceits of Enthusiasts, that having neither reason nor scripture nor conspicuous miracle, row down with the stream of men's corruptions and ripen and hasten the unclean part in man, to a more full and speedy birth of sin and ungodliness. But what's all this to me? saith Philalethes. I tell thee, Phil. I neither wrote before nor do I now write only for thy sake, but for as many as my writings may reach for their good. Nor am I out of my wits as some may fondly interpret me in this divine freedom. But the love of God compelled me. Nor am I at all, Philalethes, enthusiastical. For God doth not ride me as a horse, and guide me I know not whither myself; but converses with me as a friend, and speaks to me in such a Dialect as I understand fully, and can make others understand, that have not made shipwreck of the faculties that God hath given them, by superstition or sensuality: for with such I can not converse, because they do not converse with God; but only pity them, or am angry with them, as I am merry and pleasant with thee. For God hath permitted to me all these things, and I have it under the broad seal of Heaven. Who dare charge me? God doth acquit me. For he hath made me full Lord of the four elements, and hath constituted me Emperor of the world. I am in the fire of choler and am not burned: In the water of phlegm and am not drowned: In the airy sanguine and yet not blown away with every vain blast of transient pleasure, or false doctrines of men: I descend also into the sad earthy Melancholy, and yet am not buried from the sight of my God. I am, Philalethes, (though I dare say thou takest me for no bird of Paradise) Incola coeli in terrâ, an inhabitant of Paradise, and Heaven upon Earth: and the white stone is mine, however thou scramblest for the philosopher's stone. (I wish thou hadst them both, that is all the harm I wish thee.) I still the raging of the sea, I clear up the lowering Heavens, and with my breath blow away the clouds. I sport with the beasts of the Earth, the Lion licks my hand like a spaniel, and the Serpent sleeps upon my lap and stings me not. I play with the fowls of Heaven, and the birds of the Air sit singing on my fist. All the Creation is before me, and I call every one of them by their proper names. This is the true Adam, O Philalethes: This is Paradise, Heaven, and Christ. All these things are true in a sober sense. And the Dispensation I live in, is more happiness above all measure, then if thou couldst call down the Moon so near thee by thy magic charms that thou mightest kiss her, as she is said to have kissed Endymion, or couldst stop the course of the sun, or which is all one, with one stamp of thy foot, stay the motion of the Earth. All this external power in Nature were but as a shop of trinkets and toys, in comparison of what I have declared unto you. And an adulterous generation only seeks after a sign, or idiots, such as love to stare on a dexterous juggler when he plays his tricks. And therefore they being of so little consideration in themselves; I see and am satisfied why miracles are no more frequent in the world. God intends an higher dispensation, and greater happiness for these later times, wherein Divine Love and Reason, and for their sakes Liberty will lay claim to the stage. For He will as I told you draw us with the cords of a man, not ride us as with a bridle like a horse, or tug us along like a mad star in a band. He will sanctify our inward faculties, and so take possession of the Earth. But that a man may not deplore what is lamentable, or be angry at what is injurious to God or goodness, or laugh at what is ridiculous, this is not any part of that Law that is made manifest in the Heavenly life, but the arbitrarious precepts of supercilious Stoics, or surly Superstitionists. For God hath sanctified and will sanctify all these things. Nor am I at all mad or fanatic in all this, O you unexperienced and unwise! For as our Saviour said of his body, touch me and handle me: so say I of my soul: feel and try all the faculties of it if you can find any crack or flaw in them. Where is my Reason inconsequent, or inconsistent with the Attributes of God, the common Notions of men, the Phaenonema of Nature, or with itself? Where is my fancy distorted, unproportionate, unproper? But for the bottom of all these, that, I confess, you can not reach to nor judge of, that is divine sense, the white stone, in which there is a name written that none can read but he that hath it. But for the guidance of my reason and imagination, they have so safe a steersman, viz. that Divine touch of my soul with God, and the impregnation of my Understanding from the most High, that judgement and caution have so warily built the outward fabric of words and fancy, that I challenge any man to discover any ineptitude in them, or incoherency.  
And now verily the serious consideration of these weighty matters have so composed my mind, that I find it some difficulty to discompose it into a temper childish enough to converse with my young Eugenius. But as high as I have taken my station, I will descend, and go less myself, to bring him to what is greater. Behold, I leap down as from the top of some white rocky cloud, upon the grassy spot where my Philalethes stands, and I shall now begin the game of my personated enmity, or sportful Colluctation with him.   

Page 7. lin. 5.  
Be sure in your next to give me an account of this disease in what books or persons, &c. Mous-catcher, take away thy Trap, and take off the toasted cheese from off the wire, and with thy forefinger and thy thumb put it into thine own wide mouth, O thou Tom Vaughan of Wales.  
Lin. 14. I have found them in your ballad. ballad is a good old English word, from which I abhor no more than Spencer, or Lucretius from old Latin, who yet was something younger than Tully. Is not the song of Solomon called the ballad of ballads, in some Church-bibles? Thou art so angry that thou art not able to rail with judgement. But what high swollen words of vanity are there in that ballad of mine? Thou art so ignorant that terms of Art seem Heathen Greek to thee. But for those words that I interpreted for the ignorants sake (you see what a care I have of you, O unthankful Eugenius!) there is an apology prefixed that will satisfy the ingenuous, and for others it matters not.   

Pag. 9  
Lin. 15. With a Bull rampant. You bestow upon me many Bulls, Eugenius: But when you are so kind as to give me them for nothing, you may well expect that I will be so thankful, as to return you a Calf for every Bull I have gratis. Let us begin, &c. And you indeed have done your part already. The sense is, But you indeed have done your part already: What is this but an {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}? But you have I see as little skill in rhetoric as civility. The Calf take thee, Phil. or take thou the Calf. There is one to begin thy herd.   

Page 10.  
Lin. 1. What, both tell-truths? Before thou wast no Rhetorician, now thou art no Logician nor Philosopher, that canst not distinguish betwixt verity and veracity. Veracity is enough to make a Tom telltruth, though his Narration be false. Hence it is demonstrable that two men may be both Tel-troths, though their stories be point-blank contrary to one another. The sense of my words is this; You have told what you thought Aristotle was blameable in: I will now tell what I think you are blameable in. You may be against Aristotle, and I for him, and both with veracity, though not with verity.   

Page 11.  
Lin. 21. Found out some new truths. Yes, I say there are passages in your book, that imply so much at least. We shall see when we come at them: and I shall show that you found them before they were lost.   

Page 12.  
Lin. 17. The third project is the same with the first. Why, is to be skilful in Art magic, and to find out new truths all one? It seems than you suppose there are no new Truths to be found out but magical ones. Blessed age that we live in! All other arts are brought to their Non plus ultrá. Physicians, Geometricians, Astronomians, Astrologians, Musicians, put up your pipes. Claudite jam rivos pueri. There is nothing remains to be done by you. All is perfected. But let me ask you one sober question, Phil. Have you gone through all these Arts and throughly understand them, that you do so boldly pronounce them complete and perfect? I know Philalethes is not so immodest as to say so; I am sure the world is not so foolishly credulous as to believe so. So that I must conclude, Eugenius, that thou art so outrageously distempered in thy mind, that thou art a weaker Arithmetician than the rude Thracians. They told to four, Thou art out at three, and must begin again.   

Page 13.  
Lin. 11. How many more syllables in Anthroposophia, then in Antipsychopannychia? Not so many. So that if I had affected to be so Magical as your learned self, the same conceit would have fitted my Title-page. But I begin now to suspect, you are so nimble at comparing, that your Title-page was a kind of Apish Imitation of mine in the first Edition of my Song of the Soul. But wast thou so simple as to think that any thought better of my book for those hard words in the Frontispiece of it? I only set them there as a windmill on a stack of corn, by the clack of it to scare away sparrows and crows, that it might be reserved entire for men. But I perceive for all that, that thy Rooks bill has been pecking there. But much good may it do thee, Phil. I envy it thee not.   

Page 15.  
Lin. 20. Vim scrmonis esse in verbis, &c. I say, the force and warrant both of Nouns and Verbs is from their use,  Quem penes arbitrium est, & jus, & norma loquendi. 
But if you will have, orator to be good and proper: this Epistle of yours must then be no Epistle, though you call it so, but an Oration to the Fratres R. C. which you spoke to them when they were God knows where, and they will answer you God knows when. Verily, Philalethes, thou art a fine fellow to have made an orator of in King Midas his time. For he had, they say, very long ears: And so mightest Thou have made an Oration before the King in his absence.   

Page 17.  
Line 21. A twofold Definition, accidental and essential. That's true, Phil. what Freshman but knows that? But how it is to be understood, I perceive thou dost not know. I am ashamed that I must be fain to rub up in thee the very first rudiments of logic, or rather teach thee them. For couldst thou ever forget what is meant by accidental, what by essential? Accidental is that which may be or not be in a thing, and yet the thing be: As a horse may be a horse, be it black or white. essential is that which so belongs to the thing to which it is said to be essential, that the thing cannot be conceived to exist without it. Now, say I, these faculties of Understanding, Reason, and Sense are essential to the soul of man, because we cannot conceive a soul without a power or faculty of understanding, reasoning, &c. And Aristotle has defined a soul from these. Therefore would a Peripatetic say, with an essential Definition. But Eugenius, No: This is but circumstantial, says he. Therefore I do infer, Eugenius, that thou dost dream of knowing the very naked substance of the soul; which thou wilt as soon know, as see the wind. And thus I spoke to that that thou must needs mean, if thou meanest any thing: but it is a plain case, thou dost not know thy own meaning. But Aristotle doth sufficiently countenance mine, with what he has very luckily let fall somewhere in his analytics; And thus is it manifestly true in that sense that you yourself meant; That the very essence of any substance is not to be known, nor is there any such essential Definition. This is as true, Tom. Vaughan, as two and two are four, though I do not call you Owl for your ignorance, as you do me for my knowledge. But we shall have another bout again with this, in your Anima Magica abscondita.   

Page 19 to the 24.  
To have made the world as a Carpenter, of stone and timber. Thou hast misplaced a comma in the sentence to make a Cavil. Put on thy spectacles, and see if there be any comma before of in my Book. If you understood common sense you could not but understand, that my meaning is this; That you tax the peripatetics for phansying God to have made the world as a Carpenter makes houses of stone and timber. Now pitiful Caviller! But to the point. I say this is a false taxation, Eugenius: For the parts of the world, according to the peripatetics own doctrine, are set in this order they are from an inward principle of motion, and their own proper qualities: so that they do as the stones and trees are said to have done at the music of Orpheus and Amphion, move of themselves. But the stone and timber in the work of a Carpenter, do not move themselves into their places they ought to be, for the building up of an house. But you answer two things to this: First, that the parts of the world do not move themselves: Secondly, that if they do, than they have infusion of life. To the first: Why, does not any part of the earth move itself downward, if it be in an higher place than is natural to it, and the air and fire upward, &c. and this from an inward principle of motion? Nay, is not the very definition of Nature, Principium motûs & quietis, &c. wherefore we see plainly, that according to the Aristoteleans, all to the very concave of the Moon have an inward principle of motion. And for the Heavens themselves, the most sober and cautious of the peripatetics hold them to be moved from an inward Principle, their Forma informans, as they call it. So that though they do not allow life infused into the world, yet they allow an inward principle of motion in natural bodies, which is their substantial Forms, by virtue whereof they are ranged in this order as we see; or at least according to which they are thus ranged and ordered. And this is not so dead a business as the Carpenters building with stone and timber. But in the second place, you say, That if they have this motion from an inward principle, than they have also infusion of life. But do not you see plainly, that (according to the mind of the more sober peripatetics) they have motion from an inward principle? Therefore you should have been so far from taxing them to look upon God as a Carpenter, that you should have concluded rather that they held infusion of life.   

Page 24.  
Lin. I. Thou hast abused me basely. Verily, if that were true I should be very sorry for it: For I would not willingly abuse any man living, of what condition soever. But the thing has happened unluckily. I read thy Book, I knew not thy person, nor thy name, nor thy nature, further than it was expressed in thy Book, which did not represent it so ill as now I find it. If I had thought my Galenical purge had met with such a constitution, I should have tempered it more carefully: For I delight not in the vexation of any man. The truth is, my scope in writing that Book was laudable and honest, and such as might become a very good Christian, and my mirth and pleasantness of mind much and real; but the sharpness of my style personated, and aristotelical; and therefore being but affected and fictitious, I felt it not, there was no corrosion at all; but all that was unkind in it, (if you will call that passion unkindness) was a certain light indignation that I bore, and ever do bear against magnificent folly. And there being no name to your Book, I thought I had the opportunity of doing it with the least offence, as meeting with the thing disjoined and singled from the person. But I verily think I should not have meddled at all, if you had spared your incivilities to Descartes, whose worth and skill in natural Philosophy (be it fate or judgement that constrains me to it let the world judge) I can not but honour and admire. He is railed at but not confuted by any that I see, in his natural Philosophy, and that's the thing I magnify him for. Though his metaphysics have wit and strength enough too, and he hath made them good against his opposers.  
Line 21. And assure thyself I will persecute thee, so long as there is ink or paper in England. Assuredly thou wilt not, Philalethes: For why, I am dead already, taken in thy trap and tortured to death: will not this suffice thee? I am dead, and thou thyself but mortal, wilt thou entertain immortal enmity against me? But how canst thou persecute me being dead? Wilt thou raise my soul up, O Magicus, by thy Necromancy? and then combat with me over my grave? I hope thou art but in jest, Eugenius: If thou be'st not, I must tell thee in good earnest, thy present bitterness will make thee Simon Magus like, as well as thy former boasting. O thou confounded and undone thing! how hast thou shamed thyself! Thy vizard is fallen off, and thy sanctimonious clothing torn from about thee, even as it was with the Apes and monkeys, that being attired like men and wearing visards over their faces did dance, and cringe, and kiss, and do all the gestures of men so artificially and becomingly, that the country people took them to be a lesser size of human race, till a waggish fellow that had more with then the rest, dropped a few nuts amongst them, for which they fell a scrambling so earnestly, that they tore off their visards, and to the great laughter of the spectators, showed what manner of creatures they were. O Magicus! do not dissemble before me: For thou dost not know with what eyes I behold thee. Were it not better for thee and all the world beside, to make it their business to be really and fully possessed of those things that are undoubtedly good and Christian, nay, indeed if they be had in the right Principle, are the very buds and branches of the tree of Paradise, the limbs and members of the Divine nature, such as are meekness, patience, and humility, discretion, freedom from self-interest, chastity, temperance, equity, and the like: is it not better to seek after these things, then to strain at high words and uncertain flatuous notions that do but puff up the mind and make it seem full to itself, when it is distended with nothing but unwholesome wind. Is not this very true, my dear Philatethes?  
Line II. Upon certain similitudes and analogies of mine. Now we are come to that rare piece of Zoography of thine, the world drawn out in the shape of an Animal. But let's view the whole draught as it lies in your book, because you make such a foul noise about it in your answer. Your words are these. Besides the texture of the Universe clearly discovers its Animation. The Earth which is the visible natural Basis of it, represents the gross carnal parts. The element of the water answers to the blood, for in it the pulse of the great world beats; this most men call the flux and reflux, but they know not the true cause of it. The air is the outward refreshing spirit, where this vast creature breathes though invisibly yet not insensibly: The interstellar skies are his vital ethereal waters, and the stars his animal sensual fire. Now to pass my censure on this rare Zoographicall piece. I tell thee if thy brains were so confusedly scattered as thy fancy is here, thou wert a dead man Philalethes: all the chemistry in the world could not recover thee. Thou art so unitive a soul, Phil. and such a clicker at the slightest shadows of similitude, that thou wouldst not stick to match chalk and cheese together I perceive, and mussitate a marriage betwixt an Apple and an Oyster. Even those proverbial dissimilitudes have something of similitude in them, will you then take them for similes that have so monstrous a disproportion and dissimilitude? But you are such a Sophister that you can make any thing good. Let's try. The Earth must represent the flesh because they both be gross: so is chalk and cheese, or an Apple and an Oyster. But what think you of the Moon? is not that as much green cheese as the Earth is flesh? what think you of Venus, of Mercury, and the rest of the Planets? which they that know any thing in Nature, know to be as much flesh as the Earth is, that is to be dark & opaque as well as she. What! is this flesh of the world then torn apeices and thrown about, scattered here and there like the disjointed limbs of dragged Hippolytus? Go to phil. where are you now with your fine knacks and similitudes? But to the next analogy. The element of water answers to the blood. Why? For in it is the pulse of the great world. But didst thou ever feel the pulse of the Moon? And yet is not there water too? thou little, sleepy heedless Endymion: The blood is restagnant there, I warrant you, and hath no pulse. So that the man with the thorns on his back lives in a very unwholesome region. But to keep to our own station here upon Earth. Dost thou know what thou sayest when thou venturest to name that monosyllable, Pulse, dost thou know the causes and the laws of it? Tell me, my little Philosophaster; where is there in the earth or out of the earth in this World-Animal of thine, that which will answer to the heart, and the systole and diastole thereof to make this pulse? And beside this, There is wanting rarefaction and universal diffusion of the stroke at once. These are in the pulse of a true Animal, but are not to be found in the Flux of the sea; For it is not in all places at once, nor is the water rarefied where it is. Now my pretty Parabolist, what is there left to make your similitude good for a pulse in your great Animal more than when you spill your pottage, or shog a milk-bowl? But believe it Eugenius, thou wilt never make sense of this Flux and Reflux, till thou calm thy fancy so much as to be able to read Descartes. But to tell us it is thus from an inward form, more Aristotelico, is to tell us no more, then that it is the nature of the Beast, or to make Latin words by adding only the termination bus, as hosibus and shoosibus, as Sir Kenhelm Digby hath with wit and judgement applied the compárison in like case. But now to put the blood, flesh and bones together, of your World-Animal: I say they bear not so great a proportion to the more fluid parts, viz. the vital and animal spirits thereof, as a mite in a cheese to the whole globe of the Earth. So that if thou hadst any fancy or judgement in thee, thy similitude would appear to thine own self outrageously ugly and disproportionable, and above all measure ridiculous: Nor do not think to shuffle it off, by demanding, If there be so little earth, to tell thee where it is wanting. For I only say, that if the world be an Animal, there will be much blood and flesh wanting, Philalethes, for so great a Beast. Nor do not you think to blind my eyes with your own Tobacco smoke, (I take none myself, Eugenius,) For to that over ordinary experiment, I answer two things. First, that as you look upon the parts of the body of a true Animal, in the same extension that they now actually are, not how they may be altered by rarefaction; so you are also to look upon the parts of your World-Animal, as they are de facto extended, not how they may be by rarefaction. And thus your Argument from Tobacco, will vanish into smoke. But if you will change the present condition, of any lesser Animal by burning it, and turning many of the gross parts into more thin and fluid, you destroy the ground of your comparison, betwixt the World-Animal and it; for you take away the flesh of your lesser Animal thus burnt. And besides, the proportion betwixt the vapour or thinner parts extension to the remaining ashes, is not yet so big, as of the thin parts of the World-Animal in respect of its solid parts, by many thousand and thousand millions. Nay, I shall speak within compass, if I say (as I said before) that there is a greater disproportion then betwixt the globe of the Earth and a mite in a cheese. This is plainly true to any that understands common sense. For the Earth in respect of the World is but as an indivisible point. Add to all this, that if you will rarefie the Tobacco or Hercules body by fire, I will take the same advantage, and say that the water and many parts of the earth may be also rarefied by fire, and then reckon only upon the remaining ashes of this globe, and what is turned into vapour must be added to the more fluid parts of the World-Animal, to increase that over-proportion. So that thou hast answered most wretchedly and pitifully every way, poor Anthroposophus! But besides, In the second place: When any thing is burnt, as for example, your Tobacco. I say it takes up then no more room than it did before: Because Rarefaction and Condensation is made, per modum spongiae, as a sponge is distended by the coming in, and contracted again by the going out of the water it had imbibed. But the aristotelical way, which is yours, (O profound Magicus! that hast the luck to pick out the best of that Philosophy) implies, I say, gross contradictions, which thou canst not but understand, if thou canst distinguish corporeal from incorporeal Beings. Thy way of Rarefaction and Condensation, O Eugenius, must needs imply penetration of dimensions, or something as incongruous, as every lad in our Universities, at a year or two standing at least, is able to demonstrate to thee. But if thou thinkest it hard, that so little a body as a pipe of Tobacco, should be multiplied into so very much superficies above what it had before, go to those that beat out leaf gold, and understand there how the superficies of the same body may be, to wonder, increased. And beside, I could demonstrate to thee, that a body whose basis thou shouldst imagine at the centre of the Earth, & top as far above the starry Heaven, as it is from thence to the Earth, without any condensation used thereunto, is but equal to a body that will lie within the bowl of a Tobacco pipe. Where art thou now, thou miserable Philosophaster? But to the next analogy.  
The air is the outward refreshing spirit, where this vast Creature breathes. Two things I here object, to show the ineptness and inconguity of this comparison. The one is taken from the office of respiration, which is to refresh by way of refrigerating or cooling. Is not the main end of the lungs to cool the blood, before it enter into the left ventricle of the heart? But thou art so Magical, thou know'st none of these sober and useful mysteries of Nature. All that thou answerest to this is, That we are refreshed by heat as well as by coolness. Why then, Is that general sufficient to make up your analogy or similitude? This is as well fancied as it is reasoned, when men conclude affirmatively in the second figure. There are laws in fancy too, Philalethes: and I shall show thee anon, how ridiculous thou hast made thyself by transgressing them. If thou meanest by refreshed, to be cheered or restored only, and what ever does this must be ground enough to fancy a respiration; then thou breathest in thy caudle, when thou eatest it, and hast spoiled that conceit of his, that said he never would drink sack whilst he breathed; for if sack do in any sense refresh and comfort a man, it seems he breathes while he drinks. I tell thee in the Homologi termini of similitudes, there ought to be something in some sort peculiar and restrained, or else it is flat, ridiculous, and nonsense. The other objection was taken from the situation of this air that is to be the matter of Respiration in this great Animal. What a wild difference is there in this? The air that an ordinary Animal breathes in, is external, the air of this world-Animal, internal; so that it is rather wind in the guts, than air for the lungs; and therefore we may well add the colic to the Anasarca. Is the wind-colic an outward refreshing spirit, or an inward griping pain? Being thou hast no guts in thy brains, I suspect thy brains have slipped down into thy guts, whither thy tongue should follow to be able to speak sense. Answer now like an {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, O thou man of magic! He answers, and the point and sting of all the sense of his answer is in the tail of it: pag. 29. lin. 11. and it is their outward refreshing spirit. He means the Earths and the Waters. O feeble sting! O foolish answer! This only reaches so far as to save the Earth alive from my jugulating objection. The globe of Earth and Water indeed may be still an Animal for all that objection. But thou saidst the whole world was an Animal. What, is the whole world an Animal because the Earth is one? O bundle of simples! (to return thee thine own parcel of ware again, for it belongs not to me) this is as well argued as if thou shouldest say, That a cheese is an Animal, because there is one living mite in it. But that this Earth neither is a breathing Animal, is plain enough: For what respiration, what attraction and reddition of air is there in it? There may be indeed something answering to sweating and perspiration, nothing to respiration, my good Philalethes. But to show thee thy folly, I will follow thy liberty, and impudently pronounce that a pair of bellows is an Animal. Why, is it not? It has a nose to breathe through, that's plain, the two handles are the two ears, the leather the lungs, and that which is the most seemly analogy of all, the two holes in the backside are the two eyes; as like the eyes in the fore-side of a Crab as ever thou seest any thing in thy life: Look thee, Phil. are they not? You will say, The analogy of the nose is indeed as plain as the nose on a man's face: But how can the handles be ears, when they stand one behind another? whereas the ears of Animals stand one on one side, and the other on the other side of the head. And then, how can the leather be lungs, they being the very outside of its body? Or those two holes eyes? They have neither the situation, as being placed behind, nor office of eyes. Answer me all these objections, O Mastix! I can fully answer them, O Magicus! This is an Animal drawn out according to thine own skill and principles. The leather sayst thou must be no lungs, because it is without. Why then the air must be no air for thy World-Animal to breath, because it is within: And if thou canst dispense with within and without, much more mayst thou with before and behind, or behind and on the sides. So the ears and lungs of this Animal hold good against thee still. Now to preserve my monsters eyes against this Harpy that would scratch them out. They are no eyes say you, because they have not the situation of eyes. But I told thee before, thou makest nothing of situation. But they have not the office of eyes. Why? They can see as much as the eyes of thy World-Animal, for aught thou knowest. I but this Bellows-Animal breathes at these eyes: And have not I showed thee that thy World-Animal breathes in his guts? But I will make it plain to thee that those two holes are eyes: For they are two, as the two eyes are; and transmit the thin air through them, as the eyes do the pure light. So that they agree gainly well in the general: As your Respiration in the World-Animal, in refreshing, though by heat, when in others it is by cold. Fie on thee, for a Zoographicall Bungler. These Bellows thou seest is not my Animal but thine, and the learned shall no longer call that instrument by that vulgar name of a pair of Bellows, but Tom Vaughan's Animal. So famous shalt thou grow for thy conceited foolery.  
The interstellar skies are his vital ethereal waters. Here I object, O Eugenius! that there is an over-proportionated plenty of those waters in thy World-Animal, and that thus thou hast distended the skin of thy Animal, God knows how many millions of miles off from the flesh. O prodigious Anasarca! But what dost thou answer here? viz. That I say, that the body which we see betwixt the stars, namely, the interstellar waters, is excessive in proportion. No, I do not say so: but that they are two excessive in proportion to be the fluid parts of a World-Animal. But how ever, as if I had said so, he goes about to prove, that there is no excess of proportion in them. Dost thou hear, Mastix? says he, Look up and see. Well, I hear, Phil. I look up. But do not chock me under the chin, thou wag, when I look up. Now, what must I see? What a number of bonfires, lamps, and torches are kindled in that miraculous celestial water. Yes, I see them all. I suppose they burn so clear for joy and triumph, that my Reason and Sense have so victoriously overthrown thy Phantastry and nonsense. But why miraculous waters, Phil? I see the cause: bonfires and torches burn in the waters. That were a miracle indeed, Eugenius; but that it is a falsity. Thou givest things false names, and then wouldst amaze us with verbal miracles.  
And the stars his animal sensual fire. What is thy meaning here, little Phil. (For I never called thee to account for this yet) That this World-Animal has sense only in the stars? To call them the eyes of the world is indeed pretty and poetical. And Plato's delicious spirit may seem to countenance the conceit in that elegant Distich upon his young friend After, (which in plain English is star) whom he instructed in the Art of astronomy:  

{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}   

Thou viewest the stars, my Star, were I the skies!  
That I might fix on thee so many eyes.   
But what, Eugenius, wilt thou venture in philosophic coolness, to say the sense of thy World-Animal lies in the stars? I prithee, what can those starry eyes spy out of the world? They are very quick-sighted, if they can see there, where there is nothing to be seen. But it may be, this Animal turns its eyes inward and views itself. I would Philalethes were such an Animal too; He would then find so much amiss within, that he would forbear hereafter to be so censorious without. But what? is there sense then only in the stars? For sense can be nowhere but where there is access for the Animal spirits. So it seems, the stars must hear as well as see, nay, feel and taste; as they do questionless, as often as they lick in, and eat up that star-fodder, the vapours, wherewith in Seneca, they are fantastically said to be nourished. And thus you see, that Tom Vaughan's Animal, I mean the bellows now, may see at the very same two holes that it breathes at, for he confounds all by his indiscreet fancy. How art thou blown about like a feather in the air, O thou light-minded Eugenius! How vain and irrational art thou in every thing! Art thou the Queen of Sheba, as thy sanguine a little overflowing thy Choler would dress up thyself to thy soft imagination, and make thee look smugg in thy own eyes? Had that Queen so little manners, in her addresses to so great a Philosopher? No, thy language in all thy book, is the language of a scold and of a slut. And for thy wit, if thou wilt forgo thy right to the ladle and bells, thy feminine brains as thou callest them, may lay claim to the maid-marians place in the Morris-dance: while my strong cruds, (as thou termest my masculine understanding) which are as sweet as strong, not tainted with the fumes of either revenge or Venery, shall improve their utmost strength, for the interest of Truth and Virtue.  
And thus have I taken all thy Outworks, Eugenius, yea and quite demolished them. Yet now I look better about me, there is I perceive one halfmoon standing still. Wherefore have at thy lunatic answer to that which thou callest my lunatic argument, which thou propoundest thus; That the Flux and Reflux cannot be the pulse of the great World, because it proceeds from the Moon, not from the sun. I say, Philalethes, The sun being the heart of the world, according to those that be more discreetly fantastical (consult Dr. Fludd, thou art but a bad chip of that block) it was to be expected, if thou wouldst have the Flux and Reflux to be the Pulse, that it should come from the Sun, that is reputed the heart of the world, but it comes from the Moon. To this you answer; That it comes no more from the Moon, then from that fictitious Anti-selene or Anti-moon, as you venture to call it. You say thus, but prove nothing. But there is such an apparent connexion betwixt this Phaenomenon of the Flux and Reflux, and so constant with the course of the Moon, that it is even unimaginable but that there should be the relation of cause and effect betwixt them. But I think you will not say, That the motion of the Sea has any power or effect upon the course of the Moon; wherefore it must be granted, than the course of the Moon has an effectual influence upon the Flux of the Sea. And therefore Fromondus speaks very expressly concerning this matter, and very peremptorily in these words: Si ex effect is de causa conjectatio valere potest, tam compertum videtur aestus effici & gubernari à Lunari sydere, quàm calorem ab ignibus effundi, aut lumen à Sole: to this sense; If we can gather any thing from effects concerning the cause, it seems to be as experimentally sure, that the Ebbing and Flowing of the Sea is made and governed by the Moon, as that heat flows from the fire, or light from the sun. For indeed how could there be kept such inviolable laws, as that the Ocean should always swell at the Moons ascending; and not only so, but attemperately and proportionably to her motion, (for she coming every day later and later above the Horizon, the Flux of the Sea is later and later every time, according to her recession toward the East in her monthly course) I say, How could these laws be so accurately observed, Mr. Eugenius, if the Moon were not accessary to, nay, the principal causer of this Flux and Reflux of the Sea? And if thou be'st not wilfully blind, this is enough to convince thee, that that which thou callest the Pulse of thy World-Animal, is from the Moon not from the sun, nor from its own inward form. For thou seest it is caused and regulated by an external Agent. But for a more full discovery of this mystery, I send thee to Descartes in the fourth part of his Principia Philosophiae, or to what I have taken from thence and made use of in the Notes upon my philosophical Poems. In which Poems the intelligent Reader may understand, how far, and in what sense, any sober Platonist will allow the world to be an Animal. Nor does one part of it acting upon another, as the Moon upon the Sea, hinder its Animation. For in men and beasts, one part of the body does plainly act upon another, though all be actuated by the soul.  
And now, Philalethcs, I have taken all thy outworks, none excepted; out of which thou hast shot many a slovingly shot against me. But thy foul piece has recoiled against thyself, in all sober men's opinions, and has beat thee backward into the dirt. And truly, I know not whether I should pity thee, or laugh at thy childish Arsbut thou hast given thyself. For thou railest at me now thou art down, and threatnest him that is ready to set thee up upon thy feet, provided thou wilt not prick up thy ears too, and look too spruntly upon the business. But thou wantest no help, thou art a Giant, an invincible man of war, great Goliath of Gath. I a mere puny, as thou callest me; nay, a monkey, a Mouse. What, dost thou bid defiance to three at once, Philalethes? I tell thee, any one of these three would be hard enough for thee. But what wilt thou do, now thou art to deal with a man? For I shall fight with thee, only with a man's weapon, Reason. As for thy railings and quibblings, I shall not take notice of them; so that the battle is likely to be the sharper and shorter for it. Only let's be a little merry at the beginning, it will be like shaking of hands at the taking up of the cudgels.   

OBSERVATION 1.  Art thou the hobbling Poet who sometime— praised with his quill Plato's philosophy? 
I am the Poet that did, and do with my pen, my mouth, and from my heart praise that excellent Philosophy of Plato, as the most consistent and coherent metaphysical Hypothesis, that has yet been found out by the wit of man. But why hobbling Poet? thou hobbling ass or Hobby-horse, choose thee whether. Thou hast so diseased and crazy a brain, that it cannot endure it seems the least jotting, and so thou hadst rather be carried in a Sedan, as those that are rotten with the Neapolitan disease, or else going the way to it; then be bravely hurried in my open magnificent chariot, whose tempestuous wheels dance and leap while they are wearing down the cragginess and asperity of philosophic difficulties into plainness and easiness. But I know the vulgar, those poor Merchants of eel-skins, that deal with nothing but the Exuviae of things, words and phrases, are more taken with smooth nonsense, or superficial flourishes, than with the deepest knowledge in a careless dress. Dost thou not know that those men, that make it their business to be Count and elegant in their clothes and carriages, commonly have little else but this in them? And so it is too often with Poems and other writings. But how I slight your simple censures, O ye skin-sucking flies! ye wasps with rush-stings in your tails! ye winged inhabitants of Crowland! I will show you now, not in the prose of More, but in the very Trot and Loll of Spencer, as this natural with his tongue lolling out of his drivelling mouth, uncivilly calls it.  

As gentle Shepherd in sweet Eventide  
When rnddy Phoebus 'gins to welk in West,  
High on an hill his flock to viewen wide,  
Marks which do bite their hasty supper best,  
A cloud of cumb'rous Gnats do him molest,  
All striving to infix their feeble stings,  
That from their' noyance he nowhere can rest,  
But with his clownish hands their tender wings  
He brusheth oft, and oft doth mar their murmurings.   
Nor have I here called myself Clown by craft, no more than the Poet calls the Knight so. But thy indiscreet wit cannot distinguish betwixt the Formale and Materiale, of that whence the similitude is fetched; which made there so ill digest thy philosophic Bacon. It was thine own magic, Phil. or perverse imagination that turned thee into an Hog with tusks and bristles, not I. But to return to the business: O thou judicious critic! What is the fault? where is the flaw in what thou hast recited?  — Praise with my quill Plato's Philosophy. 
Thou dost only play with the feather of the quill. But for what is writ with the inky end thereof, in those Poems of mine, I challenge thee to show me if thou canst, where my fancy or reason hath really tripped. Thou indeed hast attempted something in the Platonic way, but I have made it manifest, thou hast writ with the quill of a goose. But I have penned down the praise of Plato's Philosophy in this Canto, with the skill of a man, as any man that hath skill will acknowledge, But thy spirit is not yet prepared for the knowledge of such divine matters. It is not yet fine, gentle, and benign enough, to receive so delicious impressions. Put thy soul into a crysiple, O pragmatical chemist, and set it on that fire, that will excoct and purge out thy dross, and then judge of Platonism. Art not thou the chemical Monkey that art very busy to little purpose about the glasses of Harry Blunden, an honest man and an happy operator in chemistry as I hear? But thou dost nothing but leer and look up at the reek of the furnace, and sendest as high theomagical meditations after every fold or curl of smoke that mounteth up, as the musing Ape after the flur and far flight of every partridge he let out of the basket. But enough of Levity. Now to expiate the excess of this mirth with something more solid and sober. I am ready to answer what thou allegest, and to make good that my first observation is no oversight.  
Thou art here mistaken in two things. First, in that thou conceivest that Reminiscency is so strong an argument to prove the Preexistency of the soul before her entrance into the body. I say it is not any argument worth the insisting upon. For though the soul do find truth in herself, questions being wisely proposed to her; yet she doth not perceive that she ever thought of those things before, and therefore cannot acknowledge any such Reminiscency in herself. And I appeal unto thine own reason, Eugenius, if God should create an human soul, and put it into a body fit and compliable with contemplation, whether that soul would not be able to answer all the questions propounded in Plato's Meno, as well as those that are supposed to preexist. And therefore I have not made use of this argument in all my Platonical Poems. For I tell thee, Phil. I am a very wary Philosopher, and he must rise betimes that goes about to impose upon my reason. Thy second mistake is, that thou thinkest I condemn thy opinion of the Preexistency of the soul, which indeed I might well do as personating an Aristotelean. But what I really blame there, is thy boldness and disadvantageous rashness in the proposal of it, thou intimating, as if the soul descended into the body with her eyes broad wake, which the first page of thy preface to the Reader doth plainly imply. Let any one read and judge. But if any one ask what my opinion is, I answer, It is no matter what my opinion is, as it is mine, (for what man is {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}) but the discussion of the truth of these things he may find in my Poems.   

Observat. 2.  
Here, Philalethes, I charged thee with three absurdities.  
The first was affectation of pomp and ceremony in the finding out those things which can not be hid from the eyes of the meanest capacity. As pretending it was a whole springs task, to find out this conclusion, viz. That things that are produced in Nature, are out of something in Nature unlike the things produced. To this thou answerest; that thou art not to be understood, as if thou wert a whole spring in finding out this conclusion: For thou only sayst, I took to task the fruits of one spring. But I say, that one spring may signify a whole spring, and your making a task of it seems to determine the words to that sense. And unless thou tookest the pains of examining all the flowers that grew in the spring, one after another, I mean their kinds, it would prove no task, or at least be no proof for thy conclusion. And therefore in all likelihood, one spring should signify here a whole spring.  
The second was, that thou art fain to admit of two of Aristotle's Principles, Matter and Privation. And this I inferred from the foregoing Conclusion. But thou answerest, That thou hast not so much as named Privation, much less acknowledged it for a Principle. That's no matter. Though thou hold thy peace thy observations speak it. That Viola est ex non viola, Rosa ex non Rosa, &c. Which is the very same thing the peripatetics observe to be necessarily included in all generation, & therefore they make a Principle of it, and call it Privation.  
The third absurdity was, that you seemed so simple, as to promise yourself that you would find out the first matter, or the common matter of all things by experience. To which you answer, That you have now found it out, felt it, and seen it. Well, Engenius, thou art grown a great Proficient, I perceive, since the last time I met thee. For than thou wast to seek for this first matter, now thou hast found it and felt it. Hast not thou felt the Ephialtes, Phil? or is not thy fancy as gross and thick as a syrup? I believe thou art as much Jesuit as I Puritan, tell me truly Philalethes, dost not equivocate in this answer? and understandest by this first Matter, only the first matter of some things, as meal is the first matter of pudding, and pycrust, and bread, and the like. But if thou sayst thou hast seen and felt the first matter of all things whatsoever, thou hast pronounced what is impossible to be proved, and therefore as impossible to be believed by the sober and wise. And yet unless thou pronounce thus, thou pronouncest nothing to the present purpose. For, by first Matter, is understood the common matter of all things. But now to rebuke thy boldness in this assertion: Let me ask thee a sober question or two. This first Matter, which thou soughtest after, and now hast found, whether hadst thou any marks to know it by, when thou didst light on it? For as Venus in the Poet, when she sends hue and cry after her little Fugitive, describes him from his marks;  {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} 
So what ever is sought for by us, we ought to have an idea of it, that we may know it when we find it. As he that is to seek an horse in the field, if he have not an idea of an horse and of a cow, &c. he may bring one for the other. To be short, he that seeks without an idea of what is sought, seeks for he knows not what, and he will find it he knows not when. So that it was necessary for thee to have an idea of the first Matter, in thy mind when thou wentest about to find it out. Now tell me, what the idea of the first Matter can be, if not this? A substance out of which all corporeal things are made, but itself out of nothing. And this is, if thou understandest truth when it is propounded to thee, as true an idea of the first Matter, as, to have three angles, is the right idea of a Triangle. But answer me now, Engenius, in good earnest. Is that matter which thou sayst thou hast seen and handled such as will fit with this idea? How canst thou ever prove but that that matter was made of some other matter, otherwise modified, as well as other things may be made of this? But I will deal very candidly with thee, Philalethes: For I would fain have thee speak some sense. The idea of thy first Matter thou meanest may happily be this. Matter so prepared and qualified by the Art of chemistry, that it is fit to receive any form whatsoever, or Matter that is reduced to such a temper as it all was of at first, when it lay fitted for receiving of all forms of what nature so ever, and by this fitness engaged them to lodge in her large bosom. And thus though this Matter of thine be made of another matter, yet, because it is reduced to the state it was in first of all, before it received any forms, and was contrived into this order and distinction of parts, that constitute the world, it may in this sense be called the first Matter. But tell me, Eugenius, how know'st thou that thou hast light on such a matter as this? Thou hadst no preconceived idea of the colour and consistency of this matter, which thou sayst thou hast felt and and seen, unless somebody hath described it to thee, from certain sensible qualities. But than I would ask both them and thee, how they know that a body of this consistency and colour is the first matter? It is either because that they observe, that, what ever they resolve by their chemical fires is resolved into this at last, or because they have observed that all things will arise out of this matter. But for the first: I say, they have not, nor can make trial of all things by their Art. For how many things appear above us out of our reach? besides what lie eternally buried below. They can not distil the stars, as some say, glow-worms may be, and make them lamps of them to study by. Besides, why is that which is left, to be the first matter more than what is flown away and evaporated? And that which will not evaporate, I demand whether that is the first matter of air and light? Add to all this, That you do not so much find this first matter as make it in all likelihood. For how incredible a thing is it, but that by your fires or heats, (you putting the body that is under your operation into a perpetual motion, so that the parts fridge one against another uncessantly) the nature of it should be quite changed by you. So that you do not by a kind of Analysis discover what is at the bottom, but by Genesis modify the matter into a new dress. But that's no matter you will say, so long as it is reduced to such a temper as it was, when the whole world was to be impregnated with several forms. But there is no way now left for you to know that you have thus reduced it, unless you have seen this matter of yours. Vertumnus-like to appear before you in all shapes. Tell me then, Philalethes, Have you seen it put on the form of a Sponge? of a Pumex? of Adamant? of Marble? Have you seen it put on the shape of all plants whatsoever and Animals? to say nothing of metals and minerals. Have you played with it in the shape of a dog? or has it roared against you in the form of a lion? or have you made sport with the mustachoes of it in the figure of a mouse? Has Paracelsus his homunculus come tumbling out of it, with his tail upwards in sign of good luck? or hast thou conferred with it in the dress of a wanton Lady, clothed with transparent lawns, or Sybariticall tiffanies? If thou hast not, (and darest thou say thou hast?) thou hast no reason at all to say thou hast seen and felt the first matter of all things. It is but vain boasting and bold imposture. Add unto all this; That if there were any such matter as thou meanest, so fit for all forms, and yet fitted with none, the Mundus vitae, (or world of Lives and Forms) being everywhere present so as it is, this destitute widow, or marriageable Virgin could be no more kept from being matched with one Form or other, than Danae could be from Jupiter, who notwithstanding the close custody she was under, descended into her lap in a golden shower. Wherefore I conclude, that it is not any certain Experience, but rash juvenility and confidence, that makes thee pronounce thou hast seen and felt the first Matter.   

Obseru. 3.  
Here thou wouldst fain carp at my hymn of Humility and charity, but thy pride and unchristian bitterness only makes thee grin at it, it representing that which is so contrary to thine own nature. But here is nothing said to any purpose, and therefore 'tis to no purpose to apply an answer. As for thy cavils against those expressions of mine, that we are to measure our wisdom by unprejudicate reason, by humility and purity of mind, and not by devotion; the sense is, That we are to try how wise we are, or how safely we may conclude ourselves to be wise, by examining whether we have put off all prejudice, and use our reason impartially, whether we be humble and set free from all corruption of Flesh and Spirit. For by these we may better and more safely conclude that we have used our understanding aright, and are not mistaken in what we conceive, then by long, or hot, or humorous devotions, such as men seem but to play with God in, and rather show the world what fine heats they have, then heartily desire the true good from him, whom they seem to solicit for it. But thou art so galled with the sense, that thou wouldst fain revenge thyself upon the words.  
In what sense I call the disciples of Aristotle orthodox, anybody that hath any wit and urbanity in them may easily discern, and then my praises of Plato and Descartes may consist very well with this passage.  
But as for Scaligers making use of Aristotle's text to make good Athanasius his Creed, I will be very fair with thee, Phil. He did first believe firmly, that there is such a trinity, and then made Aristotle speak to that purpose. Now do thou but first prove strongly thy philosophical positions by Reason, and then I give thee leave for further countenance to call in Moses his text.   

Obseru. 4.  
Do you mention no life here, Eugenius? But than Georgius Venetus does for you. Omne quod vivit, propter inclusum calorem vivit: indè colligitur, caloris naturam vim habere in se vitalem in mundo passim diffusam, &c. Construe it, Phil. and be pacified.   

Obseru. 5.  
When you call it so in your own verse. Why it seems than you had a mind to write poetical Prose, which I am sure Mr. Bust of Eton had like to have whipped me for when I was a boy. But I wonder how thou comest to stumble on this Stanza of mine above the rest. Let us bring it all forth entire into view.  

The last Extreme the farthest off from light,  
That's nature's deadly shadow, Hyle's cell.  
O horrid Cave, and womb of dreaded Night!  
Mother of witchcraft and accursed spell,  
Which nothing can avail'gainst Israel,  
No magic can him hurt, his portion  
Is not divided nature, he doth dwell  
In light, in holy love, in union,  
Not fast to this or that, but free communion.   
O! now I see the reason, there is the word magic named in it. But tell me, O Magicus! dost thou understand what I have writ there? If thou didst, as thou shouldst do, and hadst an inward sense & feeling of it, thou wouldst make a bonfire of all thy books of curious Arts, as the Magicians did in the Apostles time, for joy of finding a better light. But I cannot express what I mean better than I have already in that Stanza.  
Page 40. lin. 20. prithee, Mastix, what is this subject? I'll tell thee. Nay, Aristotle shall tell thee: these are his words, Phys. l. 1. c. ult. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}. Thou wilt not say that this is in nature, neither {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} nor {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, as thou barbarously speakest. And thou must give me leave to correct thy Greek, when there is need, as well as thou dost my English where there is no need. Thy {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} is a monster, and hath one {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} too much, but I will not tread on this toe of thine too hard. I pass off, and come to thy head, that, I mean, that should dwell there; if there be anybody within, let them answer me. Is not that defined there by Aristotle, (the sense whereof is sufficiently set out in my description of the Idea of the first matter) Is it not in nature, neither {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} nor {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}? I appeal to thine own reason if thou canst any ways shift it, but that thou must conceive a matter variously changed into several succeeding forms. Therefore that which continues the same numerical substance, though in its notion incomplete, and sustains the succeeding form, that is a thing in Nature. But when we precisely conceive it utterly devoid of all forms, that's a separation made only by the fire of our understanding ({non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, the Oracles call it) not by your chemical fire: and this is not in Nature, but in our apprehension. Wherefore your assertion is false, when you say that this matter is neither {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, nor {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} in Nature. For though the notional respect be not in Nature, the thing itself is. And this, I say, is a sober description, and signifies something. But your horrible empty darkness, which you say here is the first Matter, doth but mock a man's fancy in the dark.  
Page 42. line 15. The holy Spirit, say you, is not able to see, &c. I say, Anthroposophus, that it is you that have put things together so ill-favouredly, as if you implied so much; as the Reader may judge by perpending the ninth page of your Anthroposophia.  
Page 43. line 20. As soon as God was. Where is thy logic, Eugenius? doth that imply there was a time when God was not? when we say, that one is as wise as a wisp, does that imply the wisp is wise? I tell thee, a wisp is no wiser than thou art, Mr. Magicus. So if I say that the light of the ideas was no later than the existence of God, that saying does neither stint nor stretch out the duration of God's existence, but only it coextends the light of the ideas with that duration.  
Page 44. line 1. But the water was not so. But what was the horrible empty darkness? O thou man in the dark! was that ab aeterno, or not? and if that was, could not the Divine light shine in that darkness? but I will wrestle no longer with such Lemures in the dark, as thy shifting fancy proves itself, O Anthroposophus! Let's go on, and see if we can get into the light.   

Obseru. 6.  
And speak of Rationes seminales. Yes, I spoke of them, and moved a very material question concerning them, to wit, what that Experiment in a glass could do, for the confirming or confuting the Rationes seminales. It had been your duty here to have satisfied this Quaere, but I perceive your inability, and pardon you.   

Obseru. 7.  
Line 10. I myself make the natural Idea no Idea at all. So then, Anthroposophus, this is the story. There is a twofold Idea, a divine Idea, and an Idea which is no Idea at all: Ha ha he! Thou hadst abused me so unmercifully in this bitter book of thine, that I thought I should never have been able to laugh again as long as I lived: But this would make a dog burst his halter with laughing, I must now laugh or die. What, art thou now turned Preacher, Phil? though no Puritan by no means, and telest us of three kinds of Seekers, that they are either those which are both Seekers and Finders; or those that are Finders, but no Seekers; or lastly, such as are neither Seekers nor Finders? Certainly when thou wrotest this book, thou hadst a plot to eternize thy fame, and leave thy folly upon record.  
Page 46. line 1. Cite him then, and produce his words. Here they are Philalethes: {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, page 20. He there proves, that there are divine ideas before the creation of the visible plants, from that text of Moses, Gen. 2. v. 4, 5. Philo's own words are these upon that text; {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, says he, {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that is, Does not he manifestly set before us incorporeal and intellectual ideas, which are the seals of God's sensible works? for before the earth sent forth herbs, there was even then (Saith Moses) herbs, in Rerum Natura; and before the grass grew, there was invisible grass. Can you desire any thing more plain and express? But to make thee amends for laughing at thy division of the Idea which had but one member, and hopped like one of the Monocoli upon a single leg, I will give thee another Idea besides this out of the same Philo, and such as may be truly called both an Idea and a natural one, a thing betwixt thy Ideal vestment, and the Divine Idea itself: {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} pag. 6. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that is, But the fruits was not only for nourishment for living creatures, but preparations also for the perpetual generation of the like kind of plants, they having in them seminal Substances, in which the hidden and invisible forms of all things become manifest and visible by circumvolutions of seasons. These are the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, or Rationes seminales, the seminal Forms of things.   

Obseru. 11.  
Page 48. line 9 Mastix is delivered of a Bull. This is a Calf of thy own begetting; but I have forgot all this while to render thee a Calf for a Bull as I promised thee. I am not toyish enough for thee, my little Phil. Do I say heat and siccity are Aqua vitae bottles? But may not heat, and siccity, and Aqua vitae be consentany arguments? what repugnancy is there in it? Answer, Logician: Therefore there is no Bull here, till thou be grown up to thy full stature.   

Obseru. 12.  
Here I told you that you encompassing all with the Empyreal substance, you had left no room for Evening and Morning upon the mass of the Earth. What do you answer to this? That the Empyreal substance was a fire which had borrowed its tincture from the light, but not so much as would illuminate the mass of itself. No, Philalethes? Do not you say it retained a vast portion of light? and is not that enough to illuminate the mass of itself? Nay, you say it made the first day without the sun, but now you unsay it again. Pitiful baffled Creature! But as for those terrible mysterious radiations of God upon the Chaos, & dark Evaporations of the Chaos towards God, which thou wouldst fain shuffle off thy absurdities by; I say, they are but the flarings of thine own fancy, and the reeks and fumes of thy puddled brain. Dost thou tell me this from Reason or Inspiration, Phil? If from Reason, produce thy arguments; if from Inspiration, show me thy Miracle.  
Page 51. line 25. The clouds are in the air, not above it, &c. But if the clouds be the highest parts of the world, according to the letter of Moses, which is accommodated, as I shall prove, to the common conceit and sense of the Vulgar; then in the judgement of sober men it will appear, that thy Argument hath no agreement neither with Philosophy nor common sense. Now therefore to instruct thee, as well as I do sometimes laugh at there; I will endeavour to make these two things plain to thee. First, that Scripture speaks according to the outward appearance of things to sense and vulgar conceit of men.  
Secondly, That following this Rule, we shall find the Extent of the World to be bounded no higher than the clouds, or there about: So that the Firmament, viz. the Air, (for the Hebrews have no word for the Air, distinct from Heaven or Firmament, Moses making no distinction) may be an adequate bar betwixt the lower and upper waters. Which it was requisite for Moses to mention, vulgar observation discovering that waters came down from above, viz. showers of Rain, and they could not possibly conceive, that unless there were waters above, that any water should descend thence. And this was it that gave occasion to Moses, of mentioning those two waters, the one above, the other beneath the firmament.  
But to return to the first point to be proved. That Scripture speaks according to the outward appearance of things to sense, and vulgar conceit of men. This I say is a confessed truth with the most learned of the Hebrews. Amongst whom it is a rule for the understanding of many and many places of Scripture. Loquitur Lex secundùm linguam filiorum hominum, that is, That the Law speaks according to the language of the sons of men: as Moses Aegyptius can tell you. And it will be worth our labour now to instance in some few passages.  
Gen. 19 V. 23. The sun was risen upon the Earth when Lot entered into Zoar. Which implies, that it was before under the Earth: Which is true only according to sense, and vulgar fancy.  
Deuteronom. 30. V. 4. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} or {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, Implies that the earth is bounded at certain places as if there were truly an Hercules Pillar, or Non plus ultrá. As it is manifest to them, that understand but the natural signification of {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} and {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}. For those words plainly import the Earth bounded by the blue Heavens, and the Heavens bounded by the Horizon of the Earth: they touching one another mutually. Which is true only to sense and in appearance, as any man that is not a mere Idiot will confess.  
Ecclesiastic. cap 27. V. 12. The discourse of a godly man is always with wisdom, but a fool changeth as the moon. That's to be understood according to sense and appearance. For if a fool changeth no more than the Moon doth really, he is a wise and excellently accomplished man, Semper idem, though to the sight of the vulgar different. For at least an hemisphere of the Moon is always enlightened, and even than most when she lest appears to us.  
Hitherto may be referred also that, 2. Chron. 4.2. Also he made a molten Sea of ten Cubits from brim to brim round in compass, and five Cubits the height thereof, and a line of thirty Cubits did compass it round about. A thing plainly impossible that the Diameter should be ten Cubits and the Circumference but thirty. But it pleaseth the Spirit of God here to speak according to the common use and opinion of Men, and not according to the subtlety of Archimedes his demonstration.  
Again psalm 19 In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, which as a bridegroom cometh out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run his race. This, as M. John Calvin observes, is spoken according to the rude apprehension of the Vulgar, whom David should in vain have endeavoured to teach the mysteries of Astronomy. Haec ratio est. (saith he) cur dicat tentorium ei paratum esse, deinde egredi ipsum ab una coeli extremitate, & transire celeriter ad partem oppositam; Neque enim argutè inter Philosophos de integro solis circuitu disputat, sed rudissimis quibusque se accommodans, intra ocularem experientiam se continet; ideóque dimidiam cursûs partem que sub Hemisphaerio nastro non cernitur, subticeti. e. This is the reason, to wit, the rudeness of the vulgar, why the Psalmist saith there is a tent prepared for the sun, and then that he goes from one end of the heaven and passes swiftly to the other: For he doth not here subtly dispute amongst the Philosophers of the entire circuit of the sun, but accommodating himself to the capacity of every ignorant man, contains himself within ocular experience; and therefore saith nothing of the other part of the course of the sun, which is not to be seen as being under our hemisphere. Thus M. Calvin.  
I'll add but one instance more, Joshuah 10 V. 12. sun stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou Moon in the Valley of Ajalon. Where it is manifest that Joshuah speaks not according to the astronomical truth of the thing, but according to sense and appearance. For suppose the sun placed and the Moon at the best advantage you can, so that they leave not their natural course, they were so far from being one over Ajalon and the other over Gibeon, that they were in very truth many hundreds of miles distant from them. And if the Sun and Moon were on the other side of the Equatour the distance might amount to thousands.  
I might adjoin to these proofs the suffrages of many Fathers and Modern Divines, as Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, Bernard, Aquinas, &c. But 'tis already manifest enough that the Scripture speaks not according to the exact curiosity of truth, describing things {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, according to the very nature and essence of them; but {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, according to their appearance in sense, and the vulgar opinion of men. Nor doth it therefore follow that such expressions are false, because they are according to the appearance of things to sense and obvious fancy, for there is also a Truth of Appearance.  
And thus having made good the first part of my promise, I proceed to the second; Which was to show that the Extent of the world is to be bounded no higher than to the clouds, or thereabouts, that it may thence appear, that the upper waters mentioned in Moses, are the same with those Aquae in coelo stantes mentioned by Pliny, lib 31. his words are these, Quid esse mirabilius potest aquis in coelo stantibus? and these waters can be nothing else, but that contained in the clouds, which descends in rain; and so the whole Creation will be contained within the compass of the air, which the Hebrews call {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} quasi {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} ibi aquae: because it is sedes nubium, the place of clouds and rain. And that the world is extended no higher than thus, according to Scripture, it is apparent. First, because the clouds are made the place of God's abode; whence we are to suppose them placed with the Highest. There he lives, and runs, and rides, and walks. He came walking upon the wings of the wind, in the 104 Psalm. Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, who maketh the clouds his chariot, and walketh on the wings of the wind. layeth the beams of His chambers in the waters, to wit, the upper waters which are the clouds. The almighty's lodgings therefore according to the letter, are placed in the clouds. There about also is his field for exercise and war, Deut. 33.26. There is none like to the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the Heavens for thy help in his excellency on the sky, that is, upon the upper clouds, as Buxtorf interprets it, and indeed what can {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} properly signify above, but clouds? for below it signifies pulvis tenuissimus, small dust; and the clouds are as it were the dust of heaven. Vatablus also interprets that place of God's riding on the clouds. And this agrees well with that of Nahum, chap. 1. V. 3. The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. Here he is running as swift as a whirlwind, and raiseth a dust of clouds about him. You shall find him riding again, psalm 68.4. and that in triumph; but yet but on the clouds: suitably to that in Deut. Sing unto God, sing praises unto his Name, extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name i A H, and rejoice before Him. That rideth upon the Heavens; the Hebrew is {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, which I would be bold with Aben Ezra's leave, to translate, that rideth upon the clouds: For clouds cause darkness, and the root from whence {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} is {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, which signifies obtenebrari, obscurari. But for the ground of this rabbis interpretation, to wit, upon the heavens, it is taken out of the 33 verse of the 68 psalm, To him that rideth upon the heaven of heavens of old. But if we read on there, we shall find that those heavens of heavens, in all probability, reach no higher than the clouds. For let's read the whole verse together, To him that rideth upon the heaven of heavens that were of old; Lo, he doth send out his voice, and that a mighty voice: what's that but thunder? and whence is thunder but out of the clouds? and where then doth God ride but on the clouds? The following verse makes all plain: Ascribe ye strength unto God; His excellency is over Israel, and his strength is in the clouds: which doth notably confirm, that the Extent of the Heavens, according to the letter of Moses and David too, are but about the height of the clouds. For here the heaven of heavens is the seat of thunder, and God's strength and power is said to be in the clouds. Nor doth this expression of this height, to wit, the heaven of heavens of old, imply any distance higher. For sith all the Firmament from the lower to the upper waters is called Heaven; it is not a whit unreasonable that the highest part of this Heaven or Firmament, be called the Heaven of Heavens. And this is my first argument that the heaven or firmaments Extent is but from the Sea to the Clouds, because God is seated no higher in the outward phrase of Scripture.  
My second argument is taken from the adjoining the heavens with the clouds exegetically, one with another, for the setting out of that which is exceeding high, as high as we can express. And this the Psalmist doth often, psalm 36.5. Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the Heavens, and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the Clouds. And psalm 57.10. For thy mercy is great unto the Heavens, and thy truth unto the Clouds. And psalm 108.4. For thy mercy is great above the Heavens, and thy truth reacheth above the Clouds. Where heaven and clouds set off one and the same height, that which is exceeding high, the mercy and truth of God.  
My last argument is from the Psalmists placing the sun, {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} in the clouds, or in the cloudy heaven. For the word must so signify as I did above prove, both from Testimony, and might also from the Etymon of the word. For {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} signifies comminuere, contundere, to beat to dust: and what are clouds but the dust of heaven, as I may so speak. psalm 89. v. 36, 37. His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established for ever as the Moon, and as the faithful witness {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} in heaven: that is, in the sky, the place where the clouds are. The drawing down therefore of the sun, that faithful witness in heaven, so low as the clouds, implies that the letter of the Scripture takes no notice of any considerable part of the firmament above the clouds, it terminating its expressions always at that Extent. And this suits very well with Moses his calling the Sun and the Moon the great lights, and making nothing as it were of the stars, as is manifest out of the 16 verse of the first of Genesis. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the less to rule the night; He made the stars also. But they come as cast into the bargain, as not so considerable, when as indeed a star of the first magnitude is (according to the calculation of the Astronomers) twenty thousand times bigger than the earth, and the earth five and forty times bigger than the Moon; so that one star of the first magnitude will prove about nine hundred thousand times bigger than the Moon. Which notwithstanding, according to the letter of Moses, is one of the two great lights, the sole Empress of the night. But here the letter of Moses is very consistent with itself. For sith that the Extent of heaven is not acknowledged any higher than the clouds, or thereabout (wherein as I showed you, the Sun is, and consequently the Moon, and it will not be more harsh ro make the stars stoop so low too; nay, they must indeed of necessity all of them be so low, they having nowhere else to be higher, according to the usual phrase of Scripture, the appearances of the stars will then to our sight sufficiently set out their proportions one to another, and the Sun and the Moon (according to this Hypothesis) will prove the two great lights, and the stars but scattered sky-pebbles. Wherefore from all this harmony and correspondency of things, I think I may safely conclude, that the Extent of the Firmament according to Moses, is but the distance from the sea to the clouds, or there abouts, as well as it is to our sight, which cannot discern any interval of altitudes betwixt the clouds and the Moon, the Moon and the sun, and lastly betwixt the sun and the fixed Stars. Which interpretation I am confident any man will admit of, that can bring down the tumour of his philosophic fancy unto a vulgar consistency and fit compliance with the sweetness and simplicity of Moses his style.  
And thus, Philalethes, have I proved that there is no room for thy interstellar waters within the compass of Moses his Creation, unless they run into one, and mingle with the rain or clouds.   

Observat. 13.  
Here I called the Ptolemaic system a rumbling confused Labyrinth. So you did Philalethes, & I perceive you will do so again. But prithee tell me, dost thou mean the Heavens rumble? and so understandest or rather hearest the rumbling harmony of the spheres? or dost thou mean the Labyrinth rumbles? I perceive the man hath now some guts in his brains, and he is troubled with the rumbling of them in their ventricles, and so thinks there is a noise when there is none. I tell thee, Philalethes, a wheel-barrow may be said to rumble, for to rumble is to make an ill-favoured ungrateful noise; but nobody will say the heavens or a labyrinth doth rumble, but such as are no Englishmen, as you say somewhere you are not, and so do not understand the language.  
Pag. 53. A confused wheelbarrow is a bull. Is a wheel-barrow a bull? what a bull is that? But confused, I added not confused to wheel-barrow, that's thy doing, thou author of confusion!  
Line 18. The Epicycles in respect of their orbs are but as a Mite in a cheese. Do you say so, Mr. Lilly? No. Do you say so, Mr. Booker? No. Look thee now, Phil, how thy confident ignorance hath abused those two famous Artists. They are ashamed to utter such loud nonsense. And now they have denied it, darest thou venture to say it, Anthroposophus? Tell me then how little and diminutive those Epicycles will prove in respect of their orbs, that have their diameters equal to the diameter of the orbit of the earth, or which is all one of the sun. Thou wilt answer me with the Cyclops in Erasmus, Istiusmodi subtilitates non capio. I do not not believe thou understandest the Question, though it be plainly propounded, and so I shall expect no answer.  
But come thy ways hither again, Phil. thou shalt not scape thus. I will not let thee go till I have called thee to an account for thy great bull of Basan as thou wouldst call it. Thou sayest, That the Epicycles of Ptolemy though they are too big to be true, yet that they are very diminutive things in respect of their orbs that sustain them; as little and diminutive as mites in a cheese in respect of the cheese. To speak the most favourably of this assertion of thine that may be, it is sublime astronomical Nonsense. And if we could find any Nonsense sublunary to parallel it, it would be some such stuff as this: Although the cannon bullets in the tower be as big as mount Athos, yet they are so little that they will not fill the compass of a walnut. This is a bundle of falsities and so is that. That is, Both the parts of these compound Axioms are false, and the composition itself also illegitimate. These are Discrete Axioms, Eugenius, and both the parts ought to be true, but they are both false here. And there ought also, especially these notes Quamvis and tamen being in them, to be only a Discretion of parts, but here is an implacable Opposition: things put together that imply a contradiction. In the latter of these Axioms it is manifest, but I will show you, it is so also, in that former of yours.  
For first, the Epicycles of Ptolemy, are not too big to be true. For they do not suppose them bigger than will be contained, within the thickness of their own orbs. And you yourself say that they are but as mites in a cheese in respect of their orbs. So that it is plain according to what you yourself grant, as well as according to the Hypothesis of Ptolemy, that they are not too big to be true.  
But secondly, I say they are not as little as Mites in respect of the cheese they are in. For the semi-diameter of Satur's Epicycle is to the semi-diameter of his eccentric, at least as 1 to 10. and the semi-diameter of Jupiter's Epicycle to the semi-diameter of his eccentric more than as 1 to 6. but Mars his, as 2 to 3, or thereabout, and the semidiameter of the Epicycle of Venus, to the semidiameter of her eccentric more than as 2 to 3 by a good deal. And is it not plain hence Eugenius, that thy mite in a cheese must swell up at least to the bigness of a Mouse in a cheese, though thy cheese were almost as little as a trundle bed wheel, or a box of Marmalade: and what a vast difference is there betwixt a Mite and a Mouse, but thy ignorance emboldens thee to speak any thing.  
But now in the last place, the putting these two falsities together is contradiction, as well as they are severally false. For it is evident, that if the Epicycles be too big to be true, they cannot be so little as Mites in a cheese, in respect of their orbs. For then would they be easily contained within the crassities or thickness of their orbs. But their not being able to be contained within the Crassities of their orbs, that's the thing that must make them too big to be true.  
And questionless if we will join the Epicycle with its right office, which is to bring down the Planet to its lowest Perigee, than the Epicycles of the planets will be too big to be true. For there will be of them that are half as big again as their Deiferents, nay five times if not ten times as big. And of these Epicycles I said (and Ptolemy's ought to have been such, unless they did desert their office) that they were too big to be true. But thou pronouncest concerning these things thou know'st not what, and therefore art easily tossed up and down like a shittle cock thou know'st not whither. How do I blow thee about as the dust or the down of thistles?  — ut plumas avium pappósque volantes.  

Obseru. 16.  
Thou Moor à {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} As much as a {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} Thou art so drunk & intoxicated with thine own blood (as Aristotle saith of all young men that they are {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}) that thou seest double, two O's in my name for one.   

Obseru. 19  
See what I answer at observation the 23.   

Obseru. 20.  
Phy, Phy, some rose-water. Who speaks like a Puritan now, Phil? but why some rose water? hast thou devoured an orange like an apple, pulp and pill and all, and so made thy mouth bitter, O thou man of Wales! But it is to wash hur mouth from bawdry. Why wilt thou be so bold then as to name the Lawyers phrase rem in re! Or hast thou a purpose to call all the Lawyers, bawdy Gentlemen, by craft? I tell thee, Phil. To the pure all things are pure; but thy venereous fancy which I rebuked in this passage thou exceptedst against, doth soil and corrupt what is chaste and pure.   

Obseru. 21.  
I do, Mastix, I do. Why dost thou not then explain it, thou little Mastigia?   

Obseru. 23.  
Here I have you fast, Philalethes, for all your wriggling. For if our vital and animal spirits, which are as much a part of us, as any other part of our body is, be fed and nourished by the air, than the air is an Element of our body. But here he would fain save himself, by saying that the air is rather a Compound then an Element: but let any man judge how much more it is compounded then the Earth, and then Water which nourisheth by drinking, as well as the air can do by breathing.   

Obseru. 24.  
Page 59 line 1. How can darkness be called a mass? &c. No it cannot. Nor a thin vaporous matter neither. Thy blindness cannot distinguish Abstracts from concretes. Thy soul sits in the dark, Philalethes, & nibbles on words as a mouse in a hole on cheese parings. But to slight thy injudicious cavil at Mass, & to fall to the Matter. I charged thee here to have spoke such stuff as implies a Contradiction. Thou saidst that this mass (be it black or white, dark or bright, that's nothing to the controversy here) did contain in a far less compass all that was after extracted. I say this implies a Contradiction. But you answer, this is nothing but Rarefaction and Condensation according to the common notion of the Schools. I but that Notion itself implies a Contradiction, for in Rarefaction and Condensation there is the generation or deperdition of no new Matter, but all matter hath impenetrable dimensions. Therefore if that large expansion of the heavens lay within the compass of the mass, that matter occupied the same space that the mass did, and so dimensions lay in dimensions, and thus that which is impenetrable was penetrated, which is a contradiicton. What thou allegest of the rarefaction of water into clouds or vapours, is nothing to the purpose. For these clouds and vapours are not one continued substance, but are the particles of the water put upon motion, and playing at some distance one from another, but do really take up no more place than before.   

Obseru. 26.  
To say nothing to thy fond cavil at words in the former Observation, and thy false accusation that I called thee dog (for I would not dishonour Diogenes so much as to call thee so) and leaving it to the censure of the world, how plain and real thy principles are, I am come now to my 26 Observation on the 23 page of thy Anthroposophia, where thou tellest us, That there is a threefold Earth, viz Elementary, celestial, spiritual. Now let us see what an excellent layer of the fundamentals of Science thou wilt prove thyself. And here he begins to divide before he defines. Thou shouldest first have told us what Earth is in general before thou divide it. This is like a creature with a cloven foot, and never a head. But when thou didst venture to define these Members, where was thy Logic?. Ought not every definition, nay, ought not every Precept of Art to be {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} but I will not vex thy head with these severities. The Magnet is the second member, the object of this 26 Observation. Here you say, I condemn this Magnet, but I do not offer to confute it. But I answer, I have as substantially confuted it as merrily; but thou dost not take notice of it. I have intimated that this precept of art is not {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} nay, that it is plainly false: For it affirms that which hath no discovery by reason or experience, viz. That there is a certain earth which you call the Magnet, that will draw all things to it at what distance so ever.  
Quodcunque ostendis mihi sic, incredulus odi. So far am I from approving thy Magnet, O Magicus. Nor do the pages thou here citest, of which I give a favourable censure, prove any such thing. Let the Reader peruse them, and judge. Indeed certain operations of the soul, are highly and Hyperbolically there set out by thee; but the Magnet came dropping in at the latter end of the story. I gave no allowance to that. I will not have my soul so ill taught, as to attract metal out of men's purses at any distance whatsoever.  
Page 64. line 12. Didst thou ever hear or know that I was a pickpocket? If I had had the least suspicion of thee that thou wert so, I would not have called thee so, for it had been an unmerciful jest. But if thou wert as full of candour and urbanity, as I deem thee clear of that crime, thou wouldst not have interpreted it malice but mirth. For such jests as these are not uncivil nor abusive to the person, when the materiality of them are plainly and confessedly incompatible to the party on whom they are cast.   

Obseru. 27.  
Page 65. line 14. prithee why a Gallileo's tube, were there more Galileo's then one? Certainly, Phil. thou dost not look through a Galilco's glass, but through a multiplying glass, that seest in my English more Galileo's then one. Go thy ways for the oddest corrector of English that ever I met with in all my days.   

Obseru. 28.  
Page 67. line 1. For I fear God. The devils also believe and tremble: But dost thou love God, my Philalethes? If thou didst, thou wouldst love thy brother also. But shall I tell thee truly what I fear? Truly I fear, that thou hast no such precious medicine to publish, which thou makest so nice of; and that thou dost only make Religion a cover for thine ignorance. But let me tell thee this sober truth, That Temperance will prevent more diseases by far, than thy medicine is like to cure; and Christian Love would relieve more by many thousands, than thy philosopher's stone that should convert baser metals into gold. There is gold enough in the world, and all necessaries else for outward happiness; but the generations of men make themselves miserable by neglecting the inward. This is palpably true, and it would astonish a man to see how they run madding after the noise of every pompous difficulty, and how stupid and sottish they are to those things, which God has more universally put in their power, and which would (if they made use of them) redound to their more general and effectual good.   

Obseru. 29.  
So doth S. John prophesy too. But Magicus is too wise to understand him. S. John tells us of a new Heaven, and of a new Earth. Here, Magicus, having recourse to his chemistry, in the height of his imagination prefigures to himself not only Crystalline Heavens, but also a Vitrifide Earth. But I consulting with Scripture, and with the simplicity of mine own plain Spirit, think of a new Heaven and a new Earth wherein dwells righteousness. He's for an Eden with flowery walks, and pleasant trees; I am for a Paradisc,  {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} 
Where Virtue, wisdom, and good Order meet. As the Chaldee Oracles describe it. He is for a pure clear place, I place my happiness in a clear and pure mind, which is the holy place or temple of God.   

Obseru. 30.  
Tecum habita. I will not urge that Precept too strictly upon thyself, because I wish thee a better companion.   

Obseru. 31.  
For thy ho! sounds like the noise of a Sowgelder. As much as the celestial orbs or labyrinth rumble like a wheel-barrow. This is but the crowing of thine own brain to the tune of the sowgelders horn.   

Obseru. 32.  
Here in answer to my objection thou tellest me that Ruach and Nephesh, the parts whereof the soul of man consists, differ as male and female. All the mystery than is to make man's soul an Hermaphrodite. Thou shouldst have told us here what operations were proper to Ruach, what to Nephesh, whether vegetation belong to the one, reason and sense to the other: or whether in this the divine life were seated, in that the animal and fleshly reason, and the like. But the subtlety of thy wit reacheth no further than the discrimination of sexes, and the grossly pointing out of Male and Female.  
Page 69. line 9 For your Sodomite Patron Aristotle, allows of it in his politics. More wretched beast he if it be so: but I do not remember any such passage in his politics, and yet have read them through, but long since; and it is sufficient for me if I remember the best things in authors I read, I can willingly let go the worst. But what thou sayest of Aristotle is not unlikely; for he is taxed for this unnatural practice in Diogenes Laertius, with one Hermias a foul friend of his, in the praise of whom notwithstanding he hath wrote a very fair and elegant hymn, which begins thus,  

{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}   
To this sense,  

Virtue! that putst human race  
Upon so hard toil and pains;  
Life's fairest prize! Thy lovely face  
Bright Virgin, the brave Greek constrains  
To undergo with an unwearied mind  
Long wasting labours, and in high desire  
To throng through many deaths to find  
Thee; that dost fire  
Man's soul with hopes of such immortal fruit  
No gold can suit,  
Nor love of Parents equalise,  
Nor slumbers sweet that softly seize the eyes.   
So easy a thing is it for bad men to speak good words.  
It is recorded by the same author out of Aristippus, that the same Philosopher was also so much taken with the conversation of Hermias his whore, that in lieu of that pleasure he reaped by her, he did the same ceremonies and holy rites to her, that the Anthenians were wont to do to their goddess Ceres Eleusinia. From whence it seems that his soul did consist of two parts, Male and Female, he having to do with both. So that he is more like to prove thy patron than mine, Philalethes! for I have to do with neither.  
Page 69. line 10. But I am tickled say you. Yes, I say you are so tickled and do so tickle it up in your style with expressions fetched from the Gynaeceum, that you are ridiculous in it, and I thought good to show you to be such as you are. But for mine own part I am moved neither one way nor another with any such things, but think good to affix here this sober consideration. That there being generally in Men and Women that are not either Heroically good, or stupidly and beastly nought, a kind of shame and aversation in the very naming of these things, that it is a sign that the soul of man doth in its own judgement find itself here in this condition of the body, as I may so speak, in a wrong box, and hath a kind of presage and conscience that better and more noble things belong unto it, ease why should it be troubled at its own proclivity to that which is the height and flower of the pleasure of the body as they that are given to this folly do profess.  

{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}  
{non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}   
To this sense.  

What life? what sweet without the golden tie  
Of Venus? dead to this, straight let me die.   
But that there is a natural shame of these acts and the propension to them, that story of Typhon in Diodorus Siculus is no obscure argument. For when he had murdered his brother Osiris, that he might more sacramentally bind to him for his future help and security, his twenty four complices in this act, he hewed the body of his brother into so many pieces, but was fain to fling the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} his Pudendum into the river, they every one being unwilling to take that for their share. So much aversation is there naturally from these obscenities that even those that are otherwise execrably wicked, have some sense of it. But I do not speak this as if Marriage itself were a sin as well as whoredom and adultery, for questionless it is permitted to the soul in this case she's in. But if she be not monstrous and degenerate she cannot but be mindful that she is made for something far better.   

Obseru. 33.  
To this observation thou answerest like a man with reason and generosity and with a well beseeming wit, how unlike to thyself art thou here, Anthroposophos?   

Obseru. 34.  
I perceive by thy answer to this observation thou art not at all acquainted with Ramus what ere thou art with the Schoolmen, but I pass over this and come to what is of more moment.  
Page 71. line 19 This is one of your three designs. Yes, it is one of those three designs I taxed you for in the beginning of my Observations. And here I make it good out of your own text Anthroposophia pag. 33. line 1. These are your words. And now Reader, Arrige aures, come on without prejudice and I will tell thee that, which never hitherto hath been discovered. What can be more plain if you will but prick up your ears and attend to what you say yourself. But now I have discovered that this is but a boast of yours concerning a known Notion among the Christian Platonists, you begin to pluck in your ears and confess yourself a Plagiary. In the rest of your answer you do but teach your Grannam to crack nuts, I go on Magicus to the next.   

Obseru. 35.  
As a flame of one candle can light a thousand candles more. Your answer then to this Observation is this. That the soul is propagated as light is from light; That there is a multiplication without decision or division. But for thine and the Readers fuller satisfaction I shall answer thee here, as thou somewhere demandest, in the verse of Spencer but in the reason and sense of More, out of these four Stanza's in my Canto of the Preexistency of the Soul.  

Wherefore who thinks from Souls new Souls to bring  
The same let press the sun beams in his fist,  
And squeeze out drops of Light, or strongly wring  
The rainbow, till it die his hands well pressed;  
Or with uncessant industry persist  
Th' intentional species to mash and bray  
In marble mortar, till he has expressed  
A sovereign eyesalve to discern a Fay.  
As easily as the first all these effect you may.   

Ne may quaint Similes this fury damp,  
Which say that our soul's propagation  
Is, as when lamp we lighten from a lamp,  
Which done withouten diminution  
Of the first light, shows how the soul of man  
Though indivisible may another rear  
Imparting life. But if we rightly scan  
This argument, it cometh nothing near.  
To light the lamp's to kindle the sulphureous gear   

No substance new that act doth then produce.  
Only the oily atomesed doth excite  
And wake into a flame. But no such use  
There is of human Sperm. For our free spirit  
Is not the kindled seed, but substance quite  
Distinct there from. If not: Then bodies may  
So changed be by Nature and stiff fight  
Of hungry stomachs, that what erst was clay  
Then herbs, in time itself in sense may well display.   

For than our soul can nothing be but blood,  
Or nerves, or brains, or body modifyde;  
Whence it will follow that cold stopping crud  
Hard mouldy cheese, dry nuts, when they have rid  
Due circuits through the heart, at last shall speed  
Of life and sense, look through our thin eyes,  
And view the Close wherein the Cow did feed  
Whence they were milked; gross pie-crust will grow wise  
And pickled Cucumbers sans doubt Philosophize    

Obseru. 37.  
Bid adieu to thy reputation Mastix. Well, now I perceive that thou thinkest that thou hast hit the nail on the head indeed. But all that thou dost or canst collect from what is in my Preface to the Canto concerning the sleep of the Soul, is but this: that whether we see or imagine that both of these are but the very energy of the Soul, and that the Soul doth not nor can perceive any thing immediately but her own energy. But what of all this? It doth not thence follow that the inward & outward sense is all one, but only unitate genericâ, no more than if I should say, that to be an Animal is but to have corporeal substance, life and sense, it would thence follow that an horse and a man are all one. Look thee now, Magicus, how I have passed through this huge Mound and Bulwark of thine, with as much ease and stillness as a gliding Spirit through a mudwall. I will only look back and laugh at thee Magicus, for a man of no logic. But if any man doubt whether thou sayst blind men see in their sleep, it is apparent that thou dost. For in thy Anthroposophia, Page 40. line 1. thou sayst, That the visible power is not destroyed as is plain in the dreams of blind men. Here if thou know'st what thou sayst, thou arguest from the effect to the cause, from the operation to the faculty, but is the operation of the Visive faculty (for thou dost barbarously call it visible) any thing else but seeing? therefore thou dost plainly assert that blind men see in their sleep. It would be well if they could walk in their sleep too: for than they would scarce have any loss of their eyes.   

Obseru. 38.  
Magicus, I do not altogether contemn the symbols and Signatures of nature, but I believe that Euphrasia or Eye-bright that hath the signature of the Eye, sees or feels no more, than the pulp of a wal-nut that hath the signature of the brain, doth understand or imagine.   

Obseru. 39  
What a pitiful account dost thou give me here of the difficulties I urged thee with. My Queres were these, You making two spirits in a man the rational and Sensitive. First, Whether the rational Spirit doth not hear and see in a man? Here you distinguish. The Sensitive Spirit sees the Object (say you) and the rational the Species. But I say unto thee, that sensation is nothing else, but the perceiving of some present corporeal object; and that the rational soul doth. For when two men discourse, that in them that reasons, hears the words, and sees the party with whom it reasoneth, does it not? Therefore they both see the object: But you will say, One sees by a species, the other without. I say nothing can be discerned without a species, that is, without an actual representation of the thing discerned. So that that distinction is in vain. And I would add this further, That every sentient spirit must perceive by its own species, and not by another's. But thou sayest, This sensitive Spirit like a glass represents the species of external objects. Then it seems the Sensitive spirits office is to be the glasses of the soul to see things in, but glasses themselves, Magicus, are not sentient, nor need this Spirit be so, that is the soul's glass; and it is plain it is not. For if these two were two different sensitive spirits, than they would have two different Animadversions; but there is but one animadversive spirit in a man, and therefore but one Sensitive. And that there is but one animadversive spirit in a Man is plain from hence, that if the rational animadversive bestow its animadversion fully elsewhere, the Sensitive in man cannot perform the thousandth part of that which is performed in brutes. We should lose ourselves in the most trivial matters, when notwithstanding this sensitive spirit in man, would have as quick a vehicle as in most brutes. Besides, this sensitive spirit having this animadversion, would have also a Memory apart, and would be able while the rational is busied about something else, to lay up observations such as beasts do by itself; and then long after to show them to the rational, to its sudden amazement and astonishment. But none of these things are. And in my apprehension it is, in a very gross and palpable way, sensible to me, that there is but one Animadversive in me, and I think I am no monster; If I be, it is (it seems) in that I am all rational spirit, and have had the luck to miss of the sensitive, the beast.  
Page 77. line 3. If this be true, than there be two hearing and seeing souls in a man. This is my second Quere; I asked if there be. To this you answer, Ha ha he! A very profound answer. This is no laughing matter, my friend. Have I not already showed you some difficulties, this asserting two sensitive Spirits in a man, is laden with? Answer them, Phil. I should gladly hear thee use thy tongue as well as see thee show thy teeth by laughing. For that slender faint reason that follows thy loud laughing, viz. The objects are different and the senses are different, that is taken away already. For the sting of my Argument is not this, that there would be two sensitive souls of the same nature in the body of a man; but that there should be two sensitive souls at all. And indeed, considering that the superior soul contains the faculties of the inferior, it is altogether needless. And that is a very sober truth, Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate. Which is to the same sense with that so often repeated in Aristotle and Theophrastus, {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} God and Nature do nothing in vain. And the right organization of parts and due temperature of the body, and proportion of animal spirits, this is all the glass the soul of man wants in this life, to see by or receive species from. But this glass hath no more sense itself, than an urinal or lookingglass hath. Where are you now, Phil. with your Ha hahe?  
Line 10. I could, Mastix, teach thee an higher truth. Yes truly, Magicus, you are best of all at those truths which dwell in the Highest. You love to soar aloft out of the ken of sense and reason, that you may securely rant it there in words of a strange sound and no signification. But though thou fliest up so high, like a Crow that hath both his eyes bored out, yet I have thee in a string, and can pluck thee down for all thy fluttering. Thou sayest that a soul may understand all things, sine conversione ad Phantasmata: this I suppose thou wouldst say to contradict Aristotle; but I do not suspect thee of so much learning as to have read him. He tells us in his book De Anima, {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that there is no understanding without phantasms. You say that we may understand all things without them. What think you of inidividuals, Magicus? of which it is controverted amongst the Platonists, whether there be any ideas of them or no. But being you are so confident an assertor, let's hear how stout a prover you are of your assertions. Know you this you have spoken by Sense, Reason, or divine Revelation? By this string I have plucked this blind Crow down; I have him as tame in my hand as a Titmouse: look how he pants, and gapes, and shows the white tip of his tongue, but says nothing. Go thy ways, Phil. for a pure philosophic Thraso.   

Obseru. 41.  
Three quarters of a year hast thou spent, &c. O Magicus, Magicus! thou art youthful and vainglorious, and tellest thy tutor that this hasty cookery thou entertainest him with, was dispatched and dressed up some ten days after the press was delivered of my Observations. How many ten days dost thou mean, by thy some ten days? Thou wouldst have thy tutor to struck thee on the head for a quick-parted lad, I perceive, Eugenius. But hadst thou not better have stayed longer, and writ better sense, more reason, and with less railing? But I poor slow beast! how long dost thou think I was viewing and observing that other excellent piece of thine? I confess, Magicus, because thou forcest me to play the fool as well as thyself, I was almost three quarters of a month about it; and how much more is that then some ten days, though but twice told over? and I will not be so curiously vainglorious, as to tell thee how great a share of this time was daily taken from me by necessary employments. This is to answer thy folly with folly. But I thank God that I glory in nothing, but that I feel myself an Instrument in the hand of God, to work the good of Men. The greatest strength of a man is weakness, and the power of Reason, while we are in this state, depends so much of the organs of the body, that its force is very uncertain and fickle. Is not the whole consistency of the body of Man, as a curdled cloud or coagulated vapour? and his Personality a walking shadow and dark imposture? All flesh is grass, and the glory thereof as the flower of the field: but the word of the Lord endureth for ever. Verily the people are as grass.   

Obseru. 42.  
Have at you my friends the Independents. The Independents indeed may be thy friends, Magicus; but I dare say thou art not in a capacity to be theirs, as having not yet wit and morality enough to be a friend unto thyself. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} A bad man cannot be friendly disposed towards himself, as having nothing in himself amiable and friendly, Aristot. Eth. ad Nicom, lib 9 cap. 4.   

Obseru. 43.  
Mastix, You denied formerly the Scripture was intended for philosophy. But you contending that it was, how fondly do you prefer Agrippa before Moses and Christ. This you would have called blasphemy; but I have learned no such hard language.   

Obseru. 44.  
For the natural Queres I put to thee here concerning the nature of Light, the Rainbow, the Flux and Reflux of the Sea, and the loadstone; I tell thee thou wilt never be able to answer sense to them, unless thou turn Cartesian, and explain them out of that Philosophy. But in the general, I mean, that the heats which the soul takes from personal admiration, make her neither wise, nor just; nor good, but only disturb the spirits, and disadvantage Reason.   

Obseru. 45.  
Page 81. line 2. Mastix would gladly put those asunder, whom God hath put together. You mean then that a Protestant and Christian, are termini convertibiles. What a rare Independent is Magicus! he is an Independent of the Church of England; which is as good sense as if he should say, he is a Protestant of the Church of Rome. Truly, Magicus, I think thou art an Independent in nothing but in thy Reasons and speeches; for in them indeed there is no dependency at all. They are Arena sine calce, and hang together like thum-ropes of sand. But before I be merry with thee; and I foresee I shall be when I come to thy verses, hear this sober aphorism from me. If that those things which are confessedly true in Christianity were closely kept to by men, it would so fill and satisfy their souls with an inward glorious light and spiritual joy, that all those things that are with destroying zeal and unchristian bitterness prosecuted by this and that Church, would, look all of them as contemptibly, as so many rush-candles in the light of the Sun.  
Line 15. You fall on my person. Well, I'll let your person go now, and fall on your Poetry. Where I believe, I shall prove you a notable wag indeed, and one that has abused your mother Oxford and all her children very slyly and dryly.  
Dry Pumick statues. You make your own brothers of Oxford then so many dry Pumices, things that have nothing in them at all. I wish you had been so too Phil, for you have been to me a foul wet sponge, and have squeazed all your filth upon my person, as you call it. But if thou knewest how real a friend I am to thy person, excess of kindness would make thee lick it all off again.  
Might make a marble weep to bear your verse. It seems then, you of Oxford make such dull heavy verses, that it would make a Monument of Marble like an overladen ass, weep to bear the burden of them.  
she heaved your fancies. What heavy leaden fancies are these that want such heaving. Up heavy heels. But how high did she heave them, Phil? As high as the other lead was heaved that covers the roof of your Churches and chapels? Nay higher. Above the very pinnacles, Mastix! A marvellous height, but the jackdaws of our University sit higher than thus, so it seems that the souls of the sons of your Mother Oxford are elevated as high as the bodies of the Jackdaws in the University of Cambridge. What large elevated fancies have your academics that reach almost as far as the eye and sense of an ordinary rustic! Your phansie's higher than the pinnacles, his sight higher than the Clouds, for he may see the sun and the stars too, if he be not blind.  
blessed in her martyrdom had you but shed— A Tear, &c. The sense is, I suppose, that your Mother had been burnt for a blessed Martyr if her sons had aforehand quenched out the fire with their tears.  
- One poor sigh for her last breath— That we may say she lived before her death. Here he accuseth his Mother for sucking her children's breath as, they say, a Cat doth young children's. Go thy ways Phil, for an unmerciful wit. I perceive thou wilt not spare neither Father Presbyter, nor thy Mother, nor thine own Brothers, but thou wilt break thy jest upon them. Well I now forgive thee heartily for all thy abuses upon me, I perceive thou wilt not spare thy dearest friends.   

Obseru. 47.  
Thou art not well acquainted with Gold thou art not a man of that metal. Here, Magicus, thy want of logic hath made thee a little witty. For if thou hadst understood that comparison doth not always imply any positive degree in the things compared, this conceit had been stifled before the birth. Thou sayst somewhere, that I am a thin, lean Philosopher; but I say, I am as fat as a hen is on the forehead. Whether do I profess myself lean or fat now? As lean as thou dost. Now when I say as Orient as false gold, do I say that false gold is Orient. Thou art a mere Auceps syllabarum, Magicus, or to look lower, a Mouse-catcher in Philosophy.   

Obseru. 48.  
Philalethes, say you, writ this book to revenge his death. No, Now I think you mention his death, only to bring this Latin sentence into your Book. Et quis didicit scribere in lucta lacrymarum & Atramenti.   

Obseru. 49.  
I excluded not thy censure but thy mercy. Thy words are, I expose it not to the mercy of man but of God. But it is no exposal or hardship at all to be exposed to mercy, therefore by mercy thou must needs understand censure.  
Page 86. line 2. You skud like a dog by Nilus. Here your fancy is handsome and apposite to what you would express, but that which you would express is false. For I fear no Crocodile, but the fate of Esop's dog who catching at the shadow lost the substance. Because I more than suspect that there is nothing real in those places I passed by, but only tremulous shadows of an unsettled fancy.  
Page 87. line 21. Did not I bid thee proceed to the censure of each part? What is your meaning, Philalethes! That you would have me confute all, right or wrong? No, Phil, I have done as saint George in his combat with the Dragon, thrust my spear under the monster's wing, into the parts which are most weak or least scaly. What I have excepted against was with judgement and reason, and so good, that all that I have said hitherto, stands as strong and unshaken of thy weak reasonings and impotent railings, as rocks of Adamant, and Pillars of brass at the shooting off of a child's eldern-gun against them. Let's now see how like a man thou hast quit thyself in the ensuing Discourse.   

Anima Magica Abscondita.  
WEll, Eugenius, I have now perused this second part of thy Answer, which doth not answer at all in proportion to thy first. How lank! how little is it! Thou hast even wearied thyself with scolding, and now thou art so good natured as to draw to an end. Faint, Phil, Faint? let me feel thy pulse. Assuredly it strikes a Myurus, which is a sign thou art languid at the heart. Or is thy Book troubled with the Cramp, and so hath its legs twitched up to its breech? or hath it been on Procrustes his bed and had the lower parts of it cut off? Whatever the Cause is, the Effect is apparent; that thou art wringled up at the end like a pig's tail, and shrivelled on heaps like a shred of parchment. How many sober passages of Morality? How many weighty Arguments of Reason? How many Frolicks of wit hast thou slipped over and not so much as mentioned, much less applied any suitable answer? But I hope thou wilt make good use of them silently with thyself, and rectify thy fancy hereafter by my judgement, though thou thinkest it as harsh, as standing on the Presbytercall stool: to give me public thanks. In the mean time, Reader, be contented, that I, only reply to what he hath thought good to oppose. But what he runs away from so cowardly, I will not run after him with it, nor be so cruel as to force him to abide.  

Obseru. 1.  
Page 91. line 9 It is plain then, that the body and substance of the definition is contained in these few words, Principium motûs & quietis. Why, Magicus, because you make up he rest with thinking? Suppose thy Picture were drawn to the waste, and thou thoughtest of the rest of thy body. Doth that picture therefore contain the full draught of thy body? Away, thou bird of Athens.   

Obseru. 2.  
You tell me a form can not be known otherwise then by what it can do or operate. I told thee so Phil, and do tell thee so again. And thou only deniest it, thou dost not disprove it; wherefore Phyllis is mine yet, and not the willow Garland, but the willow Rod is thine, for not learning this plain lesson any better all this while. For, (to speak to thy own sense and conceit of the soul, that it is an intelligent Fire, or Light) thou canst not frame any notion of Intelligent, but from intellectual operations: nor of Light, but from what it operates upon thy sense, thy sight; which is a truth most evidently plain to any man that is not stark blind.  
Page 92. line 5. You say Mastix, I have not considered the difference added in the definition of Nature. No, You had not when you cavilled at the Genus, as angry at it, because it did not monopolise the whole office of the definition to itself and supply also the place of a Difference. Fond Cavil! But thou supposedest, it seems, that I would never deign to answer, so unclean an Adversary as thou hast shown thyself, and that thy Readers would never take the pains to see whether thou spoke true or false, and that hath made thee say any thing, and that with undaunted confidence and foulest insultations, that the simple might be sure to believe thee, without any more ado. Eugenius, enjoy thou the applause of the simple.  {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} 
But one wise man to me is as much as ten thousands of such, and infinite swarms of them, not so much as one. I am fully of Heraclitus his mind for that, Philalethes.   

Obseru. 3.  
Here, Philalethes, you contemning Definitions made from the proper Operations of the things defined, I intimate to you, that you necessarily imply, that you look after the knowledge of a stark-naked substance, which is impossible ever to be had. What do you answer to this? Nothing. Let the Reader judge else.   

Obseru. 4.  
Let anybody compare thy Finihabia with the expositions of those terms {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} and {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, made by Julius Scaliger (for it is he that is more cunning at nonsense than the devil, not I) and he shall find that thou hast spent a page and an half here to no purpose, but only to show some few faint flashes of wit. For at last thou dost acknowledge the aptness and significancy of the words, but still complainest that there is no news of the substance of the soul in them. To which I answer again, A substance is a thing impossible to be known otherwise then by its proper operations, or peculiar relations to this or that, as I have often inculcated. But how do you take away this answer? Only by making a wry mouth, and crying, Away! away! Have I not already demonstrated unto thee, that it is impossible to know substances themselves, but only by their operations? Here he answers again, that that cannot be; For than a ploughman would be as wise as himself, and mother Bunch as his mother Oxenford. But to satisfy this inconvenience, (if it be any, to grant a ploughman wiser than thou art) I say, Thou and thy mother may be wiser than a ploughman in other things, though not in this; and in this, if your notion be more adequate and precise than his is, that is, If you are able, according to the Rules of logic, to examine whether your assertion may go for an axiom, that is, {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, or {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, and are able to rest satisfied, by finding yourselves to know according to the capacity of the subject. But now, Phil. you endeavour to go so far beyond the ploughman, that you fall short of him, and reach at so high strains, that you have strained yourself till you seem half cracked to the sober. For this truth, That a substance is not to be known, but by its proper operations, is a truth so clear, that it is clear that he is destitute of sight and judgement, that doth not discern it even at the first proposal.   

Obseru. 5, 6, 7.  
What thou answerest to these 5th, 6th, & 7th Observations is nothing at all to the purpose, and therefore to no purpose at all to answer any thing to them, as I have already said in the like case, and I must leave something to the candour and judgement of the Reader.   

Obseru. 8.  
Page 97. line 1. Mastix, you place the difficulty in the Rudiments or Sperms, because they are lax and fluid. No, Magicus, but I do not. For I think they are always so, or else the Ratio Seminalis would have a hard task of it. But when thou sayest, that the Anima, in the Matter missing a vent, &c. the difficulty is how a thing so subtle as a soul is, should miss a vent in so lax matter as the first Rudiments of life. This is the difficulty, Magicus. But thou understandest not the force of any thing I propound to thee, thy apprehension is so out of tune with straining at high things nothing to the purpose. But I perceive, though thou wouldst dissemble it, Magicus, that I have beat thee from the bunghole, and that rude expression borrowed thence. And now thou art as busy as a Moth about a candle, to fetch a Metaphor thence. For thou tellest us, that this union is like that betwixt the candle and the flame. This indeed for some Poetical illustration may do well: but what Pholosophicall satisfaction is there in it, Philalethes? For first, the flame is without the candle, not in it; but the soul within the body, not without it. Secondly, the flame is an effect of the candle, but the soul is not an effect of the body, the body is not the pabulum thereof, and the very substance of which it is made, by superinducing a new modification. Thirdly, and lastly, the soul is still the same individual soul; but the flame is no more the same flame, than the water betwixt such and such banks of the river, is still the same water. If thou hadst put thy finger into thy nose, and said, Lo the mystery of the union of the soul and body: it had been as much philosophical satisfaction as this, from the union of flame and candle. Thou pitiful puzzled thing! thou art not yet able to weigh what thou sayest. And now I have drove thee from the flame of the candle, thou hast scudded away quite into the dark, flown to I know not what strange obscure expressions, a story of old grand-dame Nature, with a set Ruff and a gold chain about her neck, which thou callest propinquity of Complexions, and I know not what. I prithee how much doth this differ from Sympathy and Antipathy, which all knowing men call Asylum ignorantiae: and now I have drove thee thither, I will leave thee in that Sanctuary of fools. What I have said, I have already made good, that the soul's union with the body is more theomagical than Magicus himself is aware of.   

Obseru. 9  
Page 98. line 19 Both which he makes to be one and the same thing. All that I say there is, that those verses are understood of the vehicle of the soul, not of the soul itself; and it is Theupolus his opinion as well as mine, who citys those verses of Virgil, and gives that sense of them; to wit, that the twofold vehicle of the soul is there meant, the ethereal and Spirituous, not the soul itself, Academic. Contemplate. lib. 4. So that Virgil doth not at all patronize thy gross conceit of making the soul consist of fire and air.  
Page 99 line 10. I grant the soul to be a bodily substance that hath dimensions too. Why Phil? Is there any bodily substances without dimensions? I could very willingly grant thee a mere body without a soul, thou hast so little reason and sense in thee; or if thou hast a soul, that it is a corporeal one, and it may well be so: but my question is meant of souls that have Sense and Reason in them, whether they be corporeal substances or no? Yes, say you, they are. They are intelligent Fire and Light. I say, Phil. thou art all fire, but no light, nor intelligent at all. Thou art the hottest fellow that ever I met with in all my days, as hot as a tailor's Goose when it hisseth, and yet as dark. But let's endeavour (if it be possible) to vitrify thy opaque carcase, and transmit a little light into thee. Dost thou know then what fire is? how it is a very fluid body, whose particles rest not one by another, but fridge one against another, being very swiftly and variously agitated. In this condition is the matter of fire. But now I demand of thee; Is there any substance in this fire thou speakest of, (for thou sayest it is really fire, and usest no Metaphor) which we may call the essential Form thereof, or no? If there be, I ask thee whether that Form be Intelligent, or no? If it be, then that is the soul, and this subtle agitated matter is but the vehicle. But if thou wilt say, that the subtle fiery matter itself is the Intelligent Soul, see what inconveniencies thou entanglest thyself in. For fire being as homogeneal a body as water is, and having all the parts much what alike agitated; how can this fire do those offices that commonly are attributed to the soul? First, how can it organize the body into so wise a structure and contrivement, the parts of this fire tending as much this way as that way or at least tending only one way, suppose upward. Secondly, how can it inform the whole body of an Embryo in the womb, and of a grown man? For if it was but big enough for the first, it will be too little for the latter; unless you suppose it to grow, and to be nourished. But thus, you will not have the same individual Soul you was Christened with, and must be forced to turn not only Independent, but Anabaptist, that your new soul may be baptised: for it is not now the same that you was Christened with before. For I say, that ten spoonfuls of water added to one, should rather individuate the whole, then that one of that whole number should individuate the ten. Thirdly, how can it move itself, or the body in a spontaneous way? For all the particles of this fiery matter wriggling and playing on their own centres, or jointly endeavouring to tend upwards, makes nothing to a spontaneous motion, no more than the atoms of dust that are seen playing in the sun beams, striking through a chink of a wall into a dark room, can conspire into one spontaneous motion, and go which way they please.  
Wherefore I say, there ought to be some superintendent Form that takes hold of all these fiery particles and commands them as one body, and guides them this way or that way, and must be the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} of this fiery substance, that is, There must be such an essence in this fiery matter (and that is noted by the preposition {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}) as doth {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} and {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} that doth hold together, that doth drive this way or that way, according to its nature or will, and yet thus driving doth keep possession of this fiery Matter; and what is this but a Soul? not the indument, the smock or petticoat of the Soul as thou call'st it. Eugenius, thou art old excellent at finding out naked essences, it seems, that takest the garment for the body. Thou art so young that thou canst not distinguish betwixt a living barn, and a baby made of clouts. But this is not all that I have to say Phil. Fourthly, I say that this fire cannot be the Soul, because fire is devoid of sense. I but you say you understand an Intelligent fire. Learnedly answered, and to as much purpose as if you should say, that a Soul is a Post or a Pillar, and then you should distinguish and tell me, you meant an Intelligent Post or Pillar, but I say fire hath no more sense than a Post or Pillar has reason. For if it have sense, it must have that which the Schools call Sensus communis. And now tell me Phil, to which of all the playing particles of this Ignis fatuus of thine thou wilt appoint the office of the Sensus Communis, or why to any one more than to the rest? But if thou appoint all, there will be as many several sensations, as there are particles. Indeed so many distinct living things. And thou wilt become more numerous within, than the possessed in the Gospel, whose name was Legion, because they were many. But if thou wilt pitch upon any one particle above the rest, tell me where it is? In the middle or at the outside of this fire? I will interpret thee the most favourably, and answer for thee; In the middle. But I demand of thee, Why shall this in the middle have the privilege of being the Sensus Communis rather then any other, or how will it be able to keep itself in the middle in so fluid a body? And if it were kept there, what privilege hath it but what the most of the rest have, as well as it, to make it fit for the office of a Sensus Communis? For it must be, either because it is otherwise moved on its centre, than the other are on theirs, which you can not prove either to be, or if it were, to be to any purpose: Or it must be, because it hath some advantage in consideration of the joint motion of the particles. Let the joint motion therefore of the particles be either rectilinear or circular. If rectilinear, as suppose in a square, let the process of motion be from side to side parallel. Hath not then any particle in a right line that is drawn through the centre of this Square figure, parallel to two of the sides, equal advantage for this office (the transmission of outward sense being perpendicular to the said right line) that the middle particle hath? For thus it can receive but what comes in one line, transmission of sense being parallel as is supposed. Nay, the points of any other inward line parallel to this, will do as well as the points of this middle line, which is as plainly true, as two and two is four, if thou understandest sense when it is propounded to thee. Well, but it may be you may think you can mend yourself by supposing the joint motion of this fiery matter to be circular. I say no. For then that of this motion, that respects external objects is from the centre to the Circumference, as it is plain in that ordinary experiment of a Sling. And thus motion is from the middle particle not towards it. But you should say here, if you could answer so wisely, that motion bearing forward from this centre toward the object, that reciprocally the object will bear against it; and so there will be a transmission of sense to the centre round about from all the circumferential parts of this fiery Orb which thou called'st the naked soul. But I say, Magicus, if the middle point of this Orb get the place of the Sensus Communis, because there is a common transmission of motion from sensible Objects thereunto: I say then that there be more Sensus Communes in this Orb than One, because such transmissions as are not perpendicular to this Orb, will meet in several points distant from the middle point or centre of this Orb, and there are enough such external transmissions as these. I might add also, that the middle point or particle being though a minute one yet a body, and consequently divisible, that that will also bid fair for a multiplicity of Common Senses. But I will add only this, That I hope to see the day wherein thou wilt be so wise as to be able to confess, that the author of Anthroposophia Theomagica, &c. was the most confident Ignaro that ever wet paper with ink. But before I leave this fourth argument, let me only cast in one thing more which equally respects both Hypotheses, either of rectilinear or circular motion. And that's this. If any one particle of this fiery substance, be the Common sense, it must be also the principle of spontaneous motion to the whole substance. For we see plainly that that which hath the Animadversive faculty in man, or the office of Common sense, moves the whole man, or that the motion of him is directed, at the beck of this. But I prithee Phil, tell me if thou canst possibly imagine, that any one particle in this fiery substance should be able to impress spontaneous Motion upon the whole. I know thou canst not but think it impossible. Fifthly, If the soul be fire (fire being so fluid and unsteady a substance) how can there be any memory in it? You remember that experssion in Catullus, whereby he would set forth sudden obliteration & forgetfulness of things, that it is like writing in the Water or in the air.  
In vento aut rapidâ scribere oportet aquâ.  
But what think you of fire then, will that consistency bear more durable characters? The perpetual fridging and toying of the fiery particles doth forthwith cancel whatever is impressed, and now there is neither Common sense nor Memory to be found in your fire, we may be secure there is no Reason to be found there. For the Discursive Faculty requires some {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, something fixed to tread upon as well as the Progressive. But in your fire all is afloat, nothing fixed. Sixthly and lastly, If the Soul of man be either fire or air, or both, I do not see that it will prove immortal; but that its consistency will be dispersed and scattered like the clouds. It will not be able to conflict with the boisterous winds, or scape blowing out, or being lost in the thin air, as other flames are, it once being uncased of the armature of the body. And these Vehicles which you will have to be the very Soul itself, they being so changeable and passive within the body, it will not be absurd with Lucretius to infer that they will be utterly dissolved when they are without.  

Haec igitur tantis ubi morbis, corpore in ipso  
Factentur, miserisque modis distracta laborent  
Cur eadem credis sine corpore, in aere aperto,  
Cum validis ventis aetatem degere posse?   
To this sense.  

If in the body racked with tort'rous pain  
And tossed with dire disease they're wearied so;  
This shelter lost, how can they then sustain  
The strong assaults of stormy winds that blow?   
I tell thee Phil, such a soul as thou fanciest would be no more able to withstand the winds then the dissipable clouds, nor to understand any more sense than a soul of clouts, or thy own Soul doth.  
But now I have so fully confuted thy gross opinion of the Soul, it may be happily expected that I would declare mine own. But Phil, I only will declare so much, that I do not look on the Soul as a peripatetical atom, but as on a spiritual substance, without corporeal dimensions, but not destitute of an immaterial amplitude of Essence, dilatable and contractible. But for further satisfaction in this point, I refer to my philosophical Poems. And do profess that I have as distinct, determinate, and clear apprehension of these things, and as wary and coherent, as I have of any corporeal thing in the world. But Heat and Phantastry to suddled minds, are as good companions as Caution and Reason to the sober. But the durableness of that satisfaction is uncertain, whereas solid Reason is lasting and immutable.   

Obseru. 10.  
Page 101. line 6. But from a similitude and symbol of Nature. You are indeed very good at similitudes Phil. as I have proved heretofore out of your skill in Zoography. But this is another business. For here you profess to speak, of the symbolising and sympathising of things one with another in Nature, and so mutually moving to union, by a kind attractive power, according to that saying  {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}. 
Well be it so that there is a mutual attractive power in things that symbolize one with another (for the attraction is mutual as well as the similitude mutual) What is this to take away what I have objected? Nothing. But I will show you how you are hanged in your own chain. For it is as plain, as one of the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, that where two things of the same nature act, the greater is stronger, and the stronger prevails. Wherefore three portions of light should fetch up two, or five one; rather than one should fetch down three, or five, or two. This is the bare point of my reason which I covered with a double comparison. viz. from the greater number of the links of a Chain preponderating the less number, and from the greater portion of Earth prevailing over the less; as in that instance, when a clod taken from the earth and let go in the free air, the earth commands it back to itself again, according to that conceit of magnetism. And here the argument was à pari, not à specie, and there may be a collation of parity even in contraries. And your ignorance of that logical Notion, hath enabled you to rail so much, and speak so little to the purpose on this Observation, as any Logician may very easily discern.   

Obseru. 13.  
Page 103. line 14. Answer if thou darest to any one of these Questions. Assure thyself, Eugenius, I can give a very rational answer to every one of them. But for thy sake I think fit to answer none of them. But what is in my philosophical Poems will salve them all.  
I will now rather examine what force of Arguments you have to prove that that which orders Matter into shape and form, is Animadversive and Intelligent.  
Your first Argument is; that if there were no Animadversion in the Ratio Seminalis, (or call it what you will) that shapes the Matter into Form, the Agent would mistake in his work.  
Secondly, That he would work he knew not what, nor wherefore, and that therefore all Generations would be blind Casualties.  
Thirdly, There would not be that Method, infallibility of Action nor proportion and Symmetry of parts in the work.  
Fourthly and Lastly, That there would be no End nor Impulsive cause to make him to work.  
To all these unsound Reasons, I have already answered very solidly and truly. That the force of them reached no further than thus. 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. And this is the opinion of Plotinus, Marsilius Ficinus, and all the Platonists that I have met with. {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} &c. Ennead. 2. lib 3. To this sense. For the Ratio Seminalis acts in the Matter and that which acts thus naturally, neither understands nor sees, but hath only a power to transform the Matter, not knowing any thing but making only as it were a form or shape in the water. And Ficinus compares this Ratio Seminalis, to an Artifice cut off from the mind of the Artificer and made self-subsistent, and able to work upon prepared matter, but without knowledge, as being disjoined from all animadversive essence. This is the right notion of the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}. And this fully takes away the force of all your Arguments. For these being divine art embodied in Nature and Matter, and working naturally, they will  
First, Mistake no more, than a Stone will in its journey downwards, or the Fire in its course upward; which go always right, if no external obstacle hinder them. And these will work right if the Matter be duly prepared.  
Secondly, Though they work they know not what, yet they work right in virtue of that cause from whence they came, the divine Intellect: and their operation is no more casual than the ascent of Fire, and descent of Earth; for it is natural.  
Thirdly, This third falls in with the second, and the same answer will serve both.  
Fourthly, There is an Impulsive cause and End of their working, though unkown to them, yet not unknown to the author of them. As in the orderly motion of a Watch, the Spring knows not the end of its Motion, but the Artificer doth. Yet the watch moves, and orderly too, and to a good End. But this fourth falls in also with the second or first. And you see now that they are indeed all fallen to nothing at all. So easily is Confidence overcome when unbacked with solid Reason.   

Obseru. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19  
Page 107. line 5. Did ever man scribble such ridiculous impertinencies? Never any man before Eugenius Philalethes. But why will you scribble such stuff, Phil. that will put you to the pains of reproaching of it when you have done? My exception against your definition of the first principle of your Clavis was as solid as merry. For, One in one, and One from one, is no definition of any one thing in the world. For definitio, or {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} is a bounding and limiting what you define. But here is no bounds nor limits at all. For every thing that is, is One in one, and One from one, viz. in one world and from one God. And then in your other attempt this way, to definc it, A pure white Virgin walking in shades and Tiffanies, is a mere foolery in Philosophy, and teacheth nothing but that your fancy is very feminine. Now in answer to all this, you contrive two ridiculous paralogisms, and then laugh at them when you have done.  
Page 108. line 8. Made their God Jupiter an Adulterer. And you Eugenius, bestow a wife on the God of Israel, and make her after an adulteress, and then call me blasphemous for deriding your folly.  
Page 109. line 14. Which thou dost blasphemously call pitiful services. Yes Philalethes, And I ought to call them so, in comparison of that high good that is intended to us by Scripture. They are pitiful things indeed in comparison of that. And thou art a pitiful fellow to make an Independent of, that hast no more wit nor Christianity in thee then to call this blasphemy. But a man may easily discern how religious thou art, though by moonlight, at the latter end of the 110 page, where thou dost display thine own Immodesty, by talking of displaying of petticoats.   

Obseru. 20.  
Line 5. The stars could not receive any light from the sun. Now you show how wise you are, in straining at so high a philosophical notion. I tell thee, Phil. the Stars cannot receive any light from the Sun, no more than this earth can from one single star. For the sun to our sight at the distance he is from the fixed stars, would seem no bigger than they, if so big. For according to the computation of Astronomers, the stars of the first magnitude are really far bigger than the sun: yet you see how little light they impart to the earth, and how very small they appear to us. And yet the lively vibration of their light shows plainly that it is their own, not borrowed. So that it is plain, that if the Sun and Stars be Man and Wife, this immense distance makes them live in a perpetual divorce.   

Obseru. 22.  
Line 17. Now at last Reader, he perceives his error: Therefore there needed none of your Correction. And I wish you could of yourself perceive yours too, that you may need none of mine. But I perceive by what follows here, thou dost not know my meaning by Spiritus Medicus. Which I pardon in thee, thou dost so seldom understand thy own.   

Obseru. 27.  
Line 12. Otherwise grass could not grow on the banks of it all the year long. I said the fringes of Reeds and Flags, and those gayer ornaments of herbs and flowers, could not grow all the year long on the banks of Yska, if it were a river in Great Britain or Ireland. What is now become of thy faint Ha ha he?  
Line 14. He thinks Yska runs to heaven. Do I so, Phil? why than I gave thee friendly counsel when I bid thee fling thyself into its stream. For than thou wouldst with ease have gone along with the stream to heaven, when others are fain to row hard against the stream, & scarce arrive thither when they have done all they can. I knew thy meaning by thy mumping, Phil. but thou expressedst it so disadvantageously, that thou gavest me good occasion to be merry with thee. But thou hast no mirth nor urbanity at all in thee, but wrath and foul language, which without any heed or discretion thou flingest upon every one that comes in thy way. And here in this 114 page, thou bidst fair for the calling of that noble Philosopher Descartes, knave, as neretofore thou didst call him fool. What Wit, Civility, or Judgement is there in this Philalethes? Thou art resolved to be recorded to posterity the most immoral and ignorant man that ever appeared yet in public. But thou hast as much confuted his Philosophy, by saying it is a Whim and a Wham, as thou hast solidly answered thy observator. I have made it apparent, that thou hast not spoke sense scarce to any one thing I objected against thee. But hast discovered thy gross ignorance in logic and Philosophy so far, that I profess I did not suspect thou hadst been any thing near so weak as I have found thee: but I willingly leave the censure of it to the Judicious. I will only speak thus much in favour to thee and for thy excuse, that the strength of thy passion may very well have more then ordinarily weakened thy reason.  
Now for that Ingenuous young Gentleman, the smartness of whose Poetry hath so wrung thee, and vexed thy guts, that it hath brought upon thee the Passio Iliaca, and made thee so foul mouthed, I will only say so much, Phil. and speak within compass, that he hath more wit and Philosophy in one hair of his head, than thou hast in thy whole noddle. And that his verse was not obedient to my prose; but the Muses were very obsequious to his wit and humour of representing thee such as thou art. And in this only he was no Poet, in that he doth not write Fictions as thou dost in prose. But it seems he hath so paid thee home, that the sense of my gentle strokes are struck out by his quicker lash. For thou sayest I am a good harmless sneaking observator, thy Alaz. that is, thy thou know'st not what, but no Mastix by no means, but only one that gave thee a flap with a foxtail. Verily, thou sayest true, I did not intend to hurt thee, and thou makest me so weak as if I were not able. Why dost thou raise then so mighty trophies upon the victory of so harmless and unable an enemy? For as inconsiderable as I am, to make himself considerable to the world, he makes a coloss, a giant, a Monster of nine acres long of me. But how can this consist with thy putting me up into a little box. Parturiunt montes— or rather, Dehiscunt montes, tandem intrat ridiculus mus. The coloss falls, the Mountains gape, and at length enters in the merry Mouse. An excellent jest my Masters? But why into a box with wire grates, rather than into an iron cage, as Tamburlaine used Bajazeth, and so carried him up and down in triumph? I wonder thou didst not take this jest by the Turkish moustaches, rather than that. But this it is, to have a wit no larger than a Mouse-catchers; or a fancy heaved up no higher than the pinnacles of Oxenford. Thou wilt in time, Phil. make a fellow of a fit size to show the Lions and Rattoon at the Tower; and I suppose thou fawnest upon the Independents so as thou dost, to get their good will for the next reversion of that office. But enough, my Philalethes, of levity & folly. I will not abuse my liberty to excess, only let me in some way answer the expectation of those that may happily expect my censure of thy Magia Adamica. But I shall not so much answer it, as frustrate it: for I profess, I take no pleasure in the censuring of any man's writings; I can employ myself better. I was in a very merry frolic when I ventured upon this; yet the Judicious may discern that there was sobriety enough at the bottom of all that mirth. But as for this Magia Adamica, I confess I have not read it; but I do favourably conjecture, that the author thereof is as well skilled in those books of magic that Adam read by the fireside in winter nights, while Eve held to him the candle, as any young man is in these European parts. I let Adamicus alone, my business is only with Anthroposophus, over whom now I having so full a victory, it will be expected, perhaps, that I lead him about in triumph. But I must answer my friends in Christian soberness, that I am the right Philalethes, a lover of truth more than a lover of victory, and of victory more than of triumph;  — sat is est prostrâsse leoni. 
Only I will say, not of his Person, but of that Dispensation and Genius in which he is in for the present; Lo, there lies the contagious spectrum of Ephesus, which I have discovered to be the pest of the commonwealth of learning, and of human and divine reason, as much as that demoniacal imposture was the walking plague of that famous city: and now he hath been pelted a little with hard language, as Apollonius commanded the Ephesians to stone that hypocritical old Mendicant with stones, he appears in the very same shape with him at the uncovering of the heap, that is, an ugly huge black mastiff sprawling for life, and foaming forth abundance of filthy stinking scum, after the manner of mad dogs. And thus have I approved myself wise as Apollonius, in discovering imposture; and valiant as Hercules, who overmastered that {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, as Dionysius calls it, that brazen-barking Cerberus.  
And now, O men of Ephesus! I mean all you that reap the fruit of this noble exploit of mine, rear me up my deserved trophy, and inscribe this Tetrastich upon it, for an everlasting monument of your gratitude to me, and love to the truth:  

Religious Heat as yet unpurged quite  
From fleshly sense and self, when't makes a stir  
About high mysteries above reason's light,  
Is at the bottom but a rabid cur.   
But that I may conceal nothing from you, O men of Ephesus, I must tell you, that whether you rear up this monument, or whether you forbear, all is one. For the truth of these verses is already written in the corner stones of the Universe, and engraven on the lasting pillars of Eternity. Heaven and earth may pass away, but not one tittle of this truth shall pass away. High and windy Notions do but blow up and kindle more fiercely the fire of Hell in the hearts of men. From whence is Pride, and Contention, and bitter Zeal. This is the pest and plague of Mankind, and the succeeding torture of the sons of Adam. For while the mind of man catcheth at high things, of which she is uncapable till she be refined and purged, she doth but fire the frame of her little world by her overbusy Motion, which burning in gross fuel, fills all with smoke. And thus the soul is even smothered and stifled in her narrow mansion. Her first enlargement here must therefore be, by Temperance and abstemiousness: For without this breathing-hole for fresh air, devotion itself will choke her still more and more, heating her thick and polluted spirits in such sort, that they cannot be sufficiently rectified by the power of the brain. But in this Dispensation especially is lodged a strong voice, weak sense, and a rude contempt of any thing that will trouble the head, as Reason, Philosophy, or any but ordinary subtlety in learning. But they love Christ very heartily after their gross way, as their protector and Securer from what outward evil naturally attends so bad an inward condition. But being so immersed in brutish sense, and yet with conscience of sin; if anybody have but the trick to persuade them that sin is but a name, he will be a very welcome Apostle to them, and they will find more ease to their beastly nature, in phansying nothing to be sin, than they did in making their hypocritical addresses to an offended Saviour. And then (Poor souls) through the foulness of the flesh, are they easily inveigled into atheism itself. In so great danger are we of the most mischievous miscarriages, by contemning of those known and confessed virtues of Temperance, Continence, and Chastity.  
But we'll suppose Men in a great measure temperate; yet how far off are they still from real happiness in themselves, or from not disturbing the happiness of others, so long as Envy, Ambition, covetousness, and Self-respect doth still lodge in them? Here indeed Reason may happily get a little more elbow-room; but it will be but to be Patron to those vices, and to make good by Argument harsh opinions of God, and peremptorily to conclude the power of Christ weaker than the force of sin. And the fancy in these something more refined Spirits, will be more easily figurable into various conceits, but very little to the purpose. Of which some must go for sober Truths, and those that are more fully shining, in the midst of a shadowy melancholized imagination, must bid fair for Divine Inspiration, though neither Miracle nor Reason countenance them. But you, O men of Ephesus! if any one tell you strange devices, and forbid you the use of your Reason, or the demanding of a Miracle, you will be so wise as to look upon him as one that would bid you wink with your eyes, that he might the more easily give you a box of the ear, or put his hand into your Pockets.  
Now out of this second Dispensation, innumerable swarms of Sects rise in all the world. For Falsehood and Imagination is infinite; but Truth is one. And the benignity of the Divine Spirit, having no harbour in all this variety of religious Pageantry; Envy, covetousness, and Ambition must needs make them bustle, and tear all the world in pieces, if the hand of Providence did not hold them in some limits:  Quin laniant mundum; tanta est discordia fratrum: 
as he saith of the winds. In this Dispensation lodgeth Anger and active Zeal concerning Opinions and Ceremonies, Uncertainty and anxiety touching the purposes of God, and a rigid injudicious Austerity, of which little comes but the frighting men off from Religion: which notwithstanding if it be had in the truth thereof, is the most cheerful and lovely thing in the world. These men having not reached to the Second Covenant, will also thank anybody that could release them from the First. For whereas true Religion is the great joy and delight of them that attain to it, theirs is but their burden. And so it is not impossible that these may be also wound off to the depth of wickedness, and sink also in time even to atheism itself. For what is real in them will work, but what is imaginary will prove itself ineffectual. Wherefore, is it not far better for men to busy all their strength in destroying those things which are so evidently destructive of human felicity, then to edge their spirits with fiery notions and strange phantasms, which pretend indeed to the semblance of deep mysterious knowledge, and divine speculation; but do nothing hinder but that the black dog may be at the bottom, as I said before?  
But you will ask me, How shall we be rid of the Importunity of the impostures and fooleries of this second Dispensation. But I demand of you, Is there any way imaginable but this? viz. To adhere to those things that are uncontrovertedly good and true, and to bestow all that zeal, and all that heat, and all that pains for the acquiring of the simplicity of the life of God, that we do in promoting our own Interest, or needless and doubtful Opinions. And I think it is without controversy true to any that are not degenerate below men, that Temperance is better than Intemperance, Justice then Injustice, Humility then Pride, Love then Hatred, and mercifulness than cruelty. It is also uncontrovertedly true, that God loves his own Image, and that the propagation of it is the most true dispreading of his glory, as the Light which is the Image of the sun, is the glory of the sun. Wherefore it is as plainly true, that God is as well willing, as able to restore this Image in men, that his glory may shine in the world. This therefore is the true Faith, to believe that by the power of God in Christ, we may reach to the participation of the Divine Nature. Which is a simple, mild, benign light, that seeks nothing for itself, as itself; but doth tenderly and cordially endeavour the good of All, and rejoiceth in the good of All, and will assuredly meet them that keep close to what they plainly in their consciences are convinced is the leading to it. And I say, that sober Morality, conscientiously kept to, is like the morning light reflected from the higher clouds, and a certain Prodrome of the sun of righteousness itself. But when he is risen above the Horizon the same virtues than stream immediately from his visible body, and they are the very members of Christ according to the Spirit. And he that is come hither, is a pillar in the Temple of God for ever and ever; for he hath reached to the Second Covenant, which he can in no more likelihood break, then lay violent hands on himself to the taking away of his natural life. Nay, that will be far more easy than this. For a man may kill himself in a trice, but he cannot extinguish this Divine life without long and miserable torture. If this be to be a Puritan, Eugenius, I am a Puritan. But I must tell thee, that by how much more a man precisely takes this way, the more Independent he will prove. And the pure simplicity of the life of God revealed in Jesus Christ, will shine with so amiable a lustre in his inward mind, that all the most valuable Opinions that are controverted amongst Churches and Sects, will seem no more comely than a fools coat, compared with the uniform Splendour of the sun. But if thou meanest by either Puritan or Independent, one in the second Dispensation, I should dissemble in the presence of Heaven, if I should not say I am above them; as I am above all Sects whatsoever as Sects. For I am a true and free Christian; and what I write and speak is for the Interest of Christ, and in the behalf of the life of the Lamb which is contemned. And his Interest is the Interest of the sons of men; for he hath no Interest but their good and welfare. But because they will not have him to rule, the Nations of the world (by a Divine Nemesis) are given up into the hands of Wolves, Foxes, and Lions: The earth is full of darkness and cruel habitations. Wherefore, Eugenius, thou dost very unskilfully, in endeavouring to tumble me off from the Independents, to cast me amongst the Puritans, as thou callest them. For it is not in thy power to cast me so low as any Sect whatsoever; God hath placed me in a Dispensation above them, and wilt thou throw me down? No, Eugenius, I shine upon them both as the sun in the Firmament, who doth not wink on one side, or withdraw his rays, but looks openly upon all, imparting warmth and light. Thou hast encountered with a coloss indeed (though thou callest me so but in sport and scorn) far bigger than that straddling Statue at Rhodes, and that reacheth far higher. And yet no Statue neither, but one that will speak what nothing but Ignorance and hypocrisy can deny. Wherefore with my feet lightly standing on the shoulders of all the Sects of the earth (for I would not tread hard like a statue to hurt them) & with my head stooping down out of the Clouds, I will venture to try the world with this sober question. Tell me therefore, O all ye Nations, People, & Kindreds of the earth, what is the reason that the world is such a stage of misery to the sons of Men? Is it not from hence, that that which should be their great Guidance, their Religion and highest Light of their minds, is but Heat and squabbling about subtle uncertain points, and foolish affectation of high mysteries, while the uncontroverted sober truths of virtue and Piety are neglected, and the simplicity of the life of God despised, as a most contemptible thing. And I had no sooner uttered these words in my mind, but me thought I heard an Answer from all the Quarters of the earth, from East, West, North and South, like the noise of many waters, or the voice of Thunder, saying, Amen. hallelujah. This is true.  
Nor is this any vain enthusiasm, Philalethes, but the triumph of the Divine Light in my rational Spirit, striking out to my exterior faculties, my Imagination and Sense. For my head was so filled with the noise, that it felt to me as bound and straitened, as being not able to contain it, and coldness & trembling seized upon my flesh. But you will say, All this is but a trivial truth that you are so zealous and triumphant in. But verily, Eugenius, is it not better to be zealous about those things that are plainly true, than those that are either uncertain of false? 'Tis true, what I have said to thy soaring soul may seem contemptible. But if thou once hadst the sight of that Principle from whence it came, thou wouldst be suddenly ashamed of that patched clothing of thy soul, stitched up of so many unsuitable and heedless figurations of thy unpurged fancy, and wouldst endeavour to put on that simple uniform light.  
And now, Eugenius, that I find myself in an advantageous temper to converse with thee, come a little nearer me, or rather I will come a little nearer to thee. Hitherto I have played the part of a personated Enemy with thee, give me leave now to do the office of an open Friend. I perceive there is in you, as you have made it manifest to all the world, an eager desire after Knowledge, and as insatiable thirst after Fame. Both which are to be reputed far above that dull and earthly proneness of the mind of some men, whose thoughts are bent upon little else but the bed and the board. But I tell thee, that this desire of thine being kindled so high in thy melancholy complexion, there arise these three inconvenieuces from this inordinate heat.  
First, thy spirits are so agitated, that thou canst not soberly and cautiously consider the Objects of thy mind, to see what is truly consequent, what not; and so thy reason goes much to wrack.  
Secondly, thy melancholy being so highly heated, it makes thee think confidently thou hast a phantasm or Idea of a thing belonging to this or that word, when thou hast not, which is a kind of inward frenzy and answers to the seeing of outward apparitions when there is nothing before the sight. Thus art thou defeated in thy design of knowledge, in divine and natural things by this distemper.  
But thirdly, the same untamed heat causeth boldness, Confidence and Pride. And hence ariseth thy Imprudence. For I tell thee, Eugenius, there is no such imprudent thing in the world as Pride. Wottest thou not what the humour of all men is; how they think themselves no inconsiderable things in the world? You know the story in Herodotus, how when the Greeks had overcome the Persians and after it was debated amongst them, to whom the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} belonged, who should have the honour of being reputed most valiant in that service, every one did acknowledge that next to himself Themistocles did best. Wherefore it is plain that he that will not let any man go before him provokes all men. Here therefore was thy imprudence, Eugenius, that thou wouldst take the {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} to thyself without so much as any debate or asking leave, when every Galenist, Aristotelian, Cartesian, and Theosophist, thinks it belongs to him as much as to thee. Thus hast thou provoked all men against thee, and made shipwreck of thy fame, as well as fallen short of Learning. But you'll say, why? what would you have me to have done as some others do, who though they be proud, yet put on a handsome dress of Modesty and squeamish Humility? That I tell thee had been indeed something more like Prudence, which thy raised heat could not stoop to, but I must confess it had been but a kind of moral Sneaking. For as the bending down of the upper parts of the body, so that the tallness of the stature thereof is concealed, is the Sneaking of the body: so to make a man's self more humble than he is, or less high-minded, is the Sneaking of the soul. But the first point of wisdom is to be really humble indeed. For, an humble mind is as still as the night, and as clear as the noonday. So that it is able without any impatiency or prejudice to discern all things, and rightly to judge of all things. This Christian temper is so sober, and wise, that no Imposture can surprise it, nor ever will it hurt it self by rashness and imprudency. This is the heir of God, the treasury of all human divine & natural knowledge, and the delight and praise of men where ever it appears. But the inseparable companions of haughtiness, are Ignorance, Shame, and Enmity. But believe it, Eugenius, as this divine Humility is of more worth, so is it of more labour than to find the philosopher's stone, or the famous medicine you talk of; I am certain of more consequence by ten thousand times. And methinks now at length through all those waves and rufflings of thy disordered mind, I see something at the bottom in thee, O Eugenius, that begins to assent to what I say, that begins to shine and smile, and look upon me as a very pleasant Apostle, sent (not without providence) to toy and sport thee into a more sober temper, and advertise thee of the highest good that the soul of man is capable of; and thou wilt I am confident very suddenly say, and that from thy heart, that better are the wounds of a friend, than the kisses of an enemy. Or if thou canst not yet fancy him a friend that hath worn the vizard of a foe so long, yet I do not mistrust but that thou wilt be so wise, as, according to Xenophon's Principle, not only, not to be hurt, but also to be profited by thine enemy.  
An enemy indeed is not a thing to be embosom and embraced, as the satire would have done the fire when he first saw it, and therefore was forewarned by Prometheus to abstain,  {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} 
But in the mean time, that which it would pain or consume may by observing the right laws of using it, receive kindly warmth and vigour from it, and work excellent things in virtue of its heat or light.  
Did not Telephus heal his wound by his enemy's spear? And had not Jason his impostume cured by that weapon that was meant for his deadly dispatch? You know also the story of Hiero, Eugenius, who when his enemy had upbraided him with his stinking breath, chid his wife when he came home, because she never had discovered it to him all that time of their living together. But she being very honest and simple, told her husband that she thought all men's breaths smelled so. You see then how much more easy it is, to hear what is true concerning us, of our professed Adversaries, then of our bosom Friends.  
But methinks I hear thee answer, that neither a bosom Friend nor an embittered Enemy can be competent judges of a man's vices or virtues. For the one would be too favourable, and the other too severe. What then? wouldst thou have some Third thing, a mean betwixt both, (according to that known aphorism {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}) whom thou mightest hope would prove an impartial judge? why, that's I, Phil. whom, I dare say thou art confident, to be no friend to thee; and I dare swear I am no enemy. And therefore why should I despair, but that my fitness and skill may prove as successful in allaying of Eugenius his tumour, as that unskilful hand was lucky in lancing Jason's impostume.  
And being once cured, do not then repine, that there was a time wherein thou wast unsound no more than Alexander the great, that he was once so little as to be lodged within the narrow compass of his mother's womb; Or Milo who at length could lift an ox, that he was once so weak that he could not stir a lamb.  
And what think'st thou Phil. of Plato, Empedocles, Democritus, Socrates, and other profound sages of the World, can you imagine that when they had arrived to that pitch of knowledge, that it was any shame or regret to them, that there was once a time when they knew not one letter of the Alphabet. Why then should my Eugenius be troubled, that he was once Childish, Ignorant, Proud and Passionate, when he is well cured of those distempers. We are what we are, and what is past is not, and therefore is not to afflict us. But he that is more anxious concerning Fame then virtue, and seeks only to seem a gallant and invincible thing to the world, when in the mean time his mind is very weak and vulnerable, I know my Eugenius is so wise, that such a man as this, will seem as irrational to him, as if one having by ill chance cut his shin, he should be less solicitous about healing of his leg then mending of his stocking.    
FINIS.   

An Index of the general heads and more remarkable passages in the foregoing Reply.  
M Astix his apology for his smart Observations upon Eugenius his Anthroposophia Theomagica, &c. from page 9, to the 14. That to laugh at the follies and defeatments of vain men, is lawful in a Christian. p. 14, 15, 16 Eugenius his Title-page, The Man-mouse taken in a Trap, censured. p. 21, 22 Mastix his Answer to two perverse charges of high incivilities gathered out of his Observations. from p. 23. to p. 32 His personal Reasons that moved him to write his Observations. p. 35, 36 Of Platonism, and of Mastix his philosophical Poems, his Song of the Soul, &c. from what Principle they were writ. p. 36. to p. 41 Of the Philosophy of Descartes, how far above all other natural Philosophyes, and yet how short of that noble, divine, universalizing Spirit in Christianity and Platonism. p. 41, 42, 43, 44 A zealous Invective against the Atheists of these times, wherein sundry causes of atheism are glanced at. p. 44. to 48 Mastix no Enthusiast but speaks according to the faculties of a man actuated by God. p. 48 A description of an heavenly Dispensation upon earth, far above either prophecy or Miracle. p. 39, 40. and 49, 50 Whether there be any essential definitions of Substances, and in what sense. p. 57, 58, 59 Whether the Peripaleticks conceit God to have made the world, as a Carpenter makes houses of Stone and Timber. p. 59, 60, 61 Eugenius his vizard of high affected Sanctimony fallen off, all the people laugh at him. p. 63, 64 The ridiculous Analogies Eugenius makes between his World-Animal, and an ordinary Animal. p. 65, 66 The flesh of his World-animal confuted. p. 66, 67 The pulse of his World-animal confuted. p. 67, 68 Of Rarefaction and Condensation, and of the miraculous multiplication of the Superficies of body. p. 70, 71, 72 The Respiration of his World animal confuted. p. 72, 73, 74 That a Pair of Bellows is an Animal, according to Eugenius his Zoography. p. 75, 76 The vital moisture of his World-animal confuted. p. 77, 78 The Animal Spirits of it confuted. p. 78, 79 The causes of the Flux and Reflux of the Sea, and that it cannot be the Pulse of his World-animal. p. 81, 82, 83 Mastix his philosophical Poems censured and defended. p. 85, 86, 87 Reminiscency no Argument for the preexistency of the Soul, p. 88, 89, 90 A large Demonstration that that Matter which Eugenius asfirms he hath often seen and felt, is not the first Matter of all things. from p. 91. to p. 97 His Assertion that Aristotle's first Matter is in Nature neither {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} nor {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}, confuted. p. 101, 102 Eugenius his Ridiculous division of an Idea into one part. p. 104 A supply made to this hopping distribution, out of Philo the few. p. 105, 106 That Eugenius doth so surround the mass with his ●mpyreall substance that there could be no Morning nor Evening as Moses text requires p. 107 That the Scripture speaks according to outward sense and vulgar apprehension, proved by sundry passages of Scripture, and Testimonies of learned Men. from p. 109, to 113 That the Extent of the world according to Moses David &c. is but to the Clouds or thereabout, very fully and largely demonstrated, and so consequently that there is no room for Eugenius his interstellar waters in Moses his Text, unless he will make them all one with the Clouds or Vapours that be coagulated into Rain. from p. 113, to p. 120 Eugenius his gross Mistake concerning Orbs and Epicycles, venting three absurdities in one Assertion. p. 121, 122, 123, 124 In what sense Mastix said in his Observations, that Epicycles were too big to be true p. 125 That Rarefaction and Condensation according to the Schools implies a Contradiction p. 128 What a miserable layer of fundamentals of Sciences Eugenius is. And in particular of his Magnet p. 129, 130 S. John's new Heaven and new Earth how Mastix would interpret it, and how Magicus. p. 132, 133 Aristotle taxed of Sodomy. p. 134, 135 His hymn in honour of Hermias, and his doing the same Rites unto his whore when he had married her, that the Athenians did to their goddess, Ceres Eleusinia p. 135, 136 The natural shame in men of obscene matters notoriously discovered in the story of Osiris and Typhon; and that this shame is a sign that there is a certain conscience or presage in the soul of man, that a better condition belongs to her then this in the body. p. 137, 138 That the soul of man is not propagated as light from light. p. 140, 141, 142 That Eugenius doth plainly assert that blind men see in their sleep. p. 143 That there is not a Sensitive Spirit distinct from the rational soul in a man. p. 144, 145, 146, 147 How long Mastix was making his Observations upon Eugenius his magical Treatises. p. 149, 150 Eugenius so unlucky in his poetical Encomiums of Oxford, that whereas he intends to praise, he seems to abuse that learned and well-deserving university. p. 153, 154 That the very substance of a thing cannot be known p. 161, 162, 163. The union betwixt the flame and the candle, not at all to set out the Union of the soul and body, to any philosophical satisfaction. p. 164, 165 That the soul is not Intelligent fire, proved by sundry Arguments. p. 166, 167, &c. From her Organization of the body p. 167 From her Information. p. 168 From Spontaneous Motion. p. 168 From Sensation. p. 169, to 174 From Memory. p. 174 From the soul's Immortality acknowledged by Eugenius. p. 174, 175 The bare point of Mastix his argument against Magicus his mysterious chain of light, more plainly discovered. p. 177, 178 Eugenius his four arguments to prove that the Seminal Forms of things are understanding Agents, propounded and confuted. from page 178, to 181 What a Ritio Seminalis, or seminal Form is according to Plotinus and the Platonists. p. 179, 180 Mastix his exception against Eugenius his definition of the first Principle of his Clavis magica proved to be as solid as merry. p. 181, 182 Whether the stars receive any light from the Sun. p. 183 Mastix his friend ●. T. vindicated. p. 186 His favourable conjecture of the author of Magia Ada mica. p. 188 His power of discovering Impostures paralleled with Apolionius. us. p, 189 His Victory, trophy, and Inscription. p. 190 His Oration to the Men of Ephesus. p. 190, 191, &c. A description of a threefold Dispensation under which Christians are. from p. 191, to 197 The first Dispensation. p. 191, 192 The second Dispensation. from p. 192, to 195 What is the way to be delivered from the Impostures and Fooleries of the second Dispensation p. 195, 196 The third Dispensation, or second Covenant. p. 196, 197 In what sense Mastix is Puritan or Independent. p. 197 That he is above all Sects whatsoever, as Sects, as being a mere Christian, p. 197, 198 The Transfiguration of his inward man into a breathing coloss, speaking from Heaven, and reminding all the Inhabitants of the Earth, of the true cause of their perpetual Miseries and Calamities. p. 199 That Mastix is no Enthusiast for all this, but that it is only the Triumph of the Divine Light in his rational Spirit, striking through his exterior faculties, and moving his very body with coldness and trembling. p. 200 His friendly and faithful Monitions to Eugenius, freely discovering to him the true causes of his being defeated in his great designs upon Fame and Knowledge. from p. 200, to 204 That a wise man will not only not be hurt, but be profited by his enemy. p. 205, &c.   

Errata.  
Page 106. line 3. read {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}.  
page 125. line 9 read Deferents.  
page 145. line 7. read glass.  
page 147. line 23. for, in the highest, read, the highest.  
page 160. line 20. read {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman}.  
page 177. line 3, 4. read, kind of attractive.