PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS, BY HENRY MORE: Master of Arts, and Fellow of CHRISTS COLLEDGE IN CAMBRIDGE.
CAMBRIDGE. Printed by ROGER DANIEL Printer to the UNIVERSITY. 1647.
To his dear Father ALEXANDER MORE ESQUIRE.
I Know at first sight you'll judge me a Novice in the affairs of the World, in not pitching upon some other Patron: and unacquainted with the Courtship of the times, that holds it more commendable to toy and complement with a stranger, then speak truth of a known friend. But I am meditating no Stage-play of ordinary Apish Civility, but sober Truth: Nor intend this an act of worldly discretion and advantage, but of Justice and Gratitude. For I cannot hope that ever any man shall deserve so well of me as your self has done. Besides what hath hitherto commended you to all that [Page]know you; your Faithfulnesse, Uprightnesse, Sedulity for the publick Welfare of the place wherein you live, your generous Opennesse and Veracity. Nor can ever that thick cloud you are now enveloped with, of melancholized old Age, and undeserved Adversity, either dark the remembrance of your pristine Lustre, or hide from me the sight of your present Worth. Sir, I could wish my self a stranger to your bloud, that I might with the better decorum set out the noblenesse of your spirit. But to speak modestly; You deserve the Patronage of better Poems then these, though you may lay a more proper claim to these then to any. You having from my childhood tuned mine ears to Spencers rhymes, entertaining us on winter nights, with that incomparable Peice of his, The Fairy Queen, a Poem as richly fraught with divine Morality as Phansy. Your early Encomiums also of Learning and Philosophy did so fire my credulous Youth with the desire of the knowledge of things, that your After-advertisements, how contemptible Learning would prove without Riches, and what a piece of Unmannerlinesse and Incivility it would be held to seem wiser then them, that are more wealthy and powerfull, [Page]could never yet restrain my mind from her first pursuit, nor quicken my attention to the affairs of the World. But this bookish disease let it make me as much poor as it will, it shall never make me the lesse just. Nor will you, I hope, esteem me the lesse dutyfull, that without your cognoscence I become thus thankfull. For I never held my self bound to ask leave of any man to exercise an act of Virtue. And yet am I conscious to my self, there may have some juvenile Extravagancies passed my pen, which your judgement and gray hairs will more slowly allow of, and my self may happily dislike by that time I arrive to half your years. But let it be my excuse, that that which was to be made common for all, could not be so exactly fitted for any one Age or Person. I am not indeed much solicitous, how every particle of these Poems may please you. In the mean time I am sure I please my self in the main; which is, The embalming of his name to Immortality, that next under God, is the Authour of my Life and Being.
A PLATONICK SONG of the SOUL; Treating, Of
- The Life of the Soul,
- Her Immortalitie,
- The Sleep of the Soul,
- The Ʋnitie of Souls, and
- Memorie after Death.
CAMBRIDGE, Printed by ROGER DANIEL Printer to the Universitie. 1647.
TO THE READER, Upon this second Edition.
IF I seem too bold in presenting my self again so suddenly to publick view, let it excuse me, at least in part, that there is not so much boldnesse in this, as in my first adventure. For whereas I had then no encouragement but mine own well meaning, and carelessenesse of the opinions of men; I have now (beside that resolv'd neglect of mens hasty censures) the experience (though unexpected) of the favourable acceptance of the bravest and best improved spirits.
For whose sakes, and as many else as are at leasure a while to lay aside the pleasure or trouble of the world, and entertain their minds with thoughts of a greater compasse then the fetching in of a little wealth or honour; I have taken the pains to peruse these Poems of the soul, and to lick them into some more tolerable form and smoothnesse. For I must confesse such was the present haste & heat that I was then hurried in (dispatching them in fewer moneths then some cold-pated-Gentlemen have conceited me to have spent years about them, and letting them slip from [Page]me so suddenly, while I was so immerse in the inward sense and representation of things, that it was even necessary to forget the oeconomie of words, and leave them behind me aloft, to float and run together at randome like chaff and straws on the surface of the water) that it could not but send them out in so uneven and rude a dresse. Nor yet can I, (I professe) ever hope to find leasure or patience so exquisitely to polish them, as fully to answer mine own curiosity, if I would be also humorous, or the delicacy of some Lady-wits that can like nothing that is not as compos'd as their own hair, or as smooth as their Mistresses Looking-glasse. But may these emendations prove but acceptable to the more generous and manly Genius; I shall please my self enough, if I prove but tolerable to those female phansies.
But as I would not industriously neglect these, so I hope I have more solidly gratifi'd the other, by the enlargement of this Poem. For besides the Canto of the INFINITY of WORLDS, I have also added another of the PRAEEXISTENCY of the SOUL, where I have set out the nature of SPIRITS and given an account of APPARITITIONS and WITCH-CRAFT, very answerable I conceive to experience and story, invited to that talk by the frequent discoveries of this very Age. Which if they were publickly recorded, and that course continued in euery Parish, it would prove one of the best Antidotes against that earthly and cold disease of Sadducisme and Atheisme, which may easily grow upon us, if not prevented, to the hazard of all Religion, and the best kinds of Philosophy.
I have also enlarged the second Canto of PSYCHOZOIA, and have added (that I might avoid all suspicion of partiality) to Psittaco and Pithecus diverse [Page]other persons, Pico, Corvino, Graculo, and Glaucis, but am so sensible of that sober precept in Josephus, which he affirms to be out of Moses, [...], that I would be very loth to be so farre mistaken as to be thought a Censurer or Contemner of other mens Religions or Opinions, if they serve God in them in the simplicity and sincerity of their hearts, and have some more precious substratum within, then inveterate custome or naturall complexion. All that I mean is this: That neither eager promoting of Opinion or Ceremony, nor the earnest opposing of the same, no not the acutenesse of Reason, nor yet a strong, if naked conceit, that we have the Spirit of God, can excuse a man from being in any better condition then in the Land of Brutes or in the mere animal nature. Which conclusion I thought worth my labour to set off with such Artifice and Circumstance as I have; the gullery and deceit therein, if not avoided, being of so great and evil consequence. For if we can but once entitle our opinions and mistakes to Religion, and Gods Spirit, it is like running quicksilver in the back of a sword, and will enable us to strike to utter destruction and ruine. But it would prevent a great deal of bloud and bitternesse in the Christian world, if we reserved the flower and strength of our zeal for the undoubted Truth of God and his immutable Righteousnesse, and were more mildly and moderately affected concerning the Traditions and determinations of the Elders.
Furthermore, I have added Notes for the better understanding, not onely of my Psychozoia, but of the Principles of Plato's Philosophy. In both which I would be so understood, as a Representer of the Wisdome of the Ancients rather then a warranter of the same. Contemplations concerning the dry essence of the Diety are very consuming and unsatisfactory. 'Tis better to drink of the [Page]bloud of the grape, then bite the root of the vine, to smell of the rose then, chew the stalk. And blessed be God, the meanest of men are capable of the former, very few successefull in the latter. And the lesse, because the reports of them that have busied themselves that way, have not onely seem'd strange to the vulgar, but even repugnant with one another. But I should in charity referre this to the nature of the pigeons neck, rather then to mistake or contradiction. One and the same Object in Nature affords many and different [...]. And God is as infinitely various as simple. Like a circle, indifferent, whether you suppose it of one Uniform line, or an infinite number of Angles. Wherefore it is more safe to admit all possible perfections in God, then rashly to deny what appears not to us in our particular posture.
I have also adjoyned some few scattering notes to the second part of the Song of the Soul. Where I have also, beside some subtil considerations concerning ATOMS and QƲANTITY, set out very plainly, the Hypothesis of Pythagoras, or Copernicus concerning the MOTION of the EARTH, as also opened the mystery of the FLƲX and REFLƲX of the SEA. Which two contemplations are not inferiour to any, for either pleasantnesse in themselves, or conduciblenesse for the finding out of the right frame of Nature.
Finally, I have cast into this second Edition severall smaller Poems, of which together with all the rest that I have published I would give this generall Advertisement, ‘Est pictura Poesis.’ Every poem is an Idyllium. And a Poet no more sings himself, then a Painter draws his own picture. Nor can I by these assume to my self the honour of being a Platonist, no more then Virgil incurre the suspicion of being an Epicurean by his Silenus, whom notwithstanding Alexander [Page]Severus thought good to style poetarum Plato.
As for a more determinate decision of those many speculations which I have set on foot in these writings, though I made some kind of promise that way in my first, I must crave leave a while to deferre it, till I find the thing it self of more consequence, and my self at better leisure. However without that, there is so great accession made to this second Edition, that I easily hope, that of as many as I was received favourably before, that I shall now be received with much more favour.
As for others, whom sensuall immersion or the deadnesse of Melancholy have more deeply seiz'd upon, I must acknowledge that in my own judgement I can seem no better to them then a piece of highly inacted folly, they obstinately preferring that sad ground of incredulity before any thing lesse then a Demonstration. For whose satisfaction Mounsieur des Chartes hath attempted bravely, but yet methinks on this side of Mathematicall evidence. He and that learned Knight our own Countryman had done a great deal more if they had promised lesse. So high confidence might become the heat and scheme of Poetry much better then sober Philosophy. Yet has he not done nothing, though not so much as he raiseth mens expectations to. And if he had performed lesse, it had been enough to souls that have well recovered that divine sagacity and quick sent of their own Interest. If this sweet ethereall gale of divine breathing do not quicken and enliven the sent and relish of such arguments as Reason, Nature, and story will afford, they will all prove weak and uselesse: Especially to exercised Wits that have so writhen and wrested their phansies that they can imagine or disimagine any thing, so weakened it that it is born down aswel with the smallest as greatest weight: so crusted and made hard their inward [...] by overmuch and triviall wearing [Page]it, that that delicate discrimination and divine touch of the soul is even lost, in so much that it would be safer to ask the judgement of young lads or Countrey idiots concerning the force of Arguments for Gods existence or the Souls immortality, then those lubricous Wits and overworn Philosophers. And surely if we will but admit of Providence and her eye to be placed upon man, and this world to be his instruction, together with the undistorted suggestions of his own heart, these easie hints and pointings will be found no fallacious directions. And true opinion is as faithfull a Guide, as Necessity and Demonstration.
That obvious conceit of the nature of light and colours, though perhaps false in it self, yet is an easie and safe conductour to that grand Truth of the divine Hypostases held up by the whole Christian world for these many hundred years and by more then have acknowledged themselves Christians. How naturally are we invited from the appearing of men deceased, to think the soul survives the body, though we may perversly suppose that those Apparitions are but our own imaginations, or that some sportfull or over officious spirit puts himself in the form and fashion of the deceased party? But what was the first and most easie suggestion, is such a truth as all Ages and Nations without intermission have embraced it. Nor yet will this be for a Demonstration and winne undoubted assent with austere and melancholick tempers. Nor is reason unback'd with better principles mathematically satisfiable in matters of this kind. Nor am I offended that it is not. For would it not be an overproportionated engine, to the again endangering of Cleombrotus neck, or too forcibly driving men to obedience if they had their immortality as demonstrable as; That the three angles in a triangle are equall to two right angles. Besides it would prevent that fitting triall of the soul, how she would be [Page]affected if there were nothing to come; whence she would not be able so sensibly to discover to her self her own Hypocrisie or sinceritie. Lastly, that loving adherence and affectionate cleaving to God by Faith and divine sense would be forestall'd by such undeniable evidence of Reason and Nature. Which though it would very much gratifie the naturall man, yet it would not prove so profitable to us, as in things appertaining to God. For seeing our most palpable evidence of the souls immortality is from an inward sense, and this inward sense is kept alive the best by devotion and purity, by freedome from worldly care and sorrow, and the grosser pleasures of the body (otherwise her ethereall vehicle will drink in so much of earthy and mortall dregs, that the sense of the soul will be changed, & being outvoted as it were by the overswaying number of terrene particles, which that ethereal nature hath so plentifully imbib'd and incorporated with, she will become in a manner corporeall, [...], as Jamblichus speaks, and in the extremity of this weaknesse and dotage will be easily drawn off to pronounce her self such as the body is, dissolvable and mortall) therefore it is better for us that we become doubtfull of our immortall condition when we stray from that virgin-purity and unspottednesse, that we may withdraw our feet from these paths of death, then that Demonstration and Infallibility should permit us to proceed so farre, that our immortality would prove an heavy disadvantage. But this is meant onely to them that are lovers of God and their own souls. For they that are at enmity with him desire no such instructions, but rather embrace all means of laying asleep that disquieting truth; that they bear about with them so precious a charge as an immortall Spirit.
To the Reader.
PSYCHOZOIA, OR The first part of the Song of the SOUL, Containing A Christiano-Platonicall display of LIFE.
By H. M. Master of Arts, and Fellow of Christs Colledge in Cambridge.
CAMBRIDGE, Printed by Roger Daniel, Printer to the Universitie. 1647.
TO THE READER, Upon the first Canto of PSYCHOZOIA.
THis first Canto, as you may judge by the names therein, was intended for a mere Platonicall description of Universall life, or life that is omnipresent, though not alike omnipresent. As in Noahs Deluge, the water that overflowed the earth was present in every part thereof, but every part of the water was not in every part of the earth, or all in every part; so the low Spirit of the Universe, though it go quite through the world, yet it is not totally in every part of the world; Else we should heare our Antipodes, if they did but whisper: Because our lower man is a part of the inferiour Spirit of the Universe.
Ahad, Aeon, and Psyche are all omnipresent in the World, after the most perfect way that humane reason can conceive of. For they are in the world all totally and at once every where.
This is the famous Platonicall Triad: which though they that slight the Christian Trinity do take for a figment; yet I think it is no contemptible argument, that the Platonists, the best and divinest of Philosophers, and the Christians, the best of all that do professe religion, do both concur that there is a Trinity. In what they differ, I leave to be found out according to the safe direction of that infallible Rule of Faith, the holy Word.
In the mean time I shall not be blamed by any thing but ignorance and malignity, for being invited to sing of the second Unity of the Platonicall Triad, in a Christian [Page]and Poeticall scheme, that which the holy Scripture witnesseth of the second Person of the Christian Trinity. As that his patrimony is the possession of the whole earth. For if it be not all one with Christ, according to his Divinity; yet the Platonists placing him in the same order, and giving him the like attributes, with the Person of the Sonne in Christianity, it is nothing harsh for me to take occasion from hence to sing a while the true Christian Autocalon, whose beauty shall adorn the whole Earth in good time; if we believe the Prophets. For that hath not as yet happened. For Christ is not where ever his Name is: but as he is the Truth, so will he be truely displayed upon the face of the whole Earth. For God doth not fill the World with his Glory by words and sounds, but by Spirit, and Life, and Reality.
Now this Eternall life I sing of, even in the middest of Platonisme: for I cannot conceal from whence I am, viz. of Christ; but yet acknowledging, that God hath not left the Heathen, Plato especially, without witnesse of himself. Whose doctrine might strike our adulterate Christian Professors with shame & astonishment; their lives falling so exceeding short of the better Heathen. How far short are they then of that admirable and transcendent high mystery of true Christianisme? To which Plato is a very good subservient Minister; whose Philosophy I singing here in a full heat; why may it not be free for me to break out into an higher strain, and under it to touch upon some points of Christianity; as well as all-approved Spencer, sings of Christ under the name of Pan? Saint Paul also transfers those things that be spoken of Jupiter, to God himself, Arat. [...].
[...].
Those latter words he gives to the Christian God, whom [Page]he himself preached. I will omit the usuall course of the Spirit of God in Holy Writ, to take occasion from things that have some resemblance with Divine things under them to speak of the true things themselves.
And that I may not seem rather forcibly to break out here out of Platonisme into Christianisme, then to be fairly and easily led into this digression by the fit similitude of things, or at least very near correspondency of Names, which should imply agreement of nature; I have thought good to exhibite to the Readers eye the grounds of this my deviation founded in this Parallelisme of Titles, belonging to the second Unity of each Triad.
| Platonic. | Christian. | |
| The Sonne of the Good. | 1 | The Sonne of God. |
| [...]. Plotin. | 2 | [...]. |
| [...] | 3 | [...]. John 1. |
| [...] | 4 | [...] |
| [...] | 5 | [...]. Proverbs. 8. |
| Aeon | 6 | Eternall Life. |
| [...]. Plot. p. 547 | 7 | [...]. or [...] |
For indeed the Greek [...] is but a Periphrasis of [...] which contains in [...] the future present, and time past, as Criticks observe.
I might adde further correspondencies betwixt the Platonick Triad, and diverse passages of Scripture according to the interpretations of no contemptible Authours. As Gods making the World by his Word, which is very reasonable, He being the wisedome of God or the Intellectuall World; the Idea of the visible and naturall Creature. And that he is the Redeemer of the laps'd World, viz. Mankind, while he reduceth the right shape and image again into Man, wisedome and righteousnesse.
Take in the whole Trinity, you shall find a strange concordance [Page]and harmony betwixt the nature of each Hypostasis in either in their order. Atove or Ahad, is simply the first Principle of all beings, the Father of all existences, and the Universall Creation is but his Family; and therefore hath he a full right of imposing Lawes on the whole Creature.
[...]. As Aristotle observes out of the Poet.
The naturall Creature (as David also bears them witnesse) keepeth this Law. But Man breaketh it: however the Law is still propounded to him, which when it doth take hold upon him, strikes him with dread and horrour. Hence will he extrinsecally shape and proportion his actions according to that outward Rule through fear and force as it were: As if a man should impresse any character, or stamp upon wax, paste, or any such like matter. And this I conceive is to be under the Law that makes nothing perfect, and may be called [...]. which is signified also by Diana in the third Canto of Psychozoia. This God vouchsafes sometime to second with the gift of his Sonne, who is [...], as Philo the Platonist calls him. He once come sits not so much on the surface of the soul, as dives and divides to the depth of the Spirit, and rooting himself there worketh out from the very bottome all corruption and filth, cleanseth us throughly from our sins, and healeth us of our infirmities, shapes us from an inward vitall Principle, (even as the Ratio seminalis figures out a tree) into a new life and shape, even into the Image of God; that is, inward living Righteousnesse and Truth, instructing us continually, and guiding us with his eye: For he is properly Wisedome and Intellect. And this may be term'd [...]. even of the Sonne of Righteousnesse. See Philo Judaeus, pag. 390.391.403, 407. as also in his [...]. pag. 76.
Of this [...] Trismegist calling him [...], writeth thus, [...]. The same which John intimates: As many as receive him become the sons of God. And a little after, he tells us that this Universall Intellect as it doth [...] cooperate with all things; so it doth also [...], resist and oppose the souls of men hurried on to pleasure and passion by this disadvantagious union with the body. [...]. Trismeg. [...].
But now being thus healed, purged, and illuminated by this Baptisme of the living Word or Intellect, which is Christ, we are no longer under the Law, nor the terrour thereof, but serve willingly, as from a vitall Principle in us, under Christ. Wherefore such ones as are thus eminently good and virtuous in themselves, even according to the judgement of Aristotle, Politic. lib. 3. are not under the Law. [...]. Against such there is no Law, for they themselves are a Law. The very same with the words of the Apostle. Gal. cap. 5. vers. 24. Rom. 2. vers. 14.15. And a little before, [...] and therefore not to be under the Law, no more then a Deity can be under their Law, [...]. For 'tis as if they should take upon them to rule Jupiter himself, and share his kingdome. See Aristol. Politic. lib. 3.
The last accomplishment of all, and the highest perfection as the Apostle witnesseth, is Love, and this is ever referr'd to the Holy Ghost, whom Peter Lombard contends to be Love, lib. 1. distinct, 17. And this agrees ad [Page]amussim with Uranore or Psyche, whom Plotinus calls [...] the celestiall Venus, out of which is born the heavenly Cupid, the divine Love. The same is also Juno the sister and wife of Jove; that is, of the Divine Intellect, as the same Philosopher observes. And the Greek name of Juno doth fi [...]ly agree to this purpose, viz. [...], her name implying Love. And a further signe that Juno and Venus are all one is that Astronomers have noted one and the same Starre by both their names. [...]. Aristot. de Mundo, See Plotin. Ennead. lib. 6.
So then the proper effect of this third Hypostasis in either Trinity is Love, which compleateth the Circle, and reduceth us again to the first Principle of all, the simple and absolute good which we enjoy by this single Act or Energie of the Soul, viz. divine Love: and this is [...], to be baptized with the Holy Ghost.
This trinall effect or spirituall influence on the Soul is experientially true: But this threefold Hypostasis, viz. Ahad, Aeon, and Psyche, cannot be known by experience, but is rather concluded by collection of reason. Nor indeed is reason it self able sufficiently to confirm or confute it, sith it can conceive that one single Essence can perform many and various functions as doth the Soul, that being one, unfolds her self into varieties of operations.
Yet have the Platonists established their Triad upon no contemptible grounds which I will not be so tedious as here to relate: but give the Reader leave to peruse Plotinus at his leisure. And I must confesse that that mystery seems to me a thing of it self, standing on its own Basis, and to happen rather to agree with some Principles of Christianisme, then to be drawn from the holy Scripture.
But the best is, that the happinesse of man is not the Essence, but the Influence of the Divinity; and to be baptized [Page]in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of more consequence then to read and understand all the curious and acute school-tracts of the Trinity. For this may be permitted to the Divel: that is the priviledge onely of the good and pious man. Nor is it any wonder at all.
For be it so that the contemplation of these things is very sublime and subtile, yet well I wot they are nothing satisfactory to the soul. For the exile Theories of the Infinity of God and Trinity, are but as it were the dry measuring and numbering of the Deity, and profit as much to the soul devoid of charity, as the Diametre of the Sunnes body, or the remembrance of that trinall property in Lux Lumen and Calefaction can warm a man in a cold frosty night.
But if any man would be sufficiently initiated into these mysteries, he must repair to the ever living Word of God, that subtile and searching fire, that will sift all the [...]anities of dreaming Philosophers, and burn up the vain [...]maginations of false-Christians like stubble.
All this out of a tendernesse of mind, being exceeding [...]oth to give any man offence by my writings, For though knowledge and theory be better then any thing but honesty and true piety, yet it is not so good as that I should willingly offend my neighbour by it.
Thus much by way of preparation to the first Canto of this Poem. I will now leave thee to thine own discresion, and judgement.
Vpon the second Canto.
THis second Canto, before we descend to particular lives, exhibits to our apprehension, by as fit a similitude as I could light upon, the Universe, as one simple [Page]uniform being from Ahad to Hyle, no particular straitned being as yet being made; no earth or any other Orb as yet kned together. All homogeneall, simple, single, pure, pervious, unknotted, uncoacted, nothing existing but those eight universall orders.
There God hath full command, builds and destroyes what he lists.
That all our souls are free effluxes from his essence. What follows is so plain that the Reader wants no direction,
Vpon the third Canto.
THere is no knot at all in this last Canto, if men do not seek one. I plainly and positively declare no opinion, but shew the abuse of those opinions there touched, crouding a number of enormities together; that easily shroud themselves there, where all sinfulnesse surely may easily get harbour, if we be not yet well aware of the Devil, that makes true opinions oftentimes serve for mischief.
Nothing else can be now expected for the easie and profitable understanding of this Poem, but the interpretation of the names that frequently occurre in it. Which I will interpret at the end of these Books; (as also the hard terms of the other Poems) for their sakes whose real worth and understanding is many times equall with the best, onely they have not fed of husks and shels, as others have been forced to do, the superficiary knowledge of tongues. But it would be well, that neither the Linguist would contemne the illiterate for his ignorance, nor the ignorant condemn the learned for his knowledge, For it is not unlearnednesse that God is so pleased withall, or sillinesse and emptinesse of mind, but singlenesse and simplicity of heart.
The Argument of PSYCHOZOIA, Or The life of the Soul.
CANT. I.
The Argument of PSYCHOZOIA, Or, The life of the Soul.
CANT. II.
The Argument of PSYCHOZOIA, Or The life of the Soul.
CANT. III.
PSYCHATHANASIA OR The second part of the Song of the SOUL, Treating Of the Immortality of Souls, especially MANS SOUL.
By H. M. Master of Arts, and Fellow of Christs Colledge in Cambridge.
[...], Empedocles.
Omnia mutantur, nihil interit, Ovid.
[...]. Trismegist.
CAMBRIDGE, Printed by Roger Daniel, Printer to the Universitie. 1647.
The Preface to the Reader.
THe very nerves and sinews of Religion is hope of immortality. What greater incitement to virtue and justice then eternall happinesse? what greater terrour from wickednesse, then a full perswasion of after-judgement and continuall torture of spirit? But my labour is superfluous, Men from their very childhood are perswaded of these things. Verily, I fear how they are perswaded of them when they become men. Else would not they whom the fear of hell doth not afright, die so unwillingly, nor wicked men so securely; nor would so many be wicked. For even naturall-providence would bid them look forward.
Beside some men of a melancholick temper (which commonly distrust and suspicion do accompany) though otherwise pious, yet out of an exceeding desire of eternall being, think they can never have security enough for this so pleasing hope and expectation, and so even with anxiety of mind busie themselves to prove the truth of that strongly, which they desire vehemently to be true. And this body, which dissolution waits upon, helpeth our infidelity exceedingly. For the soul not seeing it self, judgeth it self of such a nature, as those things are to which she is nearest united: Falsely saith, but yet ordinarily, I am sick, I am weak, I faint, I die; when it is nought but the perishing life of the body that is in such plight, to which she is so close tyed in most intimate love and sympathy. So a tender mother, if she see a knife struck to her childs heart, would shreek and swound as if her selfe had been smit; when as if her eye had not beheld [Page]that spectacle, she had not been moved though the thing were surely done. So I do verily think that the mind being taken up in some higher contemplation, if it should please God to keep it in that ecstasie, the body might be destroyed without any disturbance to the soul. for how can there be or sense or pain without animadversion.
But while we have such continuall commerce with this frail body, it is not to be expected, but that we shall be assaulted with the fear of death and darknesse. For alas! how few are there that do not make this visible world, their Adonai, their stay and sustentation of life, the prop of their soul, their God? How many Christians are not prone to whisper that of the Heathen Poet,
But I would not be so injurious, as to make men worse then they are, that my little work may seem of greater use and worth then it is.
Admit then that men are most what perswaded of the souls immortality, yet here they may read reasons to confirm that perswasion, and be put in mind, as they reade, of their end, and future condition, which cannot be but profitable at least.
For the pleasure they'll reap from this Poem, it will be according as their Genius is fitted for it. For as Plato speaks in his Io, [...], or according to the more usuall phrase [...], &c. The spirit of every Poet is not alike, nor his writings [Page]alike suitable to all dispositions. As Io, the reciter of Homers verses, professeth himself to be snatcht away with an extradodinary fury or ecstasie at the repeating of Homers Poesie, but others so little to move him that he could even fall asleep. So that no man is rashly to condemn another mans labour in this kind, because he is not taken with it. As wise or wiser then himselfe may.
But this is a main piece of idolatry and injustice in the world, that every man would make his private Genius an universall God; and would devour all mens apprehensions by his own fire, that glowes so hot in him, and (as he thinks) shines so clear.
As for this present song of the Immortality of the soul, it is not unlikely but that it will prove sung Montibus & Sylvis to the waste woods and solitary mountains. For all men are so full of their own phansies and idiopathies, that they scarce have the civility to interchange any words with a stranger. If they chance to hear his exotick tone, they entertain it with laughter, a passion very incident upon that occasion to children and clowns. But it were much better neither to embosome nor reject any thing, though strange, till we were well acquainted with it.
Exquisite disquisition begets diffidence; diffidence in knowledge, humility; humility, good manners and meek conversation. For mine own part, I desire no man to take any thing I write, upon trust, without canvasing; and would be thought rather to propound then to assert what I have here or elsewhere written. But continually to have exprest my diffidence in the very tractates themselves, had been languid and ridiculous.
It were a piece of injustice to expect of others, that which I could never indure to stoop to my self. That knowledge which is built upon humane authority, is [Page]no better then a Castle in the Aire. For what man is [...] or at least can be proved to us to be so? Wherefore the foundation of that argument will but prove precarious, that is so built. And we have rather a sound of words signifying the thing is so, then any true understanding that the thing is so indeed.
What ever may seeme strange in this Poem, condemne it not, till thou findest it dissonant to Plato's School, or not deducible from it. But there be many arguments, that have no strangenesse at all to prove the Souls immortality; so that no man that is not utterly illiterate shall lose his labour in reading this short Treatise.
I must confesse I intended to spin it out to a greater length; but things of greater importance then curious Theory, take me off; beside the hazard of speaking hard things to a multitude.
I make no question, but those that are rightly acquainted with Platonisme, will accept of that small pains, and make a good construction of my labours. For I well assure thee (Reader) that it will be nothing but ignorance of my scope, that shall make any do otherwise. I fly too high to take notice of lesser flaws. If thou seest them, I give thee free liberty to mend them. But if thou regardest not lesser trifles, we be well met.
The Argument of PSYCHATHANASIA. Or The Immortality of the Soul.
BOOK I. CANT. I.
The Argument of PSYCHATHANASIA, Or, The Immortality of the Soul.
BOOK I. CANT. II.
The Argument of PSYCHATHANASIA OR The Immortality of the Soul.
Book 1. Cant. 3.
PSYCHATHANASIA Or The Immortality of the Soul.
BOOK I. CANT. 4.
The Argument of PSYCHATHANASIA, Or The Immortalitie of the Soul.
BOOK II. CANT. 1.
The Argument of PSYCHATHANASIA, OR, The Immortality of the Soul.
Book. 2. Cant. 2.
The Argument of PSYCHATHANASIA, Or, The Immortality of the Soul.
BOOK II. CANT. III.
The Argument of PSYCHATHANASIA, OR The Immortality of the Soul.
Book. 3. Cant. 1.
The Argument of PSYCHATHANASIA, Or The Immortality of the Soul.
BOOK III. CANT. 2.
The Argument of PSYCHATHANASIA Or The Immortality of the Soul.
The Argument of PSYCHATHANASIA, OR, The Immortality of the Soul.
Book. 3. Cant. 4.
Nihil tamen frequentius inter Autores occurrit, quàm ut omnia adeò ex modulo ferè sensuum suorum aestimant, ut ea quae insuper infinit is rerum spariis extare possunt sive superbè sive imprudenter rejiciant; quin & ea omnia in usum suum sabricata suisse glorientur, perinde facientes ac si pediculi humanum caput, aut pulices sinum muliebrem propter se solos condita existimarent, eáque demum ex gradibus saltibûsque suis metirentur.
De generali totius hujus mundi aspectabilis constructione ut rectè Ph [...]losophemur duo sunt imprimis observanda: Unum ut attendentes ad infinitam Dei potentiam & bonitatem, nè vereamur nimis ampla & pulohra & absoluta ejus opera imaginari: sed è contra caveamus, nè si quos fortè limites nobis non certò cognitos, in ipsis supponanius, non satìs magnificè de creatoris potentia sentire videamur.
Alterum, ut etiam caveamus, nè nimis superbè de nobis ipsis sentiamus. Quod sieret non modò, si quos limites nobis nullâ cognitos ratione, nec divinâ revelatione, mundo vellemus assingere, tanquam si vis nostra cogitationis, ultra id quod à Deo revera factum est ferri posset; sed etiam maximè, si res omnes propter nos s [...]los, ab illo creatas esse singeremus.
Democritus Platonissans, OR AN ESSAY upon the INFINITY OF WORLDS out of Platonick Principles. Annexed To this second part of the SONG of the SOUL, as an Appendix thereunto.
[...].
CAMBRIDGE, Printed by Roger Daniel, Printer to the Universitie. 1647.
To the Reader.
I Present to thee here in its proper place what I have heretofore offered to thee upon lesse advantage, but upon so little, no where (I conceive) as that I should despair of thy acceptance, if the overstrangenesse of the Argument prove no hinderance. INFINITIE of WORLDS. A thing monstrous if assented to, and to be startled at, especially by them, whose thoughts this one have alwayes so engaged, that they can find no leisure to think of any thing else. But I onely make a bare proposall to more acute judgements, of what my sportfull phancie, with pleasure hath suggested: following my old designe of furnishing mens minds with variety of apprehensions concerning the most weighty points of Philosophie, that they may not seem rashly to have settled in the truth, though it be the truth: a thing as ill beseeming Philosophers, as hastie prejudicative sentence Politicall Judges. But if I had relinquished here my wonted self, in proving Dogmaticall, I should have found very noble Patronage for the cause among the ancients, Epicurus, Democricus, Lucretius, &c. Or if justice may reach the dead do them the right as to shew, that though they be hooted at, by the Rout of the learned, as men of menstrous conceits, they were either very wise or exceeding fortunate to light on so probable and specious an opinion, in which notwithstanding there is so much difficulty and seeming inconsistencie.
Nay and that sublime and subtill Mechanick too, Des-Chartes, though he seem to mince it must hold infinitude of worlds, or which is as harsh, one infinite one. For what is his mundus indefinitè ext [...]nsus, but extensus infinitè? Else it sounds enely infinitus quoad nos, but simpliciter finitus. But if any space be lest out u [...]stussed with At [...]ms, it will hazard the dissipation of the whole frame of Nature into disjoynted dust; as may be proved by the Principles of his own Philosophte. And that that there is space whereever God is, or any actuall and self-subsistent Being, seems to me no plainer then one of their [...].
For mine own part, I must confesse these apprehersions do plainly oppose what heretofore I have conceived; but I have sworn more faithfull frien [...]ship with Truth then with my self. And therefore without all ren [...]rse [...]ay battery against mine own edifice: not sparing to shew how week [Page]that is, that my self now deems not impregnably strong. I have at the latter end of the last Canto of P [...]ychathanasia, not without triumph concluded, that the world hath not continued ab aeterno from this ground:
And this is in answer to an objection against my last argument of the souls Immortalitie, viz. divine goodnesse. Which I there make the measure of his providence. That ground limits the Essence of the world as well as its duration, and satisfies the curiositie of the Opposer, by shewing the incompossibilitie in the Creature, not want of goodnesse in the Creatour to have staid the framing of the Vaiverse. But now roused up by a new Philosophick furie, I answer that difficultie by taking away the Hypothesis of either the world or time being finite: defending the infinitude of both. Which though I had done with a great deal of vigour and life, and semblance of assent, it would have agreed well enough with the free heat of Poesie, and might have passed for a pleasant flourish: but theseverity of my own judgement and sad Genius, hath cast in many correctives and coolers into the Canto it self; so that it cannot amount to more then a discussion. And discussion is no prejudice but an honour to the truth: for then and never but then is she victorious. And what a glorious Trophee shall the finite world erect when it hath vanquished the Infinite; a Pygmee a Giant!
The Argument of Democritus Platonissans, OR The Infinite of Worlds.
ANTIPSYCHOPANNYCHIA OR The third Book of the song of the SOUL: Containing a Confutation of the sleep of the SOUL after death.
By H. M. Master of Arts, and Fellow of Christs Colledge in Cambridge.
[...], Plotin. Ennead. 3.
[...], John 11.
CAMBRIDGE Printed by Roger Daniel, Printer to the Universitie. 1647.
The Preface to the Reader.
TO preface much concerning these little after-pieces of Poetry, I hold needlesse, having spoke my mind so fully before. The motives that drew me to adde them to the former are exprest in the Poems themselves. My drift is one in them all: which is to raise a certain number of well ordered Phantasms, fitly shaped out and warily contrived, which I set to skirmish and conflict with all the furious phansies of Epicurisme and Atheisme. But here's my disadvantage, that victory will be no victory, unlesse the adversary acknowledge himselfe overcome. None can acknowledge himself overcome, unlesse he perceive the strength, and feel the stroke of the more powerfull arguments. But the exility and subtilty of many, and that not of the meanest, is such (nor can they be otherwise) that they will (as that kind of thunder which the Poets do commonly call [...], from its over quick and penetrating energie) go through their more porous and spongy minds without any sensible impression.
Sure I am that sensuality is alwayes an enemy to subtilty of reason, which hath its rise from subtilty of phansie: so that the life of the body, being vigorous and radiant in the soul, hinders us of the sight of more attenuate phantasmes, But that being supprest or very much castigate and kept under, our inward apprehension grows clearer and larger. Few men can imagine any thing so clearly awake, as they did when they were asleep, And what's the reason, but that the sense of the body is then bound up or dead in a manner?
The dark glasse-windows will afford us a further illustration for this purpose. Why is it that we see our own [Page]faces there by night? What can reflect the species (as they phrase it) when the glasse is pervious and transparent? Surely reflexion in the ordinary apprehension is but a conceit. The darknesse behind the glasse is enough to exhibit visibly the forms of things within, by hiding stronger objects from the eye, which would bury these weak idola in their more orient lustre.
The starres shine and fill the air with their species by day, but are to be seen onely in a deep pit, which may fence the Suns light from striking our sight so strongly. Every contemptible candle conquers the beams of the Moon, by the same advantage that the Suns doth the Starrs, viz. propinquitie. But put out the candle, and you will presently find the moon-light in the room; exclude the moon, and then the feeblest of all species will step out into energy, we shall behold the night.
All this is but to shew, how the stronger or nearer [...] doth obscure the weaker or further off; and how that one being removed, the energie of the other will easily appear.
Now that our comparison may be the fitter, let us consider what Aristotle saith of phansie, that it is [...]. Thus much I will take of him, that Phansie is sense; and adde to it that [...] is also [...], and [...] and what I have intimated in some passages of these Poems, that the soul doth alwayes feel it self, its own actuall Idea, by its omniform centrall self. So that the immediate sense of the soul is nothing else but to perceive its own energie.
Now sith that, that which we call outward sense, is indeed the very energie of the soul, and inward sense which is phansie can be no other, there seems to be no reall and intrinsecall difference betwixt the [...] and [...] of any form; no more then there is betwixt a frog born by [Page]the Sunne and mere slime, and one born by copulation: For these are but extrinsecall relations. Wherefore [...] and [...] in the soul it self is all one.
But now sith it is the same nature, why is not there the same degrees in both? I say there is, as appears plainly in sleep, where we find all as clear and energeticall as when we wake.
But here these [...] or [...] (for I have prov'd them all one) do as greater and lesser lights dim one another; or that which is nearest worketh strongliest. Hence it is that the light or life of this low spirit or body of ours, stirring up the soul into a perpetuall senfuall energie, if we foster this and unite our minds, will, and animadversion with it, will by its close nearenesse with the soul dim and obscure those more subtil and exile phantasms or [...] risen from the soul it self, or occasioned by other mens writings. For they will be in the flaring light or life of the body as the starres in the beams of the Sunne scarce to be seen, unlesse we withdraw our selves out of the flush vigour of that light, into the profundity of our own souls, as into some deep pit.
Wherefore men of the most tam'd and castigate spirits are of the best and most profound judgement, because they can so easily withdraw themselves from the life and impulse of the lower spirit of this body.
Thus being quit of passion, they have upon any occasion a clear though still and quiet representation of every thing in their minds, upon which pure bright sydereall phantasms unprejudiced reason may safely work, and clearly discern what is true or probable.
If my writings fall into the hands of men otherwise qualified, I shall gain the lesse approbation. But if they will endeavour to compose themselves as near as they can to this temper; though they were of another opinion [Page]then what my writings intend to prove, I doubt not but they will have the happinesse to be overcome, and to prove gainers by my victory.
To say any thing more particularly concerning these last I hold it needlesse. Onely let me excuse my self, if any chance to blame me for my [...], as confuting that which no man will assert. For it hath been asserted by some; as those Mauri whom Ficinus speaks of; and the question is also discussed by Plotinus in his fourth Ennead, where he distinguisheth of, all souls being one, after this manner, [...]. The latter member is that, which my arguments conclude against. though they were [...] yet were we safe enough; as safe as the beams of the Sun the Sun existing. But the similitude of Praxiteles broken glasse is brought in, according to the apprehension of such, as make the image to vanish into nothing, the glasse being taken away: and that as there is but one face, though there be the appearances of many; so though there be the appearances of many souls, by reason of that ones working in divers bodies, yet there is but one soul; and understanding sense and motion to be the acts of this one soul informing severall bodies.
This is that which both Plotinus and I endeavour to destroy, which is of great moment: For if one onely soul act in every body, what ever we are now, surely this body laid in the dust we shall be nothing.
As for the Oracles answer to Amelius, if any vulgar conceited man think it came from a devil with Bats wings and a long tail, the Seventies translation of the eight verse of the 32. chapter of Deuteronomy may make it at least doubtfull. When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sonnes of Adam he set the bounds of the people, [...]. [Page]He did not then deliver them into the hand and jurisdiction of devils, nor to be instructed and taught by them.
But if Apollo who gave so good a testimony of Socrates while he was living, and of Plotinus after his death, was some foul fiend, yet tis no prejudice to their esteem, since our Saviour Christ was acknowledged by the devil.
But I have broke my word, by not breaking off before this. Reader, tis time now to leave thee to the perusall of my writings, which if they chance to please thee, I repent me not of my pains; if they chance not to please, that shall not displease me much, for I consider that I also with small content and pleasure have read the writings of other men.
The Argument of ANTIPSYCHOPANNYCHIA Or The confutation of the sleep of the Soul.
CANT. I.
The Argument of ANTIPSYCHOPANNYCHIA OR, The Confutation of the Sleep of the Soul.
Cant. 2.
The Argument of ANTIPSYCHOPANNYCHIA OR, The Confutation of the Sleep of the Soul.
Cant. 3.
The Preface to the Reader.
ALthough the opinion of the Praeexistency of the Soul be made so probable and passable in the Canto it self, that none can sleight and contemn it, that do not ordinarily approve themselves men by Derision more then by Reason; yet so heavie prejudice lying upon us both from Naturall diffidence in so high Points, and from our common Education, I thought it fit, for seeuring my self, from suspicion of overmuch lightnesse, to premize thus much: That that which I have taken the pains and boldnesse to present to the free judgement of others, hath been already judged of old, very sound and orthodox, by the wisest and most learned of preceding Ages.
Which R. Menasseh Ben-Israel, doth abundantly attest in his 15. Problem. De Creatione; Avouching that it is the common Opinion of all the Hebrews, and that it was never called into controversie, but approved of, by the common consent and suffrage of all wise men.
And himself doth by severall places out of the Old Testament (as pat for his purpose, I think, as any can be brought against it) endeavour to make it good; but might I confesse, have been more fitly furnished, could his Religion have reached into the New. For Philip. 2. v. 6, 7, 8. John 9. v. 1, 2, 3. John 17. v. 45. Mark 8. v. 27, 28. all those places do seem so naturally to favour this Probability, that if it had pleas'd the Church to have concluded it for a standing Truth; He that would not have been fully convinc'd upon the evidence of these passages of Scripture, would undoubtedly, have been held a man of a very timorous & Scepticall constitution, if not something worse.
Nor is the feeblenesse and miserable ineptnesse of Infancy [Page]any greater damp to the belief of this Preexistency then the dotage and debility of old Age, to the hope of the Souls future subsistency after death,
Nor, if we would fetch an argument from Theologie, is Gods Justice, and the divine Nemesis lesse set out, by supposing that the Souls of men, thorough their own revolting from God before they came into the body, have thus in severall measures engaged themselves in the sad, dangerous, and almost fatall entanglements of this Corporeall World; then it is, by conceiving that they must needs survive the Body, that the judgement of the Almighty may passe upon them, for what they have committed in the flesh.
Nor lastly, is it harder to phansie, how these Praeexistent Souls insinuate into seed, Embryos, or Infants, then how Created ones are insinuated; nor yet so hard, to determine of their condition if they depart in Infancy, as of the condition of these.
But mistake me not, Reader; I do not contend (in thus arguing) that this opinion of the Praeexistency of the Soul, is true, but that it is not such a self-condemned Falsity, but that I might without justly incurring the censure of any Vainnesse or Levity, deem it worthy the canvase and discussion of sober and considerate men.
The Praeexistency of the SOUL.
The Argument:
ANTIMONOPSYCHIA Or The fourth part of the Song OF THE SOUL, Containing A confutation of the Unity of Souls.
Whereunto is annexed a Paraphrase upon Apollos answer concerning Plotinus his Soul departed this life.
By H. M. Master of Arts, and Fellow of Christs Colledge in Cambridge.
[...].
CAMBRIDGE Printed by Roger Daniel, Printer to the Universitie. 1647.
The Argument of ANTIMONOPSYCHIA OR, Confutation of the Unitie of SOULS.
THE ORACLE OR, A Paraphrasticall Interpretation of the answer of Apollo, when he was consulted by Amelius whither Plotinus soul went when he departed this life.
AN ADDITION of some few smaller POEMS, BY HENRY MORE: Master of Arts, and Fellow of CHRISTS COLLEDGE in CAMBRIDGE.
CAMBRIDGE, Printed by Roger Daniel, Printer to the Universitie. 1647.
Cupids Conflict. Mela. Cleanthes.
Out of the Anthologie a Distick.
[...].
Deliquium.
THE TRIUMPH, OR A Paraphrase upon the ninth Hymn of Synesius, written in honour of Jesus, the Son of Mary, the SAVIOUR of the World.
Notes upon Psychozoia.
Canto 1. Stanz. 1.
THe fittest station to take a right view of the Song of the Soul, is Psyche, or the soul of the Universe. For whatsoever is handled in Psychozoia, and the three other parts of this song hath a meet relation to Psyche as the subject of the whole Poem. For the whole Poem is spent either in her Parentage, Marriage, Clothing or Of-spring.
The three first are dispatched in the first Canto of Psychozoia, the last in the two latter Cantoes and three following parts of the Poem. For in the second Canto the manner of the production of Souls is set out till the 24 Stanza. Then all the residue of that and the whole Canto following in the description of their habitation. But their habitation being the Land of life, that is, the severall states of the Soul in good and evill, for this cause chiefly, as also in part, for the description in the first Canto of that life deriv'd from Ahad and Aeon to Psyche, and that which flows from her [...] to the lowest skirts of the Universe, do I call this first part of the Song of the Soul, Psychozoia.
For what is time but the perseverance of the motion of the soul of the world, while she by her restlesse power [Page 336]brings forth these things in succession, that Eternity hath at once altogether. For such is the nature of Aeon or Eternity, viz. A life exhibiting all things at once, and in one. [...], but distance of life makes time, and the prorogation of life continueth time, the praeterition of life is the praeterition of time, but Psyche is the fountain of this evolved life, whence she is also the very life of time.
It may be thus shadowed out. The seed of a plant hath all the whole tree, branches, leaves, and fruit at once, in one point after a manner closed up, but potentially. Eternity hath all the world in an indivisible indistant way at once, and that actually.
Psyche or the Soul of the world, when she begins this world, begets a grosser kind of Alterity, and dispersed diversity [...]. &c. as the seminall forme spreads out it self, and the body it inacts into distant branches from the quiet and silent seed, making that actuall in time and succession which could not be here below in bodies at once. See Plotin Ennead. 3. lib. 7. cap. 10. where the nature of time is more fully described.
Viz. God himself,
- [...] Of minds thou art the Mind.
- [...] The Soul of souls.
- [...] And Nature of each natures kind.
Synes. Hymn. 4.
The deepest Centre of all things, and first root of all beings; the Platonists call [...] & [...], that is, the Good, and the One. See Plot. Ennead. 1. lib. 7. cap, 1. Mercur. Trismeg. Serm. Univers. ad Aesculap. This is [Page 337]the simple and naked essence of God, utterly devoid of division and plurality, and therefore not to be known by reason or Intellect, but [...], as the Oracle speaks, by the flower, or the summity of the Intellect. ‘ [...],’ that is, [...] as Mich. Psellus expounds it, by the unitive power of the Intellect, or by a certain simple and tactuall Energie of the soul when it is roused into act.
For so is the expression of Plotinus, Ennead. 6. l. 9. c. 7. [...] For he is present to him that can touch him, but to him that cannot, he is not present: and in the 9. Cap. describing more lively the state of our union with Atove, or the eminent absolute Good, [...], &c. And there lyeth our happinesse, saith he, and to be removed from hence, is but to partake lesse of being. Here is the rest of the soul, set out of the reach of all evils, ascended into a place devoid of all danger and mischief. Here she becomes intellectuall, Here she is impassible, Here she truly lives indeed. But this life that we live disjoyned from God is but a shadow, and umbratil imitation of that. But that [...], intellectuall energie, an energie that begets Gods [...] in that still and silent tactuall conjunction with this Universall Good. It begets beauty, it begets righteousnesse, it begets valour; for these doth the soul bring forth, being once impregned of God, and fil'd as it were with his sacred seed. And in the 10. Chap. describing further this Union, he saith, that God and the soul doth as it were [...], joyne centres, and centres do wholly swallow up one another, so that this union is even more then touch.
This tactuall conjunction of the soul with God surely in the Christian phrase is no more then divine love, as S, John speaks. God is love, and he that is in love is in [Page 338]God and God in him. And Plotinus doth plainly acknowledge it, when as he saith, Every soul is a Venus and hath her Cupid born with her, an heavenly Cupid with an heavenly Venus, till she be defiled with earthly love, [...], made common and as it were become an Harlot: but that the soul in the purity of her own nature, loves God and desireth to be joyned with him, as a beautifull virgin to a beautifull man, [...], for so I think the text is to be read, and not [...]. See the whole ninth book of the sixth Ennead. For the nature of Atove or Ahad and the manner of the conjunction of the soul with him is there exquisitly set out.
It being acknowledged both in the purest Philosophy and in Christianity, that the root of all things is goodnesse it self, the most genuine consequence of this is, That his providence being measured by himself, goodnesse it self is the measure thereof: so that all Melancholick and dismall dreams of idly affrighted men, may well vanish in the clearnesse of this light and truth; as also the envious, malicious, and bloudy minded man may here consider, how far he hath wandred from the will of God, and the root of his own being.
This Aeon is all things essentially and truly as Ahad or Atove above all things. It is the very intellectuall world, Eternall life, united ever with the father that brought him forth. The [...] of God, his understanding, or explicit inward comprehension of all things ab aeterno, infinite and every where, differing onely from his fountain in this, that he is one simple Unity, this one ever-actuall omniformity, ‘ [...].’ [Page 339]as the Oracle speaks, being the very Essence or Idea of all things, at once, not successively or in part. See Plotin. Ennead. 3. lib. 7. where he doth acknowledge Aeon and On all one: at the fourth Chapter.
The description of Aeon, which is the first form also or pulchritude, is largely set out: Ennead. 5. lib. 8. [...], where the condition of that Eternall life is thus delineated. [...] &c. that is, It is an easie life they live there, for truth is their mother, nurce, substance, and nourishment, and they see all things (not in which generation is but essence) and themselves in others. For all's pellucid, nothing dark or impervious, but every one to every one is perspicuous, and all to every one as light to light. For every one hath in him all things, and again sees all things in others. So that all things are every where, and all is all, and every thing all, and the splendour infinite. For every thing there is great, sith what is little must be also great: the Sun there is all the starres, and again every starre the Sun, and all things: but every thing is more eminently some one thing, and yet all things fairly shine in every thing, &c. See Plotin. Ennead. 5. lib. 8. cap. 4.
This is in reference to Narcissus story Stanz. 12. that sets [Page 340]out the hazard of loving earthly beauty, and of the desire of conjunction with it: but there is no such danger in Aeon land, for the objects there are perfective and not destructive, better then the soul, not baser: and chiefly Abinoam or Ahad which is as it were the Sun of that world, which Aeon doth alwayes behold steddy and unmoved, and with him all they that arrive thither. Aeons self is also an unspeakable plenitude of life, and it is an unexpresseable perfection of the mind to be joyned with him, so that there is plainly no danger or hurt to desire earnestly the enjoyment of these divine forms, though union with corporeall features may deface the soul.
So Plotin. [...]. that is.
The nature of Intellect and On is the true and first world, not distant from it self, not weak by division or dispersion, nothing defective. But all of it is life, and all intellect living in one and at once understanding. A part exhibits the whole, and the whole is friendly to it self, not separated one part from another, nor become another alone; and estrang'd from others. Whence one part is not injurious to another nor contrary. Wherefore every where being one and perfect every where, it stands unmoved and admits no alteration. See Ennead 3. lib. 2. cap. 1,
Ʋranore or Psyche the wife of Aeon, the daughter of Ahad. For indeed all things come from him, but [...]; [Page 341]First [...] or Ahad, that is a simple unity: then Aeon, that's [...] an actuall unmoveable Omniformity: Lastly, [...], that's Ʋranore, or Psyche, viz, capable of that stable Omniformity, that Fulnesse of life even all things, and of him that is above all things: but it is not of her Essence to be all things actually and steddily. See Plotin. [...]. Ennead. 5. lib. 1. cap, 8. But nothing can be more plain than what he hath written, Ennead. 5. lib. 6. cap. 4. where speaking of Ahad, Aeon, and Psyche [...] (saith he) [...]. that is, And we may resemble the first, viz. Ahad, to lux or light, the next to the Sunne; the third viz. Psyche, to the Moon, borrowing her light of the Sunne. For Psyche hath but an adventitious Intellect, which doth as it were colour her, made Intellectuall. But Intellect or Aeon, hath in himself proper Intellectuall life, not being that light onely, but that which is in his essence illuminated by Ahad: but that which imparts this light, viz. Ahad, is light alone, and nothing else beside, exhibiting a power to him to be what he is.
That the Intellect in man is clothed with the soul, the soul with fire or spirit; and that through that instrument it governs and orders this grosse body, is the Opinion of Trismeg. in his Clavis; and the like instrument he ascribes to the Maker of the whole World [...]. The Maker of the Heavens useth fire to his work. But I conceive indeed that the pure Heavens or Aether, which is [Page 342]from [...] to burn, is nothing else but attenuate fire [...], a subtill fiery liquor or liquid fire; as I have else where intimated.
I cannot better declare this matter then the Philosopher hath already, Ennead. 5. lib. 1. cap. 2.
Let any particular soul saith he, quietly by her self conceive the whole Universe devoid of life, form, and motion; let the Earth be still and stupid, the Sea, the Aire, and the Heaven: anon an universall soul flow into this torpent masse, inwardly infus'd, penetrating throughout, and illuminating all, as the beams of the Sunne doth some Cloud [...], making a golden show by their gilding light. Such is the entrance of Psyche into the body of the Vniverse, kindling and exciting the dead mist, the utmost projection of her own life into an Aethereall vivacity, and working in this, by her plasmaticall Spirits or Archei, all the whole world into order and shape, fitting this sacred Animal [...] for perfect sense, establishing that in being, which before was next to nothing, ‘Vers. 8. Aether's the vehicle of touch, smell, sight: Of taste, &c.’
This is true in the Microcosme as well as in the Macrocosme above described, viz. that the more subtill, fiery and attenuate spirits in mans body, are the medium whereby the soul is joyned to and doth work in the body.
Synesius also calleth it [...], the paternall depth Hymn. 2.
From this STANZ. to the 33. is contained a description of the visible World.
To make all this visible World the garment of Psyche is no forc'd or new fancy; sith the Sibyll hath apparrelled God therewith, Sibyll. Orac. lib. 1.
That is,
Moses also (if we will believe Philo the Jew) made Aarons garment a symboll of the visible World, and it agrees well with this of the Sibylls. For first upon the top, on his Mitre was the [...] JEHOVAH; The shoulder-pieces mought represent the Heavens; The two Precious-stones there, the two Hemispheres; The twelve names engraven, the twelve signes of the Zodiack; The blew Robe, the Air; [...]or the flowry work at the hemme of the garment, the earth; [...], the Pomegranets (with an allusion to [...] fluo) the water; [...] the Bells, the harmony, that is, the mixture of earth and water for generation. But as for [...] there is nothing answereth to it in the Hebrew Text, and why should [...] be Emblems of the water, and not rather of the whole Globe of the Earth and Water, it being a round fruit, and representing the seminall fullnesse of the Earth, by its scissure in the side, full of kernells or seeds? Peradventure had Philo been as well instructed in Pythagorisme, as in Platonisme, and had mist the Septuagints [Page 344] [...], he would hit of another harmony, then the mixture of Water and Earth doth make: I mean the noise of those Balls mentioned STANZ. 30. And so the order of having every Bell joyned with a Pomegranet, would have signified the many and numerous Globes at the severall depths of the World, with their concomitant sounds in their motion, or at the least proportionable velocities, and consequently Pythagoras harmony would have been ratified from Aarons robe: but I hold not this Argument apodicticall. Phil. de vita Mosis.
Every particular body is esteemed but a knot or close folding of that one intire Out-garment of Psyche.
It is too too probable the world is round if it be not infinite, the reasons be obvious; but to conclude it finite or infinite is but guesse, mans imagination being unable to represent Infinity to Reason to judge on.
A glance at Copernicus opinion, as at theirs also that make the fixt starres so many Sunnes, and all the Planets to be inhabited: for by their inhabitants they will be deemed the lowest part of this visible world, be it Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, or what Planet soever else discovered, or, as yet not discovered; wherefore according to this conceit, it is said,
That is, at the places that seem low, and these are all inhabited Planets supposing there be any inhabited.
Aeon and Psyche here become one, not as though they were one and the same essence, but nearer after that kind of manner that the body and soul become one man. For [Page 345] Aeon is the Entelechia of Psyche, as I may say, but closer unite then any form or soul to any body, and never to be separate. Because the universall soul of the world finds all things in Aeon, and knows also exactly inferiour things. For her animadversion is not fixed or determined to one, as mans soul is, but free, every where at once, above and below, so that she cannot possibly leave off this state, but is one, ever firmly united with Aeon.
A Christian mystery wrapt up in a Platonicall covering, the reduction of the world to conformity with the Eternall Intellect, and the soul of the world. For these move still, to this very day, to win men to be governed by them, and not by their own perverse and dark will. Or rather to speak in the Christian Idiom, the Sonne of God, and the Holy Ghost do thus stirre men up, and invite them to true and lively obedience to the eternall will of God, and to forsake their own selves, and their blind way, and to walk all in one everlasting way of light and saving health.
Here we see Ahad, Aeon. and Psyche all one, which is to be understood not of Essence, but Person (as I may so speak) and that they move and act upon the creature, as one man.
Physis is nothing else but the vegetable World, the Universall comprehension of Spermaticall life dispersed throughout. This seminall World is neither the very Intellect it self, though it be stored with all forms, nor any kind of pure soul, though depending of both, [...], A kind of life eradiating and resulting both from Intellect and Psyche.
This enters and raiseth up into life and beauty, the [Page 346]whole corporeall world, orders the lowest projection of life, viz. the reall [...]uspis of the Cone infinitely multiplied, awaking that immense mist of Atoms into severall energies, into fiery, watery and earthly; and placing her Magick attractive points, sucks hither and hither to every centre a due proportion, and rightly disposed number of those Cuspidal particles, knedding them into Suns, Moons, Earths, &c. and then with a more curious artifice, the particular Archei frame out in every one such inhabitants and ornaments, as the divine Understanding hath thought fit. For Physis (as I said) is not the divine Understanding it self, but is as if you should conceive, an Artificers imagination separate from the Artificer, and left alone to work by it self without animadversion. Hence Physis or Nature is sometimes puzzeld and bungells in ill disposed matter, because its power is not absolute and omnipotent. See Plot. Eunead. 3. lib. 2.
Every sence to be a kind of touch, was the opinion of the ancient Philosophers, as you may see in Theophrastus [...]. Every sense in Psyche is plainly and perfectly Touch, or more then Touch rather, I mean, a nearer union. But this present Stanza respects more properly the nature of sense in particular Animals (so farre had my pen started aside) where Touch is the centre as it were from whence the soul discerns in the circumference all manner of Forms and Motions,
Thus: for there is first a tactuall conjunction as it were of the representative rayes of every thing, with our sensorium before we know the things themselves, which rayes [Page 347]we really feeling, perceive those things at distance by this communication. For these rayes alwayes convey the distance or place, as well as the colour. Hence do we discern figure, viz. the ray of every Atom of the object representing the site of its Atom. For figure is nothing else but the order or disposition of those Atoms. Thus have we all figures, colours, and shapes in a whole Horison conveighed to our sight by a centrall Touch of those rayes of the objects round about us.
As is plain in the communication of rayes. For I cannot think that union simply with this sensible world, of it self can make us know things at distance, though Plotinus seem inclinable to that Opinion. See Psychathan, lib. 3. Cant. 1.
Somethings are so light that the weight is indiscernable to some, as the Flie that sat upon the Bulls horns and apologized for her self, as having wearied him, as it is in the Arabian fable, some smells too weak to strike the nostrills of others, and some objects too obscure to be seen of the eyes of othersome. But Arachne is proportioned to all whatsoever is any way sensible to any; because Psyche doth inact this All or Universe as a particular Soul doth the body.
It must needs be so. For no living soul is sensible of ought in this out-World, but by being joyned in a living manner to it. Therefore Psyche being joyned to it all, must needs perceive all forms and motions in it, that are presented to any particular soul. For these representations be made in some particular body, which is but a part of the whole, a knot as it were of Psyches outward stole, but [Page 348]the universall body of the World, is one undivided peece, wherefore nor Owl, nor Bat, nor Cat, nor any thing else can possibly see, but Psyche seeth ipso facto, for 'tis part of her body that hath those representations in it; wherefore man is transfixt through and through by the rayes of the divine Light, besides that more incomprehensible way of omnisciency in God.
As Psyche sees all naturall things, so she doth allow of them. For contrariety of Spirits is onely betwixt particulars, and uglinesse, and ill-favourednesse are but such to some kinds, nor is poyson poyson to all, else would the Spider be her own death, and all venomous monsters would save man the labour of encounter.
Till we come to Psyches self, motion and mutabilitie have place; But in Aeon and Ahad is steddy and unalterable rest, [...]. And there hath Psyche the one eye plac'd as well as the other below, beholding all things, and that which is above all things, as also the shadows and projections of all things without distraction, at once, as easily as our eyes discern many colours at once in one thing.
How she is the mother of them, see the second Canto of this book at the 23. Stanz.
The Mundane spirit (of which every body hath its part) inacted by Psyche, if any particular soul exert any imaginative act, needs must for a time at least be coloured as it were or stained with that impression; so that Psyche must needs perceive it, sith it affects her own spirit. See Psychath. lib. 3. Cant. 2. Stanz. 46.47. Besides this, euery particular soul as all things else depending so intimately [Page 349]on Psyche as being effluxes from her, it is inconceivable that the least motions of the mind, or stillest thought should escape her.
But if any man be puzled how the phantasie of a mans soul should make an impression upon any part of the universall spirit of the world, and Semele should not, let him consider, that the imaginative operations of Psyche are more high, more hovering and suspense from immersion into the grosser spirits of this body, which is little or nothing conscious of whats done so farre above, and so not receiving the impresse of so high acts, it ordinarily happens (even in the exaltation of our own phansie) that memory fails. And besides this, as the vigour of sense debilitates or quite extinguisheth the ordinary imaginations of the soul, so doth her ordinary imaginations, or sense, or both, hinder the animadversion of the impresses of Semele. But particular imaginations and the vigour of sense weakened or extinct in sleep, or near death, the energies of the soul of the world are then more perceptible, probably, even in the very spirit of our body, as well as in the naked soul: hence come prophetick dreams and true predictions before death.
But to go back to the apprehensions of Psyche. Every sensible object and every sensitive and imaginative act appear before her, and whatsoever is in her sight, is also in the sight of Aeon. Because the union betwixt Aeon and Psyche is much more near then between Psyche and the Mundane spirit. And whatsoever is represented in Aeon is also clearly in the view of Ahad; by reason of the unexpresseable close unity of these two; so that Ahad knowes every individuall thing and motion, as clearly, nay more clearly then any mortall eye can view any one thing, let it look never so steddily on it.
Thus the thoughts of all mens minds and motions of [Page 350]heart arise up into the sight and presence of the all-comprehending Divinity, as necessarily and naturally as reek or fume of frankincense rouls up into the open air. For the spirit of the Lord fills all the world, and that which conteineth all things hath knowledge of the voyce, yea of the outward shape, gestures, and thoughts too. Wisd. 1, 7.
Nor is Eternity changed or obscured by the projection of these low shadows. For infinite animad version can discern all things unmixtly and undisturbedly, not at all loosing it self, though gaining nothing by the sight of inferiour things. Nor can I assent to that passage in Plotin taken in one sense, nor is it (I think) necessary to take it in that sense, the words are these, [...]. that is, But that such a kind of inclining himself to himself, being as it were his energie and abode in himself, makes him to be what he is, the contrary supposed doth argue. For if he should incline to that which is without him, he would lose that being which he is. But this is to be considered, that God being infinitely infinite, without stooping or inclining, can produce all things, and view alwayes his work, keeping his own seat that is himself: for so saith the Philosopher in another place, [...]. that is, That Intellect or On, or the Intellectuall world is the first energie of God, is the first substance from him, he abiding in himself. See Plotin. Ennead. 6. lib. 8. cap. 16. also Ennead. 1. lib. 8. c. 2.
But now to take a short view of what I have runne through in my notes on this Canto. Ahad, Aeon, Psyche, the Platonick Triad, is rather the [...] then [...], the Divinity rather then the Deity. For God is but one indivisible unmovable self-born Unity, and his first born creature [Page 351]is Wisdome, Intellect, Aeon, On, or Autocalon, or in a word, the Intellectuall world, whose measure himself is, that is simple and perfect Goodnesse. [...]. that is. For he is without need, self-sufficient, wanting nothing, the measure and term of all things, yielding out of himself Intellect or On, and Psyche.
And speaking of Intellect, [...]. That intellect is taken up about him, imployed in a kind of vitall operation about him, living in him.
But of Psyche [...]. But Psyche something removed and without, danceth about the Intellect, busily beholding it, and looking into it, seeth God through it. So that Ahad is the vitall perfection of Aeon or Intellect, and Aeon and Ahad the happinesse of Psyche and her vitall accomplishment. Ennead. 1. lib. 8. And both Aeon and Psyche, and all things else are from Ahad, [...], that is with abatement, and farthest off from the fountain the weaker and darker, as is more fully set forth in the next Canto. Stanz. 7, 8. &c.
And that the world is inacted by Psyche, and so is (which Trismegist and Plato are not nice to grant) one intire Animal, and that therefore nothing can scape the knowledge of that universall soul, no more then any sensation, imagination, or motion of man can be hid from the soul of man, if she be at leasure to observe it. That Psyche is at leasure being uncapable of distraction, as whose animadversion is infinite, entirely omnipresent, and every where at once.
And now I have taken the pains so accurately to describe the Deity, me thinks, I have made my self obnoxious [Page 352]to almost a just censure of too much boldnesse and curiosity.
But give me leave to answer, that I have not taken upon me so much to set out the absolute nature of God, as those Notions that Plato's School have framed of Him, Which I hold neither my self nor any man else engaged to embrace for Oracles, though they were true, 'till such time as they appear to him to be so. But how ever, I think all men are to interpret both Plato and all men else at the best, and rather mark what of undoubted truth they aime at, then quarrell and entangle themselves in disputes about the manner of expressing that which no man can reach unto. As for example, I had rather fill my mind with that unquestionable truth exhibited in their Triad, viz. that God is as fully Goodnesse, Wisedome, and powerfull Love, as if there were three such distinct Hypostases in the Deity, and then that he is as surely one with himself as if there were but one onely Hypostasis, then to perplex my mind with troublesome questions of Three and One, and One and three, &c.
For the mind of man being so unable to conceive any thing of the naked being of God, those more grosse and figurate representations of Him, so be they be sutable to & expressive of His unquestionable Attributes, are not onely passable but convenient for created understandings, to lead them on in the contemplation of God in easie Love and Triumph. Whereas by endeavouring more Magisterially and determinately to comprehend and conclude that which is so unconcludible and incomprehensible to the understanding of man, we work our selves into anxietie and subtile distemper and dry up the more precious outflowings of the Divinity in our souls, by this hellish thirst and importunate desire of dealing with the very naked essence of God. But let every modest Philosopher [Page 353]but read that Inscription in Isis Temple, a notable monument of the great wisedome of the Ancients: [...], and then pronounce whether there be not roome enough in the Deity for every man to speak diversely one from another, in the representation thereof, and yet no man nor all men together to set out accurately and adequately the nature of God.
Notes upon Psychozoia.
Canto 2.
YEt not excluding Ahad. See what's written upon the 23. Stanza of this Canto.
Plotinus Ennead. 4. lib. 3. cap. 9. describes the production of the corporeall world after this manner, Psyche cannot issue out into any externall vivificative act, unlesse you suppose a body, for thats her place properly, and naturally. Wherefore if she will have place for any vitall act, she must produce her self a body. So she keeping steddily her own station, [...], or rather, [...], like a plentifull flame shining out in the extreme margins of the fire begot a fuliginous darknesse; which she seeing streightway actuated with life and form, [...], so that darknesse becoming a variously adorned aedifice is not disjoyned [Page 354]from its builder, but dependeth thence as being the genuine and true energie of the soul of the World. This I conceive is the sense of the Philosopher, whose conceit I have improved and made use of, as here in this Canto for many Stanzas together, so also else where in Psychathanasia.
What I understand by Hyle, see the Interp. Gèn. It's lower then this shadow that Plotinus speaketh of, and which maketh the body of the World. For I conceive the body of the World to be nothing else but the reall Cuspis of the Cone even infinitely multiplied and reiterated. Hyle to be nothing else but potentiality: that to be an actuall Centrality, though as low as next to nothing. But what inconvenience is in Tasis, or the corporeall sensible nature, to spring from Hyle, or the scant capacity, or incompossibility of the creature.
The production of the World being by way of energy, or emanation, hath drawn strange expressions from some of the Ancients, as Trismeg. cap. 11. Mens ad Mercur. [...]. that is, For God being the sole Artificer, is alwayes in his work, being indeed that which he maketh. According to this tenour is that also in Orpheus.
That is,
And this Hyperbolicall expression of the close dependance that all things have on God, is not mis-beseeming Poetry. But Trismeg. is as punctuall in this excesse as the Poet, Ad Tat. cap. 5. [...].
Hence is the strange opinion of God being all, and that there is nothing but God. But it is not at all strange that all things are the mere energie of God, and do as purely depend on him, as the Sun-beams of the Sunne. So that so farre forth as we may say the body, lux & lumen of the Sunne, all put together is the Sunne; so farre at least we may be bold to say that God is all things, and that there is nothing but God. And that all this may not seem to be said for nothing, the apprehension of what hath been writ on this 1. verse of the 10. Stanz. will also clear well the 6. 7. and 8. verses of the 15. Stanz. where the whole Universe is exhibited to the mind as one vitall Orb, whose centre is God himself, or Ahad.
That is, Ahad and Aeon are in every Cuspiall particle of the world.
By differentiall profundity is understood the different kinds of things descending [...] or abatement from the first cause of all things. But by latitude is understood the multitude of each kind in Individuo, which whether they be not infinite in spirituall beings where there is no [...] or justling for elbow-room I know not, unlesse you will say there will be then more infinites then one. But those are numbers, and not one. I but those numbers put together are equall to that One. But yet that One may be infinitely better then all: For who will not say that Space or Vacuum is infinitely worse, then any reall thing, and yet its extension is infinite, as Lucretius stoutly proves in his first Book, De [...]natura rerum.
That the World or Universe is indewed with life, though it be denied of some, who prove themselves men more by their risibility, then by their reason, yet very worthy and sober Philosophers have asserted it. As M. Anton. [...], lib. 10. where he calls this Universe, [...] a compleat Animal, good, just, and beautifull. And Trismeg. cap. 12. de Commun. Intellectu. ad Tat. [...], &c. This Universe a great Deity (which I conceive he speaks in reference to Psyche, upon whom such divine excellency is derived) and the image of a greater, united also to him, and keeping the will and ordinances of his Father, is one entire fullnesse of life. [...]. For there neither was, nor is, nor [Page 357]shall be any thing in the World devoid of life. And Plotin. Ennead. 4. lib. 3. cap. 10. shews how Psyche by her vitall power, full of form and vigour, shapes, and adorns, and actuates the World, [...], as the seminall forms or Archei form and shape out particular Animals, as so many little Worlds.
In contradistinction to the Universall creature Aeon, Psyche, Physis, Tasis, the centre as it were, and more firm essence of the particular creatures. For I must call these universall Orders of life, creatures too, as well as those, and onely one God, from whence is both the sensible and Intellectuall All, and every particular in them both, or from them both.
Not as if there were so many souls joyned together, and made one soul, but there is a participation of the virtue at least of all the life that is in the universall Orb of life, at the Creation of Mans soul, of which this place is meant, whence man may well be tearmed a Microcosme, or Compendium of the whole World.
The abode of the body is this Earth, but the habitation of the soul her own energy, which is exceeding vast, at least in some. Every man hath a proper World, or particular Horizon to himself, enlarged or contracted according to the capacity of his mind. But even Sence can reach the starres; what then can exalted phansie do, or boundlesse Intellect? But if starres be all inhabited, which Writers no way contemptible do assert, how vast their habitation [Page 358]is, is obvious to any phansie. Beside some inhabit God himself, who is unspeakably infinite.
Let Psychanie be as big or little as it will, Autaesthesia, and Theoprepia be the main parts of it, and exhaust the whole. Let souls be in the body or out of the body, or where they will, if they be but alive, they are alive to God, or themselves, and so are either Theoprepians, or Autaesthesians.
Now they that are alive unto themselves, are either wholly alive unto themselves, or the life of God hath also taken hold upon them; they that are wholly alive to themselves, their abode is named Adamah, which signifieth the corrupt naturall life, the old Adam, or Beirah, because this Adam is but a brute, compared to that which Plotinus calleth the true Man, whose form, and shape, and life, is wisdome, and righteousnesse: That which is above, is, saith he, [...]. but that low life in the body is but a Leonine, or rather a mixture of all brutish lives together, and is the seat or sink of wickednesse. [...], as Trismegist. speaks. For vice is congenit or connaturall to beasts. See Plotin. Ennead. 1. cap. 1. whence it is manifest why we call one thing by these two names of Adamah, and Beirah.
The other part of Autaesthesia is Dizoia, their condition is as this present Stanza declares, mungrill, betwixt Man and Beast. Light and Darknesse, God and the Devill, Jacob and Esau struggle in them.
Theoprepia, is a condition of the soul, whereby she doth that which would become God himself to do in the like cases, whether in the body, or out of the body. Michael [Page 359]ruleth here, that is, the Image or likenesse of God, the true Man, the Lord from Heaven. For the true man indeed, viz. the second Adam, is nothing else but the Image of the God of Heaven. This is He of whom the soul will say when He cometh to abide in her, and when He is known of her [...] who is like unto God, for either beautie, or power? who so comely or strong as He?
Daemon the Prince of Autaesthesie, i. e. of self-sensednesse, it is the very image of the Devil, or the Devil himself, or worse if ought can be worse: it is a life dictating self-seeking, and bottoming a mans self upon himself, a will divided from the will of God, and centred in its self.
All divisions both betwixt God and Man, and Man and Man, are from this self-seeking life.
Autophilus, is the souls more subtill and close embracements of her self in spirituall arrogancy, as Philosomatus, the love of her body; wherefore the one ruleth most in Dizoia, the other in Beirah.
Daemon, that is, the authour of division of man from God, born of self-sensednesse. See Plotin. Ennead. 5. lib. 1. cap. 1. where he saith, the first cause of evil to the soul was, [...], that they would be their own or of themselves. So delighted with this liberty, they were more and more estranged, till at last like children taken away young from their parents, they in processe of time grew ignorant both of themselves and of their parents.
Duessa is the naturall life of the body, or the naturall spirit, that, whereby we are lyable to Magick assaults, which are but the sympathies and antipathies of nature, [Page 360]such as are in the spirit of the world, [...]. The true Magick (saith he) is nothing else but the concord and discord in the Universe, and he, viz. the the world is the first Magician and Enchanter, others do but learn of him by imitation: wherefore they that are established in a principle above the world, and are strong in God, which are the true and perfect Israel, are exempt from the danger of this Enchantment. [...]. For neither Astrall spirit nor Angel can prevail against one ray of the Deity; as Aesculapius writes to King Ammon. Plotinus soul was come to that high and noble temper, that he did not onely keep off Magicall assaults from himself, but retorted them upon his enemy Olympius, which Olympius himself, who practised against him, did confesse to be from the exalted power of his soul, Porphyr. de Vita Plot.
The number of ten among the ancients called [...], is an emblem of perfection: for it comprehends all numbers,, sith we are fain to come back again to one, two, &c. when we are past it. So that ten may go for perfection of parts in the holy life: but the raising of it into a cube by multiplication, perfection of degrees in a solid, and unshaken manner.
[...] Philo interprets [...] and it is indeed from [...] dixit, the Land of talkers.
This Stanza briefly sets out the Beironites condition as concerning their Society and friendship, the bond whereof and exercise, is either feasting and tippling; or a complacency [Page 361]in the well-favourednesse of this mortall body, or some astrall concordance or hidden harmony of spirits, which also often knits in wedlock those that are farre enough from beauty.
Aristotle defines very well and like a Philosopher the genuine society that should be among men, viz. in the communication of reason and discourse. [...]. For that in men is right society, and not as in beasts, to graze in the same pasture. Moral. Nicom. lib. 9. cap. 8.
How unlike to these Beironites was the divine communialty of Pythagoras followers (as Iamblicus describes it, de vita Pythag. lib. 1. cap. 33.) not onely supplying friendly one another in the necessities of life, but mutually cherishing in one another the divine life of the soul, and maintaining an inviolable concord in the best things: [...]. For they often admonished one another not to dissipate the Deity in them: Wherefore their friendship wholly in words and works seemed to aim at a kind of commixtion and union with God, and communion with the divine Intellect and Soul.
This Stanza sets out the nature of each Beironite singly considered by himself, which is referable to some bird or beast, who are sometime lightly shadowed out even in their very countenances.
True virtue I make account is founded in true knowledge of God, in obedience and self-deniall, without [Page 362]which, those seeming virtuous dispositions, are but mockvirtues, no other then are found in some measure among the brutes.
For as Cicero from Plato, saith, Mens cujusque is est quisque, The soul is the man, not the outward shape. If she live therefore but the life of a Brute, if her vitall operation, her vigorous will, and complacency be that which a Beast likes, I cannot see that she is any more then a living Brute, or a dead Man, or a Beast clad in mans cloths. See the 48. Stanza of this Canto.
STANZ. 138, 139. From the 34. Stanz. to the 138. are the Religion, Polity, Freindship, or familiar Society and single natures of the Beironites set out. Here now begins the discovery of the way of escape from this bruitish condition, which is by obedience. Now obedience consists in these two, Self-deniall Autaparnes, and Patience Hypomone. Obedience discovers to us the doore of passage out of this pure brutality, viz. Humility. For it is self-conceit and high presumption that we are all well, and wise already, that keeps us in this base condition.
That a man in confuso, or in generall, is more easily drawn to entertain obedience, but when it is more punctually discovered to him in self-denyall and patience, it is nothing so welcome.
STANZ. 146. For understanding of this Stanza, see Autaparnes in the Interpr. Gen. as also in the 64, 65, 66, 67. Stanz. of the third Canto of this book.
Ice, so long as it is, is a thing distinct, suppose, from the Ocean, but once melt by the warmth of the Sunne it becomes one with the rest of the sea, so that no man can say, [Page 363]at least, not perceive it is different from the sea. This state of union with God Plotinus (as all things else) describes excellently well. [...], Wherefore then the mind neither sees, nor seeing discerns, nor phansies too, but as it were become another, not her self nor her own, is there, and becoming His is one with Him, as it were joyning centre with centre. Ennead. 6. lib. 9. cap. 10. And that this may not seem a Chimoera, I will annex what the noble Philosopher writes of his own experience, Ennead. 4. lib. 8. cap. 1. [...], &c. I often awaking out of the body into my self, and being without all things but within my self, do then behold an admirable beauty, and become confident of my better condition, having then so excellent a life, and being made one with the Deity: in which I being placed do set my self above all other Intellectuall beings. But after this my station and rest in God, descending out of Intellect into reason, I am perplext to think both how I now descend, and how at first my soul entred this body, she being such as she appeared to be by her self, although being in the body. Such an union as this that Plotinus professeth himself to have been acquainted with, though it be the thing chiefly aimed at in this Stanza, yet I do not confine my Theoprepia to it; nor think I the soul of man disjoyned from God, that is not in that sort united to him. But if a man have lost his self-will, and self-love, being wholly dead to himself, and alive to God, though that life exert it self in successive acts, if a man I say, be but affected as God himself, if he were in the flesh would be affected, he is also truly and really in Theoprepia.
Cant. 3.
URiel, [...] ignis Dei, Angelus Meridionalis, He that rules in the power of the Meridian Sunne. Quatuor Angeli praesidentes cardinibus Coeli, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Ʋrieb. For Gabriel in this place bears onely a naturall notion, elsewhere it is the strength of the Lord revealed in the soul. But as for those terms it was rather chance then choice that cast me upon them; being nothing solicitous whether there be any such Presidents or no. I conceive they be some old Rabbinicall inventions or traditions, by the grosse mistake in them.
For when as they assign to Michael the East, and the West to Raphael, they seem never to have dreamed of any East or West but what belonged to their own Horizon, when as, where ever East is, West is also to some Inhabitants, so that both these Angels will have the same province, Cornel. Agrip. de Occult. Philos. lib. 2. cap. 7.
The first estate of man, when he begins to make conscience of the law of God, which I call Diana, which is the Moon, as not affording life and vigour though some small light. Small I deem it in comparison of the daystarre, the Sunne of righteousnesse himself. This estate is set out in these 4. Stanzas.
The penitent, perplext, and passionate estate of one that hath the true sight and sense of his sinne, and corruption, but is not rid of them.
The condition of him whose spirits indeed are unpurged, [Page 365]though the fire hath got hold on them, and burns, and glows, as in fowl rubbish. This estate is set out by the appearance of the sunne from Ida hill, the description whereof follows in the next Stanz.
A sad image of bitter zeal and praecipitant wrath against all those that are not in the same sad condition with our selves, that is, that are either better or worse in life, and different in opinion.
Such men scarce got into the spirit of Elias; yet esteem their temper above the meeknesse of Christs own spirit, because they never yet had experience of it.
This was the disease of the Gnosticks in Plotinus time, who contemned all beside their own sect, to whom the incomparable Philosopher, gravely and more like a Christian, then those that call themselves by that name, writes to this sense, That if they were so much better then all the world, they ought to be so much the more mild and modest, and not so full of ferocity and rudenesse, and to think that there may be room with God for others also. [...]. And not in placing themselves onely next to God, to sore as it were in a dream, to flie in their sleep.
The difficulty here is how the eternall Sonne of God may suffer, he being everlasting and immortall life it self, and not contradict what was written, Canto. 1. Stanz. 9, 14, 35, 36, 37. For to the impassible eternall being is the inheritance of the world there promised, but here to that which is passible and mortall. I answer, that the eternal and immortall sonne of God is to take possession of the world, [Page 366]by that which after a manner is mortall and extinguishable, which is the energie of himself, exerted upon the souls of men, or a kind of life diffused in mans heart and soul, whereby God doth inact us, and is our [...], as the soul is the [...] of the body and governs and guides it. And if Aeon as he is the sonne of Ahad or Atove (to speak Platonically) that is, the simple and free good, or in brief as he is the sonne of God, who is the simple good without all self-nesse or straitnesse, even pure and perfect Light it self (for this Aeon contains in him also the whole creature and is the essence or Idea of all things) I say if he as he is the sonne of God be in us by his imparted life, he then takes possession of the world, and God by him. But he hath not yet enquickened men generally with this Deiform life, but it hath lyen dead to them or they to it, that influx being rather suspended then absolutely destroyed, but as the soul to its body, or any part of her body that is numb and dead. But when that life shall flow into them, as the vitall rayes of the soul into this mortall body, He shall then as truly govern, rule, and possesse the world as any soul doth her body.
And that there is an eternall sonne of God, immortall impassible, and not onely in the souls of men, but that fills the whole universe, the Evangelist I think will confirm. For he ascribes the creation of all things to him, yea and calls him God, which makes me wonder that the Turks have so high an esteem of this Gospel of S. John, unlesse they will interpret, [...] according to the same tenour that [...] is to be interpreted, neither place then signifying, unity or identity, but union onely and conjunction.
But to prove the thing in hand (John the 1. vers. 10.) He was in the world and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
By world must be understood either the whole universe, or men inhabiting it, and they either the godly or the wicked.
If the Universe, he is then the eternall principle whereby God made the whole creation. If the godly onely (as he may be said in some more speciall manner to be their maker) how came they not to know him, when he was in them and alive in them; [...]. If the wicked onely, he made them not wicked, so that if he made them at all, he made their naturall being, soul, and body, and if them why not all the world? whence a man may reasonably conclude, that the [...], that is the Word is eternall and immortall, and invulnerable. And if any Authority will now be worth looking after (S. Johns testimony being so plain) Philo the Jew speaks out to this purpose, [...]. p. 3. It is manifest that the Archetypal seal, which we call the intellectuall world, is the very word of God, the Archetypall Paradigme, the Idea of Ideas, or Form of Forms. And in, his [...] He plainly ascribes the government of the Universe, Heavens, Starres, Earth, Elements, and all the creatures in them, to that which he tearms [...]. that is, the upright word of God, his first-born son. Which is pure Platonisme, and may for ought I know go for right Christianisme, so long as the first chapter of S. John for Gospel.
For the life that is in him and should flow into us, is hindred in its vitall operation. But if any man make it a light matter that God himself or the Word himself is not hurt, let him consider that he that can find of his heart [Page 368]to destroy the deleble image of God, would, if it lay in his power, destroy God himself, so that the crime is as high and as much to be lamented.
From Beirons wall to Pantheothen dwell the Apterites, that is, such as have souls without wings, or [...], as the Platonick phrase is, souls that have their feathers moult off of them, and so are fain to flag among the dirty desires of the world, though sometime full of sorrow and vexation for their grosse vices, but yet in a kind of Hypocriticall humility, acknowledging that to be their destin'd condition, and that it is worse then that condition, to believe that a man by the help of God may get out of it.
The land betwivt Pantheothen and the valley of Ain, is Pteroessa, because the Inhabitants have wings whereby they raise themselves above the mire and dirt of the corrupt body. One of the wings is Faith in the power of God against the forces of the Prince of darknesse. The other Love and desire of appearing before God. See the 8. verse of 45. Stanza and the 5, 6, 7. verses of the 46. Stanza.
Gabriel is the strength of God, which will certainly assist them that walk in the precepts of God with simplicity of heart.
And it is well worth our observation that the main danger of Pteroessa is the making too much haste, or a slubbering speed, promoving our selves into a greater liberty, or gaping after higher contemplations than we are fitted for, or we can reap profit from, or are rightly capable to conceive.
See Interpr. Gen.
That is, to reassume that more punctuall and vigilant care over our wayes in thought, word, and deed, with a kind of austerenesse of life, crossing our own desires many times even in things indifferent, and to reattempt a perfect mortification of the old man throughout, giving no unseasonable liberty to our deceitfull body. For is it not Hypocrisy or partiality to avoid that our selves, which we often impose upon our young children, whom we oft abridge of things, that are not hurtfull of themselves, to break them off their stubborn wills. And believe it; a grown mans body is but a boy or brute, and must be kept under severely by the lash of reason and holy discipline.
This kind of stone the Caspian sea affords, as Dionysius After writes, who ascribes this virtue to it.
And this stone is none of the meanest jewels in the Platonick Diadem. Certainly the purging of our naturall spirits and raising our soul to her due hight of purity, weaning her from the love of this body, and too tender a sympathy with the frail flesh, begets that courage and Majesty of mind in a man, that both inward and outward fiends will tremble at his presence, and fly before him as darknesse at lights approch. For the soul hath then ascended her fiery vehicle, and it is noon to her at midnight, be she but awake into her self.
Those virtues there recited are refulgently conspicuous in Platonisme, Pythagorisme, and Stoicisme. Where's then the defect? But I'll first set out their virtues. Plotinus, Ennead. 1. lib. 2. [...], raiseth virtue to her hight by these 4. degrees. The first are Virtutes politicae, the second Purgatoriae, the third Animi jam purgati, the fourth and last Paradigmaticae.
Now for the better understanding of those degrees, we are to take notice of the first and second motions that be in us.
The first are such as surprise our body or living beast (as I may so call it) by some outward objects represented to sense and naturall imagination before reason hath consulted of them, or it may be phansie clearly apprehended them. Such are present frights and pleasant provocations.
The second consist in the pursuit or declining of these objects represented after the animadversion of our supernall phansie and consultation of reason. Mars. Ficin. upon Plotin.
Now those virtues that do onely amputate, prune, and more handsomely proportionate these second motions in us, are called Politicall, because a common citizen, or vulgar man ordinarily exerciseth this degree of virtue, perhaps for his credit, profit, or safety-sake.
But those virtues that do not onely prune but quite pluck up those second enormous motions of the mind are called Purgative.
Thirdly those that do both extirpate the second irregular motions, and also tame the first in some good measure, are the virtues of the soul already purged.
Fourthly and lastly, those vertues that put away quite and extinguish the first motions, are Paradigmaticall, that is, virtues that make us answer to the Paradigme or Idea of virtues exactly, viz. the Intellect or God.
These foure degrees of virtues make so many degrees of men, if I may call them all men.
[...]
- [...]
- [...]
- [...]
- [...]
Virtues
- Politicall Man.
- Purgative God-man.
- Animi jam purgati Angel-god.
- Paradigmaticall God.
And this he doth plainly confesse, acknowledging that the motions, or passions of the mind are not sins, if guided, directed and subjected to reason, [...]. But our endeavour must be not onely to be without sin, but to become God, that is, impassible, immateriall, quit of all sympathy with the body, drawn up wholly into the intellect, and plainly devoid of all perturbation. And who would not be thus at ease? who would not crowd himself into this fafe castle for his own security? I can not quite excuse the old man of self-love for that round elegancie [...]. It doth not run so well in plain English. It is better thy sonne be wicked then thou miserable, that is, passionate. Epictet. Enchirid. cap. 16. Yet to speak the truth, Stoicisme, Platonisme, and Pythagorisme are gallant lights, and a noble spirit moves in those Philosophers vains, and so near-Christianisme, if a man will look on them favourably, that one would think they are baptized already not onely with water, but the holy Ghost. But I not seeing humility and self-denyall and acknowledgement of their own unworthinesse of such things as they aimed at, nor mortification, not of the body (for that's sufficiently insisted upon) but of the more spiritual arrogative [Page 372]life of the soul, that subtill ascribing that to our selves that is Gods, for all is Gods; I say, I not seeing those things so frequently, and of purpose inculcated in their writings, thought, I might fitly make their Philosophy, or rather the life that it doth point at (for that's the subject of this Poem) a Type of that life which is very near to perfection, but as yet imperfect, having still a smack of arrogation, and self-seeking. But believe it, a man shall often meet with frequent Testimonies of their charity and universall love, of meeknesse and tranquillity of mind, of common care of men, of hearty forgivenesse of offences. Temperance, Justice, and contempt of death, are obvious and triviall; also their Prayer to God, and belief that he helps, both in finding out of Truth, and improvement of Virtue. So that I reserve as the true and adequate Character of Christianisme, the most profound and spirituall humility, that any man can have experience of, and a perfect self-deadnesse, which is the begetter indeed of the former. For where selfenesse is extinguished, all manner of arrogation must of necessity be extinct; and this is the passage through the valley of Ain. So that it must be acknowledged, that though there have been many brave and generous lights risen upon the Earth, yet none so plainly perfect, so purely amiable and lovely, as that sweet life of the Messias, to whom the possession of the World is promised.
This ravishing beauty and love, is lively set out by Plotinus, lib. 6. cap. 5. Ennead. 1. [...]. [Page 373]And when you behold your selves beautifull within, How are you affected? How are you moved and ravished? and gathering your selves from your bodies, desire more nearly and closely to embrace your naked selves? For thus are they affected that are truely amorous, when they either contemplate in themselves, or behold in others that gallantry and greatnesse of soul, that constant garb of Justice, pure and undefiled Temperance, manly, and awfull-eyed Fortitude, Gravity and Modesty gently mooving in all peaceable stillnesse and steddy Tranquillity and a god-like Understanding, watering and varnishing all these Virtues, as it were with golden showers of lustre and light.
This valley of Ain is nothing else but self deadnesse, or rather self-nothingnesse: wherefore the fume rising thence must needs be Anautesthesie, that is self-senslesnesse, no more feeling or relishing a mans self, as concerning himself, then if he were not at all.
Notes upon Psychathanasia.
Lib. 1. Canto 1.
SEE Jamblich, Protrept. cap. 15.
[...]. Merc. Trismeg. 6.
The condition of the soul in this life is so disadvantagious to her, that the Philosopher in the 3. Chapter of the 8, Book of his 4. Ennead. falleth into these expressions, [...]. That the body is but a prison and sepulchre to the soul, and this World a Den and Cave.
The Materia prima; such as the schools ordinarily describe. Else where Hyle signifieth mere potentiality.
[...]. Jambli [...]h. Protrept. cap. 3. pag. 80. Also Plat. Phaed.
There is notorious testimony of Aristotles pride, conceitednesse, and unthankfulnesse towards Plato. Aelian. Var. Histor. lib. 3. cap. 19. as also lib. 4. cap. 9. The Title of that Chapter is, [...]. Of Plato's humility, and Aristotles ingratitude
See Jamblich. De Vita Pythag. where the purity and holinesse of his spirit is sufficiently evidenced from the Character of his manners, cap. 2. pag. 30. where it is said that what ever he did or spake, he did it, [...], with inimitable serenity, and sedarenesse of mind, never surpriz'd with anger laughter, zeal, contention, or any other precipitancy or perturbation.
[...], Wherefore the love of Mortality, is the Mother of Ignorance, especially, in divine things, for we cannot cleave to both; [...]. Mercur. Trismeg. 4. pag. 21.
[...], &c. Paemandr. pag. 7.
Cant. 2.
See Plotin. 'Ennead. 4. lib. 1. cap. 8. & 12.
'Tis the opinion of Plotinus. [...]. [Page 376] Ennead. 4. lib. 1.
If quantity consists of Indivisibles or Atoms, it will follow that a Scalenum is all one with an Isosceles, &c.
Before I prove this and the following conclusions, it will be necessary to set down some few Axioms and Definitions:
Axioms.
1.That a Line hath but two ends.
2.That Lines that consist of an equall number of Atoms, are equall.
3.That it is indifferent where we pitch upon the first Line in a superficies, so that we fill the whole Area, with Lines parallell to what first we choose.
4.That no Motion goeth on lesse, then an Atom at a time, or the breadth of a Mathematicall Line.
Definitions.
1.An Isosceles, is a Triangle having two equall sides.
2.A Scalenum, is a Triangle having all sides unequall.
Theorem. 1.
That a Scalenum, and an Isosceles, be all one.
Let ABC be a Scalenum; The same ABC is also an Isosceles. For fill the whole Area ABC with Lines parrallell to AC by the 3. Axiom. There is then as many points in BA as in BC by the 1. Axiom; and therefore by the second, BA is equall to BC. and consequently by the 1. Definition. ABC is an Isosceles.
Appendices.
The same reason will prove. 1. That every Triangle is an Isopleuron or equilaterall Trirngle. 2. That the Diametre of a Quadrangle is equall to any of its sides. 3. That the Chord of a segment of a Circle, is equall to the Ark, &c.
Theorem. 2.
That the diagoniall Lines of a Rhombeids be equall.
Let ACBD be a Rhomboides, and AB stretch'd out in infinitum, after the infinite productions of CB and AD. I say, that DC will be equall to AB. For EC is equall to EA, and ED to EB, by the precedent Theorem. Wherefore DC and AB are equall.
The same is also as briefly prov'd by the first or second Appendix of the precedent Theorem.
Theorem. 3.
That the Moon sometimes enlightens the whole Earth, and the Sunne sometimes enlightens not the Earth at all.
To prove this, I must set down some received Propositions in Opticks and Astronomie.
Propositions Opticall.
1. SPhaeriodes luminosum minus si propinquius est opaco, minorem portionem illustrat quam si remotius existat.
2. Sphaeroides luminosum majus ê propinquo ampliorem partem opaci irradiat quam ê remoto. Aguilon. lib. 5.
Propositions Astronom.
1.THe greatest distance of the Full or New Moon, from the Centre of the Earth, is 64. semidiameters of the Earth.
2.The least distance of the Moon New or Full, from the Centre of the Earth, is 54. semidiameters of the Earth: so that there is five Diameters difference.
3.The Sun in his Apogee, is distant from the Centre of the Earth 1550 semidiameters of the Earth, but in his Perigee 1446. So there is 52. Diameters difference.
Now let B be the Moons Perigee, A her Apogee, CEGD, the Earth enlightned so farre as DE, by the Moon at B. Let the Moon be now removed from B into A. By this removall into A, the Earth CEGD will be more enlightned
[Page 380]by the first propositions Opticall. But I say CEGD is enlightend all over by the Moon in A, for the distance AB is five times bigger then the Diameter CG from the Consect. of the first and second propositions Astronomicall. But HG is but part of CG, so that AB will be above five times bigger then GH, to which also EG is but equall by the first and second Axiom, or the third appendix of the first Theorem. Wherefore there is above five times as many Atoms in AB as in EG. But in every Atom remove from B toward A, the light, has gaind an Atom in EG by the fourth Axiom. Therefore the Moon at B has enlightned the Earth CDGD even unto the utmost point G, long before it be removed to A: so that CDGD when the Moon has got to A will be swallowed over and over again into the Moons rayes.
But now for the second part of the Theorem. That the Sunne sometimes enlightens not the earth at all.
Let the Sunne be in his Perigee A, enlightening the Earth CEHD so farre as FG. Remove him from A to his Apogee B. In his recession to B the Earth CEHD is lesse and lesse enlightned by the second Opticall Proposition, I say, it is not enlightned at all.
For suppose he had gone back but the length of IC, then had FCG been devoyd of light, because that CG hath no more points in it then IC hath, by the first and second Axiom. or third Appendix of the first Theorem. And the light cannot go off lesse then an Atom a time by the fourth Axiom. Much more destitute therefore is the Earth CHED of light, the Sunne being in B, when as the distance [Page 381]AB will measure above fifty times CH (which yet is bigger then IC) by the Consect. of the third proposition Astrnomicall, so that day will hang in the sky many thousand miles off from us, fastigiated into one conicall point, and we become utterly destitute of light.
A man might as well with placing the Sunne in B first prove him to enlighten all the Earth at once, and make perfect day.
As also the Moon if you place her in her Apogee first, that she enlightens not the least particle of the Earth though in her full.
Lastly, if you place them in K you might prove they do enlighten every part and never a part of the Earth at once, so that a perfect Universall darknesse and light would possesse the World at the same time, which is little better then a pure contradiction. Thematter is very plain at the first sight.
[...]. Ennead 2. lib. 9. cap. 7.
Lib. 2. Cant. 1.
REad Plotin. Ennead. 6. lib. 4. cap. 14. And cap. 15. [...], &c. And a little after he saith, that the corporeall substance being thus prepared, catches life and soul from the Mundus vitae, as Ficinus calls it. [...]. Reade the 14. and 15. chap. of that fourth Book.
Cant. 2.
[...], Ennead. 4. lib. 7. cap. 6.
Cant. 3.
[...]. Merc. Trismeg. 9. p. 37.
Lib. 3. Cant. 1.
PLotinus. [...]. The opinion of the Philosopher is here, methinks, something perplext. Nor can we easly gather, whether he makes three essences, or onely three generall faculties. If three essences, why sayes he [...], one nature in many faculties? If but one essence and three faculties, how comes that supernall facultie to be ever employed in intellectuall and divine speculations, and we seldome or never perceive it? See Ennead 2. lib. 9. cap. 2.
Sith God moves all things, and all things immediately depend of him, or if you will is all things, it cannot be but he must have the sense of all things in the nearest and most immediate manner: as you may see more at large in Merc. Trismeg. in his [...]9. pag. 39.40.
Cant. 2.
PLotinus mentions also a middle way. That the great soul of ths World does at least inchoate, and rudely delineate the fabrick of our body at first. The particular soul afterward accomplishes it. [...], [Page 384] [...], &c. See Ennead. 6. lib. 7. cap. 7. He seems also in his second Ennead to intimate that our bodies are made by the soul of the World. [...]. lib. 9. cap. 18.
Plotinus professes himself to have frequent experience of this, Ennead 4. lib. 8. cap. 1.
This seems to be the opinion of that learned Knight in his Book of Bodies. But I cannot satisfie my self in some difficulties it is entangled with. How it can be possible that any fiery Atom or thin particle should be capable of so strong an impetus impressed on it, as to carry it so many thousand miles, and not to cease from motion or be extinct. Nor can the particles that follow drive on the former. For there is still the same difficulty that was afore. Besides our sense shall then discover onely those particles of light that are in our eye, so that the Sunne will seem to have neither distance nor due figure. There's the same reason in colours.
Mounsier des Chartes his gentle [...] or renixus of the Aethereall Vortices against the Organ of sight, is far more solid and ingenuous, agreeing exactly with all the properties of light, The contending in this and the following stanzes for the received way of species is but a [...]. These rayes are here used for illustration rather then Proof.
See Merc. Trismeg. [...]. 8,
[...], 11. p. 57.
Canto 3.
See Trismeg. pag. 41, 52, 68, 69. Edit: Turneb.
An Arrow shot up into the sky, the higher it goes, the faster it circuleth toward the East because the Arches it there moves in are larger, as plainly appears out of the following figure.
Where let B be the earth. A the East. Let an arrow fly in the line BC. let DE be severall hights of the air. Let the arrow K keep in BC the same line of the air or earthly magnetick spirit. So that BF, BG, BH &c. are not new lines of the air but of immovable imaginary space. which spaces let be aequall one with another. Now let the arrow K moving upward or downard in BC [Page 386]make also toward the East A in a circular motion. I say then it goes faster in E then in D. For the ark DA is divided into parts of the same proportion to the whole D A that the parts of EA to the whole EA. Now EA is far greater then DA, and therefore must the parts of EA be far greater then the parts of DA. And yet in the same time doth the arrow K passe thorough the portion of EA that it doth of DA. otherwise it would not keep in the line BC which is contrary to our hypothesis, and indeed to ordinary experience. For our eye finds the arrow come down in the same line it went up. Therefore it must needs go faster in EA then DA.
But this may seem strange and uncouth that the arrow should thus moderate it self in its motion, and proportion its swiftnesse to the ark it is in. But I conceive it is no more wonderfull then that water should figure it self according to the variety of its situations in hight and depth.
The truth and sense of this stanza will appear thus. Water is a heavie body, and therefore will get so near the centre as it can. That all the parts may get as near as they can, they must of necessity cast themselves into a sphaericall figure. For any other figure though it may happily let some parts nearer then they be in a sphear, yet it necessarily bears others further off from the Centre then the furthest would be, were they all cast into a sphericall, as plainly appears in the following Scheme.
Where let DA be a proportion of water casting it self into a rectilinear figure. FG the same proportion casting it self into a sphaericall. 'Tis plain that though DA be nearer the Centre at the point C and thereabout then FG at B or any where else, yet the highest point in the furface of FG is not so high, or so far remov'd from the centre I, as any betwixt DK or HA, wherefore all the particles of the proportion of water DA are not brought to the nearest position to the centre I, till they conform with the circle CLM. which we suppose the same proportion of water FG to have done. wherefore the lubricous particles of the water DA, will never cease tumbling, as being plac'd in an undue hight, till the surface thereof be concentricall with I.
This being premised, let E be a vessel of water in severall situations of hight. The first and highest situation [Page 388]of this vessel let be BAB which is plainly the biggest circle. Let CBC be the next, a lesse circle then BAB. The tumour at B is bigger then, then at A. let BCB be the third, lesser then any of the former, the tumour at C is then highest of all, and so on still. There will ever be a new conformation of the surface of the water, according to the distance from the Centre of the earth, as is plain from the praemized Theorem.
That the Planets get into one anothers supposed Orbs, is plain from their greatest & laste distances from the centre of the Earth.
- Mars his least distance 556 Semidiam.
- Venus greatest distance 2598 Semidiam.
- Venus least distance 399 Semidiam.
- Mercuries greatest distance 2176 Semidiam.
Now they that make solid Orbs, must of necessity make the Orb of the Planet as high or as low as the Planet it self is at least. Wherefore the lowest distance of an high Planet being much lower then the highest distance of a lower Planet, as appears out of Landsbergius his calculation in his Ʋranometria, it must needs be that their supposed solid orbs will runne one into another. But you'll say it is foul play to appeal to Landsbergius his Calculation, sith he is a party. But I see no man distrust his conclusions, though they mislike his Hypothesis.
How ever that this objection may be taken away. The fluidnesse of the Planetary heavens is acknowledged even by them that are against the motion of the Earth. As by Tycho that famous Astronomer who hath made such a System of the world, even the earth standing still, as may well agree with the conclusions of Landsbergius about the distances of the Planets from the Centre of the earth. For there Mars his least distance must needs be lower then Venus greatest distance, and Venus lest distance must [Page 389]needs be lower then Mercuries greatest distance. As you may see in the Paradigme. Where it is very plain that Venus sometime is nearer the earth then Mercury, that Mars is sometime nearer the earth then Venus, which cannot be without penetration of dimensions in solid Orbs.
But what an untoward broken system of the would this [Page 390]of Tycho's is in comparison of that of Copernicus will appear even at first sight, if we do but look upon them both.
I have set down this scheme of Copernicus because it is usefull also for the better understanding of some following passages.
Copernicus System of the World as it is described in Galilaeo, pag. 242.
It is plain to any man that is not prejudic'd that this System of the world is more naturall & genuine then that of Tycho's. No enterfaring or cutting of circles as in Tycho's, [Page 391]where the course of the Sunne cuts Mars his circuit. No such vast excentricity as there, nor disproportionatednesse of Orbs and motions. But I'll leave these things rather for the beholder to spy out then to spend needlesse words in an easie matter.
How the Flux and Reflux of the sea depends on the motion of the earth I shall endeavour to explain as follows.
About the Centre A, describe the circumference of the Earths annuall course HBC from West to East. In the point B describe the globe of the earth, DEFG running also from West to East in its diurnall course; that is, from G to D, from D to E, and so on till it come to G [Page 392]again. Here we may observe that every part of the earth at severall times hath a contrary motion.
As for example. Those parts at D [...]tending toward E have a contrary motion to what they have when they come to F and ascend toward G. So the parts twixt GD as they go on toward E, move contrary to the motion they are moved betwixt E F going on toward G. But the parts about D move one way with the annuall motion, so that the swiftnesse of the motion of those parts of the earth is increased, the annuall and diurnall motion going in one, and tending Eastward. But the parts about F go Westward toward G, so that much of the annuall swiftnesse is taken of by the diurnall motion in these parts, they going a contrary way to the annuall.
The parts about E and G go not either Westward or Eastward, but are inconsiderable in the annuall motion.
Now, saith Galilaeus, the sea being in his channell as water in a movable vessell the acceleration or retardation of the motion of the Earth will make the sea fluctuate or swill, like water in a shaken vessel, which must needs come to passe twice in every foure and twenty houres because of the great swiftnesse at D and extraordinary slownesse at F.
What the cause is of the dayly flux and reflux of the sea according to Galilaeos mind is now conspicuous. viz. The addition or subduction of the Earths diurnall motion from the annuall, which according to that Authours compute is thrice swifter then the diurnall.
Now as the dayly Flux and Reflux consists in this addition and subduction, so the monethly and yearly changes and variations of this Flux and Reflux consist in the variation or change of proportion in those additions and subductions: they bearing sometime lesse, sometime greater proportion to the annuall motion.
Finally, this variation of proportions ariseth either from [Page 393]a new swiftnesse or slownesse in the annuall motion of the Earth; or else, from the various position of the Axis thereof; it sometimes conspiring more fully with the annuall motion then other sometimes. Whenc it comes to passe that the compound motion is not alwayes of the same swiftnesse or slownesse. But we shall better understand this by applying our selves to a figure. And first of the monethly variation at full and new Moon.
Let A be the Sunne. C the Earth. C E F C the annuall circle of the Earth. B the Moon in conjunction. D in opposition or full Moon. Now we will suppose that which Galilaeo proves in his fourth dialogue. That in circular motion the same impetus being in the moveable, the
movable will move swifter if it be reduced to a lesser circle, as is plain in Pendents, and in the balance of a clock. For the nearer you place the lead to the centre the swifter the ballance moves. Again he considers the moon peculiarly and inseparably joyned with the Earth and so necessarily to move together. And that the position of the moon in D [Page 394]lengthens out the semidiametre of the Orbis magnus of the earth which is then H G. The position of the moon in B shortens it, that reacheth but to C. And the Moon in B is as the weight laid nearer to the Centre in the balance of the clock. Therefore the whole B C must move much swifter, then C D, the Moon being in D: there being in both places the same impetus of motion, or inward moving principle.
But here I must professe it seems to me very hard, how the swiftnesse of the Moon in B, or her slownesse in the Ark H D G should engage the Earth in C, in the like slownesse and swiftnesse, there being no such solid and stiff continuation from A to D as there is in a balance of a clock.
Again supposing this conceit to hold good. How will it answer to the history of the Flux and Reflux of the sea. Which is increased much, as well when the Moon is in B as when she is in D. That the Flux should be greater the Moon being in D is reasonable, because C being then much retarded in the annuall motion, the subduction and addition of the diurnall will bear a greater proportion to the annuall, and so consequently cause a greater alteration in the Flux and Reflux. But when as the Moon being in B makes the annuall motion of C swifter, the subduction and addition of the diurnall will bear a lesse proportion to the annuall, and so the Flux and Reflux shall be rather diminished then increased, which is against experience and the history of the Flux and Reflux of the sea.
But now in the third place, to find out the reason why at certain points of the years period the Flux and Reflux should be increased. We must observe that this is according to the severall positions of the Axis of the Earth, not but that it is alwayes parallel to it self, but in reference to the Ecliptick. For such is its position in the Solstitiall points [Page 395]that there the diurnall motion added or subducted bears a greater proportion to the annuall then elsewhere. In the Equinoctiall points a lesse. As will appear in the following scheme.
Let ADCB be the Ecliptick, Let the circles GCFE cut ADCB to right angles. Let the annuall motion of the Earth be from C to B, from B to A, &c. the diurnall CAEC and CBEC. The Earth at A in her Solstitiall point: at B in her Equinoctiall. It is plain at first sight that CAEC complies much more with the motion BAD, then CBE doth with CBA. It is not worth more curious proposall and proof: since the truth thereof is so farre from giving a reason of the yearly alteration in the Flux and Reflux, that it is quite repugnant with the history thereof. For according to this device of Galilaeo the greatest Flux and Reflux should be in the [Page 396]solstices, But according to the observation of Writers it is in the Aequinoxes.
But however it was a witty attempt of Galilaeo, though not altogether so solid. Mounsieur Des Chartes in my judgement is far more successefull in his Hypothesis, who renders the causes of all these [...] after the manner following.
For your more fully understanding of what I am now about to premise, I must refer to you Des Chartes his Principia Philosophiae. Mean while peruse this present Scheme.
Where CDBE is that great Vortex, in which, and by [Page 397]which the Planets are carried from West to East, according to the order of CDBE. Let A be the Sun, the Centre of this great Vortex, about which all the liquid matter of our Heaven is carried about, as grosse water in a whirlepooll; and with it the Planets like corks or strawes. Let F be the Planet, we are in, viz. the Earth, which is the Centre of a lesser Vortex HDGI. Let M be the Moon carried about the earths Vortex in her monethly course. This Vortex of the earth is not perfect sphericall, but cometh nearer the figure of an Ellipsis.
Because as Chartesius giveth you to understand, that part of the Vortex, which is the Circuit KL is more like the matter of the Vortex HDGI, then that matter which is above or below at D and I; and therefore DHIG, giveth out more easily and naturally toward K and L.
Perhaps this reason may be added: That all the parts of the Vortex CDBE endeavouring through their circular Motion to recede from their Centre A, and thereby to widen one from another; I mean the parts of any one Circle; suppose KL: and yet all the Circles urging one another [...], from A, to CDBE, they will easily give place in their Circles, as in KL, and the rest, but rather presse close in the Diametre, as in DI. So that the Diametre of the Vortex of the Earth DI, shall be lesser then its Diametre GH. In so much that when the Moon M, is in D, or I, she will straiten the stream of the V [...]tex a great deal more, then when she is in G or H, which will make it run more swiftly, and bear down the Air and Water of the Sea more strongly.
But now that we may come more nearly to our businesse in hand, and apply our selves wholly to the Earths Vortex, in which the mystery of the Flux and Reflux of the Sea is to be discovered.
Let therefore this Vortex of the earth be ABCD. The Earth her self EFGH. 1234. the surface of the sea, wherewith for greater perspicuity, let the whole Earth be covered: Let 5678. be the surface of the Air, encompassing the Sea.
And now let us consider, that if there were no Moon in this Vortex, the point T, which is the Centre of the earth, would be in the point M the Centre of the Vortex; but the Moon being at B, this Centre T must be betwixt M and D: because seeing that the ethereall matter of this Vortex is something swiftlier moved, then the Moon or Earth which it bears along with it, unlesse the point T, be somewhat more distant from B then D, the Moons being there would hinder the ethereal matter from flowing so freely betwixt B and T, as betwixt T and D. [Page 399]Wherefore the position of the Earth in this Vortex not being determined, but from the equality of force of the sethereall matter that flows about it, it is manifest that she must come somewhat nearer toward D.
And after the same manner when the Moon is in C, the Centre of the Earth must be betwixt M and A; and thus alwayes will the Earth recede somewhat from the Moon. Furthermore, because that from the Moons being in B, not onely that space which is betwixt B & T but also that betwixt T and D is made narrower; hence cometh it to passe that the ethereall matter floweth swiftlier in those places, and therefore presseth harder both upon the surface of the Air, in 6. and 8. as also upon the waters surface in 2. and 4. then if the Moon were not in the Diametre BD. And sithence the bodies of Air and Water be fluid, and easily yielding to that pressure, they must needs abate more in their height upon the parts of Earth, at FH; then if the Moon were out of the Diametre BD. But contrary wise, they must become higher at G and E, in so much that the surface of Water 1.3. and of Air 5.7. will be there protuberant.
But now because that part of the Earth, which at this moment is in F (over against B) where the Sea is at the lowest, will after six houres be in G (over against the point C) where it is at the highest, and after other six houres in H over against D, and so on. Or rather, because the Moon her self also in the interim, maketh some little progresse from B towards C, as finishing her whole Circle ABCD in the space of a moneth; that part of the Earth which is now in F over against the body of the Moon, after six houres and about 12. minutes, will have reached the point G in a Diametre of the Vortex ABCD which cuts that Diametre BD in which the Moon then is, to right angles, and then will the water be at highest [Page 400]there, viz. at F. And after other six houres and twelve minutes, F will have reached the point H, where the water will be at lowest ebb, &c. VVhence we may clearly understand, that the water of the sea must in the same place ebb and flow every twelve houres and 24. minutes.
Furthermore it is to be noted that this Vortex ABCD is not exactly round, but that diametre of it in which the Moon is at full and change to be shorter then that which is cut by it to right angles, as is above demonstrated. Whence it follows that the Flux & Reflux of the sea ought to be greater at new and full Moon then in the intermediate seasons.
VVe may also note, that whereas the Moon is alwayes in a Plain near to the Plain of the Ecliptick, and the earth is in her diurnall motion, turn'd according to the Plane of the Aequatour, which Planes intersect one another in the Aequinoxes, but be much distant from one another in the Solstices, that the greatest Flux and Reflux will be about the beginning of Spring and Autumne.
And these principles of Mons. des Chartes as they are plain and perspicuous in themselves, so are they also exactly agreeable with the [...] of Nature. So that though I was mistaken with Galilaeo in the manner, yet in the main I am not mistaken: The cause of the Flux and Reflux of the sea lying in the motion of the earth.
This ensuing Diagram will explain all what is said of Venus in this and the following stanza.
First, that she increaseth and decreaseth like the Moon (it being suppos'd that she is opake, which is discovered also by the optick glasse) is plainly shown in this figure. For in B she is not half lighted, in C she is even in the full.
Secondly, that when she is farthest of she is in her full, as appeareth by the line AC.
Thirdly, that she then seemeth lesse though in her full, because she is so much removed from us, even further then the Sun himself, as appears by the said line AC.
Fourthly, that she must appear bigger when she least is enlightned, because she is then so very near us, in respect of that ren [...]otenesse in her full, as also appears plainly if you compare AB and AC together.
Lastly, here is set forth how she rounds the Sun in her circuits continually, as also doth Mercurius, which is confirmed by their never being far from the Sun. Hence it is that Venus is the Morning and Evening starre. Either to rise not long before the Sun, and so to praenunciate the Day, or to set not long after him and so to lead on the Night.
See Copernic. System. at Stanz. 48.
Before we can well understand the sense of these stanzas we must have a right apprehension of the epicycle, and the station, direction, and retrogradation of Planets, And all these depend one of another.
Let BDHF be an Epicycle. The order of the signes GCE. The line touching the Eastern side ADE.
Now the line of the true motion of a Planet is twofold. One is refer'd to the centre of the Epicycle, the other to the body of the Planet. According to the latter sense are the following descriptions.
A Planet is direct when the line of true motion goes on with the order of the Signes.
Retrograde when it goes contrary to the order of the Signes.
Stationary, when this line seems not to move either backward or forward.
The line of true motion of the Epicycle which is AC alwayes goes with the order of the Signes. But the line that strikes through the Planet it self goes in the upper part of the Epicycle FBD with the order of the signes, but in the lower part DHF contrary to that order. This is the nature of the Epicycle and of retrogradation and station of Planets. Which superfluous motions or stands, as needlesse botchings Copernicus his System admits not [Page 404]of; the motion of the Earth so fitly salving all such [...], as the following figure will make plain.
Let the circuit of the earth be AGA about the Sunne standing still at the Centre Z. Let AN be a twelfth part of Jupiters circle that he moves in about the Sunne. For Jupiter finisheth his course but in twelve years. Divide the circuit of the earth AGA into twelve equall parts. By that time the earth hath gone through all these, Jupiter will have gone the twelfth part of his own circuit, viz. AN. Divide AN into twelve equall parts, according to the number of parts in the Earths circuit before describ'd. That while the Earth passeth thorough one twelfth of her whole circle AGA, Jupiter may also dispatch a twelfth of the ark AN, Let both these twelves be signed with the same letters, ABCDEFGHIKLMN.
Now place the Earth at the point A. Let it go forward till it come to B. Jupiter hath also gone forward in his circuit and appears in the starry firmament at B, going forward on his way suppose with the order of the signes: Let the Earth proceed to C, then is Jupiter also come to C, and appears yet direct in the highest C. so he doth in D and in E, but in F he appears Stationary betwixt F E. Let the Earth proceed to G. Here Jupiter has skip'd back in appearance as far as from F to G. Let the earth go on to H, in appearance he has gone back as far as from G to H. Let her still move forward till she reach I, there Jupiter becomes Stationary again in IH. Put her on further to K, then he is again direct. So is he in L and M and N which is the entire finishing of the Earths annuall course.
Thus according to Copernicus his supposition, is the station and repedation of the Planets, at least the three highest, Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, plainly discovered to be an appearance onely; & that the Heavens are not guilty of any such reall irregularity of motion. Which coneinnity, nor Ptolemees, nor Tycho's Hypothesis can afford us.
But lest any mistrust that the same seeming irregularity, [Page 406]will not fall out in Mercury, and Venus, which are betwixt the Sunne and our Earth; The following scheme will show how there is a station and repedation in them too, according to this Hypothesis of Copernicus.
Set the Earth at some certain point of its annuall circle, viz. at O. Let ABCDEFGHIKLM divide the circle of Venus or Mercury into equall parts. Mercurie and Venus will be in all these sites in respect of the Earth before they can be in conjunction with the Earth again, though the Earth be not fixt in the point O. Now draw a line from the point O into every section, you shall find direction, station, and repedation in these Planets as well as in the other higher Planets. For supposing the order of the Signes to go according to [...]: place Venus first in A, [Page 407]then let her Proceed to B. She has taken a long journey backward contrary to the series of the Signes, and recoyled from A in the starry firmament to B. Let her go on to C. She has given another skip back into C, but a very little one. In DEFGHIKL she is direct; but then at M she goes backward again, and in ABC, till she come at D again. This for the Retrogradation, and direction. As for the station of this Planet, it is betwixt B and D, and M and K, as the figure plainly discovers. What hath been said of Venus is also appliable to Mercury, as was intimated at first.
Let ABCDEF be the circles of Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Tellus, Venus, Mercurie. Saturn, Jupiter, Mars let them all ly in one line GH. The Earth be at the point I. It is plain that the nearest the Earth flyeth of the [Page 408]widest, and so in order. The same happeneth in Venus and Mercury, supposing the Earth at the point K. This matter is very plain even at the first sight.
Why Saturn Jupiter and Mars, when they rise Acronychall, that is, at the beginning of the night seem bigger and be indeed nearer us, then when they follow the Sunne close, and set Acronychall. The reason of this is very evident in Copernicus his Hypothesis, as you may see in this Diagram.
Mars when he riseth Acronychall is distant from the Earth, but the space of AB. But when he setteth Acronychall he is distant the space of HB. So Jupiter, when he riseth Acronychall, is distant but AC from the Earth, but when he setteth he is distant the space of HC, the like [...].
Cant. 4.
THe condition of the bad and good soul in reference to their estate after death Plotinus has very Philosophically set out as follows. [...]. Ennead. 4. lib. 4. cap. 45.
Notes upon The Infinity of Worlds.
WHen I speak of God this Mathematicall way, (which is no new thing; for the Ancients also have defined Him to be a Circle whose Centre is every where and Circumference no where. And [Page 410] Synesius calls him [...], the Centre of Centres,) I say when I speak thus of God, I then set out that modification of his Being which answers to quantity in Bodies. But God is so perfect that no one appellation or resemblance can exhaust that Treasure of Attributes in him, He being so fully all things in himself. So that if we will venture to call Him all that He eminently contains, we must be forc'd upon at least seeming inconsistencies.
And now we endeavour to set out that which answers in God to Quantity, we fall into disagreeing terms of Centre, and Basis of a Cone. But why we adumbrate the divine Entity by this representation you shall compendiously conceive in the following figure: and see in what respect he is a Centre, and in what the Basis of a Cone, as also what that is we call the Cuspis of the Cone.
Let KIHK be the whole Orb of beings. The Centre A. Ahad or Atove, BCDEFGH Aeon, Psyche, Semele, Arachne, Physis, Tasis, Hyle. I say that Ahad in respect of those subsequent Effluxes BCD, &c. is fitly termed a Centre, and is as the Sunne in respect of the Light and Rainbow. But now all things flowing from him [...] with abatement as is most discernable in the Extremes (for the point A is in every point of the whole Orb KIHK, and so is as large as the whole Orb.
As for example, The point A is at the point G and every where else as well as at A; but the point G is onely at G, or if it be at L it is onely then at L, and not at G nor any where else) therefore A though in respect of the Universall orders of Beings which flow from him may be the Centre of a Circle, yet in respect that these orders fall short of his large Ubiquity (some of them at least, all of his perfection and excellency) and the last reall efflux is contracted after a manner to a mere mathematicall point, for such is the nature of the Orb G, or corporeall substance, as I have intimated. For this reason I say, may A rightly be called the largest Basis of the Cone, whose Diametre is IM, or NL, as the descent of these Degrees and Beings from Ahad or Atove may fitly resemble a Conicall figure whose Cuspis is G.
And here I may seasonably appeal unto the apprehensions of men, whether the divine fecundity A flow'd out per saltum, and produced onely the Orb G, or whether there being a possibility of more excellent intermediate Orbs, (I will not stand upon this number I have assigned) he did not produce BCD, &c. And if he produced G onely, whether that Orb G be not either an arbitrarious or naturall efflux from A. i.e. dependeth on him as closely and intimately, as a Ray doth on the Sun. And if so, why the nature of Atove should be lesse fruitfull, [Page 412]then the imaginations of men, who can in reason, and distinct notion place severall Orbs betwixt A and G. Or why the free will of Atove or Ahad should be lesse bountifull then the minds of well meaning men, who if it were in their power as it is in the arbitrarious power of Ahad, (it clashing with no other good attribute) would fill up that empty gulf betwixt A and G. Wherefore as farre as free reason and authority of Platonisme will reach, the mystery of the Cone will hold good, though my drift at this time was rather to explane it, then confirm it.
But if any should be so adventrous as to deny such an Ubiquity as I have described, yet in some sort this adumbration of the Cone, will still hold good. For there will be a latitude and contraction of power, if not of presence. And this will be ground enough for this expression.
But it is to be noted, that if we forsake this apprehension of the omnipo [...]ency of Ahad, God and all things else will prove mere bodies. And then must God, if he can, make himself up in severall parcells and pieces. And God administring the affairs of the Earth, will scarce know what God doth in Saturn, or at least many millions of miles distant, which conceit seems to me farre below the light of Nature and improv'd Reason. But to conceive God not onely a body, but a body devoid of life, sense, and understanding, is so dark and melancholick a phansie, that I professe, I think I could with far lesse pain and reluctancy, suffer my body to be buried alive in the cold Earth, then so stark and stupid conceit to entombe my soul.
The difficulty that their opinion is entangled with that hold the Comets to be nothing but a conflux of lesser stars, is this. That they must then seem first bigger, then lesser; then bigger again, which will evidently appear in the following Scheme.
Where let the closest meeting of the Stars, DFBEGC be at A. I say before they come to A, they will make the show of a broad light; suppose, when come all to the
Circle I. But afterward this light will be lesse and lesse, till they come to the Centre A, where it will be least of all, they coming there closest of all one to another. But then they holding on stil in their severall Arks, they will passe by one another, and the Comet will grow bigger, and bigger, till they have reached the Circle I again, where the Comet is as big as at the biggest before. But then disjoyning themselves more wide one from another, their severall Circles so carrying them, they cease to be seen of us.
This would be the [...] of a Comet, if it did consist [Page 414]of a conflux of Starres. But sith there is no such thing observed in Comets it is very probable they arise not from this cause.
Notes upon The Philosophers Devotion.
TO shew how Day and Night. VVinter and Summer arise from Copernicus his Hypothesis, will not onely explane these verses but exceedingly set out the fitnesse and genuinenesse of the Hypothesis it self. VVhich I will therefore do out of Galilaeo for the satisfaction of the unprejudiced and ingenuous Reader.
Let the Circle [...] be the Ecliptick, where, by the way, we may take notice that when the Earth is in the sign [...], the Sun will appear in the opposite sign [...], when in [...], in [...] &c. And so while the Earth doth really passe through the Signes, the sunne seems to passe through the Signs opposite to those the Earth is really passing through; whence this annuall motion through the Zodiack has been ascribed unto him.
Let now the centre of the Earth be plac'd in the point of [...]. Let the Poles and Axis of the earth be AB, inclining upon the Diametre of Capricorn and Cancer 23 degrees and an half. VVe must also suppose this inclination immutable; the upper pole A, to be the North pole, the South-pole, B.
Now imagine the Earth turnd round on her Axis in 24 [Page 415]houres from West to East: then will every point in the semicircle ADB describe a parallel Circle. We'll for the present take notice onely of that great circle CD, and two other remov'd from this, 23. gr. and an half, viz. EF. and GN, the one above, the other below, and lastly two other furthermost circles IK and LM equidistant from the Poles AB.
Furthermore we are to understand that while the Earth moves on, that her Axis keeps not onely the same inclination upon the Plane of the Ecliptick, but also one constant direction toward the same part of the Universe or Firmament, remaining alway parallel to it self.
Now this immutability of inclination and steddy direction of her Axis presupposed, place the Earth also in the first points of Aries Cancer and Libra, according as you see in the present Scheme.
VVe will go thorough all the foure figures, and first that in Capricorn. In which, because the Axis AB declines from a perpendicular, upon the Diametre of Capricorne and Cancer, 23. grad. and an half, towards the Sun O, and the Ark AI, is 23. grad. and an half, (the Sun enlightning an Hemisphere of the Earth divided from the dark Hemisphere by the Circle KL which Galilaeo calls Terminator lucis) this Terminator lucis KL must divide CD as being a great circle, into equall parts, but all the other as being lesser circles into unequall; because KL passeth not through AB the poles of all these Circles. And the parallel IK with all the parallels described within IK even to the pole A will be wholly in the enlightned part of the Earth, as all the opposite parallels from LM to the pole B, wholly in the dark. Furthermore whereas the Ark AK is equall to the Ark EC, and the Ark AE common: these two, KIE and AEC will be equall, and each of them make a quadrant. And because the whole Ark KEL is a [Page 416]Semicircle, the Ark LE will be a quadrant and equall to the other EK, and therefore the Sun O shall in this posture of the Earth be verticall at Noon to all them that live in the Parallel EF which is the Tropick of Cancer described by the Earths turning upon her own Axis in that posture. And thus ariseth the height of Summer to all them that dwell on this side of the Tropick of Cancer.
Moreover we see plainly, that of all the parallel circles we may imagine drawn betwixt IK and LM. CD is onely divided into equall parts by the circle of light KL: in such sort that the diurnall arks of the parallels above CD are bigger then the Nocturnall, but under CD, lesser.
Also that the differences of the arks grow bigger and bigger by how much nearer and nearer they come to the Poles, till IK be wholly taken in to the enlightned part of the Earth and make day there, of 24 houres long, and contrariwise, the parallel LM be wholly covered in the dark part, and make night of 24. houres long. So that from hence we may see how the true differences of the lowest and shortest dayes and nights are caused to the Inhabitants of severall parallels of the Earth.
Lets now consider the third figure the centre of the earth plac'd in [...] from whence the sun will appear in the first point of Capricorn. Now it is manifest, being that the inclination and direction of the Earths Axis AB is utterly the same it was before, it remaining parallel to it self, that the situation of the Earth is the same, saving that that Hemisphere which was before enlightned is now in the dark, and that which was in the dark before, is now in the light, and so the differences of dayes and nights are quite contrary to what they were. In what parallel was the longest day before is now the shortest, and in what the shortest now the longest, as is plain to fight.
For now IK is wholly in the dark which before was in the light wholly, and LM in the light that was before in the dark &c. And the Sun is now verticall to the Inhabitants of GN as before it was to them of EF. And as it was the height of Summer before to EF and to all on this side EF: so it is now the depth of winter to them and to all on this side of them. Eor the Sun seems to have descended, or is removed from them, or they from, it by the whole arch FDN that is 47. degrees.
All which mutation proceeds from the immutable posture of the axis of the Earth, remaining still in the same inclination to the Plane of the Ecliptick and continuing [Page 418]ever parallell to it self. For so it must needs decline as much from the Sun O in the point [...] as it inclin'd to him in the point [...]. For as, if the Axis AB were supposed parallell to the Axis of the Plane of the Ecliptick the Sunne will be verticall to D and to C. So IA the inclination of the Axis toward the Sunne, will make the Sunne verticall at E in the point [...], and the declination of the said Axis, from the Sunne at the point [...] will make the Sun verticall to N.
But now if we consider the Earth plac'd in the point [...] the Sun O will appear in the beginning of [...]. And whereas the Axis of the Earth which in the first figure at [...] stands inclined upon the Diametre of Capricorn and Cancer, and therefore understood to be in a Plane which cutteth the Plane of the Ecliptick along the Diametre of Capricorn and Cancer, being erected perpendicularly to the said Plane of the Ecliptick; This Axis kept still parallell to it self, will also here be in a Plane, erected perpendicular to the Plane of the Ecliptick, and parallell to the forenamed Plane which cut the Plane of the, Ecliptick to right angles along the Diametre of Cancer and Capricorn. And therefore a Line going from the Centre of the Sunne to the Centre of the Earth, such as the Line O tending to [...] Libra, will be perpendicular to the Axis AB. But a Line drawn from the Suns Centre, to the Centre of the Earth is alwayes perpendicular to the Circle of illumination; therefore shall the Circle of Illumination, or the Terminator Lucis passe through the Poles AB in this Figure, and the Axis AB shall be in the Plane of this Circle. But a great Circle passing through the Poles of the parallells will divide them all into equall parts. Therefore IK, EF, CD, GN, LM, the diurnall Arches be all semicircles, and dayes and nights be of equall length to all the Inhabitants of the Earth.
Lastly, seeing that a Line drawn from the Centre of the Sunne, to the Centre of the Earth is perpendicular to the Axis AB, to which the greatest of the parallell Circles CD is also perpendicular; this Line thus drawn will necessarily passe along the Plane of the parallell CD, and cut its circumference in the midst of the diurnall Arch of that Circle CD. And therefore the Sunne will here be verticall to them that live in the parallell CD.
And what hath been said of the Earth at this point of Libra [...], will agree exactly to her placed in the point [...]. There is no difference, saving that the dark side turned from the Sunne is represented in this last posture as the light side in the former. The nocturnall semicircles here, [Page 420]as there the Diurnall. And so we see how Spring and Autumn cometh about as well as how Winter and Summer.
Finally, whereas the Earth being in the Solstitial points the Polar Circles IK, LM, one of them is in the Light, the other in the dark; but being in the Equinoctial points, the halfs onely of the Polar Circles be in the light or dark: 'tis easie to understand how the Earth passing, suppose from Cancer (where the parallell IK is wholly in the dark) to Leo [...], one part of the parallell IK toward the point K begins to enter into the light, and the Circle of Illumination to bear back toward the Pole A, and more inward toward the Pole B, cutting the Circle ACBD no longer in KL, but in two other points betwixt AK & LB, whence the Inhabitants of the Circle IK begin to enjoy the light, and the Inhabitants of LM, to be conveyed into Night.
The Interpretation Generall.
IF any man conceive I have done amisse in using such obscure words in my writings, I answer, That it is sometime fit for Poeticall pomp sake, as in my Psychozoia: Othersome time necessitie requires it, ‘Propter egestatem linguae, & rerum novitatem,’ as Lucretius pleads for himself in like case. Again, there is that significancie in some of the barbarous words (for the Greeks are Barbarians to us) that, although not out of superstition, yet upon due reason I was easily drawn to follow the Counsel of the Chaldee Oracle, [...], Not to change those barbarous terms into into our english tongue. Lastly, if I have offended in using such hard names or words, I shall make amends now by interpreting them.
A
ABinoam [...] Pater amoenitatis, Father of delight.
Acronychall. See Cronychall.
Adamah. [...] Earth, The earthly or naturall mans abode.
Adonai. [...] The Lord, or the sustainer of all things, from [...] the Basis or foot of a pillar.
Aelpon. [...], not hoping, or without hope.
Aeon [...], Eternity.
Aether. [...], from [...] to burn. The fluid fiery nature of heaven, the same that [...] which signifies as much, viz. a fiery fluour, or fluid fire.
Africk Rock. See Pompon. Mel. lib. 1. cap. 8. Rom. 9.33. 1. Cor. 10.4 1. Pet. 2.5. Revel 5.10. Psal. 105.15.
Ahad. [...]. One, or The One. The Platonists call the first Originall of all things, [...] and [...], for these reasons: [...], or One, because the multitude or plurality of Beings is from this One, as all numbers from an unite: [...], or The Good, [...], [Page 422]or [...], because all things are driven, drawn, or make haste to partake of it. [...], Procl. Theo. log. Plat. lib. 2. cap. 4.
Aides. [...], It ordinarily signifies Orcus or Pluto; here the Winter Sunne: the etymon fits both, [...] Hell is dark, and the Sunne in Winter leavs us to long nights.
Ain, Not to be, To be nothing; from [...] Non, nihil, or nemo.
Alethea-land, That is, the land of truth, [...], as the Platonists call it.
Alopecopolis, [...]. The foxes city, or politie.
Ananke, [...]. The same that Hyle is. But the proper signification of the word is Necessity. See Hyle.
Anautaesthetus, [...], One that feels not himself, or at least relisheth not himself.
Anautaesthesie, [...], Without self-sensednesse, or relishing ones self.
Animadversall. That lively inward animadversall. It is the soul it self, for I cannot conceive the body doth animadvert; When as objects plainly exposed to the sight are not discovered till the soul takes notice of them.
Anthropion, The same with Adamah: Onely Adamah signifies earthlinesse; Anthropion from [...], uprightnesse of body or looking up.
Apathie, [...]. To be without passion.
Apogee, [...], is that absis or ark of the circle of a Planet, in which the Planet is further off from the earth, as the word it self intimates.
Apterie, [...], from [...] negative, and [...] a wing. It signifies the want of wings.
Arachnea hath its name from [...], a spider.
Atom-lives. The same that Centrall-lives. Both the terms denotate the indivisibilty of the inmost essence it self; the pure essentiall form I mean, of plant, beast, or man, yea of angels themselves, good, or bad.
Atove. See Hattove.
Autaparnes, [...], from [...] and [...]. Simon, Autaparnes & Hypomone are but the soul, thrice told over. Autaparnes is the soul denying it self: Hypomone the soul bearing the anguish of this deniall of it self: From these two, results Simon, the soul obedient to the spirit of Christ. Now there is no self-deniall where there [Page 423]is no corrupt or evill life to be supprest and satisfied; nor any Patience or Hypomone, where there is no agony from the vexation of self-deniall. So that the soul as long as it is Autaparnes or Hypomone, is a thing complex or concrete, necessarily including the corruption of that evill life or spirit, which is the souls self for a time. Hence is that riddle easily opened; How the strength of Autaparnes is the weakning of Simon and the destruction of him and Hypomone in the valley of Ain Simons consummation and perfection, or rather his translation, or [...].
Autaestthesia, [...], Self-sensednesse.
Autokineticall, [...], That which moves it self.
Autopathia, [...], Denotates the being self-strucken, to be sensible of what harms us, rather then what is absolutely evill.
Autophilus, [...], A lover of himself.
B
BAcha, Weeping, Bacha Vale is the Valley of tears; from [...] Flevit.
Beirah, or Beiron, The brutish life, from [...] brutum.
Body. The ancient Philosophers have defined it [...]. Sext. Emperic. Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. lib. 3. cap. 5. Near to this is that description, Psychathan. Cant. 2. Stanz. 12. lib. 2. Matter extent in three dimensions: But for that [...], simple trinall distension doth not imply it, wherefore I declin'd it. But took in matter according to their conceit that phansie a Materia prima, I acknowledge none; and consequently no such corpus naturale as our Physiologist make the subject of that science. That [...] is nothing but a fixt spirit, the conspissation or coagulation of the cuspidall particles of the Cone, which are indeed the Centrall Tasis, or inward effence of the sensible world. These be an infinite number of vitall Atoms that may be wakened into divers tinctures, or energies, into Fiery, Watery, Earthy, &c. And one divine Fiat can unloose them all into an universall mist, or turn them out of that sweat, into a drie and pure Ethereall temper. These be the last projections of life from the soul of the world; and are act or form though debil and indifferent; like that which they call the first matter. But they are not merely passive, but meet their information half way, as I may so speak: are radiant ab intimo, and awake into this or the other operation, by the powerfull appulse of some superadvenient form. That which change of phantasmes is to the soul, that is alteration of rayes to them. For their rayes are ab intrinseco, as the phantasmes of the soul. These be the reall matter of which all supposed bodies are compounded, and this matter (as I said) is form and life, so that all is life and form what [Page 424]ever is in the world, as I have somewhere intimated in Antipsychopan. But how ever I use the term Body ordinarily in the usuall and vulgar acception. And for that sense of the Ancients, nearest to which I have defined it in the place first above mentioned, that I seem not to choose that same as most easie to proceed against in disproving the corporeity of the soul, the Arguments do as necessarily conclude against such a naturall body as is ordinarily described in Physiologie (as you may plainly discern if you list to observe) as also against this body composed of the Cuspidall particles of the Cone. For though they be Centrall lives, yet are they neither Plasticall, Sensitive, or Rationall; so farre are they from proving to be the humane soul, whose nature is there discust.
C
CEntre, Centrall, Centrality. When they are used out of their ordinary sense, they signifie the depth, or inmost Being of any thing, from whence its Acts and Energies flow forth. See Atom:lives.
Chaos, In our blew Chaos, that is, In our corporeall spirit: for that is the matter that the soul raiseth her phantasmaticall forms in, as the life of the World, doth bodily shapes in the Heavens or Air.
Circulation. The term is taken from a toyish observation, viz. the circling of water, when a stone is cast into a standing pool. The motion drives on circularly, the first rings are thickest, but the further they go, they grow the thinner, till they vanish into nothing. Such is the diffusion of the Species audible in the strucken Air, as also of the visible Species. In breif, any thing is said to circulate that diffuseth its Image or Species in a round. It might have been more significantly called orbiculation, seeing this circumfusion makes not onely a Circle, but fills a Sphere, which may be called the Sphere of activity: Yet Circulation more fitly sets out the diminution of activity, from those rings in the water, which as they grow in compasse, abate in force and thicknesse. But sometimes I use Circulate in an ordinary sense to turn round, or return in a Circle
Clare, Claros, a Citie of Jonia, famous for Apollo's Temple, and answers, amongst which was this, which I have interpreted in Psychathanasia.
Cone; Is a solid figure made by the turning of a rectangular Triangle, about; one of the sides that include the right angle resting, which [Page 425]will be then the Axis of the compleated Cone. But I take it sometimes for the comprehension of all things, God himself not left out, whom I tearm the Basis of the Cone or Universe. And because all from him descends, [...], with abatement or contraction, I give the name of Cone to the Universe. And of Cone rather then Pyramid, because of the roundnesse of the figure; which the effluxes of all things imitate.
Cronychall, or Acronychall, that is, [...], vespertine, or at the beginning of night. So a starre is said to rise or set Acronychall, when it riseth or setteth at the Sunne-setting; For then is the beginning of Night.
Cuspis of the Cone. The multiplide Cuspis of the Cone is nothing but the last projection of life from Psyche, which is a liquid fire, or fire and water, which are the corporeall or materiall principles of all things, changed or disgregated (if they be centrally distinguishable) and again mingled by the virtue of Physis or Spermaticall life of the World; of these are the Sunne and all the Planets, they being kned together, and fixt by the centrall power of each Planet and Sunne. The volatile Aether is also the same, and all the bodies of Plants, Beasts and Men. These are they which we handle and touch, a sufficient number compact together. For neither is the noise of those little flies in a Summer-evening audible severally: but a full Quire of them strike the eare with a pretty kind of buzzing. Strong and tumultuous pleasure, and scorching pain reside in these, they being essentiall and centrall, but sight and hearing are onely of the Images of these, See Body.
D
Daemon, Any particular life, any divided spirit; or rather the power ruling in these. This is [...] divido.
Daemoniake, That which is according to that divided life or particular spirit that rules for it self.
Deuteropathie, [...], is a being affected at second rebound, as I may so say. We see the Sunne not so properly by sympathy, as deuteropathie. As the mundane spirit is affected where the Sunne is, so am I in some manner; but not presently, because it is so affected, but because in my eye the Sunne is vigorously represented. Otherwise a man might without question see the Sunne if he had but a body of thin Aire.
Diana, The Moon, by which is set out the dead light, or letter of the Law.
Dicaeosyne, [...], Justice or Morall righteousnesse.
Dizoia, [...], Double-livednesse.
Duessa, Division, or duality.
E
EIdos [...], Form or Beauty.
Eloim or Eloah, [...] signifie properly the strong God.
Energie, it is a peculiar Platonicall term, I have elsewhere expounded it, Operation, Efflux, Activity: None of those words bear the full sense of it. The examples there are fit, viz. the light of the Sun, the phantasmes of the soul. We may collect the genuine sense of the word, by comparing severall places of the Philosopher. [...]. For every being hath its Energie, which is the image of it self, so that it existing that Energie doth also exist, and standing still is projected forward more or lesse. And some of those Energies, are weak and obscure, others hid or undiscernable, other some greater and of a larger projection, Plotin. Ennead. 4. lib. 5. cap. 7. And again, Ennead. 3. lib. 4. [...]. And we remain above by the Intellectuall man, but by the extreme part of him we are held below, as it were yielding an efflux from him to that which is below, or rather an Energie, he being not at all lessened. This curiosity Antoninus also observes (lib 8. Meditat.) in the nature of the Sun-beams, where although he admits of [...], yet he doth not of [...] which is [...]. The Sun, saith he, is diffused, and his fusion is every where but without effusion, &c. I will onely adde one place more out of Plotinus Ennead. 3. lib. 6. [...]. The naturall Energie of each power of the soul is life not parted from the soul though gone out of the soul, viz. into act.
Comparing of all these places together, I cannot better explain this Platonick term, Energie, then by calling it the rayes of an essence, or the beams of a vitall Centre. For essence is the Centre as it were of that which is truly called Energie, and Energie the beams and rayes of an essence. And as the Radi [...] of a circle leave not the Centre by touching the Circumference, no more doth that which is the pure Energie of an essence, leave the essence by being called out into act, but is [...] a working in the essence, though it flow out into act. So that Energie depends alwayes on essence, as Lumen on Lux, or the creature on God; Whom therefore Synesius in his Hymnes calls the Centre of all things.
Entelechia, [...]: It is nothing else but forma, or actus, and belongs even to the most contemptible forms, as for example to Motion, which is defined by Arist. in the third of his physicks, [...]. Scaliger in his 309 exercitation against Cardan, descants very curiously upon this word: Cùm igitur formam dixeris (that is [...]) intelliges immaterialitatem, simplicitatem, potestatem, perfectionem, informationem. Hoc enim est [...]: quod innuit maximus Poetarum, Totósque infusa per artus. Hoc est, [...]: quia est ultima forma sub coelestibus, & princeps inferiorum, finis & perfectio. Hoc est [...], posse. This goodly mysterie and fit significancy seems plainly forced or fictitious, if you compare it with what was cited out of Arist. about Motion. So that when we have made the best of [...], it is but the form of any thing in an ordinary and usuall sense. If we stood much upon words, [...] would prove more significant of the nature of the Soul, even according to Scaligers own Etymon, from [...], and [...]: from its permeation, & colligation or keeping together the body from defluxion into its ancient principles, which properties be included in [...] and [...] moves forward the body thus kept together: [...] intimates the possession or retention of the body thus moved, that it is rather promov'd by the Soul, than mov'd from the Soul. But of these words enough, or rather too much.
Eternitie is the steddy comprehension of all things at once. See Aeon described in my Notes upon Psychozoia.
Euphrona, [...], The night.
F
FAith. Platonick faith in the first Good. This faith is excellently described in Proclus. where it is set above all ratiocination, nay, Intellect it self. [...]. But to them that endeavour to be joyned with the first Good, there is no need of knowledge or multifarious cooperation, but of settlednesse, steddinesse and rest, lib. 1. cap. 24. Theolog. Platon. And in the next chapter, [...].
For we must not seek after that absolute or first good cognoscitively or imperfectly, but giving our selves up to the divine light, and winking (that is shutting our eyes of reason and understanding) so to place our selves steddily in that hidden Unity of all things: After he preferres this faith before the clear and present assent to the [...], yea and the [...], so that he will not that any intellectuall [Page 428]operation should come in comparison with it. [...]. For the operation of the Intellect is multiform, and by diversity separate from her objects, and is in a word, intellectuall motion about the object intelligible. But the divine faith must be simple and uniform, quiet and steddily resting in the haven of goodnesse. And at last he summarily concludes, [...]. See Procl: Theolog. Platonic. lib. 1. cap. 25.
G
GAbriel, The strength of God from [...] and [...].
Glaucis, Glaux, [...], an Owle.
H
HAphe. [...], The touch.
Har-Eloim, [...] The mount of Angels, Genii, or particular spirits.
Hattove, [...], the Good, or that eminent Good, or first Good from whence all good is derived. See Ahad.
Helios, [...], The Sunne.
Heterogeneall, is that which consists of parts of a diverse nature, or form: as for example, a mans body, of flesh, bon [...]s, nerves, &c.
Homogeneall, That whose nature is of one kind.
Hyle, Materia prima, or that dark fluid potentiality of the creature, the straitnesse, repugnancy, and incapacity of the creature: as when its being this, destroyes or debilitates the capacity of being something else, or after some other manner. This is all that any wary Platonist will understand by [...].
Hypomone, [...], Patience. See Autaparnes.
I
JAo, A corruption of the Tetragrammaton. Greek writers have strangeely mash'd this word [...], some calling it [...], others [...], some [...]. It is very likely that from this [...] came Bacchus his apellation [...]. and the Maenades acclamations [...] in his Orgia. Which sutes well with the Clarian Oracle, which saith that in Autumne, the Sun is called [...], which is the time of vintage.
[...]. See Fullers Miscel.
Ida. See Pompon. Mel. lib. 1. cap. 17.
Ideas, or Idees, sometimes they are forms in the Intellectuall world, viz. in Aeon, or On; other sometimes, phantasmes or representations in the soul. Innate Idees are the souls nature it self, her uniform [Page 429]essence, able by her Fiat to produce this or that phantasme into act.
Idea Lond. The Intellectuall world.
Idiopathie, [...], is ones proper peculiar [...], my or thy, being affected thus or so, upon this or that occasion; as [...], is this or that mans proper temper. But this propriety of affection may also belong unto kinds. As an Elephant hath his idiopathy, and a man his, at the hearing of a pipe; a Cat and an Eagle at the sight of the Sunne; a Dogge and a Circopithecus at the sight of the Moon, &c.
Idothea, The fleet passage of fading forms; from [...], Forma, and [...], curro.
Intellect. Sometimes it is to be interpreted Soul. Sometimes the intellectuall faculty of the Soul. Sometimes Intellect is an absolute essence shining into the Soul: whose nature is this. A substance purely immateriall, impeccable, actually omniform, or comprehending all things at once: which the soul doth also being perfectly joyned with the Intellect. [...]. Plot. Ennead 1. lib. 1. cap. 8.
Isosceles, A triangle with two sides equall.
L
LAmpropronaea, The bright side of Providence.
Lelurion, Nocturnall fire, from [...] and [...]
Leontopolis [...], The Lions citie or Politie.
Life. The vitall operation of any soul. Sometimes it is the Soul it self, be it sensitive, vegetative, or rationall.
Logos, [...], The appellation of the Sonne of God. It is ordinarily translated the Word, but hath an ample signification. It signifieth Reason, Proportion, Form, Essence, any inward single thought, or apprehension; is any thing but matter, and matter is nothing.
Lower man, The lower man is our enquickned body, into which our soul comes, it being fully prepared for the receiving of such a guest. The manner of the production of souls, or rather their non-production is admirably well set down in Plotinus, See Ennead 6. l. 4. c. 14.15.
Lypon, from [...], sorrow.
M
MAgicall, that is, attractive, or commanding by force of sympathy with the life of this naturall world.
Melampronoea, the black side of providence.
Memory. Mundane memory. Is that memory that is seated in the Mundane spirit of man, by a strong impression, or inustion of any phantasme, or outward sensible object, upon that spirit. But there is a [Page 430]memory more subtill and abstract in the soul it self, without the help of this spirit, which she also carries away with her having left the body.
Michael, who like unto God? from [...] quis & [...] similitudinis, & [...] Deus.
Moment. Sometimes signifies an instant, as indivisible, as [...], which in motion answers to an instant in time, or a point in a line, Arist. Phys. In this sense I use it, Psychathan. lib. 3. cant. 2. stanz. 2.16. But in a moment Sol doth ray. But Cant. 3. stanz 45. vers. 2. I understand, as also doth Lansbergius, by a moment one second of a minute. In Antipsych. Cant. 2. stanz. 10. vers. 2. by a moment I understand a minute, or indefinitely any small time.
Monad, [...], is Unitas, the principle of all numbers, an embleme of the Deity: And the Pythagoreans call it [...], God. It is from [...], because it is [...], stable and immovable, a firme Cube of it self, One time one time one remains still one, See Ahad.
Monocordia, [...], from [...] and [...], Single-heartednesse.
Mundane, Mundane spirit, is that which is the spirit of the world, or Universe. I mean by it not an Intellectuall spirit, but a fine, unfixt, attenuate, subtill, ethereall substance, the immediate vehicle of plasticall or sensitive life.
Myrmecopolis, [...], the city or polity of Pismires.
N
NEurospast, [...], a Puppet or any Machina that's mov'd by an unseen string or nerve.
O
OGdoas, [...], numerus octonarius, the number of eight.
Omniformity, the omniformity of the soul is the having in her nature all forms, latent at least, and power of awaking them into act, upon occasion.
On, [...]. The being.
Orb. Orb Intellectuall, is nothing else but Aeon or the Intellectuall world. The Orbs generall mentioned, Psychathan. lib. 1. cant. 3. stanz. 23. vers. 2. I understand by them but so many universall orders of being, if I may so terme them all; for Hyle hath little or nothing of being.
Out-World, and Out Heaven. The sensible World, the visible Heaven.
P
PAndemoniothen, [...], all from the devill; viz. all false perswasions, and ill effects from them.
Panoply, [...], Armour for the whole body.
Pantheothen, [...], All from God. Which is true in one sense, false in another, You'll easily discern the sense in the place you find the word. This passage of Pantheothen contains a very savory and hearty reproof of all, be they what they will, that do make use of that intricate mystery of fate and infirmity; safely to guard themselves from the due reprehensions and just expostulations of the earnest messengers of God, who would rouse them out of this sleep of sin, and stir them up seriously to seek after the might and spirit of Christ, that may work wonderfully in their souls to a glorious conquest and triumph against the devill, death and corruption.
Parallax, [...], is the difference betwixt the true and seeming place of a star; proceeding from the sensible difference of the centre, and the height of the superficies of the earth in reference to the star, and from the stars declining from the Zenith.
Parelies, [...], are rorid clouds which bear the image of the Sunne.
Parturient. See Vaticinant.
Penia, [...], Want or poverty.
Perigee, [...], is that absis or ark of a Planets circle, in which it comes nearer to the earth.
Periphere, Peripheria, it is the line that terminates a circle.
Phantasie, Lower phantasie, is that which resides in the Mundane spirit of a man, See Memory.
Phantasme, [...], any thing that the soul conceives in it self, without any present externall object.
Philosomatus, [...], a lover of his body.
Phobon, from [...], fear.
Phrenition, anger, impatiency, fury; from [...], phrensie or madnesse. Ira furor brevis est.
Physis, [...], Nature vegetative.
Pithecus, [...], an Ape.
Pithecusa, the land of Apes.
Plastick. [...], is that efformative might in the seed that shapes the body in its growth.
Protopathy, [...]. It is a suffering or being affected at first, that is, without circulation. If any man strike me, I feel immediately; because my soul is united with this body that is struck: and this is protopathy. If the air be struck aloof of, I am sensible also of that, but by circulation or propagation of that impression into my eare; and this is deuteropathy. See Deuteropathy.
Proteus, Vertumnus, changeab lenesse.
Psittaco. Don Psittaco, from Psittacus a Parot, a bird that speak significant words, whose sense notwithstanding it self is ignorant of The Dialogue betwixt this Parot and Mnemon sets out the vanity o [...] superficiall conceited Theologasters, that have but the surface and thin imagination of divinity, but truly devoid of the spirit and inward power of Christ, the living well-spring of knowledge and virtue, and yet do pride themselves in prattling and discoursing of the most hidden and abstruse mysteries of God, and take all occasions to shew forth their goodly skill and wonderfull insight into holy truth, when as they have indeeed scarce licked the outside of the glasse wherein it lies.
Psittacusa, the land of Parots.
Psychania, the land of Souls.
Psyche, [...], Soul, or spirit.
Psychicall, Though [...] be a generall name and belongs to the souls of beasts and plants, yet I understand by life Psychicall, such centrall life as is capable of Aeon, and Ahad.
Pteroessa, [...], the land of winged souls; from [...], a wing.
Q
QUadrate. A figure with foure equall sides, and foure right angles. The rightnesse of the angles, is a plain embleme of erectnesse or uprightnesse of mind. The number of the sides, as also of the angles, being pariter par, that is, equall divisible to the utmost unities ( [...], as it is in Aristotle) intimates equity or justice. The sides are equall one with another, and so are the angles; and the number of the sides and angles equall one with another. Both the numbers put together are a number pariter par again, and constitute the first cube which is eight: That adds steddinesse and persevererance in true justice and uprightnesse toward God and man. Hypomone bears all this, that is, all that dolour and vexation that comes from the keeping our perverse heart to so strait and streight a rule.
Quantitative. Forms quantitative, are such sensible energies as arise from the complexion of many natures together, at whose discretion they vanish That's the seventh orb of things, though broken and not filling all as the other do. But if you take it for the whole sensible world, it is intire and is the same that Tasis in Psychozoia. But the centre of Tasis, viz. the multiplication of the reall Cuspis of the Cone (for Hyle that is set for the most contract point of the Cuspis is scarce to be reckoned among realities) that immense diffusion of atoms, is to be referred to Psyche, as an internall vegetative act, and so belongs to Physis the lowest order of life. For as that warmth that [Page 433]the soul doth afford the body, is not rationall, sensitive or imaginative, but vegetative; So this, [...] that is, liquid fire, which Psyche sends out, and is the outmost, last, and lowest operation from her self, is also vegetative.
R
RAyes. The rayes of an essence is its energie. See Energie.
Reason. I understand by Reason, the deduction of one thing from another, which I conceive proceeds from a kind of continuity of phantasmes; and is something like the moveing of a cord at one end; the parts next it rise with it. And by this concatenation of phantasms I conceive, that both brutes and men are moved in reasonable wayes and methods in their ordinary externall actions.
Reduplicative. That is reduplicative, which is not onely in this point, but also in another, having a kind of circumscribed ubiquity, viz. in its own sphear. And this is either by being in that sphear omnipresent it self, as the soul is said to be in the body tota in toto & tota in qualibet parte; or else at least by propagation of rayes, which is the image of it self; and so are divers sensible objects Reduplicative, as light, colours, sounds. And I make account either of these wayes justly denominate any thing spiritual. Though the former is most properly, at least more eminently spirituall. And whether any thing be after that way spirituall saving the Divinity, there is reason to doubt. For what is intirely omnipresent in a sphear, whose diametre is but three foot, I see not, why (that in the circumference being as fresh and intire as that in the centre) it should stop there and not proceed, even in infinitum, if the circumference be still as fresh and entire as the centre. But I define nothing.
Rhomboides, is a parallelogrammicall figure with unequall sides and oblique angles.
S
SCalen, a triangle with all sides unequall.
Self reduplicative. See Reduplicative.
Semele, Imagination; from [...] imago.
Simon, intimates obedience, from [...] obedivit.
Solyma, or Salem, from [...] Peace.
Soul, when I speak of mans soul, I understand that which Moses saith was inspired into the body, (fitted out and made of Earth) by God, Gen. 2. which is not that impeccable spirit that cannot sinne; but the very same that the Platonists call [...], a middle essence betwixt that which they call [...] (and we would in the Christian language call [...]) and the life of the body which is [...], a kind of an umbratil vitalitie that the soul imparts to the body in the [Page 434]enlivening of it: That and the body together, we Christians call [...], and the suggestions of it, especially in its corrupt estate, [...]. And that that which God inspired into Adam was no more then [...], the soul, not the spirit, though it be called [...] Spiraculum vitae; is plain out of the text; because it made man but become a living soul, [...]. But you will say, he was a dead soul before, and this was the spirit of life, ye the spirit of God, the life of the soul that was breathed into him.
But if [...] imply such a life and spirit, you must acknowledge the same to be also in the most stupid of all living creatures, even the fishes (whose soul is as but salt to keep them from stinking, as Philo speaks) for they are said to be [...] chap. 1. v. 20.21. See 1. Cor. chap. 15. v. 45, 46. In breif therefore, that which in Platonisme is [...]; is in Scripture [...]; what [...] in one, [...], the brute or beast in the other, [...] the same in both.
Sperm. It signifies ordinarily seed. I put it for the [...], the ratio seminalis, or the invisible plasticall form that shapes every visible creature.
Spermaticall. It belongs properly to Plants, but is tranferred also to the Plasticall power in Animalls, I enlarge it to all magnetick power whatsoever that doth immediately rule and actuate any body. For all magnetick power is founded in Physis, and in reference to her, this world is but one Plant, one [...] giving it shape and corporeall life) as in reference to Psyche, one happy and holy Animall.
Spirit. Sometimes it signifieth the soul, othersometime, the naturall spirits in a mans body, which are Vinculum animae & corporis, and the souls vehicle: Sometimes life. See Reduplicative.
T
TAgathon, [...], The Good; the same with Hattove.
Tasis, [...], extension.
Tricentreity. Centre is put for essence, so Tricentreity must imply a Trinity of essence. See Centre and Energie.
V
VAticinant The soul is said to be in a vaticinant, or parturient condition, when she hath some kind of sense, and hovering knowledge of a thing, but yet cannot distinctly and fully, and commandingly represent it to herself, cannot plainly apprehend, much lesse comprehend the matter. The phrase is borrowed of Proclus, who describing the incomprehensiblenesse of God, and the desire of all things toward him, speaks thus; [...]. [Page 435] Theolog. Platon. lib. 1. cap. 21. See Psychathan. lib. 3. cant. 3. stanz. 12. & 14.
Ʋranore. The light or beauty of heaven, from [...], and [...], or [...] pulchritudo.
Z
ZAphon, Aquilo. The North.
Zeus, [...], Jupiter, from [...], serveo, or [...], vivo.
THus have I run through the more obscure terms in the preceding Poems. But for the many points a man may meet withall therein, though I did heretofore make some sleight promise of speaking more determinately of them, I hope I may without offence decline the performance as yet, till I abound more with leasure and judgement. For as I am certain I have little enough of the one, so I can not but doubt (Nature having lavished so much upon all men else, even to the infallible Determining of mutuall contradictions) whether I have got any share at all of the other. But yet I hope, without breach of modesty, I may presume to understand the purpose of my own writings. Which, as I have heretofore signified was no other then this, to stirre men up to take into their thoughts these two main considerations. The heartie good will of God to mankind, even in the life of this world, made of the commixture of light and darknesse, that he will through his power rescue those souls, that are faithfull in this their triall, and preferre the light before the dark; that he will, I say, deliver them from the power of living Death, and Hell, by that strong arm of their salvation, Jesus Christ, the living God enthron'd in the heart of man, to whom all the Genii of the Universe, be they never so goodly and glorious shall serve. They and all their curious devices and inventions shall be a spoil, prey, and a possession to Him that is most just, and shall govern the nations in righteousnesse and equity. And that, beside this happinesse on earth, every holy soul hereafter shall enjoy a never-fading felicity in the invisible and eternall Heaven, the Intellectuall world. Which if it be not true, I must needs confesse, it seems almost indifferent whether any creature be or no. For what is it to have lived, suppose 70 years, wherein we have been dead or worse above two third parts of them? Sleep, youth, age and diseases, with a number of poor and contemptible employments, swallow up at least so great a portion: that as good, if not better, is he that never was, then he is, that hath but such a glance or glimpse of passing life to mock him.
And although the succession of righteousnesse upon earth may rightly seem a goodly great and full spread thing, and a matter that may bear an ample correspondencie even to the larger thoughts of a good [Page 436]and upright man; yet, to say the truth, no man is capable of any large inheritance, whose life and existence is so scant that he shall not be able so much as to dream of the least happinesse once seised on by death.
But there are continually on earth such numbers of men alive, that if they liv'd well it would be an Heaven or Paradise. But still a scant one to every particular man, whose dayes are even as nothing. So that the work of God seems not considerable, in the making of this world, if humane souls be extinguished when they go out of it. You will say that those small particles of time that is thus scattered and lost among men in their successions, are comprehended and collected in God who is a continuall witnesse of all things.
But, alas! what doth the perpetuall repetition of the same life or deiform Image throughout all ages adde to Him, that is at once infinitely himself, viz. good, and happy?
So that there is nothing considerable in the creation, if the rationall creature be mortall. For neither is God at all profited by it, nor man considerably. And were not the Angels a great deal better employed in the beholding the worth of their Creatour, then to deminish their own happinesse, by attending those, whom nothing can make happy? looking on this troubled passing stream of the perishing generations of men, to as little purpose almost, as idle boyes do on dancing blebs and bubbles in the water.
What designe therefore can there be in God in the making of this world that will prove [...], worthy of so excellent a goodnesse and wisdome; but the triall of the immortall spirit of man? It seems the deepest reach of his counsell in the creation; and the life of this world but a prelude to one of longer durance and larger circumference hereafter. And surely it is nothing else but the heavy load of this body, that keeps down our mind from the reaching to those so high hopes, that I may not say from a certain sense and feeling of that undisturbd state of immortality.
And thus much I have ventured to speak boldly without Scepticisme in Faith and Sense, that the first Principle of all things is living Goodnesse, armd with Wisdome & all-powerfull Love. But if a mans soul be once sunk by evil fate or desert from the sense of this high and heavenly truth, into that cold conceit; that the Originall of things doth lie either in shuffling Chance, or in that stark root of unknowing Nature and brute Necessity; all the subtile cords of Reason, without the timely recovery of that divine touch within the hidden spirit of man, will [...] [...]ack, out of that abhorred pit of Atheisme and Infidelity. So much better is Innocency and Piety then subtile Argument, and earnest and sincere Devotion then curious Dispute.
Errata
| Pag. | Stanz. | lin. | Pro | Lege |
| 12 | 43 | 9 | Hiddenly | Hidde [...] lie |
| 15 | 56 | 1 | censent | concent |
| 22 | 20 | 2 | weight | wight |
| 22 | 20 | 5 | Can make | Can wake |
| 37 | 79 | 7 | Countrey-speech | Counterspeech |
| 46 | 125 | 9 | preceed | proceed |
| 58 | 21 | 5 | There lives | There lies |
| 81 | 3 | 1 | eanst | canst |
| 97 | 11 | 8 | wild | mild |
| 126 | 17 | 8 | truths | truth's |
| 142 | 11 | 6 | So he gins | so she 'gins |
| 145 | 24 | 4 | Nor part | Not part |
| 153 | 57 | 6 | Wrapt | Rapt |
| 162 | 30 | 7 | binds | It binds |
| 175 | 5 | 8 | for 'tis | for 'ts |
| 194 | 14 | 1 | conpissate | conspissate |
| 199 | 33 | 3 | possession | position |
| 203 | 48 | 9 | debare | debarre |
| 212 | 84 | 1 | these | their |
| 242 | 4 | 4 | though | through |
| 246 | 20 | 2 | stell | well |
| 260 | 19 | 9 | night | wight |
| 260 | 20 | 3 | over oft | overmost |
| 264 | 36 | 7 | of thy | to thy |
| 286 | 6 | 4 | tosse | touze |
| 314 | 33 | two efficious | too officious | |
| 318 | 21 | Haec Venus | Haec, Venus | |
| 322 | 17 | vivica | vivifica | |
| 340 | 32 | Stanz. 5. | Stanz. 15. | |
| 341 | 26 | Stanz. | Vers. | |
| 346 | 18 | Stanz. 59. | Stanz. 49. | |
| 368 | 4 | Stanz. 28. | Stanz. 38. | |
| 369 | 3 | Stanz. 50. | Stanz. 51. | |
| 383 | 24 | Stanz. | Stanz. 2. | |
| 388 | 8 | Stanz. 84. | Stanz. 48. | |
| 412 | 17 | Omnipotency | Omnipraesency. |