rather use it in the adjunct the apostle gives it, a buckler; under which I conceive a wary combatant may lie invulnerable. Since I was of understanding to know we knew nothing, my reason hath been more pliable to the will of faith; I am now content to understand a mystery without a rigid definition, in an easy and Platonic description. That allegorical description* of Hermes pleaseth me beyond all the metaphysical definitions of divines; where I cannot satisfy my reason, I love to humour my fancy: I had as lieve you tell me that anima est angelus hominis, est corpus Dei, as evteλéxeia; Lux est umbra Dei, as actus perspicuit Where there is an obscurity too deep for our reason, 't is good to sit down with a description, peri

*Sphæra cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia nullibi.

Great variety of opinion there hath been amongst the ancient philosophers touching the definition of the soul. Thales's was, that it is a nature without repose. Asclepiades, that it is an exercitation of sense: Hesiod, that it is a thing composed of earth and water: Parmenides holds, of earth and fire; Galen, that it is heat; Hippocrates, that it is a spirit diffused through the body: some others have held it to be light; Plato saith, 't is a substance moving itself; after cometh Aristotle (whom the author here reproveth) and goeth a degree farther, and saith it is évteλéxela, that is, that which naturally makes the body to move. But this definition is as rigid as any of the other; for this tells us not what the essence, origin, or nature of the soul is, but only marks an effect of it, and therefore signifieth no more than if he had said, that it is angelus hominis, or an intelligence that moveth man, as he supposed those other to do the heavens. K. Cf. Cic Tusc. Disp. L. X.

phrasis, or adumbration; for by acquainting our reason how unable it is to display the visible and obvious effects of nature, it becomes more humble and submissive unto the subtleties of faith; and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoop unto the lure of faith. I believe there was already a tree whose fruit our unhappy parents tasted; though in the same chapter, when God forbids it, 't is positively said the plants of the fields were not yet grown, for God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. I believe that the serpent, (if we shall literally understand it,) from his proper form and figure, made his motion on his belly before the curse. I find the trial of the pucellage and virginity of women, which God ordained the Jews, is very fallible. Experience and history inform me, that not only many particular women, but likewise whole nations, have escaped the curse of childbirth, which God seems to pronounce upon the whole sex; yet do I believe that all this is true, which indeed my reason would persuade me to be false; and this I think is no vulgar part of faith, to believe a thing not only above, but contrary to reason, and against the arguments of our proper senses.

XI. In my solitary and retired imagination, The Eter

Neque enim cum lectulus aut me

nity of

God.

Porticus excepit, desum mihi

I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to contemplate him and his attributes who is ever with me, especially those two mighty ones, his wisdom and eternity: with the one I recreate, with the other I confound my understanding; for who can speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without an ecstasy? Time we may comprehend, it is but five days older than ourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world; but to retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning, to give such an infinite start forward as to conceive an end in an essence that we affirm hath neither the one nor the other, it puts my reason to St. Paul's sanctuary: my philosophy dares not say the angels can do it; God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him; it is a privilege of his own nature: I am that I am, was his own definition unto Moses; and it was a short one, to confound mortality, that durst question God, or ask him what he was. Indeed he only is; all others have and shall be; but in eternity there is no distinction of tenses; and therefore that terrible term predestination, which hath troubled so many weak heads to conceive, and the wisest to explain, is in respect to God no prescious determination of our states to come, but a definitive blast of his will already fulfilled, and at the instant that he first decreed it; for to his eter

nity, which is indivisible, and all together, the last trump is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the blessed in Abraham's bosom. St. Peter speaks modestly, when he saith,* a thousand years to God are but as one day; for to speak like a philosopher, those continued instances of time which flow into a thousand years, make not to him one moment: what to us is to come, to his eternity is present, his whole duration being but one permanent point, without succession, parts, flux, or division.

XII. There is no attribute that adds more of the Trinity. difficulty to the mystery of the Trinity, where, though in a relative way of Father and Son, we must deny a priority. I wonder how Aristotle could conceive the world eternal, or how he could make good two eternities: his similitude of a triangle, comprehended in a square, doth somewhat illustrate the trinity of our souls, and that the triple unity of God; for there is in us not three, but a trinity of souls, because there is in us, if not three distinct souls, yet differing faculties, that can and do subsist apart in different subjects, and yet in us are so united as to make but one soul and substance: if one soul were so perfect as to inform three distinct bodies, that were a petty trinity: conceive the distinct number of three, not divided nor separated

* 2 Pet. iii. 8.

by the intellect, but actually comprehended in its unity, and that is a perfect trinity. I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magic of numbers. "Beware of philosophy," is a precept not to be received in too large a sense: for in this mass of nature there is a set of things that carry in their front, though not in capital letters, yet in stenography and short characters, something of divinity, which to wiser reasons serve as luminaries in the abyss of knowledge, and to judicious beliefs as scales and roundles to mount the pinnacles and highest pieces of divinity. The severe schools shall never laugh me out of the phiThe visible losophy of Hermes, that this visible world is world a but a picture of the invisible, wherein as in a portrait things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some more real substance in that invisible fabric.

picture

of the

invisible.

The Wisdom of

God.

XIII. That other attribute wherewith I recreate my devotion, is his Wisdom, in which I am happy; and for the contemplation of this only, do not repent me that I was bred in the way of study: the advantage I have of the vulgar, with the content and happiness I conceive therein, is an ample recompense for all my endeavours, in what part of knowledge soever. Wisdom is his most beauteous attribute; no man can attain unto it, yet Solomon pleased