whereas, if I mistake not, this author approveth the Church of England, not absolutely, but comparatively with other reformed churches.

My next reflection is concerning what he hath sprinkled (most wittily) in several places concerning the nature and immortality of a human soul, and the condition and state it is in, after the dissolution of the body. And here give me leave to observe what our countryman, Roger Bacon, did long ago; "that those students who busy themselves much with such notions as reside wholly to the fantasy, do hardly ever become idoneous for abstracted, metaphysical speculations; the one having bulky foundation of matter, or of the accidents of it, to settle upon, at the least with one foot: the other flying continually, even to a lessening pitch in the subtle air. And, accordingly, it hath been generally noted, that the exactest mathematicians, who converse altogether with lines, figures, and other differences of quantity, have seldom proved eminent in metaphysics, or speculative divinity. Nor again, the professors of these sciences in the other arts. Much less can it be expected that an excellent physician, whose fancy is always fraught with the material drugs that he prescribeth his apothecary to compound his medicines of, and whose hands are inured to the cutting up, and eyes, to the inspection of anatomised bodies, should easily, and with success, fly his thoughts at so towering a game, as a pure intellect, a separated and unbodied soul." Surely this acute author's sharp wit, had he orderly applied his studies that way, would have been able to satisfy himself with less labour, and others with more plenitude, than it hath been the lot of so dull a brain as mine, concerning the immortality of the soul. And yet, I assure you, my lord, the little philosophy that is allowed me, for my share, demonstrateth this proposition to me, as well as faith delivereth it; which our physician will not admit in his.

To make good this assertion here were very unreasonable; since that to do it exactly (and without ex

actness, it were not demonstration, requireth a total survey of the whole science of bodies, and of all the operations that we are conversant with, of a rational creature; which I having done with all the succinctness I have been able to explicate so knotty a subject with, hath taken me up in the first draught near two hundred sheets of paper. I shall therefore take leave of this point, with only this note, that I take the immortality of the soul (under his favour) to be of that nature, that to them only that are not versed in the ways of proving it by reason, it is an article of faith; to others, it is an evident conclusion of demonstrative sci

ence.

And with a like short note, I shall observe, how if he had traced the nature of the soul from its first principles, he could not have suspected it should sleep in the grave till the resurrection of the body. Nor would he have permitted his compassionative nature to imagine it belonged to God's mercy, (as the Chiliasts did,) to change its condition in those that are damned, from pain to happiness. For where God should have done that, he must have made that anguished soul another creature than what it was; (as to make fire cease from being hot, requireth to have it become another thing than the element of fire ;) since that to be in such a condition as maketh us understand damned souls miserable, is a necessary effect of the temper it is in, when it goeth out of the body, and must necessarily (out of its nature) remain in, unvariably for all eternity; though, for the conceptions of the vulgar part of mankind, who are not capable of such abstruse notions, it be styled, and truly too, the sentence and punishment of a severe judge.

I am extremely pleased with him, when he saith, there are not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith; and no whit less, when in philosophy he will not be satisfied with such naked terms, as in schools use to be obtruded upon easy minds, when the master's fingers are not strong enough to untie the

knots proposed unto them. I confess, when I enquire what light (to use our author's example) is, I should be as well contented with his silence, as with his telling me it is actus perspicui, unless he explicate clearly to me, what those words mean, which I find very few go about to do. Such meat they swallow whole and eject it as entire. But were such things scientifically and methodically declared they would be of extreme satisfaction and delight. And that work taketh up the greatest part of my formerly-mentioned treatise. For I endeavour to show by a continued progress, and not by leaps, all the motions of nature; and unto them to fit intelligibly the terms used by her best secretaries; whereby all wild fantastic qualities and moods, introduced for refuges of ignorance, are banished from

commerce.

In the next place, my lord, I shall suspect that our author hath not penetrated into the bottom of those conceptions that deep scholars have taught us of eternity; methinketh he taketh it for an infinite extension of time, and a never-ending revolution of continual succession; which is no more like eternity than a gross body is like a pure spirit. Nay, such an infinity of revolutions is demonstrable to be a contradiction, and impossible. In the state of eternity there is no succession, no change, no variety. Souls or angels, in that condition, do not so much as change a thought. All things, notions and actions, that ever were, are, or shall be in any creature, are actually present to such an intellect. And this, my lord, I aver, not as deriving it from theology, and having recourse to beatific vision, to make good my tenet, (for so, only glorified creatures should enjoy such immense knowledge,) but out of the principles of nature and reason, and from thence shall demonstrate it to belong to the lowest soul of the ignorantest wretch whilst he lived in this world, since damned in hell. A bold undertaking, you will say. But I confidently engage myself to it. Upon this occasion occurreth also a great deal to be said of

the nature of predestination, (which by the short touches our author giveth of it, I doubt he quite mistakes,) and how it is an unalterable series and chain of causes, producing infallible, and in respect of them, necessary effects. But that is too large a theme to unfold here; too vast an ocean to describe in the scant map of a letter. And therefore I will refer that to a fitter opportunity, fearing I have already too much trespassed upon your lordship's patience; but that, indeed, I hope you have not had enough to read thus far.

I am sure, my lord, that you, who never forgot any thing which deserved a room in your memory, do remember how we are told, that abyssus abyssum invocat ; so here our author, from the abyss of predestination, falleth into that of the trinity of persons, consistent with the indivisibility of the divine nature. And out of that, if I be not exceedingly deceived, into a third of mistaking, when he goeth about to illustrate this admirable mystery by a wild discourse of a trinity in our souls. The dint of wit is not forcible enough to dissect such tough matter; wherein all the obscure glimmering we gain of that inaccessible light, cometh to us clothed in the dark weeds of negations, and therefore little can we hope to meet with any positive examples to parallel it withal.

I doubt, he also mistaketh, and imposeth upon the several schools when he intimateth that they gainsay this visible world's being but a picture or shadow of the invisible and intellectual: which manner of philosophising he attributeth to Hermes Trismegistus, but is everywhere to be met with in Plato; and is raised since to a greater height in the Christian schools.

But I am sure he learned in no good school, nor sucked from any good philosophy, to give an actual subsistence and being to first matter without a form. He that will allow that a real existence in nature is as superficially tincted in metaphysics, as another would be in mathematics, that should allow the like to a point, a line, or a superficies in figures; these, in

their strict notions, are but negations of further extension, or but exact terminations of that quantity, which falleth under the consideration of the understanding in the present purpose, no real entities in themselves: so likewise the notions of matter, form, act, power, existence, and the like, that are with truth considered by the understanding, and have there each of them a distinct entity, are nevertheless nowhere by themselves in nature. They are terms which we must use in the negotiations of our thoughts, if we will discourse consequently, and conclude knowingly. But then again, we must be very wary of attributing to things in their own natures such entities as we create in our understandings, when we made pictures of them there; for there every different consideration, arising out of the different impression which the same thing maketh upon us, hath a distinct being by itself. Whereas, in the thing there is but one single unity, that showeth, as it were in a glass, at several positions, those various faces in our understanding. In a word, all these words are but artificial terms, not real things; and the not right understanding of them is the most dangerous rock that scholars suffer shipwreck against.

I go on with our physician's contemplations. Upon every occasion he showeth strong parts, and a vigorous brain. His wishes and aims, and what he pointeth at, speak him owner of a noble and generous heart. He hath reason to wish that Aristotle had been as accurate in examining the causes, nature, and affections of the great universe he busied himself about, as his patriarch Galen hath been in the like considerations upon this little world, man's body, in that admirable work of his "De Usu Partium." But no great human thing was ever born and perfected at once. It may satisfy us, if one in our age buildeth that magnificent structure upon the other's foundations; and especially if, where he findeth any of them unsound, he eradicateth those, and fixeth new unquestionable ones in their room; but so, as they still, in gross,