keep a proportion and bear a harmony with the other great work. This hath now, even now, our learned countryman done; the knowing Mr. White, whose name I believe your lordship hath met withal, in his excellent book "De Mundo," newly printed at Paris, where he now resideth, and is admired by the world of lettered men there, as the prodigy of these latter times. Indeed his three dialogues upon that subject, (if I am able to judge anything,) are full of the profoundest learning I ever yet met withal. And I believe, who hath well read and digested them, will persuade himself there is no truth so abstruse, nor hitherto conceived out of our reach, but man's wit may raise engines to scale and conquer. I assure myself, when our author hath studied him thoroughly he will not lament so loud for Aristotle's mutilated and defective philosophy, as in Boccaline Cæsar Caporali doth for the loss of Livy's shipwrecked decades.

That logic which he quarreleth at, for calling a toad or serpent ugly, will in the end agree with his; for nobody ever took them to be so, in respect of the universe, (in which regard he defendeth their regularity and symmetry,) but only as they have relation to us.

But I cannot so easily agree with him, where he affirmeth that devils, or other spirits in the intellectual world have no exact ephemerides, wherein they may read beforehand the stories of fortuitous accidents. For I believe that all causes are so immediately chained to their effects, as if a perfect knowing nature get hold but of one link, it will drive the entire series, or pedigree of the whole, to its utmost end; (as I think I have proved in my fore-named treatise ;) so that in truth there is no fortuitousness or contingency of things, in respect of themselves, but only in respect of us, that are ignorant of their certain and necessary

causes.

Now a little series or chain and complex of all outward circumstances, (whose highest link, poets say prettily, is fastened to Jupiter's chair, and the lowest

is rivetted to every individual on earth,) steered and levelled by God Almighty, at the first setting out of the first mover, I conceive to be that Divine Providence and mercy, which (to use our author's own example) giveth a thriving genius to the Hollanders, and the like; and not any secret, invisible, mystical blessing, that falleth not under the search or cognizance of a prudent indagation.

I must needs approve our author's equanimity, and I may as justly say his magnanimity, in being contented so cheerfully, as he saith, to shake hands with the fading goods of fortune, and be deprived of the joys of her most precious blessing; so that he may in recompense possess, in ample measure, the true ones of the mind; like Epictetus, that master of moral wisdom and piety, who taxeth them of high injustice that repine at God's distribution of his blessings, when he putteth not into their share of goods such things as they use no industry or means to purchase. For why should that man, who above all things esteemeth his own freedom, and who to enjoy that sequestereth himself from commerce with the vulgar of mankind, take it ill of his stars, if such preferments, honours, and applauses meet not him, as are painfully gained, after long and tedious services of princes, and brittle dependencies of humourous favourites, and supple compliances with all sorts of natures? As for what he saith of astrology, I do not conceive that wise men reject it so much for being repugnant to divinity, (which he reconcileth well enough,) as for having no solid rules or ground in nature. To rely too far upon that vain art I judge to be rather folly than impiety, unless in our censure we look to the first origin of it, which savoureth of the idolatry of those heathens, that worshipping the stars and heavenly bodies for deities, did in a superstitious devotion attribute unto them the casualty of all effects beneath them. And for aught I know, the belief of solid orbs in the heavens, and their regularly irregular motions, sprung from the same root. And a like inanity I

should suspect in chiromancy, as well as astrology, (especially in particular contingent effects,) however our author, and no less a man than Aristotle, seem to attribute somewhat more to that conjectural art of lines.

I should much doubt (though our author showeth himself of another mind) that Bernardinus Ochinus grew at the last to a mere atheist; when, after having been first the institutor and patriarch of the Capuchin order, (so violent was his zeal then, as no former religious institution, though never so rigorous, was strict enough for him,) he from thence fell to be first an heretic, then a Jew, and after awhile became a Turk; and at the last wrote a furious invective against those whom he called the three grand impostors of the world, among whom he ranked our Saviour, Christ, as well as Moses and Mahomet. (149)

I doubt he mistakes in his chronology, or the printer in the name, when he maketh Ptolemy condemn the Alcoran.

He needeth not be so scrupulous, as he seemeth to be, in averring downrightly, that God cannot do contradictory things, (though peradventure it is not amiss to sweeten the manner of the expression, and the sound of the words,) for who understandeth the nature of contradiction will find nonentity in one of the terms, which of God were impiety not to deny peremptorily. For he being in his proper nature self-entity, all being must immediately flow from him, and all not-being be totally excluded from the efflux. Now for the recalling of time past, which the angels posed Esdras withal, there is no contradiction in that, as is evident to them that know the essence of time. For it is but putting again all things that had motion into the same state they were in, at that moment unto which time was to be reduced back, and from thence letting

(149) This story I have but upon relation, yet of a very good hand.

it travel on again by the same motion, and upon the same wheels it rolled upon before; and therefore God could do this admirable work, though neither Esdras nor all the power of creatures together could do it; and consequently it cannot in this question be said that he posed mortality with what himself was not able to perform.

I acknowledge ingenuously our physician's experience hath the advantage of my philosophy, in knowing there are witches. Yet I am sure I have no temptation to doubt of the Deity; nor have any unsatisfaction in believing there are spirits. I do not see such a necessary conjunction between them, as that the supposition of the one must needs infer the other. Neither do I deny there are witches; I only reserve my assent till I meet with stronger motives to carry it. And I confess I doubt as much of the efficacy of those magical rules he speaketh of, as also of the finding out of mysteries by the courteous revelation of spirits.

I doubt his discourse of an universal spirit is but a wild fancy and that in the marshalling of it he mistaketh the hermetical philosophers; and surely it is a weak argument, from a common nature, that subsisteth only in our understanding, out of which it hath no being at all, to infer by parity an actual subsistence, or the like, in reality of nature (of which kind of miscarriage in men's discoursings I have spoken before.) And upon this occasion I do not see how seasonably he falleth of a sudden from natural speculations to a moral contemplation of God's Spirit working in us. In which also I would enquire, especially upon his sudden poetical rapture, whether the solidity of the judgment be not outweighed by the airiness of the fancy. Assuredly one cannot err in taking this author for a very fine ingenious gentleman; but for how deep a scholar I leave unto them to judge that are abler than I am.

If he had applied himself with earnest study, and upon right grounds, to search out the nature of pure intellects, I doubt not but his great parts would have

argued more efficaciously than he doth against those, that between men and angels, put only Porphyry's difference of mortality and immortality. And he would have dived further into the tenor of their intellectual operations, in which there is no succession nor ratiocinative discourse; for in the very first instant of their creation they actually knew all that they were capable of knowing, and they are acquainted even with all free thoughts, past, present, and to come; for they see them in their causes, and they see them altogether at one instant; as I have in my fore-mentioned treatise proved at large; and I think I have already touched thus much once before in this letter.

I am tempted here to say a great deal concerning light, by his taking it to be a bare quality. For in physics no speculation is more useful, or reacheth further; but to set down such phenomenas of it as I have observed, and from whence I evidently collect the nature of it, were too large a theme for this place. When your lordship pleaseth I shall show you another more orderly discourse upon that subject, wherein I have sufficiently proved it to be a solid substance and body.

In his proceeding to collect an intellectual world, and in his discoursing upon the place and habitation of angels, as also in his consideration of the activity of glorified eyes, which shall be in the state of rest, whereas motion is required to seeing: and in his subtle speculation upon two bodies, placed in the vacuity, beyond the utmost, all-enclosing superficies of heaven, (which implieth a contradiction in nature,) methinks I hear Apelles cry out Ne sutor ultra crepidam, or rather, it putteth me in mind of one of the titles in Pantagruel's library, (which he expresseth himself conversant in,) namely, Quæstio subtilissima, utrum chimæra in vacuo bombinans possit comedere secundas intentiones; with which short note I will leave these considerations, in which, if time and other circumstances allowed it, matter would spring up of excellent learning.