with those in that great father, securely interpret the work of the first day, fiat lux, to the creation of angels; though I confess there is not any creature that hath so near a glimpse of their nature as light in the sun and elements: we style it a bare accident; but, where it subsists alone, 't is a spiritual substance, and may be an angel:6 in brief, conceive light invisible, and that is a spirit.

SECT. XXXIV. These are certainly the magisterial and masterpieces of the Creator; the flower, or, as we may say, the best part of nothing; actually existing, what we are but in hopes, and probability. We are only that amphibious piece, between a corporeal and a spiritual essence; that middle form, that links those two together, and makes good the method of God and nature, that jumps not from extremes, but unites the incompatible distances by some middle and participating natures. That we are the breath and similitude of God, it is indisputable, and upon record of Holy Scripture: but to call ourselves a microcosm, or little world, I thought it only a pleasant trope of rhetorick, till my near judgement and second thoughts told me there was a real truth therein. For, first we are a rude mass, and in the rank of creatures which only are, and have a dull kind of being, not yet privileged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits: running on, in one mysterious nature, those five kinds of existences, which comprehend the creatures, not only of the world, but of the universe. Thus is man that great and true amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live, not only like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds; for though there be but one [world]1 to sense, there

4 I cannot, with those, &c.] Alluding probably to St. Augustine; De Civit. Dei, lib, xi, cap. 9, 19, 32. Keck, however, as well as the French translator, considers the allusion to refer rather to St. Chrysostom, in his Homily on Genesis.

All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, "with that great Father."-Ed.

5 we style it a bare accident;] MSS. W. & W. 2 read, "while we style it, &c." Edts. 1642 read, "while we style a bare accident."-Ed.

6 where it subsists alone, 't is, &c.] VOL. II.

Epicurus was of this opinion; also St. Augustine: see Enchirid. ad Laurentium.-K.

Vide Rob. Flud. in Historia Microcosmi, tract. i, § 1, lib. iii, cap. 3:-et Marsil. Ficin. in lib. de Lumine, cap. 1. 6, 13.-M.

7 Creator;] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, creature.-Ed.

8 that] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, the.-Ed.

9 Thus is man that] Edts. 1642 read, "this is man the...."-Ed.

1 [world] So in all the MSS.-Ed.

E

2

are two to reason, the one visible, the other invisible; whereof Moses seems to have left description, and of the other so obscurely, that some parts thereof are yet in controversy. And truly, for the first chapters of Genesis, I must confess a great deal of obscurity; though divines have, to the power of human reason, endeavoured to make all go in a literal meaning, yet those allegorical interpretations are also probable, and perhaps the mystical method of Moses, bred up in the hieroglyphical schools of the Egyptians.3

SECT. XXXV.-Now for that immaterial world, methinks we need not wander so far as the first moveable;+ for, even in this material fabrick, the spirits walk as freely exempt from the affection of time, place, and motion, as beyond the extremest circumference. Do but extract from the corpulency of bodies, or resolve things beyond their first matter, and you discover the habitation of angels; which if I call the ubiquitary and omnipresent essence of God, I hope I shall not offend divinity: for, before the creation of the world, God was really all things. For the angels he created no new world, or determinate mansion, and therefore they are every where where is his essence, and do live, at a distance even, in himself. That God made all things for man, is in some sense true; yet, not so far as to subordinate the creation of those purer creatures unto ours; though, as ministering spirits, they do, and are willing to fulfil, the will of God in these lower and sublunary affairs of man. God made all things for himself; and it is impossible he should make them for any other end than his own

8

2 the first chapters of Genesis,] So in all the earlier Editions, and the Latin, French, and Dutch, translations: MSS. R. and W. 2 read "first chapters of Moses;" MS. W. "those last chapters;" Edts. 1642, "the last chapter." The Editions of 1672, 1686, & 1736, all read "the first chapter." -Ed.

3 whereof Moses, &c.] This passage is not very clearly expressed. It seems however to allude to discussions which had arisen respecting the Mosaic descriptions of creation: whether they were to be received literally, as referring to the visible world only; or whether they might not be intended, also, to convey an allegorical picture of the other or invisible world.-Ed.

It was a rule among the Jewish preceptors that their disciples should not read the first chapter of Genesis, the Canticles of Solomon, nor the latter part of Ezekiel, till they were thirty years old.-Ed. 1736.

4 first moveable;] primum mobile.—M. 5 exempt from the affection of, &c.] In the sense of not affected by -Ed.

6 extract] abstract, in MS. W.-Ed. 7 the habitation of angels;] De illorum loco, aut habitatione. Vid. Maldonat. De Angelis, c. 16.-M.

8 That God made, &c.] Sunt qui ad probandum eos (spiritus) simul cum orbe condito creatos esse, statuunt hominum causa creatos. Vide Maldonati in Tract. de Angel. c. 3.-M.

glory it is all he can receive, and all that is without himself. For, honour being an external adjunct, and in the honourer rather than in the person honoured, it was necessary to make a creature, from whom he might receive this homage: and that is, in the other world, angels, in this, man; which when we neglect, we forget the very end of our creation, and may justly provoke God, not only to repent that he hath made the world, but that he hath sworn he would not destroy it. That there is but one world, is a conclusion of faith; Aristotle with all his philosophy hath not been able to prove it:9 and as weakly that the world was eternal; that dispute much troubled the pen of the ancient philosophers, but Moses decided that question, and all is salved with the new term of a creation,that is, a production of something out of nothing. And what is that?-whatsoever1 is opposite to something; or, more exactly, that which is truly contrary unto God: for he only is; all others have an existence with dependency, and are something but by a distinction. And herein is divinity conformant unto philosophy, and not only generation founded on contrarieties, but also creation. God, being all things, is contrary unto nothing; out of which were made all things, and so nothing became something, and omneity informed nullity into an essence.5

SECT. XXXVI. The whole creation is a mystery, and par

9 Aristotle, &c.] Docet tamen ille, plures haud esse mundos. Vid. lib. i, De Coelo, c. 8, 9.-M.

1 and what is that?-Whatsoever, &c.] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, " and that is whatsoever, &c."-Ed.

...

2 dependency,] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read, depending.-Ed.

3 by a distinction.] MSS. W. & R. and Edts. 1642 read, 66 by distinction." The rest of the section is omitted, in these and in MS. W. 2.-Ed.

4 informed] In the sense of animated. -Ed.

5 God, being all things, &c.] The following remarks on this passage have been pointed out to me, by my obliging friend, E. H. Barker, Esq. of Thetford. "That celebrated philosopher, shall I call him, or atheist? who said that the assemblage of all existence constituted the divine essence, who would have us to consider all corporeal beings as the body

of the divinity, published a great extravagance, if he meant that the divine essence consisted of this assemblage. But there is a very just sense, in which it may be said that the whole universe is the body of the Deity. As I call this portion of matter my body, which I move, act, and direct as I please, so God actuates by his will every part of the universe-he obscures the sun-he calms the winds-he commands the sea. But this very notion excludes all corporeity from God, and proves that God is a spirit. If God sometimes represents himself with feet, with hands, with eyes, he means in the portraits rather to give to us emblems of his attributes, than images (properly speaking) of any parts, which he possesseth: therefore when he attributes these to himself, he gives to them so vast an extent, that we easily perceive that they are not to be grossly understood. Hath he hands? They are hands, which 'weigh

:

ticularly that of man. At the blast of His mouth were the rest of the creatures made; and at his bare word they started out of nothing but in the frame of man (as the text describes it) he played the sensible operator, and seemed not so much to create as make him. When he had separated the materials of other creatures, there consequently resulted a form and soul; but, having raised the walls of man, he was driven to a second and harder creation,-of a substance like himself, an incorruptible and immortal soul.6 For these two affections we have the philosophy and opinion of the heathens, the flat affirmative of Plato, and not a negative from Aristotle. There is another scruple cast in by divinity concerning its production, much disputed in the German auditories, and with that indifferency? and equality of arguments, as leave the controversy undetermined. I am not of Paracelsus's mind, that boldly delivers a receipt to make a man without conjunction; yet cannot but wonder at the multitude of heads that do deny traduction, having no other argument to confirm their belief than that

the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance,' which measure the waters in the hollow of his hand, and mete out the heavens with a span.' (Isai. xl, 12.) Hath he eyes? They are eyes, which penetrate the most unmeasurable distances. Hath he feet? They are feet, which reach from heaven to earth; for the heaven is his throne, and the earth is his footstool.' (xlvi, 1.) Hath he a voice? It is as the sound of many waters, breaking the cedars of Lebanon, making Mount Sirion skip like an unicorn, and the hinds to calve.' (Ps. xxix, 3. 5. 6. 9.)" Saurin's Discourses, transl. by Robert Robinson.

In MSS. R. & W. 2, the next sentence is omitted, (" For these two, &c.")-Ed. 6 and harder creation, &c.] Vide Augustinum, De animæ immortalitate.-M.

1 not a negative from Aristotle.] Vide Aristotel. De Anima, l. ii, text. 4 et 19, 21, 22. De Generatione Animal. ii, c. 3, dicit, "Solam mentem extrinsecus advenire, divinam esse solanı, neque cum ejus actione actionem corporis ullam habere communionem."—M.

2 indifferency] In the sense of equipoise.-Ed.

3 There is another scruple, &c.] Namely, "An ex traduce sint animæ sicut et corpora?" Augustin. Quæstion. Vet. Test. qu. 23.

Vide Tolet. lib. iii; Aristot. De anima, c. 5, qu. 17; Burgesdicium, in Coll. Phys. Disputat. 29.—M.

4 that boldly delivers a receipt, &c.] "Paracelsus has revealed to us one of the grandest secrets of nature. When the world began to dispute on the very existence of the elementary folk, it was then he boldly offered to give birth to a fairy, and has sent down to posterity the recipe. He describes the impurity which is to be transmuted into such purity, the gross elements of a delicate fairy, which, fixed in a phial in fuming dung, will in due time settle into a full-grown fairy, bursting through its vitreous prison-on the vivifying principle by which the ancient Egyptians hatched their eggs in

*

rhetorical sentence and antimetathesis of Augustine, creando infunditur, infundendo creatur. Either opinion will consist well enough with religion; yet I should rather incline to this, did not one objection haunt me, not wrung from speculations and subtilties, but from common sense and observation; not pick'd from the leaves of any author, but bred amongst the weeds and tares of my own brain. And this is a conclusion from the equivocal and monstrous productions in the copulation of a man with a beast:7 for if the soul of man be not transmitted and transfused in the seed of the parents, why are not those productions merely beasts, but have also an impression and tincture of reason in as high a measure, as it can evidence itself in those improper organs? Nor, truly, can I peremptorily deny that the soul, in this her sublunary estate, is wholly, and in all acceptions, inorganical; but that, for the performance of her ordinary actions, is required not only a symmetry and proper disposition of organs, but a crasis and temper correspondent to its operations; yet is not this mass of flesh and visible structure the instrument and proper corpse of the soul, but rather of sense, and that the hand1 of reason. In our study of anatomy there is a mass of mysterious philosophy, and such as reduced the very heathens to divinity; yet,

• Antanaclasis.-A figure in rhetoric, where one word is inserted upon another. -MS. W.

ovens. I recollect at Dr. Farmer's sale the leaf which preserved this recipe for making a fairy, forcibly folded down by the learned commentator; from which we must infer the credit he gave to the experiment. There was a greatness of mind in Paracelsus, who, having furnished a recipe to make a fairy, had the delicacy to refrain. Even Baptista Porta, one of the most enlightened philosophers, does not deny the possibility of engendering creatures, which "at their full growth shall not exceed the size of a mouse:" but he adds that "they are only pretty little dogs to play with." Were these akin to the fairies of Paracelsus?" D'Israeli's Second Series of Curiosities of Literature, vol. iii, p. 14, 15.-Ed.

5 antimetathesis] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read," antanaclasis."*-Ed. 6 author,] Edts. 1642 read, other.--Ed. 7 from the equivocal, &c.] The French

translator not only refers to several authorities for the existence of such things, but asserts that he had seen one himself. "Touchant cette affaire, Jean Baptiste, Mag. Nat. lib. ii, cap. 12, raconte ou rapporte quelques exemples, qu'il a prises, ou tirées de Plinius, Plutarchus, Ælianus, et autres. Les ecrivains ou auteurs temoignent, que cela arrive encore aux Indes en plusieurs endroits; et moimême en ai vu un à Leyden."

Blumenbach however rejects such stories, as fabulous tales which do not need contradiction. -Ed.

8 peremptorily] So in MSS. R. & W. 2; MS. W. and Edts. 1642 read, reasonably.-Ed.

9 and in all acceptions,] Omitted in all the MSS. and Edts. 1642.-Ed.

1 the hand] All the MSS. and Edts. 1642 read," the nearer ubi."—Ed.