my

with incarnation and resurrection. I can answer all the objections of Satan and rebellious reason, with that odd resolution I learned of Tertullian, Certum est quia impossibile est. I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and visible objects, is not faith, but persuasion. Some believe the better for seeing Christ's sepulchre; and when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not of the miracle'. Now contrarily, I bless myself, and am thankful that I lived not in the days of miracles, that I never saw Christ nor his disciples: I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea, nor one of Christ's patients on whom he wrought his wonders; then had my faith been thrust upon me; nor should I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not. 'Tis an easy and necessary belief, to credit what our eye and sense hath examined: I believe he was dead and buried, and rose again; and desire to see him in his glory, rather than to contemplate him in his cenotaph or sepulchre.

Nor is this much to believe; as we have

7 Those that have seen it, have been better informed than Sir Henry Blount was; for he tells us that he desired to view the passage of Moses into the Red Sea (not being above three days' journey off), but the Jews told him the precise place was not known within less than the space of a day's journey along the shore; wherefore (saith he) I left that as too uncertain for any observation. In his voyage into the Levant.

reason, we owe this faith unto history: they only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith, who lived before his coming, who upon obscure prophecies and mystical types could raise a belief, and expect apparent impossibilities.

X. 'Tis true, there is an edge in all firm belief, and with an easy metaphor we may say the sword of faith; but in these obscurities I 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 evréλexela, as Lux est umbra Dei, as actus perspicui". Where there is an obscurity too deep for

8 Sphæra cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia nullibi.

8

9 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, 'tis a substance moving itself; after cometh Aristotle (whom the author here reproveth) and goeth a degree farther, and saith

our reason, 'tis good to sit down with a description, periphrasis, 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, it 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 curse2. I find the trial of the pu

it is értéλexela, 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.

1 St. Aug. de Genes. ad. literam, cap. 5, 6, salves that expression from any inconvenience; but the author, in Pseudodox. Epidemic. 1. 7, cap. 1, shews that we have no reason to be confident that this fruit was an apple.

2 Yet the author himself sheweth, in Pseudodox. Epidemic. lib. 7, cap. 1, that the form or kind of the serpent is not agreed on; yet Comestor affirmed it was a dragon, Eugubinus a basilisk, Delrio a viper, and others a common snake: but of what kind soever it was, he sheweth in the same volume, lib. 5, c. 4, that there was no inconvenience that the temptation should be performed in this proper shape.

cellage and virginity of women, which God ordained the Jews, is very fallible3. 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,

neque enim quum posticus, aut me

Lectulus accepit, desum mihi

HORACE.

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

3 Locus extat, Deut. c. xxii. The same is affirmed by Laurentius in his Anatom.

Touching the difference betwixt eternity and time, there have been great disputes amongst philosophers; some affirming it to be no more than duration perpetual consisting of parts; and others affirmed that it hath no distinction of tenses, but is,

hath the same horoscope with the world; but to retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning, to give such an infinite start forwards 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 prescient determination of our states to come, but a definite blast of his will already fulfilled, and at the instant that he first decreed it; for to his eternity,

according to Boetius (lib. 5, Consol. pros. 6,) his definition, interminabilis vitæ tota simul et perfecta possessio. For me, non nostrum est tantas componere lites.

5 This the author infers from the words of God to Moses, I am that I am; and this to distinguish him from all others, who (he saith) have and shall be: but those that are learned in the Hebrew, do affirm that the words in that place (Exod. iii,) do not signify, ego sum qui sum, et qui est, etc. but ero qui ero, et qui erit, etc. "I am that I am :" the French idiom is the same, "Je suis ici depuis sept années ;" and the Irish, "How long are you here?" instead of, "How long have you

been here?"