Page images
PDF
EPUB

Paradise Lost V. 458

RELIGIO MEDICI.

89

I believe they have an extemporary knowledge, and upon the first motion of their reafon do what we cannot without study or deliberation; that they know things by their forms, and define, by specifical difference, what we describe by accidents and properties; and therefore probabilities to us may ✰ be demonftrations unto them: that they have knowledge not only of the fpecifical, but numerical forms of individuals, and understand by what reserved difference each single hypoftafis (befides the relation to its Ipecies) becomes its numerical felf. That as the foul hath a power to move the body it informs, fo they have a faculty to move any, tho' inform none; we are confined to time; place and distance; but that invifible hand that conveyed Habakkuk to the lion's den, or Philip to Azo→ tus, infringeth this rule, and hath a fecret conveyance, wherewith

[ocr errors]

M

mor

mortality is not acquainted: if they have that intuitive knowledge, whereby, as in reflexion, they behold the thoughts of one another, I cannot peremptorily deny, but they know a great part of ours. Those who, to refute the invocation of faints, have denied that they have any knowledge of our affairs below, have proceeded too far, and must pardon my opinion, till I can throughly answer that piece of fcripture, At the converfion of a finner the angels in heaven rejoice. I cannot with those in that *great father fecurely interpret the work of the first day, Fiat lux, to the creation of angels, tho', I'confess, there is not any creature that hath fo near a glimpse of their nature, as light in the fun and elements: we ftile it a bare accident; but where it fubfifts alone, 'tis a fpiritual fubftance, and may be an angel in brief, conceive

a Luke xv. 7, 10.

[merged small][ocr errors]

spirit. "Listen dick, but don't re SECT. XXXIV.

=ply"

Thefe are certainly the magifterial and mafter-pieces of the creator, the flower, or (as we may fay) the bestpart of nothing, actually exifting, of which we are but in the hope, and probability: we are only that amphibions piece between a corporal and fpiritual effence, that middle form that links these two together, and makes good the method of God and nature; that jumps not from extremes, but unites the incompa tible diftances by fome middle and participating natures that we are the breath and fimilitude of God is indifputable, and upon record of holy fcripture; but to call ourfelves a microcofm, or little world, I thought only a pleafant trope of rhetorick, till my near judgment and fecond thoughts told me there

was

was a real truth therein: for first

we are a rude mafs, and in the rank exist of creatures which only are, and

not

have a dull kind of being, not yet privileged with life, or preferred to fenfe or reafon; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of fpirits, running on in one myfterious nature thofe five kinds of exiftences, which comprehend the creatures not only of the world, but of the univerfe; thus is man that great and true Amphibion, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and diftinguished worlds; for tho? there is but one world to fenfe, there are two to reafon; the one visible, the other invifible; of the one Mofes feems, to have left description, but of the other fo obfcurely, that fome parts thereof are yet in controverfy; and truly in the first chapters of Ge

nefis,

Subject to motion pasure not acc

nefis, I must confefs a great deal of obscurity; though divines have, to the power of human reafon, endeavoured to make all go in a literal meaning, yet thofe allegorical interpretations are alfo probable, and perhaps no other than the myftical method of Mofes, bred up in the hieroglyphical fchools of the Egyptians.

SECT. XXXV.

Now for that immaterial world, methinks we need not wander fo far as beyond the first moveable; for even in this material fabrick the fpirits walk as freely exempt from the affection of time, place, and motion, as beyond the extremeft cir* cumference: do but extract from the corpulency of bodies, or refolve things beyond the first matter, and you difcover the habitation of angels, which if I call the biquitary, and omniprefent ef+ Paradise Lost Book 4. fence

« PreviousContinue »