The Major Works (English Library) (11 page)

32. Now besides these particular and divided Spirits, there may be (for ought I know) an universall and common Spirit to the whole world.
¹⁸⁹
It was the opinion of
Plato
, and it is yet of the
Hermeticall
Philosophers; if there be a common nature that unites and tyes the scattered and divided individuals into one species, why may there not bee one that unites them all? However, I am sure there is a common Spirit that playes within us,
yet makes no part of us, and that is the Spirit of God, the fire and scintillation of that noble and mighty Essence, which is the life and radicall heat of spirits, and those essences that know not the vertue of the Sunne, a fire quite contrary to the fire of Hell: This is that gentle heate that brooded on the waters, and in six dayes hatched the world;
¹⁹⁰
this is that irradiation that dispells the mists of Hell, the clouds of horrour, feare, sorrow, despaire; and preserves the region of the mind in serenity: whosoever feels not the warme gale and gentle ventilation of this Spirit (though I feele his pulse) I dare not say he lives; for truely without this, to mee there is no heat under the Tropick; nor any light, though I dwelt in the body of the Sunne.

33. Therefore for Spirits I am so farre from denying their existence, that I could easily beleeve, that not onely whole Countries, but particular persons have their Tutelary, and Guardian Angels: It is not a new opinion of the Church of
Rome
, but an old one of
Pythagoras
and
Plato
;
¹⁹²
there is no heresie in it, and if not manifestly defin’d in Scripture, yet is it an opinion of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions of a mans life, and would serve as an
Hypothesis
to salve many doubts, whereof common Philosophy affordeth no solution: Now if you demand my opinion and Metaphysicks of their natures, I confesse them very shallow, most of them in a negative way, like that of God; or in a comparative, between our selves and fellow creatures; for there is in this Universe a Staire, or manifest Scale of creatures, rising not disorderly, or
in confusion, but with a comely method and proportion:
¹⁹³
betweene creatures of meere existence and things of life, there is a large disproportion of nature; betweene plants and animals or creatures of sense, a wider difference; between them and man, a farre greater: and if the proportion hold on, betweene man and Angels there should bee yet a greater.
¹⁹⁴
We doe not comprehend their natures, who retaine the first definition of
Porphyry
,
¹⁹⁵
and distinguish them from our selves by immortality; for before his fall, man also was immortall; yet must wee needs affirme that he had a different essence from the Angels: having therefore no certaine knowledge of their natures, ’tis no bad method of the Schooles, whatsoever perfection we finde obscurely in our selves, in a more compleate and absolute way to ascribe unto them. I beleeve they have an extemporary

knowledge, and upon the first motion of their reason doe what we cannot without study or deliberation;
¹⁹⁶
that they know things by their formes, and define by specificall difference, what we describe by accidents and properties;
¹⁹⁷
and therefore probabilities to us may bee demonstrations unto them; that they have knowledge not onely of the specificall, but numericall formes of individualls, and understand by what reserved
¹⁹⁸
difference each single
Hypostasis
¹⁹⁹
(besides the relation to its species) becomes its numericall selfe. That as the Soule hath a power to move the body it informes, so there’s a Faculty to move any, though informe none; ours upon restraint of time, place, and distance; but that invisible hand that conveyed
Habakkuk
to the Lions den, or
Philip
to
Azotus
,
²⁰⁰
infringeth
this rule, and hath a secret conveyance, wherewith 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. They that to refute the Invocation of Saints, have denied that they have any knowledge of our affaires below, have proceeded too farre, and must pardon my opinion, till I can thoroughly answer that piece of Scripture,
At the conversion of a sinner the Angels of heaven rejoyce
.
²⁰¹
I cannot with those in that great Father securely interpret the worke of the first day,
Fiat lux
,
²⁰²
to the creation of Angels, though (I confesse) there is not any creature that hath so neare a glympse of their nature, as light in
the Sunne and Elements; we stile it a bare accident,
²⁰³
but where it subsists alone, ’tis a spirituall Substance, and may bee an Angel: in briefe, conceive light invisible, and that is a Spirit.

34. These are certainly the Magisteriall & master pieces of the Creator, the Flower (or as we may say) the best part of nothing,
²⁰⁴
actually existing, what we are but in hopes, and probabilitie, we are onely that amphibious piece betweene a corporall and spirituall essence, that middle forme that linkes those two together, and makes good the method of God and nature, that jumps not from extreames, but unites the incompatible distances by some middle and participating natures;
²⁰⁵
that wee are the breath and similitude of God, it is indisputable, and upon record of holy Scripture,
²⁰⁶
but to call our selves a Microcosme, or little world, I thought it onely a pleasant trope of Rhetorick, till my neare judgement and second thoughts told me there was a reall truth therein: for first wee are a rude masse, and in the ranke of creatures, which onely are, and have a dull kinde of being not yet priviledged with life, or preferred
²⁰⁷
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 onely of the world, but of the Universe;
²⁰⁸
thus is man that great and true
Amphibium
, whose nature is disposed to live not onely like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds; for
though there bee but one to sense, there are two to reason; the one visible, the other invisible,
²⁰⁹
whereof
Moses
seemes to have left noe
²¹⁰
description, and of the other so obscurely, that some parts thereof
²¹¹
are yet in controversie; and truely for the first chapters of
Genesis
, I must confesse a great deale of obscurity, though Divines have to the power of humane reason endeavoured to make all goe in a literall meaning, yet those allegoricall interpretations are also probable, and perhaps the mysticall method of
Moses
bred up in the Hieroglyphicall Schooles of the Egyptians.
²¹²

35 . Now for that immateriall world, me thinkes wee need not wander so farre as the first moveable,
²¹³
for even in this materiall fabricke the spirits walke as freely exempt from the affection of time, place, and motion, as beyond the extreamest circumference: doe 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 hee created no new world, or determinate mansion, and therefore they are every where where is his essence, and doe live at a distance even in himselfe: that God made all things for man, is in some sense true, yet not so farre as to subordinate the creation of those purer creatures unto ours, though as ministring spirits they doe, and are willing to fulfill the will of God in these lower and sublunary
²¹⁴
affaires of man; God made all things for himself,
²¹⁵
and it is impossible hee should make them for any other end than his owne glory; it is
all he can receive, and all that is without himselfe; for honour being an externall adjunct, and in the honourer rather than in the person honoured, it was necessary to make a creature, from whom hee 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 onely to repent that hee hath made the world, but that hee hath sworne hee would not destroy it.
²¹⁶
That there is but one world, is a conclusion of faith.
Aristotle
with all his Philosophy hath not beene able to prove it, and as weakely that the world was eternall; that dispute much troubled the penne of the antient Philosophers, but
Moses
decided that question, and all is salved with the new terme of a creation, that is, a production of something out of nothing; and what is that? Whatsoever is opposite to something or more exactly, that which is truely contrary unto God: for he onely is, all others have an existence, with dependency and are something but by a distinction;
²¹⁷
and herein is Divinity conformant unto Philosophy, and generation not onely
²¹⁸
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.
²¹⁹

36. The whole Creation is a mystery, and particularly 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)
²²⁰
he played the sensible operator, and seemed not so much to create, as make him; when hee had separated the materials of other creatures, there consequently resulted a forme and soule, but having raised the wals of man, he was driven to a second and harder creation of a
substance like himselfe, an incorruptible and immortall soule. For these two affections
²²¹
we have the Philosophy, and opinion of the Heathens, the flat affirmative of
Plato
, and not a negative from
Aristotle
:
²²²
there is another scruple cast in by Divinity (concerning its production) much disputed in the
Germane
auditories, and with that indifferency and equality of arguments, as leave the controversie undetermined. I am not of
Paracelsus
minde
²²³
that boldly delivers a receipt to make a man without conjunction, yet cannot but wonder at the multitude of heads that doe deny traduction,
²²⁴
having no other argument to confirme their beliefe, then that Rhetoricall sentence, and
Antimetathesis
of
Augustine, Creando infunditur, infundendo creatur
:
²²⁵
either opinion will consist well enough with religion, yet I should rather incline to this, did not one objection haunt mee, not wrung from speculations and subtilties, but from common sense, and observation, not pickt from the leaves of any author, but bred amongst the weeds and tares of mine owne braine. And this is a conclusion from the equivocall
²²⁶
and monstrous productions in the copulation of man with beast; for if the soule of man bee not transmitted and transfused in the seed of the parents, why are not those productions meerely beasts, but have also an impression and tincture of reason in as high a measure as it can evidence it selfe in those improper organs? Nor truely can I peremptorily deny, that the soule in this her sublunary estate, is wholly and in all acceptions inorgan-icall,
²²⁷
but that for the performance of her ordinary actions, is required not onely a symmetry and proper disposition of
Organs, but a Crasis
²²⁸
and temper correspondent to its operations; yet is not this masse of flesh and visible structure the instrument and proper corps of the soule, but rather of sense, and that the hand of reason.
²²⁹
In our study of Anatomy there is a masse of mysterious Philosophy, and such as reduced the very Heathens to Divinitie; yet amongst all those rare discoveries, and curious pieces I finde in the fabricke of man, I doe not so much content my selfe, as in that I finde not, that is no Organe or instrument for the rationall soule; for in the braine, which wee tearme the seate of reason, there is not any thing of moment more than I can discover in the cranie of a beast:
²³⁰
and this is a sensible and no inconsiderable argument of the inorganity of the soule, at least in that sense we usually so receive it. Thus we are men, and we know not how, there is something in us, that can be without us, and will be after us, though it is strange that it hath no history, what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it entred in us.
²³¹