A treatise of the bulk and selvedge of the world wherein the greatness, littleness, and lastingness of bodies are freely handled : with an answer to Tentamine [sic] de Deo by S.P. ... / by N. Fairfax ...

The Bulke and Selvedge of the WORLD.

CHAP. I.

WHoever in good earnest be∣takes himself to the scanning of bodies, one and other, as they lie in the whole bulky throng of this World, either as to their kinds of being or wonts of working, will find no∣thing that the mind at freedom is readier to fasten upon, likelier to be lost in, or, as to the knowledg of other things, be checkt or sti∣fled by, than those two puzling things, the maximum quantum and the minimum; how far a body may be biggened by putting to it, or lessened by taking from it: the one losing it self in spatio imaginario, the other in puncto Mathematico. Now I have been thinking, there is so much of kindred between the two riddles, that if but one of them were rightly made out to mans understanding, the other

would thence, as well gain somewhat of more light, as give back somewhat for fur∣ther setling, and withal a fairer way would be made for the mind to busie it self about all those beings that lie far and wide between them.

Wherein to attach other mens reasonings of weakness, or to sing Mattins and Evensong to my own 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, by a sort of big and lofty strains, is none of my business, only I would beg leave to say, that what I have met with from the pens and tongues of learned men hereabout, have left me altogether in the dark, whatever light others may thence have gathered, and that what I have hit upon as to this affair, and am now about to set down, has set my own mind so far at freedom, that I was not altogether given to mistrust, but it might somewayes also be helpful, to the set∣ting right the thoughts of some others. Me∣thought then that the answerings or analo∣gies of beings, have been hitherto but ill pitcht or adjusted, and that those things that right reason and a wisdom above us, had evened out into ranks and kindreds by them∣selves, have been unhappily hudled and bro∣ken by the mind of man; and that other things wide enough off as to their Births and seats in the world, have been unkindly brought together by our less wary way of

thinking, besides a great many things which are either begotten by the understanding, working upon the draughts or idea's of things that sense has to do with, or else do arise from the answerings or habitudes that the things of the World bear to the make of mankind, are hastily forethought to have such a kind of being in analogia mundi, as they seem to have in analogia nostri. Whereupon things being either lodged in the mind, that have no dwellings in the world, or other∣wise shaped, linkt, or laid, than they are in the world, it falls out that things that are not, are reckoned as if they were, or things that are, are reckoned otherwise than they are.

Thus a right understanding having bound up Moral beings, with their belongers, in one bundle, and Metaphysical with theirs, in ano∣ther, by the too forward working of the mind of man, the bond has been loosned and a medly made to the everlasting shackling of that head or question, Praestat non esse quam miserum esse, for although it be as clear, as that which is clearest, that, so laid down, 'tis a known truth, yet Durandus's Argument will stand unanswered till Doomsday, to wit, that which takes away the greater good, is the greater evil, but not being does so, for it takes away the good of well-being and the good of being both. This Mr. Barlow grants but with

a Suppositâ semper subjecti duratione. But in my mind that answer is not of the same piece with the learnedness of the rest; for 'tis not askt, whether to Peter not being Peter it be evil to be endlesly wretched? but whether to Peter, being Peter, it be not worse to lose his good of well-being and his good of being too, than to lose but one of them? which is no worse way of speaking than what our blessed Lord spake of another of the twelve, * 1.1 Better had it been for that man, if he had not been born. Now he that grants bonum entis or essentiae to be the object of the will: that is, bonum Metaphysicum to be bo∣num Morale, has shut himself out from an∣swering, even for evermore: but give but to each good its right, and the thing is at an end; for bonum entis not being bonum Mo∣rale, any more than verum entis, which a lie may have, is verum Morale, knit unto malum Miseriae a moral evil, and so laid before the will, 'tis easie enough to foretel where the choice will be: And that these two goods are wide enough asunder, is clear, for why? Non bonum, that is, non ens Metaphysicum, may be as truly bonum Morale, and so the darling of the will, as what is most of all so. Thus the not being of the world it self, before all worlds, till it had a being, was as truly good, and so the object of the will of him that made

it, as its self same being when it began to be.

Thus again by the blending of Ens Physi∣cum with Ens Morale, another question about the thing that sin is, has been as much rufled and darkned as any whatsoever; for though it has been made out, as heretofore, so more∣over of late, by no mean hands, to be Ens po∣sitivum, yet most well-knowing men have been wary of speaking it out, for fear they should allot God Almighty a share in it, he being the maker of every positive being; whereas, if I do not much mis-think at least, though God Almighty be the Maker of every being that is Physically so, it follows not that he is the same of each being that is Morally so: 'tis enough that God is the maker of the power to do evil, (which being good, may therefore spring from him) not of the things that are so done, so as from them he should take name: thus 'tis most sure, that a non ens Physicum may be a moral good; a Jews na∣ked not doing business on his Rest-day, had as truly Being in it, as the doing the other works of the day, for why? as truly good; and if God should will me not to be, my not being, and willingness not to be Physically, would be as much Being, because as much good Mo∣rally, as my very being alive and willingness to be so, worshipping God whilst so. A na∣tural being leaves off to be so, when it no

longer abides in the World; but a moral be∣ing skills not the world, but is such only from its closing with, or swerving from the Law 'tis laid to; whilst 'tis, it is indeed no∣thing in the World, nor is any thing else of it self, rightly speaking, unless it takes up room there. Had there been as much of the will of God, as there might be of the will of man, in those two odd wishes, of two holy hearts, in the holiest of Books, blotting out of the Book of God would have been a good, and accursedness from Christ, a blessedness. For then a being grows up to its full ripe happi∣ness, when it fully reaches all that bliss, which God aims at, for its utmost good; which whether it abides Physically or not, is neither here nor there, it being a weakness of under∣standing to say, that a made being is more happy in its natural life, which God wills not, than in its being nothing when God wills it so: for then either we could never have bin fully happy, unless we were as well from everlasting, as to it; or at least, those that go to heaven at the end of the World, would not be so blissful as those that went in the be∣ginning, the former having an happy being, while the latter had neither happiness nor be∣ing; whereas both standing even in the love of God, they should do so too, in their own bliss. I think we do respect or look towards

Gods glory, and our own happiness more, by what we have in us of Ens morale, than by what we have of Ens Physicum.

Notwithstanding all which there would follow nothing to make us think that sin should be any whit long of God; for why, all that he does towards it, is, to leave us to our selves to bring it forth if we will; and instead of driving on to it as a fellow helper or procatarctick cause, he draws from it, and towards the good, with unspeakable endear∣ments of woing, and drives from it, by for∣bidding the evil, with all that earnestness of threatning, that may beget in man the ut∣mostness of dread; nor is he any nearer the Physical cause of it, than to give that good power, which is not the cause at all, as it looks towards him, for by giving this power he is at the same time the evil thing is done, as much the cause of the gainstanding good that is not done; now if he be no more the cause of it, than he is of that which is not at all, then he is not the cause at all.

Besides this power is not only good, but also needful, for though the fulfilledness or perfection of the will in the next life, will not be in a standing at jar, and wavering alike towards good and evil, but only in a self-wil∣lingness to good, yet in this life, I think it mainly does, and must; for this is a life of

doing, or believing, as it looks on to reward in that to come: that, a lie of rewarding, as it looks back to doing or believing here. Now if we do but allow God to deal with us, who are reasonable beings, in wayes bearing an evenliness with our kind, as he does with lower beings in wayes agreeable to theirs; then must he needs bestow upon us this free∣dom to sin that we are speaking of; for it seems not so much of right reason to reward that in man, which though he did willingly, yet he could not for his life do otherwise, least then a stock or a stone should put in too for reward, for its deeds of kind, which it does not unwillingly, but yet must needs do. In like manner Heaven being a life, not of earning wages, but of taking pay, 'tis enough there, for the freedom of the will to stand alone in spontaneitate ad bonum, or self-wil∣lingness to good.

Hence likewise we are in a fair way to answer that thread-bare Question, which did so much gravel the ungospel'd world; to wit, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉; For inasmuch as sin is a moral thing, we are well enough on't if we can but track it up to a spring of its kind, without looking after any other riste: Now unbounded wisdom and goodness having laid out endless happiness as reward for obedi∣ence, and the same wisdom and rightwiseness

allotted endless wretchedness as punishment for sin; without this obedience there could be no heaven, without sin no Hell; and without a power not to do, in both, there could be neither. So then, that God may have leave to make man happy for holiness, man must needs have power to make himself wretched for sin. That evil should alwayes flow from evil in a chain of breeders, is a great mis-understanding; for as fire arises from that which is no fire, by a smart stroke upon a flint, so evil springs from that which is not evil, by a cross blow given the Law.

If it be gainsaid, Then man may thank him∣self too for all the good he does, that being as much long of him as the other, while the thing done forbears to be denominated from God, at the freeness of the power in man: and so to make God not the spring or Author of good, would be much at one with the ma∣king of him the Author of evil.

I answer, it follows not; For in the first place, of all the good that man does, God is still the Moral cause, egging on to it by all those sweetnesses of entreaty, that the will can any way be wrought upon by; and though mans being free to it, makes it his deed (at second hand at least) both which, even holy writ and reason speak aloud; yet inasmuch as the stream of goodness, by the

putting forth of freeness, is not damm'd up, but left to run on to the thing done: and again the same Almighty hand that barely upheld while sin was done, does over and above further the thing that good is, by en∣lightning the mind, renewing the will, heal∣ing the spring in man, of that a••l which inbred sin had brought upon it, and in a word ma∣king it every way more it self; God must be more an owner there than man, and thence the thing done falls in with the divine will, because it flow'd from divine goodness; all that which is good in man by way of off-spring, being so in God by way of well-spring.

Once more by the medly of Ens Mathema∣ticum and Physicum, the Question De compo∣sitione continui, or the making up of a bulky being, has been overwhelmed and lost in the finenesses of words, and the airiness of tattle, beyond all helps of freedom to a right under∣standing; whereas by dealing the dole even∣ly between both, we hope, further on, to make it likely at least, that the doctrine of atoms is not wound up in those darknesses that some mens understandings have may-hap over-weened.

And lastly, whereas Ens Physicum or natu∣rale, is either materiale, or immateriale, body and ghost or body and not body, by bewed∣ding to body the things that belong to ghost,

or bringing over to ghost, or that which is not body, the things cleaving unto body, the bulkiness of the world, the business of moti∣on, the emptiness beyond the world, the all-fillingness of God, the herenesses and there∣nesses of ghosts, have been too much interwo∣ven and twisted together, even to the bewil∣dring of our closest and best weighed thoughts about them.

Besides our very way of thinking upon bo∣dies, or drawing their likenesses upon our souls, from the unluckiness of those pipes and suckers, through which we have fetcht them, have drunk in such a tang of manishness, or a mingle mangle of half man, half world toge∣ther, that 'tis uneasie to say, what things a bo∣dy has from us, and what it has from him that made it.

Now by giving to the above-named what is their own of right, and taking from them, what we have given them in wrong, as far as is belonging to what we have before us, is that which we have undertaken, to the ut∣most of our scantling, at least, to be all along most heedfull of, and whence also we look for more light and ease to betide the under∣standing, than from the giving way to such unkindly minglings as we have blamed be∣fore.

CHAP. II.

THus then in the first place, one of the readiest wayes for us to free the mind from mistakes about the knowledg of the world, is, for us to gather remarks of things, as much in a nearness to the Divine idea of them, or that of ghostly beings, as our more underly way of thinking will give us leave to reach to; and to uncloath them of, or make allowance for, all those answerings or analogies, that do arise to them upon the ac∣count of our animalities or beghosted body∣hood. For I reckon it will be a good step towards the knowledg of what the world ought to be to us, who are body and ghost both together, if we but know what 'tis to such Being or Beings as are ghost altoge∣ther.

Now the two first and most bewildring things that the mind is likest to fasten on, as the main belongers to the world, are the room that the world takes up, and the time that the world lasts: But if we come to lay these to the Divine Being, we shall find, that as Time is to Gods eternity or everlasting∣ness, so Bulk is to Gods immensity or his all-fillingness.

Our knowing then how the world behaves it self to one of them, will help us still to understand how 'tis to the other, as our knowing how 'tis unto both, will give us somewhat better to guess how 'tis to us who have neither.

Inasmuch then as the known perfection of God is to be so everlasting, as not to be suc∣cessive or jogging on and on, the idea or like∣ness that he frames of timesome Beings that are so, must not be by shrinking up this his fulness, to the narrowness of those Beings which must needs be creeping forwards while they are; for that would be to make himself like them; that is, not to be God: but he must take the ken of these beings, after wayes becomming his boundless or infinite being: if then it will not beseem God to be at this time, and at that time, this after that, then neither will it become him to know things that are so, after that kind of way. Now because all the things we can gripe in our minds are such, and the likenesses that God has of them are not such, the words by which we call them being answering to the things, we are as much at a loss for words, as for thoughts, about things so vastly beyond us: all that we can do towards it is, to choose out such vvords to set forth Gods ever-beingness by, as may be sure to

shut out formerness and afterness, which Gods everlastingness has not, though we can∣not on the other hand make them take in what we believe it has. Thus the whole world almost of well enlightned, and right believing men, have hit upon the way of calling Gods everlastingness, a cleaveless or indivisible now: not as if 'twere a moment of that time which we take up, (time being cast out, as well in part as in whole) but only be∣cause it cannot be brought to our bounded understandings, shrowded under any other word that can like that, cut off all former∣ness and latterness, which must by no means be taken in.

Which way of speaking has as sure footing too in holy Writ, as in well-guided reason. I am hath sent me, this day have I begotten thee, before Abraham was, I am; being as much sense spoken of God, as they would be non∣sense of any one else. Had Abraham been at the beginning of the World he had not been sooner, as to Gods everlastingness; or had he not been till the words spoken, he had not been later, because there is neither sooner nor later in the thing: that which would be [was] in Grammar to Abraham, is [am] to God, as that which would be [will be] to us, is still [am] to him. Gods saying, I am be∣fore Abraham or the world, and I am after

him or it, (answering to our were and will be) is as well the fullness, as truth of speaking, for then we have spoken all that ought, when we have spoken all that can be; and then all that can, when there are no more words to speak more with.

And that it may not seem so strange to us that we are thus word-bound in such kind of things, we may remember that we are enough put to it for words about things belonging to our own selves, when we would give forth those ravishments of love that we feel, but can not, (without giving Soul and all) give ano∣ther to understand, our words, it seems, being most an end as little squared to unbounded∣ness in the intention of degrees, or screwing up high, as 'tis to that in the extension of parts, or letting out wide.

Besides, if Gods everlastingness were to be set out by words, it must not surely be, by such vvords as are fitted to the analogy that is betvveen us, and other timesome and boundsome beings, as all those vve yet have are, but is only to be set forth by vvords run∣ning even vvith the ansvverings betvveen them and the Divine Being, which we nei∣ther know, nor can tell whether ever we shall. Thus Logick and Philosophy cannot be uttered by the neighing of Horses, the barking and howling of Dogs, the hissing

and gagling of Geese, the chirping or pra∣ting of other Birds, though they speak e∣nough that, amongst themselves, which we cannot give them to know by our more full words; they, it seems, being as unfit for Be∣ings beneath us, as above us.

Indeed the Philosophical Dr. Charleton, (from the Mighty Gassendus before him, as he from Epicurus) has taken up again, the opi∣nion of Vorstius, so learnedly overthrown by Mr. Barlow, that Gods everlastingness is boundless time, and that his unmeetsomeness is boundless width: Both which to me, (whatever they are to others) seem no less then frightful notions: For if we are existant in a small part of that duration, or the world in a small part of that extension in which God exists, and Gods eternity not be an everlast∣ing now, and his immensity an unbounded unextendedness; it will follow that some part of Gods everlastingness is yet to come, and not now; and some part of his all-filling∣ness beyond the world, not in it, vvhich vvould make such a medly of succession and division in the Attributes of God, vvhich are God himself, as I can't novv understand, or believe, I, or any man ever shall; being as sure, as I am of my ovvn thinkfullness, that vvhat is bounded or finite, cannot hold pace vvith that vvhich is unbounded or infinite, vvitho〈…〉〈…〉 vvhole nor in part.

But because it has been undertaken since by a Reverend Divine, who has followed it as well more closely, as more fully, and that too with a goodly income of Learning, and a right handsome address of words, and well air'd periods; it may happily seem to the Reader, that either we want a kindness for the business we have hitherto owned, while we let such a rub lye in our way uncared for, or else that we want respect enough for the Author, to think that so, which he has wrought hard to make so; especially too, having done so much to awaken us, as, to reckon all that think otherwise than himself does, to be no less than fools and laughing-stocks; notwithstanding yet the whole throng of those that have been of most name for learning, or of most worth for holiness, have been of the side that he is not of, from the be∣ginning of the World to this day.

In the doing of this he warns his Reader of * 1.2 two kinds of abiding, inward or in gross, and outward or by it self: The inward is the very es∣sence or existence of the thing, which if, as to what 'tis made up of, it be daily throwing off and taking in, (as we and all body-some Beings do) is then successive; but if it be alwayes the same, as 'tis with ghost and the substance of all bodies, then 'tis shut of succession and division,

and is self-same or permanent, like as God is.

Page 376, 377. The outward has so little reality in it, that the understanding cannot get a draught of it; it has nothing at all of positive reality (though it be not yet a sheer dream or fig∣ment) which is gathered, because it must al∣waies needs be, both unmade by God, and unbe∣holden to, or independent on God; if God had never made any thing, it should for all that have been; and if he should unmake all things, it would still be. Page 378. The whole of this is eternity or everlastingness, the half is aevum or endlesness, that share of it that lackies it by the worlds side is time.

Pag. 398. Thus Gods inward everbeingness, or aeternitas concreta, is the very existence of God, with an outward badge or denomination from time by-running; which is permanent and indivisible: and 'tis about this aeternitas, Boe∣thiusand others should be understood, when speaking of its being tota simul.

Gods outward or abstract is in an endless on∣wardness, and is unto Gods everlastingness, asspatium imaginarium is to his all••illingness, which is not an attribute of God, but an unboun∣ded retching out together with it.

To bring off all this fairly, we have two things to do; First, to shew that there is no such thing at all as this same aeternitas externa.

Secondly, that if there were, it would not yet do the job for which 'tis brought.

For the first, A real outward eternity or eter∣nal time that has nothing at all of positive rea∣lity, is not; because 'tis a contradiction in adjecto, that it should be a right down self-cut-throat, fordoing even its own being. Eternity, and nothing at all of positivity, can by no means stand together; for whatever is eternal, must needs be positive of eternity, as long as eternity is somewhat positive it self: and whatever is big with or positive of eter∣nity, cannot go farrow, or be privative of re∣al entity; for a thing cannot be everlasting, and not be at all: and that this is really so, is clear, in that 'tis not a figment or whimsie; So 'tis yielded to have a little reality in it, and a little real, is real; especially seeing that little reality is enough to make it really lengthen'd out with Gods most real inward everlasting∣ness, and so that although God were not, that would be, and though God had never been, that should be.

Besides he that gives it a little reality or thingsomeness, cannot for his heart be so spa∣ring as to hold his hand there, and give it no more: for why, 'tis such a craving Horsleech, it will suck in more whether a man will or not: Whilst it must for truth's sake be grant∣ed, that that little snip of everlasting time,

which reaches from my Birth-day, or at least, the Worlds raising day, till novv, has a little reality in it; For I have lived, and the World lasted really that little while; the reality of time being grafted in its timeishness, not in its boundlesness; so that every little share of time must have a little of this little reality, and every little must make a mickle. Then say I, if the time that I have lived and the world lasted, has a little reality in it, then that of it, which is beyond, must have more; and that of it which reaches infinitely beyond it,) be∣cause 'tis as reall as 'tis infinite, and as really more as 'tis real, (must have an infinite deal of reality beyond it; and that which has more, and infinitely more than a little, cannot surely be said to have but a little, or less than a great deal, or any thing short of infinite reality.

2. Its independency or loosness from God, lies as crotchet every whit, as its being; for if you ask about it the question that is wont to be askt all the homeless Crew, Whence comes it? The answer must fare as if it were a God; for 'tis to be said, God did not make it, nor did any thing else; and yet 'tis indeed, and was unbeginningly, and will be endlesly; and that is as much as can be said of God himself, under that head. If it be said that God has besides an inward ever-beingness, that is neither cleavesome, nor on and on; so

has this too, by good luck; for the inward abiding is nothing but the existence of a thing alwayes the same: now this outward ever∣lastingness has alwaies been the same, without getting or losing ought, but moments of exi∣sting, which the everlasting God and all sub∣stances do. If it be said that in God there is All-fillingness, as well as Everlastingness; so there is out of God too, a boundless roomthi∣ness, such as would be though God were not, nor had been ever; and while he is, is retcht out together with him; and was, as he him∣self, without beginning, and without him too. So we have gotten somewhat to chew upon, that is as everlasting, and as much eve∣ry where, as God is, and as unbeholden to God for being, as God is to any thing else for his; and yet in the upshot, 'tis such a kind of somewhatkin, as truckles beneath the very tinyness of an half nothing, and is forsooth a fierdhalf nothing; for after the full nice brat∣tling out of reality, into muchnesses and lit∣tlenesses, there falls to the share of this, as lit∣tle as may be, to keep it from dwindling into an altogether nothing, or a middlekin be∣tween something and nothing, that is neither of them. Whereas I have thought, that as time had not been if God had not made time∣some beings, nor room if he had not made roomthy; so neither had eternity or immen∣sity

been, if there had not been a God ever∣lasting and every where, the maker of all things.

3. As this new Everlastingness breaks with it self, upon the score of being or entity, so it as much undoes it self upon that, of its bound∣lesness or infinity; for as before we were told it was a real eternal, not real positive, so over and above, we are done to wit, that 'tis an infinite not infinite: for 'tis such an infinite as is cut in a trice into two halves, one past and the other to come. Now it being impossi∣ble that I should give thus much to be the half of a thing, without I knew the whole were as much again, it follows that if I know how much the whole is, (and that I cannot but do, because I am told what the half is,) then is this infinite, finite; for I who am finite can fathom it, and by my bounded know∣ledg of it, bound it; and yet again this finite is the measure to an hair of Gods infinity in abiding, who is boundlesly far and wide of me, and of my utmost knowledg. All which being dainties of too high a seasoning, for my more homely understanding, I must leave them, with their Miche-good-do't-ye to the elder sons of relish and shrewd fetches.

But secondly, if this same cleaving of Eter∣nity in two (that is, into inward and out∣ward) were yielded, we should be ne're the

nearer fadging for all that; for the concrete or inward everlastingness is said to be the ve∣ry existence or essence (which as they do not differ to speak of, so our Author mingles) of God himself, with the outward denomination taken from time gliding by. Now, though it seems harsh (to me at least) that an outward denomination, should come into the defini∣tion of an inward being, yet that the inward essence or existence of God must no¦be na∣kedly understood, is clear enough; for the naked essence of God is as much his all-knowingness, his all-fillingness, or his one-foldness, as his everlastingness; and that can∣not be said to be Gods everlastingness, which is as much somewhat else, as 'tis that. Gods everlastingness then is not Gods Being or Es∣sence only, but Gods Essence everlasting, or everlasting God, or Gods Essence as 'tis to himself, or in himself endlesly abiding: as Gods knowledg is his Essence as to, or within himself all-knowing, his all-fillingness as to, or within himself filling all things. Now if all this be cleaveless or indivisible, as is fairly yielded above; and of, and by it self too, as, I think, may as fairly be hence gathered, to wit the externa aeternitas & immensitas, or the everlasting time and boundless roomthiness, being utterly of themselves without God, it would be a foolish blasphemy or dirtying of

God, not to yield that Gods inward everlast∣ingness and boundlesness, may as well be without the outward, as they could be with∣out the inward. Then, say I, after all this wheeling about, we are not a step further than where we were; for Gods whole eter∣nity rightly taken, and as 'tis to himself, is not successive or growing on, but altogether, or one only everbeing now.

All that we have gotten by it is, a measure for it that is growing onward, as we have for his all-fillingness, another that may be sun∣dred. Now surely 'tis as hard to imagine, how that which is successive and divisible, as the outward are, should be the measure of that which is permanent and indivisible, as the inward is; as 'tis that that which is all at once, should hold way with that which is on & on, or that that which is altogether should hold out with that which has part and part; which is the huge non-sence that is to be fa∣ther'd upon the otherwise minded. And ve∣rily, for my share, I cannot see why we may not have a yard or an ell of good-Angell, or a pound or an ounce of the foul fiend, as well as a successive share of Gods unsuccessive everlastingness, or a divisible piece of Gods indivisible all-fillingness: but such it seems may be had, if you knock at the right door; for measures that have fore and aft, and part

and part, are the things, and the only things, by which 'tis meted out.

Besides it carries a train of things after it, that are as hard to answer as easie to light up∣on. To name one for all; there being as many things to be known, as there are dotts or points in the outward immensity; and as ma∣ny new things to be known, as new minutes to be lived in, in the outward eternity; it will follow that Gods knowledg as well as his everlastingness is both divisible and suc∣cessive: without we should answer that God knows all that scope of points without retch∣ing out that his essence which is his know∣ledg; and all that chain of minutes, without any lengthening out of that his being which is his everlastingness; but then the new knack is quite split, and we are no wiser, nor speak no more wonders, than the grey beard∣ed men, that have gone before us.

But it being likely that that which be∣spoke a kindness for this more hazardous by-road, was, because the open way was lookt upon as more encumbred and less enlightned; that the charge may be shown, as less ground∣edly taken up, we shall give answer as far as we can, unto what has been laid before us under that head.

Among the hard sayings then that we meet with, these come in chief; to wit, Page 384,

The understanding cannot take it, how one nowshould hold on with the whole runlong of all ages, any more than that one point should be dri∣ven out to the utmost wideness of the whole World.

Page 386. Again, if everlastingness were cleaveless, nothing could be in any part of time, but it would be likewise whole everlastingness; the whole being in every least of time.

Page 388. And further yet, it cannot be thought that two abidings or durations, to wit, time and everlastingness, should be together and not be the same abiding; when inasmuch as they are together they become one, as two rooms can∣not be within one abutment, unless they be there∣by clapt into one.

All which being of so near a kindred, we shall cramp them with this one instance, and that shall be one too, no farther from home than we our selves are from our selves: I mean that oneness that is between soul and body, as it makes up the being that is called man.

The soul is as cleaveless or indivisible as a point of roomthiness, or a now of time; and yet 'tis as much in every roomthy part of the body, all at once and altogether, as in the very least: and if another mans understand∣ing cannot take it, how a thing that has no parts, should be every where at once, in a thing that has, the blame lies at the man, not

in the thing, for we are as sure that 'tis, as he can be that he don't understand it. Thus again the bone is as hard to pick, how a limb of the body should not be as big as the whole, it being as big as the whole of that, which is full as much as the whole body, and in the mean time, the whole of the same too, is even with that which is but a limb of it. And another of the same is, that two abidings, that is to say, time and eternity, may be to∣gether and not be the same abiding, as well as the soul may be every where, where the body is stretched out, and yet it self not be stretched out at all. But now either all this is true, or else the soul is as bulkie as the bo∣dy, and as full of parts as it; or else as little as an atome, and so takes up only the least room in it; both which are so easie to take off, that a few words will be enough to di∣spatch them.

Page 297, & 300. First then, That the soul is not a Substance, body-like extended, for close∣ness indivisible, for thinness penetrable, (which seems to be that draught of a ghost which our Author has some kindness for, and has both roundly helpt on and filled up) is thus to be made out.

'Tis given out that ghost, as well as the substance of body innerly, is such a thing, as is alwaies the same, as much as God is; so that

if you shift it, you quite and clean undo it. But now that ghostly being which enlivens the body of man, if it were stretched out with the body, would be as surely not the same, but shifted and changed, as the body it self is: therefore we gather rightly it must not be co-extended with it at all. The rea∣son of it in more words stands thus: the body is not only reeking out whole steams of little unseen off-shoots, and taking to it as many more, but over and above 'tis taking in a daily minglement of bigger bodies, by what we eat and drink, which splicing in their lit∣tle shives, within the croud of pieces that are clinging close together, at once grow one with the body, and give further bigness to the body; and also, as it may happen, the body may be almost as much lessned, by lop∣ping off its branches, as 'twas bigned by the growing of its trunck. Now 'tis ask'd, does this extended ghost within the body biggen and lessen with it, or does it not? The soul that I was quickned with at birth day, is the same that I am quickned with at this day, but the body that I have now is bigger than that which I had then: Is my soul bigned or is it not? If it be not, it reaches then only the les∣ser share of that body which I now have, the greater being soul-less; but if it be bigned, then 'tis not the same it was, any more than

my body; nor to be sure, is it so much the same, as God is, who is so the same as to be neither bigger nor less. Again, if I have an arm or a leg cut off, my body is lessned; but I ask whether my soul be or not? If not, then have I forsooth some pieces of my soul jet∣ting out of my body, some in it; and when I walk, that assignable, but indivisible part of my soul, which was in my leg, comes shove∣ling after me, and that in my arm is swingling by me, in such a shape of air, as takes up that room, that my leg and arm did, when limbs of my body; But if my soul does not thus featly stick out of my body, then it with∣drew at the off-cut, and so my soul is not the same that 'twas before, but less. Besides, when the soul draws back so, into what does it draw? Into it self it cannot, for 'tis already so close pack'd that it can be no closer; if it could be closer, it must be from some empti∣ness within, but because it must alwaies needs be brim full, there can be none, and if there were any such, it might then be cut a pieces body-like; for, with those that hold this, it seems the reason why an atome, as well as why a ghost, cannot be cloven, is nothing but because it sticks so close together, that no emptiness can come between; a thing being cleavesome, not from its bulkiness, but in∣ward emptiness mingled. Again, on the

other hand, if the soul were as close as it could be at first, (and so it must be, or else be out of kind,) then what it has put forth since of it self, to keep even with the growth of the body, has left such little emptinesses within, (the body by waxing, having crack'd a many holes in it,) that 'tis now, at manhood, as like to be shorn in pieces as the body.

Secondly, If the Soul be not retched out with the body, but settles in some room whence it may best, by unknown reins, sway the whole body; then 'tis ask'd, whether that room be cleaveless or not: If it be the Maw or Stomach, the whirl-pool of the spi∣rits in the blood, the brain, the water of it, or the Glandula pinealis in it, (which some or other have set out for it,) they being all ex∣tended, the business would be the same as if 'twere in the whole body: If it be but in one atome or leasting in the body, then a child would have more soul to its body than a man, and should thence seem more a man, there being more atoms in the bigger than in the less body. Besides the body being all over spending some and getting others, that atome in which the soul first lodg'd, may ei∣ther shift rooms in the body, or quite slip out of it, as well as any others that do so; and so for ought I know, my soul was whilom in my head, and sometime in my toe, and after at

my fingers end, according as that atome in which it dwelt, chanced to be bounced about for elbow-room: and I may have been I know not how many men since I was born, according as that atome hapned to leave me, and another popped into its stead; I being I, no longer than I have that in me, in which my soul is.

From the whole then look'd back upon but wistly, it seems that Gods everlastingness may be all at once, or a beginningless endless now, and time that is successive be together with it, without making that so; as well as our souls which are all together, may be every where, where the body is, without having parts, as that has: which latter, while we are fain to yield, it seems but unhandsome we should make a boggle at the former.

Withall, it were not perhaps amiss to re∣mark, that a main thing which has put a cheat upon the understanding herein is this; When eternity is said to be an everlasting now, and immensity as an every where cleavelesness, some have been so hard with it, as to strain from it what belongs to a now of time, and a least of body: whereas both of them standing off in their whole kind, 'tis impossible they should hold together in some part; and see∣ing they so differ as things infinite and finite, 'tis impossible, the agreement that we make

between them in words, should be by making that which is everlasting, the least part of that, which is but a while lasting, and that which is beyond all bounds the least share of that little thing, which has bounds. That eternity therefore is called a now, and im∣mensity a thing indivisible, hence 'tis, and hence only: to wit, every part of lastingness besides a now, is onwardly as well as bounded, and every part of bulk besides the least, is cleavesome as well as bounded; now 'tis better to call them by words speaking finite barely, which one thing they are not; than by words speaking finite and successive, or finite and di∣visible, which two things we are sure they are not; and though a point be the least of boak, and a now the shortest of time, yet they may speak everlastingness, and allfill∣ingness, upon another score, (as much as we can, that is, not as much as they should,) for all their shortestness and leastness, as well as the longest or the biggest, if they could be brought in without other unfitnesses; for nei∣ther of them would come any nearer to ever∣lastingness, or everywhereness, than the short∣est and the least do; but would, to be sure, be further off from them, by taking in more things which they have not, nor can have.

Therefore when our Author tells us (page 384.) of a now longer than Ages, and a being

unretcht out, that should be more than one that is, 'tis nothing to the business: for we only call Gods Everlastingness a now, to clear it of as many things as we can that would make it on and on, as things Time-lasting are; and Gods All-fillingness an altogether, to loosen it from any thing of sundership, which all extended Beings have: not but that one is boundlesly more than all the Nows of Time, and the other boundlesly more than all the Clefts of Body; but forasmuch as we want words wherewith to name them what they are, we take those that have least to do with Time and Body, which they are not. In a word, Everlastingness is no more All at Once, as a Now of Time is, because 'tis not thing enough to be a while, than it is it self Timesom; nor is All-fillingness any more unextended, as an Atome is, that is, because 'tis not thing enough to be recht out, than it is it self extended: but Everlasting∣ness is quite another thing infinitely from what Time is, and the parts of Time are; and Every-whereness is quite another thing infi∣nitely from what Bulk is, and the cleavings of Bulk are: But because our mind gives us, that Time should be liker to Eternity, and Bulk liker to Immensity, than any other bounded things are, we choose the renablest words belonging to the former, wherewith to set forth the latter.

Perhaps the understanding may draw somewhat nearer the thing as 'tis, by taking the next thing that arises from Soul, which is thinking, together with a next thing that streams from Body, which is roomthyness; thoughtsomness setting full as close to the very stamp or inmostness of a thinking Being, as boak or roomthyness does to the Being that is Bodysom; so that if I would have bulk or roomthyness do any thing, it must be such a thing for all the world as I would have Body do, & vice versa, or heads and heels, so I may have it become big or little, show of this or of that shape, stir or stand still, because these are things that I can have Body do: In like manner, if I would have Ghost do any thing, it must for all the world be such another thing as I would have thought or thinking do, and on the o∣ther hand; for if every thing must do accor∣ding as 'tis, thought being as much an inmate in the very heart of the thinking Being, as bulkiness is in the very inside of Body, it can∣not be, but that that which is so much of Ghost in its Being, should be very much so too in its doing; as outstretchedness which is so much of Body, does as much like Body. If then I would have thought to be here or there, in a great thing or in a little, it must do these things the nearest that can be to

what a Ghost would do about them; now I find my thoughts are here and there, without moving hither and thither Body-like, and in a great thing or a small one, without being great or small themselves; and thence I think I may freely gather, that Ghost would do so too, which is of all things in the world the next to it, and the root of it: Insomuch, that as there may dwell as many thoughts upon Regiomontanuses Fly, or Tredeskins chain'd Flea, as upon a First-rate Kings man of War, or the greatest Hall-place of the greatest Keisar, (while thoughts being off in their whole kind from the works of Handy∣crafts, they must needs be off too from what befalls them as such); so there may be like∣wise as much Soul in the shaplings or tiny keeles of the great Malpighiuses eggs within the six hours setting, as was in the foul stalk∣ing lundging body of that og of Bashan, at the utmost bulk to which the Rabbins have beswoln him: And, to end, as much of Gods Everlastingness in the shortest now, as in the longsomness of a thousand years, and as much of his All-fillingness in the least of bodies, as in the greatest throng of them: for why, much and little, short and long are no more akin to Ghost or what holds to it, than think∣ing is to Body or its belongers; it being as likely to take the scantling of a stone by a

chain made of thought after thought, which only haunt the ghost of a thinking Being, as to take the measure of Gods All-fillingness from bulk or extention, which sticks as close to Body.

But there comes up another Argument by the by, which may happily at first blush seem to have more tiew in it than all the stands we have met with hitherto, and that is in short thus.

P. 383. Suppose God ten thousand years ago to have made a world, and then to have un∣made it, and after to have made this, or (which is all one) suppose this to be benothing'd, and some ten thousands of years hence another to be made; Now if there were not time between them, there would be one upon the nick of an∣other, when yet we have supposed a long while betwixt them; And if there would be time be∣tween them, then we are quite broke, inasmuch as time may then be unmade, and of it self, with∣out timesom Beings.

To which the answer is, first: If it were not easier to take up things upon trust, than to frame Arguments, we had never been sur∣prized with this which hangs so ill together: For to suppose God before any thing else was made to make something, and then to un∣make all that he had made, and leave nothing as he found nothing, and yet to leave ten

thousand years or some ten thousands; is to suppose God to leave nothing, and yet to leave something: for ten thousand years, or some ten thousands, are, in my mind, as much something as the other were that were made nothing; and I believe it would hold any man as many thousand years as there are years in the thousands, to bring it but cle∣verly off, how ten thousand years between should not be time between, or how ten thousand years should not be ten thousand years.

But taking it for granted that we shall be bated the supposition in this unweildy draught of words, and only be brought to this streight or dead lift, whether if God should make a world, and a while after an∣nihilate or make it nothing, and again should make another, and sometime after benothing that likewise, and lastly, should over and above make a third World, would there be Time between these made or unmade Worlds? and would one be before or after the other, or would they not?

To this we answer round-dealing-wise, There would be no Time at all between them, nor would one be before the other or after the other, nor, in any other meaning than as they are in Gods Everlastingness, would they be together. The reason of this

short answer stands thus: There being no∣thing but everlasting God besides them, in whom there is nothing of timesom onward∣ness, nor ground upon which to fasten fore and aft, there can be no such thing as Time, or fore, or aft, at all. And we are withal to know, that the ground why we give after∣ness to some things in the World, is from the things that were former, so as until we come at a first; and formerness to other things, from the things that will be afterward, so as until we come to a last; insomuch as some things, even in this World, may not be fore and aft, but only fore or aft: the first thing in the world that was made being after no∣thing, for why, nothing was before it; and the last thing in the world that shall be un∣made, being before nothing, because there shall be nothing after it: as what we gave an∣swer about, and namely, the whole world now in being, is neither before nor after; be∣cause there is nothing besides but God, of whom it cannot be rightly said, he was before or will be after, but that he alwayes is.

If this should come unlookt for to the Readers understanding, it will may-hap seem more kindly further on, when we come to strengthen it with an answer of the same sort, about its twin-brother, outworldish empti∣ness.

The little that is yet behind, is the answer that our Author would fain give to that most unanswerable Argument against a successive and divisible everlastingness, and every∣whereness; to wit, Whether the parts of it be finite or infinite?

Which with him is twofold, 1. Enough or abundantly, 2. More than enough, or su∣perabundantly: Enough, by acknowledging that it cannot be answered at all, (p. 402.) And then over and above, to that hard saying, Fi∣nite put to finite can't make infinite he says, A set number cannot indeed, yet nothing with-holds, but that from an infinite tale of finites there may at length arise an infinite, as who should say, from an infinite twenty or twenty one, there should start up an infinite: what you will; for every number being even or odd as those are, there is not a pin to choose whether you take one of them or some other; that must be as even or as odd to the full as one of them is, and that at the last be such a number as you may put one more to unto all Eternity, or be a numberless num∣ber, or a number which is not a number, which is the very pith, and marrow, and heart, and strength of a fineness. And, as to the back door that belongs to this, which is, that The number by which we are to tell the finites that go to the making up of an infinite,

is beyond the numbers of Arithmetick, without all iffs & ands 'tis the very twin-trangham of a figure beyond all the figures in Geometry; both which are to be understood by no other thing in the world, but the own dear sweet friend of them, yeleped reason beyond the reason of Logick.

But because the main Castleward to shrowd these weaklings from blows and qualmes, is no other, but its fellow Fierdhalf nothing call'd space or roomthiness; which, that 'tis every way infinite, (though made up all of finites,) is said to be as clear as the clearest thing in the world, (pag. 403): and it being as clear to us that 'tis not so, but boun∣ded as well as Time, we are, when it comes in our way, to lay down reasons; which, so much as they will make for that, so much will they make against this.

Now having thus far unbenighted ourselvs, and clear'd our way in the foregoing from all that lumber that could hitherto be stum∣bled on, 'tis hoped we may have leave to settle Gods whole Everlastingness, as untime∣som, and altogether unbeclogg'd with on∣wardness; and as for any other of the name that should be outward, that the same is alto∣gether nothing but the airiness of thinking: and withal, that Time and timesom Beings, this time-lasting World, and every while-be∣ing

thing in it, is neither early nor late, as the ken is taken of it by God Almighty; but that earliness and lateness sticks to the things made, as made and not being unbeginning∣ly, and so is only a tang, that all timesom things have among themselves, and cannot be relisht by that everlasting Being that made them, any more than we can relish his Ever∣lastingness; but all the things that are early or late to us, are alwayes now to him.

Which is the first undertaking, in the sort∣ing of things, so as our understandings might best come at them, that is, by laying them as near as we can to the understanding of that Being, who is so all Mind as to be nothing Body: whence we have seen how the lastingness of the World and made things, bears it self to such a Being; which was the uppermost thing, the mind was like to start, in its thoughts about them.

CHAP. III.

THe next to this, is the Room that the World takes up; which body-haunter of roomthiness, that we may rightliest know, we shall do by it as we did by lastingness; (time and Room being fellows,) which as we brought for that end before Gods Ever∣lastingness,

so we shall search what this will be, as it stands towards Gods All-fillingness.

As then the abiding of the World from first to last, was nothing but a now to Gods ever∣beingness, so the bulk of the World from least to greatest, will, I think, fall out to be but a cleavless thing to his All-fillingness: For as Gods Eternity is not endless longsomness, so neither is his Immensity unbounded out∣stretchedness; but as his everness is all at once without before and after, so his un∣meetsomness is altogether, without here and there: and so still, as the Worlds abiding be∣ing long, makes no length in his Everlasting∣ness, but 'tis yet as to that all at once, so its bulk being wide, makes no wideness in his All-fillingness, but 'tis nevertheless, as to that, altogether: For, 'tis as impossible that God should be in Room, which is one of the hangers on to Body, as that he should be in Time, which is another. When therefore we say that God is every where, it must have the same respect to Place, that his being past, at hand, and to come, has to Time. As then God does as truly abide, after the way of his everlasting nowness, as other things do after the guise of their timesom running on and on, without being himself timesom, like them: So God is as truly every where, after wayes becoming his altogetherness, as other

things are by the way of their bulkiness, without being himself extended, like to them. And as to those other stainings of the word as 'tis given to Body, we are wholly to forewarn them in this business; for where∣ness is a word, which though the Schools have markt for another thing than locality, yet betokens too much ex analogiâ nostri, and, as 'tis often made to speak, is almost quite embrew'd in Body if not altogether, our souls in the meaning of it, can hardly be said to be any where; and I believe, if we were all Ghost, and nothing else in the world were Body, we should not readily know what to do with it, or ever well reach the meaning of it; for so much does it hang to motion, which I think is altogether befast∣ed to Body, that 'tis thought by those that can best brook the word, that a thing may move from one whereness to another, as easily as Body may from one place to another. Al∣though I can frame in my mind as easily as others, that ten thousand Angels as well as one, may be altogether on a needles point, (they being all throwfaresom alike), yet it would crack my brain to find so many whernesses there, to stow each of them in. Had there never been any bodies, but on∣ly souls, made, I cannot yet think there would ever have been such a question, as

where are your thoughts? they being only said there to have a whereness where bodies have a room.

Thus a Mathematical point or Geometri∣cal figure are no where, good and evil are no where, this Treatise, before written here, was no where; yet it as truly was before the writing, (and so the others before the doing,) as 'tis now, whilst written; the words are only here, the meaning's by them set forth, as much no where as before: so true is it, that whatever is, is somewhere, is untrue.

Now everywhereness, which is the word by which we set out Gods All-fillingness, sounding as if it were a gathering together of all the rooms that may be taken up in the World, or in unbounded boak without the World, seems no more fit to mete out Gods Immensity by, than a chain of the nows of Time are, by which to mete out Gods Eter∣nity; the one speaking as much division, as the other does succession. When therefore we say that God is every where, we must mean that he is not so somewhere, as not to be elsewhere; and that there is nothing there, but all things here to his unmetesomness, as there is nothing past or to come, but all now to his everlastingness.

A thing is only there, to me, in behalf of my being here, and not there; for when I am

there, the thing is clothed with hereness: so because God cannot be now here and not there, or now there and not here, 'tis clear that the thereness or hereness was nothing belonging unto God, but grounded in the things here or there; for in close speaking whilst God is every where, he cannot be there, because there would be here to him, we are then speaking of two things, by some such words as are bounded by one of them. And indeed whereness is a word of so much nar∣rowness, that it does not reach the All of those things which it most cleaves to, that is, of bodies: forasmuch as it may rightly be said the whole world is no where; for because we can't step out of the world and becken it or point to it, as there; nor while we are in it, say, 'tis here, because 'tis as much there or yonder as here; nor can we say 'tis every where, 'tis as much too little for that as too big for the other, and God alone is, or can be so; it must then be remarkably no where, if so be, that which is neither to be shown here nor there, nor to be understood every where, be assignably no where.

What we gather hence, is not that the words are not to be used, or that 'tis blame∣worthy in them that speak so, but only that we remember when we do, that such words don't answer the thing spoken of so as they

do bodies, though we must not forsake them, only because we cannot frame others that will come nearer; though they be not the best that were to be wisht, they are for ought is known, as good as any we can come at. Thus, if I say I love such a thing at my heart, I do not mean you should understand me as if my love were seated any where in the mid∣dle belly, as my heart is; if you rend out my heart 'tis not to be found there, because it was a thing rooted in my manhood, not placed in my body: so do but unstring my soul and body, though you leave my heart in the same place, the thing is gone, and so gone as to be no where else too; and yet I cannot speak plainer English, nor be better understood.

And this way of speaking has so good footing, that in the Book of books it self, we find not only the same oftentimes, but even a step beyond it sometimes; whilst not only the things of body are given to things not body, but even bodyhood it self is. Thus we read of the body of sin, and the limbs of it, or members upon earth, as uncleanness and worldly-mindedness; which nevertheless are such moral beings, whose kind of existence is not a being any where in the world, but according to, or swerving from a Law, which when they do they only are, and when they

do not are not, vvhich fills up the whole of their Being, without any further being any vvhere.

Our souls are indeed so far ting'd with bo¦dy, that as 'tis hard for us to think hovv there should be an abiding so unlike to ours, as we are creatures, as not to be lengthned out af∣ter the rate that vve are; so 'tis hard to think there should be a vvhereness so unlike to ours, as we are creatures vvith body, as not to be boakt out after the vvay that vve are. Time not being vvrought out into any outvvard shape or roomthiness, vvherevvith to smite the sense, vve can more easily think it svvallovved up in Gods Everlastingness, in vvhich vve also frame nothing of shape or bulk, than to have the vvorlds vvhole throng of hard, vvide, and off-standing bo∣dies, ingulfed in such an immensity as has nothing at all of bulkiness in it.

Whereas now, vve ought to mend this thought, by remembring that the things that are hard, soft, vvide, off, stirr'd, and such like, are only so among themselves; as all things touching senses, are only so to those that have them: so that vvere all seeing things sightless, there vvould be no colours nor shovvs; all hearers deaf, no sounds nor dins; all feelers numb, nothing handlesom; all tastless, nothing relishing; all unsmelling, no∣thing scented.

Besides, were they all Ghost who are now body and ghost, there would be to them no∣thing impenetrable, or that could not be drill••d through, nothing hard, soft, bulkie or stirr'd; as there are no such things now ei∣ther to God, Angels or Devils, how strong soever it may be rooted in our minds, that a thick, hard, stirr'd Being is so in it self, as well as to some other Beings.

To close up this, we are to witt, that those things that we get knowledge of by the help of our senses, we know by ways more off from their kindly draughts or ideas, than those we take in, by the workings of reason upon experiments wisely made, and remarks heedfully laid: Thus the knowledge of heat that we have from the feeling of it, is far more off from the right knowledge of it, or such as may likeliest become God, than the notion of it according to the great Lord Ba∣con, in his forma calidi; inasmuch as body, and the cleavers to it, are further off from the God-like nature, than the soul is, and its ways of working are.

Sense has so much to do in the mis-shewing or disguising of things to us, that if there be but a great or little change in us, 'tis all one as if there were such in them. Were we but so long clear of body, as to furnish an idea or draught of all the laws of doing, ways,

and powers of the Beings, to be set awork in the framing of a Watch, such as we may best think a Ghost has; and upon embodying a∣gain should find it of some hiew and bulk, with such and such motions, hard, cold, dry, smooth or rough, and the like; hear it beat, smell to it, and the like; the thing, though the same, would surely seem much another thing to us, thus chang'd at home: Or did we but so take in things with the naked eye only, as we do by the sundry ground glasses, or Telescopes, Microscopes, Multiplying-glasses, Prisms, or through died glasses, the late Empty Tubes, through the hollow of the hand, upon a piece of Perspective, we must then hold, that which is now no bigger than a mite, to be as big as a spider; what is far off, to be at hand; what of one colour, to be of another; what is flat, to be hollow; what is one, to be two or ten; especially if helpt on by such a sense of feeling as we have, when, laying one finger upon another, we roll a pea upon a board; and such an hearing by some inward sleight, as in an eccho, by an hollow without: so that we must needs then reckon the world another thing from what 'tis, and as rightly too as we reckon it other∣wise now, inasmuch as we go upon the very same grounds.

Nor does reason mistake only when it

builds upon sense, but when it deals too with those lists and cravings that keep the lower house of the soul. Thus she that is the darling of the Lovers heart, be she what she will, is the best in nature; the more he loves, the better she is and does, and, as long as the fire burns, holds on to be and do: but as soon as ever it begins to be winter with the heat, 'tis spring with the faults, and as the one grows on to cold, the other grows up to great: and all this, not because she is another she, but because the love is another love. Now if we may be thus benighted in our pet∣ty likes and dislikes, notwithstanding we have the light of reason to shine within, and the whole World besides to set us right with∣out, who are we that we should take upon us to say, This wide World is that very same thing that sense sayes 'tis?

And further, to beget wariness about sense; we may find that as 'tis too low and scant to give us the marks of Ghost, or be∣cause its tools or organs are sluggish, and, taking up room, can bring home no errands of moments or atoms, it asking time and place, it seems, for the doing every thing in, that it does: So on the other side, the soul is too high bred to give us any rational ac∣counts of the awarings of sense, as heat, cold, wetness, dryness, hardness, softness; which

had never been known by us, if we had on∣ly had that reason which makes us men, and not those senses that make us animals or earthly feelers.

Those things we feel, we don't know, nor can we by the sense we have of them, give another to know, unless we could also make another to feel them as we do: So that a blind man may talk as knowingly of colours, and be as well understood, as one that can see; for that which I talk of colour is quite another thing than that which I see. A world of men have seen colours since the be∣ginning, but, for ought we know, no man could ever yet tell another what they were; till to the brightning of our Island, our hap∣py wonder of ingenuity, and best broacher of new light, Mr. Isa. Newton, hit upon the thing that 'tis indeed: and now we do know (which no man would ever have ghessed be∣fore,) that white is a medly mingling of beams differently breaking or refrangible; we see it no better than we did before. I re∣member that I once asked a blind man, who had been so from his Infant-baptism (the same water that God in goodness allotted to wash away sin, hapning through cold and carelesness to wash away his eye-sight,) what kind of thing he thought whiteness to be? he answered warily, That sure it must be a

bright lightsom colour: and what blackness was? he said, That must be a dark colour; which two took in all that he had to say of colours, and that little too was utter'd from the glimmerings of sight in him; he having so much of the Moles eye, that if he held his face to the South and lookt up, he would say whether it were day or night. And if all our eyes had been of that make, we should have known no more than those two, nor no more of them neither. And what we do feel of them as we are, sets so close to us as we are such or such, that whatever wants the tools that we have shall never feel the things that we feel, the things being wholly begotten between the organ and the object, the tool and that it works upon. Now God having no such bodily organs by which to take in things secundum habitudines nostri, and such an have-likeness being as needful on the behalf of the organ and object both, for the begetting of a sensation or feeling, as the make of such a screw is, to wind in to such an∣other, or the mutual fitnesses and yernings of kind are, to the begetting of the like in those that do so, 'tis clear he can no more be brought down to do the one, than to that other. So that, that which to us is World (seen or unseen,) to him is Being, life, might, springsomness, self-entwining, law of doing,

seed, teemingness, and such like. Thus day and night, light and darkness, are both alike to him; 1000 years as one day, 1000 years to come as yesterday when it is past, past and to come as now, impenetrable or unthrough∣faresom as penetrable, body as emptiness, hot, cold, wet, dry, hard, soft, cleavesom, and the like nothing at all (no more than they would be to our own souls out of the body), heaven and earth not far and wide a∣sunder (nor to our own thoughts that can be now in heaven and the next now on earth); lastly, all bodiship, with those its be∣longers which make it sensible unto us, co∣ming not at all into that idea that God Al∣mighty frames of them, any more than his idea of them comes into our feeling; and his idea or likeness of them being nearer to that analogy they would bear to us were we all ghost, inasmuch as he is so; it follows that there are no such things as we may think be∣longing to extended bodies, sundred from our ghesses at them secundum analogiam ho∣minis, or the business they have to do one with another secundum analogiam sui; bodies being one thing to us and themselves, ano∣ther thing to God and Ghost. So the wide, thick, all-to-be deckt heap of visible beings may be swallowed up in the altogetherness of Gods All-fillingness, as well as the long chain

of ages from the worlds first to its last, in the only one now of his Everlastingness.

And this ends the second Head, wherein we were to shew, How the Worlds vastness be∣haves it self towards Gods Immensity. In both which, having seen what the Worlds lastingness and roomth is, as it concerns that boundless Being which is neither timesom nor roomthy, and vvhat its bulk is to the same being as immense, & to those ghostly be∣ings vvhich though they are in time are not yet in any room; where 'tis found, that time has no length but as it looks to time∣som beings, nor has bulk vvideness or thick∣ness but as it stands to body: we have per∣haps open'd a fair gap, for the better knovv∣ing vvhat the World is unto our selves, vvho as vve are men and made up of ghost and bo∣dy both, are even a part of it, and take up time and room in it.

CHAP. IV.

THe dealing or business that is betvveen body and body, being as real as that betvveen body and ghost, and body and us vvho are body and ghost mingled; it being as sure that one body cannot penetrate ano∣ther, as 'tis that a ghost can, that the vvhole

throng of bodies and each one in it is exten∣ded, as that a ghost is not so, and that a piece of body may be cloven asunder or stirred so and so, as 'tis that a ghost can be neither, like it: having seen vvhat body is to God and Ghost, it seems novv as much be∣hoving us to sift out, vvhat body is to body and us. In the doing of vvhich, vve shall en∣deavour to shevv, hovv far body or the vvorld of bodies may be stretched out, hovv small a piece of body may be crumbled, hovv svvift or hovv slovv either may be moved? And also, because vve find the stuff of body of a more flitting kind than the ground-vvork or substance of ghost, Hovv long it has or might have already been, and hovv long it does or may last? And foras∣much as body may happily shift its being as vvell as its seat, Whether there may not have been some bodies or vvorlds heretofore, vvhich novv are not? And last of all, vvhilst one may be a great vvay off from another, Whether some are not so far from our place, as to be far also from the vvorld in vvhich vve are placed? Of each of these, as they vvill best fall in vvith that train of thoughts vvhich vve have framed about them, vvith∣out aiming at any better rangement for them.

The first Head about extension in the

whole or the utmost reach of bodies, will fall into these things; to wit, Whether the world be boundless or bounded? And if bounded, what 'tis that bounds it; whether body or emptiness? And if either, Whether they be bounded or not? which shall be likewise set down in somewhat a mingled way, as they may lucken most readily to come into mind.

Having erewhile said, That manifold lengths of time coming one after other, could never make out an Eternity, or a be∣ing boundless in abiding, so here we say, That the cleavesom bitlings of body heapt one upon another, can never make up an Immensity, or a being boundless in its bulk somness: but now the world is all heapt up of such little bits: therefore we gather thence, that it cannot be boundless in its bulk. The reason of the thing to me is clear thus. Every thing that may be riven apieces may have its pieces told, and every tally by which we tell things must be either even or odd: every one that is even may have one put to it to make it odd, every one that is odd may have one put to it to make it e∣ven, and every one that may have one put to it is not infinite: It follows then, that if there be no parts but may be numbred, and no number but must be finite; that whatever

is made up of parts is finite too, its parts be∣ing told by a finite tally.

Now as to a number beyond the numbers of Arithemetick, I must be so bold with it, for once, as to ask, Whether it be even or odd? if it be either, we have the same choaks for it that we had before; and if it be neither, then 'tis no number: for every number (whether Arithmetical or Hyper∣arithmetical,) is even or odd, though you take leave to eke it out beyond the bounds of Arithmetick, and make it a greater num∣ber; 'tis to be understood you must not pull out the pluck of it, and make it quite ano∣ther thing from number: for that would not be a number beyond Arithmetick, but a thing besides it; not an eking out in tale, but a change in kind: and so you may as well call it a shooinghorn beyond the numbers of Arith∣metick, as a number beyond them.

That the world which is made up of parts finite should be infinite, is to me as great a wonder, as that God should be finite: for I think 'tis as impossible that that being which has nothing in it but parts finite should be infinite, as 'tis that that being which has no∣thing in it but what is infinite should be fi∣nite. I cannot see why there may not as well be finite things in the infinite Being of God, as an infinite All from the finite parts of

bulk; finite standing off no further from in∣finite than infinite does from finite: 'tis even as broad as 'tis long.

But because most men are willing to wave the boundlesness of the world, so be it, they may but give it, name and thing, to that same emptiness that is thought to be beyond it; we shall therefore to our power rumage in it with our wonted freeness, that we may un∣derstand a little, whether it be so boundless as 'tis thought to be, or whether there be any such thing at all? for having already cut off its partner, eternal time, from the abiding of the world, we are not o trust, if we can, to pare this same immense emptiness too from about its selvedge.

To me indeed 'tis as likely, that the world it self should be boundless, as that any out∣worldish emptiness about it should be so; that roomthiness being as really something besides God as the world is. For what is really ex∣tended must be really something, but that roomthiness is as really extended as 'tis at all; extension or spreadingness being the very inwards, and indeed the very all of it.

But the unluckiness on't is, that if out∣worldish boak be yielded at all, it must needs be yielded infinite to boot; For why, there can be nothing thought on, sleeping or waking, to bound it, but that same thought

that pitches upon bounds, slides on to room∣thiness beyond the bounds, imaginary in in∣finitum, or bound and room, bound and room in infinitum.

To say the truth of it, Some have been so forward to yield the boundlesness of spatium extramundanum, that they have given it the right hand of fellowship with God Almigh∣thy; this roomthiness forsooth being need∣ful for the very existence of an immense God: thereby making it at once something, bound∣less, and before God. Something, because needful for God to dwell in, and such need∣fulness cannot be spoken of nothing: Bound∣less, because such is that Being that must dwell in it: and before God, because it was that God might have scope to be: and if God had made it, it must have been need∣lesly; for he might as well have liv'd with∣out it a maker, as no maker: besides, that a being should make another that it self might have room to be, is the very height and depth of nonsense.

And again, should this dreamt or imagina∣ry space answer its name, and be no more thing than a dream is, 'tis worse to think; how somewhat that is the fondling of our addle brains should be needful to the exi∣stence of the ever blessed God who made us, and the best brains we have to our heads too.

Now I think, that as Gods Everlasting∣ness is in time, and boundlesly before it as to imaginary years, without before and after, in an ever-being now; so Gods All-filling∣ness is in the world, and boundlesly beyond it as to imaginary worlds or roomthiness, without any roomthy spreadingness, in an in∣divisible altogetherness.

For I bethink my self, that God is as bound∣less in his Almightiness as in his All-filling∣ness. Now Gods Almightiness is within the least punctum physicum, or dustling of body, ('twas made and is kept in being by Al∣mightiness). But Gods Almightiness being God himself, himself is there altogether: and if the Almighty be there wholly, the All-filling is there too in like manner; for both is one, and less than wholly they cannot be there, because less than wholly they cannot be. And we may as well dream of boundless imaginary stuff for Almightiness to work upon, as boundless imaginary roomth for All-fillingness to dwell in; (if it be enough for his Almightiness to work inwards upon his Essence, so 'tis too for his All-fillingness to dwell inwards in the same.) God then be∣ing as Almighty in the least brack of the world as in the whole world, he is as all-fil∣ling in the same too as in the whole: and if that were gone too, he would be as all-fil∣ling

without it as with it; for he was as im∣mense before there was an atome of body or room, as he is now when there are both: and so it follows, there needs neither real nor imaginary scope to make way for a bound∣less all-fillingness.

I remember the excellent Dr. Hen. More, whose soul may have roamed as far into these scopes and vastnesses as most mens in the world, has not only (in his Enchirid. Metaph.) made Ghost, as such, extended; but has started such a boundless roomthiness, and as needful as God is (if I understand him) as is a kind of ghost inwardly drilling through the All of body, and such a one too as is so far a likeness of God himself, that it wants nothing of him but only his life and working; and somewhere else finds in his heart to say, That there is a space wherever God is or any self-subsistent Being, is as plain to him as the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉: but, for my share, lay∣ing aside all humour of thwarting my bet∣ters, I do as verily believe, as I do any thing I have not a word of God for, that there is roomth no where but where body is, and that ghost is so far from needing space to be in, that when 'tis in a world where room is, 'tis as far from taking up room as 'tis from putting on body: nor can I but wonder, that one who lives so much in the soul, and

so little in the body as he seems to do, should find it quite otherwise. That worthy Gen∣tleman, I do think, had his reasons for so steady a belief, and of that weight to him, that his own are wont to be to others; the slighting of which would not strengthen, nor the valuing of them weaken, those of ours on the other behalf, which are mainly the following.

First, I see this roomthiness in the whole, must as well have unassignable parts or such as cannot be laid out, as body has assignable or such as can; and though they be unlaid out in themselves, they may be laid out by body laid in, as all the parts of that room in which the world is may now be. Now I cannot understand, how that which is made up of parts, laid out or unlaid out, which are all finite, should it self be infinite: and that all are so I am sure, because those I know, which are altogether like the rest which I do not know, are so: and as for parts more than all those that are all thus fi∣nite, they cannot be: and if all that a thing be made up of be finite, I cannot for my heart think how the whole, which is no more than all, should be infinite; every thing be∣ing the same with all the parts of it taken to∣gether.

Secondly, That such a kind of thing must

be, that God himself may be, strikes me with too great an awe to speak it. They who hold this wild emptiness, hold also (as they must) its independency on, or unbeholden∣ness to, God himself: Now who would think that there were such a thing that God should be beholden to, for the Being which he has, and that not beholden to him for the being which it self has? And to say, that both are eternal as well as boundless, and so, one was not before the other, because nei∣ther did ever begin to be, will take off no∣thing of the hardness: For, (not to say, that if one could have been before the other, space had been the eldest,) though one was not before the other in standing, the one was worthy before the other in causality; though God was never the cause of room, yet room was ever the cause of God: for that was that God might have leave to be; and had not that ever been, God had never been, had not that ever been without him, he had ne∣ver been within that; its being making way for his being, its being room making way for his being God; who could not be it seems, be∣cause he wanted room to be in, though that could be room without his being in it, or would be if he were out of it.

Besides, they that bestow extension upon any thing else but body, as emptiness, ghost,

and thence upon God himself, are not, I fear me, very well aware of its ill-lookt follow∣ers. For whoever makes God a boundless extended being, may upon the same score make him a boundless extended triangle, (one figure being as much extension fashion'd as another, 'tis neither here nor there which:) some figure or other he must be (as to kind) because 'tis as much of the nature of exten∣sion to be of some shape; as to be of some roomth, unless we should here borrow a bucket somewhere and draw up a figure too beyond all the figures in Geometry, out of the same depth with the number beyond all the numbers in Arithmetick. Already, it seems, God must have as many shapes in his unassignable parts with us, as all the things of the world have in those that we have sense of; their shape being nothing but their bulk so cantled out: and what there is of God beyond the world, being of the same piece with that of him which is in it, must al∣so put on shape as that does; inasmuch as roomthiness there, can no more be without it than roomthiness here. Whence would arise what I am not forward at all to speak of; an harshness in these things not being so harm∣less as the cutting of Cork, whereby, though you saw and wring the ears with the sharm, yet still 'tis but a light business you have to

deal with; and I am thinking the unhand∣somness will lose nothing of its distastfulness for not being named only out of dread.

But now one reason at least why the un∣derstanding has been robletted in to these wastes and wildnesses is, the forefearing, that if emptiness far and wide were not granted, the world would not be bounded; where∣fore rather than make a boundless world, many have chosen to yield a boundless scope beyond it. But we are at no such pend, as we should be fain to fly to either the one or the other; for the world is not bounded by any thing beyond, nor ought any such thing, or kind of thing to be imagined: but 'tis e∣nough that 'tis bounded by it self; its boun∣dedness, where 'tis bounded, arising as un∣avoidably from its very kind, as its extensi∣on where 'tis extended.

The leading mistake of all, I think, with freedom to others, is this: We first roved in our minds at an unbounded emptiness, and then thought put the world in the midst of it. Whereas we were alike mistaken in the middle and in the thing too, both which may thank haste; for before any thing was made there was nothing, and therefore we should have staid and thought of nothing, but only infinite power, wisdom, goodness, truth, & what other things there are in God,

whereby he vouchsafes to make known him∣self to us. Now, for a Being whose very Es∣sence is no other than these, roomth or space is no more needful, than for the dwelling of the good things of the mind and soul under those names, or than there is for Universal, or boak, as taken in the Mathematicks, stript out of body. You may as well be earnest for a finite room for one, as an infinite for the other, (and perhaps better too, inasmuch as one may be had, whatever the other may.) If it be said these are other kind of beings, (as Moral, Metaphysical or Mathematical.) I answer, So is God too, and more other than they are, because boundlesly other. Besides, I think a being, that is the term of Creation, or a piece of Gods handy-work, may live without any room, as do the Angels, and would do if world should be no more. If we can but get thus far then, as to think there was no roomthiness before the world, (If we think there was, we find at what pe∣ril we must;) 'tis easie enough to think fur∣ther, that there is none beyond it. For 'tis but thinking the world was made and no∣thing else besides it, which surely is true, and the thing is done: for if it were not be∣fore the world was made, nor made with the world when the world was made, it never was made, nor never was.

But we are not yet out of the mire, nor like to be, until we can fairly rid our selves of that load of objections with which the men of depth and quickness have even over∣burden'd the thing we hold. All, or all the weightiest of which, that we can feel for, shall be dispatcht in manner following.

Obj. 1. Suppose we then with the learned Dr. More, that an Archer were so seated at the rim of the world, as to level his arrow right through the selvedge of it outwards; there be∣ing full strength and right aim given it, Would the arrow fly, or Would it not?

Ans. It would, and it would not, and ei∣ther according as you make the selvedge. If you make it as round as a Mathematical cir∣cle, it would not fly: for arrow standing in a streight line, from the innermost or cen∣tre to the selvedge; and there being no more reason why it should warp to the right hand than to the left, why this way rather than that, it must needs stir no way; but stick with its head at the selvedge, though it has all the force given it that strong-bow and arm-strong can make together. But the shapes of nature being of another kind of make than those of handy-works, 'tis very likely that the roundness of the world (if yet it be round) is somewhat otherwise than a true Geometrick circle. As we see the ring of

the Earth, a far less Ball, ends not in lines evenly drawn from the centre thither, but is bounded with hills and dales; and both earth and water with manifold unevennesses: much more then are we to ghess such in the bigger roundle of the world. Whence 'tis, that the arrow may have, by some lucky rising or o∣ther, a Bias given it this way or that way, as a Coach may be so tickly set upon the surface of the earth, as to give it self a trundling, one way or other. So then, the motion would be, as touching the world, in a bow or arch of a circle, upon the very selvedge of it; but, as touching the Marks-man, in a line streight enough on to the eye. For it flying in a line as far off as it can, according to the steering that was given it, it would be seemingly as streight as it can be at all; for the nearer the eye comes to a great thing that is bowing, the less bowing it seems. When we first make a Ness at Land too, it seems more a Ness than when we are less off at Sea; but when we are just at shore, it seems to lye in a streight line with the rest of the Coast. And as we are not aware of that bow, which is made by all things darted or shot in the air, supposing the whirle of the earth; because we our selves are running the same round (as the great Galileo has altogether made out): so neither do we ken that bow that is made by

the wheeling of a Chariot onwards upon the round surface of the earth (whether it stirs or stands still); but we see it run as much flat∣wise or in plano, setting aside the little ri∣sings and fallings of uneven ground, as if the outside of the earth were a shire flat or level. Nor could Sir Fra. Drake have ever gather'd from the eye, that he sail'd otherwise than in a level; when yet he sail'd in a circle round about the earth. As then, whatsoever moves as much in a flat as it can for the earths rim, we reckon to have moved in a flat altogether: so whatever flies in as streight a path as the bow of the worlds big∣ger rim will give leave, we, if there, would count wholly streight.

And that such seeming streightness would not show sidewise but forwards, may be ga∣ther'd from hence. If I were to look through the earth at an enlightned hole or Well, reaching from me to him that sets foot to foot with me on the other side, the hole would seem all downwards to me, although in it self it were half downwards half up∣wards: As well then may an arrow gliding on the selvedge of the world, seem to me, there standing, all upwards and nothing at all sidewise.

But to give the objection all the lifts we can, Suppose we instead of this Shooter, a man leauing

his side against the selvedge of the world, with his arm down by it, Could he spread forth his arm or could he not? If he could, then he did it in that emptiness which is gainsay'd: For we will think him to bear it that way, and for the nonce to hinder all other wayes: and if it should but upon the shove flie upwards or downwards, or other∣wise than he aims it, he would quickly be aware of it, by the change of that posture which it would then have to the rest of his body. And if it could not, when thus hem'd in, be put forth into the emptiness at all, What hinders it?

To this we answer in the first place, 'Tis hugely questionable to me, Whether such a posture may be allow'd as standing with the loadstoneships or magnetisms of the world, and the ballancings of a body, such as that of mans is. For as we see 'tis impossible to have the earth, (in this our roundle) otherwise than beneath us; so 'tis agreeable, that we cannot otherwise have the heaven, in the world, than as to sence above us. The thing taken up then, grates as much upon the face of Dame Nature, as to suppose a man lying along in the open air at level, or in a line pa∣rallel to the plane of the Horizon.

But secondly, Bating the Objection all this seeming roughness, We answer: If the

man were so laid at the worlds selvedge, as to have it on the side of him, not above his head, his arm hanging by the same side; if by a sudden rush of the spirits into it, he should give it an heave outwards, and from the same inward free spring of motion should keep it from slipping awry: then would not the arm stir at all, there being no place left for it to stir into, it being all one as if he should thrust it against some hard body at rest, of too stout a withstanding to yield way or give back. If it be further said, it must sure flie outwards, because 'tis lifted that way, and there's nothing to forbid its coming there: 'tis further answered, The knack or contrivance of the Frame of the world for∣bids it; and that is something, and something too as powerful to check or bind motion, as the way-laying of a gross unweildy body, or any thing else that we, by sence and trial, find enough to stop the career of a body in its swiftest hurry.

If this answer seems harsh or stretched, we shall easily slacken and soften it by a clearer Instance nearer home. Suppose we then a bore through the heart or centre of the earth from outside to outside, into which let a man be thought falling down: when he comes at the centre he falls no further, but

is as surely stopt there, as if the hole were bored no further, but had the whole pillar of the earths half-thwart line, or semidiame∣ter of even bore to withstand it. Now in this Instance it may as well be said, there be∣ing nothing in the Tube to hinder, Why should not the man fall further, the air of the Well being all of a make? What could not stop him in one place could not in ano∣ther. And indeed, if the air upon any score could check the downfal, it vvould sooner do it at the top of the earth, vvhere the spring of the air belovv vvas stronger, though its vveight aloft lighter; than in the middlemost, vvhere the pent or bear of it beneath vvas nothing at all, (there being no beneath at all,) though the vveight above much more, the spring of the earth over-ballancing the vveight of it as to povver: vvhich perhaps is one reason vvhy all dovvn∣fals hasten their speed, by how much the nearer they come to the earth. Novv the ansvver to the Phoenomenon is this, That the reason vvhy it stops there, is, not the meeting vvith any body there of force enough to stand against the shock of its motion, but only the nice contrivance of the vvorlds Frame: and more especially the magnetisms and poyses of the earthly Vortex, vvhich vvill not allovv an heavy body left to it self

vvithin a flovvsom one that is lighter, to buoy up.

Which business of deadning the motion of a stirr'd body, not from body, but the law of body, puts me in mind of bodies or a mans being stirr'd up from rest, without any jog from body that we are aware of, but mainly from some of these hidden working laws that round the world. Our sleep is call'd rest, and a waking out of it, a being stirring: now 'tis easie to mark that we are thus stirr'd by those wide and unseen laws that wield the day, while we for little dream of it. Thus our time of waking or stirring is the morning, from that even share of refreshing sleep, as one would think, that we are wont to take the night before: But 'tis shrewdly to be mistrusted, that something a great deal further off, and broader spread, has some kind of tamperings here. For if you mind it, you will find, an hundred to one else, That whether you go to bed at 8, 9, 10, 11, or 12 a clock at night, you shall wake at your wonted hour next morning; (little otherwise whether it begin to rain late in the evening, at midnight, early or late in the morning, it does likely hold up, as we say, by that time the Shrews have dined): which cannot be from that measure of rest, and new breed of quickners that have befallen the body in

the night; for why, there has been so much odds in the hours of sleep. It seems then, that the thing that calls us up is Morningness, or that woof and plight that the whole ticklish frame of worldly beings are wheel'd into at such a tide of day. Which we should never have sprung by hunting for, had we not thus been made aware of it, in that we find there is somewhat in it, that firks us more at such a nick of time to wake and stir, than the wont that we have got of resting so ma∣ny hours, can bind us down to bed and sleep.

And here indeed 'tis mainly to be heeded, That we are by no means to look upon the world as a great heap of fast and loose bo∣dies hudled up together at sixes and sevens by hast and carelesness, or an hugger-mugger of meddlesom beings all at jars: but a curi∣ous frame of well-ranged bulks so featly set together by a boundless cunning, that should but any one pin of it be misdriven, or the running of its least wheel slipt or jostled, you hazard the cracking and splitting of the whole. Whence 'tis, that the least bitling of it will so far club and fall in with the laws that bind the whole Set, that we can some∣times force bodies to close with the woof or tenor of the whole, though it lyes cross to those little businesses which they seem to

have been set about in their narrow homes: as may be made out by instances, enough to fill up a book of bulk, bestowed upon us from that wealthy and yet growing store-house wherewith the Royal Society have en∣richt the world, and singly from that of the Noble Mr. Boyle the glory of it, and Englands too as well as the great wish of the whole world besides us. He that will but weigh & ponder in his mind what at first sight puts forth it self, when looking on a Watch, where the single shove or heave of the spring, which if the pieces of the Watch were un∣hing'd and born upon by it would only be pusht forwards or by-wards, puts the Watch thus fadg'd together and in tilter into mo∣tions round, right on, level, swingling, for∣wards, backwards, upwards, downwards, and otherwayes, all because 'tis a knack or engine: and shall further mark, (the Watch-wrights craft being not only the Ape of Na∣ture, but the very Tool, still in her hand,) that if Nature should but flinch back her hand, or the world that is round about it should but be pluckt away from it, our Watch would without more ado be utterly unwatcht; its being in the world being as needful to its being a Watch, as its being made by the skill of a Watch-maker: the whole Watch being nothing else but a cun∣ning

and clever way of laying bodies to the wheels and springs or ballancings of Nature, as its pieces are put to the spring that is so craftily lodg'd in it by the Workman. No∣thing less than a world being able to stand upon its own legs, or do any thing after 'tis made; all our knicknacks are but engines within an engine, engines of the Craftsman within the machina mundi, or a Cog put into Natures wheel, which if one did not stir the other vvould not, any more than a mill vvould be that 'tis made for, if the vvorld did not help it to vvind or vvater to set it a vvorking, as vvell as stuff of vvhich to make it. He, I say, vvho vvill but vveigh and scan these things, vvill at length have some lovv and underly rovings at, or at least admirings of that height and depth of vvorkmanship, that this curious vvorld is vvrought up to.

But 'tis further objected from the same learned hand, Though the arrow shoved by bo∣dy, or the arm yerkt by spirit enlivening body, will not be gotten into this vacuum extramun∣danum,yet an Angel unencumbred with body may be there, and help either thither. For if Angels were before the world, and the first ofGen. should mean only the works that are seen not those too that are not seen or were the first dayes work, and so existing before the

world was such as 'tis as they shall after the breaking up of the world by fire, or being no wayes beclam'd with body as to ubiety or where∣ness, or may be wherever God is, who must be in outworldish wasts, then may we imagine them there now, and carrying the arm or arrow thi∣ther?

Answ. This Objection as fast as it comes, comes yet too late: For we have already be∣reav'd Ghosts of place, and tyed up that at∣tribute or belonger to bodies only. So that 'tis as impossible to seat an Angel in out∣worldish emptiness, as in the world it self; and as impossible to seat or stow it in this world, as to seat moral virtue or a Mathe∣matical point here. 'Tis indeed such a great bellied truth that body only can be in a room, that it has another truth in the womb of it, which is, That no body but such as is lodg'd by with or among other bodies is in a room: For to be in a room is to be in such a room, or in a room that may be shown, and such a shown room as that wherein another body is not. So that if there were but one body, it could not rightly be said to be in a room, but only to be. And in truth of speak∣ing, the whole world is in no place or room, as bearing no stowsomness to any other body about it; for want therefore of another bo∣dy, near to or far from which it should be

placed, it loses its stowsomness or location. Every place of it the mean-while being in a place, as having nearnesses or farnesses betwen each other within the great verge; while the whole must needs have them from with∣out, or else can have none at all. Inasmuch as it cannot be said of the world, 'tis in this place, or that, or some other place besides, be∣cause this and that, and some other, would be all one, the world taking up no less than all that is; nor that 'tis here or there or some∣where else, because there would be here, here there, and somewhere else no where else, the world filling up all wherenesses; all which would be an ill kind of medly: Therefore it should seem that it cannot but harshly be said, that the world has a placeness or whereness at all. In short, Room is rather in the world than the world in room, as thinking is in the soul, not the soul in thinking. So that I be∣lieve we should never have dreamt of stow∣ing any thing in a room, if our minds had not first given us that the room was bigger than the thing to be bestow'd; any more than we should have thought of putting a thing into a box, without we had first thought the box was so much bigger as to hold it.

The same likewise, as to another thing befals the Mininium quantum, or the Least share of the world. Cleavesomness we know

is the great hanger on to body; but yet the least brack of body cannot be broken a pieces, because 'tis already the least: yet 'tis as really body as that piece which can, and no whit nearer ghost than it was when knit to more. So place is another thing that haunts body as much; the whole world in the mean time not being in a place, and yet 'tis never the nearer being ghost: for that the one has too little bulk to lose any and yet be, the other too much to have any thing bigger wherein to take up room, or besides whereby to be plac'd. Yet these be∣longers to body are helpful enough, where∣with to set forth the nature of the things to which we bequeath them: For we are to un∣derstand, that the ends and bounds of natu∣ral beings have things spoken of them much otherwise than what becomes their whole, or the bigger parts to which they belong. Thus supposing, that as time had a beginning so it should have an end, and only God him∣self to be after this world as he was before it, then the kindliest attribute of time, which is successiveness in abiding, would not be true of the beginning and the end of it. For if the first now were successive, it was not the first: for why, it follow'd a former; and the last now could not abide, for if it did, it was not the last. When therefore we say, All

time has fore and aft, we must bar the begin∣ning which had not fore, and the end which had not aft: in the mean time it still holding good enough, that time is a successive or lengthning kind of abiding. The beginning or end of time being no more time (as we call it) than the least part is the whole, and the definition or whatness of a thing ought to to be of a thing as a thing, not of the least or greatest, first or last part or a thing, as such part.

But to strain this yet a little further: Sup∣pose God Almighty to have made another world beyond, or which is better, besides this; which being a gathering of bodies, may be said to be somewhere, and somewhere too where this world is not: and there be∣ing our world also, it may stand so or so un∣to ours, and ours so or so unto that, and thereupon both of them be in a place, and either near to or far from each other: and all this farness or nearness, or way of standing off, by the bare making of a world over and above this, vvithout the making any thing of scope or roomth betvveen. Therefore vvhatever there vvould be of such scope or roomth betvveen tvvo such vvorlds, must needs before the vvorlds so made: and, as it follovvs, must be the same vvith that spa∣tium imaginarium vvhich vve have been so shie of ovvning all along.

Ans. To overlook the uncouthness of the thing, We will be so kind to the supposition of more vvorlds, by Almighty power, as to let it go for a thing that may be, though it be a great deal more likely, as we may happi∣ly shew beneath, that it may not be than that it may: And in plain English ansvver, That such a vvorld besides this, vvould neither be far from it, nor near to it, or any vvays med∣dle or make vvith it, any more than if this vvere the only vvorld, or if instead of tvvo vvorlds you should there suppose two An∣gels. For the clearing up of vvhich vve are to understand, That unto a stovvsomness or local respect betvveen tvvo stovved beings, 'tis not only needful they should be both bulky; upon vvhich foot vve have taken a∣vvay all stovvsom medlings betvveen the vvorld and God, betvveen the vvorld and ghosts, or between God and the vvorld, and ghost and the world, because but one of them is bulky: but 'tis also behoveful there should be something besides the things which are stowed, to which roomthiness should as much belong; two roomthy beings bearing no stowsomness to each other, upon the ac∣count of their being two or two roomthy beings, any more than two ghosts: but also upon the score of roomthiness put between them. Now room between these two worlds

being that which is denied, the argument brought to prove it must by no means be al∣lowed to suppose it. Imagine we now two Angels point blank over against each other, in the hem or rim of the world, there is room between, but no roomthy or stowsom re∣spect; because the two things that are there, are such as cannot be put into a place there, and all local habitude or behaviour must be between two things or more, in a place so or so. Then let us suppose in the stead of an An∣gel, some remarkable body; there is one of the terms, body plac'd, and there is roomthi∣ness between that and the other boundary or term: but because that other is not also body, nor can, for want of being so, take up room, the local respect is shier lost, for nothing but because the third thing is no roomthy being. A ghost being in it self not roomthy, it can∣not bear any roomthy behaviour towards bodies that are so, any more than bodies that are bulky, can bear immaterial respects or thoughtsom behaviours towards ghosts that are so; roomthiness being as much no∣thing to a ghost, as thinking is to a body. Think any what they will, the world is what it is and bodies do what they do: so let roomth be, a ghost thinks and does the same as if roomth were not. They are things that are off in their whole kind, and one does

nothing like the other: So that you may as well threap one down, that a ghost is heavi∣er or lighter, colder or hotter, wetter or dry∣er, harder or softer, whiter or blacker than a body, as to say 'tis further or nearer to it, above it or beneath it, a furlong on the right hand, or a furlong on the left in any other than in a borrowed meaning. As we cannot say that a body has an inch or an ell of thinking, an ounce or a pound of under∣standing or willing: for though body and inch, or ounce agree well enough, yet the third thing in the bunch, that is thinking, will not be brought to stick to either, (with∣out it be in such borrowed meanings as when we say, The love of the world is near the heart, or the fear of God far from it, thoughts heavy in grief, light in gladness, softness of mind, hard thoughts, and the like.) As in our former Instance, body at one side of the world, and room from thence to the o∣ther side, did close well enough; but then ghost at the end of it will stick no more to it, than birdlime will to a thought.

Moreover yet, That it cannot be said of a Ghost 'tis further or nearer to a body given, may hence, I think, be seen. The reason why we say this is further off than that from ano∣ther, is not only because I cam lay a longer line between them while so far asunder, but

that it will also take a longer time to bring them close together. Now the motions (if we may call them so) of ghosts being all in an instant, (as the darting of our thoughts are through the world,) they can both come home in the same time. If then they come home neither sooner nor later, nor did they lye off either nearer or further. If their co∣ming together must be measured by the same time, their lying asunder must be meted by the same metwand. So that which is nearer, must be as far off as that which is further, and that which was further, as nigh as that which was nearer; which speaks aloud that near∣ness and farness had nothing to do with their being what they were. To a ghost the whole world and the least bit of it are all one. A ghost at one side of the world is as near the other side as if it were in the middle, and in the middle as near as if it were at the edge. Now the whole world bearing no cleavesom behaviour to a ghost, 'tis impossi∣ble the whole or any part of it should bear a local. If we our selves were not body as well as soul, our understandings would ne∣ver have coped with such a thing as place∣ness or stowage at all. If then we suppose a being that is bulkie, and nothing about it that is so, or two beings that are bulky and nothing between them that is so; though

both these taken in themselves are, after a sort, and like nothing but themselves, in a place, yet they have no local respect to one another: that being in a place w^ch they have, speaking nothing which belongs to them be∣yond their own bounds or outsides, and is nothing in the world but their own room∣thiness, and all the unlikeness between them and ghost as to stowage is, that as to within they are roomthy, and so in place, or rather place it self; but as to without, there belongs nothing such to them any more than to ghost.

If besides the two worlds we should sup∣pose manifold ghosts laid between them (vvhich may as vvell be as our thoughts are vvhile vve make the supposal) still they vvould bear no place-like respect. For as the placing of body betvveen tvvo ghostly be∣ings, vvould not give them a placely beha∣viour; so the stovving of a ghostly being as a middle thing betvveen tvvo bodies, vvould not give them any such behaviour neither. If then ghosts betvveen the tvvo vvorlds vvould not give it, surely nothing at all be∣tvveen them could not. That cannot do this one thing, that can do nothing at all.

But vve may further be tvvitted vvith this, If there be nothing betvveen the tvvo vvorlds as vve have ansvvered, then the rims

of them vvould touch.

To this vve have tvvo or three things to give in. And in the first place, We say, The catch is so unphilosophical, that that vvhich gainsays it most, is most true. If nothing were between them, the side of one would not butt upon the other, but be inlaid in the o∣ther. That one body should touch another, 'tis altogether needful that something should be betwixt them. For we are to mark, that the smoothest body in being has more or few∣er unevennesses, or ridges and furrows, in its outerness or surface. The utmost smoothness we can come at by tools or otherwise, is full of such little ruggednesses, between which lye as many little holes of air; which holes if they could be filled up, or the little ridges and knolls brought down to a level with them, so as the surface might not be some airsom body, but all such thick or fast body, then this body laid to another, would be so far from touching it, that it would be no o∣ther than one with it, and the nearer any bo∣dy comes to this plight, the nearer it comes to inlaying or oneness. The pieces of a body do not pierce one another, but are only clapt together at their little smoothnesses as close as they can snug, and held there by the poysings of the world. Thus we see two pieces of flat polisht marble laid one upon another,

are either inlaid secundum quid or after a sort, that is, as to such parting as may be made by drawing them asunder upwards or downward, or else they are in a middle be∣tween onlaid and inlaid, which is a thing for which we want a word; for the hun∣dredth part of that power that is but enough to sunder two such flat abutting marbles, is more than enough to break up the very in∣laying of a spunge.

That stounding and surprizing Essex Writer in his Dialogues de Mundo, roundly bears us down, That two such worlds would touch without any more ado; there being no off-standing betwixt them, because no∣thing at all between them. And all bodies standing off from each other do so, by rea∣son of off-standing or roomth put between them. And as it follows, Two such worlds must club together and become one; and up∣on that ground he shews A moreness of worlds would be impossible.

But now we are to shew, That that which makes two sides of two bodies touch, is not the not having roomthiness betwixt them. There lies no roomthiness between the soul and the body, nor between God and the world, and yet they do not touch, any more than two bodies would do that are off from each other. But 'tis also needful there

be no possibility of putting a quantum or roomth between them, where indeed they do touch; as only those things may touch that have a mayness or possibility of having roomth put between them. To make one body butt upon another, 'tis not enough that nothing sensible be between them; but it behoves them also, that they be the near∣est together, that they can be and not be one. But we have already taken away all shew of nearness and farness from the two bulks, by shutting out the middleness in which such nearness or farness must needs be pitcht. Those bodies or beings that cannot have a placely respect, cannot have an abutting or touching respect.

Thus on the other hand, the putting of a bulky middleness between two ghosts, 'tis not enough to set them at such a farness from each other. Suppose two Angels to have been before the world in their agree∣able wherenesses, after the making of the world, without any change in their unbody∣like way of being somewhere, one to be found in the roundle of the Moon, another in that of the earth; extended body is now between them, without the least distance or off-standing arisen between them. For be∣fore the world there was no off-standing be∣twixt them, all extension being then un∣made,

and they holding the self-same where∣nesses, must also have the same non-distance after the world made. Every thing while it holds the same whereness, keeps also the same things to be spoken of it as to where∣ness.

If those sides between which nothing is, do touch and become one, Then if all the world were unmade but Sun and Moon, they two should forthwith jump into one; and it would be hard enough to say what it were, Whether a Sun, or a Moon, or neither? sup∣posing that by Almighty power their Sun∣ship and Moonship might be kept by them, without worldship.

Again, If between which nothing is put, the sides would touch, according to sound and right speaking, Then beyond which no∣thing is put, the selvedge is infinite. So it falls as hard upon the Cartesians and the Whitings, for an infinite world, which nei∣ther of them dare speak in words, but shuffle it indeed: emptiness or spatium imaginarium with them, being as verily nothing, as that which is imagin'd between the two sides of the vessel emptied of all its body between them.

And now by driving thus far, We have gain'd ground for the answering that puzling argument of the foresaid Doctor, for distance

in vacuo, in his ingenious Canto of Infinity of worlds. Suppose the skie all swept away from Saturn to the Sun, the Planets still holding their rooms, and holding on their roundings as they did before, let then an Astronomer take their heights: The Question is, Whether their Parallaxes would be the same, or other, or none at all?

I answer upon the Supposition, (which is wide enough from what is natural, and per∣haps from what may be too against nature: for that which claws away world from a∣bout them, would, 'tis like, wring out their Planethood from within them.) There would be no Parallaxes at all, no beams of light to take Parallaxes by, no throughfa∣rings of the least steams or reekings of bo∣dies, from one globe to another or from our earth to any of the globes, nor any power to shoot forth any body from one to the o∣ther, by any impetus or darting whatsoever. Though the kinred between these things should be still left, yet the gossipred would be quite taken away. Though all should jump in this one thing, to wit, in being Pla∣nets as before, yet they could neither speak with, nor make one another, (if I may word it so much Yeoman-wise,) nor have any more to do with one another than if there had never been dealings between them; that by

which they medled and made each with o∣ther being taken away. As on the other side, we find some bodies amongst us hold up a Gossipred, that seem to have little or no∣thing of kinred; as may be seen between jet and straw, loadstone and iron, with some o∣thers of that hooking kind: where, setting aside their angling and groping one for ano∣ther, there are as few things cleaving to one, to be met with in the other, as in most twoes in the whole world. In a word, the business here would be much at one with that of two worlds spoken of before; one being as free from fellowship and dealing with the other as they were, or as would be between our earth and so many Angels, having supposed dwellings there, where those Planets have such place. But as for their motion in ring or circular, that must not be yielded; for that seems as hard to be in vacuo, as for a ghost to stand still in pleno.

But once more to take off all shew of strength from that way-layer, to wit, the sides of the vessel must needs touch between which nothing is: We will but lay it down thus. Take we a square body in the world unevenly sided, out of the hollow of this take we then (in our minds) all body what∣soever, leaving nothing at all. The ingeni∣ous Des Cartes and others tells us, The sides

for that trick alone would touch. But now we say stifly, and will stand to it so, That the sides would not only not touch, but be so far, in part, from touching, that they would, to rights, be further asunder. For the off-stand∣standing or distance between them being to be met with only in the body that lyes be∣tween them, and the body space and distance which lay nearest between them being taken away, they can only be meted by that which lyes furthest off; those bodies being further off that are by all measure found to be so. Thus the middle point in one of the sides, for that it cannot be meted by a streight line drawn from it to its overthwart, but only by a crooked line of three sides and two corners tracing along the surface of the hol∣low, must as needs be further from it than before, as this crooked line that goes thus far about to mete it now, is longer than the overthwart streight one by which it might have been meted before.

But it being easie for me here to Object it to my self, I may think 'tis as easie for ano∣ther to do it, That then two bodies keeping the same place in the world, or standing stark still, may yet change place as if they stirr'd out of it: which seems to thwart at an high rate.

To which I answer. If the world in which they

are, be changed, 'tis no wonder if their place in it be changed also; or if that by which their distance be meted, be taken away, is it, that their distance should be so too: a di∣stance that cannot be measured being none at all. But by supposing this emptiness, the world is not what it was, but by so much less as our mind took away: as, if the body made nothing should again be made there, it would be by so much bigger as that was big; the nearness taken away by one deed, would be brought again by the other; and to take a∣way place, or to take away the body plac'd, comes all to a reckoning. I am in the room where I now stand, about sixty miles from Westminster Abby, If you start that sixty miles further, though I stand still, I am so much further from it as if both had started three miles apiece: but if both it and I stand still, and a square cut of earth be digged between us, from the Eastern shore as far as to the Westward, I am as near still by water, but so much further by land as I am fain to go about for the sake of that cut betwixt: but if you empty it as well of water as you did of earth, I am just so far from it by water as I was by land, and am only as near to it as ever I was by air. So if I were of the winged kind, I might flie to it through the Skie, as well as I could walk to it by land or row and sail by

water: but if you empty out the air too, and leave nothing, I am then so much further from it all three wayes: and if I would come nearer to it, I must either have a bridge of body laid between, or else must walk, or row, or flie about. So near one thing is to another as it can come to be, and no nearer: If then I can come no nearer to it, but by the ways spoken of, I think I rightly gather I am no nearer to it. That which is as near to a thing as ever it can come, is as near as it can be, without iffs and ands, or to all intents and purposes. That I be further from another thing, 'tis all one whether you hitch me off from it while that stand still, or whether you put that back from me while I stand still, or vvhether you make that betvvixt us further from both vvhile both stand still. As you see 'tis the same in making me further off by land, vvater, or air, so I see nothing forbid∣ding it to be the same by all other vvayes. While the taking such things from betvveen makes me further off as to such things or so far, the taking all things from betvveen should make me further off as to all things or altogether. A change of the vvorld in the suchness of the betvveen-lyers, begetting a change in my nearness as ansvvering that such∣ness: so a change of the vvorld in the whole of the betvveen-lyers, must beget a change

in the whole of my nearness. The more bo∣dy there is between me and another body the nearest way that can be gone, the further are we asunder: and the more body is pared away from the nearest path that can be gone, the more body is laid between, the nearest way that can be gone: the more short paths you cut away, the longer you leave behind: and if you cut away short and long, the things are neither near nor far, but name and thing are utterly lost.

Furthermore, that the answer may less seem to have any thing of trick in it, a like thing may be done, the world not thus chang'd, to make way for it. For as the world now is, a body may glide at full speed, so shifting place as to the bodies it glides by, and yet stand still as to the greatest part of the world besides; so keeping place, and shifting place as uncouthly as in the thing ob∣jected. Thus we will take upon trust the whirling of the earth from West to East, (which is held by all a thing that may be, by most a thing that is,) and a ship under sail driving with the same speed from East to West, (not being checkt by the earths giving over its motion to it.) Now this would shift place as to the bodies making up the earths ball, and hold the same place as to all the rest of the world besides. So we reckon St.

Pauls Church in London to stand so stone still, that it never stirr'd ground since the days of Sebert King of the Saxons; yet supposing the earths motion, it only keeps its place in respect of the earth, or that steamscope or at∣mosphere that wheels the same round with it, and shifts room every day with all the world besides, that by which its off-standing thereto should be taken, being so oft length∣ned and shortned by the whirl of the earth. And in the thing before us, by taking all bo∣dy out of the square and leaving just no∣thing, such pieces of the world would be fur∣ther from others, whose nearest roads for measure should lie through such room taken away, keeping still the same off-standing to all the rest of the world besides.

So true is it, that we name and bound things according to what they oftenest or easiliest do seem to us to be, and not as to those narrow and less heeded by-ways, wherein somtimes they may be.

At the foot of this we shall yet set one re∣mark more, and that is this. That of all men, he that holds a boundless roomthiness be∣yond the world, must beware how he hits us in the teeth with this, That we make a body stir and stand still both together. For if the forestroke give us but a little tick, the back∣stroke will be sure to give him a knocker.

We say, a body may keep place as to some things, and shift it as to some others: But he must say, a body must stand still and run both together, and as to all things. For we will take but this o'trust, That the world may have been sinking down, or flying up, or starting aside ever since it was made; He that made it, could as easily make it stir as stand still; and he that we are speaking with, holds it as easie to stir in emptiness as in ful∣ness: Then say, we That this utmost speed of about 5675 years, is no other than stark standing still. For while it stands still, it has but boundless room evenly about it, so as to be, to our thinking, in the midst of it: but for all it runs, and has done, thus much, and thus long, it has the very same boundless room every way about it (nor more, nor less) than it should have had, it it had stood still: therefore it has stood still all the while it has run so fast. For, if that body which is in the midst of a bounded ring, so running 5675 years as to be still as much in the midst as ever, does so run as to stand stil all the while it runs, then in like manner, That body which has unbounded room so every way about it, that if by running never so long, and never so fast one way, it would neither lengthen the room behind it, nor shorten the room before it, then it so runs as to stand

still all the while it runs; and then if by making it stand still, it can have no more than the same unbounded room round about it, that it would have had if scouring all the while one way or other, its standing still is as much running as its running was standing still, and each as much the other as it self: Which falls so pat upon the head of him that owns an emptiness beyond the world, that I dare be bold to say, 'Tis such a flail as there can ne're be fence for.

The quick-sighted Mr. Barlow coping with Nazarius, who had rightly laid down body and space to be the same, and that the worlds being in room is being in its own sel∣vedge, has thence rais'd this further Obje∣ction; to wit, That the world being thus in its own selvedge, may by God Almighty be thrust into another room; and, as it follows, the room in which now 'tis, is another thing from it; and that room into which it is thrust, must be the same outworldish scope that we have been all this while falling out with.

What answer Nazarius would give to it, I cannot tell; but from the grounds laid down by us, 'tis as easie to answer as to name. For as the Argument says, the world may be thrust out of the room in which 'tis into another, our Answer says it may not be: that is, with∣out God should also make another room for

it to be thrust into. And though the may be in the Argument came starveling alone with∣out any thing of proof to back it, yet the may not be in the Answer shall be thus shoul∣der'd up. Unto motion 'tis not only behoo∣ving that the thing stirr'd be bulkie, but that the thing through which 'tis stirr'd be also roomthy. Thus as a ghost, because no bulky Be∣ing, cannot move through the world, though a bulky throughfare or medium: so the world or whole clutter of bodies, though a bulky Being, cannot stir any way; for why, it has no bulky throughfare to stir in: Whatever stirs must stir in somewhat. And if it seems odd, that motion, which is an all-reaching affection or belonger to each bit of the world, should yet be denied to the whole, 'tis full as odd, that cleavesomness, which is as all-reaching a belonger to body, should be with-held from a least piece, which is as truly body as the greatest. But as that would partake of sundering, if it were not the least that can be: so would the world of stirring, if it were not the greatest that could be. From the leastness and mostness, not from the things themselves, it is, that this befals them. The world is made as much for stirring in its kind, as any share of it, if it had but a wherein to stir: and a least bitling is made as much for cleaving, if it had but a wherewith to be clo∣ven;

its leastness, not its bodiness forbidding it.

But it would not be out of the way, it may be, to put one thing more to this Answer before we go from it, and that is this, That when I say, God must also make another room for the world to be thrust into, if it starts at all, I would not be understood, as if I meant a room without body; which is the thing I have been so much blaming. For, to me, room and body are all one, that is, al∣together; as ghost and thinking are: And I can no more understand how room can be by it self without body, than I can how a thought may dwell by it self without a thinking Being. But the room that I mean, is a roomthy yielding body, big enough to shift places with the world. For to me the very life and soul of motion is shuffle or saw∣ing, and all stirrings one and other are no∣thing but go-byes or shiftings of bodies. So that if one body had not another body to slide by and make a sawing with, that it might be, out one, in another, that way one, this way t'other, it would ne're stir while 'tis a body. Whence, that one world may stir, another must be made for it to stir in. What∣ever moves, must do it somewhere, or in somewhat, besides it self too. For nothing can stir its whole self within it self: All stir∣ring

being out of, into. And 'tis easier to think, how, if this world were all marble, that piece in the middlemost might slide it self to the outside, than how a world, which has no room about it, should stir any whi∣ther. 'Tis easier crowding into a full room, than into none at all. The middle piece here has body about it, but only 'tis too stiff and sturdy to yield or shift rooms with it: but the world we speak of, wants both yielding bo∣dy and body too; and cannot stir into a some∣where, because all besides it self is a no∣where.

Now because ghost cannot hand the saw thus with body so as its sliding into the room of body, should make body slip into the room of it, Thence 'tis, as I make reckon∣ing, that ghost cannot rightly be said to move. For it cannot be, out body, in ghost, as 'tis in motion, out one body, in another; but body in, or body out, 'tis all one to ghost. A bodies standing in the way, cannot slacken its speed; nor a bodies making way, quicken it. And all motion, being either speedier or slower, that which stirs neither the one way nor the other, stirs not at all. We find that all stirring is as the thing stirr'd is withstood; if more, 'tis easily, if less, 'tis fast. But because a ghost can't be withstood at all by body, (every body, but where 'tis ensouled, being

alike throughfaresom to it,) it does that in one now, at once, that body does in some time, by steps. For want of which stepping or gradation, it cannot well be call'd motion, (any more than its being out of this plight, can be call'd placing in some room, or stand∣ing still.) But 'tis somewhat else that we have no right name for, (unless skipping or cant∣ing may in a low sort speak it;) as we have none neither for those odd wights, (to name one of a thousand more,) that ran down a steep place into the Sea, with our Lords good leave. For they were neither Hogs nor De∣vils, no devillish Hogs, nor hoggish Devils; but a mesling of two, that we have no more name for than we had of yore for that med∣ly of three which we now call Gun-powder: their being call'd Swine, is such a vouch∣safement for the Folks sake, as calling the Devil in a Crawler, a Serpent.

The last Argument we shall need to name, for width or room beyond the world, is from the same worthy Gentleman, and stands thus. If God be in very deed in it, then such a thing is: But, that God is indeed in it, may thus be made out; that is to say, Because he may frame another world standing off from this, and then be in both of them as in this, otherwise he should not be every-where. And if he be in both, the must be in the room al∣so

that lyes between both, otherwise he should be two in both, not one, this crossing his one-fold∣ness as much as the other did his all-fillingness.

Answ. Had these Bugbears comen in the Van, they might have put on the shew of a forlorn of Bravoes: But having grapled al∣ready with so many Battalioes, and wrought our way through such strong fastnesses, we are not to be worsted by the reermost and very leavings. We say then in short, That all this wast arises from a mistake, that God is every-where in the world so as to be coex∣tended with the world: Whereas the truth is, Were there no space at all, neither real nor counterfeit, (as none was, before he who made all things, made that,) God should be as immense as he is for all that: As if there had never been any time, (nor was there, till God made timesom Beings,) he had been as eternal as he is. As God by making of a bo∣dy and real space with it, every-where in which he really is, is thereby no more really in space himself than he vvas before, or no more roomthily there than he vvas before; (What he really is, he vvas from everlast∣ing:) So by not making of a body, he is not less really in space, or in imaginary scope: But let space be vvhat it vvill, his every∣vvayness or immensity is the same, one not medling at all vvith the other.

I say then, That God vvould be in those tvvo vvorlds as he is in this. As he is not here by halves, so neither vvould he be there. As he is not partly in one piece of this vvorld and partly in another; but vvholly in all, and vvholly in each, vvholly in East side, and vvholly in West side, vvithout having any part of him in the parts betvveen: So he vvould not be partly in one vvorld and part∣ly in another, but vvholly in both, and vvholly in each. And as for taking up the room betvveen them, either vvith vvhole or vvith part, the care is taken: for vve have al∣ready made it out, That there vvould be no room at all; and that vvhich is not at all, God is not in at all. While God is so in tvvo vvorlds, that though they do not touch or abut, yet there lyes nothing betvveen them; 'tis all one as to the one-foldness of his Be∣ing, as if they tvvo did touch, or vvere both made one: for there can be no more than no∣thing betvveen tvvo vvorlds that touch, or betvveen the very parts themselves of one vvorld; in any of vvhich, and in every of vvhich, 'tis yet easily yielded God may be, and be one too.

CHAP. V.

HAving hitherto treated of Bulk, How far it may be bigned? it follows next, that somewhat should be spoken to the o∣ther hard Question, How far it may be les∣sened? And the rather, because, if we have been lucky in making it out, That body by putting to it cannot be bigned beyond a certain bulk, it seems to follow by the laws of Analogies, That the same by taking from it cannot be lessened beneath a certain smal∣ness. And we have from thence this ground to set foot upon, That that which is not boundless one way, cannot be so another; or that that which is not infinite in its whole, cannot be so in its little part. We must then put an end to that puzling Question, Whe∣ther a bulky Being be made up of a throng of cleaveless shreadlings? by bearing the Reader in hand, flatly, that so 'tis indeed. And that upon this score too as well as any other; because 'tis impossible to put so much as one jot or dust unto bulk, beyond a set or bounded number: this finite world being the All of quantity, and nothing of outstretched∣ness being beyond it or besides it, so, at least, as to have any thing to do with it: that it should be likewise impossible to take from

bulk, so much as one jot or dust beneath a bounded number.

Which while we are beginning to take in hand, it will well become us to shew first, what we mean by a Gr. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, Lat. Punctum, or Indivisibile, and an English Leasting. The crafty Magnenus new dressing his old Demo∣critus, gives it to be Materialis physicae{que} ex∣tensionis radix & initium. Which may safely enough be owned as it stands, bating but its belongers bequeathed it by him, which are in no wise to be hearkned to, that is to say, Quantity under I cannot tell what Mathe∣matical dimensions or measures: For so he takes off the graveller, Indivisibile junctum indivisibili non facit majus, quia tangit secun∣dum se totum, That His indivisibles suas ha∣bent dimensiones secundum quas jungi cum ex∣tensionis incremento possunt: By which kind of Mathematical parts or metenesses in a Physi∣cal point, he does all his great feats in his whole row of Answers.

But 'tis to be wondred, that having shaken off Ariaga's Mathematical points, and Sua∣rezes way of making up bodies of parts and Mathematical points jumbled together, he could not feel himself, whilst playing aloof off, to have wheeled about into the self∣same snare: For he says, Neither by no means: but a natural body is made up of Physical

points, made up of Mathematical measures. That is, 'tis not made of Mathematical points, but made of those things that are made of no∣thing but Mathematical points. A slie kind of body indeed, that is Mathematical at second hand, or linsey Physical woolsey Mathema∣tical.

Wherefore we are about to say, That our atome punctum or leasting, is made only of body. And although it may be metesom by Mathematical measures of the minds ma∣king, yet it is not made up thereof, any more than the greater parts are, or the whole is. But as to Physical measures, it has neither East side nor West side, North side nor South side, top nor bottom, this nor that, nor any thing that speaks twinship to any thing else, but is it self all that 'tis: and when you have said that, you have said all. So that if you ask, when it abuts upon another, Whether it touches secundum se totum, or not? Whe∣ther wholewise or piecewise? 'Tis answer'd, There is no such name belongs to it. For ha∣ving maintain'd it to be a least part, 'tis im∣possible it should have parts in it; which, if any, must be less than least. And 'tis also im∣possible, that that Physical body which has not parts, should rightly be a whole, or a thing made up of that which it has not. Eve∣ry Physical whole being made up of parts,

that which has no parts, but is it self the least of parts, can no more be an whole, than the whole nakedly taken can be a part. And e∣very whole being greater than its parts, ta∣ken sunderly, it would follow, that our leasting were greater than somewhat else, or greater than it self: Which would be a thwacker as unspeakably big as that is lit∣tle.

We are therefore in good sooth to under∣stand, That having pared off from body all its parts, we have also bereaved it of all those bedightings or affections that belong to it, as having parts; of which the whole∣ness, laid in our dish was one. And though we cannot thereby make it ghost or not bo∣dy, because we cannot tear from it pierceless∣ness or impenetrability, which is the closest sticker to a body, as a body lessen'd; yet it comes so much the nearer to ghost, by how much the more it has thrown off the things belonging to a body, which ghost had not neither. As we found a now of time to speak out Gods Eternity better than any other share of lastingness; because it threw off more of those things that time had, and that had not: so here, we can no more betemme whole∣ness to the one, than to the other: It being as good speech to talk of the head or foot, right half or left half of a ghost, as of an atome. For

as in a ghost there are none of them, because there is nothing of body to fasten them to: So neither are they in a leasting: For why, there is so little body, that one would be the other.

What we have hitherto spoken, will seem to have less of auk in it, if we do but pat∣tern our leasting of body with a now of time, which has no more fore and aft, than we say this has side and side; though it goes to the making up of that which has the for∣mer, as this does to the making up of that which has the latter.

And again, if we be but so good as to re∣member. That we have lifted our leasting out of the kingdom of the world, and seat∣ed it in the kingdom of the mind. For an a∣tome by it self, unlinkt from the chain of all other bulks to which it hangs, is no where to be found but in that of our thoughts, any more than a now of time is, so singled out from time past and time to come.

But to speak more home or right down to the thing in hand, Whether a leasting tou∣ches another in its whole, or by its parts? Say∣ing only in the first place, That the word Touch is none of the fittest that can be to come in here. For why, many things may close that do not touch, as the soul, for one, does with the body. We answer, That as we have said already, it touches according to neither.

For why, 'tis not the one, nor has the other. So we say flatly, it touches according to its piercelesness, secundum impenetrabilitatem; it so snugs to another, as not to be in another; and according to its seedsom length, secundum longitudinem seminalem, so as with another to make a line of two points. For not being a stretchling or quid quantum, any more than a now is an onwardling or quid successivum, but only quid impenetrabile, somewhat un∣through faresom; and having nothing in it sa∣ving the seed of bulkiness, which, so as 'tis knit to more leastings, springs up; we must not look that it should touch after what it has not, but after what it has. So put we but an atome to it, the seed of bulksomness is so far quickned, that length is begotten; close but as many more sidewise, up starts breadth; so again, as many clapt to, upwards or downwards, and forth comes deepness. So that to the three meteings or dimensions of a body, 'tis fit that eight leastings should be clapt together: as it takes at least two nows of time to make fore and aft, and three to make was, is, and is to come. Whence we gather, 'tis altogether from the business to hale any of these things in, when we are speaking of one only: And nothing better is it, than pumping of two out of one, or taking the greater number out of the rest, in Tale∣craft or Arithmetick.

Not much unlike is the closing or union between soul and body, which two together make up one man. The soul not being bulky, cannot be stretched out with the body; and not being unthroughfaresom, cannot close so with it, as to be shut out from being in it. As it had not the latter by it self, so neither had it the former in booty beme, or a power in seed, (or half seed,) to biggen the bulk of the body, or make it more as to any of the measures. The close or oneness therefore be∣tween ghost and body, must be according to those powers the soul or ghost has, whereby 'tis squar'd for the laying hold on or laying in with body, and not according to those it has not. Now the soul has the trick or power in the seed to quicken body, when by such and such laws kept down to it, without flinching from it, neither taking up room it self in the body, or eking out the body, by making over to it, seedwise, from it self, any thing that is bulky or unthroughfaresom; and can withal bestead it with a fashioning or plastick spring of lifesomness or animality, whence it grows, works, and begets its like from an inbred power; and has another feat to move the body: Which it does not by shoving or driving of it forwards, as a slouch does a crowd-barrow, stepping into the room which that leaves behind it; but, as

the Ingenious Mounsieur de Cordemoy has it, By having such stirrings of the body to answer such workings of the thoughts.* 1.3 Every thing must do as it self is, and as it tools are: And certain workings of thoughts are to a soul, what certain stirrings of parts are to a body, in the which the soul is hous'd: only the soul not agreeing with bo∣dy, so much as in that one belonger of un∣throughfareness, when bewedded thereunto it cannot make it bigger; being lost in it, not lodg'd by it; but only better or nobler, as to its being or working. But now our least∣ing, being, while such, of a lower house, and made for the nonce to be knit unto more of its kind without piercing or being pierc'd, gathers thereby to it self a fresh train of hangers on in the body kind, or in genere Physico, which it would never reach to, but only in fellowship with them, as making up a bulk of such a name; no more than a part can take upon it those names or things which are suited to its whole, all together, as an whole: it self being an unthroughfaresom whatkin, having in it the seed of an half length, quar∣ter breadth, and eighth of depth. Little o∣therwise, one sex, though compleat in it self taken, cannot by it self beget its like; but is, as to that, the half seed of it, and enkindles

it as clubbing with another like power, from which two only that one must spring; each of which by themselves have but the half or unlike seeds of quickning, as lock and key has of opening.

This kind of touching of things accord∣ing to some one thing that is in them, and not according to others, puts me in mind of what is done of that sort, not only between part and part barely taken as abutting, but between draught and draught or scheme and scheme as medling. Thus a certain ga∣thering together of bracks or atoms, make that scheme in the stomack that we call hun∣ger or thirst; and another unlike one, makes that there, which we call a fulness, or loath∣ing and spewing. Now wormwood has ano∣ther draught in it, that touches or closes with thir latter, so as to make up the former; but it neither touches according to the draught of its root stalk, branches, leaves, flowrings, seed, juice, powder, water, mash or conserve, syrup, steepings, boylings, setlings or extract, salt, oyl or spirit: for each of these will do it, only because this touching draught is more broken in some, and more tight in o∣thers; some do it more, some less. Now if it does not touch or meddle according to any of the fore-named, it must do it, as to that we have no name for, unless we call it a

Wormwoodness; it being a wormwoody stamp more or less printed upon each of them, and like wards for such a lock, will perhaps clap in with nothing in the world else, but that Set of atoms which is sometimes found in the maw of a feeder. On the other hand, Asarum holds a scheme of an unlike make from wormwood, which shall put the stomack, when in good plight, into loathings and ca∣stings, as surely as wormwood shall still and heal such roilings; and this either in its raw juice or powder dryed in an oven: but do but boyl it, and then break up the scheme of it, and then if it changes or empties the body 'tis by sweat, (sayes Rulandus:) this then seems not so much to be done by its Rabac∣caness, unless that of it may be boyl'd away, which cannot be bak'd away, as by some nar∣row draught that lies in juice and powder, made to lock with that other which lies in the juices of the stomack.

And now because the reason why so many great understandings have leaned to the o∣ther side, holding the cleavesomness of a bo∣dy unboundedly, is from a willingness to be rid of those gallers that twinge the brain of the stiff maintainer of this, it shall in the next place be tryed, Whether we can afford any rest or good liking to the mind, by fa∣cing the Objections with such Answers as

the grounds we have laid down will allow us to build upon. And they will fall, not unto∣wardly, under a threefold Head.

• 1. Such as hold to figure mainly.
• 2. Such as meddle with figure and moti∣on together. And
• 3. Such as have to do with motion rather than figure.

Under the first of which, we are born in hand with this, That then a Scalenum and Isosceles would be all one: Thus.

[illustration] triangle

A. B. C. is a Scalenum. The same must also, from the Doctrine of leastings, be an Isosceles, or even-sided Triangle: For fill but the Area with lines parallel to A. C. there must be then as many pricks or points in B. A. as in B. C. there being as many lines drawn from the one as to the other; and so B. A. would be equal to B. C. that is, the Scalenum would become an Isosceles.

Answ. It would not be so Physically, but only Mathematically: Thus namely, The lines drawn to the side B. C. do not touch it in one point, but the line B. C. bends so much

to a parallel with the lines drawn from B. A. to C. that they make the angles to be altoge∣ther in a parallel with at least the two last points of the lines A. C. so that it may fairly hold as many points again, or be as long again.

The same Answer undoes the knot, That every triangle would be an Isopleuron, That the diagonial lines of a Rhomboides would be equal, That the diameter of a Quadrangle would be equal to its sides, That a Semicircle would not be greater than its diameter, As also, That of divers concentrick circles, the outermost would not be greater than the inmost; inasmuch as all lines drawn from all points of it towards the Centre, must pass through as many points of the other: With so many more of the same kind, as are not readily so much as to be named. All which, however done in Geometry, are much other∣wise, or not at all done in Physicks.

Again, 'tis said, A line of unequal atoms could not then be cut into halves; when yet 'tis as sure as any thing in Geometry, that any line whatsoever may be so.

To which 'tis answered, That 'tis as un∣true in Physicks, as 'tis true in Mathema∣ticks. But because a Physical leasting comes not under the ken of sense, according to the smartest reckoning that we can make with

body, Nevertheless, we may hold such a bo∣dy to be even with another, if sense can find no unevenness between them, whether they be so indeed or not. That is to be reckon'd even, that cannot be found otherwise than even.

But those which are harder to take off, are such as come with figure and motion hand in hand, being a kind of mingled Ma∣thematicks.

Thus it may be objected, That a wheel of manifold rims whirl'd upon its axletree, would make out uneven bows of circles, in even shares of time, the whole wheel being evenly turned, and the circles being some bigger than others: whence it would fol∣low, That one atome in the inner rims, would be even to more than one in the outermore.

Now supposing the rims of the wheel to be brought from their bow into a streight line, the same whirling force resting in each, the Objection would fall in with the follow∣ing (figure only changed;) to wit, That all bodies would then be moved with a like swiftness; the swiftest running but through a leasting of room in a now of time, and the slowest creeping on even, so much in so much.

To this killing one, there have been a great many Answers forged by the men of

brains, and fine-spun thoughts. The cunning Magnenus takes his flight to Mathematical parts in a Physical leasting, Ariaga to rests in∣termingled with stirrings. But we having shut out Mathematical parts as to the making up of body, it cannot but be thought huge∣ly misdone, to tow them in here for the ma∣king out of motion; there being the same parts and no more in a body mov'd, that there are in the same made. And as for rests, there being yet no reason shewn, why stir∣ring should begin after such rests, than why a body at full rest altogether, should of it self stir, without a quickning jostle from some o∣ther Being, or a fresh swing or poysing from its lodging in the world; both the contri∣vances will even miss of giving the mind that ease and rest which the wittiness of them might seem to have been worthy of.

The Answer then that we have been think∣ing of is this, That slower motions are made up of starts and bearings, or springsomness, (progression and elasticity): and that the swiftest are either all outstart, without bear∣ings, or made up of speed and sprightfulness, (pernicity and impetus.)

For the better making out of which, we are to bethink our selves, That as the begin∣ning of time had not fore and aft, nor the least deal of body here a piece and there a

piece, or partem extra partem: so neither has the first spring of motion any thing of onwardness or stirring, but only a pend or earnest strift fromwards, which we call springsomness or bearing. A thing though not motion, yet as much the beginning or seed of it and made for the nonce for it, as a now is of or for time, and a leasting of or for bo∣dy. And again, motion being quid non ma∣teriale, somewhat bodiless, may-hap it ought not altogether to be scan'd and sifted by the laws that say bulkiness as such alone: As time in which all motion is, and with which it began, has got some things belonging to it, that body cannot lay claim to.

Thus then, suppose a body slowly mov'd to begin at the bear or heave, and for one now of time to start one leasting of room, the next now neither to start nor rest, but to be in the bearing or elater, till the bearing be wrought up so high as to burst forth into an∣other start of another atome, in another mi∣nute; so holding on bearing and starting, till it comes to a full rest, after the last start and bear: For as motion begins in a bearing or conatus, so it ends in the same; and as the bearing took rist from rest, so it dies and falls into the same again.

Now although this Answer may at first seem chargeable, with the same hardnesses

with that of girds and rests; yet upon a nar∣rower search, it will be clearly found to be far and wide from it in the making out. For we having warily held, the stirr'd body not to be at rest, or in a stound or pause at all, but alwayes to be either stirring or bearing, which bearing is no more rest than 'tis stir∣ring; as a leasting, though it be not quantum, yet 'tis far enough off from being ghost, and wants nothing but more of the same to make it quantum; or a now of time to make it fore and aft. We cannot then be charged with the uncouthness of bodies recovering mo∣tion of it self, after the dying or breaking off of that vvhich stirred it. For how can that be said to be recovered which was ne∣ver lost? Now motion is not lost, but only lockt up in the bearing or elater: Forasmuch as the bear is the well-spring of motion, as motion is the off-spring of bearing. As like∣wise the darting power in the hand or soul is not motion, but the rist or spring of all that swiftness that is given to outcasts. Now when motion is shifted or begotten in the thing mov'd or forthcast, this darting force or rally of stirring springs, is shotten or propagated also, and that firstly and nextly too; it being the breeder, motion the child of it; the hand giving a kind of teemingness to the spring, which in its season is brought

to bed of startings. Whence 'tis, that until this loses its enkindling or leavening strength, the motion into which it breaks when swell'd up to an height, cannot be lost neither; only it asks some time to heave or pend in, before it actually starts; Whence 'tis that one body is slower than another in its motion.

Because I find the meaning of the words do not square so evenly with the notion, as I think that may do with the truth of the thing, (thoughts being easier to come by than words,) We shall strive to imprint it on the Readers understanding, by such like∣nesses as either Handicrafts or Nature it self shall afford us.

Thus then the stirring of the hand or In∣dex on the Dial-plate of a Watch, is as slow as any that we need to treat of; 'tis notwith∣standing, or ought to be, on and on, without stops or stands; and yet 'tis an hour creeping from hour-stroke to hour-stroke. Now when we see what a long thread of sand passes the neck-hole of an hour-glass in that same time; four mile long, in likelihood at least, supposing the running but as fast again as the walk of a midling kind of foot-man, (when yet to the eye it seems far speedier;) 'tis al∣most beyond the reach thoughts, that the hand should find so many atoms or leastings

of body to step over one after other, without the least stopping between the two streaks, not above the sixth or eighth part of an inch asunder, as to be even with the time that the aforesaid thread of sand is posting through the neck-plate of the hour-glass. But 'tis easie enough to understand, that the spring of the Watch, which is the spring also of the hands stirring, should by its bear or elasticity hitch it forwards, not so as to be alwayes stirring, or at any time resting, but creeper-like, to be sometimes starting one point, and oftner bearing towards the next; the spring asking some minutes time to gather strength enough, (as the arm does by fetch∣ing about) to give a start or least stirring, and some minute or minutes more to bear on to∣wards a second hitch: In the mean time that which bequeaths it this slow pace, and the wheels and ballance a pretty tight one, is a thing that is not so fitly said to be stirr'd or in motion it self, as lodg'd or lockt up in a bearing or pressing posture. So agreeable is the notion that we have been advancing, that the best key-keeper of motion is an ela∣ter or bear, where one would at first think it would likeliest be lost.

But it may indeed be said, That this comes not home to the business of forthcast things; the spring or principle of motion being con∣tinued

or close by the thing stirr'd, where∣as the hand is sunder'd from that body which is thrown forth by it.

Answ. 'Tis but supposing that the spring of motion or an elater or elaters, as well as the motion flowing from thence, is also thrown off, (which ought in dartings forth to be supposed,) and then the business is much at one; unless it be that in things thrown, the stirring is swifter for the most part, and spends it self sooner: it being impossible to make over motion that may be lasting, with∣out a spring of swiftness; and as impossible to hold on a swiftness, without the renew∣ing of such a spring. So the greatest unlike∣ness between crowding and throwing is, That in the first it skills not whether there be above one spring, or few springs of moti∣on, handed over at one time; for why, as soon as that one is, or those few are spent, an∣other is, or more are hard by to follow, with∣out any let to the going on: whence 'tis, that I can crowd a bigger body than I can throw, as I can give one or few springs, where I cannot give more or many: But as to the other, I cannot put a body off, with∣out I bequeath it either such a spring as has another spring, or more springs in the belly of it, or else give it so many springs to keep at its breaking off from my hand, as it

had when in it, and carried by it: other∣wise it would fall down, as soon as the crowding or gird of the hand left it; or else go on but a little way, with a sudden breaking off, from the nimbleness of stirring which it had before it parted from the arm that threw it.

A little further help may be gain'd, I think, by quoting a likeness of Natures own, wherein the stirring power is taken aside from the thing stirr'd or quicknesd, and that stirring or sprightfulness only lockt up in the spring or strift to stir, which afterwards up∣on the taking off all clogs and stops, advan∣ces up to those bounds that Dame Kind be∣fore had pitcht upon. The Instance is that of an egg, which we will take as a thing that sprang from the impetus of the tread, the Harveyan tang, or contagion and egg-fry of Kerckring and de Graaf, to be what 'tis, after laid by the Hen. That which 'tis in motion to∣wards as fast as it can, (the little scar I mean, or Cicatricula) is a Chicken: But that there is no more of this stirring but what is hem'd and coopt up in the spring, while the body that imprinted it is broken from it, is clear from hence: For why, an egg that has been kept many dayes, and set under a breeding Hen, shall be hatcht no sooner than one that has been laid fewer; and the oftner they cool

by the Hens being long off her nest, the lon∣ger are they in hatching; which is Argu∣ment enough that some stop or other was met with by the way; and yet upon a bare warmth or brooding shrowd, which only removes way-layers or brushes the passages, so giving scope for the springs of the scarr to leap forth into nimble freaks and brisknesses, the makings towards animality are taken up a fresh, and carried on, after all rubs in the way, to that bulk and quickness, which Dame Nature had cast with her self to bring about.

That this is done, as I say, by only paring off encumbrances, and scouring the passages, or at least not from any new springs or stir∣rings that are begotten, by the hoppings and friskings about of such warm and light∣some steams, as may be thought to have swarm'd from the brooding hen, and crow∣den into the brooded egge; as a Watch or a Jack, by being only wown up, without thrip∣ping the balance or flyer, fa••l to work again: may, I think, even hence, seem more than a little likely,

In that a Snayl or Dodman, which is not only not warm, but to our feeling, very cold, is fain to brood its as cold sweatty eggs, nested upon a cold wet earth, be∣spiewing them about with the fuzze of a

cold clammy froth, in coldish raughty wea∣ther, and all making way to a kind and timely hatching of them: And so needful is a kind of cold and sultryness to the doing of this, that as far as ever I could find by hous∣ing and turning of them, (when I have not only miss'd of the brood, but, for want of feeding their earth and froath, with cold and raughtiness, as it should be done▪ I have soon lost sight of the very eggs too;) that I say, I dare undertake to light sooner of that warmth and reek and air, that will hatch an hens egge, than that cold and dew and clamminess, that goes to the hatching of a snails.

And to say there may be warmth, though no body living could ever feel it, is as bad a put off as to say, that such a thing is sence, though all men in the world have ever taken it for non sence.

'Tis therefore somewhat likely, that a hens setting upon her eggs for hatching, is much what, with her brooding her chickens un∣der her wings when they are hatcht; the one being to ward off quellers from the air, the other to shrowd them from those birds of prey that are scouting & sharking up and down in it. Whence a snail, whoseeggs have other kind of foes, besets them with other kind of shield and buckler. Their set∣ting

being the casing or housing such a tickleish piece of workmanship, that wind and weather may not ruffle and snarle it, or any stragling bodies clutter up its rooms and stifle it.

From which I think, without straining, we may gather, that, if such a spring as this is, may be tickled and rous'd up again, in which is bound up a whole set or draught of springs, some shaping or plastick, some bigning or growing, others barely stirring or twitching, and after all so long stinted and so often checkt; Well may one motion, of one sort, after sinking into its spring, or being wown up in it, be, by its inhidden power, when unfetter'd, brought on again to a kind of quickness.

Little otherwise a hoop brought to a stiff bough, and kept in it by such a strength as can cope with it, upon some after chance the hoop getting ground of its holdfast slips or starts, by fits and girds, keeping still its inward springsomness, though in a lessening way, that is in a scantling to what is spent or thrown off at every slip, until at length lo∣sing all its springiness, it falls of it self into the stillness of a rest.

This to me also seems to be the main, if not the whole of Vegetative motion, or the waxings and sproutings forth, which are

found in all growers. For I take the seed (till some further experiment teach me bet∣ter) to be a cluster of bubbles wryed up snug, or a bottome of hoops or springs closely girt or knit together, which being a little loosned when sown a while, by the be∣dewings of the raughty mold soaking in be∣tween its crevices, the springs swell and grow roomthy, and which follows thereup∣on, the bosomes or hollows are made wi∣der, vvhence nevv moisture or fogginess presses in, not at random, but moulded by the hollovvs into bovvs for the nonce, be∣dighted or impregnated also, vvith a spring∣somness altogether fit, both to eke out that of the vvidned hoops, and also by a kind fermentation or bustle of the vvorking or leavening particles, beget nevv springs, and then biggen the same, till the seed heaves up from a sprouting or shrubble, to the scant∣ling of height, bulk and grovvth, that na∣ture has cut out for it, as a plant or as a tree.

But as in springs made by the hand of the vvorkman, if they lie too long bent, by rea∣son of the svvarms of insensibles, drilling through their pores or spungholes, they may be so fast stuck by such as jump in die vvise or cubically, as to have their springs choakt or benumm'd (as a piece of Iron by lying

long in an odde posture, may by the same chance light upon a magnetism): so the seeds of most or all grovvths, kept beyond their full time, upon the same score shed or loose their springinesses, and vvhen sown be∣come barren or unsproutful.

Only herein the motion that nature gives, is unlike to that which we bequeath to forthcasts. For why, she not only bedights them with many springs at first, but lays in spawn also for the begetting of more, and stuff for the greatning of one and other. Whereas when we give a dartingness to out∣casts, we betemme them but one or a few springs, which by often sturts and flashes of motion, cracker-like, weaken themselves, till at length all ends in the calmness of a rest.

Again, if we go up to the stock of breathers, a step above these as they are a step beneath us, we shall find that begetting the like, is making over of springs; and ac∣cording as the begetter is hotter and smirker, or colder and listlesser, the bows are sooner or later bent and shot off. So while the lively eager Creatures do the business of their kind, in the while that we are speaking of it, a Toad (to name one of the cold and clammy kind) may-hap takes days to do the same. Thus I remember that towards the end

of March at high noon day, I was shewn a he and she Toad engendring, which to be sure had lyen so from noon the day before, how much soever longer they might or would have done, (unless the spring of the year being backward, and the mouth'd and vents of their bodies not yet opened, might happily lengthen out the time somewhat longer than otherwise.) And as it took so much time to set the bowie frame, so it seems he could not break off where he was very suddenly; for we had not only slit open the body of the she, but were taking out the in∣wards before he could frame to get loose of her, and yet, at that time, he hugg'd her only with his two forefeet, which he had thrust so into the soft of her sides, as to make two deep doaks there. So we see that man or beast fetching their runns with earnestness, they can't strike sail, or notch the wheels, and croose the springs, at work within them, in a trice. And this also may be one cause why earthworms are limed so much to the headward, and hold so for an whole night. And why Slugs or Dodmans ingender in the neck, and are so many hours, if not days, in the limeing, to wit, that so the workhouse for the springs may be nearer seated to the storehouse of the tools and stuff for that end, which is the brain and spirits. And why both

of them too play the hees part in the deeds of their kind, each crowding into the other a roping, tough, silver-like thread of seed: (That both do the shees work also, I cannot yet find, but mistrust that Doctor Swam∣merdam might rather ghess so aforehand than know so.)

Because the quickening power of one, was not enough to rally together all those sparks of life, that lay asunder in a clammy dew, and were to be enkindled and hatcht up into a springiness of such a set, and so thrown off, but both of them must go hand in hand, in blowing of the bellows.

Nor is it altogether without remark, a∣mong those of our own kind, that the man, upon the account of his being stronger and springier does more, (as 'tis like will be found) towards the bequeathing of that hord of sprightfulness to the little one that is to be, than does the woman. (It seems not to be in the first blessing of growing manifold, for that was given evenly to both.) I know somebody, who knows a woman of under∣standing enough to make the remark, and of faithfulness enough to be believed about it, who took with child in the very fit of a Third Ague, (not to name many that have done so, out of the fit;) the latter being lost too, until brought to bed, for the former be∣ing

got: when yet I have not found hitherto, (I know not what I may do, or others have done,) that a man under that disease, either in the fit or out of it, could be so much a man as at other times; though I have made the observation, where the man has had the blessing of off-spring all the years of wed∣lock, before and after, and the ground that was to be sown that year in as good tilt as in the other, only the husbandman so much out of plight. Whence it should seem that the life that is made over to the off-spring, is but a frame or draught of-springs, leaven∣ed into a breedingness, and stampt upon this or that which is beginning, and is either stronger or weaker, in more or in less time made over, as it happens that the Being which does it, can fetch them up, or slip them off. As unto the things thrown out by the hand, there is given forth a clue of springs, or starts, and bearings, without any such draught of them or breed in them, or plastick might in the thrower, so to frame or rank them.

But I would not here be understood so much at warfare with my self, as if I took the soul of man to be a thing, that might body-like be some ways mov'd or thrown off; For having all along been driving at this, that motion or going on by steps, is such a

sticker unto body, that it can no more be∣long to Ghost, than thinking can to that, I should wonder at my self, if I should yield that to the soul as 'tis beginning to be from another, which it must by no means have to do with, when it is it self and does like it self.

That which I mean therefore is that The soul may be so one with a breeding frame or bud of body, as, for ought I know, to be made over together with it, when that is made over, and yet not be mov'd as that then is mov'd, any more than the thoughts of the heart walk when the body walks. And as a strong breath'd and well set man for wayfaring, shall foot it with greater sleight and more speed, than one who is not so made; in like manner, another man whose plastick, shaping, or enkindling powers, are fraught with more of manhood, and quickued with a kindlyer sprightfulness, may make over the beginnings of manli∣ness to the beginning birth, with a liveli∣ness no ways unanswerable. Life and Soul being two things with me, as are Spirits and Spirit; the first being the springiness of the body, in such a well set frame, the other that which sets all in man a going: both which as they are together▪ in the being of man, so are they, I think, in the beginning

of man; man being the son of man, as first∣man was the Son of God; the soul coming from God, nextly, to the first man, and from God through man, to every one else. Whole mans springing from whole man, seeming, to me at least, a main Doctrine in that Text, Abraham begat Isaac. But, that the soul, which way soever we come by it, should be any thing of that body which we are, I bless God, I never dreamt so much of Master Hobbes in all my life as to think it. And if any man else has had his brain so far blac∣ken'd with that Writers Ink as to think, that body may be thoughtful too, and any ways aware, I believe he may have it pretty well wip'd off for him, with some papers from the hand of the Learned and Ingenious Master Thomas Tenison, in a * 1.4 Book, where 'tis hard to say, whether the argu∣ments in the whole be more strong, or the way of bringing them in more handsome, onely because both of them are most of all so.

Having thus far endeavour'd to reckon with the slow paced motion, and found, to our thinking, that 'tis a kind of thing that has got the fidget; and that bodies so stirr'd, do not gain for every minute of time, a point of room, but jogging on in a jiffling way,

they lag behind at every bearing, as they come up more or less at every jetting: We shall go on to find out, whether there be not also somewhat of likelyhood, that in the swiftest hurryes, and most glancing gobyes of the world, such bodies do not glide through more than one leasting of room, in one now of time.

That which has put me upon the ghess is this, Time is such a thing as neither mends its pace nor slacks it, but is always plodding on at the same rate, but motion is a thing that may be either hugely slow, or hugely swift, or else in the middle between both: Now 'tis but odde to think how such a flicketing skipjackly thing as that is, which is always so much upon the snatches, that no body knows where to have it, should be bound to the behaviour of such a grave stayd thing as time is. Especially having seen already that motion in its loyterings or sluggishness can∣not walk times pace, but is cast back much or little as the strifts are.

Now that the mind may cope with this so much the better, we must look back to some hints before treated of, to wit, That what is body and what is not body, ought not to be measured by the same laws of worldishness, or natural affections, any more than those reasonless breathers that live under us, are to

to be weilded by those laws Divine or Mo∣ral, that are to sway and bind the whole stock of mankind.

But now of things not-body there are two sorts, Either such as are bodiless and no more, non materialia, or non corporea, such as you may fancy time to be; or else such as are not only bodiless, but over and above ghostly, immaterialia or spiritualia; either of which may yet have to do with body, and in and through that, give tokens to us, of its being and power of doing.

Thus we find the soul of man to have bu∣siness laid out for it in the body of man, by way of oneness with it. In which, besides a sort of mechanical or engine-like twitchings, and animal sprightnesses which are there set on foot, either by its power, or at its beck and good liking, it also cleaves to it in the advance to certain workings, of so lofty and refined an alloy, as to stamp man with the likeness and shew of him that made him, and withal trim up and fashion him for the re∣lishings of a world after this, where it shall be his bliss to live with God, or his woe to be banisht from him, world without end.

Then again, Motion, which is another un∣bodily thing, though it does not carry bo∣dy into any such lofts as should raise it above its meanness when at rest: yet in its med∣dlings

with it, 'tis whisking about riding and of the so manifold pieces of the world, that it gripes within the bounds of its wide verge all the restlesness that we are either justling with, or other things bang'd about by, within the whole scope which bodies have to play in.

Now this in its kind lying between ghost and body, partaking of neither, is rais'd up by both. Thus the soul of man and other ghosts, holding upon the hand of the first Being, beget it daily; as he of himself, up∣held by none, did at the first stir and im∣power other beings to do so and body al∣so (if I mistake not,) without ghost, give birth to it, in the rank of Beings next below man, or at least beneath that of breathers; and this, according to the tickleness of its lodging in the machina mundi, it does ei∣ther in it self or in another body. For I am so much of the mind, that matter or body moves it self under God, as poys'd or postu∣red in the frame of bulkiness, that I wonder all or most men, that have lookt much into it, are not of the same mind too, there be∣ing (or may be) more bodies mov'd by body than by ghost, in the world. I see a body as sluggish as iron, may be so clapt in with the knack of a Craftsman, as both to stir it self, and conne its heavy neighbour a share too.

And I can't find in my heart to deny that skill to a World-maker, that I must needs give to a Watch-maker, not to say to that child, who has but strength enough to wind that up, that he had skill enough to let so down.

And as it may be begotten by both, or be∣queath'd another from both, so it may it self belong unto both, though in a way so much unlike, that one word cannot well take in the meaning of it as it reaches both. For body being a stour unweildsom thing, or at least a boaky unthroughfaresom thing, it cannot stir without asking another bodies leave to crowd by; whence 'tis, that this Motion, as such, is ever onwardly or by de∣grees: But a ghost being never in the least stinted in its way by body, is here, or there, or yonder, forthwith or in an instant. For if when 'tis here at this now, there be nothing to hinder it from being there or yonder, next now, it may be there or yonder then: And if there be nothing but body to hinder, there is nothing at all to hinder, all body being as throughfaresom to ghost, as 'tis stopping to body. But now this kind of leaping not be∣ing successive, but all together, 'tis but even a lessening and underly way of speaking to call it Motion.

To apply this then, we are to lay down,

That this hord of restlesness is evenly dealt out amongst the sundry Clubs and Cantreds of bodies, while time is one and the same to all and every one; insomuch that it may fall to the share of some body or other, to be more quickned or leavened with degrees of motion, than 'tis besteaded with pieces of bulk; and thereupon behave it self in the world, more after the laws of unbodily be∣ings, than of those that own body: things working according to that which they have most of within them. Now we having setled this, That spirits change their Beings here or there, in the All of bodies, far otherwise than bodies do when they flit places, as being now here, next now in the furthest corner of the world, without taking point by point the room that lyes between; and this power they have too, as being not body.

We say then again, That motion, a thing as truly not body as ghost is, may happily up∣on that score be so far quickned, by ghost at least, or so high wrought up in its own kind, as to hale the thing stirr'd in the utmost speed, beyond the steppings of atome by a∣tome, after its kind.

So a body having bequeath'd it one de∣gree of sturt or yerk, in one now of time, and hitching thereupon one atome of room may upon taking in ten or twenty degrees

of the same, in the next, sturt to many atoms in length. Now it being as easie for a body to take in ten or twenty degrees of starting in one now, as to take in one, (Start or swift∣ness not being body in it self, cannot be mea∣sured as intended in degrees, by that which measures body as extended in parts;) it seems not to bear very hard upon reason, that it should also undergo the brunt of them as of one. As then the effect of one taken in in one now, was a start of one atome of room in one now of time, the taking in of twenty such degrees in such one now, should also be∣get a skip of twenty such atoms in one such now.

Though the foul seems to have much the better of it, as to the body, while in it, as do∣ing things often against the grain of the bo∣dy, and more like it self, when the body cannot do many things against the souls will, nor any against its kind, though the things be never so friendly to body as body: Yet this sway that the soul has over the bo∣dy, will not help us out in the shewing, how body may be carried out to the doing be∣yond it self, as such, when rous'd up by a thing, not body, which has gotten the maste∣ry of it. For the souls business in the wagon or vehicle of the body, is not to ride it full speed, but to breath it fair and soft, rather

to ride in state than to ride post, ennobling the body by its curious draughts and trails of enlivening sprightlinesses, not jading it in the great road of bare motion, which other stirr'd bodies are wayfaring in.

That therefore, whence I think a little light will dawn towards us in these mists, is this, to wit, Some instance of Gods impower∣ing ghost, either by bare leave, or by bid∣ing to boot, to run body so far off its legs, as to hurry it on nearer the pace of ghost, than that of it self, yet without insouling or inlivening of it. Thus, if any faith may be had to story, we have tales enough to make a Thomas believe, that spirits have brought bodies into a room, in the twinkling of an eye, and by as clever a slight wafted them away in another; and that they have in a bo∣dily shape told some, as at this now, what is done at a place, scores or hundreds of miles off, which upon search have been found to have been done there, as near as could be dri∣ven, but the moment before it was spoken yonder: Of which, (to name one) the Devil of Mascon falls not much short, whether you look upon the feats done, or the witness of the story that speaks them so.

But to be sure, one who could never mi∣stake himself, nor mistel us, has said flatly, that our Blessed Lord was so suddenly waft∣ed

into the midst of his Disciples, (Luke 24. 36.) that of above 22 eyes none could see him coming thither, till they beheld him standing there. And though they might well believe their eyes, while he stood, that it was, a body by standing there; yet 'tis said they were frighted to think, that it must be a spirit in its coming thither: they being no more able to ken the body through the glancing of the spirit that brought it, than they could the speed of a spirits glancing, even without body. And as his coming was thus over-quick, to be seen by those eyes that can see from earth to heaven in a moment, so his going away from two, a little before, was of the same kind, (v. 31,) He vanisht out of their sight: not that the body turn'd to a nothingness, but to an unseenness, (〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉.) And such, to end, was his farewel, While he blessed them he parted, and was car∣ried up, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉; in the very bles∣sing he was carried. It was so soon upon it, that the Spirit of God did not think meet to say it was after it. Though indeed we read from one Gospeller, That after the Lord had spoken he was received up; yet he does not say it was after these words of blessing, but might be only after what he was speaking of fore∣going: Or if he did take in this, he does not say after but 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, which may be at, among, or

about, there, as well as it must be elsewhere, Luk. 24. 5. And if it be said that our Lords Body was a spiritual body, we must also say, that if it was not true body, as well as spiri∣tual, it could not be truly a spiritual body.

What we would gather hence is this, That if a body, whilst a body, may be so over∣sway'd by ghost within it, as to brush through many atoms of room in fewer nows of time, it may happily be that that unbo∣dily thing call'd motion without ghost, may be so far intended beyond what the body in which 'tis is extended, as to bring it to a like swiftness. So that if all the motion with which God at first quickned the world, were made over to one small body, just holding way with time in its motion, and all the rest at a dead stilness, time all the while holding on its even by-run, 'tis not methinks altoge∣ther unlikely, but that this body which ran even a breast with time, from the motion which it had before, should now give time the go-by, with what it has gotten since, and is over-glutted with. But, to break off from this so great a stamme to the mind, rather wishing we could give more light in it, than blissing our selves in that already given, We go on to the following, which may seem to have beset the mind as narrowly with wrack and night, as any of the foregoing.

We have it, with the former, father'd upon Empiricus, thus. Take a line of nine points, and imagine two least bodies pacing with even speed from the two ends to the middle, that they may meet there, 'tis needful that the fifth or middle point should be halv'd between them, there being no reason why one should engross the whole more than the other; when yet the places and bodies mov'd in them, are for-taken to be altogether without parts.

To which by way of fore-runner, we an∣answer, That if the Argument be of any force at all, it will hold as strongly against time's being made up of nows, as body's be∣ing made up of leastings. For suppose we these nine atoms of room to be run over by these leastings, in nine nows of time; each of them then must needs have run as well four instances and an half of time, as four atoms and an half of room, time being a thing to be halv'd as well as room: Notwithstanding which, we hold time to be made out of nows or instances, and so may likewise for all that, hold body to be made up of leastings or points; Only we have a divine witness to as∣sure us, that time had a first now, but have only reason to bespeak us, that bulk has a least part: Whence we are not so ready to drive one back to infinity, as we are to drive the other on to it.

But then to speak more home, we answer, That the middle point is not to be halv'd or shared between both, nor taken up by ei∣ther; but the race of both shall end at the fourth leasting. If it be askt, What stops them there, when there is another least∣ing of room between them ere they can touch? I answer again, The laws of motion, in the round All of bodies stop them there, by virtue whereof 'tis impossible for a body to move through less than a least of room, or to strive to do it: Now the whole, or all that lyes between them being the least that can be, if both should crowd nearer, (and one must do it as well as the other) motion would be made in less than a leasting of room: which is but a kind of more than the most of non∣sense.

That they do not touch comes to nothing: for having taken them up as Indivisibles, such as can't be shread, we have thereupon made them Invisibles, such as can't be seen; and those things that cannot be seen at all, can∣not be seen to touch or not to touch at all.

But if you make two such bodies as may be seen, so to run a tilt upon such a line of odd leastings, we say they would meet and touch, and yet leave the odd atome of room between them too: For there are not two bodies in nature or handy-works so smooth∣ly

outsided, but that being clapt together, would leave as many leastings of room be∣tween them, as those they touch at indeed, and in the mean time should seemingly touch or abutt at all, and by us be said and thought so to do.

Besides, we are to reckon here, That 'tis no unwonted thing in nature, for motions to be checkt, from a bare truckling to the laws of the world, or symbolizing with the scheme of the great All, without the least hit or stop from other bodies that thwart them; as we have before shewn they would do, at the sel∣vedge of the World, and centre of the Earth. Nor is this Show or Phaenomenon har∣der to be understood, than that of two atoms falling from the two ends of the Earths throughfare line or diameter in even pace, and both ceasing to stir further, with the cen∣tral or inmost point between them, as here with the middlemost. It being demonstrable, that neither of the two should thrust into it, and shut out the other, for this reason, Because 'tis alike impossible, that both should have the whole, (two leastings of body crowding into one of room;) or that each of them should have half, the breaking that asunder which is the least that can be alrea∣dy, being only a breach of sense, and nothing at all besides.

Which laws too, are so far spread as to take in ghost as well as body. For though we are sure that body cannot stop the glan∣cings of a ghost, the hardest or the stiffest matter being as throughfaresom unto that, as the softest or the yieldingest: Yet, to go no further than our own souls, we see them bound, by these wide reaching laws we are speaking of, to the narrow closet of a mans body; which that the body do not lock up there for the sake of its hardfastness or closeness, we are ensured. For why, the body is as fast and unthroughfaresom when a car∣case, as when enlivened: but when the bo∣dy becomes a carcase by timely or untimely death, we see then the soul can do after the needings of its own kind, and fairly take leave of the body for all its cloggishness; not that it has sprung any new leaks or start∣ing-holes to flie out at, but only that law which bad it stay till then, bids it go now. If you ask me then, What 'tis that keeps the soul so fast within the quickned body? I an∣swer, Because the great law of its kind has set it no business to do any where else in the world; and for the soul to be, and be for no∣thing, or be against the law of its kind, which is as bad, would too ill tax, and too much shame the wisdom of its maker. 'Tis a truth with a witness, That every thing in the world

is as much stakt down to its work (freedoms in free beings set aside) by the law of its Ma∣ker, as the Groundsil of St. Paul's was by the tools of the Workmen. Yielding therefore but this, That the soul was once put into the body by God Almighty, to begin or carry on a shaping or plastick work of life, in such bounds, of such stuff, for such a time; which must be so, or else, that the hairs of our head are told, or our time's in Gods hand, not so: It will as surely hold to that spot of the world, for that work, all that while, as all other ghosts may do within the selvedge of it, or as the body would rest where 'tis, if begirt in a mould of marble, to the bigness of the whole earths globe; the laws of the All of bodies taking like place in both. The reason of the latter being, not, that the body of man cannot drill through marble at all: For if God likes to impower it, it may, for ought I know, do so, as well as our Blessed Lord's could come in to such a room, as where the doors were shut. But the main, if not the only thing in the way, is, That un∣less a narrower law be made for it, there is a wider already made against it. And sure, to think of any other and thicker way of ma∣king the body the souls inholder, as if any strings of it could bind it down there or the closest coat of it wrap it up there, would

be all one with hedging in the Cuckoe, or laying of lime-twigs to catch the flying thoughts of it.

And that this law is not a law like that of right reason, and setled within, but some out∣ward one, far above and wide of it, may be gather'd from hence; in that though we think it never so meet and wish it never so earnestly, (if it be our mind and will only and not Gods) that we may go out of the bo∣dy in life, or stay in it at death, neither will come to pass, any more than willing to be rich will make so; our bounded wills not be∣ing of strength enough to unhinge Gods un∣bounded power: Who hath withstood his will, that is, of power or forecast?

If I agree with a Workman to build me on such a plot of ground, an house of such a size, in such a time, with such stuff as shall be laid him in, he not stirring out of it until he has ended it; though the doors or wayes be open, he cannot any wayes get out within that time, morally or in right: For why, I have so hem'd in that of him which is moral by the bargain, that that cannot be done by him that cannot lawfully be done by him, though he has still the same kindly power of going out at doors or openings that other men have. And could I now as well bind him by laws of nature, as I have done by

those of right and wrong, (which God can do both alike,) I should then grasp all of him, as well as before I laid hold of some of him; and it would then be as well beyond his po∣wer to stir abroad altogether, as 'tis now to do it lawfully; and he would more surely, than with chains and bullwarks, be charm'd within that circle all that time. If God Al∣mighty had said it with himself, That I shall ne're set foot in Rome; though my soul has the same power to do that for my body that another mans soul does for him going from hence thither, or that it should do for me if I went thither; yet I shall be as sure not to come there, as if I were way-laid with no∣thing but walls and sconces gulfs and quick∣sands. So much does each thing after its kind, bow to the laws of him that made it.

Much of this may be seen to in the Brea∣thers below us, of which a bird, one of the most quick and flitting kind, is one. At a known time of the year, one of the laws we are speaking of, binds her to the sluggish trade of setting in a nest upon eggs, on which score alone it does it, in the open lightsom air too, and with more stilness than if tyed with strings, or born down with weights, and notwithstanding too, the kindly cravings of hunger and thirst, as seems from its lean∣ness at that season, and all this from as certain

a cause as is that, by which the runner in a Mill does not sink through the Lyingstone, that is, a wide law of the Almighties. After∣wards the same law, that for the sake of the eggs hatching, had tyed down the brisk and eager fowl so long, fore-casting also for the young ones a coming, bids it arise; for though its fatness might be spared, yet its life can∣not. And now, though the Coethy bird should be as much bent upon setting and starving, as it was before upon rising and eat∣ing; yet, as then the strength of the law overbound it to set still and hatch, so now the force of the same overswayes it to flie a∣way and eat: All this while she plotting no more, (without wiser than we) than the shruff, moss and hair, that the nest was thwackt together of. In a word, 'tis so clear that the Shows or Phaenomena of the world are weilded by unseen laws, even the worst of its shocks and jumbles, and not after those thick roughnesses that sence beholds them with, that he cannot be any thing of a Chri∣stian Philosopher (nor can he be now adayes the latter, to speak of, who is not the for∣mer,) that does not see, that even the Beings beneath us are led to do all their tricks, by a wisdom far overtopping that by which we manage the most weighty and crafty of our own affairs.

The birds we have been speaking of, build nests with such an auk tool, their beak vary∣ing too after the manifoldness of their sorts and kinds, without either being shown or having tryed, more neatly than some men would do, holding the Apprenticeship to the craft of a Nestwright and making it their daily work, with the meetest of tools. The Spider drives on the great business of catching flies, by netting in corners within doors, and darting in the open air abroad, from the beginning to the end, with far more layers of plots and traps than the cun∣ningest Huntsman follows his game. If the Commonwealth of Bees were but as narrow∣ly searcht into, as it has been curiously en∣deavour'd, happily it would shame the mis∣adventures of the cryed up Kingdoms a∣mongst the stock of mankind. To come more home, we find we could such better at a week old, without showing or trying, than we can do when grown up, by the help of rea∣son and sight of the thing done: for when we did it as sucklings, we were steer'd by a wisdom in its ripeness, too far outgoing what we laid claim to in the seeds and sparklings to be named with it. Nay, to end, we may observe in our own elderly doings, and those too of so low a rank as that of the bare stir∣ring of the limbs, we are set on work after

higher scantlings of wisdom than when we put forth the loftiest powers of will and un∣derstanding: else we can give no reason why a Fool should rise more Mathematically from a seat, than the wisest man can fully reckon for; inasmuch as the remark is as old as Aristotle, That no man can rise off a seat without either bowing the body forwards, or drawing the legs backwards: but the ground of the thing has been so much in the dark, that it was but lately (that I know) hit upon by that great Light of Chester and the World, (now with the Father of Lights,) the excel∣lent Bishop Wilkins; who has brought it so to the lever of the thigh, as to make the middle of it the prop or thiller, the body the weight, and the leg the power; either of which being brought by a sharp angle to a downright or perpendicular or more, with the thiller, will by so much lessen the weight, from the yielded assumption in that mecha∣nick power, That that point, which is toucht by a perpendicular from the centre of hea∣viness, is one of the terms: Which kind of way made out to a fool, as an help to him to stand up from his seat, would sooner fit the man that gives it to set down even such ano∣ther, than him any whit the more to rise up, for being taught so, how he should: but yet he can do the thing without showing, and

as most wise men do too, without so much as thinking how. So far do the laws we have hitherto been upon, bind and oversway the workings of all bodies, from the noblest be∣ings in the world, to the tiny bestirrings of the least atoms, which led us into all these re∣marks.

CHAP. VI.

HAving thus seen how far body or the world of bodies may be bigned, how far a piece of it may be lessen'd, and how slowly or how swiftly bodies may be stirr'd, The next thing to be handled is, Of what standing the world may be, or might have been? Whether it might not have been so far of old, as to have had no beginning; or may not be such a while to come, as to have no end?

To this we must say, That as we learn from holy Writ, that the world had a beginning, so from the grounds by us laid down, it could not choose but have so; It being as easie for God, who is without beginning, to have be∣ginning, as for the world which had it, to have had none. God who is every way un∣bounded, may as well be brought down to the timesomness of that which is bounded,

as that which is every way bounded, may be lifted up to the alwayness of him who is un∣bounded; the farness being the same, 'tis all one, for this to come to that or that to this, the Hill to come to Mahomet or Mahomet to the Hill. If it be said, That Gods coming down to the world would ungod him, but not the worlds coming up to somewhat that he is. I say, the worlds driving up to any thing of Gods being, would as much ungod him, and over and above unworld it self. For it does as much ungod him who is ever∣lasting, to make another so, as it does to make him not so; for why, if he be not only ever∣lasting, he is not everlasting at all. Two times may as well drive on by each others side, and not be one, as two everlastingnesses; and two things unbounded in bulk, may as well dwell together in the same unbounded room, and not be the same bulk, as two things unbounded in lasting, may dwell to∣gether in the same abiding, and not be the self-same abiding.

If God has the whole perfection or fulness of everlastingness, then cannot the world go shares with him, without he should un∣god himself, by making himself less perfect; and if he has it so wholly, as that whole thing to be himself wholly, then cannot he make it over to another, without making

that to be no other but himself. Insomuch that I do think the begetting and forth∣stepping of the Son and Holy Ghost could nere have been, had they not been Very God of very God.

If any shall say as some have done already, that the world is somewhat besides God for all his boundlessness, and has a bounded ful∣ness or perfection, over and above his bound∣less perfection, and so why may there not be infinitely more than gods infinite whole perfection as well as finitely more? I answer, Methinks whoever says it, speaks thick, in both meanings, as taken for hasty and gross too. For though the world be somewhat that is not God, yet 'tis not somewhat that is not Gods; 'tis not he but 'tis his; 'its per∣fection is his perfection, and so his, as that it had never been his nor never been, if he had not been Infinite or Almighty. Had the world or any thing else perfection or be∣ing, though in never so low and scant a way, and not springing from God, I could not tell how to think God an infinite maker; something being made, or being, that he did not make: but that Gods making a boundedly perfect world, from his unboundedly per∣fect power, should be a taking up of, or lessening to, that his whole perfection, I no more conne, than that a mans doing a thing

wisely, should make him not to have the whole of that wisdom which he had. Indeed if God were such a kind of Being, as some have made him, by ekeing him out with boundless scopes, nothing could then be roomthy besides him, without carving a piece out of him. Which he that stickles so much for should do well to mind a little the twitchings of; For sure he must be stockt with forehead, as well as brains, to hold it.

As that Bayard must ever be as bold as blind, that comes hobling with his blundring houghs, on Hallowed be thy name. God is an infinite maker as well as an infinite God, infinite in doing, as well as in being; when therefore he does or makes, he does or makes somewhat: but that the somewhat, should end in a thing that is not God, falls out by luck, and is not a thing that must be; for Gods making of something into no∣thing, is as much an Almighty work, as making of something out of nothing. Whence I think, that God by making any things, does not make any new perfection besides, or out of, his own, which is the whole infinitely; but gives a new show of it, in that, which still lives, or moves, or has its being in him, not out of, or besides him, as when he be nothings a thing that is, he does not benothing any

perfection, it being too hard to think how that can be an infinitely perfect deed, as all his are, but only shift the show or sight of his own infinite whole perfection, which is not more by doing this, nor less by doing that; (or gives the same in another dress).

The way to drive the world up to ever∣lastingness, is not to give it a being sooner and sooner, on and on: For when you have driven it as far as you can that way, you are as far off from Gods everlastingness as when you first set out; and 'tis no better than if you should go about to make a man as wise as God, by making him every day a little wiser than other. We have said it and must stand to it, that Gods everlastingness is a be∣ginningless, endless now; and if you mean, to get the world to go share in it, you must turn its way of being one now of time af∣ter another, into that of being all at once, or you do nothing; any more than you shall make it all filling, unless you can put it out of its wont of having here a piece and there a piece, into the way of being alto∣gether.

If otherwise, look for brain-breaks from such kind of killing things as these; As an infinite tale of years to have run before the time in which the world, as 'tis, began; and that is such a cannot be, that we need say no

more against it, because we have said e∣nough already: and then a more than in∣finite tale now, because more have run by now, than had then: and a more than that more, because more are to come to the end of the world, than have already been: and then a most behind that after more, for why there is to come an unknown tale of years after the worlds end: and after that after as endlesly as ever were before. Thus shall we sort out eternity into as many kinds and lengths, as the Darbyshire huswife does her puddings, when she makes whitings and blackings, and liverings and hackings: and 'tis pitty for fooling sake that we cannot tye a string at the ends of all a∣like. But still that which kills after all this death is, that in this infinite tale of years, more than infinite, more than that more, and most at the end of it, there must yet have been a more infinite than all those infinites of moneths, and in that a more than that infi∣nite of weeks, and in that a more than that infinite of days; in that, a more of hours, in that, of halves quarters and moments: and yet the first infinite tale, as much as all of them together, neither more nor less.

Pag. 400. 402. And if any man think to come flourishing off with this, That 'tis not the infinite succession but the infinity of the

succession that thus wracks the mind, and that it would bear as hard upon any other infinite but Gods, that is. I think so my self and would have others think so too, that a things infinity in whole, which is finite in parts, is enough to crack all the strings in the back∣bone. Therefore all the hurt I wish men, is That as they love their ease, they would ne∣ver crack their brains nor rend their souls, with thinking that there are any such things, while they live, but only in the Mathema∣ticks, where such are supposed, but are not, nor ever were said to be. And then, as for Gods ever blessed and only infinity, to a man who is as he should be, it comes as full of good cheer and heart taking, as the other comes empty of it.

Pag. 413, 414. Our Author indeed is clearly of the mind, the world might have been from everlasting, and that for ought I can see for these reasons only.

'Tis clear, says he, the world might have been made sooner than it was made; and if there ne∣ver was a time in which the world could not be made, it follows that it might have been made from eternal ages?

Answ. Before world was, there was no soonerness at all: and therefore the world could not have been sooner made than it was. And the reason why there never was a time

in which the world could not be made, is only this; Because there never was any time at all, till the world that was the first time∣som thing, was made, and by it time was. Nor does it follow from thence, That it might have been from eternal ages; For why, there were no ages at all, until that which began at the beginning of the world.

Secondly, Pag. 415. Could not God thenmake the world, when he set with himself that he would do it? What bound him up, that he could not give shew of his power, together with his will?

Answ. The words having a twofold mean∣ing, one true, the other untrue, I say he could, and he could not; he could in one meaning, and he could not in another. The when has two faces, one with which it looks inwards into the decree, the other with which it looks onwards unto the world. As to the first, 'tis not true; as to the latter, 'tis. God could bring forth the world at that then, wherein or when he had cast with him∣self the world could afterwards be made, and that was when it was made: But God could not do it then, when he was setting with him∣self to do it afterward, (if I may word it so to be better understood;) and that when on∣ly was from everlasting; for he had decreed from everlasting, that he would do it in time,

and it could be done no otherwise.

That forecast or decree by the power of which the world was, was nothing but God forecasting or decreeing; and if the world had been of as long standing as that was, that had been God too. That everlastingness that made one to be God, would have made the other so. Insomuch that the Argument is nothing but this, God was from everlasting, therefore the world might have been so too. And that is indeed a pretty little brat, that has been so lovingly dandled by old Father Hobbes, that it will never call other man Daddy while the world lasts.

Methinks decreeing is so much forecasting or foredooming that which is to be, and is not, till so foredoom'd, that do but once yield that the world was, because God from everlasting did decree it should be, and for the sake of that alone it cannot be from ever∣lasting. The world being no world but as it was a decreed world, and the decree by which it was such, being from everlasting decreed, and never a decreeing, then I say, The world must be after the decree, not in the passing of it; for it was ever passed, never passing. So the decree passed, was the cause of the world made. Now the decree which was pass'd be∣fore it, being from everlasting, it was there∣upon from everlasting before it. So that by

making the world as much as you can of old, you can make it no more everlasting than 'tis; for it would alwayes be alike after the decree, which was from everlasting before it.

If you say the world was just as everlast∣ing as the decree, rather made in it than by it, or upon it: Not to say, How can that be made, that was never a making? I say then, The world must needs be before ever God was aware of it, or could ever decree it; and so as much the cause of the decree, as the decree of that; and the decree as much a worlded decree, as the world a decreed world; and that decree being God himself, he must be also a worlded God, or a begoded world.

'Tis still a truth, and owned such, That what binds up God from doing, binds him also from willing: But as God had not a power from everlasting, to make the world from everlasting; so neither did he ever will it should be so: but his will from everlasting was, That it should be in time. Accordingly his power holding an evenness with this his will, brought forth the world at that time and no other, than we read it took begin∣ning.

Obj. There is yet another Argument much befriended by the same hand, as also to be met with good broadly somewhere in the

Morean Philosophy, and that is, Why could not God as well make the world everlasting a parte ante, on the behalf of formerness, as he did the soul of man a parte post, on the be∣half of latterness? Why could not the one as well have no beginning, as the other no end?

Answ. This all flows from a very great mistake about the very being of that thing which we call Everlastingness. Gods everlast∣ingness, and that of the soul, are two things under one name; and so wide asunder too, that they lye infinitely off each other, as to their very kind. As Gods everlastingness was always without succession, so 'tis now, and ever shall be. And as the everlasting soul of Adam has liv'd as successively since his death, as the world it self, that we see holds on to do so still; so shall it abide for what is to come, as it has for that which is past▪ it shall never wear otherwise than it has or does. And it shall never be said, That his, or any mans soul, has liv'd to an infinite number of minutes; but whatever minute you pitch upon, in the boundless lasting of the soul, it will have a bounded tale of mi∣nutes behind it; and it shall never live in other to come, than such as are already past; the soul being rather indefinite than infinite in its abiding, rather of an unmarkt lasting than everlasting; and that everlastingness

or endlesness which it has, (so call'd,) shall come no nearer Gods everlastingness or end∣lesness, than if it lasted only for a while, and then ended: For still it shall be rightly said, That God is every way infinitely beyond the soul, in his way of abiding. Gods everlast∣ingness is without beginning and without end; and these two are so together, and bound up in one, that you can no wayes halve them, and say, This half is unbegin∣ningly, and that unendingly; this unlike the souls abiding, and that like it: For that is this, and this is that in God, and both are one, and one God too, and you can no more sunder them than cut a now in two. From e∣verlasting to everlasting is God's whole eter∣nity, and nothing less can be it, or any thing of it; If it be otherwise dealt out, we must remember, 'tis for our sakes only.

But now the alwayness of the soul is such a thing, as of which it may be said, it ever∣more was not, as well as it evermore will be. Now as that which evermore was, stands off infinitely from that which evermore was not, so does Gods everlastingness, which was the former, from that of the soul which is the latter. And as for that which is to come, the soul must creep on to it step by step, now af∣ter now: Whereas to Gods everlastingness, as there was nothing before it, so there is no∣thing

to come after it; nothing to come, nor nothing past in respect of it; but all to him is now, and he is shier out of the length of our line, from everlasting before it, to ever∣lasting beyond it.

Should it be otherwise than we have said, this unbecomingness would tread upon the heels of it, to wit, That the world might as well get up with Gods all-fillingness by growing bigger, as with his everlastingness by growing older. For let us but suppose the world every week it lasts, to wax as big a∣gain, (he that made this in six dayes, can make it as much more in six more,) and to have the same everlastingness the soul has, or might have had; if by its ever growing older it would reach or hold up with Gods ever∣lastingness, then by its ever growing bigger it would reach or hold out with Gods all-fil∣lingness: ever to ever, or infinite to infinite being the same.

Why could not God make the world boundless in its bigness one way, as the soul in its lasting another way? As suppose an infinite line to cut the infinite roomthiness in the midst, (as somebody will shew you how,) might not God have made in one half, a Being boundless in bulk one way, so as we might say, that God were infinitely beyond the bound of its infinity one way, as well as

say, God was everlastingly before the be∣ginning of our everlastingness one way. Its immensity might as well have a first part as to outstretchedness, and no last, as our ever∣lastingness have a first now of its abiding, and no last. Extension that is infinite as to bulk one way, is no more uncouth than an abiding that is everlasting as to length one way.

But now should there ever be such a thing as this, it must needs share in the half of Gods all-fillingness; but seeing that Gods all-fillingness cannot be halv'd, but is what it is wholly, and this is what it is halfly, it fol∣lows, That because this Being cannot reach half of it, or all of it, it can reach none at all of it. In like manner, Gods everlastingness not being to be halv'd, any more than his all-fillingness, the everlastingness that the soul has, must reach the whole of it, or none of it.

Besides, the thing would be too ill matcht with it self, ever to be at all. If that which is once infinite can never be finite, 'tis impossi∣ble, that even while 'tis infinite it should be finite too, infinite one way and finite ano∣ther, whether it be so in its lasting or in its roomthiness. Finite one way and infinite another, is worse than man one way and horse another, or woman one way and fish another, which yet is that Centaur and Mere∣maid,

that never were but in the wildest thoughts of him that sometimes roved at them.

But indeed the self-same Writer has told us roundly, (p. 399.) That Gods being everlasting, is nothing but his having the root of it so in him, as to be call'd everlasting in the self-same meaning that the soul of man is; not that it has been together with that which is to be, but that 'tis put into such a way that it must needs ever abide, and be together withevery now, when once it comes. But that God should be in actu, or already, together with those moments that are to come, is both absurdand impossible.

Now I must beg leave to say, That how∣ever this everlastingness may set well enough upon the thing that Mr. Hobbes has made a God of, that he might play with him: yet I am sure it would full ill become that God who has made us, that we might worship him. For I will be bold to say, 'tis prov'd, the soul shall never have liv'd everlastingly, and that that everlastingness which the soul has in the root, and is to come, is of the same kind with that abiding which it has already grown up to, and is past: Nor is it any thing else but time eked out, now after now, a last∣ingness that is indefinite, but not finite; for why, a thing that is finite backwards, cannot

be infinite forwards, any more than a thing may be boundless in bulk one way and boun∣ded another. Now, that God Almighty should have an everlastingness that is as much finite as infinite, growing as grown, or be only indefinite, is a thing that I will not call by its right name: but be it as it can be, it lights full upon the head of him that says, Gods everlastingness is so strainedly such as that of our souls is. If it be allayed with this, That only that part of Gods ever∣lastingness which is to come, is akin to ours; he that shall do it, is himself more akin to Waltham's Calf, that was to suck part of that Bulls milk that had none at all. He that breaks asunder Gods everlastingness, breaks the Godhead; for why, his everlastingness is no less than his very Being: and he that makes part of it like to ours, makes the whole so; for whatsoever part you pitch on fore or aft, it is the whole, and now for ever∣more.

The ground we go upon here is this, That whatsoever God is, or is in God, is actualiter or in a readiness, and that he is not towards any thing which now he is not, or in potentia ad aliquid. That the bare Essence or Being of God is so in actu or forthwith, that 'tis as impossible he should be in potentia, as that he should be less perfect, is owned as well by

our Author as any man. But I say then, That Gods everlastingness must needs be as much in a readiness, because Gods Being, as 'tis everlasting, is as far from not being, and as every way perfect as his Being barely taken. And if that be reason enough to make one actually or forthwith, 'tis so too to make the other; the latter being bound in the former, and Gods being alone without being everlast∣ing, not being at all, but as we think it, by it self. If then Gods Essence or Being, taken only as such, cannot be made up of being and not being, neither can that his Being, taken as everlasting; the everlastingness of it being as much of the Essence as the nakedness, and rather too, inasmuch as one is, the other lone∣ly, is but thought. If then Gods being as such, shut out as well the may be, posse esse, as the may not be, the posse non esse, Gods Be∣ing as ever being, shuts out both too; else God should be more perfect in the being which he has sunderly in our thoughts, than in that being which he has truly in himself. If that of Gods everlastingness which is to come may be, but is not; then that of Gods Essence which it is, may be also, but as yet is not. He then that sayes that Gods bare Es∣sence must be forthwith or actu, but his ever∣lasting Essence, or his everlastingness which is all one, must be forth-coming or in potentia,

must either say he does not know what, or he does not care what; it being true blew Go∣tham or Hobbes ingrain'd, one of the two.

To make it yet out, that Gods everlasting∣ness must be like that of the soul, growing still more and more, our Author goes on, by shewing the aukness or great absurdity on the other side, which is, That all that which is to come should already be.

That that which is so unto us should al∣ready be with us, I acknowledge is auk e∣nough; but that that which is so to us, but not to God, (to whom nothing can be to come or past) should be now together with him, is no more odd, than that that which is a great way off in place from us, should be at hand to God-ward. As for what we read in Holy Writ, that God was, and is, and is to come, 'tis a coming down to our meanness: As when he said, Before Abraham was I am, and This day have I begotten thee, who was begotten from everlasting, he kept as near to the thing that he was, as he kept off from the Grammar that we speak by. And if we should but reason from the likenesses that God has given us of himself to other things, as 'tis here done from the likeness given to time, unto his being such indeed, we might easily make as odd a thing of the Godhead▪ as somebody else has done of his everlasting∣ness.

Besides, 'tis owned too, That all the mo∣ments which are to come shall never be, [p. 399.] and therefore God shall never be▪ together with them. Not to say how hard 'tis, that that which is not at all, nor ever will be, nor can be at all, nor can come nearer at all, should yet be a coming; I must yet mark, that this onward everlastingness which is fastned upon God Almighty, is all along made up of things which before were not, afterwards are not, and leaves still beyond it things that never shall be: So that Gods everlastingness, or everlasting God, is made up of something that now is, and something that was and is not, and something that nei∣ther is, nor ever was, nor ever will be: And that is a something that never was some∣thing, nor is now something, nor ever will be something: but a something that is now nothing, and alwayes was nothing, and al∣wayes will be nothing; unless the Reader will let it be something that is now awake, and alwayes was awke, and alwayes will be awke.

But we are not only to be burden'd withawke, but knockt down with a Can't be too. For so we read, If there be nothing to come of Gods infinite succession, then 'tis come to an end: but 'tis a Contradiction that what is unbounded should ever be ended: 'tis there∣fore

impossible that God should be in actu or at hand with that, which is not so yet, but will be.

This indeed smells pretty strong of quirk, but relishes as faintly as may be of reason. For it has no crutches to lean its crippled burden on, but what we have already pluckt from under it, to wit, a succession in Gods everlastingness; whence 'tis thought be∣cause things are to come to us, who are growing onwards, they must be so to God likewise, who is not, but calls the things that are not as though they were: and I think enough has been said to shew, that neither is extendednes the measure of Gods immensity, nor is successive lastingness the measure of his eternity. But if the man who is so all to be∣nighted, will needs be setting up a Will in the wisp, no wonder if the glare of it some∣times roblet him into bogs and marlpits.

But if another gates answer must be gi∣ven, I do say, that when ever any man dogs me with this, If there be nothing to come of Gods eternity tis at an end? Then will I say too, If there be nothing to come of half of it, that half is at an end. So at the very time of my writing this, Half Gods ever∣lastingness should be fairly tript off; and though God Almighty were whole God from everlasting, yet he is to be but half-God to

everlasting; his everlastingness being of his very Godhead, and this halving of it being a knack of our Authors owning long since. Again I must say, If there be no part of Gods immensity beyond the room where I now am, then tis wholly here, and if wholly here tis wholly finite; for such is the whole room that is here: But tis a Con∣tradiction that boundless being should be bounded. For the rightning of all which there is nothing in the world to be brought forth but this, that He that talks of one or other, talks idle, and jumbles holy Ghost and body, lastingness and everlastingness both together, which should always be kept wide asunder. Something to come, and part beyond, have nothing to do, with Gods everlastingness or alfillingness, but are whol∣ly taken up by body and time. And because we see that every body has a middle and that our lastingness has an onwardness, we are hasty to make over these to God and his everlastingness: Whereas nothing has a mid∣dle, that has not two ends, between which the middle must evenly be, nor is any thing growing older that was not sometimes young, or young that was not sometimes nothing: If then Gods Eternity has neither beginning or end, he must be hugely out, that talks of the middle of it; and if God

were never younger than he is, he is but a brainsick wight that dreams of his growing older. If nothing of his everlastingness be past, nothing of it is to come, and if any be past then something of Gods being, was, but is not; and if any be to come, then something of Gods being is not yet, but for∣sooth shall be, and yet his own self stiffly and rightly holds, that Gods being as such is altogether in a readiness or actualiter. Now do but put these two together, and see how huge luckily and unluckily they spell absurd and impossible, which yet are the two hard things that are cast into the Folks dish for them to gnaw upon: Sometimes he that is busie in hurling stones at random to pelt o∣ther mens Geese, may unluckily brain some of his own Swans.

Though the thing we are upon be so a Nonesuch, that there is no other thing in be∣ing, or can be, to which we may fully liken it, yet some things there are by our looking unto which, the understanding, I think, will a little the better cope with this. One is the way of the souls being in the body, or to∣gether with it. Let us then with Michaelius (a late Hoorns man) take eternity to be as it were the soul of time as then the soul takes in all the body, without being partable as that is, but being as cleaveless as if it were

but the least point of it; So eternity hems in all time, without creeping on & on as that does, but being as free from all succession as the least now of it. Little otherwise Gods work∣ing or knowing differs from ours, as sealing or printing does from limning and drawing, one asking time, and the more done the more time; the other is done in a moment, and much may be done in that moment as easily as a little.

Another likeness may be that of the wheel, beset with a row of cogs or pegs, in the whirling about of which, to an eye that is plac't within, the stirring of each cog comes into sight, one after other, all on a row; so that the first look't on, must turn about to the point at which its start began, before all of them can come to be seen; but to an eye that is seated without the wheel, the running of the wheel is taken in the twinkling of an eye. Now God is beyond the wheel or line of our time; for why, he is beyond the selvedge of this our timesome world, by way of perfection, that is, not stowage, to him then the whole wheeling about or revolution of times, is as much in an instant, as the least now of it is to us.

Nor is it right down trifling to mark how time has a great deal of its length or short∣ness, from the plight that our souls or bodies

are in: for when we are ill at ease, the shor∣ter time is alwayes long, and the wheel there∣of drives on heavily; but when we are blith and happy, the wheel is laid aside for wings, and that which could scarce go of late, now flies, and overswiftly too for us to mark its speed. Now God who is infinitely more hap∣py than we are, must needs drive on the speed of this wheel to an infinite height, beyond what we can; so that it must do no less than wind up into it self, even in a very moment. If it can take the slowness of one now after another, from us, why may it not take the swiftness of all its nows together from God? And though indeed many things are to us o∣therwise than they are, yet so as all things are to him, even so they are indeed.

But to make short with our Author, to whom it seems the world might have been from everlasting, we shall only mark what an ugly train this carries after it. His news is, That the world might have been as unbegin∣ningly as God himself, and then to be sure it may be as endlesly as he is; for the soul which is one thing that God had made, being so al∣ready, the world which is another, may be so too, if God will: So God may give away his whole everlastingness, to a world that is as much as he can be from everlasting to everlasting: And when he is thus on the gi∣ving

hand, he may give away his immensi∣ty too. And this indeed our Author is so for∣ward to yield, that he has taken it up for a thing that all men else have done; for so he lanches out, (p. 391.) Our lastingness cannot be of another kind from Gods everlastingness; for then if God should make a body of an all-filling, outstretchedness, it would not be all-fil∣ling, because it would have dimensions of ano∣ther kind from what God has. So he does not only take it for a truth, That such a thing may be, but a more owned truth than that which this is brought to strengthen. But in∣deed, whether he will hold so or not, he must, or else break with himself. For if the reason why the world might be from everlasting, was, (as p. 414. is said,) Because there was no part of that lastingness which was before the world, in which it began to have a po∣wer to be, but still it might have been sooner and sooner unbeginningly, then the same gives the world leave to have been all-filling as to bulk: For why, there is no scantling of that roomthiness beyond the world, beyond which the world had no power to be, but still it might have been bigger and bigger boundlesly. Besides, for fail, he has found out another way to make the world as im∣mense as God is, though it were made boun∣ded from everlasting; and that is by growing

every day bigger and bigger endlesly: so having lasted an infinite while, it must needs have grown up to an infinite bulk, though made otherwise at first; for so he says, God is call'd everlasting, not that he is gotten up to all the nows of time that are to come, but that he is hieing thither as fast as he can, in the same road with our souls. Which is in∣deed a most curious, pretty, dainty thing if you mind it narrowly: For, in likeness, Gods immensity may be call'd so, not that he has fill'd all roomthiness from all eternity, or was everlastingly every where; but from his growing ever more and more in bulk, he may be said to be immense, as from his growing ever older and older in time, he may be said to be eternal: so have we gotten a world as everlasting and as immense as God himself. Now he that will but cut out such a God for me and make it thus far, Ile undertake to make it up for him with stuff of the own; for now Gods Almightiness, All-wisdom, and whatever else comes under the name of at∣tributum incommunicabile in the Dutch Divi∣nity, setting no closer to the Godhead than his everlastingness and all-fillingness, he might from everlasting have thrown them in too after the other: or however, if he gave them but a bounded mightiness and wisdom, yet inasmuch as there might be a growing

every day more mighty and more wise from everlasting, that Being must needs be as infi∣nite in wisdom and mightiness as God him∣self, because as infinite in those two as he is in his everlastingness, in which he is no less infinite than in them.

All that we want now of making the world a God Cap-a-pe, or up to the Brim, is only this, That such a world would be made by God still, and not from everlasting of it self, as he is. But do but put it next into that same boundless roomthiness and abiding, whereupon 'tis said, they would jump into one roomthiness and abiding; and, which are as much of themselves as God himself is, and were and will be for all him from everlasting to everlasting; and then I think he will have set before us such a Hoghen moghen Leviathan, that that of Holy Job would be but a kind of Spratkin to it ward, and the bigger one of Mr. Hobbes would never be enough to make Anchovy-sauce for it. Though indeed I can∣not think he meant no better, yet weighing these things, I must needs say, He seems to be a setter forth of strange gods, and looks as if he had given us Tentamina de Deo for the nonce. And for my part, if I did but think there were or could be any such thing as springs thus kindly from the seed which he has sown, it would give me for ever frolick∣ing

on't again, and I should go in fear of my life on't every day I rise, and dream full dradly on't every night I went to bed. For I being at no agreement vvith this same hi∣deous Roomster, as to the vvay hovv I should behave my self tovvards it vvhile in it, hovv to bespeak its forgiveness after doing amiss, or how to know when I have done so; it may be, while I am thinking how all is well, and a coaks a coming, I may, for ought I know, be ramping on the snout of it, and so have my harmless mistake paid home by a vile mischance and a sudden too, with no∣thing less than the dreadfulness of a grim nip, and a dead-doing gripe.

And this shall be enough to have spoken to the first part of our fourth Head, How far of old, the world or body, has or might have been: The other part is, How long it shall or may last. The Answer to which must be twofold, according to the twofold state of the world; to wit, That in which 'tis, and that in which it shall be. As to the latter, There sticks nothing with me, but that the world or body may be as everlasting as the soul: For I think 'tis as impossible, that that which is something should make it self no∣thing, as that that which is nothing should make it self something. And when we say, the body is dying or timesom, the soul death∣less

or endless, we do not mean the body should thereby lose its bodyhood, but only its suchness: It shall be or may be alwayes body, but it never shall be, or at least never was it body unshifted; but after its kind, sending forth and taking in of steams and reeks, even all along.

But as to that plight in which the world now is, the May be of its lastingness is not to be gathered from the inwardness of the thing; for, for ought we know, body as now 'tis, may last as long as body renewed and cleansed by fire, as hereafter it shall be: But we are altogether to look outward to the will of God, who, as he hath said to the Sea, Thus far shalt thou go and no further in room, so has he said to the World, Thus far shalt thou go and no further in time: The last day and hour of which, though no man knows, yet I think 'tis not much harder to pitch a time beyond which it shall not be, than 'tis to find out a scantling beyond which the roundle or globe of the earth is not, as now.

For whether we hold, That the same body which slept shall rise again, that very flesh, blood and bones which it lay down, as Ho∣ly Church seems all along to have believ'd; or whether we will have it, That the same body, because the same Man with body be∣ghosted, rises, as some of the uppermost seat

of Philosophers at this day have themselves thought, and wonne upon others to think so too; Inasmuch as both of them are ac∣knowledged to be made of stuff already in being, it comes all to one: As sure as we are that the body shall rise again either way, so sure are we that this world shall hold no lon∣ger, than till all the stuff that is now in the world be wrought up into bodies rising a∣gain.

But then we are not only sure that the bo∣dy shall rise again, but we have the same Word of God for it, That it shall do so in the world in which now 'tis, though not in the world as now 'tis, but chang'd in its kind of worldhood, as that shall be in its kind of bo∣dyhood; the new heavens and the new earth being (as we think,) but old bodies new drest. So that we are sure too, that at the ending of the world there must be stuff e∣nough left, unmade up into Manish bodies, wherewith to frame a new heaven and new earth, without making more of nothing; and that this world shall hold no longer than till then.

Now though the heavens and the earth have dealings with one another, yet they do not make over to each other any thing that is bulky or weighty, that we can find so: whence we may make bold to say, over and

above, That all bodies that are to rise again, are made of the same mold or ground that the first was; that is, taken out of the earth∣ly world, not out of the heavenly bodies. Whence the world is to last no longer than till the earthly stuff for rifing bodies be spent, with leaving enough for an earthly world besides.

If then we do but know how the earths globe, or that of it that lyes fleshward, bears it self to the throng of mens bodies made out of it, we may at length come at such a bound of time or term of years, beyond which we may be sure the world shall not hold out. And if we were but well aware, how much the innermost bodies enwomb'd in the earth, had to do with the making of ours, we might come a great deal nearer the business, than otherwise we are like to do. But, setting aside the Excellent Mr. Boyle and Kircher, almost all men that have delved in∣to the bowels of the earth to fetch us any tales of under-ground bodies, have done it rather to make themselves more rich and wealthy, than either themselves or any body else more wise or knowing. So that we are much at a loss as to the kind of those things that are hidden there, and whether accor∣ding to the Laws that God has set to himself, in drawing one thing out of another, in those

Workhousen which we find he has set up, the fleshly body of man may at length be car∣ved out of them, or Whether there be any little spungholes or crannies by w^ch one may soak through to the other? Again, What we do find at our utmost depths or bores, whe∣quarries of stone, Mines of metal, or layers and veins of barren earths and sapless med∣lies, we can't tell how far they may be tiew'd, and drest, and mingled, so as at length to be be made fit for the food of body, to make it wax when well, as we see they may for the health of the body, to make it well when sick. And yet again, The sundry unevennes∣ses in the depth of those layers, that are made of sapful and growthsom earths, lead us into another Wilderness and leave us there. For like as sometimes we find Gold (a thing that changes us much, but feeds us little) as fleet as the roots of shrubs in Peru or the West In∣dies, sometimes among the shallow waters that drill between the pebbles in the Falls of Guiny or Africa: whilst the Gold Mine at Chremnitz is no less than 160 fathoms deep, (as we have it from a good Hand upon the place:) So in like manner, those things that feed and biggen us, lye in the earths globe at full us uneven depths. For while salt, a thing that helps as much to live, and get life for others too, sometimes floats on the top

of the Sea, and is thickned in the open Beds, at the salt-making Marshes of the Isle of Rhe and Xantoign, Provence and Messina, or digg'd in the Isle of May, and fetcht up at the Wi∣ches in England from easie depths. We have it for truth, That near Eperies is a Salt-Mine 180 fathoms deep, and a Sal gemma Mine in Poland no less than 200. Though for the most part it will hold good, that you cannot dig many spades in mold or growth∣som earth, before you come at a dead soyl. Supposing then (to make short of a thing that may more easily be made long) That the wet and dry surface of the earths roundle, to the depth of mans height, one place with another, may be made up into the bodies of mankind, and with the well-skill'd F. Taquet, That at Dooms-day a less cantling of it than England, which we reckon above the thou∣sandth part of the Globe, will be enough to hold all the dwellers of it and their children, that ever have been, or in likelihood may be hereafter till then, though the world should last 10000 years, Then are we sure this world shall never last beyond a thousand times ten thousand years, how much soever it may be guest to fall short of it. Which be∣ing the whole that we think needful to speak, under an Head that has so much room to spread upon, and so little of boundedness to

winde up in, we shall take forth to our last, which is,

CHAP. VII.

WHether there may not have been some other worlds or world before ours was; or Whether there may not yet be some such a great way off, while this of ours is?

Answ. A moreness of worlds, and a sooner∣ness of this world, may alwayes be, and of∣ten are, grounded upon a like way of reason∣ing; that is, the boundless and everlasting power and goodness of the Almighty Maker: for so pleads the avoucher, God being all way boundless in power and goodness, and every where withal, wherever and whenever he is, he may give shew of his power and his good∣ness; there being nothing to hinder his ma∣king worlds elsewhere than where this was pitcht, or other-while than when this was begun, but only time and room imaginary which are nothing; and it being good in it self for a world to be, the more of them there were, or the sooner they began, so much the better. Now if all this makes any thing for a moreness or more earliness of worlds, by the self-same Argument we may hold, That this world began sooner than we are told it

did begin. Which is both impossible to be, and wicked to think: For the Maker Al∣mighty being everlasting as well as all-filling, and ever as well as then, boundlesly powerful and good; and it being good in it self for this world, as much as for any former or o∣ther world to be, Why might he not 10000 ages before the world was, give it its bidding to step forth, whilst the sooner it was the better? But we must also note, That the Ar∣gument drawn from Gods unbounded power and goodness, as looking towards the behoof of the Creature will ever fall short upon this score: For why, there is not a full reckon∣ing up of those attributes of his that have to do in the work; boundless wisdom and good liking being left out. For we are to know, That then only infinite power and goodness could make the world, when infinite wisdom and good-liking thought it meet, that such a being should begin to be. Now that was when we read in Moses it did begin to be. Whence I think it follows. That it could begin no sooner. For infinite wisdom pitching upon that time for its beginning, chose out the ve∣ry best time that could be lighted on for its beginning: Had it then begun sooner, it had been better for it not to have begun so soon. But to mistrust boundless wisdom, to con∣trive so, that it might have better been con∣trived,

is to unmake its boundlesness. And to pitch upon two or more best times, for a thing to begin in, is to pitch upon one of the worser kinds of awkwardness.

Hence then we gather thus much, That as boundless wisdom took in with a moment, wherein it was deem'd most meet, that Crea∣tures should begin, so are we to think again it settled upon a certain number of Crea∣tures, which it was best of all, should some∣times have beginning. For if there were no more reason, why God should make the world, then when he did make it, than why he should make it sooner or later than he did, it had nere been made at all, any more than it was made sooner or later than it was: and if there were no more reason why he made so many beings in the world, than why he should make more or fewer, he had never made so many at all, any more than he made fewer or more than he did make. Now the same most trustful witness that tells us when the world began, telling us also that it was, in the beginning; that is, (if I understand the first word in the Bible 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉) in the beginning of those things that were ever made, or before all worlds, or the first made bodies were the heaven and the earth which now are: and when he tells us what things were then made; tells us also

that they were made up into a world that was one. And the same argument that makes for worlds more or sooner, proves also with the same strength that our own world was more or sooner, or might have been. We have the same reason to deny its force for more or earlier worlds at all, that we have to deny it for the forebeing or morebeing of this.

Besides, To gather that God has or may have, more or earlyer worlds, because he can do the most that can be done, and the soonest that could be done, is no less than the very scum of emptiness. For God being as bound∣less in his goodness as he is his mightiness, at this rate, would be forc't to reach out that love to all mankind at least, that we read he has bounded only to some chosen ones: so not only the few names in Sardis and the remnant of Israel, but the All of those Churches and mankind too, should at length arrive at everlasting bliss. But as we find his goodness as boundless in the making some happy for ever, as it would be in the making all so; and that God has thought meet that his infinite goodness should have enough to do, to save some, without saving all or most: surely we are to think too, that his boundless power has enough to do, and begins soon enough to do, or did as much as it needed to do, and began as soon as it need∣ed

to begin, in making one world as he did, and beginning it, when he did. If then boundless good will and ruthfulness in spa∣ring some from everlasting burnings, has spared as many as it needs to spare, for the sake of its boundlesness; in like manner boundless mightiness in making the world or this whole Crowd of beings, as late as tis, and as little as tis, has made it as soon and as big, as a world or number of beings needs to be made, for the sake of its boundless∣ness, so as if more or sooner worlds should be made, it would not better become, or more fully speak forth its boundlessness. And if so, then had God made, sooner or bigger or more worlds, he had done that which was altogether needless to be done, and what not so well done, as that which he has already done; because what is done is the best that can be done: And that would be an unbeseemingness, which would as much take from the boundlessness of his wisdom, as it would put to the boundlessness of his power.

Again, This ill weighed reasoning would put God upon the doing of things, with a meaner forecast than we do things our selves. For should God have made worlds, before or besides this, that so his works might hold some fuller proportion or meet∣somness

with his everlasting and Almighty power; it would be a making of God to do things, for such ends as he should never be able to reach, nor in the least draw nearer to. For should God have made any worlds some thousands of years before this, there would have been the same everlasting power, before all such worlds, as is before this, and no less: as there is now the same everlasting power before our world, that would be before such worlds, and no more. And should God make other worlds toge∣ther with, or wide off this world, there would be the same Almighty power be∣yond them, and taken up in the making of them, that is beyond, and in the making of this, and no more, as there is in this, and no less. Upon the same account that God may make or might have made, one world more than this, he may make or might have made 10000, and upon the same score he may or might 10000, he may or might 100000, and when he has made all of them, be yet no nearer doing any thing like his boundless self than he was in the making this one; for his whole boundless power was set a work or taken up, in the making of this, and no more than the whole could be, in the making of never so many more worlds, or never so many more early worlds.

God did not make the world or worldly beings, that the bigness or manifoldness of them should set forth to us his alfillingness, or that the earliness of them should give us the likeness of his everlastingness, but that the unutterable curiousness of its frame and workmanship, the unthinkable care and forecast in all its evennesses and entwinings, should beget in us as well an awfulness of, as wonder for, a greatness and wisdom so unbounded. As also that the thoughts of those manifold layers of hallow∣ed drifts, and everlasting well wishes for the happiness of worthless sinful man, should enkindle in us the flames of holy love and hearty worshippings, of a boundless good∣ness, so boundlesly endearing. All which are to be done well enough, without look∣ing at the time before, the room beyond, or the while taken up, in the doing of the things we so much wonder at, and bow down while we think upon. Else should we have lower thoughts of Almighty Power and Wisdom making the world in six days, than if the same had been done in one, or less than one. Isaac Habrechtus that cunning Handywright who made the Clock at Stras∣burgh is as much talkt of, and wondred at, far and wide, for the bare framing of it at such a bigness, sometime in his life, once, in

so long while as he thought fit, as if he had made it bigger or earlier, and had made more besides it, and in a shorter time: for, for its workmanship alone, tis matchless, as to mans skill, and it would have been no more than so, by reason of the rest.

God Almighty by making this one world in six days, beginning it when he did, and bounding it where he did, has made it a Nonesuch altogether; and had he by making it more, or quicker, or sooner, or bigger, ful∣fill'd the mindes of such as would have it so, it had been no more still than a Nonesuch al∣together. He that cannot enough praise Al∣mighty wisdom, and love everlasting good∣ness, for the making one world of nothing when he did, would never find in his heart to do it, for his making more, or quicker, or sooner or bigger: Boundless wisdom, love and power brought about the first, and no more than boundless could the latter.

The worthy Doctor More has suprizingly effay'd the infinity or boundless manifold∣ness of worlds from the Head of lightsom∣ness. For so he pleads, Either there must be infinite Suns and Worlds or else, (which is frightful to think), there must be infinite darkness, for nothing bounded could ever enlighten it?

To which we say first, that having taken

away altogether that boundless wastfulness beyond the world, we are no whit careful, about the light or darkness of it; that which is nothing at all, being neither light nor dark at all: let them say, which of the two it had best to be, who hold it. And again we cannot but mark here, how hard a thing 'tis for us, to lay aside the things which befal bodies, while we are speaking of things, which are not so. For the outworldish emp∣tiness before the income of lightsome worlds is owned to be no body, and yet it seems, must needs be dark, if unenlightned, body-like: according to which that Learned Gentleman might as well have proved the soul it self to have been dark, no Sun shining into it, as that emptiness, a thing as much not body (a sort of which alone are enlight∣ned with sunbeams), would have been so: not to say that even God himself before the making of the Sun, must thus have been in state of darkness too; for God, who, whilst no body, is yet somthing, stands fairer for being an enlightned somthing, than that does, which, whilst no body, is also nothing at all, and must therefore first become som∣thing, before it can get up to be an enlightned somthing.

Moreover, to say nothing how light may otherwise arise than from suns, (as may be

seen by Mr. Clayton's Diamond, the Bononian Stone, stale Sprats, the souce drink of Mac∣krel, the off-scourings of an Oyster-shell, &c,) 'tis clear that darkness or Sun-light, are such narrow betiders of body, that they are too scant to cover all that are bound up under that name, unless any will be so un∣couth as to say, that a Mill-stone is inwardly dark; which he that does, must see further into than I can, or any man else that I know; or that a shining piece of rotten wood, has less of its lightsomness in the dark than in the day.

As for the lights that have been seen in Mr. Boyles Air pump, When it once be made clear, as the lights we are speaking of, that all body is indeed and indeed suckt out of it, that light cannot beam in that thinness where a breather can't live nor a bladder be blown, that the hollow side of the glass throws in no rayes or steams, nor the outside of the shining body any at all or any but those of light, or that none of those rayes of other atoms that are shacking all over the worlds wasts come riding or drilling through both; it will behove us to bethink our selves of some kind of Answer for it: But until that be done, we shall think that the world can∣not at all, or at least by man, be crowded in∣to a less room than God at first allow'd it,

(and that it must be, if the empty Receiver has nothing of the world in it); and that all the light that we see is body in body, (the world, as we think, being all over glutted with body). So that he who at the selvedge of the world does but see light as far as he can see any thing, he needs not take thought for that darkness beyond which neither his eyes see, nor understanding kens. Which might be enough wherewith to close the last thing we laid down, that is, the moreness or more earliness of worlds.

Unless that we may put to the rest one Objection more for the plurality of worlds, or infinity of this, from such sayings in the English tongue, as seem to speak it a truth with us, time out of mind: Some whereof having room either in the daily offices of the Liturgy, or in the Creed it self, the over-looking of them without any remark, may seem so like a slight that Book, or those things which holy and wise men have had both good thoughts of, and much love for, that I hope we may be forgiven, while we go on to shew, that their right meanings do as much befriend these our thinkings, as their mistaken ones may seem to lye cross to them.

The first is that which comes, as other-where, so oftenest in the Gloria patri,—World without end; which may seem to speak the

world everlasting or boundless. The other is most remarkably in the Nicene Creed—Be∣fore all worlds; which seems too to be well enough bottom'd upon Holy Writ it self; For so we read, Heb. 1. 2, By whom also he made the worlds. And 11. 3, Through faith we un∣derstand the worlds were framed. Whence one would think, that we do believe in good earnest, that there were worlds before this, or are besides it.

Answ. If we had but that insight into the happy speech of our fore-fathers that were to be wisht for, the words could never af∣ford us the least of a stumbling-block. But so few men having thought good to meddle with it of late, and scarce any but Mr. Somner at this day, we shall take upon us, as shortly as we can, to give the meaning of those say∣ings, so as no man who has not so much as lookt back to old English, should at any time be misled by them.

We are then to understand, That the word [World] though we now take it for that bulk of bodily beings we see, yet of old it was as well, and oftner too, taken for ages and lastingness time out of mind. And the word with our Saxon Fore-fathers, for what we now call the World, was mostly Middan eard, Middle earth. The old word World answering to the Seculum of the Latines, as

the fore-named did to their Mundus. Which they have stuck so closely to in their English∣ings of Latine, that not only Aelfrick in his Glossary, (set forth by the Learned and pain∣ful Mr. Somner,) turns seculum, World, (as he does aevum yld & ece). But the word seculum being to be met with 70 times and upwards in the Psalms, according to the vulgar Lat. the Saxon translations, (printed by the Great Spelman,) have alwayes turn'd it world; and as often as it happens in the Saxon Gospels 'tis the same too. And whereas Mundus comes in in the Gospels about 20 times, 'tis also read Middan eard: As also 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 in Aelfrick's Glossary. And though Orbis terrarum be the same in sence with both, that is Englished by neither word, but evermore, (if I mistake not,) in the Psalms and Gospels by ym∣bhwyrft eorthena, or all the round-about of earthly beings. And lastly, Though in aeternum, in perpetuum, and in sempiternum, mean the same with in seculum, yet are they ever turn'd on ecnysse, unto endlesness.

But how little they thought them to differ in sence, will be shown by an Instance or two among many. Psal. 135, His mercy endureth for ever; It being in aeternum, 'tis made on ecnysse: But the very same thing, Psal. 117, being spoken by in seculum, 'tis Englisht on worulde, to or for world. Psal. 9. 5, in aeter∣num,

and in seculum seculi being together, 'tis on ecnysse and on worulde a worulde, for ever and ever. And Psal. 27. the last— life them up for ever, being in aeternum, the Trin. Coll. MSS. reads oth on worulde and on ecnysse, for ever and ever as we say. Whence 'tis clear, that with our Fore-fa∣thers, World and Evermore were often the same.

And they were so ready to make World speak seculum, that where we give a much unlike meaning, they still hold to it. So Psal. 89, (90.) 8, where we read, our secret sins. The Lat. having it seculum nostrum, (and the 70 the same in Gr.) from the Heb. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, they have it worulde ure, our world. So they hold it in the Ajective too: Whence in King Aethels••ans Laws, as we have them from Mr. Lambert, we find Messe thegn, and weoruld thegn, turn'd in Brampton, as the Great Sel∣den has it, Presbyteri & Seculares. And in K. Edm. Laws, Church-men and Secular men are shared into God••••nda hada and wo∣ruld••••da, and worldmanna dome is judicium seculare.

Besides, We are to know that World, whe∣ther it be in the singular number or plural, may betoken plurally or indefinitely, and as much adverbially as nominally. So where we read, Psal. 54. 21, Abideth of old, ante se∣cula,

plurally, 'tis atforan worulde, singu∣larly. And in St. Luke, in secula is on worulde, as in seculum is sometimes on a worulda, Psal. 132. 4. and sometimes one sometimes the other, Psal. 117. So that world needs not be one age only, but ages time out of mind, and hereafterward.

Again, If we compare a few Doxologies of the Saxon times, with the sayings we be∣fore spake of, it will yet further be seen.

Thus in the Saxon Sermon in Mr. Lisle and Mr. Fox, we read on ealra worulda woruld, unto all ages of ages. And in the pieces of Saxon Homilies by Mr. Wheelock, on ealra woruld, unto all ages; yeond ealra worulda woruld, beyond all ages of ages, or times of times; a butan ende, aye with∣out end; on ealra worulde woruld a butan ende, unto all ages of ages, aye without end; a a on ecnysse, for aye, to eternity; a to woruld, aye for ever, or for ever and for aye. And K. Canute shuts up his Church-Laws with symble efre to woruld Amen, alwayes, for ever, to endlesness; after our full way of speaking over and over what is boundless, when we say, for ever and ever.

And since we were over-run by the Nor∣mans, this way of speaking has been kept up. Thus in a MSS. now by me of the N. T. written (as I ghess) about the time of Ric. 1.

where 'tis said, Rom. 1. 25, Benedictus in se∣cula, 'tis that is bless••d into worldis of worldis, who is blessed for ever. 1 Cor. 2. 7, Ante secula, bifore worldis. 2 Cor. 11. 31, In secula, into worldis. Eph. 2. 7. In seculis supervenientibus, in the worldis above co∣myng, in the ages to come. Col. 1. 26, Hid from ages and generations, fro worldis and generaciouns. Lastly, in the Cordial, one of the earliest printed Books coming forth a. 1478, quoting Isa. 34, 'tis said, The sin∣ner shall be in desolation time and world withouten ende.

From all which 'tis as clear, that we meant in the dayes of yore by the word World, time, ages, all the while that has been here∣tofore or is to be hereafter boundlesly, as that we mean by it now adayes, that frame of bodies in which we live and speak it.

And indeed 'tis easie enough to be aware, that we still take World for that which is vast in bulk, boundless in tale or lastingness, or any wayes else that we can think of. In those Country sayings of a world of water in the Sea, a world of Sea-stones on the shingle, or a world of moments since the world be∣gan; and when we say, this or that is nothing in the world, such a thing is like another for all the world.

So then, to make an end, When we read

in the Penman of the Hebr. of Worlds that were made or framed by God, we mean (if we know what we mean) as the Gr. and V. Lat. mean; that is, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, fecit secula, and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, ap••ata esse secula; he made or there were framed, the sundry ages or by-runnings and wheelings about of things in this world, or the whole gathering of them call'd world: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 betokening rather a lasting than the thing that lasts; and yet may sometimes be both, as the Heb. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 is Se∣culum and Mundus. Likewise when we read in the Nicene Creed, or Maesse Creda, as in the Saxon, that Christ was begotten of the Fa∣ther ante omnia secula; we have it aer ealle worulda, before all worlds, that is, before all ages or wheelings about of times, and things in time. And world without end, in the Doxo∣logy, is ages, or evermore without end, or be∣yond all ages or set times. The keeping to which old sayinge in Holy Writ, or about holy things, (as we do elsewhere to those of two tenth deals of flower, reward thee in this plat, seek after leasing, go with him twain, &c.) while we have taken in so many new wayes of speaking, and later meanings of the word World, has made those more lonesome Spee∣ches somewhat less understood, and more likely to be mistaken.

FINIS.

Notes

• * 1.1

  〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉. comparativè.
• * 1.2

  Tentamina Phys. Theol. de Deo. p. 373.
• * 1.3

  Le discernement du corps & de l'ame.
• * 1.4

  The Creed of Ma∣ster Hobbes examined.