Enthusiasmus triumphatus, or, A discourse of the nature, causes, kinds, and cure, of enthusiasme; written by Philophilus Parresiastes, and prefixed to Alazonomastix his observations and reply: whereunto is added a letter of his to a private friend, wherein certain passages in his reply are vindicated, and severall matters relating to enthusiasme more fully cleared.

Observation 24.

Page 59. line 1. How can darknesse be called a Masse? &c. No it cannot. Nor a thin vaporous matter neither. Thy blindnesse cannot distinguish Abstracts from Concrets. Thy soul sits in the dark, Philalethes, and nibbles on words as a mouse in a hole on cheese ••arings. But to slight thy injudicious cavil at Masse, and to fall to the Matter. I charged thee here to have spoke such stuff as implies a Contra∣diction. Thou saidest that this Masse (be it black or white, dark or bright, that's nothing to the Contro∣versie here) did contain in a farre less compass all that was after extracted. I say this implies a Con∣tradiction. But you answer, this is nothing but Rare∣faction and Condensation according to the common notion of the Schools. I but that Notion it self im∣plies

a Contradiction, for in Rarefaction and Conden∣sation there is the generation or deperdition of no new Matter, but all matter hath impenetrable dimensions. Therefore if that large expansion of the heavens lay within the compass of the Mass, that matter occupyed the same space that the masse did, and so dimensions lay in dimensions, and thus that which is impenetra∣ble was penetrated, which is a contradiction. What thou alledgest of the rarefaction of water into clouds or vapours, is nothing to the purpose. For these clouds and vapours are not one continued substance, but are the particles of the water put upon motion, and playing at some distance one from another, but do re∣ally take up no more place then before.