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.

SECT. I.

Eugenius taxed of vain glory. Three main ways he atempts to approve himself an extraordinary know∣ing man to the world. His affectation of seeming a Magician discovered in his so highly magnifying Agrippa, in the dress of his Title-page, and his submissive address to the Rosie-brotherhood. His indiscreet exprobration of ignorance to the Aristote∣leans for not knowing the very essence or substance of the Soule. His uncivil calling Aristotle an Ape, and ignorant taxation of his School concerning the frame of the world. The disproportionable Deline∣ation of Eugenius his World-Animal; and his un∣just railing against Aristotles writings, which he uncivilly tearms his Vomit.

ANd now brother Philalethes, that we are so well met, let us begin to act according to the freenesse of our tempers, and play the Tom Tell-troths. And you indeed have done your part already. My course is next. Which must be spent in the Observations I told you of, upon those profound Treatises of yours, Anthroposophia Theomagica, and Anima Magica Abscondita.

And my first and general Observation is this, That the genius of my brother Eugenies magical Discourse is such, that Simon Magus-like, he seems to have a very liquoursome desire to be thought to be 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉,

some great man in the World. And for the prosecu∣tion of this main end, he layes himself out chiefly in these three subordinate designes. First, to be thought to have found out some new concerning Truths, hitherto undiscovered. Secondly, to be more learned & knowing then Aristotle, that great light of these European parts, for these many hundred years together: and not onely so, but to be so far above him, that he may be his Master, that he may tew him, and lugge him, and lash him more cruelly, then any Orbilius or cholerick Pedagogue, his puny scholars. Thirdly and lastly, that he may strike home for the getting of a fame of profound learning indeed, he do's most affectedly and industriously raise in the Reader a strong surmise and suspicion that he is very deeply seen in Art Magick, and is a very knowing Disciple of Agrippa, and puts in as far for the name of a Magician, as honesty will permit, and safety from that troublesome fellow Hopkins the Witch-finder.

And indeed the very clatter of the Title of his Book, Anthroposophia Theomagica, sounds not much unlike some conjuration, or charm, that would either call up, or scare away the Devil. And Zoroaster for∣sooth, at the bottome of the page, that old reputed Magician, must stand as an Assistent to this preludiall Exorcism; with this Oracle in his mouth, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, Audi ignis vocem. That is in plain English, Hear the voice or noise of fire. Me thinks I smell a Gunpowder-plot. What can this voice of fire be? Why! how now Anthroposophus! you intend cer∣tainly to make the Rosy Brotherhood merry with squibs and crackers. For certainly your Mysterious∣nesse does not mean those lesser or greater fire-squirts, Carbines or Cannons. So might the Fratres R. C. be received with like solemnity that those Apostles at

Rome, the Cardinals. But the word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, (which implies a subsultation, or skipping this way and that way) which is in the context of this Oracle, seems to allude to, and prognosticate of, Fire-crackers and Squibs rather then Cannons or Carbines. But how ever if this dog-trick fail, Anthroposophus has another as puerile and innocent a Present, to entertain that Reverend Fraternity: And that's a very queint and trim Latine Epistle, which he, like a good Schoolboy, to shew them what a good Proficient he is grown in his Latine Grammar, presents to their assem∣bled Gravities. 'Tis a good child, Anthroposophus! and 'tis well done. Qui nescit obedire, nescit impera∣re. He that knows not how to submit himself in the form of a breeching boy to the Fratres R. C. how can he know so unmercifully to whip and domineer over poor Aristotle?

Surely, Anthroposophus! when the Rosy brethren ride swooping through the Air in their Theomagicall chariots, they will hail down sugar plums, and Ca∣rua's on thy blessed pate, if thou hast but the good hap at that time to walk abroad with thy hat off, to cool thy heated nodle.

But stay a while, I am afraid I am mistaken. It may well be, that Anthroposophus rides along with them, as being the Proloquutour of their Assembly. For he writes himself Oratoris vestri. How can that belong to a short Epistle, unlesse it were some Title of office? But it may be my Gentleman, being not so dextrous and quick in Latine as in English, measured the length of it more by his labour then the lines, and thought that that which took him so much pains, could not prove so little as an Epistle; and therefore would insinuate that it was an Oration made to the Fratres R. C. I suppose at their meeting at Fryer Ba∣con's brasen head in Oxford.

Well •• be it what it will be, my observation here, Anthroposophus, is, that you would also by your ad∣dresse to the Fratres R. C. make the world bel••eve, that you are now mellowing a pace, and are not much unripe for admission into that Society. And then An∣throposophus would be a rare Theomagician indeed. But enough of this vein of mirth and levity.

Now Philalethes! your brother Tel-troth, intends to fall more closely on your bones, and to discover whether you have not a greater minde to seem to be wise then to be so indeed, or to make others so. But yet you may assure your self, I will onely find flaws, not make any in you; but rather candidly passe over what may receive any tolerably good interpretation, nor touch the sore any where, but where I may hope to heal it, either in your self or others. And that this may be done without any tedious taking a pieces of what you have put together, I shall fairly passe from page to page without any Analyticall Artifice.

And truly from the First page to the middle of the Fourth page of your Epistle to the Reader, there be many pretty, smart, elegant, humourous contextures of phrases and things. But there, presently after Fryer Bacons Fool and his fellow, you fall upon our Peripateticks as such superficiall Philosophasters, be∣cause they cannot lay open to you the very essence of the Soul. Why! Anthroposophus! can you tell the very essence of any Substantiall thing? Hereby you show your self very raw & unexercised in meditation, in that you have not yet taken notice what things are knowable, what not. And thus may you have as ill a trick put upon you, for want of this discerning, as the old dim and doting woman had, that with her rotten teeth endeavoured to crack a round pebble stone in stead of a nut, which was a thing impossible.

Nor will any mans understanding, be it as sharp as it will, enter the bare essence of any thing. But the nearest we can get, is, to know the powers, and opera∣tions, the respects, and fitnesses that things have in themselves, or toward others. Which is so true, that any man in a little search, will presently satisfie him∣self in the evidence thereof.

From the middle of this Fourth page to the mid∣dle of the sixth, is continued a dance of Anticks, or various ridiculous shiftings and postures of phansie•• to make Aristotle and his followers contemptible. But such generall railings, as they are mis-beseeming the Writer, so they teach the Reader nothing but that the Authour of them is a Mome, or a Mimick, and more like an Ape by far then him that he compares to one. If this man clap the wings so when he has really got the foil, (for hitherto he has charged Aristotle with no particular piece of ignorance but of what is impossible to be known) what would he do if he h••d the victory?

The second particular taxation (for generals I hold nothing, Dolosus ambulat in universalibus) is that the Peripateticks fancy God to have made the World, as a Carpenter of stone and timber. But this is false, because they give an inward principle of motion to all naturall bodies, and there is one conti∣nuity of all, as much as of the parts of water among themselves. But their grand fault is that they do not say the World is Animate. But is not yours far greater, Anthroposophus! that gives so ridiculous unproportionable account of that Tenet? The whole World is an Animal, say you, whose flesh is the earth, whose bloud is the water, the air the out∣ward refreshing spirit in which it breath••, the inter∣stellar skies his vitall waters, the Stars his sensitive fire. But are not you a meer Animal your self to say

so? For it is as irrationall and incredible, as if you should tell us a tale of a Beast, whose bloud and flesh put together, bears not so great a proportion to the rest of the more fluid parts of the Animal, sup∣pose his vitall and animal spirits, as a mite in a cheese to the whole globe of the earth. And beside this, how shall this water which you call bloud, be refreshed by the air that is warmer then it? And then those wa∣ters which you place in the outmost parts towards his dappled or spotted skin the coelum stellatum, what over-p••oportionated plenty of them is there there? In so much that this creature you make a diseased Animall from its first birth, and ever labouring with an Anasarca. Lastly, how unproperly is the air said to be the outward refreshing spirit of this Animal, when it is ever in the very midst of it? And how rashly is the Flux and Reflux of the Sea assimilated to the pulse, when the pulse is from the heart, not the brain; but the flux and reflux of the Sea from the Moon not the Sun, which they that be more discreetly phantasticall then your self, do call Cor Mundi. Wherefore, Anthro∣posophus! your phansies to sober men, will seem as vain and puerile, as those of idle children that ima∣gine the fortuitous postures of spaul and snivell on plaster-walls, to bear the form of mens or dogs faces, or of Lyons, and what not?

And yet see the supine stupidity and senslesnesse of this mans judgement, that he triumphs so in this fig∣ment of his as so rare and excellent a truth, that Ari∣stotles Philosophy must be groundlesse superstition and Popery in respect of it, this the primevall truth of the creation; when as it is a thousand times more froth, then His is vomit. My friend Anthroposophus! is this to appear for the truth (as you professe) in a day of necessity? Certainly she'll be well holpe at a

dead lift, if she find no better champions then your self.

Verily Philalethes, if you be no better in your Book then in your Preface to the Reader, you have abused Moses his Text beyond measure. For your Principles will have neither heaven nor earth in them, head nor foot, reason nor sense. They will be things extra intellectum, and extra sensum, meer vagrant imaginations seated in your own subsultorious & skip-jack phansie onely. But what they are we shall now begin to examine, according to the number of pages.