A discovery of divine mysteries, or, The nature and efficacy of the soul of man considered in all its faculties, operations and divine perfections, and how it governs in divine and secular affairs of life ... with many other curious matters : being a compleat body of divine and moral philosophy / by C.B., D.D., Fellow of the Royal Society.

That every one feels and perceives his Soul; and that altho' he be ignorant, it is only be∣cause he knows not that he knows it.

St. Augustin made himself an Idea and a Notion of his Soul by that Reflection, and

thenceforwards he cut off and suspended all the Acts and all the Exercises of the Imagination, when he would Reason concerning God, concerning Angels, and concerning Humanc Souls. See, here we have found a good Guide and a good Master, let us follow his Principles and his Examples; He attained to have the most perfect Idea of the Soul that one can possibly have of it, and we shall attain it likewise with him; he hath learnt us to know our Soul with the greatest ease in the World: Let us reflect like him upon our selves, and upon our proper Fa∣culty of Imagining, of Seeing, of Perceiving, and when we shall have well Reflected, we shall find that we have not need of making any Effort for to know our Souls, that we have nothing to do but to cut off all the Corporeal Images which can present themselves to us, and to shut up our selves into that which we per∣ceive of our selves, which is, that we have in us something that Perceives, that Knows, that Reasons, that Loves, that Hates, &c. And when we have well setled and fixed our Thoughts thereon, we shall say that we have found our Soul, that we hold it, that we touch it, that we see it.

For effectively there is That which is our Soul, there is no Man who may not know it, and who cannot frame a Notion and an Idea of it; because there is no Man who doth not perceive it, and who by the reflection upon his own Sentiment, cannot frame a clear Idea

and Notion of it; but we do not at all perceive that we know it, because we Imagine, which is another thing; we go to see for the Idea or Notion of it out of our selves, we run over all Nature, and a thousand Countreys that lie perdue out of Nature, a thousand chimerical Imaginations to find an Idea and a Notion of the Soul which can content the Imagination; we seek afar off for that which is at hand, we search after that which we Have, and we seek out of our selves for that which we have in the first and most interior Sentiment which we have of our selves; we are like him, who having heard speak of the Sun, and not at all knowing that it was That so beautiful and so luminous Body, which lightens and which warms all the visible World, that bore that Name, enquir'd of every body for the Sun, and search'd for it every where. We know necessarily what the Soul is, we perceive it, but till we have reflect∣ed on it, we do not know that we know it: If we had nothing to do but to reflect, we should then have this clear and distinct Idea of our Soul, That our Soul is that which we Experience makes us Perceive, makes us See, makes us to Love and to Hate; which makes us have Plea∣sure and Pain, and all the Certitude which we have of our selves, and of the things which are out of us: From whence we form this Notion, That our Soul is a Knowing Nature and Sub∣stance, and indubitably distinct from the Body, Mistress of its Thoughts and Desires, and sensi∣ble

of Order and Duty, by which we are capable and susceptible of Idea's and Sentiments without bounds and without end, according as the Su∣preme Nature which rules over us with so sen∣sible and so evident an Empire, will please to give us them; and tho' there were in our Na∣ture but this single Character of our Dependence, of which all our Sentiments and all our Know∣ledges carry the Idea to our Understanding, it would be impossible to be ignorant, and not to acknowledge that we are under the Hand of a Master, who can make us Sovereignly happy or unhappy when he pleaseth.