I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an
opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me in that
from which within a few days I should dissent myself. I have no genius
to disputes in religion, and have often thought it wisdom to decline
them, especially upon a disadvantage, or when the cause of truth might
suffer in the weakness of my patronage. Where we desire to be informed,
'tis good to contest with men above ourselves; but to confirm and
establish our opinions, 'tis best to argue with judgments below our own,
that the frequent spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in
ourselves an esteem and confirmed opinion of our own. Every man is not a
proper champion for truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause
of verity: many from the ignorance of these maxims, and an
inconsiderate zeal for truth, have too rashly charged the troops of
error, and remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth. A man may be in
as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to
surrender; 'tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace, than to
hazard her on a battle: if therefore there rise any doubts in my way, I
do forget them, or at least defer them, till my better settled judgment
and more manly reason be able to resolve them; for I perceive every
man's own reason is his best Oedipus, and will, upon a reasonable truce,
find a way to loose those bonds wherewith the subtleties of error have
enchained our more flexible and tender judgments. In philosophy, where
truth seems double-faced, there is no man more paradoxical than myself:
but in divinity I love to keep the road; and though not in an implicit,
yet an humble faith, follow the great wheel of the Church, by which I
move, not reserving any proper poles or motion from the epicycle of my
own brain: by these means I leave no gap for heresy, schisms, or errors.
As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in
religion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never
stretched the _pia mater_ of mine: methinks there be not impossibilities
enough in religion for an active faith; the deepest mysteries ours
contains have not only been illustrated, but maintained, by syllogism
and the rule of reason. I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my
reason to an _O altitudo!_ 'Tis my solitary recreation to pose my
apprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity,
with Incarnation and Resurrection. I can answer all the objections of
Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd resolution I learned of
Tertullian, "Certum est quia impossible est." I desire to exercise my
faith in the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and visible
objects is not faith, but persuasion. Some believe the better for seeing
Christ's sepulchre; and when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not of
the miracle. Now contrarily, I bless myself and am thankful that I live
not in the days of miracles, that I never saw Christ nor his disciples;
I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea,
nor one of Christ's patients on whom he wrought his wonders: then had my
faith been thrust upon me; nor should I enjoy that greater blessing
pronounced to all that believe and saw not. 'Tis an easy and necessary
belief, to credit what our eye and sense hath examined: I believe he was
dead and buried, and rose again; and desire to see him in his glory,
rather than to contemplate him in his cenotaph or sepulchre. Nor is this
much to believe; as we have reason, we owe this faith unto history: they
only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith who lived before his
coming, who upon obscure prophecies and mystical types could raise a
belief and expect apparent impossibilities.
In my solitary and retired imagination,
"Neque enim cum lectulus aut me
Porticus excepit, desum mihi"--
I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to contemplate Him
and his attributes who is ever with me, especially those two mighty
ones, His wisdom and eternity: with the one I recreate, with the other I
confound my understanding; for who can speak of eternity without a
solecism, or think thereof without an ecstasy? Time we may comprehend:
it is but five days older than ourselves, and hath the same horoscope
with the world; but to retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning,
to give such an infinite start forward as to conceive an end in an
essence that we affirm hath neither the one nor the other, it puts my
reason to St. Paul's sanctuary: my philosophy dares not say the angels
can do it; God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him; it is a
privilege of his own nature: _I am that I am_, was his own definition
unto Moses; and it was a short one, to confound mortality, that durst
question God or ask him what he was. Indeed he only is; all others have
and shall be; but in eternity there is no distinction of tenses; and
therefore that terrible term _predestination_, which hath troubled so
many weak heads to conceive, and the wisest to explain, is in respect to
God no prescious determination of our states to come, but a definitive
blast of his will already fulfilled, and at the instant that he first
decreed it; for to his eternity, which is indivisible and all together,
the last trump, is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame and the
blessed in Abraham's bosom. St. Peter speaks modestly when he saith, a
thousand years to God are but as one day; for to speak like a
philosopher, those continued instances of time which flow into a
thousand years make not to him one moment: what to us is to come, to his
eternity is present, his whole duration being but one permanent point,
without succession, parts, flux, or division.
The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and
contemplated by man; 'tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and
the homage we pay for not being beasts; without this, the world is still
as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day, when as
yet there was not a creature that could conceive or say there was a
world. The wisdom of God receives small honor from those vulgar heads
that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his works:
those highly magnify him whose judicious inquiry into his acts, and
deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout and
learned admiration.
"Natura nihil agit frustra," is the only indisputable axiom in
philosophy; there are no grotesques in nature; not anything framed to
fill up empty cantons and unnecessary spaces: in the most imperfect
creatures, and such as were not preserved in the ark, but, having their
seeds and principles in the womb of nature, are everywhere where the
power of the sun is--in these is the wisdom of His hand discovered; out
of this rank Solomon chose the object of his admiration; indeed, what
reason may not go to school to the wisdom of bees, ants, and spiders?
what wise hand teacheth them to do what reason cannot teach us? Ruder
heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of nature--whales,
elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess, are the colossi
and majestic pieces of her hand: but in these narrow engines there is
more curious mathematics; and the civility of these little citizens more
neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker. Who admires not
Regio-Montanus his fly beyond his eagle, or wonders not more at the
operation of two souls in those little bodies, than but one in the trunk
of a cedar? I could never content my contemplation with those general
pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea, the increase of the
Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north; and have studied to
match and parallel those in the more obvious and neglected pieces of
nature, which without further travel I can do in the cosmography of
myself: we carry with us the wonders we seek without us; there is all
Africa and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece
of nature which he that studies wisely learns in a compendium, what
others labor at in a divided piece and endless volume.
Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity: besides that
written one of God, another of his servant nature, that universal and
public manuscript that lies expansed unto the eyes of all; those that
never saw him in the one have discovered him in the other. This was the
Scripture and Theology of the heathens: the natural motion of the sun
made them more admire him than its supernatural station did the children
of Israel; the ordinary effect of nature wrought more admiration in them
than in the other all his miracles: surely the heathens knew better how
to join and read these mystical letters than we Christians, who cast a
more careless eye on these common hieroglyphics and disdain to suck
divinity from the flowers of nature. Nor do I so forget God as to adore
the name of nature; which I define not, with the schools, to be the
principle of motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that
settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actions
of his creatures, according to their several kinds. To make a revolution
every day is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course
which God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve but by a faculty
from that voice which first did give it motion. Now this course of
nature God seldom alters or perverts, but, like an excellent artist,
hath so contrived his work that with the selfsame instrument, without a
new creation, he may effect his obscurest designs. Thus he sweeteneth
the water with a wood, preserveth the creatures in the ark, which the
blast of his mouth might have as easily created; for God is like a
skillful geometrician, who when more easily, and with one stroke of his
compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather to do
this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and
forelaid principles of his art: yet this rule of his he doth sometimes
pervert to acquaint the world with his prerogative, lest the arrogancy
of our reason should question his power and conclude he could not. And
thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and
instrument she only is; and therefore to ascribe his actions unto her is
to devolve the honor of the principal agent upon the instrument; which
if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they
have built our houses, and our pens receive the honor of our writing. I
hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no
deformity in any kind of species whatsoever: I cannot tell by what
logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly, they being created in
those outward shapes and figures which best express those actions of
their inward forms. And having passed that general visitation of God,
who saw that all that he had made was good, that is, conformable to his
will, which abhors deformity, and is the rule of order and beauty: there
is no deformity but in monstrosity, wherein notwithstanding there is a
kind of beauty, nature so ingeniously contriving the irregular parts
that they become sometimes more remarkable than the principal fabric. To
speak yet more narrowly, there was never anything ugly or misshapen but
the chaos; wherein, notwithstanding, to speak strictly, there was no
deformity, because no form, nor was it yet impregnate by the voice of
God; now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature, they
being both servants of his providence: art is the perfection of nature:
were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos;
nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are
artificial; for nature is the art of God.
I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of Cicero;
others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the library of
Alexandria; for my own part, I think there be too many in the world, and
could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could I,
with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon. I would not
omit a copy of Enoch's Pillars had they many nearer authors than
Josephus, or did not relish somewhat of the fable. Some men have written
more than others have spoken: Pineda quotes more authors in one work
than are necessary in a whole world. Of those three great inventions in
Germany, there are two which are not without their incommodities. It is
not a melancholy _utinam_ of my own, but the desires of better heads,
that there were a general synod; not to unite the incompatible
difference of religion, but for the benefit of learning, to reduce it,
as it lay at first, in a few and solid authors; and to condemn to the
fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies begotten only to distract
and abuse the weaker judgments of scholars, and to maintain the trade
and mystery of typographers.
Again, I believe that all that use sorceries, incantations, and spells
are not witches, or, as we term them, magicians. I conceive there is a
traditional magic not learned immediately from the Devil, but at second
hand from his scholars, who, having once the secret betrayed, are able,
and do empirically practice without his advice, they both proceeding
upon the principles of nature; where actives aptly conjoined to disposed
passives will under any master produce their effects. Thus, I think at
first a great part of philosophy was witchcraft, which being afterward
derived to one another, proved but philosophy, and was indeed no more
but the honest effects of nature: what invented by us is philosophy,
learned from him is magic. We do surely owe the discovery of many
secrets to the discovery of good and bad angels. I could never pass that
sentence of Paracelsus without an asterisk or annotation: "Ascendens
astrum multa revelat quærentibus magnalia naturæ, i.e., opera Dei." I do
think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions have been the
courteous revelations of spirits,--for those noble essences in heaven
bear a friendly regard unto their fellow natures on earth; and therefore
believe that those many prodigies and ominous prognostics which forerun
the ruins of States, princes, and private persons are the charitable
premonitions of good angels, which more careless inquiries term but the
effects of chance and nature.
Now, besides these particular and divided spirits there may be (for
aught I know) an universal and common spirit to the whole world. It was
the opinion of Plato, and it is yet of the Hermetical philosophers: if
there be a common nature that unites and ties the scattered and divided
individuals into one species, why may there not be one that unites them
all? However, I am sure there is a common spirit that plays within us,
yet makes no part of us: and that is the Spirit of God, the fire and
scintillation of that noble and mighty essence which is the life and
radical heat of spirits and those essences that know not the virtue of
the sun; a fire quite contrary to the fire of hell: this is that gentle
heat that brooded on the waters, and in six days hatched the world; this
is that irradiation that dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of
horror, fear, sorrow, despair; and preserves the region of the mind in
serenity: whosoever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventilation of
this spirit (though I feel his pulse) I dare not say he lives; for truly
without this, to me there is no heat under the tropic; nor any light,
though I dwelt in the body of the sun.
I believe that the whole frame of a beast doth perish, and is left in
the same state after death as before it was materialled unto life: that
the souls of men know neither contrary nor corruption; that they subsist
beyond the body, and outlive death by the privilege of their proper
natures, and without a miracle; that the souls of the faithful, as they
leave earth, take possession of heaven: that those apparitions and
ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the
unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us into mischief,
blood, and villainy; instilling and stealing into our hearts that the
blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous
of the affairs of the world: but that those phantasms appear often, and
do frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, it is because
those are the dormitories of the dead, where the Devil, like an insolent
champion, beholds with pride the spoils and trophies of his victory
in Adam.
This is that dismal conquest we all deplore, that makes us so often cry,
"Adam, quid fecisti?" I thank God I have not those strait ligaments, or
narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on life, or be convulsed and
tremble at the name of death: not that I am insensible of the dread and
horror thereof; or by raking into the bowels of the deceased, continual
sight of anatomies, skeletons, or cadaverous reliques, like vespilloes
or grave-makers, I am become stupid or have forgot the apprehension of
mortality; but that marshaling all the horrors, and contemplating the
extremities thereof, I find not anything therein able to daunt the
courage of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian; and therefore am
not angry at the error of our first parents, or unwilling to bear a part
of this common fate, and like the best of them to die--that is, to cease
to breathe, to take a farewell of the elements, to be a kind of nothing
for a moment, to be within one instant of a spirit. When I take a full
view and circle of myself without this reasonable moderator and equal
piece of justice, Death, I do conceive myself the miserablest person
extant: were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of
this world should not entreat a moment's breath from me; could the Devil
work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive that
very thought. I have so abject a conceit of this common way of
existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this
to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity. In
expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in
my best meditations do often defy death: I honor any man that contemns
it, nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes me
naturally love a soldier, and honor those tattered and contemptible
regiments that will die at the command of a sergeant. For a pagan there
may be some motives to be in love with life; but for a Christian to be
amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma--that he is
too sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come.
* * * * *
I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age, or travel been able
to effront or enharden me: yet I have one part of modesty which I have
seldom discovered in another, that is (to speak truly) I am not so much
afraid of death, as ashamed thereof: 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy
of our natures that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest
friends, wife, and children, stand afraid and start at us. The birds and
beasts of the field, that before in a natural fear obeyed us, forgetting
all allegiance, begin to prey upon us. This very conceit hath in a
tempest disposed and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of
waters, wherein I had perished unseen, unpitied, without wondering eyes,
tears of pity, lectures of mortality, and none had said, "Quantum
mutatus ab illo!" Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, or
can accuse nature for playing the bungler in any part of me, or my own
vicious life for contracting any shameful disease upon me, whereby I
might not call myself as wholesome a morsel for the worms as any.
* * * * *
Men commonly set forth the torments of hell by fire and the extremity of
corporal afflictions, and describe hell in the same method that Mahomet
doth heaven. This indeed makes a noise, and drums in popular ears: but
if this be the terrible piece thereof, it is not worthy to stand in
diameter with heaven, whose happiness consists in that part that is best
able to comprehend it--that immortal essence, that translated divinity
and colony of God, the soul. Surely, though we place hell under earth,
the Devil's walk and purlieu is about it; men speak too popularly who
place it in those flaming mountains which to grosser apprehensions
represent hell. The heart of man is the place the Devil dwells in: I
feel sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my
breast; Legion is revived in me. There are as many hells as Anaxarchus
conceited worlds: there was more than one hell in Magdalen, when there
were seven devils, for every devil is an hell unto himself; he holds
enough of torture in his own _ubi_, and needs not the misery of
circumference to afflict him; and thus a distracted conscience here is a
shadow or introduction unto hell hereafter. Who can but pity the
merciful intention of those hands that do destroy themselves? the Devil,
were it in his power, would do the like; which being impossible, his
miseries are endless, and he suffers most in that attribute wherein he
is impassible, his immortality.
I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of hell, nor
never grew pale at the description of that place; I have so fixed my
contemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea of hell,
and am afraid rather to lose the joys of the one than endure the misery
of the other: to be deprived of them is a perfect hell, and needs,
methinks, no addition to complete our afflictions. That terrible term
hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the
name thereof. I fear God, yet am not afraid of him; his mercies make me
ashamed of my sins, before his judgments afraid thereof; these are the
forced and secondary method of his wisdom, which he useth but as the
last remedy, and upon provocation: a course rather to deter the wicked
than incite the virtuous to his worship. I can hardly think there was
ever any scared into heaven; they go the fairest way to heaven that
would serve God without a hell; other mercenaries, that crouch unto him
in fear of hell, though they term themselves the servants, are indeed
but the slaves of the Almighty.
That which is the cause of my election I hold to be the cause of my
salvation, which was the mercy and _beneplacit_ of God, before I was, or
the foundation of the world. "Before Abraham was, I am," is the saying
of Christ; yet is it true in some sense, if I say it of myself; for I
was not only before myself, but Adam--that is, in the idea of God, and
the decree of that synod held from all eternity: and in this sense, I
say, the world was before the creation, and at an end before it had a
beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive; though my grave be
England, my dying place was Paradise; and Eve miscarried of me before
she conceived of Cain.
* * * * *
Now for that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a mere
notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavored to nourish the
merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my parents,
and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of charity: and if I
hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and naturally framed to
such a piece of virtue; for I am of a constitution so general that it
consorts and sympathizeth with all things: I have no antipathy, or
rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humor, air, anything. I wonder not at the
French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools; nor at the
Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but being amongst them, make them my
common viands, and I find they agree with my stomach as well as theirs.
I could digest a salad gathered in a churchyard as well as in a garden.
I cannot start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or
salamander: at the sight of a toad or viper I find in me no desire to
take up a stone to destroy them. I feel not in myself those common
antipathies that I can discover in others; those national repugnances do
not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian,
Spaniard, or Dutch: but where I find their actions in balance with my
countrymen's, I honor, love, and embrace them in the same degree. I was
born in the eighth climate, but seem for to be framed and constellated
unto all: I am no plant that will not prosper out of a garden; all
places, all airs, make unto me one country; I am in England, everywhere,
and under any meridian; I have been shipwrecked, yet am not enemy with
the sea or winds; I can study, play or sleep in a tempest. In brief, I
am averse from nothing: my conscience would give me the lie if I should
absolutely detest or hate any essence but the Devil; or so at least
abhor anything but that we might come to composition. If there be any
among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is
that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion--the multitude: that
numerous piece of monstrosity which, taken asunder, seem men and the
reasonable creatures of God, but confused together, make but one great
beast and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra: it is no breach of
charity to call these fools; it is the style all holy writers have
afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point
of our faith to believe so. Neither in the name of multitude do I only
include the base and minor sort of people: there is a rabble even
amongst the gentry, a sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the
same wheel as these; men in the same level with mechanics, though their
fortunes do somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses compound
for their follies.
I must give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfill
and accomplish the will and command of my God: I draw not my purse for
his sake that demands it, but His that enjoined it; I believe no man
upon the rhetoric of his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating
disposition; for this is still but moral charity, and an act that oweth
more to passion than reason. He that relieves another upon the bare
suggestion and bowels of pity doth not this so much for his sake as for
his own; for by compassion we make others' misery our own, and so, by
relieving them, we relieve ourselves also. It is as erroneous a conceit
to redress other men's misfortunes upon the common considerations of
merciful natures, that it may be one day our own case; for this is a
sinister and politic kind of charity, whereby we seem to bespeak the
pities of men in the like occasions. And truly I have observed that
those professed eleemosynaries, though in a crowd or multitude, do yet
direct and place their petitions on a few and selected persons: there is
surely a physiognomy which those experienced and master mendicants
observe, whereby they instantly discover a merciful aspect, and will
single out a face wherein they spy the signatures and marks of mercy.
For there are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in
them the motto of our souls, wherein he that cannot read ABC may read
our natures. I hold moreover that there is a phytognomy, or physiognomy,
not only of men, but of plants and vegetables; and in every one of them
some outward figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward
forms. The finger of God hath left an inscription upon all his works,
not graphical or composed of letters, but of their several forms,
constitutions, parts and operations, which, aptly joined together, do
make one word that doth express their natures. By these letters God
calls the stars by their names; and by this alphabet Adam assigned to
every creature a name peculiar to its nature. Now there are, besides
these characters in our faces, certain mystical figures in our hands,
which I dare not call mere dashes, strokes _à la volée_, or at random,
because delineated by a pencil that never works in vain; and hereof I
take more particular notice, because I carry that in mine own hand which
I could never read of or discover in another. Aristotle, I confess, in
his acute and singular book of physiognomy, hath made no mention of
chiromancy; yet I believe the Egyptians, who were nearer addicted to
those abstruse and mystical sciences, had a knowledge therein, to which
those vagabond and counterfeit Egyptians did after pretend, and perhaps
retained a few corrupted principles which sometimes might verify their
prognostics.
It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions of
faces, there should be none alike. Now, contrary, I wonder as much how
there should be any: he that shall consider how many thousand several
words have been carelessly and without study composed out of twenty-four
letters; withal, how many hundred lines there are to be drawn in the
fabric of one man, shall easily find that this variety is necessary; and
it will be very hard that they shall so concur as to make one portrait
like another. Let a painter carelessly limn out a million of faces, and
you shall find them all different; yea, let him have his copy before
him, yet after all his art there will remain a sensible distinction; for
the pattern or example of everything is the perfectest in that kind,
whereof we still come short, though we transcend or go beyond it,
because herein it is wide, and agrees not in all points unto its copy.
Nor doth the similitude of creatures disparage the variety of nature,
nor any way confound the works of God. For even in things alike there is
diversity; and those that do seem to accord do manifestly disagree. And
thus is man like God; for in the same things that we resemble him we are
utterly different from him. There was never anything so like another as
in all points to concur; there will ever some reserved difference slip
in, to prevent the identity, without which two several things would not
be alike, but the same, which is impossible.
Naturally amorous of all that is beautiful, I can look a whole day with
delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse. It is my
temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony; and sure there
is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes,
far sweeter than the sound of an instrument: for there is music wherever
there is harmony, order, or, proportion: and thus far we may maintain
_the music of the spheres_; for those well-ordered motions and regular
paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding
they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically
composed, delights in harmony, which makes me much distrust the
symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church music. For
myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do
embrace it: for even that vulgar and tavern music, which makes one man
merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion and a profound
contemplation of the First Composer; there is something in it of
divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and
shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of God; such a melody
to the ear as the whole world, well understood, would afford the
understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which
intellectually sounds in the ears of God. It unties the ligaments of my
frame, takes me to pieces, dilates me out of myself, and by degrees,
methinks, resolves me into heaven. I will not say, with Plato, the soul
is an harmony, but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto music;
thus some, whose temper of body agrees and humors the constitution of
their souls, are born poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined
unto rhythm.
There is surely a nearer apprehension of anything that delights us in
our dreams than in our waked senses: without this, I were unhappy; for
my awaked judgment discontents me, ever whispering unto me that I am
from my friend; but my friendly dreams in the night requite me, and make
me think I am within his arms. I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do
for my good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable
desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happiness; and surely
it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this world,
and that the conceits of this life are as mere dreams to those of the
next; as the phantasms of the night to the conceits of the day. There is
an equal delusion in both, and the one doth but seem to be the emblem or
picture of the other; we are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps,
and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It
is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking
conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. At my nativity my
ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius; I was born in the planetary
hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me.
I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of
company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the
action, and apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits
thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I
would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose
for my devotions; but our grosser memories have then so little hold of
our abstracted understandings that they forget the story, and can only
relate to our awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that that hath
passed. Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not,
methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, though he seem to have
corrected it: for those noctambuloes and night-walkers, though in their
sleep do yet enjoy the action of their senses; we must therefore say
that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction of
Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatic souls do walk about in
their own corps, as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they
seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are destitute of
sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them.
Thus it is observed that men sometimes, upon the hour of their
departure, do speak and reason above themselves. For then the soul,
beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason
like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.