THE DOCTOR,

VAN HELMONT'S WORKS, AND CERTAIN SPECIALITIES IN HIS LIFE.

Voilà mon conte.—Je ne sçay s'il est vray; mais, je l'ay ainsi ouy conter.—Possible que cela est faux, possible que non.—Je m'en rapporte à ce qui en est. Il ne sera pas damné qui le croira, ou décroira.

BRANTÔME.

INTERCHAPTER XX.

ST. PANTALEON OF NICOMEDIA IN BITHYNIA—HIS HISTORY, AND SOME FURTHER PARTICULARS NOT TO BE FOUND ELSEWHERE.

Non dicea le cose senza il quia;Che il dritto distingueva dal mancino,E dicea pane al pane, e vino al vino.BERTOLDO.

ARCH-CHAPTER.

CHAPTER CLXXXVIII.

FOLLY IN PRINT, REFERRED TO, BUT (N.B.) NOT EXEMPLIFIED. THE FAIR MAID OF DONCASTER. DOUBTS CONCERNING THE AUTHENTICITY OF HER STORY. THEVENARD, AND LOVE ON A NEW FOOTING. STARS AND GARTERS, A MONITORY ANECDOTE FOR OUR SEX, AND A WHOLESOME NOVELTY IN DRESS RECOMMENDED TO BOTH.

They be at hand, Sir, with stick and fiddle,They can play a new dance, Sir, called hey, diddle, diddle.KINGCAMBYSES.

CHAPTER CLXXXIX.

THE DOCTOR'S OPINION OF LATE HOURS. DANCING. FANATICAL OBJECTION OF THE ALBIGENSES; INJURIOUS EFFECT OF THAT OPINION WHEN TRANSMITTED TO THE FRENCH PROTESTANTS. SIR JOHN DAVIES AND BURTON QUOTED TO SHOW THAT IT CAN BE NO DISPARAGEMENT TO SAY THAT ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE, WHEN ALL THE SKY'S A BALL-ROOM.

I could be pleased with any oneWho entertained my sight with such gay shows,As men and women moving here and there,That coursing one another in their stepsHave made their feet a tune.DRYDEN.

CHAPTER CXC.

DANCING PROSCRIBED BY THE METHODISTS. ADAM CLARKE. BURCHELL'S REMARKS ON THE UNIVERSALITY OF THIS PRACTICE. HOW IT IS REGARDED IN THE COLUMBIAN PHILOSOPHY.

Non vi par adunque che habbiamo ragionato a bastanza di questo? A bastanza parmi, rispose il Signor Gasparo; pur desidero io d'intendere qualche particolarità anchor.

ILCORTEGIANO.

CHAPTER CXCI.

A SERIOUS WORD IN SAD APOLOGY FOR ONE OF THE MANY FOOLISH WAYS IN WHICH TIME IS MIS-SPENT.

Time as he passes us, has a dove's wing,Unsoil'd, and swift, and of a silken sound;But the World's Time, is Time in masquerade!Their's, should I paint him, has his pinions fledged,With motley plumes; and where the peacock shewsHis azure eyes, is tinctured black and redWith spots quadrangular of diamond form,Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife,And spades, the emblem of untimely graves.COWPER.

CHAPTER CXCII.

MORE OF THE DOCTOR'S PHILOSOPHY, WHICH WILL AND WILL NOT BE LIKED BY THE LADIES, AND SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S WHICH WILL AND WILL NOT BY THE GENTLEMEN. THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO COUNT CASTIGLIONE, AND TO SIR JOHN CHEKE.

Ou tend l'auteur à cette heure?Que fait-il? Revient-il? Va-t-il? Ou s'il demeure?L'AUTEUR.Non, je ne reviens pas, car je n'ai pas été;Je ne vais pas aussi, car je suis arrété;Et ne demeure point, car, tout de ce pas mêmeJe pretens m'en aller.MOLIERE.

CHAPTER CXCIII.

MASTER THOMAS MACE, AND THE TWO HISTORIANS OF HIS SCIENCE, SIR JOHN HAWKINS AND DR. BURNEY. SOME ACCOUNT OF THE OLD LUTANIST AND OF HIS “MUSIC'S MONUMENT.”

This Man of Music hath more in his headThan mere crotchets.SIRW. DAVENANT.

CHAPTER CXCIV.

A MUSIC LESSON FROM MASTER THOMAS MACE TO BE PLAYED BY LADY FAIR:—A STORY, THAN WHICH THERE IS NONE PRETTIER IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC.

What shall I say? Or shall I say no more?I must go on! I'm brim-full, running o'er.But yet I'll hold, because I judge ye wise;And few words unto such may well suffice.But much—much more than this I could declare;Yet for some certain reasons I'll forbear.But less than this I could not say; because,If saying less, I should neglect my cause,For 'tis the Doctor's cause I plead so strong for,And 'tis his cause compleated that I long for,And 'tis true doctrine certainly I preach,And 'tis that doctrine every priest should teach.THOMASMACE, TO ALL DIVINE READERS.

CHAPTER CXCV.

ANOTHER LESSON WITH THE STORY AND MANNER OF ITS PRODUCTION.

Οὐδεὶς ἐρεῖ ποθ᾽, ὡς ὑπόβλητον λόγον,———ἔλεξας, ἀλλὰ τῆς σαυτῦ φρενός.SOPHOCLES.

CHAPTER CXCVI.

FURTHER ACCOUNT OF MASTER THOMAS MACE,—HIS LIGHT HEART, HIS SORROWS, AND HIS POVERTY,—POORLY, POOR MAN, HE LIVED, POORLY, POOR MAN, HE DIED—PHINEAS FLETCHER.

The sweet and the sour,The nettle and the flower,The thorn and the rose,This garland compose.SMALLGARLAND OFPIOUS ANDGODLYSONGS.

CHAPTER CXCVII.

QUESTION PROPOSED, WHETHER A MAN BE MAGNIFIED OR MINIFIED BY CONSIDERING HIMSELF UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE HEAVENLY BODIES, AND ANSWERED WITH LEARNING AND DISCRETION.

I find by experience that Writing is like Building, wherein the undertaker, to supply some defect, or serve some convenience which at first he foresaw not, is usually forced to exceed his first model and proposal, and many times to double the charge and expence of it.

DR. JOHNSCOTT.

CHAPTER CXCVIII.

PETER HOPKINS' VIEWS OF ASTROLOGY. HIS SKILL IN CHIROMANCY, PALMISTRY, OR MANUAL DIVINATION WISELY TEMPERED.—SPANISH PROVERB AND SONNET BY BARTOLOME LEONARDO DE ARGENSOLA.—TIPPOO SULTAN.—MAHOMETAN SUPERSTITION.—W. Y. PLAYTES' PROSPECTUS FOR THE HORN BOOK FOR THE REMEMBRANCE OF THE SIGNS OF SALVATION.

Seguite dunque con la mente lieta,Seguite, Monsignor, che com' io dico,Presto presto sarete in su la meta.LUDOVICODOLCE.

CHAPTER CXCIX.

CONCERNING THE GREAT HONOURS TO WHICH CERTAIN HORSES HAVE ATTAINED, AND THE ROYAL MERITS OF NOBS.

Siento para contarlas que me llamaEl á mi, yo á mi pluma, ella á la fama.BALBUENA.

CHAPTER CC.

A CHAPTER OF KINGS.

FIMBUL-FAMBIheitrSá er fatt kann segia,That er ósnotvrs athal.Fimbul-fambi (fatuus) vocaturQui pauca novit narrare:Ea est hominis insciti proprietas.EDDA,Háva Mál.

INTERCHAPTER XXI.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

Le Plebe è bestiaDi cento teste, e non rinchiude in loroPur oncia di saper.CHIABRERA.

INTERCHAPTER XXII.

VARIETY OF STILES.

Qualis vir, talis oratio.ERASMIADAGIA.

INTERCHAPTER XXIII.

A LITTLE ADVICE BESTOWED UPON THE SCORNFUL READER IN A SHORT INTERCHAPTER.

No man is so foolish, but may give another good counsel sometimes; and no man is so wise, but may easily err, if he will take no other counsel but his own.

BENJONSON.

DESCARTES' NOTION CONCERNING THE PROLONGATION OF LIFE. A SICILIAN PROPOSAL FOR BREEDING UP CHILDREN TO BE IMMORTAL. ASGILL'S ARGUMENT AGAINST THE NECESSITY OF DYING.

O harmless Death! whom still the valiant brave,The wise expect, the sorrowful invite;And all the good embrace, who know the GraveA short dark passage to eternal light.SIRWILLIAMDAVENANT.

Sir Kenelm Digby went to Holland for the purpose of conversing with Descartes, who was then living in retirement at Egmont. Speculative knowledge, Digby said to him, was no doubt a refined and agreeable pursuit, but it was too uncertain and too useless to be made a man's occupation, life being so short that one has scarcely time to acquire well the knowledge of necessary things. It would be far more worthy of a person like Descartes, he observed, who so well understood the construction of the human frame, if he would apply himself to discover means of prolonging its duration, rather than attach himself to the mere speculation of philosophy. Descartes made answer that this was a subject on which he had already meditated; that as for rendering man immortal, it was what he would not venture to promise, but that he was very sure he could prolong his life to the standard of the Patriarchs.

Saint-Evremond to whom Digby repeated this, says that this opinion of Descartes was well known both to his friends in Holland and in France. The Abbé Picot, his disciple and his martyr, was so fully persuaded of it that it was long before he would believe his master was dead, and when at length unwillingly convinced of what it was no longer possible to deny or doubt, he exclaimed,que c'en étoit fait et que la fin du Genre humain alloit venir!

A certain Sicilian physician who commented upon Galen was more cautious if not more modest than Descartes. He affirmed that it was certainly possible to render men immortal, but then they must be bred up from the earliest infancy with that view; and he undertook so to train and render them,—if they were fit subjects.—Poor children! if it had indeed been possible thus to divest them of their reversionary interest in Heaven.

A much better way of abolishing death was that which Asgill imagined, when he persuaded himself from Scripture that it is in our power to go to Heaven without any such unpleasant middle passage. Asgill's is the worst case of intolerance that has occurred in this country since persecution has ceased to affect life or member.

This remarkable man was born about the middle of the seventeenth century and bred to the Law in Lincoln's Inn under Mr. Eyre a very eminent lawyer of those days. In 1698 he published a treatise with this title—“Several assertions proved, in order to create another species of money than Gold and Silver,” and also an “Essay on a Registry for Titles of Lands.” Both subjects seem to denote that on these points he was considerably advanced beyond his age. But the whole strength of his mind was devoted to his profession, in which he had so completely trammelled and drilled his intellectual powers that he at length acquired a habit of looking at all subjects in a legal point of view. He could find flaws in an hereditary title to the crown. But it was not to seek flaws that he studied the Bible; he studied it to see whether he could not claim under the Old and New Testament something more than was considered to be his share. The result of this examination was that in the year 1700 he published “An Argument proving that according to the Covenant of Eternal Life revealed in the Scriptures Man may be translated from hence into that Eternal Life without passing through death, although the Human Nature of Christ himself could not be thus translated till he had passed through death.”

That, the old motto, (says he) worn upon tomb-stones, “Death is the Gate of Life,” is a lie, by which men decoy one another into death, taking it to be a thorough-fare into Eternal Life, whereas it is just so far out of the way. For die when we will, and be buried where we will, and lie in the grave as long as we will, we must all return from thence and stand again upon the Earth before we can ascend into the Heavens. “Hinc itur ad astra.” He admitted that “this custom of the world to die hath gained such a prevalency over our minds by prepossessing us of the necessity of death, that it stands ready to swallow his argument whole without digesting it.” But the dominion of death, he said, is supported by our fear of it, by which it hath bullied the world to this day. Yet “the custom of the World to die is no argument one way or other;” however, because he knew that custom itself is admitted as an evidence of title, upon presumption that such custom had once a reasonable commencement and that this reason doth continue, it was incumbent upon him to answer this Custom by shewing the time and reason of its commencement and that the reason was determined.

“First then,” says he, “I do admit the custom or possession of Death over the world to be as followeth: that Death did reign from Adam to Moses by an uninterrupted possession over all men women and children, created or born, except one breach made upon it in that time by Enoch; and hath reigned from Moses unto this day by the like uninterrupted possession, except one other breach made upon it in this time by Elijah. And this is as strong a possession as can be alledged against me.

“The religion of the World now is that Man is born to die. But from the beginning it was not so, for Man was made to live. God made not Death till Man brought it upon himself by his delinquency. Adam stood as fair for Life as Death, and fairer too, because he was in the actual possession of Life,—as Tenant thereof at the Will of God, and had an opportunity to have made that title perpetual by the Tree of Life, which stood before him with the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And here 'tis observable how the same act of man is made the condition both of his life and death: ‘put forth thy hand and pull and eat and die,’ or ‘put forth thy hand and pull and eat and live for ever.’ 'Tis not to be conceived that there was any physical virtues in either of these Trees whereby to cause life or death; but God having sanctified them by those two different names, he was obliged to make good his own characters of them, by commanding the whole Creation to act in such a manner as that Man should feel the effects of this word, according to which of the Trees he first put forth his hand. And it is yet more strange, that man having life and death set before him at the same time and place, and both to be had upon the same condition, that he should single out his own death and leave the Tree of Life untouched. And what is further strange, even after his election of death he had an interval of time before his expulsion out of Paradise, to have retrieved his fate by putting forth his hand to the Tree of Life; and yet he omitted this too!

“But by all this it is manifest that as the form or person of man in his first creation was capable of eternal life without dying, so the fall of man which happened to him after his creation hath not disabled his person from that capacity of eternal life. And therefore durst Man even then have broken through the Cherubim and flaming sword, or could he now any way come at the Tree of Life, he must yet live for ever, notwithstanding his sin committed in Paradise and his expulsion out of it. But this Tree of Life now seems lost to Man; and so he remains under the curse of that other Tree, ‘in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die.’ Which sentence of the Law is the cause of the death of Man, and was the commencement of the Custom of Death in the World, and by the force of this Law Death has kept the possession (before admitted) to this day.

“By his act of delinquency and the sentence upon it, Adam stood attainted and became a dead man in law, though he was not executed till about nine hundred years afterwards.” Lawyer as Asgill was, and legally as he conducts his whole extraordinary argument, he yet offers a moral extenuation of Adam's offence. Eve after her eating and Adam before his eating, were, he says, in two different states, she in the state of Death, and he in the State of Life; and thereby his was much the harder case. For she by her very creation was so much a part of himself that he could not be happy while she was miserable. The loss of her happiness so much affected him by sympathy that all his other enjoyments could do him no good; and therefore since he thought it impossible for her to return into the same state with him, he chose, rather than be parted from her, to hazard himself in the same state with her. Asgill then resumes his legal view of the case: the offence he says was at last joint and several; the sentence fell upon Mankind as descendants from these our common ancestors, and so upon Christ himself. And this is the reason why in the genealogy of our Saviour as set down by two Evangelists his legal descent by Joseph is only counted upon, “because all legal descents are accounted from the father.” As he was born of a Virgin to preserve his nature from the defilement of humanity, so was he of a Virgin espoused to derive upon himself the curse of the Law by a legal father: for which purpose it was necessary that the birth of Christ should, in the terms of the Evangelist, be on this wise and no otherwise. And hence the Genealogy of Christ is a fundamental part of Eternal Life.

The reader will soon perceive that technically as Asgill treated his strange argument, he was sincerely and even religiously convinced of its importance and its truth. “Having shewn,” he proceeds, “how this Law fell upon Christ, it is next incumbent on me to shew that it is taken away by his death, and consequently that the long possession of Death over the World can be no longer a title against Life. But when I say this Law is taken away, I don't mean that the words of it are taken away; for they remain with us to this day and being matter of Record must remain for ever; but that it is satisfied by other matter of Record, by which the force of it is gone. Law satisfied is no Law, as a debt satisfied is no debt. Now the specific demand of the Law was Death; and of a man; and a man made under the Law. Christ qualified himself to be so: and as such suffered under it, thus undergoing the literal sentence. This he might have done and not have given the Law satisfaction, for millions of men before him had undergone it and yet the Law was nevertheless dissatisfied with them and others, but He declaredIt is finishedbefore he gave up the ghost. By the dignity of his person he gave that satisfaction which it was impossible for mankind to give.”

For the Law, he argues, was not such a civil contract that the breach of it could be satisfied; it was a Law of Honour, the breach whereof required personal satisfaction for the greatest affront and the highest act of ingratitude to God, inasmuch as the slighter the thing demanded is, the greater is the affront in refusing it. “Man by his very creation entered into the labours of the Creator and became Lord of the Universe which was adapted to his enjoyments. God left him in possession of it upon his parole of honour, only that he would acknowledge it to be held of Him, and as the token of this tenure that he would only forbear from eating of one tree, withal telling him that if he did eat of it, his life should go for it. If man had had more than his life to give, God would have had it of him. This was rather a resentment of the affront, than any satisfaction for it; and therefore to signify the height of this resentment God raises man from the dead to demand further satisfaction from him. Death is a commitment to the prison of the Grave till the Judgement of the Great Day; and then the grand Habeas Corpus will issue to the Earth and to the Sea, to give up their dead: to remove the Bodies, with the cause of their commitment.

“Yet was this a resentment without malice; for as God maintained his resentment under all his love, so He maintained his love under all his resentment. For his love being a love of kindness flowing from his own nature, could not be diminished by any act of man; and yet his honour being concerned to maintain the truth of his word, he could not falsify that to gratify his own affection. And thus he bore the passion of his own love, till he had found out a salvo for his honour by that Son of Man who gave him satisfaction at once by the dignity of his person. Personal satisfactions by the Laws of Honour are esteemed sufficient or not, according to the equality or inequality between the persons who give or take the affront. Therefore God to vindicate his honour was obliged to find out a person for this purpose equal to Himself: the invention of which is called the manifold wisdom of God, the invention itself being the highest expression of the deepest love, and the execution of it, in the death of Christ, the deepest resentment of the highest affront.

“Now inasmuch as the person of our Saviour was superior to the human nature, so much the satisfaction by his death surmounted the offence. He died under the Law but he did not arise under it, having taken it away by his death. The life regained by him in his resurrection was by Conquest, by which, according to all the Laws of Conquest, the Law of Death is taken away. For by the Laws of Conquest the Laws of the conquered areipso factotaken away, and all records and writings that remain of them are of no more force than waste paper. Hence the title of Christ to Eternal Life is become absolute,—by absolute”—says this theologo-jurist,—“I mean discharged from all tenure or condition, and consequently from all forfeiture. And as his title to life is thus become absolute by Conquest, so the direction of it is become eternal by being annexed to the Person of the Godhead: thus Christ ever since his resurrection did, and doth, stand seized of an absolute and indefeazable Estate of Eternal Life, without any tenure or condition or other matter or thing to change or determine it for ever.” “I had reason” says Asgill “thus to assert the title of Christ at large; because this is the title by and under which I am going to affirm my argument and to claim Eternal Life for myself and all the world.”

“And first I put it upon the Profession of Divinity to deny one word of the fact as I have repeated it. Next I challenge the Science of the Law to shew such another Title as this is. And then I defy the Logicians to deny my Argument: of which this is the abstract: That the Law delivered to Adam before the Fall is the original cause of Death in the World: That this Law is taken away by the Death of Christ: That therefore the legal power of death is gone. And I am so far from thinking this Covenant of Eternal Life to be an allusion to the forms of Title amongst men, that I rather adore it as the precedent for them all; believing with that great Apostle that the things on Earth are but the patterns of things in the Heavens where the Originals are kept.” This he says because he has before made it appear that in the Covenant of Eternal Life all things requisite to constitute a legal instrument are found, to wit, the date, the parties, the contents, and consideration, the sealing, and execution, the witnesses, and the Ceremony required of Man, whereby to execute it on his part and take the advantage of it.

By the sacrifice which our Lord offered of himself, this technical but sincere and serious enthusiast argues, more than an atonement was made. “And that this superabundancy might not run to waste, God declared that Man should have Eternal Life absolute as Christ himself had it; and hence Eternal Life is called the Gift of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, over and above our redemption. Why then,” he asks, “doth Death remain in the World? Why because Man knows not the Way of Life—‘the way of Life they have not known.’ Because our faith is not yet come to us—‘when the Son of Man comes shall he find faith upon the earth?’ Because Man is a beast of burden that knows not his own strength in the virtue of the Death and the power of the Resurrection of Christ. Unbelief goes not by reason or dint of argument, but is a sort of melancholy madness, by which if we once fancy ourselves bound, it hath the same effect upon us as if we really were so. Death is like Satan, who appears to none but those who are afraid of him: Resist the Devil and he will flee from you. Because Death had once dominion over us, we think it hath and must have it still. And this I find within myself, that though I can't deny one word I have said in fact or argument, yet I can't maintain my belief of it without making it more familiar to my understanding, by turning it up and down in my thoughts and ruminating upon some proceedings already made upon it in the World.

“The Motto of the Religion of the World isMors Janua Vitæ;if we mean by this the Death of Christ, we are in the right; but if we mean our own Death then we are in the wrong. Far be it from me to say that Man may not attain to Eternal Life, though he should die; for the Text runs double. ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that liveth and believeth on me, shall never die; and though he were dead he shall live.’ This very Text shows that there is a nearer way of entering into Eternal Life than by the way of Death and Resurrection. Whatever circumstances a man is under at the time of his death, God is bound to make good this Text to him, according to which part of it he builds his faith upon; if he be dead there's a necessity for a resurrection; but if he be alive there's no occasion for Death or Resurrection either. This text doth not maintain two religions, but two articles of faith in the same religion, and the article of faith for a present life without dying is the higher of the two.

“No man can comprehend the heights and depths of the Gospel at his first entrance into it; and in point of order, ‘the last enemy to be destroyed is Death.’ The first essay of Faith is against Hell, that though we die we may not be damned; and the full assurance of this is more than most men attain to before Death overtakes them, which makes Death a terror to men. But they who attain it can sing a requiem ‘Lord now lettest thou thy Servant depart in peace!’ and if God takes them at their word, they lie down in the faith of the Resurrection of the Just. But whenever he pleases to continue them, after that attainment, much longer above ground, that time seems to them an interval of perfect leisure, till at last espying Death itself, they fall upon it as an enemy that must be conquered, one time or other, through faith in Christ. This is the reason why it seems intended that a respite of time should be allotted to believers after the first Resurrection and before the dissolution of the World, for perfecting that faith which they began before their death but could not attain to in the first reach of life: for Death being but a discontinuance of Life, wherever men leave off at their death, they must begin at their resurrection. Nor shall they ascend after their resurrection, till they have attained to this faith of translation, and by that very faith they shall be then convinced that they need not have died.

“When Elijah courted death under the juniper tree in the wilderness, and ‘said—now Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers,’ that request shews that he was not educated in this faith of translation, but attained it afterwards by study. Paul tells ‘we shall not all die but we shall all be changed;’ yet though he delivered this to be his faith in general, he did not attain to such a particular knowledge of the way and manner of it as to prevent his own death: he tells us he had not yet attained the Resurrection of the dead, but was pressing after it. He had but a late conversion, and was detained in the study of another part of divinity, the confirming the New Testament by the Old and making them answer one another,—a point previous to the faith of translation, and which must be learned before it—in order to it. But this his pressing (though he did not attain,) hath much encouraged me,” says Asgill, “to make this enquiry, being well assured that he would not have thus pursued it, had he not apprehended more in it than the vulgar opinion.

“We don't think ourselves fit to deal with one another in human affairs till our age of one and twenty. But to deal with our offended Maker, to counterplot the malice of fallen Angels, and to rescue ourselves from eternal ruin, we are generally as well qualified before we can speak plain, as all our life-time after. Children can say over their religion at four or five years old, and their parents that taught them can do no more at four or five and fifty. The common Creed of the Christian religion may be learned in an hour: and one days philosophy will teach a man to die. But to know the virtue of the Death and Power of the Resurrection of Christ, is a science calculated for the study of Men and Angels for ever.

“But if man may be thus changed without death, and that it is of no use to him in order to Eternal Life; what then is Death? Or, whereunto serveth it? What is it? Why 'tis a misfortune fallen upon man from the beginning, and from which he has not yet dared to attempt his recovery: and it serves as a Spectre to fright us into a little better life (perhaps) than we should lead without it. Though God hath formed this Covenant of Eternal Life, Men have made an agreement with Death and Hell, by way of composition to submit to Death, in hope of escaping Hell by that obedience; and under this allegiance we think ourselves bound never to rebel against it! The study of Philosophy is to teach men to die, from the observations of Nature; the profession of Divinity is to enforce the doctrine from Revelation: and the science of the Law is to settle our civil affairs pursuant to these resolutions. The old men are making their last Wills and Testaments; and the young are expecting the execution of them by the death of the testators; and thus

Mortis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis.

I was under this Law of Death once; and while I lay under it, I felt the terror of it, till I had delivered myself from it by those thoughts which must convince them that have them. And in this thing only, I wish, for their sakes, that all men were as I am. The reason why I believe that this doctrine is true, is, because God hath said it: yet I could not thus assert it by argument, if I did not conceive it with more self-conviction than I have from any maxims or positions in human science. The Covenant of Eternal Life is a Law of itself and a science of itself, which can never be known by the study of any other science. It is a science out of Man's way, being a pure invention of God. Man knows no more how to save himself than he did to create himself; but to raise his ambition for learning this, God graduates him upon his degree of knowledge in it, and gives him badges of honour as belonging to that degree, upon the attainment whereof a man gains the title of a Child of the Resurrection: to which title belongs this badge of honour, to die no more but make our exit by translation, as Christ, who was the first of this Order, did before us. And this world being the academy to educate Man for Heaven, none shall ever enter there till they have taken this degree here.

“Let the Dead bury the Dead! and the Dead lie with the Dead! And the rest of the Living go lie with them! I'll follow him that was dead, and is alive, and living for ever. And though I am now single, yet I believe that this belief will be general before the general change, of which Paul speaks, shall come; and that then, and not before, shall be the Resurrection of the Just, which is called the first Resurrection; and after that the Dead so arisen, with the Living, then alive, shall have learned this faith, which shall qualify them to be caught up together in the air, then shall be the General Resurrection, after which Time shall be no more.

“The beginning of this faith, like all other parts of the Kingdom of Heaven will be like a grain of mustard seed, spreading itself by degrees till it overshadow the whole earth. And since ‘the things concerning Him must have an end,’ in order to this they must have a beginning. But whoever leads the van will make the world start, and must expect for himself to walk up and down, like Cain, with a mark on his forehead, and run the gauntlet for an Ishmaelite, having every man's hand against him because his hand is against every man; than which nothing is more averse to my temper. This makes me think of publishing with as much regret as he that ran way from his errand when sent to Niniveh: but being just going to cross the water—(he was going to Ireland,—) I dared not leave this behind me undone, lest a Tempest send me back again to do it. And to shelter myself a little, (though I knew my speech would betray me) I left the Title page anonymous. Nor do I think that any thing would now extort my name from me but the dread of the sentence, ‘he that is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will I be ashamed before my Father and his Angels:’ for fear of which I dare not but subscribe my argument, though with a trembling hand; having felt two powers within me all the while I have been about it, one bids me write, and the other bobs my elbow. But since I have wrote this, as Pilate did his inscription, without consulting any one, I'll be absolute as he was; ‘what I have written, I have written.’

“Having pursued that command, ‘Seek first the Kingdom of God,’ I yet expect the performance of that promise, ‘to receive in this life an hundred fold, and in the world to come life everlasting.’ I have a great deal of business yet in this world, without doing of which Heaven itself would be uneasy to me: but when that is done I know no business I have with the dead, and therefore do depend that I shall not go hence by ‘returning to the dust,’ which is the sentence of that law from which I claim a discharge: but that I shall make my exit by way of translation, which I claim as a dignity belonging to that Degree in the Science of Eternal Life of which I profess myself a graduate. And if after this I die like other men, I declare myself to die of no religion. Let no one be concerned for me as a desperade: I am not going to renounce the other part of our religion, but to add another article of faith to it, without which I cannot understand the rest. And if it be possible to believe too much in God, I desire to be guilty of that sin.

“Behold ye despisers and wonder! Wonder to see Paradise lost, with the Tree of Life in the midst of it! Wonder and curse at Adam for an original fool, who in the length of one day never so much as thought to put forth his hand, for him and us, and pull and eat and live for ever! Wonder at and damn ourselves for fools of the last impression, that in the space of seventeen hundred years never so much as thought to put forth our hands, every one for himself, and seal and execute the Covenant of Eternal Life.

“To be even with the World at once, he that wonders at my faith, I wonder at his unbelief. The Blood of Christ hath an incident quality which cleaneth from sin; and he that understands this never makes any use of his own personal virtues as an argument for his own salvation, lest God should overbalance against him with his sins; nor doth God ever object a man's sins to him in the day of his faith; therefore till I am more sinful than He was holy, my sins are no objection against my faith. And because in Him is all my hope, I care not (almost) what I am myself.

“It is observed in the mathematics that the practice doth not always answer the theory; and that therefore there is no dependence upon the mere notions of it as they lie in the brain, without putting them together in the form of a tool or instrument, to see how all things fit. This made me distrust my own thoughts till I had put them together, to see how they would look in the form of an argument. But in doing this, I thank God I have found every joint and article to come into its own place and fall in with and suit one another to a hair's breadth, beyond my expectation: or else I could not have had the confidence to produce this as an engine in Divinity to convey man from Earth to Heaven. I am not making myself wings to fly to Heaven with, but only making myself ready for that conveyance which shall be sent me. And if I should lose myself in this untrodden path of Life, I can still find out the beaten Road of Death blindfold. If therefore, after this, ‘I go the way of my fathers’ I freely waive that haughty epitaph,magnis tamen excidit ausis, and instead knock under table that Satan hath beguiled me to play the fool with myself, in which however he hath shewed his masterpiece; for I defy the whole clan of Hell to produce another lye so like to truth as this is. But if I act my motto, and go the way of an Eagle in the air, then have I played a trump upon Death and shewn myself a match for the Devil.

“And while I am thus fighting with Death and Hell, it looks a little like foul play for Flesh and Blood to interpose themselves against me. But if any one hath spite enough to give me a polt, thinking to falsify my faith by taking away my life, I only desire them first to qualify themselves for my executioners, by taking this short test in their own consciences: whoever thinks that any thing herein contained is not fair dealing with God and Man, let him—or her—burn this book, and cast a stone at him that wrote it.”

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