side the opinion of their own church or any other, but also any particular author; which, notwithstanding, a sober judgment may do without offence or heresy; for there is yet, after all the decrees of councils and the niceties of the schools, many things untoucht, unimagined, wherein the liberty of an honest reason may play and expatiate with security, and far without the circle of an heresy.

IX. 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 impossibile 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 lived 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 belief to credit what our eye easy and necessary 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 impos

sibilities.

X. 'Tis true there is an edge in all firm belief, and with an easy metaphor we may say the sword of faith; but in these obscurities I rather use it in

the adjunct the apostle gives it, a buckler; under which I conceive a wary combatant may lie invulnerable. Since I was of understanding to know we know nothing, my reason hath been more pliable to the will of faith; I am now content to understand a mystery without a rigid definition, in an easy and Platonick description. That allegorical description of Hermes* pleaseth me beyond all the metaphysical definitions of divines; where I cannot satisfy my reason I love to humour my fancy: I had as lieve you tell me that anima est angelus hominis, est corpus Dei, as entelechia; lux est umbra Dei, as actus perspicui, where there is an obscurity too deep for our reason, 'tis good to sit down with a description, periphrasis, or adumbration; for by acquainting our reason how unable it is to display the visible and obvious effects of nature, it becomes more humble and submissive unto the subtleties of faith; and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoop unto the lure of faith. I believe there was already a tree whose fruit our unhappy parents tasted, though in the same chapter, when God forbids it, 'tis positively said the plants of

* Sphæra, cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia nullibi.

the field were not yet grown; for God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. I believe that the serpent (if we shall literally understand it) from his proper form and figure made his motion on his belly before the curse. I find the trial of the pucellage and virginity of women, which God ordained the Jews, is very fallible. Experience, and history informs me, that not only many particular women, but likewise whole nations have escaped the curse of childbirth, which God seems to pronounce upon the whole sex; yet do I believe that all this is true, which indeed my reason would persuade me to be false; and this I think is no vulgar part of faith, to believe a thing not only above, but contrary to reason, and against the arguments of our proper senses.

XI. 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

D

who can speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without an ecstacy? Time we may comprehend, 'tis but five days elder 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 forwards 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, 'tis the privilege of his own nature. I am that I am, was his own definition unto Moses; and 'twas 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 estates 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