by others, whereof the late detection of the maid of Germany hath left a pregnant example.

XXXI. 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 magick, not learned immediately from the devil, but at second hand from his scholars; who having once the secret betrayed, are able, and do empirically practise 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 magick. 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 constellatum multa revelat quærentibus magnalia naturæ, i. e. operi 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 prognosticks 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.

XXXII. Now besides these particular and divided

*Thereby is meant our good angel, appointed us from our nativity.

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 the 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 horrour, 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 tropick, nor any light though I dwelt in the body of the sun.

As when the labouring sun hath wrought his track

Up to the top of lofty Cancer's back,

The icy ocean cracks, the frozen pole

Thaws with the heat of the celestial coal;
So when thy absent beams begin t' impart
Again a solstice on my frozen heart,

My winter's o'er, my drooping spirits sing,
And every part revives into a spring.
But if thy quickening beams a while decline,
And with their light bless not this orb of mine,

A chilly frost surpriseth every member,
And in the midst of June I feel December.
O how this earthly temper doth debase
The noble soul, in this her humble place!

Whose wingy nature ever doth aspire
To reach that place whence first it took its fire.
These flames I feel, which in my heart do dwell,
Are not thy beams, but take their fire from hell;
O quench them all! and let thy light divine
Be as the sun to this poor orb of mine,
And to thy sacred Spirit convert those fires,
Whose earthly fumes choke my devout aspires.

XXXIII. Therefore for spirits, I am so far from denying their existence, that I could easily believe that not only whole countries, but particular persons have their tutelary and guardian angels. It is not a new opinion of the church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato; there is no heresy in it, and if not manifestly defined in Scripture yet it is an opinion of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions of a man's life, and would serve as an hypothesis to salve many doubts whereof common philosophy affordeth no solution. Now if you demand my opinion and metaphysicks of their natures, I confess them very shallow, most of them in a negative way, like that of God; or in a comparative, between ourselves and fellowcreatures; for there is in this universe a stair or manifest scale of creatures, rising not disorderly or in confusion, but with a comely method and proportion. Between creatures of mere existence and things of life, there is a large disproportion of nature; between plants and animals or creatures of sense, a wider difference; between them and man, a far greater; and if the proportion hold on, between man and angels there should be yet a greater. We do not comprehend their natures who retain the first definition of Porphyry, and distinguish them from ourselves by immortality; for before his fall, man also was immortal; yet must we needs

affirm that he had a different essence from the angels; having therefore no certain knowledge of their natures, 'tis no bad method of the schools, whatsoever perfection we find obscurely in ourselves, in a more complete and absolute way to ascribe unto them. I believe they have an extemporary knowledge, and upon the first motion of their reason do what we cannot without study or deliberation; that they know things by their forms, and define by specifical difference what we describe by accidents and properties; and therefore probabilities to us may be demonstrations unto them; that they have knowledge not only of the specifical, but numerical forms of individuals, and understand by what reserved difference each single hypostasis (besides the relation to its species) becomes its numerical self. That as the soul hath a power to move the body it informs, so there's a faculty to move any, though inform none; ours upon restraint of time, place, and distance; but that invisible hand that conveyed Habakkuk to the lions' den, or Philip to Azotus, infringeth this rule, and hath a secret conveyance wherewith mortality is not acquainted. If they have that intuitive knowledge whereby as in reflexion they behold the thoughts of one another, I cannot peremptorily deny but they know a great part of ours. They that to refute the invocation of saints have denied that they have any knowledge of our affairs below, have proceeded too far, and must pardon my opinion till I can throughly answer that piece of Scripture, at the conversion of a sinner the angels in heaven rejoice. I cannot with those in that great father securely interpret the work of the first day, fiat lux, to the creation of angels, though, I confess, there is not any creature that hath so near a glimpse of their nature,

as light in the sun and elements; we style it a bare accident, but where it subsists alone 'tis a spiritual substance, and may be an angel; in brief, conceive light invisible, and that is a spirit.

XXXIV. These are certainly the magisterial and masterpieces of the Creator, the flower or (as we may say) the best part of nothing, actually existing what we are but in hopes and probability; we are only that amphibious piece between a corporal and spiritual essence, that middle form that links those two together, and makes good the method of God and nature that jumps not from extremes, but unites the incompatible distances by some middle and participating natures. That we are the breath and similitude of God, it is indisputable, and upon record of Holy Scripture; but to call ourselves a microcosm, or little world, I thought it only a pleasant trope of rhetorick, till my near judgment and second thoughts told me there was a real truth therein; for first we are a rude mass, and in the rank of creatures which only are, and have a dull kind of being not privileged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits, running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existences, which comprehend the creatures not only of the world, but of the universe. Thus is man that great and true amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds; for though there be but one to sense there are two to reason; the one visible, the other invisible, whereof Moses seems to have left description, and of the other so obscurely that some parts thereof are yet in controversy. And truly for the first chapters