not so well perceived by a subtile wit, woπep aiolŋoei kekaOapuérn―' as by a purified sense,'-as Plotinus phraseth it.

Neither was the ancient philosophy unacquainted with this way and method of attaining to the knowledge of divine things; and therefore Aristotle himself thought a young man unfit to meddle with the grave precepts of morality, till the heat and violent precipitancy of his youthful affections were cooled and moderated'. And it is observed of Pythagoras, that he had several ways to try the capacity of his scholars, and to prove the sedateness and moral temper of their minds, before he would entrust them with the sublimer mysteries of his philosophy. The Platonists were herein so wary and solicitous, that they thought the minds of men could never be purged enough from those earthly dregs of sense and passion, in which they were so much steeped, before they could be capable of their divine metaphysics3: and therefore they so much

wise man of his wisdom, and the prophet of his gift of prophecy.-Gem. Pesachim, cap. VI. fol. 67 a. (Vide Discourse on Prophecy, cap. VIII.) So, on the contrary, they maintain that a holy life, and devotion to sacred study will secure the Divine Presence. In the Mishna Massec. Avoth, cap. III. § 6, it is said that the Shechinah dwells with ten persons met together for the study of the laws. Again, the same is said (§ 2) with reference to two persons met together for such study. (Cf. S. Matth. xviii. 19, 20.) We must be careful not to confound the Jewish idea at

2 It is curious that the first test to which Pythagoras subjected his disciples was the physiognomical. Hence, a science which as yet finds less favour with us than with the Germans, has at least the authority of antiquity in the Greek philosopher. For the definition of Gellius is explicit enough to identify the Pythagorean with the modern physiognomy: 'Jam a principio adolescentes, qui sese ad discendum obtulerant, ἐφυσιογνωμόνει. Id verbum significat, mores naturasque hominum conjectatione quadam de oris et vultus ingenio deque totius corporis filo atque habitu sciscitari.'-Gell. N. A. 1. 9.

When admitted as scholars, their novitiate was passed in the practice of selfdenial in matters of appetite and corporal indulgence in general: they were exercised in abstruse enquiries and speculations, and, if the accounts are to be believed, in the ordeal of silence for a term of years.Jambl. De Pyth. Vit. 68.

3 ΞΕ. ̓Αλλὰ μὴν τό γε διαλεκτικὸν οὐκ ἄλλῳ δώσεις, ὡς ἐγᾦμαι, πλὴν τῷ καθαρῶς τε καὶ δικαίως φιλοσοφοῦντι.-Plat. Sophist. 253 E.

solicit a χωρισμὸς ἀπὸ τοῦ σώματος, as they are wont to phrase it a separation from the body,' in all those that would καθαρώς φιλοσοφείν, as Socrates speaks, that is indeed, 'sincerely understand divine truth;' for that was the scope of their philosophy. This was also intimated by them in their defining philosophy to be μελέτη θανάτου α meditation of death';' aiming herein at only a moral way of dying, by loosening the soul from the body and this sensitive life; which they thought was necessary to a right contemplation of intelligible things: and therefore, besides those ἀρεταὶ καθαρτικαί by which the souls of men were to be separated from sensuality, and purged from fleshly filth, they devised a farther way of separation more accommodated to the condition of philosophers, which was their mathemata, or mathematical contemplations, whereby the souls of men might farther shake off their dependency upon sense, and learn to go as it were alone, without the crutch of any sensible or material thing to support them; and so be a little inured, being once got up above the body, to converse freely with immaterial natures, without looking down again and falling back into sense. Besides, many other ways they had, whereby to rise out of this dark body-ἀναβάσεις ἐκ τοῦ σπηλαίου, as they are wont to call them',-several steps and ascents out of this miry cave of mortality, before they could set any sure footing with their intellectual part in the land of light and immortal being.

1 Τοῦτο δὲ οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἐστὶν ἢ ὀρθῶς φιλοσοφοῦσα (se. ψυχή) καὶ τῷ ὄντι τεθνάναι μελετῶσα ῥᾳδίως· ἢ οὐ τοῦτ ̓ ἂν εἴη μελέτη θανάτου; Παντάπασί γε.-Plato. Phæd. 80 E.

As a comment on the whole passage we may quote what was probably in the author's mind when he wrote it: OuкOŪV τοῦτό γε θάνατος ὀνομάζεται, λύσις καὶ χωρισμὸς ψυχῆς ἀπὸ σώματος; Παντάπασί γ' ἡ δ ̓ ὅς. Λύειν δέ γε αὐτήν, ὥς φαμεν, προ

θυμοῦνται ἀεὶ μάλιστα καὶ μόνοι οἱ φιλοσοφοῦντες ὀρθῶς, καὶ τὸ μελέτημα αὐτὸ τοῦτό ἐστι τῶν φιλοσόφων, λύσις καὶ χωρισμὸς ψυχῆς ἀπὸ σώματος, ἢ οὔ; Φαίνεται.-Plat. Phæd. 67 D.

2 An expression borrowed from Plato (De Repub. 514, 515), by Plotinus, Enn. π. 9. 6: εἰδότων καὶ σαφῶς τῶν ̔Ελλήνων ἀτύφως λεγόντων ἀναβάσεις ἐκ τοῦ σπη λαίου.

And thus we should pass from this topic of our discourse, upon which we have dwelt too long already, but that before we quite let it go, I hope we may fairly make this use of it farther (besides what we have openly aimed at all this while), which is, to learn not to devote or give up ourselves to any private opinions or dictates of men in matters of religion, nor too zealously to propugn the dogmas of any sect. As we should not, like rigid censurers, arraign and condemn the creeds of other men which we comply not with, before a full and mature understanding of them, ripened not only by the natural sagacity of our own reason, but by the benign influence of holy and mortified affection: so neither should we over hastily credere in fidem alienam-subscribe to the symbols and articles of other men. They are not always the best men that blot most paper: truth is not, I fear, so voluminous, nor swells into such a mighty bulk as our books do. Those minds are not always the most chaste that are most parturient with these learned discourses, which too often bear upon them a foul stain of their unlawful propagation. A bitter juice of corrupt affections may sometimes be strained into the ink of our greatest scholars; their doctrines may taste too sour of the cask they come through. We are not always happy in meeting with that wholesome food (as some are wont to call the doctrinal part of religion) which hath been dressed out by the cleanest hands. Some men have too bad hearts to have good heads: they cannot be good at theory who have been so bad at the practice, as we may justly fear too many of those, from whom we are apt to take the articles of our belief, have been. Whilst we plead so much our right to the patrimony of our fathers, we may take too fast a possession of their errors, as well as of their sober opinions. There are idola specûs-innate prejudices, and deceitful hypotheses, that many times

wander up and down in the minds of good men, that may fly out from them with their graver determinations'. We can never be well assured what our traditional divinity is; nor can we securely enough addict ourselves to any sect of men. That which was the philosopher's motto, 'Exeuθερον εἶναι δεῖ τῇ γνώμῃ τὸν μέλλοντα φιλοσοφεῖν, we may a little enlarge, and so fit it for an ingenuous pursuer after divine truth: he that will find truth, must seek it with a free judgment, and a sanctified mind:' he that thus seeks shall find; he shall live in truth, and that shall live in him; it shall be like a stream of living waters issuing out of his own soul; he shall drink of the waters of his own cistern, and be satisfied; he shall every morning find this heavenly manna lying upon the top of his own soul, and be fed with it to eternal life; he will find satisfaction within, feeling himself in conjunction with truth, though all the world should dispute against him.

SECTION II.

An objection against the method of knowing laid down in the former section, answered. That men generally, notwithstanding their apostasy, are furnished with the radical principles of true knowledge. Men want not so much means of knowing what they ought to do, as wills to do what they know. Practical knowledge differs from all other knowledge, and excels it.

AND thus I should again leave this argument, but that

perhaps we may, all this while,

dermine what we intend to build up.

have seemed to un

For if divine truth

spring up only from the root of true goodness, how shall we endeavour to be good, before we know what it is to be

1 Quod ad Idola Specûs attinet, illa ortum habent ex propriâ cujusque naturâ et animi et corporis, etc.-Bacon's Works,

Vol. VIII. p. 294, and Vol. IX. p. 204. ed.
Basil Montagu.

so? or how shall we convince the gainsaying world of truth, unless we could also inspire virtue into it?

To both which we shall make this reply; that there are some radical principles of knowledge that are so deeply sunk in the souls of men, as that the impression cannot easily be obliterated, though it may be much darkened. Sensual baseness doth not so grossly sully and bemire the souls of all wicked men at first, as to make them, with Diagoras, deny the Deity, or, with Protagoras, doubt of, or, with Diodorus, to question the immortality of rational souls. Neither are the common principles of virtue so pulled up by the roots in all, as to make them so dubious in stating the bounds of virtue and vice as Epicurus was, though he could not but sometimes take notice of them. Neither is the retentive power of truth so weak and loose in all sceptics, as it was in him, who, being well scourged in the streets till the blood ran about him, questioned, when he came home, whether he had been beaten or not. Arrian hath well observed, that the common notions of God and virtue impressed upon the souls of men, are more clear and perspicuous than any else; and that if they have not more certainty, yet they have more evidence, and display themselves with less difficulty to our reflective faculty than any geometrical demonstrations: and these are both available to prescribe out ways of virtue to men's own souls, and to force an acknowledgment of truth from those that oppose, when they are well guided by a skilful hand. Truth needs not at any time fly from reason, there being an eternal amity between them. They are only some private dogmas, that may well be suspected as spurious and adulterate, that dare not abide the trial thereof. And this reason is not everywhere so extinguished, as that we may not, by that, enter into the souls of men. What the magnetical virtue is in these earthly bodies, that reason is in men's