faith flourishes on mystical paradx 18 but dual reaury De Carne See below, RELIGIO MEDICI. PART I. İncarnation, 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 perswasion. 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 my self 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 pass'd 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 St. John xx. that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not. 'Tis an easie 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 Cenotaphe 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 prophesies and mystical Types could raise a belief, and expect apparent impossibilities. 29. SECT. X. of a Chris 'Tis true, there is an edge in all firm beThe armour lief, and with an easie Metaphor we may say. the Sword of Faith; but in these obscurities I tian. 0203 my PART I, See below, p. 85. p. 203. a Buckler; under which I conceive a wary com- form and figure, made his motion on his belly Gen. iii. 14. زا PART I. Gen. iii. 16. SFCT. XI. Horace, See below, p. 115. 1. The Eter nity of GOD. 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 perswade 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. In my solitary and retired imagination (neque enim cum porticus aut me Lectulus accepit, 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 solæcism, or think thereof without an Extasie? Time we may comprehend; 'tis but five days elder then our selves, 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 a privilege of Exod. iii. 14. 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 onely is ; XI there is no distinction of Tenses; and therefore PART I. 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 in St. Luke xvi. Abraham's bosome. St. Peter speaks modestly, 2 St Pet. when he saith, a thousand years to GOD are but iii. 8. 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. 22. 10. 3. There is no Attribute that adds more dif- SECT. XII. Of the Holy ficulty to the mystery of the Trinity, where, Trinity. though in a relative way of Father and Son, we must deny a priority. I wonder how Aristotle De Calo, i. could conceive the World eternal, or how he See below, could make good two Eternities. His similitude P. 57. of a Triangle comprehended in a square doth De Animâ, somewhat illustrate the Trinity of our Souls, and that the Triple Unity of GOD; for there is in us not three, but a Trinity of Souls; because there is in us, if not three distinct Souls, yet differing faculties, that can and do subsist apart in different Subjects, and yet in us are so united as to ii. 3. 5. PART I. were so perfect as to inform three distinct Bodies, that were a petty Trinity: conceive the distinct number of three, not divided nor separated by the intellect, but actually comprehended in its Unity, and that is a perfect Trinity. I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret Magick of numbers. Beware of Philosophy, is a precept not to be received in too large a sense; for in this Mass of Nature there is a set of things that carry in their Front (though not in Capital Letters, yet in Stenography and short Characters,) something of Divinity, which to wiser Reasons serve as Luminaries in the Abyss of Knowledge, and to judicious beliefs as Scales and Roundles to mount the Pinacles and highest pieces of Divinity. The severe Schools shall never laugh me out of the Philosophy World a pic of Hermes, that this visible World is but a Picture of the invisible, wherein, as in a Pourtraict, things are not truely, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some more real substance in that invisible fabrick. The visible ture of the invisible. SECT. XIII. dom of GOD. That other Attribute wherewith I recreate 2. The Wis- my devotion, is His Wisdom, in which I am happy; and for the contemplation of this only, do not repent me that I was bred in the way of Study: the advantage I have of the vulgar, with the content and happiness I conceive therein, is an ample recompence for all my endeavours, in what part of knowledge soever. Wisdom is His most beauteous Attribute; no man can attain unto it, yet Solomon pleased 1 Kings iii. |