seen, nor ear heard ';" and to have some glimpses and foretaste of them, which St. Paul calleth the "earnest, and firstfruits of the Spirit ;" what is this, but to leave sense behind us, and to outrun our bodies? And therefore it is, that evangelical mysteries were not, at the first, urged by disputes of secular learning, but were sacredly infused, not persuading by fleshly wisdom ", but by a spiritual and heavenly call, drawing to the belief of them. Evangelical truths do as much transcend the natural reason, as spiritual goodness doth the natural will of man. That one nature should be in three persons, and two natures in one person; that the invisible God should be manifest in the flesh, and a pure virgin bring forth a son ;-these are mysteries above the reach of human, yea, even of angelical, disquisition." Sarah laughed, when Abraham believed: and reason expected, that the apostle should have fallen down dead, when Faith shook the viper into the fire.P

There is a great difference between the manner of yielding our assent unto natural and supernatural verities. The principles of the one are ingrafted, and suitable to the native seeds, and original notions of reason natural: but the principles of the other are revealed; and, without such revelation, could never have been sifted out by our implanted light, or by any human disquisition been discovered. For the gospel being a supernatural science, the principles thereof must needs transcend the reach of natural faculties, till raised and enabled by divine grace. And then indeed reason is an excellent instrument to use those principles of faith unto our further proficiency in sacred knowledge, which, without divine revelation, proposing the object, and divine grace disposing the faculty, it could never have either known or used.

And from hence (I suppose) did arise that usual calumny

11 Cor. ii. 9, 10. Heb. iii. 1. τη Δεῖ γὰρ πρὸς τοὺς τῆς ἐκκλησίας τροφίμους μὴ λογισμοῖς ἀνθρωπίνοις διευθύνειν τὰ θεῖα, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸ βούλευμα τῆς διδασκαλίας τοῦ πνεύματος τῶν λόγων ποιεῖσθαι τὴν ἔκθεσιν. Just. Mart. Expos. Fid. Eph. iii. 9. Vid. Greg, Nyssen. Homil. 8. in Cant, et Sext. Senens. Biblioth. 1. 6. Annot. 165, et 299. o Gen. xvii. 12. xxviii. 5, 6.—Ubi ad profunditatem Sacramentorum perventum est, omnis Platonicorum caligavit subtilitas: Cypr. de Spir. Sanct. Vid. etiam Aug. Enchir. c. 4.

P Acts

of the philosophers against the Christians, that they taught their followers nothing but an illiterate and naked belief. Though indeed the revelation of divine mysteries and the grace of God being presupposed, there is no such height of rational evidence and demonstration in all the writings of philosophers, as in the gospel.

But to return. This freedom from bodily restraint, has, according to the schoolmen, those raptures and extasies, which raise and ravish the soul with the sweetness of extraordinary contemplations, wherein a man is, as it were, carried out of himself, and transported extra connaturalem apprehensionem,' beyond the usual bounds of sense and common apprehension.

Now for the exemption of the more ordinary actions of the soul from the predominancy of the body, it is chiefly wrought by these three means, education, custom, and occasion. For the rule of Aristotle', though in agents, purely natural, it hold true, yet in voluntary agents it is not constant, that things which proceed from nature, are unalterable by custom. For we may usually observe, that the culture of the mind, as of the earth, doth deliver it from the barrenness of its nature."

X

And therefore when Zopyrus the physiognomist did conjecture of the disposition of Socrates, contrary to that which men believed of him, and thereupon was derided as an ignorat pretender; Socrates himself did acquit the man from that imputation, confessing, that he had rightly judged of his natural inclinations, which only the study of philosophy had altered and over-ruled.

Thus as hard bones, being steeped in vinegar and ashes,

Greg. Naz. 2 Orat. 3. Euseb. de præparat. Evang. 1. 1. c. 1, 3. Theod. Serm. 1. Therapeut. r1 Cor. ii. 7. Aquin. 12. qu. 28. Art. 3. et 22. qu. Ethic. lib. 2. c. 1. et 1. 10. c. 9. « Γῆ μὲν κακὴ,

175. art. c. 4.

y Eu

Τυχοῦσα καιροῦ θεόθεν, εὖ στάχυν φέρει. Εurip. Hecub. 590.—Exercetque frequens tellurem, atque imperat arvis, Virgil. * Maxim. Tyrius, dissert. 12. sel. de præp. Evang. 1. 5. c. 9. Theodoret. Serm. 4. Cic. Tuscul. q. 1. 4. in finem et 1. de fato. Plut. 1. an vitiositas ad felicitatem sufficiat. * Παραπλησία τη

púσei didaσkaría. Democrit. apud Theodoret. Serm. 4. Therapeut.-Alaσrp'erbai τὸ λογικὸν ζῶον διὰ τὰς τῶν ἔξωθεν πραγματείων πιθανότητας. Diog. Laert. l. 7. *Η χρημάτων γὰρ δοῦλός ἐστιν, ἢ τύχης, Η πλῆθος αὐτὸν πόλεως, ἢ νόμων γραφαὶ Exprovoι Xprodaι μn kaтà yváμnν Tрómois. Eurip. Hecub. 855. Vid. Sen. de Ira. 1. 2. c. 12.

(as Plutarch notes) do lose their nature, and grow so soft, that they may be cut with a thread; so the roughest and most unbended natures, by early and prudent discipline, be much rectified; though still indeed, like simples of a strong and predominant relish in a compounded medicine, they will give a tincture to all other super-induced qualities.

may

Socrates himself, notwithstanding the great mastery which he professed to have gotten over the vicious propensions of his nature, could not yet always be so faithful to his moral principles, as not to relapse, and betray the looseness of his disposition; and that not only in anger and passions, charged upon him by his best friends, Aristoxenus and Porphyrius, but also in unnatural obscenities, the usual sin (as the apostle notes, and as Plutarch confesseth) even of their greatest philosophers. Whence that of the poet",

"Inter Socraticos notissima fossa cinædos."

Now for occasion, that alters the natural inclination of the will and affections: for so we see, that the bias of men's desires are often turned, by reason of some sudden or emergent occurrences, contrary to the standing temper and complexion of the body. Thus we read sometimes of men in war, who,—notwithstanding of themselves timorous and sluggish, yet being deprived of all possibility of flight, and hope of mercy,-if they should be conquered, have strangely gained by their despairs, and gotten great and prosperous victories by a forced and unnatural fortitude :-an example whereof we have in the Philistines, who, being sorely terrified with the ark of the Lord in the camp of Israel', resolved thereupon to quit themselves like men, and fight. Nor could the band of the Scythian slaves, who endeavoured to shake off their servile condition, be removed from that insolence, till the sight of rods, and staves, and other instruments of fear, had driven them back into their nature again.

a Cyril. Alex. cont. Julian. 1. 6. Theodoret. Serm. 12. de virtute activa. Rom. i. 25, 26. • Plutarch. περὶ παιδιἀγωγ. d Juvenal. Lego partem sententiæ Atticæ, Socratem corruptorem adolescentium pronunciatum. Tertul. Apolog. c. 4. e Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem. f 1 Sam. iv. 6, 7, 8.

8 Justin.

CHAP. III.

Of the Memory, and some few causes of the weakness thereof.

Now for these inward senses, which are commonly accounted three, (though extending themselves unto sundry operations of different qualities,) I take the two latter, to wit, memory, and fancy or imagination, to have a more excellent degree of perfection in man, as being indeed the principal store-houses and treasuries of the operations of the soul. Where, by memory,' I understand not the faculty. as it is common to beasts with men, and importeth nothing but the simple retention, and conservation of some species, formerly treasured up by the conveyance of the outward sense: but as it is consors et co-operatrix rationis,' as Hugo speaks, a joint-worker in the operations of reason*; which the Latins call reminiscentia,' or recordatio,' including some acts of the understanding: which is a reviewing, or (as we speak) a calling to mind' of former objects, by discourse, or rational searching for them; which is made, by Aristotle, to be the remote ground of all arts: "For" (saith he) "memory is the ground of experience, and experience the mother of art." The dignity hereof in man is seen, both by perfecting the understanding in matter of learning and discourse, wherein some men have attained unto almost a miraculous felicity :-[as Seneca the Elder confesseth of himself, who could immediately recite two thousand words, in the same order as they had been spoken before to him; and Cyrus, of whom Xenophon testifieth, that he could salute all the soldiers in his army by their names; and Mithridates", who, being king over twenty-two countries, did speak so many languages without an interpreter; and Politian, in his epistles, telleth of Fabius Ursinus, a child but of eleven years of age, in whom there was so rare a mixture of inven

tion and memory, that he could, unto five or six several persons, at the same time, dictate the matter and words of so many several epistles, some serious, some jocular, all of different arguments, returning after every short period from the last to the first, and so in order ; and, in the conclusion, every epistle should be so close, proper, and coherent within. itself, as if it alone had been intended] as also by affording special assistance for the direction and discreet managing of our actions, conforming them either unto precepts and rules in morality, or unto principles of wisdom and public prudence, gathered from historical observations: while the mind, by the help of memory, being, as it were, conversant with ages past, and furnished with examples for any service and employment, doth, by mature application, weighing particulars, comparing times, circumstances, and passages of affairs together, enable itself, with the more hope and resolution, to pass successfully through any enterprise or difficulty: for, ' qui credit sperat,' he that believeth, and is acquainted with the happy issue of other men's resolutions, will, with the less anxiety or discouragement, go on in his own.

The principal corruptions which I conceive of the memory, are, first, too much slightness and shallowness of observation; when, out of an impatiency of staying long, or making any profound enquiry into one object, and out of a gluttonous curiosity to feed on many, the greediness of the appetite weakeneth the digestion; (for so some have called the memory, the belly of the soul,') and an eagerness to take in, makes uncareful to retain. And this is a reason why many men wander over all arts and sciences, without gaining real improvement or solidity in any: they make not any solemn journey to a particular coast and head of learning, but view all, as it were, in transitu;' having no sooner begun to settle on one, but they are in haste to visit another. But such men as these (except endowed with an incredible and more than usual felicity of despatch) are no more able to find the use, or search the bottom of any learning, than he who rides post, is to make a description and map of his journeys; who, though by much employment, he may toil and sweat more in travelling from place to place, yet he is far less able to discover the nature of the countries, temperature of the air, character of the people, commodities of the