be still the

fuade me I have any; I také my circle to be above three hundred and fixty, tho' the number of the ark do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind: Whilft It ftudied to find how I am a microcofm or little world, I find myself fomething more than the great world. There is furely * a piece of divinity in us, fomething that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the fun. Nature tells me, I am the image of God, as well as fcripture; he that underftands not thus much, hath not his introduction or firft leffon, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man. not injure the felicity of others, if I fay I am as happy as any, Ruat cælum, fiat voluntas tua, falveth all; fo that whatsoever happens, it is but what our daily prayers defire. In brief, I am content, and what fhould providence add more? Surely this is what we call happinefs, Mel oft before his infant eyes would and stray, toth forms as glitter in it messe's ray ith orcant beams, untorrowed of use.

Let me

matter where,

and this do I enjoy; with this I am happy in a dream, and as content to enjoy a happiness in a fancy as others in a more apparent truth and reality. There is furely a nearer apprehenfion of any thing that delights us in our dreams, than in our waking fenfes ; without this I were unhappy; for my awakened judgment difcontents me, ever whifpering unto me, that I am from my friend; but my friendly dreams in the night requite me, and make me think I am within his arms. I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do for my good reft; for there is a fatisfaction in them unto reafonable defires, and fuch as can be content with a fit of happiness; and furely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all afleep in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as mere dreams to those of the next, as the phantafmes of the night, to the conceits

of

of the day. There is an equal delufion in both, and the one doth but feem to be the emblem or picture of the other; we are somewhat more than ourselves in our fleep, and flumber of the body feems to be but the waking of the foul. It is the ligation of fenfe, but the liberty of reason, and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our fleep. At my nativity, my afcendant was the watery fign of Scorpius; I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me: I am no way facetious, nor difpofed for the mirth and gallantry of company; yet in one dream *I can compofe a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof; were my memory as faithful as my reafon is then fruitful, I would never ftudy but in my dreams, and this time alfo would

I chufe for my devotions; but * our groffer memories have then fo little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the ftory, and can only relate to our waking fouls a confused and broken tale of that that hath paffed. Ariftotle, who hath written a fingular tract of fleep, hath not, methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, tho' he feems to have corrected it; for those noctambuloes and nightwalkers tho' in their fleep, do yet enjoy the action of their fenfes : we must therefore fay, that there is fomething in us that is not in the jurifdiction of Morpheus; and that thofe abftracted and ecstatick fouls do walk about in their own bodies, as fpirits with the bodies they affume, wherein they seem to hear, fee, and feel, tho' indeed the organs are deftitute of fense, and their natures of thofe faculties that fhould inform them. Thus it is ob

ferved,

animal times

magnetism

i modern

ferved, that men fometimes upon the hour of their departure, do fpeak and reason above themfelves. For then the foul being near freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reafon like herself, and to difcourfe in a strain above mortality.

SECT. XII.

We term fleep a death; and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys thofe fpirits that are the house of life. 'Tis indeed a part of life that best expreffeth death, for every man truly lives fo long as he acts his nature, or fome way makes good the faculties of himfelf: Themistocles therefore that flew his foldiers in his fleep was a merciful excutioner; this is a kind of punishment the mildnefs of no laws hath invented; *I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not difcover it. It is that death by which

we