Thomas Vaughan

Be pleased to consider, that obstinacy enslaves the Soul, and clips the wings which God gave Her for flight, and discovery.

I would not have thee look on my endeavors as a design of captivity. I intend not the conquest but the exercise of thy reason, not that, thou should swear allegiance to my dictates but compare my conclusions with Nature and examine their …

They are things beyond reasoning sensible, practical truths, not mere vagaries and rambles of the brain.

The earth which is the visible, natural basis of it represents the gross, carnal parts. The element of water answers to the blood, for in it the pulse of the Great World beats: this most men call the flux and reflux, but they know not the …

The peripatetics look on God as they do on carpenters, who build with stone and timber, without any infusion of life. But the world which is God's building is full of spirit, quick and living.

Aristotle thrives by scuffles and the world cries him up, when truth cries him down.

Hence it is that his followers, notwithstanding the assistance of so many ages, can fetch nothing out of him but notions: And these indeed they use, as he sayeth Lycophron did his epithets, (Non ut Condimentis, sed ut Cibis) not as spices …

Besides, their Aristotle is a poet in text, his principles are but fancies, and they stand more on our concessions, then his bottom.

Their philosophy is like a church, that is all discipline, and no doctrine

Notwithstanding I acknowledge the schoolmen ingenious: they conceive their principles irregular, and prescribe rules for method, though they want matter.

They dwell altogether in the face, their endeavors are meer titillations, & their acquaintance with Nature is not at the heart.

The peripateticks when they define the soul or some inferior principle describe it only by outward circumstances, which every child can do, but they state nothing essentially.

Friar Bacon walked in Oxford between two steeples, but he that would have discovered his thoughts, by his steps, had been more his fool than his fellow.

Now if I should question any sect (for there is no Communion in Christendom) whither these later intimations drive? They can but return me to the first rudiments, or produce some empty pretense of Spirit.

It is an age of intellectual slaveries; If they meet any thing extraordinary, they prune it with distinctions, or daub it with false glosses, til it looks like the traditions of Aristotle. His followers are so confident of his principles …

She hath several ways to break up house, but her best is without a disease. This is her mystical walk, an exit only to return.

Ignorance gave this release the name of death, but properly it is the soul's birth and a charter that makes for her liberty.

Look on this life as the Progress of an Essence Royale. The Soul but quits her court to see the country. Heaven hath in it a scene of earth; and had she had bin contented with ideas, she had not travelled beyond the map.

Now to return to Jacob, it is written of him, that he was asleep, but this is a Mysticall Speech, for it signifies Death, namely that Death which the Cabalist calls Mors Osculi, or the Death of the Kiss, of which I must not speake one …