Quote#Wisdom
Bless'd souls, whose care it was this first to know
Quote byThomas Vaughan · 1621–1666
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: Anima Magica Abscondita (1650).
English (original)
Bless'd souls, whose care it was this first to know And thus the mansions of the light attain: How credible to hold that minds like these Transcend both human littleness and vice. If Thou, O Jehovah, my God, wilt enlighten me, darkness shall be made light. p.56
— Thomas Vaughan
More from Thomas Vaughan
Ignorance gave this release the name of death, but properly it is the soul's birth and a charter that makes for her liberty.
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 …
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 …
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.
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.
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.