medium to hand and transport the visible rays of the
object unto the sense; but when there shall be a general
defect of either medium to convey, or light to prepare
and dispose that medium, and yet a perfect vision, we
must suspend the rules of our philosophy, and make all
good by a more absolute piece of opticks.
<i>Sect.</i> 50.--I cannot tell how to say that fire is the
essence of hell; I know not what to make of purgatory,
or conceive a flame that can either prey upon, or purify
the substance of a soul. Those flames of sulphur, men-
tioned in the scriptures, I take not to be understood of
this present hell, but of that to come, where fire shall
make up the complement of our tortures, and have a
body or subject whereon to manifest its tyranny. Some
who have had the honour to be textuary in divinity are
of opinion it shall be the same specifical fire with ours.
This is hard to conceive, yet can I make good how even
that may prey upon our bodies, and yet not consume
us: for in this material world, there are bodies that
persist invincible in the powerfulest flames; and though,
by the action of fire, they fall into ignition and liquation,
yet will they never suffer a destruction. I would gladly
know how Moses, with an actual fire, calcined or burnt
the golden calf into powder: for that mystical metal of
gold, whose solary and celestial nature I admire, ex-
posed unto the violence of fire, grows only hot, and
liquefies, but consumeth not; so when the consumable
and volatile pieces of our bodies shall be refined into a
more impregnable and fixed temper, like gold, though
they suffer from the action of flames, they shall never
perish, but lie immortal in the arms of fire. And
surely, if this flame must suffer only by the action of
this element, there will many bodies escape; and not
only heaven, but earth will not be at an end, but
rather a beginning. For at present it is not earth, but
a composition of fire, water, earth, and air; but at that
time, spoiled of these ingredients, it shall appear in a
substance more like itself, its ashes. Philosophers that
opinioned the world's destruction by fire, did never
dream of annihilation, which is beyond the power of
sublunary causes; for the last and proper action of that
element is but vitrification, or a reduction of a body into
glass; and therefore some of our chymicks facetiously
affirm, that, at the last fire, all shall be crystalized and
reverberated into glass, which is the utmost action of
that element. Nor need we fear this term, annihilation,
or wonder that God will destroy the works of his crea-
tion: for man subsisting, who is, and will then truly
appear, a microcosm, the world cannot be said to be
destroyed. For the eyes of God, and perhaps also of
our glorified selves, shall as really behold and contem-
plate the world, in its epitome or contracted essence, as
now it doth at large and in its dilated substance. In
the seed of a plant, to the eyes of God, and to the under-
standing of man, there exists, though in an invisible
way, the perfect leaves, flowers, and fruit thereof; for
things that are in <i>posse</i> to the sense, are actually existent