until the only realities, to him, were unreal,-the incomprehensible, the only thing he could understand. Though, in some things, and at a very humble distance, not unlike Sir Thomas Brown, they differed in this, that as the pia mater of the one was not stretched with what he justly and expressively calls "wingy mysteries," the pia mater of the other was blown up by such vapours to the consistency of a rapidly ascending balloon. Yet, with all his follies, Glanvill was one that early and strenuously opposed the exclusive authority of Aristotle and the schoolmen, and the then revived artificial and merely logical philosophy; was an early member of the Royal Society; and, indirectly, an encourager of sound reasoning and rational learning. The truth we suspect to have been, that a faith in Aristotle was not one of the thirty-nine articles; and logical precision was not convenient to so excursive and "errant" a genius. More conclusive reasons were, indeed, assigned by an enemy, namely, that he could not construe the one, and did not understand the other: but, as "honest Antony Wood," who reports it, assures us the man was much given to slander, we treat the opinion as libellous, though Wood himself, who professes to have known Glanvill, makes no other mention of his learning than that he was "a great master of the English language, expressing himself therein with easy fluency, and in a manly, yet, withal, a smooth style."

Glanvill was certainly born" an age too late," or many ages too soon. He was, we believe, a quietist,—a mystic,-a disciple of the great Dr. Henry More, "the profound restorer and refiner of almost extinct Platonism,"-a pre-existant,one of the last educated men who wrote in favour of demonology and witchcraft. As we do not quite comprehend the utility of these abstruse speculations, we shall not presume to offer an opinion on them, lest we should come under the censure passed, in the preface to the last mentioned and most celebrated of his works, on such "narrow and confined spirits, who account all discourses needless that are not for their particular purposes, and judge all the world to be of the size and genius of those within the circle of their knowledge and acquaintance; so that, with a pert and pragmatick insolence, they censure all the braver designs and notices that lie beyond their ken, as nice and impertinent speculations: an ignorant and proud injustice ;-hence it comes to pass, that the greatest and worthiest things that are written, or said, do always meet with the most general neglect and scorn; since the lesser people, for whom they were not intended, are quick to shoot their bolt, and to condemn what they do not understand, and because they do not."

Although, in the very name and title-page of this work, it professes to be an Inquiry into the opinion of the eastern Sages concerning the pre-existence of Souls, it would have been very contrary to the habitude and disposition of its author to have troubled himself with any other opinion than his own, or that of his oracle, Dr. Henry More. The eastern doctrine is but a text which he expounds, and his argument is, briefly,-That the continual creation of a soul for each separate body, as it comes into the world, is inconsistent with the divine attributes; for all the works of God bear His image, and are perfect in their kind; and He being pure, what comes from Him, proportionable to its capacity, partakes of His perfection: and how would it agree with divine goodness to put pure and immaculate spirits into bodies that would defile them? or with divine wisdom thus to make and destroy? to give a capacity for nobleness and yet an incapacity of acting nobly, from the gross habitude of that sensual body to which the spirit is bound? or with divine justice to subject a spirit, that came, perhaps, immediately before, righteous, pure, and immaculate, from the hands of its creator, to eternal torments? And yet we are taught, that as soon as born, and even in the womb, we are obnoxious to eternal wrath.'” Constant creation being then abandoned, he considers the possibility of traduction, which he holds to be impossible; for if the parent beget the soul out of nothing, it will be pure and clean as if God himself were its creator; for the parents can only transmit their natural, and not their moral, pravities, and if the soul be but a particle or decerption of its parent, then is the last guilty of all the sins that ever were committed since Adam; therefore, it was the opinion of "the Indian Brachmans, the Persian Magi, the Egyptian Gymnosophists, the Jewish Rabbins, some of the Grecian philosophers, and Christian fathers, (this is the Lux Orientalis,) that the souls of men were created all at first; and, at several times and occasions, upon forfeiture of their better life and condition, dropt down into their terrestrial bodies;" which is the more rational opinion; is not contrary to Scripture; and was commonly received in the times of Jesus. These are profound speculations, with which we dare not presume to interfere; but we are curious to know how it happens that souls forfeit their better life and condition just in numbers corresponding with the creation of bodies, and by what law of forfeiture the souls are made to correspond and keep pace with Mr. Malthus's law of population. Then follows a consideration of the objections to pre-existence, which, in some points, is really well argued. Thus he says, if it be

Urged, that had we lived and acted in a former state, we should,

doubtless, have retained some remembrance of that condition; but we having no memory of any thing backwards before our appearance upon this present stage, it will be thought to be a considerable presumption, that pre-existence is but a fancy.

"But I would desire such kind of reasoners to tell me, how much they remember of their state and condition in the womb, or of the actions of their first infancy. And I could wish they would consider, that not one passage in an hundred is remembered of their grown and riper age: nor doth there scarce a night pass but we dream of many things which our waking memories can give us no account of; yea, old age, and some kinds of diseases, blot out all the images of things past, and, even in this state, cause a total oblivion. Now, if the reasons why we should lose the remembrance of our former life be greater than are the causes of forgetfulness in the instances we have produced, I think it will be clear, that this argument hath but little force against the opinion we are inquiring into. Therefore, if we do but reflect upon that long state of silence and inactivity that we emerged from, when we came into these bodies, and the vast change we underwent by our sinking into this new and unwonted habitation, it will appear to the considerate, that there is greater reason why we should have forgotten our former life than any thing in this; and if a disease, or old age, can rase out the memory of past actions, even while we are in one and the same condition of life, certainly so long and deep a swoon as is absolute insensibility and inertness may, much more reasonably, be thought to blot out the memory of another life, whose passages, probably, were nothing like the transactions of this; and this, also, might be given as another reason of our forgetting our former state, since, usually, things are brought to our remembrance by some like occurrences.'

After thus disposing of other arguments that, he conceives, might, à priori, be urged against his theory, he proceeds to adduce many in its favour, in which, however, he is not equally successful. There is nothing extraordinary in this. In all such subtle speculations as are necessarily bottomed rather on the imagination than the reason, however guarded, it is almost of course. These arguments are certainly not worth notice, and may be easily inferred from the hypothesis he builds up at the conclusion, and which is imaginative, and beautiful enough to deserve abridgement, and sufficiently conclusive for the gratification of all intellectual idlers. It is briefly, that as nature proceeds, in all changes, by progression and gentle gradations, it is not reasonable to believe that, intimately as the soul is, in this state, mingled with the body, it would, on changing its state, be altogether stript of corporiety; neither therefore, by parity of reasoning, that a pure spirit could have been at once so intimately mingled with the body, on first entering this state. He, therefore, concludes that the soul hath always a

tenuous and subtle body, though we know not its nature. That it is in the nature of the soul itself to delight only in the contemplation of immaterial objects, as virtue, knowledge, and divine law; but it is equally the nature of the matter with which it is united to delight only in objects of sense, "Now, it cannot, with equal vigour, exercise itself both ways together; and, consequently, the more it is taken up in the higher operations, the more prompt and vigorous it will be in these exercises, and less so about those that concern the body, and è converso." It is, therefore, natural to believe that, agreeable to the divine wisdom and goodness, in making all creatures as perfect as their nature admitted, and placing them in situations most agreeable to their nature," the souls of men were, at first, in the highest invigoration of the spiritual and intellectual faculties," while "the lower powers, or life, of the body was languid and remiss;" so that "the most tenuous, pure, and simple matter being the fittest instrument for the most vigorous and spiritual faculties," it was, at first, united with such, and passed whole ages, probably, in the contemplation of virtue, and in the realms of light and blessedness. But, though thus created happy, it was in its nature mutable; and the purer spirit, after long and vigorous exercise, it may be, begin to remit its sublimest operations; in which time of remission, "the lower may advance, and more lively display themselves, than they could before. And now they begin to convert towards the body, and warmly to resent the delights and pleasures thereof." Then the sense of what is grateful and pleasant, gets head over the apprehension of what is just and good; and the lower faculties, having greater exercise, become vigorously awaked, while the higher are proportionably shrunk up, and the æthereal body contracts grossness and impurity; and thus such a change is wrought in the soul, as may spoil its congruity or celestial body;" and thus, we may be presumed to have fallen from our first state of felicity, that state being only agreeable to the condition of our creation; and thus we proceed in our descent, progressively, through, what he calls the Aerial and then to the Terrestrial state. After this, the progress, either by further debasement or returning, is dependant on the refreshed and returning vigour of the nobler faculties. Where the spirit is sufficiently invigorated and refreshed, it succeeds, by degrees, in mortifying and subduing the body, and becomes fitted for the Aërial state, which is one step on its return; and so è converso in its further descent.

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We hope that, in this brief extract, the question is fairly stated; but there is, throughout the work, such "a profligate waste of words,"-what Wood, we suppose, calls "easy flu

ency," that it is sometimes difficult to discover the meaning of them.

The accompanying Discourse of Truth, is, as stated in the title-page, written by Dr. Rush, the friend of Jeremy Taylor, and his successor in the bishoprick of Dromore. It is another subtle speculation, but less so, and, we think, much more ably argued than the former. The purpose of it is, to show that things are what they are, and that there are mutual respects and relations, eternal, immutable, and, in order of nature, antecedent to any understanding, either created or uncreated, as that, "Homo est animal rationale; triangulum est quod habet tres angulos;" which are not arbitrary dependancies upon the will, decrees, or understanding of God, but necessary and eternal truths; and that the divine understanding cannot be the fountain of the truth of things, nor the foundation of the references of one to another. That denying this would lead to the most gross and horrid absurdities; for, if the mutual respects and relations of things be not eternal and indispensable, then there could be no such thing as divine wisdom and knowledge, which is an apprehension, not by deduction, but intuition, of the natures and mutual respects and relations of things; for there could be no such natures or mutual respects, if such things be only by his arbitrarious imagination; for then he can "unimagine that imagination ;" and all that before stood in relation, shall now stand in opposition;—neither could there be any such thing as right and wrong, or any assurance of future happiness to man ;-and "lying, swearing, envy, malice, nay, hatred of God and goodness itself, may be the most acceptable service to God, and the readiest way to happiness;" and as to the large and ample promises of Jesus, God could will that they were not promised; or if there be no intrinsical relation betwixt veracity and perfection," but a mere arbitrarious respect dependant on His will, then, as an evidence of His sovereign will, He might damn all mankind; or, as the greatest evidence, damn all that have put faith in the words of Christ or the apostles, and take those only into heaven and happiness, who have been the greatest sinners and worst of men.'

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The annotations, which form so large a portion of the_volume, were written by Dr. Henry More himself, although no otherwise named than as one not unskilled in these kind of speculations.