Conjectura cabbalistica

contemptible, that it is but just with as many as are not mere fools, to look upon it as some melancholic conceit, or cunning fiction brought into the world, to awe the simpler sort, but behind the hangings to be freely laughed at, and derided by those that are more wise; And that it were an easy thing in a short time to raze the memory of it out of the minds of men, it having so little root in the human faculties. Which for my own part I think as hopeful, as that posterity will be born without eyes and ears, and lose the use of speech. For I think the knowledge of God, and a sense of Religion is as natural and essential to mankind, as any other property in them whatsoever: And that the generations of men shall as soon become utterly irrational, as plainly irreligious. Which, I think, my late Treatise against Atheism will make good to any one, that with care and judgment will peruse it.

Nor does it at all follow, because a truth

truth is delivered by way of Tradition, that it is unconcludable by Reason. For I do not know any one Theorem in all Natural Philosophy, that has more sufficient reasons for it, than the motion of the Earth, which notwithstanding is part of the Philosophic Cabbala or Tradition of Moses, as I shall plainly show in its due place. So likewise for the pre-existence of the Soul, which seems to have been part of the same Tradition, it is abundantly consentaneous to Reason: And as we can give a genuine account of all those seeming irregularities of motion in the Planets, supposing, they and the Earth move round about the Sun: so we may open the causes of all those astonishing Paradoxes of Providence, from this other Hypothesis, and show that there is nothing here unsuitable to the precious Attributes of God, if we could place the eye of our understanding in that Center of all free motions, that steady eternal Good, and were not our selves carried aloof off from him, amongst other wandering Planets,