Namsi tantopere 'st animi mutata potestas,
Omnis ut actarum excideret retinentia rerum,
Non ut opinor ea ab læto jam longiter errat.
[Lib. 3.]
This Argument, 'tis true, is pro falso contra falsum, but yet holds ad hominem so far, that it is not likely (as the Author saith) but Pythagoras would observe an absurdity in the consequence of his Metempsychosis; and therefore did not mean it literally, but desired only to express the Soul to be immortal, which he, and the other Philosophers that were of that opinion, who had not heard of Creation, could not conceive, unless it must be taken for truth, that the soul were before the body; so saith Lactantius of them. Non putaverunt aliter fieri posse ut supersint animæ post corpora, nisi videntur fuisse ante corpora. De fals. Sap. c. 18.
Sect. 41. Pag. 59.
[I do not envy the temper of Crows or Daws.]] As Theophrastus did, who dying, accused Nature for giving them, to whom it could not be of any concernment, so large a life; and to man, whom it much concern'd, so short a one. Cic. Tusc. quæst. l. 3. How long Daws live, see in Not. ad Sect. 41.
Sect. 42. Pag. 61.
[Not upon Cicero's ground, because I have liv'd them well.]] I suppose he alludes to an expression in an Epistle of Cicero, written in his Exile, to his wife and children, where he hath these words to his wife: Quod reliquum est, te sustenta mea Terentia ut potes, honestissime viximus, floruimus. Non vitium nostrum sed virtus nos afflixit, peccatum est nullum nisi quod non unà animum cum ornamentis amisimus, l. 24, Ep. 4.
[And stand in need of Eson's bath before threescore.]] Eson was the Father of Jason, and, at his request, was by Medea, by the means of this Bath, restored to his youth. Ingredients that went into it, and the description of Medea's performance, Ovid gives you, l. 7. Metam.