More considerable there are in this mysticall account, which we must not insist on. And therefore why the radicall Letters in the Pentateuch should equall the number of the Souldiery of the Tribes; Why our Saviour in the Wildernesse fed five thousand persons with five Barley Loaves, and again, but four thousand with no lesse then seven of Wheat? Why Joseph designed five changes of Rayment unto Benjamin? and David took just five pibbles[179] out of the Brook against the Pagan Champion? We leave it unto Arithmeticall Divinity, and Theologicall explanation.
Yet if any delight in new Problemes, or think it worth the enquiry, whether the Criticall Physician hath rightly hit the nominall notation of Quinque; Why the Ancients mixed five or three but not four parts of water unto their Wine: And Hippocrates observed a fifth proportion in the mixture of water with milk, as in Dysenteries and bloudy fluxes. Under what abstruse foundation Astrologers do figure the good or bad Fate from our Children, in good Fortune,[180] or the fifth house of their Celestial Schemes. Whether the Ægyptians described a Starre by a Figure of five points, with reference unto the five[181] Capitall aspects, whereby they transmit their Influences, or abstruser Considerations? Why the Cabalisticall Doctors, who conceive the whole Sephiroth, or divine Emanations to have guided the ten-stringed Harp of David, whereby he pacified the evil spirit of Saul, in strict numeration doe begin with the Perihypate Meson, or ff fa ut, and so place the Tiphereth answering C sol fa ut, upon the fifth string: Or whether this number be oftner applied unto bad things and ends, then good in holy Scripture, and why? He may meet with abstrusities of no ready resolution.
If any shall question the rationality of that Magick, in the cure of the blinde man by Serapis, commanded to place five fingers on his Altar, and then his hand on his Eyes? Why since the whole Comœdy is primarily and naturally comprised in four[182] parts; and Antiquity permitted not so many persons to speak in one Scene, yet would not comprehend the same in more or lesse then five acts? Why amongst Sea-starres nature chiefly delighteth in five points? And since there are found some of no fewer then twelve, and some of seven and nine, there are few or none discovered of six or eight? If any shall enquire why the Flowers of Rue properly consist of four Leaves, The first and third Flower have five? Why since many Flowers have one leaf or none,[183] as Scaliger will have it, diverse three, and the greatest number consist of five divided from their bottomes; there are yet so few of two: or why nature generally beginning or setting out with two opposite leaves at the Root, doth so seldome conclude with that order and number at the Flower? he shall not passe his hours in vulgar speculations.
If any shall further quæry why magneticall Philosophy excludeth decussations, and needles transversly placed do naturally distract their verticities. Why Geomancers do imitate the Quintuple Figure, in their Mother Characters of Acquisition and Amission, etc. somewhat answering the Figures in the Lady or speckled Beetle? With what Equity, Chiromantical conjecturers decry these decussations in the Lines and Mounts of the hand? What that decussated Figure intendeth in the medall of Alexander the Great? Why the Goddesses sit commonly crosse-legged in ancient draughts, Since Juno is described in the same as a venefical posture to hinder the birth of Hercules? If any shall doubt why at the Amphidromicall Feasts, on the fifth day after the Childe was born, presents were sent from friends, of Polipusses, and Cuttle fishes? Why five must be only left in that Symbolicall mutiny among the men of Cadmus? Why Proteus in Homer the Symbole of the first matter, before he setled himself in the midst of his Sea-Monsters, doth place them out by fives? Why the fifth years Oxe was acceptable Sacrifice unto Jupiter? Or why the Noble Antoninus in some sence doth call the soul it self a Rhombus? He shall not fall on trite or triviall disquisitions. And these we invent and propose unto acuter enquirers, nauseating crambe verities and questions over-queried. Flat and flexible truths are beat out by every hammer; But Vulcan and his whole forge sweat to work out Achilles his armour. A large field is yet left unto sharper discerners to enlarge upon this order, to search out the quaternio’s and figured draughts of this nature, and moderating the study of names, and meer nomenclature of plants, to erect generalities, disclose unobserved proprieties, not only in the vegetable shop, but the whole volume of nature; affording delightfull Truths, confirmable by sense and ocular Observation, which seems to me the surest path, to trace the Labyrinth of truth. For though discursive enquiry and rationall conjecture, may leave handsome gashes and flesh-wounds; yet without conjunction of this expect no mortal or dispatching blows unto errour.
But the Quincunx[184] of Heaven runs low, and ’tis time to close the five ports of knowledge; We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, which often continueth præcogitations; making Cables of Cobwebbes and Wildernesses of handsome Groves. Beside Hippocrates[185] hath spoke so little and the Oneirocriticall Masters,[186] have left such frigid Interpretations from plants, that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise it self. Nor will the sweetest delight of Gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dulnesse of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the Bed[187] of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a Rose.
Night, which Pagan Theology could make the daughter of Chaos, affords no advantage to the description of order: Although no lower then that Masse can we derive its Genealogy. All things began in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again; according to the ordainer of order and mystical Mathematicks of the City of heaven.
Though Somnus in Homer be sent to rowse up Agamemnon, I finde no such effects in the drowsy approaches of sleep. To keep our eyes open longer were but to act our Antipodes. The Huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsie at that howr which freed us from everlasting sleep? or have slumbring thoughts at that time, when sleep it self must end, and as some conjecture all shall awake again?
FINIS