Page:Saducismus Triumphatus.djvu/146

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The true Notion of a Spirit.

SECT. XXII.

That besides those THREE Dimensions which belong to all extended things, a FOURTH also is to be admitted, which belongs properly to SPIRITS.

ANd that I may not dissemble or conceal any thing, altho' all Material things, consider'd in themselves, have three Dimensions only; yet there must be admitted in Nature a Fourth, which fitly enough, I think, may be called Essential Spissitude; Which, tho' it most properly appertains to those Spirits which can contract their Extension into a less Ubi, yet by a less Analogie it may be referred also to Spirits penetrating as well the Matter as mutually one another, so that wherever there are more Essences than one, or more of the same Essence in the same Ubi than is adequate to the Amplitude thereof, there this Fourth Dimension is to be acknowledged, which we call Essential Spissitude.

Which assuredly involves no greater repugnancy than what may seem at first view, to him that considers the thing less attentively, to be in the other three Dimensions, namely, unless one would conceive that a piece of Wax stretched out, suppose to the length of an Ell, and afterwards rolled together into the form of a Globe, loses something of its former Extension, by this its conglobation, he must confess that a Spirit, neither by the contraction of it self into a less space has lost any thing of its Extension or Essence, but as in the above-said Wax, the diminution of its Longitude is compensated with the augmentation of its Latitude and Profundity; so in a Spirit contracting it self, that in like manner its Longitude, Latitude, and Profundity being lessened, are compensated by Essential Spissitude, which the Spirit acquires by this contraction of it self.

And in both cases we are to remember that the Site is only changed, but that the Essence and Extension are not at all impaired.

Verily these things by me are so perfectly every way perceived, so certain and tried, that I dare appeal to the Mind of any one which is free from the moral Prejudices of Imagi-nation,