TO THE

REVEREND AND LEARNED ANTHONY TUCKNEY, D.D.,

MASTER OF EMANUEL COLLEGE IN CAMBRIDGE,

AND TO THE

FELLOWS OF THAT RELIGIOUS AND HAPPY FOUNDATION.

HONOURED SIRS,-The many testimonies of your real affection towards this pious and learned author, especially while he lay under the discipline of so sad a providence, deserve all thankful acknowledgment and grateful commemoration; which I doubt not but himself would have made in most ample manner, had it pleased God to have granted him longer life and farther opportunity. But since Divine Providence hath otherwise disposed, I thought it no solecism in friendship to undertake the executorship of his desires, and so far to own his debt of gratitude, as to endeavour some public acknowledgment of it, though the greatness of your benefits admits not of just recompense and satisfaction. Having therefore the disposal of his papers committed to me by his nearest and dearest friends, and finding them to be of such worth and excellency as ought not to be smothered in obscurity, I interpreted this a fit opportunity to let both yourselves and others understand

how deep an impression your kindness to him hath left in the apprehensions and memories of those his friends to whom God and nature had given the advantage of being more peculiarly interested in his welfare. Upon which account I do here present you with this elegant issue of his noble and gallant abilities, which, besides the relation it hath to you by the father's side, would gladly entitle itself unto your acceptance and protection, as having been conceived in your college, and delivered in your chapel; and, therefore, hope that you, who with much delight were sometimes ear-witnesses of it, will now become its susceptors.

And thus having lodged it in its mother's arms, I leave it to her embraces. On whose behalf I shall only offer up this serious and hearty wish, that as, by the blessing of Heaven upon her fruitful womb, she hath been made a mother of many profitable instruments both in church and commonwealth, so God would be pleased to make good her name unto her, and delight still to use her as the handmaid-instrument of His glory; that He would lay her top-stone in His blessing, as her foundation was laid in His fear.

So prays the meanest of her sons, and your humble servant,

Aug. 10, 1652.

WILLIAM DILLINGHAM.

TO THE READER.

COURTEOUS READER,-Not many months have passed, since I sent abroad into the world a little treatise, which knew itself by the name of Spiritual Optics, with intention only to make some discovery of the minds and affections of men towards pieces of that nature; which having met somewhere, it seems, with kind entertainment and acceptance beyond its expectation, hath now persuaded all its fellows into a resolution to take wing, and adventure themselves upon thy candour and ingenuity. I intend not here to hang out ivy, nor with my canvas. to preface this cloth of gold. The work is weaved of sunbeams; to hang anything before it were but to obscure it: yet something here must needs be said for mine own discharge, and thy better satisfaction. Know, therefore, gentle reader, that these pieces were first intended as scholastic exercises in a college chapel, and therefore more properly suited to such an auditory ; yet I make no question but some of them, the White Stone especially, may be read with much profit by those who are of meaner capacities and less refined intellectuals. The

f

Discourse of the Light of Nature, which, though here it bear the torch before the rest, is younger brother to them all, was written above six years ago. The design of it was, on the one hand, to vindicate the use of reason, in matters of religion, from the aspersions and prejudices of some weaker ones in those times, who, having entertained erroneous opinions, which they were no way able to defend, were taught by their more cunning seducers to wink hard, and except against all offensive weapons; so, on the other hand, to chastise the sauciness of Socinus and his followers, who dare set Hagar above her mistress, and make faith wait at the elbow of corrupt and distorted reason; to take off the head of that uncircumcised Philistine1 with his own sword, but better sharpened, and then to lay it up behind the ephod in the sanctuary. An enterprise, I confess, of no small import; which yet, he hoped, with God's assistance, to have effected, by giving unto reason the things that are reason's, and unto faith the things that are faith's. And had the world been favoured with his longer life, the height of his parts, and the earnest he gave, had bespoken very ample expectations in those who knew and heard him. But it pleased God, having first melted him with His love, and then chastised him, though somewhat sharply, to take him to Himself; from the contemplation of the light

1 An unacknowledged reference to a passage in the Discourse,' (p. 23.) It is remarkable that Dr. Whichcote, in his second letter to Dr. Tuckney, written in 1651 or 1652, uses the allusion also. I deserve as little to be called a Socinian, as David for extorting Goliath's sword out of his hand, and cutting the master's head off with it, did deserve to be esteemed a Philistine.'-Eight Letters of Dr. A. Tuckney and Dr. B. Whichcote, appended to Whichcote's Moral and Religious Maxims.

of Nature, to the enjoyment of one supernatural, that pŵs ampóσITоv-light inaccessible, which none can see and live, 1 Tim. vi. 16 and to translate him from snuffing a candle here to be made partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. So that all he finished towards that undertaking was this Discourse of the Light of Nature in general, not descending so low as to show how the moral law was founded in it, or that Gospel revelation doth not extinguish it. Wherein, if standing in the midst between two adversaries of extreme persuasions, while he opposes the one, he seems to favour the other more than is meet; when thou shalt observe him, at another time, to declare as much against the other, thou wilt then be of another mind. Judge candidly, and take his opinion as thou wouldst do his picture, sitting; not from a luxuriant expression, wherein he always allowed for the shrinking, but from his declared judgment, when he speaks professedly of such a subject. For instance, if any expression seem to lift reason up too high, you may, if you please, otherwise hear it confess and bewail its own weakness, (chap. xii.); you may see it bow the head and worship, and then lay itself down quietly at the feet of faith, (chap. xviii.) So that if thou read but the whole discourse, thou wilt easily perceive, as himself would often affirm, that he abhorred the very thought of advancing the power of Nature into the throne of free grace, or by the light of Nature in the least measure to eclipse that of faith.

I would not willingly by any prolepsis forestall thy reading, yet if thou shouldst desire a foretaste of the author's style, I would turn thee to the beginning of the seventeenth chapter; never was light so bespangled, never