he Stars and Spheres, and saw, that they had
all regular Motions, and went round in a due Order; and that they were
pellucid and shining, and remote from any approach to Change or
Dissolution: which made him have a strong suspicion, that they had
_Essences_ distinct from their Bodies, which were acquainted with this
_necessarily self-existent Essence._ And that these understanding
Essences,were like his understanding Essence. And why might it not be
suppos'd that they might have incorporeal Essences, when he himself had,
notwithstanding his Weakness and extream want of sensible Things? That
he consisted of a corruptible Body, and yet nevertheless, all these
Defects did not hinder him from having an incorporeal incorruptible
Essence: From whence he concluded, that the Celestial Bodies were much
more likely to have it; and he perceived that they had a Knowledge of
the _necessarily self-existent Being_, and did actually behold it at all
times; because they were not at all incumbred with those Hinderances,
arising from the Intervention of sensible Things, which debarr'd him
from enjoying the _Vision_, without Interruption.

Sec. 69. Then he began to consider with himself, what should be the reason
why he alone, above all the rest of living Creatures, should be endu'd
with such an Essence, as made him like the Heavenly Bodies. Now he
understood before the Nature of the Elements, and how one of them us'd
to be chang'd into another, and that there was nothing upon the Face of
the Earth, which always remain'd in the same Form, but that Generation
and Corruption follow'd one another perpetually in a mutual Succession;
and that the greatest part of these Bodies were mix'd and compounded of
contrary Things, and were for that reason the more dispos'd to
Dissolution: And that there could not be found among them all, any thing
pure and free from Mixture, but that such Bodies as came nearest to it,
and had least mixture, as Gold and Jacinth are of longest Duration, and
less subject to Dissolution; and that the Heavenly Bodies were most
simple and pure, and for that reason more free from Dissolution, and not
subject to a Succession of Forms. And here it appear'd to him, that the
real Essence of those Bodies, which are in this sublunary World,
consisted in some, of one simple Notion added to Corporeity, as the four
Elements; in others of more, as Animals and Plants. And that those,
whose Essence consisted of the fewest Forms, had fewest