passages, are able to reach it, as is
easily perceivable by the ardent desire and vehement longing harboured in
the breast of everyone to be still creating more debts and new creditors.

Yet doth it not lie in the power of everyone to be a debtor. To acquire
creditors is not at the disposure of each man's arbitrament. You
nevertheless would deprive me of this sublime felicity. You ask me when I
will be out of debt. Well, to go yet further on, and possibly worse in
your conceit, may Saint Bablin, the good saint, snatch me, if I have not
all my lifetime held debt to be as a union or conjunction of the heavens
with the earth, and the whole cement whereby the race of mankind is kept
together; yea, of such virtue and efficacy that, I say, the whole progeny
of Adam would very suddenly perish without it. Therefore, perhaps, I do
not think amiss, when I repute it to be the great soul of the universe,
which, according to the opinion of the Academics, vivifieth all manner of
things. In confirmation whereof, that you may the better believe it to be
so, represent unto yourself, without any prejudicacy of spirit, in a clear
and serene fancy, the idea and form of some other world than this; take, if
you please, and lay hold on the thirtieth of those which the philosopher
Metrodorus did enumerate, wherein it is to be supposed there is no debtor
or creditor, that is to say, a world without debts.

There amongst the planets will be no regular course, all will be in
disorder. Jupiter, reckoning himself to be nothing indebted unto Saturn,
will go near to detrude him out of his sphere, and with the Homeric chain
will be like to hang up the intelligences, gods, heavens, demons, heroes,
devils, earth and sea, together with the other elements. Saturn, no doubt,
combining with Mars will reduce that so disturbed world into a chaos of
confusion.

Mercury then would be no more subjected to the other planets; he would
scorn to be any longer their Camillus, as he was of old termed in the
Etrurian tongue. For it is to be imagined that he is no way a debtor to
them.

Venus will be no more venerable, because she shall have lent nothing. The
moon will remain bloody and obscure. For to what end should the sun impart
unto her any of his light? He owed her nothing. Nor yet will the sun
shine upon the earth, nor the stars send down any good influence, because
the terrestrial globe hath desisted from sending up their wonted
nourishment by va