sburg, living in close and intimate contact with his Collegiant
friends. It was here during these happiest years of his life, in this
quiet retreat and surrounded with spiritually-minded men with whom he had
much in common, that he wrote his _Short Treatise on God, Man and His
Well-Being_, as well as his _Treatise on the Improvement of the
Understanding_, which opens with his account of the birth of his own
spiritual passion. These intellectual and high-minded Collegiants had
their influence upon the philosopher, and he in turn had a deep influence
upon them. Peter Balling translated into Dutch in 1664 Spinoza's version
of Descartes' _Principia_, and Balling turned to his friend Spinoza for
consolation in his great loss occasioned by the death of his child that
same year,[31] while the philosopher at his death left all his
unpublished manuscripts to another life-long intimate Collegiant friend
of his, John Rieuwertsz.

_The Light on the Candlestick_, to which we shall now turn for the ripest
ideas of the little sect, was written while Spinoza was living among the
Collegiants in Rynsburg. It was very quickly discovered by the Quakers,
who immediately recognized it as "bone of their bone," and circulated it
as a Quaker Tract. It was translated into English in 1663 by B. F.,[32]
who published it with this curious title-page: "The Light upon the
Candlestick. Serving for Observation of the Principal things in the Book
called, _The Mystery of the Kingdom of God, &c. Against several
Professors, Treated of, and written by Will Ames_. Printed in Low Dutch
for the Author, 1662, and translated into English by B. F."

The Collegiant author, quite in the spirit and style of Spinoza, urges
the importance of discovering a central love for "things which are
durable and incorruptible," "knowing thereby better things than those to
which the {129} multitude are link't so fast with love." We have
outgrown the "toyes with which we played as children," there is now "no
desire or moving thereunto, because we have found better things for our
minds"; so, too, "all those things in which men, even to old age, so much
delight" would seem like "toyes" if they once discovered the true Light
"which abides forever unchangeable," and if through it they got a sight
of "those things which are alone worthy to be known." This "true and
lasting change," from "toyes" to "the things which are durable and
eternal," can come only through an inward con