ntral
force, and that Continuity is the law of nature, is clearly laid down, and
its truth demonstrated, by Behmen, as well as the distinction between
spirit and matter, and that the moral and material world is pervaded by a
sublime unity. And though all this was not admitted in Behmen's days,
because science was not then sufficiently advanced to understand the deep
sense of our author, many of his passages, then unintelligible, or
apparently absurd, read by the light of the present age, are found to
contain the positive enunciation of principles at whose discovery and
establishment science has only just arrived by wearisome and painful
investigations. Every new scientific discovery goes to prove his profound
and intuitive insight into the most secret workings of nature; and if
scientific men, instead of sharing the prejudice arising from ignorance of
Behmen's system, would place themselves on the vantage ground it affords,
they would at once find themselves on an eminence whence they could behold
all the arcana of nature. Behmen's system, in fact, shows us the _inside_
of things, while modern physical science is content with looking at the
_outside_. Behmen traces back every outward manifestation or development to
its one central root,--to that one central energy which, as yet, is only
suspected; every link in the chain of his demonstration is perfect, and
there is not one link wanting. He carries us from the out-births of the
circumference, along the radius to the center, {321} or point, and beyond
that even to the zero, demonstrating the constitution of the zero, or
nothing, with mathematical precision. C. W. H."

And so Behmen is no subject for the Budget! I waited until I should chance
to light on one of his volumes, knowing that any volume would do, and
almost any page. My first hap was on the second volume of the edition of
1664 (4to, published by M. Richardson) and opening near the beginning, a
turn or two brought me to page 13, where I saw about _sulphur_ and
_mercurius_ as follows:

"Thus SUL is the soul, in an herb it is the oil, and in man also, according
to the spirit of _this_ world in the third principle, which is continually
generated out of the anguish of the will in the mind, and the
Brimstone-worm is the Spirit, which hath the fire and _burneth_: PHUR is
the sour wheel in itself which causeth that.

"_Mercurius_ comprehendeth all the four forms, even as the life springeth
up, and yet hath not it