Thomas Vaughan Quotes

When I found out this truth, that man in his original was a branch planted in God and that there was a continual influx from the stock to the Sion, I was much troubled at his corruptions, and wondered his fruits were not correspondent to his root. But when I was told he had tasted of an other tree, my admiration was quickly off, it being my chief care to reduce him to his first simplicity, and separate his mixtures of good & evil. But his fall had so bruised him in his best part, that his soul had no knowledge left to study him a cure. His punishment presently followed his trespass: "all things were hidden and oblivion, the mother of ignorance, entered in." (Veleta funt omnia, intravitq oblivio mater ignorantie) P. 1

It is an age wherein truth is near a miscarriage, and it is enough for me that I have appeared thus far for it, in a day of necessity.

If thou wilt kick and fling, I shall say with the cardinal: Etiam asinus meus recaldtrat (My ass also kicks up his heels) for I value no man's Censure.

This is my advice but how welcome to thee I know not.

Great is their number who perhaps had attained to perfection, had they not already thought themselves perfect.

If thou wilt not quit thy Aristotle, let not any prejudice hinder thy further search.

Be pleased to consider, that obstinacy enslaves the Soul, and clips the wings which God gave Her for flight, and discovery.

I would not have thee look on my endeavors as a design of captivity. I intend not the conquest but the exercise of thy reason, not that, thou should swear allegiance to my dictates but compare my conclusions with Nature and examine their correspondence.

They are things beyond reasoning sensible, practical truths, not mere vagaries and rambles of the brain.

The earth which is the visible, natural basis of it represents the gross, carnal parts. The element of water answers to the blood, for in it the pulse of the Great World beats: this most men call the flux and reflux, but they know not the true cause of it. The air is the outward refreshing spirit, where this vast creature breathes though invisibly, yet not altogether insensibly.

The peripatetics look on God as they do on carpenters, who build with stone and timber, without any infusion of life. But the world which is God's building is full of spirit, quick and living.

Aristotle thrives by scuffles and the world cries him up, when truth cries him down.

It is better then a fight in Quixote, to observe what duels and digladiations they have about him, One will make him speak sense another non-sense and a third both, Aquinas palps him gently, Scotus makes him winch and he is taught like an ape to shew several tricks. If we look on his adversaries the least amongst them hath foyld him, but Telesius knocked him in the head, and Campanella hath quite discomposed him.

Hence it is that his followers, notwithstanding the assistance of so many ages, can fetch nothing out of him but notions: And these indeed they use, as he sayeth Lycophron did his epithets, (Non ut Condimentis, sed ut Cibis) not as spices but as food. Their compositions are a meer tympany of terms.

Besides, their Aristotle is a poet in text, his principles are but fancies, and they stand more on our concessions, then his bottom.