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[From The Third Dialogue.]

Hyl.[1] Stay your hand, O Cuphophron. There's none so chill or cold at heart as you imagine. I am sure I am all Joy and Warmth without the help of any such Liquour.

Cuph. It may be you are over-hot, Hylobares; Sack is good even in Fevers, and it is not unlikely but that a Glass of it may cool you.

Hyl. All the heat that I have at this time, be it never so much, is so sacred and divine, that I will not diminish it in the least degree upon any pretense.

Philop. I pray you, Cuphophron, keep <558> your Bottle entire till another time. I perceive it is now utterly needless, and your Liquour is too good to be cast away in vain.

Philoth. We all overflow with such Joy, O Cuphophron, as no terrestriall Wine can procure, nor increase, nor ought to diminish.

Euist. Indeed I think we doe, Philotheus; I would not drink a Glass of Sack now, no not for forty pounds.

Cuph. I have not the luck of it at this time to contribute to the pleasure of this excellent Company in any thing, my Wine it self being as rejectaneous as my Reasonings.

Hyl. O dear Cuphophron, be not you solicitous touching these things. I'll assure you, your performance was marvellous noble, and worthy the great Parts and Wit of Cuphophron.

Cuph. It's a comfortable circumstance, that the censure of Hylobares is so favourable, whose humour is to abuse in me what-ever is or is not abuseable. But I profess to thee, Hylobares, I was never so confounded in all my life as in that point of the <559> World's possibility of being created from everlasting. I am perfectly puzzled in it to this very day.

Hyl. Why, I prithee, Cuphophron, how many hours, or rather minutes, is it since that confusion first surprized thee?

Cuph. [2] My minde has been so jumbled betwixt Time and Eternity, that I think I can speak sense in neither. What a marvellous thing is this, that God, who was Omnipotent as soon as he was, and who was from all Eternity, and could create Suns and Vortices within a moment that he was Omnipotent, yet should not be able to create the World so soon, but that there would be an Eternity of Duration necessarily conceivable before the World's Creation?

Bath. Yes, Cuphophron, and this marvellously-anticipating Eternity is the proper and necessary eternal Duration of God, which nothing can reach or exhaust; as that inmost Extension or Amplitude which will necessarily remain after we have imagined all Matter, or what-ever else is re <560> moveable, removed or extermina{illeg} out of the World, is to be look'd upno {sic} as the permanent Expansion or Amplitude of the radical Essentiality of God.

Cuph. This is obscurum per obscuriu{illeg} Bathynous; but doubtless it is an highly-Metaphysicall Point, and a man ought to muster up all his Metaphysicall forces that would grapple with it. This is a noble game for me alone by my self to pursue in my Arbour.

Philop. Or on your Pillow, Cuphophron; for it is very late. And therefore, courteous Cuphophron, we'll bid you Good night.

Cuph. You say well, Philopolis, it will not be amiss to consult with one's Pillow, as the Proverb is, and sleep upon't.

Philop. Gentlemen, you'll remember the appointed time to morrow.

Philoth. We will not fail you, Philopolis.

The end of the Third Dialogue. FINIS.

[1] XXXIX. The Preference of Intellectual Joy before that which is Sensual.

[2] XL. That there is an ever-anticipative Eternity and inexterminable Amplitude that are proper to the Deity onely.

Cite as: Henry More, Divine Dialogues (1668), pp. 557-560, https://www.cambridge-platonism.divinity.cam.ac.uk/view/texts/diplomatic/More1668A-excerpt004, accessed 2024-04-25.