Infinite God, which servant is corporeal or material Nature: God is onely to be admired, adored, and worshipped; but not ungloriously to be discoursed of; Which Omnipotent God, I pray of his Infinite Mercy to give me Faith to believe in him, and not to let presumption prevail with me so, as to liken vain and idle conceptions to that Incomprehensible Deity. These, _Madam_, are my humble Prayers to God; and my request to you is, that I may continue the same in your love and affection, which I have been hitherto; so shall I live content, and rest, Madam, _Your faithful Friend_ _and Servant._ SECT. III. I. _MADAM,_ I have discharged my duty thus far, that in obedience to your commands, I have given you my answers to the opinions of three of those famous and learned _Authors_ you sent me, _viz. Hobbes, Des Cartes_, and _More_, and explained my own opinions by examining theirs; My onely task shall be now to proceed in the same manner with that famous Philosopher and Chymist, _Van Helmont_; But him I find more difficult to be understood then any of the forementioned, not onely by reason of the Art of Chymistry, which I confess myself not versed in, but especially, that he has such strange terms and unusual expressions as may puzle any body to apprehend the sense and meaning of them: Wherefore, if you receive not that full satisfaction you expect from me, in examining his opinions and arguments, I beg your pardon before-hand, and desire you to remember, that I sent you word in the beginning, I did undertake this work more out of desire to clear my own opinions, then a quarrelsome humor to contradict others; which if I do but obtain, I have my aim. And so to the business: When as your _Author_ discourses of the causes and beginnings of Natural things, he is pleased to say,[1] That _Souls and Lives, as they know no Degrees, so they know no Parts_; which opinion is very different from mine: For although I confess, that there is but one kind of Life, and one kind of Soul in Nature, which is the sensitive Life, and the rational Soul, both consisting not onely of Matter, but of one kind of Matter, to wit, Animate; nevertheless they are of different degrees, the matter of the rational Soul being more agil, subtil and active, then the matter of the sensitive Life; which is the reason that the rational can act in its own substance or degree of matter, and make figures in it self, and its own parts; when as the sensitive, being of somewhat a grosser degree then the rational, and not so subtil and active, is confined to work with and upon the Inanimate matter. But mistake me not, _Madam_, for I make onely a difference of the degrees of Subtilty, Activity, Agility, Purity, betwixt rational and sensitive Matter; but as for the rational Matter it self, it has no degrees of Purity, Subtilty and Activity in its own Nature or Parts, but is always one and the same in its substance in all Creatures, and so is the sensitive.