together with himself; and that they were so many as could not he number’d, if we might call them many; or that they were all one, if we might call them one.  And he perceiv’d both in his own Essence, and in those other Essences which were in the same Rank with him, infinite Beauty, Brightness and Pleasure, such as neither Eye hath seen, nor Ear heard, nor hath it enter’d into the Heart of Man; and which none can describe nor understand, but those which have attain’d to it, and experimentally know it.

Sec. 93.  Then he saw a great many other immaterial Essences[25], which resembled rusty Looking-glasses, cover’d over with Filth, and besides, turn’d their Backs upon, and had their Faces averted from those polish’d Looking-glasses that had the Image of the Sun imprinted upon them; and he saw that these Essences had so much Filthiness adhering to them, and such manifold Defects as he could not have conceived.  And he saw that they were afflicted with infinite Pains, which caused incessant Sighs and Groans; and that they were compass’d about with Torments, as those who lie in a Bed are with Curtains; and that they were scorch’d with the fiery Veil of Separation[26].  But after a very little while his Senses return’d to him again, and he came to himself out of this State, as out of an Extasie; and his Foot sliding out of this place, he came within sight of this sensible World, and lost the sight of the Divine World, for there is no joining them both together in the same State. For this World in which we live, and that other are like two Wives belonging to the same Husband; if you please one, you displease the other.

Sec. 94.  Now, if you should object, that it appears from what I have said concerning this Vision, that those separated Essences, if they chance to be in Bodies of perpetual Duration, as the Heavenly Bodies are, shall also remain perpetually, but if they be in a Body which is liable to Corruption (such an one as belongs to us reasonable Creatures) that then they must perish too, and vanish away, as appears from the Similitude of the Looking-glasses which I have us’d to explain it; because the Image there has no Duration of itself, but what depends upon the Duration of the Looking-glass; and if you break the Glass, the Image is most certainly destroy’d and vanishes.  In answer to this I must tell you, that you have soon forgot the Bargain I made with you.  For did not I tell you before that it was a narrow Field, and that we had but little room for Explication; and that Words however us’d, would most certainly occasion Men to think otherwise of the thing than really it was?  Now that which has made you imagine this, is, because you thought that the Similitude must answer the thing represented in every respect.  But that will not hold in any common Discourse; how much less in this, where the Sun and its Light, and its Image, and the Representation of it, and the Glasses, and the Forms which appear in them, are all of them things which are inseparable from Body, and which cannot subsist but by it and in it, and therefore the very Essences of them depend upon Body, and they perish together with it.