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ROSICRUCIAN APOLOGISTS : JOHN HEYDON. 323
errour he hath committed. 1 Had the stars favoured me, I
might have been happy in that sweet sex.
"
I remember also that this Quartile of Saturn imprisoned
me at a messenger's house for contending with Cromwell,
who maliciously commanded I should be kept close in
Lambeth House, as indeed I was two years. My person
he feared, and my tongue and pen offended him, because,
amongst many things, I said particularly, such a day he
would die, and he dyed. It is very true Oliver opposed me
all his life, and made my father pay seventeen-hundred
pounds for his liberty ; besides, they stole, under pretence
of sequestering him, two thousand pounds in jewels, plate,
&c., and yet the King's noblest servants suffer upon suspi-
tion of death.
" When the moon was directed to the Quartile of Sol,
and the M. C. to the opposition of Sol, I was by the phanatick
Committee of Safety committed to prison, and my
books burnt, yet I would not entertain a base design, or an
action that should call me villain, for all the riches in
England ; and for this only do I love and honour my own
soul, and have, methinks, two arms too few to embrace
myself. My conversation is like the Sun with all men, and
with a friendly aspect to good and bad. Methinks there is
no man bad, and the worst best, that is, while they are
kept within the circle of those qualities wherein there is
good. The method I should use in distributive justice I
1 " I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without
conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world
without this trivial and vulgar way of coition : it is the foolishest
act a wise man commits in all his life, nor is there anything
that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider
what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath committed. I speak
not in prejudice, nor am averse from that sweet sex, but naturally
amorous of all that is beautiful." Religio Medici, pt. ii. sec. 9.