In all my writings, I have had constant regard to this great end, not to suit and apply them to particular occasions and circumstances of time, of place, or of person; but to calculate them for universal nature, and mankind in general. And of such catholick use I esteem this present disquisition[1]; for I do not remember any other temper of body, or quality of mind, wherein all nations and ages of the world, have so unanimously agreed, as that of a fanatick strain, or tincture of enthusiasm; which, improved by certain persons or societies of men, and by them practised upon the rest, has been able to produce revolutions of the greatest figure in history; as will soon appear to those, who know anything of Arabia, Persia, India, or China, of Morocco and Peru. Farther, it has possessed as great a power, in the kingdom of knowledge; where it is hard to assign one art or science, which has not annexed to it some fanatick branch: such are, the philosopher's stone; the grand elixir[2]; the planetary worlds; the squaring of the circle; the fummum bonum; Utopian commonwealths; with some others of less or subordinate note: which all serve for nothing else, but to employ or amuse this grain of enthusiasm, dealt into every composition.
But, if this plant has found a root, in the fields of empire and of knowledge, it has fixed deeper, and spread yet farther, upon holy ground. Wherein, though it has passed under the general name of enthusiasm, and perhaps arisen from the same original,
