fâ—â—r But it must be known that this is a discased state unnatural to the Believer as such as it 's unnatural for a Woman married to a faithful Husband to lie in terrour thinking that he will kill her or doth not love her or for a Child to think the same of a loving Father Faith of its own nature tendeth to the Souls Peace and Joy in the sense of God's love And how is Christ offered to us but as a Saviour to bring us by Grace to Glory And he that accepteth him as such whereby he is justified doth sure believe that he is offered as such For none can accept what he thinks not to be offered And this implieth some hope at least that Christ will be such to us And did Faith work strongly and kindly its effect would be a constant joyful state of Soul as pleasant Health and Mirth is to our Natures All our distrustful fears and griefs and disquietments of Soul are for want of more Faith as Sickness and Pain is for want of the Vital causes of Health IV. This Peace with God is only through our Lord Jesus Christ Though it be a vain dream to think by justifying Faith is meant Christ only and not Faith Yet it is no other Faith but the foresaid Believing Trust on Christ Therefore as Faith is our part so it supposeth Christ and all the works of his Office and Righteousness on his part as its Object Christ is the purchasing cause But our Trust and Acceptance is that which is pleasing to God and chosen by him to be our part without Innocency or keeping the Jewish Law Since Man once sinned God's Justice and Man's Conscience tell us that we are unfit for God's acceptance or communion immediately but must have a suitable Mediator O blessed be God for this suitable Mediator Without him I dare not pray I cannot hope I dare not die God would else frown me away to misery All the hope of Pardon and Salvaâ—ion that I have all the access to God and the Mercies and Deliverances that I have received have been by this Author and Finisher of our Faith Into his conducting hands I give my Soul and into his preserving hands both Soul and Body and into his receiving hands I commend my departing Soul V. v. 2. By whom we have access by Faith unto this Grace wherein we stand That is into this state of blessed Christianity Peace with God and the following Blessings As it is by Marriage that a Woman hath right to her Husbands Estate and Honours and by Inheritance that a Child comes to his Father's maintenance and Land This is no diminution to God's Love To say It is all by Christ is not to take it as ever the less from God the Father it is more to give us Christ and Life in him than to have given us life without a Christ Joh. 3. 16. 1 Joh. 5. 10 11 12. As God is never the less the Giver of light to the Earth forgiving it them by the Sun Second causes diminish not the Honour of the first VI. And rejoice in hope of the Glory of God Here is 1. The beatifical Object The Glory of God 2. The beatifical Act Rejoice 3. The mediate causing Act Hope all presupposing Faith and Justification 2. The Glory of God is that glorious appearance of God to Man and Angels which maketh happy 1. The mind by beholding it 2. The will by loving it and receiving the communications of Love 3. The executive powers by joyful praise c. 2. Though some foretasts are here it is yet said to be hoped for and we hope for that which is not seen When Faith is said to be that which we are justified or saved by it includeth hope though more precisely taken they are distinct We are saved by hope The same word is oft translated Trust and Hope And Faith is Trust to Trust Christ for Salvation includeth hoping that he will save us But Hope is denominated from the Good hoped for and Faith from the Cause by which we hope to obtain it Hope doth not necessarily imply either certainty or uncertainty It may stand with both in various degrees 3. Rejoicing is made by God the very naturally desired state of the Soul It is when natural the pleasant efflorence of the Spirits or their state of Health It is Pleasure that is the Spring or Poise of all motion sensitive in the World Trahit sua quemque volisptas Appetite or Will is the Active Principle and congrucus Good or delectable is the Object The World is undone by the seduction of false deceitful Pleasure and men are blessed only in true and durable pleasure And though we that made not our selves are not so made for our selves as that our Pleasure or Felicity in God should be so high in our desire as God himself who is the ultimate Object of our Love yet seeing such an Object he is and the Love of him and received from him is our Felicity these are never to be separated What have I to rejoice in if this hoped Glory be not my joy All things else are dying to me And God himself is not my Felicity as he afflicts me nor as he giveth me the transitory gifts of Nature but as he is to be seen in Glory If this be not my joy it 's all but vanity What then should all my thoughts and labour aim at more as to my self than to hope for and foretast this Glory No sin lieth heavier on me than that my hopes of Glory raise me to no higher joy and that the great weakness of my Faith appeareth by such dull thoughts of Glory or by withdrawing fears Sure there is enough in the Glory of God soundly believed and hoped for to make a Man rejoice in pain and weakness and to make him long to be with Christ I live not according to the Nature of Christianity if I live not as in peace with God and in the joyful hopes of promised Glory VII Not only so but we glory in Tribulation Glory is so Transcendent and Tribulation so small and short that an expectant of Glory may well rejoice in bodily sufferings It is Tribulation for Christ and Righteousness sake that we are said to Glory in The rest for our sins it 's well if we can improve and patiently bear Yet in them we may rejoice in hope of Glory though we glory not of them O if all the painful languid Daies and Nights and Years that I have had as the fruit of my sin had been sufferings for that which I am now hated and hunted for even for preaching Christ when men forbid me how joyfully might I undergo it But yet even here approaching Glory should be my joy Alas my groans and moans are too great and my joy too little VIII Knowing that Tribulation worketh Patience That which worketh Patience is matter of Joy For Patience doth us more good than Tribulation can do hurt Why then do I groan
Effective Teaching of God doth ordinarily suppose a Rational Objective Organical Teaching and Knowledge And the foresaid unlearned Christians are convinced by good evidence that God's Word is true and his Rewards are sure though they have but a confused conception of this evidence and cannot word it nor reduce it to fit notions And to drive these that have fundamental evidence unseasonably and hastily to dispute their Faith and so to puzzle them by words and artificial Objections is but to hurt them by setting the Artificial Organical lower part which is the body of Knowledge against the real Light and Perception of the Thing which is as the Soul even as carnal men set the Creatures against God that should lead us to God so do they by Logical Artificial Knowledge § 15. But they that are prepared for such Disputes and furnished with all artificial helps may make good use of them for defending and clearing up the Truth to themselves and others so be it they use them as a means to the due end and in a right manner and set them not up against or instead of the real and effective Light § 16. But the Revealed and Necessary part must here be distinguished from the unrevealed and unnecessary To study till we as clearly as may be understand the certainty of a future happiness and wherein it consisteth in the sight of God's Glory and in perfect holy mutual Love in Union with Christ and all the blessed this is of great use to our Holiness and Peace But when we will know more than God would have us it doth but tend as gazing on the Sun to make us blind and to doubt of certainties because we cannot be resolved of uncertainties To trouble our heads too much in thinking how Souls out of the body do subsâ—sâ— and act sensitively or not by Organs or without how far they are one and how far still individuate in what place they shall remain and where is their Paradise or Heaven how they shall be again united to the body whether by their own emission as the Sun beams touch their Objects here and whether the body shall be restored as the consumed flesh of restored sick men aliunde or only from the old materials A hundred of these Questions are better left to the knowledge of Christ lest we do but foolishly make snares for our selves Had all these been needful to us they had been revealed In respect to all such curiosities and needless knowledge it is a Believer's wisdom implicitly to Trust his Soul to Christ and to be satisfied that he knoweth what we know not and to fear that vain vexatious knowledge or inquisitiveness into good and evil which is selfish and savoureth of a distrust of God and is that sin and fruit of sin which the Learned world too little feareth § 17. III. That God is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him and that holy Souls shall be in blessedness with Christ these following Evidences conjoyned do evince on which my Soul doth raise its Hopes § 18. I. The Soul which is an Immortal Spirit must be immortally in a Good or Bad condition But Man's Soul is an Immortal Spirit and the good are not in a bad condition Its Immortality is proved thus A spiritual or most pure invisible substance naturally endowed with the Power Virtue or Faculty of Vital-Action Intellection and Volition which is not annihilated nor destroyed by separation of Parts nor ceaseth or loseth either its Power Species Individuation or Action is an Immortal Spirit But such is the Soul of Man as shall be manifest by parts § 19. I. The Soul is a substance For that which is Nothing can do Nothing but it doth move understand and will No man will deny that this is done by something in us and by some substance and that substance is it which we call the Soul It is not Nothing and it is within us § 20. As to them that say It is the Temperament of several parts conjunct I have elsewhere fully confuted them and proved 1. That it is some one part that is the Agent on the rest which all they confess that think it to be the material spirits or fiery part It is not bones and flesh that understand but a purer substance as all acknowledge 2. What part soever it be it can do no more than it is Able to do And a conjunction of many parts of which no one hath the power of Vitality Intellection or Volition formally or eminently somewhat as excellent can never by contemperation do those acts For there can be no more in the effect than is in the cause otherwise it were no effect The vanity of their Objections that tell us a Lute a Watch a Book perform that by cooperation which no one part can do I have elsewhere manifested 1. Many strings indeed have many motions and so have many effects on the Ear and Phantasie which in us are sound and harmony But all is but a percussion of the Air by the strings and were not that motion received by a sensitive Soul it would be no Musick or Melody so that there is nothing done but what each part had power to do But Intellection and Volition are not the conjunct motions of all parts of the body receiving their form in a nobler Intellective nature as the sound of the strings maketh melody in man If it were so that Receptive Nature still would be as excellent as the Effect importeth 2. And the Watch or Clock doth but move according to the action of the spring or poise but that it moveth in such an order as becometh to man a sign and measure of Time this is from Man who ordereth it to that use But there is nothing in the motion but what the parts have their power to cause And that it signifieth the hour of the daies to us is no Action but an object used by a rational Soul as it can use the shadow of a Tree or House that yet doth nothing 3. And so a Book doth nothing at all but is a meer objective ordination of passive signs by which Man 's active Intellect can understand what the Writer or Orderer did intend so that here is nothing done beyond the power of the Agent nor any thing in the effect which was not in the cause either formally or eminently But for a company of Atoms of which no one hath sense or reason to become sensitive and rational by meer conjunct motion is an â—ffect beyond the power of the supposed cause § 21. But as some think so basely of our noblest Acts as to think that contempered agitated Atoms can perform them that have no natural intellective or sensitive virtue or power in themselves so others think so highly of them as to take them to be the Acts only of God or some universal Soul in the body of Man and so that there is no Life Sense or Reason in the World but God himself or such
But what should an Intellectual Spirit be changed into How should it lose its formal Power not by Nature for its Nature hath nothing that tendeth to deterioration or decay or self-destruction The Sun doth not decay by its wonderful Motion Light and Heat And why should Spirits Not by God's destroying them or changing their Nature For though all things are in constant motion or revolution he continueth the Natures of the simple Beings and sheweth us that he delighteth in a constancy of operations insomuch that hence Aristotle thought the world Eternal And God hath made no Law that threateneth to do it as a penalty Therefore to dream that Intellectual Spirits shall be turned into other things and lose their Essential formal Powers which specify them is without and against all sober reason Let them first but prove that the Sun loseth Motion Light and Heat and is turned into Air or Water or Earth Such changes are beyond a rational fear § 29. VI. But some men dream that Souls shall sleep and cease their Acts though they doe not their powers But this is more unreasonable than the former For it must be remembred that it is not a meer obediential Passive power that we speak of but an Active Power consisting in a great an Inclination to Act as Passive natures have to forbear action So that if such a nature Act not it must be because its natural Inclination is hindred by a stronger And who shall hinder it 1. God would not continue an Active Power Force and Inclination in nature and forcibly hinder the operation of that nature which he himself continueth unless penally for some special cause Which he never gave us any notice of by any threatning but the contrary 2. Objects will not be wanting for all the world will be still at hand and God above all It is therefore an unreasonable conceit to think that God will continue an Active Vital Intellective Volitive Nature Form Power Force Inclination in a noble substance which shall use none of these for many hundred or thousand years and so continue them in vain Nay 3. It is rather to be thought that some Action is their constant state without which the cessation of their very form would be inferred § 30. But all that can be said with reason is that separated Souls and Souls hereafter in Spiritual Bodies will have Actions of another mode and very different from these that we now perceive in flesh And be it so They will yet be radically of the same Kind and they will be formally or eminently such as we now call Vitality Intellection and Volition And they will be no lower nor less excellent if not far more And then what the difference will be Christ knoweth whom I trust and in season I shall know But to talk of a Dead Life an unactive activity or a Sleeping Soul is fitter for a sleeping than a waking man § 31. It 's true that Diseases or Hurts do now hinder the Souls Intellectual perceptions in the body and in Infancy and Sleep they are imperfect Which proveth indeed that the Acts commonly called Intellection and Volition have now somthing in them also of sensation and that sensitive operations are diversifyed by the Organs of the several senses And that bare Intellection and Volition without any sensation is now scarce to be observed in us though the Soul may have such acts intrinsecally and in its profundity For it is now so united to this body that it acteth on it as our form And indeed the Act observed by us cannot be denied to be such as are specified or modified at least by the Agents and the Recipients and Sub-Agents parts conjunct But 1. As the Sun would do the same thing ex parte sui if in vacuo only it sent forth its beams though this were no Illumination or Calefaction because there were no Recipient to be Illuminated and Heated by it And it would lose nothing by the want of objects so the Soul had it no Body to act on would have its profound Immanent Acts of self-living self-perceiving and self loving and all its external acts on other objects which need not Organs of sense for their approximation And 2. It s sensitive faculty is it self or such as it is not separated from though the Particular sorts of sensation may be altered with their uses And therefore it may still act on or with the sense And if one way of sensation be hindered it hath another 3. And how far this Lanthorn of flesh doth help or hinder its operations we know not yet but shall know hereafter Sondiâ—s de Orig. Animae though an heretical Writer hath said much to prove that the Body is a hinderance and not a help to the Soul's Intuition And if Ratiocination be a compound act yet Intuition may be done for ever by the Soul alone 4. But as we are not to judge what Powers the Soul hath when the Acts are hindered but when they are done nor what Souls were made by God for by their state in the Womb or Infancy or Diseases but by our ordinary mature state of life so we have little reason to think that the same God who made them for Life Intellection and Volitions here will not continue the same Powers oâ— the same or as noble uses hereafter whether with Organs or without as pleaseth him If in this flesh our Spirits were not unactive and useless we have no reason to think that they will be so hereafter and that for ever § 32. This greatest and hardest of all Objections doth make us confess with Contarenus contra Pomponatium de Anim. Immortalit that though by the Light of Nature we may know the Immortality of Souls and that they lose not their Powers or Activity yet without supernatural Light we know not what manner of Action they will have in their separated state or in another world because here they act according to objective Termination and the Receptivity of the Sense and Phantasie Recipitur ad modum recipientis and in the Womb we perceive not that it acteth intellectually at all But we know That 1. If even then it differed not in its formal â—ower from the Souls of Brutes it would not so much afterward differ in Act And it would never be raised to that which was not virtually in its Nature at the first 2. And we find that even very little Children have quick and strong knowledge of such Objects as â—â—e brought within their reach And that their Ignorance is not for want of an Intellectual Power but for want of Objects or Images of things which time and use and conversation among Objects must furnish their Phantasies and Memories with And so a Soul in the Womb or in an Apoplexy hath not Objects of Intellection within its reach to act upon but is as the Sun to a Room that hath no windows to let in its light 3. And what if its profound Vitality Self perception and
have UNION so also COMMUNION with the Divine and Humane Nature of Christ respectively Both as they will be the Objects of our Souls most noble and Constant acts and as they will be the Fountain or Communicative cause of our receptions § 15. 1. We find now that our various Faculties have various Objects suitable to their Natures The Objects of Sense are things sensible and the Objects of Imagination things Imaginable and the Objects of Intellection things Intelligible and the Objects of the Will things amiable The Eye that is a nobler Sense than some others hath Light for its Object which to other Senses is none and so of the rest Therefore we have cause to suppose that as far as our Glorified Souls and our Spiritual Glorified Bodies will differ so far Christ's Glorified Soul and Body will respectively be their several Objects And beholding the Glory of both will be part of our Glory § 16. Yet is it not hence to be gathered that the separated Soul before the Resurrection shall not have Christ's Glorified Body for its Object For the Objects of the Body are also the Objects of the Soul or to speak more properly the Objects of Sense are also the Objects of Intellection and Will though all the Objects of the Intellect and Will are not Objects of Sense The Separated Soul can know Christ's Glorified Body though our present Bodies cannot see a Soul But how much our Spiritual Bodies will excel in Capacity and Activity these passive Bodies that have so much Earth and Water we cannot tell § 17. And though now our Souls are as a Candle in a Lanthorn and must have extrinsick Objects admitted by the Senses before they can be understood yet it followeth not that therefore a separated Soul cannot know such Objects 1. Because it now knoweth them Abstractively per species because its act of Ratiocination is Compound as to the Cause Soul and Body But it will then know such things Intuitively as now it can do it self when the Lanthorn is cast by 2. And what ever many of late that have given themselves the title of Ingenious have said to the contrary we have little reason to think that the sensitive faculty is not an Essential inseparable power of the same Soul that is Intellectual and that sensation ceaseth to separated Souls however the modes of it may cease with their several Uses and Organs To Feel Intellectually or to understand and will feelingly we have cause to think will be the Action of separated Souls And if so why may they not have communion with Christ's Body and Soul as their Objects in their separated State 3. Besides that we are uncertain whether the separated Soul have no Vehicle or Body at all Things unknown to us must not be supposed True or False Some think that the sensitive Soul is Material and as a Body to the Intellectual never separated I am not of their Opinion that make them two substances but I cannot say I am certain that they err Some think that the Soul is Material of a purer substance than things visible and that the common Notion of its substantiality meaneth nothing else but a pure as they call it Spiritual Materiality Thus thought not only Tertullian but almost all the old Greek Doctors of the Church that write of it and most of the Latine or very many as I have elsewhere shewed and as Faustus reciteth them in the Treatise answered by Mammertus Some think that the Soul as Vegetative is an Igneous Body such as we call Aether or Solar Fire or rather of a higher purer kind and that Sensation and Intellection are those formal Faculties which Specifically difference it from inferior meer Fire or Aether There were few of the Old Doctors that thought it not some of these ways Material And consequently extensive and divisible per potentiam Divin 〈◊〉 though not Naturally or of its own inclination because most strongly inclined to Unity And if any of all these uncertain Opinions should prove true the Objections in hand will find no place To say nothing of their conceit who say that as the Spirit that retireth from the falling Leaves in Autumn continueth to animate the Tree so Man's Soul may do when departed with that to which it is United to animate some more Noble universal Body But as all these are the too bold Cogitations of men that had better let unknown things alone so yet they may be mentioned to refel that more perillous boldness which denyeth the Souls Action which is certain upon at best uncertain Reasons § 18. I may boldly conclude notwithstanding such Objections that Christ's Divine and Humane Nature Soul and Body shall be the felicitating Objects of Intuition and holy Love to the separated Soul before the Resurrection and that to be with Christ is to have such communion with him and not only to be present where he is § 19. 2. And the chief part of this communion will be that in which we are Receptive even Christ's Communications to the Soul And as the Infinite Incomprehensible Deity is the Root or first Cause of all Communication Natural Gracious and Glorious to Being Motion Life Rule Reason Holiness and Happiness and the whole Creation is more dependant on God than the Fruit on the Tree or the Plants on the Earth or the Members on the Body though yet they are not parts of the Deity nor Deified because the Communication is Creative so God useth Second Causes in his Communications to inferiour Natures and it is more than probable that the Humane Soul of Christ primarily and his Body secondarily are the chief second cause of Influence and Communication both of Grace and Glory both to Man in the Body and to the separated Soul And as the Sun is first an Efficient communicative second Cause of seeing to the Eye and then is also the Object of our sight so Christ is to the Soul For as God so the Lamb is the Light and Glory of the heavenly Hierusalem and in his light we shall have light Though he give up the Kingdom to the Father so far as that God shall be all in all and his Creature be fully restored to his favour and there shall be need of a healing Government no more for the recovering of lapsed Souls to God yet sure he will not cease to be our Mediator and to be the Churches Head and to be the conveying cause of Everlasting Life and Light and Love to all his Members As now we live because he liveth even as the Branches in the Vine and the Spirit that quickneth enlightneth and sanctifieth us is first the Spirit of Christ before it is ours and is communicated from God by him to us so will it be in the state of Glory For we shall have our Union and Communion with him perfected and not destroyed or diminished And unless I could be so proud as to think that I am or shall be the most excellent of all the Creatures