occasion to speak when I shall enquire which of the faculties of the Soul may seem primary in operation yet I think even native reason in some men is able so to throw a Vail over the senses and frame the imagination that there may be conceived in the imagination some more glorious and amiable thing than it can well conceive and from that conception it shall have readily attending it a sensitive love as we call it that is a motion of the heart from some Nerves or Tendons at least a fixation of the heart not to move too extravagantly but be readily obedient to the dictates of reason and I see no ground why we should with reason hope to quite discard them from its obedience or have our passions and affections clean rooted up lest by avoiding that which one kind of Philosopher resembled to the Itch that is be always desiring and joying loving and fearing c. we do light upon a kind of felicity which another Philosopher resembled to the felicity of a Stock or Stone I would not indeed willingly grieve but I had rather sorrow than never joy and the one can never be inherent without the other either rationatively or sensitively Reason I say has some ability and power yet left since our fall not only to correct and reduce the imagination but to direct and point it to seek after somewhat so that if all men should deny a pure rational love they may grant there may be a good sensitive love 'T is true the imagination from sense shews us no living creature better than our selves and we are apt to see through it as in a false glass some amiableness in our selves and so we become lovers of our selves more than lovers of God yet that little strength of reason does sometimes hinder and stop the imagination from presenting that false glass stays the affections from looking too much into it wins the imagination to take part with it self for a while in conceiving our vileness and then by consequence forces it to represent to the affections some amiableness in that being from whence all other things have their being and without which we cease to be any thing so as about some amiable good do the affections always move if they move From one of these two Mirrors I say do I think is the rise of the affections quatenus working in a Body the one of these Mirrors is clear yet false and only of the imaginations framing from sense the other is dark and cloudy unless amended by special grace but true and of reasons correcting The root of each Tree of affections whether bad or good springing from hence is Love Neither can I upon my review find cause to alter my opinion in my Treatise of comfort against loss of Children but do think that some innate faculty of love is the primary mover in the affections and thus I think it may sprout up and bring forth Trees of divers colour'd branches If we look in that false glass mentioned and by reflexion have a good opinion of our selves which is from a love of our selves there shoots out a branch called Pride or in short that is Pride If we become mounted in thoughts to exceed others that is Ambition if we see some cause as we think that others should have a good opinion of us that is Vain-glory if from this sight we are troubled that any other should seem to exceed us and withall there be an endeavour in us to exceed them that is Emulation but if it be only to supplant or hinder them that is Envy If we espy any opposition in another and behold that person as mean and not able to hurt us that is Contempt which is a kind of contumacy or immobility of the heart but if otherwise we discern an ability to hurt it is Frowardness Impatience Fretting Anger Hatred Malice or Revenge according to the nature of the Soil And here certainly Love must be agreed to be the root and to give being on either side There is no man ever opposes or does wrong for the wrongs sake it is to purchase to himself profit pleasure or repute and that is from the love of himself and therefore says Bacon wittily If a man do me wrong why should I be angry with him for loving himself better than me But to go on If we look after or espy ways or means to adorn beautifie and sustain our beloved selves be it by Money Lands or Goods that is Covetousness if we espy a failure in others of love mutual and reciprocal to our beloved selves where 't is expected that is Jealousie if we apprehend future danger or loss it is Fear if present Heaviness Sadness Sorrow if we espy any probable way or means of our acquiring or adding to our acquisitions Hope c. And after this manner might I reckon the springing or growth of all evil affections whatsoever On the other side if that true but dim glass be at any time presented or set before us and we receive any distant sight of an excellency and goodness in the Creator and continual preserver of the Universe our Love a little moves another way and raises a Tree of other manner of affections If we behold in that his Power his Justice or his Love there arises Fear if his Mercy then Hope Joy Comfort If we apprehend him a Protector against all injury Courage Trust and Fortitude if a Revenger of wrong Patience If we espy his providence and care there arises Contentedness if we discern our own inability Humility if our own evil dealings to others Meekness if our failings and errors Trouble Grief and Sorrow if affliction fallen on our Brethren Pity and Compassion and the like And were my opinion asked of the ground and cause of the most Heroick worthy or pious particular action ever done in the World I for my part should determine it in short to be the parties love to God or himself for if it be not the one that has made a man die willingly for his Country as the phrase goes I am sure 't is the other if not Charity some desire of a perpetual lasting Fame of his memory which is a love to and of himself Now whatever men pretend there neither is nor was nor will be any created Soul within a Body wholly exempt from any one passion or affection whatsoever And though some affections seem very contrary so as not to subsist together at least in any height or excess and therefore it was not without some wonder observed of Nero if I remember aright that he who singly beheld his Cruelty would believe he had no Lust and he who beheld his Lust apart would believe he had nothing of Cruelty in him yet they can and do subsist together And though some men may take their denomination from some one faculty or affection chiefly and most commonly predominant as for instance it may be said Moses was a meek man Nebuchadnezzar a proud man
2. By his merciful Providence or restraining Grace 3. By his bountiful Providence or common renewing grace 4. By his Spirit or special renewing Grace How God according to all these may be invocated The danger of applying the operation of the Spirit to every work in man And how fit it is to clear the mind of such Errour Of the use of solitude in some particular Seasons as the most ready and likely way to discover Truth page 13 EPIST. III. Wherein he sets down some further grounds and Reasons of his opinion of the Mortality or utter annihilation of the Souls of Brutes upon their death No durable Spirit in any visible Creature but man of Sympathies and Antipathies in Plants and Animals The soul of Beasts essential with the Body and so subject to the same fate The Intellect in them in its height at the first whereas that in man is gradual Acts peculiar to reasonable Creatures as desire of dissolution and voluntary abstinence The Spirit of Brutes determined by Sense No Creature besides man lays up more than is sufficient to maintain it self We attribute greater gifts and Sagacity to mere Animals than they have as in Ants. That there may be as much Intellect in Creatures we converse not with as those we do The opinion of the utter annihilation of the spirit of Brutes hath no tendency to Atheism page 39 EPIST. IV. Wherein the Author Treats of man's ignorance in his search into the most ordinary work of Nature and concludes how much more dim-sighted we are when we look into the frame and structure of man's Soul Solomon's knowledge of Nature not universal much in Nature found out accidentally No one work of it fully to be understood How Nature doth change in its operations Of change in Colours and that the variety in them is unaccountable That there is a transcendent Wisdom ruling and appearing in all far above our reach And so there is great Reason for caution in our enquiries or affirmations page 60 EPIST. V. Wherein he further illustrates the inherent or native Power and Predominancy of the Affections above the other faculties of the Soul but more particularly treats of the Imagination its deception in us our miseries thereby and the remedies against its delusion Imagination in Brutes ariseth only from Sense That in them receives its objects in their proper Nature they are seldom mistaken in the face of the Heavens c. they cannot revolve in their mind or recall Imagination Imagination in them changeth according to its objects Imagination in us sometimes supplies the place of Reason as in the case of Transubstantiation c. deceives the Affections Imagination and in Conjunction with them is the cause of Error as in malice c. The good man the only rational man The difference 'twixt Reason and ratiocination Reason deceives not and is the chief principle of governing the Thoughts The advantage of sorrow in curbing the Imagination The Imagination subject to infection from the humours of the Body When we are answerable for its transgressions Thoughts cannot arise from Sense page 68 EPIST. VI. Wherein he treats of the various impress of the Divine Power upon each particular created substance much more upon the Souls of men wherein there is great dissimilitude And further shews how prone we are from thence to mistake in judging of the temper of others and our own Thence he proceeds to discourse of the Nature grounds measure and ends of Friendship page 128 EPIST. VII Of the different pursuits of the Souls of men wherein we are ready to accuse each other of folly though not our selves and yet in a degree are all weak and foolish That no pursuit of the Soul here is praise-worthy or commendable further than it intentionally advanceth God's glory which is the mark set before us and which if we do not behold in all our travails our labour in the issue will prove of as little profit as comfort page 156 EPIST. VIII Compleat Happiness here is merely in speculation That natural endowments in the Soul do conduce to the ease peace and quiet of it and are therefore desirable though we attain not happiness thereby Learning and Knowledge Wisdom Prudence and subtilty considered That even Prudence the most likely conduct to Happiness was never yet the constant concomitant of the clearest human Soul No satisfaction without the belief of a Providence page 166 EPIST. IX Wherein the Author maintains a divine Wisdom and Providence ruling in and over the Soul of man more especially and more apparently if considered than any work of Creation And that the Affections in the heart of man seem that part of the Soul whereon God more especially exerciseth his Prerogative moulding and changing them on the sudden to his secret purposes beyond and even contrary to any foresight conjecture or Imagination of the Soul it self page 185 EPIST. X. Of Credulity and Incredulity the rise of both and that Credulity of the two is of more pernicious consequence And of the evil of imposing on others or creating or raising a Belief on false or uncertain Principles Of the word notion and grace of Faith Of the strange variety of Beliefs in the World Of Liberty of Conscience page 195 ERRATA PAge 21. l. 10. for Esau's vine r. Isaiah's vine p. 44. l. ult for Hawk r. Hare p. 45. l. 39. for Have r. Cave p. 46. l. ult for substance r. subsistence p. 47. l. 2. for submit r. subsist ibid. l. 14. for gifts r. Fits p. 52. l. 9. for life r. Fly p. 53. l. 15. for their r. the 54. l. 25. dele since p. 56. l. 11. for that r. they ibid. l. 30. for piece r. Pease CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST Immoderate care for a Man 's own Posterity and sorrow for the loss of Children SECT I. Of Afflictions in general their Usefulness and Necessity and in particular the loss of Children considered with the use and end of it THE first thoughts which presented themselves to me and what I ever before firmly believed were these That first as there is one Eternal wise God Creator of Heaven and Earth and all things therein So secondly the same God has a care over all the works of his Creation and continually rules and disposes all things according to his infinite wisdom which act of his we call Providence To doubt of this were not only to deny all Scripture and relinquish my profession of Christianity but even to abandon my very Reason For from this first part of my belief I think there are few dissenters and although this Age affords a number of David's jolly sanguine Fools who at some time think otherwise in their hearts yet those same hearts from afflictions will think the same with mine unless they have hardned them on purpose to shut out all Deity and since at first they would have none to serve now they are resolved to let in none so long as they can oppose it to punish As to the second part
extract and being For the very innate desire of some distinguishing knowledge of good from evil could not have its motion from sense nor ever was introduced by sense There is a kind of knowledge springs it self from sense as the Ox knows his owner c. but knowledge by causes such as it is is peculiar to Humane nature and has no relation to sense Know indeed so as to comprehend we cannot knowledge in the abstract being the peculiar of the Divine nature If we had been capable to have known good and evil absolutely the Devil had used no Hyperbole in telling us Ye shall be as Gods But the very desire of knowledge even such a knowledge as the Soul is in some measure capable of that is by causes shews a Divine spark in us tending towards the cause of all causes which exercised about God's revealed will here might be more clear but mounting in desire is apt to lose its light and vanish Nay not only our desire but our fear or doubt of somewhat we know not nor can perfectly attain to by our search nor is reasonable fully to demonstrate must necessarily have its origine from somewhat more than sense If we at least fear a future being and continuance for ever and future punishment that very fear is either native and natural in our Souls or else arises in us from the Tradition of some others if from Tradition then sense being the Port and Inlet I allow to be Parent too but yet while we allow it to spring from Tradition in our selves we do by consequence allow it to be native in some one particular person and he who allows it native in any one must allow the Soul to be a substance of it self and not a resultance from the Body for thoughts of infinity could never first spring from a bare temporary finite existence I said I would lay aside the inferiour faculties of the Soul from my thoughts Desire and fear are affections I agree common to Brutes I know they desire and fear but I dare say never any one of them yet desired knowledge or feared any thing to happen after this life and therefore these as they are in us being in respect of the object no such affections as are led by sense or work by sense barely and so not having their essence from the Body are not to be accounted amongst the other inferiour faculties common with Brutes But to proceed and go a little higher Whence arise those accusing or excusing thoughts mentioned by St. Paul in the Soul of man though wholly ignorant of Scripture and having no accession of new Light so much as by Tradition Certainly it must be some glimmering of that coelestial native spark of Justice implanted in every Humane Soul I dare leave it without further pressure to any quiet sedate reasonable Soul to determine whether if there had never been any Divine or Humane Law written or divulged by Tradition against Murther but that that same fact by the Laws of his native Country were allowed and approved if done against meer Strangers whether I say in case of that man's private imbruing his hands in his Brother's bloud with no other colourable pretence or provocation than some slight worldly gain he should not upon the consideration that we men made not our selves but that every one was a fellow-member with other of the visible Universe and of equal native extract expect to find some inward regret disgust trouble or vexation of mind If he determine that he thinks he should the question will be about that consideration how it could arise For we find that or the like consideration has risen without the help of any outward Engine or sense nay when all the Spels imaginable have been used and applied to allay it Now no disgust or trouble or sorrow was yet perceived in any other Creature beside Man upon the destruction of his fellow creature or Man the Sovereign of creatures And whence is this but because their Soul is not extensive beyond its original nor has any motion but from sense that is it is not capable of any consideration For consideration weighing or pondering of a thing whether it be good or evil is a proper act of a reasonable Soul distinct from a Body and is somewhat more than desire of knowledge by causes 'T is the very exercise of Reason 't is the Soul's waving of its senses for a time and summoning its noble powers to tryal which have some little native ability This trying considering or weighing good from evil by Reason the ballance of the Soul is I say the Soul 's peculiar act from which act there may be very properly the Author to the Hebrews uses the like words a weariness of the mind and so it 's distinguished and is different from such acts of the Soul which Solomon saith are a weariness of the flesh For that kind of study which he respects viz. composing reading or hearing are no peculiar acts of the Soul as withdrawn from the flesh but are a bare introduction of somewhat to the Soul through the Organs of the flesh and so are a weariness to it Whereas the Soul after reception and some light of a thing by sense in considering the good or evil of it quite lays aside the senses for a time and so the mind is peculiarly affected SECT VIII The Immortality of man's Soul considered from things peculiar to Man as weeping laughter speech with some conclusion against Atheism THe Soul of man does not only shew it self and its original by the aforesaid manner of withdrawing it self or as it were by separation from the Body to be above the capacity of a Soul extracted or springing from the flesh but even by peculiar actions and motions through bodily Organs which a bare earthly or fleshly Soul does not There are three things generally held and esteemed proper and peculiar to Humane Nature and no ways incident to any other living creature whatsoever and those are Tears or weeping Laughter and Speech in each of which or from each of which may seem to appear somewhat more in Man than a product Soul part of the Body or extracted or raised from the Body though never so curiously or admirably framed I do not alledge each of them apart as any infallible demonstration of a Spirit distinct and separable from the Body yet coupled and joyned together they become of some seeming weight and strength to me to confirm my opinion It does not seem much wonderful at any time to behold a distillation from the Eyes that thing is to be found in Beast as well as Man not only from a disease or some distemper in the Bloud but upon every offensive touch of the Eye yet when neither of these are present or can be alledged for a cause to have the Body as it were melted on the sudden and send forth its streams through that unusual channel makes it seem to me no
there is a gracious dissipation of these sublunary Mists and Fogs which hinder and obstruct the clearer prospect of our Souls And as I so in all humility own it I cannot rationally expect any one should take it barely by reverberation from me or by looking into these Papers He who is Brightness and the Mirrour of wisdom grant unto me and every man so much of true reason and understanding as that while it is time we may in some sort behold the errors and follies of our own ways For though I and others may cry out Why art thou so troubled O my Soul and why art thou so disquieted within me yet they and I shall never argue our selves into patience without trusting that he is the help of our countenance and our God But if I may in humility present my thoughts to others who may by his gift believe with me I cannot think any rule herein or hereabout to be observed of so much weight as this one in two words custodi cor The wisest of men after he has partly shewed us the manner of wisdoms entrance into the Soul and her excellencies that the merchandize thereof is better then silver and the gain thereof then gold that she is more precious then Rubies and all that can be desired in the three first Chapters of his Book And after divers commendations of her and exhortations to attention in the fourth he does as it were lay the first ground-work of attaining her in this precept Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life Surely God has placed that in the midst of us to be the magazine and treasury of our Soul and has required it for himself of every one in express terms My Son give me thy heart I will not here in this place and upon this occasion enquire whether the functions of the intellect or the affections do follow the cogitations or the cogitations are actuated and stirred by them or which is the most proper seat of either The Soul is of so subtle a composure that it self could never yet find out the manner of its own operations but this I hope may be affirmed here that if the heart be the more peculiar seat of the affections and Love the chief of the affections the aim thereof must be good and what that good is our Reason under God will certainly best direct us For Reason as in a Watch-tower beholding as well absent as present good and the affections only beholding the present it is Reason only that must reclaim the imagination and bring it in subjection to it self and place the affections upon a right object there And surely Reason tells every man that has her that That from which the Soul it self had its primary being and existence is the chief good and ought to take up the chief room in our Soul I for my part with my little reason cannot find any such Engine as will remove the whole World unless it be the Love of God nor any place to fix this Engine in more proper then the heart If this Love do once possess the Citadel of our Soul we are safe we all too truly find that while we are cloathed with flesh it will let in sometimes other more visible and sensible objects which may make some mutiny in her but still she has this Love as a safe and sure Captain that will keep her from taking Surely methinks if Reason be but consulted this Love must be the predominant affection Were it possible for us to give being to some Creatures and to endue them with Reason too should we not desert them for deserting us and for too close an union amongst themselves and to other Creatures without respect to us And if God had never instilled into us by his Word that he is a jealous God who would punish for admittance of a Rival to his love could we expect less And therefore ought not we in reason as much as may be to keep out all Rivals 'T is a strange fascination in us to confine all goodness which is the aim of Love within our own bowels and sometimes the bowels of the Earth too No wise man will think neither can we justly own the affections in us to be moved from any habitual or inherent goodness in our nature or that we do thereby express any similitude or likeness to that Image whose goodness is universally diffusive to all Since our Love though it be owing to the whole Race of mankind as we are made of one lump from one Eternal power is concentred in particulars From which cause as our Love does often thereby upon our loss convert into sorrow so should that sorrow in reason convert into shame For to say I think the truth we excessive mourners in this case may be defined to be persons who have locked up our hearts from the love of God and shut up our bowels from mankind in general and confined them to work only within our own imaginary Sphere And were we accosted with that rough speech of Ioab to David That we hereby declare that we regard neither Princes nor Servants but that the World may well perceive that if our Absalom had lived and an hundred else had died it had pleased us well we could find no sufficient reply to justifie our selves but must confess our own error And now if our gourd be withered shall we sit down in a sullen mood And if that perfect love that should have held place in us be dispossessed shall not reason and understanding struggle for her Sure the most rational way of cure is since we have given up our hearts to follow that which flies from us as a shadow to leave the pursuit and catch hold on something else if may be Though our Children are gone the World is yet full of various objects of delight But that which makes all or any of them so is God and from that original must they so glide into the heart and therefore we most of necessity reduce and bring back our wandring love to its proper state and original for which 't was first implanted in us and fix it upon that delightful object and through that Mirrour all things will have a more lovely aspect Understanding and the Love of God are always so coupled and linked together that the one cannot be or subsist without the other If a man love not his God and Creator 't is for want of understanding and if a man has not a right understanding of his present and future well-being it is alone because he wants that love For that love will infallibly fix every mans thoughts upon a hearty endeavour to perform the whole will of God Thus hath St. Iohn truly defined the love of God to be a keeping of his Commandments This is the love of God if we keep his Commandments And our Saviour himself has made that the test and tryal of love And both David
borrowing for a Patronage any Great man's name or daring to affix my own as a ground-work for him to build on and I should rejoyce to rest assured any one would undertake or undergo that labour I have but this I think reasonable request to any man about to quarrel with these Papers That he take some consideration and bethink himself whether he may not wrong or prejudice his own Soul Because I will affirm nothing in them as a matter of truth with so much confidence and assurance as this one thing here that is if he desire tranquility and peace of mind the greatest worldly blessing imaginable and the thing I seek after he shall never so readily attain it by any narrow search into the errors and extravagancies of my Soul for disputation sake as by passiug them with pity and commiseration for God's sake who best knows whereof we are both made remembreth our frame and how subject we are to mistakes And I hope that no man will before-hand from the Spirit of pride and contradiction raise up a Tower or Fortress for his own intellect from thence to summon all others to vail and come in but let mine or other such like pass as a poor Merchant that chiefly intends to see Countries bring back somewhat it may be for its own support and possibly too for the support of some others of a like or little inferiour capacity though its Wares have no such flourish or signature on them as may make them vendible or prized by the Merchants of this Age. PART I. SECT I. How far the Soul of man is similar with that of Brutes I Think it may appear somewhat plain and obvious to the meanest capacity that the Soul of man is endowed with three distinct prime or principal faculties whereby it appears to work and those are 1 st the Affections 2 ly the Will and 3 ly the Intellect or Understanding which last is more commonly reduced to and made to terminate in these three faculties 1. Imagination 2. Memory 3. Reason For to say more or make any further enumeration at present were to fall upon my second limited subject which I intend to handle more particularly in its proper place and might perhaps confound my self and others with strange notions in the beginning which I intend not All these distinct faculties or operations we cannot well deny to be inherent and discernible in the wiser if I may so say sort of Brutes The two first viz. Affections and Will I suppose every man will grant to be apparent in the less seeming intelligent Animals and therefore I 'le not trouble my self to demonstrate after what manner they love and fear or the like nor dispute about their voluntary motions nor whence that voluntary motion may proceed whether from sense or passion or sometimes intellect For though I believe there is not a Sparrow that lighteth upon the House-top without a Divine providence yet I think it had a will to light on the House-top as well as I to write and could not be said to have an involuntary motion like an Arrow shot thither out of a Bow for in all involuntary motion there is requisite a second discernible working cause as well as a first cause But my enquiry concerning them shall be only in those three faculties referred to the intellect viz. Imagination Memory and Reason none of which I know well how to deny to be in several kinds of creatures in some sort beside man And first for Imagination which is the representation of some image or apparence in the Soul not at present introduced by sight c. and therefore may as well be sleeping as waking Though otherwise there appear no ground to us of their imagination which is internal yet such an effect there is often seen in them as cannot proceed from any other cause but some internal image of an outward object And this is discernible in sleeping Hounds and Spaniels whose bodies from thence are moved and agitated with such kind of motion and accompanied noise as if they were in pursuit and quest of their imagined prey or game For Memory he who denies its being in the Soul of Beast either believes not or has forgot the story of Darius his Horse or has not seen or observed the common course of Dogs and other creatures in hiding and covering their acquired food and upon occasion going as readily or dexterously as I may say to the place as any man could or has not been himself a common Master or Rider of Horses some of which in a maze of ways and turnings shall with the liberty of his Rein bring his Master to his accustomed home and indeed it 's strange to see divers creatures brought from their usual and accustomed place of residence after some time of stay by reason of some let and hindrance to return again many miles to their old abode which they could never so readily do nor could be effected as I suppose without the aid and help of what we call Memory Our chief enquiry will be whether we shall in any case allow them Reason which we have already so appropriated to our selves that we have differenced our Nature and Being from theirs in that only notion Toward the resolution of which we must enquire and define what Reason is now if Reason be only a conception by speech whereby we are able to explicate our minds and thoughts as some would have it we may well deny it to all creatures but our selves but if it be a discerning faculty of the Soul by which we judge with any election or choice what is or may be good or hurtful to it or to the body what is good and what is evil what to embrace or avoid we cannot deny it in some measure to be in meer Animals Whatever distinction is made between Instinct and Intellect when the word Reason is taken away from them and the word Fancy allowed to supply the place I do not think it amiss to admire God in them and though the best of their faculties quite differ in the extract from ours yet they are the work of the same God in a different manner and wonderful it is to see such faculties as we must needs allow them by some title or other to proceed from a corporeal substance only attenuated and rarified as I shall say anon and so similar to ours They were created with us for our use and service and all for God's glory and if we made a right use of our own rational faculty we should neither sometimes vilifie them as we do nor at other times extoll and enlarge their faculties beyond their due limits and bounds seeming rather desirous of having our own understanding admired among our selves by amplification of theirs than making any true state of our different cases thereby shewing our invention rather than our knowledge This we cannot but truly acknowledge that they having had no such lapse or fall as we work more wisely
when it seems wholly to go alone unless by the first guidance of some outward sense yet in that very case as there is an assent of the Will and Affections too so it s very ramblings windings and turnings may be orderly unravelled like the hanging together of Links and Chains though of various forms as if some reason for its very wandrings were to be given For though in short space it run from the greatest State or Monarch in the World to the smallest Insect there is still some concatenation of them together and it never skips wholly from its subject matter without some sudden new introduction from sense or the Affections or Reasons recall as if some of them set it on work or at least it wrought not for it self As for instance I walk into my Orchard and there I espy Fruit-trees in their tender bud spoiled and devoured by Caterpillers upon which I seek in my mind somewhat of the cause how these Insects are bred as from drought Easterly winds or the like Now if Fruit were one of my chiefest delights and a thing in desire Reason would somewhat fix my thoughts and busie them in finding out with its assistance some way or means for the prevention or destruction of this creature but being not forthwith from them my thoughts are carried rambling after all those peculiar Trees on which these Insects usually feed straightways experience informs me the Oak for one then I think how that Tree amongst the Heathen was sacred to Iupiter then it may be I think on the story of the Royal Oak and the miraculous preservation of our Sovereign from thence my thoughts travel to and ramble over the greatest Monarchies in the World and from thence mount to Heaven and think on him who is the establisher of all Monarchies and by whom Kings reign anon Reason puts a stop to this career of the Imagination and perhaps fixes it for a while in some regular course and then perphaps for want of better imployment it unravels it self backward again to the Caterpiller finding out all the ways and steps it went before and all that to as little purpose as its former journey and travel And thus do we often more litterally than those of whom David speaks imagine a vain thing This faculty seems only able to behold it self and its own vanity and this is the faculty over which Reason has the least power and for whose extravagancies we may readiliest expect pardon since it casually works for others and cannot be at rest Free-will and power and a kind of dominion over every of our faculties nay our whole selves as well as others seems to be in some degree or measure inherent in our I will not say our nature desires and therefore the very power of reducing to subjection this one faculty to what we call our Wills may now and then seem to please us in imagination or wish and that if it were so we might govern our selves alone as we pleased and so become wise and happy for we would then think of nothing but good This perhaps is now and then our desire but surely hitherto every man's Imagination has been and is the framer of his Will rather than that any man's Will ever was or can be master of his Imagination or else there would never have been forged and framed in the Soul such a Will as now and then there is And 't is the goodness of a wise and gracious Almighty power that there is no absolute power in man over this faculty or such a Will in him as were able at all times to bring it to subjection or obedience Indeed when the heart seems well tuned and to be fixed as David says and we are praising God with the best member we have it is an unhappy thing our thoughts should be rambling as I remember St. Hierom said of his as far as Rome or Carthage But the natural course of its rambling duly considered is undoubtedly a great mercy to us for 't is to be feared Evil would be as often present with us as our Wills as St. Paul saith and then a power over the imagination would little avail In the main it is our great advantage and happiness too that this one faculty of the Soul cannot possibly be fixed long on any one thing without wavering to and fro or be made the constant attendant of any predominant affection if it could it might I fear often prove to us an Hell upon Earth rather than an Heaven and by gratifying even one of our affections should it alway hold a glass to sorrow and sometimes we seem to will that or rather fear how miserable were we Even the poor Prisoner going to Execution hath this happiness that his imagination is a wanderer without any absolute controul and that every moment almost his thoughts are for some short space diverted from death towards other things by some sense or other though they presently return again or else it would be truly said from the steadiness of the imagination that the pomp or usher of death and so of all other evils would be far more powerful than the hand of the Executioner The Psalmist seems to me to have had some such thoughts when beholding death in himself at some further distance he suddenly crys out O let the sorrowful sighing of the prisoners come before thee according to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to die We cannot well think or imagine how and after what manner this faculty works in Beasts we may conjecture perhaps that it 's chiefly according to sense or is more easily turned about by sense and therefore makes not so pleasing or irksom impressions nor yet so lasting as upon our selves This is certain in our selves 't is not always readily diverted by sense but is now and then so intent and fixed upon some peculiar object as that at that instant we may be said neither to see hear tast feel or smell though indeed we do And how rambling and volatile soever it may be in it self yet it makes and sometimes leaves in the Soul such an Impress or Effigies as is for continuance which we call Memory and that I shall now consider SECT V. Of the Memory MEmory is some remaining mark impress or footstep in the Brain or a collective faculty there of somewhat before rouled over by the Imagination or examined by Reason whether introduced by sense sent thither and actuated by the affections or native in the Imagination and becomes a treasury or storehouse for the Imagination and Reason to resort unto Generally I think that according to the strength of the Imagination those marks or strokes it makes do remain and that he who hath a smart conception or invention and a good superintendent that is Reason seldom has a bad or weak memory And therefore those men of parts as we term them who often pretent forgetfulness rather pretend
way of operation or any primacy or superintendency in them over the other faculties of the Soul but admit it to be in some other more noble faculty as the Imagination yet something of force power and strength must be granted and allowed to these common Souldiers of the Soul It is a wise and prudent conduct that keeps them at any time from mutiny and disorder but if it once happen they do mutiny 't is not any General we have or carry about us that can reclaim them or rule and master them much less at any time disband or cashier any one of them I know a man may talk Philosophically and when his imagination is high-flown and his Brains a little busie in asserting their Prerogative above the Affections he may think of mastering subduing and eradicating or at least of wholly mortifying them when all the while 't is a vainglorious affection to be esteemed wise and master of ones passions that sets the Brain on work and raises such a mist therein that the Brain for the present cannot espy it but thinks it works for and of it self Let no man think I speak this as if experience were my only Tutor though with us all it often appears a baffler of Reason or because I have too much been or continue a slave to my affections until he can plainly shew me he has mastered his own I do own their potency and am in quest of another power In the mean time while I behold the Soul as it is as I find no ground for contest or dispute about precedency between any faculties of the Soul unless between the Affections and the Imagination so is there none as I conceive for predominancy power and strength or mastery one above another unless between the Affections and Reason The Imagination though a faculty head-strong as we say enough at particular seasons is various and mutable and never holds out long or keeps its station against opponents but is apt to yield and comply with every sense upon all occasions The Will as I have said is the certain assenting subject of the present ruling faculty For if I am sad and would be otherwise 't is the Wills obedience to a present desire which desire it may be springs from some sensible uneasiness of my present condition or some special dictate or demonstration of Reason Reason that excellent special Divine gift is never much visible till man be of some age or maturity and till then how apparently do the affections reign and sometimes one of them over the other and the imagination is ever their assistant till Reason become of ability to reclaim it and win it by fits or turns unto it self And during this infancy of the Soul in the Body there is certainly some special preventing ruling Grace I know not what else to call it that keeps us from running into all manner of extravagancies as well as there is a providence that keeps the World from resolving again into its first Chaos Now that which forces me to impute such potency to the affections above all other faculties of the Soul is this that the greatest and strongest combates in the Soul of man are still after God has actually given us some Reason as his Vicegerent to govern us and seems as it were to leave us to our selves at least if he did leave us to our selves we might justly condemn our selves for our disobedience to that only guide of the Soul under him Which guide Reason though appointed in some sort to be the Soul's governour too never yet fully and wholly subdued let men talk what they please any mans evil and erring affections Yet on the other side unruly and violent affections have many times totally and absolutely extinguished and destroyed Reason as strong and clear as man has ordinarily been endowed withall and this I take to be demonstrable in every distracted person or mad man For the word amens or demens in Latine that is without mind or without Soul I think them improper words in the case for that there is nothing wanting in mad men but Reason and the more proper word for that distemper or loss in the Soul might be that by which we distinguish a Beast from a man that is irrationalis And this is to be noted or observed that it is nothing else at any time but some violent impetuous and unlimited passion that is the cause of this distemper and at such time always as man is of maturity and Reason of some ability to govern the other faculties of the Soul and to put some check to the career of the affections if it were but consulted or suffered We have Infants idiots as we call them but never have Infants mad or distracted He who always wanted Reason to govern himself can never be said to have lost it or quite discarded it as is the case of mad men who have all other their faculties quick and working but become totally deprived of their once Moderator and Governour and doubtless can have no check of Conscience imagining all they do is right and thereupon the Law exempts them from punishment I have not been much conversant in the Hospital of Bethlem but if it were narrowly enquired I believe it scarce has a constant residentiary in it but some violent native passion first gave him his mittimus thither I am ready to acknowledge that every passion in excess is a short madness Reason is clouded shut up or hid for a time but not quite extinct cut off or shut out of doors But when that once comes to pass through the violence of any unruly masterful passion and from vehement becomes habitual I doubt it wholly and irrecoverably lost and question much whether Physicians do not vainly pretend to a perfect and absolute cure But herein I distinguish between passions how violent soever raised from some fermentation in the Bloud though they seem habitual as may be from Wine and several corporal diseases and such where there being no distemper of the Body Reason is once disbanded or cast off by the violent career only of some native passion assisted with the spur of the imagination For the imagination of it self is not of force and ability to destroy Reason it may be more vain and idle more extravagant and less subject to be governed by Reason than the affections but if it had any such power of it self to destroy Reason then might a man lose his Reason from a dream for then does the imagination work most strongly and without opposition and often carries with it terrible presentments to the other faculties of the Soul But from thence we never find men distracted or beside themselves it must be some violent waking affection that does it when Reason is at hand to oppose which is not in a dream and sets the imagination like a rouling Engine on such a career as to leave Reason quite behind and destroyed and it self never reclaimable from a vain wandring
course They are these passions which metamorphose a man into a furious Beast 'T is they which are able to destroy that best faculty or light of the Soul Reason and therefore Solomon's maxim is to be observed above any Custodi cor But Reason was never yet found of ability to destroy or wholly mortifie any one passion It may somewhat from Divine assistance regulate or calm lead or direct but if it should wholly destroy the affections as some have pretended to do by it it would prove in the condition of a Prince without Subjects that is indeed no Prince or Governour at all but we find the Subjects able sometimes for want of his vigilancy to destroy their Sovereign and set up a strange confused Anarchy amongst themselves Whatever faculty of the Soul we may give precedency to we sometimes too sensibly find the strength and power of our passions For besides that they are able to destroy one another and that love or hatred can drive away fear and fear is able sometimes to suppress love or hatred so as it seems more difficult to determine which of the passions are strongest then it would be of those things Darius his Guard disputed about while he was asleep They are all strong and either of them is of power enough oft-times to make us destroy our selves or at least neglect our selves and work more hurt to our Bodies than any other faculties of the Soul whatsoever Reason never destroyed any man the imagination might help to do it but never did it of it self but sorrow has done it if we believe the wise Son of Syrach And this common experience will tell every man who lives and is not yet destroyed that the slightest of the passions is able to keep us waking by its proper strength when the imagination were it not for some affection would let us sleep By the strength of that only I mean the imagination we seldom so much as awake from our sleep unless by some terrible presentment it do irritate the affections and then they are the cause and not the imagination and if we do awake thereupon Reason forthwith shews us the folly of our imagination and our affections become quiet But when they have their rise from sense more peculiarly than from the imagination then is the combate dubious they then go on in their rebellion and there is no mastery to be obtained over them by power but by fraud as it were The Will they outlaw which was ordained the subject of Reason and that necessarily carries with it the Organs of the Body as its ministers The aim of the Will may be good in general but that is not of power to distinguish between reality and apparency of good neither good the end nor virtues the way to that end have any corporal shape and therefore cannot be shewed as so to the senses whereby the affections might be reclaimed and made to fix upon any real good Besides Sense is only judge of present things Reason of future as well as present the imagination is somewhat capable of both And therefore if ever the affections become fixed on a real good 't is not that they are mastered but that next and immediately under God's special Grace often leading and directing them they are deceived into good hoodwink'd a little from sense and caught as it were by a wile or stratagem The imagination is slily drawn away from taking part with them and somewhat of real good is first from Reason as it were darted into the imagination and by the imagination conveyed unto them Affections being native visibly working in us as soon as we are born without controul for a long while unless ab extra as we say and no Reason to govern till they have encamped and fortified themselves the wise man might well say He that ruleth them is better than he that ruleth a City The City where they inhabit is a deceitful place many Caves and Vaults in it for them to lurk in we find it but too true when we enter into it and search it and think we have wholly won it We may well wish that Ieremy were a false Prophet and somewhat deceived himself in telling us it is deceitful above all things and therefore we have a hard task to make those Citizens there good Subjects and fit for another City whose maker and builder is God If ever they prove so they must be dealt withall like as with men wedded to their affections as we term them proverbially and as they are usually dealt withall that is allured and led not thrust and driven they are too stubborn to move that way SECT V. That some Affection is the substantial part of the Soul I Have thought and do think and believe which is somewhat more then a thought it is a thought with the concurrence approbation and allowance of ones Reason that the Soul of man is immortal and that the very Essence or substantial part of an Humane Soul disrobed of a Body or subsisting of it self is some restless working however at some times invisible affection and that if those more noble faculties of our Soul next and immediately under that bright heavenly Star are the Pilots to conduct us unto rest some affection as it seems to me is the chief Passenger in this frail and weak Vessel of the flesh St. Paul in that admirable Encomium of his of Charity tells us that it abides when many other gifts fail And if we shall know as we are known as he tells us in another place there will be then little use of the Invention Memory Reason or the like which are but the Handmaids to knowledge Neither can I rationally imagine after return of the Soul to its place of rest or for default thereof in its banishment to everlasting wandring any use of other faculties than the affections unless towards the exalting or heightning them in their several degrees whether love and joy on the one side or sorrow fear c. on the other The Soul of man being an emanation from that Divine love must necessarily partake of it love and not able at present by any natural light it has to reach unto it self its proper object lays hold on any thing rather than seem to vanish or be extinct and withall that it happens to have such several inclinations in man while it is here is surely by reason of some false imaginary light or the want of a true one and that we want both power and skill in the setting or tuning some strings of the affections as I may call them And 't is want of a clear inspect into our nature and frame that we become as David speaks a stubborn generation a generation that set not their hearts aright and whose Spirit cleaveth not stedfastly to God And I do further believe that all the faculties strength and power of the Soul which we have are given us towards the performance of that
preheminence above all other faculties of the Soul It is God's Deputy or Viceroy given ordained and sent to govern in it upon Earth to reduce it to obedience and keep it from Rebellion and yet in things of importance ever to consult its Prince If the Affections reject Reason and it be recalled or its power diminished for want of our obedience and we are left only to our own imagination our Affections become in a miserable and distracted condition they shall by that have strange impositions laid on them they shall be led a thousand ways jaded and tired but never satisfied If the Affections set up Reason for King and trust to that alone they are not in a much better state For though it be generally a safe yet it is a weak guide and not to be relied on alone For it being only some clearer sight than ordinary of an intellectual faculty of things here below though it somewhat quiet the affections for a time it can never absolutely reclaim them or reduce them to fasten on any thing beyond its own prospect or out of its own reach Though the intellect do become at any time inabled any ways to reach to the affections things in such excellent order and manner as that they may be with some pleasure embraced for the present without any cause of disgust and so accounted as good yet all those things within its reach being of a transitory and fading nature the best of the affections or the possessory affections as I may call them as Love and Joy can never be so replete therewith as that there will not be room for distrust and fear of a privation of those very things they enjoy I have only this reserve left in reference to this desirable good and excellent gift That an inherent Prudence in man the Flower of Reason and in some degree the Dowry of every rational Soul may with some secret Divine assistance conduce much to the present ease and rest and also future happiness of his Soul For that Prudence or Humane wisdom as we may call it putting no false gloss upon things nor therein so deceiving the affections in their enjoyment but shewing all things to them as vanity and withall that from Reason she is not able to shew them any thing beyond that inscription she does as it were prepare the affections to stand quiet ready and attendant for some other thing to be presented to them and to catch hold thereon upon any occasion or offer without any great turbulency or admitting fear or distrust to accompany them over-much in reference to the enjoyment or loss of any of those things which Reason has as it were once convinced them to be vain or forced them at some time to reject as such The affections will move of themselves in despite of us 't is a good guide they want to find out good which is always their aim Reason is a good guide but we often want a better There be many that say says the Psalmist who will shew us any good but not expecting with patience the light in the following verse which only puts true gladness into the heart think they can find it of themselves and though all pretend to that good run as various courses as imaginable For not looking fore-right upon the Goal nor considering whatever thing unnecessary we reach at and take up here in the way becomes a burthen to us and how at that Goal of death we must part with all the affections stoop in the course and catch at the Golden Apple in the way and sometimes a more trivial thing a Feather a puff every man at somewhat though never so mean and sordid I do yet think the Soul of man however it moves or from what power soever it moves to be in its proper genuine equipage of march here when Reason shines in her most bright and so as the affections principally and chiefly move according to her light when every faculty is as it were up and ready for motion each one attends the other and yet moves not far or any great distance but expects her directions When at any time the Soul looks through the windows of the Body Sense she makes use of that light no farther than for the present support of that building and uses the world as St. Paul expresses it as not using it But when we once become so unhappy as that one kind of affection takes up his quarters or repose here another there and quarrel about their Lodging and mutiny about their Guides too when they sometimes quite desert and reject the one to follow the other when though Reason will admit Sense in her company yet the Affections once up in Arms for Sense will not admit Reason then from each faculty of the Soul thus out of order and not performing its Office aright it happens that no one of them moves with ease or quiet neither shall we find any rest until we find some more than ordinary way or means of pacifying and right marshalling this disorderly multitude of unruly appetites and affections I am very much assured there never was sober rational man but at some time or other has had in his Soul some combate between his Affections and his Reason and withall has found his Reason baffled by them And therefore methinks that very Reason that cannot rule in the case and finds it so might however admonish and point to the Affections and set us on work if it be but to will or desire earnestly to find out some remedy or have it shewn us which Reason it self cannot extract from all the imagination is able to bring in nor is in the strength and power of the Soul Which brings me to my last part of enquiry what may be the best way and method to reclaim the disorders of the Soul and reduce it to some quiet estate and composure for the present PART IV. SECT I. Means to reclaim the Soul ABsolute power and ability in man from the greatest strength of Reason there is none and I dare say whoever takes it for granted in the premisses of his tryal will deny it in the conclusion What can that wholly allay the tumours in the Soul which is in some manner the very cause or occasion of those tumours It is the very appearance of Reason as I have said and shewing her self in the Soul that often begets these Agonies in it The passions are like some rude and unreasonable Rout that the more endeavour is used to reclaim them the more violent and outragious they become and the more fierce and heady in their excursions when it may be let alone and not opposed they would forthwith cool and vanish of themselves When we were Children and had none or very little Reason to govern our affections perhaps there might be some scuffle amongst our passions but nothing from thence that ever caused a wounded Spirit only some little scars or scratches which a short space
pardon and receive again into favour And 't is our only rational way in the like case to acknowledge our errors and get our affections somewhat hot and then melting in us that any dross contracted in our Souls any cankering rust cleaving to them may drop off that they may be somewhat bright and shine again The Heathens who had no other light but this to lead them had their purgations of which Socrates I think was the beginner which though after a vain manner may seem no ways to hurt them And certainly this manner of purgation that is melting into sorrow may do us good and prevent many sharp pains the Soul might otherwise feel even here in the Body I am not about to enquire and determine whether after thus doing we shall be at rest here or how far more or less from hence the Soul may become obnoxious to afflictions or crosses but certainly in all reason she will bear them better when she has done all she can towards a return and can find in her self no ground to think but that her boils proceed rather from some outward than any inward cause and that her disease is rather Epidemical than singular Having our Souls somewhat restored and cleansed somewhat at ease and calm we may I trust without offence and without rejection of more Sovereign Antidotes make use of our Reason towards the preventing of a Tempest in her for the future by finding out and judging if we can first the most probable and chief cause of her billows and why she is often thus tossed and almost shipwrack'd in the World and next espy out some ways or means for the future prevention of these storms But first by the way let us acknowledge that Reason in man such as it is and whereby we exceed all other visible creatures as it is the special gift of God and the thing we have least cause to term our own or too much think of the nativeness or inherency of it in us so it wants a more than ordinary daily support and supply for 't is that faculty or ability in the Soul which I have said man is most subject wholly to lose and be deprived and bereft of and without beholding through it that light which gave it being we may as I may say run mad with our Reason And such Rationalists there are in the World for why some men who have had a greater outward visibility and appearance of Reason than others have yet acted in the conclusion as if they had less if this presumption in them be not the cause or that they looked on their strength of Reason too much as an Habit and too little as a Grace I can find none If the Donor of the Talent be but owned it may surely as well be Traded with as laid up in a Napkin and not unlikely even from it may be found out too some other inherent gift in the Soul which if rightly disposed and ordered I will not say disposed or ordered by Reason may somewhat abate all excrescencies in the Soul and become the chief and only Foundation-stone for any Spiritual building spoken of before even that Tower of defence Faith Reason I say may point at or find out the proper corner-stone for building though she cannot move it of her self or erect any thing on it SECT II. Of Love SUrely he who created us neither gave us Invention to find out nor Reason to judge in vain I must acknowledge I am not able so much as to think a good thought nor well able to judge when my thoughts are as they should or might or ought to be yet that roving faculty of mine call it men what they best like labouring to introduce into my Soul divers and sundry causes of the disquietness tumults and disorders happening in her as well as others my weak Reason after rejection of some has seemed to rest satisfied and pitch'd upon this as the chief if not the only proper cause thereof That that essential part of the Soul Love from whence at some times we feel greatest delight suffers often too narrow an inclosure is pent up and imprisoned by some means or other and has neither that free scope and range or full and clear prospect abroad into the World which Reason is able to allow it and afford it whereby it loses that common acceptable title of Charity in a word Love is not rational but sensual Love may seem with the allowance of our Reason I think to be placed in every of our Souls like the Sun in the Firmament which though it may have peculiar Flowers that require more than its ordinary influence at least its visible rays and we are allowed some such things as we may more particularly call here Flowers of our Sun yet its circuit should be to the ends of the Earth and nothing hid from the heat thereof And then whatever becomes of those Flowers though they are cropt dead or withered it finds innumerable objects to exercise its rays upon and still shines bright and pleasant but if it become once eclipsed by the interposition of any peculiar objects there happens such an Aegyptian darkness in the Soul as most properly may be said to be felt Whenever we look into the Soul and find such a thing as Love there Reason though it be not able to quicken nor blow it up to any bright extensive flame for that is ever from Divine influence yet can demonstrate to us to what end and purpose that spark of Love is inherent in us that is to love the Author of our Being Now as we cannot see God but by his works so neither can we be properly said to love him but through his works Amongst which as there is nothing more deserves our love than such as bear his Image in common with our selves so there is no more certain way to judge of the sincerity of our love to him than by our love to them Thus the Apostle If we love one another God dwelleth in us and again He that loveth not his Brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen This is so much the dictate of Reason that I should have thus thought upon consideration had I never seen Scripture and it is to a certain Law antecedent to all that is written that the Scripture it self doth refer it Thus the Apostle speaks I write no new Commandment unto you but an old Commandment which ye had from the beginning and calls it the message from the beginning of the breach of which he gives an instance in Cain's unnatural murder of his Brother before there was any written Law so that the Apostle might in this sense say As touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you for ye your selves are taught of God by the light of Nature and the Law written in the heart to love one another Now if the obligation to this Charity ariseth
Why give me leave to tell him Knowledge Wisdom Power Truth Mercy Justice Love Goodness and the like for I hope we may safely affirm as well as some Philosophers that there is morality in the nature of God and that his happiness consists as well in goodness as in power and knowledge united in one eternal mind is that God which we adore not through amazement and out of a confounded astonishment bestowing these attributes on him but rationally believing they are essentially compleat and perfect in such mind of which ours is some image or shadow but now dark and imperfect Moses brings in God himself speaking after this strange manner My spirit shall not always strive with man and this came to pass at such time as men began to multiply on the face of the earth and this happy solitude God and a mans self seemed to be rejected for visible company The citing any books of Moses to an Atheist will 't is likely prove to little purpose perhaps he may say Moses was an Impostor if not worse and to talk of God's spirit under any notion whether grace of illumination or sanctification c. will be to as little purpose until a man has some knowledge of his own spirit I will only say this more That if any man please to follow my advice and withdraw himself a little from the world and all company in an humble manner in relation to enquiry on that subject Himself How himself so intellectual from whence and whom himself or the like he may perchance find a striving or strugling within himself in relation to that other subject matter God Whether it be his own spirit or somewhat else that so strives or struggles in him I will leave to his own determination This I am sure of that upon such withdrawing and search he will be afraid there is some such thing as a God and I believe for that present instant would venture a considerable summ for the return of an infallible assurance there were no such thing and he is a most insensible man that would venture a farthing to be secured from that which his reason plainly tells him is impossible says that most excellent Author whom I had rather cite than seem to rob though such notion came into my head as of it self before reading him and why then should he not confess his fears and jealousies Those fears and jealousies are an heavy nauseous burthen to the soul retained and kept in but cast up and discharged in that manner will cause very much present ease and may fit and prepare the soul to let into it a more pleasing and cordial belief in relation to a Deity than such an one as that of Felix which only makes it tremble I doubt not but you have sometimes as well as I thought on the madness of the people and more especially these two seeming kind of opposite mad-men I have mentioned both equally bold with God the one avouching him as the sole and immediate spring of all his good and such he is ready to term any or most of his own whatever they seem to others thoughts and motions and that in an high and admirable sense and notion not in his providence but by his very spirit The other denying that he is at all or that there is any such thing as either What either of these believe I know not or whether any of them really and cordially believes what he says I know not But whatsoever either of them believes 't were to be wished for peace sake amongst us they sometimes would be more sparing of their speech especially the latter And I think he might in prudence soonest be silent because I cannot judge of any great design he should have to gain proselytes whatever the other may But the best way to quiet them both is I have thought and do think not to provoke them over much but leave them a little to themselves that so by degrees they may through Gods providence over us seem to be at quiet of themselves And I beseech almighty God that none of us ever provoke other in the way of dispute out of some secret lurking passion the love of somewhat else rather than the love of truth the sight whereof if we are once so happy as to behold and can but retain any glimmering light thereof the same will reduce us to unity of mind and not set us at discord and variance Shall I in the conclusion of this Epistle plainly tell you the result of some of my solitary thoughts in relation to the fluttering motion of our spirit here That though it be governed and enlightned in some case by that good spirit of God the very eternal spirit of truth yet it is unsafe and dangerous for us to conclude when and how far we are thereby actuated further than the bare embracing that eternal word by faith as the alone Saviour of the world That the providence of God may be safely averred and affirmed in all things and that it is or may be visible to all men and he who beholds it not in some degree is not rational That were there not some foreign or operative power ruleing in and over our spirit besides what is natural or what we call nature that is any absolute power it has of it self it could not notwithstanding any present lust of the flesh or eyes be drawn any wise to promote any act the inevitable consequents whereof viz the disquiet of it self and disease of the body it naturally loaths and abhors upon consideration And that consequent certainly every soul more or less foresees in all intestine division and civil War That he who considers our late past troubles and the madness of the people then may safely conclude our punishment therein was from God's just vengeance for our sins in his providence And that if he thinks there was any thing of his spirit therein as was then much pretended or contributing or assisting thereto he is besides himself That if the like madness now beginning to possess us again perhaps through the general neglect of our ordinary duty to God or the like break not out into open rage and hostility I will without hesitation affirm 't is the merciful providence of God alone and what we can scarce rationally expect beholding our selves to sin so much against the light of reason And thus much may any man see That the soul of the wisest man at best receives but a dim and short sight of the truth of things and causes that if such sight at any time happen through the goodness and bounty of the Deity it is apt to vanish again on the suddain by reason of the interposition of some clouds arrising from the flesh so as the soul cannot long behold it nor know where to fix but in faith of some future clearer vision That Man cannot find out the work that is done under the Sun because though a man labour to seek it
residence or future habitation of these Souls when the body leaves them or they leave the body We shall scarce allow them any heavenly vision and though they are the work of God's hand as well as we and work to his glory and set forth his glory here on Earth we shall hardly admit them to do it locally in Heaven To what place shall we convey them or for what work or use shall we assign them in our thoughts If we leave them as thin aiery bodies wandring up and down in the Air or we know not where or whither neither animating or moving other bodies nor doing good or harm to man or ought else I think we derogate from the wisdom of that first cause wich can no more be thought to continue a thing altogether useless and unnecessary than to create a thing useless from the beginning which reason will not allow us to think If upon the separation of these Souls from the body we can imagine they forthwith enter into animate and reside in other bodies we must forthwith make enquiry whether such bodies only as are of the same Nature Quality and Species with those they inhabited before or else promiscuously of any kind or degree whatever Either of which will prove absurd to imagine with reason But before we come to view that absurdity in its particulars All living and moving Creatures would be a little considered together in their several Faculties or Intellects from which notion Intellect we raise our doubts of their Mortality or perishing Though the wisdom of the Almighty be apparent and imbraced by the reason he has given us in his willing the production of a more fine and subtle spirit for moving bodies than those fixed to the Earth touched before we cannot reasonably conjecture any vast disproportion of Intellect though some we find between living moving Creatures themselves whose voluntary operation seems to be and tend only towards acquiring Food and Sustenance to each particular individual and perpetuating it self by generation For our more immediate acquaintance or conversation with some of them more proper and fit for our use make the difference in their Intellect seem greater to us than in reality it is And we are apt to place the excellency generally in those creatures which necessarily depending on us next under God the Preserver and Feeder of all for preservation and sustenance do by that their dependance and familiarity with us shew their Intellect more apparently to us than other Brute Creatures But why we should hereupon imagine that there is not as much of Intellect in some Fishes of the Sea as either in Fowls of the Air or four-footed Beasts which we better know I find no reason since by their Intellect they both acquire their food and preserve themselves from danger equally with the others Nay I see no ground to deprive Insects from as large a share of Intellect in some cases as either By Insects I mean not only those reptilia and volatilia without parts and blood to us discernible but all creaturs whatsoever bred of heat and putrefaction as it may be Mice some kinds of Serpents Frogs and the like whereof some years seem to produce more and far greater numbers than can be thought to proceed from generation though I believe most Creatures bred of putrefaction at first do after generate These together do undoubtedly far exceed in number all quadrupedes and flying Fowls upon the face of the Earth Now some of these have already obtained from us the repute of very wise and provident Animals and we are apt to extol their Intellect sometimes beyond that of other Creatures of far greater bulk and dimension Truly it may be adequate in many cases Intellect we know no more how absolutely to deny them than other Creatures Certainly we cannot deny any sense to most of them for instance the Bee undoubtedly they see and hear too as may be observed and collected from their being stayed or allured with whistling or the ringing of a Bason And since we observe how they will find and know their way to a Field of Thyme or the like some Miles distant from their Hives and return directly to them again we cannot deny them voluntary motion and by consequence Imagination and further I am somewhat assured upon Experiment they will in few days certainly know and distinguish a person conversant about them and not at any time molesting him though he somewhat molest and disturb them and forthwith strike at any Stranger upon his or her approach And truly were Wasps and Hornets equally beneficial to man with them I doubt not but some who have wrote the Common-wealth of the one would soon have espied a Kingdom in the other more than Agur could discern in the Locusts and found as much of sense and Intellect in the one as in the other Since they are no less political creatures and work in select numbers and with no less order and it may be government than the other the like may be said of many other kinds of Insects The numerous excess of Insects beyond that of other creatures granted and likewise that there is in many of them which I know not well how it can be denyed as great a measure of knowledge as in some other creatures which thing Knowledg or Intellect in any or all is our ground to think why such their Spirit resolves not into Earth or Air but rather continues in some airy thin body or transmigrates into some other body for the animation thereof It will follow that the spirits of these insects cannot transmigrate into specifick quadrupede bodies or Fowls because it may be made almost apparent that there often are in one or two days space more of them in number destroyed and mortified than there are probably four-footed Beasts and Fowls upon the face of the whole earth But we must of necessity find out in our imagination some place for the spirits of these insects to rest in for a time or where they work or wander up and down for a certain space Or else conclude they do forthwith animate or transmigrate into bodies of the same or the like species with themselves to wit insects only Which to hold and maintain would be equally absurd to our reason unless we can rest convinced withall of some World in the Moon or at least a most accurate Antipodes to our selves and a Continent of land so placed where the Sun shall have a most lively vivifying influence too at that very time or instant we shall first feel our sharp Autumm frosts For besides the innumerable millions of divers kinds of our ordinary Flies whose spirits from thence cease to work any more in the same bodies between which and those Insects we attribute so much of prudence to it would be difficult to define any certain bounds in point of prudence or Intellect How many thousand millions of that sage provident creature the Ant do's one winter destroy
of Trees from the Cedar that is in Lebanon even to the Hyssop that springeth out of the wall and of Beasts And we may grant him to be the greatest Philosopher and best Naturalist the World ever yet afforded and yet think there were many things in Nature beyond or out of his sight Some men indeed have fansied to themselves that he had a kind of Universal Knowledg and was thoroughly acquainted with the nature of all manner of Plants annd of their own too and seem much to lament the loss of his Writings and observation in that kind by the reason of the Universality as well as excellency of the subject yet I hope I may without offence think that there are infinite kind of Trees which Solomon never saw read or heard of when besides the many other Countreys far remote from his the West-Indies which have many Plants not found elsewhere were not known as we may fairly suppose notwithstanding what some conjecture about the situation of Ophir that way to that Eastern part of the World in his time And when any one Nation nay one single Acre of ground in it may find a man work all his days we may conceive even those things which Solomon saw read or spake of had so much of Mystery beyond any mans comprehension lock'd up in their Nature that there was more in them that he did not know than that he did And herein I had rather confine Solomon's knowledge and so understand his speaking of Trees from the Cedar to the hyssop with its due limitation as it ought to be so as not to comprize all mediums and particulars whatsoever than bring any particular part of Gods Creation within the bounds and compass of his or any mans understanding But besides had it been as some imagine that he had thus spoke of all these and their several Natures by a wonderful kind of sagacity if not Divine Inspiration yet that discourse of his upon those arguments was never reduced to writing For if he had wrote of all Trees Herbs Beasts Fowl Fishes and Creeping things as the Text reckons them up we may conclude without any Hyperbole that no subject matter of Paper c. would be able to contain all that should be written Since the number of the last of these and the least considered is unaccountable every body I will not except Snow or Salt producing at some time its peculiar Insect and some bodies several The search into Nature has afforded many pretty inventions various and wonderful helps to man in this Pilgrimage physically and otherwise thanks be to the God of Nature and may do more yet seldom or never by any nice abstract Philosophical inquiry but rather casually and unexpectedly upon some first humble discreet universal observation of the things of the World and then of some particulars And the event and success hereabout has usually moralized the Fable of Pan who though a rural God sooner found Ceres lost by accident than all the more select Gods by their curious speculation and search This I observe not to dehort any man from it but advise it rather so it be performed with due moderation and circumspection That great Book of Nature which is before us all and somewhat laid open for us to read is daily mistaken and we are apt to forget the first and last letter of it the Alpha and the Omega and adventure upon causes not only lamely for that we do at best but blindly too and then 't is no marvel if at last we find we imbrace a Cloud in the room of a Goddess I am not about here to set down any Catalogue of the Errors or misconceited sights some men have made into the works of Nature though it might prove no unprofitable work to have them marked out but only declare to you my opinion of the fallibility of this kind of search And that unless we therefrom by the goodness of a gratious as well as incomprehensible wise God see our own ignorance and thereby somewhat of him our search is usually vain and that he who terminates there only hits the proper mark set before him whatever he seem to aim or design at or light on profitably besides 'T is true in the search of Nature we often for the present light on causes agreeable and acceptable to our Reason and t is the peculiar property of human Reason only to search and find out causes the words are often confounded and shewing a Reason put for shewing a Cause but no man yet was ever able to extract by his invention with the present allowance of his Reason such a certain cause of any Work in Nature as to be imbraced by himself or others as altogether indubitable Fancy indeed having oft-times somewhat of similitude and likeness with Reason though not of cognation with her is so much quicker sighted though not clearer sighted than reason her self that if it keep the Watch-Tower in the Soul there shall not be such a thing as an occult quality in nature nor any thing so hid as it cannot easily discern No man who has it regent in his Soul will ever dye the death of Aristotle although a death most likely of fancies first framing or inventing It is able to espy not only a Transexion or Transmutation of Sex but a Transmutation or Transition of one reputed species into another a Transformation Metamorphosis or what it pleases and not content to stand still as a Spectator in Natures conception or production will do the office of a Midwife and frame an Embryo to its own model nay raise more monstrosities than ever Nature produced from confusion of Principles But I think reason will as soon espy the defects and imperfections of that Soul it inhabits as any other mans and find that even nature is above its absolute reach After due trial and search into the works of Nature and perhaps invention or experiment of some setled or constant effect therein not to rest assured therewith may be accounted and perhaps is the usual disease of an inconstant wavering fickle if not very weak judgment yet such is the variety of secret occult Qualities and some secret property words quite cashiered by our hot-spur searchers as the Asylum of Fools or Sluggards wrapped up in every individual as is sufficient to beget a Scepticism in any modest sober Soul I am not ashamed to acknowledge my weakness and dim-sightedness into the meanest and smallest Plant or Insect and to confess that after diligent search into some and when I thought I had espied the very utmost extent of their Nature and Qualities I found my self deceived even by something casually or accidentally appearing from them not ordinary in others of the same visible species so far as I was able to distinguish from whence I could afford you perhaps some incredible stories It may seem a bold adventure of so weak a soul as mine yet I dare challenge the quickest clearest and Learnedst Intellect in the
Universal World to shew me how Nature in her Work often changes even as to visible mutation of colours and to set down any rationally undeniable or incontroulable cause for instance of black or blackness nay such as I am not able in Reason to convince him of the uncertainty and dubiousness thereof That she follows any certain especial course therein no man will maintain in things of the same species That not only in Sheep a thing most common white of both Sexes for many descents produce black we find but even Crows and Daws sometimes do the like or contrary and produce white as I have sometimes seen and I suppose at this day may be seen at Saint Iames's And though it might be rare it would not appear a miracle to me but the Work of Nature to behold a black Swan The like I could demonstrate in Fruit both Plums and Cherries from Stones of another colour'd Fruit set together in the same bed of Earth black from white or red and white from black Men may talk of some portion of Mercury Salt or Sulphur in every Body adust torrified sindged or the like but how this adustion works sometime in peculiar forms and figures only let any man tell me That alteration of colour is at any time an effect of the Imagination is a thing utterly exploded and never was other than the whimsy of some mens imagination or fancy surely never any man obtained fair or black Children from the greatest strength of his Imagination If it were able to work such an Effect we should be all very fair from hope or black from fear since Passions very much strengthen if not create or ingender an Imagination However if any such thing were thus wrought in living Creatures it cannot hold in Plants which have no Imagination I know men from their imagination have adventured to set down Causes of Colours and thought verily they hit on the right and yet have been corrected by another mans imagination rather than any solid Reason Aristotle tells us the cause why there are to be found more delicate and lively colours in the Feathers of Birds than in Hairs of Beasts is this For that Birds are more within the Raies or Beams of the Sun that Beasts are Another comes and corrects him and say's he gives a vain and frivolous Cause for it and tells us the true and real Cause of it is for that the excrementitious moisture of living Creatures which makes as well the Feathers in Birds as Hair in Beasts passeth in Birds through a finer and more delicate streiner for Feathers pass through Quills and Hair through Skin And surely his true and real Cause is as little exempt of vanity unless he had been pleased or could have shewed us a Cause too why there should be so adjacent such variety of delicate Colours about the neck of a Cock-Pheasant produced from such neighbourly and similar Streiners nay three of four delicate Colours in one and the same Feather through one and the same streiner Or why in a Peacocks train at such an exact and equal distance from the Body Nature should produce that curious and delectable Colour in a peculiar form and shape and the excrementitious moisture in its streining should fail of its Beauty not only in its first and next but in its furthest and most remote motion and produce but a dull Colour at either end of the Quill Of the two opinions or causes I will give that of Aristotle the precedency because I find not only in Feathers but all Flowers that I have seen and observed that side of the Feather Leaf or Flower which is most directly within the Suns raies to be ever most beautiful and that Eye of Argus in the Peacocks train to have but a shadow of its Beauty or form on the lower reversed side And yet doubtless there are most curious Colours to be found in the very bowels of the Earth And I for my own part am neither able to give nor do I expect further or other substantial cause to be given of the beauty and splendor in any part of a Creature than the will of the Almighty in his Creation either for our pleasure in beholding or admiration to draw us towards him in considering the variety ornament and excellency of his Works Neither do I think there is any undeniable cause to be rendred why Stones ground to powder should not nourish as well as bread if God's fiat had been upon them as Satan seemed to tempt him I do not from hence go about to perswade you or any man to transplant and remove back again all final causes particular effects and fix them only and barely upon the first original cause of all things I know there are exterior Causes to be given for the blackness of this very Ink I write with and such as may not only satisfy an ordinary Reason to accept thereof as indubitable but such as may frame an ingenious Spirit towards the finding out some like useful invention But this I say there is such an intricacy in the veriest ordinary Works of Nature to him who looks any thing deeply and not superficially therein as is sufficient to shew us both our own weakness and folly and a transcendent Wisdom far above our reach Upon which there should be always one Eye fixed and ready upon all occasions to recall the other and also all our other senses and faculties permitted sometimes lawfully to ramble after second Causes And surely unless we set up fancy as I have said rather than Reason for Umpire it would so be and we should be forced at last as to the main to terminate in some hidden Cause A Cause indeed not altogether hid from us but set aside as unregarded that is there necessarily is One only Eternal immutable unchangeable Essence abundant in Power and Wisdom through its abundance shewing it self in variety in the least of whose Works being infinite there is more than humanity can comprehend which by a Law of Nature binding all things but it self continually worketh all in all What defence or Apology shall I then make first for permitting my thoughts to ramble in quest of the Nature or extract of the Soul of Beasts as well as my own and next for setting down my opinion thereof and exposing the same to publick view thereby seeming to endeavour to impose the same belief on others which I hold and maintain my self Why truly for the first it might be occasioned or at least augmented from a late private rural life and a conversation as I may say with Beasts as well as men I cannot say with the Preacher I gave my heart to seek and search out by Wisdom concerning all things that are done under Heaven but the later part of the verse may not unfitly be applied to me or others This sore travel hath God given to the Sons of Man to be exercised therewith or to aflict them or as some Translations to humble
distinct from the Spirit never was the occasion of falshood never wrought injustice and damage to any man Nor of it self unless from our neglect of its monitions became of evil consequence to any Argument or ratiocination as some men call it has but I do not take every seeming manifestation every Logical dispute or Rhetorical flourish to be at any time so much the proper effect of Reason as of invention or Imagination Perhaps that one word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifying both Speech and Reason has not only made young Sophisters mistake themselves for the rational men but deceived the World into a plausible opinion of them and begat a Faith of many things contrary to Sense and Experience the best and trustiest Hand-maids Reason has in the Soul We have coined a multitude of English words from thence ending in logy to signify our rationality as Astrology to be a knowledg of the effect of the Stars Theology a dispute or dissertation of God or things Divine Analogy a comparing of things together Apology rendring of a cause or reason and the like When God knows how little of true Reason is made use of in relation thereto but words only And they might for ought I can perceive owe their derivation thither or from thence as well as the word Tautology And therefore though that Phrase of Speech be sometimes used in Scripture and which we translate reasoning I do not judge it to be spoken of or mean that pure natural human insight into the reality and truth of things upon consideration ever void of evil or just offence but a disputation private of words arising or offering themselves in the Soul from the Affections and Imagination or from the Imagination chiefly Saint Luke in the Parable of the Vineyard and those Husbandmen who would have killed the Heir that the Inheritance might be theirs uses the words ratiocinabantur inter se which Saint Matthew and Saint Mark both express by the word dixerunt And in the demur of the Scribes and Elders to our Saviours question about the Baptism of Iohn although all the Evangelists use the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 reasoned I have seen it in some Translations rendred thought I must confess Speech as I have touched before to be a certain demonstration of inherent Reason and therefore of an immortal Soul or Spirit but not therefore that all speech or argument proceeds chiefly from Reason that admirable faculty which of it self deceives not injures not or works at any time against right Can you or I or any sober unbiassed rational man upon due consideration believe or affirm unless where fancy supplies the place of Reason that any indeavour with the best and most polite arguments made thereupon for the disinherison of a lawful Heir by any of us who can challenge no right to the present disposition of the Inheritance proceeds from Reason Can Reason do or contrive any evil or injustice that good may come thereon perhaps in fancy only Do's it not teach us rather to suffer patiently whether by stripes imprisonment or death Do's it at any time teach us or instruct us to do or say what we would not have done or said in relation to our selves and this upon due examination and weighing in the ballance of Justice were our case theirs against whom we do or of whom we say He who has truly impartially acted or spoken thus has followed the dictates of right Reason not he who has used elaborate arguments to condemn or disable another in the case he would think it unjust to be disabled himself be the convenience or inconvenience to the generality of mankind never so great or pressing but has rather followed his own Imagination and the dictates of his own lust or affection which indeed is apt to delude and deceive not only other mens but even our own Reason in the end I may pray to confound mens counsel as David in the case of Achitophel I may pray to confound their devices as well as to abate their Pride and asswage their Malice as in our Liturgy I may pray to be delivered from absurd or unreasonable men But I shall never pray I think to confound any mans Reason that will never hurt me I am sure or deceive me But for want of it or exercise of it in my self I may be deceived The Poet says Reason neither deceives nor is deceived at any time in the first part of his assertion I fully agree with him It is that special emanation from Truth which of it self or by it self puts no fallacy on things nor works any evil as I said But unless by Reason he means that very light of truth or truth it self which is the thing we admire and adore by the name of God it is deceiveable Human Reason how strong soever is deceiveable and that through its tame compliance only to the work of the Imagination guided or directed as we may say by some base or corrupt or otherwise pitiful mean Affection and supplying its place Nay men do not only falsly impute all our wicked contrivances of deep reach and subtilty framed unto reason But even all our futile idle contrivances well and formally or curiously done to Reason too Every finely framed Romance every Eutopia or Atlantis every witty Poem the mere work of the Imagination we ascribe to that we are all become so rational Nay if we see but an exact Picture or Building we do as much when we might better do it in the model of every little Birds Nest. But as Reason in the former case disallows every thing that is apparently false or evil so in this it rejects of it self every work in the Soul and every contrivance of the Imagination not directly tending to the glory of our Maker the discovery of truth the reformation of mens manners or the like And doubtless at the instant work of the Imagination in relation to these contrivances though not directly hurtful of themselves many men have had some secret whisper within them first of the vanity thereof then upon a review perhaps have had some kind of Regret and in the end have censured and condemned themselves as guilty of a crime for such work that their Imagination or invention might have been better imployed as they say it fared with Sir Ph. Sidney Which could never be if reason had actually afforded its help towards the contrivance But in these very cases I think as in the former there is the immediate help and assistance of some Affection and that the Imagination is constantly attended therewith and elevated or inflamed thereby or else it would be otherwise imployed through sense and these pretty kind of Buildings would fall to the ground or vanish in oblivion before they were perfectly and compleatly finished And what kind of Affection is this why a desire of being admired for our fancy a light airy Affection and spawn of Pride nourished and fostered in the Imagination
in us from thence than from the inforced motion of any outward humane application We may desire and request men to exercise their Reason we may lay down before them the benefit and advantage they may reap thereby but we cannot properly be said to perswade them to it For 't is not a belief upon a bare consideration that what we at present say to them is true that is an exercise of Reason though belief in a strict sence be the work of Reason but upon consideration whether what we alledg may not be false A narrow scrutiny and voluntary search after truth is an exercise of Reason And this is the work in the Soul as it were of it self rather than from our perswasion or indeed the work of Grace which I commend We have in one place a kind of assertion of this power and ability in man to me seeming from one who elswhere ascribes all his good thoughts and actions as much and as oft to the effect of Gods Grace in him as any man whatsoever and that is St. Paul in the defence of himself before Foelix when Tertullus had accused him as a Pestilent fellow a mover of sedition and a ring-leader of a Sect That he had exercised himself to have always a conscience void of offence towards God and towards men What can his meaning be herein by the words himself and exercise but by the one his Reason by the other a will and power annexed to that Reason given as a rein over the other faculties of the Soul that is for so I take his meaning to be that notwithstanding his opinion notwithstanding his Affections adhering cleaving to or going along with such opinion notwithstanding a subsequent will or desire that the World should imbrace that opinion or belief viz. of a Resurrection which he himself had entertained with the allowance and consent of Reason He endeavoured all along by his Reason so to keep those other faculties under subjection as that they became not offensive to God or man and from thence as I infer he implicitely avers That in entertainment of that opinion he neither imagined evil desired evil willed evil or prayed for evil to any man for dissenting from him in opinion that his Imagination was not hurried herein to gratifie any evil ambitious or vain affection that he neither meant or intended or could foresee the disturbance of the present Peace or Government of that Nation in the allowance or declaration of his belief that he neither desired or aimed at riches places preferment or popular applause or admiration thereby So as when he came to review and re-examine his past thoughts and actions in the judicatory of his Reason he doubted not but he should find quietness of mind and no disturbance amongst the faculties of his Soul nor God nor man justly offended thereby I wish we all in matter of belief endeavoured as much that is exercised our Reason therein I affirm we may and can and that is the readier way by this work from within to obtain and procure his words are there ad habendam a Conscience void of offence than by the Imagination raise a Chimaera in the Soul a Conscience vulnerable in complaint from without a thing only offended when the Imagination and Affections are crossed in their course together and not else I do not presume here to propose or offer this exercise of Reason which I affirm to be in the power of most of us to do as any absolute way or means by which our Imagination and Affections may be reduced to work and lay hold on that which is good only that I refer to the only fountain of all intellectual as well as other beings through our humble Address and application thereto in Prayer from some sense of our own weakness and reserve it for a Conclusion but as a preparative thereto Neither has my Imagination hitherto so far out run my Reason or so supplied the place thereof as to make me believe St. Paul or any other was ever wholly void of offence or trouble of mind thereby But my Reason I trust to say so informs me that did we make that use of it we could or should we might espy the fallacy of our Imagination in many particular if not most cases of our life And to endeavour to awake it in our selves or others if these Papers happen to be seen is my chief aim and I hope and trust it will prove no cause of offence Experience something more than memory for 't is a judgement passed upon memory methinks might help us a little 'T is to Reason as memory to the Imagination A Fort to resort to sometimes from which it makes its sally or exit usually with some greater strength and vigour than before And methinks if Reason were not Master in us before this thing Experience which is certainly Mistress in most of us might help to make it so To see we have been deceived by our Imagination and that from thence a kind of false or feigned belief has been raised in us is sure the readiest way to prevent deceit for the future and raise in us a more true and substantial belief from Reason How oft have we observed our Affection nay our whole Soul disturbed and disquieted through the delusion of this one faculty in us the Imagination Has not that often put divers and various colours upon Objects as it were through Sense at several times and upon several occasions while Sense continues one and the same to day and to Morrow Have we not as it were Yesterday beheld things as Delightful Beautiful and Pleasant through that false glass only which to day we do not Has not that alone and not Sense raised the Proverb of the Crow He who has at several times received favours and disgraces from Court He who has at several times received admission and denial to Church preferment with either of which I was never acquainted or concerned is better able to set forth to the life his various prospects through this glass than I and better describe how ugly or beautiful the feet of those men from whom he has received both denial and admittance obstruction and furtherance have seemed at several times and I wish some men would consider it Is it not the strength of this one faculty alone so predominant often in us that introduces various forms of one and the same thing Beasts do love and fear as well as we from sense of a particular Object but I can scarce conjecture the Imagination in them can so far alter the form of the Object as to make it seem various to several Beasts of the same species at one and the same time This we find and may observe it does in us Men a Bush at a distance will seem to one his appointed Friend to another his Lover to a Third a wild Beast to a Fourth a Thief to a Fifth an evil Spirit and to a Sixth a good Angel according as
Memory and weak of Judgment whatever our Will or Affections are or seem to be and the sight of that might well put a stop to my Writing But you and every man who finds and owns himself under that Notion will I hope pass by and pardon my infirmities if there appear any discrepancy between these and my former thoughts already set down in relation to this Subject And the rather because you well know all my former Papers were out of my custody whilst I was imployed and busied in these I have already exceeded the bounds of an Epistle and will trouble you no further save in relation to some former demonstration of my weak judgement relating to this faculty of the Soul the Imagination under these four several following heads distinct and a part and those I am bold to set down as follows I. That the Imagination of all the faculties of an human Soul is most subject to infection change and alteration from the humours of the Body II. That the guidance regulation or Government thereof is least in our power of any faculty of the Soul III. That it being a faculty the Government whereof is so much out of or beyond our Power We are not answerable for its Transgression unless where some other faculty more in the power of our will through the light of Reason does apparently concur or comply with it Or that through the negligence of our Reason it was the cause of the Imaginations incorrigible rambling errors IV. That it shews its Divinity and extraction as well as any other faculty of the Soul in the manner of its Work That set on work in relation to its own motion it necessarily terminates with the allowance of Reason in the thoughts of one Eternal Wise Being or Mind Governour and disposer of all things That from such thoughts we are necessarily stirred and incited in all the faculties of our Soul to fly thither for relief and to receive direction and guidance from thence chiefly That yet herein necessary care is to be had and taken that we retain and in some measure make use of our Reason lest we become ensnared through the delusion of Satan I. Notwithstanding my Opinion of the Souls extraction its Divinity and Immortality its power here in a Body from Heavenly influence to mount sometimes above sense its strength to resist all foreign delusion through sense by Reason Its capacity to work without a Body or the help of that more present inlet bodily sense Yet it is in my judgement while it remains in a Body so far subject to some Mists and Vapours arising there from that the Imagination the Eye of the Soul is thereby often deceived And so far deceived thereby that Reason though it remain in its native strength cannot correct its wandring but is forced to yield its allowance and consent and to be led as it were captive by the Imagination This faculty the Imagination the Eye of the Soul through sense as well as otherwise necessarily and perpetually working and in motion Upon any distemperature of the Body whereby sense is in any degree or measure clouded or disturbed is apt of it self to frame and raise strange Idea's and make strange representations to the other faculties to the amazement and confusion of Reason To the allurement inticement or attraction of other faculties from that which before they naturally were bent and inclined to and thereby at length to the captivation of Reason it self This happens not from every humour or in every disease of the Body but in such disease and from such humor only as by fumes sent into the brain clouds or darkens that port or inlet to the Soul Sense Or so disturbs or obstructs those passages that they cannot afford that assistance to Reason as usual against the deceit of the Imagination Sense I say a passage way or means by the perfect openness and clearness whereof Reason oft makes a better and truer judgment of things than it can when those passages are a little obstructed and yet to the Imagination seem open and clear In sleep when that port Sense is as it were wholly shut up through fumes Reason without blame leaves the Imagination as sole Master in the Soul to frame and introduce Idea's of it self which in reality are not Yet upon the opening of Sense again they vanish or are presently rejected and cast out of the Soul as idle But when that port of Sense is open and the Imagination presents to the other faculties of the Soul as if what it presented were rightly and truly formed through Sense with the allowance of Reason and thereby a vain belief a thing somewhat more than a Dream is raised perhaps to the terrour and affrightment of the Affections Reason not able absolutely to contradict the Imagination because it seemed to have the concurrence of Sense is sliely drawn into a kind of consent and this not seldom occasioned through gross humors in the Body In which case there is in my opinion a kind of defect lett or disease in Sense though not apparent as well as fault in the Imagination The Imagination is capable of distemper two manner of ways corporally or spiritually as we say But those two kind of distempers of the Imagination the one from the Body to the Imaginations deception of its fellow faculties in the Soul the other from those fellow faculties as violent Affections to the deception or rather confusion of the Imagination it self being often confounded together and the one not sedom mistaken for the other and the fault of the Body imputed to the Soul and the fault of the Soul imputed to the Body I have thought good to set down here some kind of mark by which they might be distinguished though I offer it not with any great confidence as the light of an infallible truth appearing to me and it is this That if at any time we find and observe a Body healthful as in most Lunaticks and withal the Affections very vigorous and active and every design and bent of them ready to be put in execution by the will and the instruments thereof bodily members There we may rationally adjudge the distemper of that Soul to be occasioned no otherwise than by its own default or neglect and the Original cause of the disease to have been the too familiar intercourse and trust between the Affections and the Imagination from the neglect of Reason and a thing which Reason might have prevented But if we find and observe the Body infirm heavy and lumpish and not active or ready with the Affections to put in execution those things which are framed in the Imagination but that there is a kind of Terror or Horror observable over the Spirits and a doubting and distrust in the Soul there we may impute every false gloss and fictitious formation and contrivance of the Imagination to have its rise or result from some gross humors in the Body such as we call Melancholy such
them But there is none I suppose that ever admitted them so far rational or indeed so far imaginative as to search after the ground of their Imagination whether Sense barely or somewhat more or once to imagine or think after what manner they thought Now surely these thoughts arise in most of us as of themselves and if that proceed from any stroke through Sense barely I have no Reason and could I not fancy to my self there were existent that which eye never saw nor ear ever heard c. I wanted human Imagination and such an Imagination barely can never proceed from the Body Well Imagination in us alone revolved is a thing that most certainly declares our Divinity and extraction for it shews it self penetrable otherwise than by Sense Nay it appears being revolved to be made to work and lead the Will and consequently some Affection in direct opposition to Sense How were it else possible good men should be willing to die and leave this World 'T is not Reason alone and by it self can model and frame a more pleasant state 't is not all the bare telling us there is such will do it How were it possible as I have touched before that an evil man should be so weary of his life here as to let out his Soul with his own hands or by any voluntary act which Beast never did 'T is not any stroke through Sense alone can render his life more miserable to him than all others there is nothing but self-preservation and self-existence offers it self through Sense The Imagination alone is the cause It is wrought upon divers and sundry ways as Divine not subject to strokes through fense only but some way else and from somewhat else than corporeal We are assaultable divers ways and in sundry faculties of our Soul and I deny not but supernatural power not tied to order may work its effect originally in Affection or the Will but I do think this facile pliable restless and ever working faculty the Imagination is oftnest directly and particularly assaulted from insensible powers and the work of our conversion as well as destruction not seldom begun there The Imagination ever meets with somewhat Divine in its own work admit there were no other faculty apparently in conjunction with it at first It is commonly said that that man is of very weak parts or ordinary capacity or in an evil condition who cannot entertain himself with his own thoughts Now if he do but that first and no man can but do it sometimes that is think of his thoughts he will have Affection and Reason attendant and then he must needs see and be inflamed therewith that these thoughts of thought arose from somewhat more than Sense no Sense could lead him back to think of thinking or be the direct occasion thereof and proceeding further to weigh and consider the manner of his thoughts together with his sometimes strange Affections he will by a kind of necessary consequence observe that Imagination in man is not merely actuated through Sense and that by these two consequents First there will appear to him there was no certain method or order in the motion of the several faculties of his Soul but that sometimes the Affections seemed to move from the Imagination sometimes the Imagination from the Affections Next there will appear an independence and direct breach of his thoughts at peculiar Seasons and that without any new stroak through Sense for though there be generally as I have touched a concatenation of mans thoughts as certainly there is always in Beast until that link be broken by a stroke through Sense yet upon due examination man will find it otherwise at some time in himself I. That there is no direct approach from one human Soul unto another but through Sense I confess and agree and that he who would inform or rectify our Reason or Judgment and bend and incline our Affections to or from that thing it already stands bent or inclined must necessarily enter that way that is by Sense and thereby consequently first make some slight touch upon the Imagination So as the Soul seems generally to work from Sense first by the Imagination with the assent or allowance of Reason and next the Will and Affections and yet even in this manner of its work there is so suddain a stroke upon all of them as it were together that no man can directly affirm priority or posteriority in the work of either of those faculties of the Soul or that one is in time before or after other But when we are sometimes alone and the Soul works as it were of it self though indeed not of it self without any apparent stroke through Sense it may be nay appears upon a serious retrospect and consideration otherwise Do we not or may we not observe there has been sometimes a burning within us our Affections on the suddain kindled and inflamed in a kind of expectancy we well know not how or of what and so as it were creating thoughts in us divers from what we ever had or perhaps otherwise would ever have been Sometimes we find Reason suddainly enlightned to the disallowance and correction of our present as well as past thoughts Will and Affections whereby there is a strange mutation wrought in the Soul Sometimes we find such a thing as a Will wrestling and struggling in us to change and alter our present thoughts and Affections and they have been changed But more often may we observe a suddain irresistible thought arising in us without any help or assistance of Sense that we can perceive or observe nay sometimes in a direct opposition to Sense as it were we know not nor can find whence or how whereby our other faculties subjected as it were thereto some work is wrought tending in the conclusion to the glory of some all-powerful irresistible Will as we conjecture by the consequence and shall most certainly find in the end Now if the course and manner of the Souls work be not always the same but so various and seeming preposterous so alterable mutable or changeable in its work and yet that alteration is not made by any stroke through bodily Organs neither is there any apparent cause to be found why the Affections should be inflamed or Reason enlightned on the suddain in opposition to an evil or false Imagination or an Imagination suddainly raised in opposition to delectancy through present Sense then is the Soul in every part a thing most certainly Divine capable of insensible influence and not extracted from the Body For if it were of the Body and so necessarily required for its motion or agitation a stroke through bodily Organs the course of its motion would always be regular and continue after one and the same manner Man must see and feel and hear c. and perfectly conceive by his Imagination through Sense before he be affected and then I should be ready to grant the Imagination to be the Principal
greatest pleasure of any thing our Souls are able to frame to themselves here and cometh nearest in delight to that pure love of God even for himself which of his mere love and goodness now and then as the earnest of everlasting love and joy he bestows on us for his Sons sake and is chiefly effected through faith This being premised that every love which is praise-worthy and which is able of it self to create an alternate true Love necessarily respects a Deity Let us behold if you please how far it ought to respect humanity too and with whom we may contract a Friendship By the very profession of Atheism notwithstanding any seeming kindness all obligation of mutual rational amity is become null and void for the cause aforesaid I may have charity for such a man and relieve him in his want but charity differs much from friendship and is somewhat of an higher Orb for charity respects God only or chiefly though rationally and we thereby pay a duty barely to him in his Image which we behold with our Reason as his however or which way soever defaced But this other love respecting man as well as God and man chiefly and God secondarily as I may say cannot arise without some apprehension of human recompence or expectation of a reciprocal kindness and that cannot be from an Atheist for how can I think that mans Soul will ever be knit to mine in amity who denies the very cause of its own existence and attributes that to chance which I do to Wisdom and Love Human love stirred through opinion with Reasons allowance necessarily requires an agreement in opinion about the Author of our being For where we vary in opinion about the manner of our Creation or Extraction there is no ground for rational Love as fellow Creatures or fellow Members But whether this kind of Love called Friendship requires any further consent in opinion than that there is one God eternally wise Maker and Creator of all things in Heaven and Earth and a just rewarder of Virtue and punisher of Vice and the like let us if you please inquire a little further Why truly I can see no just Reason why we may not contract Friendship with a Turk as well as Christian States and Princes make Leagues with them or having contracted Friendship with a Christian why I should dissolve that knot of amity imagine he turn Mahometan which I cannot so much as imagine at present if he ever were a true Christian provided I behold and continue to behold in such person according to the best judicature of my Reason the worship of a God and an unfeigned indeavour to be led by the clear light of truth and a continued resolution not to forsake those known and approved by all men paths of Justice Judgment Mercy and the like which tend towards her Friendship being a voluntary union of Affections between man and man and so of human product It is not requisite it should have the approbation and acceptance of Faith but it is sufficient it have the allowance of Reason which is the proper Judge of all human actions It is an human League or tye a duty if you please of loving one another as men and that not as men out of the Body though it be a conjunction of Souls but in the Body and therefore if we think and adjudge the Will and the Affections in man good in the main that is constantly bent and inclined towards some good we are not to reject such an one in point of Friendship because he believes not just as we do or because we think he wants those graces things out of an human rational prospect which we suppose we have We should friendly indeavour to inform his Reason and heartily pray for the further enlightning of his Spirit and so long as we behold faith in his practice whatever he want in the theory begin to love him and continue to love him If mercy and truth forsake not a man I know no Reason why he should not find favour in the sight of man as well as God according to Solomon or why we should relinquish virtue in the Race which doubtless is not in vain whatsoever it meet with at the Goal Our different opinions in point of Religion though they ought not prove often I confess a great obstruction to Friendship but yet there is a greater which puts a stop to it through the whole race of mankind of what temper soever or what opinion soever And that is besides the strange diversity of human Souls in point of opinion the difficulty of discerning anothers opinion and mans mutability too therein the difficulty of discerning the very right bent or inclination of a mans Affections or distinguishing that which is real from counterfeit ware by reason of that false vail which every human Soul the simplest and weakest has ready at hand and is able to put on and wear by looks and gesture as well as speech and that is Hypocrisie and Dissimulation which no other Creature but man how sage soever did or could ever yet put on Charity sometimes overlooks this natural habit in man but Friendship a thing of human product and expecting a return which charity does not trades abroad very seldom and sparingly upon this account of counterfeit wares and men are loth to venture for fear of false returns Of Dissimulation I mean to say somewhat in another place how little it ever advantaged any man and therefore let it suffice here only to say of it that it is the very bane of Friendship and whensoever 't is beheld as an habit in any man that man must not expect Love and Friendship from another That Love is the Loadstone of Love is a trite and true saying and therefore he who would attract it in this case had need carefully observe the Apostles rule and let his Love be without dissimulation It cannot be with it I am sure acceptable or pleasant but nauseous and loathsome Dissimulation seen in any man being a thing that gives an ill aspect and an ill relish and savour to that and other the best indowments in a Soul It was the variety of human tempers and the difficulty of knowing them that I principally respected in the writing of this Epistle Friendship and the want thereof came in accidentally to my thoughts Well perfect and complete Friendship between any two is as the Heathens feigned their antient God begotten of time notwithstanding this it must have a beginning and comes to pass many times on the suddain in an instant as soon as a man makes an end of speaking as we find that of Ionathan to David if we perceive or at least think there be integrity of heart in the Speech Yet in this league of Friendship sometimes too suddainly made and concluded we ought to take some care that it be such as may be lasting and that since as one says All old Friends were once new we
on him You 'l say he has reason to love me I say so too but it will be but with a sensual Love notwithstanding his Reason for in the first case he may think and his Reason may well allow of such thoughts My Charity or kindness was with an eye to some praise to be seen of men c. or at least in expectation of some future reward and not from beholding any thing of good in him In the second case he may with the like reason conjecture my liberality flowed with expectation of a return and with some reference to my own Worldy advantage that I intended to make use of him or the like But if at any time there appear to this man a sight of truth in me that upon the greatest advantages or greatest offers and temptations to desert him I stuck to him and would not be drawn to do him the least injury or injustice for any gain whatsoever and he behold the principles of Justice and Honesty engraven in me He will then think it proceeded from my view of his deserts and some good I saw in him and seeing the like in me and placing some trust and confidence in this my Love he will make me a return and love me cordially as we say with the allowance of his Reason free and at liberty and this I call a rational Love or friendly Love and the inition of true Friendship We will imagine there are three persons before whom I have a Cause depending to corrupt whom I offer to each a Bribe the one refuses the other two accept and thereupon I have a Judgment by the two according to my sensual appetite or desire and am very well pleased therewith the question is whether of these I should love best from my heart root or soonest enter into a League of Friendship with Undoubtedly he who refused and yet I must necessarily love the other two who gave judgment for me according to my sensual desire best with a sensual Love Now in this case of my sensual Love to the two Reason was assistant towards the raising of it or else I could not have thought on a Bribe On the other side Reason free and at liberty must be the thing solely which causes me to love him who refused my Bribe and that in beholding his integrity for it is impossible I should do that by Sense his action being or working visibly against my interest There are two Litigants before me the one a Christian by the Seal of Baptism and outward profession as I know the other not but a Turk we will suppose These two I delay in point of judgment with some shew perhaps of my readiness to take a Bribe from either the Christian offers me one the Turk not but trusting to the merits and justice of his Cause and hating and detesting corruption in such case as I observe utterly refuses though upon hearing I were fully satisfied of the justice of the Christians cause and gave judgment for him whether of these two think you should I have the firmest or deepest Love for or soonest enter into a league of Friendship with upon occasion I will tell you the Turk For as concerning the Christian's action my Reason will inform me that there is no person that indeavours to corrupt me by Bribe but either thinks I am unjust or at least would have me so If I once suspect he thinks me unjust 't will be in vain to love him after the manner of a Friend for he can never love me so again or place any trust or repose in me If I perceive he would have me to be unjust he is most certainly so himself and then I can place no trust or repose in him Now if outward profession were to be the standard of this Love and my own Religion the guide I should sooner make choice of the Christian for my Friend For I behold him through Grace the better of the two and believe the Turk a Reprobate notwithstanding his hate of corruption and Love of Justice and that the Christian may be by repentance in the state of Grace notwithstanding this injustice in him yet beholding and condemning falshood in any man by my Reason I cannot in that man place a trust or repose with allowance of my Reason nor raise a trust in my Soul so as to confide in him which must be effected through Reason as the proper Judge of human Safety or felicity here for upon that is Friendship builded not on future hopes or Heavenly prospects And therefore Grace which is a kind of prospect through Faith of future felicity can neither create friendly Love nor judge rightly of a fit subject thereof but Reason Whoever would be my Friend I desire he may so be from the very formation as well as allowance of his Reason I know not what any man can behold in me whatever he see in himself worthy friendly Love by any other light than that of Reason Neither do I know if his love should move otherwise or by a greater gift how to repay him a burthen to every man till it be done but by such a return a Love from my Reason since I confess I have no other light to do it by nor without it can judge of the reality of his Love or any good in him I know there are some men who would confine their Love to move only by what they call the Spirit but whether it be not the Spirit of Delusion rather than Love will appear by its confinement within such a particular Sphere That Spirit of Love surely directs us not to reject any man in whom we behold just and upright dealing and other effects of a sincere and well-disposed mind by our Reason what falls not within the compass of that light viz. Reason may be beheld by him who infuses it through the merits of his Son not by us And whom I think we do ill to vouch in our ordinary familiar intercourses and to make him so much a party that he must love only as we whilst we love only as we please and as our own fancy doth direct us To love as Friends needs not the seal of adoption and Grace the seal of Creation is sufficient You have seen doubtless as well as I contracted mystical subscriptions in very familiar Epistles such as Yours or thine in the Lord only which though it be good and allowable in some Sense cannot be acceptable in the common notion as we are men neither can we rationally think such men will ever love us as sober men when once they seem to think themselves out of the flesh while they are in it But we may allow such as in our days use the salutation and who make bold thus to write in every Epistle to cloud their kindness in Divinity since there never was party some thereof at least that bore about them less of humanity But if such kind of men who would seem out of the flesh here and
them a free passage and give them a quick return by way of acknowledgment to that bountiful Ocean of goodness as the necessary means of a fresh supply I know nothing but that Agrippa his Oration might be good nay so good as a Stander by might in a good Sense take it to be rather the voice of God than man but if his Auditors acclamation in applying it solely to him were gross flattery I am sure his reception in that strict and narrow Sense must needs be a damnable presumption Satan is a subtle Politician and doubtless many who in the beginning of their race have set forth with an eye only or chiefly fixed on the Glory of God and the general good of man have by baits thrown in and casually happening in the way diverted their eyes a little from the course they first steered and cast them inward on themselves and at last converted publick aims to private or at least so intermixed or allayed them as that they could not be taken for currant And when once our actions begin to carry upon them our own image and superscription it will be no difficult matter for the Devil to perswade us to own the Metal as well as the Coin and make us think and own our selves as well Miners as Forgers of our dependants fortunes and our own But he who steers chiefly towards God's Glory and holds out in a streight and steddy course whatever outward glorious acquisitions as we sometimes call them and Scripture allows he obtains collaterally As he will find no cause to condemn himself so neither do I and as no man I am sure can find just Reason to envy his Worldly Power Pomp and Authority knowing at the best and honestly obtained how transitory and fading all Worldly habiliments are So none of us can justly condemn or accuse such a man of vain glory but we may allow him some such Euge as David took up upon another account Good luck have he with his honour let him ride on And we who seem to want what such a man enjoys may by our contentedness in a mean estate with chearfulness and alacrity glorify God together with him since the World is able to afford Power Authority great Place and the like only to a few and small number of men This Gloria in excelsis by the way ought to be the Canticum of our Souls in all our travail and to have its rise from our strongest and best Affection It should be the Motto we carry along with us but in a white Banner as the Ensign of peace and not that of In nomine domini in a bloody and warlike one It is indeed a most angelical Anthem yet it must be taken whole as they sang it or not at all I have wondred at the once leaving out Gloria patri c. appointed to be as the bearing of those Heavenly Songs or Hymns of David and have sometimes thought it would never have been ordered to be omitted unless by those who desired neither peace on Earth nor good will towards men This is a thing if any to be preferred above our own salvation and I must take leave here to be of opinion It was this alone which made St. Paul wish himself Anathema for in my weak judgment I cannot take the meaning of those words usher'd in with such a serious protestation as I speak the truth in Christ I lye not my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost otherwise I cannot think his Charity did so abound or overflow as that he wished his brethrens salvation before his own as some For to wish evil to ones self is impossible and to wish anothers good before ones own is so too and also irregular we being at utmost commanded to love our Neighbour but as our selves the whole heart is only due to the Maker and Framer of all hearts for whose Glory all things were made But this I think is his meaning that were it possible God's Glory could once come in competition with ones own or other mens salvation the first were to be preferred by us And this he brings in as a Preface to his explanation of God's promise made to Abraham's Seed that all are not children of the promise which are Abraham's Seed but some others and is an answer to an objection which might be made by the Romans to whom he preached that promise as seeming contrary to the letter thereof Were God as cruel to some one peculiar part of his image as kind to others under the Notion of Predestination as some have represented him in their fancies and so rendred all his Precepts and his Promises of none effect which God forbid And were I assured notwithstanding all my diligence all my indeavours and earnest requests to perform his will that I might obtain his promise that I were one of that irrecoverably secluded number I do yet at this present think I could notwithstanding any such assurance make my exit in these very words Glory be to God on high or sanctisicetur or magnificetur nomen tuum And certainly who ever makes a true search into himself and consults his Reason whereby he will find God's prerogative far greater over us than the Potter over his Clay will find cause to do as much Well! he who keeps within such a path as points and tends directly to God's Glory and the general good of mankind God's visible Image without turning quite out of it into some other By-path or corner what ever ornaments or covering he gets which are often scattered in the way he may lawfully take up and wear and which we esteem and account of as good worldly Blessings But yet notwithstanding we so do when we consider how cumbersom they are and how troublesome they often prove to the owner and injoyer especially all outward ones which concern the Body barely and which when superfluous are reserved but for one Sense to feed upon that is the Eye we may with Reason reject them And though some men have made a shift sometimes to keep on those Plumes and Feathers of Honours Riches c. and wore them perhaps both safely and easily during their lives Yet since we are able dayly to behold how certainly they are shed or moulten by every mans Posterity if not stripped from them by force and violence and that usually in a very short space of time although they were thought by the Ancestor very fast pinnion'd to his progeny We can by no means exempt any of them from that title Solomon has given them Nay we have thought and said that even Fame her self which has the most lasting Feathers and strongest Wings may yet lose them and perish in oblivion And therefore there is no Reason for man to be very eager in the quest of any thing this World is able to afford him neither can we think but our most fortunate Worldly contrivers and happy men as we esteem them infected in some degree with
we see hear or feel the Effects As concerning any such like future motion the cause of the Wind whence it comes or whither it goes which the Text tells us we know not that is Reason's inquiry and it must be Reason's eye that beholds ought thereabout And what is from thence brought into the Soul is of some continuance a thing no ways incident to Beasts and that which we call belief which whatever it be continues the same till Reason be consulted again and inform otherwise If I believe the Wind to be fluent air If I believe it to be caused by some fermentation like that in our Bodies upon meeting of divers humors upon the concourse of several Atoms If I believe it is sent out of the caverns of the Earth c my belief in each case continues all the while the same till Reason frame another in my Soul Nay Sense shall not alter a belief without some consult of Reason and therefore a belief once raised or framed do's upon every touch of Sense make a kind of resort to Reason for its allowance or disallowance for its continuance as it is or its change For instance if I once believe that you love me or have a kindness for me If after I hear otherwise from others or see a strangeness in your countenance or feel some hard usage from you before the alteration of this first setled opinion or belief there will necessarily be some consult of Reason whether this or that may not be and yet your Affection continue firm Now if Reason do not weigh things by it self but listens only to the introduction of Sense so far forth as to change my belief without due examination this is the thing which I call Credulity and for which Reason is negligent and to blame Though I allow a Will in Brutes Imagination or Cogitation Memory and such a kind of Reason as by and through Sense co-operating with those faculties guides them in a regular motion and may be said to create a knowledge in them yet without Sense it is idle and nothing And can neither put a stop to the Affections in opposition to Sense nor create any such thing as a belief which is a matter effected above and beyond Sense though not clean contrary to Sense as some would have us to believe and through human Reason and is the consequent in such a Soul only as shall be able to work when the windows of Sense shall be shut up or Sense shall be no more Many Beasts are quick of Sense and so of knowledge I grant and may be said to be sensibly rational but not rationally sensible or so much as to consider their Sense or raise any belief about it And this is the utmost I am able to judge of their capacity for I must confess and acknowledge that could I discern more or could any man discover to me some certain indubitable sign of any such rational motion in them at any time as to give a check to their Affections which is the thing I call Conscience or create a light in them out of the reach of Sense and raise an evidence of things not seen which is the thing I adjudge to be Faith or Belief and which the weakest human Soul is in some measure capable of and I doubt not but Divine Grace does sometimes shine upon such beyond our inspection It would overthrow my opinion of their annihilation or else much shake and batter my belief of our own Immortality The Fowls of the Heaven are of so quick Sense as that thereby perceiving the alteration of the Air by a kind of adjunct Reason accompanying that Sense they know their appointed time as 't is said of the Stork and move accordingly yet being uncapable to foresee or judge of any cause thereof they cannot be said to believe ought thereabout before or after Undoubtedly the Ox may know his Feeder from another man as sure as the Feeder knows the Ox from another Beast but the Ox cannot believe any thing of the Feeder that he may or will hurt him upon a displeasure as the Feeder may of the Ox for that must proceed from Reason's inquiry or information above or beyond Sense Many Creatures when they feel pain or are sick and sensible thereof have such a kind of Reason ready attendant as often effectually works their cure without inquiry into natural causes and so may be said to know the cure but yet without an inspect into natural causes 't is impossible to believe it and therefore 't is that rational sight only that creates a belief and is in no wise the sight of Sense Now when from Reason there is raised in the Soul of man especially with concurrence of some Sense collateral as I may say to the thing believed a firm and indubitable belief of any thing we make use of the word knowledge and say we know and yet in truth there is no more than a belief in the case For instance I know I shall dye Now if I had never seen man dy or heard of death I should by my Reason observing my decay and waxing old as a garment verily believe some such thing but withal seeing and hearing continually of the death of others I rest assured I shall dy and so say I know But my own death being absolutely out of the reach of Sense I cannot properly be said to know so much neither does what I say therein amount to any more than a belief And so it is in many like cases where we say We know as where Iob says as we translate it I know that my redeemer liveth there is no more to be understood than a firm strong Faith the like of St. Iohn Baptist giving knowledge of salvation And so I think is St. Paul to be understood in that Chapter where he mentions knowledge so often Now a Beast neither knows or believes any thing of his own death for that as the causes and symptoms of death are out of the reach of his Reason which only accompanies Sense and is nought without it So his very death is out of the reach of Sense it self and he cannot know it For this reason perhaps some may think them the more happy Creature but if we consider it and make good use of our Reason we shall find that over and above that superlative prerogative of beholding in a manner and so believing future happiness we have here a great benefit and advantage by it above other Creatures and are enabled from hence to quit the Affections which otherwise would be disturbed by the often false alarms of Sense to which they are subject and so keep our Soul from being wounded by any thing from without Knowledge I say is a thing of the meaner extract the product of Sense and in no wise of Reason neither is Reason the parent thereof in any case unless in some case of Conscience a thing so much talked of and which I