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
the like nature with that breath it proceeded from and so be immaterial and immortal And we shall find this difference further confirmed by the same Authority For whereas Moses gives no other Life or Spirit different from the bloud to other creatures but saith the bloud is their life or Soul and their Soul in the bloud when he speaks of that of man he calls it the bloud of their lives signifying by this variety of phrase the difference of the thing and that in man the bloud has rather its motion from the Soul than the Soul its origine from the bloud And in the ensuing verse where he forbiddeth the shedding mans bloud by a retaliative Law he adds again the words used in the Creation For in the image of God made he man So that the Souls of Brutes only appear as the Tongues mentioned in the Acts as it were of fire but that of Man as a spark of that Eternal Light real and durable and as Solomon says after the dust returns to Earth as it was the Spirit shall return to God that gave it SECT III. The Immortality of the Soul of man maintained and illustrated from its obstruction in its operation NOw though this Earthly rarified Spirit of Brutes may to sense often outshine the other and several other creatures may outstrip some such particular men as we call Naturals in knowledge that diminishes nothing from nor renders the Soul of man to be of a less noble extract than in truth it is but that the one still remains Divine and the other Natural For although real Fire may by hid and by reason of some obstruction impediment or interposition dart forth little or no light to the senses and an ignis fatuus may shew it self and appear more lucid and bright to them yet Fire is no less Fire when covered and the nature and quality of them still remains different The outward appearance does never infallibly demonstrate the inward excellency of things and there may be a change of our common Proverb and Gold found that glisters not It seems to me rather some Argument of the immortality of mans Soul that it sometimes remains so darkly as it were inclosed in some one particular trunk or carcass without any the least symptom of its being there more than outward heat and motion as well as that in some others it shews forth its wonderful capacity and faculties beyond that of all other creatures For if it did arise naturally or had its production from the flesh or the more fluid substance of that flesh the Bloud as that of Beasts there never could happen or be such a disparity such a distance and disproportion in its effects as now and then there appears The faculties of the Souls of Beasts wherein they are similar to those of Man do not much exceed or outshine one another of the same species For although one Horse may be more docible than another more lively quick or better spirited as we term it than another yet there never was that or any other kind of Brute so brutish as I may say but had some knowledge of his Feeder and like the Ox and the Ass none of the wisest Animals could know its Owner and its Master's Crib none that would not shew some endeavour to nourish and preserve it self be sensible of what was noxious and destructive to it self careful to avoid Fire and Water or the like know its Young if Female and love and nourish them and be somewhat useful in its kind to man and other creatures as if the Souls of Beasts only dwelt in their native and proper Country and were at liberty and ours were here Prisoners in Chains and Fetters and sometimes in a Dungeon waiting for their deliverance I knew a man born in a Village near me living to the age of twenty years very heathful of a good stature of perfect outward lineaments and features endowed with the senses of Hearing and Seeing of a sage countenance if at any time without motion and yet never as I or others could discern knowing any one person about him more than another never making any signs for meat or drink though greedily swallowing them when put to his mouth never could he be made sensible of the passage of his own ordure or of Fire or Water and yet might be kept at any time from the danger of those Elements by the interposition of Stools or a Line or Cord and within that circumscribed Sphere would move all day ridiculously Certainly if this inclosed Soul had its being from the Bloud and not the Bloud its motion from it whatever Physicians may alledge and however they may guess at some obstructions or defect in some part of the Brain and they can but guess at the one more then I do at the other for they can shew me nothing in a dissection it must in some degree equal that of Brutes in outward appearance But seeing there is such a disproportion in degree of knowledge as well by comparing the most stupid Man with the most stupid Animal as the wisest Man with the wisest Animal and Man is found to exceed both ways that very excess on our parts does more demonstrate the immediate work of God in our creation and somewhat different from Natures ordinary course which though his working too usually produces the same effects in all individuals of the same species and might prove a Medicine to allay our fears on the one hand and our spiritual pride on the other and shew what the Soul of man is capable of and yet how obscure it may be here on Earth till it shall please that Inspirer to receive it into Glory I do not look on knowledge in the Soul of man as a bare remembrance or that the mind of man is at present and while in the Body merely thereby let and hindred from the knowledge of all things yet some such notion may not seem to arise and be fixed now and then in our conceptions altogether without the allowance of Reason since as often as we attain to any intellectual knowledge of things that is from causes whereof we were or seemed before ignorant and that either from the bare labour and search of our intellective faculty or from others information through sense with its attention it will seem to us rather a recovery from some disease than any new being or existence in the Soul rather a dissipation of some Cloud than any new Light and that we knew as much before if we had but minded it as we are wont to say And besides the usual native weakness or blindness in the Soul of man which is a thing almost perpetually labouring and working in some men as it were for a cure if it recovers in some sort and measure yet it 's afterward very incident to a relapse and subject to an adventitious weakness or blindness doth contract infirmities and often lives long in the Body blinded with a
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
of Affections and call them by name Desire Joy Fear Grief Sorrow Love Anger Hatred Malice Enmity Strife Debate Frowardness Peevishness Curiosity Indignation Revenge Cruelty Lust Luxury Jealousie Pride Boasting Vainglory Ambition Envy Emulation Detraction Contempt Impudence Admiration Covetousness Miserableness Parsimony Care Doubt Desperation Lamentation Amazement Pensiveness Sadness Distrust Anxiety Shame and many others Now herein we often give several names to one and the same Affection according to its degree in working or the subject matter upon which or from which it worketh We have Pusillanimity Timorousness Dastardliness Cowardliness Fear Amazement Dread and Terrour as well as the Latines have metus formido timor pavor tremor terror horror exanimatio and we have Love Fondness and Lust as well as they have amor dilectio libido and we have Anger Wrath Fury as well as they have ira excandescentia furor and we have Sorrow Grief Pensiveness Mourning as well as they have dolor moeror aerumna luctus the first of which last to wit dolor when they come to define they call it aegritudo crucians the second aegritudo flebilis the third aegritudo laboriosa and the fourth aegritudo ex ejus qui carus fuerit interitu acerbo and all is but Sorrow Now besides that some of the aforementioned words denominating our passions may be taken in a good sence as Love Fear Sorrow Joy Indignation Care c. so may we reckon up and adorn the Affections on the contrary part with as many commendable and well-sounding words which are as proper and peculiar for them as the other as Charity Peace Gentleness Calmness Meekness Purity Benevolence Alacrity Chearfulness Constancy Courage Valour Pity Compassion Tenderness Humility Caution Frugality Liberality Mercy Modesty Sobriety Content Comfort c. And I think our so accounted Divine and Moral Virtues are no more than well tuned Affections or germins springing from them by native Reason and the superaddition of Grace And where either the one or the other is wanting the result from them is very harsh and grating and of an evil sound I will for instance pick one out of the former sort of a sound most abominated and detested the term we fix upon the Devil as a thing inherent most proper and peculiar in him and that is Envy The word it self is of no original evil signification the Latine expresses it best from whence we derive ours invidia is from in videre to pry or look into the estate being or condition of another creature Now if from this looking into we conclude him happy and are pleased with it that is Joy and I think a good Joy of the mind if from our insight we conclude him unhappy and miserable and we are any whit displeased or troubled at it that is Pity or Compassion and I think that good too and a true fruit of Love and Charity which Tree of Love flourishes the better by that dropping or excrescence from it But if we either sorrow at the apprehension of another's happiness which effect hath with us appropriated the word Envy to it self or rejoyce at the apprehension of his unhappiness which we may call malum mentis gaudium then is our affection wrong-tuned and evil yet all terminates in joy or sorrow and sorrow is indeed but a privation of joy and those other many words are Coins made by us to express our selves in For Hatred Malice or the like I cannot apprehend there is any such thing as either in Nature that is subsisting by it self separate and diverse from other passions that which we call Malice or Hatred is but an evil desire or wish tending to the weakning or depressing or removing that object which we imagine obstructs the joy or comfort we would have or should arise from the excessive evil Love of our selves or others And for Anger which always has for his object to work upon something or other offensive 't is defined but ulciscendi libido a desire of revenge and according to the height of that act unless where it lights on inanimate things and so accounted Folly it may be termed Hard-heartedness Oppression Cruelty or the like SECT III. Of the rise of the Affections COncerning the rise of our passions or affections my thoughts and conjectures at present are these That there naturally is in every thing and every creature but especially out of its place some secret hidden appetite desire endeavour propension proclivity inclination tendence or motion called which you will to some place of rest quiet or good but often receives lets or impediments in that its tendence And the Soul of man being an emanation from a Divine Essence and God as I may say being the Center to which naturally it tends until it come to that beatifick vision it cannot be at rest Now a rational Soul naturally working by Love and Joy in its fruition for want of that fruition necessarily and by consequence Desires and Sorrows so as I do think Love and Joy Desire and Sorrow to be of the Essence of a Soul wholly disjoyned from a Body and rational acts of it not properly passions but when the Soul works in that manner through a Body then are they called passions Now the Soul conjoyned to a Body may have yet notwithstanding some love purely intellectual and rational by some reflexion and drawing in some amiableness as through the imagination though it cannot fully by the imagination reach the proper object of love to it self and this may be upon some consideration a proper and peculiar act of an Humane Soul as I have said of some infinite power goodness and wisdom in the creation and preservation of the Universe of which it is a minute particle And certainly the Soul of man may be discerned now and then to act in the Body as if it were out of the Body summoning its powers and drawing its forces together from some tending affection as if it were about to take its flight ravish it self from the Body lay aside its senses for a time and have no manner of commerce with them but did see with other eyes and seem to it self for a while as disjoyned from a Body Which kind of motion has undoubtedly been selt as I may say and observed by some in a pleasant healthful state and more especially after waking from quiet rest These gracious kind of prospects of the Soul are cause sufficient to make any man cry out with St. Paul cupio dissolvi c. but these kind of extasies are short and rare and the Soul is straightways forced to a return and act again as usually in and through a Body Now were it granted that no affection can move but from the imagination and that sense is the general Port and entrance into the imagination which thing at present I cannot grant but believe the imagination may receive some stroke from that thing which I call a pure intellectual rational love of which I shall have fitter
a present fancy shall render with the assistance of some formerly debauched or deceived Affection Now howsoever I adjudge affirm or maintain Affection to be the original cause of motion or work in the Soul I do not adjudge it originally to blame or to be the chief and principal cause of every uneasy or evil motion in the Soul but that the Imagination is first and chiefly to be blamed and that Affection would never imbrace any thing as good or reject any thing as evil which are not so in their Nature if the Imagination did not first present them as such Human Affection originally good naturally tends in desire to that which is good But because the Imagination the perspective by which it looks abroad is not able of its own strength to afford it a full and true prospect of any such thing it many times presents unto it in haste things as good and beautiful which in truth are not which once accepted by the Affections as good from that false glass they adhere thereto and are not easily removed but disturb us whensoever we are informed the contrary by others beating upon our Reason through sense or indeed that our Reason of it self shall too late inform us otherwise 'T is from the checks of Reason at peculiar seasons that that saying of video meliora c. has arose not from the Imagination which is most apt to delude us that we follow and are most prone to follow and if we are once given up shall surely follow as Scripture it self seems to intimate placing the foolishness of our hearts subsequent and attending on the vanity of our Imagination And therefore we should strive as far as we are able to rectify that one faculty in the beginning Does not experience daily shew us this one faculty in the Soul has deluded every thing that may be called an Affection in us by representing things on the right hand in a far more pleasant and delightful and on the left in a far more horrid and uncouth dress than in truth they are or prove to be when we become really acquainted with them and by our Affections seem to taste them Every man who has promised himself Place or Power with the delight thereof to gratify Ambition or Revenge Honour to gratify Pride Riches to gratify a Covetous desire Fleshly pleasure to satisfy a more than Beastly lust and enjoyed either I am sure will own it to himself and that a Mahometan Paradise best agrees with fancy alone and by it self as it were for whatsoever may be called an Affection no sooner tasts it but it loaths it and wants the Imagination to put fresh colours on it again to raise a fresh or as it were a new desire The things which the Imagination at first presents as ingrateful to the Affections we are rarely so long and so well acquainted with because we shun them and turn from them in thoughts as often as we can as with the help of experience to make a true judgment of our Imaginations false gloss thereon and we are never willing to stand out the trial This I am verily perswaded that that most dreadful Gulph of Death is chiefly so framed from the Imagination and is not such without its deception And that those who have shot it if they could return to us again and declare what might be most for our ease and quiet in relation thereto would bid us not to read the Treatises thereof which some have made and framed by their Imagination but advise us to exercise our thoughts towards the performance of moral duties rather than busy them about that which serves but to aggravate and enhaunce terror And I do further believe how e're we accuse our Affections therefore that it never was suddain joy or suddain fear or grief as is storied that has killed men those Passions are not so much to be blamed how suddainly soever they are awaked they only imbrace or avoid as they seem directed but that it is a strange suddain exaltation of the Imagination a thing seated in the brain which from its violent heat and motion there is able to dissolve and dissipate our vital Spirits and stop this breath of life in our mortal Bodies I do not impute our common distractions and disturbance of mind grounded as may seem to most in fears and jealousies so much to the fault of mens Affections as their Imaginations though Affection be to blame too Affection in man is generally good and inclinable to peace and quiet and if it work the contrary 't is from some false light of things darted from the Imagination however raised or kindled therein There are many thousands no doubt who from the bottom of their hearts wish and desire the quiet and peace of their Country and Nation and yet at this instant very much help to foment its differences and are ready to bring upon it the contraries thereof Trouble and War and this from a false and vain Imagination only or chiefly that we might be happier than we are because we seem not at present so happy as we would be Which deceit of the Imagination men usually observe when 't is too late and wish themselves again but as happy as they have been But it is a strange thing that they who have once observed it and found themselves deceived thereby should a second time suffer their Affections to labour under the same fallacy and not observe from Reason back'd as it were from Experience that we may be deceived thereby and therefore carry such a suspicion of the Imagination in our Soul as not to let our Affections too deeply ingage with theirs who may possibly indeavour their own advancement rather than our reformation and amendment and aim at the delusion of our Imagination by mormo's and spectrum's raised and shot into it through sense absurdly enough rather than the enlightning our Reason by offering us any thing of weight or truth Nay when the Imagination without the least ground or concurrence of Reason has once framed a belief in some men and thereby captivated their Affections how ready are these faculties together to spread the infection through Sense in others by the most ridiculous ways and means that may be Every Apparition every Blazing-Star must portend if not infallibly denote to others as well as themselves Sedition Troubles Wars Subversion of Monarchy or what else men readily would And truly so every such thing does if we exercise not our Reason and it happens once to become a general belief amongst us from the fallacy of our Imagination by the Devils Emissaries that there is such a portent but if men would be prevailed with to make use of their Reason I affirm and they would see these Apparitions portend no such thing But that it is in our power at all times to change the seeming evil consequent of these Signs or Face of the Heavens and I will plainly tell you how Let every one of us
any time even to eat and drink was from the hand of God As if when all were said that could be said there were a provident wise disposal of all things beyond the reach of human capacity to which he referred us A quick discerning sight of Reason often by the level of Justice and Charity though Gods gracious direction which some men have pretty ready at hand and in a sort fixed in the Soul has many and great advantages here and were to be wished if but for this one attendant which St. Paul glances at that a man might suffer fools gladly That is not fret and vex himself at the beholding the inherent folly and madness of some men in the World He who is at any time indowed with this discerning gift of the Soul ought to own it with all thankfulness but yet there is no appropriating though attributing may be sometimes allowable and tolerable of divine gifts to human nature lest in saying We will be wise we find with Solomon at the same instant It is far from us It is sufficient to render human Nature somewhat unhappy and incapable of any setled tranquillity of mind that this one seeming inherent gift or Attendant in the Soul Right Reason or Prudence shewing her self sometimes as our Vassal does at other times become so treacherous as to desert and forsake us and leave us only light enough to have the want of her espied It is and will be owned as some point of knowledge to observe the cloudiness which sometimes hangs over us To discern our want of so clear a sight into very human affairs as others are at the same time indowed withall or we perhaps at other times How often weaker eyes in estimation outvye us as we say and that we are forced as it were to borrow or take our light or have our Candle lighted from them as I may say Now if we do not at such time withall consider and behold our selves rather a subject of infused light capable of receiving more or less according as it may further the good will and pleasure or secret purpose of some Almighty Power than an independent light of our selves or shining at any time by our own proper power or strength Every view or espial of such defect which is often incident to the wisest man must necessarily torment and vex us And no man how wise soever is able to prevent these billows arising from such his often cogitations nor able to shroud himself from this very kind of storm or be at rest in his mind without recourse to some such shelter as this that there is some Eternal light which lighteth every man which cometh into the World according to his good will and pleasure and from whom every good and perfect gift descendeth as from the father of lights And therefore I am prone to think those Heathens so much in esteem with us either secretly owned all their common abilities in this kind as divine gifts without assuming a self-sufficiency or yet thinking themselves wise by Fate for so it is likely they call'd Providence did in a manner render up their Souls to their Donor or Author from whom how much further they might be enlightned in the end I know not or else rather palliated a tranquillity of mind than really felt any If they had any thing of Wisdom or foresight as we say they must needs espy their own defects and weakness and that view must necessarily beget some disease in the Soul unless they were able to behold or believe a wise disposal of all things as well as an inevitable one For as to any thing under no better notion than Fate Destiny or Necessity as well blind as inexorable it would afford a man rather ground for discontent and sooner prompt him to curse his fate than acquiesce in it But if any man will admit they beheld an irresistible but yet all-seeing and wise power under any of those names I will not quarrel or dispute with him about words Thus have my thoughts sometime rambled in relation to Happiness here or a desire of any thing here to make us so Never let us envy any man for his outward accessions They will do us no good if we had them for his inward indowments we know not what they are or how easy and pleasant in his Soul or how they would fit us if we injoyed them or the like Let him who is able only to satiate the Soul moderate our desires here and make us wise onely unto Salvation and then are we happy even here whether we know it or no. Epist. IX Wherein the Author maintains Divine Wisdom and Providence ruling in and over the Soul of man more especially and more apparently if considered than any work of the Creation And that the Affections in the heart of man seem that part of the Soul whereon God more especially exercises his prerogative moulding and changing them on the suddain to his secret purposes beyond and even contrary to any foresight conjecture or Imagination of the very Soul it self THere are already extant no doubt the footsteps or Monuments of many more excellent Souls than mine which have indeavoured by their Writings unknown to me to render conspicuous to the World or to a succession of Souls after them a constant and continued operation of one only Eternal intellectual wise mind in every the most vulgar and ordinary motion of the most common visible work in the Creation And surely he who has but the ordinary discerning Spirit of a man is either strangely fascinated or else had need go out of this World and be transplanted into some other before he can become capable to deny in his heart the belief of such a thing it is so obvious to sense in each particular Nature as we call it has no such certain impress upon its habitude or motion as that we can in any case rely thereon for when she seems to intend one thing Providence draws forth another not contrary to Nature And upon the most diligent search thereinto we cannot arrive to any satisfaction or come to an end of our enquiries but after all we doubt and wonder and are nonplus'd Cause direct us to Cause and all to one that is the first and Supreme insomuch as every Herb according to the old saying is sufficient to demonstrate a God and give some higher title to the cause of all being and motion than Nature The Soul of man and its strange excellent faculties has not seldom happened to be as you may perceive the wonderful subject of my thoughts and therefore I would not seem here to descend any lower than that to find out or maintain a providence nor indeavour to extract that out of a Flie which is more visible and may far sooner be perceived in man himself if he could or would but look into himself That the Soul of man or Spirit and life in man as some would is that work or extract in
choosing for us 2 The folly of our own Choice with respect especially to the Goods of fortune and particularly to Children we cannot foresee how they will prove or what may happen to them to make them and us by them miserable 3 Our sins are the cause of all Evil and exceed our sufferings and which are often to be discovered by them as is exemplified in the loss of Children 4 Our remaining enjoyments surmount our sufferings page 8 SECT III. Of the Nature and Origine of Sorrow that it ariseth chiefly from Love which is the root of all passions The cure of sorrow by the love of God page 20 SECT IV. The remedies ordinarily prescribed against Sorrow considered and shewed to be of little force towards the cure of it as that death is a common thing that we cannot recal our Friends that they are happy that our case is not singular That it s not to be cured by Reason and Philosophy alone and by nothing less than an influence from above What graces are exercised in Affliction page 29 Ejaculations used in the state of the disease page 36 BOOK II. A Treatise of the Soul containing several discourses of the Nature Powers and Operations of it The Preface shewing the occasions and Reasons of writing such a tract page 45 PART I. SECT I. How far the Soul of man is similar with that of Brutes The Soul considered in the three prime faculties of the Intellect viz. the Imagination Mmory and Reason That Beasts work more regularly in order to their end than men That man only beholds things at a distance p. 52. SECT II. Wherein the Soul of man exceeds that of Brutes It s immortality considered and proved from Scripture and particularly from the writings of Moses page 56 SECT III. It s Immortality maintained and illustrated from its obstructions in its operations as deliriums and dotage page 57 SECT IV. It s Immortality proved from the manner of its acting in the inferiour faculties similar with Brutes page 60 SECT V. It s Immortality further illustrated from its different operations in different persons whereas Beasts of the same species do all agree in their desires and delights page 61 SECT VI. The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from the difference between Parents and Children and its difference from it self page 63 SECT VII The immortality of it shew'd from its unweariedness in acting from its reflex acts which cannot proceed meerly from Sense page 65 SECT VIII It s immortality shew'd from things peculiar to man as Weeping Laughter Speech and the nature of these considered with respect to their different causes and which cannot be extracted out of matter Reflections on Atheism and the immortality of the Soul shewed from the desires that are to be found even in the defenders of it page 67 PART II. SECT I. Of the several faculties and operations of the Soul and therein of voluntary and involuntary motion page 75 SECT II. Of the Affections of the Soul the severals of them The nature of Envy c. considered page 76 SECT III. Of the rise of the Affections Love the primary mover of them What part in the Soul is the seat of the Passions Of the Heart the Stomach and Spleen page 78 SECT IV. Of the Imagination which receives several names according to its working as Invention Conception Reflexion Apprehension Cogitation Fancy A Syncope or swoun peculiar to man in which Imagination ceaseth to work In all the ramblings of Imagination there is a dependence It s a faculty Reason hath the least power over And the benefit of not having an absolute power over it page 83 SECT V. Of Memory He that hath a smart invention seldom wants a good Memory The impress in it on the Imagination is according to the strength of Affections and Reason page 87 SECT VI. Of Reason that saving graces are ingrafted on it page 88 SECT VII Of the Will The Will free as respecting self but depending on God No other will in Brutes but what receives immediate impression from Sense such a will as ariseth from but cannot put a stop to thought page 89 SECT VIII Of Conscience what it is of a tender Conscience page 90 SECT IX Os the faculties of the Soul working upon each other Sense works upon the Imagination and the Imagination upon the Affections and both upon Reason and Reason again on the Affections c. Reason influenced by the Divine providence page 93 PART III. SECT I. Of the prevailing faculty of the Soul and wherein the primacy seems to be Of the concurrence of the Imagination and the Affections and the power of the Affections page 98 SECT II. The potency seems to be in the Affections if we consult Scripture p. 101 SECT III. It may seem to be in some Affection from humane conjecture p. 103. SECT IV. Of the potency of the Affections They are not to be subdued by Reason alone but Reason is oft subdued by them page 104 SECT V. Some Affection is the substantial part of the Soul page 109 SECT VI. How the Affections move from the Imagination or otherwise as from Revelation Reason or Sense page 110 SECT VII What light the Imagination receives from Reason Of the weakness of Reason Of the dependence which the Soul hath upon the Body in its operations page 112 SECT VIII Of the excellency and advantage of Reason notwithstanding its inability and dependence page 115 PART IV. SECT I. Means to reclaim the Soul The Affections not opposed forthwith cool Reason shews us our Errors but neeeds Faith to enforce it p. 118 SECT II. Of Love Love toward man a principle of Nature and what Faith doth not set us at liberty from It should be Universal page 122 SECT III. How Love may be regent Though Love be the principal grace it ows much of its vigour to the concurrence of the rest as is exemplified in Humility Iustice and especially Faith page 129 The Conclusion Against Censuring That we search not into things too high for us but make the word of God our guide page 132 BOOK III. Containing several Epistles to the REVEREND the DEAN of CANTERBURY EPIST. I. Wherein the Author after some Apology for the not making publick his Treatises de Dolore de Animâ makes some reflexions on Atheism and blames the unnecessary and extravagant dsputes and writings against such as seem tainted with it That the way to convince such is by the practice of Religion That opposition doth often continue that which if neglected would fall of it self as men of sharp wits delight to find Antagonists page 1 EPIST. II. Wherein he treats of the cause of action or motion under the notion of Spirit That a Spirit conscious of its own work is durable That the flashes thoughts and actions of our own Spirits are often mistaken for and applied to the operation of the Spirit of God Four ways of Gods operation with respect to man 1. By his common Providence
Air and the Fishes of the Sea too and so far as we can discern we find them agree in their desires and delights with one another of the same species They have each their particular Food and rest contented satisfied and pleased therewith during their whole course of nature 'T is not with them as with us what one loves another loathes 'T would be a difficult matter to find an hungry Ox that would refuse Hay either when he is young or old A man may well ask Iob's question Doth the wild Ass bray when he hath grass or loweth the Ox over his fodder 't is man doth only that or the like when he hath what his fleshly heart can desire The Beasts are more constant and content and their Soul seems settled and the inhabitant of its proper Region they neither fear nor joy in excess their choices and elections are still alike and every Cock like Aesop's Cock will yet to this day prefer the Barley-corn before a Jewel though amongst men some prefer the one and some the other I speak thus much for this cause only that viewing the Soul of man in its very inferiour faculties and finding it so various and disagreeing so little at a stay or at rest so fighting and combating so snatching and catching at it knows not what things neither useful nor profitable for the body or the mind it somewhat convinces me 't is a thing very capacious and that there is a place of fulness of joy or fulness of sorrow for it hereafter SECT VI. The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from the difference thereof between Parents and Children BEsides this some enquiry might be made into the different qualities of the Souls of men beyond those of Beasts in their ordinary workings though they inhabit or actuate Bodies which have their being from one and the same production For if the Soul of man were the ordinary work of Nature only a fine rarified vigorous quality in the Bloud Man receiving his body from his Parents by the ordinary course of Nature as other creatures do his Soul would always somewhat resemble that of his Parents too and Brethren twins especially would resemble one another in the faculties of their Souls as well as 't is often seen they do many ways in the Body But there is generally found as between Iacob and Esau such dissimilitude in the Spirits of Brethren and those of Father and Son Mother and Daughter as greater is not to be found between meer strangers in bloud which thing daily experience will not only demonstrate upon search but may be readily found in the Histories of Princes in all Ages Now the Soul of Beast being the bare product of flesh only and necessarily taking its rise and essence from the substance of its Parents if I may so call them for the word may be proper enough pario being only to bring forth or produce never varies much or altogether at any time from that of the Parent We shall never find an absolute Jadish Spirit in a Horse begot from free and well-bred ones nor a meer Curr from right good Hounds no not in one of his senses the Nose or smell But if in any case they excell or degenerate from their Stock 't is by degrees and not per saltum which thing per saltum may be found and observed in the Race of men And besides this variation of the Souls of men from Birth there sometimes happens on the sudden a strange kind of total Metamorphosis of the Soul of man so as one would scarce adjudge it the same but according to Scripture phrase that one becomes a new man and this without any alteration at all of the Bodies constitution Now if the Soul of man were not a substance of it self capable to be wrought on ab extra by somewhat without any introduction by the senses then no such alteration without the Bodies alteration could be made but through the senses and if such alteration were made from sense through the Organs of the Body then upon the shortest obstruction or letting in of prior forms again the Soul would consequently return to its pristine state according to that simile of the dog to his vomit c. which change or alteration in the Soul of man we see sometimes settled and remaining notwithstanding all interposition during a long following life Thus we find that men have utterly contemned and hated without any offence raised from the thing it self even with a perfect hatred that which was formerly their delight which kind of hatred never yet happened or was discernible in Beast Now if any man shall ask me At what time the Soul of man being a substance of it self distinct from the Body enters and possesses the Body I can make him a reply with as difficult a question At what instant doth this other arising product Soul from the Bloud begin its circulation and move If we know neither why should it seem more wonderful and strange to us for the God of Nature upon man's conception in the womb to create and have ordained a Spirit to actuate that conception which Spirit should continue for ever notwithstanding that conception should decay and perish for a time as well as that there should arise a Spirit from the Bloud to actuate move and govern the Body for a certain period of time which time we could never define certainly from any course of Nature And further that the wise Creator and Governour of all things should ordain that if the first created Spirit to inhabit a Body both together being Man should wander in disobedience from its Creator all others sent and entring into Bodies product from the Loyns of the first Body should be infected with the same wandring disease and have no cure but by Grace from the first Creator But I would not wander too much my self nor desire to pry into any of God's secrets further than he has thought fit to reveal by his Holy Word and so shall lay aside my thoughts of the manner of Man's creation every way wonderful as the Psalmist expresses it as also the consideration of the inferiour faculties for the present and try and see if there be not some sparks in the Soul of man which give such a light as can by no means naturally arise from any thing barely and simply terrestrial SECT VII The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from its unweariedness in searching c. and its reflex acts and operations WHy has the Soul of man in all Ages when it has been at any time withdrawn from that quick intromission of worldly objects by the senses and has not been hindred or obstructed by some mists fogs or lets of the flesh wherein at present 't is confined to work hunted after wearied and tired it self to find out and comprehend what it is not able to comprehend The first sin of man shewed at once the Soul's error and its
less than the quick and violent agitation of some Divine flame thawing all the vital parts and drawing the moisture through the chief and clearest Organ of the body the Eye and not to be caused by any thing which is part of it self I do agree that every living Soul whether arising from the Body or by a greater Divine gift infused into or sent to actuate a Body has equally in either some influence upon the visible Body and according as the affections with the imagination are moved worketh visible effects therein and that Man and Beast such as have their parts similar may and do equally tremble for fear and the like But yet as to this kind of motion or extasie mentioned that is weeping for I know not how to term that or laughter either a passion but both strange attendants or consequents of some kind of passions I cannot adjudge it to arise from the acceptance of a bare representation of an offensive object through sense but by some inward distinct conception of a Soul as of it self though at the same time agitated or rouzed by passion For if it were from the first barely then the same effect could never proceed from any pleasing object the contrary whereof we find and men to weep as well upon the predominancy of joy in the Soul as sorrow nay weeping is a concomitant often of a weak anger which not able otherwise to satiate or satisfie it self has this help to vanish and resolve into tears as may be observed in Women and Children Now tears being the attendant the effect as may seem to some of clean contrary passions such as joy and sorrow are they cannot really be the proper and bare effect of any passion nor the sole work of any such Spirit as is no other than the refined and most curious part of the Bloud For that were able to cause only different effects upon different occasions or representations and still the same effect upon the same occasion so far forth as we are able to look into the ordinary works of Nature Indeed salt brackish and chrystal tears flowing in that abundance as at some time is to be seen would puzzle the most learned Physician as well as a Poet to alledge a right fountain as well as a cause and wonder in searching after the original Spring-head of them in the Body If I should alledge or affirm Laughter to be some denotation or demonstration of a pure intellectual Spirit separable from a Body and no ways arising from any other single or primary cause then such I hope I should not incur the censure or become the subject of laughter to all men though I might to some By Laughter I do not mean a bare dilatation or contraction of the mouth or lips and other parts of the face such a kind of grinning as is incident to Apes and no less to Dogs and such as in the latter we term fawning a kind of habit or faculty some men take up for peculiar purposes as seeming pleased with others actions and sensible of some such involuntary motion voluntarily counterfeit one nor yet any agitation of the lungs with expulsion of breath and other odd motions of the Body in others whereby perhaps they would seem to please themselves But I mean an absolute involuntary motion upon some sudden slight pleasing touch of the Spirits by some bare conception in the intellect different in notion from what is represented by the senses It is a thing that differs much from true joy and is often extorted from men in their greatest griefs and sometimes tortures of Body as is storied of that Villain who murthered the Prince of Orange that in the midst of his pains and while he was tormented with burning Pincers for a confession laughed at the fall of a number of Spectators from a Scaffold It is one of the first unnecessary as I may say motions in Infants it is incident to wise men as well as foolish and old as well as young though not in the same measure or degree and is and happens sometimes as well sleeping as waking Now I do take it to arise properly and peculiarly from the intellect's judging on the sudden though that Judgment is not always aright of somewhat of folly lapse or oversight in a rational creature or some ill or shrewd turn happening thereupon which from prudence might have been prevented and have been done or acted otherwise and I do not judge it to arise unless we will allow something of voluntariness in it after the manner I spake before upon any sight or action proceeding from an irrational or brute creature Therefore I do think that I my self should not with Crassus the Grandfather of Marcus that wealthy Roman as is so storied of him and that he never laughed but that once have laughed at the beholding an Ass eating of Thistles I think the Beast does it with a great deal of Art to save the pricking of his mouth but had I seen a man smelling on a Thistle to gratifie that sense and thereby in pricking his Nose much more offended another I do think I should have laughed Now though laughter be a thing more incident to the Fool than the Wise whose clearer Judgment is best able to correct its rise yet it proceeds from apprehension of the intellect ready to judge at all turns and quickest often in that notion when weakest and may denote at once some kind of inherent wisdom together with folly or frenzy in man that we being created to act most regularly and prudently from a disturbed intellect become often the most giddily erring and foolishest of creatures so as if Solomon said of mirth what doth it he might well say of laughter It is mad As for Speech which is a power or ability the Soul has so to move the Tongue and other Organs of the Body that from thence shall result such a modulation of the Air that each rational Soul from an articulate voice might apprehend others meaning and intent This formation of words made to be the Idea of the mind appears not nor could ever break out from the earthly extracted Soul of other creatures not that there is any absolute defect in their Organs for then no other Spirit could frame an articulate voice by them and we must deny the Devil 's speaking in the Serpent and some other Spirit for a time in Balaam's Beast for they have curious and admirable Notes and some of them have framed as plain a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with many other words as man can utter which has been a resultance from the ear when they were taught but no Index of the mind This gift and power of Speech I say is the chief outward livery badge or cognizance of the Soul by which Mankind is distinguished from and hath the advantage of all other creatures Brutes do indeed fellow together and apprehend and if I may so say understand one another by signs
into its natural extract or that such a substance can covet something future and as it were contrary to its own annihilation and yet become certainly annihilate This Desire I suppose all men will agree to be no ways incident to Beasts and therefore I beseech men for God's sake that if at any time there arise a desire in them or they wish or would that others should speak well of them rather than evil after their death then at that time they would seriously consider whether those motions are not from some Spirit to continue a Spirit after it leaves its earthly habitation rather than from an earthly Spirit a Vapour which cannot act or imagine or desire or fear things beyond its continuance For if the desire or fear of Posthume Glory or Posthume shame or punishment be congenial and connatural to all noble minds it is a pregnant and I think undeniable hint of their possible at least sempiternal existence after death Now a probability of our Souls being and existence and a possibility of its Eternal being after death being as much as native reason can suggest or inform any man for I do not think that any man from reason ever thought himself to be a God and of Eternal existence à parte ante as men say but had a beginning and by consequence if he had a beginning his duration support and conservation must necessarily depend on the same Eternal power that gave it beginning and that from the withdrawing that conserving power all things created have an end this probability and possibility from reason methinks should create some prudence and watchfulness in man and cause him whensoever he feels some inbred light glowing in him and yet after it has stirred burns so dimly in him that he knows not well which way to move to implore the aid of the Author of our own and all other beings and feeling something native to seek after somewhat of Tradition too to help it And that if there may be collected from reason some such thing in man as a capacity of Eternal life to make a quaere like him in the Gospel what shall I do to know it and inherit it that is enjoy it or live it with joy for fear at least otherwise we may so live as that we would desire to die and be extinct and find cause when nothing will help us to call on inanimate creatures even the Hills to cover us from his presence with whom there might have been fulness of joy All men living agree the Creator of the Universe to be good and gracious and loving to his creatures therefore let us search into that which the whole Christian World have always acknowledged to have been his Word and if we find not from thence assurance of Eternal life and by his Grace comfort from it conclude it is not to be found but not conclude before we have sought PART II. SECT I. Of the several faculties or operations of the Soul and therein first of Involuntary and Voluntary motion I Am now about to take the best view I can or my Soul is capable to do of its several faculties or operations distinct and apart one from the other and which together working in the Body we call the Soul of man What I have elsewhere said is an intricate maze full of little windings and turnings not to be traced out or fully discovered to it self I may here further say it is a brightness issued or darted from that glorious light so shining as somewhat to be seen and admired not at present wholly comprehended I never thought nor hoped to set down all that it is but only somewhat that it is we are not able to dissect the very case of it so as to find out the hundredth entry or passage for this Soul into the Body whereby that Lump is moved Some little kind of knowledge or notice we have got of its larger Rooms but for its smaller Inlets they have puzzled the most curious and quickest sight in the search and if my information be not false the most learned have acknowledged and confessed that upon the narrowest scrutiny they could possibly make in a dissection they could never yet find out by which ways or means Milk was made or conveyed from other parts of the Body to the Paps or Dugs The Soul must needs be of a more subtle nature than the Bloud from which some would have it to arise in Man as well as Beast and if that were granted we could scarce discover all the motions of the one without a perfect knowledge of the other which it seems is yet wanting and I am not desirous to lose my self in finding All that I desire to find is the cause and occasion of the Souls billows rage and tempestuousness and what helps there may be towards the allaying them to see whether our madness and folly does not with the raging of the Sea necessarily require one and the same stiller and quieter But from my search into the Soul I am not altogether ignorant that first from it there is a motion which we term for distinction sake Involuntary motion continuing without interruption during the whole time of the Souls residence with the Body as is the course or circulation of the Bloud the pulse breathing concoction nutrition excretion c. And also another kind of motion not always but admitting intermission and this arising from an introduction by some sense viz. the pressure of an external object upon each peculiar Organ of the Body proper and by the mediation of Nerves or Fibres conveyed inward to the chief domicils of the Soul from whence in its primary motion we are said to see hear feel tast or smell and so receives some counterpressure or resistance by stirring some Limb and making some noise which because seeming to depend upon some precedent fancy in our mind and capable of intermission we call Voluntary motion These and the like motions of the Soul are not the things I hunt after nor trouble my self to decipher since they may be quicker or slower without any apparent disease or combustion in the Soul of man But in short the Affections the Understanding and the Will together with the result from some of them the thing we call Conscience are those actions of the Soul I would at present in order enumerate be acquainted with and make legible to my self SECT II. Of the Affections of the Soul AFfections we commonly call them some Affects some Passions they are many and various in the Soul of man and there is little need of enumerating them they are too obvious upon several occasions in the Souls march here and they are a Troop without a wise conduct readier for mutiny than for service And though what we term sometimes Affections seem not properly so but are rather propensions or habits budding forth from Affections and taken for Affections we will at present muster some of them together under the notion
any of the four things mentioned by Agur and I may confidently speak in the words of Solomon to any such diver As thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit nor how the bones do grow in the womb so thou knowest not the work of God who maketh all 'T is not a thing I dare undertake to discover nor a thing I have absolutely desired to know But only to quiet and satisfie my self I have endeavoured to make some little search or enquiry which of the faculties of the Soul may seem a visum est only primary or most potent in operation not which in truth are for that shall never man certainly define And therefore let no man till he be able to find out himself the circulation of the Soul and the origine of that circulation and be assured to convince others in reason of that his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 blame me of sloth or ignorance but allow me something of intellect if it be but in finding out my own defect therein And yet because I am willing in some degree to satisfie my self and others too but not wade herein further than some light from Scripture which I believe to be the true proper light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world may seem to direct and mark out I shall set down somewhat of my thoughts concerning the priority precedency or prevalency in the faculties of the Soul one before or above another Whereabout though I may seem to dissent from the received opinion and learning of the World and therein be exploded by some yet I trust and hope I shall in no wise wrench or screw that Sacred Word for my purpose nor much swerve from the true and genuine meaning of that which I alledge to be the principal if not the only ground of my opinion I am not able to find out any great ground of contest to arise between any faculties of the Soul for priority or precedency that is any dispute or question thereabout unless between the Imagination and the Affections barely Now that which we call the Imagination or cogitation in the Soul of man we find to be an unconstant fluttering as well as a restless faculty which at no time can be found settled or made to fix long nay much or often upon any one single object unless some affection do first seem to draw it and set it on work and in a manner fasten it as its attendant for a time though then also it have some momentary flyings out and extravagancies And though it be a thing undeniable that the imagination may often move or rouze some affection which was quiet before yet it is a thing as undeniable that the imagination or cogitation never created or made any affection more than any affection ever created that for we must agree they are contemporary in the Soul and so neither hath the precedency But yet where one seems to work more often in obedience and to some ends and designs or safe lodging or pleasing of another we may allow that other some kind of excellency and so priority And this I am ready to afford to some affection lodged in the center of the Body or innermost place of recess for the Soul there secretly fixed by its Creator with some reason to direct and guide as well as imagination to whet it Indeed the imagination and the affections when they are orderly or regularly working if not at all times and seasons do whet and as it were give edge to each other but surely as the Love of God far exceeds the thoughts of him so the Soul being an emanation at first from that Spirit of Love Love of him may be said to be a cause of thoughts of him and that if the Soul were not naturally capable to love and tend some whither we could not so much as think Sense must be agreed while we live in the Body to be the chief though not the only inlet or Port to the Soul and that every object by and through sense has some touch in its entrance upon the imagination or else we shall make a strange Chimaera of the Soul But not barely resting upon sense we may allow some prior inherent quality upon which by sense the imagination may seem attendant and in subjection to And though at some times the imagination do appear as the usher of the affections yet the least affection once kindled and something there must be allowed to be kindled whether of it self bursting out into flame or however inflamed or kindled will often hale the thoughts to the object without any farther help of sense But many things are presented to the imagination by sense upon which no affection seems to stir or move that we are able to discern and thereupon we may allow the imagination's work or motion to be chiefly from something occult whatever use it sometimes makes of sense to which it is or may be in subjection and not prior but rather posterior SECT II. That it seems to be in the Affections rather then any other from Scripture THere is a common saying how true I know not that life is first and last in that part of man's Body which we call the Heart and it is generally agreed and believed and I find no reason to dissent much from that opinion that there is the principal seat of the affections and that That is the Cell wherein they chiefly move and work Now nothing is so much called upon in Scripture as the Affections nor any part of man's Body so often named as the Heart the chief and principal seat thereof as if that part were taken for the whole and the content for the contained and whole man Soul and Body were included in that one word Heart and no act or thought of man were significant without affection or did arise or work but from an affection I shall not in this place going about to shew some peculiar prerogative the affections seem to have over the other faculties of the Soul scrape up together and cite the multitude of Texts wherein God by his Prophets and Apostles seems to strike only at the root of the affections the Heart and call upon that particularly to be given him or inclined or bent towards him they are obvious enough and I believe a thousand such are readily to be found But I shall only mention some peculiar places occurring at present to my thoughts which seem to allow not only a native or dative power in the affections over the whole intellective faculty whether Imagination Memory or Reason but also some primary influence which they have upon them all or as if the other faculties had their rise or spring from them Thus generally whensoever the intellect is mentioned in Scripture it is coupled with the seat of the affections and taken for them as if from thence it rose and had its influence For if the very imagination had any motion of it self or by sense
barely without the agitation or help of an affection and so were the first inlet of things to the affections by and of it self it s own peculiar seat were then the proper attribute and adjunct for it and it would or might be said the imagination of the Brain instead of the imagination of the Heart for there doubtless we imagine in dreams and when the affections are most quiet and may seem only to move if they do then move from the imagination But on the contrary we read in Scripture of the imaginations thoughts and conceptions the meditation and study the intents and devices the inditings and reasonings the understanding and errors of the heart After this manner speaks St. Paul that when in a whole days discourse from morning to evening he found he could not move the affections of some of his Countrymen cites them these words of Esaias the Prophet The heart of this people is waxed gross c. lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and should be converted As if the heart must be opened and the affections first move to let in understanding All which considered we shall not find it any absurdity in our Litany to pray against blindness of heart In these places with many more like the Holy Spirit of God pitching upon the affections or the chief seat of the affections for the whole Soul it seems to me to point out some potent if not some leading quality in them And therefore do I think we have not translated that Mandate of St. Paul to the Colossians amiss by these words Set your affections on things above not set your minds I know the original is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 superna sapite or de supernis cogitate and so primarily respects the mind But 't is also frequently applied in Scripture to the affections so our Saviour uses it to St. Peter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thou savourest not the things that be of God And although we render it Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Iesus yet it must needs be there meant rather of the affections viz. an humble mind and void of pride because of the immediate subsequent declaration of our Saviours humility And as the Scripture speaks after this manner of the Imagination so it doth also of the Memory which though I have in some sort before defined to be the Treasury or Storehouse of the Soul seated in the Brain yet the affections do seem to ingross that title too and that there is not only a savour or sense but a laying up and keeping in the heart as well as Brain So it 's expressed of the Virgin Mary and our Saviour seems to inferr it by telling us A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things As if all our good or evil acts had their stamp or coinage from the Affections SECT III. That it may seem to be in some affection from Humane conjecture and allowance HUmane thoughts and cogitations seem unto me like Clouds in the Air some vain and empty and like unto Smoak some full and weighty some bright and pleasant some black and dismal succeeding each other in time and place always in motion and sometimes quick and violently agitated upon divers occasions from divers quarters which though they may be said sometimes to refresh the Earth and make her good and fruitful and that without the fall of them upon her she were an insignificant dry heavy lump without activity or cause of vegetation yet certainly those Clouds were first insensibly created raised and sent up from her whom they again sometimes refresh and sometimes drown Indeed to me the affections do no otherwise appear than that Earthy part of the Soul and so we sometimes term it and that not improperly while 't is imployed on Earthly things which though it have not that splendor nor is beheld in any wise so admirable or excellent as those glorious Lights above from which it receives influence yet does rather seem to precede them in time And it may be no false assertion to say of them as the Scripture does of the other they were ordained to give light upon the Earth which was before them The intellect must be owned by all as the affections light and Reason as our present Sun able in some measure to correct their barren churlish nature and quality and now and then dispell those unwholesom and unpleasant mists and fogs springing or arising from them But yet this Earth of ours as all things was created good and in no wise to be wholly rejected contemned or despised and for ought I am able to perceive might be the chief cause why the others were at all Whoever shall tell me 't is some more noble faculty in my Soul than an affection that gives being to this very enquiry I must acknowledge somewhat of truth in the allegation and probably my suggestant may do no less in first acknowledging some kind of appetite or desire in my Soul to enquire and search Desire as it preceded our first unlucky knowledge so it continues surely a fermentation in all our learning at least some affection does and works that which our natural light would not attain to of it self We have a saying Si natura negat facit indignatio versum Indignation is an affection in the Soul and often at least helps aids and assists the more noble faculties to work and so do other affections too as well as Indignation The great pretended Rationalist of the World the Atheist has ready at hand another such like verse and if we talk of God will forthwith bring it out and tell us Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor That it was not our Reason was able to find them or our Imagination to conceive them of it self It may be true in some sort and it might be happy for these Rationalists too if fear could set their intellectuals on work as well as ours since love does not or will not However from them who deny the Author or Inspirer of the Soul 't is agreed that the passions if any part of the Soul must first find him and surely I might no less properly before have resembled Affection to a Whetstone than I did Reason to a Touchstone For though it be Reason which tries whether they be pure or impure false or currant yet 't is an Affection that always give an edge and vigour even to Reason as many of our quickest Wits have owned and that without the rubbing or motion of some Affection there would be little of sharpness or so much as brightness in any other faculty of the Soul SECT IV Of the potency of the Affections THough we should not or do not allow the affections precedency by
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
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
and condemn all men who receive it not as 't were from us and from our hands Indeed he who feels any blessed effect of his own Faith will not only wish all men believed as he did but endeavour without breach or rent of Charity they should But surely methinks he should not with ease or without feeling some smart undergo a rupture in his own Charity for the transplanting the same Faith into others since he will certainly find neither himself nor any man barely was the planter of it in himself nor think there should be any diminution of the one for the propagating as we call it of the other in other men Without some rent of this thing called Charity I doubt whether there can be an approbation of or assent to Cleonard's proposition to the Princes of Christendom that is without other just cause an endeavour to shew the Turk our Faith with Temporal Armour over it if we were able so to do and put part of his Nation to the Sword to draw or hale the remnant of them to the Faith and to heal some Souls through the wounds of others Bodies They are men as well as we of the same mould and their Souls of the same extraction and we might consider first how we could approve of the like conviction amongst our selves The Sword doubtless has often made a way for Faith and I believe it to be or happens sometimes through God's Eternal wise decree but I do much question the truth of those mens Faith who are upon such a reason at any time the immediate visible instruments of this preparative When a man shall once own the New Testament as the Word of Truth and stand convinced that all the Precepts laid down therein are righteous and grounded on Moral equity if he make his recourse to the New for his belief only and to the Old only for some of his actions I would ask a Stranger in that case whether he thinks that man's Reason or his Affections bear the greatest sway or be most predominant in his Soul It may seem strange how some men can step from Mount Gerizim to Mount Ebal as it were at will and pleasure settle a Tower of peace or defence for themselves on the one and raise a Tower of offence against others on the other let the one be the seat for their Reason and the other for their Affections and place Faith as they call it the attendant on both and that Reason all this while should not espy that the Affections lead it thither There is one esteemed a great planter or reformer of our Faith in these parts who to maintain the lawfulness of Malediction in some case I am sure against Christ's precept and his example who prayed for his persecutors and against St. Stephen's too who did the like would make a distinction between a persecution of man though for the Gospel and a persecution of the Gospel If it be against the persecutors of the Gospel according to his definition he then calls it Faiths malediction or cursing which says he rather than God's Word should be suppressed or Heresie maintained wisheth that all creatures went to rack If this be the work or effect of some mens Faith I hope I may say without offence I pray God deliver me from such a Faith Surely it may be questioned how and in what manner the Gospel of it self may suffer persecution and no less whether the believers therein would suffer so much from their common Enemies or one another were it not for their too positive condemnation sometimes of all who do not believe just as they do or profess themselves to do Theano a Heathen Nun had in my opinion more Divine thoughts in her than some of our late Reformers and 't was a better and far more charitable saying of hers when by publick Decree she was commanded amongst others to ban and curse Alcibiades for prophaning their reputed Holy mysteries That her profession was to pray and to bless not to curse I am so far from adhering to any party more than other and so far prone to blame all parties in this case that I am not like to receive the favour or good opinion of any But whatsoever I receive from man I trust and believe I shall never incur God's displeasure for declaring my sence of things only according to the best light of Reason he has endowed me with Some such thing I do believe there is on Earth as St. Augustine has intitled his Book A City of God that is a peculiar select number of people who so pass their lives here as that they shall be Eternally happy hereafter But for several men to frame and imagine such a peculiar City in any Nation or corner of the World different in some fashion form or mode from all others and then think that to be the Model or Platform upon which future happiness must necessarily be built or depend seems very strange to me and may do so perhaps to some others I cannot think those Citizens whoever they are require such a different habit or dress from all others but rather all of them generally use one special attire or ornament for the Soul whereof somewhat is to be found in all Nations and places and which men free of that City may be best known and distinguished by And that is that becoming ornament St. Paul seems to mention upon another account Good works that ornament which naturally arises from a meek and quiet Spirit which St. Peter seems to intimate the hidden man of the heart not outwardly worn in pomp but that whosoever privately wears or carries about him will not too narrowly dissect rend and tear much less suddenly condemn the Spirit of another man True Charity saith the Apostle beareth all things believeth all things hopeth all things endureth all things and if we put on that which is the bond of perfectness it will reconcile us to all mankind and be as useful to others as it is ornamental to us It will be like the Dove in the Ark as swift of wing and as fit to be sent abroad upon any employment as the Raven or Vulture and with that will bring a branch of Olive solid contentment and satisfaction to our selves we shall then have all the old leaven purged out and become a new lump and shall render unto God by such a restauration of his Image that which is Gods SECT III. How Love may be regent I May seem before to have undertaken a rational discourse of the Soul and to shew by what steps and degrees even that way it may be fitted to resist assaults from without and therefore in reason it may be expected that I should set down some rule some probable demonstrable way or means how this thing I call Charity which is ever the main principle of Action may be set up regent in the Soul which I have said and do think there is some
the greatest vilest miserablest and most deformed of sinners and the most defaced Image of his goodness that he would again restore that Image here in some measure give me a Fountain of tears to wash away all its blots and wilful sullies direct me by his Grace here towards his Glory increase my weak Faith that it become an assurance convert my fearful hopes into a full perswasion and certain expectation of that glorious Vision be with me comfort me and strengthen me at the hour of death And when this wearied tossed and turmoil'd Soul that can find no settled rest here shall leave its polluted and sinful habitation purified by Repentance and Faith receive it into Glory And this for the merits and mediation of his Son Iesus Christ our ever blessed Saviour and Redeemer to whom be glory and honour and praise now and for ever Amen SEVERAL EPISTLES To the Reverend Dr. TILLOTSON DEAN of CANTERBURY WHEREIN The Nature the Immortality the Operations and the Happiness of the SOUL of MAN Are further Considered and Illustrated And the Divine Providence over it in a particular manner Asserted By the aforesaid Author LONDON Printed for George Downs The Author's Apology for his Writing To the Reverend John Tillotson D. D. DEAN of CANTERBURY EPIST. I. Wherein the Author after some Apology for the not making publick his said Treatises De Dolore De Anima makes some reflexion on Atheism and blames the unnecessary and extravagant disputes and writings against such as seem tainted or infected with that opinion SIR HAVING reduced my sometimes sad solitary or serious considerations at all times and upon all occasions very inept weak and imperfect ones God knows into some kind of Method and made them legible in paper I took upon me the boldness altogether unknown to you and without so much as discovering my name to approach you before all others and begg the favour of your perusal And this I did not only from a hearsay of your clear judgement and courteous disposition to all men as well strangers as familiars but from a singular opinion I had of you my self That you were a person of a frank and open discourse and one who would plainly and roundly tell me of my faults and my follies discover your real opinion of what lay before you and not permit and suffer me a meer stranger for want of admonition to cherish an imperfect or deformed Embryo and such as might casually hereafter be born into the world to my disgrace but rather while I lived and had the power over it to smother and consume it in the flames The most favourable censure I expected from you was a reprieve of it for some season not a present enfranchisement of it or making it free of the world in my life time and by consequence a kind of confinement of my future thoughts if they should vary from or disagree with these And yet the latter I met withall from you and find that you are pleased to move me not only to allow it present life and future birth but to afford it instant liberty and freedom to walk abroad I might seem ill natur'd not presently to grant his request who so readily condescended unto mine had I no just cause to alledge for a demurr at least if not for a denial and such as may work upon you to desist from any such motion as much as on me for a denial For I must tell you If I hereafter suffer therein I shall readily transfer the blame on you and some perhaps will give you the precedency therein when they come to know the person who perused these papers and blame your oversight beyond my weak and feeble inspect Your universal Charity may so far abound as to overlook many deformities if not errors occasioned perhaps from my immoderate affection Which kind of Charity is a thing not to be expected from other men at least from all Indeed if any man receive good from these Papers he will find greater cause to thank you next under God than me who never at first intended them as a Legacy to the world nor durst nor dare yet own them under any name I trust they would hurt or prejudice no man if publick further than the spending of his time in vain in reading them and surely that 's a sufficient damage or loss to any ingenuous spirit There is enough good seed already sown more than any man can reap in his life time 't were well if the tares of this nature were gathered together in bundles to be burnt from which fate I I know not how to exempt mine I have given you my opinion already in discourse from which I know not well how to recede That if some Judicious person were of power to do it and should banish out of the world and cause to be buried in utter oblivion many thousand volumes now extant he would merit more of the world and perform a far more acceptable service to the wise and learned thereof than he who added one though of never so great use or excellency There is enough said about the soul of man already more perhaps than is or ever will be understood and too much I fear of a higher-subject Every age in each single Nation has afforded or rather introduced some subject matter or other whereabout the Souls of men have more peculiarly busied themselves by way of disputation and made the canvasing of particular opinions a thing in mode and fashion for a certain time and season That which at this instant seems to imploy and busy the tongue the pen or the Press except seditious Pamphlets and the like from the spirit of contradiction or an overweening conceit of ones self never out of fashion most or above all other is the different opinion of men about the original of all things under the notion names or titles of Theism and Atheism wherefore we had some little discourse together occasioned by some short passages of mine in my aforesaid Treatise And for as much as all those Atheistical Tenets now more than ordinarily vented do seem to strike at the very root of religious worship and are wholly derogatory of the glorious Attributes of that God we serve and adore I perceive you are not only to your praise a strong oppugner thereof your self but take pleasure in them also who do the same Now truly I must here tell you That which has fell from me in relation to that subject was rather accidental upon my weak search into the nature operation and faculties of the Soul than of any designed purpose to convince any man of the falshood of those Atheistical opinions Because I am not yet fully convinced in my thoughts of the necessity of any such endeavour but do rather believe all those men we term or hold for professed Atheists would yet gladly receive and imbrace a full perswasion and conviction from others of what they themselves maintain in words and not seldom some of
Heaven if I understand the word nor that reason can demonstrate what God is though it may tell us what God is not And therefore I think reason may be as well too blame for marching too far or soaring too high for its learning or knowledg as sitting quite still or groveling on the earth and permitting the imagination to introduce what forms of a Deity will or best may gratify any the most predominant present affection an habit which has been too much in fashion of late and now a little withdrawing makes way for the other excess I may have said too much my self in this little it has exceeded my original intent and purpose yet this further I must say and begg your pardon and others who shall chance to see it if I say amiss that my wishes are we may all in this great concern carefully avoid extreams and that as we do not set up such a God by faith as reason is able daily to confront so we set not up such a God by reason as there needs no faith to lay hold on For my weak opinion is nay my present resolution is As never wholly to desert my reason for the adoration of any God So never to adore any thing for God my reason is able fully to comprehend EPIST. II. Wherein he treats of the cause of Action or Motion under the notion of Spirit and endeavours to shew our often mistakes in applying our thoughts and actions to the operation of that Spirit of truth in us which though good in themselves may proceed from other cause and advises to solitude at particular seasons as the most ready and likely way to behold in some degree the light of truth BEcause Soul or Spirit hath been heretofore at special seasons the subject of my thoughts and because there are many amongst us who would seem to have great knowledge of a Deity and may be thought too familiar with God under a colour or pretence of being daily enlightened with his Holy Spirit affirming its constant working in them And others quite Aliens and strangers to God not barely by their life and conversation but by their outward profession too and who deny in words as much or more than in the deeds that there is any such thing as a Spirit which in St. Iohn our Saviour tells us God is and that what we term Spirit is a mere Chimaera fansied in our brains Both which kind of persons being equally to modest Society and civil conversation and I may say enemies to true Religion I have adventured with all submission to your more weighty thoughts and solid judgement to present you with my sometimes opinion in reference to what we most properly and peculiarly term Spirit and wherein I say ought in relation to that Spirit of truth I humbly implore its aid that nothing escape my Pen which may in any wise if seen lead others into error or in the least diminish the goodness power glory might Majesty c. dominion of the Almighty First I have thought and do think That we can not rationally attribute or impute the cause of any action or motion whatsoever to ought else than somewhat which we in no wise able to comprehend by our sense term or call a Spirit and that without some such thing the world were an insignificant Lump That from such thing all things live and move and have their being is not to be doubted whether we call it Nature or ought else This Spirit gone forth or sent into the visible world which now has visible effects as I take it to be some emission of that Eternal spirit at the Creation from the Word so I think it generally worketh unknown to its self the will of that Eternal Spirit neither can it cease of it self to work but if re-assumed or gathered again as is expressed in Iob all flesh would perish together c. And that all flesh and all other things Sun Moon c. do not perish is the work of Gods ordinary I trust I may so call it Providence the confirmation Seal of his Creation Such vivifying Spirit as this which men may call nature if they please is gone out into the world and shall continue working every where no doubt until the appointed end of the world yet not apprehensive of its being nor capable of understanding in the least to what end it works may probably cease to work after the manner it now worketh And this kind of Spirit receives no new influence nor seems capable of any new influence from above yet is ordered by what we call Providence But where there is any Spirit conscious of its own working and in some measure capable to conceive from whence it is or at least desirous to enquire after or know the original of its being that Spirit seems to me to be some special emission more than ordinary at the beginning or Creation of the visible world to be of duration and continuance A thing now as it were subsisting of it self and which vanishes not nor can vanish or will be re-assumed again But being as I may say the very Spirit or breath of the Almighty and able to look back towards its original and fountain is capable of some new influence and as I may say regeneration and such is the Spirit of man And therefore we in no wise deny but that the Spirit of man may receive some new light for its motion otherwise than barely and simply by sense the Organ of the body And that no other though intellectual Spirit inferiour thereto can so do or is capable so to do Now of created Spirits superiour to our selves or of greater capacity in point of intellect than our selves as I read or hear of none save Angels created all good as well as we so I cannot conceive that any created or circumscribed Spirit from any power of it self to intermix it self with our Spirit or so move in us as that it may be properly said we are possessed with any other Spirit than our own and therefore 't is most properly said When we are tempted we are drawn away of our own lusts Though I confess I think objects may be brought by the assistance of some such spirit and laid down before our senses or presented to our fancy whereby our lust may seem to begin to move though indeed our lusts be the original of our error But forasmuch as our own spirit is some image of and has its being from the Almighty that is one eternal all powerful spirit it being capable by its reason for no otherwise 't is so to distinguish between good and evil in some measure and to know the will of that almighty One It doubtless may be and is capable also not only to have its reason enlightned from thence but to receive some such new accession of light as that it may not only have a clearer sight of that bountiful Creator than reason is able to afford it but be
reconcilation for they are opposites it might prove an happy thing for this Island And truly I cannot imagine a readier way to reconcile them than to perswade every of the Leaders in each opinion if we could prevail therein now and then to withdraw himself from all company and seriously consider himself our spiritualists with the invocation of divine assistance though the other not have some rational discourse or intercourse with himself alone in relation to his past actions or opinions after what strange manner his soul has worked Not only why his will and affections have pursued and imbraced that which his intellect has rejected but why his intellect without apparent cause from without should sometimes reject that which at other times it receives and receive that which at other times it rejects Whether that be not guided by affection sometimes as well as affection by that Or whether they with the imagination have not wrought together of themselves for want of a better guide rather than of any spirit from above And what is that we seem to drive at all our lives and why With many such like enquiries This I call a busy solitude and recommend it if that may move ought as the readiest way for some little light of truth which we pretend to but too much to break in upon the soul. And O that some men would with their reason and the spirit in conjunction together if that might be throughly and impartially view and consider their imperfections the daily errors and lapses of their own soul whether through the precipitance of passion or otherwise howsoever Then surely notwithstanding they might trust to the merits of a Saviour through that blessed Spirit I dare say they would not boast of its daily effects in themselves nor go about to perswade others of its daily motion in them clean contrary to reason and so much difference and distinguish themselves from all others by the spirit only I know no hurt this rational solitude could do our Anti-Atheists and such as almost deify themselves I do not observe those great spiritualists much given to melancholy a thing which sets the imagination on work without any reason at all and from which I confess there may be much danger in solitude they are generally busy and medling enough and over and above their inspiration assume and challenge to themselves a great deal of rationality beyond other men They have their reason ready at hand and surely we must needs allow them strength of reason if the greatest policy or subtilty be always the product of the strongest reason which I cannot think but the looking beyond and beholding all policy as vain to be it and then that reason of theirs if they would first lay aside all prejudice and passion might in an humble solitude work that effect which in the end might bring them truer comfort than what they at present feel or pretend to from the spirit But they are not the men to whom I would chiefly recommend solitude lest from thence they feed their passions through their reason rather than subdue them thereby as it often happens It is the plain downright Atheist resolved in company to believe nothing without a plain demonstration and who perhaps alone with himself might from himself receive a kind of demonstration Men may pronounce a vae soli but so long as a mans reason is able upon occasion to put a stop to the career of his imagination and not only suffer it to ramble beyond sense but even contrary to sense in which case only it is we are subject to destroy our own bodies We do think notwithstanding God's wise and provident care of a companion for man in the creation and the advantage and comfort we receive from company above all other creatures It may be good for man to be sometimes alone It matters not much who was the first Author of that saying Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus whether Scipio the African or any other if so be upon consideration it be found to have no less of weight in it than any of those of the Sages Surely we must needs think upon weighing it proceeded from a more than ordinary divine soul and one who from solitude found somewhat of enjoyment more than ordinary Scipio if we believe history received as great and publick applause from publick action as any man whatsoever and might have pleased and enjoyed himself we may well think in company as much as any man And therefore if it were he we might the rather give credit to the saying and hope to find that company and complacency in solitude we never yet found This let me tell any man that he who considers his past actions by himself searches rationally into himself if he once come to behold his own imperfections and that sight he will not miss of if his intellect be not strangly bewitched by his affections he will from thence fly in desire to find out and behold somewhat that is perfect which if he should not at present do as I am almost assured he will do in fine that little acquaintance he gets with himself will otherwise find him imployment sufficient to verify that saying of Scipio And this is the thing I would always have specially recommended to an Atheist We have an English expression in relation to a delirium or dotage of being besides our selves we so translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or insanis Paul and truly he who travels all the world over in quest of an original cause of all things and looks not into himself is in my opinion as well really and truly as literally so 'T is a strange thing one would think men in their search after God should go furthest from him run to the least and I think most inconsiderable particle of his creation and fansie atoms to be the cause of mind without a mind No it must be a greater mind that is the cause of a lesser mind and a perfect mind of an imperfect mind we our selves seem nearest to a Deity and what should we go further to search for it A man 's own soul is in my opinion that glass which narrowly looked into shews not only it self unto its self but something beyond it and above it Did ever any man observe the motion of his soul and not at that time see his ignorance and impute folly to some of his actions And can he behold ignorance and folly and not believe there is some such thing as knowledge or perfect wisdom Can he observe his own weakness without acknowledging some absolute power Can he find such a thing as falshood in himself and not believe there is truth Can he observe himself sometimes harsh and cruel and not acknowledge that there is such a thing as mercy Did he never injure man and if that escape not his sight how will he be able to deny but that there is such a thing as justice and so for the like
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
righteous merciful to our Beasts Thus much more I have adventured to speak in reference to the Soul of Beasts that curious and admirable effect of Nature that Chimistry in nature by which we conceive there is extracted a kind of Intellect out of matter yet such as necessarily ceases to be or work out of its house of clay but falls and perishes with it as we conjecture and is not so immediately from the breath or spirit of the Almighty as our own because we cannot observe in or from its motion or operation any thing which might seem to tend or reach after eternity or perpetuity or any imployment of any thoughts about that more remote author of its being the first original indepent cause of all God In my search into my self or in my Treatise de Anima and comparing the soul of man and beast together I did endeavour to find out the native Strength and Power and set down the just Extent Limits and Bounds of each without diminishing ought from the one or adding to the other that thereby I might behold their several original extract This I did by the best and clearest light my Reason was able to afford and from thence I could never espy any just ground to conclude any future duration of the Spirit of Beast as that of ours but rather the contrary Now the chief ground as I conceive which has begot an opinion in some men of their Duration and Immortality is some false opinion or admiration of an Intellect in them beyond its compass and ability or what they are naturally endowed withal Men have been very apt and prone sometimes in their search into the works of Nature to bestow their own reason on other Creatures and amplified theirs to have their own magnified and would be esteemed quick-sighted in curiously finding out what they never had or enjoyed We have often attributed to Brutes greater gifts than God through Nature ever bestowed on them Their Intellect has been strangely gilt by some of us and made to pass for currant amongst others when in reality it is but ordinary Earth and from thence extracted and if we can but once find and espy as we think some remote prospect of theirs it is no marvel if we ascribe duration and perpetuity to them as well as to our selves An instance whereof I will first here lay down before you and then fully convince you as I think or any other of the falsity of that common Tenet Amongst others the wisdom of the Ant is much extolled and magnified and it is a received opinion from some learned and eminent Men that that Creature for the preservation of the Corn she carries to her Nest or Heap for her support in Winter bites of the ends to prevent the shooting out of the Nutriment thereof into Blade and Stalk Now to shew the apparent falsity hereof and that there is no such provident wisdom in this Creature nor any such foresight of it into the Works of Nature We must first find out if we can what kind of Ant it is for there are divers kinds to which this provident wisdom is attributed Of Ants so called there are many of various kinds and different colours some greater and some smaller some conversant only in Pasture grounds or Orchards raising multitudes of little Hillocks out of the Earth and scarce discernible to move much further than those Banks most of a red colour Others of a black colour and usually about some hollow Tree Others more conversant about houses and very troublesome to the Owners Others more conversant about woody places and raising a great heap of Sticks Straws and other light adjacent matter and this is the great brown Ant the Poet so finely and elegantly describes which I conceive to be the provident wise Ant intended For of other kind I could never discern that carried any thing to their Heap Food or otherwise Now I must first take leave to deny from sight this constant seeming wise course of theirs For I have seen Corn spring and shoot from their Heaps and opening their Heap have taken it into my hands and viewed its Sprouts into Blade and Root Not that I think it usual or common with them to bring any Corn at all thither unless the same casually scattered next their Heap and Path was with other things as a light portable matter for them brought to their Heap For I could never yet discern them to feed on any Corn but only on tender Buds of Fruit-Trees and other Trees Grass Flowers and sometimes Fruit neither indeed shall a man find their Path by which they go and return tend towards any Corn-Field at any time but to some particular Trees where one shall see their quick and numerous passage up and down Now besides that there are innumerable kinds of Seeds which may come under the notion of Grain or Corn so round as that no end is discernible I would the Discerner and finder out or at least the Assertor of this Wisdom in the Ant would shew me the two ends of a piece which if he should I can shew him if he please to stay the Experiment both Blade and Root proceed from one end in some particular Grain and Kernels and that if it be cut into parts and one end cast away the other will notwithstanding sprout grow up thrive and flourish But to confute this Error as I said He who has ever observed their Heaps and moved them after a great rain shall find such a pretty contexture or way of laying those little sticks and straws that the place where they lay their Eggs unless sometimes they bring them up nearer to the Sun and whither they chiefly resort shall be very dry after the greatest Showers Now if they have such a way of Architecture that they can lay up their Corn dry and that it will so continue then there is no need of biting off the ends for without moisture it will never sprout though the ends continue on but if that be denied and that they lay up their Corn so as it it may be moistened from Rain then though it be bit and uncapable of sprouting that moisture in the Heap will soon convert it to Putrefaction and Earth and take from it all nutritive quality before the approach of Winter the time they may seem to need it But besides this whosoever observes all kinds of Insects which move upon the face of the Earth shall find none of them unless such as are kept vigorous from the heat of other greater living Bodies viz. Worms Lice or the like to want nourishment the greater and sharper part of Winter but lye as it were dead and stupified till again revived and re-inspirited by the more near approach and warmth of the Sun-Beams And except it be for such time they have always Herb their common food so as we do vainly impute to them a false Wisdom of our own imagination Yet there is a pretty and
of the Inventor such as otherwise would not have been viz. That he who first started this game for the Imagination to hunt after to the confusion of it self and the clouding of Reason so far as to betray the Soul to the delusion of Satan and averting it from a ready and willing obedience to that guide set over it was no good Christian nor no good moral man If he were alive I am pretty confident he would grant it were in my power to be idle that is permit my thoughts to ramble in obedience only to sense present or prior so as without exercising my Reason how weak soever that thought of him would never have risen within me but I should have believed or granted All he had said to be true and then had I prevented such as I suppose he would call it evil thought of him Reason though it be the least Earthly or the least of cognation with the Body of any faculty in the Soul yet is most like it in this that it acquires strength and vigour by use and exercise If it but once reclaim the Imagination If but once thereby we master an unruly Affection for a time If from it we once behold our past folly and madness and have some glimmering light of truth besides the present comfort therein how ready is it upon every turn to afford us its help and assistance It seems indeed at first an irksom thing to the Imagination perpetually working as of it self ad arbitrium and naturally working to feed and please the passions to have Reason called in for its regulation or direction in all or any of its motion It begets in us that disease we fansie so at least the Apostle calls a weariness of the mind Let the Affections and Imagination work and run together without control men seldom complain of a weariness of the Soul however it may fare with their Body in pursuance but if Reason be obeyed in its checks and called in to weigh all circumstances future danger as well as present enjoyment and to distinguish real good and happiness from colourable delights We presently faint and give over leaving our Imagination and Affections to themselves again And so instead of a weariness of the mind for the present subject it to Agues and Feavers doubts and distrusts anxiety and perturbation in the conclusion such as are far more unpleasant irksom and intolerable than the pains we indeavour to avoid If any man who has felt it shall make a diligent search into the cause of any his involuntary disquiet of mind he will find setting aside some particular cases not to be prevented it has been from the too great trust the faculties of his Soul have had of each other and the too familiar compliance with each other that which way soever the one has first moved the other has followed or at least not resisted as it should or might that in their course together which soever has been originally most to blame the Imagination has been the Ring-leader or File-leader that if they had been now and then at a little distrust and now and then had had a little contest for precedency and superiority it might have prevented that mutiny and disorder in the Soul which is not seldom occasioned by Reason's stepping in and exercising its power and shewing us our Errors when it seems too late I must confess every dispute or contest amongst the faculties of the Soul is for the present troublesome but who would not if he could indure a small trouble to avoid a greater A voluntary dispute or contest between our Reason and Imagination is never very dreadful or deadly neither can I foresee any dangerous consequent thereof The danger is only when it is involuntary when Reason is roused and awakened by some unexpected accident sickness crosses or the like when it starts up as it were on the suddain and as Gods Vicegerent of which we were not sensible before seems loudly to cry out and condemn us for not making that use of it we might or not obeying its private monitions before and this to the suddain amazement and confusion of all the other faculties in the Soul then does the Imagination sometimes according to its wonted falshood so far comply with it too as to present us a prospect of a just and revengeful God and forgetting mercy his utter desertion and rejection of us which likely ends in despair but if it be voluntary and so the Imagination and Affections be as it were prepared for the encounter let no man ever fear the evil success thereof Reason Gods Vicegerent will never condemn us utterly at such time as it works of it self and as it were of its free motion to reform us This contest in the Soul I recommend and this mutiny if it might be for the present I look upon as the readiest way and means towards a setled and lasting peace and quiet for the future We are prone and ready enough to distrust each other and to fall to foreign or outward dispute and controversie and to go together by the ears for God's sake as we say But truly if there be in Nature any struggling or contest any difference or division any fighting or combating acceptable to the God of Nature and the God of Unity Peace and Concord it is between the several faculties of a Soul amongst themselves when Reason shall as it were voluntarily exercise them and call them to an account when Affections good and bad shall as it were fight together when Pride and Vain-glory shall be undermined and fall to the ground through a sense of our own unworthiness when modesty and shame shall quench the flames of inordinate and more than bestial love when perfect love shall drive away fear and the like And this through Reason's shewing us the delusion of the Imagination before all the wound we receive thereby is that our Affections seem a little disgusted for their too great compliance with the Imagination and disobedience to some former checks of Reason which will be perfectly healed by their present compliance and the Imagination hereby will be somewhat reclaimed from presenting to them a pretence to any absolute authority for the future Surely this most excellent Divine gift Reason was not given us barely to condemn our selves for our neglect of the motion of Grace in us but that there is a kind of will and power in us attendant upon that admirable gift to act I own there is Grace co-operating with it or working in it by which it often moves and guides us but yet I judg it may move from some strength of our own or as of it self It stands by often as it were idle and unconcerned in relation to our thoughts and actions but we often find it is not dead in us and then surely we our selves may give it strength by exercise or add strength to it and exercise it we our selves may and that it will sooner and better work
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
has found out every root and string of their Affection and judges good perhaps to indeavour some mutual and interchangeable transplantation of Affection that thing I mean to speak of friendship for the melioration thereof had need be very wary and circumspect in his choice and rely upon a Divine watering and pruning too as well as his own planting or else perhaps though it grow and thrive with him it may bear him little or no good Fruit. The variety and diversity of human Souls with their several seeming inclinations and suddain alterations and that innate unsatiate love in man receiving its inflammation sometimes otherwise than by Sense from whence every one labours and travails to secure and advance it self by some means or other and especially the difficulty of discerning the motion of the Spirit in a mans self much more in another is the cause in my opinion why there is so little of true and real Friendship amongst us in the World and that there have been in all Ages so small a number of faithful Friends reckoned up and that our love is changeable mutable and unconstant When as we may daily espy in other Creatures of different Species even a Lyon and a Whelp bred up together a constant and continued love to each other during their lives I may say without design or without dissimulation Of Friendship I have read or been taught somewhat when I was a Boy which as I long since utterly forgot so I mean not now to have recourse thither again or to any other Author that treats thereof but having already adventured to meddle with the Soul I am minded to say somewhat of that league or union of Souls Friendship to you my Friend and to give you my natural thoughts of it only according to my plain rustick way and manner of delivery Friendship I take to be an union or knitting together of two Souls as is expressed of Ionathan and David in amity so as the one loves the other as it self Or more particularly An human yet sacred tye made and contracted between two Souls in the mutual and reciprocal aspect of some similitude and likeness in each other Each shining in some degree after the similitude and likeness of its Maker So that to the contracting thereof it is necessary the party who loves as a Friend do behold in the other some Image or shadow at least and Goodness Truth Justice Mercy Love especially and the like without this view or supposed view there can arise no such Love as is called Friendship Or if you please we will in short define it thus Whereas Charity is a general love to all men for God's sake So Friendship is a love to some particular person for the persons sake yet ever having a respect to God Friendship being a kind of alliance of two Souls resembles somewhat an alliance by blood or a consanguinity as we call it He who would make out that to any man must necessarily resort to some one fountain head or Ancestour and from thence trace and bring down the blood to himself and the other party without any corruption or attainter intervening And our Soul being a distinct gift and a distinct creation or breathing which we receive not from our Parents it is necessary in Friendship that as two Souls concenter in belief of one head and fountain of their being So there be no visible corruption thereof but that each participate somewhat of the Image of its Maker and leave not quite off to be Loving Just Merciful c. at least be not stigmatized with any Character of Uncharitableness Injustice Cruelty or the like whereby that Image seems defaced and therefore no Atheist can be a friend to any man nor any other man so to him For if there be such an human Creature in the World who verily believes there is no God he must consequently believe there is no such thing as Justice or Mercy or no need thereof towards our particular quiet or well-being and such man's kindness whatsoever he pretend is no other than a mere self-love and respecting himself barely and not Friendship neither can any one love that man who rejects or disowns the Wisdom of his Maker and attributes all to what we call Nature or Chance Besides this If there be any men who own a God and yet live as without God in the World though they readily perform all offices of kindness faithfully to each other that I hold not to be Friendship but call it rather a Satanical League than Friendship such as St. Iames terms enmity with God For a league of Friendship ever respects God because unless in respect to our selves there can be no other original cause to love one another but God alone who indowed us with a love extrinsick as I may say and such as is not natural or arising from the flesh The Soul of man in the Body is prone to cleave to Earthly things and many Leagues it makes and Alliances it doth contract Some upon considerations merely accidental and transient and which fail with those considerations such is that with respects the bounty of another as Solomon saith Every man is a Friend to him that giveth gifts or as the wise Son of Syrach Liberality pleaseth all men and so gains applause respect and Friendship improperly taken but the Friendship thereby obtained proves but like the Winter Brooks that Iob speaks of that what time they wax warm they vanish when it is hot they are consumed out of their place The paths of their way are turned aside they go to nothing and perish And when we stand in most need of their help will most surely deny it Sometimes again love proceeds from external relations as that which a man bears to his own natural Product which although it be usually real and lasting and is allowable good and lawful yet is not praise-worthy and commendable the like being to be found in Beasts and would be as great and lasting in them had they equall knowledge of their own with us nor can be called Friendship since it seldom and of it self begets a Love mutual and reciprocal and cannot indeed be termed other than love of our selves That which doth come nearest to it is the love in Marriage which being mutual and reciprocal when contracted upon fitting terms the Man and Wife thereby are as our great Lawyer thinks according to Scripture he has rightly defined that mystical knot Two Souls in one Body And when it respects Vertue chiefly they may be said to be one Soul in two Bodies When two Souls can place a repose in each other without distrust or diffidence when they dare trust each other as Gods though men that I call Friendship which can never be without some imaginary at least sight of Truth Justice Love c. the one in the other To such a love I will afford and affix the Attribute of good And doubtless such a mutual Love affords the
reject all moral Vertue and Goodness as insignificant will not be drawn to affect or love us otherwise than aforesaid nor imbrace us for any Justice or Mercy shewed them for as for Spiritual Graces theirs and ours are equally invisible we shall do well so to frame our ways as to please our Maker that if they become our enemies because we do not take the same imaginary flight with them they may at least be at peace with us and that if it be possible as much as in us lyes we may have peace with all men In the Christian World I doubt nay I believe there is least visibility of Friendship and this I take to be the cause that the very outward noble badge or cognizance of Christianity I will not say true Christianity by the help of Satan has so much elevated many Souls in opinion and fancy as to make them think no others who wear it not outwardly for ostentation and shew as themselves worthy their common Friendship It is a seeming unhappiness in our nature that our Affection cannot be long at rest and that Love in man only has such several Pilots or Guides Sense would have it stay at home chiefly and please or work for the Body that at least it should not move far nor otherwise than to bring in freight for the ease and pleasure of that Reason would it should traffick abroad and imbrace whatsoever that heholds good and virtuous laudable and amiable in another man and the man withal therefore Grace now and then raises it to mount upwards and beholding that fixed bright Star by which we all move attracts it in some measure to bend and incline thitherward without regard to danger It moves at all these several Summons or calls wherein that in Beast never stirs otherwise than from Sense But yet upon every turn and occurrence so weak is our light of Reason and so uncertain and often clouded through our sins is that other bright and gracious light that it is apt to be drawn and haled home again by Sense and then it catches up every weapon offensive and defensive for the Body Anger Fear and the like Thus are we tossed to and fro as it were by contrary Winds and often shipwracked before we come to shoot that dreadful gulf of Death and we may well cry out before the time O wretched men that we are who shall deliver us from this Body of Death Reason sooner than Sense will shew us some ground whereon we may anchor and fix our Love as it were in a good and pleasant harbour for a time but it self will often loosen it again by shewing us it is sandy that there is no trust in man nor in the children of men and that whatsoever we see of Justice or Truth or any thing of goodness in them for the present those are not things of permanency in them Men are various fickle and mutable in their Habits and in their Affections too We cannot rationally trust our selves We have no power over our selves 't is most certain And we have beheld some seemingly very rational for want of Grace destroy that Body they best loved their own with their own hands And how then can we place any setled trust in another Faith must throw us out at last an anchor for the Soul sure and stedfast and that must be of Love not that it directs or should direct our Love quatenus human that is and ought to be guided by Reason But it may inflame our Love to that height towards our Maker that we shall not be troubled above measure though we behold the inconstancy of human Nature and the falshood and treachery of our dearest Friends though they deceive us and all the World forsake us nay Though the Earth be moved and though the hills be carried into the midst of the Sea We may wish perhaps but as much setledness of Affection and seeming constancy of Nature amongst our selves as in those poor Creatures which serve us and were created next to God's Glory for our use that we might find ground to trust each other here and lodge our Affection safe out of our selves for a time in any fellow-member since we can behold no better by our Sense nor comprehend what is above us by our Reason But his Wisdom is infinite and unsearchable and yet perhaps may appear to us herein that we should trust even while here in none but him who is for ever one and the same and Lord over all And who if we love him will withhold nothing he sees good for us and become himself our Comforter in all our Afflictions EPIST. VII Of the different vain pursuits of the Souls of Men wherein we are ready to accuse each other of Folly though not our selves and yet are all Fools in some degree That no pursuit of the Soul here is praise-worthy or commendable further than it intentionally advances God's Glory which is the mark set before us and which if we do not behold in all our travails our labour will not profit IN my Treatise of the Soul I made some glance at the various and different pursuits of it in man that is the affectionary or imbracing part of it but I could not but behold withal the several opinions that men seem to have of the pursuit of each others Affection how vain every man thinks that to be which he himself affects not or desires But the beholding the variety of opinions and judgments in the case with the folly and madness of all men would have conduced little to the present cure of any Soul diseased and therefore I needed not to insert my thoughts thereabout in such Treatise but have reserved and now sent them to you for your perusal Truth is all our courses as various as they are in any excess and not necessarily relating to some other end than what they seem to an ordinary Spectator to tend after are equally frivolous and vain and though we are every one of us very dimm-sighted towards any espial of our own follies and ridiculous eager and longing pursuits yet are we quick and apt enough to see and deride the same madness and folly in others and we never need with the Psalmist attribute laughter to him who dwelleth in the Heavens from his only or alone beholding our futile contrivances since we our selves are able to afford it one another from the weak inspection we do or are able to make into any mans madness or folly but our own I do think the Creator of all things who affords himself that blessed center of rest unto our Souls and to whom our best and chiefest Affections might from very gratitude rationally tend has of his abundant wisdom and gracious goodness permitted and allowed them not only a divers and innocent vagrancy towards various and several terrestrial objects but withal so framed the Intellect and Judgment as that each several person shall in some manner or measure approve and allow
Prudent Yet without any necessary self-denial it may not be improper or imprudent to allow an inherent kind of Wisdom in man as God's gift if it be owned with the same qualification as our Saviour approves or allows in case of Riches that there be put no trust therein 'T is a good caution and commendable to put men in mind of not trusting to either but absolutely to condemn the Owners thereof if any such is not so Perhaps it were to be wished that some men who to lay a good foundation for grace in their Auditory as they seem to pretend do utterly decry all other excellent gifts of the Soul under the name of Worldly Wisdom and would have it rooted out as obstructive to Spiritual gifts as they peculiarly term them were such indeed themselves as they desire their Auditors should be that is plain simple well meaning men But since the number of weak and foolish men does always far exceed that of the discerning and Prudent and since weak and ignorant men are soonest won by a smoothing kind of Flattery that theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven and to them alone belong the Promises We have cause I fear to suspect that some who are very sollicitous and over-earnest Preachers of this Doctrine to others are not free from subtilty or policy therein though of Prudence they are and such as I say may cohabit and well agree with Wisdom in the same Soul and take up and make use of those very Sayings which were chiefly meant and intended by St. Paul against themselves I do not alledge it as an observation worthy any regard neither do I know whether it has been made before But we find not St. Paul any where so strongly declaiming against Worldly Wisdom twice together citing the Prophet Esaias Where is the Wise where is the Scribe c. as in those two or three first Chapters to the Corinthians and that immediately after his complaint of their divisions and telling them how some said they were of Paul some of Apollos some of Cephas As if he should seem to allow a kind of policy or Worldly Wisdom in those factious sidings and parties and admit how advantageous it might prove to the leaders thereof yet God and Truth being still the same There was no need to fight or contest for it under the peculiar Colours or pretended Banners either of himself or Apollos or Cephas But that such their doings were Folly and Madness in the sight of God and not in reality Wisdom as perhaps they esteemed it He tells them immediately before his declaration of the Wisdom of the World being foolishness with God using there the word Craftiness of their manner of building on his Foundation Bidding them take heed how they built thereon Indeed he does not absolutely condemn such Builders neither do I but this may be said from his words to such men for I know not how to build upon his words Castles in the Air or Purgatories as some have done that they had need pass through a Purgatory of Repentance in this life for building Wood or Hay or Stubble instead of Gold and Silver c. upon his Foundation I have Charity enough to think or hope at least that this kind of Subtilty of fashioning Gods word so to a mans own Model as that he may thereby best raise his own fortune and advancement thereon since it never yet obtained a Patron and is utterly disclaimed and disowned by all men is very rare But the one and the other of these men the Prudent and the Subtile as I distinguish them which is but from their Reason looking different ways have left us some of their several Precepts and Maxims to walk by if we please I am not much acquainted with such Writings neither have I read or studied them from that Reason I enjoy I have ever thought a man may become better inabled to walk by his own guide than another mans and that if any one should collect all the sage Sayings which ever the World afforded and had them ready ad unguem as we say he would never prove the more subtle or prudent person for them They might be like Jewels in a Swines snout perhaps stay him a little now and then from extravagantly wrooting in the Earth but never further him towards the acquiring Food or what his Affections would prey upon nor afford him lustre to walk by with any such decorum or comeliness as if they were his own proper ornaments or extracted from himself The chief and principal Corner-stone for the subtle mans Building is we know though we desire not to know all deep Dissimulation polished with Lyes And though he may have other fine wrought Materials and a pretty kind of varnish't Mortar to cement his Fabrick Yet what great and lasting Building or at least pleasant Structrure any man can raise on such Foundation I leave to any sober person to judge Indeed this very thing Dissimulation has ingrossed the name of Wisdom to it self and no man is allowed the title of the one till he first obtain a perfect habit in the other It has been too much esteemed a Court-like and Princely Virtue or quality and some no mean ones have professed to desire their Son and Successor should learn no other Lesson whereby to live and govern prosperously and happily If such men did but consider that they often find by Experience the Mistress of Fools that there is a great number of men which make as little use of their very outward Sense to find them out as their Reason they would never esteem this Art for any point of Policy in themselves For to take up Solomon's saying in this case Surely in vain the Net is spread in the Eyes of every thing that hath wings and it must be a very dull Eye that at some time or other or upon some occasion or other is not able to peep through this false net-work vail which when once men do such catch little by it and if according to a common English Proverb they gain any thing in the Hundred they lose more in the Shire Men do not naturally love masked Faces and what true Friendship or perfect Love can any man expect in return from others who puts off counterfeit Wares to all men He who can make it his trade and profession purposely to disfigure the very Image of Truth that is himself the Image of God must needs be sensible sometimes that he mocks himself with his fellow Creatures and cannot be ignorant that his Creator cannot be mocked I dare appeal to any such man whether he has not sometimes deceived himself to scorn if not to derision and so over-acted that he has sensibly found that his longing Affections had been better gratified if his brains had been more quiet and at rest and that he had obtained better trading and quicker returns for them if he had not hung out so many and various signs for them There are
his name might be declared throughout all the Earth as St. Paul tells the Romans from that place Affection in man as in my thoughts of the Soul I have already touched seems often the most disorderly and irregular thing in the course of Nature And therefore could I once prevail with any man so far as seriously to consider the strange motion of it in himself or others I do think it might prove the readiest way to quiet it for a time and dispel those misty clouds which are raised in the Soul by the very restless struggling of the Affections and enlighten it to behold a constant working providence over all its faculties and especially to win and regain that very part of it for what is our understanding to our Creatour but to admire him but our Affections are given to embrace him and to have our Affections become inflamed thitherward Sometimes our Intellect cannot but observe how strangely and suddainly the Affections are cooled moved or restrained beyond its foresight or prospect We see or hear or read a thing an hundred times and it may be then think our Intellect clear and discerning too and yet not become affected with it And it may be these our waters at some other times are rapidly moved not from the Imagination I shall rather chuse to say from some Angel coming down at certain seasons that Assistant I mean or Framer of the Intellect that spirat quo vult Otherwise the same words could never strike so much deeper into one onely it may be of a great Auditory and he none of the quickest apprehension or naturally or usually most discerning Spirit and that to the subduing of an unruly Affection equally predominant in many others of the same Auditory I know there is no man but has loved and feared and joyed sometimes without any apparent or discernible cause to himself or any other and if he would or could but observe so much he might possibly discern somewhat more than chance in the disposition if not Creation of his Soul Some and not the meanest Wits have stood at a maze at the Affections motion especially And though they looked no higher than themselves yet terminated in some occult cause such as the blindness and sometimes edge and sometimes dulness of their Affections It may perhaps seem to many but a mean distich of the Poet Non amo te Sabadi nec possum dicere quare Hoc tantum possum dicere non amote but I must crave leave to judge otherwise of it and that he saw by that as far as ordinary human Reason is able to shew us and I take his meaning to be that such is the condition of man as that notwithstanding there be often presented to the Affections an invitation without exception and sufficient ground and reason offered to them to imbrace and accept yet they are stubborn and decline it and want something more than natural human light to bring them to compliance There are thousands doubtless have received all the endearments imaginable from particular persons and thought well of them but never heartily affected them And on the other side notwithstanding all the scorn and contempt injuries and affronts they could receive from others have yet heartily and truly loved them So as 't is no wonder the Heathen amongst all their Gods thought only Love blind and so represented him to us Indeed upon the beholding and consideration of any the least Plant or Insect there is a glance offered of some power wonderful and to be admired But that power is chiefly to be seen in ordering ruling and determining the Passions and Affections of men sometimes preventing them from breaking forth in an Insurrection and then suddenly quenching the fire that the World be not thereby in a greater flame This doth the Psalmist ascribe to him Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain I do think some rational accompt in Nature might be given of the motion of celestial Orbs and no less of the Spirits of Beasts Why there is so much and such apparency of gentleness and meekness and patience in the Lamb and in the Dove and why at all times the contrary and so quick and ready a will of revenge in the Bee and the Wasp that Passion and Affection in several Creatures should so much differ and yet the one not exceed the other in Intellect But why several men sprung from one and the same stock in Nature should now and then resemble each Creature in point of Affection and exceed them either way I know not unless by such a wise working Power as ordering the result of all human Affections to its glory in the end should permit the sometimes mad pursuit of them Whereof Reason as his present gift is sufficient to demonstrate their Error â—â—d so justly condemn them and Grace only to reclaim them That men should adventure their Lives and Fortunes yea their Souls too and hack and hew one anothers Bodies in pieces to please the appetite of an ambitious and covetous Prince nay perhaps some less apparent Meteor some one or two Subjects designing either to build on the ruins of others abroad or divert mens eyes for a while from looking into their own corrupt and base designs and practices at home or the like What is it but some base rubbish of Affection in the generality of mankind sympathetically as I may say kindled by the heat of some ambitious desire in particular Persons or highly inflamed in them at least by the Devil or some evil Spirit I am sure there is nothing of Reason or Prudence nay or Nature could lead the generality of mankind in companies into such design since you may quickly and easily convince almost every particular Person of them that it is safer and better to be quiet at home But when this fire is once throughly kindled in a Nation and every ones hand is against his Brother he knows not why How strangely and how suddainly do we see this fire when there 's apparent matter enough left put out and extinguished and those scattered who delight in Wars On the other side notwithstanding the fierceness of man which every way turns to Gods Praise as the Psalmist says how readily and easily do we often daily see a multitude governed by such Cobweb human Laws as they are able at any time to break through and want not the greatest part will to their power and yet they are led often all their days like sheep by the hands of weaker and worse shepherds than Moses and Aaron who feed them not but rather poll and sheer or fleece them without resistance For either of which rather than the stay of the raging of the Sea if any man can pierce so deep into that thing he calls Nature as to shew me any single undeniable cause therein nay I might say any colourable cause other than the Will of one single Eternal Wise Power for secret purposes
Conscience If men would we should behold their Faith let us see their Reason too attending on it or coming after it and permit us likewise to make use of ours which if they do they may be assured we shall have an eye to their works and not much regard ought else There is ever most talk of those things we least understand or are able to perceive or judge of Whatsoever defects there are in the Soul or whatsoever Errors in any of the faculties happen to be committed As when men sin against the very plain light of Reason if they are blamed if there be an indeavour to reclaim them they are apt to talk of their faith and their conscience and take them up as weapons not only to put by the stroaks of others who wish or would have them morally honest but even sometimes make use of the same to offend also But when the one or the other is thus brought forth I will not say to view I may say to ostentation doubtless St. Paul's words in relation to one is no unfit reply for either Hast thou Faith hast thou Conscience have it to thy self before God It 's He alone can judge of the sincerity of both but if such would approve them to men and shew their Faith to be true and their Conscience to be good they must make it evident by such fruits as are proper to them and arise from them whereever they are for Faith worketh by Love and a good Conscience being a ready obedience of the Affections to the dictates of Reason will always act in conformity to its laws These are by the Apostle joyned together Having faith and a good conscience and so we are willing to leave them and by no means separate them and pray they be not only joyfully embraced by all but better apprehended by some Faith as it is a bare human perswasion in the Soul for from thence the word is properly derived as I have said of the truth or falshood of a thing or the good or evil lawfulness or unlawfulness thereof is no more than a bare assent or consent of Reason to the one or the other but upon Reason's deceit for no opinion can alter the nature of a thing as it is in it self but the same remains as it was good or evil the Affections are set upon a very dangerous precipice because subordinate to Reason by a Law of Nature if they obey they must leap with Reason into a gulf on the one side and if they disobey they fall into a miry quagg on the other side and make good the Apostle's saying in that very sence of human perswasion whatever is not of Faith is sin Reason is requisite and necessary in either case to the creation of that thing we call Faith be it natural or be it supernatural for that no irrational Creature be it of never so quick a capacity can be said in anycase properly to believe I shall make evident in the conclusion Now though Reason in its nature or original be as well an heroick and valiant faculty as the most noble and generous in the Soul and such a faculty as will not presently yield upon every summons and yields only when it finds an impossibility of victory and there is left no cause as well as strength to defend it self against all opposition yet sometimes by a kind of supine negligence and want of exercise of this most noble faculty it becomes so degenerate that it not only permits the passions to rule in the Soul as they list but becomes as it were subordinate to that of other mens and seems to move only according to their directions This is that thing which I call or term Credulity sometimes a weakness but most commonly a laziness in the Intellective faculty and a conformity of Reason or an approbation or allowance thereof to whatsoever is brought before it without due examination and trial This is it which has caused so many vulgar as well as dangerous and pernitious Errors and I dare say were it not for it that is a laziness of the understanding Idolatry had never been or at least never took footing as we say in the World For never any man was yet so stupid and blockish as upon consideration and due examination or the least resistive operation of his Intellective faculty to believe the work of his own hands to excel himself and be brought to fall down before it and worship it and think that it were a greater crime to dismember it than his brother Now though the contrary Incredulity may be thought sometimes to have its rise from worse Principles in Nature and to be as it often is the effect of a stubborn refractory Will or rather the Master's whom that Will serves viz. corrupt Affections so that we find the Saying after a sort verified in particular persons Non persuadebis etiam si persuaseris Yet is there in truth a perswasion and the fault remains in the inferiour faculties of the Soul which though they may be more violent in their course do not usually hold out so long Nay sometimes the Affections being as I have said in the hands of God and turned as he pleases do on the suddain unexpectedly comply with his Vicegerent in the Soul Reason if that be in the right way though they disobey its first Summons But if at any time the fault be in the Intellect by negligence and a tame compliance they then err by a kind of Authority and being led by a blind Guide such as makes not use of its own eyes at least they necessarily both fall into a Ditch A man may do himself much hurt by always keeping that inward door of the Soul Reason close shut and barred and believing nothing beyond Sense that outward Port of it and such an one may be termed perverse as well as incredulous as our Saviour once called his Disciples but to leave it alway ready open and become like a child tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lye in wait to deceive others is of more dangerous consequence Those incredulous Disciples of our Saviour believed to good effect at last and some have observed of Thomas how his Incredulity at first wrought a good effect at last and proved a stronger confirmation of our Saviour's Bodily Resurrection than the ready belief of the other Besides a perverse Incredulity caused by the Affections too much addiction to Sense and to be led only thereby there may be I confess and sometimes is a kind of Sceptical Infidelity or Academical reservation in man A doubting ferment in the Soul neither expellible by Reason or Sense for the present But this is rare attending now and then the most quick and searching brain and doth often proceed from some kind of humility in the Soul and then likely in the end terminates in a clear and setled perswasion For he who is
happen to be without Reason for it is Reason's assent that creates a belief or gives it that denomination If Reason be absent 't is no more than a bare short cogitation of a thing such as is or may be in Beast which is driven away by the next thought But belief solely attending Reason or being the off-spring of Reason has somewhat of permanency in it though it be subject to change habits Faith says the author to the Hebrews is the evidence of things not seen the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems more full and of a larger extent or signification than we can well render by that word Evidence or any one single word in our language it is a demonstration by argument or ratiocination which may be I think without the present help of Sense He gives us this instance Through it we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear The latter part of conclusion is no more than what every ordinary Heathen might espy from his Reason that visibility could not be the product of visibility that the framer and the framed must necessarily differ in a vast degree and therefore conclude by way of argument from Reason and as it were rest satisfied that it was no visible substance but some eternal omnipotent invisible wise power or mind that created the World in this admirable visible beauty and lustre as it is And this as we call it Faith so it is no more than ordinary But for the Soul to lay hold on such a thing as Word and pierce into the depth of that monosyllable which Saint Iohn with his Eagle eyes had so deep an inspect into It must I think necessarily be reached down from Heaven and be an heavenly light which first shewed it unto man The Power and strength of Reason in man able of it self upon consideration to raise an evidence of things not seen is the chief and main ground which induces me to think that no sober wise man that is no man whose Reason is in any measure clear is an Atheist but that it must be the fool only who says in his heart there is no God And yet that there are and may be as well rational Infidels as Christians since that Word incarnate is above the reach of the clearest human Reason In my Treatise de Anima after my plain way and manner I set down the grounds of my belief of the immortality of an human Soul only and that was chiefly from its Reason such a Reason as is able to weigh things without the help of Sense I know that human Reason by the delusion of Satan and for want of good exercise is often captivated and brought to accept any thing almost for true and current that is so represented and laid before it whuch thing I call Credulity yet that very Credulity is to me a clear evidence of the Soul's immortality and therefore I mean here to speak a little of Faith or Belief as it is described by the Author to the Hebrews The evidence of things not seen for surely by that we may be distinguished from all other Creatures Faith or belief we men alone have in us whether by way of ratiocination or immediately given us shall not be our present inquiry a capacity to imbrace or catch or lay hold on things at a distance which capacity we think is only the product of human Reason A capacity in the Soul of man which though it may seem at first view to come far short of knowledge yet in dignity or worth far surmounts any thing which we call or can properly so call Knowledge such as it is in us or any Creature is the off-spring of Sense and Faith the off-spring only of Reason For of things unseen or of the true Nature or original cause of any thing we have no knowledge at all But that things are so or so and that they differ in specie one from another we and Beasts have both equal certain knowledge from Sense unless they whose Sense is clearest may be said to exceed a little therein Sense certainly penetrates quicker into the substance of things than Reason can do into the Nature and causes of them and therefore the termination of one may well be accounted knowledge when the other acquires only the title of Belief And yet that belief arises from a much deeper sight than the other Which kind of light in the Soul and such thing as may create a belief we can in no wise discern in Brutes although we do discern and allow knowledge in them Because belief in its lowest degree and at the least proceeds from Reason and such a Reason as is or may be separate and distinct from Sense I cannot but allow a kind of Reason in Beasts concomitant and attendant upon Sense sufficient to determine their election and choice or if you please their will But it is such as vanishes with the act and nothing from thence can amount unto or be said to be a belief in any case It is stirred only by and vanishes with Sense and the ground of its work being gon and past there might be a knowledge pro tempore but no such thing as a belief because there remains no fixed footsteps or hold of its operation But belief ever depending upon somewhat and being a thing of permanency and continuance it must necessarily depend upon such a Reason as subsists of it self and is able to work of it self For that is it which makes a belief Otherwise there is no more than a cogitation or memory the renewer of a cogitation and such as the coming of one usually drives away the other as I said both in man and Beast And though I cannot be said properly between cogitation and cogitation to remember a thing all the while yet I may be said to believe the same all the while without so much as a thought of the object matter of my belief As to knowledge such as it is in man or Beast it is but a present plain demonstration of Sense and a thing of no permanency without the continued help of Sense For though I knew a man yesterday I cannot properly say I know him till I see him again and then I may but I believe all the while I shall know him if I see him again and if a man shall ask me the question whether I know such a man it is most proper for me to say I believe I do or shall when I see him I will give you this plain instance if you please a little to distinguish knowledge and belief The wind blows Now seeing the effects of its motion in the Clouds on the Trees c hearing the noise it causes upon resistance feeling the coolness of the air ventilated I know it blows or there is such kind of motion and so do's a Beast but this neither of us know longer than
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