course of Nature and of Reason it is a mighty great blessing were it but in this regard that it giveth time leave to vent and boyl away the unquietnesses and turbulencies that follow our passions and to wean our selves gently from carnal affections and at the last to drop with ease and willingness like ripe fruit from the Tree as I remember Plotinus finely discourseth in one of his Eneads For when before the Season it is plucked off with violent hands or shaken down by rude and boysterous winds it carrieth along with it an indigested raw tast of the Wood and hath an unpleasant aigerness it its juyce that maketh it unfit for use till long time hath mellowed it And peradventure it may be so backward as in stead of ripening it may grow rotten in the very Center In like manner Souls that go out of their Bodies with affection to those Objects they leave behind them which usually is as long as they can relish them do retain still even in their Separation a by as and a languishing towards them which is the Reason why such terrene Souls appear oftenest in Coemeteries and Charnel-houses and not that moral one which our Author giveth For Life which is union with the body being that which carnal souls have straightest affection to and that they are loathest to be separated from their unquiet Spirit which can never naturally lose the impressions it had wrought in it at the time of its driving out lingereth perpetually after that dear Consort of his The impossibility cannot cure them of their impotent desires they would fain be alive again Iterumque ad tarda revierti Corpora Quae lucis miseris tam dira cupido And to this cause peradventure may be reduced the strange effect which is frequently seen in England When at the approach of the Murderer the slain body suddenly bleedeth afresh For certainly the Souls of them that are treacherously murdered by surprize use to leave their bodies with extream unwillingness and with vehement indignation against them that force them to so unprovided and abhorred a passage That Soul then to wreak its evil talent against the hated Murderer and to draw a just and desired revenge upon his head would do all it can to manifest the author of the fact To speak it cannot for in it self it wanteth Organs of voice and those it is parted from are now grown too heavy and are too benummed for it to give motion unto Yet some change it desireth to make in the body which it hath so vehement inclinations to and therefore is the aptest for it to work upon It must then endeavour to cause a motion in the subtilest and most fluid parts and consequently the most moveable ones of it This can be nothing but the Blood which then being violently moved must needs gush out at those places where it findeth issues Our Author cannot believe that the World will perish upon the ruines of its own principles But Mr. White hath demonstrated the end of it upon natural Reason And though the precise time for that general Destruction be inscrutable yet he learnedly sheweth an ingenious Rule whereby to measure in some sort the duration of it without being branded as our Author threatneth with convincible and Statute-madness or with impiety And whereas he will have the work of this last great Day the Summer up of all past days to imply annihilation and thereupon interesseth God only in it I must beg leave to contradict him namely in this Point and to affirm that the letting loose then of the activest Element to destroy this face of the World will but beget a change in it and that no annihilation can proceed from God Almighty For his Essence being as I said before self-existence it is more impossible that Not-being should flow from him than that cold should flow immediately from fire or darkness from the actual presence of light I must needs acknowledge that where he ballanceth Life and Death against one another and considereth that the latter is to be a Kind of nothing for a moment to become a pure Spirit within one instant and what followeth of this strong thought is extream handsomely said and argueth very gallant and generous Resolutions in him To exemplifie the Immortality of the Soul he needeth not have recourse to the Philosophers-stone His own store furnisheth him with a most pregnant one of reviving a Plant the same numerical Plant out of his own ashes But under his favour I believe his experiment will fail if under the notion of the same he comprehendeth all the Accidents that first accompanied that Plant for since in the ashes there remaineth onely the fixed Salt I am very confident that all the Colour and much of the Odour and Taste of it is flown away with the Volatile Salt What should I say of his making so particular a Narration of personal things and private thoughts of his own the knowledge whereof cannot much conduce to any mans betterment which I make account is the chief end of his writing this Discourse As where he speaketh of the soundness of his Body of the course of his Diet of the coolness of his Blood at the Summer-Solstice of his age of his neglect of an Epitaph how long he hath lived or may live what Popes Emperours Kings Grand-Seigniors he hath been Contemporary unto and the like Would it not be thought that he hath a special good opinion of himself and indeed he hath reason when he maketh such great Princes the Landmarks in the Chronology of himself Surely if he were to write by retale the particulars of his own Story and Life it would be a notable Romance since he telleth us in one total Sum it is a continued Miracle of thirty years Though he creepeth gently upon us at the first yet he groweth a Gyant an Atlas to use his own expression at the last But I will not censure him as he that made Notes upon Balsac's Letters and was angry with him for vexing his Readers with Stories of his Cholicks and voiding of Gravel I leave this kind of expressions without looking further into them In the next place my Lord I shall take occasion from our Author 's setting so main a difference between moral Honesty and Vertue or being vertuous to use his own phrase out of an inbred loyalty to Vertue and on the other side being vertuous for a rewards sake to discourse a little concerning Vertue in this life and the effects of it afterwards Truely my Lord however he seemeth to prefer this later I cannot but value the other much before it if we regard the nobleness and heroickness of the nature and mind from whence they both proceed And if we consider the Journeys end to which each of them carrieth us I am confident the first yieldeth nothing to the second but indeed both meet in the period of Beatitude To clear this point which is very well worth the wisest man's seriousest thought
we must consider what it is that bringeth us to this excellent State to be happy in the other World of Eternity and Immutability It is agreed on all hands to be God's Grace and Favour to us But all do not agree by what steps his Grace produceth this effect Herein I shall not trouble your Lordship with a long Discourse how that Grace worketh in us which yet I will in a word touch anon that you may conceive what I understand Grace to be but will suppose it to have wrought its effect in us in this life and from thence examine what hinges they are that turn us over to Beatitude and Glory in the next Some consider God as a Judge that rewardeth or punisheth men according as they co-operated with or repugned to the Grace he gave That according as their actions please or displease him he is well affected towards them or angry with them and accordingly maketh them to the purpose and very home feel the effects of his kindness or indignation Others that fly a higher pitch and are so happy Vt rerum poterint cognoscere causas do conceive that Beatitude and misery in the other life are effects that necessarily and orderly flow out of the Nature of those Causes that begot them in this life without engaging God Almighty to give a sentence and act the part of a Judge according to the state of our Cause as it shall appear upon the Accusations and pleadings at his great Bar. Much of which manner of expression is Metaphorical and rather adapted to contain vulgar minds in their Duties that are awed with the thought of a severe Judge sifting every minute-action of theirs than such as we must conceive every circumstance to pass so in reality as the literal sound of the words seems to infer in ordinary construction and yet all that is true too in its genuine sence But my Lord these more penetrating men and that I conceive are vertuous upon higher and stronger Motives for they truely and solidly know why they are so do consider that what impressions are once made in the spiritual Substance of a Soul and what affections it hath once contracted do ever remain in it till a contrary and diametrically contradicting judgement and affection do obliterate it and expel it thence This is the reason why Contrition Sorrow and Hatred for Sins past is encharged us If then the Soul do go out of the Body with impressions and affections to the Objects and pleasures of this life it continually lingreth after them and as Virgil learnedly as well as wittily saith Quae gratia currum Armorumque fuit vivis quae cura nitentes Pascere equos eadem sequitur tellure repostos But that being a State wherein those Objects neither are nor can be enjoyed it must needs follow that such a Soul must be in an exceeding anguish sorrow and affliction for being deprived of them and for want of that it so much prizeth will neglect all other contentments it might have as not having a relish or taste moulded and prepared to the savouring of them but like feavorish tongues that when they are even scorched with heat take no delight in the pleasingest liquors but the sweetest drinks seem bitter to them by reason of their overflowing Gall So they even hate whatsoever good is in their power and thus pine away a long Eternity In which the sharpness and activity of their pain anguish and sad condition is to be measured by the sensibleness of their Natures which being then spiritual is in a manner infinitely more than any torment that in this life can be inflicted upon a dull gross body To this add the vexation it must be to them to see how inestimable and infinite a good they have lost and lost meerly by their own fault and for momentary trifles and childrens play and that it was so easie for them to have gained it had they remained but in their right senses and governed themselves according unto Reason And then judge in what a tortured condition they must be of remorse and execrating themselves for their most resupine and sensless madness But if on the other side a Soul be released out of this Prison of clay and flesh with affections setled upon Intellectual goods as Truth knowledge and the like and that it be grown to an irksome dislike of the flat pleasures of this World and look upon carnal and sensual Objects with a disdainful eye as discerning the contemptible Inanity in them that is set off only by their painted outside and above all that it hath a longing desire to be in the Society of that supereminent Cause of Causes in which they know are heaped up the Treasurers of all Beauty Knowledge Truth Delight and good whatsoever and therefore are impatient at the Delay and reckon all their Absence from him as a tedious Banishment and in that regard hate their Life and Body as Cause of this Divorce such a Soul I say must necessarily by reason of the temper it is wrought into enjoy immediately at the instant of the Bodies dissolution and its liberty more Contentment more Joy more true Happiness than it is possible for a heart of flesh to have scarce any scantling of much less to comprehend For immense Knowledge is natural to it as I have touched before Truth which is the adequated and satisfying Object of the Understanding is there displayed in her own Colours or rather without any And that which is the Crown of all and in respect of which all the rest is nothing that infinite Entity which above all things this Soul thirsteth to be united unto cannot for his own Goodness sake deny his Embraces to so affectionate a Creature and to such an enflamed Love If he should then were that Soul for being the best and for loving him most condemned to be the unhappiest For what Joy could she have in any thing were she barrred from what she so infinitely loveth But since the Nature of superiour and excellent things is to shower down their propitious Influences wheresoever there is a Capacity of receiving them and no Obstacle to keep them out like the Sun that illuminateth the whole Air if no Cloud or solid opacous Body intervene it followeth clearly that this infinite Sun of Justice this immense Ocean of Goodness cannot chuse but inviron with his Beams and replenish even beyond satiety with his delightsome Waters a soul so prepared and tempered to receive them No my Lord to make use of this Discourse and apply it to what begot it be pleased to determine which way will deliver us evenest and smoothest to this happy end of our Journey To be vertuous for hope of a Reward and through fear of Punishment or to be so out of a natural and inward affection to Vertue for Vertues and Reasons sake Surely one in this latter condition not onely doth those things which will bring him to Beatitude but he is so secured in a
essential points of happiness wherein we resemble our Maker To wiser desires it is satisfaction enough to deserve though not to enjoy the favours of Fortune let Providence provide for Fools 't is not partiality but equity in God who deals with us but as our natural Parents those that are able of Body and Mind he leaves to their deserts to those of weaker merits he imparts a larger portion and pieces out the defect of one by the access of the other Thus have we no just quarrel with Nature for leaving us naked or to envy the Horns Hoofs Skins and Furs of other Creatures being provided with Reason that can supply them all We need not labour with so many Arguments to confute Judicial Astrology for if there be a truth therein it doth not injure Divinity if to be born under Mercury disposeth us to be witty under Jupiter to be wealthy I do not owe a Knee unto these but unto that merciful Hand that hath ordered my indifferent and uncertain nativity unto such benevolous Aspects Those that hold that all things are governed by Fortune had not erred had they not persisted there The Romans that erected a Temple to Fortune acknowledged therein though in a blinder way somewhat of Divinity for in a wise supputation all things begin and end in the Almighty There is a nearer way to Heaven than Homer's Chain an easie Logick may conjoyn Heaven and Earth in one Argument and with less than a Sorites resolve all things into God Far though we christen effects by their most sensible and nearest Causes yet is God the true and infallible Cause of all whose concourse though it be general yet doth it subdivide it self into the particular Actions of every thing and is that Spirit by which each singular Essence not only subsists but performs its operation Sect. 19 The bad construction and perverse comment on these pair of second Causes or visible hands of God have perverted the Devotion of many unto Atheism who forgetting the honest Advisoes of Faith have listened unto the conspiracy of Passion and Reason I have therefore always endeavoured to compose those Feuds and angry Dissentions between Affection Faith and Reason For there is in our Soul a kind of Triumvirate or triple Government of three Competitors which distract the Peace of this our Common-wealth not less than did that other the State of Rome As Reason is a Rebel unto Faith so Passion unto Reason As the Propositions of Faith seem absurd unto Reason so the Theorems of Reason unto Passion and both unto Reason yet a moderate and peaceable discretion may so state and order the matter that they may be all Kings and yet make but one Monarchy every one exercising his Soveraignty and Prerogative in a due time and place according to the restraint and limit of circumstance There is as in Philosophy so in Divinity sturdy doubts and boisterous Objections wherewith the unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us More of these no man hath known than my self which I confess I conquered not in a martial posture but on my Knees For our endeavours are not only to combat with doubts but always to dispute with the Devil the villany of that Spirit takes a hint of Infidelity from our Studies and by demonstrating a naturality in one way makes us mistrust a miracle in another Thus having perused the Archidoxes and read the secret Sympathies of things he would disswade my belief from the miracle of the Brazen Serpent make me conceit that Image worked by Sympathy and was but an Aegyptian trick to cure their Diseases without a miracle Again having seen some experiments of Bitumen and having read far more of Naphtha he whispered to my curiosity the fire of the Altar might be natural and bid me mistrust a miracle in Elias when he entrenched the Altar round with Water for that inflamable substance yields not easily unto Water but flames in the Arms of its Antagonist And thus would he inveagle my belief to think the combustion of Sodom might be natural and that there was an Asphaltick and Bituminous nature in that Lake before the Fire of Gomorrah I know that Manna is now plentifully gathered in Calabria and Josephus tells me in his days it was as plentiful in Arabia the Devil therefore made the quaere Where was then the miracle in the days of Moses the Israelite saw but that in his time the Natives of those Countries behold in ours Thus the Devil played at Chess with me and yielding a Pawn thought to gain a Queen of me taking advantage of my honest endeavours and whilst I laboured to raise the structure of my Reason he strived to undermine the edifice of my Faith Sect. 20 Neither had these or any other ever such advantage of me as to incline me to any point of Infidelity or desperate positions of Atheism for I have been these many years of opinion there was never any Those that held Religion was the difference of Man from Beasts have spoken probably and proceed upon a principle as inductive as the other That doctrine of Epicurus that denied the Providence of God was no Atheism but a magnificent and high strained conceit of his Majesty which he deemed too sublime to mind the trivial Actions of those inferiour Creatures That fatal necessity of the Stoicks is nothing but the immutable Law of his will Those that heretofore denied the Divinity of the Holy Ghost have been condemned but as Hereticks and those that now deny our Saviour though more than Hereticks are not so much as Atheists for though they deny two persons in the Trinity they hold as we do there is but one God That Villain and Secretary of Hell that composed that miscreant piece of the three Impostors though divided from all Religions and was neither Jew Turk nor Christian was not a positive Atheist I confess every Country hath its Machiavel every Age its Lciuan whereof common Heads must not hear nor more advanced Judgments too rashly venture on It is the Rhetorick of Satan and may pervert a loose or prejudicate belief Sect. 22 I confess I have perused them all and can discover nothing that may startle a discreet belief yet are their heads carried off with the Wind and breath of such motives I remember a Doctor in Physick of Italy who could perfectly believe the immortality of the Soul because Galen seemed to make a doubt thereof With another I was familiarly acquainted in France a Divine and a man of singular parts that on the same point was so plunged and gravelled with three lines of Seneca that all our Antidotes drawn from both Scripture and Philosophy could not expel the poyson of his errour There are a set of Heads that can credit the relations of Mariners yet question the Testimonies of St. Paul and peremptorily maintain the traditions of Aelian or Pliny yet in Histories of Scripture raise Queries and Objections believing no more than they can