so evil as its Evils and the one being his Heaven and the other his Hell all other Considerations are overcome by them and to obtain the one and avoid the other he must stick at nothing no not at renouncing his God and his Religion together with all his Hopes of a future Immortality 6. And lastly Living in any known Course of Sin provokes God to give us up to the Power of Delusion For so long as Men submit themselves to the Guidance and Direction of a good Conscience the Spirit of God who is a Spirit of Truth abides with them and not only directs their Wills but also informs their Understandings and enables them to discern the Beauty and Reality of those heavenly Truths which he hath revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures For though since he hath revealed already the whole Will of God to us concerning our eternal Salvation we have no Reason to expect that he will reveal new Truths to us yet seeing so far forth as it is necessary he hath promised and engaged that he will co-operate with us to enable us as well to understand the Will of God as to perform it we have the greatest Reason in the World to depend upon it that so long as we cherish his heavenly Inspirations by yielding to them our free and ready Compliance he will be so far an assâ—sting Genius to our Understandings as to suggest to us those Truths which he hath already revealed and set them before our Eyes in so fair a Light as that we shall not fail more clearly to discern and more distinctly to apprehend them than otherwise we should or could have done For when he writes his Truth upon our Minds it is with such a Victorious Sun-beam as will endure neither Cloud nor Shadow before it Whenever he speaks He speaks not to our Ears but to our Minds and represents Things nakedly and immediately to our Understandings He converses with our Spirits as Spirits do with Spirits without involving his Sense in articulate Sounds or material Representations but objects it to us in its own naked Light and characterizes it immediately on our Understandings And as he proposes the Divine Light to us so he also illuminates our Minds to discern and comprehend it He raises and exalts our Intellectual Powers and as a vital Form to the Light of our Reason invigorates and actuates it and thereby renders its Apprehension of Things more quick and piercing and sagacious Thus doth the Holy Spirit more or less assist us in the true Understanding of Divine Things as he finds us more or less compliant with his heavenly Pleasure and though he stands no more obliged to render our Minds infallible than our Wills impeccable yet so long as by our sincere Obedience to his holy Suggestions we keep our selves under his Conduct and Direction we may depend upon it he will either preserve us from all dangerous Errors or if for just Reasons he should permit us to fall into any such they shall not prove dangerous to us but either we shall be convinced of them while we live or obtain Pity and Pardon for them when we die But whilst we persist in any willful Course of Sin we do not only violate our own Conscience but also repel those good Motions of the Spirit of God whereby he strives to reduce and reclaim us in doing which we continually grieve him and if we do not forbear shall at length provoke him wholly to forsake and abandon us to give us up to our own Hearts Lusts as desperate Wretches with whom he hath hitherto strove and struggled in vain and of whose future Recovery there remains no farther Hope or Prospect And when He hath forsaken us our Mind will not only be left naked and destitute of all those Helps and Advantages for the understanding of Divine Truths which it receives from him but also be exposed to the Cheats and Fallacies of Evil Spirits whose Recreation it is to put Tricks upon our Minds to banter and play upon our easie Faith to cast Mists before our Eyes and therein to juggle away all true Religion from us and foist in the Room of it the most fulsom Errors and Mistakes For so the Apostle tells us of Antichrist the great Deceiver that he should come with all deceivableness of unrighteousness to them that perish because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved And that for that Cause viz. their not receiving the truth in the love of it God should send them strong delusion that they should believe a lye that is by abandoning them to the Power of cheating and deluding Spirits That they all might be damned who believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness 2 Thess. 2. 10 11 12. And God grant that this at last prove not our Fate that because we have sinned against the clearest Light and gone astray in all Unrighteousness under the best and purest Religion in the World we are not at length given up by God to follow the wild Delusions of Antichrist and to believe all those fulsom Lyes and Impostures which he from Age to Age hath been imposing upon the World But whether it prove thus or no this I am sure of that by persisting in any vicious Course against the Light and Conviction of our Consciences we highly provoke Almighty God to withdraw his Grace from us and give us up to our own Hearts Lusts and when this is done our own Hearts Lusts will soon betray and give up our Faith to false and vicious Principles of Religion And now having shewn at large what strong and prevalent Tendencies there are in a wicked Life to Apostacy from true Religion I shall conclude this Argument with two or three Inferences 1. From hence I infer What a great Malignity there is in Mens being inconstant to and apostatizing from the true Religion in Compliance with their sinful Affections it being as you see the ill Daughter of a bad Mother a debauched and a dissolute Conscience and consequently partaking of all its natural Bane and Malignity even as all other bad Effects do of the malignant Nature of their bad Causes But the Truth of this will more fully appear by considering the particular Evils which Mens Inconstancy to and Proneness to revolt from the true Religion implies of which I shall give you these five Instances 1. The great Impiety of it 2. The desperate Folly of it 3. The foul Dishonesty of it 4. The shameful Cowardize of it 5. The vast Hazard and Insecurity of it 1. Consider the great Impiety of it He who can part with his Religion or any Principle of it upon any other Terms than a full Conviction of the Falshood of it is either a down-right Atheist who believing no Religion to be true governs himself by this Principle That the wisest Course is to profess none but that which is uppermost and most for his Interest or a prophane and impious
a Mind to stear and manage it it would be an equal Chance whether we did well or ill with it So that unless there were some Vnderstanding either within or without us to conduct our active Powers and determine them to our Good we were as good be altogether without them because while they act by Chance it is at least an equal Lay whether they will injure or advantage us Since therefore Vnderstanding is the Rule and Measure of all our other Powers it necessarily follows that it self is the greatest and noblest of them all What an excellent Being therefore must a Soul be in which this great and Sovereign Power resides a Power that can collect into it self such prodigious Numbers of simple Apprehensions and by comparing one with the other can connect them into true Propositions and upon each of these can run such long and curious Descants of Discourse till it hath drawn out all their Consequents into a Chain of wise and coherent Notions and sorted these into such various Systems of useful Arts and Sciences That can discern the Harmonious Contextures of Truths with Truths the secret Links and Junctures of coherent Notions trace up Effects to their Causes and sift the remotest Consequents to their natural Principles That 〈◊〉 Abroad its sharp-sighted Thoughts over the whole Extent of Beings and like the Sun with it s out-stretched Rays reach the remotest Objects That can in the Twinkling of an Eye expatiate through all the Vniverse and keep Correspondence with both Worlds can prick out the Paths of the Heavenly Bodies and measure the Circles of their Motion span the whole Surface of the Earth and dive into its Capacious Womb and there discover the numerous Offsprings with which it is continually teeming That can sail into the World of Spirits by the never-varying Compass of its Reason and discover those invisible Regions of Happiness and Misery which are altogether out of our sight whilest we stand upon this hither Shore In a word That can ascend from Cause to Cause to God who is the Cause of all and with its Eagle-Eyes can gaze upon that glorious Sun and dive into the infinite Abyss of his divine Perfections What an excellent Being therefore is that Soul that is endowed with such a vast Capacity of Vnderstanding and with its piercing Eye can reach such an immense Compass of Beings and travail through so vast an Horizon of Truth Doubtless if humane Souls had no other Capacity to value themselves by but only this this were enough to give them the Preheminence over all inferiour Beings and render them the most glorious Part of all this sublunary World 2. The Soul of Man is of vast Worth in Respect of its Capacity of Moral Perfection For by the Exercise of those humane Vertues which are proper to it in this state of Conjunction with the Body it is capable of raising it self to the Perfection of those Angelical Natures which of all Creatures do most nearly approach and resemble the great Creator and Fountain of all Perfection For by keeping a due Restraint upon its bodily Appetites and thereby gradually weaning it self from the Pleasures of the Body it may by degrees be educated and trained up to lead the Life and relish the Joys of naked and immortal Spirits it may be contempered to an incorporeal State so as to be able to enjoy it self without eating and drinking and live most happily upon the Fare of Angels upon Wisdom and Holiness and Love and Contemplation And then by governing its own Will and Affections by the Laws of Reason and Religion it may be degrees improve it self so far in all these Moral Endowments which are the proper Graces of every reasonable Nature as to be at last as perfectly wise and reasonable in its own Choices and Refusals in its Love and Hatred in its Desires and Delights as the Angels themselves are For though it cannot be expected that in this imperfect state a Soul should arrive to such a Pitch as this yet even now it may be growing up and aspiring to it which if it doth as I shall shew you by and by when this is expired it hath another Life to live which being antecedently prepared for by those spiritual Improvements it hath made here will furnish it with Opportunites of improing infinitely faster than here it did or possibly could For in that Life it shall not only be freed from those many Incumbrances which do here retard it in its spiritual Progress nor shall it only be associated with a World of pure and blessed Spirits whose holy Example and wise Converse will doubtless wonderfully edifie and improve it but be also admitted into a more intimate Acquaintance with God who is the Author and Pattern of all Perfection the sight of whose ravishing Beauty will inflame it with a most ardent Love to him and excite it to a most vigorous Imitation of him All which considered it is not to be imagined how much the state of Heaven will immediately improve those happy Souls that are prepared and disposed for it But then considering that Moral Perfection is as infinite as the Nature of God in which there is an Infinity of Holiness and Iustice and Goodness within this boundless Subject there will be Room enough for Souls to make farther and farther Improvements in even to Eternity And then when they shall still be growing on so fast and yet be still forever improving to what a transcendent Height of Glory and Perfection will they at last arrive For tho no finite Soul can ever arrive to an infinite Perfection yet still it may be growing on to it because there will still be possible Degrees of it beyond its present Attainments and when it is arrived to the farthest imaginable Degree yet still it will be capable of farther and so farther and farther to all Eternity And if so O blessed God of what a Capacious Nature hast thou made these Souls of ours which tho they will doubtless improve in Goodness as fast in the other Life as is possible for them with all the Advantages of a Heavenly State yet will never attain to an utmost Period but still be growing perfecter and perfecter forever 3. The Soul of Man is of vast Worth in Respect of its immense Capacities of Pleasure and Delight For its Capacity of Pleasure must necessarily be as large and extensive as its Capacity of Vnderstanding and of Moral Perfection because the proper Pleasure of a Soul results from its own Knowledge and Goodness from its farther Discoveries of Truth and farther Proficiency in inward Rectitude and Vertue and consequently as as it Improves farther and farther in Vnderstanding and in Moral Perfection it must still gather more and more Fuel to feed and encrease its own Joy and Pleasure For the Pleasure of every Being consists in the vigorous Exercise of its Faculties about convenient and agreable Objects but the Faculties of a Soul are Vnderstanding and Will to which
there of The Word In him saith he was Life and the Life was the Light of Men. Now I think it will be hard to give any natural Account how that Life that was in The Word should enlighten Men unless we suppose his very Life and Being to consist in Knowledge and Vnderstanding for by the Light of Men here is plainly meant that Divine Knowledge which is revealed to the World by Christ and this Divine Knowledge he tells us is the very Life of The Word or the Life that was in The Word And afterwards he expresly calls The Word the Light it self from whence all our Knowledge of God and Goodness is derived v. 9. which is exactly the same with what Philo saith of The Word viz. that He is the Intellectual Sun that is altogether Light and with what Plotin saith of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Divine Mind that he is a Light shed forth every where streaming from God and begotten of him Which is a plain Evidence of Christ's being the substantial Light Knowledge or Idea of all things which God from Everlasting formed in his own Mind and of his being therefore called the Word of God because he is the Off-spring of God's Understanding even as our Reason is the Off-spring of ours 2dly He is called The Word of God because he is the perfect Image of God even as the Word is the Image of the Mind For thus as I have already told you the Eternal Word is very frequently called the Image of God both by the Iews and Gentiles For so Plotin that this Divine Vnderstanding being the very Word of God and Image of God everlastingly beholds God and cannot be separated from him and that it is the begotten Issue Word and Image of the Sovereign God And Plato himself calls him the begotten Son of the Good and most like unto him in all things the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and afterwards 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is the begotten Son of the Good who is most like unto himself And Rab. Moses the Son of Neheman as he is quoted by Masius proving that that Angel of God's Presence which went before the Camp of Israel was the Messias or Eternal Word tells us that he is therefore called the Angel of God's Presence nimirum quia ille Angelus est facies Dei because he is the Face of God in whom God's Face was to be sâ—en And so Philo the Iew also doth very frequently call The Word the Image and Resemblance of God and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most perfect and exact Representation of God For they suppose that God being Omniscient he must necessarily know himself and that knowing himself necessarily he must act ad extremum Virium to the utmost of his Power even as all other necessary Agents do that acting to the utmost of his Power he must by knowing himself produce as perfect an Image Idea or Notion of himself in his own Understanding as it was possible for him to do that it was possible for him to produce such a vital and substantial Idea of himself as is vested with all the infinite Perfections of his Nature and consequently that such an Idea he hath produced and that this Idea is the Eternal Word For God can do whatsoever doth not imply a Contradiction now there is nothing in God but what he can communicate without a Contradiction but only Self-Existence that implies a Contradiction indeed for God to cause another thing to be without any Cause and to exist of it self But as for all his other Perfections he may communicate them and when he acts necessarily as he is supposed to do in the Generation of the Word he must because then he acts to his utmost Possibility So then The Word must have the same Nature Essence and Perfections with the Father and the only imaginable Difference between them must be this that whereas the Father exists of himself the Word exists of the Father which is exactly agreeable to the Catholick Notion of Christians And indeed if it be granted that God who is infinitely knowing must necessarily know himself perfectly then it will seem to follow that there must be the same Perfections in that Idea or Notion by which he knows himself that there are in himself for else it is not one perfect Idea of him And hence it is that our Notions do so imperfectly resemble things because we cannot communicate to them that Life and Substance that is in the things themselves and therefore if God knows himself perfectly as he must needs do being infinitely knowing he must communicate Life and Substance to the Notion of himself or else 't will be no perfect Notion of his Life and Substance and he must communicate to it all the iâ—mense Perfections of his own Nature or else 't will be no perfect Notion of his own Perfections So then the Eternal Word which is here supposed to be the most perfect Notion of the Father must be a vital and substantial Idea endued with all the Perfections of the Divine Nature which is also very agreeable with the Christian Notion of the Divine Word For he is described to be the Image of God 2 Cor. 4. 4. the Brightness of his Glory and the express Character of his Person Heb. 1. 3. and being so he must necessarily be what God is i. e. God essential or else he cannot be the perfect Image and express Character of God And accordingly in the New Testament he is called God over all blessed for ever Rom. 9. 5. and the Perfections of the Divine Nature are very frequently attributed to him as particularly Omniscience Iohn 16. 30. Eternity Heb. 1. 12. and Rev. 22. 13. I am Alpha and Omega the beginning and the end the first and the last So that upon this Account also he may very properly be called The Word of God because as our Words are the Images of our Minds so He is the most perfect Image of God 3dly He is called The Word because he is the Interpreter of the Father's Mind even as our Words also are the Interpreters of our Minds to others And this Philo the Iew doth also take notice of as the proper Work and Office of The Word to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Embassador of the Great King to his Subjects to communicate his Mind and Will to them and also the Angel and Messenger of God to Men to declare his Will and Pleasure to them And that in the Execution of this Office he doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 â— Some as a King he commands what they shall do others as a School-master he profitably instructs others as a Counsellor he faithfully admonishes all which he performs as the Interpreter of the Mind of God And elsewhere he calls him the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Divine Sun that enlightens the Souls of Men and elsewhere he expresly calls him the Interpreter of the