is convincing and taste alone hath made all mankind agree in that If the mind saw in bodies but what is in them without having a sentiment of what is not in them their use would be very painful and inconvenient to us for who would take the pains to examine with care the nature of all things that are about us to cleave to or leave them What should tell us when we ought to sit down to dinner and when rise from it What should place us at a reasonable distance from the fire And should we not often doubt whether we burnt or warm'd our selves In short would it not happen sometimes that we should be the cause of our own death by Inadvertency by Grief or even out of desire of making near discoveries in Anatomies Therefore it is most reasonable that God incline us to seek the good of the body and shun its contrary by the foregoing sensations of Pleasure and Pain For after all if men were oblig'd to examine the Configuration of a Fruit those of all the parts of their bodies and the different relations which result from the one to the other to be able to judge if in the present heat of their blood and a thousand other dispositions of their body this Fruit were good to nourish them 't is obvious that such things as are altogether unworthy of the application of their minds would wholly fill its capacity and that also unprofitably enough since they would not be able to preserve themselves any considerable time by that only way Arist I must confess this conduct is very wise and most worthy its Author But yet we feel some pleasure in the use of sensible things why then must we not love them Theod. Because they are not lovely you are a rational creature and your reason doth not represent to you bodies as your good If sensible objects did contain in themselves what you feel when you use them if they were the true cause of your Pleasure and Grief you might love and fear them but your reason doth not tell you so as I yesterday prov'd it to you You may use them but not love them you may eat of a fruit but not settle your Love upon it Likewise you ought to avoid Fire or a Sword but ought not to fear them * See the 8th Chapter of the 6th Book of the Inquiry after Truth We must love and fear what is able to cause pleasure and pain that 's a common notion which I do not contradict But we must take heed not to confound the true efficient cause with the occasional I say it once more we must love and fear the efficient cause of pleasure and of pain and we may seek or avoid their occasional causes provided we do not do it against the positive orders of that efficient cause and do not force it in consequence of its natural Laws to work in us what is against its precepts And we must not imitate the voluptuous who make God an instument of their sensuality and oblige him in consequence of his first will to reward them with a sentiment of pleasure in the very moment when they offend him for that 's the greatest Injustice can be committed Believe me Aristarchus the good of the body cannot be belov'd but by Instinct but the good of the mind can and ought to be belov'd by reason The good of the body can be belov'd but by Instinct and with a blind Love because the mind cannot even perceive so clearly that the good of the body is a real good for the mind cannot see what is not It cannot clearly perceive that Bodies are above the Spirit that they can act in it punish or reward it and render it more happy and more perfect but the good of the mind ought to be lov'd by reason God will be lov'd with a Love of choice with a reasonable Love a meritorious Love a Love worthy of him and worthy of us we see clearly that God is our good that he is above us that he can act in us that he can reward us and render us not only more happy but also more perfect than we are is it not this sufficient to make a Spirit love God And thus we see that God was not to make man love him by the instinct of Pleasure when he created him he was not to make use of this kind of art nor implore any force against the Liberty of a reasonable creature to lessen the merit of his Love For the first man ought to have adhered to God and could do it without the help of a preingaging pleasure though now Pleasure is commonly necessary to remedy the blindness which sin has brought upon us and to withstand the continual attacks of Concupiscence against our Reason I 'le say it again Aristarchus that you may remember it It was necessary that the antecedent pleasure and not the light of reason should incline us to the good of the body since reason cannot even represent to its self the bodies that are about us as a good But there was no need that God should make use of preingaging pleasure as of a kind of art to cause himself to be beloved by the first man since it was sufficient that he should enlighten his reason he being the sole and only good of Spirits Arist I grant all these things are very well imagin'd but there is still in your System a difficulty that puzzles me For methinks you confound Concupiscence with the institution of Nature and making God the Author of the pleasure we feel in the use of sensible things you also make him Author of Concupiscence since it is nothing else but that pleasure considered as striving against our reason Theod. This institution of Nature is thus Aristarchus God hath made the Soul and the Body of man and 't was his pleasure for the preservation of his work that as often as there should be in the body some certain motions there should result in the Soul some certain sentiments provided those motions did communicate themselves as far as a certain part of the Brain which I shall not specifie but because the will of God is efficacious there never hapned any motions in that part of the Brain but there followed some sensations and because the will of God is unchangeable this was not changed by the sin of the first man Yet as before man had sinned and whilst all things were in perfect good order it was not just that the body should hinder the Spirit from thinking on what is desired It follows that man had necessarily such a power over his body that he did as it were separate the principal part of his brain from the rest of his body and did hinder its usual communication with the sensitive Nerves as often as he desired to apply himself to truth or to some other thing than the good of the body And by those means it was in Adam's power first to make use
of his taste to discern the things that were useful to the preservation of the body and then to eat on without taste and pleasure because the pleasure be felt in the use of sensible things never overruled his desires it only modestly warn'd of what he was to do for the good of his body Adam therefore could think on what he would and one may say that even when he slept his Spirit was awake For after all it cannot be believed that in the state of Original Righteousness there should be such a great disorder in the most admirable work of God that the spirit should be as slave to the body This is the institution of Nature Now you shall hear its Corruption The first man by degrees stranging himself from from the presence of God by suffering the capacity of his Spirit to be fill'd with sensible pleasures or the sentiments of his own excellency or with some other Ideas which by reason of the narrowness of his Spirit did blot out the remembrance of his Duty and Dependance fell at last into a disobedience to Gods command and then lost the power he had over his body For it is not just that a Sinner should reign over any thing and that God should suspend the Laws of the Communication of motions in favour of a wicked and rebellious man * I do not speak here of the Concupiscence which consists in the difficulty we find to put our selves in the presence of God and in the unvoluntary inclination we have to think always upon our selves For the motions of sensible Objects communicating themselves as far as the brain and also leaving there some deep Impressions it is necessary according to the first will of the Author of Nature that there should result in the Soul some sentiments and motions which carry her even in spight of her self to sensible things Arist All this is very well but why doth God continue to be willing that the impressions of the brain and the agitations of the animal spirits should be followed by sentiments and sensible motions since that hinders us now from loving him and applying our selves to the Truth for which we are made Theod. But why Aristarchus will you have the will of God to depend from that of the first man You have seen that the institution of Nature is admirably well ordered and would you have this Institution alter'd on the account of the mutability of Adam's will Do you not know that the inconstancy of the will is a mark of a narrow Understanding and that God is too just to repent All what God has will'd he wills it still and because his will is efficacious he doth it God had rather for some time be subservient to the injustice of men and even in one sense to reward them by the pleasure they feel in their Debaucheries than to alter the order of things which he hath most wisely establisht And men are so unworthy of God after the rebellion of their first Father that 't is just in one sense that God remove them from him continually and in a manner reward them when they go from him but it is a transitory reward a deceitful reward the price of sin that fattens the Victim for the Sacrifice and prepares sinners for the day of the Lord for that day when the Judge and Saviour of the world will hurry the impious in the fire everlasting to satisfie the divine justice as he will raise with him the elect to an Eternal Glory to exalt the Goodness and Mercy of his Father Therefore Aristarchus the Will of God which forms and rules so wisely all things was not to depend from that of the first man It was necessary that this will should subsist and that he whose wisdom has no bounds should re-establish in a manner worthy of himself the order of things which Free-will had overthrown He hath done it Aristarchus by his 〈◊〉 Will which makes the order of Grace by the 〈◊〉 design of his Son's Incarnation by that great work of Mercy which surpasses all his other works and 〈◊〉 him infinitely more honour than all that 〈◊〉 of Nature which is admir'd with so much 〈◊〉 and represents in so lively a manner the infinite wisdom of its Author Erast Give me leave Theodorus to offer to you the greatest difficulty I find in all the things you have told us now God is infinitely wise he hath foreseen from all Eternity whatever was to fall out in the order of things he was to establish he hath foreseen the sin of the first man before he was form'd why then did he make him Or why did he make him free or why did he not bind and fasten him to his duty by preingaging Pleasures In short why did he establish an order that was to be overthrown and a Nature that was to grow corrupt I grant that he hath repaired the corruption of Nature by the wisest method imaginable but would it not have been wiser to have made one uncapable of Corruption I beg of you to tell me if these things may not justly make us doubt whither an infinite intelligent being rules all Theod. But supposing I did not give you an answer Erastus what could you directly infer from my silence but that I do not know the designs of God I have evidently demonstrated to you by arguing only upon clear Ideas that there is a God and that none but him acts really in us Believe what you have seen and do not wilfully blind your self by opposing to the light of truth some objections which can rise but from the darkness of our minds When we see evidently a thing we must not cease to believe it as soon as some difficulty we cannot solve is offer'd to us Nevertheless Erastus though I do not flatter my self to know God's designs I 'le endeavour to satisfie you in few words for I will not engage my self to say to you whatever may be thought upon that subject God made man because it was his will and it was his will because man is better than nothing and that he is more capable of honouring him than nothing God made man free because the will of man is made to love good but man being able to love but what he sees if God had not made him free or if God did infallibly and necessarily carry him towards all that hath the appearance of a good or towards all that man being apt to err may consider as a good it might be said that God is the cause of sin and of the disorderly motions of the will God made man free and left him to himself without determining him by preingaging pleasure because God will be loved by reason since we are rational Creatures He will be lov'd with an Understanding Love with a Love worthy of him and worthy of us a meritorious Love and which he may remunerate for other reasons which I have already told you He foresaw that man would cease to
our love and we are so free in the love of finite good that we even feel the secret reproaches of our reason when we fix our selves on it Because he that made us for himself speaks to us that we may turn to him and give no bounds to the motion of love which he incessantly produces in us All the motion that the soul hath towards good comes from God and God only acting for himself all the motion of the soul hath no other end nor bound than God in the Institution of Nature God presenting to spirits no other Idea but himself since he hath made spirits for himself All the motion of our wills is towards him since wills move themselves towards those things only which the spirit perceives But men thinking that they see creatures in themselves the consent they give to the motion that God imprints in them ends in the creatures and it may be said with a great deal of truth that the free will of men or their consent to the motion they receive from God tends to the creatures though the natural motion of their love can tend only to God By this you see Aristarchus that God preserves spirits for himself only that the faculties they enjoy to know and love know and love none but him that sinners do not overturn the laws of nature that they are inviolable and that this general principle of Religion and Morality viz. That God hath made us for himself is undeniable Arist But if the order of nature is that we know and love God and if we cannot resist that order since the motion of our love for the creatures tends of necessity towards the Creator how can it be said that we really offend God Theod. It may be said for many reasons God incessantly moves spirits towards good either general or particular for all good is to be beloved He invincibly moves them towards general good but 't is otherwise with the impression he gives them towards particular good God doth not limit towards that good the act which he produces in them For if we observe it duely we sufficiently perceive that in the very time when we fix on some finite good we have some motion to go further if we will So we offend God by stopping his act and not letting him act in us according to the full extent of his act The reason why God moves us towards good is because it moves us towards him and he moves us towards himself because he loves himself 'T is then the love of God to himself that produces our love in us Therefore our love ought to be like to that which God bears to himself But it is not like it when it concenters in a particular good it is then unworthy of the cause that hath produced it and it may be said to be displeasing to him Order is certainly the essential and necessary Will of God according to which and by which he wills whatever he wills for God loves order he wills nothing but order his will always follows order But a creature who loves more those things that are less lovely thwarts order withdraws himself from it and even overthrows it as much as he is capable of it He resists then to the will of God and so deserves to come into the order of his justice since he leaves that of his goodness which is the first and most natural God alone can act in the soul and cause in her some pleasure And by his decree or general will that makes the order of nature 't was his desire that pleasure should attend certain motions in the body So those that produce in their body these motions without reason even against the secret reproaches of their reason oblige God in consequence of his general will to renumerate them by pleasing sentiments even in the very time when they ought to be punished They therefore use violence against his justice and offend him But they only use this violence by the love they have for particular good So this love offends God For all those who love their pleasure without minding the true cause that produces it offend that cause since God never causes pleasure with an intent that we should fix on it but rather that we may love the cause that produces the pleasure and that we may unite with the thing that determines that cause to produce it You see therefore Aristarchus that God is offended when we fix the motion of love he causes in us on particular good But though you might not see it you cannot doubt but it is so for when we confine our love to some particular good we feel an inward check in the secret of our reason and a just check is a mark of infidelity against him that causes it those checks or reproaches can proceed but from a general cause since they are generally to be found in all mankind and must therefore be just since they are caused by a just God and this just God is offended when we confine our love to particular good This single Argument is sufficient for 't is unnecessary to seek metaphysical proofs of a thing whereof we are convined by inward sentiments that is by a light which strikes through the blindest and by a punishment that stings the most hardened sinners Arist I believe all this and I pray you to go on Theod. If you believe all this Aristarchus you may see your friend ask him at first if he desires to be happy Show him that none but God can act and cause in him that pleasure he loves so much and that renders him the more happy the greater it is Let him know that God is just that he will be obey'd that it cannot be conceived he should make truely happy those who do not follow his orders nor unhappy those that follow them that so we ought to use all our endeavours to know the Will of God and ought to obey it with all the fidelity imaginable You are sensible that men must be either stupid or out of their senses not to see those things and that those that see them and are not affected with them must either be mad or desperate but do not tell him so take heed above all things you do not awaken his passions and principally his pride for he would conceive nothing of what you might tell him make him understand as much as you can that God acts only for himself That he hath made our spirit only for himself That he hath given some motion to our heart only to incline it towards him That therefore we ought not to make an ill use of the motion of love which God causes in us by loving any thing besides him or without relation to him Make him understand that God is his true good not only by being alone capable to make him happy but also because none but God can make him more perfect not only as he is the cause of pleasure but also as he is
I don't know that Theodorus for being merciful he can pardon when he pleaseth Theod. But can he be willing to do it Arist What a Question that is Men themselves can do that Theod. Men can forgive when they are offended they ought not to revenge themselves nor have they power to do it As they love themselves to excess they would be sure to exceed being Sinners they would condemn themselves and whatsoever offends them being ordained by God they would be guilty of Rebellion For the only thing wherein God hath no hand to wit the inward malice of their Enemies doth them no harm they have no right to oblige others to love them neither can they take any revenge for want of that love that doth not belong to them But if Men had received the sovereign wisdom and power to judge and punish if their essential Will was the Order if they could not act against that Order might they not punish such Crimes as would be committed against God or pardon Sin and Disorder and yet not offend the Law and Order But supposing they could do you think they might also secure to Sinners the means of attaining Felicity They would certainly make an ill use of their power and by overthrowing the order of Justice prove themselves Sinners and thereby be altogether destitute of either love to God or zeal for his glory Do you think God can reverse the essential order of things or fight against himself Do you imagin it is possible he should not love himself or forbear his own satisfaction by neglecting his Justice and that mercy which you conceive to be a virtue in us to be a perfection in God No Aristarchus God is not merciful in the same manner as we are that Clemency would be contrary to his Justice That Sinners be happy implies contradiction if not on the part of Sinners at least on that of him that is omnipotent and cannot act against the essential order of things on the part I say of him that is essentially just God must punish Sin and if he hath a mind to spare those that commit it for the end that he proposed to himself in the construction of his work it is necessary that a Sacrifice more worthy of his greatness and justice than they are should receive the blow that was to make them eternally miserable Thus God may be merciful Things being thus you easily see what need we stand in of Christ's satisfaction That the Mediator of the Arians and Socinians is a Mediator who can never atone for them nor reconcile them to God And that none but those who believe that Jesus Christ is really God because none but a God can justifie and save us in a word that none but those who call upon Christ by that name which the Scripture gives him that expresses so well his qualities Jehovah Justitia nostra God our Righteousness can have a full assurance in his Sacrifice Observe Aristarchus that God doth whatever he ought to do Arist But God lieth under no obligation to any one Theod. I own it But God doth whatever he is obliged to for his own sake Men offend and oppose him and overturn the order of things ought not he then to revenge himself satisfy his Justice and punish those that offend him For I grant that as for our sakes God is obliged to do no more than he pleaseth But he is obliged to do something for himself and that being granted it is just to believe that he will not omit to do it for he loveth himself and is willing to do whatever he ought to do for himself I own that there is no Law that constrains him but that he is to himself his own Law However he is to himself inviolably a Law and must of necessity love himself tho' nothing forces him to love himself but himself Arist But Theodorus will you dive into God's Councels and give Bounds to his Wisdom and Power Do you think that God could not satisfie his Justice otherwise than by the death of his Son If it be so Theod. I understand you Aristarchus God's Justice could have been satisfied by a thousand other means The least Suffering the least Action of God-Man could fully satisfy God's Justice for all our Crimes for the merit of it is infinite by the dignity of the Person But God could not be fully satisfied by any other Satisfaction than that of a Divine Person Nothing is worthy of God but God himself All manner of offence against God is infinitely criminal and there is nothing Infinite but God He cannot therefore be satisfied without having a hand in it such is the Immensity of his greatness Tho' God had sacrificed all the Creation to his wrath and annihilated all his Works that Sacrifice would still have been unworthy of him But God had not made the world to annihilate it he had made it for him that hath restored it for his Son was predestinated before all Ages to be the Chief of it He is the First-born of all Creatures the Beginning of the Lord's Ways the Beginning End and Perfection of all the Works of God for whatever God hath made is only perfectly worthy of God through Christ I don't know Aristarchus whether your thoughts follow mine perhaps I run too fast But pray what is it you would say to me Arist I 'le tell you God being infinitely wise and powerful why could he not form a Creature sufficiently noble and raised above Sinners to atone for them Theod. How Aristarchus Shall a Creature undertake to reconcile Sinners Plead for them Shew any love for them That is for the damned For if we are not ranked with the damned it is because we are made free in Christ But supposing with you that a Creature could do all this satisfie for us and free us by his satisfaction it follows that we are indebted to that Creature and his Slaves that our obligations to him ought to divide our love between God and him and that our Restoration being perhaps a greater good to us than our Creation we ought to love him better than God himself if we ought to love most the things that do us most good Yet God requires that we should love him in all things and that all the motion of love which he causes in us tend towards him and he will not only be esteemed by us as the first Cause and Being but also beloved in all things as the only true cause of whatever the Creatures seem to produce in us This is the order of things Now it would be reversed and even its overturning justified should your Notion of God's design to give us another Restorer than himself subsist For that design would in some manner justify a Love not solely tending towards God since that design proposes to us another than God for an Object of our Love when it proposes to us a Creature endowed with an excellency sufficient to oblige us really and by himself
but also the desire And sometimes the Imagination does so augment all things that the pleasure it produces excites the Concupiscence after a more strong and lively manner than that we enjoy even in the use of Bodies Persons who have too quick and delicate an Imagination may sometimes cure the hurt they have received in a contagious discourse by tasting the pleasures which are represented to them or of which they form'd themselves too great an Idea And there are certain bashful lazy and judicious persons and of a certain disposition of mind hard to describe to whom it is convenient sometimes to shew the world to give 'em a dislike of it But Erastus this is rare and 't is extremely dangerous to be familiariz'd with sensible things You have an horror for Tobacco you are pleas'd not to be subject to the necessity of always having some with you yet if you were to be with Men who frequently use it their discourse and manner would engage you by degrees to use it your self and Use would subject you to it as well as others for I know some who can't be without it that could not endure it heretofore Erast. It is true Theodorus that the great Secret to resist Concupiscence is to have continually an eye to the purity of our Imagination and to take heed that it leave not footsteps in the Brain which may carry us to the love of sensible things thus to remedy the beginning of our Irregularities The Councels of JESVS CHRIST which only tend to deprive us of the use of sensible things are admirable but they are very uneasie methinks Philosophy furnishes us with a Remedy more commodious than that of the Gospel 't is this Philosophy teaches me that all Bodies which are about me can't act in me and that 't is God only that causes in me the pleasure and grief which I feel in their use this being granted I can enjoy Bodies without loving them for as I only ought to love that which is truly capable of making me happy to excite in me the love of God I have only to remember in the use of sensible things that 't is God who makes me happy by their means Thus I ought not to shun Bodies on the contrary I ought to seek them that so by exciting pleasure in me they may continually make me to think of God who is the cause of it Whence comes it that the Blessed love God constantly and that they can't leave off loving him if it is not that they see him and that they are ty'd to him by a preingaging pleasure Well then I see God by Philosophy I perceive him in every thing if I eat I think of God because 't is God that makes me eat with pleasure I 'm not careful to love good entertainment as there 's nothing but God which acts in me I only love him Theod. You Erastus are free from sin and confirm'd in grace for who shall disunite you from God the most violent pleasures tie you more strongly to him and pains can only produce in you a fear and respect for him but do you your self often make use of your own Remedy and have you never acted contrary to the remorse of your Conscience Erast. I am very sensible Theodorus that this Remedy of my Philosophy is not soveraign but pray explain to us the defects of it Theod. I will When you taste of Fruit with pleasure your Reason tells you that there is a God whom you see not who causes in you this pleasure your Senses tell you on the contrary that this Fruit which you see which you hold in your hands 〈◊〉 which you eat is that which causes in you this pleasure which of these two speaks higher your Reason or your Senses As for me I find that the noise of my Senses is so great that I even think no of God in that moment but perhaps Erastus is such a Philosopher that his Senses are silent as soon as he pleases and that they never speak to him without first obtaining his Licence If so your Remedy is good for you for the privation of Bodies is not absolutely necessary to those who have no Concupiscence Adam could taste of pleasures without becoming their Slave tho he had done better to have let them alone Then let those who feel no Concupiscence in them and whose Body is intirely subject to the Spirit make use of your Remedy 't is good for them they are just by themselves they descend in a right Line from the Pre-Adamites Neither did Christ come for them he came not to save the Just but Sinners He came for us who are Sinners Children of a sinful Parent sold and subject to Sin and who always feel in our Bodies the Rebellion of our Senses and Passions When the obligation we have to preserve our health and life constrains us to enjoy some pleasure then we must make a necessity of Virtue and make use of your Remedy if we can remembring that these are not the Objects which cause in us this pleasure but God only we must thank him for them and pray to him that he would defend us from the malignity of sensible Objects we must use them with fear and with a kind of horror for without the grace of JESVS CHRIST that which gives life to the Body gives death to the Soul you know the Reasons of it Erast. But why Pleasure in itself is not ill I receive it then it does me no harm I thank God for it and love him the more it unites me to God who is the Author of it then it does me good Theod. The love of God which the enjoyment of Pleasure causes in you is much interested I 'm much afraid Erastus that in loving God as the Author of your Pleasure you love your self instead of loving God But I wish that this love be not ill I also wish that you have the power of raising your self up to God in the time that you enjoy some Pleasure but this Pleasure makes traces in the Brain these traces continually agitate the Soul and in the time of Prayer or some other necessary business they disturb the Action blind the Mind and stir up the Passions Thus when you would even make a good use of Pleasure at the moment that you should taste it the trouble that it disperses thro' the Imagination has so dangerous Consequences that you had better have been depriv'd of it Think you Erastus that there has been a Race of Mankind so very stupid as to get drunk for the honor of God and to bring him into one's mind for the pleasure of drunkenness and do you observe that the pleasure which is found in the excessive use of sensible things is such as can't be pray'd for to God without remorse Hence it is that this pleasure was not ordain'd by Nature to carry us directly to God but for the use of Bodies so far as they shall be necessary for the preservation
of life We must love God because Reason informs us that every thing is center'd in him that deserves our love God will be lov'd with a clear love with a love which flows from pure light and not with a confus'd Sentiment such as Pleasure is God is so lovely that those who see him as he is would love him in the midst of the most cruel Torments and we do not love him as he deserves when we love him because 't is he only who can create agreeable Sentiments in us A Friend reproves us because he should do it we offend our selves when we punish our selves for our Irregularities do we therefore cease to love our selves or our Friend No doubtless we endeavor perhaps to shun the Reproof which our Friend thinks himself oblig'd to give us but if we see that he only does what he ought to do we are unreasonable if we cease to have an intrinsic respect and love for him If then a person could conceive that God ows that to his Justice which he inflicts upon him to make him sensible of the highest pains he always would suffer patiently without ceasing to love God He should not love these pains in themselves but he should love the Author of them who if he did not inflict them would be less lovely because he would be less just and less perfect A Criminal who hath brib'd his Judge loves and esteems him much less than if he had punisht him provided that this Criminal who is not just enough to hate the Crime in himself would be reasonable enough to hate it in another Accordingly the blessed might suffer the pains of the damned without hating God for altho' the pleasure they enjoy keeps them united to God inseparably yet they love not God for the sake of the pleasure which they receive from him they would even love him in their Torments For after all pleasure is not so much instituted to make us love the Author of it as to unite us to him since as reasonable Creatures Reason alone ought to stir up our love Pleasure should carry us to the cause of it and true Good should be capable of producing it because true Good should recompence all those who truly love But pleasure which is the recompence and attraction of the love of the Iust is not their end for the Just would then love themselves instead of their good God deserves love in himself and the pleasure which is found in the use of Bodies instead of inviting is to love him as we ought to do and even the sweetness which is tasted in love sets us at a distance from him if resting upon this sweetness we love him not for himself for then we love our selves instead of him Erast. I observe that there 's nothing more dangerous than to make use of sensible pleasures and I am am now convinc'd that they increase Concupiscence by the impressions which they make in the Brains and carry the mind not to God who is their Author but to Bodies which seem to produce them and that tho' absolutely speaking they may induce us to think of God who is their Author yet they excite in us nothing but an interested love a love which is more like Self-love than true Charity Arist. But Theodorus the Law of Nature does not only oblige us to love God but also Men and if we have not some Correspondence with them by means of the Body what other Reason will induce us to love them 'T is Interest which forms Societies 'T is Pleasure which unites different Sexes and there are whole Nations that can't maintain Peace and Commerce but by the means of Wine To drink together is sufficient to put away Enmity amongst some Men. A glass of Wine must be drunk to drive on a Bargain Thus you see it is profitable for Men to enjoy Pleasure together to preserve that Union and Charity amongst them which is commanded them Theod. I believe you have a mind to make your self merry Aristarchus What! do you believe that there 's any thing besides Truth and Justice which can strictly unite us together do you believe that a Peace concluded in drink betwixt Drunkards would be so solid as that which reasonable Men make in the sight of Justice and by a Motive of Charity Certainly all the Bonds which are made by Interest are unserviceable towards the fulfilling of the Precept of loving our Neighbor The Appearances are sav'd and Men are treated with Civility but cordial Love is wanting when Interest lies at the stake We must love other Men for God for as it is he that should terminate all the motions of our heart he can only reunite all minds in himself But the Commerce which we may have with Men by means of the Body are only proper to create a division amongst us for sensible Goods are not like those of the mind one can't possess them without sharing them It 's enough for a Man to desire an enjoyment of his Friend's Estate to make him unhappy and become his Enemy It 's the Love of temporal advantage which begets Wars and breeds Division in Families Persons would enjoy these Goods but can't without depriving those of them that possess them Thus 't is evident that a contempt of sensible Goods and a privation of Pleasures are as useful for the preservation of Peace amongst them as to continue a strict Union with God Arist. 'T is true Theodorus that to avoid a quarrel with any Body there 's no better means than to yield our Possessions to those that desire them of us but the Command of Jesus Christ in this matter is very inconvenient and I do not see that even the most perfect follow it Theod. I confess it Aristarchus there are many occasions on which we should not too rigidly pursue this Command but we must always be disposed to it if there be necessity 'T is not the difficulty that we find in this Command and in the rest which ought to hinder us from practising them on the contrary they are so much the more useful as they tend more to satisfy the * Pontificius loquitur Justice of God and to merit the Favor of our perfect re-union with him We are all Sinners and deserve to suffer and these instructions of Privation being painful they have this advantage that they cleanse us from our Sins in making us partakers in the Sufferings of CHRIST In our misery we have all of us need of the assistance of Heaven but CHRIST teaches us to merit them when our Sufferings being join'd to his our Sufferings are meritorious with his Thus the Inconveniency you find in the Precepts of CHRIST bring their Recommendation along with them If the trouble which attends the privation of sensible Objects were not necessary to satisfy God nor merit his Assistance of which we have the greatest need I confess there would be a fault in the Evangelic Councils nevertheless there would be none better for
also by what he said to me Yesterday when I was come back from my Friend's Would you have me give you some account of it Theod. You will oblige me we are always very fond of knowing the last Words of those that leave us Arist Erastus never exprest himself with more Eloquence and Happiness of Thought He told me among other Things that Man is not only united to his own Body but also to all those that surround him that our Passions diffuse our Soul into all sensible Objects as our Senses diffuse it through every part of the Body and that those who launch into the wide World continually running after Riches Pleasures and Honours dissipate and lose themselves by being disperst as it were out of themselves While they fancy that they enlarge their own Being they weaken themselves and become Slaves to those whom they would command And while they encrease their Power on the Bodies that surround them they lose that which they have on the Truth that penetrates them Let me consider said he how Man comes to be sensible Out of his Brain certain Nerves are emitted whose infinite number of Branches are disperst over all the Parts of his Body These Nerves or Fibres which correspond to the Seat of the Soul agitate her as soon as they are stirred they disperse her through all the Parts into which they insinuate themselves and whatsoever happens in the Body breaks her Quiet and disturbs her Now let me examine the Condition which that Man is in who is led by his Passions and fasten'd to every Thing Out of his Heart some Bonds may in one sense be said to be emitted and thence their strings are disperst through all sensible Objects These Strings are no sooner stirr'd by the Motion of those Objects but his Heart is also mov'd If these Objects are remov'd at some distance his Heart must follow or be torn In short his Soul disperses her self by the Means of these Tyes through whatever surrounds him just as she diffuses her self by the Means of Nerves over every Part of the Body When a Man inconsiderately gives himself up to the Commerce of the World the Tyes of his Heart fasten him to a Thousand Objects which only serve to make him wretched and if he be mad enough to have a real Love for those Objects or to be pusst up with his new Greatness he is said he to me like those who would be proud of a Dropsie or of Wens or Bunches that swell their Body to a bigger Bulk than ordinary Do you think continued he that the Souls of Gigantic Men are greater than those of other Men They have indeed a larger Body and can put a greater Mass of Matter into Motion but if you examine them well you 'll find that their Motions are more irregular The very Horses and Elephants are stronger than they and more bulky and if these Men measur'd the Greatness of their Soul by that of their Body they would make themselves universally ridiculous Yet it were a juster Thing to measure the Greatness of the Soul by that of the Body than by that of Riches and Honours For after all our Body is more our own than our Wealth and we are more united to it than we are to our Clothes our House or our Lands How foolish and vain then are not Men when they pretend to grow greater by being disperst out of themselves Truely cry'd he Imaginary Greatness makes Men become very miserable Creatures Every thing offends them every thing disturbs them every thing holds them fast And can Men in a perpetual Hurry and as it were wounded in every Part be able to Think Can they be able to cleave to Truth for which alone they are made with which alone they can be nourish'd and through which alone they can grow more wise and more happy They are commonly mad stupid thoughtless Creatures void of Light and Understanding Do you think added he that the Voluptuous and those who continually strive to extend their Slavery by enlarging the Bounds of their Commands do so much as know that they are not made for Bodies nor for a Time and that they are not on Earth barely to live there Alas they know nothing of this they do not perceive that Bodies are inferiour to them uncapable of acting on them and altogether unworthy of their Love As they have not yet felt the Sting of Death they cannot strictly be said to know they shall dye Their Tongues indeed say they must and they believe it but they do not know it They think they shall be no more but they do not know they shall dye What vast difference is there not between seeing and seeing 'T is but a very little while since I know that I am not made for Corporeal Beings that the Figure of this World passeth away that the true Good of Spirits is a Spiritual Good and even since I know what it is to dye Nay as my Understanding is but small I have too been obliged to think with my utmost application to comprehend these Truths Before this I thought of Death what my Eyes discover'd to me of it and scarce any thing more And if I had not been in a greater Capacity of applying my self to thinking than those who are in the Hurry of Business or a hunting after Pleasure I must confess I had not known what I believe is unknown to great Numbers of Men. The application of the Mind produces Light and discovers Truth The sight of Truth gives perfection to the Mind and regulates the Heart Such an application is then necessary But can a Man when he is pull'd and drawn on all sides struck and wounded every where thrust back when he would get forwards dragg'd forwards when he would go back and continually disturb'd and misus'd can such a Man I say think with application Can a Man who fears every thing yet desires hopes for and runs after every thing think on what he does not see Truth is distant and not sensible nor is it a Good which we find our selves press'd to love We must seek it if we would find it But we may still put off the Search for it never wholly leaves us On the contrary Bodies cause themselves to be felt every Moment press us to love them and continually oblige us to cleave to them for they are transitory and leave us as soon as they have tempted us So because Opportunity when lost is not easily recover'd Men are quickly determin'd to enjoy them but as for Truth they put off from time to time the applying of themselves to it because it never leaves them nor causes it self to be felt and for that reason it does not press them to love it How happy are those added he who wait for Eternity in Deserts and who finding themselves too weak to preserve the Freedom of their Mind and the purity of their Imagination against the Efforts and Malignity of sensible Objects have bravely
the original of light Endeavour to persuade him that God alone is the life and nourishment of the soul That all bodies are invisible by themselves and altogether uncapable of producing any sentiment in our souls That all good is included in God in an intelligible manner in a manner fit to act into the mind to shew it self and cause it self to be felt by it In short that God alone is the true good of the mind all manner of ways and that we ought to love and adore none but him Raise in him a desire to hear you by things on which perhaps he never thought and such as may by their novelty stir up in him a salutary curiosity But above all things endeavour to make him very sensible of his unjustice towards God whilst he follows his passions And that being a sinner and consequently unworthy of being rewarded by the delightful sentiments of pleasure he obliges God in consequence of his immutable orders to affect him with delight in the very moment he offends him Death shall corrupt his body and then God remaining unchangeable in his decrees will avenge during a whole eternity the wrongs he shall have done him by compelling him in a manner not only to be subservient to his disorders but even to reward him for his disobedience In short make him sensible of the necessity there is to repent and strive to inspire in him a saultary horror of all those criminal pleasures that bewitch the senses and corrupt the heart and reason That retiring within himself the confused noise of his passions may not hinder him from hearkning to the secret checks of inward truth and thus he may understand what you shall tell him afterwards DIALOGUE IV. Of the Disorder of Nature caused by Original Sin Theod. WELL what satisfaction have you had of your last visit to your Friend Arist None at all My Friend becomes ill-humoured when ever I speak to him nay sometimes he grows angry and flies out in a passion This troubles me very much Theod. But doth he laugh no more at what you say Arist No. Theod. Be of good heart then your Friend mends and I hope will recover He begins now to feel his wounds since he laughs no more when they are drest Should you wonder to see a man grow ill-humoured and angry if another filled him with wounds confusion and shame why then would you have your Friend insensible You have told him perhaps some truths that oblige him to leave his pleasure to shake off the Old Man to be in a disposition to repent and appear full of confusion and shame in the sense of his unfortunate Friends who will laugh at his change He hath had a prospect of all those things within himself and they have scar'd him If he be vext 't is because you have wounded him and I believe that you have offended him by Convincing him Can any thing grieve and mortifie a worldly man more than the thoughts of being obliged to change altogether his way of living and approve by his own example a manner of life which his Friends ridicule and he himself hath laught at with them all his life-time Perhaps your Friend finds himself obliged to this He is willing to breakhis bonds but he tears himself to pieces his heartis divided and you wonder at his pain and impatience Know my dear Aristarchus that if your Friend heard you without being moved it would show that he is not affected with your words that they do not reach his heart that he is not convinced by that conviction which stirs us to action begins our conversion and makes us suffer because it strips us of the Old Man So I would have you be joyful not because you have filled your Friend with sadness but because his sadness is in all likelihood the sadness that inclines us to repentance Arist You revive me extreamly Let us go on I pray you in our conferences that I may strengthen my self in the knowledge of the proofs of Religion and Morality to convince my Friend fully You prov'd me t'other day that God hath made us to know and love him Pray what consequence do you draw from that principle For I grant that God will not have us to fix on particular good the motion of Love that he incessantly causes in us that we may love him incessantly not with respect to his works which being below us are unworthy of our Love but in himself and according to the idea we have of him as a Being infinitely perfect Theod. All the Precepts of Christian Morals depend upon that Principle You believe it already but you shall see it clearly when I shall make use of it to justifie the counsels which the Eternal Wisdom hath given us in the Gospel I will show you now that this principle is the ground of the Christian Religion that owns the need of a Restorer and Law-giver able to illuminate the Spirit and give a new strength to the Soul of a Mediator between God and Men who may offer a Sacrifice and establish a Worship worthy of God and able to satisfie his justice You own that God will be loved with all our strength that is to say that all the motion of love he creates in us end towards him and that we love creatures only for him and not him with respect to creatures But do you love him always after that manner do you find no difficulty in the practice of his Love do you feel no pain to follow this motion to its utmost or no pleasure to stop it In short do you not find often that the ways of vertue are hard and painful and those of vice smooth and pleasing Arist I am not more perfect than St. Paul I sometimes delight in the love of God according to the inward man but I feel in my body another law that fights against the law of my spirit I suffer when I practice vertue I receive some pleasure in the enjoyment of sensible things in spight of all my opposition and am so much a slave to my body that I cannot even apply my self without pain and reluctancy to things that have no relation to the body Theod. But whence proceeds this pain you resent in doing well and this pleasure you have in doing ill You are not the cause of your own pleasure nor pain for if you were seeing you love your self you would never produce pain in your self and would still be injoying some pleasure Neither is it your body not those that are about you for all bodys are below you and it cannot be conceived that they may act in you or make you happy or unhappy None but God can act in the Soul But do you think that God afflicts you when you do well or that he rewards you when you do ill Do you think that God who desireth that you may love him with all your strength throws you back when you run after him But when you cease to
because he made us he will not have us such as we have made our selves far from this as such he cannot suffer us near him and always removes us from him Yet Aristarchus it is true that God is too just and loves himself too much not to desire to be beloved and to remove positively from him creatures whom he only made for himself for sensible pleasure or pain removes from God but indirectly and by our own fault First because being able to find out by reason that bodies are incapable of creating in us either pleasure or pain we ought neither to fear nor love them but God alone who hath power to cause these sensations in us When something wounds us we ought to fear God and when our senses are any ways pleased we ought to think on him and fear and love him in all things For it is a common notion that the true cause of pleasure and of pain ought to be loved and feared But our ignorance of the actual presence and continual operation of this true cause of our sensations makes us love and fear bodies imagining them to be capable to act in us Now this ignorance is not something positive caused in us by God it is nothing It is true that not to love or fear bodys it is absolutely necessary we should have a very clear and lively knowledge of the presence and continual operation of God upon us for the knowledge which Philosophy gives us of him doth not strongly enough dispose us to cleave incessantly to him But what can be concluded from God's not causing himself to be known enough without his grace to be Loved and feared in all things but that men have offended and displeased him God doth not therefore remove us positively from him when he causes some pleasure or pain in us by the means of bodys since we ought and may then think on him rather than on those bodys Now I come to the second reason Seeing we have a body it is necessary we should have notice of what passes in it It is necessary that at the appearance of objects we have sentiments moving us to cleave to or shun them It is also necessary that these sentiments be preingaging for some reasons that I have mentioned elsewhere So God doth not positively remove us from him when he causes in us our sentiments since on the contrary it is the shortest means to warn us of the things that are necessary for the preservation of life without turning us away from him But those preingaging Sentiments ought not to disturb us nor oppose our Reason and seeing they do it is evident as I have already said it 2d Dial. That Man doth not deserve God should interrupt the Law of the communication of motions for his sake but this doth not imply that God really pushes us back from him In short men see all things in God their immediate object is the intelligible world and the very substance of God but they not thinking on him at the appearance of sensible objects imagine that some outward being altogether like the Idea they have of it acts in them Thus God moves them only towards himself since he only moves them towards what they see and not towards those things which they imagine to be external and it is only indirectly and through a mistake that they love the creatures which are neither so lovely nor such as they imagin them to be Erast You are much in the right Theodorus when you believe that the first cause of our disorders is our not having God always present to our minds and not seeing or rather not feeling him in all things For did we plainly and sensibly see that none but God really acts in us when bodies are present to our sences methinks we would fear and love none but him since we love or fear nothing but what acts in us How then could Adam estrange himself from God for he could see God in all things and had all the knowledge that was necessary to remain united to him If you do not explain how he could fall into sin perhaps Aristarchus will believe that the first man was made such as we are and that concupiscence is not so much a punishment for sin as the first institution of Nature Theod. You need not fear it Erastus he knows now that we ought not to leave a demonstrated Truth because we cannot solve some difficult Points he now sticks to what he sees But I understand what you mean and answer you thus The first man did clearly see God in all things he evidently knew that bodies could not be his true good nor properly make him in the least happy or unhappy he was fully convinc'd of God's continual operation on him but his was no sensible conviction he knew this but did not feel it on the contrary he could feel that bodies acted on him tho he could not know that they did it It is true that being endowed with reason he ought to have followed his light and not his sentiment and that he could easily have done it seeing he could stop his sentiments when he pleased being free from concupiscence However deferring too much to his sences and suffering himself by degrees to hearken to them more willingly than to God himself by reason that the sences always move pleasingly and God did not move him to hear him by preingaging pleasures which must have lessened his Freedom you easily conceive how he came to remove himself so far from God as to lose sight of him to adjoyn in will to a creature by whose means he received some satisfaction and which he might then confusedly imagin to be capable of making him as happy as the Serpent assured Eve it would For tho Adam was not attackt nor seduced by the Serpent as Eve was And Adam was not deceived 1 Tim. 2.14 Yet what God said after Adam's fall Behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil Gen. 3.22 Sufficiently shows that he had some hopes of becoming happy by the means of the forbidden Fruit. Now to determine us to do a thing there is no absolute necessity that we be fully persuaded that our Motive is just and reasonable The hopes of a great benefit tho never so small are capable of making us do much So we may suppose that Adam was so strongly applied to sensible Objects and consequently so far removed out of God's presence that the least hope the slightest doubt and the most confused sentiment of so great an advantage as that of being like God hath been capable of moving him to do a thing which he did not perhaps think very sinful at the time of his Fall All finite Spirits must be subject to Error and Sin principally if they resent preingaging pleasures which incline them to seek things that they ought not to love and to shun what they ought not to fear For no finite Spirit can actually resent pleasure without
well hereafter But when we judge rashly of things without consulting any other master than our imagination or the doctrine of certain false-learned 't is impossible for us to come near God Arist I can't express to you the pleasure I find in this new way of Philosophising I rejoyce to see that Children and ignorant men are the most capable of true wisdom and I am charm'd to learn from Erastus things on which I had not so much as thought before His answers instruct me more than the high reasonings of our Philosophers and methinks every word he speaks spreads in my mind a pure Light that doth not dazzle by its lustre and yet disperses all my Darkness Theod. I will go on then with my questions to Erastus since you are so well pleased with hearing him Hear me my dear Erastus you told me just now that Fire can move variously the particles of your hand because bodies can act on bodies You believe then that bodies have a power to move those they meet Erast My Eyes tell me so but my mind doth not tell me so yet for I have not yet examined that question Theod. Well then answer me Hath a body power to move it self Erast I do not believe it Theod. Is then the power that moves bodies distinguish'd from these bodies Erast I don't know Theod. Take notice Erastus that I do not speak of motion The local motion of a body is a kind of being of that body with respect to those that are about it I do not speak of that but of the power which causes it I ask you if this power is something that is corporeal and if it is in the power of bodies to communicate it Erast I do not believe it for if it were any thing corporeal it would not be able to move it self No Theodorus I do not believe that bodies can communicate to those they meet a power which they have not themselves a power they could not communicate though they had it In short a power whose diffusion and communication they could not be able to direct in a manner as regular as is that which we see since bodies do not even know either the bigness or motion of those they meet It seems to me that an intelligent being and one and the same intelligent being must produce and regulate all the motions of matter since the communication of the motion is always the same in the same accidents For all bodies or many intelligent beings would not easily agree together to act always after the same manner in the communication of motions Arist Methinks Erastus runs too fast and loses himself For it seems to me that those things which are always done the same way are not done by an intelligent being but by a blind action caeco impetu naturae Theod. You mistake your self Erastus is not out and you ought not to attribute to a blind impetuosity that which comes from the immutability of the author of nature I see you do not know that 't is the mark of an excellent workman to produce admirable effects by acting always after the same manner and by the most simple means I will not undertake to lead you to God that way it is too difficult and does not afford us a notion of God so useful to morality I would discover him to you as the Sole Author of the felicity of the Just and of the misery of the Wicked and in a word as being alone able to act in us For I ought not only to demonstrate to you that he is which certainly is but seldom doubted of but I ought also to demonstrate to you that he is our good in all respects for that 's a thing which is not sufficiently known I return to Erastus You are perswaded my dear Erastus that neither Fire nor the Sun nor any one of those bodies that surround you are the true causes of what you feel at their presence and in this you are wiser than all those who have worshipped Fire or the Sun You do not even believe that bodies have any natural power to move those they meet and in that too you see more clearly than those who worship the Heavens the Elements and all those bodies which Aristotle call'd divine because he believed they had in them a power to move themselves and to produce by this motion all the good or evils whereof men are capable But it is not sufficient to know that bodies do not act on you you must also discover the true cause of all that is produced in you You feel warmth and pain at the presence of Fire Now Fire doth not produce this warmth and this pain in you What must it be then Erastus Erast I must confess to you that I know nothing of it Theod. Is it not your soul who acts on her self who afflicts her self when Fire separates the particles of the body she loves or who rejoyces when the same fire produces in her body a motion proper to keep you alive and help the circulation of the blood Erast I do not believe it Theod. Why Pray Erast Because the soul doth not know that the fire moves or separates the fibres of the body I felt heat and pain before I had learnt by the reflections I made what fire is able to produce on my body And do not believe that Clowns who know nothing of what fire doth operate in them are free from pain when they are burnt Besides I do not know what is the motion that is proper to keep me alive and help the circulation of the blood And if I were to feel no heat till I knew it perhaps I should never feel any In short when I happen to burn my self by inadvertency I feel pain before all things I might perhaps conclude by the pain I feel that there is in my body some motion at work which offends it but ' its evident that the knowledge of those motions neither precede nor cause any pain Theod. Your Reasons Erastus are altogether sound But what think you of them Aristarchus Arist They seem to me probable enough However Erastus how can you tell but that your soul hath a certain knowledge of instinct which discovers to her in a moment all that happens in her body Answer me Erastus Answer me quickly then 'T is a strange thing you never answer me readily Erast I do not understand your meaning but all that I can say to you is that when I know actually something I am sure that I do know it for I am not distinguish'd from my self If my soul had actually some knowledge of instinct or whatsoever other you please for I don't understand that word very well I should know it Yet now that I come near the fire I do not know that I have the knowledge of the motions that are actually produced in my hand tho I feel in it sometimes a pain and sometimes a kind of pleasure or titillation There is not then actually
in my soul a knowledge of instinct nor any other I cannot tell if you are satisfied Arist But little truly Theod. Shall I tell you why you are not well satisfied 'T is because Erastus hath made a clear and evident answer to an Objection that was not so If you clearly understood what you object Erastus would answer you both clearly and quickly If hereafter you desire to receive from him more satisfaction than you have had hitherto consider well what you intend to ask him He cannot answer you speedily and clearly when he doth not understand you and you do not even understand your self He uses all his endeavours not to answer but when he hath consulted inward truth and had its answer but it never answers him when he doth not know what he asks Yet you would have him give you an answer and that speedy too If he made you any he would deceive you for it would be his answer and not Truths you should receive I will still put some questions to him that you may observe the method I think is proper to go about it and that his answers may instruct you of the Truth we seek I have obliged my self Erastus to prove the existence of God by the effects which fire seems to produce in us but to do it 't is of the greatest consequence to know that 't is not the soul that causes in her self her own sensations See if you have not still some other proof I do not say more solid but more able to convince Aristarchus Think on it Why do you sometimes suffer a pain Do you delight in it Erast I understand you Theodorus I am not to my self the cause of my happiness nor of my misery If I was the cause of the pleasure I feel seeing I love it I should always produce some in me And on the contrary if I was the cause of the pain I suffer seeing I hate it I would never produce it in my self I perceive that there is a superiour cause that acts on me and may make me happy or unhappy Since I cannot act on my self and that bodies produce not in me the sensations which I feel as we said just now Arist You have it not right Erastus you love your Body you either know or feel that there happens some good or ill to it you either rejoyce or are afflicted at it The one is your pleasure and the other your pain Erast What ever Aristarchus says to me puzzles me and throws me into darkness I beg of you Theodorus to disperse it Theod. I do not wonder at it Erastus Whatever he tells you is false or full of obscurity yet seems probable enough Will you never retire within your self Aristarchus How can you conceive I pray you that Erastus loves his body Whatever is within Erastus that is able to love is better than the body of Erastus Erastus knows it His Body cannot act on his Soul he knows it his Body cannot be his Good he knows that too it cannot be properly said then that he loves it But here lies the riddle Erastus loves pleasure more than his body and he resents pleasure when his body is well dispos'd 'T is that obliges him to mind his body and to defend it when any thing offends it Do you think the Drunkards love their body when they gorge it with Wine Do you think the Libertines love their body when they ruine their health Is it not rather because they love the present pleasure Do those who mortifie their body love it when they tear it or do you believe they hate it What is it then they love but the pleasures they hope one day to enjoy What do they hate on the contrary but the everlasting torments they fear to suffer Thus you may see that Erastus doth not cause in himself his pleasure because he finds or is sensible that the body he loves is well dispos'd For he doth not even know that his body is in a good state by any other thing than by the pleasure he hath by it It is true that when we feel by pleasure or by pain that our body is well or ill dispos'd we are affected with joy or grief but if you think on it seriously you will easily perceive that this grief and joy that are the effects of our knowledge differ mightily from those antecedent pains and pleasures of which we speak Therefore they must have some other cause than our selves Do you grant it Arist I am now convinced of it Theod. Now this cause must be superior and always present to us since it acts within us This cause can punish or reward us make us happy or unhappy since pleasure delights us and pain displeases and makes us uneasie If then this Cause were God we should know that God doth not only rule the motions of the heavens But that he hath a hand in our concerns rules whatsoever passes in us and that in order to our happiness we ought to fear him love him and follow his orders For since he makes continual applications to us he requires something from us and if we do not perform what he requires from us 't is not likely that he should reward us and make us happy Arist I own it But how would you prove that it is not some Angel or Demon that hath the Government of us and acts on us How would you prove that there is a Being infinitely powerful and who includes in his being all the perfections imaginable This seems to me very difficult Theod. It is difficult by the method I have taken but when we acknowledge a superior power that acts in us we have not much difficulty to consider him as Soveraign and to allow him all the perfections of which we have some idea Nevertheless I must endeavour to convince you fully Mind me also Enastus As soon as we are prick'd with a Thorn we feel pain This pain doth not proceed from the Thorn nor from the Soul you grant all this it proceeds then from a superior power This power ought to know the moment when the Thorn pricks our body that he may in the same moment produce the pain in our soul But how shall he know it Think on it He cannot know it from us for we know nothing of it yet Nor from the Thorn for the Thorn cannot act on the spirit of that power nor represent it self to him for the Thorn is neither visible nor intelligible by it self there being no relation between bodies and intelligent beings Whence then shall this superior power learn the moment when the Thorn pricks us If you tell me that he shall know it from some other intelligent being I will ask you the same questions of the second intelligent being and if you fly to a third you will get no more by it Yet in the very instant when we are pricked we feel pain The superior cause must then have learnt that the Thorn pricks us without the help
of other intelligent beings ad infinitum For as you see he would not have so soon an answer seeing 't is no easie matter to find an ultimate in an infinite There must be then an intelligent being that learns in himself and by its self in what moment the thorn pricks us And this intelligent being can be no other than God that is to say a being whose power is infinite and whose will alone is the cause of things For after all there is none but him whose will is efficacious that can see in himself and by himself the existence and the motion of Bodies For it being impossible he should be ignorant of his own will he only can discover within himself the number figure and scituation of bodies and generally whatever happens to them It follows then that all other intelligent beings are enlightned by the Creator And as you see or as you will clearly see if you think on it seriously you should not know that you have a body and that there are others about you if you had not learnt it of him who knows it by himself Do you understand these things Erastus Erast I do plainly Theodorus This is your argument What causes pain is neither the Soul that feels nor the Thorn that pricks but a superior power This power ought at least to know the moment when the thorn pricks he cannot know it from the thorn seeing bodies cannot give any light to spirits they being neither visible nor intelligible by themselves and no relation being to be found between a body and a spirit He can know it then but by himself that is to say by the knowledge of his own will which creates and moves the thorn and whose power is infinite since it is able to create There is then a God and if there was no God I should not be pricked I should feel nothing see nothing and know nothing Theod. Very well But what think you of these reasons Aristarchus Arist Think I think that both you and your echo Erastus talk in the clouds The ground of your proof is that that there is no relation between bodies and spirits From whence you conclude that an Angel cannot see a body immediately and by himself To which I answer that that spirits may know bodies it is sufficient that they penetrate them Theod. What do you mean by penetrating them Certainly Erastus doth not understand you But without asking you explications that perhaps would puzzle and displease you doth your soul penetrate your body your heart or your brain the principal part where she resides Arist I believe it doth Theod. Pray tell me then how your brain is composed or that principal part wherein your soul resides Arist I do not understand Anatomy Theod. How You don't understand Anatomy Must you search in Books or in the head of other men which you do not penetrate to know how the brain which your soul penetrates is compos'd What signifies it then to a spirit to penetrate a body Arist I must confess I have nothing to answer Yet methinks if a spirit penetrates a body he ought to know that body But perhaps there is something that hinders it which I do not understand Theod. If it were so Aristarchus this something would be the God whom we seek I will lose no time to prove it to you For I will not prove the existence of God by imaginary effects You may think on it at your leisure But I rather advise you to make a serious reflection on the things I have told you now and then I hope you will visibly find that there is a God I mean a Being whose Will is Power and Power Infinite since it is able to create You will find that this God doth not walk about the Heavens as the Libertines will have it but that his providence extends it self to all things and that he acts incessantly in us That it is he that gives us the pleasing and painful sentiments we have of sensible objects and that consequently he may make us happy or miserable In short you will know God in the most useful manner for morality You will even confess that God hath made nothing but may serve to demonstrate his existence though 't is more conducing to morality to demonstrate it by something that passes within us One of the reasons why you are not easily brought to be of my mind is that you have perhaps never seriously thought on the things of which we have been speaking For I do not perceive that my proofs are remote or hard to be understood I will be judg'd of it by Erastus And I believe we ought to agree on that point that hereafter you may be prepared on the subjects on which we shall treat Arist It belongs to you Theodorus to set rules for every thing For you know that my resolution is to seek none but such truths as are essential and may make us wiser and more happy I need say no more to you Theod. To this effect Aristarchus I will tell you the course I intend to keep in our Conferences Observe it well that you may think on it at leisure and prepare your self to make me all the Objections you can I believe I have sufficiently demonstrated that there is a God who acts incessantly in us and who may make us happy or unhappy by pleasure and by pain of which he alone is the true cause and therefore I will bring no other proofs of it and will content my self with resolving your difficulties But I will prove to you that the design of God in creating man hath been that man might know and love him that God hath preserved man but to that end In short that that design is so unalterable that sinners and the damned themselves execute it in one sense and that they shall sooner cease to be than they shall wholly cease to know and to love God When I have establisht as a principle that since God acts always for himself we cannot be happy if we resist his will nor unhappy if we obey it I will demonstrate how God will be known and be loved how we can resist his orders and what is yet more â—trange how we are capable to offend him I will show that our nature is corrupted that sin dwells in us that the spirit is a slave to the flesh In short I will explain the cause and the effects of the corruption of nature how our disorders strange us from God and make us his enemies as also our want of a Mediator and Redeemer I will explain the qualities our Redeemer and Mediator ought to have to reconcile us to God and to satifie his justice that Jesus Christ possesses them all and none but him What may cure the blindness of the mind and the malice of our heart That those remedies are to be found in the precepts of the Gospel and the grace of Jesus Christ In fine I will show that none but a God
made man can restore reconcile and save us That nothing but the blood of Christ can cleanse us that nothing but his grace can strengthen us that only his precepts can conduct us to that wisdom and to that felicity you wish for and that all we have to do in this life is to study the moral of the Gospel to hear Jesus Christ to love Jesus Christ to follow and to imitate Jesus Christ who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption that according as it is written he that glorieth let him glory in the Lord 1 Cor. 1.30,31 DIALOGUE II. Objections and Answers Aristarchus WE long'd with impatience to see you again Theodorus for we wanted you almost as soon as we had left you Erastus and I could not agree about the things you told us yesterday for there come into my mind some difficulties which seem to me not to be overcome and so we have done nothing but disputed all the while but at last Erastus saith he doth not understand me and that he hath nothing else to answer me Theod. Nothing but truth can reconcile minds and if you disagree it is because one of you doth not consult it I am very much affraid that you have consulted your imagination more than your reason and that you have lancht into the deepest recess of your memory for some justificative evidence of your prejudices Tell me is it not true Aristarchus that you have but little meditated on the things I told you yesterday and that whereas you should have examined them by the light of truth you have compar'd them with those things of which the perusual of the Ancients hath left you a tincture Will you never be brought to and will you never understand that you have in your self a faithful master ready to give you an answer at all times if you ask it with decency and submission that is to say in the calm of your senses and passions You tell me that you wanted me but pray are you not ashamed to have recourse to a man to be enlightned and ought you not to know that if I am capable of giving you some instruction 't is not by diffusing light into your mind but making you retire within your self and turning you towards the light that enlightens me Why are we sometimes of the same mind but because we both retire within our selves and harken to him of whom all mankind receives the like answers And why have you so much disputed with Erastus but because you told him things which the truth he consults did not tell him nor had ever told you I beg of you then Aristarchus that we may have no more disputes but let truth be the supreme Judge amongst us and use all your endeavours to make me no objections but such as you understand clearly and may also be understood by Erastus Arist Perhaps all the difficulty in the objections I made Erastus proceeded from our ignorance of a great many things and it may be that not being much used to meditate I have proposed to him my ancient prejudices as so many new truths which presented themselves to me by the strength of meditation But really I have started to him some difficulties which seem to me grounded upon evident Principles and are received by all men Here they are You have told us that none but God can act in our soul and that all the bodies which are about us are uncapable of causing in us the sentiments we have of them But pray is not the Sun bright enough to be visible Do you think I can suffer my self to be imposed upon by Philosophical Reasons to believe that 't is not the Sun that gives me light after all the experiments I have of it And supposing you could perswade me that Fire doth not cause the heat or pain I feel when 't is near me Do you think you may conclude that the Sun doth notdiffuse light and say in general as you do now that all the bodies that surround us are uncapable of producing in us the sentiments we have of them Theod. Forbear to consult your senses Aristarchus if you desire to hear the answers of Truth It dwells in the deepest recess of Reason Peruse at your leisure the first Book of The inquiry after Truth if you have a mind to be fully instructed of the errors of our senses with respect to sensible qualities for I do not intend to make it my business to explain to you all the difficulties of Philosophy which may puzzle you The only thing that 's necessary at present is that you know there is a God and he alone can cause in you the pleasure and pain you feel by the intervention of Bodies You believed it yesterday or I am mistaken Do you believe it now Arist I doubt of it for this Reason that if God did cause in me the pleasure I feel in the use of sensible things It seems he would dispose me to love them and to cleave to them as to my good For pleasure is the character of good 't is an instinct of nature which disposes us to love what produces or seems to produce it Yet faith teaches me that God will not have me to love bodies Can God draw me by pleasure to cleave to sensible things and forbid me at the same time to love them This is my difficulty judge of it now Theod. It is a solid one and 't is absolutely necessary to solve it for from its solution most of the true principles of morality may be deduced This is my system * It is taken out of the fifth Chapter of the first Book of the Inquiry after Truth I have taken several things from that Book and desire the Reader to take notice of it once for all Being made up of spirit and body we have two sorts of good to seek spiritual and corporal We have likewise two ways to know if a thing is good or bad viz. the use of the mind alone and the use of the mind jointly with the body We can know the good of the mind by an evident and clear knowledge of the mind alone and we can also discover the good of the body by a confus'd sentiment By the mind I know justice is to be beloved and by the taste I assure my self such a fruit is good The beauty of justice cannot fall under our senses for 't is unnecessary to the perfection of the body and the goodness of the fruit doth not fall under our understanding for a fruit cannot be useful to the perfection of the mind The good of the body not deserving the application of the mind which God made but for himself and God not being willing that we should be taken up with it it is necessary that the mind do know it without examination and by the short and incontestable proof of sentiment Bread is fit to nourish us and Stones are not The proof of it
truth he could not bear a little while before Arist I give you thanks for this advice Theodorus and will certainly make good use of it the Impatience which is excited within me by the hopes of being serviceable to my friend obliges me to break off our Conversation I must satisfie my self Theod. I commend your zeal and the sincerity of your friendship be of good heart Aristarchus I wish you may return satisfy'd and you Erastus be careful to have in your mind the things that we have said and to discourse about them with Aristarchus as soon as he comes back DIALOGUE III. Of the Order of Nature in the Creation of Man Theod. WEll Aristarchus you have converted your man Erastus told me just now all that past between you and him I even know that he desires to be your Disciple and to have an account of our following conferences Be pleas'd then for his sake to apply your self so that you may demonstrate all things to him with some exactness Arist You take the right way to ingage me for I am extreamly sensible to friendship and methinks my desire to know truth is doubled by the design I have to impart it to my friend Let us go on then I beseech you I am perswaded that there is a God that is to say a Being infinitely perfect whose wisdom and power have no bounds and whose providence extends it self not only to us but even to the atoms of matter I remember your proofs and am convinc'd of them Theod. I can demonstrate nothing of true Religion nor of true Morality till I know what God designs in the creation and preservation of our being Arist You must seek some other principle Theodorus My friend is a Cartesian his Philosophy doth not admit final causes and tho he is now convinc'd that there is a God he will not fail to tell me that we ought not to presume so much of our selves as to believe that God hath been pleas'd to make us privy to his counsels Theod. Your friend will never say this to you if he be a good Cartesian The knowledge of final Causes is of little or no use in Natural Philosophy as Descartes pretends But it is absolutely necessry in Religion Can you obey God if you do not know his will and can you hope to please him and that he will make you happy except you be obedient to him â—… may be you imagine that we can know nothing of Gods design on men by Reason but you are mistaken Do not think too much on your friend Pray think on what I am going to tell you You are perswaded that God is wise and ascribe to him all the perfections whereof you have some Idea God therefore loves most what is most lovely and so must love himself more than all things and be to himself the end of all his actions And by consequence the end of the Creation and preservation of our being It follows then that the faculty by which we know that is to say our Mind and that whereby we love which is our will 〈◊〉 made and preâ—…ved to know and to love God supposing as you do not doubt it they have been made to know and to love Do you find any darkness in what I have told you Pray think on it 't is the ground of all we shall â—ay hereafter Arist All this seems to me as evident as the most certain principles of Natural Philosophy Theod. It hath even more certainty the communication of motion is certain as experience teaches us nevertheless this communication might not be and it will in all likelihood cease after the resurrection that our bodies may be incorruptible but it shall never cease to be the will of God that we know and love him Since then this seems to be plain to you how can it happen that there be men that neither know nor love God since God preserves them but to know and love him Do you think it possible to resist God and that God hath any love for Spirits who have no knowledge of him nor any love for him Do you think God preserves them and do you not know that if God should cease to love them they should be no more Arist I begin to doubt of your principle for you draw some very sad consequences from it Theod. 'T is very strange Aristarchus you should doubt of things of which you have an evidence Will you always forget that light ought to be preferred to darkness and that clear truths are not to be forsaken because we find some difficulty in clearing some dark objections Learn to distinguish truth from what seems to be so and observe that what I objected to you just now is true in one sense and false in another For there is no man but knows and loves God in one sense as you will see it hereafter Therefore stick firmly to this truth that God hath made and preserves spirits but to know and love him And this truth being granted since it is evident endeavour to discover how it may be conceiv'd that all spirits know and love God for that is of the greatest consequence I will put some questions to Erastus that I may insensibly lead you to that truth Do you think Erastus that Spirits can see Bodies Or rather do you think that this material and sensible world can be the immediate object of the mind Do you think that bodies can act in the mind make themselves visible to the mind or enlighten it Erast I do not think it Theod. What then do you see immediately when you see the material and visible world Erast I see If I may say so the Intelligible World Theod. How when you look upon the Stars do you not see the Stars Erast When I look upon the Stars I see the Stars when I look upon the Stars of the material world I see the Stars of the intelligible world and judge that those material Stars are like those of the intelligible world I see For the Sun that I see is sometimes bigger and sometimes less and is never bigger than an intelligible Circle of two or three foot diameter but the material Sun is always the same and according to the sentiment of some Astronomers about thirty thousand times bigger than the Earth 't is not then this Sun I see when I am looking upon it Theod. But Erastus where is this intelligible world which you see Do you think to include it within your self Do you think your soul comprehends in an intelligible manner all the beings that God can make and you can see Can your Soul whose bounds are too narrow whose perfections are finite and who certainly doth not include all things see all things by reflecting on herself Erast I do not think it but I dare not tell you my opinion I imagine that there is none but God that includes the intelligible world and that we see in God whatever we see Theod. But why are you afraid to
the Authors of those Sports which you formerly frequented so much Aristarchus have no other design than to raise the Passions and bewitch the Imagination I think that if any Temptation surprized me in those Places I should not be Master of my self enough to resist it so I 'm resolv'd never to go thither Theod. You speak with a great deal of Reason Erastus We should always seek the most simple and most moderate Diversions we should use Recreations as harmless as are those of Children But some People cannot be diverted without being disturb'd these do not take their Diversion as you do merely to unbend their Mind alas they never tire it with hard Study they are for Diversions that may give some respite to their Passions which weary them too much because they follow their violent Motions Their design is not by this means to settle again the Imagination in its natural Seat after it has been harrass'd by Meditation but rather to put out of their Mind some ambitious or other unruly Thoughts which the Passions have excited and which are no longer pleasing to them that so they may make themselves more happy in following the Motions of Passions softer and more moderate than those that commonly move them for after all the Passions which are Acted on the Stage do not so violently move us as those whose Object is real and substantial Erast Certainly Theodorus these Persons are very miserable their Imagination is much disordered Concupiscence or the weight of Sin to use Aristarchus's Expression weighs heavy in their Scale and there had need be a great deal of pre-ingaging Pleasure to counterballance it In the mean time they hope to be sav'd like other Christians and imagine that though they do not prepare themselves for ordinary Graces by following the Counsels of Christ God will give them those extraordinary Graces which overcome all the Malignity of the most corrupt Minds In short they say that it belongs to God to convert them Theod. When I hear your voluptuous or ambitious Men complain that God does not give them such Graces as may work their Conversion methinks I see a Company of cruel Wretches that stab themselves and at the same time accuse God of the barbarity which they use against themselves They expect that he should do them good while they are doing themselves harm and at the very time that they cause in their Bodies such Motions as by the Order of Nature are still to be attended with Pain they would have God to alter that Order and Work Miracles for their sakes We cannot too often call to mind that God always acts by the most simple Means and inviolably keeps the Laws which he has prescribed to himself not only in the Order of Nature but also in that of Grace The simplest and shortest way for the Conversion of Sinners is that they deprive themselves of Pleasures this is plain They must therefore begin with this and not flatter themselves with the hopes of such extraordinary Graces as may really be esteemed Miracles in the Order of Grace If we desire to live we must eat if we would enjoy some Pleasure we must excite within our Body those Motions which Nature has decreed should be attended with pleasing Sensations for these Motions oblige God in Consequence of his Will to cause us to feel the Pleasure which we wished for So if we would attain to a regenerate state and live the Life of Grace we ought to ween our selves of sensible Objects mortifie the Lusts of the Flesh and pray without ceasing Our Repentance and our Prayers will prevail with God according to his Promise to bestow on us such Graces as are able to regenerate us But if we follow the Impulse of our Passions and rely on the Efficacy of extraordinary Graces 't is as if some Mad-men should cast themselves headlong down a Precipice in hopes that God would do a Miracle to save them When we do not know what the Laws of Nature are we learn them by Experiments but when we know what those Laws are we look upon them to be inviolable and conforming our Actions to them we do not pretend to overturn them So a Person who does not know that Fire may offend him comes too near it but he no sooner knows how it acts on him but that he takes greater Care of himself neither does he think that the Fire ought to respect him if he should presume to throw himself in the midst of its Flames Now if we are ignorant in the Laws of Grace we ought to inform our selves about them and when we know what they are we must be conformable to them and not think we may break them as we please For God's Will can never be made to depend on our Caprichios The Natural Philosophers have but a very imperfect Insight into the particular Laws of Nature for Experiments which are the surest Means to discover them are very uncertain yet they revere and fear those Laws as unknown as they are to them and shall Christians void of all Veneration and Fear for the Laws of Grace which they do not know presume to reconcile all Things to their Designs They know the Poyson but because it seems pleasant they swallow it without horrour Reason teaches them as we discover'd it at our last Conference that the shortest way for the Restauration of Nature is Self-denial the inward Sentiment of their Conscience confirms the Decree of their Reason the Admonitions of our Saviour his Example those of all good Men do not suffer them to doubt of it yet they take pleasure in blinding themselves not to discover the necessity they lye under to follow that Means and if they find themselves oblig'd to own how necessary it is to follow this Direction given us by Christ all the deference they pay to it is often barely exteriour denying themselves some certain Things which they do not value and suffering a carnal Circumcision that is not the Circumcision of the Heart which God requires of them When we consider the Life of our Saviour's Forerunner who was in a manner the Personal Preparation to Substantial Grace for St. John the Baptist was sent to represent to us by his Preaching and Holiness of Life all the things that prepare us for the receiving of Grace as Christ was sent to impart it to us When we consider I say that living Pattern of Preparation to Grace we see in him nothing but a separation from the World a continual self-denyal even as to the things that seem needful for the upholding of Life for you know what is said of him in the Gospel Matth. 3.4 Thus his Example sufficiently teaches us what we are to do to befit our selves for the receiving of Grace But our imagination wholly deprav'd by sensible Pleasures soon takes off our Eyes from this model of Mortification and Penitence to mould us another of some Person whom the World esteems a good Man though he indulges
Sinful Father WE have seen in the fore-going Considerations that Man in himself is a meer Nothing that he is made up of Weakness Infirmity and Darkness that he receives Life Sense and Motion continually from God that he owes to him his whole Being and all his Faculties And therefore he is certainly under the highest Obligations of Love and Gratitude to God since he depends so absolutely upon him as he is a Creature But if we consider him as the Son of a Sinful Father and as a Sinner himself we shall find so great a multiplicity of essential and indispensable Duties which he owes to God and at the same time so great a want of Power and so much unworthiness to perform them that so far is he from being able to do his Duty that even his Performances would be rejected if Christ our Mediator had not merited Grace for him by his Death We must not then consider Man only as the Son of a Sinful Father and as he is a Sinner himself but we ought always to look upon him in Jesus Christ in whom alone we are able to please God The Fifth Consideration MAN considered as the Son of a Sinful Father is a Reprobate a Child of Wrath whom his Father will not see and who shall never see his Father for he is a Child whom his Father does not love nor will he be belov'd by such a Child God lov'd Adam before his Fall and desir'd to be lov'd by him He was willing to communicate himself to him and to be in a manner familiarly acquainted with him He call'd to him as he now does to us but with a much clearer and more intelligible Voice I am thy Good make me the only Object of thy Love and Hope At these words his Senses and Passions were silent nor was he disturb'd by that confus'd and flattering noise which arises in us even against our Wills and boldly opposes the dictates of Truth in our Souls God spoke to him and he did not murmur God inlighten'd him and he was freed from Darkness God commanded him and he made no resistance The Pleasure and Joy which he felt in seeing himself favour'd and protected by a God that would never forsake him if he did not first leave him kept him united to his Lord by Bonds that were never like to be broken God did not force Adam to love him by preingaging Pleasures because he would have him merit his Reward more speedily He left him to the determination of his own Free-will that he might have power to chuse for himself and he bestow'd a due measure of Knowledge and Understanding upon him that he might be enabled to make a good choice Thus Man perceiv'd clearly what he was to do to obtain solid and perfect Happiness and nothing could hinder him from performing that as long as he pleased But he was not separated from himself and the consideration of himself fill'd him with a certain Joy and Pleasure which made him in a manner feel that his Natural Perfection was the cause of his present Felicity for Joy seems to proceed naturally and absolutely from a view of our own Perfections because we do not always think on him who operates always in us Besides Adam had a Body and could when he pleas'd relish such Pleasures in the actual enjoyment of Sensible Things as made him feel that Corporeal Things were his Good I did not make choice of this Expression without Reason for he knew that God was his Good but did not feel it because he felt no preingaging Pleasures in the performance of his Duty and on the other side he felt that the Objects of his Senses were his Good but did not know them to be so because that which is not cannot be known When Adam felt that Sensible Objects were his Good or imagin'd that the cause of his Happiness was in himself when he tasted Pleasure in the use of Corporeal Things or rejoyc'd at the sight of his own Perfections his Sensations obscur'd the clear perceptions of his Mind by which he knew that God was his Good For Sensation confounds Knowledge because it modifies the Soul and divides its capacity Thus Adam who perceiv'd all these things clearly ought to have been perpetually upon his guard He should have resisted the allurements of the Pleasures which he felt least he should be distracted by them and betray'd into unavoidable destruction He should have stood firm in the presence of God and depended absolutely on his Light But relying too much upon himself he suffered his Understanding to be darkened by the relish of Sensual Pleasures or by a confus'd Sensation of a presumptuous Joy and being thus insensibly disunited from him who was his true Strength and the source of all his Happiness he was justly punished by the revolt of those Senses to which he had voluntarily submitted By which Punishment it seem'd that God had utterly forsaken him and that he would never any more vouchsafe to accept of his Love and had given him the Material World to be the Object of his Knowledge and Affection The Curse of God that was pronounc'd against Adam is fall'n upon all the Posterity of that rebellious Father God has withdrawn his presence from the World and instead of communicating himself to it does continually thrust it farther from him We suffer Pain when we seek God but we feel all sorts of Pleasures when being weary with following him through such rough and troublesome ways we joyn our selves to his Creatures The World does not clearly perceive that it ought to love God and that he alone ought to be the proper Object of its Affection but it feels in a very lively and alluring manner that it should love something else besides him and consequently it does not love God but flies from him continually and even is unable to turn to him It was shamefully driven out of Paradise in the Person of Adam it has forfeited its Title to God and lost the hope of Heaven and Happiness It is accurst and eternally accurst It is a Crime to wish well to it because it is and for ever shall be at enmity with God And even it cannot wish well to it self without doing it self an injury For by wishing well to it self it endeavours to break the establisht Order of Things it provokes the God of Order and increases the Hatred and Indignation of him to whom Vengeance belongs What can it thus do Shall it yield it self up to Fury and Despair and seek to be annihilated because it cannot enjoy God But annihilation it self is perhaps a Favour which it does not deserve and therefore shall not obtain We may indeed kill but cannot annihilate our selves and if Death were an annihilation it would not be in the power of Man to put an end to his Life What must we do then and what course must we take to regain our lost Happiness We must humble our selves before God we must hate our selves
mortally as the Children of Adam and neither love nor esteem our selves or others but in and through Christ in whom all things subsist and by whom we are reconcil'd to God The Elevation of the Soul of GOD. O GOD let me always be sensible of the wretchedness of my condition as a Son of fallen Adam that as such I am not worthy to think on thee or to adore and love thee but am a Child of Darkness a Sojourner in a dry and parched Land banished from thy Presence despised and rejected by thee and Heir to thy Eternal Malediction and that I have no right to complain of thy just rigour either to thy self or to thy Creatures Grant that I may humble my self before thee and abhor my self in this condition in which I am incapable of loving thee and that I may with an humble Faith fly to thy Son who has restored us to Peace and by whom we have free access to thee to render that which we owe to thee and to ask of thee that which thou seemest to owe to our Misery O Jesus my Deliverer perfect thy own work strip me of the old and cloth me with the new Man I will not henceforth love any thing in my self but what thou hast put into me or rather I will only love thee in my Heart Thou art all my Wisdom and all my Strength be thou also all my Glory and all my Felicity The Sixth Consideration MAN considered as the Son of a Father who revolted against God is a miserable weak and tender Child destitute both of Cloaths and Arms expos'd to the injuries of the Weather and given up as a prey to the fury of wild Beasts Adam in the State of Innocence was strong and mighty he was seated in an inaccessible place and under the protection of God nothing durst assault him and he was able to resist every thing After his Fall all the Creatures made War upon him and he was not able to resist any of them All the Posterity of this rebellious Parent do not only partake of his Sin but also of his Punishment Let us illustrate this Truth by distinct Ideas 'T is Pleasure that rules with a Soveraign and Arbitrary Power in the Heart of Man especially when his Reason is blinded For Pleasure is the Natural Character of good and Men cannot forbear loving that which is good And therefore Pleasure is as it were the weight of the Soul which inclines it by degrees and at last pulls it forcibly towards the Object that is the true or seeming Cause of that Sensation tho' Reason may oppose it for some time Adam before his Fall did not feel those preventing and preingaging Pleasures which afterwards constrained him to place his Affection on the Objects of his Senses He enjoy'd a perfect liberty and a full power to dispose of himself He was neither forced nor enticed but of his own accord and according to the measure of Light that was in him he inclined to love his real good But together with his Innocence he lost his perfect Liberty Not being longer Master of Pleasure nor able to stop the Sensation of it he was at last inslaved by it and both his Understanding and Affections were subdu'd under the tyranical dominion of Terrestrial Things He became altogether Earthly a Slave to Sin subject to Death and to a thousand other Miseries which it would be needless to describe We are all born like our first Father chained to the Earth For we do all Naturally feel Pleasure in the use of sensible things which are the good of the Body but we don't Naturally feel any good in those things which contribute to the perfection of the Mind And it is this irregularity of our Pleasures that disorders our Affections and is the most fruitful source of all our Miseries And while we are in this wretched condition we cannot by our selves draw near to God neither are we able to find in the Natural Order of things a Creature that is noble and pure enough and sufficiently elevated by the dignity of its Person and by the greatness of its Merits to reconcile us to God But we find all that we want or can desire in the Christian Religion This Holy Religion does continually exhort us to Mortification Resignation to a Circumcision of the heart and lessening of the weight of Sin and it gives us also a Mediator by whose Merit we receive the weight of Grace that victorious delight which passeth all understanding and which draws us to God notwithstanding all the resistance of our Passions and of the Pleasures of our Senses For these two things the privation of Pleasures and the delectation of Grace are absolutely necessary to us in a state of Sin We must by a continual Mortification of our Senses and Passions diminish that weight of Concupiscence which draws us to the Earth and ask of God through our Mediator Christ Jesus the delectation of his Grace without which all our endeavours to diminish the weight of Sin would be in vain for it would still weight us down and the least weight of Sin would infallibly draw us along with it and keep us as it were fastened to the Earth and under the dominion of our Enemies The Elevation of the Soul to GOD. O GOD let me never forget that I am an unhappy exile from my Native Countrey that I am in the midst of my Enemies who are still plotting my Destruction that the Air of the World is pestilential and poysonous and that all the Creatures draw me to themselves and divert me from thee Make me sensible O God that my Domestick Enemies are most dangerous that I ought to fear my self more than the World and the World more than the Devil and that among so many Enemies I have no strength to defend my self no arms to resist them nor understanding to discern them Inspire me with a deep sense of all my Infirmities Wounds and Miseries of which I have yet but a very imperfect knowledge O JESVS I see nothing in my self but weakness when I look upon my self without thee but when I feel thee with me I find my self endued with an invincible strength Through thee will we push down our Enemies and through thy Name will we tread them under that rise up against us For I will not trust in my Bow neither shall my Sword save me O thou derided buffeted and scourged Jesus thou that wast covered with Spittle and Blood and humbled even to the Death confound my Pride and Sensuality Drive all my Domestick Enemies out of my Heart by the Vertue of thy Sufferings and by the Merit of thy Holy Resignation Cloth thy self in Purple O my King put on thy Crown of Thorns and take thy Reed in thy hand come to my assistance and judge and subdue all my Enemies make the Earth tremble before thee when thou ascendest the Throne of thy Cross slay Death it self and for ever destroy the Pride of Sin
Eternal Wisdom this is the Advice which he gives not only to the Apostles but to all Mankind in general And when he had called the people unto him with his disciples also he said unto them Whosoever will come after me let him deny himself c. The Elevation of the Soul to GOD. O LORD whose Will is ever effectual and all whose Decrees are unchangeable it is of thy bounty that we feel Pleasure in the use of sensible things but ungrateful Man loves that false good and despises the true cause of his Happiness or rather he is ignorant that thou O Lord alone art able to operate in him It was wisely ordered by thy Providence that Man should be able to discern by short and evident Proofs whether he should use or avoid the Bodies that surround him that he might not be obliged to turn from thee nor to six his Mind upon thy Creatures But he has abused thy Mercy to his own destruction for thou O God art not in all his thoughts He imagines that matter is the cause of all the Pleasure which he feels and therefore yields himself a slave to it and makes it the only Object of his Thoughts and Affections Thus what thou hadst appointed to preserve the Righteous Man in his Rightcousness serves now to harden the Wicked in their Wickedness Is it just thou shouldst work a Miracle for a sinful wretch O God No Lord let thy Decrees remain fixt for ever and woe be to those that tempt thee Let Men shun Poyson if they would avoid Death They can discern that Poyson for thou hast taught them to know and avoid it But O thou Just and Merciful God who dealest Righteously with thy Creatures how shall we be able to hate Pleasure How hate what thou causest us to love It is just that we suffer as Sinners but can we love Pain which thou seemest to make us hate by an invincible Impression O Lord whose Wisdom is infinite enable us perfectly to understand that thou art not contrary to thy self and that thy Wills do not imply contradiction that Pleasure in it self is not absolutely bad and that the true cause that produces it really deserves and ought to be belov'd and respected belov'd with all our Heart and Soul and respected so as not to be constrain'd in consequence of his Will to gratifie us when absolutely speaking be should punish us O Lord who hidest thy self from our mortal Eyes cause thy strength and the efficacy of thy will to exert themselves and do thou clearly and incessantly convince us that the Bodies which are on all sides about us are absolutely incapable of doing us either good or harm Perhaps Men will love none but thee when they come to know that thou alone art able to do them good and perhaps they will fear none but thee when they shall have rightly understood that thou alone hast sufficient strength and power to cause them to suffer Pain But I beseech thee O my God to deal with me in a more safe and merciful manner I know that thy Creatures are not my good yet I love them I am convinc'd that whatever is round me cannot penetrate me yet my Heart insensibly opens it self and expects to receive from the vilest of thy Creatures what thou alone art able to give me Therefore O Lord be pleased out of thy infimte Mercy to deal with me in a more safe manner than thou dost with those who follow the Dictates of their Love Oh set me apart from thy Creatures since they turn my Heart from thee Draw my Eyes from fixing themselves on sensible Objects since I mistake them for thee or rather since I love them instead of thee This is the surest means to remedy the disorders in my Heart All my Philosophy is not sufficient to regulate my Love and can only serve to accuse and confound me before thee It teaches me that I make use of the Order to overthrow the Order that I misemploy thy Gifts by promoting what is ill and that I make use of the immutability of thy Decrees meerly to reward Rebellion and other Crimes It plainly shows me my Impiety and Injustice but leaves me plung'd in it I am stricken with horrour when I think on my self yet I cannot forbear loving my self So I procure those Pleasures to my self which make me happy at least while I enjoy them O God how stupid and sensless am I not I love my self for a Moment and ruine my self for a whole Eternity But I have a feeling sence of that Moment and I have none of Eternity 'T is true I think on it and the Thought disturbs my Joy but alas Pleasure though never so weaken'd by my Reflections easily draws after its self a Heart which it has already put into motion Deprive me then O my God of all the Objects that flatter my Senses and disorder my Reason While as being the Author of Nature thou makest me seel Pleasure in the use of those Objects do thou as thou art the Author of Grace make me loath and abhor them And I beseech thee out of the abundance of thy Mercies that at such times as Pains are voluntary thou mayst make me suffer those which my Crimes deserve O God who canst not let sin remain impunished make me continually return to the observance of the Order Form me upon the model of thy Son crucifie me with him and let his Cross that is only folly and weakness to the Eyes of Man be all my Strength all my Wisdom and all my Joy O Jesus who wast nail'd on the Cross for my sins I am thine nail and fix me there with thee crucifie my Flesh with its Passions and unruly Desires destroy this body of Sin or by thy Grace deliver me from the stress of it that continually presses upon my Mind We are baptized in thy Death We are dead to all the things of this World We are even buried with thee through Baptism Our old Man according to thy great Apostle was crucified with thee that the body of sin might be destroy'd And wilt thou O Lord suffer this Old Man to live again and this Body of Sin to subsist O Saviour of the World do thou finish the work which thou hast begun Continue to suffer in thy Members Do thou in our Flesh sinish the Sacrifice which thou hast begun in Abel which thou didst continue in the Patriarchs and Prophets and to which thou wilt not put an end but by the Death of the last Member of thy Body that is to be the last Saint whom thou wilt give to thy Church O thou Blessed Spirit of Christ thou Love of the Father and of the Son diffuse thy Charity through our Hearts drive the servile fear of Slaves out of our Minds and fill us with that Fear that is found in the Children and which gives a Right to the Inheritance of our Father Come O thou Spirit of Comfort soften the bitterness and distaste which we find in Repentance make us partake of the Sufferings of Christ that we may also be made partakers of his Glory But give us at the same time some of that Heavenly Fire which thou didst shower down on the Apostles that Fire which kindled in them an ardent Zeal to preach the Cross of Christ without Fear and to suffer joyfully the shame of Whipping the stress of Torments and Death it self for Christ Jesus Amen FINIS
love him I grant it but he draws his glory from thence The shame of Free-will adds to Gods honour every way and man being not able to trust to his own strength finds himself oblig'd by Justice to give to God all the Glory of his actions But how do you know after all but that the first and the chief design of God in the Creation of man was the Incarnation of his Son it may be Erastus that the order of Nature is only the occasional cause of that of Grace and that God would not have made man if the fall of man had not given lew to his reparation I grant that if man had not sinn'd the Word had not been made flesh But is it not certain that the Obedience and Sacrifice of the incarnate Word hath pleased him more who orders all things according to his own pleasure than the rebellion of man hath displeas'd him Is it not reasonable to believe that God hath done all for his Son since he hath made all by his Son and that his chief intent in the disposition of his work hath been to establish his Son Chief of his Church and Soveraign Lord over all his creatures O certè necessarium Adae peccatum O felix culpa quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem Take notice of this Erastus God acts for his glory and the chief of his designs is that by which he gets most of it But doth he not receive more glory from his Son than from all the rest of his works He hath in his Son an Adorer a Sacrificator and a Victim of an infinite dignity for his Son is a God that worships him a God that obey's him a God that dyes to honour his Holiness and Justice But supposing even no bounds to the world what honour would accrue by it to its Author Supposing all creatures were incessantly imployed to praise him who gave them being what proportion is there between the creature and the Creator between the praises of the blessed Spirits and the infinite greatness of God except it be that the praises of the Saints receive a kind of an infinite greatness and dignity in Jesus Christ through whom as the Church sings Angels praise the Divine Majesty Powers adore him c. For the Church knows very well that 't is only through Jesus Christ we can render to God an honour worthy of him I will explain to you those things more at large at some other time What I have said now is sufficient to let you judge that though God did foresee the fall of man he was not to change his design since that fall hath been the occasion of that great work so worthy the greatness and mercy of God and so admirable all manner of ways Yet though what I have told you were not certain you ought not to believe easily that God ought to have alter'd his design because he foresaw the sin of the first man and the disorder of Nature Can you think Erastus that if god only design'd to make a man he would make a Monster I mean that he would make him with two heads one of which would be useless and only troublesome to him or make him with an useless Arm sprouting our of his forehead and dangling continually over his face Can you imagin that such a Creature would be a work worthy of an Intelligence infinitely wise and powerful Yet there are Monsters and I do not believe that those small disorders of Nature ought to lessen the esteem you have of its Author not only because those Monsters however imperfect in themselves do not make the world imperfect But chiefly because those monsters are the consequences of the communication which is between the imagination of the Mother and the fruit she bears in her Womb and that this communication is very wisely establisht for the formation or increasing of the Child God did well foresee that this communication would sometimes cause some disorder but seeing it would be of an infinitely greater use towards the accomplishment of his work than this small disorder he ought not to have alter'd his desing 'T is true that God could have remedied it by establishing for these particular cases some new Laws of motion But God doth not multiply his will thus it is a point of his greatness and his wisdom to act always by the most simple ways and to make use of a very small number of Natural Laws to produce a very great number of admirable works Neither do I believe that we ought always to imagin that God hath other ways to produce his work as simple and perfect as those of whom he hath made use whereby he could make it more perfect than it is and such as we would have it to be for this perhaps may not be 'T is likely that God acts in the manner the most worthy of him that may be I mean that his work is as perfect as it can be by relation to the methods which he uses to produce it and if we imagin that we discover some faults in it besides our natural disposition to be frequently mistaken it may proceed from the simplicity of the means of which he hath made use to form this work and from the union which all bodies have with one another Could you imagin Erastus that God though all wise and all mighty cannot fill intirely with small round balls the least space that we can determine Yet if you think on it seriously you will easily find that this cannot be done and that the balls touching one another and leavinga triangular space there must be something besides balls to fill it But from whence proceeds this impossibility 't is not from any want of wisdom nor power in the cause but from the relation which bodies have with one another There is such a Concatenation in all the parts which make up the world that we have some reason to believe that perhaps it impylteh contradiction that man should be more perfect than he is by relation to the bodies that surround him and that perhaps it is not possible for him to have wings and be at the same time as well composed as he is by relation to the wants of this present Life And thus Erastus as you must not think that God ought to have abandon'd his design of forming men by the usual way of generation because men seem to be imperfect and monsters are sometimes generated that way So you ought not to imagin that God foreseeing the sin of man ought to have taken another design tho he had not even repair'd the disorder of nature by a way as worthy of his wisdom as is the incarnation of his Son Erast I confess Theodorus that what you say is very reasonable and that those want both strength and firmness of judgment who abandon evident truths when some difficulties which they cannot solve are offer'd to them tho' those difficulties have no other ground than the