effect of any politick Confederacy between him and them but the effect of Gods Power Light and Love so that it should be a great confirmation to our Faith to consider that those multitudes believed by the wonderfull testimony and work of the Holy Ghost upon the Disciples when Christ had been crucified in despight who yet believed not before but were his Crucifiers It was not so hard nor honourable an act to believe in him when he went about working Miracles and seemed in a possibility to restore their temporal Kingdom as to believe in him after he had been crucified among Malefactors He therefore that could after this by the Spirit and Miracles bring so many thousands to believe did shew that he was alive himself and in full power 3. And that the Apostles were mean unlearned men is a great confirmation to our Faith For now it is apparent that they had their abilities wisdom and successes from the Spirit and Power of God But if they had been Philosophers or cunning men it might have been more suspected to be a laid contrivance between Christ and them Indeed for all his Miracles they began to be in doubt of him themselves when he was dead and buryed till they saw him risen again and had the Spirit came upon them and this last undenyable evidence and this heavenly insuperable Call and Conviction was it which miraculously setled them in the Faith 4. And that Saviour who came not to make us Worldlings but to save us from this present evil World and to cure our esteem and love of worldly things did think it meetest both to appear in the form of a poor man himself and to choose Disciples of the like condition and not to choose the worldly wise and great and honourable to be the first attesters of his miracles or preachers of his Gospel Though he had some that were of place and quality in the World as Nicodemus Joseph Cornelius Sergius Paulus c. yet his Power needed not such Instruments As he would not teach us to magnifie worldly Pomp nor value things by outward appearance as the deluded dreaming world doth so he would shew us that he needeth not Kings nor Philosophers by worldly power or wisdom to set up his Kingdom He giveth power but he receiveth none He setteth up Kings and by him they reign but they set not up him nor doth he reign by any of them Nor will he be beholden to great men or learned men for their help to promote his cause and interest in the World The largeness of his mercy indeed extendeth to Kings and all in Authority as well as to the poor and if they will not reject it nor break his bonds but kiss the Son before his wrath break forth against them they may be saved as well as others Psal 2.1 2 9 10. 1 Tim. 2.1 2. But he will not use them in the first setting up of his Church in the World lest men should think that it was set up by the Learning Policy or Power of man 1 Cor. 1.26 27 28 29. and 2.5 6 7 10 13. 13.19 c. And therefore he would not be voted one of the Gods by Tyberius or Adrians Senate nor accept of the worship of Alexander Sevâ—rus who in his Lararium worshipped him as one of his Demi-gods nor receive any such beggarly Deity from man but when Constantine acknowledged him as God indeed he accepted his acknowledgement Those unlearned men whom he used were made wiser in an hour by the Holy Ghost than all the Philosophers in the World And those mean contemned persons overcame the Learning and Power of the World and not by Arms as Mahomet but against Arms and Arguments wit and rage by the Spirit alone they subdued the greatest powers to their Lord. Obj. XIV But it doth sapere scenam sound like a Poetical fiction that God should satisfie his own Justice and Christ should die instead of our being damned and this to appease the wrath of God as if God were angry and delighted in the blood or sufferings of the innocent Answ Ignorance is the great cause of unbelief This objection cometh from many errours and false conceits about the things of which it speaketh 1. If the word Satisfaction offend you use only the Scripture-words that Christ was a Sacrifice an Atonement a Propitiation a Price c. And if this be incredible how came it to pass that sacrificing was the custom of all the world Doth not this objection as much militate against this was God angry or was he delighted in the bloud and sufferings of harmless sheep and other cattel and must these either satisfie him or appease his wrath What think you should be the cause that sacrificing was thus commonly used in all ages through all the earth if it savoured but of poetical fiction 2. God hath no such thing as a passion of anger to be appeased nor is he at all delighted in the bloud or sufferings of the worst much less of the innocent nor doth he sell his mercy for bloud nor is his satisfaction any reparation of any loss of his which he receiveth from another But 1. Do you understand what Government is and what Divine Government is and what is the end of it even the pleasing of the will of God in the demonstrations of his own perfections if you do you will know that it was necessary that God's penal Laws should not be broken by a rebel world without being executed on them according to their true intent and meaning or without such an equivalent demonstration of his Justice as might vindicate the Law and Law-giver from contempt and the imputation of ignorance or levity and might attain the ends of Government as much as if all sinners had suffered themselves And this is it that we mean by a Sacrifice Ransom or Satisfaction Shall God be a Governour and have no Laws or shall he have Laws that have no penalties or shall he set up a lying scar-crow to frighten sinners by deceit and have Laws which are never meant for execution Are any of these becoming God Or shall he let the Devil go for true who told Eve at first You shall not die and let the world sin on with boldness and laugh at his Laws and say God did but frighten us with a few words which he never intended to fulfill or should God have damned all the world according to their desert If none of all this be credible to you then certainly nothing should be more credible than that his wisdom hath found out some way to exercise pardoning saving mercy without any injury to his governing justice and truth and without exposing his Laws and himself to the contempt of sinners or emboldening them in their sins even a way which shall vindicate his honour and attain his ends of government as well as if we had been all punished with death and hell and yet may save us with the great
all which we are seeking after For what any Cause doth by a power received from a higher Cause and consequently ordered by it that is done principally by that first or highest Cause And if God had made the world by an Angel or Intelligence it would have been nevertheless his Creature nor any thing the less to his honour than if he had made it by himself alone § 11. The summ of all is that There is certainly a first uncaused independent Cause of Man and all things else besides that Cause CHAP. V. What this Cause is in it self That it is God § 1. THe first Cause is known to us imperfectly and by the effects Man is so conscious of his ignorance herein and of the perplexities and diversities of opinions which follow thereupon and of the necessity of beginning downward at the effects and rising upward in his enquiry that I need not prove this Proposition to any man § 2. Though God or the first Cause is to be searched after in all his works yet chiefly in the chiefest of them within our reach which is Man himself If any shall say that the Sun and other creatures are more excellent than Man and therefore God or the first Cause is to be searched after rather in them and his Attributes denominated from them I answer There is no doubt but secundum quid the Sun is a nobler Creature than Man But what it is simpliciter we cannot tell unless we knew it better The highest exellencies known to man in the Sun is the Potentia Motiva Illuminativa Calefactiva Motion Light and Heat with their effects do tell us what we know of it That which we are conscious of in Man is Posse Scire Velle Power Intellection and Will with their Perfections which are an higher excellency than Motion Light and Heat § 3. He that giveth Being to all else that is must needs be the first Being formally or eminently Himself Entity must needs be in the noblest sense or sort in the Primum Ens the original of Being rather than in any derived Being whatsoever For it cannot give better than it hath so that Ens or I am is his first Name § 4. He that hath made Substances more noble than Accidents is Himself a Substance either formally or eminently and a Living Substance yea Life it self Once for all by Eminently I mean somewhat more excellent or transcendent which yet Man hath no better Name for or fitter Notion of God is thus a Substance Life transcendently if not formally § 5. He that hath made Intelligences or Spirits or Minds more noble and excellent than Bodies is himself a Mind Intelligence or Spirit either formally or transcendently and eminently We find that corporeal gross and dense Beings are most dull and passive and have least of excellency The Body of it self in comparison of the Mind is a dull and dirty clod Though we have no adequate conception of a Spirit we know not onely Negatively that it containeth a freedom from the baseness and inconveniences of corporeity but also we know by its essential acts that positively it is a pure active Life Intelligence and Will and therefore a more excellent sort of Being than things meerly corporeal which have no such action So that we have found as to his Being that the first Cause is Ens Substantia Vita Spiritus § 6. There must needs be in the first Cause an Esse Posse Operari If there were no Operation there were no Causation If there were no Power there could be no Operation and if there were no Being there could be no Power Not that these are things so various as to make a composition in the first Cause but they are transcendently in it without division and imperfection by a formal or virtual distinction § 7. Seeing the noblest Creatures known to us are Minds that have a Posse Scire Velle active executive Power with an Vnderstanding to guide it and a Will to command it God hath either formally or eminently and transcendently such a Power Intellect and Will which is his Essence For nothing is more certain than that no Cause can give more than it had to give If the first Cause had not Power Understanding and Will either formally or eminently in a higher and nobler kind he could not have endowed all mankind with what he had not 1. That the first Cause is most powerful is evident by his works he that gave Man his measure of power and much more to many other creatures hath himself much more than any of them He that made this marvellous frame of all the Orbs and causeth and continueth their being and their constant rapid motion is incomprehensibly potent Whatsoever Power there is in all the Creatures visible and invisible set together there must be more or as much in their first Cause alone because nothing can give more Power than it hath 2. His works also prove that the first Cause is an Vnderstanding for the admirable composure order nature motions variety and usefulness of all his Creatures do declare it He that hath given Vnderstanding to Man hath formally or eminently more himself than all men and all his creatures have If Intellection were not an excellency above meer natural or bruitish motion Man were not better than the inanimates or bruites but if it be the Giver of it cannot want it Not that his Intellection is univocally the same thing with ours But it is something incomparably more noble which expresseth it self in humane Intellection as its Image and is seen by us in this Glass and can be expressed by us no better than by this name 3. And as it is a nobler nature which acteth by Volition or Free-will than that which hath no Will at all and so no voluntary choice and complacency so the first Cause which hath given this noble faculty to Man hath certainly himself though not a Will univocally the same with ours yet a Will of a transcendent excellency which expresseth it self in ours as its Image and must be something better and greater but cannot be lower or less And though such Indetermination as proceedeth from imperfection and consequently such Liberty belongeth not to the first Cause which hath no defects yet all that Liberty which belongeth to perfection must undoubtedly belong to Him He that did what we see hath done it willingly and freely § 8. What ever the first Cause is it must needs be in absolute Perfection It must needs have in it more than the whole world besides because it giveth all that to the whole Creation which it hath received and is An imperfect cause could never have made such a world as we behold and partly know And were the first Cause imperfect there would be no perfection in being § 9. The perfection of the first Cause in Being requireth that it be Eternal without Beginning or End of duration Nothing in the world can
be more evident to reason than that something must be Eternal without beginning nothing being more evident than that Nothing hath no power no action no effects and so can make nothing And therefore if ever there had been a time when Nothing was Nothing could ever have been imagine that there were Nothing now and it is certain there never would be any thing Obj. Something may oriri de novo without any Cause as well as God be eternally without any Cause Answ It s impossible For he that is eternally hath all perfection eternally in himself and needeth no Cause being still in being and being the Cause of Causes But Nothing hath no perfection or being and therefore needeth an Omnipotent Cause to give it a being Obj. If the world may be created of nothing materially it may be what it is without any thing efficiently Answ Impossible Pre-existent matter is not necessary to the first created matter for Matter may be caused of Nothing by an Omnipotent Efficient as well as the wonderful frame of all things be made out of Matter But without an Efficient no Being can arise de novo So that it is most evident seeing any thing now is there hath been something eternally And if something it must needs be the first Cause which is chief in excellency and first in order of production and therefore of existence § 10. The first Cause must needs be independent in being perfections and operations and so be absolutely self-sufficient For it were not the first if there were any before it and being caused by nothing else it was eternally sufficient in and for it self otherwise that which it were beholden to would have the place of a Cause to it And if it caused not all or needed the help of any other it is not absolutely the first Cause to all others nor perfect in it self That which could be eternally without a cause and it self cause all things is self-sufficient and independent § 11. The first Cause must needs be free from all imperfection of Corporeity or Materiality Composition Passibility corruptibility Mutability and Mortality and all other imperfections of defendent beings There is such a thing as a Living Principle and a pure spiritual Nature in the created world and the Maker of it must be life and Spirit in a higher purer sense than it and therefore must be free from all its imperfections and having no cause hath no defect and having no beginning can have no end All this Reason doth certainly apprehend § 12. This perfect first Cause must be Immense or Infinite in Being Not by corporeal extension as if God as a Body were in a place and being more extensive than all place were called Immense But in the perfect Essence of an eternall Life and Spirit and Mind he is every where without Locality and all things live and move and be in him The thought of space is but a Metaphorical help to our conception of his Immensity § 13. Therefore he must needs be Omnipresent Not by extension quantitative but in a sort transcendent and more excellent according to the transcendent way of his Existence For if we must have conceived of him as no better than a Body and of Magnitude as an Excellency we might well have concluded that he hath made nothing greater than himself Nemo dat quod non habet and therefore he must be more extensive than all the world and consequently absent from no part of it Much more when his Being which surpasseth corporeity directeth us to acknowledge a more noble kind of Omnipresence than Extensive § 14. Therefore is he Incomprehensible as to humane understanding or any other created intellect Of our own incomprehension experience sufficiently convinceth us here and Reason evinceth the same of all created Intellects for the less cannot comprehend the greater and between finite and infinite there is no proportion We know nothing purely-intelligible so easily and certainly as that God is But there is nothing that we are so far from comprehending As we see nothing more easily and certainly than the Sun which yet we see not with a comprehensive but a partial and defective sight § 15. This Infinite Being can be but One. For if there were many they could not be Infinite and so indeed there would be none nor would there be any one first Cause of all things For if one caused one part of the World and another another part no one were the first Cause of all And if they joyned in causing all together they would all conjunctly make but one first cause and each one several be but part of the Cause If there be no one that is sufficient to make and govern all the World there is no perfect Being nor no God but the effect sheweth the sufficiency and the unity of the World the Orbs being one frame the unity of the first cause Perfection consisteth more in the unity of one all sufficient Being than in a voluntary concurrence of many Beings The most learned Heathens who thought there were many to be named Gods did mean but subordinate particular Gods that were under the one universal God whom the Stoicks and Academicks took to be the universal Soul and the subordinate Gods the Souls of the particular Orbs and Planets § 16. The Power of this God must needs be Omnipotency He that hath given so great Power to the creatures as is exercised by them especially the Sun and fixed Stars in their several Vortices or Orbs and he that could make such a World of nothing and uphold the being and maintain the order and cause and continue the rapid motions of all the Vortices or Orbs which are to us innumerable and each of incomprehensible excellency and magnitude is certainly to be accounted no less than Omnipotent By his Omnipotency I mean that by which in it self considered in primo instanti he can do all things possible that is which belong not to Impotency but to Power And by which in secundo instanti he can do all things which his Infinite Wisdom judgeth congruous and meet to be done And in tertio instanti can do all that he will do and are pleasing to him § 17. The understanding of the first Cause must needs be Omniscient and infinite Wisdom 1. He that hath given so much wisdom to such a Worm as Man must have more than all the men in the World Whatever knowledge is in the whole Creation being given by Him doth prove that formally or eminently he hath more Were it all contracted into one Intelligence it must be less than His that caused it He hath not given more wisdom than he had to give nor so much as he had or is himself For if he should make any thing equal to Himself there would be two Infinites and there would be a perfect self-sufficient being which yet had lately no sufficiency or being and there would be a being independent in facto
unity and concord and harmony of the Church consisteth 1. In their Universal Adoption or One Relation to God as their reconciled Father in Christ 2. In the one Relation they have all to Christ their Head 3. In the unity of the Spirit which dwelleth and worketh in them all 4. In their One Relation to the Body or Church of Christ as its members 5. In the unity of that Faith which stateth them in these relations 6. In the unity of the Baptismal Covenant which initiateth them 7. In the unity of the Gospel in the Essentials which is the common rule of their faith and life and the ground of their hope and comfort 8. In the bond of mutual brotherly love 9. In the concord of a holy life 10. In the unity of the End which they all intend and shall at last attain the pleasing of God and the heavenly glory § 24. The Means of this Unity and Concord are 1. All as aforesaid which promote their holiness From holiness is the centring of all hearts in God and it destroyeth that dividing Selfishness which maketh men have as many ends as they are persons 2. The learning and ability of the Pastors to hold the flocks together by the force of truth and to stop the mouthes of cavilling dividers and seducers When no gain-sayers are able to stand before the evidence of that truth which they demonstrate 3. The holy lives of Pastors which keep up the love of truth and them in the peoples hearts 4. By the paternal government of the Pastors ruling them not by force but willingly and in fatherly love and a loving familiar converse with them 5. By the just execution of Discipline on the impenitent that the godly may see that wickedness is disowned 6 By the concord of the Pastors among themselves and the prudent use of Synods or Councils to that end 7. By the humble and submissive respect of the people to their Pastors 8 By keeping up the interest and authority of the most ancient and experienced of the flock over the young and unexperienced who are the common causes of division 9. By the Pastors avoiding all temptations to worldliness and pride that they tear not the Church by striving who shall be the greatest or have the preeminence 10. By godly Magistrates keeping their power in their own hand and using it to rebuke intollerable false Teachers and to encourage the peaceable and restrain the railing and violence of Pastors and parties against each other and by impartial keeping the Church's peace § 25. Hence the causes of Church-divisions are discernable 1. The encrease of ungodliness and sin which is as fire in the thatch and possesseth all men with dividing principles practices and ends 2. The disability of Pastors over-topt in parts by every Sectary 3. The ungodliness of the Pastors which looseneth the hearts of the people from them 4. The strangeness violence or hurtfulness of the Pastors 5. The encouragement and tolleration of all the most flagitious and impenitent in undisciplin'd Churches which frighteneth men out of the Church as from a ruinous house and tempteth them to an unwarrantable separation because the Pastors will not make a necessary and regular separation 6. The discord of the Bishops among themselves 7. The peoples ignorance of the Pastoral power and their own duty 8. An unruly fierce censorious spirit in many of the young and unexperienced of the flock 9. The Pastors striving who shall be the greatest and seeking great things in the world or popular applause and admiration 10. The Magistrates either permitting the endeavours of dividing Teachers in palpable cases or suffering self-seeking Pastors or people to disturb the Church § 26. But next to common ungodliness the great causes of the most ruinating Church-divisions are 1. Wars and dissentions among Princes and States and civil factions in Kingdoms whereby the Clergy are drawn or forced to engage themselves on one side or other and then the prevailing side stigmatizeth those as scandalous who were not for them and think themselves engaged by their interest to extirpate them 2. Mistaking the just terms of union and communion and setting up a false centre as that which all men must unite in Thus have the Roman party divided themselves from the Greeks and Protestants and made the greatest schism in the Church that ever was made in it 1. By setting up a false usurping constitutive Head the Roman Bishop and pretending that none are members of the Church who are not his subjects and so condemning the far greatest part of the Catholick Church 2 By imposing an Oath and divers gross corruptions in Doctrine Discipline and Worship upon all that will be in their communion and condemning those that receive them not and so departing from the Scripture-sufficiency These two usurpations are the grand dividers § 27. All Hereticks also who speak perverse things against Christianity to draw away Disciples after them or Schismaticks who unwarrantably separate from those Churches in which they ought to abide that they may gather new congregations after their own mind are the immediate adversaries of Church-union and concord § 28. So are the importune and virulent Disputations of contentious Wits about unnecessary things or matters of faction and self-interest § 29. Especially when the Magistrate lendeth his sword to one party of the contenders to suppress or be revenged on the rest and to dispute with arguments of steel § 30. The well-ordered Councils of Bishops or Pastors of several Churches assembled together have been justly esteemed a convenient means of maintaining the concord and peace of Christians and a fit remedy for the cure of heresies corruptions and divisions And when the cause requireth it those councils should consist of as many as can conveniently meet even from the most distant Churches which can send their Bishops without incurring greater hurt or discommodity than their presence will countervail in doing good And therefore the councils called General in the Dominions of the Christian Roman Emperours were commendable and very profitable to the Church when rightly used But whereas the Pope doth argue that he is the constitutive Head of the whole catholick Church throughout the world because his Predecessors did oft preside in those councils it is most evident to any one who will make a faithful search into the History of them that those councils were so far from representing all the Churches in the world that they were constituted only of the Churches or Subjects of the Roman Empire and those that having formerly been parts of the Empire continued that way of communion when they fell into the hands of conquerors their conquerors being commonly Pagans Infidels or Arrian Hereticks I except only now and then two or three or an inconsiderable number of neighbour Bishops There were none of the Representatives of the Churches in all the other parts of the world as I have proved in my Disputation with Mr. Johnson
fiery nature of the semen of the Sun and of the calor naturalis telluris are generally the same and by their agreeableness do meet in co-operation for generation 8. Herein all three as conjunct are the cause of Life as Life the Sun the seed and the calor telluris communicating conjunctly what in their natures they all contain that is an active nature having a power by motion light and heat to cause vegetation and its conjunct effects But the calor motus solis and the calor telluris are but universal causes of life as life but the virtus seminalis is both a cause of life in genere and a specifying cause of this or that sort of Plants in specie the reason why e. g. an Oak an Elm a Rose-tree and every plant is what it is in specie being to be fetch'd from the seed alone and the Creator's will 9. Though the seed be the chief or only specifying cause why this is Adeantum and that Betonica and that Calendula c. yet the Sun and Earth the universal causes do contribute much more to the life as life than the seed it self 10. This fiery or solar active nature is so pure and above the full knowledge of mortals that we have no certainty at all whether in all this generative influx it communicate to vegetatives from it self a pre-existent matter and so draw it back to it self again by circulation or whether it do only by the substantial contact of its active streams cherish and actuate and perfect the substance which it findeth in semine materiâ passivâ or whether per influxum virtutis it operate only by that which is commonly called Quality without any communication or contact of substance 11. In all this operation of the Solar or fiery nature in generation it is quid medium between the passive matter and the animal nature and is plainly an image of the animal nature and its operations so like it that it hath tempted many to ascribe all animal operations only to the Solar or fiery nature and hath caused wise men to doubt whether this nature be to be numbred with things corporeal or incorporeal and to place it between both as participating in several respects of both 12. If the sensitive nature be really above or specifically different from the fiery we may in what is said conjecture much at the order of the generation of things sensitive viz. by a three-fold cause co-operating one specifying and two universal and cherishing The specifying is the virtus seminalis maris foeminae conjunct and of neither alone the same God which bless'd the single seed of a plant with the gift of multiplication bless'd only the conjunct seeds of male and female animals with that gift The superiour universal cause is either some anima universalis ejusdem naturae or God immediately By an Anima universalis I mean not an anima totius mundi but of that superiour vortex or part which this earth belongs to Either this is the Sun or some invisible soul If it be the Sun it is not by its simple fiery nature before mentioned because sensation seemeth to be somewhat totâ specie different from motion light and heat and then it must prove that the Sun is compound and hath a superiour form and nature which either formaliter or eminenter is sensitive and that by this it is that it animateth inferiour sensitives But of this we mortals have no certainty It seemeth very improbable that a worm or flie should have a nature superiour to any that the Sun hath but probabilities are not certainties there are things highest and things lowest in their several kinds But remember that if it should be the Sun it is by that nature superiour to fire by which it doth it The maternal universal Cause of the sensitive life is the Mother Whether the spirits of a sensitive Creature have more in them than the spirits of a Plant and do more by nutrition than cause Vegetation whether they nourish sensitive Life as such is doubtfull But if they do so they be but an universal and not a specifying Cause that is the Cause of Life as Life but not of the vita bovis equi canis felis aquilae qua talis And therefore if the late-discovered trick of passing all the blood of one animal into another be prosecuted to the utmost tryal possibly it may do much to the advantage of Life and Sense as such but never to the alteration of the species to turn a Dog into a Swine or any other sort of Animal 13. Whether the sensitive nature be most refined-corporeal or totally incorporeal is past the reach of man to be assured of 14. The foresaid difficulty is greater here than in the Vegetative Generation viz. Whether in the multiplication of sensitive souls there be an addition of substance communicated from the Universal Causes or a greater quantity or degree of matter physical or metaphysical propagated and produced into existence by generation than there was before It seemeth hard to say that a pair of Animals in Noahs Ark had as much matter or substance in their souls as the millions since proceeding from them But whether such souls have quantitive degrees or by what terms of gradation the souls of millions are distinct from one besides the number or whether God in the blessing of multiplication hath enabled them to increase the quantity of matter which shall serve for so many more forms are things which we cannot fully understand 15. In the like manner we may rise up and conceive of the Generation of Mankind We are sure that he hath an intelligent nature much nobler than the sensitive And we know that homo generat hominem And we know that in his Generation there is an Vniversal Cause and a specifying Cause for though there be but one species of men yet there are more of Intelligences and that one may have an Vniversal Cause producing that and other effects and an Univocal special Cause We know that because he is Generated the specifying Cause is the fecundity or propagating power of the Parent generating a separable seed which seed in conjunction as aforesaid suppositis supponendis is semen hominis and is man seminally and virtually but not actually that is Hath both Passive and Active Power and virtue by reception of the influx of the universal Cause to become a man The universal inferior or feminine Cause is the Mothers Body and Soul or the whole Mother in whom the Infant is generated and cherished I call it Vniversal For it is only the semen that specifieth And therefore by a false or bruitish semen a woman may produce a Monster The Vniversal Paternal Cause is certainly GOD ut prima and it is probable also ut sola For he made Mans Soul at first by that immediate communication which is called Breathing it into him And the Intellectual nature though specified into Angels and Men is the
esse which was dependent in fieri which are Contradictions 2. The effects in the admirable frame and nature and motions of the Creation declare that the Creator is infinitely wise The smallest insect is so curiously made and so admirably fitted and instructed to its proper end and uses The smallest Plants in wonderfull variety of shapes and colours and smells and qualities uses and operations and beautifull flowers so marvellously constituted and animated by an unseen form and propagated by unsearchable seminal vertue The smallest Birds and Beasts and creeping things so adorned in their kinds and so admirably furnished for their proper ends especially the propagation of their species in love and sagacity and diligence to their young by instinct equaling in those particulars the reasonable creature The admirable composure of all the parts of the body of Man and of the vilest Beast and Vermine The quality and operation of all the Organs humours and spirits The operations of the Minde of man and the constitution of Societies and over-ruling all the matters of the World with innumerable instances in the creature do all concurr to proclaim that man as mad as madness can possibly make him in that particular who thinketh that any lower cause than incomprehensible wisdom did principally produce all this And that by any bruitish or natural motion or confluence of Atomes or any other matter it could be thus ordered continued and maintained without the infinite wisdome and power of a first Cause superiour to meer natural matter and motion What then should we say if we had a sight into the inwards of all the Earth of the nature and cause of Minerals and of the forms of all things If we saw the reason of the motions of the Seas and all other appearances of Nature which are now beyond our reach Yea if we had a sight of all the Orbs both fixed Starrs and Planets and of their matter and form and order and relation to each other and their communications and influences on each other and the cause of all their wonderous motions If we saw not only the nature of the Elements especially the active Element Fire but also the constitution magnitude and use of all those thousand Suns and lesser Worlds which constitute the universal World And if they be inhabited if we knew the Inhabitants of each Did we know all the Intelligences blessed Angels and holy Spirits which possess the nobler parts of Nature and the unhappy degenerate Spirits that have departed from light and joy into darkness and horrour by departing from God yea if we could see all these comprehensively at one view what thoughts should we have of the wisdom of the Creator And what should we think of the Atheist that denyeth it We should think Bedlam too honourable a place for that man that could believe or durst say that any accidental motion of subtile matter or fortuitous concourse of Atomes or any thing below a Wisdom and Power infinitely transcending all that with Man is called by that name was the first Cause and is the chief continuer of such an incomprehensible frame § 18. The first Cause must needs be infinitely Good By Goodness I mean all essential Excellency which is known to us by its fruits and appearances in the Creature which as it hath a Goodness natural and moral so is it the Index of that transcendent Goodness which is the first cause of both This goodness is incomparably beyond that which consisteth in a usefulness to the creatures good or Goodness of Benignity as relative to Man And it is known better by the meer name as expressing that which Nature hath an intrinsick sense and notion of than by definitions As sensible qualities light colour sound odour sweet bitter c. are known by the name best which lead to the sensitive memory which informeth the Intellect what they are As the mention of things sensible entereth the definition of sense and the mention of sense doth enter the definition of things sensible and yet the object is in order of nature before the act And as Truth must enter the definition of Intellection and Intellection the definition of Truth and yet Truth is in order before Intellection and contemporary with the Intellect so is it between Goodness and the Will But if we speak of uncreated Good and of a created Will then Good is infinitely antecedent to that Will But the Will which is created hath a nature suited to it and so the notion of Excellency and Goodness is naturally in our estimative faculty and the relish of it or complacency in it is naturally in the Will so far as it is not corrupted and depraved As if I knew a man that had the wisdom and virtue of an Angel my estimation calleth him Excellent and Good and my Will doth complacentially cleave to him though I should never look to be the better for him my self or if I onely heard of him and never saw him or were personally beholden to him That God is thus infinitely Excellent and Good the Goodness of his Creatures proveth for all the goodness that is in Men and Angels Earth and Heaven proceedeth from him If there be any Natural Goodness in the whole Creation there must be more in the Creator If there be any Moral Goodness in Men and Angels there must be more in eminency in him For he can make nothing better than himself nor give to creatures what he hath not § 19. The Goodness of the first Being consisting in this infinite Perfection or Excellency containeth his Happiness his Holiness and his Love or Benignity § 20. The HAPPINESS of the first Being consisteth 1. In his BEING HIMSELF 2. In his KNOWING HIMSELF 3. In his LOVING and ENJOYING HIMSELF The most perfect Being must needs be the most Happy and that in Being what he is his own Perfection being his Happiness And as Knowledge in the Creature is both his Perfection and Delight so the transcendent Omniscience of the Creator must needs be both part of his Perfection as distinguished by our narrow minds and such felicity as may be called Eminently his Delight though what God's Delight is we know not formally And as Love or Complacency is the perfective operation of the Will and so of the Humane Nature in Man and is his highest final and enjoying acts of which all Goodness is the object so there must be something in the Perfection of the first Cause though not formally the same with Love in Man yet eminently so called as knowable to us by no other name And this complacency must needs be principally in Himself because He himself is the Infinite and onely Primitive Good and as there was primitively no Good but Himself to Love so now there is no Good but derived from Him and dependent on Him And as his Creature of which anon is obliged to love Him most so he must needs be most amiable to Himself Self-love and self-esteem in
It is not one part of the Sun that moveth and another which illuminateth and another which heateth But the whole Sun if it be wholly Fire or aethereal matter doth move the whole illuminateth and the whole doth heat And Motion Light and Heat are not Qualities inherent in it But Motion Illumination and Calefaction are Acts flowing immediately from its Essence as containing the faculties or powers of such acts He that could write a perfect method of Physicks and Morality would shew us Trinity in Unity through all its parts from first to last But as the Veins Arteries and Nerves the Vessels of the Natural Vital and Animal humours and spirits are easily discernable in their trunks and greater branches but not so when they are minute and multiplied into thousands so is it in this Method But I must desire the Reader to observe that though I here explain this Trinity of Active Principles in the Divine Essence which is so evident to Natural Reason it self as to be past all controversie Yet whether indeed the Trinity of Hypostases or Persons which is part of the Christian Faith be not somewhat distinct from this is a question which here I am not to meddle with till I come to the second part of the Treatise Nor is it my purpose to deny it but only to prepare for the better understanding of it Of which more shall there afterward be said § 32. And thus all Creatures and especially our selves declare that there is a first Being and Cause of them all who is a Substance Life a Spirit or Minde an Active Power Vnderstanding and Will perfect eternall independent and self-sufficient not compounded not passible not mutable corruptible or mortall Immense Omnipresent Incomprehensible only One Omnipotent Omniscient and most Good most Happy in Being Himself in Knowing himself and enjoying him most Holy transcending all the Creatures of a Perfect Will the Fountain of all Morall Good Love or Benigne having a Trinity of essential Transcendent Principles in unity of Essence which have made their adumbration or appearance on the World whereof though he be not the constitutive form or Soul He is to it much more the first Efficient Dirigent and ultimate final Cause of all That is THERE IS A GOD. CHAP. VI. Of GOD as RELATED to his Creatures especially to Man And I. as his OWNER PAssing by all that is doubtfull and controverted among men truly Rational and taking before me only that which is certain undenyable and clear and wherein my own Soul is past all doubt I shall proceed in the same method secundum ordinem cognoscendi non essendi The word GOD doth not only signifie all that I have been proving viz. The perfect nature of the first Cause but also his Relations to us his Creatures And therefore till I have opened and proved those Relations I have done but part of my work to prove that THERE IS A GOD. § 1. GOD having produced Man and all the World by his Power Vnderstanding and Will is by immediate resultancy Related to him as his CREATOR Though he made his Body of pre-existent Matter yet was that Matter made of nothing and therefore God is properly Mans CREATOR and not his Fabricator only And a CREATURE is a Relation which inferreth the Correlate a CREATOR as a Son doth a Father This therefore is Gods first grand Relation unto Man which hath no cause to produce it but his actual Creation which is its fundamentum § 2. This Grand prime Relation inferreth a Trinity of Grand Relations viz. That God is our OWNER our RVLER and our BENEFACTOR of which we are now to speak in order That these Three are justly distinguished from each other is past doubt to all that understand what is meant by the terms An Owner as such is not a Ruler or Benefactor a Ruler as such is not an Owner or a Benefactor A Benefactor as such is neither an Owner nor a Ruler And the enumeration is sufficient All humane affairs or actions of converse and society belong to Man in one of these three Relations or such as are subordinate to them and meer dependents on them or compounded of them They are in some respect the Genera and in some as it were the Elements of all other Relations And from the manner of men they are applyed to God with as much propriety of speech as any terms that man can use concerning him And he that could draw a true scheme or method of the Body of Morality or Theology for all is one with me would reduce all the dealings of God with Man which are subsequent to the fundamental Act of Creation to these three Relations and accordingly distinguish of them all Yet in the Mixt acts as most are such distinguishing only of the compounding Elements I mean the interest of these three Relations as making up the several acts § 3. A full Owner or Proprietor is called Dominus in the strictest sense and is one that hath a Jus possidendi disponendi utendi a right of having or possessing disposing and using without any copartner or superior Proprietor to restrain him The meaning is better known by the bare terms of denomination through common use than by definition We know what it meaneth when a man saith of any thing It is mine own There are defective half-proprieties of Co-partners and subordinate Proprietors which belong not to our present case The word Dominus Dominuim is sometime taken laxely as comprehending both Propriety and Rule and sometime improperly for Government or Command it self But among Lawyers it is most commonly taken properly and strictly for an OWNER as such But lest any be contentious about the use of the word I here put instead of it the word Owner and Proprietor as being more free from ambiguity § 4. GOD is jure Creationis Conservationis the most absolute Owner or Proprietor of Man and the whole Creation It is not possible that there should be a more full and certain title to propriety than Creation and total conservation is He that giveth the World all its Being and that of nothing and continueth that being and was beholden to no pre-existent matter nor to any co-ordinate concause nor dependent on any superiour cause in his causation but is himself the first independent efficient total cause of being and well-being and all the means thereto must needs be the absolute Owner of all without the least limitation or exception It is not the supereminency of Gods nature excelling all created beings that is the foundation of this his Propriety in the creature For Excellency is no title to Propriety And yet he that is unicus in capacitate possidendi that is so transcendently excellent as to have no Copartner in a claim might by Occupation be sole Proprietor in that kinde of Propriety secundum quid which Man is capable of Because there is no other whom he can be said to wrong But GOD hath a
the flames of Troy that ript up his own Mother that he might see the place where once he lay Did Caligula think so Did Commodus Caracalla Heliogabalus think so Did the Spaniards think so by the Indians who are said by their own Writers to have murdered in forty two years space no less than fifty millions of them Did King Philip think so who put his own Son and Heir to death by the Inquisition besides so many thousands more in Spain and the Low Countreys by that and other wayes How full of such bloody instances is the World If it were a Tyrants interest that kept him under some moderation to the people of his own Dominions it might yet possibly leave him a bloody destroyer of other Nations in his Conquests The World hath not wanted men that think the lives of many thousands a little sacrifice to a proud design or furious passion and are no more troubled at it than a Pythagorean would be to kill a Bird. It hath had such as Sylla Messala Catiline and the Conquerours of Jerusalem who as Josephus saith crucified so many thousands till they wanted Crosses for men and place for Crosses besides the greater numbers famished Obj. But if Chief Governours be under no Law they are under Covenants by which they are obliged Answ What shall make their Covenants obligatory to their consciences if they be under no government of God The reason why mens Covenants bind them is because they are under the government of God who requireth all men to keep their Covenants and condemneth Covenant-breakers But if God had never commanded Covenant-keeping nor forbad Covenant-breaking they could never be matter of duty or sin So that this Doctrin that God hath made no Laws for man and is not his Governour doth leave all Soveraigns from under the least conscientious restraint from any acts of cruelty or injustice and tendeth to deliver up the world to be a sacrifice to their lusts when it is the government of the universal Soveraign that is their restraint § 9. VI. If God have not the Soveraignty over all the world then no man on earth can have any Governing Power But Princes and Rulers have a Governing Power Therefore the Soveraignty is in God The reason of the major is because Kings can have no power but what they receive from some or other there is no effect without a cause And if they receive it it is either from God or Man as the Original Not from Man for the people themselves have no governing power to use or give as to the government of Commonwealths for their personal power over themselves is of another species and cometh short of this in many respects as else-where I have proved And if it were otherwise yet they have nothing themselves but derivatively from God as is proved before and therefore they themselves must have their power from him from whom they are and have all that they possess But God cannot give that which he hath not himself either formally or eminently Therefore he hath governing power formally or eminently or else no Prince or Man or Angel can have any no more than they can have being or reason without him And though his power be transcendent his exercise of it must be according to the capacity of the subject and therefore morally by Laws and Executions So that as all things else in the creature are derived so is power And as in beings aut Deus aut nihil is an undeniable truth so as to governing power or Soveraignty either it is Primitively Supremely and Transcendently in God or there is none in any Prince or Parents for if they have it not from Him they can have none at all Obj. Governing by Laws is caused by humane impotency because man is not every where present nor of power to effect himself in and by others all the things which he commandeth But were man Omnipresent and Omnipotent as God is he would make all men do well and not command them to do it Therefore it is so in the Government of God Answ It is granted that man is impotent and God Omnipotent and Omnipresent and therefore that God could indeed do as is here intimated even make all men do well and not command it But 1. it is apparent that de facto he doth not so 2. And his wisdom being more eminently to be manifested in the work of Government than his Omnipotency doth shew us partly why he doth not so even because the sapiential way is more suitable to his ends and to the subject Creation did most eminently glorifie or manifest Omnipotency Government doth most eminently glorifie God's Omniscience or Wisdom as our Perfection or Glorification will most eminently manifest and glorifie his Love and Goodness Each Attribute shineth most eminently in its proper work and mans conceits must not confound this perfect order Yet let it be here noted that all this while I meddle not with the controversie of the Liberty of man's will and so whether God's sapiential government by Laws do operate also by necessitation and Physical causation as the natural motions of the Orbs or the artificial motions of an Engine I only argue that whether God thus operate by his Government by secret necessitation or not yet it is most certain that he governeth Morally and useth the Means of Doctrin Laws and Judgments which might consist with Physical necessitating efficacy in all that do obey indeed if God's wisdom and man's freedom of will did inferr nothing to the contrary But if it had been granted that all God's government is by Physical efficacy it would stand good nevertheless that Laws and Judgment are part of the means which he maketh so effectual But yet I shall go further in the next Argument § 10. VII Experience satisfieth all the rational world that there is de facto a course of Duty appointed by God for men which they do not eventually fulfil Therefore there is not only a Moral Government which is effectual but also which is separated from necessitating efficacy They that deny this and plead for Physical Government only must affirm that nothing is any man's Duty but what he actually performeth and that nothing is any man's sin which he doth or omitteth to do that is that there is no sin or moral evil in the world For all that God Physically effecteth is good and they suppose him to have no Law which commandeth any thing but what he Physically effecteth and he will not Physically effect that which he forbiddeth And if there be no such thing as moral evil or sin in the world then no man should fear any or avoid any Let but a man leave any thing undone if it be nourishing his children defending his King loving God or man and he may thence conclude that it never was his duty Let him but do any thing that he hath a mind to if it be killing Father or Mother or his Prince or Friend
knoweth and regardeth all things For can he be either ignorant forgetful or mindless of that which he made and still doth so conserve as to continue a kind of Creation of it His Omnipotent Will which gave it a being doth still continue it should he withdraw his active sustentation it would turn all not only to confusion but to nothing And doth he not know and regard what is continually as in his hand or by continual volition produced or maintained by him He is the universal Cause of all the agency and motion in the world in him we Live Move and Be and can he be ignorant or regardless of what he doth Why will he make maintain and move that which he doth not regard 5. His Relation of Owner proveth his regard all things are his Own 6. And his Relation of a Governour proveth his regard and his actual government of Man and all his actions For he taketh not on him a vain Relation and he that maketh Laws for every person and action doth regard and govern every person and action But so doth God Ergo. § 30. Those who think God doth nothing to all the rest of the world but by those noblest creatures which are next him and that he hath committed the government of all the rest of the world to the Intelligences of the first Order cannot without blindness and contradiction deny that he is still Himself no less the actual Mover and Governour of all than if he used no Officer or Instrument at all For 1. God ceased not himself to be Omnipresent Omniscient Omnipotent or most Benign when he gave that supposed Power to those Instruments 2. He made them and ordered them under Him through plenitude of Goodness delighting to communicate Power and Dignity as well as Being to his Creatures and not through impotency or insufficiency to supply any defect in his own Government and to help him He useth them to honour them and not to dishonour himself He gave away from himself no degree of Perfection nor deprived himself of the smallest part of Honour which he communicateth to them but honoureth himself in the appearance of his Perfections by the said Communications As God can do that by himself without the Creature which he causeth the Creature to do as to move illuminate and beat the lower parts without the Sun as well as with it or any thing which importeth not impotency or contradiction for he ceased not to be omnipotent so that which he doth by any Creature is as truly and fully done by Himself as if there were no created instrument or cause in it For that Creature which is nothing of it self and hath not any Being but in full dependance on its Maker can have no action of it self but in full dependance upon him what ever it doth it doth by him though as to the specifying comparison why this rather than that God hath given men a power with liberty yet the Action as an Action being from the Power which was totally from him is so it self There can be no less of God's agency in any action because he doth it by a Creature than if he did it without though there be more of the Creatures there is no less of his His communication of Power is not by discerption or division and diminution of his own He that knoweth what a Creator and total first Cause is needs no other proof of this Men indeed communicate power to their Officers through their own insufficiency to be their helpers and supply the want of their presence or action but so doth not God Therefore if Angels or Intelligences govern and move all inferiour things they are all governed and moved no less certainly proximately honourably by God himself than if he had never used such a subordinate Agent and that immediatione essentiae virtutis immediately though not so immediately as to use no honourary second cause § 31. Justice is an Attribute of God as GOVERNOVR by which he maketh equal Laws and giveth all their due according to them or judgeth them righteously according to his Laws for the ends of Government As Justice is conceived of in God according to the image in Man which we call the Virtue or Habit of Justice so it is his eternal Nature being nothing else but the perfection of his infinite Wisdom and his Will or Goodness as respecting a Kingdom of Subjects as possible and future For he may so be called JUST that hath no Kingdom because he hath that Virtue which would do Justice if he had a Kingdom But as JUSTICE is taken either for the exercise of righteous Government or for the honourable Relation and Title of one that doth so exercise it that is of an actually Just Governour so formally and denominatively it is an Attribute of God which is not Eternal but subsequent to his Relation of a King or Governour He that is not a Governour is not a just Governour A negatione est secundi adjecti ad negationem est tertii valet argumentum The Law is Norma Officii Judicii He that maketh a Law thereby telleth his Subjects that according to this they must live and according to this they must be judged Indeed the immediate sense of the words of a Law as such is not to be taken as de Eventu but de Debito He that saith Thou shalt not murder saith not Eventually it shall not come to pass that thou shalt not murder but It shall be thy Duty not to do it And he that saith If thou murder thou shalt be put to death doth primarily in the sense of the words themselves mean no more but Death shall be thy due But in that he declareth that he will justly govern according to this Law therefore he meaneth secondarily and consequently that ordinarily he will give to all their due In what cases the Letter and nearest sense of a Law may be dispensed with or the Law-giver reserveth a liberty of dispensation to himself belongeth not to this place to be disputed CHAP. IX II. Of Man's Subjection to God or Relation to him as our Governour § 1. MAn being made thus a Rational free Agent and sociable to be governed and God being his Rightful Governour is immediately related to God as his Subject as to Right and Obligation There is no Soveraign without a Subject Subjection is our Relation to our Governour or else our consent to that Relation In the former sense we take it here A Subject is one that is bound to obey another as his Ruler He that is a Subject by Right and Obligation and yet doth not consent and actually subject himself to his rightful Governour is a Rebel There cannot be greater obligations to subjection imagined by a created understanding than the Rational Creature hath to God § 2. All men are obliged to consent to this subjection and to give up themselves absolutely to the government of God God's absolute propriety in us
if God brought them forth for his own Perfection it would follow that he was before imperfect and consequently not God and that his Perfections are mutable and perishing Therefore at least some other cause of these must be found out And as for the similitudes in the objection I answer 1. That the fructifying of a Tree is an act of Generation and the ends of it are partly the use for food to superiour sensitive Creatures especially man and partly the propagation of its species because it is mortall Fructification is indeed its perfection but that is because it is not made for it self but for another Sic vos non vobis may be written upon all But God is neither mortall needing a propagation of the species nor is he subservient to any other and finally for its use And as for the Soul it made not the matter of its own body but found it made though in the formation of it it might be so efficient as domicilium sibi fabricare But God made all matter of nothing and gave the World whatsoever it is or hath And therefore was Perfect himself before For an imperfect being could never have been the cause of such a frame Therefore he needed no domicilium for himself nor as an imperfect Part a form to concurr to the constitution of a whole But he is the efficient dirigent and final cause of the World and all things but not the constituent or essential for then the Creature and Creator were all one and God debased and the Creature deified But he is to them a supra-essential cause even more than a form and soul while he is a total efficient of all 3. If all that is in the Objection had been proved it would not at all shake the main design of my present discourse which is to prove that God is our Grand Benefactor and Chief Good and that he is mans ultimate end For if the World were his Body and he both its Efficient and its Soul he would be the cause of all its Good and the Cause would be more excellent than the Effect And if our Souls that never made the matter of our Bodies are yet the noblest part of us and far more excellent than the Body much more would God that made or caused all the Matter and Order in the World be more excellent than that World which he effected And as the Soul is not for the Body as its ultimate end though it be the Life of the Body and its great Benefactor but the Body is finally more for the Soul though the Soul need not the Body so much as the Body needeth the Soul and as the Horse is finally for the Rider and not the Rider for the Horse though the Horse needeth his Master more than the Master doth the Horse for the Horses life is preserved by the Master when the Master is but accommodated in his Journey by his Horse Even so though the World need God and he needeth not the World and God giveth being and life to the World which can give nothing at all to him yet the World is finally for God and not God for the World The noblest and first Being is still the End And the generated part of the World which is not formally eternal but doth oriri interire is it that our dispute doth most concern which the Objection doth no whit invalidate § 5. The same Will of God which was the free efficient is the End of all his Works ad extra Gods Essence hath no Efficient or final Cause but is the efficient and final cause of all things else They proceeded from his Power his Wisdom and his good-will and they bear the Image of his Power Wisdom and Good-will and he loveth his own Image in them and loveth them as they bear his Image and loveth his Image for Himself So that the act of his Love to Himself is necessary though voluntary and so is the act of his Love to his Image and to all the Goodness of the Creature while it is such But he freely and not necessarily made and continueth the Creature in his Image and needeth not the Glass or Image being self-sufficient so that his Creature is the mediate Object his Image on the Creature is the ultimate created Object his own perfections to which that Image relateth is the objectum simpliciter ultimatum his complacency or love is the Actus ultimus and that very act is the object of his precedent act of Creation or volition of the Creatures But all this is spoken according to the narrow imperfect capacity of man who conceiveth of God as having a prius posterius in his acts which is but respectively and denominatively from the order of the objects In short Gods free-will is the Beginning of his works ad extra and the complacency of that will in his works as Good in relation to his own perfections is the END And therefore he is said to Rest when he saw that all his works were Good § 6. Whatsoever is the fullest expression and Glorifying demonstration of God in the Creature must needs be the chief created excellency Because he loveth Himself first and the Creature for Himself And seeing the Creature hath all from him which is good and amiable in it it must needs follow that those parts are most amiable and best which have most of the impression of the Creators excellencies on them Not that he hath greater Perfections to imprint on one Creature than another but the impression of those Perfections is much greater on one than on another § 7. The Happier therefore God will make any Creature the more will be communicate to it of the Image and demonstration of his own goodness and so will both love it the more for his own Image and cause it to love him the more which is the chief part of his Image § 8. The Goodness of God is conceived of by our narrow mindes in three notions as it were in three degrees of altitude The Highest is The infinite perfections of his Essence as such The second is The infinite perfection of his Will as such which is called His Holiness and the Fountain of Morality The third is that one part of his Wills perfection which is his Benignity to his Creatures which we call his Goodness in a lower notion as relative to our selves because he is inclined by it to Do us good This is his Goodness in condescention § 9. Though all this is but one in God yet because our mindes are fain to receive it as in several parts or notions we may therefore not only distinguish them but compare them as the Objects of our Love § 10. Man usually beginneth at the lowest and loveth God first for his Benignity and Love to us before he riseth to the higher acts And this is not an irregular motion of a lapsed Soul in its return to God so be it we make haste in our
kept it out of the world and saved the Individuals from it will confess that man's interest is not the Measure of God's goodness especially considering what consequents also follow sin both here and hereafter 3. And as to this lower part of the Vniverse how many Nations of the Earth are drown'd in woful ignorance and ungodliness how few are the wise and good and peaceable When God could have sent them Learning and Teachers and Means of Reformation and have blessed all this Means to their deliverance So that the far greater part of this lower world hath not so much good as God could give them and the infirmities of the best do cause their dolorous complaints It is certain that God is infinitely good and that all his works also are good in their degree but withall it is certain that God in himself is the Simple Primitive Good and that created goodness principally consisteth in a conformity to his Will which is the standard and measure of it § 16. God as considered in the Infinite Perfections of his Nature and his Will is most Amiable and the object of our highest love § 17. But he is not known by us in those Perfections as seen in themselves immediately but as demonstrated and glorified expressively in his works in which he shineth to us in his goodness § 18. His works therefore are made for the apt revealing of himself as amiable to the intelligent part of his Creation They are the Book in which he hath appointed us to read and the Glass in which he hath appointed us with admiration to behold the Infinite power Wisdom and Goodness of the Creator and in which we may see that he is not only our Chief Benefactor but the Vltimate Object of our Love and so the End of all our Motions § 19. This third Relation of God to us as our Chief Good efficiently and finally is the highest and most perfective to us but is not separated from the former two but they are all marvelously conjunct and concur in the production of most of the subsequent effects of Gods providence As the Elements are conjuct but not confounded in mixed bodies and in themselves are easily to be distinguished where they are not divided and their effects sometimes also distinct but usually mix'd as are the causes so is it in the case of these three Great Relations though God's Propriety extend further than his Government because Inanimates and Bruites are capable of one and not of the other yet as to the Rational Creatures they are in reality of the same extent God is as to Right the Owner and the Ruler of all the world and also their real Benefactor and quoad debitum their ultimate end But as to consent on their parts none but the godly give up themselves to him in any one of these Relations In order of Nature God is first our Owner and then our Ruler and our chief Good or End His work in the first Relation is Arbitrary Disposal of us his work in the second is to Govern us and in the third Attraction and Felicitating But he so Disposeth of us as never to cross his rules of Government and so governeth us as never to cross his absolute Propriety and attracteth and felicitateth us in concent with his Premiant act of Government and all sweetly and wonderfully conspire the perfection of his works § 20. All these Relations are oft summed up in one name which principally importeth the last which is the persective Relation but truly includeth both the former and that is That GOD is Our FATHER As the Rational Soul doth ever include the Sensitive and Vegetative Faculties so doth God's Fatherly Relation to us include his Dominion and Government A Father is thus a kind of Image of God in this Relation For 1. he hath a certain Propriety in his children 2. He is by nature their rightful Governour 3. He is their Benefactor for they are beholden to him for their being and well-being Nature causeth him to love them and bindeth them again to love him And the Title OVR FATHER which art in Heaven includeth all these Divine Relations to us but specially expresseth the Love and Graciousness of God to us Obj. But I must go against the sense of most of the world if I take God to be infinitely or perfectly good for operari sequitur esse He that is perfectly good will perfectly do good But do we not see and feel what you said before The world is but as a wilderness and the life of man a misery We come into the world in weakness and in a case in which we cannot help our selves but are a pity and trouble to others we are their trouble that breed us and bring us up we are vexed with unsatisfied desires with troubling passions with tormenting pains and languishing weakness and enemies malice with poverty and care with losses and crosses and shame and grief with hard labour and studies with the injuries and spectacles of a Bedlam world and with fears of death and death at last Our enemies are our trouble our friends are our trouble our Rulers are our trouble and our inferiours children and servants are our trouble our possessions are our trouble and so are our wants And is all this the effect of perfect Goodness And the poor Bruits seem more miserable than we they labour and hunger and die at last to serve our will we beat them use them and abuse them at our pleasure And all the Inanimates have no sense of any good and which is worst of all the world is like a Dungeon of ignorance like an Hospital of mad-men for folly and distractedness like a band of Robbers for injury and violence like Tygers for cruelty like snarling Dogs for contention and in a word like Hell for wickedness What else sets the world together by the ears in wars and bloudshed in all generations what maketh peace-makers the most neglected men what maketh vertue and piety the mark of persecution and of common scorn how small a part of the world hath knowledge or piety And you tell us of a Hell for most at last Is all this the fruit of perfect Goodness These thoughts have seriously troubled some Answ He that will ever come to knowledge must begin at the first Fundamental Truths and in his enquiry proceed to lesser Superstructures and reduce uncertainties and difficulties to those points which are sure and plain and not cast away the plainest certain truths because they over-take some difficulties beyond them The true method of enquiry is that we first try whether there be a God that is perfectly Good or not If this be once proved beyond all controversie then all that followeth is certainly reconcilable to it for Truth and Truth is not contradictory Now that God is perfectly Good hath been fully proved before He that giveth to all the world both Heaven and Earth and all the Orbs all that Good whether Natural
yet is as obligatory and as much if not more than a Law which maketh it more than the Duty of a Subject to answer love and goodness with gratitude and love so that if per impossibile you suppose that we had no other obligation to God but this of love and goodness or abstract this from the rest I question whether it be not most eminently morall and whether the performance of it do not morally fit us for the highest benefits and felicity and the violation of it merit not morally the rejections of our great Benefactor and the withdrawing of all his favours to our undoing But this Controversie my Cause is not much concerned in as I have said because the same God is our Soveraign also § 2. The duty which we specially owe to God in this highest Relation is LOVE which as such is above obedience as such The difference of Understandings and Wills requireth Government and obedience that the understanding and will of the superiour may be a Rule to the subjects But LOVE is a Concord of Wills and so farr as LOVE hath caused a concord there is no use for Government by Laws and Penalties And therefore the Law is not made for a Righteous man as such that is so far as Love hath united his Soul to Virtue and separated it from sin he need not to be constrained or restrained by any Penal Laws no more than men need a Law to command them to eat and drink and preserve their lives and forbear self-destruction But so far as any man is unrighteous or ungodly that is hath a will to sin or cross or averse to Goodness so far he needeth a penal Law which therefore all need while they remain imperfect Nature hath made Love and Goodness like the Iron and the Load-stone The Vnderstanding doth not so ponderously incline to Truth as the Will doth naturally to Good For this being the perfect act of the Soul the whole inclination of Nature goeth after it Therefore Love is the highest duty or noblest act of the Soul of Man the end and perfection of all the rest § 3. The essential act of this LOVE is COMPLACENCIE or the Pleasedness of the minde in a suitable Good But it hath divers effects concomitants and accidents from whence it borroweth divers Names § 4. The LOVE of Benevolence as it worketh towards the felicity of another is the Love of God to man who needeth him but not of Man to God who is above our benefits and needeth nothing § 5. Our LOVE to God respecteth him either 1. as our Efficient 2. Dirigent 3. or final Good which hath accordingly concomitant duties § 6. I. Our LOVE to God as our Chief good efficiently containeth in it 1. A willing Receiving Love 2. A Thankfull Love 3. A Returning devoted serving Love which among men amounts to retribution § 7. 1. An absolute dependent Beneficiary ought with full dependance on his Totall Benefactor to Receive all his Benefits with Love and willingness An undervaluing of Benefits and demurring or rejecting them is a great abuse and injury to a Benefactor Thus doth the ungodly World against all the Grace and greatest mercies of God They know not the worth of them and therefore despise them and will not be intreated to accept them but take them for intollerable injuries or troubles as a sick Stomack doth its Physick and Food because they are against their fleshly Appetites An open heart to receive Gods mercies with high esteem beseemeth such Beneficiaries as we § 8. 2. Thankfulness is that Operation of Love which the light of Nature hath convinced all the World to be a duty and scarce a man is to be found so bruitish as to deny it And our Love to God should be more thankfull than to all the World because our Receivings from Him are much greater than from all § 9. 3. Though we cannot requite God true gratitude will devote the whole man to his Service Will and Honour and bring back his Mercies to him for his use so far as we are able § 10. II. Our LOVE to our DIRIGENT Benefactor is 1. A fiducial Love 2. A love well-pleased in his conduct 3. A following Love Though it belongeth to God chiefly as our sapiential Governour to be the Dirigent Cause of our Lives Yet he doth it also as our Benefactor by a commixture of the effects of his Relations § 11. 1. So infinite and sure a Friend is absolutely to be Tristed with a General Confidence in the Goodness of his Nature and a particular Confidence in the Promises or significations of his good-will Infinite Good cannot be willing to deceive or disappoint us And if we absolutely Trust him it will abundantly conduce to our holiness and peace § 12. 2. We must also love his Conduct his Precepts and his holy Examples and the very way it self in which he leadeth us All that is from him is good and must be loved both for it self and for him that it cometh from and for that which it leadeth to All his Instructions helps reproofs and all his conducting Means should be amiable to us § 13. 3. Love must make us cheerfully follow him in all the wayes which by Precept or Example he is pleased to lead us And so to follow him as to love the tokens of his presence and footsteps of his will and all the signs of his approbation And with an Heroick fortitude of Love to rejoyce in sufferings and venture upon dangers and conquer difficulties for his sake § 14. III. Our LOVE to GOD as our final Good is 1. A Desiring LOVE 2. A seeking LOVE and 3. A full complacential delighting Love which is the perfection of us and all the rest And accidentally it is sometimes a Mourning Love § 15. 1. Man being but in Via under the efficiency and conduct of Love to final Love and Goodness hath his End to intend and his means to use and therefore Love must needs work by Desire § 16. So far as a man is short of the thing desired Love will have some sense of want and so far as we are crossed in our seekings and frustrate in any of our hopes it will be sorrowfull § 17. 2. Man being appointed to a course and life of Means to his last end must needs be employed in those Means for the Love of that End And so the main work of this life is that of a Desiring seeking Love § 18. 3. The complacential delighting LOVE hath three degrees The first in Belief and Hope The second in foretaste and The third in full enflamed exercise § 19. 1. The well-grounded Hope of the foreseen Vision and fruition of the Infinite Good which is our End must needs possess the considerate minde with a delight which is somewhat answerable to that Hope § 20. 2. When the Soul doth not only Hope for its future end but also at present close with God subratione finis in the exercise
himself our Benefactor nor nevertheless near us What nearness to us they have we are much uncertain but that he himself is our total Benefactor and always with us as near to us as we are to our selves is past all question and proved before 2. There neither is nor can be any object so suitable for our LOVE as God he hath all Goodness in him and all in the creature is derived from him and dependeth on him and he hath given us all that ever we our selves received and must give us all that ever we shall receive hereafter He is all-sufficient for the supply of all our wants and granting all our just desires and making us perfect all that he doth for us he doth in Love as an intellectual free Agent and he is still present with us upholding us and giving us the very Love which he demandeth and he created us for Himself to be his Own and gave us these faculties to know and love him And can any then be a more suitable object of our love 3. Do you not find that your understandings have a suitableness or inclination to Truth and Knowledge and would you not know the best and greatest things and know the cause of all the wonderful effects which you see and what is this but to know God And do you not find that your Wills have a suitableness to good as such in the general and to your own felicity And do you not know that it should not be unnatural to any man to love the best which is best and especially which is best for him and to love him best who is his greatest Benefactor and most worthy of his love in all respects And can you doubt whether God be most worthy of your love All this is plain and sure And will mens averseness to the love of God then disprove it It is natural for man to desire knowledge as that which perfecteth his understanding and yet Boys are averse to learn their Books because they are slothful and are diverted by the love of play What if your servants be averse and slothful to your service doth it follow that it is not their duty or that you hired them not for it What if your wife and children be averse to love you is it therefore none of their duty so to do Rebels are averse to obey their Governours and yet it is their duty to obey them If your child or any one that is most beholden to you should be averse to love and gratitude to you as thousands are to their Parents and Benefactors will it follow that Nature obliged them not to it 4. What can you think is suitable to your love if God be not is it lust or play or meat and drink and ease A Swine hath a nature as suitable to these as you Is it only to deal ingenuously and honourably in providing for the flesh and maintaining the fuel of these sensualities by Buildings Trading Manufactures Ornaments and Arts All this is but to have a reason to serve your sense and so the swinish part still shall be the chief for that which is the chief and ruling object with you doth shew which is the chief and regnant faculty If sensual objects be the chief than Sense is the chief faculty with you And if you had the greatest wit in the world and used it only to serve your guts and throats and lusts in a more effectual and ingenious way than any other men could do this were but to be an ingenuous beast or to have an Intellect bound in service to your bellies And can you think that things so little satisfying and so quickly perishing are more suitable objects for your love than God 5. What say you to all them that are otherwise minded and that take the Love of God for their work and happiness They find a suitableness in God to their highest esteem and love and are they not as fit Judges for the affirmative as you for the negative Obj. They do but force themselves to some acts of fancy Answ You see that they are such acts as are the more serious and prevalent in their lives and can make them lay by other pleasures and spend their days in seeking God and lay down their lives in the exercise and hopes of Love And that it is you that follow fancy and they that follow solid reason is evident in the reason of your several ways That world which you set above God is at last called Vanity by all that try it Reason will not finally justifie your choice but I have here shewed you undeniable reason for their choice and love and therefore it is they that know what they do and obey the Law of Nature which you obliterate and contradict Obj. But we see the Creature but God we see not and we find it not natural to us to love that which we do not see Answ Is not Reason a nobler faculty than sight if it be why should it not more rule you and dispose of you Shall no Subjects honour and obey their King but those that see him You can love your mony and land and friends when they are out of sight Obj. But these are things visible in their nature Answ They are so much the more vile and less amiable Your own Souls are invisible will you not therefore love them You never saw the life or form of any Plant or living Wight you see the beauty of your Roses and many other flowers but you see not the life and form within which causeth all that beauty and variety which yet must be more excellent than the effect Can you doubt whether all things which appear here to your sight have an invisible Cause and Maker or can you think him less amiable because he is invisible that is more excellent 6. In a word it is most evident that all this averseness of mens hearts to the Love of God is their sin and pravity and the unsuitableness of their nature is because they are vitiated with sensuality and deceived by sensible things a disease to be cured and not defended Their sin will not prove the contrary no duty 7. And yet while we are in flesh though God be not visible to us his works are and it is in them the frame of the world that he hath revealed and exposed Himself to our love It is in this visible Glass that we must see his Image and in that Image must love him and if we will love any Goodness we must love his for all is his and as his should be loved by us CHAP. XIII Experiments of the difficulty of all this Duty and what it will cost a man that will live this holy life HItherto I have proved that there is a GOD of Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness the Creator and consequently the Owner the Ruler and the Father or Chief Good of Man and that Man as his creature is absolutely his own and
consideration The Eternity of the future state I have not here gone about to prove because I reserve it for a fitter place and need the help of more than natural light for such a task But that it shall be of so much weight and duration as shall suffice to the full execution of Justice and to set all streight that seemed crooked in Gods present Government this Nature it self doth fully testifie Three sorts of men will read what I have written 1. Some few and but very few of those whose Consciences are so bloody in the guilt of their debauchery that they take it for their interest to hope that there is no life but this 2. Those whose Faith and Holiness hath made the World to come to be their interest happiness hope desire and only joy 3. Those that only understand in generall that it is the highest interest of humane Nature that there be a full felicity hereafter and see it a most desireable thing though they know not whether it be to be expected or not The first sort I may fear are under such a Curse of God as that he may leave their Wills to master their Belief as their Lusts have mastered their Wills and lest they be forsaken of God to think that true which their wicked hearts desire were true and that the Haters of God and a holy Life should be left to dream that there is no God nor future Happy Life The second sort have both Light Experience and Desire and therefore will easily believe The third sort are they whose Necessities are great and yet conjunct with hope of some success Though bare interest should command no mans understanding because a thing may be desireable which is neither certain nor possible yet I must needs say that Reason and self-love should make any man that is not resolved in wickedness exceeding glad to hear of any hopes much more of certainty of a life of Angelical Happiness and Joy to be possess'd when this is ended And therefore the enquiry should be exceeding willingly and studiously endeavoured I shall conclude this point with a few serious Questions to those that deny a future Life of Retribution Qu. 1. Whether he that taketh a man to be but an ingenuous kinde of Beast can take it ill to be esteemed as a Beast May I not expect that he should live like a Beast who thinketh that he shall die like a Beast Is such a man fit to be trusted any further in humane converse than his present fleshly interest obligeth him May I not justly suppose that he liveth in the practice of fornication adultery lying perjury hypocrisie murder treachery theft deceit or any other villany as oft as his interest tells him he should do it What is a sufficient or likely motive to restrain that man or make him just who believes not any life after this It seemeth to me a wrong to him in his own Profession to call him an Honest man 2. If you think your selves but ingenuous Beasts why should you not be content to be used as Beasts A Beast is not capable of true Propriety Right or Wrong He that can master him doth him no wrong if he work him or fleece him or take away his life Why may not they that can master you use you like Pack-horses or Slaves and beat you and take away your lives 3. Would you be only your selves of this mind or would you have all others of it If your selves only why envy you the Truth as you suppose to others If all others what security shall Kings have of their lives or Subjects of their lives of liberties What trust can you put in Wife or Child or Servant or any man that you converse with Will you not quickly feel the effect of their opinions Had you not rather that the enemy who would murder you the thief who would rob you the lyar that would deceive you did believe a Judgement and life of Retribution than not 4. If there be no Life after this what business have you for your Reason and all your noble faculties and time that is worthy of a man or that is not like Childrens games or Poppet-playes What have you to do in the World that hath any weight in the tryal any content or comfort in the review or will give solid comfort to a dying man Were it not better lie down and sleep out our days than waste them all in dreaming waking O what a silly Worm were Man what should he find to do with his understanding Take off the poise of his ultimate End and all his Rational Motions must stand still and only the bruitish motion must go on and Reason must drudge in the Captivity of its service But these Questions and more such I put more home in my Book called A Saint or a Bruit If conscience tell you that you can put no trust in your friend your wife your servant or your neighbour if they believe that there is no life but this surely the same conscience may tell you that then the thing is true and that the God of infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness hath better means enough than deceits and lies to rule the world by Hear what the conscience of the Epicure saith in Cicero Academ Quaest l. 4. p. mihi 44. Quis enim potest cum existimet à Deo se curari non dies noctes divinum numen horrere c. it s true of the guilty But what greater joy to the upright godly faithful Soul CHAP. XV. Of the intrinsick Evil of Sin and of the perpetual Punishment due to the Sinner by the undoubted Law of Nature § 1. IT seemed good to the most wise Creator to give Man with Reason a Liberty of Will by which he is a kind of first cause of its own determination in comparative moral acts though he hold the power in full dependance upon God and perform each act as an act in genere by the influx of his Maker and do all under his perfect government And these great Principles in his Nature his Power his Reason and his free self-determining Will are the Image of God in which as Man he was created which advanced by the perfections of Fortitude Wisdom and Moral Goodness are also in Holiness the Image of God's Perfections When a man deliberateth whether he shall do this sin or not as lie or murder he cannot act in general without God but that he chooseth this act rather than another may be without any more of God than his giving and maintaining his free-choosing power and his universal influx before mentioned and his setting him among such objects as he acteth upon Neither do those objects nor any Physical efficient motion of God or any creature besides himself determine his will effectually to choose the evil and refuse the good It is not true that nothing undetermined can determine it self to act this is but to deny God's
it that in effect it denieth that there is a God or pulleth him down as much as in the sinner lieth and it setteth up the Devil in his stead and calleth him God or maketh God to be such a one as the Devil is and also maketh an Idol of the sinner himself For it denieth God's Power Wisdom Goodness Propriety Sovereignty and Love his Truth and Holiness and Justice and maketh him on the contrary impotent unwise bad envious unholy false unjust and one that hath no authority to rule us with much more the like But a life of enmity rebellion and final impenitency which is the case of all that perish much more deserveth what ever humane nature can undergo § 30. He that consenteth not to God's Government is a Rebel and deserveth accordingly and he that consenteth to it consenteth to his Laws and consequently to the Penalty threatned and therefore if he break them he suffereth by his own consent and therefore cannot complain of wrong All that understand God's Government and Laws and consent to them are not only under the obligation of governing-power but also of their own consent and it is justly supposed that they consented on good and rational grounds not knowing where they could be better on hopes of the benefits of the Government and the Reward they necessarily consented to the Penalties § 31. He that never consenteth to the Law and yet is under the obligation of it hath Life and Death the Blessing and the Curse Felicity and Misery set before him in the Law Felicity is annexed to obedience and misery to disobedience and the Law-giver telleth us that accordingly he will judge and execute and he offereth every man his choice He therefore that after this doth choose the sin which misery is annexed to doth choose the misery and refuse the happiness and therefore it is no wrong to cast him into misery though everlasting as long as he hath nothing but what he chose and loseth nothing but what he rejected and that with wilful obstinacy to the very last A sinner in this case hath nothing but blasphemy to say against the Justice of his Maker for what can he say He cannot say that his Maker had not Authority to make this Law for his authority was absolute He cannot say that it was too cruel hard and unjust a Law for it was made but to deter him and such as he from such sin to which he had no greater temptations than the toyish vanities of a fleshly life And he himself hath declared by the event that the Law was not terrible enough to deter him if it would not seem against so small and poor a bait he himself doth justifie the terribleness of it by his contempt God saith I threaten Hell to thee to keep thee from sin The sinner saith by his life and practice The threatning of Hell is not enough to keep me from sin And shall the same man say when execution cometh it is too great No sinner shall suffer any thing but what he chose himself in the causes of it If he say I did not believe that God was in good earnest and would do ath◠said this is but to blaspheme and say I took God for a liar and deceiver and a bad and unwise and impotent Governour If he say I did not know that sin even final impenitency in an ungodly life deserved so ill common reason and all the world will rise up against him and the light of nature will shew him to his face that all the forty points of malignity were in sin which I mentioned before and therefore that the Law of nature had a sufficient promulgation Having thus shew'd what punishment God may inflict without the least imputation of injustice let us next enquire of Reason what he will inflict § 32. When it is at God's choice whether he will annihilate a sinner or let him live in misery Reason telleth us that the latter is more suitable to the ends of Government because the living offendor will not only be still a spectacle in the eyes of others as a man hang'd up in chains but will also confess his folly and sin and his conscience will justifie his Judge and so God's Justice will be more glorious and useful to its ends That which is not is not seen nor heard the annihilated are out of sight And the mind of man is apt to think of a state of annihilation as that which is as a state of rest or ease and feeleth no harm and so is not terrible enough as shall be farther said anon The living sufferer therefore is rationally the fittest monument of God's Justice § 33. It must reasonably be expected that a Soul which is made apt to perpetual duration should perpetually endure and that the Soul enduring the misery also should endure seeing it was due by the Law of Nature as is proved Perpetual duration is necessary to no creature their Beings being but contingent and dependent on the will of God But perpetual duration of a dependent being is certain when the first Being doth declare his will that it shall be so and the natural way by which God declareth his will concerning the use of any thing is by the nature and usefulness of it because he maketh all things wisely and nothing in vain Therefore when he maketh the nature of an Angel or spiritual being apt to perpetual duration as being not mixt of separable Principles nor corruptible he thereby declareth his will for its duration because he gave it not that durable nature in vain Two Arguments therefore I now offer to prove that man's Soul is of perpetual duration 1. Because it is such in its operations and therefore in its essence as the superiour Spirits are which are so durable for they are but Intelligences and Free-agents fitted to love God and delight in him and praise him and so is man 2. Because as is fully proved before it is made to be happy in another life and that proveth that it dieth not with the Body and that proveth that its nature is incorruptible and that proveth that it shall be perpetual unless any sin should forfeit its being by way of penal deprivation and that is improbable both because God hath fitter ways of punishment and intimateth in its corruptible nature that this is not his intent and because the state of future reward is like to be a confirmed state § 34. Experience telleth the world that so great is the folly and obdurateness of man and the force of present sensual allurements that nothing less than a perpetual misery worse than annihilation is rationally sufficient to be the Penalty of that Law which is the instrument of governing the world and therefore it is certain that so much is in the Law and so much shall be executed Those thieves and murderers that have confirmed their infidelity and overcome all the expectations of another world will as boldly venture
in a light and speaking to him from Heaven and is sent to preach the Gospel which he doth with zeal and power and patient labours to the death Act. 9. Ananias is commanded by God to instruct him and baptize him after his first call Act. 9 Peter at Lydda cureth Aeneas by a word who had kept his bed eight years of a Palsie Act. 8. At Joppa he raiseth Tabitha from the dead Act. 9. Cornelius by an Angel is directed to send for Peter to preach the Gospel to him The Holy Ghost fell on all that heard his words Act. 10. Agabus prophesied of the Dearth Act. 11. Peter imprisoned by Herod is delivered by an Angel who opened the doors and loosed his bonds and brought him out Act. 12. Herod is eaten to death with worms Act. 12. At Paphos Elymas the Sorcerer is strucken blinde by Pauls word for resisting the Gospel and Sergius the Roman Deputy is thereby made a Believer Act. 13. At Lystra Paul by a word cureth a Creeple that was so born insomuch as the People would have done sacrifice to him and Barnaâ—as as to Mercury and Jupiter Act. 14. Paul casteth out a divining Devil Act. 16. And being imprisoned and scourged with Silas and their feet in the Stocks at midnight as they sang Praises to God an Earthquake shook the foundations of the Prison the doors were all opened and all their bonds loosed and the Jailor converted Act. 16. The Holy Ghost came upon twelve Disciples upon the imposition of Paul's hands Act. 19. And God wrought so many miracles by his hands at Ephesus that from his body were brought to the sick handkerchiefs and aprons and the diseases departed from them Act. 19. At Troas he raised Eutychus to life Act. 20. His sufferings at Jerusalem are foretold by Agabus Act. 21. At Melita the people took him for a God because the Viper hurt him not that fastened on his hand And there he cured the Father of Publius the chief man of the Island of a Flux and Feaver by Prayer and Imposition of hands In a word in all places where the Apostles came these miracles were wrought and in all the Churches the gifts of the Holy Ghost were usual either of Prophesie or of healing or of speaking strange languages or interpreting them some had one and some another and some had most or all And by such miracles were the Christian Churches planted And all this power Christ had foretold them of at his departure from them Mark 16.17 These signs shall follow them that believe in my Name shall they cast out Devils they shall speak with new tongues they shall take up Serpents and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them they shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall recover Yea in his Life-time on Earth he sent forth his Apostles and seventy Disciples with the same power which they exercised openly Luk. 9.1 c. 10.16 17. Thus was the Gospel confirmed by multitudes of open miracles And Christs own Resurrection and Ascension was the greatest of all And here it must be noted that these Miracles were 1. Not one or two but multitudes 2. Not obscure and doubtfull but evident and unquestionable 3. Not controlled or checked by any greater contrary Miracles as the wonders of the Egyptian Sorcerers were by Moses but altogether uncontrolled 4. Not in one place only but in all Countreys where they came 5. Not by one or two persons only but by very many who were scattered up and down in the World And that miracles and such miracles as these are a certain proof of the truth of Christ and Christianity is most evident in that they are the attestation of God himself 1. It is undenyable that they are the effects of Gods own Power If any question whether God do them immediately or whether an Angel or Spirit may not do them that makes no difference in the case considerable for all creatures are absolutely dependant upon God and can use no power but what he giveth them and continueth in them and exerciseth by them the power of the creatures is all of it the power of God without him they are nothing and can do nothing and God is as near to the effect himself when he useth an instrument as when he useth none So that undoubtedly it is God's work 2. And God having no voice but created revealeth his mind to man by his operations and as he cannot lie so his infinite wisdom and goodness will not give up the world to such unavoidable deceit as such a multitude of miracles would lead them into if they were used to attest a lie If I cannot know him to be sent of God who raiseth the dead and sheweth me such a Seal of Omnipotency to his Commission I have no possibility of knowing who speaketh from God at all nor of escaping deceit in the greatest matters of which God by his Omnipotent Arm would be the cause But none of this can stand with the Nature and righteous Government of God This therefore is an infallible proof of the Veracity of Christ and his Apostles and the truth of the History of these Miracles shall be further opened anon § 10. IV. The fourth part of the Spirit 's Testimony to Christ is subsequent in the work of Regeneration or Sanctification in which he effectually illuminateth the mind and reneweth the soul and life to a true resignation obedience and love of God and to a heavenly mind and conversation and so proveth Christ to be really and effectively the SAVIOVR This evidence is commonly much over-look'd and made little account of by the ungodly who have no such Renovation on themselves because though it may be discerned in others by the fruits yet they that have it not in themselves are much hindred from discerning it partly because it is at a distance from them and because it is in it self seated in the heart where it is neither felt nor seen by others but in the effects And partly because the effects are imperfect and clouded with a mixture of remaining faults but especially because that ungodly men have a secret enmity to holy things and thence to holy persons and therefore are falsely prejudic'd against them which is encreased by cross interests and courses in their converse But yet indeed the Spirit of Regeneration is a plenary evidence of the truth of Christ and Christianity To manifest which I shall 1. consider What it is and doth 2. How and by what means 3. On whom 4. Against what opposition 5. That it is Christ indeed that doth it I. The change which is made by the Spirit of Christ doth consist in these particulars following 1. It taketh down pride and maketh men humble and low in their own eyes to which end it acquainteth them with their sin and their desert and misery 2. It teacheth men self-denial and causeth them to resign themselves to God and use
and blessedness of the Life to come that they say nothing of it that is ever likely to make any considerable number set their hearts on Heaven and to live a heavenly Life 9. They were so unacquainted with the nature and will of God that they taught and used such a manner of Worship as tended rather to delude and corrupt men than to sanctifie them 10. They medled so little with the inward sins and duties of the heart especially about the holy Love of God and their goodness was so much in outward acts and in meer respect to men that they were not like to sanctifie the Soul or make the Man good that his actions might be good but only to polish men for Civil Societies with the addition of a little Varnish of Superstition and Hypocrisie 11. Their very style is either suitable to dead speculation as a Lecture of Metaphysicks or sleight and dull and unlike to be effectual to convert and sanctifie mens Souls 12. Almost all is done in such a disputing sophistical way and clogg'd with so many obscurities uncertainties and self-contradictions and mixt in heaps of Physical and Logical Subtilties that they were unfit for the common peoples benefit and could tend but to the benefit of a few 13. Experience taught and still teacheth the World that Holy Souls and Lives that were sincerely set upon God and Heaven were strangers amongst the Disciples of the Philosophers and other Heathens Or if it be thought that there were some such among them certainly they were very few in comparison of true Christians and those few very dark and diseased and defective with us a Childe at ten years old will know more of God and shew more true piety than did any of their Philosophers with us poor women and labouring persons do live in that holiness and heavenliness of minde and conversation which the wisest of the Philosophers never did attain I spake of this before but here also thought meet to shew you the difference between the effect of Christs doctrine and the Philosophers 2. And that all this is justly to be imputed to Christ himself I shall now prove 1. He gave them a perfect pattern for his holy obedient heavenly Life in his own person and his conversation here on Earth 2. His Doctrine and Law requireth all this holiness which I described to you You finde the Prescript in his Word of which the holy Souls and Lives of men are but a transcript 3. All his Institutions and Ordinances are but means and helps to this 4. He hath made it the condition of mans Salvation to be thus holy in sincerity and to desire and seek after perfection in it He taketh no other for true Christians indeed nor will save any other at the last 5. All his comforting Promises of mercy and defence are made only to such 6. He hath made it the Office of his Ministers through the World to perswade and draw men to this Holiness And if you hear the Sermons and read the Books which any faithfull Minister of Christ doth preach or write you will soon see that this is the business of them all And you may soon perceive that these Ministers have another kinde of preaching and writing than the Philosophers had more clear more congruous more spiritual more powerfull and likely to win men to Holiness and Heavenliness When our Divines and their Philosophers are compared as to their promoting of true Holiness verily the latter seem to be but as Glow-worms and the former to be the Candles for the Family of God And yet I truly value the wisdom and virtue which I finde in a Plato a Seneca a Cicero an Antonine or any of them If you say our advantage is because coming after all we have the helps of all even of those Philosophers I answer mark in our Books and Sermons whether it be any thing but Christianity which we preach It is from Christ and Scripture that we fetch our Doctrine and not from the Philosophers we use their helps in Logick Physicks c. But that 's nothing to our Doctrine He that taught me to speak English did not teach me the Doctrine which I preach in English And he that teacheth me to use the Instruments of Logick doth not teach me the doctrine about which I use them And why did not those Philosophers by all their art attain to that skill in this Sacred work as the Ministers of Christ do when they had as much or more of the Arts than we I read indeed of many good Orations then used even in those of the Emperour Julian there is much good and in Antonine Arrian Epictetus Plutarch more And I read of much taking-Oratory of the Bonzii in Japan c. But compared to the endeavours of Christian Divines they are poor pedantick barren things and little sparks and the success of them is but answerable 7. Christ did before hand promise to send his Spirit into mens Souls to do all this work upon all his Chosen And as he promised just so he doth 8. And we finde by experience that it is the preaching of Christs doctrine by which the work is done It is by the reading of the sacred Scripture or hearing the Doctrine of it opened and applyed to us that Souls are thus changed as is before described And if it be by the medicines which he sendeth us himself by the hands of his own Servants that we are healed we need not doubt whether it be he that healed us His Doctrine doth it as the instrumental Cause for we finde it adapted thereunto and we finde nothing done upon us but by that Doctrine nor any remaining effect but what is the impression of it But his Spirit inwardly reneweth us as the Principal cause and worketh with and by the Word For we finde that the Word doth not work upon all nor upon all alike that are alike prepared But we easily perceive a voluntary distinguishing choice in the operation And we finde a power more than can be in the words alone in the effect upon our selves The heart is like the Wax and the Word like the Seal and the Spirit like the hand that strongly applyeth it We feel upon our hearts that though nothing is done without the Seal yet a greater force doth make the impression than the weight of the Seal alone could cause By this time it is evident that this work of Sanctification is the attestation of God by which he publickly owneth the Gospel and declareth to the World that Christ is the Saviour and his Word is true For 1. It is certain that this work of Renovation is the work of God For 1. It is his Image on the Soul It is the life of the Soul as flowing from his Holy Life wherein are contained the Trinity of Perfections It is the Power of the Soul by which it can overcome the Flesh the World and the Devil which without it none is able to do It is the
so doth prove the Divine approbation of his Doctrine without which he could not have the command of mens Souls 7. Note also that the Gospel proposeth to the Soul of man both Truth and Goodness and the Truth is in order to the Good and subservient to it That Christ is indeed the Saviour and his Word infallibly true is believed that we may be made partakers of his Salvation and of the Grace and Glory promised And when the Spirit by the Gospel hath regenerated and renewed any Soul he hath given him part of that grace in possession and hath procreated in him the habitual love of God and of holiness with a love to that Saviour and holy Word which brought him to it So that this Love is now become as a new Nature to the Soul and this being done the Soul cleaveth now as fast to Christ and the Gospel by Love as by Belief not that love becometh an irrational causless love nor continueth without the continuance of Belief or Belief without the Reasons and Evidence of Verity and Credibility But Love now by concurrence greatly assisteth Faith it self and is the faster hold of the two so that the Soul that is very weak in its Reasoning faculty and may oft lose the sight of these Evidences of truth which it did once perceive may still hold fast by this holy Love As the man that by reasoning hath been convinced that hony is sweet will easilier change his mind than he that hath tasted it so Love is the Souls taste which causeth its fastest adherence to God and to the Gospel If a caviller dispute with a loving child or parent or friend to alienate their hearts from one another and would perswade them that it is but dissembled love that is professed to them by their relations and friends Love will do more here to hinder the belief of such a slander than Reason alone can do and where Reason is not strong enough to answer all that the caviller can say yet Love may be strong enough to reject it And here I must observe how oft I have noted the great mercy of God to abundance of poor people whose reasoning faculty would have failed them in temptations to Atheism and Infidelity if they had not had a stronger hold than that and their Faith had not been radicated in the Will by Love I have known a great number of women who never read a Treatise that pleaded the Cause of the Christian Religion nor were able to answer a crafty Infidel that yet in the very decaying time of Nature at fourscore years of age and upward have lived in that sense of the Love of God and in such Love to him and to their Saviour as that they have longed to die and be with Christ and lived in all humility charity and piety such blameless exemplary heavenly Lives in the joyfull expectation of their Change as hath shewed the firmness of their Faith and the Love and Experience which was in them would have rejected a temptation to Atheism and Unbelief more effectually than the strongest Reason alone could ever do Yet none have cause to reproach such and say Their Wills lead their Vnderstandings and they customarily and obstinately believe they know not why for they have known sufficient reason to believe and their understandings have been illuminated to see the truth of true Religion and it was this knowledge of Faith which bred their Love and Experience but when that is done as Love is the more noble and perfect operation of the Soul having the most excellent object so it will act more powerfully and prevailingly and hath the strongest hold Nor are all they without Light and Reason for their belief who cannot form it into arguments and answer all that is said against it Obj. But may not all this which you call Regeneration and the Image of God be the meer power of fantasie and affectation and may not all these people force themselves like melancholy persons to conceit that they have that which indeed they have not Answ 1. They are not melancholly persons that I speak of but those that are as capable as any others to know their own minds and what is upon their own hearts 2. It is not one or two but millions 3. Nature hath given man so great acquaintance with himself by a power of perceiving his own operations that his own cogitations and desires are the first thing that naturally he can know and therefore if he cannot know them he can know nothing If I cannot know what I think and what I love and hate I can know nothing at all 4. That they are really minded and affected as they seem and have in them that love to God and Heaven and Holiness which they profess they shew to all the world by the effects 1. In that it ruleth the main course of their lives and disposeth of them in the world 2. In that these apprehensions and affections over-rule all their worldly fleshly interest and cause them to deny the pleasures of the flesh and the profits and honours of the world 3. In that they are constant in it to the death and have no other mind in their distress when as Seneca saith Nothing feigned is of long continuance for all forc'd things are bending back to their natural state 4. In that they will lay down their lives and forsake all the world for the hopes which faith in Christ begetteth in them And if the objectors mean that all this is true and yet it is but upon delusion or mistake that they raise these hopes and raise these affections I answer This is the thing that I am disproving 1. The love of God and a holy mind and life is not a dream of the Soul or a deliration I have proved from Natural reason in the first Book that it is the end and use and perfection of man's faculties that if God be God and man be man we are to love him above all and to obey him as our absolute Sovereign and to live as devoted to him and to delight in his love Man were more ignoble or miserable than a beast if this were not his work And is that a dream or a delusion which causeth a man to live as a man to the ends that he was made for and according to the nature and use of his reason and all his faculties 2. While the proofs of the excellency and necessity of a holy life are so fully before laid down from natural and supernatural revelation the Objector doth but refuse to see in the open light when he satisfieth himself with a bare assertion that all this is no sufficient ground for a holy life but that it is taken up upon mistake 3. All the world is convinced at one time or other that on the contrary it is the unholy fleshly worldly life which is the dream and dotage and is caused by the grossest error and deceit Object But how
shall I know that there is indeed such holiness in Christians as you mention and that it is not dissembled and counterfeit Answ I have told you in the fore-going answer 1. If you were truly Christians you might know it by possession in your selves as you know that you love your friend or a learned man knoweth that he hath learning 2. If you have it not your selves you may see that others do not dissemble when you see them as afore-said make it the drift of all their lives and prefer it before their worldly interest and their lives and hold on constantly in it to the death When you see a holy life what reason have you to question a holy heart especially among so great a number you may well know that if some be dissemblers all the rest are not so Obj. But I see no Christians that are really so holy I see nothing in the best of them above civility but only self-conceit and affectation and strictness in their several forms and modes of Worship Answ 1. If you are no better than such your self it is the greatest shame and plague of heart that you could have confessed and it must needs be because you have been false to the very light of Nature and of Grace 2. If you know no Christians that are truly holy it must needs be either because you are unacquainted with them or because your malice will not give you leave to see any good in these that you dislike And if you have acquainted your self with no Christians that were truly holy what could it be but malice or sensuality that turned you away from their acquaintance when there have been so many round about you If you have been intimate with them and known their secret and open conversation and yet have not seen any holiness in them it can be no better than wilful malice that hath blinded you And because a negative witness that knoweth not whether it be so or not is not to be regarded against an affirming witness who knoweth what he saith I will here leave my testimony as in the presence of God the searcher of hearts and the revenger of a lie yea even of lies pretended for his glory I have considered of the characters of a Christian in the twenty particulars before expressed in this Chapter § 10. and I have examined my soul concerning them all and as far as I am able to know my self I must profess in humble thankfulness to my Redeemer that there is none of them which I find not in me And seeing God hath given me his testimony within me to the truth of the Gospel of his Son I take it to be my duty in the profession of it to give my testimony of it to unbelievers And I must as solemnly profess that I have had acquaintance with hundreds if not thousands on whom I have seen such evidences of a holy heavenly mind which nothing but uncharitable and unrighteous censure could deny And I have had special intimate familiarity with very many in all whom I have discerned the Image of God in such innocency charity justice holiness contempt of the world mortification self-denial humility patience and heavenly mindedness in such a measure that I have seen no cause to question their sincerity but great cause to love and honour them as the Saints of God yea I bless the Lord that most of my converse in the world since the 22d year of my age hath been with such and much of it six years sooner Therefore for my own part I cannot be ignorant that Christ hath a sanctified people upon earth Object But how can one man know another's heart to be sincere Answ I pretend not to know by an infallible certainty the heart of any single individual person But 1. I have in such a course of effects as is mentioned before great reason to be very confident of it and no reason to deny it concerning very many A child cannot be infallibly certain that his father or mother loveth him because he knoweth not the heart But when he considereth of the ordinariness of natural affection and hath always found such usage as dearest love doth use to cause he hath much reason to be confident of it and none to deny it 2. There may be a certainty that all conjunctly do not counterfeit when you have no certainty of any single individual As I can be sure that all the mothers in the world do not counterfeit love to their children though I cannot be certain of it in any individual Object But it is not all Christians nor most that are thus holy Answ It is all that are Christians in deed and truth Christ is so far from owning any other that he will condemn them the more for abusing his Name to the covering of their sins All are not Christians who have the name of Christians in all professions the vulgar rabble of the ignorant and ungodly do use to joyn with the party that is uppermost and seem to be of the Religion which is most for their worldly ends be it right or wrong when indeed they are of none at all Hypocrites are no true Christians but the persons that Christ is most displeased with Judge but by his precepts and example and you will see who they are that are Christians indeed Object But what if the preaching or writings of a Minister do convert and sanctifie men it doth not follow that they are Saviours of the world Answ What ever they do they do it as the Ministers and Messengers of Christ by his Doctrine and not by any of their own by his Commission and in his Name and by his Power or Spirit Therefore it witnesseth to his truth and honour who is indeed the Saviour which they never affirmed of themselves Object What if Pythagoras Socrates Plato the Japonian Bonzii the Indian Bramenes c. do bring any souls to a holy state as its like they did it will not follow that they were all Saviours of the world Answ 1. They have but an imperfect Doctrine and consequently make on the minds of men but a lame defective change and that change but upon few and that but for a few Ages and then another Sect succeedeth them So that they have no such attestation and approbation of God as Christ hath in the renovation of so many thousands all abroad the world and that for so many ages together 2. They did not affirm themselves to be the Sons of God and the Saviours of the world if they had God would not have annexed such a testimony to their word as he doth to Christs 3. The mercy of God is over all his works He hath compassion upon all Nations and setteth up some candles where the Sun is not yet risen The Light and Law of Nature are his as well as the Light and Law of Supernatural Revelation and accordingly he hath his instruments for the communication of them to
he is not a deceiver and so may be perswaded to trust and try him himself § 101. The way to know that others are thus regenerated is 1. By believing them Fide humana 2. By discerning it in the effects And though it be too frequent to have presumptuous self-conceited persons to affirm that the Spirit of Christ hath renewed them when it is no such matter yet all humane testimony of matters so neer men even within them is not therefore incredible but wise men will discern a credible person from an incredible In the forementioned instance many may tell you that they are cured by the Physician when it is not so but will you therefore believe no one that telleth you that he is cured Many may boast of that learning which they have not and tell you that they have knowledge in Mathematicks or in several Arts But is no man therefore to be believed that saith the same But yet I perswade no man here to take up with the bare belief of another mans word where he seeth not enough in the effects to second it and to perswade a reasonable man that it is true But as he that heareth a man that was sick profess that he is cured may well believe him if he see him eat and drink and sleep and labour and laugh as the healthfull use to doe so he that heareth a sober man profess with humble thanks to God that he hath changed and renewed him by his Spirit may well believe him if he see him live like a renewed man § 102. Though you cannot be infallibly certain of the sincerity of any one individual person but your self because we know not the heart yet may you be certain that all do not dissemble Because there is a natural impossibility that interests and motives and sufficient causes should concurre to lead them to it As before I said we are not certain of any individual woman that she doth not dissemble Love to her Husband and Children but we may be certain that all the women in the World do not from many natural proofs which might be given § 103. All these effects of Renovation may be discerned in others 1. You may discern that they are much grieved for their former sins 2. That they are weary of the remnant of their corruption or infirmity 3. That they long and labour to be delivered and to have their cure perfected and live in the diligent use of means to that end 4. That they live in no sin but smaller humane frailties 5. That all the riches in the world would not hire them deliberately and wilfully to sin but they will rather choose to suffer what man can lay upon them 6. That they are vile in their own eyes because of their remaining imperfections 7. That they do no wrong or injustice to any or if they do wrong any they are ready to confess it and make them satisfaction 8. That they love all good men with a love of complacency and all bad men with a love of benevolence yea even their enemies and instead of revenge are ready to forgive and to do what good they can for them and all men And that they hate bad men in opposition to complacency but as they hate themselves for their sins 9. That they love all doctrines persons and practices which are holy temperate just and charitable 10. That their passions at least are so far governed that they do not carry them to swear curse or rail or slander or fight or to do evil 11. That their tongues are used to speak with reverence of holy and righteous things and not to filthy ribbald railing lying or other wicked speech 12. That they suffer not their lusts to carry them to fornication nor their appetites to drunkenness or notable excess 13. That nothing below God himself is the principle object of their devotion but to know him to love him to serve and please him and to delight in these is the greatest care and desire and endeavour of their souls 14. That their chiefest hopes are of heaven and everlasting happiness with God in the perfection of this sight and love 15. That the ruling motives are fetch'd from God and the life to come which most command their choice their comforts and their lives 16. That in comparison of this all worldly riches honours and dignities are sordid contemptible things in their esteem 17. That for the hope of this they are much supported with patience under all sufferings in the way 18. That they value and use the things of this world in their callings and labours in subserviency to God and Heaven as a means to its proper end 19. That they vse their relations in the same subserviency ruling chiefly for God if they be superiours and obeying chiefly for God if they be inferiours and that with fidelity submission and patience so far as they can know his will 20. That their care and daily business in the world is by diligent redeeming precious time in getting and doing what good they can to make ready for death and judgment to secure their everlasting happiness and to please their God § 104. All this may be discerned in others with so great probability of their sincerity that no charitable reason shall have cause to question it And I repeat my testimony that here is not a word which I have not faithfully copied out of my own heart and experience and that I have been acquainted with multitudes who I verily believe were much better than my self and had a greater measure of all this grace § 105. If any shall say that men superstitiously appoint themselves unnecessary tasks and forbid themselves many lawful things and then call this by the name of Holiness I answer That many indeed do so but it is no such that I am speaking of Let reason judge whether in this or any of the fore-going descriptions of Holiness there be any such thing at all contained § 106. He that will be able to discern this Spirit of God in others must necessarily observe these reasonable conditions 1. Choose not those that are notoriously No-christians to judge of Christianity by a drunkard fornicator voluptuous carnal worldly proud or selfish person calling himself a Christian is certainly but an hypocrite And shall Christianity be judged of by a lying hypocrite 2. As you must choose such to try by as are truly serious in their Religion so you must be intimate and familiar with them and not strangers that see them as afar off for they make no vain ostentation of their piety And how can they discern the divine motions of their souls that only see them in common conversation 3. You must not judge of them by the revilings of ignorant ungodly men 4. Nor by the reproach of selfish men that are moved only by some interest of their own 5. Nor by the words of faction Civil or Religious which judgeth of all men according to the
may let it go and boast of your better choice as you find cause How much did the light of nature teach the Stoicks the Cynicks and many other Sects which differeth not much in austerity from Christ's precepts of mortification and self-denial Socrates could say Opes ac nobilitates non solum nihil in se habere honestatis verum omne malum ex eis aboriri Laert. l. 2. in Socr. p. 99. Dicebat unicum esse bonum scientiam malumque unicum inscitiam Id. ib. Et referenti quod illum Athenienses mori dâ—crevissent natura illos inquit Ib. Et multa prius de immortalitate animorum ac praeclara disserens cicutam bibit p. 105. Magna animi sublimitate carpentes se objurgantes contemnebat p. 96. When he was publickly derided Omnia ferebat aequo animo And when one kickt him and the people marvelled at his patience he said What if an Ass had kickt me should I have sued him at Law p. 93. When he saw in Fairs and Shops what abundance of things are set to sale he rejoycingly said Quam multis ipse non egeo cum libere quo vellet abire carcere liceret noluit plorantes severe increpavit pulcherrimosque sermones illos vinctus prosecutus est If so many Philosophers thought it a shameful note of cowardise for a man to live and not to kill himself when he was falling into shame or misery much greater reason hath a true believer to be willing to die in a lawful way for the sake of Christ and the hope of glory and to be less fearful of death than a Brutus a Cato a Seneca or a Socrates though not to inflict it on themselves Soundly believe the promises of Christ and then you will never much stick at suffering To lose a feather and win a Crown is a bargain that very few would grudge at And profanely with Esau to sell the birth-right for a morsel to part with heaven for the paltry pleasures of flesh and fancy were below the reason of a man if sin had not unmann'd him Matth. 16.25 26. Whosoever will save his life shall lose it and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul Virulent Eunapius giveth us the witness of natural reason for a holy mortified life whilst he maketh it the glory of the Philosophers whom he celebrateth Of Antoninus the son of Aedesius he saith Totum se dedidit atque applicuit Diis loci gentilibus sacris mysticis arcanis citoque in Deorum immortalium contubernium receptus est neglectâ prorsus corporis curâ ejusque voluptatibus remisso nuntio sapientiae studio profano vulgo incognitum amplexus Cuncti mortales hujusce viri temperantiam constantiam inflecti nesciam mentem demirati suere Eunap in Aedes What a Saint doth he make Jamblichus to be of whom it was feigned that in his Prayers he would be lifted up above ten cubits from the earth and his garments changed into a golden colour till he had done Eun. in Jambl. p. 572. Even while he raileth at the Alexandrian Monks ut homines quidem specie sed vitam turpem porcorum more exigentes c. p. 598. contrary to the evidence of abundant History he beareth witness against a vitious life And if holiness and mortification or temperance be so laudable even in the judgment of the bitterest Heathens why should it be thought intollerable strictness as it is more clearly and sweetly proposed in the Christian verity And if he say of Jamblicus Ob justitiae cultum facilem ad deorum aures accessum habuit we may boldly say that the righteous God loveth righteousness and that the prayers of the upright are his delight and that their sufferings shall not always be forgotten nor their faithful labours prove in vain CHAP. XII The reasonable Conditions required of them who will overcome the difficulties of Believing and will not undo themselves by wilful Infidelity I Have answered the objections against Christianity but have not removed the chiefest impediments for recipitur ad modum recipientis the grand impediments are within even the incapacity or indisposition or frowardness of the persons that should believe It is not every head and heart that is fit for heavenly truth and work I will next therefore tell you what conditions Reason it self will require of them that would not be deceived that so you may not lay that blame on Christ if you be infidels which belongeth only to your selves Cond 1. Come not in your studies of these sacred Mysteries with an enmity against the doctrine which you must study or at least suspend your enmity so far as is necessary to an impartial search and examination For ill will cannot easily believe well Malice and partiality will blind the strongest wits and hide the force of the plainest evidence Con. 2. Drown not the love of truth in a vitious fleshly heart and life and forfeit not the light of supernatural revelation by wilful sinning against natural light and debauching your consciences by abusing the knowledge which already you have Sensuality and wilful debauchery is the common temptation to Infidelity when men have once so heinously abused God as that they must needs believe that if there be a God he must be a terrour to them and if there be a judgment and a life of retribution it is like to go ill with them a little thing will perswade such men that there is no God nor life to come indeed When they once hope it is so and take it for their interest and a desirable thing they will easily believe that it is so indeed And God is just and beginneth the executions of his justice in this world and the forsaking of a soul that hateth the light and wilfully resisteth and abuseth knowledge is one of his most dreadful judgments That man who will be a drunkard a glutton a whore-monger a proud ambitious worldling in despight of the common light of nature can hardly expect that God should give him the light of grace Despighting truth and enslaving reason and turning a man into a beast is not the way to heavenly illumination Cond 3. Be not ignorant of the common natural Truths which are recited in the first part of this book for supernatural revelation presupposeth natural and grace which maketh us Saints supposeth that reason hath constituted us men and all true Knowledge is methodically attained It is a great wrong to the Christian cause that too many preachers of it have missed the true method and still begun at supernatural revelations and built even natural certainties thereupon and have either not known or concealed much of the fore-written natural verities And it is an exceeding great cause of the multiplying of Infidels that most men are dull or idle drones and unacquainted with the common natural truths which
another life and is made only to be happy in that knowledge love and fruition of God which the Gospel most effectually leads you to Cond 21. Mark well the prophesies of Christ himself both of the destruction of Jerusalem and the successes of his Apostles in the world c. and mark how exactly they are all fulfilled Cond 22. Let no pretence of humility tempt you to debase humane nature below its proper excellency lest thence you be tempted to think it uncapable of the everlasting sight and fruition of God The devils way of destroying is oftentimes by over-doing The proud devil will help you to be very humble and help you to deny the excellency of reason and natural free-will and all supernatural inclinations when he can make use of it to perswade you that man is but a subtil sort of bruit and hath a soul but gradually different from sensitives and so is not made for another life Cond 23. Yet come to Christ as humble learners and not as arrogant self-conceited censurers and think not that you are capable of understanding every thing as soon as you hear it Cond 24. Judge not of the main cause of Christianity or of particular texts or points by sudden hasty thoughts and glances as if it were a business to be cursorily done but allow it your most deliberate sober studies your most diligent labour and such time and patience as reason may tell you are necessary to a learner in so great a cause Cond 25. Call not so great a matter to the trial in a case of melancholy and natural incapacity but stay till you are fitter to perform the search It is one of the common cheats of Satan to perswade poor weak and melancholy persons that have but half the use of their understandings to go then to try the Christian Religion when they can scarce cast up an intricate account nor are fit to judge of any great and difficult thing And then he hath an advantage to confound them and fill them with blasphemous and unbelieving thoughts and if not to shake their habitual faith yet greatly to perplex them and disturb their peace The soundest wit and most composed is fittest for so great a task Cond 26. When upon sober trial you have discerned the evidences of the Christian verity record what you have found true and judge not the next time against those evidences till you have equal opportunity for a full consideration of them In this case the Tempter much abuseth many injudicious souls when by good advice and soberest meditation they have seen the evidence of truth in satisfying clearness he will after surprise them when their minds are darker or their thoughts more scattered or the former evidence is out of mind and push them on suddenly then to judge of the matters of immortality and of the Christian cause that what he cannot get by truth of argument he may get by the incapacity of the disputant As if a man that once saw a mountain some miles distant from him in a clear day should be tempted to believe that he was deceived because he seeth it not in a misty day or when he is in a valley or within the house Or as if a man that in many days hard study hath cast up an intricate large account and set it right under his hand should be called suddenly to give up the same account anew without looking on that which he before cast up when as if his first account be lost he must have equal time and helps and fitness before he can set it as right again Take it not therefore as any disparagement to the Christian truth if you cannot on a sudden give your selves so satisfactory an account of it as formerly in more clearness and by greater studies you have done Cond 27. Gratifie not Satan so much as to question well resolved points as oft as he will move you to it Though you must prove all things till as learning you come to understand them in their proper evidence time and order yet you must record and hold fast that which you have proved and not suffer the devil to put you to the answer of one and the same question over and over as often as he please this is to give him our time and to admit him to debate his cause with us by temptation as frequently as he will which you would not allow to a ruffian to the debauching of your wife or servants and you provoke God to give you up to errour when no resolution will serve your turn After just resolution the tempter is to be rejected and not disputed with as a troublesome fellow that would interrupt us in our work Cond 28. Where you find your own understandings insufficient have recourse for help to some truly wise judicious Divine Not to every weak Christian nor unskilful Minister who is not well grounded in his own Religion but to those that have throughly studied it themselves you may meet with many difficulties in Theology and in the Text which you think can never be well solved which are nothing to them that understand the thing No Novice in the study of Logick Astronomy Geometry or any Art or Science will think that every difficulty that he meeteth with doth prove that his Author was deceived unless he be able to resolve it of himself but he will ask his Tutor or some one versed in those matters to resolve it and then he will see that his ignorance was the cause of all his doubts Cond 29. Labour faithfully to receive all holy truths with a practical intent and to work them on your hearts according to their nature weight and use For the doctrine of Christianity is scientia affectiva practica a doctrine for Head Heart and Life And if that which is made for the Heart be not admitted to the Heart and rooted there it is half rejected while it seemeth received and is not in its proper place and soil If you are yet in doubt of any of the supernatural Verities admit those truths to your hearts which you are convinced of else you are false to them and to your selves and forfeit all further helps of grace Object This is but a trick of deceit to engage the affections when you want arguments to convince the judgment Perit omne judicium cum res transit in affectum Answ When the affection is inordinate and over-runs the judgment this saying hath some truth but it is most false as of ordinate affections which follow sound judgment For by suscitation of the faculties such affections greatly help the judgment and judgment is but the eye of the soul to guide the man and it is but the passage to the will where humane acts are more compleat If your wife be taught that conjugal love is due to her husband and your child that filial love and reverence is due to his father such affections will not blind their judgments but contrarily they do
and desire the Reader who thinketh that his Reply doth need any confutation but to peruse Ortelius or any true Map of the Roman Empire and Myraeus or any Notitia Episcopatuum and withal the names of the Bishops in each Council and then let him ask his conscience whether those Councils were true or equal Representatives of all the Christian world or only of the Subjects or Churches of one Empire with a few inconsiderable accidental auxiliaries and if he smile not at Mr. Johnson's instances of the Bishops of Thrace and other such Countries as if they had been out of the verge of the Roman Empire at least he shall excuse me from confuting such Replies And since then Christ hath enlarged his Church to many more Nations and remote parts of the world and we are not hopeless that the Gospel may yet be preached to the remotest parts of the earth and an equal just Representative may become more impossible than it now is Yet now such proper universal Councils are so far from being the constitutive visible Head of the Church or the Pope as there presiding or any necessary means of its Vnity and Peace that rebus sic stantibus they are morally impossible For 1. Their distance is so great from Abassia Egypt Armenia Syria Mexico New-England and other parts to those of Muscovy Sweden Norway c. that it will be unlawful and impossible to undertake such journeys and deprive the Church of the labours of the Pastors so long on this account 2. It cannot be expected that many live to perform the journey and return 3. The Princes in whose countreys they live or through whose dominions they must pass are many of them Infidels and will not suffer it and many still in wars and most of them full of State-jealousies 4. When they come together the number of just Representatives which may be proportioned to the several parts of the Church and may be more than a mockery or faction will be so great that they will not be capable of just debates such as the great matters of Religion do require or if they be it will be so long as will frustrate the work and waste their age before they can return when usually the cause which required their congregating will bear no such delays 5. They cannot all speak to the understanding of the Council in one and the same language for all the commoness of Greek and Latine God hath neither promised that all Bishops shall be able to converse in one tongue nor actually performed it 6. Such a council never was in any Christian Emperours time for they neither could nor did summon all the just Representatives of the Churches in other Princes dominions but only those in their own § 31. The predominancy of Selfishness and Self-interest in all hypocrites that are but Christians in name and not by true Regeneration and the great numbers of such Hypocrites in the visible Church are the summary of all the great causes of Divisions and the Prognosticks of their continuance § 32. Unity and harmony will be imperfect whilest true Holiness is so rare and imperfect And to expect the contrary and so to drive on an ill-grounded unholy unity is a great cause of the Division and distraction of the Churches § 33. When differing opinions cause discord betwixt several Churches the means of Christian concord is not an agreement in every opinion but to send to each other a Profession of the true Christian Faith subscribed with a Renunciation of all that is contrary thereto and to require Christian Love and Communion on these terms with a mutual patience and pardon of each others infirmities § 34. No Christian must pretend Holiness against Unity and Peace nor Unity and Peace against Holiness but take them as inseparable in point of Duty And every tender Conscience should be as tender of Church-division and real Schisme as of drunkenness whoredom or such other enormous sins Jam. 3.14 15 16 17. § 35. III. The extensive interest of the Church consisting in the multiplication of Christians is 1. Principally in the multiplication of the Regenerate-members of the Church-mystical 2. And subordinately in the multiplication of Professed Christians in the Church Visible § 36. It is not another but the very same Christianity which in sincerity constituteth a mystical member and in Profession a Visible member of the Church which is not two Churches but one so that all are Hypocrites who are not sincere § 37. The instituted door or entrance into the Church visible is by Baptisme § 38. The Pastors of the Church by the power of the Keyes are Judges who are to be admitted by Baptisme and to Baptise them And the people are to take the baptized for Church-members and in point of publick communion to see as with their Pastors eyes ordinarily though as to Private converse they are Judges themselves § 39. Those that are baptized in Infancy should at age have a solemn transition into the rank of adult members upon a solemn serious owning and renewing of their Baptismal Covenant § 40. God doth not require a false profession of Christianity but a true But yet he appointeth his Ministers to take a Profession not proved false as credibly true Because we are no heart-searchers and every one should be best acquainted with himself and God will have every man the chooser or refuser of his own felicity that the comfort or sorrow may be most his own And a humane belief of them that have not forfeited their credit especially about their own hearts is necessary to humane converse § 41. And God taketh occasion of Hypocrites intrusion 1. To do good to the Church by the excellent gifts of many Hypocrites 2. To do good to themselves by the means or helps of Grace which they meet with in the Church § 42. But the proper appointed place which all that are not at age perswaded to the profession of true Christianity should continue in is the state of Catechumens or Audientes meer Learners in order to be made Christians § 43. The Visible Church is much larger than the Mystical though but one Church that is the Church hath more Professing than Regenerate Members and will have to the end of the World and none must expect that they be commensurate § 44. As a Corn Field hath 1. Corn 2. Straw and Chaffe and 3. Weeds and stricken ears and is denominated from the Corn which is the chief preserved part but the straw must not be cast out because it is necessary for the Corn but the weeds must be pull'd up except when doing it may hurt the Wheat Even so the Church hath 1. Sincere Christians from whom it is denominated 2. Close Hypocrites whose gifts are for the good of the sincere and must not be cast out by the Pastors 3. Hereticks and notorious wicked men who are impenitent after due admonition and these must
to the cause in all the entities and motions in the world is undeniable Whatsoever any Being hath and hath not originally from it self or independently in it self it must needs have from another and that other cannot act beyond its power nor give that which it hath not either formally or eminently Therefore he that findeth in the world about him so much entity and motion so much Intellection Volition and Operation and so much Wisdom Goodness and Power must needs know that all these have some cause which formally or eminently or in a way of transcendency hath more it self than it giveth to others I measured my endeavours about this subject according as the occasions of my own soul had led me among all the temptations which have at any time assaulted me I have found those so contemptible and inconsiderable as to their strength which would have made me doubt of the being of a God that I am apt to think that it is so with others And therefore in the review of this discourse I find no reason to stand to answer any mans objections against the Being or essential Attributes or Properties of God And for the second point that we all owe to this God our absolute Resignation Obedience and Love and so that Holiness is naturally our duty it doth so naturally result from the Nature of God and Man compared that I can scarce think of any thing worthy of a confutation which can be said against it but that which denieth the Nature of God or Man and therefore is either confuted under the first head or is to be confuted under the third As for the fourth particular contained in the second Tome the truth of the Gospel I find not any reason to defend it more particularly nor to answer any more objections than I have done for in proving the truth I have proved all the contradictory assertions to be false and I have answered already the greatest objections and after this to answer every ignorant exception of unsatisfied persons against the several passages of the Scripture would be tedious and not necessary to the end of my design And indeed I perceive not that any considerable number are troubled with doubtings of the truth of the Christian faith in a prevalent degree who are well convinced of those antecedent verities of the Deity and of the natural obligation and necessity of Holiness and of the Immortality of the soul or of a future life of reward and punishment and that live in any reasonable conformity to these natural principles which they profess For when natural evidence hath sufficiently convinced a man that he is obliged to be holy in absolute obedience and love to his Creator through the hopes and fears of another life he is very much prepared to close with the design and doctrine of the Gospel which is so far from contradicting this that it doth but confirm it and shew us the way by which it may most certainly be brought to pass And therefore my observation and experiences constrain me to think that there is no point which I have insisted on which so much calleth for my vindication as the third about the Life to come I know there is a sort of over-wise and over-doing Divines who will tell their followers in private where there is none to contradict them that the method of this Treatise is perverse as appealing too much to natural light and over-valuing humane reason and that I should have done no more but shortly tell men that All that which God speaketh in his word is true and that propria luce it is evident that the Scripture is the Word of God and that to all God's Elect he will give his Spirit to cause them to discern it and that this much alone had been better than all these disputes and reasons but these over-wise men who need themselves no reason for their Religion and judge accordingly of others and think that those men who rest not in the authority of Jesus Christ should rest in theirs are many of them so well acquainted with me as not to expect that I should trouble them in their way or reason against them who speak against reason even in the greatest matters which our reason is given us for As much as I am addicted to scribling I can quietly dismiss this sort of men and love their zeal without the labour of opening their ignorance My task therefore in this conclusion shall be only to defend the doctrine delivered in this fore-going Treatise of the Life to come or the Soul's Immortality against some who call themselves Philosophers For of men so called it is but a small part who at all gainsay this weighty truth The followers of Plato the Divine Philosopher with the Pythagoreans the Stoicks the Cynicks and divers other Sects are so much for it that indeed the most of them go too far and make the soul to be eternal both à parte arte and à parte post and Cicero doth conclude from its self-moving power that it is certainly eternal and divine Insomuch that not only Arnobius but many other ancient Christians write so much against Plato for holding the soul to be naturally immortal and assert themselves that it is of a middle nature between that which is naturally immortal and that which is meerly mortal that he that doth not well understand them may be scandalized at their expressions and think that he readeth the Philosopher defending the souls immortality and the Christian opposing it And though Aristotle's opinion be questioned by many yet Cicero who lived in time and places wherein he had better advantage than we to know his meaning doth frequently affirm that he was in the main of Plato's mind and that the Academicks Peripateticks and Stoicks differed more in words than sense chiding the Stoicks for their schism or separation in setting up a School or Sect as new which had almost nothing new but words Not only Fernelius de abditis rerum causis but many others have vindicated Aristotle however his obscurity hath given men occasion to keep up that controversie And if the book de Mundo be undoubtedly his I see no reason to make any more question of his meaning much less if that book be his which is entitled Mystica Aegypt Chald. Philos which Aben Ama Arabs translated out of Greek into Arabick which Franc. Roseus brought from Damascus and Moses Rovas Medicus Haebr translated into Italian and Pet. Nicol. Castelinus into Latine and Patricius thinketh Aristotle took from Plato's mouth It is only then the Epicureans and some novel Somatists that I have now to answer who think they have much to say against the separated subsistence and immortality of mans soul which I may reduce to these objections following I. Matter and Motion without any more may do all that which you ascribe to incorporeal substances or souls therefore you assert them without ground II. To confirm this
they have done fair though afterwards they consider not that interest of his in all operations which their own concessions necessarily infer 10. Lastly I perceive that they proceed not methodically in their collections but confound all by mixing certainties with uncertainties Whereas the first the great the most discernable truths should be first congested as CERTAINTIES by themselves and the uncertainties should not be pleaded against them nor suffered to stand in contest with them Perceiving all these general Reasons to distrust this sort of Philosophers above others though I resolve to be impartial I cannot willingly be so foolish as to over-look their disadvantage in the present cause II. The particular reasons which disswade me from believing the Epicurean sufficiency of Matter and Motion are these following 1. They all with whom I have now to do are constrained to confess an incorporeal intellectual substance even that there is a God and that GOD is such Epicurus himself doth not deny it yea seemeth to speak magnificently of God and in honour to him would excuse his providence from the minding of inferiour things For 1. They know that matter did not make it self and motion is but its mode and therefore matter cannot be made by its own motion It s being is in order of nature before its motion And matter is in it self so dull a thing and by the adversaries stripped of all forms which are not caused by motion that if it were said to be from eternity in its duration they will confess it could be but as an eternal effect of some nobler cause So that at the first word they grant that matter hath an incorporeal cause 2. And motion as it is found in matter could not cause it self though it be but of the mode of matter it is such a mode as must have a cause And the passive matter yet unmoved is supposed by themselves to be void of all antecedent moving power So that they are all fain to say that God made the matter and gave it the first push And so all matter and motion is reduced to a first efficient who is incorporeal And therefore an incorporeal being is acknowledged 2. I meet with none of them who dare deny this God to be an intellectual free Agent so that though it be granted them that intelligere velle be not in God the same thing formally as it is in man yet is it something which eminently must be so called man having no fitter conception or expression of it than from these acts of his own soul Epicurus will not make God defectively ignorant impotent or bad When themselves divide all things into such as have understanding and such as have none of which part do they suppose GOD to stand Things that are void of understanding formally or eminently are below the dignity of things that have understanding So that they confess there is existent an incorporeal intelligent free Agent 3. As they confess that this intellectual Agent is the first cause both of matter and motion so they cannot deny that he still causeth both by his continued influx or causing efficacy For there can be no effect without a cause and therefore when the cause ceaseth the effect must cease The material part of a moral cause may cease and yet the effect continue But that moral causation continueth which is proportioned to the effect The Parent may die while the child surviveth but there is a continued cause of the life of the child proportioned to the effect Matter is not an independent being To say that God hath made it self-sufficient and independent is to say that he hath made it a God Suppose but a total cessation of the Divine emanation influx and causation and you must needs suppose also the cessation of all Beings If you say that when God hath once given it a Being it will continue of it self till his power annihilate it I answer if it continue without a continuing causation it must continue as an independent self-sufficient being But this is a contradiction because it is a creature GOD is no effect and therefore needeth no cause of subsistence but the creature is an effect and cannot subsist a moment without a continued cause As the beams or communicated light cannot continue an instant if there were a total cessation of the emanation of the luminary because their being is meerly dependent and they need no other positive annihilation besides the cessation of the causation which did continue them It was from one of your own Poets that Paul cited In him we live and move and have our being for we are his off-spring And nothing is more abhorrent to all common reason than that this stone or dirt which was nothing as yesterday should be a God to it self even one independent self-sufficient being as soon as it is created and so that God made as many demy-gods as atoms We see past doubt that one creature cannot subsist or move without another on which it is dependent how much less can any creature subsist or move without its continued reception of its Creator's influx If you could suppose that for one moment there were no God you must suppose there would be nothing If I thought any would deny this besides those inflated vertiginous brains that are not to be disputed with I would say more for the illustration of it Object But though matter subsist not without a continued divine causation or emanation or efficacious volition yet motion may continue when all divine causation of it ceaseth Because when God hath given it one push that causeth a motion which causeth another motion and that another and so in infinitum if there were no stop Answ 1. If this were so it must be on supposition of a vis motiva communicata vel impressa for if there had been no such the first motion would have not been or all have presently ceased for want of a continued cause As there is no motion sine vi motiva so none can be communicated but by the communication of that force Action is not nothing nor will be caused by nothing As the delapsus gravium would presently cease if we could cause the pondus or gravity to cease so is it in all other motions If there be no vis or strength communicated along with the motion there would be nothing in that motion to cause another motion nor in that to cause another And if it were by way of traction if the cause cease which is the prima trahens all the motion ceaseth and so also if it be by way of pulsion So that in every motion there is something more than matter and motion 2. All motion of things below within our reach hath many impediments and therefore would cease if the first cause continued not his powerful efficacy It is tedious and needless to enumerate instances 3. The moving power of the noblest creatures is not purely active but partly passive and partly
active and must receive the influx of the highest cause before it can act or communicate any thing Therefore as soon as the first mover should cease the rest would be soon stop'd though some active power was communicated to them As we see in a Clock when the poise is down and in a Watch when the spring is down the motion ceaseth first where it first began 4. Can you constrain your reason to imagine that God is the sole principal active cause for the first touch and as it were for one minute or instant while he causeth the first motus and is an unactive being or no cause ever after save only reputativè because he caused the first This is to say that God was God till he made the world and ever since he hath done nothing but left every atom or creature to be God Is God so mutable to do all for one instant and to do nothing ever after 5. The infiniteness and perfection of God fully proveth that all continued motion is by the continuance of his efficiency For it is undeniable that he who made all things is every where or present to all his creatures in the most intimate proximity And it is certain that he cannot but know them all and also that his Benignity maintaineth all their beings and well-beings and therefore that he is not an unactive being but that his power as well as his wisdom and Goodness is continually in act How strangely do these Epicureans differ from Aristotle who durst not deny the Eternity of the World lest he should make God an unactive Being ad extra from Eternity till the Creation When-as these men feign him to have given but one instantaneous push and to have been coetera otiosus or unactive from Eternity Seeing then it cannot by sober reason be denyed that God himself is by a continued Causation the Preserver and intimate first mover of all things it must needs thence follow that matter and motion are still insufficient of themselves and that this is to be none of the Controversie between us but only whether it be any created Nature Power or other Cause by which God causeth motion in any thing or all things or whether he do it by his own immediate Causation alone without the use of any second Cause save meer motion it self so that the insufficiency of Matter and Motion to continual alterations and productions must be confessed by all that confess there is a God 4. It is also manifest in the effect that it is not a meer motion of the first Cause which appeareth in the being and motions of the Creature There is apparently a tendency in the Creatures motion to a certain end which is an attractive Good and there is a certain Order in all motions to that end and certain Laws or Guidances and overrulings to keep them in that Order so that Wisdom and Goodness do eminently appear in them all in their beings natures differences excellencies order and ends as well as Motion the effect of Power 1. It is certain that God who is unmoved himself is the first mover of all 2. And if God were not unmoved but by self-motion caused motion yet he exerteth Wisdom and Goodness in his Creation and Providence as well as Motion 1. He that is Infinite and therefore not properly in any place or space or at least is limited in none can himself by Locomotion move himself in none which methinks none should question And they that make the World infinite or at least indefinite as they call it methinks should not deny the Infinitenesse of God And they acknowledge no motion themselves but Locomotion or migratio a loco in locum But saith Gassendus Vol. 1. pag. 337. Et certè captum omnem fugit ut quippiam quantumvis sit alteri praesens conjunctumque ipsum moveat si in seipso immotum maneat c. Itaque necesse omnino videtur ut cum in serie moventium quorum moventur alia ab aliis procedi in infinitum non possit perveniatur ad unum primum non quod immotum moveat sed quod ipsum per se moveatur Answ You gather from hence that it is the contexture of the most subtile Atomes which is the form and first mover in physical beings But you granted before that God moved those Atomes and also put a moving inclination into them And atomes are far from being unum or primum You said before sufficiat Deum quidem esse incorporeum ac pervadere fovereq universam mundi machinam And if so then movere etiam as well as fovere Either you mean as you speak in confessing a God or not If not it is unworthy a Philosopher to dissemble for any worldly respects whatsoever If you do then Is it beyond your capacity to conceive that God being unmoved moveth all things or not If not why should it be beyond your capacity to conceive the same in a second Order of a second spiritual being The reason as to motion is of the same kinde If yea then either you believe God is the first Mover or not If not withdraw your former Confession If yea what Locomotion for you deny all other can you ascribe to God who is unbounded and infinite what place is he moved from and what place is he moved into And is his motion rectus vel circularis is it one or multifarious or rather will you not renounce all these 2. And as God moveth being unmoved so he doth more than move He moveth Orderly and giveth Rules and Guidances to motion and moveth graciously to the felicity of the Creature and to a desireable end A Horse can move more than a man for he hath more strength or moving power But he moveth not so regularly nor to such intended ends because he hath not wisdom and benignity or goodness as Man hath He that buildeth a House or Ship or writeth such Volumes as Gassendus did doth somewhat more than barely move which a Swallow or a Hare could have done as swiftly And he that looketh on the works of God even to the Heavens and Earth as Gassendus hath himself described them and seeth not the effects of Wisdom and Goodness in the Order and tendency and ends of motion as well as Power in motion it self did take his survey but in his dream saith Balbus in Cicero de Nat. Deor. l. 2. p. 62. Hoc qui existimat fieri potuisse that is for the World to be made by meer fortuitous motion of atomes c. non intelligo cur non idem putet si innumerabiles unius viginti formae literarum aliquo coniciantur posse ex his in terram excussis Annales Ennii ut diâ—inceps legi possint effici quod nescio an in uno quidem versu possit tantum valere fortuna Quod si mundum efficere potest concursus atomorum cur porticum cur templum cur domum cur navem non potest quae sunt minus
operosa multo quidem faciliora Certè ita temere de mundo effutiunt ut mihi quidem nunquam hunc admirabilem coeli ornatum qui locus est proximus suspexisse videantur Where he brings in this passage as from Aristotle that if we should imagine men to have lived in some Dungeon or Cavern in the Earth and never to have seen the Sun or Light or World as we do and if there should be a doubt or dispute among them whether there be a God and if you should presently bring up these men into our places where they might look above them and about them to the Sun and Stars and Heaven and Earth they would quickly by such a sight be convinced that there is a God But as he truly addeth Assiduitate quotidiana consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi neque admirantur neque requirunt rationes earum rerum quas semper vident perinde quasi novitas nos magis quam magnitude rerum debeat adexquirendas causas excitare But I suppose it will be granted me that the first mover doth more than meerly move the effects of Wisdom and Goodness being so legible on all the World but you 'l say that to do it wisely and to attain good ends by it c. is but the modus of action with the effect and therefore matter and motion rightly ordered may be nevertheless sufficient to all effects To which I answer that the Creatures motion requireth not only that the Creator move them but that he place and order them and move them rightly and that he remove and overcome impediments c. Therefore there is necessary in the first mover both Wisdom and Love as well as Power And neither his Power Wisdom or Love are Locomotion in himself And this much being proved that in every motion there is Divine Power Wisdom and Love which is more than matter and motion it self I proceed next to enquire 5. Do you think there is any thing existent in the World besides matter and motion or not As to meer site and figure and other such order or modes of matter I know you will not deny them to have now a being as well as motion But is there no different tendency to motion in the parts of matter Is there not in many Creatures a Power an Inclination or aptitude to motion besides motion it self Is there not a reason à priore to be given why one Creature is more agile and active than another and why they act in their various wayes Why is fire more active than earth and a Swallow than a Snail If you say that the different ratio motus is in some extrinsecal agent only which moveth them you will hardly shew any possibility of that when the same Sun by the same virtue or motion as you will say is it that moveth all And if it were so you must go up to the first Cause to ask for the different motions of those movers when our enquiry now is de natura moventium motorum Creatorum If you say that it is the Ratio recipiendi in the different magnitudes or positions of the parts of matter which is the cause of different motions I would know 1. Whether this difference of magnitude and figure and site being now antecedently necessary to different motions was not so heretofore as well as now If you say No you feign without proof a state of things and order of Causes contrary to that which all mens sense perceiveth to be now existent And who is the wiser Philosopher he that judgeth the course and nature of things to be and have been what he now findeth it till the contrary be proved or he that findeth it one thing and feigneth it sometime to have been another without any proof That which is now antecedently necessary to diversity of motion it 's like was so heretofore 2. And then how could one simple equal act of God setting the first matter into motion cause such an inequality in motions to this day if it be true that you hold that only that which is moved or in motion it self can move and that motion is all that is necessary to the diversity 3. Either the first matter was made solid in larger parcels or all conjunct or in Atomes If it was made first in Atomes then Motion caused not Division If it was made conjunct and solid then motion caused not conjunction and solidity And if the first division or conjunction site and figure of matter was all antecedent to motion and without it we have no reason to think that it is the sole Cause of all things now But surely quantity figure and site are not all that now is antecedent to motion Doth not a man feel in himself a certain Power to sudden and voluntary motion He that sate still can suddenly rise and go And if you say that he performeth that sudden motion by some antecedent motion I answer that I grant that but the question is whether by that alone or whether a Power distinct from motion it self be not as evidently the Cause For otherwise the antecedent motion would proceed but according to its own proportion It would not in a minute make so sudden and great an alteration I can restrain also that motion which some antecedent motion e.g. passion urgeth me to Surely this Power of doing or not doing is somewhat different from doing it self A power of not-moving is not motion And what is the Pondus which Gassendus doth adde to magnitude and figure as a third pre-requisite in Atomes I perceive he knoweth not what to make of it himself But in conclusion it must be no natural Gravity by which the parts are inclined to the whole in themselves but the meer effect of pulsion or traction or both At the first he was for both conjunct pulsion of the Air and traction of the Atomes from the Earth But of this he repented as seeing impulsionem aeris nullam esse and was for the traction of Atoms alone Than which his Friends conceit of the pulsive motion of the Sun in its Diastole or whatever other motion is the cause doth seem less absurd But that man that would have me believe that if a Rock were in the air or if Pauls Steeple should fall the descent would be only by the traction of the hamuli of invisible Atomes or by the pulsion of Air and Sun conjunct must come neerer first and tell me how the hamuli of atomes can fasten upon a marble rock and how they come to have so much strength as to move that rock which no man can move in its proper place if there be no such thing as strength or power besides actual motion and why it is that those drawing atomes do move so powerfully Earthwards when at the same time it is supposed that as many or more atomes are moving upwards by the Suns attraction and more are moved circularly with the Earth why do not these stop or
Marble feeleth no more than the solid stone nor the air than the earth for any proof that we have of it The boys that whip their tops and the women that turn their wheels so swiftly that the motion shall not be discerned yet put no feeling into either though the motion be swifter than that of the heart or lungs or blood What the learned Dr. Ward hath said of this against Mr. Hobs I refer you to peruse and excuse me for transcribing it Scaliger Sennertus and many others have heretofore challenged these Philosophers to shew the world how atoms by motion or elements by mixture can get that sense which neither matter motion nor mixture have but we can meet with no account of it yet worth the reading not by Cartesius not by Regius or Berigardus not by Gassendus nor any other that we can get and read How unsatisfactory is it to tell us that facultas sentiendi movendi quae anima sensitiva vulgo dicitur est partium animalis in spiritus nervos alia sensoria c. talis attemperatio conformatio qua animal ab objectis variis motibus affici potest as Regius l. 4. c. 3. p. 267. This is an easie solving of the Phaenomena indeed But qualis est illa contemperatio quomodo potest contemperantia insensibilium sensibile constituere Nonne dat ista contemperatio quod non habet Perhaps you will say with him in Cicer. de Nat. Deor. that by this argument God must be a Fidler because he maketh men that are such Answ By this argument no fidler nor any other man hath more wisdom than God or can do that which God cannot do but because God is above him in his skill doth it follow that the names which signifie humane imperfection must be put on God Can God enable a man to that which he is not able to do himself and can he give that which he hath not to give Object None of the parts of a clock can tell the hour of the day and yet all set together can and none of the letters of a book are Philosophy and yet the whole may be a learned system and no atoms in a Lute can make melody as the whole can do Answ This is but to play with words In all these instances the whole hath nothing of a higher kind in nature than the several parts but only a composition by the contribution of each part The clock telleth you nothing but per modum signi and that signum is only in the sound or order of motion And sound and motion belongeth to the whole by vertue or contribution of the parts and is not another thing above them And that the motion is so ordered and that man can by it collect the time of the day is from the power of our understandings and not from the matter of the engine at all So the book is no otherwise Philosophy at all but per modum signi which signum is related to mans understanding both as the cause and orderer and as the receiver and apprehender So that the letters do nothing at all but passively serve the mind of man And so it is in the other instance the strings do but move the air and cause the sound which is in the ear that this is melody is caused only by the mind of man who first frameth and then orderly moveth them and then suo modo receiveth the sound and maketh melody by the aptitude of his apprehension If you had proved that Clock or Book or Lute do make themselves and order and use themselves and know the time or understand or delight in themselves you had done something But by the deceitful names of Philosophy and Melody to confound the bare natural sound and sign with that ordering and that reception which is the priviledge of a mind is unfit for a Philosopher Moreover I expect from Matter and Motion an account of motions great concomitants that is of Light and Heat Mistake me not I am not undervaluing the effects of motion I take it for a most noble and observable cause of most that is done or existent in the corporeal world but must it therefore be the solitary cause I have long observed amongst wranglers and erroneous zealots in Divinity that most of their error and misdoing lieth in setting the necessary co-ordinate causes or parts of things as inconsistent in opposition to one another It would make one ashamed to hear one plead that Scripture must be proved by it self and another that it must be proved by reason and another that it must be by miracles and another by the Church and another by general History and Tradition c. As if every one of these were not necessary concurrent parts in the proof Such work have we among poor deluded women and ignorant men while the Romanists say that they are the true Church and the Greeks say it is they and the Lutherans say it is they and the Anabaptists say it is they as if my neighbours and I should contend which of our houses it is that is the Town And so do these Philosophers about the Principles and Elements The Intellectual nature which is the Image of God hath notoriously three faculties Vnderstanding Will and Executive Power and men think that they cannot understand the one without denying the other two and the fiery nature which constituteth the Sun and other Luminaries and is the image of the vital nature hath three notorious powers or properties Light Heat and Motion and they cannot understand Motion without making nothing of Light and Heat or greatly obscuring and abusing them Cull out into one and set together but what Patricius hath said of Light and what Telesius hath said of Heat and Campanella after him and what Gassendus and Cartesius have said of Motion and cut off all their superfluities and you will have a better entrance into sound Philosophy than any one book that I know doth afford you I confess that as wisdom must lead the will and determine its acts quoad specificationem and the will must set a work the same intellect and determine its acts quoad exercitium and the active power doth partly work ad intra in the operations of both these and ad extra is excited by the imperium of the will so that these three faculties as Schibler Alsted and many others truly number them are marvellously conjunct and co operative Even so it is in the Motion Light and Heat of the active element or fiery or aethereal nature I know motion contributeth to light and heat but it 's as true that light and heat have their proper coequal and co-ordinate properties and effects and that heat contributeth as much to motion at least as motion doth to heat indeed in one essence they are three coequal vertues or faculties the Vis Motiva Illuminativa Calefactiva And so vain is their labour who only from matter
necessitating force than a man moveth as a stone because it is irresistibly moved and hath no power to forbear any act which it performeth or to do it otherwise than it doth For if there be no power habits or dispositions antecedent to motion but motion it self is all then there is one and the same account to be given of all actions good and bad I did it because I was irresistibly moved to it and could no more do otherwise than my pen can choose to write There is then no virtue or vice no place for Laws and moral Government further than they may be tacklings in the engine which necessitateth whatsoever is done amiss is as much imputable to God the first mover as that which is done-well If you shoot an arrow which killeth your friend the arrow could not hinder it if you make or set your watch amiss though one motion causeth another yet the errour of all is resolved into the defect of the first cause They that killed Henry the 3. and Henry the 4. Kings of France may say that as the knife could not resist the motion of their hand so neither could they the motion of the superiour cause that moved them and so on to the first No Traitors or Rebels can resist the power which acteth them therein any more than the dust can resist the wind which stirreth it up And so you see what cometh of all the Government of God and Man and of all Laws and Judgments Justice and Injustice Right and Wrong And how little cause you have to be angry with the Thief that robbeth you or the man that cudgelleth you any more than with the staff But of this I refer you to the foresaid writing of Bishop Bromhal against Mr. Hobs allowing you to make the most you can of his Reply We are certain by the operations of things that there is a difference in their natural powers and virtues and not only in their quantity figure and motion God hath not made only homogeneal undifferenced matter there are plainly now exceeding diversities of natural excellencies virtues and qualities in the things we see And he that will say that by motion only God made this difference at first doth but presumptuously speak without book without all proof to make it credible and taketh on him to know that which he knoweth that he knoweth not Is not the virtue and goodness of things as laudable as their quantity and motion Why then should we imagine so vast a disproportion in the image of God upon his works as to acknowledge the magnitude and motion incomprehensible and to think that in virtue and goodness of nature they are all alike and none is more noble or more like himself than a clod of earth We see that the natures of all things are suited to their several uses Operari sequitur esse Things act as they are There is somewhat in the nature of a bird or beast or plant which is their fitness to their various motions If only motion made that fire to day which yesterday was but a stone why doth not the strongest wind so much as warm us or why doth it so much cool us Why doth not the snow make us as warm as a fleece of wool the wool doth move no more than the snow and the matter of it appeareth to be no more subtil Indeed man can give to none of his works a nature a life or virtue for the operation which he desireth He can but alter the magnitude and figure and motion of things and compound and mix them and conjoyn them and these Epicureans seem to judge of the works of God by mans But he who is Being Life and Intelligence doth accordingly animate his noble Engines and give them natures and vertues for their operations and not only make use of matter and weight where he findeth it as our Mechanicks themselves can do Debasing all the noblest of Gods works is unbeseeming a true Philosopher who should search out the virtues and goodness as well as the greatness of them But I have been longer in answering this first Objection than I can afford to be about the rest unless I would make a Book of this which I call but the Conclusion I will adde but this one thing more That in case it were granted the Epicureans that the soul is material it will be no disproving of its immortality nor invalidate any of my former arguments for a life of retribution after this To which purpose consider these things 1. That where matter is simple and not compounded it hath no tendency to corruption Object Matter is divisible and therefore corruptible how simple soever Answ It is such as may be divided if God please and so the soul is such as God can destroy But we see that all parts of matter have a wonderful tendency to unity and have a tendency to a motus aggregativus if you separate them Earth inclineth to earth and water to water and air to air and fire to fire 2. All Philosophers agree to what I say who hold that matter is eternal either à parte ante or à parte post For if matter be eternal the soul's materiality may consist with its eternity 3. Yea all without exception do agree that there is no annihilation of matter when there is a dissolution Therefore if the soul be a simple uncompounded being though material it will remain the same This therefore is to be set down as granted us by all the Infidels and Atheists in the world that man's soul what ever it is is not annihilated when he dieth if it be any kind of substance material or immaterial And they that call his temperament his soul do all acknowledge that there is in the composition some one predominant principle more active or noble than the rest and of the duration of this it is that we enquire which no man doth deny though some deny it to be immaterial But this will be further opened under the rest of the Objections The reasons of my many words in answering this Objection I give you in the words of a late learned Conciliator Philosophiae Platonicae explicationi diutius immorati sumus quod res maximas cognitione dignissimas complectatur Habet i◠quoque prae coeteris quod ad aeternas primitivas rationes mentem erigat eamque à fluxis perituris rebus advocatam ad eas quae sola intelligentia percipiuntur convertat Qua quidem in re infinitum prope momentum est Nam obruimur turbâ Philosophorum qui nimis fidunt sensibus nihil praeter corpora intelligi posse contendunt Atque ut mihi videtur nulla perniciosior pestis in vitam humanam potest invadere nihil quod magis religioni adversetur Joh. Bapt. du Hamel in Conscens veteris novae Philos Praefat. OBJECTION II. BY Sense Imagination Cogitation Reason you cannot prove the Soul to be incorporeal because the Bruits partake of
same thing as many others do that call them forms when they speak of vegetatives And what if by substances Telesius mean the same that Pemble doth by accidents Is not the world then troubled with ambiguitie of words He that will consider them well may suspect that they mean as I conjecture An active power or principle being the chief cause of operations alterations and discrimination is the thing that they all mean by all these names And the followers of Democritus especially Gassendus and Cartesius do not improbably argue that it is some substantial being which maketh that change or effect upon our senses which as there received is a quality So that unless Mr. Pemble can better tell us what lux calor are than by calling them Qualities he hath given the understanding no satisfaction at all Much less when he nakedly asserteth without any proof that sensation doth not superare naturam primarum qualitatum that are none of them sensible themselves And when he hath no other answer to this argument but that non minus miranda sunt in inanimatis which he giveth not one instance or word to prove When Aristotle c. Scaliger Sennertus and abundance more have said much to the contrary I conclude that for all that is here said and whether you call them our forms or not as you may or may not in several senses humane souls are those parts of man which are simple pure invisible active powerful substances and therefore being not annihilated must needs subsist in their separated state OBJECTION IV. THe Soul is material and consequently mortal because it dependeth upon matter in its operations and consequently in its essence Answ 1. I have proved already that if you did prove the soul material you had not thereby at all proved it mortal unless you mean only that it hath a posse mori vel annihilari which may be said of every creature for simple matter which hath no repugnant parts or principles hath not only a posse nen mori but an aptitude in its nature ad non moriendum Remember your friends that make the world or matter at least to be eternal They thought not that materiality was a proof of either annihilation or corruption Object If it be material it must be compounded of matter and form and therefore is corruptible Answ True if that matter and form were two several substances and were one repugnant to the other The soul and body are different substances but the metaphysical matter and form of the soul being but the genus differentia are not two substances much less repugnant and therefore have never the more a tendency to corruption 2. The soul useth matter and dependeth no otherwise on it than its instrument It doth not follow that a man is a horse because he dependeth on his horse in the manner of his riding and his pace nor that I am inanimate because in writing I depend on my pen which is inanimate If you put spirits of wine into water or whey as its vehicle to temper it for a medicine it doth not follow that the spirits are meer water because they operate not without the water but conjunct and as tempered by it If the fire in your Lamp do not shine or burn without the oil but in manner and duration dependeth on it it doth not follow that fire is annihilated when the candle is out or that it was but oil before no nor that it ceaseth to be fire afterwards as Gassendus must needs confess who holdeth that the Elements are not turned into one another § 1. l. 3. c. 2. Fire ceaseth not to be fire when it goeth out of our observation The noblest natures use and rule the inferiour God himself moveth and useth things material and yet is not therefore material himself Yea if motus be in patiente recipitur ad modum recipientis you may conjecture how far God's own operations upon the creatures may be called dependent as to the effect as being ad captum modum creaturae And the Sun doth move and quicken all passive matter here below ad modum recipientis with great variety through the variety of the matter and yet it followeth not that the Sun is it self such passive matter 3. The soul hath operations which are not upon matter at all though matter may possibly be an antecedent occasion or prerequisite Such is the apprehension of its own intellection and volitions and all that it thence gathereth of God and other intellectual natures and operations of which I must say more anon OBJECTION V. NO immaterial substance moveth that which is material as a principle of its operations but the soul moveth the body as the principle of its operations Ergo. Answ 1. I have already said that if you proved the soul material it would not prove it mortal 2. As the body hath various operations so it is moved by various principles or powers As to locomotion and perhaps vegetation the materia subtilii or finest atoms as you will call it or the fiery matter in the spirits as I would call it is an active being which hath a natural power to move it self and the rest But whether that motion do suffice to sensation is undecided But certainly there is another inward principle of motion which guideth much of the locomotive and over-ruleth some of the natural motion by a peculiar action of its own which is called Intellection and Volition as I have proved before When I go to the Church when I write or talk the spirits are the nearest sufficient principle of the motion as motion but as it is done in this manner to this end at this time with these reasons it is from the intellectual principle 3 And thus I deny the major Proposition And I prove the contrary 1. God is the first principle of all motion in the world and the first cause of material motion and yet is not material 2. What the lower and baser nature can do that the higher and nobler hath power to do suppositis supponendis therefore if a body can move a body a soul can do it much more But saith Gassendus Causis secundis primum agendi principium est Atomorum varia mobilitas ingenita non incorporea aliqua substantia Answ Angels are causae secundae souls are causae secundae animated bodies of men are causae secundae prove it now of any of these in your exclusion if you can But he saith Capere non licet quomodo si incorporeum sit ita applicari corpori valeat ut illi impulsum imprimat quando noque ipsum contingere carens ipsa tactu seu mole quae tangat non potest Physicae actiones corporeae cum sint nisi à principio physico corporeoque elici non possiut Quod anima autem humana incorporea cum sit in ipsum tamen corpus suum agat motumque ipsi imprimat dicimus animam humanam qua est
intellectus seu mens atque adeo incorporea non elicere actiones nisi intellectuales seu mentales incorporeas Et quum est sentiens vegetans praeditaque vi corporum motrice atque adeo corporea est elicere actiones corporeas c. And of Angels and Devils he saith That it is known by faith only that they are incorporeal and perhaps God gave them extraordinary bodies when he would have them move or act on bodies To this I answer 1. Who gave those atoms their ingenite mobility and how You say that captum omnem fugit ut quippiam aliud moveat si in seipso immotum maneat If so then it seemeth that either God was moved when he moved atoms or that he never moved them How then came they to be moved first But you confess that God put into them their mobility You say De Deo alia ratio est quoniam infinitae virtutis cum sit vâ—ique praesens non ullo sâ—i motu sed nutu solo agere movere quidlibet potest If you think not as you speak it is unworthy of a Philosopher if you do then it is strange that you should overthrow your own reasoning and excuse it no better than thus If the reason why incorporeal spirits cannot move bodies be that which you alledge because only a body can be applied to a body to make impression on it then God can less move a body than man's soul can because his purest essence is more distant from corporeal grossness than our souls are At least the reason would be the same And to say that God is every where and of infinite vertues maketh him nevertheless a Spirit and created spirits if that be enough may have power or vertue enough for such an effect Doubtless if God move bodies the spirituality of an agent hindereth not the motion 2. But why should it captum omnem superare that a nobler and more potent nature can do that which a more ignoble can do Because I cannot know how a spirit by contact can apply it self to matter shall I dream that therefore it is uncapable of moving bodies Clean contrary I see that matter of it self is an unactive thing and were it not that the noble active element of fire which as a lower soul to the passive matter and a thing almost middle between a spirit and a body did move things here below I could discern no motion in the world but that which spirits cause except only that of the parts to the whole the aggregative motion which tendeth to rest The difference of understandings is very strange it is much easier to me to apprehend that almost all motion should come from the purest powerful active vital natures than that they should be all unable to stir a straw or move the air or any body OBJECTION VI. THe soul is in our sleep either unactive as when we do not so much as dream or acteth irregularly and irrationally according to the fortuitous motion of the spirits Ergo it is no incorporeal immortal substance Answ 1. I suppose the soul is never totally unactive I never awaked since I had the use of memory but I found my self coming out of a dream And I suppose they that think they dream not think so because they forget their dreams 2. Many a time my reason hath acted for a time as regularly and much more forcibly than it doth when I am awake which sheweth what it can do though it be not ordinary 3. This reason is no better than that before answered where I told you that it argueth not that I am a horse or no wiser than my horse because I ride but according to his pace when he halteth or is tired Nor doth it prove that when I alight I cannot go on foot He is hard of understanding that believeth that all the glorious parts of the world above us have no nobler intellectual natures than man Suppose there be Angels and suppose one of them should be united to a body as our souls are we cannot imagine but that he would actuate it and operate in it according to its nature as I write amiss when my pen is bad The same I say of persons Lethargick Apoplectick Delirant c. OBJECTION VII REason is no proof of the soul's immateriality because sense is a clearer and more excellent way of apprehension than Reason is and the bruits have sense Answ 1. I have said enough to the case of Bruits before 2. The soul understandeth bodily things by the inlet of the bodily senses Things incorporeal as I shall shew more anon it otherwise understandeth When it understandeth by the help of sense it is not the sense that understandeth any thing If Bruits themselves had not an Imagination which is an Image of Reason their sense would be of little use to them We see when by business or other thoughts the minde is diverted and alienated how little sense it self doth for us when we can hear as if we never heard and see and not observe what we see yet it 's true that the more sense helpeth us in the apprehending of things sensible which are then objects the better and surely râ—w perceive them by the understanding As the second and third Concoction will not be well made if there be a failing in the first so the second and third perception â—n the Phantasie and Intellect will be ill made if the first deceive or fail them But this proveth not either that the first Concoction or Perception is more noble than the third or that Sensitives without Reason have any true understanding at all or that Sense Phantasie and Reason are not better than Sense alone But these things need not much disputing If Sense be nobler than Reason let the Horse ride the man and let the Woman give her milk to her Cow and let Bruits labour men and feed upon them and let Beasts be your Tutors and Kings and Judges commit to them the noblest works and give them the preeminence if you think they have the noblest faculties OBJECTION VIII SEnsation and Intellection are both but Reception The passiveness therefore of the Soul doth shew its materiality Answ A short answer may satisfie to this Objection 1. All created Powers are partly passive how active soever they be For being in esse operari dependant on and subordinate to the first Cause they must needs receive his influence as well as exercise their own powers As the second wheel in the Clock must receive the moving force of the first before it can move the third 2. It is an enormous error about the operations of the Soul to think that Intellection yea or Sensation either is meer Reception and that the sensitive and intellective power are but Passive The active Soul of Man yea of Bruits receiveth not its object as the mark or butt receiveth the arrow that is shot at it It receiveth it by a similitude of
doth make all such arguings to sound like dreams 2. I have shewed that spiritual powers receive not impressions as dull matter doth by a meer passive power but by an activity and outgoing it worketh indeed upon that which it receiveth much more than any such matter can be said to work on it nay matter doth not properly work upon it at all but only afford it matter to work upon and occasion to exercise its active power As the stone or tree doth not work upon the sight but the sight by the help of light doth work upon it As the eye can see a dung-hill and yet be of a nobler kind and God and Angels can know beasts and worms and yet be incorporeal So man can know things inanimate and yet be animate and things insensible and yet be sensible and things irrational and yet be rational and things corporeal and yet be incorporeal And this by the activity and extent of its power and not by any passive debasing defectiveness at all OBJECTION Xâ— THat is not incorporeal which neither knoweth it self to be incorporeal nor hath any notion but negative of an incorporeal being But such is man's soul Answ 1. If the soul know not it self to be an immortal spirit what maketh almost all the world to judge so of themselves insomuch that those men that under pretence of Philosophy deny it are fain to study very hard and take many years pains to blot out this light of nature from their minds because they cannot be ignorant of it at easie rates The understanding will not lose its natural light nor suffer such verities to be obliterated but by a great deal of industry and by the engines of abundance of false notions which are sought after to that use As Cicero saith of the Epicureans They learn those things quae cum praeclare didicerunt nihil sciant Piso de fin 5. p. 204. They learn diligently to unlearn the truth that when they have learn'd much they may know little 2. Hath man no notion but Negative of an incorporeal being I shewed you before why the notion of materiality should not be here used for a cheat or blind But look back on what I said even now and you will see that as Cartes truly saith we have not only positive conceptions of a mind but the first the clearest and the surest conceptions of it in the measure that is fit for our present state Quest 1. Have you not a positive conception of Intellection and Volition If not you are unfit for any controversies about them and cannot own your own humanity Quest 2. Have you not a clearer perception that you think and know or reason either right or wrong than you have what that thing is that you think or reason about Quest 3. Have you not a sure and positive conception that omnis actus est alicujus actus quod nihil nihil agit and therefore that you are an intelligent volitive being Quest 4. Have you not a positive sure conception that quicquid agit agere potest and that nothing doth that which it cannot do and therefore that your souls are beings potentiated for Intellection Volition and Execution Quest 5. Have you not a positive sure conception that you have a natural inclination to these acts and a pleasure in them and that they are natural and perfective to you and consequently that your souls are beings that have not only a power but a vis inclinatio naturalis or a power that is natural and active and inclined to these particular actings Quest 6. Have you not a positive sure conception that the end and highest objects of these acts and inclinations are things above sense viz. your selves or minds in the first place and then the things above you the first Being Cause and Mover of all the infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness who is your Maker and your End If you find no such thing The Lord have mercy on you for every honest man may find it Quest 7. Have you not a positive sure conception that such as the Operations are which flow from the essential powers or faculties such in nobility and excellency and nature is the substance thus potentiated and acting All these are clear undeniable positive conceptions of the soul which set together are thus much that The Mind or Soul of man is a noble Essence above the reach and nature of sense naturally potentiated and inclined as an active being to intellection volition and seeking after things celestial and everlasting especially God himself his ultimate end All this is positive clear and sure And you would think this enough 1. If you did consider what Lud. Vives saith that God hath given man a soul to use rather than accurately to know or to know so far as is necessary to use As your child may have the use of his knife or clock or watch or cloaths without knowing what metall they are made of or how to compose and make the like as long as he can but do that with them which is necessary to their use Often saith Seneca Necessaria ignoramus quia superflua didicimus 2. If your minds were not by sense deluded and captivated to such fixed idea's of things corporeal and gross as to over-look all other beings and measure all substance by such gross idea's 3. If you well considered that you know in any respect little more of things corporeal and in some respects much less Let us see wherein it is that you know more either as to the sensible or insensible parts of such beings As for the substances as such you confess they are but per accidens the objects of sense and that as stripped of their accidents you have no positive true conception of them And as for the accidents you are no whit agreed either what they are or how many Of all things you are most unanimous in that of Quantity moles or extensions but what a poor kind of knowledge is it to know that this or that is quantum and not to know what it is that is quantum What light colour sapor odor are and what all the senses that perceive them you are as much disagreed as if this age had been the first that had debated it The same I may say both of Qualities in general and of all other in particular except figure which properly belongeth not to the predicament Of all the rest there is the like disagreement even time and place which truly are nothing but entia rationis are debased by you in the first place and are two of Gassendus his four predicaments About the number either of principles or elements there is no agreement no nor what any one of the elements are Who hath told us what is the form of earth or water or air or described them otherwise than by their qualities And then differ you as much about those qualities Who hath told us any thing of the naked matter or
neerest to GOD that we have any knowledge of And therefore Reason will not teach us to look to any intermediate universal or superiour Cause because there is no created superiour Nature to the Intellectual And it 's absurd to goe to the Inferior to be the Cause of the superior If any will needs think that under God there is some Vniversal Intellect not of the whole Universe for that 's plainly improbable but of our Systeme or Vortex they must take it to be some Angelical Intelligence as Aristotle or the Sun No man can prove either of these to have any such office And for the Sun it is certain that it is not possible unless it self be an Intelligence And though to humane Reason it seem very likely that so glorious a corporeal Nature as the Sun should not be destitute of as noble a form as a lump of Clay a humane body doth possess that so there may be a proportion in Gods works between the nobility of matter and form yet all this to man is utterly uncertain nor doth any man know whether the Luminaries are animated with either sentient or intelligent Souls or not He that most confidently asserteth either and scorneth the Contradicter doth but tell you that he is ignorant of his ignorance But if it should prove true as many of the Fathers thought and Mammertus ubi supra asserteth that Angels have fiery Bodies which they animate and so that the Sun is animated with an Intelligence it would not follow that as fiery or as sensitive but only as intellective it were a subordinate universal Cause of compleat humane Generations and that Sol Homo generant hominem save only quoad Corpus which is but secundum quid But that God is the Vniversal Cause is unquestionable whether there be any subordinate or not 16. And here it is no wonder if the doubts arise which were in the cases of the forementioned Generations Whether God as the universal cause produce new-metaphysical matter for new forms Whether millions of Souls since generated have not more such metaphysical matter than the soul of Adam and Eve alone How Souls may be said to have more or less such matter or substance Whether he educe all Souls è virtute foecunditate primarum by giving them a power without any division or diminution of themselves to bring forth others by multiplication and so cause his Creature to participate of his own foecundity or power of causing Entities c. But such difficulties as these which arise not from uncertainties in Theology but are the meer consequents of the imperfection of humane Intellects and the remoteness depth and unrevealedness of these mysterious works of God should turn no man from the holding of other plain revealed truths As that man generateth man that God is the chief specifying Cause by his first making of man and giving him the power and blessing of propagation which he still maintaineth and with which he doth concurre That Man is the second specifying Cause in the exercise of that power of Generation which God gave him That God is the chief universal Cause and to the production of an Intellectual nature as such doth unspeakably more than man That the mother as cherishing the semen utriusque Parentis is the maternal universal Cause c. We know not fully how it is that one Light causeth a thousand without division or diminution of it self and what it is that is caused de novo It is easie to say that it is but the motion of one part of the atomes or materia subtilis moving another which was all pre-existent But few men that can see through a smoke or dust of atomes will believe that the Sun and other fiery bodies which shew themselves so wonderfully to us by Motion Light and Heat have no peculiar Nature Power or Virtues to cause all this but meer magnitude and figure And that those Corpuscles which have so many hundred degrees of magnitude and figures should not fall into as many hundred such Bodies as we call Elements rather than into two or four Suppose which we may ad verum exquirendum that there were no more Fire in the Universe than one Candle It having the same nature as now it hath that Candle would turn Cities and all combustible matter into Fire But of the Generation of man quoad animam I referre the Reader to Sennertus his Hypomnemata to omit all others And now I would know what there is in Generation that should be against the Immortality of the Soul will you say it is because the Soul hath a Beginning I have answered before that so have all Creatures Is it because it proveth the Soul material 1. If it did I have shewed that you your selves hold a perpetuity of matter 2. But it doth not so If you say that Incorporeal Spirits generate not I answer That is but a naked unproved assertion If you say that Angels do not I answer that 1. that is not because they are unable or unapt if God thought it fittest for them nor 2. can any man prove de facto whether they do or not Christ saith They marry not but he saith not whether they at all propagate their species or not I know the negative is taken for certain and I say not that it is not true but that it is not certain not at all known and therefore an unfit supposition to argue from against the Immortality of the Soul And I must confess that for my part as I have oft read Formae se multiplicant and that the Fire can more multiply or encrease it self than Earth and as I know that the more noble any Nature is the more like it is to God and therefore more potent more active more fecund and productive so I should farr rather think that the Angelical Nature can propagate it self than the Humane if God had not told me the later and said nothing pro or contra of the former And therefore make no doubt but if it do not which no man knoweth it is not because things material are more able but for other reasons unknown to us Whether because God will have this lower World to be the Nidus vel Matrix Coelorum and the Seminary of Heaven and all multiplication to be here or what it is we know not But if it be on the other side concluded that the whole substance of a Soul doth proceed directly and immediately from God it doth make no great alteration in this case or any of the coincident cases about humane propagation if you consider 1. That it is impossible that there should be any substance which is not totally from God either immediately or mediately And that what is said to be mediately from Him hath in it as much of his Causation as if there were no medium For God is not a partial Cause but a total in suo genere and he is as neer to the effect as if there were no
Light be not still the same till all the passive matter be consumed is more than you know So also if you argue from the Vegetative life of a Tree Whether the same Principle of Vegetation enlarging it self continue not to the end to individuate the Tree though all the passive Elements Earth Water and Air may be in fluxu and a transient state It is certain that some fixed Principle of Individuation there is from whence it must be denominated the same The water of the hasty River would not be called the same River if the Channel which it runs in were not the same Nor your Candle be called the same Candle if some of the first Wick or Oyl at least did not remain or the same fire continue it or the same Candlestick hold it And what is it in the Tree which is still the same or what in the Bird that flyeth about which is still the same when you have searched all you will finde nothing so likely as the vital Principle and yet that something there must be 2. But doth not the light of Nature and the concurrent sense and practice of all the World confute you and tell you that if you cannot understand what the Individuating Principle is yet that certainly some such there is and doth continue Why else will you love and provide for your own Children if they be not at all the same that you begat nor the same this year as you had the last Why will you be revenged on the Man that did beat you or hang the Thief that robbed you or do Justice on any Murderer or Male-factor seeing that it is not the same man that did the deed If he transpire as much as Sanctorius saith and his substance diminish as much in a day as Opicius saith certainly a few dayes leave him not the same as to those transitory parts Surely therefore there is something which is still the same Else you would deny the King his title and disoblige your selves from your subjection by saying that he is not at all the same man that you swore Allegiance to or that was born Heir of the Crown And you would by the same reason forfeit your own Inheritance Why should uncertain Philosophical whimsies befool men into those speculations which the light and practice of all the world doth condemn as madness But arguing ab ignotis will have no better success Of the individuation of Bodies in the Resurrection I spake before OBJECTION XVII IF the Soul be a substance we must confess it not annihilated But it is most like to proceed from some Element of Souls or Vniversal Soul either the Anima Mundi or rather the Anima Solis vel hujus systematis And so to be reduced to it again and lose its individuation and consequently to be uncapable of Retribution Answ 1. That the Soul which we speak of is a substance is past all controversie For though as I have shewed there is truely an order or temperament of the parts which he that listeth may call the form the life the soul or what he please yet no man denyeth but that there is also some one part which is more subtile pure active potent and regnant than the rest and this is it whatever it is which I call the Soul We are agreed of the Thing let them wrangle de nomine who have nothing else to doe 2. That this substance no substance else is not annihilated as I have said is past dispute 3. Therefore there is nothing indeed in all this business which is liable to Controversie but this point of Individuation which this Objection mentioneth and that of action and operation following And I must confess that this is the only particular in which hereabouts I have found the temptation to error to be much considerable They that see how all waters come from the Sea and how Earth Water Air and Fire have a potent inclination of union and when the parts are separated have a motus aggregativus may be tempted to think it a probable thing that all Souls come from and return unto a Universal Soul or Element of which they are but particles But concerning this I recommend to the sober Reader these following Considerations 1. There is in Nature more than a probability that the Vniverse hath no Vniversal Soul whatever particular Systems or Globes may have For we finde that Perfection lyeth so much in Vnity and as all things are from One so as they go out from One they go into Multiplicity that we have great cause to think that it is the Divine Prerogative to be Vnicus Vniversalis He is the Vnicus Vniversalis in Entity Life Intelligence c. As he hath made no one Monarch of all the Universe no nor of all the Earth nor no one Head of all the Church that is not God whatever the Roman Vice-god say nor hath given any one a sufficiency hereto whatever a self-Idolizer may imagine of himself so he hath not given away or communicated that Prerogative which seemeth proper to the Deity to be an Vniversal Minde and consequently an Vniversal Parent and King yea more to be Omnia in Vno Having no sort of proof that there is any such thing finding it so high and Divine a Prerogative we have little reason to believe that there is any such thing at all in being 2. If you mean therefore no more than an Vniversal Soul to a particular Systeme or Vortex in the World that Vniversal will be it self a particular Soul Individuated and distinct from other Individuals And indeed those very Elements that tempt you might do much to undeceive you There is of Fire a specifical Unity by which it differeth from other Elements but there is no universal aggregation of all the parts of Fire The Sun which seemeth most likely to contend for it will yet acknowledge individual Starrs and other parts of Fire which shew that it is not the whole The Water is not all in the Sea we know that there is much in the Clouds whatever there is elsewhere above the Clouds We have no great cause to think that this Earth is Terra Vniversalis I confess since I have looked upon the Moon through a Tube and since I have read what Galilaeus saith of it and of Venus and other Planets I finde little reason to think that other Globes are not some of them like our Earth And if you can believe an Individuation of Greater Souls why not of Lesser The same reasons that tempt you to think that the Individuation of our Souls will cease by returning into the Anima Systematis vel Solis may tempt you to think that the animae systematum may all cease their Individuation by returning into God and their existence too 3. If this were left as an unrevealed thing you might take some liberty for your Conjectures But when all the Twenty Arguments which I have given do prove a continued Individuation
before disproved In point of efficiency we grant that he is as the Soul of Souls effecting more than Souls do for their Bodies but not in point of Constitution He is much more than the Soul of the world but is not formally its Soul But 2. Those men that will think so must acknowledge that as they take the Horse and the Rider to be both parts of God and the Child and the Father and the Subject and the Prince and the Malefactor and the Judge and the flagitious wretch and the best of men so it is no other membership than what consisteth with the difference of moral good and evil of wise and foolish of Governours and Subjects of Rewards and Punishments of Happiness and Misery which are the things that I am seeking after But so few lay this claim to Deity that I need no further mind them § 3. My Parents were not the first cause of my being what I am As each Individual cannot be the first Cause of it self so neither can their Parents for they do not so much as know my frame and nature nor the order and temperature of my parts nor how or when they were set together nor their use or the reason of their location And certainly he that made me knew what he did and why he did it in each particular My Parents could not choose my sex nor shape nor strength nor qualifications § 4. The world which I see and live in did not make it self As Men and Beasts and Trees and Stones did not make themselves so neither did they joyn as concauses or assistants in the making of the whole nor did any one of them make the rest nor did any of the more simple substances called Elements make themselves neither the passive Elements or the active the Earth the Water the Air or the Fire For we know past doubt that nothing hath no power or action and before they were they were not and therefore could not make themselves Nor can they be the first cause of mixt bodies because there is that exceeding wisdom most apparent in the generation production nature and operations of these Bodies which these Elements have not § 5. The visible world is not an uncaused independent Being For all the generated parts we see do oriri interire they have a beginning progress decay and end And the inanimate parts having less of natural excellency than the living cannot infinitely exceed them in the excellency of Deity as uncaused and independent And we see that they are all dependent in their operations They shew in the order of their beings and action that incomprehensible wisdom which is not in themselves the Earth the Sea the Air and Winds are all ordered exactly by a Wisdom and a Will which they themselves are void of Besides they are many and various but their order and agreement sheweth that it is some One universal Wisdom and Will which ruleth them all and if they are dependent in operation they are certainly dependent in being And had they that excellency to be uncaused and independent they would have had therewith all other perfections which we see they want and they would not have been many but one in that perfection § 6. The first universal Matter is not an uncaused independent being If such there be its inactivity and passiveness sheweth it to want the excellency of independency and the ordination of it into its several beings and the disposals of it there is done by a principle of infinite power activity and wisdom on which having this dependence in its ordination and use it must be dependent also in its being § 7. If it were doubtful whether the world were eternal and whether it were the Body of God as the informing Soul yet it would be past doubt that it is not uncaused or independent but caused by God That the world is not eternal we want not natural evidence for saith Lullius then there would be two Eternals the Cause and its Effects and then all things would be caused by natural necessity and not by free will and consequently always alike and then there hath been Evil eternally and both the caused Good and the Evil would in all other aggravations be answerable to Eternity and the Evil would be as soon as great as durable as the good The same world which is finite in good and evil and other respects would be infinite in Eternity and the evil would have an infiniteness in point of Eternity and this necessitated by the eternity of the world And seeing no individuals are eternal the supposed eternity of the world must be but of some common matter or only intentional and not real The corporeal part having quantity is finite as to extension and therefore cannot be infinite in duration In Eternity then there is no time no prius posterius but in the world there is Much more is said by many but this is not my present task I shall say more of it afterward But if it were doubtful whether the world were not eternally the Body of God yet would it be undoubted still that he caused it And that there were the difference of a cause and an effect in order of nature though not in duration As if a Tree or a mans body were supposed eternal yet the root and spirits of the Tree and the principal parts and spirits in mans body would be the causal parts on which the rest depend § 8. It remaineth therefore most certain that something is a first Cause to all things else and that he is the Creator of all things For if the world be not uncaused and independent it hath a Cause and if it have a Cause it hath a Creator For when there was nothing but himself he must make all things of Himself or of Nothing not of Himself for He is not Material and they are not parts of God who is indivisible He that thinks otherwise should not kill a Flea or a Toad nor blame any man that beateth or robbeth or wrongeth him nor eat any creature because he doth kill and blame and eat a part of God who is unblameable and can injure none and is to be more reverenced § 9. If there were any doubt whether the Sun or Fire or passive matter had a first Cause there can be no doubt at all concerning MAN which is the thing which I am enquiring into at the present For every one seeth that Man hath his beginning and confesseth that it is but as yesterday since he was not and therefore hath a Cause which must be uncaused or have a Cause it self if the latter then that Cause again is uncaused or hath a Cause it self And so we must needs come at last to some uncaused cause § 10. If any second Cause had made Man or the World yet if it did it but as a caused Cause it self would lead us up to an uncaused Cause which is the first Cause of
you before the judgment-seats Christianity teacheth us to lament the sin of Tyranny the grand crime which keepeth out the Gospel from the Nations of Infidels and Pagans through the earth and eclipseth its glory in the Popish Principalities It teacheth us to resist tyrannical Usurpers in the defence of our true and lawful Kings But if it teach men patiently to suffer rather than rebelliously resist that is not from baseness but true nobleness of spirit exceeding both the Greek and Roman genius in that it proceedeth from a contempt of those inferiour trifles which they rebell for and from that satisfaction in the hopes of endless glory which maketh it easie to them to bear the loss of liberty life or any thing on earth and from obedience to their highest Lord. But in a lawful way they can defend their Countries and liberties as gallantly as ever Heathens did Object IX If your Religion had reason for it what need it be kept up by cruelty and bloud how many thousands and hundred thousands hath sword and fire and inquisition devoured as for the supporting of Religion and when they are thus compelled how know you who believeth Christianity indeed Answ This is none of the way or work of Christianity but of that sect which is raised by worldly interest and design and must accordingly be kept up In Christ's own family two of his Disciples would have called for fire from heaven to consume those that rejected him but he rebuked them and told them that they knew not what manner of spirit they were of and that he came not to destroy mens lives but to save them Will you now lay the blame of that consuming zeal on Christ which he so rebuketh The same two men would have been preferred before the rest to sit at his right hand and his left hand in his Kingdom and his Disciples strove who should be the greatest Did Christ countenance this or did he not sharply reprehend them and tell them that they must not have titles and domination as secular Princes have but be as little children in humility and their greatness must consist in being greatliest serviceable even in being servants to all If men after this will take no warning but fight and kill and burn and torment men in carnal zeal and pride and tyranny shall this be imputed to Christ who in his doctrine and life hath form'd such a testimony against this crime as never was done by any else in the world and as is become an offence to unbelievers Object X. We see not that the Leaders in the Christian Religion do really themselves believe it Pope Leo the tenth called it Fabula de Christo What do men make of it but a Trade to live by a means to get Abbies and Bishopricks and Benefices and to live at ease and fleshly pleasure and what do Secular Rulers make of it but a means to keep their subjects in awe Answ He that knoweth no other Christians in the world but such as these knoweth none at all and is unfit to judge of those whom he knoweth not True Christians are men that place all their happiness and hopes in the life to come and use this life in order to the next and contemn all the wealth and glory of the world in comparison of the love of God and their salvation True Pastors and Bishops of the Church do thirst after the conversion and happiness of sinners and spend their lives in diligent labours to these ends not thinking it too much to stoop to the poorest for their good nor regarding worldly wealth and glory in comparison of the winning of one soul nor counting their lives dear if they may but finish their course and ministery with joy Luk. 15. Act. 20. Heb. 13.7.17 c. They are hypocrites and not true Christians whom the objection doth describe by what names or titles soever they be dignified and are more disowned by Christ than by any other in the world Object XI Christians are divided into so many sects among themselves and every one condemning others that we have reason to suspect them all for how know we which of them to believe or follow Answ 1. Christianity is but One and easily known and all Christians do indeed hold this as certain by common agreement and consent they differ not at all about that which I am pleading for there may be a difference whether the Pope of Rome or the Patriarch of Constantinople be the greater or whether one Bishop must rule over all and such like matters of carnal quarrel but there is no difference whether Christ be the Saviour of the world or whether all his doctrine be infallibly true and the more they quarrel about their personal interests and by-opinions the most valid is their testimony in the things wherein they all agree it is not those things which they differ about that I am now pleading for or perswading any to embrace but those wherein they all consent 2. But if they agree not in all the Integrals of their Religion it is no wonder nor inferreth any more than that they are not all perfect in the knowledge of such high and mysterious things and when no man understandeth all that is in Aristotle nor no two interpreters of him agree in every exposition no nor any two men in all the world agree in every opinion who hold any thing of their own what wonder if Christians differ in many points of difficulty 3. But their differences are nothing in comparison of the Heathen Philosophers who were of so many minds and ways that there was scarce any coherence among them nor many things which they could ever agree in 4. The very differences of abundance of honest Christians is occasioned by their earnest desire to please God and do nothing but what is just and right and their high esteem of piety and honesty while the imperfection of their judgments keepeth them from knowing in all things what it is which indeed is that good and righteous way which they should take If children do differ and fall out if it be but in striving who shall do best and please their father it is the more excusable enemies do not so ideots fall not out in School-disputes or Philosophical controversies swine will not fall out for gold or jewels if they be cast before them in the streets but it 's like that men may 5. But the great sidings and factions kept up in the world and the cruelties exercised thereupon are from worldly hypocrites who under the mask of Christianity are playing their own game And why must Christ be answerable for those whom he most abhorreth and will most terribly condemn Object XII You boast of the holiness of Christians and we see not but they are worse than Heathens and Mahometans they are more drunken and greater deceivers in their dealings as lustful and unclean as covetous and carnal as proud and ambitious as tyrannical and
perfidious as cruel and contentious insomuch as among the Turkish Mahometans and the Indian Banians the wickedness of Christians is the grand cause that they abhor Christianity and it keepeth out your Religion from most Nations of the earth so that it is a proverb among them when any is suspected of treachery What do you think I am a Christian And Acosta witnesseth the like of the West-Indies Answ 1. Every man knoweth that the vulgar rabble who indeed are of no Religion will seem to be of the Religion which is most for their worldly advantage or else which their Ancestors and Custom have delivered to them And who can expect that such should live as Christians who are no Christians You may as well blame men because Images do not labour and are not learned wise and virtuous We never took all for Christians indeed who for carnal interest or custom or tradition take up the bare name and desire to be called Christians rebels may affect the name of loyal subjects and thieves and robbers the name of true and honest men Shall loyalty truth and honesty therefore be judged of by such as them Nothing can be more unrighteous than to judge of Christianity by those hypocrites whom Christ hath told us shall be condemned to the sorest punishment and whom he hateth above all sorts of sinners What if Julian Celsus Porphyry or any of these objectors should call themselves Christians and live in drunkenness cruelty perjury or deceit is it any reason that Christ should be reproached for their crimes Christianity is not a dead opinion or name but an active heavenly principle renewing and governing heart and life I have before shewed what Christianity is 2. In the Dominions of the Turks and other Infidel Princes the Christians by oppression are kept without the means of knowledge and so their ignorance hath caused them to degenerate for the greater part into a sensual sottish sort of people unlike to Christians And in the Dominions of the Moscovite tyranny hath set up a jealousie of the Gospel and suppressed Preaching for fear lest Preachers should injure the Emperour And in the West the usurpation and tyranny of the Papacy hath lock'd up the Scriptures from that people in an unknown tongue that they know no more what Christ saith than the Priest thinks meet to tell them lest they should be loosened from their dependance on the Roman Oracle And thus Ignorance with the most destroyeth Christianity and leaveth men but the shadow image and name For belief is an intellectual act and a sort of knowing and no man can believe really he knoweth not what If any Disciples in the School of Christ have met with such Teachers as think it their vertue and proficiency to be ignorant call not such Christians as know not what Christianity is and judge not of Christ's doctrine by them that never read or heard it or are not able to give you any good account of it But blessed be the Lord there are many thousand better Christians Object XIII But it is not the ignorant rabble only but many of your most zealous Professors of Christianity who have been as false as proud and turbulent and seditious as any others Answ 1. That the true genuine Christian is not so you may see past doubt by the doctrine and life of Christ and his Apostles And that there are thousands and millions of humble holy faithful Christians in the world is a truth which nothing but ignorance or malice can deny 2. Hypocrites are no true Christians what zeal soever they pretend There is a zeal for self and interest which is oft masked with the name of zeal for Christ It is not the seeming but the real Christian which we have to justifie 3. It is commonly a few young unexperienc'd novices which are tempted into disorders But Christ will bring them to repentance for all before he will forgive and save them Look into the Scripture and see whether it do not disown and contradict every fault both great and small which ever you knew any Christian commit If it do as visibly it doth why must Christ be blamed for our faults when he is condemning them and reproving us and curing us of them Object XIV The greater part of the world is against Christianity Heathens and Infidels are the far greater part of the earth and the greatest Princes and learnedst Philosophers have been and are on the other side Answ 1. The greater number of the world are not Kings nor Philosophers nor wise nor good men and yet that is no disparagement to Kings or learned or good men 2. The most of the world do not know what Christianity is nor ever heard the reasons of it and therefore no wonder if they are not Christians And if the most of the world be ignorant and carnal and such as have subjected their reason to their lusts no wonder if they are not wise 3. There is no where in the world so much learning as among the Christians experience puts that past dispute with those that have any true knowledge of the world Mahomitanism cannot endure the light of learning and therefore doth suppress or sleight it The old Greeks and Romans had much learning which did but prepare for the reception of Christianity at whose service it hath continued ever since But barbarous ignorance hath over spread almost all the rest of the world even the learning of the Chinenses and the Pythagoreans of the East is but childishness and dotage in comparison of the learning of the present Christians Object XV. For all that you say when we hear subtil arguings against Christianity it staggereth us and we are not able to confute them Answ That is indeed the common case of tempted men their own weakness and ignorance is their enemies strength But your ignorance should be lamented and not the Christian cause accused it is a dishonour to your selves but it is none to Christ Do your duty and you may be more capable of discerning the evidence of truth Object XVI But the sufferings which attend Christianity are so great that we cannot bear them in most places it is persecuted by Princes and Magistrates and it restraineth us from our pleasures and putteth us upon an ungrateful troublesome life and we are not souls that have no bodies and therefore cannot sleight these things Answ But you have souls that were made to rule your bodies and are more worthy and durable than they and were your souls such as reason telleth you they should be no life on earth would be so delectable to you as that which you account so troublesome And if you will chuse things perishing for your portion be content with the momentary pleasures of a dream you must patiently undergo the fruits of such a foolish choice And if eternal glory will not compensate what ever you can lose by the wrath of man or by the crossing of your fleshly minds you