to resolve us how the disadvantage of living out of the discipline of affliction is recompensed to those who possibly had they lived under it would have repented in sack-cloth and ashes All these I say to him who reverences Gods Ark is wisely conversant in the things revealed that pertain to us and repines not that the dark waters and thick clouds of the sky are Gods Pavillion are so far unridled that he finds the benefit of that promise The humble he will guide in Judgment and the meek he will teach his way the secret of the Lord is communicated with them that fear him for he leads them into more who expect his admission then they can obtain who cutting their way to themselves ravish the cloud of an empty imagination when they most please themselves with what they think they have found out and comprehended The Scriptures speak wisdom but not the wisdom of this world which is brought to nought not that which he towres into who is vainly pufft up with his fleshly mind but that which is to sobriety let us then measure by the line of it to these foregoing thoughts to which it reaches so as to bring them into subjection 1. As to the Justice of God it can have no injury because there is an Eternal Judgment so high and substantial that it doth infinitely honour satisfie and recompense whatever Justice can seem to suffer Nothing is under a necessity to shew it self but that which is confined to such a moment and if it loses that lyes hid for ever Things which are poor that have only an appearance and not a retired treasure are in haste to be known small revenges are hastily executed but nullum tempus occurrit Regi The deep waters run silently and what hath Eternity to give it room and space slumbers not though it make no present noise God hath the highest reasons of his patience the perfect strength of his Being and the vastness of everlasting Ages to explain himself and his displeasure in All opinations of men against him and his Judiciary Providence vanish like a dream when he appears for his coming constrains belief commands full assent and nothing contrary dares then be seen nor can it be traced but in that horrour and condemned disappointment to which it hath betrayed the masters of it The apprehensions that have footing only in time are not to be valued for time it self is so little and inconsiderable a thing that though it is greater or less when it is measured by its own line yet it is but the dust of the ballance the drop of the Bucket nothing less then nothing when it is set by Eternity when any immortal Being especially the prime Being who only hath immortality hath the grasping of it it is squeezed to nothing while it is within it self judged by its own Rules and the creatures of it it is somewhat but to God the Grandeur and pride of it a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night the contempt God and his Justice endure from it as soon as ever it sinks into Eternity are as if they had never been one glance of that Judgment immediately consumes it This consideration doth also abundantly remove the inequalities of time if we suppose them never so great and level good men among themselves and bad men among themselves and so precisely distinguishes good and bad one from another that there remain no possible remembrances of the state of this world nor any thing that should call in question or diminish ought from the clearness of Gods dealing Eternal rewards and punishments swallow up all distinctions of time which hereupon become no more then imagination or opinion when true Judgment takes place or then thought and fancy when knowledge and reality enter the pleasures and happinesses the torment and complaint of it are all gone all that is great in time is the manner and temper of an immortal Spirit in and upon it which is an inchasement of Eternity into it and makes it valuable for the ordinableness of it to an everlasting condition of things all of it else is but like infancy and child-hood compared with manly estate that is vanity and folly whatever puerile age seems to it self it is known to have nothing worthy in it but the beginnings and dawns of that mind which education improves and ripens to a strength in elder years for which it is formed The contempt it hath of severer Judgment detracts nothing from the solidity and dignity of true reason but is imputed to its silliness and imperfection the pleasures of it are condemned as unworthy a man The very same Soul censures and even despises it self in its childish estimations discourses and actions when it feels it self man and remembers them not but with dislike or compassionate scorn If after-time then blots out the things fore-going with so strange an oblivion if manhood doth so efface past child-hood and death yet expunges much more then these how exceedingly more doth another world wipe out all things pertaining to this Moralities only remaining and transmitted through all without loss from whence accrues to good men greater glory through their sufferings and increase of torment to the evil from their pleasures with which they are upbraided hereafter and very probably each of these arising to both sorts proportionable to the difference they have met with here in the world Further different presences of God and the consolations of his Spirit may be a present reward to good men in the worst times service of God even to a kind of Martyrdom speedier translations to Heaven greater degrees of Honour and blessed Immortality are much better to them then an ease and quiet that must within such a number of years expire however Even as stings of conscience and longer heaping up guilt and wrath may make it less tolerable for evil men who have lived in prosperous times then for others of the same kind who have been preserved from so much sin and awakened to some sense of God by adversity their present trouble thus lessening an eternal punishment except to those who have been brawned to a greater contempt of God and hardned in the fire against him whose case deserves no consideration From all which we see there is no such necessity upon God to punish now nor any so complainable inequality in his distributions to good and bad men For when either of these ranks of men know themselves in that unchangeable state they will reflect upon nothing in time but as it hath paid something to Eternity and conveyed thither what remains and abides If then any thing aggrandizes that happiness or asswages that misery however it hath been resented with grief and deploration here it is then put on as a crown or applyed as a Lenitive to pain but that which is blessed with no addittament of Glory is laid aside as worthless how pleasant soever in the
They are all everlasting and bear up themselves consolidate by Eternity Man by his Soul is set in this heavenly world and can no more remove himself out of it then he can his body out of the material one let his mind be never so high in its own elevation it cannot keep the impressions of matter off from his earthy part much less can he by sensuality untye his relation to spirituality to which his Soul knits him so fast God having given a touch and feeling a sense and judgment though it be not improved Whatever a Soul doth or doth not that is wherein it refuses or through neglect minds not to act becomes most momentany for all partakes the spirituality of its nature and receives beauty or deformity purity or defilement from the powers of that Law within it A man cannot be a beast though he degenerate like one Sin then receiving force from the Soul that commits it mounts the spiritual Creation and rests it self in the world of Righteousness as a defilement in it adheres to it as death deformity sickness emptiness darkness do to the solid parts of the Creation and thereby challenge a place in this world which yet in themselves are nothing but the want of the due perfection of the subject to which they adjoyn Thus have we considered these two worlds as distinct yet is there in this world an Ordo ad Spiritualia through which it is inclasped under the Government of the higher having a capacity to be sublimated to ends above it self which is as a cement betwixt them both whence it comes to pass that sin descends upon the lower by neglect or inversion of the order wherein it stands the first of which is to depress the works of God below his intention and aim at his own Holiness in them and is to disanul it the latter is to debauch the Creatures of God to lust blotting out his superscription and setting that of sin in the room and both are to build up evil grounded in matter to the third Heaven Thus though meats cannot defile the man yet the man may defile himself by meats and defile the meats as on the other side meats commend him not to God yet he may by a holy use by the Word and prayer commend himself and sanctifie them he is able by his Soul to touch them into gold or to taint them with his own impurity And this very innate power though a man never considers it nor behaves himself worthily by his judgment and caution of it is yet the same as to the substance as if he had a Soul never so greatned and inlarged by improvement When there is a defilement among spiritual things every thing in the whole spiritual Nature keeps it extant and puts a seal upon it the certainty and unchangeableness of those holy Laws the all-seeing Eye of God an infinite mind and understanding an infinite purity an everlasting Justice and Judge the consent of the whole world of spirits with him the immortality of the Soul from which the defilement immediately rises and recoiling rests From whence it comes to pass that what men do with their Souls they never lose but live in the midst of all their actions whether good or evil For God keeping in force these Laws retains and binds the Soul sinning under the sense of what it hath done and sends down the charges of his wrath into the conscience and dispatches punishments as he pleases ever preserving inviolable records of every transgression laid up within his own Justice and registred in the guilty breast which sucks in the air it hath breathed out and if evil is setled into a defilement so great that nothing is pure to it Let us then compute things and when we find so many men in the world whose actions are going out by hundreds and thousands having no ballance of righteousness upon them nor sifted by any examination but rolling down that great precipice and declivity of humane Nature all corrupted not only with their own violence but by the force of that power of darkness that concurs with them what must the amount of the impurity then be That an Eternal Judgment countervails all this evil in number weight and measure shall be hereafter discoursed But how Judgments take off the foulness of sin at present is now to be considered which may better be conceived by applying their efficacies to every of the particulars of its defilement in these following observations 1. That prime and eternal Holiness which with its Glory governs the spiritual order and beauty of things in a conform Holiness Righteousness and Purity as their first constitution when offended by the sin of any of the proper subjects of it is secondarily repaired by punishment upon the sinner We may consider this as abstracted into its own most spiritual Nature or formed into Laws and either way punishment repairs it 1. If in its own spiritual Nature we look upon it there is a splendour in punitive Justice which is another mode of that Eternal Holiness shewing it self it is the zeal and earnest intention of it meeting with any thing aliene and receded from it The wrath of God is the flame or light-fire of his infinite purity in contest with iniquity which gives such a lustre that all the Earth is filled with this glory and is an accidental illumination of the superior state of things For which had there been no place undoubtedly all entrances of sin had been precluded The Apostle speaks of God that he willing to shew his wrath and make his power known endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction Knowing how to give reparations to himself he permits to sin and sinners a scope in their own actions There is yet no communion betwixt light and darkness only another kind of efficacy of light For that which endures not the approach of the least evil but by its own vigour and perfection throws it off with abhorrence and disdain can never be defiled but hath occasion from evil to manifest its own intenseness and supremacy and preserve in another way the same lustre and greatness of the whole state under it 2. If we consider this Holiness as it is formed into Laws wherein the state of it is more plain the first honour of a Law is obedience if that be not paid the second is punishment which keeps up the Majesty and greatness of it and even establisheth its authority those Laws being only weakned and infringed by transgression which go unrevenged for then the power passes out of the Law and settles in the transgression which from thence assumes an authentickness and damnes the Law to an obsoletion But if the Law hath the offender in its hand to deal severely with and to condemn the power is apparently with it it can terrifie into its observation those whom it cannot allure by its direction equity and rewards which makes evil a feeble and weak
them Heavenly light and knowledge like God and his Providence is both within by its intimate diffusion of it self and without every thing in the world by its own unmeasurableness and so cannot be covered but because those organs that are to observe and work by it are disabled and turned another way and because men use every art and make all kind of vails and shuts between themselves and this spiritual light the Judgments of God make a collision upon the faculties of the Soul upon which the sparks hid within flye out and there is a forced kind of light in order to that which is more natural and continuing a great flame oft arising out of this little fire Although if the heart of man were not so thick in its insensibleness of God and the powers of it that should tend towards him afar off from him there were no such violence necessary in the case But things being as they are there can be no fairer opportunity presented to man to recover himself out of the snare of sensual things or the profound launches of his Soul into them then these severities of affliction which bridle the appetite in himself and render ungrateful or remove out of his reach the very things he lusts after for if the pain be in the body the Soul is filled with so dolorous a resentment from it that nothing appears fair to it when man is chastened with pain upon his bed and the multitude of his bones with strong pain his Soul abhorreth bread and his life dainty meats If the Judgment of God lyes on the pleasures of sense without it immediately enters within through the famine that presses or through the very anguish inflicted upon it by the contrariety of natural causes so that either way it is made to sit alone and keep silence In which interval rush in the thoughts of God and the obedience we owe to him a sense that we are made for greater things the excellency of peace with God and likeness to him our relation to Eternity in all which lye the most potent arguments to goodness which when they meet upon an irregular and unreformed estate fill the Soul with the sorrow that works into repentance and a zeal of recovering it self to a better condition For the inconvenience that sense feels in these pressures when the goodness of God is retreated and the hand of his displeasure stretched out is so great that it enters into the very reason and provokes that to inquire the cause even as the delights of sense distil upon the mind and close it up in a soft slumber and in apprehensiveness of it self and what is truly its interest fascinated with other pleasures In the mean time it exacts of it all its sagacity and vigour to be imployed in continuing and inlarging those fruitions So the discontents of the same sense pierce into the Soul and putting it into an agony call it up to another kind of exercise the consideration of the complaints it offers Now though while the bed was easie it was content to lye down and forget every thing yet when it misses of this and grows full of losses and is set to examine how this comes to pass by degrees it returns like the Prodigal in want to it self Its first inquiries and determinations stay as long as they can upon natural causes it undertakes and endeavours to solve things upon those Principles but being urged by the case it self and its own temper to search further it is sent from one thing to another till within the inmost fold of things it finds a divine Justice and upon it is resolved into a conscience and lays together the great obligations of repentance and humiliation By this light a man hath quite another sense of sin and the evil of it those actions he passed so favourably or carelesly upon have much a more ghastly and dreadful appearance Thus God excites a man to take a just account and make a righteous judgment of his own actions and to call that into suspition he never questioned before It is meet to be said unto God under chastisement I have done iniquity but will offend no more That which I see not teach thou me He searches and tryes his ways that he may turn to God For Judgments carrying with them the most close and sensible instructions of the displeasure of God convey also the quickest reasons of self-examination of repentance and change of a mans course to those who are neither sunk down to a brutish or Pharaoh-like impenitency nor risen up to the more heroick state of one chusing Holiness for it self and not of love For man having an affection of fear it is impossible he should not turn it upon that which is most dreadful when it appears to him or that that fear should not excite him to the removal of the danger the first of which is founded in that Law of Nature that every affection turns to the supreme object understood with greatest intention the second in that of self-preservation For the first it is certain the wrath of God is most terrible it being most commanding and pursues a man beyond the most formidable of evils death which is therefore so because in the opinion of Nature it swallows all sense of Being now sense of Being is the foundation of pleasure and delight but this keeps a man in the jaws of that second death which eternally ruminates upon him Our Saviour spoke highest reason Fear not them that kill the body and have no more that they can do but I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear Fear him that after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell I say unto you Fear him For the removal of this danger there is nothing conscience is more authoritative in then this There can be no firm at onement with God nor so much as expectation of good from him without repentance or reformation it ever appearing most unreasonable to it that God should give any ear to him that regards iniquity in his heart To conclude this conscience that is the most vigorous of all a mans powers being collected and congregated of the strength of all and acting upon those Principles that every man knows to be the most concerning if true and instead of demonstration for the truth of its grounds hath this advantage that they are deeply rivetted into the heart so that though there may be a stupefaction yet there can be no obliteration Against this stupefaction Judgments come making legible those Characters which at other times we dissemble and are as the fire to some sort of writing that makes apparent what was not before discerned CHAP. XIV Of Sense of particular Sins effected by by Judgments 2. UNder Judgments there is a sense of particular sins which reverberated upon the Soul by it self thus incouraged and inlivened by the presence of a divine Justice assisting it is of all things most astonishing prostrates the Soul and submits