asked his Disciples if they would leave him they asked him again Whither shall we go Thou hast the words of Etetnal Life which no one else pretends to Now if these words of his are words only then was he an Impostor and his Doctrine is false But if this Assertion of himself be true That Man by him may live for ever Then all our Attempts beneath this are mean and cowardly as counting our selves unworthy of Eternal Life The Objection made against him when he affirmed it was The Custom of the World to the contrary Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead whom makest thou thy self to be And I am not unaware that this Custom of the World to die hath gained such a prevalency over our minds by prepossessing us of the necessity of Death that it stands ready to swallow my Argument whole without digesting it For if the custom of Bondage derived upon Man but for a few Generations doth so enure him to subjection that he thinks it Jure divino and all attempts against it to be Rebellion How much more may I expect that this attempt against Death which hath had so much a longer possession over Man will be accounted madness But as a learned Man said That the Pride of Women comes from the baseness of Men and the courage of Cowards from others more Cowards So I may say That the Dominion of Death is supported by our fear of it by which it hath bullied the World to this day And therefore before I fall upon the direct proof of my Argument I 'll offer an answer to the Custom of the World against me Custom it self without a Reason for it is an Argument only to Fools Nor can the Life or Death of one Man be assigned as the cause of the Life or Death of another unless the same thing happen to them both Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead What then Why Abraham died of Age as the Folk call it he gave up the Ghost being an old Man and full of Years And the Prophets were many of them knock'd on the head Ye have stoned the Prophets Must it therefore follow that either of these Deaths must happen to me or that because they died of one death I must die of another Suppose my Mother died in Childbed must I therefore do so too Or that my Father was hang'd must I therefore be drown'd Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead What then Why Abraham had a Son of his own begetting at a hundred years old upon a Woman of ninety had an Army of Men born in his own House Flocks and Herds without number and a whole Country of his own to feed them in And the Prophets were Favorites of Heaven could raise the Dead and kill the Living Must therefore any of these Gifts happen to me Why then if I must not partake with Abraham and the Prophets in their Blessings why must I partake with them in their Deaths Nor did Abraham die because the Prophets died nor did the Prophets die because Abraham died Then if their Deaths had no effects upon one another Why should they have any effect upon me And as the Life or Death of one Man is no cause of the Life or Death of another so the multitude of Examples don't alter the case The Life or Death of all the World except one Man can be no cause of the Life or Death of that one Man Almost this very case once happen'd in the World when the Flood destroyed all but eight Persons and yet this was no Argument that those eight must be drowned too nor was the preservation of them any Argument for the preservation of the rest We have heard of a hundred thousand Men slain in Battel and yet this was no Argument for the death of any other Man who was not slain in it Wherefore the custom of the World to die is no Argument one way or other But because I know that Custom it self is admitted as an evidence of Title upon presumption that this Custom had once a reasonable Commencement and that this Reason doth continue therefore it is incumbent upon me to answer this Custom by shewing The Time and Reason of its Commencement And that this Reason is determined Which if I do shew then the bare Custom of the World to die ought no longer to be admitted as a Title against Life First then I do admit the Custom or Possession of Death over the World to be as followeth viz. That Death did reign from Adam to Moses by an uninterrupted possession over all Men Women and Children created or born except one Breach made upon it in that time by Enoch And hath reigned from Moses unto this day by the like uninterrupted possession except one other Breach made upon it in this time by Elijah And this is as strong a Possession as can be alledged against me To answer this I must shew That this Custom or Possession of Death had a reasonable Commencement which was the Original of it To avoid this Possession I must shew That this Reason is determined and that therefore this Possession ought to be no longer admitted as a Title against Life The Religion of the World now is That Man is born to die But from the beginning it was not so for Man was made to live God made not Death till Man brought it upon himself by his delinquency Adam stood as fair for Life as Death and fairer too because he was in the actual possession of Life as Tenant thereof at the Will of God and had an opportunity to have made that Title perpetual by the Tree of Life which stood before him with the Tree of Knowledg of Good and Evil. And here 't is observable how the same act of Man is made the condition both of his Life and Death Put forth thy hand and pull and eat and die Or Put forth thy hand and pull and eat and live for ever So little doth God esteem the Work of Man in order to his own Salvation The Lord Bacon descanting upon the Fall of Man expresses it thus That Man made a total defection from God presuming to imagine that the Commandments and Prohibitions of God were not the Rules of Good and Evil but that Good and Evil had their own Principles and beginnings and that Man lusted after the knowledg of those imagined Beginnings to the end to depend no more upon God's Will revealed but upon himself and his own Light as a God than which there could not be a Sin more opposite to the whole Law of God For 't is not to be conceived that there was any physical Virtue in either of these Trees whereby to cause Life or Death But God having sanctified them by those two different Names he was obliged to make good his own Characters of them by commanding the whole Creation to act in such a manner as that Man should feel the Effects of this Word according to which of
the Trees he first put forth his hand And it is yet more strange that Man having Life and Death set before him at the same time and place and both to be had upon the same condition that he should single out his own Death and leave the Tree of Life untouch'd And what is further strange even after his election of Death he had an interval of time before his expulsion out of Paradise to have retrieved his Fate by putting forth his hand to the Tree of Life and that yet he omitted this too But by all this it is manifest That as the Form or Person of Man in his first Creation was capable of Eternal Life without dying so the fall of Man which happen'd to him after his Creation hath not disabled his Person from that capacity of Eternal Life And therefore durst Man even then have broken through the Cherubim and flaming Sword or could he now any way come at the Tree of Life he must yet live for ever notwithstanding his Sin committed in Paradise and his expulsion out of it But this Tree of Life now seems lost to Man And so he remains under the Curse of that other Tree In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die Which Sentence of the Law is the cause of the death of Man and was the Commencement of the Custom of Death in the World as the Original of it And by the Force of this Law Death hath kept the possession before admitted to this day For tho this Law was delivered to Adam before Eve was made and in it there are no express words to bind her or the Issue begotten between them yet it did not only bind him and her and all their Descendants but even the whole Creation under them for tho this Law was delivered to Adam in his single Person yet it was so delivered to him in his Politick Capacity as Head of the whole Creation and the great Trustee for them all And thus Adam understood it for he had told it Eve as a thing that concerned her as well as himself of which she took notice and repeated it to the Serpent in the Dialogue between them And as Adam thus understood it so God declared it immediately after the Fall To the Woman he said I will greatly multiply thy Sorrow c. To the Man he said Cursed be the Ground for thy sake c. And God having thus explained himself he immediately commanded Nature to turn upon Man to execute the Sentence of this Curse upon them And under this Command Nature hath acted ever since which is an Inversion of it from its original Institution Nature was formed by a Law superior to it which is called the Law of the Creation Let there be Light and there was Light And being thus made by a Law God immediately gave it another Law to act by by which the Earth watered it self and brought forth Fruit without the labour of Man or Beast But upon Man's delinquency God superseded this course of Nature and put it under another Law whereby the whole Creation stands inverted at this day So that all these common Events which now happen in the World tho they are become natural according to Nature thus inverted yet from the beginning they were not so Death was a strange word to Adam for tho he did understand it to be a determination of his Being yet he did not apprehend in what manner his Being should be so determined nor how he should make his Exit out of the World having never seen one Example of it And this made the Sentence of Death more terrible to them because they did not know what God was going to pronounce against them But God finding the Man and his Wife hid among the Trees of the Garden for fear of him he hinted to them their Redemption by the Seed of the Woman in the close of the Curse against the Serpent before ever he came to denounce their own Sentence against them which supported them under the terror of it and without which they had sunk down dead in the place And thus Christ as he saith is the Life of the World tho they don't know it For had it not been for this God had executed Man in the Fact Adam by this very act of Delinquency and the Sentence upon it stood attainted and became a dead Man in Law tho he was not executed till about nine hundred years afterwards and during that Interval he begat Sons and Daughters and performed all other Acts of Life From which it is observable that the change of a Man's State tho it doth at one instant ascertain his Fate one way or other yet it doth not work so sudden a change in his Person or Affections Eve after her eating and Adam before his eating of the Forbidden Tree were in two different States from one another she in the State of Death and he in the State of Life and yet this did not presently change their Affections one to another Which put the Case much harder upon him than it was before upon her For she by her very Creation was made so much a part of himself from his passion of Love to her that he could not be happy while she was miserable and hence perhaps we read of no other Argument she used to him for breach of the Command than that she had done it before him The violation of her Happiness did so much affect him by a sympathy with her that all his other Enjoyments could do him no good And therefore since he thought it impossible for her to return into the same State with him rather than be parted from her he chose to hazard himself in the same State with her The Philosophers say Man and Woman are one Creature in two pieces And as such God gave them one common Name before he made them Let us make Man and let Them have dominion c. And this is still retained as a common Name to them both in all Languages But their Offence was at last joint and several Now the Articles of the Curse denounced against those our common Ancestors for this their Offence is the Law of Death and is the State under which the World stands at this day and from which we can never be redeemed but by being discharged from this Law The falling of which Curse upon Mankind as descendants from those our common Ancestors is the Foundation of all the Laws of Man in the like case For that Parents have power by their own Acts to bind their Issue before they are born is the Law of all the World because every Man hath his Heirs in him And thus Levi is said to have been in the Loyns of his great Grandfather and to have paid Tithes in him four Generations before he was born And thus all the Descendants of Esau and Jacob are said to be in their Mother's Womb while they were Two Nations strugled in her Womb. And that the Birth
yet when I say he did not do it voluntarily I don't mean that he did it unwillingly For as he did it with all frankness and generosity of his Will I lay down my Life of my self so he did it with the highest affection of Love to Mankind Greater Love than this hath no Man that he lay down his Life for his Friend But I mean he did not do it purely voluntarily without a necessity of doing it and a Consideration for it First then There was a Necessity upon God himself God told Adam that if he did eat he should die The Devil told Eve that they might eat and not die And these were the first words spoken to Man by God or the Devil upon the truth or falshood whereof the very Beings of them both were to depend for ever For which ever of them could maintain the Truth of his Word against the other he must have been God and the other the Devil And therefore God having turned the Lie upon the Devil he is from thence called a Liar from the beginning and the Father of it and will never be believed again for ever God could not have dispensed with his Word without complementing the Devil with his Godhead in taking the Lie upon himself and this he could not do For God cannot lie without undeifying himself and this he can't do because all his Qualities being of his Essence he can't change them That God cannot change is not a deficiency in his Nature but the perfection of his Essence which can be nothing but himself For as it is the happiness of imperfect Beings to be capable of change in order to be made better so it is the happiness of perfect Beings to be incapable of change whereby to be made worse Man can lie because he can't speak Truth there 's nothing that a Man can say but what he can unsay and falsify by the change of his mind which he can change only because he can't fix it as a Man that hath a broken Arm can turn it every way because he can fix it no way Nothing but an absolute Power can be absolute in any thing therefore Man having no absolute Power can't absolutely determine his own Will every change of which subjects him to a Lie either by falsifying his former Resolutions or his present Inclinations But God having an absolute Power to determine his own Will he could not change it after he had so determined it for what is fix'd can't be changed Wherefore God could not dispense with the Breach of his Law to pardon it Which was not for want of Mercy in God for he hath and doth daily pardon ten thousand times the Sins committed by Man against the moral Law which seem as great Offences as this Because the moral Law hath in it self a defeazance or condition annexed to it at the time of the first delivering of it Except ye repent ye shall perish By which this Law may be fulfilled without a performance of it in specie by doing another thing which is admitted to be done instead of it A defeazance is not the same thing with the thing to be defeated but something collateral to it And thus Repentance which is not a performance of the Moral Law is nevertheless accepted instead of it But in this Law delivered to Adam there was no such condition annexed to it at the first delivery The words are absolute In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die which leaves no room for Repentance Adam did repent but he found no place for it he could not find any words of the Law to which he could apply his Repentance to do him any good And when a Deed hath no defeazance or condition annexed to it at the time of the first delivery it can't be added to it afterwards And hence tho this Law delivered to Adam was at the time of the first delivery a Law of Life and Death yet the Law of Life being ended by breach of the Condition there was then nothing left but the Law of Death which became absolute without any condition And this put God upon a necessity of executing the Sentence of the Law upon Man in specie or making himself a Liar which he could not do and therefore the necessity upon him was absolute Which necessity was all the while a contradiction to his Nature which is Love to Man God is Love And this divided him against himself and laid him under a necessity of finding out an Invention to reconcile his Truth to his Love and his Love to his Truth And this Necessity upon God draw'd a Necessity upon Christ to come and execute this Invention because none could do it but himself Now there being such a Necessity for Christ's assuming the Humane Nature and dying under it there was a Covenant made between him and the Father previous to his coming in the Flesh which is called the Covenant of Eternal Life and is the History of the Scriptures altho it be not set down altogether in any one place Rich Metals and precious Stones don't lie together in heaps above ground but being so valuable when found Men think it worth their while to dig down for them in all places where they have any probability of finding them Then if the way and manner of attaining Eternal Life doth lie in so narrow a Volume as the Bible Search the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have Eternal Life shall we not think it worth our while to search it through for that precious Stone with a new Name which none can read but they that have it And this is a more pleasant Labour than the search for other Jewels for there we meet with nothing of pleasure or profit till we find the very thing we seek for But in making this enquiry we divert our selves with knowledg all the way we go Nor did God think any one Man or any one Age of the World worthy to have the whole of this Covenant revealed to them all at once He was 4000 Years from Adam to Christ delivering it in Types and Shadows to 62 Generations of Men who passed their Age in that time But having thus prefaced it at sundry times and in divers manners to our Fathers by the Prophets he at last spoke it to us by his Son In which these parts do appear 1. The Date 2. The Parties 3. The Contents and Consideration 4. The Sealing and Execution 5. The Witnesses 6. The Ceremony required of Man whereby to execute it on his part and take the advantage of it 1. The Date This was before the Foundation of the World I was set up from everlasting Before Abraham was I am God who created all things by Jesus Christ the Lamb slain before the Foundation of the World The priority of which Date prevents any preincumbrance that could be made of Eternal Life which is more than can be said of any Titles amongst Men. 2. The Parties It was between him
extravagant humour in God to distinguish Men to be saved or damned only for believing or not believing in Christ But may we not think it as extravagant in us to distinguish our selves to have or not have a thousand pounds a Year only for sealing or not sealing a Deed Should we not call our selves Fools for refusing to put forth our hands to a piece of Parchment and take it off again to get an Estate by And yet we think our selves wise in refusing Eternal Life because we may have it upon such easy Terms For tho from the positive words of this Prescription the sealing and executing this Covenant of Eternal Life by Man without more saying or doing gives him as perfect a Title to Eternal Life as the sealing of a Deed among Men can make to the Lands contained in it Yet from the negative words of the Prescription there can be no Title to this Eternal Life without the complyance with this Ceremony For if Man can have any other Title to Eternal Life than according to this Covenant this Covenant don't give him a Title to it No Deed gives Man a Title that leaves any part of the Title at large out of the Deed. If the Grantor reserves any of the Title to himself then the Grantee hath no perfect Title But God hath excepted nothing out of this Covenant but his own Personal Life For when it is said That he hath put all things under him it is manifest that he is excepted who hath put all things under him Wherefore all the other parts of Eternal Life are subject to this way of Life by Jesus Christ And hence all other attempts for Heaven are accounted Sin He that entereth not in by the Door but climbeth up some other way is a Thief and a Robber and comes for to steal And having thus opened this Covenant First I put it upon the Profession of Divinity to deny one word of the Fact as I have repeated it Next I challenge the Science of the Law to shew such another Title as this And then I defy the Logicians to deny my Argument Of which this is the Abstract That the Law delivered to Adam before the Fall is the Original Cause of Death in the World That this Law is taken away by the Death of Christ That therefore the Legal Power of Death is gone And I am so far from thinking this Covenant of Eternal Life to be an Allusion to the forms of Title amongst Men that I rather adore it as the Precedent for them all from which our imperfect Forms are taken Believing with that great Apostle That the things on Earth are but the Patterns of things in the Heavens where the Originals are kept BVT why then doth Death remain in the World Why because Man knows not the way of Life The way of Life they have not known Or as I said at the beginning that Death maintains its dominion over us by our fear of it Having no other right to remain with us but because our Faith is not yet come to us When the Son of Man comes shall he find Faith upon the Earth Man is a Beast of Burden that knows not his own strength in the virtue of the Death and the Power of the Resurrection of Christ Which Ignorance doth not proceed from want of Revelation of the Truth but from our neglect to study and inaptitude to believe it O Fools and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken Unbelief don't go by reason or dint of Argument but is a sort of Melancholy-madness by which if we once fancy our selves bound it hath the same effect upon us as if we really were so It is like the noise of War heard in the Camp of the Syrians which made them fly when no one pursued Or like that possession of fear which still kept the besieged within the Garison tho the Enemy had left the Field Death is like Satan who appears to none but them that are afraid of him Resist the Devil and he will fly from you Or like Tyrants and saucy Pedagogues whose former Cruelties render them terrible to those who have been under their lash after they are freed from it Because Death had once dominion over us we think it hath and must have it still And this I find within my self that tho I can't deny one Word I have said in Fact or Argument yet I can't maintain my belief of it without making it more familiar to my understanding by turning it up and down in my thoughts and ruminating upon some proceedings already made upon it in the World Some Specimens whereof I 'll present to the Reader The Motto of the Religion of the World is as I have said Mors janua Vitae Death is the Gate of Life Now I say if we do by this mean the Death of Christ then we are in the right But if by this we mean our own Death then we are in the wrong The Death of Christ was necessary for him and us both because the Covenant of Life would not take effect but by his Death which in the Covenant hath two Capacities 1st As it was the consideration upon which the Covenant was made 2dly As it was the Ceremony by which it was executed But all this being over and done the Death of Man is wholly useless and serves to no intent or purpose in order to Eternal Life nor ever did And could we distinguish between the change of our State and the change of our Persons and Places this Doctrine would be more plain to us By State I always mean Title so that when I say a Man is in the State of Life I mean he is by Law intituled to live and when I say he is in the state of Death I mean he is by Law appointed to die Now a Man may change his State without change of his Person or Place Christ by his Death and Resurrection did pass under an invisible change of his State by being discharged from that Law of Death to which he stood before subjected by his Birth and being translated into that Law of Life which he gained by his Resurrection Which tho it were only a legal or invisible Translation he was thereby as safe from Death as he is now being ascended and sitting at the right Hand of God And yet his Person remained here unchanged Behold my Hands and my Feet that it is I my self These were Marks of Honour that could not be counterfeit And that some did not know him is said to be from their Unbelief or that their Eyes were holden that they should not know him But tho this change of his State in an instant did not work so sudden an alteration in his Person yet it did intitle his Person to a change for the better which Title he had not before his Death Christ was as perfect in his Nature and his Principles before Death as he was afterwards and yet he could not then
Truth of Religion be defined by the number of Professors then the Mahometan is safer than the Christian and the Romish than the Protestant The majority of Votes in Civil Affairs may conclude our right but it don't thereby convince our Judgment Nor are our Rights thereby concluded further than for that Turn only And thus it is in the whole Scheme of Government In the Power Elective The majority of Electors conclude the minority for that Turn only In the Power Legislative The majority of the Legislators make a Law but their Successors are not by this precluded from repealing that Law by another majority In the Power Judicial The opinion of the Majority make a Rule in Law but their Successors may alter those Rules by the like Majority Which hath made much difference between Opinions Antient and Modern And tho these seem and indeed are incertainties in the Law yet the policy of Man can't form a better Because those Laws or Judgments which are good at the time of the making may come to be otherwise by things that may happen in revolution of time And therefore none but God himself who alone foreknows Times and Seasons can establish an Eternal Law When the vastness of Empire in the Persian Monarchy had raised a Pride in their Kings to arrogate to themselves this Power it proved but a Fallacy And thus when Hadassah the Queen had prevailed upon Ahasuerus to reverse his Decree for the Massacre of the Jews the Scribes who were the Lawyers in those days soon found out an Evasion of the Law to sute the change of the King's Mind They let the former Proclamation for the Massacre go as it was And issued out another granting the Jews liberty to stand for their Lives with force of Arms. And thus both these Decrees were executed with the loss of about 75000 Men slain on one side And yet forsooth these two Proclamations so contrary to one another and issued within less than three months one of the other must bear the Sacred Name of Eternal Laws for the Honour of the King that made them This I instance to shew that the Policy of Man can't constitute an Eternal Law And from hence I say I am not so much concerned for the present Opinion of the World against me because being but the Opinion of Men it is subject to a change And I know the time when the whole World were of another Opinion Adam and Eve had no fear of Death till they fell under the Law of Death And could their Posterity who are fallen under this Law with them apprehend their deliverance from it into the Law of Life they would all be converted in a day I was under this Law of Death once and while I lay under it I felt the terror of it till I had delivered my self from it by those thoughts that must convince them that have them And in this thing only I wish for their sakes that all Men were as I am Nor do I yet think my self obliged in this Argument to dispute all the rest of the World by Unites For in Matters of Faith Men aggregate into Churches and Classes where we may argue with a whole Clan of them at once Now for Children and Madmen and all the Nations that know not God nor call upon his Name I am no more capable of discussing this Point with them than with Creatures wholly deprived of Speech But for the whole Christian World professing their Religion from Revelation I 'll venture to encounter them all at once and that in their own Creed which I know they can run over as fast as a Mariner doth the Points of the Compass But if after that we would but catechise our selves a little in it we shall find that when we come to the main Point our Faith will be like the Athenians Worship We believe we know not what You believe in God and in Jesus Christ his Son our Lord born of the Virgin suffered under Pontius Pilate crucified dead buried rose again the third day ascended into Heaven sitting at the right Hand of God and from thence he shall come to judg the living and the dead Very well this is a full description of the Person in whom you place your Faith But what is it that you do or would believe of him or in him Why we believe him for our Saviour Save you from what Why from our Sins Why what hurt will Sin do you Why it will kill us How do you know Why the Law of God saith so In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die Why but then will not this Saviour save you from this Law and from this Death No no he 'l save us from Sin Why then it seems you have got a Pardon for Horse-stealing with a non obstante to be hang'd Do but see now what a Jest you have made of your Faith And yet I defy the Order of Priesthood to form a better Creed than this without admitting the Truth of my Argument Or to make sense of their own Faith without adding mine to it It is much easier to make a Creed than to believe it after it is made Nor can any Man really believe any part of the Gospel that doth not believe it all For it is a Doctrine so dependant upon it self that unless we know the whole of it from the beginning to the end we can't know the use or reason of any part of it Wherefore notwithstanding this Inundation of Death in the World and the infection of fear contracted upon Man from hence I am not afrighted from reassuming my Assertions at the Beginning That this long possession of Death over Man is a possession against Right That the length of this Possession is no foreclosure of the Right of Man to Life And that he that dares prosecute his Claim with effect may recover this Right and avoid that possession And that he that is got through the Death and Resurrection of Christ hath had Judgment against Death and execution of Eternal Life Christ by the instant of his Resurrection stood dissolved from all his former Relations to the World neither could he die any more being become a Child of the Resurrection For tho he did arise with the same Body with which he died yet that risen Body was not the Son of the Virgin Mary because he had assumed it by a new Power and in another manner than that by which he was first born The Body with which he lay down in the Grave was of no more use to him in his Resurrection than so much other common Matter for he was put to add Life to it by his own Power which he could have done to any other matter as well as that The present Bodies of Men laid down in the Grave are of no use to God in the Resurrection Therefore he permits them to be dissolved into any other Forms knowing that he can give the old Forms again to any other Matter by those