Characters of them which remain with him God is able out of these Stones to raise up Children unto Abraham And in this he resembles himself to a Potter who takes no care to preserve his broken Pots for any other use of them because having the Moulds by him he can make several Vessels of the same Figure out of one Earth as well as another And tho all the Vessels of the same Mould are not the same in identity of Matter yet being the same in Form they are the same to all uses intents and purposes And hence tho the Dead shall not arise with the same identity of Matter with which they died yet being in the same Form they will not know themselves from themselves being the same to all uses intents and purposes But in this God is so curious an Artist that he keeps a several Character in Heaven for every Figure of Man on Earth by which as the Apostle saith every Seed shall receive its own Body Whereas we like Fac-simile Mechanicks make one Mould serve for a thousand Figures But then as God in the Resurrection is not bound up to use the same Matter neither is he obliged to use a different Matter Whenever the Body to be raised doth remain so intire from Corruption that the form of it is not spoiled God uses that form again as it is without composing any other Matter Thus he did with the Body of Christ according to that Promise Thou wilt not leave my Soul in Grave nor suffer thy holy One to see Corruption And thus Christ did with the Bodies he raised in the days of his Flesh All which I instance still to shew the Insignificancy of Death one way or other in order to Eternal Life and that the Death of Man works no change in him To make this still more plain consider when and where the Predestination of God is executed upon Man Christ said Rejoice in this that your Names are written in the Book of Life Which he would not have commanded Man upon Earth if the knowledg of it which seems to be the top of Man's Ambition were not attainable here Now this being part of the secret Will of God as his own Memorandums of what he intends to do it can't be shewn to Man by Inspection But when God comes to execute this secret Will then it becomes part of his revealed Will which belongs to Man Secret things belong to God but things revealed to us and to our Children And the time of the Execution of this Decree being the instance of our Faith in Christ As many as were ordained to Eternal Life believed We may by this be as sure that our Names are written in the Book of Life as if we had wrote it with our own hands And that this instant of Faith is the time of the execution of this Decree appears by what Christ said to the Thief on the Cross This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise From whence some think themselves obliged to believe a separate Existence of the Soul from the Body by Death For say they something of this Man did immediately go into Paradise and we see his Body remains here Ergo his Soul went Whereas Christ did not speak this of the Person but the State of the Man Christ and he were both under the same State before they were executed which was the Law of Death And that very day they both exchanged this State into the State of Life Christ by his own Death and the Man by Faith in him tho the Person of Christ went one way and his another So from the words of David Thou wilt not leave my Soul in Grave there was a Conception raised of the separate Existence of the Soul For think we the Body of David is in the Grave Ergo his Soul is gone to Heaven by it self But Peter evinced this Doctrine as erroneous by shewing that David spoke prophetically of the Resurrection of Christ in which the word Soul comprehends his whole human Life which did die and rise together And that it is translated Soul is an Anglicism not understood in other Languages which have no other word for Soul but the same which is for Life As 't is usual for some peculiar Countries to have an odd Name for a common thing which is not vulgarly known in any other parts of the same Kingdom See how Man's Life came to him at first God first formed the Figure of Man's Body in common Earth from whence Men also form Figures of one another Then to this Figure God added Life by breathing it into him from himself whereby this inanimate Body became a living one But in this Composition the Spirit is so perfectly mixed with and diffused through the whole Body that we can't now say which is Spirit nor which is Earth but the whole is one intire living Creature As in levened Dough we can't say which is the Leven nor which is the Dough. But God who first infused this Life can extract it out again and leave the Body as it was before this Life was thus put into it And this form of Death God chose for Man Dust thou art and unto Dust shalt thou return God unmakes Man just as he made him He takes him to pieces like a jointed Tool he draws in his Breath to himself and leaves the Lump to the Elements of which it was at first composed which by degrees loses its very Form and takes its place again in common with other Matter And thus the Spirit returns to God that gave it for the remainder of the Spirit is with him But in this return the Spirit of Man maintains no self-existence having surrender'd it self into the Ocean of Life from whence it first flowed When Rivers return into the Sea they are no more Rivers but lose their Name and Property being merged in the Ocean of their original Fountain And yet God doth retain in his Memory the particular Characters or Ideas of every instance of Life which he doth so extract from whence in the day of the restitution of all things every Body shall have its own Spirit and every Spirit it s own Body But to return to my Argument whence I have a little digressed to descant upon this Opinion of the self-existence of the Soul If this Man that was crucified with Christ did immediately become in the same state with him how comes it that he lies still in the Grave while Christ is ascended into the Heavens To this I say that tho this Man's first Faith did thus qualify him for a change of State yet he had not proceeded far enough in this Faith to qualify himself for an immediate Tanslation of his Person but this he must expect with the rest of them who have died in the same Faith with him and who will not now attain that Perfection till after the Resurrection for there 's no Work in the Grave Man is as safe upon his first Faith in
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
Christ as if he were in Heaven but he don't know it And God will not deliver out Eternal Life to Man faster than he makes him understand it for the knowledg of Eternal Life is the Essence of it This is Eternal Life to know God and Jesus Christ Every Man possesses as much of Eternal Life as he knows and he knows as much as he possesseth and no more And what the residue of Eternal Life is beyond our present knowledg it hath not enter'd into the Heart of Man to conceive For no Man can know till he doth know And hence the different Gifts of Faith by God bestowed upon Man are incommunicable to one another Abraham was singled out by God as the Father of the Faithful and yet he never attained the Faith of Translation which his Progenitor Enoch had done before him Elisha was an Eye-witness of Elijah's Translation and had a double portion of his Spirit given him by which he wrought Miracles on others and yet after all he died the common Death of Man having not attained to the Faith of his Master in that Point And thus the Apostles themselves who raised others from the dead through Faith in Christ did not yet attain this Faith to prevent themselves from Death Whence I say that God in the distribution of Eternal Life doth not give any part of it to Man contrary to his own Opinion and Apprehension of it And this is sutable to the dealings of Men with one another If an illiterate Man be to seal a Deed which he can't read and another takes upon him to read it to him and reads it in other words than what are written the Law will adjudg the Execution of it to be in the sense read and not in the words written because he that sealed it did so understand it So when the common Preachers of the Christian Religion do administer the Blood of Christ to their Communicants in the Sacrament as significant only to save them from Hell after Death but as ineffectual against Death it self How should the People who perhaps think themselves obliged to swear in verba Magistri have any higher Conceptions of it And thus like Priests like People As it is delivered them so they understand it And as they understand it so they receive it And as they receive it so it hath effect upon them According to thy Faith be it unto thee Which Faith I say is Knowledg not by sight but by evidence of things not seen of which we may have stronger Notions than by our Eye-sight The Face of a Man gives us but a superficial knowledg of him but his Works and Writings tell us his Principles and Capacities And thus Man knows God by his Word and his Works Nor doth God offer himself to Man in any way aukward to human understanding The reason why I believe that this Doctrine I am asserting is true is because God hath said it But yet I could not thus assert it by Argument if I did not conceive it with more self-conviction than I have from any Maxims or Positions in human Science Whenever Christ speaks of Life and Resurrection he means his own I am the Resurrection and the Life And if we would thus understand him this Doctrine would be plain to us whether we would or no. But our Heads are so full of our own business that we can't think of any Death or Resurrection but that of our own Persons And thus we are at cross purposes with him as Men are with one another when one talks of Chalk and another of Cheese Christ saith they that attain that Life and the Resurrection from the Dead can die no more being the Children of the Resurrection Now here we fancy presently that when the Persons of Men have been once dead and risen again they can die no more But this is false for Lazarus and the others raised by Miracles did not thereby become the Children of the Resurrection but remain'd still the Children of this World and as such died again But Christ by his Resurrection did thereby become a Child of the Resurrection and did not nor could then after die any more And therefore whoever can attain this Resurrection can die no more neither And this is attainable by knowledg acquired in study like Attainments in other Sciences The perfection of any Science is a Mystery to the first beginners in it and hence 't is in vain to speak Wisdom to any but the perfect Now the Covenant of Eternal Life is a Law of it self and a Science of it self which can never be known by the study of any other Science but it self It is a Science out of Man's way being a pure Invention of God Man knows no more how to save himself than he did to create himself But to raise Man's ambition to learn this God graduats him upon his degrees of Knowledg in it and gives him Badges of Honour as belonging to that Degree as Men do to one another in other Sciences And thus the knowledg of the Virtue of the Death and the Power of the Resurrection of Christ makes a Degree in this Science Upon the attainment whereof a Man gains the Title of a Child of the Resurrection To which Title doth belong this Badg of Honour To die no more but to make our Exit by way of Translation as Christ himself who was the first of this Order did before us And this World being the Academy to educate Man for Heaven none shall ever enter there till they have taken this Degree here But when once they have passed this they can never after be degraded again to be turned down amongst the Dead as the fallen Angels were from Heaven because they hold by the Title of the Captain of their Salvation which is absolute and indefeazible Take one Thought more which seems plainer than all the rest It is said We that are alive at his coming shall be caught up together in the Air with him and we are commanded to be always ready for the second coming of Christ Then if Death be necessary to qualify us for this second coming of Christ the next thing we all have to do is to kill our selves that we may be so far in our way Unless we do expect that he should stay for us when he comes while we die and rise again which he hath declared he will not do For the least stay for the greater This long interval of time between his first and second coming is allowed for the preaching of the Gospel The Gospel must first be preached through the whole World as a Witness to all Nations and then shall the End be But every Man as fast as he hears of it is in the mean time at liberty to imbrace it without staying for them that are to come after him The Law and the Prophets were until John but since the days of John the Baptist the Kingdom of Heaven is preached and every Man presseth into it We are
that he would only forbear one Common Tree for it seems to be no more till it became otherwise by his eating of it Withal telling him that if he did eat of it his Life should go for it Not that God thought his Life satisfaction but it was all the Satisfaction God could have of him it was rather a Resentment of the Affront than any Satisfaction for it By which God shew'd that if Man had had more than his Life to give God would have had it of him And therefore to signify the height of this Resentment God raises Man from the Dead to demand further Satisfaction of him Death is a commitment to the Prison of the Grave till the Judgment of the great Day and then the grand Habeas Corpus will issue to the Earth and to the Sea to give up their Dead to remove the Bodies with the cause of their Commitment And as these Causes shall appear they shall either be released or else sentenced to the common Goal of Hell there to remain until Satisfaction Such was the Resentment of despised Love and yet this was a Resentment without Malice For as God maintained his Resentment under all his Love so he maintained his Love under all his Resentment For his Love being a Love of Kindness flowing from the generosity of his own Nature could not be diminished by any Art of Man And yet his Honour being concerned to maintain the Truth of his Word he could not falsify that to gratify his own Affection And thus he bore the Passion of his own Law till he had found out a Salvo for his Honour by that Son of Man who gave him Satisfaction all at once by the dignity of his Person Personal Satisfactions by the Laws of Honour are esteemed sufficient or not sufficient according to the equality or inequality between the Persons who give and take the Affront Therefore God to vindicate his Honour thus affronted was oblig'd to find out a Person for that purpose equal to himself who was affronted The invention of which is called the manifold Wisdom of God The Invention it self being the highest Expression of the deepest Love And the Execution of this Invention in the Death of Christ being the deepest Resentment of the highest Affront Which Death of Christ did nevertheless surmount all the Demands made upon him For as much as his Person was superiour in dignity to the Human Nature so much the Satisfaction by his Death surmounted the Offence of Man And thus I say this Law being fulfilled and over satisfied by Christ in his Death was and is taken away so that there was no such Law in being against him after his Resurrection He was made under the Law by his Birth but he did not arise under it having taken it away by his Death And having thus taken away the Law by his Death the Life regained by him in his Resurrection was by Conquest He met with no quarter from God nor Man God would not save him from Death tho he ask'd him and therefore he rescued himself from it He pray'd to be preserv'd from Death before it came upon him but he craved no Aid against the Power of it towards his Resurrection Destroy this Body and I will raise it in three days Die he knew he must but rise he knew he could And the reason of his Resurrection was because Death could hold him no longer For it was not possible that he should be held any longer of it And this he did not in contradiction to the Will of God For God having executed the Law upon him by his Death he did not oppose him in his Resurrection And therefore tho he could not come down from the Cross because the Will of God was then against him yet he could arise from the dead because the Will of God did not then oppose him And so God leaving him to himself he conquered Death By which according to all the Laws of Conquest the Law of Death is taken away For by the Laws of Conquest the Laws of the conquered are ipso facto taken away by the very Conquest and all Records and Writings that remain of them are of no more force than waste Paper The Law of Death as I have said remains in words and will remain for ever but it had no more force against Christ after his Resurrection than if it had never been made And from hence the Title of Christ to Eternal Life is become absolute By absolute I mean discharged from all Tenure or Condition and consequently from all Forfeiture And this is the Title of Conquerors who hold of none but themselves because they receive their Right from none but their Arms. And is in opposition to the first Title of Life delivered to Adam which was held by Tenure as being received from God and being so held it became forfeited to him of whom it was held according to the Laws of Tenure But Christ receiving his Life in his Resurrection from none but himself I lay down my Life of my self and I take it up again it is now his own without Tenure and therefore is absolute and cannot be forfeited And as his Title to Life is thus become absolute by Conquest So the duration of it is become Eternal by being annexed to the Person of the Godhead A Man may have an absolute Title and yet that Title may be but for a time Life is called Temporal or Eternal according to the Persons or Things to which it is annexed or united The Life of Vegetables and Animals is called a Temporal Life because it is annexed to things which have a Temporal Duration And thus according to our Laws whatever is annexed to the Person of a Man is adjudged to have continuance during his Life So that if Land be convey'd to a Man indefinitely without naming any time how long he shall hold it he has without more saying an Estate for Life because his Estate is annexed to his Person which is said to have continuance for his Life And hence the Life of Christ regained by the Conquest of his Resurrection being annexed to the Person of his Godhead which is eternal doth thereby become Eternal Life for the Life of God and Eternal Life are synonymous Terms And thus Christ ever since his Resurrection did and doth stand seized of an absolute and indefezible Estate of Eternal Life without any Tenure or Condition or other matter or thing to change or determine it for ever And I had reason thus to assert the Title of Christ at large Because this is the Title by and under which I am going to affirm my Argument and to claim Eternal Life for my self and all the World Had Christ thus become Man and died and rose again all voluntarily to try an Experiment he had only saved his own Life and left all the World to shift for themselves But this would have been Knight-Errantry in tempting God against which he hath sufficiently declared himself And
make his immediate passage to Heaven by way of translation because he was fallen under that Law which did oblige him to the common Fate of Death But having once suffered this and thereby and by his Resurrection delivered himself from that Law which had obliged him to it He then stood perfectly qualified to make his Exit by way of Translation And therefore having done all he had to do upon Earth he claimed a right of reentrance into his former Glory without dying any more I have finished the Work thou gavest me to do Now glorify me with that Glory which I had with thee before the World began And thereupon God sent him down one of the Chariots of Heaven to convey him thither as he had done before to those two Heroes of old whom I have excepted out of the possession of Death upon this their Faith in him before they saw him Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed Now I say this that as Christ did thus change his State upon Earth without change of his Person or Place so Man may do too with this difference that tho Christ passed this change by his own Death and Resurrection yet we can't do it by our own Death and Resurrection but must do it by passing through the Death and Resurrection of Christ in that legal Form prescribed by the Covenant of Eternal Life because his Death and not ours is made the Seal of that Covenant And this Man may do without any real Death or Resurrection of his own If the Death and Resurrection of Christ be the Passage into Eternal Life then he that is passed this is passed into Eternal Life whether he himself ever died or not And for us to think to imitate Christ in attaining Eternal Life by passing through Death because Christ did so shews us to be as ignorant of the Law of Eternal Life as a Man would seem of our Laws who seeing another intituled to an Estate by sealing of a piece of Wax upon a piece of Parchment should think to get the same himself by doing the same thing upon other pieces of the like of his own putting together For my own part I thank God I have already made this so familiar to my self that could I pass through an actual Death and Resurrection of my own without Pain I would not value the Experiment as any thing towards Salvation further than this that I should thereby know that there is nothing in it And of this I am as well satisfied by the Experiments made upon others as if it were upon my self When Christ had opened the Eyes of the Man born blind the People were ready to interrogate him to death What How Where When did he cure you What did he say to you What did he do to you What did you see first What did you feel first But he knew no more of the matter than they did Only that whereas I was blind now I see So when the People flock'd about Lazarus expecting to hear from him some News of the other World he could give them no other account of it than whereas I am dead now I am alive He was neither richer nor wiser by his Resurrection nor could learn by that how to escape another Death but died again and might have thus died and rose and rose and died a hundred times without any change of his State Wherefore Samuel ask'd Saul Why dost thou disquiet me to bring me up What wouldst thou have with me Is it to see me Why here I am an old Man in a Mantle as thou hast seen me a hundred times Wouldst thou talk with me Why thou knowst what I have told thee over and over the Lord is departed from thee and hath rent the Kingdom out of thy hand and so I tell you now and more I cannot say If Men will not believe Moses and the Prophets while they are living why should we fancy we shall rather believe them when risen from the Dead If they say the same things over again it is Impertinence and should they contradict themselves how could we believe them We have strange Conceptions of Death and Resurrection as long as we are on this side them But when we have once passed through and find our selves much the same as we were before we shall be at as much loss about it as we are now And if the Death of others who have died before us hath put us into such a fear of Death that we shall die too I can't conceive how our own Death should discharge us of that fear after our Resurrection but that it should rather augment it for what we have once felt we are ever after more afraid of feeling again The burnt Child dreads the Fire And yet far be it from me to say that Man may not attain to Eternal Life tho he should die for the Text runs double I am the Resurrection and the Life he that liveth and believeth on me shall never die and tho he were dead he shall live But this I say that by this very Text there is a nearer way of entring into Eternal Life than by the way of Death and Resurrection Whatever Circumstances a Man is under at the time of his Faith God is bound upon his Fidelity to make good this Text to him according to which part of it he builds his Faith upon If he be dead then there 's a necessity for a Resurrection But if he be alive there 's no occasion for Death or Resurrection either Nor doth this Text maintain two Religions but two Articles of Faith in the same Religion But this I do apprehend that the Article of Faith for a present Life without dying is a higher Article of Faith than that which expects Death and Resurrection because I passed through this last Article long before the other which I am now arguing for ever enter'd into my thoughts I once courted Death as Elijah did under the Juniper-Tree in the Wilderness when he requested for himself to die and said Now Lord take away my Life for I am not better than my Fathers Which shews that he was not educated in this Faith of Translation but attained it afterwards by study For no Man can comprehend the heights and depths of the Gospel at his first entrance into it And in point of order the last Enemy to be destroyed is Death The first Essay of Faith is against Hell that tho we should die we might not be damned And the full assurance of this is more than most Men attain to before Death overtakes them which makes Death a Terror to them But they that do attain to this assurance before they go hence can sing a Requiem at their Death Lord now lettest thou thy Servant depart in peace for mine Eyes have seen thy Salvation And if God takes them at their words they lie down in the Faith of the Resurrection of the Just But whenever he pleases to continue them after