in a moment go down to the dead Let us take the mirth and jollity the present time affords not fore-stalling unhappiness with preconceipts of it and when worse comes let us bear it as well as we can but throw from us all those fantomes of a mind or virtuous consideration as if they were only air and breath for their truth and of no service to man but to torture and deprive him of all enjoyment Now this doth so violently despoil a man of all he can be supposed to have an understanding given him for and turns him into the condition of a beast that it cannot seem credible man should have powers given him and possibilities of consideration above such a state and nothing at all to do with them We see in all other creatures their action and their powers are equal except we could imagine that beasts have phansies and contemplations of things of a higher state then their own But who that hath not forfeited all sober face dares owne so brutish a life who doth not detest such a debasement of reason that it should either have nothing to do or no more then sense can do in the Beasts Yet lest this should be too much to be consident upon we will only say There is a great disposition in the mind and Soul of man that is never so little opened and unfolded by ingenuity education or observation of it self to improve it and compose it self by reason to an excellency standing in virtue and magnanimity to cast the accounts of evil publick or private and to secure it self first by moderation and withdrawment from all these outward things then by the better enrichments of self with knowledge and goodness lastly to flanck it self with patience and resolution that it may be defended on every side against whatever can befal it on the right hand or the left That men of Philosophy have flown this pitch without any tincture of Christianity or colour of the Doctrine of the Scriptures upon them is enough known That they have discoursed of greatning their spirits against all assaults of Fortune of constancy of mind raised upon the confidence of a mans native excellency and domestick riches out of the reach of all extern disorder those writings of theirs so much magnified and worn by every hand testifie Furthermore seeing every man feels within him an Impetus to pursue that first-born desire to be happy he that goes about it considerately must needs find There can be no such thing as happiness in the outward man whose condition is subject to every change The room of the body is indeed too narrow and close the receipts of it too dark and pent to entertain so great a presence as happiness but besides this the accesses are too open to pain and misery the sound and noise of all kind of disturbance is ever about it and one time or other the things crowd in upon it But happiness is even and all alike it is a consistency a perpetuity or nothing A perpetuity that at this time we date not into Eternity but allow that to be so which fills up its own measure and runs out to its own utmost length that in this case we allow to be so that is commensurate with the present life and being in the world But it is impossible to preclude the pressures of evil from this moment for no man can tell how soon a disease bred within his own walls shall wage a war against him and blast all his contentments how immediately a violence from without shall rob him of what most pleases him Whoever then will lodge any such thing as a felicity within himself must retire it into this appartment of his Soul and himself sequestred from body and dissolved from it must retreat into spirit that he may enjoy it He must forsake all things beyond the line of mind and looking upon them as the daily prey of every contingent be wholly unconcerned what becomes of them though he uses them while they are to be had yet with greatest indifferency coolness and freedom from them and even then despising them when he seems to enjoy them He must bear the strokes of evil with that part alone upon which they fall and never let them touch his mind In the mean time he must raise and ennoble his Soul and carry all kind of treasure into it that is proper for it he must fortifie and environ it on every side with courage and longanimity he must watch that it be not betrayed by lust or inordinate affection nor made weak and false by such correspondencies which do not only open an avenue to suffering but leave a guilt behind them of which though we suppose no higher Judge then himself yet the reverence he owes to his own authority and the severity he feels from himself when that is offended obliges him to innocency Thus while he hath a being in the world he maintains it in peace and greatness first not taken and decoyed out of himself by the general applause of pleasures riches and honours he hears in the world nor sunk below himself when he finds any of these gone whose service he accepted so as to be well without them though he did not morosely refuse them but either when through their own inconstancy they change their master or are compelled to leave him he is yet the same he was living in himself and supplyed in all things by himself For he hath taken the elevation of every thing in the world and of his own Being he hath set down the incertainty of these things and therefore he is not amazed at what he expected he hath taken the estimate of wisdom and vertue and finds them invaluable in their price unmoveable in their nature his business is therefore to fabricate his mind for them These are his happiness that do not feel the pain of a disease the cruelty of a sword the pinches of a famine his Soul is the Cabinet of them that nothing from without can either find or touch while it keeps it self distinct and alone from the body which it visits by a necessary charity and care of it but dares not mix with it lest it first be insecured with its lusts and after infected with its misery Thus hath Reason in the dark and unenlightned by Sacred Truth selt out happiness and having enough from sense that it could not be out of the Soul hath placed it within But if there be no better state beyond this life who feels not a compassion that such a man as hath been described must dye that so great a Soul that can protect it self while it is in motion and action must yet be suppressed by death that he whose reason and magnanimity endures the torture must yet be silenced and stupified by Fate Who doth not wish that Soul should out-live that body in a perfecter state that lived now so much above and beyond it Yea who would not desire that that
that sin which ruines Kingdoms and for that piety that exalts them is most earnest When perswasions of Reformation find freest entertainment with those who have most power to promote it and Princes are not only Philosophers but Divines publishing Repentance and Amendment of life by those Soveraign Documents the face of their Authority and Example shining upon Holiness how orderly doth this Reformation descend from the Superior Regions without that tumult and suspition of Design that usually accompanies Popular Attempts therein and with greatest Honour For such being nearer God the Original of all we accept from them recommendations of goodness as Acts of Bounty with thankfulness but not without disdain and regret from them below us There being ever an exprobration in that inversion of Order and Nature when we receive the light or dew of Heaven from beneath that should come down from above to us It must needs be a Rebuke from Heaven upon the upper world when in the silence of Religion Judgment and Equity there God opens the vulgar mouths to call for them and yet if these should hold their peace there is so great a constraint for the want that even the stones would cry out The Reason that forsakes men transmigrates as it were into insensible things Vniversal Wisdom having so contrived that as the neglect goes down lower and lower things lowest should be moved to convince them above till the nethermost foundations of the Earth are stirred to reprove disobedient man though at the other higher end of it When the Seats of Dignity are empty that is not filled with good Government who is not ready to press into them and when the Prophets Chairs are unfurnished by persons of graver investiture naked Sauls crowd into them as they say Nature swells out of its place to prevent vacuity Or rather the plenitude of wisdom that flows from God the Fountain is so immense that being excluded its proper place as a full stream forced out of its own Channel it bursts into another or overflows all or like the Apostles Doctrine which driven from the Jews expatiated upon the Gentiles But these extravasations are ever in themselves dangerous if not deadly this Wisdom never shewing it self out of the residences it hath chosen as fittest for it but in wrath when it speaks by men of lower rank what it would do by Superiors or by the Creatures what men should understand themselves It is in Judgment to forbid their madness May it then be the Happiness of our Times and Nation to be rescued from the further pursuits of the Divine displeasure by the mediation of personages of place and lawful suffrages that have not taken their Honour to themselves or by the Indignation of God thrust into it To whom to present these two Generals of Reformation that are not of any private Interpretation or Opinion but of the sense of all sober understanding will not be accounted presumption though they know and do the things already 1. An efficacious Interposal against Licentiousness of Practices which grows speedily to a height when those whose honour and gravâ—â—â— forbids them to stoop to those mâ—â—â—nesses of vice which others fall down to have not yet that zeal against it but either draw too nigh the Circus or Ring of the Disorders beholding them with pleasure or entertain the Actors of them with familiarity Any of which give a boldness to wickedness that soon espies its own advantages and grows insolent upon them ready not only to rise with violence against common opposition but to dismount Authority it self which hath no greater security then its own virtue enstamped upon those under it Solomons advice not to be over-much wicked hath not only equal but larger place upon States then upon persons for besides that Justice makes more haste to punish a Combination in evil the f … of contrary passions and lusts 〈◊〉 so outragious that they violate all things in their mutual encounters and the inundation grows so strong through the meeting of so great a Body of Evil that the destructive force runs into suddenner confusions and is more impatient of those abatements a single wickedness must admit and so more leisurely brings forth death There are possibly few Instances of any such who have been the notorious Debauches of their time but have been exemplary for the Fate attending them except prevented by sudden returns to a sober mind but not any of an extreamly corrupted Age but unhappiness if not ruine have trodden along with it But could it be that a stream of wickedness had run like Oyl smooth and untroubled yet doth that time wherein it so ran look black to Posterity not Chance but some unchangeable Law giving the Character always alike which is ever derived from those of Eminency as when Pictures are taken the Head and parts of the Body nearest to it are generally thought enough to represent the whole thus when the Portraicture of any Time is given the Aspect of Majesty the Seat of Authority and Vnderstanding are the life and the rest added to make the Grace of them the greater and more impressive from the beauty of a full proportion 2. A potent opposition to Atheism and scornful neglect of the Solemnities of Christianity which when it is professed hath the weight of prosperity or ruine resting upon it for as God often hung the Glory or Desolation of the Princes people of Judah upon the observation of their Sabbath though an extern Rite of Religion because it carried so much of the Reverence of Divine Worship and the Acknowledgments of God so he still suspends the Greatness or Depression of Nations to whom the notices of himself and Jesus Christ are given upon their subjection to those Sacred Principles and the Institutions wherein they are conserved And because we have fallen into the mention of a Sabbath and these Institutions have their full room in it it is not out of the way of this Address to observe That our Christian Sabbath is slipped out of the shell of a Jewish Ceremony into the Spirituality of the Lords Day and the Morality of a Rest for the publick and private Exercises of Religion on which accounts our Obligations to it still continue with those advantages wherein it was made for man All contemptful disenclosures or unworthy prostitutions of it must needs therefore imply not only a great senselessness of God and his Glory whom we would dispute into the narrowest rooms but too much of an irreverence of him if not defiance to him Were it possible there could be a severe suppression of Vice and inclination to Virtue without Piety yet would it be dishonourable without the Illustration of Religions Glories The highest care of those that truly understand Honour is the paying all due Observances to God the Fountain of Honour who honours them that honour him but delivers to in … or contempt those that lightly â—â—gâ—rd him â—s some States that have enactâ—â— vâ—â—tuous Laws and been
For which reason the effect of this also points just upon man For what Creature hath so quick a sense of and pain in the disorder as he or upon whom doth the malignancy fall equally as upon him to whose ruine the world it self had without further patience run had not the Grace of God intending a restauration to that fallen Nature staid the precipitation Hence things are kept so near the rule and tune to which they were at first set that there remain fair prints of their former exactness in themselves and humble amicableness to man together with the admonitions of his lapsed state which are so intermingled that they give luster to each other but so still that they are at a minutes warning and in a moment take a Divine Allarm to rise up against sinful man with the executions of his wrath in what degrees he pleases even to the turning themselves into a general flame at last to which they are reserved by him and whereunto they were at first upon supposition of sin equally prepared Now in all this there is as august a presence of wisdom and as great an understanding in the displays of it self though severe to man in his disobedience as great a beauty and order of Justice as there was of Mercy The night hath its Graces though in black shades and the glories that inlighten it There is an order in storms and a rule in the bloody battles a declaration of God in Judgments as well as in acts of bounty Nor is it any change in God but an even counsel that in his favour is life and peace but rebellion against him is pursued with disappointment and misery And what can be more natural then that Nature it self should leave its own place to serve the Creator that fixed it there or turn out of its way when the more primitive paths of it lead not to his ends Or what more unnatural then that the Lord of all should be disserved Or what more orderly way of punishment then that those Creatures should rise up against man that were made for his service when he sinned against the common Soveraign of him and themselves and that sinning he should find his unhappiness just in that place where his contentment in his obedience rested 2. This outward world or state of things was tuned to an inward more excellent and immaterial world constituted of Holiness and Righteousness standing in communion with God and conformity to him The perfection and highest glory of it was indeed in Heaven and the center of it Eternity where God and blessed Spirits under him inhabite But it pleased infinite goodness to give an example of it also in a visible and material world and to set it floating in time that after an experiment made he might again unite it to himself in Eternity The great exactness curious frame and order of the outward world was a transparency for that unspotted purity from above to shine through The eye prepared to read the Laws and behold the Divine Beauty and in whom the intellectual image it self resided was man who therefore is created similar to it a Soul inriched with knowledg righteousness and true holiness sparkling through an innocent inoffensive and unspotted body that while with his mind he adores that supreme and original goodness and conforms to it with greatest pleasure he may withal delightfully contemplate that wisdom and righteousness as it were incarnate in the several Creatures and visible in their beauty order and peace wherein they stand united one to another This Divine likeness in which man himself was made was the life and all below him a beautiful shadow which received its continuance and liveliness from the purity and flourish of that heavenly life preserved in him By sin he quenches this Divine spark sinks below himself and betrays the whole excellency of the Creation depending upon him Thus great personages held up by the grace of the Prince shining upon their loyalty spread their beams not only upon their real dependents but give honour to their effigies But falling by treason all the marks of honour they derived are defaced and their very representations though insensible partake their guilt and degradation Man deposed from that excellency of Gods image a cloud covers all about him the order and peace are dissolved and flye in pieces and the whole becomes a black shade in which his sin and fall are drawn That Soul that first shone through is now imprisoned in its own body and looking out at the grates sees the dreadful likeness of its impurity The body and Soul by it feels those pains and disorders that arise first through the jars and violences of things intumult and conflict with themselves and rushing upon it then through the want of that supply and service caused by the interruption and discontinuance of the line of things that run up to man These are also daily brought within in those strifes that fall out among the humours the continual trepidations of a healthful state constant propensities and at last putrefaction in death All which are a sensible history of sin and Apostacy from God unlikeness to him and disinterest in him as the former was of holiness and a state of favour Thus falls the glory of the outward world in the ruine of this inward that was the Spirit and Soul of it In all which there is nothing unbecoming the stability or fore-sight of that Counsel that first contrived things For when the integrity and perfection of the image of God in man was broken and all other beauty but an ensample of it as it stood in him why should the transcription be kept fair as an honour to him who had unworthily betrayed the Original But even according to the first design the deformity rushing in with the first treason was to be drawn upon the very same tables that were thus embellished in resemblance of and as a dignity to humane Nature or seeing the glory of the Creation was a reflection from the Eternal light that first descending upon man with strongest rays was from him with a fainter splendour to rebound upon the lower region of the Creatures when these rays were so withdrawn that his day was turned into night it must needs be dark with them also Lastly how could the punishment of man be more equally laid then in the confusing those things the order of which was prepared for his glory and as an act of Grace to him and wherein his pleasure and fruition as a Creature of this world consisted when he himself was so unlovely and instead of a delight grown an object of repentance to God But everlasting brightness that dawned upon man in a Mediator ere it set in a total privation continued much of the primaeve glory to all things as to their fundamental state yet the cloudy condition of mankind between his own fall and recovery by Christ is exemplified by the waving motion of all the creatures about
Scriptures always discoursing Gods dealings with men at a higher rate of esteem then this and suing himself to all the moves against them that they may be orderly and just as if the Soul of man would reason and debate with him concerning his ways for so indeed we find there is a spirit in man that in those that are good humbly and reverently desires to plead with him as in Job and Jeremy and in evil men contends and calumniates him as unequal till he convinces them of all their hard speeches against him And the comparison can never be equal betwixt man and any of the creatures under him for they melt away from the least pressure into death and cease there but man dated for Eternity is therefore of a much higher consideration nor have the other those notions of right and wrong of rewards for doing well and punishments for ill doing that are implanted in mans Soul God therefore passes into all the cases of his rational Creatures and determines upon them so that he will not regret or offend those Principles which he himself hath put into them but in all his Judgments and tryals of them he comprehends their right in his own and so sentences them to misery as that it could not be otherwise consistently with that Justice and Righteousness he is to declare All which are not only argued here in the world in the darkness and low state of Souls and in this mixture of things wherein a man cannot truly know love or hatred by any thing that is before him but in the clearness and open air of Eternity when the spirits of men will be at their highest pitch and multitudes of them aculeated with the sting of an endless doom while other Creatures lye still in their dust and covered in their ashes These immortal Souls challenging out of rottenness their bodies rise up plead with the Almighty concerning themselves From whence we infer that God doth not willingly afflict the children of men so much as here seeing it is he that hath put into them and excites in them these powers of debate with himself and those reasons upon which they argue and he doth it that he may be justified when he speaketh and be clear when he judgeth and that it may be known that all he doth is as we have said upon accounts of Interest in his own glory of sincerest intention for the good of his Creation and of necessity for the righteous Government of the world Of which accounts we shall treat particularly having first laid down the fundamental reason of Judgments The primary reason of Judgments is to be found in close connexion with Justice and the nature of punishment For Judgments upon a close description are the executions of punishment according to rules of Justice The essence of this Justice is in the distribution of every ones right to them by an exact ballance of reward and punishment according to works for the establishment of righteousness and order in the world which are both the beauty and peace of it The supreme care of this is in the hand of Original Righteousness and increate Justice whose the world and all the Creatures are and which is ever awake upon this its Paramount Function The nature of punishment is found only in pain without which we can have no possible notion of it for it always imports to us something grievous And it stands upon this reason Fruition and pleasure are the last ends in which the desires of man rest as his happiness this is always his reach and contention through what ways soever he steers himself When he travels through the mediums of honour or profit or when he immediately grasps pleasure it self or whether these be truly or but apparently what he names them the satisfaction arising from them is equally the design in all This pleasure or satisfaction is the tast or reflection of man upon the conveniency of things to his Nature ministring delight through the mutual touch and embrace of them one with another being thereto fitted by the wisdom and goodness of the Author of Nature This conveniency of things is called Good the Fountain of it is God himself the First Good the streams of it are derived from him upon the several Creatures which flow one among another True pleasure God hath by great skill woven into Holiness and gracious Action these things being of themselves most accordant to mans Soul and further by an eternal and unchangeable constitution which is the foundation of all propriety set it as the reward of obedience to these Laws of Goodness so that to him who perfectly observes them the reward is reckoned of debt that the mind considering first this pleasure springing from goodness may be led to that as the root of it then understanding it as a reward apportioned to virtuous actions may be yet more fully invited thereunto The whole complex of Good is hereby assured both in the present accommodations of things to this life and state and in the sum of it eternal life For godliness hath the promises of this life and of that which is to come and they are rendred to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for honour glory and immortality the paths of which lead to that fulness of Joy in the presence of God and to those Rivers of pleasure at his right hand for evermore which are the most commensurate significations of Happiness On the other side that which stands opposite to pleasure as darkness to light or death to life is pain and it is the point from which the Fuga or aversation of the Soul hastens it with all vehemency This we style Evil for it is the disagreement of things to our Nature which awakening resentment causes greatest displeasure All this evil is by God seated in the heart of the evil of sin where its proper habitation is for every impure action being dissonant to the true make of mans Soul is as far from pleasure rightly so called as it is from goodness and it is moreover prepared for the avenge of disobedience as its due portion and reward From whence both the rise of unhappiness is known and the reason understood Death entred by sin and the wages of sin is death with all the preparations to it This evil of punishment is administred by the severe Touches of God himself as an adversary or the unfriendly pressures of the Creatures upon our Nature set on by his wrath either in the degrees now or that complement Scripture calls Hell where is wailing and gnashing of teeth in utter darkness or utter impossibility of enjoyment This constitution of things is the foundation of Religion the pleasurable both fruit and remuneration of obedience and the painful issue and recompence of transgression being adapted to the inclining of the mind on each side of it and the more necessary because through the wise disposition of things by God for the tryal of man virtue
pure and those we have also of our own Souls whose due perfection and accomplishment is a participation of the divine Nature or likeness and therefore from the correlation between God and the Soul flows that pertinacious exaction of the Soul from it self that it be good and holy that it may have peace with God But because the Soul finds so much disorder and contrariety in it self to that awful Law so many transgressions against it that cannot be undone it can have no rest here but needs something that may countervail that guilt within it There can be none so convenient so great and potent as the pardoning mercy of God in Jesus Christ who by his obedience to death in our Nature carries up the supreme forgiveness of God Yet this not exhausting that Principle and perswasion of the Soul that it must be inwardly good it is most necessary the Doctrine of pardon by a Saviour should be filled with a spirit and influence of Holiness that this grace may not seem prostituted as an indulgence to sin Thus the foundations of our peace stand upon the free Grace of God and sincerity of Holiness as an evidence we are within the compass of that Grace To assure which the very same Spirit of Holiness alone able to diffuse the comforts of this peace comes in and anoints the Soul with the Joy of it till it enters into the full possessions of Salvation which is the final acquittal from evil Evil may in the mean time be used for chastisement and higher inticement to Holiness but loses its sting when that Justice that armed it is satisfied Thus a man acting upon the Principles of his own mind when he finds himself oppressed with evil is led into the Doctrine of Christianity for observing the hand-writing upon himself he reads God the Author of affliction hence flows the sense of sin since God afflicts not without cause sense of sin and the displeasure of God upon it makes it necessary to inquire after the Doctrine of pardon and repentance These are no where in their Oriency but in the Gospel of Jesus Christ The Doctrine of pardon and peace carry a man into expectations of good from God This being not found here the Soul is sent to the promises of Eternal life made known and brought to light by Christ These give joy in tribulations and hope of the Glory of God This crowns the Soul and sets it triumphant over all evil in the world Less then this can give us no true sense or construction of the great miseries of our condition nor with reason cluck us out of them into so much as the discourse of lasting rest and safety The Soul of man so busie as it is first to inquire the reasons of its unhappiness then to find the remedies of it hath great advantage of accepting that truth which tells it all that is within it concerning these things and explains them so far that it finds it self at the very utmost ends of these wonders and to have as much made known of them as is to be known Thus out of the eater comes forth meat and sweetness out of evil considered by the mind of man either acting its own reason and securing it self the best it can against what it cannot remove or turning it self upon those Principles ingraffed within it that lead it to the source and Antidotes of misery Both which convey it to the Discipline of Jesus Christ as the true relief of humane condition and its infelicity CHAP. XIII Of the more direct operations of Judgments towards Reformation wherein first of the efficacy they have in confining Sensuality and setting free Conscience and its proper Motions LEt us now approach the considerations of the more immediate powers of Judgment 1. They give a notable rebuke and abatement to sense and the sensual temper Judgments trouble all the air sensuality hath to breathe in and make it dark they pour out their vial upon its Sun and a night ensues so that it every where meets terrour and disappointment which bring it low and enfeeble it Now this is that sensuality that over-grows at once the proper motions of a Soul and Conscience and that spiritual world with which the converses of a spirit most properly lye When this is wind-bound and brought to an ebb either through the hand of God upon the body the primary seat of it or those external objects that feed and minister to it immediately the mind that lay in a swoon and oppressed emerges and rises up It hath its opportunity and uses its freedom through the great clefts and rents the strokes of God make in this vail and cloud the Soul espies the spiritual world the shadow of the material one removing off by reason of these commotions caused by Judgments The great accounts of mans sin and impenitency lye in the deep plunges and immersions of his Soul into sense and sensual things wherein he grows immoderate above the beasts through the vigours of an immaterial and immortal Spirit dissevered from its true objects and natural motions and carried down this stream From whence retaining all its own force but misguided it grows extreamly foul while it at once neglects heavenly and spiritual things for which it was made boldly transgresses all rules of goodness and cuts its way through every thing to its impure satisfactions The light that is true and pure is kept from all approach to it and its own native exercise is suppressed whence it comes to pass that God and Eternal things are covered from it and as it were wholly blotted out it lives in the unclean pleasures of the body which have all the influence and sway upon it But awakened by the Judgments of God the Soul inquires after its own world and meets it every where God having graciously disseminated it into every thing within it and without it even as the open eye in the day time greets the light where ever it goes That great deal of sensual noise and business being made to cease the false light being put out and the windows out of which lust looks dammed up the Soul hath nothing else to do it finds leisure then to do like it self and is even provoked to it by its own force carrying it always upon action and when it is taken off from that to which it is only inclaved it returns upon its proper motion when the noises of Chariots and their jumping wheels the sounds of musick the light of candles as in the overthrow of Cities are removed in that stilness Conscience is heard in that silence of foolish fires purer rays shine upon the Soul For the beams of truth and the distinct voice of it fall every where were there but an eye and ear to receive and take them in On the other side the capacities of the Soul are always fitted to them and were they not importuned and incumbred by other things they would be continually opening to and earnestly expecting
Soul that had so well commanded a body should have a glorious one to shine in and that out of the ashes of that body in which such a Soul dwelt and taught it virtue another more perfect should rise In the mean time would not just cause of complaint arise if Fortune or a blind course of things should have any dispose of but the outside of such a man Who would not desire there should be a God who with skill first exercises virtue into a lustre and then rewards it Who that hath any love to virtue would not bewail it if there were no other difference between virtue and vice then what is seen here and rejoyce in an Eternal Judgment that would illustrate and crown it Who would not wish virtue ennobled with the love of so blessed a Being as God and that it should be made more considerable by pleasing him that it should be enriched by the knowledge of Jesus Christ so great an Exemplar of it in our nature that it should be assisted by the blessed Spirit of Grace without which it cannot sustain it self And who that behaves himself thus in the world as we have described can but think the Principles of Christianity would best fit his purpose and manner of life and therefore be willing to espouse them For though this we have insisted upon be all a man can do and that he must do to retain any thing oâ— the honour of a man it is yet but poor and unhappy if separated from the hopes and promises of immortality very jejune and cold when alone virtue without Christianity is but like the temporary and perishing things of the world that make a blaze and then go out Though that of virtue be the purest yet it is as soon quenched by death and while it is it wants much of the true alloy and reason For so great an object of goodness whom continually to love and adore so great a Spectator and Judge so gracious a Father of Spirits and their excellent endowments as God makes as great a difference in these things as the light of the Sun doth in the world compared with the light of the Moon and as the influences of the one surpass those of the other so do the virtues falling from the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ excel those chiller irradiations of Moral Disciplines when separated from Diviner Fire But we have thus far argued from the sentiments of Morality upon Sense that we might from thence conclude Seeing there is no security for man in his compounded state of Body and Soul and that yet the appetite of man contends towards happiness with so much earnestness he must either be a beast stifling all motions but of sense and the just present satisfaction so that he may enjoy himself when things are well and suffer as a beast when evil falls upon him without any agitation of a mind or else he must be an Angel removing his chief interests out of the body This wise men without any suspition of subordination from Christianity confessed and therefore the ground on which true Religion states all things must needs be to Morality that is not sullen and prejudiced the most acceptable For sagest Ethicks guided by Christ indeed as Cyrus by God though they knew him not acknowledged this conclusion of the matter That there must be some higher end of men then the body and that all his condition must be resigned to that and hereupon waded as far as they could into those deeper Doctrines of the Immortality of the Soul a Judgment a future state besides that which was much opener to them the acknowledgment of the First Being God Now he that upon these grounds dyes to his flesh to live in his Soul is not far from the Kingdom of God and Christ which teaches a man to deny himself and sow his present life to let it dye as a grain of wheat which except it dye abides alone that is can never be any more then it is but loses it self at last whilst that which submits it self to a short death in expectation of a better resurrection propagates it self to Eternity The assurances of Everlasting life at the end and in the mean time that no imaginable thing either height or depth life or death what is present or to come shall separate from that love of God in Christ which makes more then a Conqueror in all are true grounds of the happiness of man and only sufficient herein All these Christianity hath the honour to reveal and yet Morality hath so great need of to impe it self with that if it were it self alone it must needs adore this Revelation however as it is blended in men with corruption of Nature and planted among those roots of bitterness that spring up and defile it it may profess an emnity yet certainly as those Heathen Princes paid a reverence to that God that had foretold their successes by his Prophets so it is impossible but all wise use of reason must needs say of the Doctrine of Christ There is a divine thing in it seeing it doth not only establish the same rules of life with that reason but advances the encouragements of them to the very Heavens CHAP. XII Of the much higher Elevation of Reason into Christianity received from the improvement of innate and revealed Principles concerning Judgments HItherto we have from evidence of sense stated things as if man finding them in a posture generally adverse to him were by his own wisdom and virtue to make the best of himself and to rise by it as much above the condition of the creatures below him as his understanding exceeds theirs and discoursing thus we have fathomed the excellencies of Christian Religion without which Morality sinks very low But we come now into a debate upon those Principles ingraffed in mans heart heightned by the Word of God even as the sensitive Soul is elevated by the presence of the rational or as the reason is advanced by the Spirit of God inhabiting it viz. That there is a God an Eternal condition that all calamities upon humane Nature are from God and his Justice for sin And who that is wise would leave so strong a sense as his Soul hath of these things unsatisfied unanswered Or why should a man be truly dealt with by his eye and ear his tast and touch and that common sense that weilds them and deceived by that inward intelligence his mind Why should it be true there are wars plagues c. and that these are grievous and destructive and not be true that God punishes by them Sense is sure of the one innate reason of the other the reports of which are as confident and earnest and if heeded most prevailing and effective For as the universality of men believe sense about its own objects so do they acknowledge these Principles even against themselves when in their evil actions they wander from them If evil practice be taken for an argument