Pleasure we may taste in Eternity if we live in such a manner as may render us worthy of having our Fidelity recompensed Our Soul is something that is great noble and admirable by the Ideas which it is capable of receiving and it is yet more great and more noble if you will by the Pleasure and Felicity which it is capable of having God who hath the Treasures of Knowledge and Wisdom hath infinite Riches of Goodness and Oceans of Felicities and of Pleasures and our Soul which is capable of receiving all the Idea's which God contains in the Treasures of his Knowledge and Wisdom can also taste all the Pleasures which he contains in the Riches of his Goodness Such is the nature of our Souls they are not only undoubtedly Spiritual by their Intelligent Nature but they are in some manner infinite in Dignity and in Nobleness they are admirable Copies and Images of the Supreme Nature they carry a thousand Characters of his Grandeur and their Celestial Origine and that which augments and enhances all this Merit is that they are undoubtedly as Immortal and Eternal as Spiritual CHAP. XI That our Souls are undoubtedly Immortal by reason of their Knowing Nature YES as undoubtedly Immortal and Eternal because being Natures altogether distinct and altogether different from Body and all Corporeal Nature it is impossible that Death which only cuts and makes this havock upon Bodies should have any Prey upon them or give them the least Stroke If God who hath drawn them out of his Heart will not employ his Almighty Power to annihilate and destroy them in that moment that Death breaks the Structure and Harmony of Body which will appear hereafter that he cannot be willing to do there is no It is thus that Diseases and Old Age causes us to die and the violent Accidents of Fire and Sword or Falls and Ruines do the same It is the Body that Diseases Old Age and violent Accidents do all attack it is its Structure that they break and ruine for they do not touch the very Ground and Matter of the Body Death doth not touch the Substance of the Body and its Matter it only touches the Disposition of its Organs it is That only that it destroys It 's true that when the Brain can no longer serve to the Universal Cause and to the Eternal Wisdom and Power which holds our Souls united to the Bodies for an Occasional and Determinate Cause to determine it to give us Idea's and Perceptions of other Bodies which are round about Ours and which act upon them which is properly the Chain and Knot which holds our Souls united to our Bodies then It retires our Souls from our Bodies and they cease to Be in our Bodies We commonly conceive that our Bodies die because our Souls do retire themselves but this is to conceive things very ill It is not that our Bodies die because our Souls retire themselves but on the contrary our Souls retire themselve because our Bodies die because the Structure that render'd them fit to serve for a Lodging to our Souls comes to be broken and destroy'd Death is nothing precisely but this ruining of the Harmony of the Body which obliges God to withdraw the Soul And who do's not see that it being so Death is so far from being able to destroy the Soul that it cannot do any thing unto it It cannot so much as cause the least alteration in it all that it doth precisely to it is to take from it its Union with the Body it disunites the two Parts but it doth not destroy nor annihilate any of them the Body remains Body every Part remains in its Nature the Body remains ruin'd and the Soul returns separated Death can do nothing unto our Souls which are not a Material Structure it destroys the Souls of Beasts because their Soul results from the Organization and Harmony of a Material Structure and from a certain degree of Heat and quickness in their Blood which keeping their Members dispos'd and their Nerves well extended keeps them at the same time dispos'd to receive the Impressions of exterior Bodies which act upon them and to move themselves in a thousand manners according as He hath destin'd them who hath ordain'd and directed to his Ends their particular Structure But Death can do nothing to our Souls which are evidently natures wholly Immaterial and Spiritual in which there is neither Structure nor Harmony of Parts Diseases cannot at all attack our Souls they have no Blood nor Humors to be enflam'd and set afire Old Age cannot make them die because they know not what it is to grow old Fire and Sword cannot kill them as Jesus Christ hath said they have no Parts that the Sword can divide or that Fire can consume or dry up Let us say something boldly Though Death should be able to prey upon our Souls as it doth upon our Bodies it would not cease to be certain that Death could not in the least annihilate them for it cannot annihilate even our Bodies which are given as a Prey to it and upon which it exercises all its cruelties and rigour Do not our Bodies remain Bodies after our Death they change indeed the Name and Form but they subsist in the Ground of their Corporeal Nature Doth not their Matter remain always What is there in the World more constant and what greater and stronger Argument would you have of the Immortality and Eternity of our Souls Would you have the Corporeal Part to be Eternal That Nature so base and so vile and This Nature so noble so admirable so divine which we have made you acknowledge to be in you would you have this to have an end and to return into nothing That Death should not be able to annihilate the Body which is given it to destroy and yet that it should annihilate our Souls upon which it neither hath nor can make any Prey Nothing is so certain and so evident in the World as this is That all the Bodies of the Universe and all created Powers cannot destroy a Spiritual Nature nor so much as endamage and alter it That only Power which made our Souls out of nothing can make them thither to return again and we are assur'd by the infallible Prejudgment of his Wisdom that this Sovereign Power neither ought or can ever be willing to employ his Infinite Power upon such an Essay or to make such a Trial of it He that created the Souls could absolutely annihilate them if he would but he cannot be willing to it but for some Benefit either of his Glory or of the common Good of the Universe or of some singular Advantage of the Perfection of some one of his Creatures of which he would do himself Honor. And it is impossible for him to find any such Utility by annihilating our Souls who necessarily acknowledge his Sovereignty over them so long as they endure For every Intelligent Nature hath Essentially some Sentiment
Place of Spirits than the Sea is the Place for Fishes and the Air the Place for Birds The Body saith the Wise-man returns to the Earth from whence it was taken and the Soul returns to God who made it and from whom it issu'd out that is to say It hath no more immediate Union but with God alone which occasions us to say very exactly That she goes into God We have said That our Souls have an Essential Union with God in whom they live and to whom they are much more united by all their Parts and by all the Faculties of their Being than the Beams are united to the Sun than a River is united to its Spring than the living Branch is united to its Root We have said That all Knowing Created Natures do depend as immediately upon God in all the Acts of their Life and by consequence in all the Acts of their Perceptive and Appetitive Faculties as they depend upon him for the Foundation of their Being as well as all other Created Natures that is to say That as they cannot come out of nothing but by the Almighty and Efficacious Action of his Eternal Essence so they can neither Think nor Will but by the continual Action of his Supream Influence We have said That as God is the sole Being Existing by himself so he is the sole Living Being and by consequence the sole Thinking and Willing Being by himself and from thence arises a Relation and an Essential Union of all Created Spirits with the Supream Spirit and of the Supream Spirit with the Created Spirits All the Rivers drink of the Sea saith that Ancient all the Branches suck up perpetually the the Juyce and the Sap of the Root the Beams draw perpetually their Heat and Light from the Sun and all Living Beings drink perpetually of that Living and Eternal Spring of Life and all Spirits of that Living and Eternal Source of Knowledge It is the Natural Estate of all Spiritual Natures to have this immediate Union with God but this Supream Spirit being willing to do Honor to his Almightiness and to his Wisdom being willing to make the Idea of all kinds of Creatures possible to proceed from himself and to render it Real and Effective to make the World thereby compleat and finish'd and being willing to assemble together Corporeal and Spiritual Nature in one single Whole and being willing perhaps thereby to put Pure Spirits into the Places of the Fall'n Angels and to triumph over the Rebellious Ones in causing himself to be Serv'd in Bodies by Inferior Spirits would have it that this Immediate Union which the Created Spirits have Essentially with Him should be in some manner suspended and interrupted or at least obscur'd and diminish'd in regard of those whose Fidelity and Obedience he was willing to make Trial of in the Body The Union of Bodies interrupts and suspends the Immediate Union of our Souls with God Our Souls naturally like other Created Spirits ought not to have any Dependence upon any Bodies for to have the Idea's of things they ought only to depend immediately upon God and by consequence ought only to have Union with Him But this Supream Spirit having been pleas'd for the Reasons we have said for many others which we conceive and for more yet apparently which we do not conceive that our Souls should have their Thoughts and their Sentiments their Desires and their Affections upon the Occasion of the Body to the End that That should be a continual Subject of Victory and of meritorious Exercise He hath thought fit that for a time this Immediate and Essential Union of all Created Spirits with the Eternal Essence should become in our Souls Mediate if I may be permitted to say so and that the Essential Union of God and of all Created Spirits should not Operate in them but by an Accessory Union with this Matter Organiz'd or dispos'd into a certain Structure of Bones of Flesh and of Nerves which we call Human Body This Union of our Souls with our Bodies is not as we have said but this precisely That our Bodies by the diverse stirrings up the diverse Agitations and the diverse Configurations of the Brain which they receive from Bodies which environ them or from the natural Course of the Blood or from their proper Humors are the Occasion and Condition of the Determination of the Idea's and Sentiments which the Supream Spirit gives us that is to say That the Body is the Occasional Cause which Determines the Influence of the Essential Union which we have with God and thereby it is in some manner betwixt us and God it diminisheth in some manner our Essential Union with him because it hinders if I may be permitted to say so the Immediation of him Without That we could not say that our Souls were in our Bodies they would be immediately in God because the Place of the Souls and of all Spirits is intirely their Relation of Dependence and of Activity and our Souls in that case would have no Relation and Dependence but upon God only It is for that Reason that the Scripture speaks to us of the Union of our Souls with our Bodies or of our present Life not only as it were of a Wall between God and us but as it were of a Banishment as it were a Voyage and a Running away or Departure which we make from God Peregrinamur à Domino saith St. Paul and this is Effectively as it were a kind of Departure from God and by consequence a Banishment a Voyage a Running away from him because it is a Suspension and an Interruption of the Essential and Immediate Union which all Spirits have necessarily with him Our Souls going out of the Body are immediately united to God Now since our Souls entring into Bodies do go out from God according to the Expressions of the Divine Word which are exact and just when we know how to comprehend and penetrate them we must say likewise That our Souls going out of the Body return to God and in God as the Scripture Effectively saith it God is on both sides the Term of the Voyage It is from him we part in ceasing to be united immediately to him by reason of the Intervention of Body through which the Action of the Influence of his Divine Life in us doth pass and it is to him that we return in Dying and in going out of the Body because our Dependence on the Body ceaseth by Death and Death beating down the Wall which was between God and us the Union of God to us and of us to God becomes Pure and Immediate God is the Term we arrive to as well as that from whence we parted we are come out of him and we enter again into him that is to say That as before our Souls are united to our Bodies they have no Union with any thing but with God and by consequence they are nowhere but in God so after the same manner so
that Will which remains in the Reprobate Souls do's not Operate there as it doth in Holy Souls They are driven and moved essentially by an invincible Love towards Good and instead of Good which they seek for with so much vehemence They see nothing before them but Pains Despair and Misery They launch out and throw themselves perpetually towards the Good by Efforts and Movements inconceivable and He in whom they see the Source of Good and as it were all the Treasure and all the Foundation of Good Repulses them and throws them back again and in the same time wounds and transpierces them with a thousand deadly Darts They are Eternally thirsting after Pleasure and they have Eternally nothing but Grief Pain and Despair for their Portion so that the Will placed in them to be the Beginning and the Seat of their Happiness is found to be the Eternal Principle and Seat of their Unhappiness and Despair It would be to no purpose to lose time in saying That all the agreeable Passions will be in the Holy Souls and all the afflicting ones in the Reprobate that is comprehended of it self as also That these Passions will be in the Appetitive Faculty independently of the Body as we have said That the acts of Perceiving Imagining and Remembring will be in the Perceptive Faculty So there remains nothing more to finish this last Illustration and to draw from thence the so-essential Instruction of our Duties of Time and of Eternity of the Present Life and the Future Life of the Present World and the World to come of all our Present Condition and of all our Future State Than to remark that this Estate of the Souls out of the Body will not be changed in the main at bottom but only in some Circumstances not essential by the Re-union of the Bodies which will be made by the Universal Resurrection CHAP. XIII That this State of the Souls out of the Body will not be changed in the main or at Bottom by the new State of the Universal Resurrection but only in some accessory Circumstances ALthough we do not at all find in the Sentiment or in the precise Idea which we have of our Souls the Certainty and the Conviction of their Future Re-union with the Bodies which Faith teaches us ought to be made by the Universal Resurrection it is for all that certain That considering all the Train and all the Concatenation of the Mysteries and Principles whereof the Divine System of Religion and of Christianity is formed considering also the honor of the Divine Attributes which require That God should be jealous of his Glory and of the happy Event and Success of his Designs It is altogether evident That God who hath been pleased to Assemble the two kinds of Natures which only are known to Us whether as Existing or as Possible viz. To wit Corporeal Nature and Spiritual Nature into one single Compositum and one single Whole or Hypostasis to make thereof the Master-piece of the Visible World and as it were an Epitome an Abridgment or a curious Recapitulation of all his Works ought necessarily to Re-place it and to Re-establish it such as he formed it and designed it at first He ought to do it either for his own honor and glory as Creator to the end That Man may eternally subsist in this admirable Composition of Body and of Spirit who holding equally of the Visible and Corporeal World and of the Intelligible and Spiritual World makes as it were a Third and a kind of One altogether singular which infinitely exalteth his Wisdom and his Power or else for the honor and glory of the Redemption and of the Man-God who would eternally remain Imperfect and Defective if things were not Re-established upon the foot of the first Plat-form and of the first Design of the Creation and by consequence if the Bodies were not re-placed with the Souls because the Man-God would not be altogether a Repairer and a Restorer if he did not re-place Man such as he was at first Created and Designed and his Triumph over Sin over Death and Satan would not be compleat and finished if the half of Men should remain in the Jaws of Death Considering then all this Train of the Divine System of Religion it is without doubt most clear and certain That the Universal Resurrection ought to be a Circumstance of that glorious Solemnity of Justice which God ought then to make at the Consummation of Ages for the Consecration of his Eternal Temple for the Overture and Commencement of his Immortal Reign for the Solemn Coronation of his Predestined for the compleat Triumph of the Man-God for the Justification of all his Providence and the Declaration of all his Designs It is I say indubitable and constant That then at the end of the present Oeconomy and then when God will put an end to the Vicissitudes of Time and to the liberty of Revolt and of License which he gives at present to his Creatures then when he will fix all things in an Immutable and Eternal Order then when he will give a beginning to the New World He will then Re-establish all the Bodies and Re-unite every Soul to that which she animated during the present Life But in the mean time as we cannot say That our Souls find in themselves the Sentiment of their future Re-union with their Bodies so we will not speak of it here but as a Truth of Faith because we proposed to our selves to decide nothing concerning Them but what we should find Established either by our own proper Sentiment and our indubitable Experience or by a clear Light of Evidence arising from the Notion which we have made our selves of it as of a knowing Nature sensible of Order and Duty no less than of Pleasure and Pain and of all that is done in Her but this Truth presupposed and elsewhere sufficiently justified to the Idea of the Divine Attributes and in all the Train of the Principles of Religion and of Christianity VVe may speak with assurance of the manner how our Souls will be in their Resuscitated Bodies He who calls Himself the Resurrection and the Life the First-Born amongst the Dead the Father of the Ages to come He in whom we are all raised up again in Mystery and in Figure according to St. Pauls Expression and by whom we all of us ought to be raised up again effectively at the Last Day He tells us that we shall be then even in our Bodies like the Angels disfranchised from the Businesses and the Inclinations which we have upon the Occasion of the Body St. Paul also teaches us That our Bodies shall be Spiritualized and we may upon this Principle decide with certainty That the Re-union of Bodies doth not at all change the Foundation of that State of the Soul out of the Body the manner and circumstances whereof we have been Illustrating When St. Paul saith That our Bodies shall be Spiritualized by the Resurrection he
in God In vain do we wander do we lose our selves and go astray We never lose our selves for God he never lets us go for altogether he hath his Cord and his Chain by which he holds us and by which he recalls us when he pleases and when he thinks fit He will recall us yes and our ungrateful Souls who are now all of them turn'd away from him always Fugitives and Vagabonds wandring from Vanity to Vanity will be much astonish'd when we shall return to him O what Surprise what Astonishment what Confusion what Disorder what Dread what Efforts but fruitless Efforts of Flying of Hiding ones self and of Escaping What Commotions what Storms what Agitations in the Hearts of these Fugitive Slaves brought back to their Master of these Rebellious Subjects dragg'd in Chains before their King At this Meeting what Despair in these Souls what Movements in God! If these Souls on their side are Troubl'd Amaz'd Affrighted and Agitated in themselves God how is he on his side how do's he receive them how do they find him what Entertainment what Accosting what Reception in your Opinion But what Reproaches or to say better What Thunder and Thunderbolts what Looks what Rage what Threatnings what Indignation But if the the Accosting and the Meeting causes so much Pain what will the Judgment and the Condemnation do what will the Account which they must give of all the Thoughts of the Spirit and all the Motions of the Heart of them who forget God There is not one Hair of our Head lost saith the Divine Word That is to say saith S. Augustin That all our Thoughts are counted all our Steps are written down there is an Account kept of all our Respirations not one of our Thoughts not one of the Motions of our Hearts shall be lost and every one of them which shall have wandred from God if we may be permitted to say so in our Lives Every one of them which shall not have God for its Mark for its principal End and over-ruling Object will be found Impious and Sacrilegious And then what Surprise will there be anew what Regret what Stinging and bitter Repentance what Shame and Confusion what Despite and what Rage of ungrateful Souls against themselves what Despair and what Fury with what Evidence and with what Sentiment will they acknowledge their Wandring With what Cries and with what Howlings will they tear themselves to pieces and will say Ergo erravimus Ah! it is too true That so much as we have forgot God we have been truly wandring All the Pleasure and the Happiness which we have search'd for out of God hath been a real Wandring Oh! how far do we find our selves from that Mark and Goal which we then did run to with so much violence and fury Oh! Pleasures Oh! Goods which we search'd for out of God and which we now see are no where but in God O Error O Wandring The Condemnation of our blind and senseless love of our Body If by the Principle of our Origine and of our Celestial Dependence which ought to make us so essentially to turn to God we ought so mightily to condemn our forgetfulness and our wandring from God We ought no less to condemn by the Principle of Nature and the Spiritual Quality of our Souls our Foolish and Idolatrous love of our Bodies For in fine Since our Souls is the true Foundation of our Being how comes it to pass That we only know our Bodies That we only Love Adore and Idolize our Bodies That we are not concern'd but for the Interests of our Bodies That we do not labour or much concern our selves but for our Bodies We are sensible to all their little Businesses to all their little Advantages to all their little Commodities and insensible to all the Businesses to all the Interests and Advantages of our Soul Our Soul is as hath been said The whole Foundation of our Being It is by her That we ought to be eternally happy or unhappy She is all our True and Essential Being The Body and every thing which hath the Body for its Basis for its Foundation and for its Subject is no more than as it were an accident of our True Being The Whole Man is in the Soul or to say better It is the Soul only that is the Whole Man because Man is nothing properly but what he ought to be Eternally for there is nothing truly and properly real but what is Eternal To be for a Moment for a Day for a Year or for some short time This is not properly to Be. Eternity is the true Ground and the true Basis of a solid and real Being Nothing properly and truly Is but that which is to be for ever To be for a time only is not truly to Be It is a Shaddow of Being It is a Figure of Being The Present World is not according to St. Paul but a Figure of a World not a True World because it passes away All Corporeal Felicity therefore all Grandeur all Abundance all the Advantages which have Bodies for a Basis and for a Subject cannot make to a Man a true and real Being since Death ought to make her Prey upon them The true Being of a Man is that which ought to Be Eternally and since it is by the Soul only and by the advantages or disadvantages of the Soul that Man ought to be Eternally all that which he ought to be Therefore there is nothing more true than to say That it is the Soul only which is the Whole Man Beauty Ladies which you make as the Basis and Foundation of all your Being And the Debaucheries in which you infamous Sensual Men make your Felicity and all your Being to consist will not go along with you into Eternity The Body which is the Basis of Beauty and of Debauchery is laid in the Grave and remains on this side when the Soul returns to God and makes her Passage into Eternity and then at the Consummation of Time and the Establishment of the Immutable Order of the World to come when the Soul shall come to Re-assume the Body She will take with it nothing of that which at present makes her Felicity and her Pomps The Pleasures of the Body are all of them Essentially false as well as empty They leave the Heart even during this Life sick and Famished and they leave the Soul eternally deceived they disappear they fly away they leave the Soul in a cruel Privation and in an insupportable Desolation of Regret and of Repentance of Horror and of Despair O Vanity then of Vanities Illusion of Illusions Thus to abandon our selves to love nothing but our Bodies and neglect the care of our Souls The Soul at this very hour hath her Goods her Riches her Grandeurs and her Pleasures which are worth more without comparison than the Pleasures the Goods Riches and Grandeurs of the Body But tho' the Soul should have none but the Pleasures the Riches