force at all in this or no that Supplement I have made in the foregoing verse will make good the sense of our Cabbala And in the very Letter and History of the Scripture if a man take notice he must of necessity make a supply of something or another to pass to what follows with due cohaesion and clearness of sense So in the very next Chapter where God dooms Cain to be a Vagabond and he cryes out that every man that meets him will kill him according to the concise story of the Text there was none but Adam and Eve in the world to meet him and yet there is a mark set upon him by God as if there had been then several people in the world into whose hands he might fall and lose his life by them And then again at ver 17. Cain had no sooner got into the Land of Nod but he has a wife and a childe by her and he is forthwith said to build a City when as there is no mention of any but himself his wife and his childe to be the Artificers but any ingenious Reader will easily make to himself fitting supplements ever supposing due distances of time and right preparations to all that is said to be acted And so in the story of Samson where he is said to take three hundred Foxes it may be rationally supposed that Countrey was full of such creatures that he had a competency of time a sufficient number to help him and the like That the History of Scripture is very concise no body can deny and therefore where easie natural and agreeable supplements will clear the sense I conceive it is very warrantable to suppose some such supplies and for a Paraphrast judiciously to interweave them But now that Paradise at first should signifie a state of divine pleasure and afterward of sensual voluptuousness it is no more harsh then that Adam one while is the Spiritual or Intellectual Man another while the Earthly and Carnal For one and the same natural thing may be a Symbole of contrary Spiritual Mysteries So a Lion and a Serpent are figures of Christ as well as of the Devil and therefore it is not so hard to admit that this Garden of Eden may emblematize while Adam is discours'd of as innocent and obedient to God the delights of the Spirit but after his forsaking God the pleasures of the Flesh and consequently that the fruit of the Tree of Life in the one may be perseverance and establishment in the divine Life in the other a settlement and fixedness in the brutish and sensual Ver. 24. The manly faculties of Reason and Conscience These I conceive may be understood by the Cherubim and flaming Sword For the Cherubim bear the Image of a man and Reason is a cutting dividing thing like a Sword the Stoicks call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dividing and distinguishing Reason For Reason is nothing but a distinct discernment of the Idea's of things whereby the minde is able to sever what will not sute and lay together what will But if any body will like better of Philo's interpretation here of the Cherubim and flaming Sword who makes the Cherubim to signifie the goodness and power of God the flaming Sword 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the effectual and operative Wisdome or Word of God it does not at all clash with what we have already set down For my self also suppose that God by his Son the Eternal Word works upon the Reason and Conscience of man For that Word is living and powerful sharper then any two-edged Sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit and of the joints and marrow and is the discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do Heb. 4. That he could not set up his rest for ever Assuredly a mans heart is not so in his own hand that he can do himself all the mischief he is contented to do For we are more Gods then our own and his Goodness and Power has dominion over us And therefore let not a man vainly fancy that by violently running into all enormity of life and extinguishing all the Principles of Piety and Virtue in him that he shall be able thus to hide himself from God and never be re-minded of him again for ever For though a man may happen thus to forget God for a time yet he can never forget us sith all things lie open to his sight And the power of his ever-living Word will easily cut through all that thickness and darkness which we shrowd our selves in and wound us so as to make us look back with shame and sorrow at a time that we least thought of But that our pain may be the lesse and our happiness commence the sooner it will be our wisdome to comply with the divine Light betimes for the sooner we begin the work is the easier and will be the more timely dispatch'd through the power of God working in us But this I must confess and I think my self bound to bear witness to so true and useful a mysterie wrapt up in this Mosaical covering that there is no other passage nor return into happiness then by death Whence Plato also that had been acquainted with these holy writings has defined Philosophy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The meditation of death viz. the dying to the lust of the flesh and inordinate desires of the body which Purgatory if we had once passed through there would soon spring up that Morning Joy the resurrection from the dead and our arrival to everlasting life and glory And there is no other way then this that is manifestable either by Scripture Reason or Experience But those that through the grace of God and a vehement thirst after the divine Righteousness have born the Crosse till the perfect death of the body of sin and make it their business to have no more sense nor relish of themselves or their own particular persons then if they were not at all they being thus demolished as to themselves and turned into a Chaos or dark Nothingness as I may so speak they become thereby fitted for the new Creation And this personal life being thus destroyed God calls unto them in the dead of the Night when all things are silent about them awakes them and raises them up and breathes into them the breath of everlasting life and ever after actuates them by his own Spirit and takes all the humane faculties unto himself guiding or allowing all their operations always holding up the spirit of man so that he will never sink into sin and from henceforth death and sorrow is swallowed up for ever for the sting of Death is Sin But whatever liberty and joy men take to themselves that is not founded in this new life is false and frivolous and will end but in
that no man can adde any thing to it But then for comparison of persons what dotage is it for any man because he can read the common Alphabet of Honesty and a Pious life in the History of the Old and New Testament finely allegorizing as is conceiv'd those external Transactions to a mysterious application of what concerns the inward man to either place himself or for others to place him in the same level with Jesus Christ the Son of God the Saviour of men and Prince of the highest Angelical Orders who rose out of the grave by the Omnipotent hand of his Father and was seen to ascend into Heaven by his Apostles that gazed upon him as he passed through the Clouds and whom all true Christians expect visibly to appear there again and re-visit the world according to the promise Now it seems to me a very unreasonable and rash thing if not impious and blasphemous to acknowledge any man whatsoever comparable to so sacred a Person as our Saviour Christ every way approved himself and was approved by a voice from Heaven saying This is my beloved Son hear him If any man therefore having none of these testimonies from above nor being able to do any thing more then other men shall be so unmannerly as to place himself in the same order and rank with Christ the Son of God because he has got some fine fancies and phrases and special and peculiar interpretations of Scripture which he will have immediately suggested from the Spirit I cannot forbear again to pronounce that this man is overtaken with an high degree of either pride or madness and if he can perswade any others to look upon him as so sacred a Prophet that it must be in them at least Inadvertency or Ignorance Nay I think I shall not say amisse if I attribute their mistake to a kinde of Pride also For Pride affects nothing more then Singularity and therefore undervaluing the plain simplicity of ordinary Christianity such as at first sight is held forth in the Gospel of Christ they think it no small privilege to have a Prophet of their own especially they getting this advantage thereby that they can very presently as they fancy censure and discern the truth or falshood of all that venture to speak out of the Rode of their own Sect as if every body were bound to conne their lessons according to their Book And it is a fine thing to become so accurately wise at so cheap a rate and discover who is Spiritual or who is the Carnal or meer Moral man This is indeed the folly of all Sects and there is no way better that I know to be freed from such inveiglements then by earnestly endevouring after that which they all pretend to and to become truly more holy and sincere then other men for the throughly purified man is certainly delivered from all these follies These things I could not forbear to speak in zeal to the honour of my Saviour and the good and safety of his Church For if men once get a trick to call the world Christian where the death of Christ on the Crosse at Jerusalem is not acknowledged a sacrifice for sin nor himself now in his humane Person a Mediatour with God the Father and the Head of his Church Militant and Triumphant nor that there is any Eternal Life nor Resurrection but that in the Moral or Mystical sense assuredly this will prove the most dangerous way imaginable quite to take away that in time which is most properly called Christian Religion out of the world and to leave meerly the name thereof behinde But a Religion so manifestly established by God in a most miraculous manner and being so perfect that the wit of man cannot imagine any thing more compleat and better fitted for winning souls to God It can be nothing but giddiness or light-mindedness to think that this Religion can be ever superannuated in the world but that it shall last till Christs Corporeal appearance in the Clouds For there is no reason at all that the holy Ghost should be thought to come in the flesh of some particular man no more then God the Father did under the Law For what can he tell us more or better then Christ already has told us or what himself may tell us without any personal shape And there is no Prophecie of any such thing but onely of that which is better that Christ will procure for all those that are his faithful and obedient followers the Spirit of Truth and Righteousnesse and indue them with the divine Life and that it shall so at length come to pass that Justice Peace and Equity shall more universally and fully flourish in the world then ever yet they have done And that faith in God and of the Life to come shall be more vigorously sealed upon the hearts of men and that there shall be a neerer union and conjunction betwixt the humane and divine nature in us then ever and more frequent and sensible commerce betwixt the Inhabitants of the Aethereal and Terrestrial Region according as I have already declared concerning the Seventh day in this Defence of the Moral Cabbala But in the mean time though that full Sabbatisme be so far off yet I doubt not but there have been and are very sweet and joyful praelibations of it in sundry persons which quickens their hopes and desires of the compleatment thereof and divine Providence is not idle all things working towards this last Catastraphe and the heads of Sects themselves though I never saw any yet that my light and judgement could pronounce infallible and perfect as I think there never will be any till Christ himself come again who will appear in no Sectarian way for himself hath given us an intimation that if any one say Loe here is Christ or there is Christ believe it not yet such is the grosse ignorance or hypocrisie of ordinary carnal Churches as they call them that some heads of Sects I say have spoken very true and weighty things against them very lively setting them out depainting them in their own colors insomuch that they will be able not only to turn from them the affections of all plain hearted men that are fast friends to the eternal Righteousness of God and prefer that before the most specious devices of arbitrarious Superstition but also to raise their anger and indignation against them But it does not presently follow that because a man can truly discover the gross faults falsities that are in another that therefore he is utterly blameless himself and not at all imposed upon by his natural complexion nor speaks any thing that is false nor omits any thing that is both true and necessary But be these Sects what they will be the grand Churches themselves are so naked and obnoxious that unlesse they cast away from them their hypocrisie pride and covetousnesse they will in all likelihood raise such storms in all Christendome
two extremes the first and the last that makes up the Creation of the Spiritual Adam or Christ compleated in us and includes the middle which is Blood First therefore is Repentance from what we delighted in before Then the killing of that evil and corrupt life in us which is resisting to blood as the Apostle speaks And the 1 Epistle of John ch 5. v. 4. What ever is born of God overcomes the world Who is he that overcomes the world but he that believes that Jesus Christ the divine Light and Life in us is the Son of God and therefore indued with power from on high to overcome all sin and wickednesse in us This is he that comes by Water and Blood by repentance and perseverance till the death of the body of sin not by repentance only and dislike of our former life but by the mortification also of it Then the Spirit of Truth is awakened in us and will bear witnesse of whatever is right and true And according to this manner of testimony is it to be understood especially That no man can say that Jesus Christ is the Son of God but by the Spirit of God as the Apostle elsewhere affirms This is the heavenly Adam which is true Light and Glory to all them that have attain'd to the resurrection of the dead and into whom God hath breathed the breath of Life without which we have no right knowledge nor sense of God at all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They are thâ— words of Philo upon the place For how should the soul of man says he know God if he did not inspire her and take hold of her by his power Ver. 8. To the Kingdome of Heaven And the end of the doctrine of John which was Repentance was for this purpose that men might arrive to that comfortable condition here described and therefore it was a motive for them to repent For though sorrow endure for a night yet joy will come in the morning For the new Jerusalem is to be built and God is to pitch his Tabernacle amongst men and to rule by his Spirit here upon Earth which if I would venture upon an Historical Cabbala of Moses I should presage would happen in the seventh thousand years according to the Chronology of Scripture when the world shall be so spiritualized that the work of Salvation shall be finished and the great Sabbath and Festival shall be then celebrated in the height A thousand years are but as one day saith the Apostle Peter And therefore the seventh thousand years may well be the seventh day Wherefore in the end of the sixth thousand years the Kingdomes of the Earth will be the second Adams the Lord Christs as Adam in the Sixt day was created the Lord of the world and all the creatures therein and this conquest of his will bring in the Seventh day of rest and peace and joy upon the face of the whole Earth Which presage will seem more credible when I shall have unfolded unto you out of Philo Judaeus the mysterie of the number Seven but before I fall upon that let me a little prepare your belief by shewing the truth of the same thing in another Figure Adam Seth Enos Cainan Mahalaleel Jared they died not enjoying the richness of Gods goodness in their bodies But Enoch who was the seventh from Adam he was taken up alive into Heaven and seems to enjoy that great blisse in the body The world then in the Seventh Chiliad will be assumed up into God snatch'd up by his Spirit inacted by his Power The Jerusalem that comes down from Heaven will then in a most glorious and eminent manner flourish upon Earth God will as I said pitch his Tabernacle amongst men And for God to be in us and with us is as much as for us to be lifted up into God But to come now to the mysterie of the Septenary or number Seven it is of two kindes the one is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Septenary within the Decade is meerly seven unites The other is a Seventh Number beginning at an Vnite and holding on in a continued Geometrical Proportion till you have gone through Seven Proportional Terms For the Seventh Term there is this Septenary of the second kinde whose nature Philo fully expresses in these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To this sense For always beginning from an Vnite and holding on in double or triple or what Proportion you will the seventh Number of this rank is both Square and Cube comprehending both kindes as well the Corporeal as Incorporeal Substancâ—e the Incorporeal according to the Superficies which the Squares exhibite but the Corporeal according to the solid dimensions which are set out by the Cubes As for example 64. or 729. these are Numbers that arise after this manner each of them are a Seventh from an Unite the one arising from double Proportion the other from triple and if the Proportion were Quadruple Quintuple or any else there is the same reason some other Seventh Number would arise which would prove of the same nature with these they would prove both Cubes and Squares that is Corporeal and Incorporeal For such is sixty four either made by multiplying eight into eight and so it is a Square or else by multiplying four Cubically For four times four times four is again sixty four but then it is a Cube And so seven hundred twenty nine is made either by Squaring of twenty seven or Cubically multiplying of Nine for either way will seven hundred twenty nine be made and so is both Cube and Square Corporeal and Incorporeal Whereby is intimated that the world shall not be reduced in the Seventh day to a meer Spiritual consistency to an Incorporeal condition but that there shall be a co-habitation of the Spirit with Flesh in a Mystical or Moral sense and that God will pitch his Tent amongst us Then shall be settled everlasting righteousnesse and rooted in the Earth so long as mankind shall inhabite upon the face thereof And this truth of the Reign of Righteousness in this Seventh thousand years is still more clearly set out to us in the Septenary within Ten. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo calls it the naked number Seven For the parts it consists of are 3 and 4 which put together make 7. And these parts be the sides of the first Orthogonion in Numbers the very sides that include the right angle thereof And the Orthogonion what a foundation it is of Trigonometry and of measuring the altitudes latitudes and longitudes of things every body knows that knows any thing at all in Mathematicks And this prefigures the uprightness of that holy Generation who will stand and walk 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Inclining neither this way nor that way but they will approve themselves of an upright and sincere heart And by this Spirit of Righteousness will these Saints be enabled to finde out the depth and breadth
us they bidding more open warre to the quiet and happiness of mans life as that judicious Poet Spencer has well observed in his Legend of Sir Guyon or Temperance Cant. 6. A harder lesson to learn continence In joyous pleasure then in grievous pain For sweetness doth allure the weaker sense So strongly that uneathes it can refrain From that which feeble Nature covets fain But grief and wrath that be our enemies And foes of life she better can restrain Yet Virtue vaunts in both her Victories And Guyon in them all shews goodly Masteries What a rigid and severe thing c. This is the conceit of such as are either utter strangers to Religion or have not yet arrived to that comfortable result of it that may be expected For God takes no delight in the perpetual rack of those souls he came to redeem but came to redeem us from that pain and torture which the love of our selves and our untamed lusts and pride of spirit makes us obnoxious to which men being loth to part with and not having the heart to let them be struck to the very quick and pulled up by the roots the work not accomplished according to the full minde and purpose of God there are still the seeds of perpetual anxiety sadness and inevitable pain For to be dead is easement but to be still dying is pain and it is most ordinarily but the due punishment of halting and hypocrisie And mens spirits being long sowred thus and made sad their profession and behaviour is such that they fright all inexperienced young men from any tolerable compliance in matters of Religion thinking that when they are once engaged there they are condemned ad Fodinas for ever and that they can never emerge out of this work and drudgery in those dark Caverns till they die there like the poor Americans inslaved and over-wrought by the merciless Spaniard But verily if we have but the patience to be laid low enough the same hand that depressed us will exalt us above all hope and expectation For if we be sufficiently baptized into the Death of Christ we shall assuredly be made partakers of his Resurrection to Life and that glorious liberty of the Sons of God according as it is written If the Son make you free then are you free indeed free from Sin and secure from the power of any Temptation But if Mortification has not had its perfect work too mature a return of the sweetness of the Animal Life may prove like the Countreymans cherishing the Snake by the fire side which he had as he thought taken up dead in the Snow it will move and hisse and bite and sting The strong presages of the manifold corporeal delights and satisfactions of the flesh may grow so big and boisterous in the minde that the soul may deem her self too straitly girt up and begin to listen to such whispers of the Serpent as this What a rigid and severe thing is this business of Religion c. and account her self if she be not free to every thing that she is as good as free to nothing Ver. 2 3. But the womanish part in Adam 'T is but one and the same soul in man entertaining a dialogue with her self that is set out by these three parts The Serpent Adam and the Woman And here the soul recollecting her self cannot but confess that Religion denies her no honest nor fitting pleasure that is not hazardous to her greater happiness and bethinks her self in what peril she is of losing the divine Life and due sense of God if she venture thus promiscuously to follow her own will and not measure all her actions and purposes by the divine Light that for the present is at hand to direct her Ver. 4. But the Serpent c. The sense of this verse is that the eager desire of pleasure had wrought it self so far into the sweetness of the Animal Life that it clouded the mans judgement and made him fondly hope that the being so freely alive to his own will was no prejudice to the will of the Spirit and the life of God which was in him when as yet notwithstanding the Apostle expresly writes What fellowship is there betwixt righteousness unrighteousness What communion betwixt light and darkness What agreement betwixt Christ and Belial And he elsewhere tells us That Christ gave himself for his Church that he might so throughly purge it and sanctifie it that it should have neither spot nor wrinkle but that it should be holy and unblameable a true Virgin Bride clothed with his divine Life and Glory And those men that are so willing to halt betwixt two the Flesh and the Spirit and have house-room enough to entertain them both as if there could be any friendship and communion betwixt them let them seriously consider whether this opinion be not the same that deceived Adam was of and let them suspect the same sad event and acknowledge it to arise from the self-same Principle the inordinate desire of pleasing their own wills without the allowance of the divine Light and consulting with the will of God Ver. 5. Skill and Experience in things And some men make it no sin but warrantable knowledge to know the world and account others fools that are ignorant of that wicked mysterie For man would be no Slave or Idiot but know his own liberty and gain experience as he pretends by the making use of it But that the accurate exercise of Reason in the knowledge of Gods marvellous works in Nature or those innocent delightful conclusions in Geometry and Arithmetick and the like that these parts of knowledge should be perstringed by Moses in this History it seems to me not to have the least probability in it for there are so very few in the world whose mindes are carried any thing seriously to such objects that it had not been worth the taking notice of And then again it is plain that the miscarriage is from the affectation of such kinde of knowledge as the Woman the flowring life of the body occasioned Adam to transgresse in Wherefore it is the fulfilling of the various desires of the flesh not an high aspire after Intellectual Contemplations for they respect the Masculine Faculties not the Feminine that made way to the transgression Wherefore I say the wisdome that the Serpent here promised was not Natural Philosophy or Mathematicks or any of those innocuous and noble accomplishments of the understanding of man but it was the knowledge of the world and the wisdome of the flesh For the life of the body is full of desires and presages of satisfaction in the obtaining of this or the other external thing whether it be in Honour Riches or Pleasure and if they shake off the divine Guide within them they will have it by hook or by crook And this worldly wisdome is so plausible in the world and so sweetly relished by the meer natural man that it were temptation enough for