asked his Disciples if they would leave him they asked him again Whither shall we go Thou hast the words of Etetnal Life which no one else pretends to Now if these words of his are words only then was he an Impostor and his Doctrine is false But if this Assertion of himself be true That Man by him may live for ever Then all our Attempts beneath this are mean and cowardly as counting our selves unworthy of Eternal Life The Objection made against him when he affirmed it was The Custom of the World to the contrary Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead whom makest thou thy self to be And I am not unaware that this Custom of the World to die hath gained such a prevalency over our minds by prepossessing us of the necessity of Death that it stands ready to swallow my Argument whole without digesting it For if the custom of Bondage derived upon Man but for a few Generations doth so enure him to subjection that he thinks it Jure divino and all attempts against it to be Rebellion How much more may I expect that this attempt against Death which hath had so much a longer possession over Man will be accounted madness But as a learned Man said That the Pride of Women comes from the baseness of Men and the courage of Cowards from others more Cowards So I may say That the Dominion of Death is supported by our fear of it by which it hath bullied the World to this day And therefore before I fall upon the direct proof of my Argument I 'll offer an answer to the Custom of the World against me Custom it self without a Reason for it is an Argument only to Fools Nor can the Life or Death of one Man be assigned as the cause of the Life or Death of another unless the same thing happen to them both Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead What then Why Abraham died of Age as the Folk call it he gave up the Ghost being an old Man and full of Years And the Prophets were many of them knock'd on the head Ye have stoned the Prophets Must it therefore follow that either of these Deaths must happen to me or that because they died of one death I must die of another Suppose my Mother died in Childbed must I therefore do so too Or that my Father was hang'd must I therefore be drown'd Abraham is dead and the Prophets are dead What then Why Abraham had a Son of his own begetting at a hundred years old upon a Woman of ninety had an Army of Men born in his own House Flocks and Herds without number and a whole Country of his own to feed them in And the Prophets were Favorites of Heaven could raise the Dead and kill the Living Must therefore any of these Gifts happen to me Why then if I must not partake with Abraham and the Prophets in their Blessings why must I partake with them in their Deaths Nor did Abraham die because the Prophets died nor did the Prophets die because Abraham died Then if their Deaths had no effects upon one another Why should they have any effect upon me And as the Life or Death of one Man is no cause of the Life or Death of another so the multitude of Examples don't alter the case The Life or Death of all the World except one Man can be no cause of the Life or Death of that one Man Almost this very case once happen'd in the World when the Flood destroyed all but eight Persons and yet this was no Argument that those eight must be drowned too nor was the preservation of them any Argument for the preservation of the rest We have heard of a hundred thousand Men slain in Battel and yet this was no Argument for the death of any other Man who was not slain in it Wherefore the custom of the World to die is no Argument one way or other But because I know that Custom it self is admitted as an evidence of Title upon presumption that this Custom had once a reasonable Commencement and that this Reason doth continue therefore it is incumbent upon me to answer this Custom by shewing The Time and Reason of its Commencement And that this Reason is determined Which if I do shew then the bare Custom of the World to die ought no longer to be admitted as a Title against Life First then I do admit the Custom or Possession of Death over the World to be as followeth viz. That Death did reign from Adam to Moses by an uninterrupted possession over all Men Women and Children created or born except one Breach made upon it in that time by Enoch And hath reigned from Moses unto this day by the like uninterrupted possession except one other Breach made upon it in this time by Elijah And this is as strong a Possession as can be alledged against me To answer this I must shew That this Custom or Possession of Death had a reasonable Commencement which was the Original of it To avoid this Possession I must shew That this Reason is determined and that therefore this Possession ought to be no longer admitted as a Title against Life The Religion of the World now is That Man is born to die But from the beginning it was not so for Man was made to live God made not Death till Man brought it upon himself by his delinquency Adam stood as fair for Life as Death and fairer too because he was in the actual possession of Life as Tenant thereof at the Will of God and had an opportunity to have made that Title perpetual by the Tree of Life which stood before him with the Tree of Knowledg of Good and Evil. And here 't is observable how the same act of Man is made the condition both of his Life and Death Put forth thy hand and pull and eat and die Or Put forth thy hand and pull and eat and live for ever So little doth God esteem the Work of Man in order to his own Salvation The Lord Bacon descanting upon the Fall of Man expresses it thus That Man made a total defection from God presuming to imagine that the Commandments and Prohibitions of God were not the Rules of Good and Evil but that Good and Evil had their own Principles and beginnings and that Man lusted after the knowledg of those imagined Beginnings to the end to depend no more upon God's Will revealed but upon himself and his own Light as a God than which there could not be a Sin more opposite to the whole Law of God For 't is not to be conceived that there was any physical Virtue in either of these Trees whereby to cause Life or Death But God having sanctified them by those two different Names he was obliged to make good his own Characters of them by commanding the whole Creation to act in such a manner as that Man should feel the Effects of this Word according to which of
make his immediate passage to Heaven by way of translation because he was fallen under that Law which did oblige him to the common Fate of Death But having once suffered this and thereby and by his Resurrection delivered himself from that Law which had obliged him to it He then stood perfectly qualified to make his Exit by way of Translation And therefore having done all he had to do upon Earth he claimed a right of reentrance into his former Glory without dying any more I have finished the Work thou gavest me to do Now glorify me with that Glory which I had with thee before the World began And thereupon God sent him down one of the Chariots of Heaven to convey him thither as he had done before to those two Heroes of old whom I have excepted out of the possession of Death upon this their Faith in him before they saw him Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed Now I say this that as Christ did thus change his State upon Earth without change of his Person or Place so Man may do too with this difference that tho Christ passed this change by his own Death and Resurrection yet we can't do it by our own Death and Resurrection but must do it by passing through the Death and Resurrection of Christ in that legal Form prescribed by the Covenant of Eternal Life because his Death and not ours is made the Seal of that Covenant And this Man may do without any real Death or Resurrection of his own If the Death and Resurrection of Christ be the Passage into Eternal Life then he that is passed this is passed into Eternal Life whether he himself ever died or not And for us to think to imitate Christ in attaining Eternal Life by passing through Death because Christ did so shews us to be as ignorant of the Law of Eternal Life as a Man would seem of our Laws who seeing another intituled to an Estate by sealing of a piece of Wax upon a piece of Parchment should think to get the same himself by doing the same thing upon other pieces of the like of his own putting together For my own part I thank God I have already made this so familiar to my self that could I pass through an actual Death and Resurrection of my own without Pain I would not value the Experiment as any thing towards Salvation further than this that I should thereby know that there is nothing in it And of this I am as well satisfied by the Experiments made upon others as if it were upon my self When Christ had opened the Eyes of the Man born blind the People were ready to interrogate him to death What How Where When did he cure you What did he say to you What did he do to you What did you see first What did you feel first But he knew no more of the matter than they did Only that whereas I was blind now I see So when the People flock'd about Lazarus expecting to hear from him some News of the other World he could give them no other account of it than whereas I am dead now I am alive He was neither richer nor wiser by his Resurrection nor could learn by that how to escape another Death but died again and might have thus died and rose and rose and died a hundred times without any change of his State Wherefore Samuel ask'd Saul Why dost thou disquiet me to bring me up What wouldst thou have with me Is it to see me Why here I am an old Man in a Mantle as thou hast seen me a hundred times Wouldst thou talk with me Why thou knowst what I have told thee over and over the Lord is departed from thee and hath rent the Kingdom out of thy hand and so I tell you now and more I cannot say If Men will not believe Moses and the Prophets while they are living why should we fancy we shall rather believe them when risen from the Dead If they say the same things over again it is Impertinence and should they contradict themselves how could we believe them We have strange Conceptions of Death and Resurrection as long as we are on this side them But when we have once passed through and find our selves much the same as we were before we shall be at as much loss about it as we are now And if the Death of others who have died before us hath put us into such a fear of Death that we shall die too I can't conceive how our own Death should discharge us of that fear after our Resurrection but that it should rather augment it for what we have once felt we are ever after more afraid of feeling again The burnt Child dreads the Fire And yet far be it from me to say that Man may not attain to Eternal Life tho he should die for the Text runs double I am the Resurrection and the Life he that liveth and believeth on me shall never die and tho he were dead he shall live But this I say that by this very Text there is a nearer way of entring into Eternal Life than by the way of Death and Resurrection Whatever Circumstances a Man is under at the time of his Faith God is bound upon his Fidelity to make good this Text to him according to which part of it he builds his Faith upon If he be dead then there 's a necessity for a Resurrection But if he be alive there 's no occasion for Death or Resurrection either Nor doth this Text maintain two Religions but two Articles of Faith in the same Religion But this I do apprehend that the Article of Faith for a present Life without dying is a higher Article of Faith than that which expects Death and Resurrection because I passed through this last Article long before the other which I am now arguing for ever enter'd into my thoughts I once courted Death as Elijah did under the Juniper-Tree in the Wilderness when he requested for himself to die and said Now Lord take away my Life for I am not better than my Fathers Which shews that he was not educated in this Faith of Translation but attained it afterwards by study For no Man can comprehend the heights and depths of the Gospel at his first entrance into it And in point of order the last Enemy to be destroyed is Death The first Essay of Faith is against Hell that tho we should die we might not be damned And the full assurance of this is more than most Men attain to before Death overtakes them which makes Death a Terror to them But they that do attain to this assurance before they go hence can sing a Requiem at their Death Lord now lettest thou thy Servant depart in peace for mine Eyes have seen thy Salvation And if God takes them at their words they lie down in the Faith of the Resurrection of the Just But whenever he pleases to continue them after
Christ as if he were in Heaven but he don't know it And God will not deliver out Eternal Life to Man faster than he makes him understand it for the knowledg of Eternal Life is the Essence of it This is Eternal Life to know God and Jesus Christ Every Man possesses as much of Eternal Life as he knows and he knows as much as he possesseth and no more And what the residue of Eternal Life is beyond our present knowledg it hath not enter'd into the Heart of Man to conceive For no Man can know till he doth know And hence the different Gifts of Faith by God bestowed upon Man are incommunicable to one another Abraham was singled out by God as the Father of the Faithful and yet he never attained the Faith of Translation which his Progenitor Enoch had done before him Elisha was an Eye-witness of Elijah's Translation and had a double portion of his Spirit given him by which he wrought Miracles on others and yet after all he died the common Death of Man having not attained to the Faith of his Master in that Point And thus the Apostles themselves who raised others from the dead through Faith in Christ did not yet attain this Faith to prevent themselves from Death Whence I say that God in the distribution of Eternal Life doth not give any part of it to Man contrary to his own Opinion and Apprehension of it And this is sutable to the dealings of Men with one another If an illiterate Man be to seal a Deed which he can't read and another takes upon him to read it to him and reads it in other words than what are written the Law will adjudg the Execution of it to be in the sense read and not in the words written because he that sealed it did so understand it So when the common Preachers of the Christian Religion do administer the Blood of Christ to their Communicants in the Sacrament as significant only to save them from Hell after Death but as ineffectual against Death it self How should the People who perhaps think themselves obliged to swear in verba Magistri have any higher Conceptions of it And thus like Priests like People As it is delivered them so they understand it And as they understand it so they receive it And as they receive it so it hath effect upon them According to thy Faith be it unto thee Which Faith I say is Knowledg not by sight but by evidence of things not seen of which we may have stronger Notions than by our Eye-sight The Face of a Man gives us but a superficial knowledg of him but his Works and Writings tell us his Principles and Capacities And thus Man knows God by his Word and his Works Nor doth God offer himself to Man in any way aukward to human understanding The reason why I believe that this Doctrine I am asserting is true is because God hath said it But yet I could not thus assert it by Argument if I did not conceive it with more self-conviction than I have from any Maxims or Positions in human Science Whenever Christ speaks of Life and Resurrection he means his own I am the Resurrection and the Life And if we would thus understand him this Doctrine would be plain to us whether we would or no. But our Heads are so full of our own business that we can't think of any Death or Resurrection but that of our own Persons And thus we are at cross purposes with him as Men are with one another when one talks of Chalk and another of Cheese Christ saith they that attain that Life and the Resurrection from the Dead can die no more being the Children of the Resurrection Now here we fancy presently that when the Persons of Men have been once dead and risen again they can die no more But this is false for Lazarus and the others raised by Miracles did not thereby become the Children of the Resurrection but remain'd still the Children of this World and as such died again But Christ by his Resurrection did thereby become a Child of the Resurrection and did not nor could then after die any more And therefore whoever can attain this Resurrection can die no more neither And this is attainable by knowledg acquired in study like Attainments in other Sciences The perfection of any Science is a Mystery to the first beginners in it and hence 't is in vain to speak Wisdom to any but the perfect Now the Covenant of Eternal Life is a Law of it self and a Science of it self which can never be known by the study of any other Science but it self It is a Science out of Man's way being a pure Invention of God Man knows no more how to save himself than he did to create himself But to raise Man's ambition to learn this God graduats him upon his degrees of Knowledg in it and gives him Badges of Honour as belonging to that Degree as Men do to one another in other Sciences And thus the knowledg of the Virtue of the Death and the Power of the Resurrection of Christ makes a Degree in this Science Upon the attainment whereof a Man gains the Title of a Child of the Resurrection To which Title doth belong this Badg of Honour To die no more but to make our Exit by way of Translation as Christ himself who was the first of this Order did before us And this World being the Academy to educate Man for Heaven none shall ever enter there till they have taken this Degree here But when once they have passed this they can never after be degraded again to be turned down amongst the Dead as the fallen Angels were from Heaven because they hold by the Title of the Captain of their Salvation which is absolute and indefeazible Take one Thought more which seems plainer than all the rest It is said We that are alive at his coming shall be caught up together in the Air with him and we are commanded to be always ready for the second coming of Christ Then if Death be necessary to qualify us for this second coming of Christ the next thing we all have to do is to kill our selves that we may be so far in our way Unless we do expect that he should stay for us when he comes while we die and rise again which he hath declared he will not do For the least stay for the greater This long interval of time between his first and second coming is allowed for the preaching of the Gospel The Gospel must first be preached through the whole World as a Witness to all Nations and then shall the End be But every Man as fast as he hears of it is in the mean time at liberty to imbrace it without staying for them that are to come after him The Law and the Prophets were until John but since the days of John the Baptist the Kingdom of Heaven is preached and every Man presseth into it We are
that he would only forbear one Common Tree for it seems to be no more till it became otherwise by his eating of it Withal telling him that if he did eat of it his Life should go for it Not that God thought his Life satisfaction but it was all the Satisfaction God could have of him it was rather a Resentment of the Affront than any Satisfaction for it By which God shew'd that if Man had had more than his Life to give God would have had it of him And therefore to signify the height of this Resentment God raises Man from the Dead to demand further Satisfaction of him Death is a commitment to the Prison of the Grave till the Judgment of the great Day and then the grand Habeas Corpus will issue to the Earth and to the Sea to give up their Dead to remove the Bodies with the cause of their Commitment And as these Causes shall appear they shall either be released or else sentenced to the common Goal of Hell there to remain until Satisfaction Such was the Resentment of despised Love and yet this was a Resentment without Malice For as God maintained his Resentment under all his Love so he maintained his Love under all his Resentment For his Love being a Love of Kindness flowing from the generosity of his own Nature could not be diminished by any Art of Man And yet his Honour being concerned to maintain the Truth of his Word he could not falsify that to gratify his own Affection And thus he bore the Passion of his own Law till he had found out a Salvo for his Honour by that Son of Man who gave him Satisfaction all at once by the dignity of his Person Personal Satisfactions by the Laws of Honour are esteemed sufficient or not sufficient according to the equality or inequality between the Persons who give and take the Affront Therefore God to vindicate his Honour thus affronted was oblig'd to find out a Person for that purpose equal to himself who was affronted The invention of which is called the manifold Wisdom of God The Invention it self being the highest Expression of the deepest Love And the Execution of this Invention in the Death of Christ being the deepest Resentment of the highest Affront Which Death of Christ did nevertheless surmount all the Demands made upon him For as much as his Person was superiour in dignity to the Human Nature so much the Satisfaction by his Death surmounted the Offence of Man And thus I say this Law being fulfilled and over satisfied by Christ in his Death was and is taken away so that there was no such Law in being against him after his Resurrection He was made under the Law by his Birth but he did not arise under it having taken it away by his Death And having thus taken away the Law by his Death the Life regained by him in his Resurrection was by Conquest He met with no quarter from God nor Man God would not save him from Death tho he ask'd him and therefore he rescued himself from it He pray'd to be preserv'd from Death before it came upon him but he craved no Aid against the Power of it towards his Resurrection Destroy this Body and I will raise it in three days Die he knew he must but rise he knew he could And the reason of his Resurrection was because Death could hold him no longer For it was not possible that he should be held any longer of it And this he did not in contradiction to the Will of God For God having executed the Law upon him by his Death he did not oppose him in his Resurrection And therefore tho he could not come down from the Cross because the Will of God was then against him yet he could arise from the dead because the Will of God did not then oppose him And so God leaving him to himself he conquered Death By which according to all the Laws of Conquest the Law of Death is taken away For by the Laws of Conquest the Laws of the conquered are ipso facto taken away by the very Conquest and all Records and Writings that remain of them are of no more force than waste Paper The Law of Death as I have said remains in words and will remain for ever but it had no more force against Christ after his Resurrection than if it had never been made And from hence the Title of Christ to Eternal Life is become absolute By absolute I mean discharged from all Tenure or Condition and consequently from all Forfeiture And this is the Title of Conquerors who hold of none but themselves because they receive their Right from none but their Arms. And is in opposition to the first Title of Life delivered to Adam which was held by Tenure as being received from God and being so held it became forfeited to him of whom it was held according to the Laws of Tenure But Christ receiving his Life in his Resurrection from none but himself I lay down my Life of my self and I take it up again it is now his own without Tenure and therefore is absolute and cannot be forfeited And as his Title to Life is thus become absolute by Conquest So the duration of it is become Eternal by being annexed to the Person of the Godhead A Man may have an absolute Title and yet that Title may be but for a time Life is called Temporal or Eternal according to the Persons or Things to which it is annexed or united The Life of Vegetables and Animals is called a Temporal Life because it is annexed to things which have a Temporal Duration And thus according to our Laws whatever is annexed to the Person of a Man is adjudged to have continuance during his Life So that if Land be convey'd to a Man indefinitely without naming any time how long he shall hold it he has without more saying an Estate for Life because his Estate is annexed to his Person which is said to have continuance for his Life And hence the Life of Christ regained by the Conquest of his Resurrection being annexed to the Person of his Godhead which is eternal doth thereby become Eternal Life for the Life of God and Eternal Life are synonymous Terms And thus Christ ever since his Resurrection did and doth stand seized of an absolute and indefezible Estate of Eternal Life without any Tenure or Condition or other matter or thing to change or determine it for ever And I had reason thus to assert the Title of Christ at large Because this is the Title by and under which I am going to affirm my Argument and to claim Eternal Life for my self and all the World Had Christ thus become Man and died and rose again all voluntarily to try an Experiment he had only saved his own Life and left all the World to shift for themselves But this would have been Knight-Errantry in tempting God against which he hath sufficiently declared himself And
Truth of Religion be defined by the number of Professors then the Mahometan is safer than the Christian and the Romish than the Protestant The majority of Votes in Civil Affairs may conclude our right but it don't thereby convince our Judgment Nor are our Rights thereby concluded further than for that Turn only And thus it is in the whole Scheme of Government In the Power Elective The majority of Electors conclude the minority for that Turn only In the Power Legislative The majority of the Legislators make a Law but their Successors are not by this precluded from repealing that Law by another majority In the Power Judicial The opinion of the Majority make a Rule in Law but their Successors may alter those Rules by the like Majority Which hath made much difference between Opinions Antient and Modern And tho these seem and indeed are incertainties in the Law yet the policy of Man can't form a better Because those Laws or Judgments which are good at the time of the making may come to be otherwise by things that may happen in revolution of time And therefore none but God himself who alone foreknows Times and Seasons can establish an Eternal Law When the vastness of Empire in the Persian Monarchy had raised a Pride in their Kings to arrogate to themselves this Power it proved but a Fallacy And thus when Hadassah the Queen had prevailed upon Ahasuerus to reverse his Decree for the Massacre of the Jews the Scribes who were the Lawyers in those days soon found out an Evasion of the Law to sute the change of the King's Mind They let the former Proclamation for the Massacre go as it was And issued out another granting the Jews liberty to stand for their Lives with force of Arms. And thus both these Decrees were executed with the loss of about 75000 Men slain on one side And yet forsooth these two Proclamations so contrary to one another and issued within less than three months one of the other must bear the Sacred Name of Eternal Laws for the Honour of the King that made them This I instance to shew that the Policy of Man can't constitute an Eternal Law And from hence I say I am not so much concerned for the present Opinion of the World against me because being but the Opinion of Men it is subject to a change And I know the time when the whole World were of another Opinion Adam and Eve had no fear of Death till they fell under the Law of Death And could their Posterity who are fallen under this Law with them apprehend their deliverance from it into the Law of Life they would all be converted in a day I was under this Law of Death once and while I lay under it I felt the terror of it till I had delivered my self from it by those thoughts that must convince them that have them And in this thing only I wish for their sakes that all Men were as I am Nor do I yet think my self obliged in this Argument to dispute all the rest of the World by Unites For in Matters of Faith Men aggregate into Churches and Classes where we may argue with a whole Clan of them at once Now for Children and Madmen and all the Nations that know not God nor call upon his Name I am no more capable of discussing this Point with them than with Creatures wholly deprived of Speech But for the whole Christian World professing their Religion from Revelation I 'll venture to encounter them all at once and that in their own Creed which I know they can run over as fast as a Mariner doth the Points of the Compass But if after that we would but catechise our selves a little in it we shall find that when we come to the main Point our Faith will be like the Athenians Worship We believe we know not what You believe in God and in Jesus Christ his Son our Lord born of the Virgin suffered under Pontius Pilate crucified dead buried rose again the third day ascended into Heaven sitting at the right Hand of God and from thence he shall come to judg the living and the dead Very well this is a full description of the Person in whom you place your Faith But what is it that you do or would believe of him or in him Why we believe him for our Saviour Save you from what Why from our Sins Why what hurt will Sin do you Why it will kill us How do you know Why the Law of God saith so In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die Why but then will not this Saviour save you from this Law and from this Death No no he 'l save us from Sin Why then it seems you have got a Pardon for Horse-stealing with a non obstante to be hang'd Do but see now what a Jest you have made of your Faith And yet I defy the Order of Priesthood to form a better Creed than this without admitting the Truth of my Argument Or to make sense of their own Faith without adding mine to it It is much easier to make a Creed than to believe it after it is made Nor can any Man really believe any part of the Gospel that doth not believe it all For it is a Doctrine so dependant upon it self that unless we know the whole of it from the beginning to the end we can't know the use or reason of any part of it Wherefore notwithstanding this Inundation of Death in the World and the infection of fear contracted upon Man from hence I am not afrighted from reassuming my Assertions at the Beginning That this long possession of Death over Man is a possession against Right That the length of this Possession is no foreclosure of the Right of Man to Life And that he that dares prosecute his Claim with effect may recover this Right and avoid that possession And that he that is got through the Death and Resurrection of Christ hath had Judgment against Death and execution of Eternal Life Christ by the instant of his Resurrection stood dissolved from all his former Relations to the World neither could he die any more being become a Child of the Resurrection For tho he did arise with the same Body with which he died yet that risen Body was not the Son of the Virgin Mary because he had assumed it by a new Power and in another manner than that by which he was first born The Body with which he lay down in the Grave was of no more use to him in his Resurrection than so much other common Matter for he was put to add Life to it by his own Power which he could have done to any other matter as well as that The present Bodies of Men laid down in the Grave are of no use to God in the Resurrection Therefore he permits them to be dissolved into any other Forms knowing that he can give the old Forms again to any other Matter by those
my Heart's desire But when that is done I know no Business I have with the Dead and therefore do as much depend that I shall not go hence by returning unto the Dust which is the Sentence of that Law from which I claim a Discharge But that I shall make my Exit by way of Translation which I claim as a dignity belonging to that Degree in the Science of Eternal Life of which I profess my self a Graduat according to the true intent and meaning of the Covenant of Eternal Life revealed in the Scriptures And if after this I die like other Men I declare my self to die of no Religion And in this let no one be concerned for me as a Desperade For I am not going to renounce the other parts of our Religion but to add another Article of Faith to it without which I can't understand the rest And if I lose this additional Article by failing in this Attempt I have as much Religion left still as they that pity me Nor have I in all this spoken presumptuously or from fancy having said nothing but what he that made me said before me And if it be possible to believe too much in God I desire to be guilty of that Sin I dread no Hell but the Sentence prepared against them that despise the Gospel Behold ye Despisers and wonder and perish Behold what Behold Men coming from the East and from the West to sit down in the Kingdom of God and you your selves shut out Shut out from what To be shut out from Virtue and Holiness Justice and Truth perhaps would be no uneasiness to us all but to be shut out from an eternal Draught of an eternal Stream of Love from the Marriage Feast of the King's Son from the view of his Bride adorn'd in her Glory and from all the Joys of Nuptials for ever this will be a Torment created by Man to himself through Unbelief beyond the Exquisition of Tyrants or the Execution of Devils It seems conceivable that Man by his change into the other World will not lose any species of his present Affections or have any new ones added to them But that all those Passions which are now begun in him will there increase upon him for ever He that is holy let him be holy still and he that is filthy let him be filthy still And then tho Man cannot now conceive by what Objects his Passions or Affections will be thus augmented yet by his present feeling of them he may conceive the nature tho not the perfection of his future Joys or Torments Did you ever feel a fit of Envy Multiply that by thousands till you want a Name of Number and then call that the thousandth thousandth part of one of the Torments of Hell Did you ever feel a Pang of Love Spend your days in Algebra and carry on the Account of it to Heaven and there add to that for ever till your Desire fail and you 'll ne'er begin to sum the Total All Life is Motion and therefore cannot be eternal without an eternal Motion For whenever it comes to stagnate the Patient rots and stinks and dies The most pleasant Enjoyments being kept long in our hands pall our Appetites to them And hence the smallest addition to what we had before seems greater Riches to us than all our former Possessions And every new Thought that falls into our Studies proves a greater Diversion to us than all our former Knowledg Now in all Inventions of Men towards Perpetuity of Motion they never attempt any thing beyond a Circle which moving it self by Rotation comes to the same place again But the Motion calculated for the maintenance of Eternal Life is made to move in a direct Ascent for ever in every reach of which we see and taste and seel what we never did before The Water that I shall give him shall be a Spring of living Water rising up to Everlasting Life But behold ye Despisers and wonder Wonder at what Wonder to see Paradise lost with the Tree of Life in the midst of it Wonder and curse at Adam for an original Fact who in the length of one day never so much as thought to put forth his hand for him and us and pull and eat and live for ever Wonder at and damn our selves for Fools of the last Impression that in the space of seventeen hundred years never so much as thought to put forth our hands every one for himself and seal and execute the Covenant of Eternal Life and live for ever But behold ye Despisers and wonder and perish Perish how Why perish under the same Malice against the Son of God for ever They blasphemed God and yet repented not to give him Glory being concluded under Unbelief from the day of Adjournment of Time into Eternity proclaimed by the last of the seven Heralds of Angels who setting his right foot upon the Sea and his left foot upon the Earth lifted up his hand to Heaven and swore by him that lives for ever That Time should be no longer AND now bear with me a little while I prepare my self for being shown as a Monster 'T is no news for Believers and Unbelievers to be the Admiration of one another They wondered at his Works and he marvelled at their Unbelief And this is a marvellous thing that ye know not whence he is who hath opened the Eyes of one born blind Therefore to be even with the World at once he that wonders at my Faith I wonder at his Vnbelief And stare at me as long as you will I am sure that neither my Physiognomy Sins nor Misfortunes can make me look so unlikely to be translated as my Redeemer was to be hang'd And tho perhaps I may be the sport of some yet I can't but think and say again that whoever is designed for Happiness will meet with some of that Pleasure in reading which I have had in writing and whoever are not so appointed no one can lament them more than I do Nor can I think how any Man that is right in his Religion can be wrong in his Morals which are all set to right in him as an incident to his Faith The Blood of Christ hath an incident quality which cleanseth from Sin But this quality is subsequent and accidental to that legal Sanction and first Appointment of it to take away the Law of Death And he that understands this aright never makes any use of his own personal Virtues as an Argument for his own Salvation lest God should overbalance against him with his Sins Nor doth God ever object a Mans own personal Sins to him in the day of his Faith because Christ had no Credit given him for his personal Holiness in the day of his Death And therefore till I am more sinful than he was holy my Sins are no Objection against my Faith And because in him is all my hope I care not almost what I am my self This I know from