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
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
the Trees he first put forth his hand And it is yet more strange that Man having Life and Death set before him at the same time and place and both to be had upon the same condition that he should single out his own Death and leave the Tree of Life untouch'd And what is further strange even after his election of Death he had an interval of time before his expulsion out of Paradise to have retrieved his Fate by putting forth his hand to the Tree of Life and that yet he omitted this too But by all this it is manifest That as the Form or Person of Man in his first Creation was capable of Eternal Life without dying so the fall of Man which happen'd to him after his Creation hath not disabled his Person from that capacity of Eternal Life And therefore durst Man even then have broken through the Cherubim and flaming Sword or could he now any way come at the Tree of Life he must yet live for ever notwithstanding his Sin committed in Paradise and his expulsion out of it But this Tree of Life now seems lost to Man And so he remains under the Curse of that other Tree In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die Which Sentence of the Law is the cause of the death of Man and was the Commencement of the Custom of Death in the World as the Original of it And by the Force of this Law Death hath kept the possession before admitted to this day For tho this Law was delivered to Adam before Eve was made and in it there are no express words to bind her or the Issue begotten between them yet it did not only bind him and her and all their Descendants but even the whole Creation under them for tho this Law was delivered to Adam in his single Person yet it was so delivered to him in his Politick Capacity as Head of the whole Creation and the great Trustee for them all And thus Adam understood it for he had told it Eve as a thing that concerned her as well as himself of which she took notice and repeated it to the Serpent in the Dialogue between them And as Adam thus understood it so God declared it immediately after the Fall To the Woman he said I will greatly multiply thy Sorrow c. To the Man he said Cursed be the Ground for thy sake c. And God having thus explained himself he immediately commanded Nature to turn upon Man to execute the Sentence of this Curse upon them And under this Command Nature hath acted ever since which is an Inversion of it from its original Institution Nature was formed by a Law superior to it which is called the Law of the Creation Let there be Light and there was Light And being thus made by a Law God immediately gave it another Law to act by by which the Earth watered it self and brought forth Fruit without the labour of Man or Beast But upon Man's delinquency God superseded this course of Nature and put it under another Law whereby the whole Creation stands inverted at this day So that all these common Events which now happen in the World tho they are become natural according to Nature thus inverted yet from the beginning they were not so Death was a strange word to Adam for tho he did understand it to be a determination of his Being yet he did not apprehend in what manner his Being should be so determined nor how he should make his Exit out of the World having never seen one Example of it And this made the Sentence of Death more terrible to them because they did not know what God was going to pronounce against them But God finding the Man and his Wife hid among the Trees of the Garden for fear of him he hinted to them their Redemption by the Seed of the Woman in the close of the Curse against the Serpent before ever he came to denounce their own Sentence against them which supported them under the terror of it and without which they had sunk down dead in the place And thus Christ as he saith is the Life of the World tho they don't know it For had it not been for this God had executed Man in the Fact Adam by this very act of Delinquency and the Sentence upon it stood attainted and became a dead Man in Law tho he was not executed till about nine hundred years afterwards and during that Interval he begat Sons and Daughters and performed all other Acts of Life From which it is observable that the change of a Man's State tho it doth at one instant ascertain his Fate one way or other yet it doth not work so sudden a change in his Person or Affections Eve after her eating and Adam before his eating of the Forbidden Tree were in two different States from one another she in the State of Death and he in the State of Life and yet this did not presently change their Affections one to another Which put the Case much harder upon him than it was before upon her For she by her very Creation was made so much a part of himself from his passion of Love to her that he could not be happy while she was miserable and hence perhaps we read of no other Argument she used to him for breach of the Command than that she had done it before him The violation of her Happiness did so much affect him by a sympathy with her that all his other Enjoyments could do him no good And therefore since he thought it impossible for her to return into the same State with him rather than be parted from her he chose to hazard himself in the same State with her The Philosophers say Man and Woman are one Creature in two pieces And as such God gave them one common Name before he made them Let us make Man and let Them have dominion c. And this is still retained as a common Name to them both in all Languages But their Offence was at last joint and several Now the Articles of the Curse denounced against those our common Ancestors for this their Offence is the Law of Death and is the State under which the World stands at this day and from which we can never be redeemed but by being discharged from this Law The falling of which Curse upon Mankind as descendants from those our common Ancestors is the Foundation of all the Laws of Man in the like case For that Parents have power by their own Acts to bind their Issue before they are born is the Law of all the World because every Man hath his Heirs in him And thus Levi is said to have been in the Loyns of his great Grandfather and to have paid Tithes in him four Generations before he was born And thus all the Descendants of Esau and Jacob are said to be in their Mother's Womb while they were Two Nations strugled in her Womb. And that the Birth
of every Man within any Country doth subject him to the Laws of that Country is the Law of all Nations And without these Concessions there could be no Laws because else every Man must have a particular Law delivered him for himself which being a publick Inconvenience cannot be admitted in the nature of Laws And thus this Law of Death fell upon Christ himself as a Descendant from the same common Ancestors Christ had two descents in his Birth One was his natural descent from the Virgin Mary his real Mother The other his legal descent from Joseph his supposed Father But in his Genealogy set down by two Evangelists this legal descent by Joseph is only counted upon without taking any notice of his descent by his Mother's side Because this descent by Joseph was his legitimate descent according to that Law which makes all the Issue of the Woman born during the Coverture to be the Issue of the Husband although it be notoriously known that in Fact it were begotten by another And this is our Law at this day altho the Issue be born but one day after the Espousals And the Canon Law is much stronger for that makes the Issue born of the Woman before Marriage let them be begotten by whom she will unless by a former Husband in Wedlock to be the Issue of the Husband to whom she is afterward married And therefore Christ having such a Father-in-Law as this his descent must be accounted from his Father-in-Law and not from his Mother because all legal descents are accounted from the Father and not from the Mother When the eleven Tribes were polled in the Wilderness of Sinai they gave account of their Pedigrees after their Families by the House of their Fathers without taking any notice of their descent by their Mothers side And so did they of the Tribe of Levi who were numbered after them Wherefore I say the business of the Evangelists being to shew such a descent in Christ by which the Curse of the Law might fall upon him in his Birth they must shew a descent upon which the Law might operate For as this is a Law all Proceedings thereupon are according to Law And hence it is observable that his being born of a Virgin espoused and not of a single Virgin was not accidental but designed For as it was necessary that he should be born of a pure Virgin to preserve his Nature from the defilements of the Humanity so it was necessary that he should be born of a Virgin espoused to derive upon himself the Curse of the Law by a legal Father For which purpose it was necessary that the Birth of Christ should in the terms of the Evangelist be on this wise and no otherwise And as this peculiar Genealogy of Christ was not accidental but designed the quality of his descent was so too There are mutual courtesies and civilities used amongst Equals but he that accepteth Riches or Honour from another doth thereby acknowledg him to be his Superior for the lesser is blessed of the greater Wherefore when Abraham had rescued the Plunder taken from the Sodomites he permitted the young Men that fought with him to eat and drink of the Provisions and his three Confederates that assisted him to take their Portion of the Goods but for his own part taking himself to be as good a Man as the then King of Sodom he scorned to accept from him the value of a Shoe Latchet lest it should be said he made Abraham rich So tho Christ in the days of his flesh behaved himself with all the freedom of Conversation The Son of Man came eating and drinking and when little Zacheus climb'd up a Tree to see him he frankly invited himself to dine with him Yet knowing himself to be the Son of God he neither could nor would receive any Dignity from Man I receive not Honour from Man And thus knowing his real descent to be from Above I am from Above it was equal to him to be reputed the Son of a King or a Carpenter But he rather chose the latter because being himself a King I am a King he would not accept his immediate descent from another King lest it should be said that that made him King David often vaunted of him as his descendant to come twice fourteen Generations before he was born And Abraham rejoiced to see his day But he was so far from valuing himself upon these great Ancestors one a King and the other a King's Fellow that he rather seemed to disown them Before Abraham was I am If David called me Lord how am I his Son He made no other use of his Royal Pedigree but to convey by them a corrupted descent from Adam who standing attainted of Treason against Heaven Christ himself under this Attainder was baptized in his own Blood to restore the rest of Mankind into the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God For Christ himself thus falling under the Law became as guilty of the breach of it as any common Man notwithstanding his personal Holiness For we are none of us guilty of this Sin in Fact but only by construction of Law in the Article of our Birth which falls upon us before we know Good or Evil and so it did upon the Humanity of Christ And this Law thus falling upon him was as just a cause of his Death as it is of ours Nor can his Death be assigned to any other cause but this This Death of Christ was the most unlikely thing that ever happen'd in the World His Disciples could not believe it till they saw it He did not die of Age being about thirty three at his Death He did not die of natural Infirmity having the power of Health by which he preserved his own and restored others He did not die in Battel For his Kingdom was not of this World else would his Servants have fought that he should not have been delivered unto the Jews He did not die by any sudden Accident the Angels having charge over him lest he should dash his foot against a stone He did not murder himself but made all his Efforts to escape the greatest of which was his asking his Life of God Nor was he murdered by others because there was a form of Law in doing it And yet he was not executed by Law because there was no Law then in being by which he could be executed for the Crime of which he stood accused The time that Christ lived in the World was after the destruction of the Jewish Monarchy and during the continuance of the Roman Conquest under which the Jewish Nation being then Subjects were permitted the exercise of their Religion and Priesthood but not of the Civil Power which they had while their Monarchy was in being So that if a Jew had committed any Offence against the Jewish Law which was not an Offence against the Roman Law he was liable to no other Punishment than the Censure of the Jewish Church
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
And this was the Case of Christ He being of the Jewish Nation was accused of Blasphemy which was Death by their Law but being not so by the Roman Law the Priests were at a loss how to get a formal Sentence against him And therefore when Pilate first demanded of them his Accusation they gave for Answer Were he not a Malefactor we would not have delivered him unto thee expecting to have had him condemned upon their Honour having indeed brought him in such a pickle as would have half hang'd any Man upon the view But we know Pilate's Reply to that and to their Accusation when they offer'd it And considering in the sequel of the History the Warning sent to Pilate by a Message from Heaven his own Inclinations to obey it and the former Affections of the People towards him who had their Election to redeem him against a common Rogue it seem'd impossible that he should have been executed Who can assign the Cause why Herod and Pilate Jews and Romans Priests and People who were each at odds with one another in other matters should all fall in together to condemn innocent Blood That the most exact Worshipper of God should be accused for a Blasphemer That he that refused to be a King should be arraign'd for a Traitor Such was the Death of Christ without a Precedent without a Name without a Reason without a Cause They hated me without a Cause But they were all against him because God was against him And this he told Pilate without which he declared he would not have surrender'd himself Wot ye not that I can even now call to my Heavenly Father and he shall send me more than twelve Legions of Angels but how then shall the Scripture be fulfilled His Hands were bound and his Feet were in the Stocks that he was not at liberty to defend himself being fallen under that Law which necessitated him to die And thus his Death is exclaim'd as equally miraculous with his Birth He was wonderful in his Death like Moses And who can declare his Generation All other Causes of Death are but second Causes which may or may not happen and against which a Man may make his defence But this general Law of Death is a Flail against which there is no defence for if one Execution don't reach us another will they that remain of the Pestilence shall the Sword devour and they that escape the Sword shall be consum'd with Famine Whatever is the immediate Cause is but the Executioner to the first Command It was Joab that set Vriah in the Front of the Battel and the Ammonites that slew him but it was David that kill'd him Thou hast killed Uriah the Hittite and hast slain him with the Sword of the Children of Ammon And having thus shewn how this Law which was the Commencement of the Possession of Death over the World did descend and fall upon Christ and was the cause of his Death It is next incumbent upon me to shew That this Law is taken away by his Death and consequently that the long Possession of Death over the World can be no longer a Title against Life But when I say this Law is taken away I don't mean that the words of it are taken away for they remain with us to this day and being matter of Record must remain for ever But that it is satisfied by other matter of Record by which the force of it is gone And I call that Law taken away which is satisfied Law satisfied is no Law as a Debt satisfied is no Debt Now the specifick Demand of the Law was Death And the Death of a Man And the Death of Man made under the Law And therefore Christ to qualify himself for this Undertaking became Man in the manner and form beforementioned for had he assumed the Human Nature by any other entrance into it he had not come under the Law and therefore could not have been put to answer it For what the Law says it says to them that are under it And hence the Genealogy of Christ is a fundamental part of eternal Life For Christ had visited the World once before under the Name of Melchisedeck but not then making his entrance by a Father or Mother but assuming the Humanity immediately like the appearances of Angels the Law could not reach him for want of a legal Genealogy from Adam by which it might attaint him and therefore he then returned to Heaven without hurt as several appearances of Angels in the forms of Men had done before him But in his coming in the Flesh pursuant to this Covenant of Eternal Life He took not on him the Nature of Angels but the Seed of Abraham And having thus qualified himself to be a Subject to the Law he as such did suffer under it by his Death by which he performed the literal Sentence of the Law In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die Which yet he might have done and not have given the Law Satisfaction for Millions of Men before him had undergone the literal Sentence of the Law by dying under it and yet the Law was nevertheless dissatisfied with them and others But he declared It is finished before he gave up the Ghost And this is the difference between his Death and ours Man dies under the Execution of the Law before he can give Satisfaction to the Justice of it but this Son of Man gave Satisfaction to the Justice of the Law before the extremity of the Execution could reach him And this he did by the dignity of his Person For this Law was not such a Civil Contract that the Breach of it could be satisfied with Mony But it was a Law of Honour the Breach whereof required personal Satisfaction for the most impudent Affront and the highest Act of Ingratitude to God Men charge God as a Humorist for condemning the whole Race of Mankind for so small an Offence as eating a little forbidden Fruit. But this is their ignorance of the Laws of Honour and Gratitude by which the slighter the thing demanded is the greater the affront in refusing it Had David asked the Inheritance of Nabal's Estate he had render'd himself as odious as Ahab did when he demanded Naboth's Vineyard But his Request being only for some ordinary Provision in common with Sheep-shearers the refusal of it render'd Nabal a Churl not fit to live So Naaman's Servant said to his Master Had the Prophet bid thee do some great thing wouldst thou not have done it How much more when he only saith Wash and be clean Man by his very Creation enter'd into the Labours of God himself without one thought of his own and at the first moment of his being became Lord of the Universe which was adapted to his Enjoyments and Pleasures And God left him in possession of it all upon his parol of Honour only that he would acknowledg it to be held of God and as the Token of this Tenure
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
yet when I say he did not do it voluntarily I don't mean that he did it unwillingly For as he did it with all frankness and generosity of his Will I lay down my Life of my self so he did it with the highest affection of Love to Mankind Greater Love than this hath no Man that he lay down his Life for his Friend But I mean he did not do it purely voluntarily without a necessity of doing it and a Consideration for it First then There was a Necessity upon God himself God told Adam that if he did eat he should die The Devil told Eve that they might eat and not die And these were the first words spoken to Man by God or the Devil upon the truth or falshood whereof the very Beings of them both were to depend for ever For which ever of them could maintain the Truth of his Word against the other he must have been God and the other the Devil And therefore God having turned the Lie upon the Devil he is from thence called a Liar from the beginning and the Father of it and will never be believed again for ever God could not have dispensed with his Word without complementing the Devil with his Godhead in taking the Lie upon himself and this he could not do For God cannot lie without undeifying himself and this he can't do because all his Qualities being of his Essence he can't change them That God cannot change is not a deficiency in his Nature but the perfection of his Essence which can be nothing but himself For as it is the happiness of imperfect Beings to be capable of change in order to be made better so it is the happiness of perfect Beings to be incapable of change whereby to be made worse Man can lie because he can't speak Truth there 's nothing that a Man can say but what he can unsay and falsify by the change of his mind which he can change only because he can't fix it as a Man that hath a broken Arm can turn it every way because he can fix it no way Nothing but an absolute Power can be absolute in any thing therefore Man having no absolute Power can't absolutely determine his own Will every change of which subjects him to a Lie either by falsifying his former Resolutions or his present Inclinations But God having an absolute Power to determine his own Will he could not change it after he had so determined it for what is fix'd can't be changed Wherefore God could not dispense with the Breach of his Law to pardon it Which was not for want of Mercy in God for he hath and doth daily pardon ten thousand times the Sins committed by Man against the moral Law which seem as great Offences as this Because the moral Law hath in it self a defeazance or condition annexed to it at the time of the first delivering of it Except ye repent ye shall perish By which this Law may be fulfilled without a performance of it in specie by doing another thing which is admitted to be done instead of it A defeazance is not the same thing with the thing to be defeated but something collateral to it And thus Repentance which is not a performance of the Moral Law is nevertheless accepted instead of it But in this Law delivered to Adam there was no such condition annexed to it at the first delivery The words are absolute In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die which leaves no room for Repentance Adam did repent but he found no place for it he could not find any words of the Law to which he could apply his Repentance to do him any good And when a Deed hath no defeazance or condition annexed to it at the time of the first delivery it can't be added to it afterwards And hence tho this Law delivered to Adam was at the time of the first delivery a Law of Life and Death yet the Law of Life being ended by breach of the Condition there was then nothing left but the Law of Death which became absolute without any condition And this put God upon a necessity of executing the Sentence of the Law upon Man in specie or making himself a Liar which he could not do and therefore the necessity upon him was absolute Which necessity was all the while a contradiction to his Nature which is Love to Man God is Love And this divided him against himself and laid him under a necessity of finding out an Invention to reconcile his Truth to his Love and his Love to his Truth And this Necessity upon God draw'd a Necessity upon Christ to come and execute this Invention because none could do it but himself Now there being such a Necessity for Christ's assuming the Humane Nature and dying under it there was a Covenant made between him and the Father previous to his coming in the Flesh which is called the Covenant of Eternal Life and is the History of the Scriptures altho it be not set down altogether in any one place Rich Metals and precious Stones don't lie together in heaps above ground but being so valuable when found Men think it worth their while to dig down for them in all places where they have any probability of finding them Then if the way and manner of attaining Eternal Life doth lie in so narrow a Volume as the Bible Search the Scriptures for in them ye think ye have Eternal Life shall we not think it worth our while to search it through for that precious Stone with a new Name which none can read but they that have it And this is a more pleasant Labour than the search for other Jewels for there we meet with nothing of pleasure or profit till we find the very thing we seek for But in making this enquiry we divert our selves with knowledg all the way we go Nor did God think any one Man or any one Age of the World worthy to have the whole of this Covenant revealed to them all at once He was 4000 Years from Adam to Christ delivering it in Types and Shadows to 62 Generations of Men who passed their Age in that time But having thus prefaced it at sundry times and in divers manners to our Fathers by the Prophets he at last spoke it to us by his Son In which these parts do appear 1. The Date 2. The Parties 3. The Contents and Consideration 4. The Sealing and Execution 5. The Witnesses 6. The Ceremony required of Man whereby to execute it on his part and take the advantage of it 1. The Date This was before the Foundation of the World I was set up from everlasting Before Abraham was I am God who created all things by Jesus Christ the Lamb slain before the Foundation of the World The priority of which Date prevents any preincumbrance that could be made of Eternal Life which is more than can be said of any Titles amongst Men. 2. The Parties It was between him
and the Father Lo I come to do thy Will O God In the Volume of the Book it is written of me I will give thee the Heathen for thy Possession and the utmost parts of the Earth for thine Inheritance The first Text tells us what he came to do and in pursuance of what Agreement The other what he was to have for doing it and who he was to have it from Now God being the undoubted Author of Eternal Life there can be no hazard in this Title for want of a right Person to make the Grant which is more than can be said of any Titles amongst Men. 3. The Contents and Consideration That if he became bound we should be made free He gave his Life a Ransom for many Christ well knew what Man stood bound to under the Law of Death And did as well know that if he himself ever came under that Law he must thereby become bound to the same And that if he should come under the Law before he made an agreement previous to it he should be concluded by the Law to suffer under it upon his account and thereby be incapacitated to capitulate with God about it For the Life of a Man attainted as Christ was the first moment of his Birth is forfeited to the Law and therefore after that he could not have been at liberty to treat with God concerning that Law And thereupon he would not become charged with this Law till he had made this Covenant That we that were before charged with it might thereby be discharged from it By which he was to be neither Surety nor Bail for Man For in both these the Principals still remain liable and the Sureties stand only hazarded with them and have a Remedy over against them Which had been a dishonourable Engagement for the Dignity of so great a Person And therefore he offered himself a Ransom or nothing to be delivered in exchange for the Captives whereby he alone stood bound And as such he was accepted I have trodden the Wine-press alone and none of all the People with me And therefore when he was taken there was not a Man taken with him I am Jesus of Nazareth whom ye seek let these therefore go their way And this was the highest Honour that God could put upon him to accept him a Ransom for the whole World And yet this was not an Honour above his Merit for as in Debts by Civil Contract 't is not the Multitude but the Solvency of the Debtors that makes the Payment so in the Laws of Ransom 't is not the Number but the Dignity of the Persons that is valued in the Exchange And hence this Son of Man being more worth than ten thousands of the people his Death was a greater Honour to the Law than if all the World besides had died under it And could Man from hence understand the force of the Covenant of Eternal Life he might see himself discharged from Death in the very moment the Law fell upon Christ which was the instant of his Birth Because Man was to be ipso facto released upon Christ's becoming bound And after that it was no matter to Man whether Christ had ever given Satisfaction to God or not we might have said to God Look thou to that For God by this Covenant having once accepted Christ for a Ransom Man could never after that have been retaken by any Law of Reprizal altho the Ransom had escaped As soon as the Ram was caught in the Thicket the Sacrifice that before lay bound upon the Altar was let loose Not that the coming of Christ in the Flesh was the Satisfaction but God was thereby sure of his Satisfaction For as certain as Christ by his Birth became a living Child in fact so certain did he that moment become a dead Man in Law But yet all that I have hitherto said doth not amount to instate Man into the same Title of Eternal Life which Christ had after his Resurrection Because a meer Ransom doth in it self amount to no more than to restore us to the same Liberty which we had before we were Captive And then this Ransom by Christ would only have reinstated Man into that Law of Life conditional in which Adam stood before the Fall But God having found out this Salvo for his Honour by that Man Christ Jesus he did at the same time find that this would not only do but over-do all that Man had misdone And that this superabundancy might not run in waste God did declare that for this Man should have eternal Life absolute as Christ himself had it And hence Eternal Life is called the Gift of God through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ over and above our Redemption So that now by this Covenant of Eternal Life we are not only ransomed from that Law under which we fell in Adam but are delivered over into a State and Title which we never had before the Fall viz. that absolute and indefeasible Estate of Eternal Life in which Christ was installed by his Resurrection from the dead And this Redemption from one Law and Deliverance over into another are both done at the same instant without any Interval of Time passing between them As in Conveyances amongst Men the Title vests and devests from one to another by one and the same Act. And hence this Covenant is not called the Covenant of Redemption but the Covenant of Eternal Life as the most worthy Title And therefore he that takes any thing by this Covenant must take Eternal Life or nothing A Believer is never spoken of with a less addition than Eternal Life He that believeth on the Son of God hath everlasting Life And thus it is in Conveyances among Men whatever is contain'd in the Deed can't be divided but must pass altogether by the Execution of that Deed which as to this now stands next in order 4. The Sealing and Execution for let the Contents of a Writing be what it will it is neither Deed nor Covenant till it is executed This Covenant of Eternal Life being thus formed in Heaven was afterwards sealed and executed by God himself according to all the Forms and Ceremonies of Titles among Men. For God having establish'd Eternal Life by a Law he hath used all the Ceremonies of Law to make a Title to it Every Law prescribes its own Ceremonies by which it is to be executed The Ceremony as I have said by which the Law of Death is executed upon Man is his Birth The Ceremony by which the Jews received the Law of Moses was Circumcision And the Ceremony by which the Covenant of Eternal Life was executed by God is the Blood of Christ And now I am come to that Point that hath puzled the whole World What! Eat the Flesh and drink the Blood of a Man and be saved That this Covenant should be sealed is agreeable to all other Titles amongst Men. But that it should be sealed with the Blood of
extravagant humour in God to distinguish Men to be saved or damned only for believing or not believing in Christ But may we not think it as extravagant in us to distinguish our selves to have or not have a thousand pounds a Year only for sealing or not sealing a Deed Should we not call our selves Fools for refusing to put forth our hands to a piece of Parchment and take it off again to get an Estate by And yet we think our selves wise in refusing Eternal Life because we may have it upon such easy Terms For tho from the positive words of this Prescription the sealing and executing this Covenant of Eternal Life by Man without more saying or doing gives him as perfect a Title to Eternal Life as the sealing of a Deed among Men can make to the Lands contained in it Yet from the negative words of the Prescription there can be no Title to this Eternal Life without the complyance with this Ceremony For if Man can have any other Title to Eternal Life than according to this Covenant this Covenant don't give him a Title to it No Deed gives Man a Title that leaves any part of the Title at large out of the Deed. If the Grantor reserves any of the Title to himself then the Grantee hath no perfect Title But God hath excepted nothing out of this Covenant but his own Personal Life For when it is said That he hath put all things under him it is manifest that he is excepted who hath put all things under him Wherefore all the other parts of Eternal Life are subject to this way of Life by Jesus Christ And hence all other attempts for Heaven are accounted Sin He that entereth not in by the Door but climbeth up some other way is a Thief and a Robber and comes for to steal And having thus opened this Covenant First I put it upon the Profession of Divinity to deny one word of the Fact as I have repeated it Next I challenge the Science of the Law to shew such another Title as this And then I defy the Logicians to deny my Argument Of which this is the Abstract That the Law delivered to Adam before the Fall is the Original Cause of Death in the World That this Law is taken away by the Death of Christ That therefore the Legal Power of Death is gone And I am so far from thinking this Covenant of Eternal Life to be an Allusion to the forms of Title amongst Men that I rather adore it as the Precedent for them all from which our imperfect Forms are taken Believing with that great Apostle That the things on Earth are but the Patterns of things in the Heavens where the Originals are kept BVT why then doth Death remain in the World Why because Man knows not the way of Life The way of Life they have not known Or as I said at the beginning that Death maintains its dominion over us by our fear of it Having no other right to remain with us but because our Faith is not yet come to us When the Son of Man comes shall he find Faith upon the Earth Man is a Beast of Burden that knows not his own strength in the virtue of the Death and the Power of the Resurrection of Christ Which Ignorance doth not proceed from want of Revelation of the Truth but from our neglect to study and inaptitude to believe it O Fools and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken Unbelief don't go by reason or dint of Argument but is a sort of Melancholy-madness by which if we once fancy our selves bound it hath the same effect upon us as if we really were so It is like the noise of War heard in the Camp of the Syrians which made them fly when no one pursued Or like that possession of fear which still kept the besieged within the Garison tho the Enemy had left the Field Death is like Satan who appears to none but them that are afraid of him Resist the Devil and he will fly from you Or like Tyrants and saucy Pedagogues whose former Cruelties render them terrible to those who have been under their lash after they are freed from it Because Death had once dominion over us we think it hath and must have it still And this I find within my self that tho I can't deny one Word I have said in Fact or Argument yet I can't maintain my belief of it without making it more familiar to my understanding by turning it up and down in my thoughts and ruminating upon some proceedings already made upon it in the World Some Specimens whereof I 'll present to the Reader The Motto of the Religion of the World is as I have said Mors janua Vitae Death is the Gate of Life Now I say if we do by this mean the Death of Christ then we are in the right But if by this we mean our own Death then we are in the wrong The Death of Christ was necessary for him and us both because the Covenant of Life would not take effect but by his Death which in the Covenant hath two Capacities 1st As it was the consideration upon which the Covenant was made 2dly As it was the Ceremony by which it was executed But all this being over and done the Death of Man is wholly useless and serves to no intent or purpose in order to Eternal Life nor ever did And could we distinguish between the change of our State and the change of our Persons and Places this Doctrine would be more plain to us By State I always mean Title so that when I say a Man is in the State of Life I mean he is by Law intituled to live and when I say he is in the state of Death I mean he is by Law appointed to die Now a Man may change his State without change of his Person or Place Christ by his Death and Resurrection did pass under an invisible change of his State by being discharged from that Law of Death to which he stood before subjected by his Birth and being translated into that Law of Life which he gained by his Resurrection Which tho it were only a legal or invisible Translation he was thereby as safe from Death as he is now being ascended and sitting at the right Hand of God And yet his Person remained here unchanged Behold my Hands and my Feet that it is I my self These were Marks of Honour that could not be counterfeit And that some did not know him is said to be from their Unbelief or that their Eyes were holden that they should not know him But tho this change of his State in an instant did not work so sudden an alteration in his Person yet it did intitle his Person to a change for the better which Title he had not before his Death Christ was as perfect in his Nature and his Principles before Death as he was afterwards and yet he could not then
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
this attainment much longer above ground that Time seems to them an Interval of perfect leisure as Alexander's did to him after his Conquest till at last espying Death it self they fall upon it as an Enemy that must be conquered one time or other through Faith in Christ And for this cause there seems a respite of time intended to be allotted to Believers after the first Resurrection and before the Dissolution of the World for perfecting that Faith which they began before their Death and which they could not attain to in the first reach of Life For Death being but a discontinuance of Life wherever Men leave off at their Death they must begin at their Resurrection The Believers already dead are not ascended into the Heavens for David is not ascended into the Heavens Nor shall they ascend after their Resurrection till they have attain'd to this Faith of Translation And by that very Faith they shall be then convinced that if they had had that Faith before they need not have died The Story of Lazarus makes this plain His two Sisters said to Christ that if he had been there their Brother had not died And others that stood by said Could not this Man that opened the Eyes of the blind have even caused that this Man should not have died And Martha said further That whatever Christ would yet ask of God God would give it him By which she declared her Faith to be that Christ could raise her Brother presently Now these People had not these Articles of Faith from any Religion then commonly received amongst them But observing the Miracles Christ had done before they could not beat it out of their heads but that he could have prevented the Death of Lazarus and could then raise him presently Both which were right and rational Conclusions and did form a true Religion in them But when Christ closed in with them upon it and offered to make it good by raising the dead Man presently they all fell to recanting their Faith one cry'd He stinketh and the other He hath been dead four days and thereupon desired him to desist And the reason of the Recantation is evident The common Religion then received amongst them concerning the Resurrection was what we still retain That there will be a Resurrection at the last day And this having gain'd an Impression upon them from the force of Education was too strong for that single Impression which fell upon their Minds from their own Observation only And therefore they thought it safer to renounce their own Faith than the Religion delivered them by their Parents But Christ by doing the thing did convince them that their own Faith and Opinion of him was right And yet he did not say that the Religion delivered them by their Parents was wrong For that there will be a Resurrection at the last day in which all they that are not before that time raised shall then arise But what he said by this Text was that this Resurrection at the last day doth not prevent a present Resurrection from Death nor an immediate Translation without Death to them whose Faith is ready to receive it We must all be changed but we need not all die in order to be changed for 't is not Death that works our Change but the Death and Resurrection of Christ which we may pass through without Death Paul was of this Religion that we may be changed without Death We shall not all die but we shall all be chang'd And yet tho he had deliver'd this to be his Faith in general he did not attain to such a particular knowledg of the way and manner of it so as to prevent his own Death And his Confession tells us the reason of his failure That he had not yet attained the Resurrection of the Dead but was pressing after it But tho he was taken away in this pursuit he hath not lost his labour but is got so much nearer to the mark and at his Resurrection will be so far beforehand with them that never studied it He had but a late Conversion and after that was detained in the study of another part of Divinity the confirming the New Testament by the Old and making them answer one another in which he seems to have spent himself and from whence all Students in Divinity after him have stood upon his Shoulders For this is a Point previous to the Faith of Translation and must be learn'd before it in order to it And this his pressing tho he did not attain hath much encouraged me to make this Inquiry being well assured that he would not have thus pursued it had he not apprehended more in it than the vulgar Opinion is about it We don't think our selves fit to deal with one another in Human Affairs till our Age of one and twenty But to deal with our Maker thus offended to counter-plot the Malice of fallen Angels and to rescue our selves from eternal Ruin we are generally as well qualified for before we can speak plain as all our Life-time after Children can say over their Religion at four or five years old and their Parents that taught them can do no more at four or five and fifty For Religion being preach'd to them as a Mystery they are forbid to think of understanding it Graecum est non potest legi The common Creed of the Christian Religion may be learn'd in an hour And one day's Philosophy will teach a Man to die But to know the Virtue of the Death and Power of the Resurrection of Christ is a Science calculated for the study of Men and Angels for ever BUT if Man may be thus chang'd without Death and that it is of no use to him in order to Eternal Life What then is Death Or Whereunto serveth it What is it Why 't is a misfortune fallen upon Man from the beginning and from which he hath not yet dared to attempt his recovery And it serves as a Spectrum to fright us into a little better life than perhaps we should lead without it Tho God hath formed this Covenant of Eternal Life against Death Man still maintains a Covenant with it They have made an Agreement with Death and Hell By way of composition to submit to Death in hopes by that obedience to escape Hell And under this Oath of Allegiance we think our selves bound never to rebel against it The study of Philosophy is to teach Men to die from the Observations of Nature The Profession of Divinity is to inforce this Doctrine from Revelation And the Science of the Law is to settle our civil Affairs pursuant to these Resolutions The old Men are making their last Wills and Testaments And the young are expecting the execution of them by the death of the Testators And thus Mortis ad exemplum totus componitur Orbis Now what one Man dares raise a Faction against the whole World thus constituted under the Political Government of Death Why but if the
Characters of them which remain with him God is able out of these Stones to raise up Children unto Abraham And in this he resembles himself to a Potter who takes no care to preserve his broken Pots for any other use of them because having the Moulds by him he can make several Vessels of the same Figure out of one Earth as well as another And tho all the Vessels of the same Mould are not the same in identity of Matter yet being the same in Form they are the same to all uses intents and purposes And hence tho the Dead shall not arise with the same identity of Matter with which they died yet being in the same Form they will not know themselves from themselves being the same to all uses intents and purposes But in this God is so curious an Artist that he keeps a several Character in Heaven for every Figure of Man on Earth by which as the Apostle saith every Seed shall receive its own Body Whereas we like Fac-simile Mechanicks make one Mould serve for a thousand Figures But then as God in the Resurrection is not bound up to use the same Matter neither is he obliged to use a different Matter Whenever the Body to be raised doth remain so intire from Corruption that the form of it is not spoiled God uses that form again as it is without composing any other Matter Thus he did with the Body of Christ according to that Promise Thou wilt not leave my Soul in Grave nor suffer thy holy One to see Corruption And thus Christ did with the Bodies he raised in the days of his Flesh All which I instance still to shew the Insignificancy of Death one way or other in order to Eternal Life and that the Death of Man works no change in him To make this still more plain consider when and where the Predestination of God is executed upon Man Christ said Rejoice in this that your Names are written in the Book of Life Which he would not have commanded Man upon Earth if the knowledg of it which seems to be the top of Man's Ambition were not attainable here Now this being part of the secret Will of God as his own Memorandums of what he intends to do it can't be shewn to Man by Inspection But when God comes to execute this secret Will then it becomes part of his revealed Will which belongs to Man Secret things belong to God but things revealed to us and to our Children And the time of the Execution of this Decree being the instance of our Faith in Christ As many as were ordained to Eternal Life believed We may by this be as sure that our Names are written in the Book of Life as if we had wrote it with our own hands And that this instant of Faith is the time of the execution of this Decree appears by what Christ said to the Thief on the Cross This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise From whence some think themselves obliged to believe a separate Existence of the Soul from the Body by Death For say they something of this Man did immediately go into Paradise and we see his Body remains here Ergo his Soul went Whereas Christ did not speak this of the Person but the State of the Man Christ and he were both under the same State before they were executed which was the Law of Death And that very day they both exchanged this State into the State of Life Christ by his own Death and the Man by Faith in him tho the Person of Christ went one way and his another So from the words of David Thou wilt not leave my Soul in Grave there was a Conception raised of the separate Existence of the Soul For think we the Body of David is in the Grave Ergo his Soul is gone to Heaven by it self But Peter evinced this Doctrine as erroneous by shewing that David spoke prophetically of the Resurrection of Christ in which the word Soul comprehends his whole human Life which did die and rise together And that it is translated Soul is an Anglicism not understood in other Languages which have no other word for Soul but the same which is for Life As 't is usual for some peculiar Countries to have an odd Name for a common thing which is not vulgarly known in any other parts of the same Kingdom See how Man's Life came to him at first God first formed the Figure of Man's Body in common Earth from whence Men also form Figures of one another Then to this Figure God added Life by breathing it into him from himself whereby this inanimate Body became a living one But in this Composition the Spirit is so perfectly mixed with and diffused through the whole Body that we can't now say which is Spirit nor which is Earth but the whole is one intire living Creature As in levened Dough we can't say which is the Leven nor which is the Dough. But God who first infused this Life can extract it out again and leave the Body as it was before this Life was thus put into it And this form of Death God chose for Man Dust thou art and unto Dust shalt thou return God unmakes Man just as he made him He takes him to pieces like a jointed Tool he draws in his Breath to himself and leaves the Lump to the Elements of which it was at first composed which by degrees loses its very Form and takes its place again in common with other Matter And thus the Spirit returns to God that gave it for the remainder of the Spirit is with him But in this return the Spirit of Man maintains no self-existence having surrender'd it self into the Ocean of Life from whence it first flowed When Rivers return into the Sea they are no more Rivers but lose their Name and Property being merged in the Ocean of their original Fountain And yet God doth retain in his Memory the particular Characters or Ideas of every instance of Life which he doth so extract from whence in the day of the restitution of all things every Body shall have its own Spirit and every Spirit it s own Body But to return to my Argument whence I have a little digressed to descant upon this Opinion of the self-existence of the Soul If this Man that was crucified with Christ did immediately become in the same state with him how comes it that he lies still in the Grave while Christ is ascended into the Heavens To this I say that tho this Man's first Faith did thus qualify him for a change of State yet he had not proceeded far enough in this Faith to qualify himself for an immediate Tanslation of his Person but this he must expect with the rest of them who have died in the same Faith with him and who will not now attain that Perfection till after the Resurrection for there 's no Work in the Grave Man is as safe upon his first Faith in