fatal Act of Sinning and that every Man because subject to Sin and the slavish Law of his lustful Appetite becomes captivated by the man of Sin so yields himself captive to the Prisons of Death whose outward progression is actually moved by irregular motion of the desires inward But the Heavens we see and the Celestial Incolists how they never since the Creation consented to Sin and as they were so are they still carried about with a rapid motion The reason whereof must necessarily spring from an internal cause and intrinsick principle since intelligences are so ambigious and what is this principle if not the Soul of the World or the Universal Spirit God has put into Nature whereby as a Magnet it retains the matter which labouring to re-assume its former liberty frames to her self a habitation in the Centre and branching into the several Members of the Body makes more room to act and bestir her faculties No wonder therefore that natures are compounded since nothing but the Almighty is without composition Nor is it the great or the lesser World that which transmutes nutrition into blood but the active Spirit of Life and transmutation is that which is indeed the Life of the Body Since material principles therefore are only passive and can neither alter nor purifie the parts we find them in a state to be altered and purified tho not to communicate or dispose themselves to another substance beyond their native intention Wherefore we have considered them altogether finite and therefore have concluded them also determinate Now if this be a secret you may call it so but as truth needs no voucher it s a substantial truth Wherefore to conclude this philosophick Hypothesis let us throw away if possible those two celebrated crutches of pretended modern sanctity and the solemnity of Ceremony and what results but primitive purity which since the Creation has known no deformity And God said in the Text let us now make Man in our own Image let us make him and after our likeness and let them have dominion over the Fish in the Sea the Fowl in the Air over the Cattle also and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the Earth By this the Creation seem'd to want a Head and less than a Prince is too little to govern it Adam must therefore be a Universal Monarch and sway the Throne and the Regal Scepter And Adam must not only wear Heavens Livery but personate the King of Heaven himself Here the Divinest seems to Summons a Councel and God said in himself let us now make Man not like to any thing already made but let us make him in likeness like our self in our own similitude and likeness let us make him and enlarge his Empire by giving him dominion over all the Fish that swim in the Sea and over all the Fowl that fly in the Air over the Cattle also that move on the Earth and over every living creature that creepeth and moveth the Wisdome of God so divinely ordered This was a large and copious Commission that God intrusted a single Subject withal yet such was the good opinion the Creator had of the Creature that God intrusts Adam with the Stock of the Creation and all the Creatures and every complicated Being that was made comprehended and contained in it And Adam drew all his supplies from above since enricht with the Stock and the Treasures of Heaven nor converst he with any inferiour Subject nor any thing in any respect unsuitable to himself whereby he might indignifie or diminish his Authority In the cool of the Evening he walked with God and in the heat of the day the Aquaducts refresht him Aurora sent him Summons of approach of Day but the Night nor was darkness dreadful to him The Celestial Sun was his daily Tapour and the Catalogue of Stars his hourly Contemplation but the Son of God his perpetual Lamp. So that his outside was bettered by his inside and because richly adorned and divinely beautified he saw no darkness nor the shadow of Death whiles he stood in this innocent State of Perfection For God in the Idea beholding a shape or as I may so say a representation of himself became therewith inamour'd and extreamly loving it would cohabit with it when immediately upon the resolution the operation ensued and then was this great Image the beautiful World or rather the representative of his Maker brought forth and created And God said to himself or the holy Word increase in increasing and multiply in multitudes But to Man only because Lord of the Creation I have endowed him with mind and made him immortal So that if he die the cause of death must necessarily proceed from excess of the body and inequallity of Elements and pray tell me what death is if not a cold icy touch or a dismal darkness of the compounded moist nature adhering only to the sensible World. Let no Man wonder therefore that the light of God which illuminates the World is unlike the Beam or Ray of the Sun that by reason of its fiery and excessive brightness immediately and at once strikes the eye with blindness but rather to the contrary Heavens brighter Glory never at any time dazles the mind since the mind is the Souls ingressive eye that soars up aloft to those elevated Mansions where that light shines that enlightneth every Man already come or to come into the World and is the beauty and glory of light and our saving health that influenceth illuminates and beautifieth the Creation and every Creature and created Being But Man above all because made a Monarch and capable to receive this blessed influence proceeding from God the Majesty of Light and superexcellent brightness that diefies the Soul whiles yet in the Body it s he that 's only blest to contemplate this divine beauty and live up to the Vertue of Piety and Holiness So that Adam in a state of innocency represents as Montanus says a Mortal God and our Heavenly Redeemer an immortal Man if when to consider the blessed Incarnation And thus the things that are were made manifest in time but the things that are and not yet made manifest lie hid and conceal'd in the Divinest himself who is all things in all yet subsists without them manifest only in the mind of Man but invisible to the World and the visible eye except in the act of creating only And as the eminency of all appearing beauties are in the Essence much more pure so great and greater is the disproportion of beauty betwixt this of Earth and the Beauty of Heaven All things therefore subject to the Eye represent to us only things subject to sence or more fully to explain it visible operation whiles the Fabrick of the Body needs and requires those similar things that it cannot with conveniency live well without them But the Beauty and Majesty of invisible Beings are inspected only by intellectual Converse since the
separable from its native Principium is subject to Mortality but Death is the Destruction of all Elemental compounded Mixts All Compounds therefore are subject to Mortality which Nature endeavours with all her might to preserve if possible from the Periods of Death and whose Champions to purchase this heroick Victory Fire and Water are instituted and appointed the most proper and immediate Agents and Instruments the last to discharge by immersive Calcination all exteriour and superfluous Adustion whiles the first by Sublimation claims a Superiority because when to separate by the intense Action of Fire whatever Recrements and Impurities adhere to the Center These and no other are the lineal Tracts that Nature has trod in since the nonage of the Universe whose Seeds void of Form and confusedly mix'd in a Hoil or Chaos were dissolved in Water but rarified and sublimed by pure Argument of Fire Calcination and Sublimation therefore were purposely invented to purge and separate the Pure from the Impure as is Solution and Distillation the more terrestrial Dregs that stiffly adhere to the Parts extraneous Now whatever remains without any beginning that Subject is altogether uncapable of end But all Beginnings sprung up from Eternity as is Eternity the Ray of the Majesty Eternity therefore is the Parent of Time from whence Generation lineally descended and Generation because the Infant and the Child of Time has its Periods lock'd up in the Prisons of Death and doom'd and predestinated by the Law of Sin the Apostle tells us is Death in the abstract yet improperly the End of any thing save Elements whereby to remonstrate their true Beginnings but now to bud and to blossom forth because directing towards an eternal State which I call the new Breathings from a State of Corruption precedent to Putrefaction the immature Offspring and imperfect Birth of infirm Ancestors and Elementary Principles For the Body no sooner dismantles it self of the exteriour Form and Elementary Faetor when the indivisibility of the more purer Parts begin at once to display themselves for the Treasures of Life are most strictly lock'd up and which also begins to perspire and breath forth by the glorious Ray of God's Soveraign Power whose refulgent Beam illuminates the World and stirs up the hidden Life therein which before seem'd to sleep passively perdue in the silent Sepulcher of Divine Contemplation If therefore debasing our selves by Sin be Argument of Death and God's eternal Displeasure a Regenerate state implies the Sanctity of Renovation which is a clear Demonstration of a real Conversion Otherwise how comes it to pass that the unbelieving Wife is sanctified by the believing Husband Now if Husband and Wife are constipated one Flesh by the Conjugal Celebration and Law of Matrimony why not Heaven and Earth under the like Divine Ordinance since by a Supream Law from the Sovereign Legislator whose powerful Edicts are for ever irrevocable made and established Synonima Regalia Thus thâ— Celestial Sun in the clarified Firmament influenceth and impregnates this embellish'd Creation as do's the Supercelestial Son of the Majesty of God most illustriously shine in every Believers Soul and is the true Light that illuminates the Universe and every Man that cometh into the World. So that in this short and compendious Paragraph you may read the Divine Progeny of the whole Creation the Exaltation and Dignity of the Micro as the Macrocosm the great End why the World and Man was made the Reason also why the Divinest made Man and drest up so beautifully this stupendious Creation All which was only but to see himself and Sovereign Majesty by way of Reflection wherefore he built up a Tabernacle in Man for his Divine Residence and Man's Redemption Now Adam was made this Supream Monarch whom his Maker dignified with such eminent Qualifications as not only to see because having the faculty of Sense but to inspeculate and admire the Majesty of his Maker that hung up aloft in the Firmament of Heaven so many Luminous and Beautious Bodies impregnating every one with the Blessings of Vegetation but Moral Reason and barren Apprehension because uncapable to exalt it self to these eminent sublime and superlative Elevations of necessity sinks under them And here Moses tells you That in the beginning the Divinest created both the Heavens and the Earth Now creating or making what implies it more than manifesting Invisibles by Visibles or discovering such things as lay hid in the Chaos occultly concealed from occular view which in time appeared but not until such time as the Waters by the Fiat were separated from the Waters and then the purer matter ascended upwards because disintangled from its impure Fecula which Celestial Clarified and Pure Crystalline Body is by the Scriptures interpreted the Firmament And Hermes tells you in his Smaragdine Table That the likeness of that which is placed above is also beneath coinhabiting below to work the Myracle of one single thing There must therefore of necessity be some assimilation in Earth Soveraignly qualified with the same existence of Celestials otherwise pray tell me where 's the harmony betwixt them And why should God select the little World called Man for his Divine and Glorious Reception rejecting as I may so say the more copious or great one as the more commaculate and impure habitation had not he divinely dignified the less by Soveraign Wisdom for his Royal Entertainment There is therefore not only the likeness of Superiours but the same Vertue Beauty and Excellency also in Inferiours Christ in you the hope of Glory This is that Magnet of Vertue and Swavity whose illustrious Ray attracts the Soul to those transcendent Mansions of Beatitude and Immortallity For the Kings Daughter is all glorious within because made glorious by the King of Heaven where note by way of Digression when to admit of a faint comparison the Anima or Sulphur of Sols beauteous inside when duely examined by a sedulous Adept a Celestial Corporiety displays it self whose glorious appearance gratifies the solicitous with Wisdom's Oracle and the Treasures of Art by every one acquirable and by most admired But the Hoil or Chaos presents unto us a subject matter as yet indigested when macerated mingled or jumbled together and such we are to consider it in the Act of Fermentation when nothing but darkness had its Region in the Deep nor did any thing appear upon the Face of the Waters until Darkness by the Divinest was utterly separated by the glorious Beam of the Majesty of Light for till then the Stars roll'd not in their Orbs nor did the Fluctuating Ocean move its Vital Pulse till actuated by the Law of its Soveraign Maker which daily remonstrates the Flux of the Ocean Nor till then did the Earth nor the Barren Mountains know any thing of the Law of Life and Vegetation Nor was there any Prolifick Vertue or propagating Quality hitherto as yet incorporated into them when at once the Fountains of the great Deeps broke up out of whose
exuberant and miraculous Womb not only those innumerable and inexhaustible Treasures as the Principles and Elements but also whatever besides them was made visible was by Wisdom drawn forth out of this immense Deep And to whatever had Sense by Life and Motion Nature by Ordination gave it a beginning but Light and Life she had not power to give for that sprung spontaneously from the Divine Fiat which great work with the great Creator took up but seven days tho seven times seven is adjudged too little nay had I said Months are supposed little enough if when attempting to compleat a Philosophick Operation So that now the Darkness because disappearing the glorious and beautiful Ray of Light suddenly and at once invades all the Universe for after Separation by Divine Ordination every individual as to Vertue and Purity in its innate Quality arose up from obscurity And because relinquishing its Earthy fecula elevated it self according to Dignity correspondent also with the Purity of Matter The Sun therefore with the Moon and the Stars exalted themselves and surmounting the Aether were supreamly ranged in a Divine Order The Elements also they separated themselves into four Divisions or distinct Classes whereby to illustrate this imbellish'd Creation and the Principles because lock'd up in every individual whereby to make permanent by the Law of Perfection began to ferment which the Vulgar understand not for should they be separated purified and reconjoyned a new Creation would inevitably ensue in the Microcosm or the little World as by Divine Appointment it never ceases daily to influence and operate in the Macrocosm From whence all Celestials appear immortal most fiery luminous subtile and bright and by the Divinest made distant and remote were separated from all impure and immund dregs and because excavated into Rotundity they elevated themselves and flew up at once for which cause also Nature of her self desires a round form for things Eternal as being most perfect permanent and indeficient On the contrary it follows that Terrestial things are subject to corruption mutation and death because contrarieties are joyned in their elementary Composition and wherewith the dreggs and impurities of matter were mixed as at first with what was impure otherwise the produce that had proceeded from them would have been beyond dispute Subjects immortal Nor could there ever have been any Generation for without contrariety of qualities in Elements there had never been alteration nor mutation of form and all would have had but one Face without distinction remaining equally in purity and subtilty And tho cloathed with its own Ornament of Beauty and Swavity yet wanting matter whereon to impress formation would become deficient indigent and destitute of Creation It was necessary therefore to mix subtilty of substance with the gross and impure faecula of matter for where nothing but Clarity and Purity remains there of necessity can be no Action and where no Action is there can be no Patient seeing what is pure wants act of Power over that also which is as pure and this End and Operation is Natures Work of Separation for preservation of its Essence and Vital Encrease For if the Earth and her Fruits were as pure as the Heavens all Animals would live as long as Celestial Incholasts But Nature by the Divinest has ordained a Law that whatever partakes of Matter or Corporiety should dwell about that which is also Corporial and that which is most corruptible and inquinate about that which is also likest unto it but the Earth as subordinate is the most precipitant of Bodies consequently most gross and of all things most corruptible nothing therefore can proceed or be deducible from it but what is naturally most agreeable unto it wherefore its Corruption Sordities and Impurities must also be rarified by progress of Separation When therefore it s more pure Substance is extracted and exalted by a true and Magnetick Philosophical Medium Nature of necessity begins there all her Actions and in separation all is found And the Spirit of God moving upon the Face of the Waters was by Incubation or supream Act of Power by the determinate Wisdom and Counsel of God the immediate and proper cause of Separation for here you may read that the Spirit of God divinely moved upon the Face of the Waters And here also you may consider and deliberately understand that the Spirit of God inspired them with Vegetation otherwise of themselves how could they bring forth For the Chaos had a Passive but no Active Spirit in it till God by Wisdom roused up the Ferch or the hidden Life therein concealed and illuminating or kindling the Commassated Matter by the Ray and Majesty of his Divine Spirit that separated the pure from that that 's impure which could be no otherwise since no impure thing can enter nor center where the whole is pure And thus the Angel Gabriel salutes the Blessed Virgin with Hail Mary full of Grace God is with thee the glory of Females Now this Virgin was a Native and true Israelite and had not hitherto known her Husband which Virgin conceives by the Holy Ghost and was a Miraculous and a Spiritual Birth so that we may consider there 's nothing impossible with God the Creator that made the World when in love to incarnate himself to redeem it And Moses he tells you That when God had breathed into Adam our Protoplast the breath of Life he then became a living Soul not that Adam was destitute of a Natural Soul but of a Divine and Spiritual Life which also implies a supernatural state in which excellent state our Protoplast stood when God had transformed his Earth into Heaven and in which pure state he for ever had stood had he stood in simplicity and the Will of his Maker for what we sow that shall we reap and nothing is quickned except it die Mortification therefore precedes Regeneration we must all die to Sin to live to Righteousness But the Spirit of God moved upon the Waters which Act of Power was no sooner performed but the Waters of themselves incessantly brought forth and every created thing that God had made by a Divine and Soveraign Act of Power began to Operate Vegetate and Fructuate who surrounded the Constellations with a Crystalline Firmament and cloathing the Principles which stood naked before him with a Body suitable to their necessity gave Laws and Ordinances to Nature as Substitute immediately to let loose the Universal Spirit whereby to vegetate encrease and multiply to form also to animate and impregnate Bodies but Nature of her self because bounded with periods admits Death inevitably to invade all Compounds for were it otherwise there needed no Separation and Nature preadventure would become sloathful and idle Consequently the Fabrick of the whole Creation would again redact and result in a Chaos Separation therefore is of absolute necessity whereby to distinguish the pure from the impure the fair and immaculate from the most pollute and unclean which
reveal the Glory of the Father in the Face and Fulness of Jesus Christ. And God saw the Light and behold it was good the consequence follows for God he made it and God divided the Light from the Darkness as by his Wisdom the Day from the Night Separation therefore from adust impurity makes it Sublime Immaculate and Pure So Divine out of a Moral and a Celestial out of a Terrestrial State is a transmutation by the Grace of God for if nothing that 's impure can subsist in his presence whatever comes there must be spiritually pure and such are Invisibles separated from Elements the Waters above the Firmament of a pure Nature existent with Life but the Waters beneath Elementary and Fluctuating The Universal Spirit therefore inspiring Life and Motion the whole Creation began to breath and bud forth And God after separation of the Light from the Darkness of the pure and sublime from that that 's inquinate of Heaven from Earth of the Waters from the Waters of the Translucid and Diaphanous Bodies from Corruptible Recrements and Sordid Impurities Then was there a Noble and Divine Separation because when to raise an immortal Seed out of the Principles and Rudiments of Elements And such also is the Regenerate state in Man when born of the Royal Seed from Heaven for Flesh and Blood because Transient and Elementary are inconsistent with the Eternity of God uncapable therefore to inherit the Kingdom This is that Divine and Heavenly Transmutation by which Christ Jesus the Wisdom of the Father with one regal grain transmutes our Nature and our Mortal Bodies into an Immortal State and is that Elixir of Life and Vertue that defends it for ever from torture and destruction and eternally delivers it from the periods of Death But some will object What Body is this And Paul solves the Doubt by a Scriptural Explanation telling us it s a Body increate and incorruptible consequently uncapable of any mutation and because impregnated and animated with Life is under protection divinely blessed absolved and acquitted the assaults of Death What Body then some will say must it be and he tells you It 's a Body as it pleaseth God. But this you 'll object is also insufficient To speak more plainly then it 's a Regenerate Body born from the Spirit and not from Elements but of a pure and immaculate nature that never knew nor consented to Sin Such a Birth will triumph over Death because it can never be made to die nor subject it self to the periods of Death since bound up in the Volume of the Infinite Eternity But Darkness is the Vmbra or promiscuous shadow of the beautiful and amiable Glory of Light And because separated from the Beam of Light and gathered to its self is the Representation of Death Where note we may call it the Mantle or Covering of some solid Substance or some material thing and such is the Night by Earth's Interposition retirements of Light or the Suns bright absence Corpulences also are Stellat Ecclipses because from Globical Bodies intermediating for Night is only the Suns bright absence when deprived the beautiful Beam of his Light and the Day as I may so say the Infant of Light because it sprung up from Light Original The created Light therefore pray tell me what is it if not the beautiful Aurora of Eternity as is Eternity the Ray of the Majesty Thus the Light as appears shines still in Darkness and yet the Darkness comprehends it not Now what is this Darkness but the shades of Death and what is Death but a separation from Life and Life it self the amiable Infant that sprung from Eternity as Generation from Time But Darkness abhors the lustre of Light lest peradventure fearing the Light should inspire it Gold therefore like the Salamander lives eternally in Fire without detriment destruction or diminution of parts whiles imperfect Metals when examined by the test evaporate and vanish so become imperceptible which displays some impurity in their natural Composition for were they of a regal stamp and condition no force of Fire would be Argument strong enough to make in them the least separation so Darkness when made pure by the Beam of Light it then becomes a natural brightness and Mortality transchanged by the Grace of God becomes Immortal by Divine Transmutation The Day therefore sprung natively from Light as a Legitimate Heir from the Loins of his Parents nor could it do otherwise because by the Divinest destinated and determinated to such an end by the Counsel of God. And thus the Beam or Ray of the Sun as its Integer Light can be no otherwise because the proper Effect from that efficient Cause for the Celestial Sun if sedately to consider it was kindled by a virtual spark of invisible Light And this invisible Light the Son of God is the Essence Wisdom and the Beauty of the Father and is that Soveraign and Saving Light of the Divinity and Majesty of God himself As pure Religion therefore is such in it self as it pleads Precedency long before Error consequently it 's a bright and most illustrious Taper that directs to the standard of Divine Truth in whose Frontispiece Devotion displays Christianity and which truly is the most Eminent and Divine Encomium that ever was attributed to Men as Mortals and is in a Scriptural sense the new way of Conquering because through Christ we are more than Conquerours and fight in this Field without Carnal Weapons for no Gladiators arm here to Combat nor is there any Banner but the Cross of Christ and whose Enemies are Abaddon and the Hierarchy of Hell and whose Engins are Sin and the Toils of Death endeavouring therewith to obstruct our passage when attempting the triumphant Joys of Heaven But a Nominal Christian with grief I speak it which signifies no more than a formal Professor if when wanting the Vital Power of the living Act of Faith such a profession makes no Man a Christian any more than reading the Alcharon compleats a Saint nor is every Professor a true Minister of God except of God ordain'd to preach For the Gospel is free and the love of God free and it was the free Act of Christ to give himself freely for the Sins of the World. Christs Redemption therefore was a free Act of Grace to blot out Sin and usher in Repentance and all that 's required for so great a suffering is only conformity to a Holy Life and sanctified Obedience to that Living Power in whom the fulness of the Godhead dwells He therefore that prays and pays not his Orisons to this great Oracle the Wisdom of the Father stands still indebted for his Life and Freedom and proclaims himself an Alien to the Court of Sion as also a Stranger to the New Ierusalem Now in opposition to Light stands this formidable Darkness a Figure of a Creature that was found folded up after the Divine Act and force of Separation not improper therefore to intitle