the dictates of natural religion and the evidence of right and unprejudiced reason Columbus had no demonstration that there were such vast tracts of land on the other side of the great Atlantic ocean running out almost from one Pole to the other which he afterwards discovered he was onley lead by probable arguments to undertake that voyage as thinking it very unlikely that so great a part of the terraqueous globe over which the Sun passes in his diurnal revolution should be covered with water It was lookt upon at first as a project which had nothing to support it but the strong phansie of the man who proposed it and it was a long time before he could be furnished with ships in order to make a discovery But how were they alarmed at his return with the news which he brought of another world which had layn hid for so many ages how were the opinions of the old Philosophers confuted that there could be no living between the Tropics and especially under the Line by reason of the intolerable heat which the perpendicular projection of the sun-beams they phansied must necessarily produce when they were assured from eye-witnesses that no country in the world could be more populous Now our B. Saviour who came down from heaven has made full and clear discoveries of a glorious kingdom and has laid down rules and directions for our journeying thither rules and directions so plain that we cannot fail of arriving at that blessed place if we observe and follow them What can any one alledge to justifie or excuse his solly how can he answer it to God or to himself at the last great day if after all this he should doubt whether there be such a place as heaven or no and so doubt as wretchedly to neglect the happy opportunities of getting thither at the end of his life If as Socrates argued a little before his death nothing remains to a man after he is dead then he would be the less troubled at what he was then about to suffer for then he should cease to be mistaken if he were mistaken But if there be another state in the next life as there is the highest reason to believe and no reason to believe the contrary what a foolish bargain will it appear the Epicure has made in buying the vain and perishing pleasures of the world at the price of his soul It will then be an infallible demonstration that he has acted against the common rules of prudence in preferring a trifle a shadow a humour before the favour of God before the fulness of joy which is to be had in his presence before immortal blessedness with which he shall see the righteous crowned which will heighten his anguish and make it intolerable and the thought of this will as much torment him as the very flames that he might have been happy as they but for his own wretched carelessness and obstinate infidelity To conclude this short discourse which I most heartily and passionately recommend to the serious and impartial consideration of all such as vouchsafe to read it Seeing that there will be and must be a day of judgment in which we shall give a strict accompt of our lives that there is a future state whose duration shall be beyond the limits of time that when we depart out of this life we launch forth into an ocean which knows neither bounds nor shore that there are eternal rewards and punishments in the other world and that according to the tenor and habit of our lives and the condition we are found in at our death we shall receive our everlasting doom how much does it concern every one of us so to live here in this world that is in the fear of God and in a conscientious discharge and practise of all Christian and moral virtues as to live for ever happy in the next FINIS a Theodoretus in loc 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The things which now exist are not fully proportionable to the divine power so as to exhaust it but onely agreable to his divine will and pleasure For God could have created more and greater things than these out he would only make so many and of such sorts species and denominations as it pleased him a The Greeke and Latine Fathers are very copious and careful even to a philosophical niceness in their explications and illustrations of these common notions about the just and proper object of the divine power a collection of which the Reader may find in Bishop Pearson's elaborate and learned Commentary on the Apostles Creed where he treats of this particular argument as of the rest of the Articles with great accuracy and judgment More authorities might easily be added by one of ordinary reading but I forbear at present it being a common place and shall content my self onely to adjoyn the concurrent testimonies of the Master of the Sentences and Thomas Aquinas Petrus Lombardus lib. 1. Sententiarum xlii distinct Sunt alia quaedam quae Deus nullatenus facere potest ut peccata non enim potest mentiri non potest peccare Sed non ideo omnipotentiae Det detrahitur vel derogatur si peccare non posse dicitur quia non esset hoc potentiae sed infirmitatis Si enim hoc posset omnipotens non esset Non ergo impotentiae sed poteatiae imputandum est quod ista non potest Again Manifestum est Deum omnino nihil posse pati omnia facere posse praeter ca sola quibus ejus dignitas laederetur ejusque excellentiae derogaretur in quo tamen non est minus omnipotens Hoc enim posse non esset posse sed non posse Herein following the doctrine of his Master S. Augustine in his book de Symbolo which he there cites Deus omnipotens non potest mori non potest falli non potest miser fieri nec potest vinci Haec utique hujusmodi absit ut posset omnipotens Si enim bujusmodi passionibus atque defectibus subjici posset omnipotens minimè foret and in his book de spiritu literâ Non potest Deus facere injusta quia ipse est summa justitia bonitas Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica part 1. quaest xxv Artic. 3. Ea quae contradictionem implicant sub divinâ omnipotentiâ non continentur quia non possunt habere possibilium rationem Unde convenientius dicitur quod ea non possunt fieri quam quod Deus ea non possit facere Post. Peccare est deficere à perfecta ratione unde posse peccare est posse deficere in agendo quod repugnat imnipotentiae Et propter hoc Deus peccare non potest quia est omnipotens The whole of what has been said both by Fathers and Schoolmen upon this subject is summed up by the learned Dr. Overall then Dean of St. Pauls and afterwards Bishop of Norwich in a letter to his Friend H. Grotius written 16 May 1613. in this brief definition and sentence Potentia Dei activa qua omnia possibilia quae non implicant contradictionem impotentiam iniquitatem aliudque quid Deo indignum facere possit * In Epistola ad Romanos edit Oxon. 1633. 48. pag. 36. * Vid. S. Clementem Romanum pag. 36 37. * Vide hac de re S. Clementem Romanum eleganter differentem pag. 27 28. * Arnob. adv gentes lib. 2. Lugd. Batav 4 o. p. 55 56. * Vide S. Clementem p. 37. Plato in Phoedone edit Cantabr 88. 1673. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pag. 82. * Cicero in his Oration de Haruspicum responsis which he pronounced in the Senate Quam volumus licet P. C. ipsi nos amenius tamen nec numero Hispanos nec calliditate Poenos nec robore Gallos nec artibus Graecos nec denique hoc ipso hujus gentis ac terrae domestico nativoque sensu Italos ipsos ac Latinos sed pietate religione atque hac una sapientia quod Deorum immortalium numine omnia regi gubernarique perspeximus omnes gentes nationesque super â—â—imus a Estne opus in vitâ negotiosum aliquod atque actuosum genus quod non side praeeunte suscipiant sumant atque aggrediantur actores As Arnobius adv Gentes lib. 2. pag. 47. Lugd. Bat. 48. 1651. there shews at large with great sharpness of wit and judgment against the Heathen of his time who objected credulity to the Christians b Nulla futurorum potest existere comprobatio Cum ergo haec sit conditio futurorum ut teneri comprehendi nullius possint anticipationis attactu c. Arnob. lib. 2. pag. 44. c Nonne purior ratio est ex duobus incertis in ambiguà exspectatione pendentibus id potius credere quod aliquas spes ferat quam omnino quod nullas Arnob. p. 44.
us for ever in the next A DISCOURSE ABOUT THE CERTAINTY and EVIDENCE OF A Future State HOW much it is below a man to busie himself wholly in the pursuit of earthly things whether honour wealth or pleasure and how contemptible a creature he is notwithstanding all his acquists of outward greatness unless he does raise his mind to the contemplation of better and nobler objects whosoever will reflect seriously upon the nature and faculties of the mind by which he is enabled to discourse and reason and judge of things and of their consequences unless he is utterly forsaken by his reason and governed by brutal appetite will be forced to acknowledge Besides there are such continual changes and vicissitudes of things here below so much uncertainty in them and withal so little satisfaction to the rational desires of the soul such intermixtures of good and evil ebbs and flows of prosperity sickness and discontent and disappointments and various anxieties arising from irregular passion and distemper of bloud and humours and a thousand evil accidents which no wisdom or care can prevent notwithstanding the flattering intervals of health and ease and pleasurable self-enjoyment taking up the greatest part of our lives and death at last after three or fourscore years at most seizing upon us that even according to the judgment of natural reason and the more refined Heathen have acknowledged it the condition of humane life would be very miserable and all things considered inferior to that of other creatures if there were no life hereafter in another world Nay amidst those corrupt principles which barbarousness and sensuality had super-induced among the wilder sort of Heathen immersed in blind and stupid ignorance and destitute of all helps and methods of knowledge and learning they yet retained a belief and exspectation of another state after this life this could not be wholly effaced out of their minds and memories these thoughts pursued them wherever they went and when they met with violence and hardship and were oppressed by the irresistible strength of invaders and suffered unjustly in all these straits and difficulties they comforted themselves with faint hopes of it and tho' they could not by reason of fatal prejudices and prepossessions taken up from sense and of the want of the true knowledge of God and his attributes have any just apprehension or notion of the resurrection of the body yet they all concluded unanimously for the life and being and subsistence of the soul. So that the wild and savage people of Afric and America as well as the more civilized and cultivated by philosophy and the discipline of laws give in full evidence against the Atheistical wits of the age who with an unparallel'd boldness maintain that when a man has acted his part in this life he goes off the stage and disappears for ever that the soul like a flame when the matter which fed it is spent is wholly extinguished and vanishes into soft air that we came into the world by meer chance and shall be hereafter as tho' we had never been as the Author of the book of Wisdom elegantly brings in the Gallants of his time triumphing and entertaining themselves with such idle phantastick and irrational hopes chap. ii 2. and that when a man dyes there is an utter end of him a dissolution of soul as well as body every element taking its own and the whole swallowed up in the universal mass of matter out of which it was at first made singing out with the chorus in Seneca's Troas Quaeris quo jaceas post obitum loco Quo non nata jacent and Post mortem nihil est ipsaque mors nihil But it ought not to be exspected as to the Heathen that they whose eyes were dim and weak and who were involved in thick clouds and mists of ignorance should have a clear view and prospect of another world and that those heavenly objects should appear to them whose understandings were darkned with false notions and principles in their full brightness However it is most certain that they did believe a life after this and made it the great incentive and encouragement of virtue and courage in dying for their country and when they did ill and that in the dark with all possible secrecy and undisturbance and with all security under no restraint of law or fear of punishment yet their hearts misgave them and in private and alone they dreaded the evil effects and consequences of their guilt I am not backward to acknowledge that this opinion belief and exspectation of another life might be oftentimes clogg'd in the best of them with mixtures of doubts the prepossessions of sense stifling the dictates of right reason and the suggestions of natural conscience Even that excellent person Socrates who was one of the first among the Greeks who freed his reason from the entanglement of vulgar opinions in matters of religion and moral philosophy which the corrupt Theology of their Poets had introduced and who died as it were a Martyr for the unity of the Godhead spake somewhat doubtfully of it in the discourse he had with his friends the very day of his death the sum of which is preserved by Plato in his dialogue entitled Phoedo or of the soul. He said he would not be positive and dogmatical but however he profest his hope that he should pass immediately to the company of those good men who died before him whose souls survived in some happy place he knew not where This was far from the heroick and steady assurance of S. Paul who after his second appearance before Nero when he saw that there was nothing but death to be exspected from the Tyrant and his bloudy Officers triumphs in his neer approaches to it as the entrance to a blessed immortality 2 Tim. ii 6 7 8. I am now ready to be offered and the time of my departure is at hand I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kept the faith henceforth is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge shall give me at that day He seemed as sure of it as if he had had the crown upon his head and had been actually in heaven What Philosophy can scarce reach being at that vast distance from it that Christianity easily discovers Reason is the same in all mankind but reason assisted by revelation is like the eye armed with a Telescope it not only sees things clearer and better but discovers new objects such as before lay hid and were indiscernible to the naked sight A Christian man that is if he be more so than in profession and if his immoralities have not altogether corrupted his mind and plunged him into the very dregs of infidelity cannot at all doubt of a future state He looks upon himself as a pilgrime and is travelling toward a better country that is a heavenly here he has no continuing city but looks for one to
founded on the justice of God and his governing power which render it undeniably necessary Nothing perplext the minds of the ancient Philosophers more than to see righteous and virtuous men oftentimes afflicted and opprest and the wicked and dissolute prosperous and triumphant No phaenomenon whatever which they pretended might be solved and accompted for by their several hypotheses without interesting a Deity at all in their solutions troubled them so much as this these difficulties were great and perplext and disagreeable as they thought to the common notions of reason equity and justice imprinted upon their minds so that in the tumultuous workings of their thoughts they began to question whether God for such a supreme being they could not they durst not deny had any thing to do in the government of the world who permitted such disorders and seemed so unconcerned But upon wise thoughts and sedate deliberation they quickly recovered and generally condemned the doctrine of Epicurus and readily acknowledged that all the great revolutions that were in the world all the odd and strange events of things and the different conditions of life as to good and evil so seemingly repugnant to the rules of right and wrong were for wise ends and purposes permitted to come to pass that there was a soveraign infinite being who governs the world according to his will and pleasure and that all things are subject to the rules and laws of his wisdom and providence This after all their researches into the causes and reasons of things notwithstanding the great difficulties wherewith they had been entangled was generally acknowledged by them as the voice and dictate of universal nature and clear and right reason The Schools of all the sober Masters and Professors of Philosophy both at Athens and Rome sounded with this doctrine and all who pretended to virtue and honour and understanding very few excepted embraced it It was to the belief of this prime truth and the practises of religion grounded upon it that the wise and judicious Cicero ascribed the astonishing success of the Roman Arms in the several distant parts of the then known world where their victorious eagles percht that it was not because they were more numerous or excelled either in the arts of policy or in the art of war as if the Galls or the Carthaginians had been inferiour to them in valour and discipline for they had had frequent experience of the contrary and had been sadly distrest by both and Brennus and Hannibal were names which had made Rome to tremble or as if the other nations as the Greeks or the Spaniards or even their own neighbours and countrymen the Italians and Latines themselves whom they conquered and brought under the jurisdiction of their imperial City were not so numerous or not so cunning and ingenious and excellent in discipline and civil arts and accomplishments of life sed pietate atque religione atque hac una sapientia quod Deorum immortalium numine omnia regi gubernarique perspeximus but in piety and religion and in this peculiar wisdom that they acknowledged that the great affairs of the world and all things in it were governed and over-ruled by a Deity This truth they retained notwithstanding the grievous errors which they had taken up concerning the multiplicity of inferior Gods and the horrible and shameful scandals of their idolatrous worship But our improved reason enlightned with the knowledge of the true God does more fully and clearly upon just and easie reflexions prove and make manifest to us that God who created the universe is an alwise God holy just and true that righteousness is essential to his nature that nothing comes to pass or can come to pass without his appointment at least without his permission that what now seems disorder and chance is wise contrivance and design and that all the confusions brought upon the world tend to illustrate God's wisdom and power who can and will bring beauty and order out of them If all things then in the world are under a law the law of their respective natures and act according to the established laws of their creation and if there be an over-ruling providence seen every where man certainly who is capable of a law by reason of his intellectual faculties and liberty of will cannot be supposed left to himself to act as he wantonly pleaseth without being accomptable to a superior power He who made him and continues his being to him has a right to govern him that is may if he will lay down laws and rules for the right ordering of his life and he has actually done so and every man is conscious to himself that he is obliged by virtue of his creation and dependence upon God to obey that law Now it is not so much the equity the agreeableness the advantage or necessity of a law as the sanction which makes it to be obeyed and preserves it inviolable If God then be the governour of the world and particularly of mankind and if he governs man according to the laws and rules of justice the necessary and fundamental maximes of government will oblige us to believe that he will accordingly reward and punish There is one Law-giver who is able to save and to destroy But we see daily how the laws of God are violated and that the violators of them oftentimes escape unpunished in this life and we know what ill use impatient and inconsiderate men have made of this forbearance and long-suffering of God Is not bloud-thirsty cruelty for instance a manifest breach of the law natural and divine that multitudes of innocent persons should be sacrificed to the revengeful and wanton humour of a Tyrant which was the case of the primitive Christians during the reigns of the heathen Roman Emperours who does not detest as impious and inhumane yet how many of them who have been guilty of this barbarity have left the world without any mark of the divine vengeance upon them they having had whole armies to defend them and assist them in their outragious and bloudy massacres Who is not concerned for the sufferings of good men in all ages when they are dead they are pitied perchance and men weep over their graves and celebrate their memories with anniversary orations and speak great things in praise of their courage and virtue which no opposition no trouble whatever no not death it self could tire out and overcome This is all the reward which they have in this world and certainly in it self a very poor one tho' justly due to their name and memory But while they lived oftentimes they were destitute afflicted tormented wanting the conveniencies of life exposed to extreme poverty and to cruel mockings and scourgings wandring about in deserts and mountains and retiring to dens and caves for shelter and outlawed by sanguinary edicts from the society of mankind and at other times condemned to the flames or to wild beasts in their Amphitheatres or to gibbets
do not like and is disagreeable to our designs does not easily get admittance within us we demur upon it and raise difficulties and doubts and pretend that we cannot understand it when the true reason is it makes against us and therefore we will not And this is one great reason why the Atheists and Deists set themselves against the fundamental truths of religion and labour so much to confirm themselves in their infidelity by making use of their wit and the little reason that is left them to find out new difficulties and raise objections to justifie and defend themselves in their unbelief in opposition to the rational wise and just sentiments of good men whom they most absurdly represent under the nickname of Believers that is credulous For these men are fully convinced that their practises are altogether inconsistent with such professions that if they admit these truths they must quit their present course of life unless they could have the patience to live under the anguish of self-condemnation which would turn all their luscious enjoyments into gall and wormwood that if there be a God and that his power and justice are equally infinite he is to be feared and adored for who would dare to live in open defiance of his laws and blaspheme him daily who believes that he can punish him eternally for such defiance and blasphemy and that if there be a future state they must not then live like the beasts which perish and which are altogether unconcerned in it But the pleasures of the animal life have corrupted their minds they are immersed in sensuality they have given up themselves to be governed by their appetite to gratifie that is their only study and business it is death to them to think of a sober restrained and mortified kind of life it is not their interest they know as the case stands with them to believe that there is a heaven or an hell and therefore we need not wonder if they cry out that they see no force in this or that argument in which the whole world has hitherto acquiesced as just and satisfactory to convince their judgment Nothing will content them but Mathematical evidence and demonstration tho' it may very justly be feared that if the evidence they so foolishly call for were prejudicial to the end and purposes of life which they pursue they would deny even that too II. No other kind of evidence in the case of a future state can or ought to be exspected or demanded And the reason is because the subject-matter is not capable of it There are different ways of proving things agreeable to their respective natures both in Metaphysics Natural Philosophy Ethics and the like of the conclusions of which fairly deduced according to the laws of method there can be no just doubt every science being built upon certain general principles and rules taken up either from experience and observation or else drawn from the common notices and consent of mankind Often repeated trials and experiments which have succeeded well sufficiently convince us of the truth of several things which we will not pretend to demonstrate If a matter of fact in it self not unlikely much less impossible be confirmed by credible witnesses or by authentic records it would be a very strange piece of niceness in us to deny the truth of it and call for demonstration because we have all the assurance which relation and history can give us that it is so To perswade a man that it is his duty to be just and honest and sober and chast I am onely to make use of moral arguments To prove to him that he has a command over himself as to his actions I shew him the absurdities of the doctrine of fatal necessity and if he should persist and demand further satisfaction I can do no more than make an appeal to himself whether he does not find a power within him of acting or not acting as he pleaseth whether he does not deliberate with himself whether he had best do it or no and when after some demurs and debates he hath determined his will of his own accord which before was indifferent either to this or that whether he doth not consult about the means to bring about his design and upon a survey of several make choice of such as he judgeth most proper and effectual In these and the like cases we can have no Mathematical evidence and demonstration yet we cannot rationally doubt of the verity of their proofs tho' the evidence and assurance be onely moral yet it is such as will perswade any man who is free from unjust and irrational prejudice Besides upon this kind of assurance depends all the actions of our lives No man can demonstrate to another who has not been there that there are such countries as India Persia and Turkey or such great cities as Delhi Agra Ispahân and Constantinople and yet men send their estates thither tho' they have onely the reports of others for their assurance and the ability and integrity of the persons whom they employ and trust in the management of their rich trade That they are the sons of such and such persons they are onely assured by the testimony of others and chiefly of their Parents who have taken care of their education It would be idle monstrous and unnatural to deny to pay them the respect and reverence due to them both by the laws of God and nature upon a pretense that they have some scruples upon their minds whether they be their parents or no and that it cannot be made out demonstratively to them that they are so What other assurance have they that the deeds and conveyances whereby they hold their estates derived down to them from their ancestors at the sealing and delivering of which they were not present are not counterfeit and would they be contented to have them called in question upon such a phantastick supposition No one can demonstrate to himself out of Euclide and Archimedes that the house wherein he lyes will not fall upon his head and yet for all this bare possibility he sleeps securely and without any disturbance and will not lye in the open air Not to heap up more instances in a thing so common and every where to be met with All satisfaction concerning the certainty of a future state is offered that can be justly demanded We have the evidence of reason and the evidence of religion which is founded upon the belief of it the justice of God makes it necessary and the doctrine of providence and of the government of the world by the alwise and omnipotent Creator suppose it Things future are not triable by sense they are the objects of our hopes and of our fears and of our belief and of our exspectation and therefore cannot be proved to exist the same way as things which every day present themselves to our sight But how are these men assured that there is no future