They are all everlasting and bear up themselves consolidate by Eternity Man by his Soul is set in this heavenly world and can no more remove himself out of it then he can his body out of the material one let his mind be never so high in its own elevation it cannot keep the impressions of matter off from his earthy part much less can he by sensuality untye his relation to spirituality to which his Soul knits him so fast God having given a touch and feeling a sense and judgment though it be not improved Whatever a Soul doth or doth not that is wherein it refuses or through neglect minds not to act becomes most momentany for all partakes the spirituality of its nature and receives beauty or deformity purity or defilement from the powers of that Law within it A man cannot be a beast though he degenerate like one Sin then receiving force from the Soul that commits it mounts the spiritual Creation and rests it self in the world of Righteousness as a defilement in it adheres to it as death deformity sickness emptiness darkness do to the solid parts of the Creation and thereby challenge a place in this world which yet in themselves are nothing but the want of the due perfection of the subject to which they adjoyn Thus have we considered these two worlds as distinct yet is there in this world an Ordo ad Spiritualia through which it is inclasped under the Government of the higher having a capacity to be sublimated to ends above it self which is as a cement betwixt them both whence it comes to pass that sin descends upon the lower by neglect or inversion of the order wherein it stands the first of which is to depress the works of God below his intention and aim at his own Holiness in them and is to disanul it the latter is to debauch the Creatures of God to lust blotting out his superscription and setting that of sin in the room and both are to build up evil grounded in matter to the third Heaven Thus though meats cannot defile the man yet the man may defile himself by meats and defile the meats as on the other side meats commend him not to God yet he may by a holy use by the Word and prayer commend himself and sanctifie them he is able by his Soul to touch them into gold or to taint them with his own impurity And this very innate power though a man never considers it nor behaves himself worthily by his judgment and caution of it is yet the same as to the substance as if he had a Soul never so greatned and inlarged by improvement When there is a defilement among spiritual things every thing in the whole spiritual Nature keeps it extant and puts a seal upon it the certainty and unchangeableness of those holy Laws the all-seeing Eye of God an infinite mind and understanding an infinite purity an everlasting Justice and Judge the consent of the whole world of spirits with him the immortality of the Soul from which the defilement immediately rises and recoiling rests From whence it comes to pass that what men do with their Souls they never lose but live in the midst of all their actions whether good or evil For God keeping in force these Laws retains and binds the Soul sinning under the sense of what it hath done and sends down the charges of his wrath into the conscience and dispatches punishments as he pleases ever preserving inviolable records of every transgression laid up within his own Justice and registred in the guilty breast which sucks in the air it hath breathed out and if evil is setled into a defilement so great that nothing is pure to it Let us then compute things and when we find so many men in the world whose actions are going out by hundreds and thousands having no ballance of righteousness upon them nor sifted by any examination but rolling down that great precipice and declivity of humane Nature all corrupted not only with their own violence but by the force of that power of darkness that concurs with them what must the amount of the impurity then be That an Eternal Judgment countervails all this evil in number weight and measure shall be hereafter discoursed But how Judgments take off the foulness of sin at present is now to be considered which may better be conceived by applying their efficacies to every of the particulars of its defilement in these following observations 1. That prime and eternal Holiness which with its Glory governs the spiritual order and beauty of things in a conform Holiness Righteousness and Purity as their first constitution when offended by the sin of any of the proper subjects of it is secondarily repaired by punishment upon the sinner We may consider this as abstracted into its own most spiritual Nature or formed into Laws and either way punishment repairs it 1. If in its own spiritual Nature we look upon it there is a splendour in punitive Justice which is another mode of that Eternal Holiness shewing it self it is the zeal and earnest intention of it meeting with any thing aliene and receded from it The wrath of God is the flame or light-fire of his infinite purity in contest with iniquity which gives such a lustre that all the Earth is filled with this glory and is an accidental illumination of the superior state of things For which had there been no place undoubtedly all entrances of sin had been precluded The Apostle speaks of God that he willing to shew his wrath and make his power known endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction Knowing how to give reparations to himself he permits to sin and sinners a scope in their own actions There is yet no communion betwixt light and darkness only another kind of efficacy of light For that which endures not the approach of the least evil but by its own vigour and perfection throws it off with abhorrence and disdain can never be defiled but hath occasion from evil to manifest its own intenseness and supremacy and preserve in another way the same lustre and greatness of the whole state under it 2. If we consider this Holiness as it is formed into Laws wherein the state of it is more plain the first honour of a Law is obedience if that be not paid the second is punishment which keeps up the Majesty and greatness of it and even establisheth its authority those Laws being only weakned and infringed by transgression which go unrevenged for then the power passes out of the Law and settles in the transgression which from thence assumes an authentickness and damnes the Law to an obsoletion But if the Law hath the offender in its hand to deal severely with and to condemn the power is apparently with it it can terrifie into its observation those whom it cannot allure by its direction equity and rewards which makes evil a feeble and weak
Scriptures always discoursing Gods dealings with men at a higher rate of esteem then this and suing himself to all the moves against them that they may be orderly and just as if the Soul of man would reason and debate with him concerning his ways for so indeed we find there is a spirit in man that in those that are good humbly and reverently desires to plead with him as in Job and Jeremy and in evil men contends and calumniates him as unequal till he convinces them of all their hard speeches against him And the comparison can never be equal betwixt man and any of the creatures under him for they melt away from the least pressure into death and cease there but man dated for Eternity is therefore of a much higher consideration nor have the other those notions of right and wrong of rewards for doing well and punishments for ill doing that are implanted in mans Soul God therefore passes into all the cases of his rational Creatures and determines upon them so that he will not regret or offend those Principles which he himself hath put into them but in all his Judgments and tryals of them he comprehends their right in his own and so sentences them to misery as that it could not be otherwise consistently with that Justice and Righteousness he is to declare All which are not only argued here in the world in the darkness and low state of Souls and in this mixture of things wherein a man cannot truly know love or hatred by any thing that is before him but in the clearness and open air of Eternity when the spirits of men will be at their highest pitch and multitudes of them aculeated with the sting of an endless doom while other Creatures lye still in their dust and covered in their ashes These immortal Souls challenging out of rottenness their bodies rise up plead with the Almighty concerning themselves From whence we infer that God doth not willingly afflict the children of men so much as here seeing it is he that hath put into them and excites in them these powers of debate with himself and those reasons upon which they argue and he doth it that he may be justified when he speaketh and be clear when he judgeth and that it may be known that all he doth is as we have said upon accounts of Interest in his own glory of sincerest intention for the good of his Creation and of necessity for the righteous Government of the world Of which accounts we shall treat particularly having first laid down the fundamental reason of Judgments The primary reason of Judgments is to be found in close connexion with Justice and the nature of punishment For Judgments upon a close description are the executions of punishment according to rules of Justice The essence of this Justice is in the distribution of every ones right to them by an exact ballance of reward and punishment according to works for the establishment of righteousness and order in the world which are both the beauty and peace of it The supreme care of this is in the hand of Original Righteousness and increate Justice whose the world and all the Creatures are and which is ever awake upon this its Paramount Function The nature of punishment is found only in pain without which we can have no possible notion of it for it always imports to us something grievous And it stands upon this reason Fruition and pleasure are the last ends in which the desires of man rest as his happiness this is always his reach and contention through what ways soever he steers himself When he travels through the mediums of honour or profit or when he immediately grasps pleasure it self or whether these be truly or but apparently what he names them the satisfaction arising from them is equally the design in all This pleasure or satisfaction is the tast or reflection of man upon the conveniency of things to his Nature ministring delight through the mutual touch and embrace of them one with another being thereto fitted by the wisdom and goodness of the Author of Nature This conveniency of things is called Good the Fountain of it is God himself the First Good the streams of it are derived from him upon the several Creatures which flow one among another True pleasure God hath by great skill woven into Holiness and gracious Action these things being of themselves most accordant to mans Soul and further by an eternal and unchangeable constitution which is the foundation of all propriety set it as the reward of obedience to these Laws of Goodness so that to him who perfectly observes them the reward is reckoned of debt that the mind considering first this pleasure springing from goodness may be led to that as the root of it then understanding it as a reward apportioned to virtuous actions may be yet more fully invited thereunto The whole complex of Good is hereby assured both in the present accommodations of things to this life and state and in the sum of it eternal life For godliness hath the promises of this life and of that which is to come and they are rendred to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for honour glory and immortality the paths of which lead to that fulness of Joy in the presence of God and to those Rivers of pleasure at his right hand for evermore which are the most commensurate significations of Happiness On the other side that which stands opposite to pleasure as darkness to light or death to life is pain and it is the point from which the Fuga or aversation of the Soul hastens it with all vehemency This we style Evil for it is the disagreement of things to our Nature which awakening resentment causes greatest displeasure All this evil is by God seated in the heart of the evil of sin where its proper habitation is for every impure action being dissonant to the true make of mans Soul is as far from pleasure rightly so called as it is from goodness and it is moreover prepared for the avenge of disobedience as its due portion and reward From whence both the rise of unhappiness is known and the reason understood Death entred by sin and the wages of sin is death with all the preparations to it This evil of punishment is administred by the severe Touches of God himself as an adversary or the unfriendly pressures of the Creatures upon our Nature set on by his wrath either in the degrees now or that complement Scripture calls Hell where is wailing and gnashing of teeth in utter darkness or utter impossibility of enjoyment This constitution of things is the foundation of Religion the pleasurable both fruit and remuneration of obedience and the painful issue and recompence of transgression being adapted to the inclining of the mind on each side of it and the more necessary because through the wise disposition of things by God for the tryal of man virtue
is beset with present inconveniences especially since our Fall which deters the simple and on the other side the entertainments of folly and sin have the sweetness of stollen waters the inticement of Fools but both these are counterballanced by the after and lasting rewards or punishments These things that are first proper to persons considered singly spread as men themselves do and combine upon Nations and Communities For that Justice we speak of is not only as distinct as every man is to himself but as large and general as the whole world that Bodies of men may be awed with the same reasons that seem to have greater place upon particulars and be either prosperous and spend their days in pleasure or calamitous and traveling always with pain according to their conformities with the Laws of righteousness or prevarication from them Let this then be reduced to the present purpose Justice always intent upon its high administration observes the sins of men passes sentence upon them and is ready to execute it The sentence upon sin is the intire sum of pain and misery rolled up in that one commination of dying the death the proportions instruments and seasons are chosen by that highest wisdom that guides the dispensation of Justice and the residue laid up in store for the last Judgment when the wicked shall be turned into Hell and the Nations that forget God From hence it is that Judgments the great vehicles of pain to the world move up and down in it by the appointment of Justice to enforce transgressors to receive that pain which is the demerit of their sin in which else they would disclaim their right and to compel the Kingdoms of the Earth to drink certainly the Wine-cup of fury however unwilling they are to it because it duly appertains to them These things are so close to mans Soul that punishment is the next expectation after an offence and if it be delayed men are ready to cry out Where is Justice as if it were in a slumber How reasonable is this account then of Judgments that there may be a due execution of Justice In this Reason lye the seeds of these sequent Reasons of Judgments 1. That there may be a sense of Justice preserved in the world as an admonition against sin For these inflictions are evident as matters of fact and countersway the present pleasure of sin for a season by after-pains 2. That there may be an expiation of the world for satisfaction for the present given to Justice for sin is a purgation pro tempore 3. That men may have assurances of Judgment to come seeing such a thing as rendring vengeance that is not perfect leads to that is absolute 4. That God may change times and seasons in his Government of the world for pain unpins and forces the state of things asunder 5. To reform men by shewing their folly in shaping their course to the Country of pain and dolors that they might find pleasure From this general consideration let us pass to the particular reasons of Judgments of which we proceed to speak in order CHAP. VII The first Reason The importance to the World that a Justice over it be understood Reas 1 THat there may be the sense of a Justice preserved in the thoughts of men For the daily evils that fall out though they are the effects of it yet being of a sâ—fter temper and to be compounded with are not so eogent Arguments but easily attributable to the common course of things These are so still in view and carried so temperately with the progress of natural causes that notwithstanding them Solomon observes Sentence is not speedily executed upon wicked works nor will men who do not curiously inquire know by them whether there be a Justice over the world or not and therefore still the hearts of the Sons of men are set in them to do evil For this cause God erects such pillars of salt in the world as Judgments and they stand not only for the admonition of the just present but they project their instructions upon succession even that which is most quiet and secure The Apostle Peter observes the great monuments of Judgments were raised to that stupendious height betimes that they might over-look all decurrent Ages and be seen by the last and lowest of the world that there might be none without such cautions of the Righteousness of God Their kind too was extraordinary from Heaven immediately that the Argument might be more undeniable and the impression stronger But how much the apprehension of such a waking Eye upon all the ways of men and the administrations of States and Kingdoms is both to the glory of God the good Government of the world the Interest of man may without difficulty be understood For as the Apostle expressing God in a jealousie of the honour of his Goodness says he left not himself without witness but ingaged the acts of mercy in giving fruitful times and seasons So in like manner do the distributions of his Justice give testimony to him that he judgeth in the Earth so that all the inferences of Righteousness that are most naturally to be derived from so high a consideration may fall with greatest force upon the minds of men For as Judgments being abroad are prevalent preachers of it so those that have been heretofore being past yet speak And the treasure of that Justice and Power in God that inflicts them is an unmoveable perswasion that no change falls upon and which indeed carries a constant force without which those that are past would have soon been exhausted and spent and those that are present included within themselves Take away the sense of a Justice and all rules of goodness are chilled into honest notions and moral speculations without any sting Laws grow feeble and have only a precarious authority And if the Justice be only humane the Sphere is so narrow and restrained that great wickednesses are committed out of its Jurisdiction and cognisance But Justice and that Divine commands and threatens with all highest confidence and nothing can find exemption from it laying strongest warnings upon men lâ—st they sin and giving greatest motives to repentance after the commissions spanning all reasons for prevention and removal of evil Now there are no arguments of a Justice so cogent as those it self gives which like things of sense find least dispute when they are resident by their own motion upon their proper subjects For as the objects of sense are to sense so are these strokes of the hand of God to the conscience all fineness of conceit and tricks of wit will not elude the strength of things themselves taking place upon sense though they should have inveigled the fancy at a distance from them yet the first approach melts the vapour yea though the Judgment should have been reasoned into a confidence and undertaken to give an Apathy as the Stoick to his wise man yet is it not of proof to
thing for whoever is bold in it presumes upon his own ruine not only serving without protection but under the certain penalty of dying the death Thus a further potency of the Law is explained and opened that else had lain hid at least in the effect viz. that it cannot only command but avenge It is true the natural desire of every good Law is to be obeyed and to have the hearts of men burn in innocent flames of affection and devotion to it rejoycing more in its power to rule well and do good but when this is not accepted the violater is struck by the hand of it that it may not betray its power to Anarchy and wickedness All the Laws of God have therefore come armed into the world with threats and denunciations of wrath that the rebellions he foresaw might not diminish ought from the greatness of them and the Judgments that gave being to those threats and made them true thunderbolts have come professedly to recompence the injuries done to his commands and revenge their quarrel that all may know There is a Government in the world 2. Judgments are a great expiation of the spiritual world it self God instructs the vicegerent powers under him to assoil themselves and a Nation from community in piacular actions by heaping the guilt upon the offenders head which proceeding separates the malefactor from the common mass and dismembring him from the society of which he was disinterests that in the perpetration This is the great meaning of that excommunication recommended by the Apostle as of so much use in the Church of God This was the sense of Sacrifices in which beasts commuted for men attracted like common sponges symbolical guilt upon themselves and bydeath or that ceremonial exile of the Scape-Goat were thrust out of the world for the atonement of it As therefore things set apart to holy ends and distinguished from the ordinary heap were Nazarited to God so are persons under this kind of devotion also and have a more unhappy sacredness upon them to his Justice being herein Catharmatical to the rest put out from among them forced down into the common receptacles of impurity For when unclean things or persons are reduced to their own place as the Apostle speaks of Judas they cease to defile We see throughout the world pollution arises from the boldness of things that for their unworthiness and impurity ought to be by themselves and bound in darkâ—ess appearing openly and joyning with bâ—tter company or when that which is of 〈◊〉 bâ—tter alloy moves downwards and submits it self to mean allays like the Sons of God falling in love with the daughters of men But when noisomness is stopped up in its own vaults and cast into its own lake those depurations preserve the common air wholsome and free and the great complex is not indamaged That therefore which the Justice of man is too little and weak for God who hath a much wideâ— Jurisdiction performs by extending his Anathematisms his greater or lesser excommunications as to his Justice appertains upon greatest Princes and Nations till at last by that Anathema Maran-atha of casting into Hell he makes a purgation so perfect that nothing out of it hath the least breath or exhalation of that great Sewer upon it For were not that segregation to the very utmost it would certainly have been an annihilation so incompatible is the foul state of things with the pure when brought to their everlasting and incommutable point 3. God gives a period to evil and iniquity comes to an end by his Judgments which sometimes fall upon the great Engineers the workers of iniquity and either causing them to drink the wine of astonishment that they have no further spirits and life for sin or cutting them off in the midst of their work force them to leave off to build their Babel sometimes he takes from them the instruments and matter with which they are at work so that they have no more to do or lastly the very Scene or Stage upon wâ—ich they are acting the Cities and Countries that bore them are as it were removed Now when God doth any of these there follows a great silence of evil and a cessation of the further defilement of it as a calm and stilness ensues when great Tyrants that have made a huge noise in the world go down into the nethermost parts of the Earth and lay their Swords under their heads or as when Cities that have filled that circuit of Earth they took up with the sound of their pomp and business become a desolation an unwonted quiet succeeds there even then there is a present stop upon that constant stream of wickedness that ran along with the duration of Princes and Cities in their flourish till as their power and greatness rises in some other part of the world so a like impiety grows up out of their ruines the whole course of time being spent in mowing down thosegreat repullulations of sin that are no sooner cut and gathered in one Age or place but they spring in another until the harvest of the Earth is fully ripe and the last time reaped by that sickle that leaves nothing to be done after it till then History swells with these descriptions and prophetick Writings most livelily represent such vindemiations and to the ends we have now discoursed 4. Herein also are the Creatures freed from their unworthy services the righteous use that God makes of them restoring them to that sanctity that stood in dedication to himself in which if they suffer a resemblance of punishment as they first received a seemingly culpable imitation of mans sin it is but purgatorial for the whole Creation is by Judgments in a degree now at last perfectly freed from soil and restored to its first and genuine clearness 5. Man himself who is the defiler and most defiled is led by affliction to purification if sin hath not eaten so deep into him that he is become one with that accursed thing and so himself fit to be made a curse This usefulness of Judgments shall be disposed into a distinct head of reason CHAP. VIII The third Reason expresses the connexion of these with Eternal Judgment Reas 3 THat men may have assurances of Judgment to come for these are but the little pieces and scalings of that great mountain of it with God lesser vials of that great Sea which in favour to the world are distributed to forewarn it of the last day In favour I say to the world there being nothing of like moment to communicate to it either as a warning against sin or obligation to repentance seeing it is a Judgment that comprehends all whereas possibility of escape lessens the motives from present punishment and also because the settlement it makes is unchangeable but many out-live their present calamities or at least are ransomed from them by death God therefore teaches us before-hand that so great vengeance These lesser sums are arguments