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
it to any terms of obedience in hope of Grace A man thus affected feels the deadly stroke in that strength of his Soul that is to bear him up in every infirmity that is the spirit of a man which when it is wounded what can uphold it that it self carried all This is the power that poises every evil and judges of the spring from which it rises the extent of its virtue the effects and ends it is to reach And then compares with the evil the strength that is necessary to oppose it the means of prevention the proper allays in enduring it if it cannot be avoided the efficacies of removal according to all which that native courage and resolution keeps it self upright and sinks not under the evil But what can it do when the evil is so great that there is no match between all that the Soul can find either to protect or rescue it and that this very spirit of it falls split as with a shaft of Thunder is so dissolved and melted that it is ready to take any new shape having no further consistency in that formerly its own Now it is most evident an infinite wrath is too great for allay or remedy too constant for removal all valour and resolution against an infinite evil is first madness and foolish hardiness before it comes and when it is felt either softens into extream despondency or rages into despair That which breaks the spirit of a man thus is not yet simply the evil or the infiniteness of it but its failure in that which is its strength viz. innocency and freedom from guilt without which it can never be truly great and when it finds the want of this it sinks oppressed with its own weight Judgments are like the Rack to the Soul which work it to unbosom it self within it self as men are tortured into the confessions that they would else most earnestly have suppressed Josephs brethren at such a time confessed among themselves the sin they had so long hid from their own Souls as well as others Thus rise up particular sins leading into the universal foulness and obnoxiousness of the whole state so that if a man should offer to retire into himself he feels he is pursued into his very heart and yet finds no Sanctuary there when he would be quiet in his innocency and that is gone this is the profoundest abasement of a man Thus God girds us with our sins and fills our bowels with our guilt and even soaks our bones with our wickedness as with oyl till all we endure is no less our own Justice upon our selves then Gods This begets in a man earnestest desires of mercy from him without whom we cannot be merciful to our selves This makes repentance and returns to goodness as necessary to the Soul for its peace with it self as it is for its peace with God For all the sentences of God when ever they come into execution propagate themselves and beget the very same in the sinner himself who if he could but comfort himself with his integrity would with far more ease suffer from a power above him though injust to him A virtuous man conscious of nothing but rectitude and sincerity stands unshaken in that and values his untainted mind above the Tyrants spotted greatness however he lye at the power of it But whither should he flye that feels so great a severity from himself but out of himself into the arms of mercy and to the re-innocency of repentance Into the arms of that mercy which is superior to the natural compassion of a man to himself and to that re-innocency of repentance the only refuge of the Soul when vexed and pursued with its guilt and the self-abhorrencies springing from it which make it intolerably weary of its own thoughts and retorted looks upon its state That supreme Goodness that first drives a man out of his sins by these interior perplexities into the necessities of repentance for who can endure himself in that foulness his eye is continually upon hath also prepared the same repentance to be the pleasant and consolatory retirement of it in which it returns into a reconciliation with it self even as with God through Jesus Christ CHAP. XV. Of Judgments exciting Prayer 3. ALL anguishes of the Soul either from its outward trouble or those internal afflictions from the sense of sin do most naturally run out into Prayer and address to God Whoso gives them not that vent restrains and forcibly imprisons so free and inclinable a motion of his own Soul These desires towards God and his mercy when they are cloistered in sullen and irreligious breasts like strong liquors confined against their will or like the earnest winds that cannot endure their prison find some out-let to themselves so that sometimes unawares somtimes extorted invocations of highest goodness have come from them who have studiously compressed those their most genuine sentiments but not only from the truly humble and religious breast but even from unprejudiced Nature they have much a greater liberty and take their free course Now no mans Soul goes out to God for relief in misery but it hath some considerations of those great Principles that make such a motion reasonable and of such attendants of these desires that may make the address to God decent and honourable All which concenter in the necessary change of the heart and life If he that wrought a miracle in Christs Name could not lightly speak evil of him with how great an impropriety doth that man approach God and his Goodness who intends a continued defiance to him by his sins How doth he bran down that sense of divine mercy leading to repentance the consideration of which gives him leave to hope well from God This then shews the advantage of affliction in which these motions of the Soul to God are as natural as the very desires of relief simply considered all are ready to visit God in affliction and to pour out a prayer when his chastning is upon them God makes no doubt of a very bad sort of men that in their affliction they will seek him early It being the highest act of impenitency Daniel complains of in his time and the seventh seal of their Judgment that they made not their prayer to God that they might turn from iniquity and understand his truth The powers of mens Souls are never in a more fading condition nor their sins in greater violence then when they call not upon God nor stir up themselves to take hold of him CHAP. XVI A Recollection of this Discourse to its proper purpose THis Discourse of the efficacies of Judgment we have so placed that it is most applicable to particular persons but when they have a due effect there â—hey do from single breasts conspire into a general air especially when they affect the hearts of personages that are of power and example from them they result upon whole bodies of people and give at least some
tincture to the state of times that they become more sober and of a better inclination For there is apparently a Genius and temper of an Age even as there is of persons and a common constitution of a Nation as of one man which is also capable of such kind of alterations in Morality as in single men which are produced by the Cardinal changes that fall out in and upon them Yet seeing no man can determine what this will be that is whether the Age he lives in will be reformed by Judgments when it hath so far corrupted as to make it self the seat of them seeing these general amendments grow not upon private men nor so much as upon lesser fraternities except as they meet in greater incorporations or spring from the highest branches of Principality which as in the tree inverted are indeed the roots of all publick associations and most often of their manners That being then incertain to us that is out of our power it is good for every man to look well to the state of his own Soul that if he find not any exemption from the common evil yet he may be inrolled in eternal mercies which is a Cabinet always removed from the possibilities of danger and indeed these powerful operations of Grace are most designed to the eternal happiness of man even when they pass through these austerer methods wherein God is very good for if he takes the present state and moulds it any way for our everlasting peace and life it is an act of infinite mercy All true goodness hath its present use in this world it honours God makes the best composure of the Soul offers a blessing to the world now but it doth not like the creatures of time determine it self here It doth not as those faint things breathe out and dye but shines a light in the world keeping the most perverse and crooked generation from utter darkness and is at last translated from hence to a higher Orbe of Glory and eternal lustre but never suffers extinction No man then loses by his reformation or the good effect of evil though through general obstinacy in wicked ways the Judgment goes on and he dyes in the common calamity for to fit men for enjoyment of prosperity here is but a contingent end of affliction eternal blessedness is only certain to it While good men are thus provided for the refractoriness of the Age or other particular persons is no disproof of the usefulness of Judgments any more then that many dye under the methods of Physick is an argument against so worthy a Science When men under the hand of God have nothing worthy repentance rising in them 't is deadly As when a Physitian purges yet the distemper continues and the blood is still impure after frequent Phlebotomy for it argues all is discust the whole mass is corrupted and nothing to be purged but what is it self for impurity still swims up after all evacuations God is weary of striking impenitents in order to a cure they must dye as those in whom Nature hath no resistance to make against the prevailing distemper the whole head is sick and the whole heart faint and those powers perished that should be aided by medicine The principles of recovery that are as the handles by which God apprehends the Soul are lost by great obdurâ—cies in sin men dye like beasts under those strokes of which they understand no more then that they oppress them This is that irremediable malady of sin whereof Nations and persons dye and are written upon as Ahaz that trespassed more under Gods hand This is that King Ahaz CHAP. XVII An Inquiry into the Freedom of God in his distribution of Judgments with a solution of doubts concerning it WE have thus far endeavoured to speak the reason of Scripture touching the Judgments of God which are all holy just and good faithful to his own Glory and the true interest of the world There remains nothing within our present intention that may either establish or clear from the objections raised against it this grand Position That all the evils we endure are righteous Judgments of God but to reconcile with it the liberty and arbitration God uses in over-looking and passing by some times and persons that are free from those strokes upon which yet the main reasons of Judgments we have assigned are concurrent This is first to be resolved into the uncontrollable Counsel of God who giveth no such account of his matters but that his paths are still hid in the Sea and his foot-steps in the great waters This we know he is righteous in all his ways and holy in all his works what he does is therefore to conclude our thoughts who being but upon the skirts and borders of knowledge understand much more what is fit to be done by what we see him do then by our own conjectures which if not so bounded are vain and rove incertainly in the wild of things His actions are the great marks by which our understandings are to be guided that they may not dangerously miscarry If then we observe a void place of Judgments let us rebuke our own apprehensions when we take upon us to think it fit Justice should there have planted it self with the acknowledges of the Dominion it hath over all times and persons when we see its displays in the world we may then understand God is giving some present check to sin and its grassant impurity that carries such efficacies along with it as seem meet to himself But though we thus ascribe greatness to God yet may we secondarily observe those moments of satisfaction we receive out of his Word and the reason of it which are enough to answer any scruples concerning the non-appearance of his Justice in a season when it seems requisite it should be seen and to free us out of that maze of doubts that falls in therewith viz. the inequality of his dealings either with good men compared with evil men or towards good and evil men compared each sort among themselves for when either the evil pass peaceably through and out of the world and feel no bands in their death but good men have waters of a full cup wrung out unto them or when one good man hath the candle of God shining in his Tabernacle washes his steps in butter and hath the Rock pouring out oyl to him and another though fearing God eats in darkness all his days disconsolate either with publick or private calamities or lastly when one evil man fares wel in the common prosperity and another of the same stamp is covered with a cloud all his days either in the general adversity or his particular infelicity there is an appearance of partiality and seeing all of both qualities arrive each at their own ends any solution taken from those ends seems insufficient All these are so many scandals to this Doctrine which yet true reason of Scripture plentifully removes There is enough too