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
to resolve us how the disadvantage of living out of the discipline of affliction is recompensed to those who possibly had they lived under it would have repented in sack-cloth and ashes All these I say to him who reverences Gods Ark is wisely conversant in the things revealed that pertain to us and repines not that the dark waters and thick clouds of the sky are Gods Pavillion are so far unridled that he finds the benefit of that promise The humble he will guide in Judgment and the meek he will teach his way the secret of the Lord is communicated with them that fear him for he leads them into more who expect his admission then they can obtain who cutting their way to themselves ravish the cloud of an empty imagination when they most please themselves with what they think they have found out and comprehended The Scriptures speak wisdom but not the wisdom of this world which is brought to nought not that which he towres into who is vainly pufft up with his fleshly mind but that which is to sobriety let us then measure by the line of it to these foregoing thoughts to which it reaches so as to bring them into subjection 1. As to the Justice of God it can have no injury because there is an Eternal Judgment so high and substantial that it doth infinitely honour satisfie and recompense whatever Justice can seem to suffer Nothing is under a necessity to shew it self but that which is confined to such a moment and if it loses that lyes hid for ever Things which are poor that have only an appearance and not a retired treasure are in haste to be known small revenges are hastily executed but nullum tempus occurrit Regi The deep waters run silently and what hath Eternity to give it room and space slumbers not though it make no present noise God hath the highest reasons of his patience the perfect strength of his Being and the vastness of everlasting Ages to explain himself and his displeasure in All opinations of men against him and his Judiciary Providence vanish like a dream when he appears for his coming constrains belief commands full assent and nothing contrary dares then be seen nor can it be traced but in that horrour and condemned disappointment to which it hath betrayed the masters of it The apprehensions that have footing only in time are not to be valued for time it self is so little and inconsiderable a thing that though it is greater or less when it is measured by its own line yet it is but the dust of the ballance the drop of the Bucket nothing less then nothing when it is set by Eternity when any immortal Being especially the prime Being who only hath immortality hath the grasping of it it is squeezed to nothing while it is within it self judged by its own Rules and the creatures of it it is somewhat but to God the Grandeur and pride of it a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past and as a watch in the night the contempt God and his Justice endure from it as soon as ever it sinks into Eternity are as if they had never been one glance of that Judgment immediately consumes it This consideration doth also abundantly remove the inequalities of time if we suppose them never so great and level good men among themselves and bad men among themselves and so precisely distinguishes good and bad one from another that there remain no possible remembrances of the state of this world nor any thing that should call in question or diminish ought from the clearness of Gods dealing Eternal rewards and punishments swallow up all distinctions of time which hereupon become no more then imagination or opinion when true Judgment takes place or then thought and fancy when knowledge and reality enter the pleasures and happinesses the torment and complaint of it are all gone all that is great in time is the manner and temper of an immortal Spirit in and upon it which is an inchasement of Eternity into it and makes it valuable for the ordinableness of it to an everlasting condition of things all of it else is but like infancy and child-hood compared with manly estate that is vanity and folly whatever puerile age seems to it self it is known to have nothing worthy in it but the beginnings and dawns of that mind which education improves and ripens to a strength in elder years for which it is formed The contempt it hath of severer Judgment detracts nothing from the solidity and dignity of true reason but is imputed to its silliness and imperfection the pleasures of it are condemned as unworthy a man The very same Soul censures and even despises it self in its childish estimations discourses and actions when it feels it self man and remembers them not but with dislike or compassionate scorn If after-time then blots out the things fore-going with so strange an oblivion if manhood doth so efface past child-hood and death yet expunges much more then these how exceedingly more doth another world wipe out all things pertaining to this Moralities only remaining and transmitted through all without loss from whence accrues to good men greater glory through their sufferings and increase of torment to the evil from their pleasures with which they are upbraided hereafter and very probably each of these arising to both sorts proportionable to the difference they have met with here in the world Further different presences of God and the consolations of his Spirit may be a present reward to good men in the worst times service of God even to a kind of Martyrdom speedier translations to Heaven greater degrees of Honour and blessed Immortality are much better to them then an ease and quiet that must within such a number of years expire however Even as stings of conscience and longer heaping up guilt and wrath may make it less tolerable for evil men who have lived in prosperous times then for others of the same kind who have been preserved from so much sin and awakened to some sense of God by adversity their present trouble thus lessening an eternal punishment except to those who have been brawned to a greater contempt of God and hardned in the fire against him whose case deserves no consideration From all which we see there is no such necessity upon God to punish now nor any so complainable inequality in his distributions to good and bad men For when either of these ranks of men know themselves in that unchangeable state they will reflect upon nothing in time but as it hath paid something to Eternity and conveyed thither what remains and abides If then any thing aggrandizes that happiness or asswages that misery however it hath been resented with grief and deploration here it is then put on as a crown or applyed as a Lenitive to pain but that which is blessed with no addittament of Glory is laid aside as worthless how pleasant soever in the
Soul that had so well commanded a body should have a glorious one to shine in and that out of the ashes of that body in which such a Soul dwelt and taught it virtue another more perfect should rise In the mean time would not just cause of complaint arise if Fortune or a blind course of things should have any dispose of but the outside of such a man Who would not desire there should be a God who with skill first exercises virtue into a lustre and then rewards it Who that hath any love to virtue would not bewail it if there were no other difference between virtue and vice then what is seen here and rejoyce in an Eternal Judgment that would illustrate and crown it Who would not wish virtue ennobled with the love of so blessed a Being as God and that it should be made more considerable by pleasing him that it should be enriched by the knowledge of Jesus Christ so great an Exemplar of it in our nature that it should be assisted by the blessed Spirit of Grace without which it cannot sustain it self And who that behaves himself thus in the world as we have described can but think the Principles of Christianity would best fit his purpose and manner of life and therefore be willing to espouse them For though this we have insisted upon be all a man can do and that he must do to retain any thing oâ— the honour of a man it is yet but poor and unhappy if separated from the hopes and promises of immortality very jejune and cold when alone virtue without Christianity is but like the temporary and perishing things of the world that make a blaze and then go out Though that of virtue be the purest yet it is as soon quenched by death and while it is it wants much of the true alloy and reason For so great an object of goodness whom continually to love and adore so great a Spectator and Judge so gracious a Father of Spirits and their excellent endowments as God makes as great a difference in these things as the light of the Sun doth in the world compared with the light of the Moon and as the influences of the one surpass those of the other so do the virtues falling from the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ excel those chiller irradiations of Moral Disciplines when separated from Diviner Fire But we have thus far argued from the sentiments of Morality upon Sense that we might from thence conclude Seeing there is no security for man in his compounded state of Body and Soul and that yet the appetite of man contends towards happiness with so much earnestness he must either be a beast stifling all motions but of sense and the just present satisfaction so that he may enjoy himself when things are well and suffer as a beast when evil falls upon him without any agitation of a mind or else he must be an Angel removing his chief interests out of the body This wise men without any suspition of subordination from Christianity confessed and therefore the ground on which true Religion states all things must needs be to Morality that is not sullen and prejudiced the most acceptable For sagest Ethicks guided by Christ indeed as Cyrus by God though they knew him not acknowledged this conclusion of the matter That there must be some higher end of men then the body and that all his condition must be resigned to that and hereupon waded as far as they could into those deeper Doctrines of the Immortality of the Soul a Judgment a future state besides that which was much opener to them the acknowledgment of the First Being God Now he that upon these grounds dyes to his flesh to live in his Soul is not far from the Kingdom of God and Christ which teaches a man to deny himself and sow his present life to let it dye as a grain of wheat which except it dye abides alone that is can never be any more then it is but loses it self at last whilst that which submits it self to a short death in expectation of a better resurrection propagates it self to Eternity The assurances of Everlasting life at the end and in the mean time that no imaginable thing either height or depth life or death what is present or to come shall separate from that love of God in Christ which makes more then a Conqueror in all are true grounds of the happiness of man and only sufficient herein All these Christianity hath the honour to reveal and yet Morality hath so great need of to impe it self with that if it were it self alone it must needs adore this Revelation however as it is blended in men with corruption of Nature and planted among those roots of bitterness that spring up and defile it it may profess an emnity yet certainly as those Heathen Princes paid a reverence to that God that had foretold their successes by his Prophets so it is impossible but all wise use of reason must needs say of the Doctrine of Christ There is a divine thing in it seeing it doth not only establish the same rules of life with that reason but advances the encouragements of them to the very Heavens CHAP. XII Of the much higher Elevation of Reason into Christianity received from the improvement of innate and revealed Principles concerning Judgments HItherto we have from evidence of sense stated things as if man finding them in a posture generally adverse to him were by his own wisdom and virtue to make the best of himself and to rise by it as much above the condition of the creatures below him as his understanding exceeds theirs and discoursing thus we have fathomed the excellencies of Christian Religion without which Morality sinks very low But we come now into a debate upon those Principles ingraffed in mans heart heightned by the Word of God even as the sensitive Soul is elevated by the presence of the rational or as the reason is advanced by the Spirit of God inhabiting it viz. That there is a God an Eternal condition that all calamities upon humane Nature are from God and his Justice for sin And who that is wise would leave so strong a sense as his Soul hath of these things unsatisfied unanswered Or why should a man be truly dealt with by his eye and ear his tast and touch and that common sense that weilds them and deceived by that inward intelligence his mind Why should it be true there are wars plagues c. and that these are grievous and destructive and not be true that God punishes by them Sense is sure of the one innate reason of the other the reports of which are as confident and earnest and if heeded most prevailing and effective For as the universality of men believe sense about its own objects so do they acknowledge these Principles even against themselves when in their evil actions they wander from them If evil practice be taken for an argument