of Spirits to behold in the whole Creation especially in their own Natures the great Perfections of God surmounting themselves and much more the rest of the Creatures as Infinite doth Finite that so God may be understood and accordingly ador'd by them seeing Spirits in his own Image of Understanding and Likeness can alone so far know him as in a true and proper sense to adore him and the Glory of God in such an Adoration being the end of Creation it argues the necessity of such Creatures and so accomplish'd thus to give him his Glory As therefore by reviews of the Creatures in general and particularly of our own Minds and by Observations of what excells amongst all it is possible without Scripture though more darkly to find out the Perfections that are to be ascrib'd infinitely to God and when we come to Scripture and find that agreeing with though exceeding Natural Knowledge in its Attributions to God we have by this combination of Scripture and Reason Revealed and Natural Knowledge the praeeminence being easily yielded to Revealed the most satisfying Assurances of God we can have On the other side by considering the Excellencies and Perfections attributed to God in his Word and finding the same Lines drawn upon our own Minds observable both in the Discourses of Scripture concerning them and in our own experience though but according to the degree and model of Creatures we understand our own Souls more fully so that as the consideration of our selves the Creatures leads us without Revelation to understand God though not so clearly so these Oracles revealing God and all his Attributes more certainly and evidently to us reveal also our selves more plainly because they tell us we are made in his Image and Likeness and so by knowing God with greatest clearness we know our selves also most clearly for the Knowledge of our selves as to what concerns the clearness of it depends upon our Knowledge of God by the Scriptures more than our Knowledge of God depends upon the Knowledge of our selves by Natural Knowledge without Scripture Yet still the Knowledge of our own Souls where Men have no Revelation leads them best to the Knowledge of God as the Knowledge of God by Revelation leads us best to the Knowledge of our own Souls because God and the Soul do mutually represent one another God the Original Prototype and Infinite Exemplar Man's Soul the humble Representation and Copy Upon which Reason the Apostle having said We are his off-spring Acts 17. 28 29. immediately argues Forasmuch as we are the off-spring of God we ought not to think the Godhead like to silver and gold Our own Nature deriving from God instructs us better concerning him for seeing we our selves far excel all those things however heightned by Art he that gave us those Excellencies must needs have them in himself and in a transcendency As he that built the house hath more honour than the house and the Life excels the Picture So on the other side the Excellencies and Perfections of the Divine Being are every where given us in Scripture as the Rule of Composure for Man's Soul which could not be reasonable were not the being of it first given in the Image and Likeness of God and susceptive of the Divine Nature that is of the Virtues of it Touching the Souls Likeness to Angels we need not labour much but rather in comparing them with God the Original of both and occasionally onely illustrate the Doctrine of the Soul by observation of what we are taught in inspir'd Leaves concerning them though Philosophy hath not been altogether ignorant herein In general they are of a middle state between God and us nearer to God in that they are a higher Rank of Spirits disengag'd from Body much nearer to us in that they are Finite Spirits and God infinitely above them In speaking then of the Likeness of Man's Soul to God we must again have recourse to his Creation and when God had said Let us make Man in our own Likeness and Image and form'd the Body as a curious Statuary doth a most exact Statue he then breath'd into it the Breath of Life Now this Breathing of God argues he gave a great semblance of himself and that God deriv'd something from himself to Man's Soul that should more immediately express himself and was taken from himself as the Life Thus our Saviour breath'd upon his Apostles and made them Partakers of a Spirit that had a great Likeness to his own in the Infallibility and Heavenliness of his Doctrine the Power of working Miracles the Holiness of their Ministry and whole Apostolick Function God breathing Mans Soul it became so like him that some have call'd it A Particle of the Divinity a Kiss of God an Imprint of himself Now this Likeness of Man's Soul to God I believe not to be first in those moral Resemblances of the Truth Holiness and Goodness of God which speak God the best and in which to be like God is Mans Rectitude and Integrity and the Foundation of his Happiness as a Rational Agent nor onely in the Intellectual Faculties but also in those Attributes which speak God the Greatest though these be in this present state of Man much obscured even as the other Of the Soul of Man an Invisible Spirit hath been already discours'd Of other the Greatnesses of God giving a glance an eye of themselves upon Mans Soul we may also apprehend There is a Resemblance of his Infiniteness and Ubiquity of Presence in that swift and sudden Motion of Mans Soul from East to West summoning things of farthest distance into its presence by Thought and Intellectual Consideration the Intelligence he endeavours to hold with all the Action and Business of the World both Natural Civil and Moral the Correspondency he hath with Things Divine and Heavenly The Freedom and Liberty of the Increated Will is reflected in some degree in the Liberty of Mans Will that can be no way forc'd or compell'd in the vastness of his Appetite and Desire which though now irregular yet speaks the Original Greatness of his Soul and that Joy unspeakable he was intended for The Dominion of God in Mans Dominion over the Creatures and the vast and restless Ambition and Desire of Power and Empire so natural to him The Eternity of God in the Immortality and at last Unchangeableness given to Mans Soul The Divine Blessedness in the Lustre and Glory Man affects the Well-being he so inseparably from his Nature desires the Happiness he is capable of to which he was design'd and to which he is exalted by the Salvation of Christ From hence there is something like Creation in the great Works that have been done by Men and something in Humane Contrivances and Administrations like Providence And that there is a Force and Potency of Mans Spirit in a proportion resembling that Power of God that brings Things to pass in Matter or like the force of Angels that have wrought
and more especially as they are Divine and relate to God Because the knowledge of the Things themselves is most lost and the Understanding so cramp'd concerning them To be able therefore in such Treaties to speak so as to compare Spiritual things with Spiritual that is to observe the Decorum Spiritual Things require to be spoken with there is necessary the Divine Revelation of Scripture and the assistance of the Holy Spirit For so to speak is that Divine Vtterance or Elocution which the Apostle joins with Knowledge and magnifies as an Act of Grace to Fallen man in order to his Recovery derived from Jesus Christ the restorer of Humane Nature and is in various degrees distributed to the professors of Christianity and conveyed to them in the diligent Exercise of themselves in Sacred Writings 2. The Dulness and Inattentiveness of Hearers makes things hard to be interpreted especially things of great Retreat from ordinary Apprehension We cannot speak them plainly enough to make people conceive of them so as to be affected with them Yet notwithstanding we having so often occasion to converse with these great Sounds A Soul An Immortal Spirit and its Eternal State there is as great an obligation to search the Things as far as we can lest they appear to us no more than great sounds without as great a Substance whereas indeed their Substance and Reality exceeds their Sound how great soever And to encourage us in this most industrious search we are first to oppose to the Difficulty this Consideration That it is not so much the Unintelligibleness of the things themselves as the want of a due Intention of Mind in our inquiries as also an humble application of our selves to the Divine Assistance that makes it so hard to speak and hear of these Spiritual Subjects as Wise men and Christians For Discourses of them made up of such words as the spirit of God teaches jointed and put together by the same Wisdom and then aright received how significant and potent would they be how clearly representative to the Understanding how perswasive upon the whole Soul And seeing in these things we have a kind of natural Knowledge and Experience like Natural Arithmetique and Mathematiques which yet being adorn'd and cultivated by Art are much improved but especially because we have the Word of God so great a light to our feet and lamp to our paths in our Discourse concerning them and the promise of the Blessed Spirit to assist our Inquiries into Truth There is great reason of Confidence the closer our Researches and the more industrious our Explanations of the things are the brighter our apprehensions and the more prevailing our Knowledge of them will grow so as to enlighten and perswade others also Committing then this Undertaking to Divine Assistance I have chosen this great assumption of Elihu concerning Man to rest this Discourse upon There is a Spirit in Man and the Inspiration of the Almighty giveth him Vnderstanding Not that the Soul of Man and its excellent Nature deriving it self in Creation from God inspiring it is precisely and in the first place here intended or the original proceeding of the Finite Vnderstanding from the Infinite But the mighty Vigor and Force of this Spirit stirred up by God and the Understanding acted to the Height by a more gracious inspiration enlivening assisting and setting it on work in some peculiar persons and to some peculiar ends and employment is that which this Eloquent Reasoner immediately means and hath a particular respect to himself in it as notably assisted by God in his following Discourses Yet it plainly appears he alludes to that History of the First Creation the Tradition of which all Wise and Good men had conveyed and assured to them by undoubted Monuments for it very much agrees with and resembles that relation There is a Spirit in man says Elihu a mighty and Gen. 1. 26. excellent Spirit In the Image and Likeness of God as Moses describes it And the Breath of the Almighty giveth him understanding as Elihu speaks Which in the words of Moses is thus expressed God breath'd into his Face Gen. 2. 7. the Breath of Life and Man became a living Soul That Inspiration gave that Soul of Life whose Nature is Vnderstanding or Intellect and its Life Rational and Intellectual And herein rest fundamentally those extraordinary Vigors of which Elihu here speaks when God by a secondary Donation and Grace enables this Spirit and Vnderstanding to act like it self and to appear as it is For all excellent motions of Soul inspired by God into eminent personages are but Fairer Exemplifications of Creation and the Vniversal Nature of mans Soul So that while Elihu intends something further he assures the main position That Man in general hath a Great Spirit or Soul in him and an Vnderstanding or Intellect given him by immediate inspiration from God in Creation To give then a description of this Great Soul of man as a foundation of the whole Treaty concerning it I shall do it under these three following Heads 1. As it is considered in its substantial and Essential Nature and so I describe it An Invisible Spirit and Immortal made in the Image and Likeness of God and nearly allyed to Angels the very Nobleness and Excellency of mans Being above Brutes and Common matter 2. As it is to be understood in its immediate Emanations and Motions of it self and so it is An Intellectual Light indued with all the powers of Rational and Moral Action It is that by which a man breaths in the free and open Air of Reason and Intelligence It is the principle of such Action as is far above sense for if rightly ordered it bears the lofty Characters of Good Holy Virtuous and because it cannot sink upon a Common level if disorderly and irregular it carries the black indeed but Tremendous names of Sin Wickedness Vice 3. As it is to be known in its Resentments and so It is that which tastes and enjoys all Good or feels and endures discerns and perceives Evil and Misery If that be well the whole is well If that be wounded and in Torment there can be no Ease or Remedy And it is prepared to be a Great and Ample Receipt of and a most vehement Agent in its own Everlasting Happiness or Misery This Soul is that which is Eternally Happy or Miserable And though this Spirit be hid in the Body and the Body seems to be All yet it can indeed do nothing nor feel any thing but as the Soul does by it and this Body because as it is now it is an Instrument unfit is laid aside in Death without any prejudice to the Souls Action or Resentment but to the unspeakable Exaltation of it and at last a Body more fit for its use is given to it and which is every way proportion'd to its state whether of Happiness or Misery Now whosoever shall well weigh and consider this Soul will stand
the Soul quick of apprehension that presently enlarges much further upon it and many Instances there are of those who have cut their own way to Knowledge and such a one as hath been altogether untrodden before them Notwithstanding this the advantage of Instruction is evident and most evident in that part of Knowledge which concerns us towards God the Knowledge of his gracious Intentions towards us and our Duty to him wherein Divine Revelation hath been always the first and is ever the most sure and undoubted Guide Yet even in this the Spirit of Man is the Candle of the Lord For God doth not that he may make known himself create any new Understanding but applies himself in Grace to his first Creation the Soul of Man of which there is no abolition by Divine Illumination but as the Scripture speaks of the Sun the Light of it grows seven-fold The Candle that burnt dim and was even choak'd up is trimm'd and becomes Light on all sides and sends out its Beams from every part The Sum then is this The Soul of Man is the same Candle of the Lord whose Natural Power of Understanding is rais'd and made more clear by the Irradiation of Instruction whether the Power be an innate Force of Trying and Judging of Things by it self as it is a Faculty able to try and judge by the Nature of its Being or by some implanted Sentiments given to it with its Being or by Maxims to be collected by it self through the ministery and mediation of Sense However these things be it is always of the Nature of Understanding that there be a Resentment and Feeling of the agreeableness of Truth to it self There must be a Knowing in its own Spirit by every Intelligence the Reasonableness and Verity of the Things propos'd or there can be no Understanding Even Faith it self is an Intellectual that is an Explicite not an Implicite Act else it would be but a meer childish Memory of what hath been receiv'd as Catechism But all true Acts of Understanding have a Taste and Relish and what is propos'd to Mind must have a Gustfulness to it Knowledge and Faith not at all differing in this but onely that in things of Knowledge the Understanding arrives at that Knowledge or at least acquiesces in it upon Grounds more its own in things of Faith by Assurances more out of it self yet having Instruments of its own for the acceptation of such when so offer'd Characters and Tests within it self of what is offer'd whether it be worthy to be believ'd Resentments within it self of Pleasure or Trouble according to the Quality of what it hath receiv'd when so offer'd To draw all this that hath been spoken to what is mainly to be intended that is That the Understanding is the Candle of the Lord especially lighting us to himself Let us therefore inquire after some Principles that are Standards in the great Concernments we have with God which whether they are settled in the Soul by the Hand that created it or do immediately result from the Observation of Things without improved by the Mind running through its own Circuits and Trains of Reason concerning them or whether it is led into them by the Instructions God is still giving into the World or whether all these concur to their establishment in the heart of Man yet they are such as are universally consented in and are the Foundation of Religious Practice and also such a Receptacle for supernatural Revelation that there it may be tasted acknowledged and savoured as Divine with these as with a Helm the great Governour of Spirits turns them whither soever he listeth either for Conviction or Conversion Repentance and Reformation or as he pleases to Self-condemnation And all the boisterousness of their contrary affections are overrul'd and controll'd hereby Such Principles I esteem these Four Princip 1 That there is a God The Soul cannot move but it acknowledges God a Soul cannot look up but it sees God and this Principle in the Soul is a great Light God hath so carved himself into Understanding that there cannot be an Understanding in Motion and Activity but there must be a sight a conception an apprehension of such a Being as God as the Eye cannot open but it sees the Light or if it seems to lye hid yet upon the least collision as between the Flint and Steel upon any conflict of Thought with it self or with the Propose of this Truth from without this Light breaks forth It is manifest in men because God hath shewed it to them Rom. 1. 19. that is In the very making them Souls he hath set it in them In the first solemn action of the Understanding the acknowledgment of a Supreme Being rebounds and leaps up to them the Soul no sooner sees any thing by inward sense but it sees God the Author as a Man that sees the impression in the Wax presently thinks of the Seal Many Men endeavour to reject and disannul this Principle but they cannot deface it much less wear out the apprehension And when the Soul hath considered further and more vehemently the more it reasons the more it confirms and settles it self in the assurance of the Divine Being even when it endeavours to Reason out this Belief of it it prevails the more And besides what it hath within concerning God The invisible Things V. 20. of him from the Creation of the World are clearly seen being understood by the Things that are made and done even his eternal Power and Godhead So that the Soul can neither consider without nor within but it sees God Princip 2 That we have a Soul Many have violently oppressed this Sense thus far as to deny a Soul a Spirit distinct in its Essence yet they cannot but acknowledge a vehemency of Motion an Activity that teaches us more than the Beasts of the Field Every man must say There is a Spirit in Man above any other Creature a force and excellency of Motion the Motion of Reason and Understanding No Man can stir but he finds There is a Breath of the Almighty that gives him Vnderstanding Now these two Principles as they do mutually enlighten one another so they give great and illustrious light to all holy Practice they enlighten themselves for he that apprehends a God whose very Being is absolute Perfection retires out of all things bodily and weak to conceive aright of him and find him out and when he is thus understood the Notion of an inferiour and subordinate Spirit that yet hath a likeness to him is easie And whoever finds out in himself a diviner part than Body hath an easie ascent to God in whom all the lesser Perfections of his own Being are transcended and at the height And how do they both shine upon holy Practice seeing God is the great both Exemplar and Argument of all Goodness And no Man can suppose himself to have received such great powers of Understanding for mean much