not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God for God is in heaven and thou upon earth therefore let thy words be few In this farther advice Solomon confirm's and open's his meaning in the former The mouth we are not to be rash with nor suffer our heart to utter any thing before God by is the mystical mouth or tongue of the natural Spirit Comprehensively signifying all its variety of expressing it self in outward action and a sound of words as also the inward agitation of mind in thought and desire The latter is call'd by Philosophers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the thought or inward word of the mind or spirit of Man within himself the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the outward expression of it to other Men. The Mystical Tongue of the natural spirit in this comprehensive sense of the Word Mouth or Tongue we are not to be rash with nor hasty to utter any thing or word before God by is abundantly more untamable and unreclaimable in its exorbitances then the figurative Litteral Tongue And of this mystical extent and significancy abovesaid is Tongue to be understood Jam. 3. 8. The Tongue can no Man tame it is an unruly evil full of deadly Poison 〈◊〉 kind of Beasts 〈◊〉 Fishes and Serpents or Creeping things in Air Earth and Water have bin tamed by Man But the Tongue his own Spirit in the unruly Life Motion and Various 〈◊〉 of it can no Man tame This is beyond Man's Power or Skill And more so when beside all the Evil and Enmity to God found in its fallen earthly state of nature and fiery Zeal of love to and for the defence of its own Life Will and Way Specially when restor'd and clensed from filth of flesh 't is also set on fire of Hell This may seem to import its being brought by Satan's farther workman-ship into a fix'd state of Flaming Zeal and Love for and to it self with him in unchangable Enmity to God and his Spirit of Grace This full account of the Tongue the same with the Mouth here have we with the Litteral Figure that little Member that boasts great things and with its little fire or heat in the beginning of a contention kindles a great matter encreases into a huge flame and tumult so as frequently to bring two persons or more before in Union into a final seperation and an irreconcileable parting-blow to their dying Hours Thus is the Tongue in Letter and Mystery put together a fire a World of Iniquity defiling the whole Body or Man and setting on fire the course of nature and all this beyond Retrieve or Remedy when it is once set on fire of Hell Any Man then that 's reduced by the Cross of Christ the only effectual and powerful Bit Bridle and Helm for ruling or bringing about his natural spirit more untamable and unreducible to order then any wild Horse Mule Psal. 32. 9. or other Beast more ungovernable then a Ship in a Storm or other dangers into due order peace quietness and right demeanour towards God and Man any or every such Man is a perfect Man not offending in Word but able on all accounts to bridle and order his whole Body or Man All this have we Jam. 3. 2-8 In many things we offend all say's that Apostle that is the natural Spirit in its own will course and way at best worst 〈◊〉 any intermediate condition is a continual Offender without any intermission in principle and all manner of operation or motion desire thought word or action The very Spirit it self is a Root of Bitterness bearing Gall Wormwood Briars and Thorns in Enmity and Rebellion against God Yea in the very awak'ned Spiritual Saint 〈◊〉 perfectly Crucified and Slain Dead and Buried in the mystical Grave of Christ 't is a continual contrary-minded Warrier and Fighter against God and the Saint's own spiritual mind Gal. 5. 17. Rom. 7. 22 23. Thus have we by Solomon Paul and James a sad strang but true description or Character of the temper and condition of the Spirit of Man within the compass of nature or in the Sphere of its own activity corrupt or righteous It 〈◊〉 in wickedness or in the wicked one 1 Jo. 5. 19. Satan has a twofold party in mankind the corrupt Profane Heathen and a mistaking righteous Professing first 〈◊〉 People Both are against Christ's little Flock Spiritual Saints a third party in this World 〈◊〉 in Heaven We find the mention of all three Psal. 2. and Rev. 12. 12. Inhabitants of Earth and Sea a mystical earthly Jerusalem party of Professors in all Ages and a prosane party foaming out their own shame casting up Mire and Dirt as a mystical 〈◊〉 Sea these are all of them against the dwellers in Heaven that have their Conversation 〈◊〉 Heaven affections fix'd on things above Another wonder Of Satan's two parties in the World Professors in first-covenant Holiness as gained by him and made his Synagogue in a fix'd Enmity to the Gospel prove all along his most serviceable Instruments as the righteous Scribes and Pharisees against Christ and his whole Gospel-ministry his choicest Subjects the strongest frontier Garrisons in his whole worldly Dominion or Universal Monarchy before and all along the four Universal Humane Monarchies with the Romane or last whereof his also is to be Perioded They are the signal with-standers of Gospel-Light and of all Christ's true Gospel-Witnesses in all times whose Testimony is Tormenting to all that dwell upon the Earth or take up with confidence in but earthly restor'd natural Principles for Salvation These false Apostles Messengers or Emissaries of Satan that so generally amuse Men with his accursed other Gospel for Christ's true and blessed one are his most useful Engineers to keep off the true Gospel and Preachers thereof in the whole World Why What if Christ's Messengers or Ambassadours should have a hearing Why they are the only dangerous Invaders of Satan's Universal worldly Monarchy discoverers of all the intriqu's wiles and most subtile devices by which he 〈◊〉 on his whole Mystery of Iniquity manages all his affairs for the maintaining his ground against any Encroachments or Dawnings of the Kingdom or Spirit of Christ. So long as he can keep out Christ's Gospel as the most formidable Blasphemy and Heresy in the World and make his Law-Gospel pass currant with the generallity of Professors he reckon's himself well and his matters at a very good pass And if he have thus prevail'd wonderfully all along this World even in the very day of Christ's and his Apostles Ministry what 's to be expected in this latter day the worst of times He has alway's in a manner engaged magistratical Humane Powers as under his influence and steerage on his Gospel's-side to assist against Christ's help first-Covenant Brethren against the second a worldly Church against a heavenly Hypocritical Sinners in Zion against true Spiritual Zion-Saints in their Controversies with them the Orthodox Doctrin of Man's Wisdom on natur's
this riddle of providence in outward dispensations to friends as 〈◊〉 and foes as friends He sees not this mystery that when the wicked spring as the grass and all the workers of Iniquity flourish it is that they shall be destroyed for ever Psal. 92. 6 7. They are in their various self-pleasing wicked ways but treasuring up Wrath for themselves against the day of Wrath and posting to eternal death as happy as they both seem to themselves and others to be God's abused patience and long-suffring towards them will be found at winding up a signal aggravation of their sin and punishment Yet mean while God magnifies his mercy towards them in giving them so large a time to take notice of and advantage by his instructing warnings for preventing the wrath to come The mystical-wicked first-covenant Brethren fix'd in enmity to the 〈◊〉 do long live and prosper generation after generation in union of mind with the Devil filling up the measure of their Fathers in the highest and most criminal wickednesses Wolves in Sheep's-clothing are they Serpents a generation of Vipers that have drunk down the old Serpent's poyson of unchangeable enmity to God and 〈◊〉 then can they escape the damnation of Hell Mat. 23. 31 33. They 〈◊〉 and follow their first 〈◊〉 Fathers in former generations as persecuting Zelots against the second and so pass along into the same everlasting darkness after them and never see light Psal. 49. 13 19. To prevent this dangerous fixure in the righteousness of Man in the first covenant against the Gospel-life and new-creature righteousness of God in the second Solomon advises all capable of repentance or change of mind as follows Vers. 16. Be not righteous over-much neither make thy-self over-wise why shouldst thou destroy thy felf Heb. be desolate Man is righteous over-much or long in the first-Covenant when he over-much values it and lay's to great a stress upon it when he trusts rest's in and builds upon the changeable fallible principles thereof for Salvation On this mistake he refuses Christ's heavenly call to him to come up out of the life and image of the earthy into his heavenly out of the perishing life wisdom and righteousness of man in the first-covenant principle into the everlasting Life Wisdom and Righteousness of God in the second An overvalue for and unwarrantable security in the first endangers man's shutting the door of his heart and deafning his ear to Christ against his gracious offer of and invitation into the second So by preferring the Law-righteousness of man to the Gospel-life and righteousness of Christ and God do men destroy themselves bring the desolating final judgments of God upon their guilty heads This get they by being over-much righteous and over-wise as putting a value upon such righteousness and wisdom of their own nature above what is written of it 1 Cor. 4. 6. in God's Oracles of Truth Job while yet much in the dark as to what God was about to do with him said tho' he were perfect yet would he not know his own soul but despise even his righteous life Job 9. 21. The professing Jews blasphem'd and crucified Christ Paul breathed out threatnings and slaughters against the Disciples of the Lord from a fond conceit over-value for and 〈◊〉 in the restor'd life of the first Covenant and the wisdom and righteousness of man therein so as to prefer it to the everlasting Life Wisdom and Righteousness of God in the second This 〈◊〉 when Paul was happily deliver'd from he found his Jewish professing Brethren still in Rom. 10. 1 3. They were ignorant of God's Gospel Righteousness in the second and so zealous for their own Law-righteousness in the first While thus ignorant as he once and so pardonable and curable he earnestly pray'd they might so accept of and receive his Gospel-instructions that they might be saved He had greater love and better desires for them than they yet knew how to have for themselves He compassionatly bemoans and laments over 〈◊〉 on the same account Christ himself did Mat. 23. 37 38. O Jerusalem Jerusalem c. Behold your house is left unto you desolate Here 's the temper of the mystical earthly Jerusalem professor in all times and places under Law or Gospel They have bin all along generation after generation found in a posture of 〈◊〉 towards all right words brought to them in Christ's Gospel-spirit of true 〈◊〉 declaring the death of nature in the first-Covenant undispensably necessary to their sinding eternal life in the second The final refusal of the Lord's Counsel herein will render their first-Covenant house of feasting eternally desolate This twofold errour one the certain consequent of the other even the placing Salvation in the first and finally rejecting the life of God in the second is certain Damnation Man establish'd in his own righteousness as a state of Salvation is the unchangeable enemy of God Christ all spiritual Saints and Gospel 〈◊〉 This unlawful use of the Law or their own Law-life against Christ's everlasting Gospel-life amounts to that love of the World or of themselves in their worldly first-creation Law-life of Nature that 's enmity to God and his Gospel-spirit of Grace This is spiritual and most criminal adultery Jam. 4. 4. Law-life thus abused is the leaven of the Pharisees a root of bitternesses against the Gospel-life and Truths of Christ with mystically profane Esau Heb. 12. 15 16. Such wilful opposing instead of obedient submitting to God's Righteousness Rom. 10. 3. and Jam. 4. 7. keep 's Men from ever entering into God's Righteousness David the Type and Christ the Truth intercede against such incorrigible enemies Let 〈◊〉 not come into thy righteousness Psal. 69. 27. Let their habitation be desolate ver 25. ' Be not then righteous over-much or over-long by over-much valuing and over long staying in that first-Covenant life place or state whence by the death and loss of all thou art there possess'd of the true spiritual Children of Christ break forth into the new-creature-life of God Hos. 13. 13. Be not over-pleas'd transported and delighted with the fading righteous life of thy own nature so as to be leaven'd and sowr'd into a bitter enmity against that spiritual life of Christ in which alone any can be saved Prefer not thy mortal to Gods immortal righteous life Why shouldst thou destroy thy self or be 〈◊〉 and undone for ever This by turning all the fading Life Righteousness Wisdom Beauty and Glory by Christ himself set up in and put upon thee into a perfect abomination to him and cause of final desolation to thy self Vers. 17. Be not over-much wicked neither be thou foolish why shouldst thou die before thy time Heb. not in thy time Here 's another branch of Solomon's advice to another sort of Men whom he call's wicked living in the vile affections and lusts of the corrupt spirit of nature refusing the Redeemer's purchas'd and offered Deliverance out of that most palpably evil and shameful state of
spirit into you by which ye shall rightly understand all my words vers 23. While men ramble after their many things spend all their labour and money for that which is not Bread Satans divers and strange Doctrines they come to be established in their own Nature with his meats to their final destruction in stead of being established with the Grace and Doctrine of Christ for their everlasting 〈◊〉 Heb. 13. 9. All our Old things Life Light Wisdom Righteousness c. must pass away that we may receive Christ's new 2 Cor. 5. 17. Vers. IX There is no remembrance of former things neither shall their be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after All former things excellencies and perfections found in the natural first-creation state before the fall or gradual restorations of the like since are of no account or remembrance with God Nothing short of his Life of everlasting righteousness set up in Man brings him under his approbation-Seal Men must be unmade broken down and pull'd up by the roots as to that Building and Life they were set up in by God himself in their first-creation-make in order to be new Vessels of his newness of Life by a second God planted in Man an incorrupt seed of corruptible Life that in its utmost flourish and fruitfulness amounts but to a fading flower by his left hand in a first-creation He offers to plant and quicken up in him on the obedient death and removal of all this Root and Branch Tree and Fruit an incorruptible seed of an everlasting Life by his right hand in a new-creation of him See both Seeds with a negative on the former in all born of the latter 1 Pet. 1. 23. This only and man therein will be of everlasting account and remembrance with God the other never in time past in innocency or any restorings of it since or time to come by the like restorings of it in following generations under Satans reign or the full perfection of it under Christ's reign which shall come after Vers. XII I the Preacher was King over Israel in Jerusalem What more contemptible than Satan's mercenary Priests and Preachers of Lies What or who more honourable than the Preachers of God's Truth King Solomon and a far greater than he Christ himself the high Priest of God is the Preacher of his Truths and Declarer of his Counsels to Angels and Men. Preaching Christ's Gospel is the best of Callings Satan's the worst of Trades Solomon the Preacher and Writer of this Book was King over litteral Israel in Jerusalem and therein a Type of Christ King over the whole spirituall Israel of God in the New-Jerusalem In the all-discerning Spirit of Prophecy does Solomon reflect upon his former vain thought for finding true happiness or the way towards it in the single wisdom of his own enlightned nature however eminent as follows Vers. XIII And I gave my heart to seek and search out by Wisdom concerning all things that are done under Heaven This sore travel hath God given to the Sons of Man to be exercised therewith Solomon here in the true preaching Spirit of Jesus reflects upon and gives an account of his own mistaking wisdom and thought about blessedness and of his sad experience therein I gave my heart to search out by my own Wisdom wherein I excelled others concerning all things under Heaven The result was he found this sore travel and labour of his natural mind to be what God has given to the sons of men to exercise afflict or humble them by In the new-creature Wisdom of God he finds the vanity of his own and his vain design thought and labour therein He finds that and all the things or works and fruits thereof to be but earthly from beneath below that Life wisdom and things of God he had now the experience of in him under Heaven So he at once confesses declares and corrects his vain thought of reaching knowing and doing all things relating to his true blessedness therein By way of Recantation toward the close of his Life and day in this World he confesses the vanity of his thought and unprofitableness of all his labour therein calling it as by sad experience he had found it a sore travel He declares also God's design in letting even Saints for a season run their course there to humble and Afflict them and so dispose them to a willing surrender of that for a better Life and Wisdom in which alone they may find what they were under an impossibility seeking for Thus God let Job and his three Friends run to the end of their Line in their own Wisdom and Spirit as Disputers of this world till at an absolute puzzle and period none of them being able to unriddle the design and methods of God's Wisdom towards Job under that dispensation of the Cross. Then he opens the mouth of his fore-runing Messenger 〈◊〉 to instruct them all in another Wisdom and Spirit on which they were 〈◊〉 answered no more but left off speaking Job 32. 2. 15. Enmity to God inseperable from the highest restored Life and Wisdom of Man must needs render his utmost labour therein about happiness a sore travel God in greatest love on Man's fall 〈◊〉 the mystical Ground Earth or earthly state of Man's nature and that for Man's sake so as to render that enmity to him contracted by the Fall unextinguishable otherwise then by the perfect death thereof Thorns and Thistles shall it bring forth say's God to Adam Gen. 3. 17. 18. Both the litteral and also mystical earth of Man's Nature in the very restored Life of the Law Image of the earthy and righteousnes of Man fell immediatly under this Curse All in the best works of their Law-life are under this Curse Gal. 3. 10. What Thorns and Thistles was Paul when eminent herein bringing forth in a fierce persecuting enmity against Christ and all his Gospel Truths and Saints Phil. 3. 6. Act. 26. 11. The death of nature then the right way not in but to sin so that sin becomes dead in them not they in it under the Cross and Gospel-sword is undispensably necessary to the ridding man of all evil and capacitating him to receive a Life of everlasting righteousness wherein he will find himself possessed of all good a state wherein 't is as impossible not to please God in every thing as in his own Life at best ever to please him in any thing This comes Man to by obediently complying with God's design in gladly receiving his sentence of Death within him as Paul and so getting rid of his own Law-spirit of bondage enmity and death and all his sore travel and labour therein to no purpose as to his grand concern in exchange for the Gospel-life of Christ and therein glorious liberty of the sons of God an everlasting freedom to good only and from all Evil of sin or punishment for ever Then all our works are wrought in
God Joh. 3. 21. and God works all our works in us and for us We therein are co-workers with God All such works are ever acceptable to him and most easy delightful and profitable to man What all works in man's earthly Life and Nature under Heaven amount unto we find yet farther Vers. 14. I have seen all the works that are done under the Sun and behold all is vanity and vexation of spirit Solomon in the new light and wisdom of God positively concludes the most rectified Principles of nature and man's utmost fruitfulness exactest walking best works designs counsels thoughts and purposes therein to be but vanity in themselves and vexation of spirit to himself The more rich and full Man is in the righteousness wisdom and glory of his own nature the more apt to grow offended at the Cross that comes to seize and set fire on all and hereby the more is God offended at him A confidence in such encreasing riches as are but vanity encreases vexation of spirit every way Vers. 15. That which is crooked cannot be made straight and that which is wanting cannot be numbred Humane nature at best in innocency as liable to wax old decay and die in all the Wisdom Life and Glory of it and as liable to corrupt and be depraved through Man's evil use of all in preference and opposition to what 's more excellent might be called old and crooked But since the fall 't is actually and apparently so A glory it had which was no glory to the glory that excells and remains for ever in new-creation Life The Life Wisdom Righteousnes of man in his first created state was no Life Wisdom Righteousnes in respect of what is given to and set up in him by the second is admitted no comparison looked upon as nothing to it is to be folded up and laid aside as an old garment for it God himself thus handles all the first-creation works of his own hands Isa. 34. 4. 66. 1 2. Heb. 1. 10-12 Man though made perfect and upright at first all the life and goodness he was possessed of was corruptible and changable though not corrupt So not to be compared with the incorruptible unchangable everlasting Life Wisdom Righteousnes and Glory of God set up in and put upon man by a new-creation Man's and Angels attempts and designs for holding fast making straight and establishing themselves in their natural first-creation Life which God hath made crooked 〈◊〉 7. 13. in opposition to his offered straight and incorruptibly perfect new-creation life is peerless madness and inexcusable folly God requires them both and all to part with their own crooked life how ever straight in their Eye for his own absolutly straight and incorruptibly perfect new-creation life which only is straight in his Eye But farther what God made 〈◊〉 to crookednes and in that sense crooked fallen Angels and Man have made actually perverse crooked and tortuous In evil Angels t is made unchangably so in rebellion against God and a justling competition with his unchangably straight new-creation life In fallen man enmity to God and his everlasting righteous creature-life is inseperable from his natural state and life however restored But both that enmity and his life are seperable from him by his obedient death in sacrifice to God on which he receives thepromise of the Father the unchangably straight new-creature life of the Son Evil Angels are continually at it with Men follow them closs with this lying suggestion that their but restored righteous natural state is the straight thing in God's sight as well as theirs which will give them entrance into the kingdom of God Multitudes multitudes all along this World under Satan's reign have drunk in this serpentine venom to their eternal ruin as will appear in the valley of decision Fixure in the life of nature corrupt or righteous renders men litteral or mystical Sodomites both most Crooked perverse and abominable in God's sight and thoughts be what they will in their own Such establishment in the righteousnes of Man as is highly esteemed amongst men is abomination in the sight of God Such an evil concupiscence lust or covetousnes after and delight in the mysticall riches fruits wisdom glory and righteousness of their own nature or house as makes them finally to despise the durable riches wisdom life and glory of God in that spirit of grace which is his house and to refuse the required exchang of all their fading vanities for them is death without mercy Thus do men by an evil covetousnes to their own house consult shame to themselves and get everlasting contempt as vessels of dishonour Hab. 2. 9 10. This did the Pharises who were thus covetous Luk. 16. 14 15. This fixes man in an unchangable bloody mind of enmity to the constant steady right Psa. 51. 10. unchangably straight creature-spirit of everlasting righteousness and truth and to God most high The defects of man or what is wanting to him for eternal Life in his own nature corrupt or righteous from which since the fall filth of flesh or spirit are inseperable cannot be numbred For he wants every thing all things Spiritual Heavenly and Eternall and must part with every thing he has for them Till poor desolate and undone in himself he cannot be rich and strong in God till impoverished even to death in his own spirit not rich in God's but wretched poor blind and naked destitute of and wanting all things for eternal Life Enmity to God and that Spirit of Grace in which alone any can be saved is as inseperable from man in the corrupt or righteous Life of his own spirit of nature as the Ethiopian hiew or Leopards spots from them Jer. 13. 23. Till the said exchang by death be obediently yielded to the terms God's wisdom put 's on man as his part in order to an entrance into his new and everlasting covenant-life on which he will certainly perform his part of that covenant in giving him that life the things man wants for salvation cannot be numbered All the numberless spiritual new-creation things the everlasting creature-Life Wisdom and Righteousness of God with the innumerable fruits to be brought forth by men therein to God and the innumerable fruits of Gods love therein 〈◊〉 man Love Joy Peace c. Gal. 5. 22 23. All these things are wanting that is every thing Vers. XVI I communed with mine own heart saying Lo I am come to great estate and have gotten more wisdom then all they that have bin before me in Jerusalem yea my heart had great experience Heb. seen much of wisdom and knowledg Solomon was eminent in mystical earthly-Jerusalem life and in the Ornaments or excellent best and most spiritual inlightning gifts of the Heavenly In this super-eminent wisdom and understanding the vain thought and pussing up Imagination of his own heart was that he now wanted nothing for the rendring him compleatly happy His wisdom and largeness of heart was as the
As figure and shadow of his meaning herein 't is with many the whole design of all their Labours and Travels to heap up outward treasures to themselves and leave to their Posterity great Possessions call'd after their own Name as if they had any concern therein when deceased or any relief thereby when with Dives tormented in the flames of God's Wrath. And as to any advantage to Posterity how know they but their Successors will blot out and deface by their unwise and sinful practices what they got by their wise and honest labours though great things of that sort are seldom so gotten Such great things puff up and are oft the ruine of those that come after them This was Solomons own case in his foolish Son Rhehoboam who following the rash dictates of ignorant young 〈◊〉 and rejecting the sage counsel of grave Senators that stood before his Father disobliged the People lost ten parts of his Kingdom at first entrance on his Government and he and his Successors held the rest not without great confusions troubles and desolating Wars with the Kings of Israel their Brethren and from such Nations round about as were common enemies to both Moab Ammon 〈◊〉 Edom Philistines c. 1 King 12. Yet is this but the lowest and least part of Solomon's meaning in these and the following words Vers. XIX And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise Man or a fool Yet shall he have Rule over all my labour wherein I have laboured and wherein I have shew'd my self wise under the Sun This is also vanity Here is a deep mystical Truth The fading Laodicean Riches and great Possessions treasured up in and by the fruitful exercise of my own spirit in the restored first-covenant Life of the Law Who knoweth 〈◊〉 a wise Man or a fool shall get and rule over it Whether the supreamly wise man Christ himself by his Gospel-sicle Sword or Cross as freely and obediently surrendred to him or the Man of sin and Son of Perdition the greatest mystical Fool the Devil Those that give up themselves and all Christ's gifts to them of first-covenant Life Wisdom and Ornaments and second-covenant Light with all their fruits and effects brought forth therein mystical Corn Wine Oil Silver and Gold to Baal or Moloch the Lord or King and god of this World are willing he should reap and gather all and so use all Christ's own gifts to them and all the fruits of their own labours therein against Christ and God himself to their own destruction as qualified thereby to be the most gygantick opposers fighters against God Man walk's in a vain shew disquiets himself in vain heaping up Riches and not knowing who shall gather them Psal. 39. 6. Till Man come to a resolution whose Arms he will cast himself into with his changable Life and Riches Christ's or the Devil's in order to be fix'd in the unchangably good Spirit of the former or evil one of the latter He knows not who shall gather all or what will become of him and all he has gotten One of these will certainly gather all in conclusion All puffed up self-exalters against Christ give themselves and all they have into the hands of that Lucifcrian Head and King over all such children of Pride Job 41. 34. receiving his spirit of unchangable enmity to God for the Principle of their Life Desire Thought and Action All fixed first-covenant Kings are absolutely engag'd in Satan's reign in perfect opposition to Christ and his invisible Saints whose saintship or spiritual Life is hid with Christ in God till Christs second appearing and rendring it visible in himself and them which will be the Manifestation of the Sons of God Christ offers true freedom to all even the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God But multitudes of enlightned holy first-covenant Professors and no better whatever they reckon themselves chuse rather for self-preservation against the Cross to be slaves of the Devil the arrantest slave of all and so to have their eares boared as his servants for ever on their willful refusal of true Liberty This is figured out Ex. 21. 5 6. At last Christ by his Cross and spiritual Gospel-Sword or Sicle will reap down and gather or take from all evil Angels and Men all the Riches and Comforts all the fading Glory and Power they have used against him under Satan's reign and tread them all under foot in his reign From a sober Reflexion upon the whole matter in the Spirit of Truth discovering the vanity of all first-creation Life and things of Man with all his vain Labours and uncertain Riches and then the uncertainty as to who shall gather them to his everlasting damage or greatest gain he looks on all Man's Labours and Possessions in the confounded state of his own Nature corrupt or righteous on all these accounts put together to be but a hateful vanity and vexation of spirit So he farther declares Vers. XX. Therefore I went about to cause my heart to despair of all the Labour which I took under the Sun So should every one in union of mind with Christ hate his own Life with all his Labours and Fruits brought forth in the but restor'd natural Principle or Spirit of the first-covenant Law of Works for the Life Wisdom and Righteousness of God in the second the new-covenant spirit of the Gospel The former at best was but changably good and since the Fall enmity to God or filth of spirit is inseperable from it direct enmity to that creature-spirit or holy Ghost in the new Life whereof only 't is possible to please God or be saved A heart set to love that Life in which man hates and is hateful to God is a heart fixed in or set to do evil for ever Solomon therefore sets his heart to hate the whole Life and all the best works done in the single activity of his own nature at best under the twofold first-creation Sun litteral and mystical as abovesaid Of this he gives a farther account vers 21 -23. Vers. XXI For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom and in knowledge and in equity Yet to a man that hath not laboured therein shall he leave it for his portion This also is vanity and a great Evil. Solomon gives an account of himself in the Man here described by him travelling in Wisdom Knowledge and Equity that is in the wise and righteous actings of his own restored enlightned nature All this he finds vain and unprofitable yea a great grief and sorrow to him Here 's the sad result of all man's goodnes and fruitfulnes in his own nature All is vanity the 〈◊〉 tree of good and evil and since the fall of evil only filth of spirit at least which is the greater sort of evil with the Fruits the Root with the Branch Principle and Operations Desires Thoughts Counsels Purposes Words Actions all naught The loss of all as obediently surrendred to the sacrificing hand Gospel-cross Sword
and Fire of God's High Priest is our only way of being delivered from all evil of sin or punishment for ever And on such obedience we shall certainly receive the promise of the Father the everlasting creature-creature-life and spirit of the Son which will fill us with all good for ever above wonder Is not here great Gain on all hands to encourage us to bear such loss the spiritual Law of the Cross and ordinances of God's new-creation sanctuary call for as undispensably necessary for our admission or entrance thereinto This exchang-traffique of Law for Gospel Life of Nature for Grace Earthly for Heavenly the natural life of the Creature for the spiritual life of the Creator is the highest and best market man can make of all his first-creation vanities Truth or the Gospel-spirit of truth can never be bought but to Man 's unspeakable advantage never sold or parted with from love to what 's to be parted with for it but to Man 's unspeakable loss Buy the Truth therefore at any rate but Sell it at no rate though all the kingdom's of this World and glory of them all natural humane or Angelical excellencies be bidden for it Paul when eminent in first-covenant holines parted with all as dung for this Truth All that have tried this most gainfull traffique have found it so No active obedience performable in Man 's own nature ever does his work for salvation but passive a right ceasing from that life with all its activity and labours Should a Man live a thousand years twice told in the utmost fruitfulnes of his rectified naturals he will still find Solomon's account true all vanity All that 's but Earthly in Man or Angel all first-creation Life and fruits or works thereof will be burnt up by the fire of the second 2 Pet. 3. 10. Christ's new-creature spirit will try by its al-discovering light all principles and works whether natural or spiritual earthly or Heavenly and then all the former that 's changable and perishable will most certainly perish or be burnt up by the fire of this trying spirit All that obediently submit not to this fiery triall fall inevitably under its everlasting burnings in and upon them in final Wrath. All changable goodnes earthly first-creation Life and Fruits first or last must passe away from obedient Saints and incorrigible sinners in God's Love or Wrath. This fiery triall seem's grievous at present to nature in Saints Heb. 12. 11. Our nature in Christ himself was sorrowfull to death cast out a word for scaping the Death-Cup but he instantly called it back His living Soul of the same kind with the first Adam's was sorely put to 't made exceeding sorrowful under the death-work of his second-Adam's quickning-spirit or gospel-sword and fire upon it Mat. 26. 38 39. Obedient submission to God's present temporary Wrath in this case is the only possible way of deliverance from his Eternal the Wrath to come All willful refusers of the former are sure to meet with the latter Those that with Paul received Gods just sentence of Death within them On their naturals at best have unspeakably the best on 't Those that please themselves a-while in resisting and scaping it fall under it for ever The sufferings and shame brought on the natural man of the Saint are not to be compared with the joy and glory of spiritual life that follows Nor does the present false joy stiffnecked resisters of the Cross or holy Ghost in its demolishing operation upon their naturals please themselves with signify any thing in comparision of the griefs torments and vexation of spirit this crosse will bring upon them in Eternal Death The demolishing-work of the Cross is grievous to nature in Saints at present but in no comparison so grievous as 't wil be to it in rebellious resisters and that for ever True Saints soon find the benefit of their obediently sacrificed nature by a resurrection out of the death of that into the everlasting righteous life of the sacrificing high Priest of their Gospel-profession Melchisedeck So have they eternal life abiding in them the Kingdom of Heaven within them live and walk in Christ's kingdom-spirit the Gospel-principle of everlasting righteousness Thus by submitting to the temporary wrath at present brought upon them in God's everlasting kindness do they scape the wrath to come But what mean's Solomon in saying that all his wise labours in his own restored nature must be left to a man that has not laboured therein Who is this Christ in his originally unchangable creature-spirit of everlasting righteousness and truth Himself surrendred the earthly first-covenant righteous life and labours thereof in our flesh to the flames of his own eternal Heb. 9. 14. everlasting righteous creature spirit in sacrifice to his own divine spirit and God most high The sacrifice he offred the sacrificing Priest that offered it and God to whom offered all are comprehended in the worderful person of the Mediatour as the divine and twofold creature form of God originally spiritual and spiritualiz'd transformed regenerate natural baptized into the death and assimilated in the resurrection life of it to the originally spiritual This divine and twofold creature-being image or form of God in Christ is all called God even the spiritualiz'd man Christ Jo. 1. 1. All are the living Word and Oracle of God's infinite divine mind his Wonderfull Counsellor to Angels and Men. And in all stands he in a distinction for ever from God most high in the single and uncompounded divine essence in which the Father to this divine and creature-Son begotten from eternity as the divine and from everlasting Prov. 8 23 as creature-Son of God Hence is it said the Mediatour is not of one nature but God is one Gal. 3. 20. This sacrificing Priestly Gospel-spirit of Christ reapes or gather's cut 's down burns up and utterly consumes all the life and labours or workings of Angel or Man in their natural first-creation make and life as he served our fleshly nature in his own person By his Cross or Gospel-sword he gathers all for sacrifice to God as his due required Tithes and Offerings the mystical truth of the litteral that never laboured or did any thing in that natural state of life but was originally spiritual This also is vanity sayes Solomon or shewes the insignificancy of man's or angel's labours in their earthly first-creation Life of vanity about salvation All must go life and all or they never can be saved And this is a great evil or grieving consideration to man that his life at best and all done in it are but perishing vanities vanishing shadows of things to come or to be brought a-float in men by a new-creation 'T is also Man's great evil his unpardonable Sin if he rob God or withold his Mystical Tithes and Offrings Mal. 3. 8. the most high and criminal Spiritual sacriledg many first-covenant Professours are guilty of in holy flesh Rom. 2. 22. the best fruits or works
of his own nature life and all from Christ's Gospel-sword or Cross and spiritual Circumcision-Knife and so from being an obedient sacrifice or holocaust to God in all There is also a great evil even direct enmity to God found in all man's first-creation life of vanity the most restored Image of the Earthy and best fruits producible therein This filth of spirit cleaves fast unto all and is inseperable from Man's nature since the first sin of it Christs communicating to and setting up his spiritual life in Saints makes them Lilies that neither toil nor Spin yet grow into a flourishing fruitfulnes No labour or toil of the natural spirit in the case but a rest from all that labour God works all our works in us and we all our works in him Jo. 3. 21. Solomon in all his glory was not Arayed like one of these Mat. 6. 28 29. In all his fading natural excellencies and perfections he had no glory to these beautiful new-creation Lilies that excel Men yield up all their fading natural life and fruits to Christ as the man the spirit of everlasting righteousness or to the Devil the Man of sin and everlasting wickedness If to Christ he offers all up in sacrifice to God If to Satan he sets up and uses all in unchangable enmity to God When the Son of God had this life of vanity about him the life of the Law God spared it not in him nor did he pitty or spare it in himself as the Devil by Peter advised him to do Some that have a mind to be bidding at Salvation and the new-building in the way of the Cross and won't bid up are willing to part with the corrupt life of nature and palpably evil fruits and lusts thereof the refuse and worst of their Cattel but as Saul in letter and mystery spare the choice things the King and best of the Cattel in this Amalekite-spirit of nature keep back part of their earthly possessions with Ananias and Saphira the righteous Earthly life and fruits thereof will come off or fare as they did lose their own self-chosen kingdom life and all 1 Sam. 15. 8 9. and v. 18-23 Acts. 5. 1-10 Vers. XXII For what hath a Man of all his labour and of the vexation of his heart wherein he hath laboured under the Sun Without a surrender of all for that newness of life in which alone he can bring forth fruit unto God and be saved all turns to his eternal loss and disadvantage This question is resolved Vers. XXIII For all his dayes are sorrows and his Travel grief yea his heart taketh not rest in the night This is also vanity If first-covenant life be not first or last surrendred for the second that has bin no active principle or labourer in the way and Wisdom of the first all 's lost For 't is in the new life of the second only can any bring forth fruit unto God or be saved This exchange of first for second finally refused Man will have nothing to reap of all his labours and travels in the first but unexpressible sorrows grief shame and everlasting contempt as having wilfully rendered himself a Vessel of dishonour for ever under wrath He has changed all his goodness the wrong way into unchangable evil and enmity to God for which the unchangable wrath of God will be upon him And this will make that mystical Night of Darkness and Death his heart can take no rest in This come all men's vain labours for rest in the life and activity of their own nature to against all the faithful counsels and timely warnings of God So will all the dayes belonging to their immortal beings even to all eternity be spent in torment and vexation of spirit They have rebelliously walked in the light of their own Fire and Sparks of their own kindling the fruits and births of their own light and wisdom in the life and activity of their own nature and must lie down in Sorrow for their pains All first-creation life of the Law thus unlawfully used in rebellion against God will be found not only vanity but a great and sore evil to them for ever Vers. XXIIII There is nothing better for a man then that he should Eat and Drink and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour This also I saw that it was from the hand of God This eating and drinking as a taking pleasure and joy in man's labour Solomon recommend's as savory advice and a peculiar gift from God cannot be any thing bordering upon brutish sensuality nor yet Men's feeding and gratifying themselves with the best fruits of their labours in a first-covenant Law-life for in both these men lie under the Curse of God Gal. 3. 10. No feeding on perishing meats in a perishing life can be the meaning of the spirit Solomon gave this counsel in but a feeding on never-perishing Meats suited to a never-perishing life as Christ the true Solomon advises with a negative dash on all other life and meats Jo. 6. 27. This only is a true blessing from God puts man under his approbation-seal a Belly and Meats he will not destroy All other he will All other life finally kept up and fed in tends to man's final destruction Right eating and drinking of Christ's living Bread and the kingdom-Wine of his spirit strengthens man in his newness of life to bring forth fruit unto God daily more and more from thirty to sixty sixty to a hundred-fold and from that to a thousand c. endlesly David Solomon and other Saints have seen and proclaimed the vanity of all other Life and Meats with all Man 's delusive destructive joy mistaken pleasures and confidences therein They have recanted and declared the wrong measures they took in their own fallible wisdoms both of themselves and Gods various dealings with them and others in this world Enemies are gratified with more than heart can wish litteral or mystical riches in their own nature will and way after their own hearts while true saints are plagued all their day long in this World and chastned every morning Psal. 73. 4. 14. The natural man of the saint envies frets and is vexed at this worldly prosperity of the wicked but their spiritual in God's Sanctuary-light sees what all will come to and so quiets their wrangling envious natural as an injurious quarreller at Gods dispensations and the methods of his wisdom v. 16-19 Spiritual light extricates them out of that labyrinth and consused maze their own wisdom and thoughts run them into and sets all to rights The blessed end of Saints troubles and dreadful conclusion of wicked Mens prosperity payes for and answers all This seen quiets the Saint and fills him with Joy unspeakable and glorious This we find over and over Psal. 37. 73. 〈◊〉 21. and in plenty of other scriptures Envy not their fools-paradice here that ha's Hell at end on 't All their laughter and merriment is but as the crackling
of Thorns under a pot a short blaze in this mortal World and away After their Resurrection of Damnation they 'l have time enough to pay their sad reckoning under the flamings forth of unquenchable Wrath upon them This will they have from God's hand When Saints clearly see this twofold Issue of their trouble and others prosperity in this world can they envy will they not pity them The afflictions of the one and prosperity of the other are both but a Dream Truth will out at last in the endless end both arrive at and come to in eternal life or death When the Wicked awake out of their dreamish hapines God will despise their Image destroy their life and all their false comforts in the Image of the Earthy Psal. 73. 20. When Saints awake out of their afflictiondream they will be satisfied with Gods Heavenly Image and his new-creature life Psal. 17. 15. One has but an Imaginary hapines the other Imaginary trouble all 's but a vain shew Psal. 39. 6. As Saints more plentifully feed on the Lords never-perishing Meats from his heavenly table they are more strengthned in that newness of life in which they bring forth never-perishing fruits unto God God requires and delights in their eating and drinking abundantly at his Heavenly Table the glorious fruits of his divine and creature-spirit the Tree of Life They can never be too much filled with his spirit Eph. 5. 18. and fruits thereof No rioting or excess at his Table never too much of his Wine The more any feed at his table the more they discover and nauseate Satan's worldly meats and wine Let him gild his perishing vanities with never so near a resemblance of Christs meats ' twon't do They can spie out his Contemptible meats under all the beautiful disguises he puts upon them and reject them See then the mystery and truth of Solomons declaration here There 's nothing better for a man then to eat and drink the good of all his spiritual labours which never are in vain in the Lord 1 Cor. 15. 58. All other labour in mans own nature is in vain as to his grand concern Life Fruits Labours nothing vain in a new-creation state all in the old All 's unchangable in the new all vanishing in the old Tree and Fruit Root and Branch Womb and Births Fruits in the new are Peaceable fruits of Righteousness in a union of mind with God not so in the Old All there is done in a spirit of enmity to God even the best and most righteous works of man By works of Grace in God's new-covenant spirit Abraham was Justified and not by Faith only Jam. 2. 21-24 Such works wrought in God or in the spirit of faith are ingredients into the saint's Justification not any works or deeds of the Law-spirit of nature Rom. 4. 2-6 The true saint does not live war or walk after the flesh but against it in the spirit The ruling principle in man denominates A predominant exercise of the corrupt spirit of nature with the vile affections and brutish lusts thereof denominates Man a Beast The ruling exercise of the enlightened principles of nature declare a man a Legal Christian or at least a moral Heathen The ruling exercise of the Gospel-spirit in man makes a spiritual Saint a Gospel-Christian And now by this opening of these words into the mystical truth of them is not excluded a shadowy litteral sense thereof as countenancing a right and free use of the concerns of bodily Life for the end by God intended in them against the folly of those that from an evil covetousness and vain self-tormenting sollicitude find no heart or power to eat thereof to the best advantage of the Life that 's more then meat and the Body that 's more then Raiment Mat. 6. 25. Vers. XXV For who can eat or who else can hasten hereunto more then I Solomon here declares his Priviledg through the awak'ned Wisdom of God in him of hastening to and feeding at Christ's Heavenly Table on the things of God Who carried forth with a stronger bent of affection to things above Col. 3. 2. then I He found a strength of spiritual appetite carrying him forth to eat and drink abundantly according to Christ's Invitation to his supreamly double-portion'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Saints of which number himself seem's to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in his own mysterious Song Cant. 5. 1. Vers. XXVI For God giveth to a man that is good in his sight Wisdom and Knowledg and Joy But to the sinner he giveth Travel to gather and to heap up that he may give to him that is good before God This also is vanity and vexation of spirit The good man in God's sight is the spiritual Saint in distinction from all others What 's unchangably good only is properly good in God's sight None good insinitely from Eternity but God only 〈◊〉 everlasting to Eternity is the creature-spirit in the Mediator good And to Eternity are all obedient Angels and Saints born of that spirit and brought forth in the everlasting righteous Life thereof good before God No Angel no Man no thing in the first-creation-make or State of Angel or Man is in this sense good however good in their kind and right use yea very good Gen. 1. 31. The natural man of the Saint in the restored first-covenant Life and Image of the earthy is made good in God's sight by submitting to the Plow-work of the Cross Christ's spiritual husbandry upon it pointed so deep as to tear up by the Roots the natural principle of enmity And then by the same hand or spiritual Plow is quick'ned up the before dormant seed of an incorruptible righteous new-creation Life in which Man's nature as made new earth brings forth fruit unto God This is the Earth that by drinking in the spirituall Rain-waters of Life that come oft npon it brings forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed Christ and God most high Heb. 6. 7. Saints are thus Gods Husbandry and Christ the Mystical Husband-man that does the work He cleanses from filth of flesh the vile fruits and lusts of the corrupt Nature This yet 〈◊〉 not or enables men to bring forth fruit unto God but to themselves only Hos. 10. 1. towards the farther enriching and adorning their own nature They are empty Vines and but fallow Fields yet to God Some-what clear'd are they from the Nettles and Thistles of the corrupt spirit of nature but they bring forth no right Grapes or good fruit unto God unchangably good A seed of enmity remaining in them after all natural cleansings is a Root of bitterness bearing Gall and Wormwood Briars and Thorns in a bloody bitter murderous mind of enmity against God Christ and all his Gospel-Saints and Truths So see we the good man here rendred so by God's unspeakable Gift consisting in true Wisdom Knowledge and Joy joy unspeakable and Glorious in the holy Ghost or spiritual principle of everlasting righteous life desire thought word and
witnes against them as fixed dwellers on the said mystical Earth or their earthly life when offered Heaven or God's spiritual heavenly life by a new-creation Christ sends his spiritual convictions into them as faithful spies that give a good report of his true land of promise or state of life These sinned against and not hearkned to vex and torment them taking from them such full undisturbed delights and uninterrupted pleasure as they desire to find in their earthly life will and way Gods spiritual conviction-light given in mercy finally rebelled against is in wrath kept up in their consciences as a never dying Worm that will torment them to all eternity witnessing against themselves as unpardonably guilty and for God as most just in his unquenchable wrath upon them Mar. 9. 44. Now this gnawing Worm that will be this sinner's everlasting tormentor in the world to come is a sore allay to his false joy in this Spiritual conviction is as a particular day of Gods Judgment in and upon man before the general comes The accusing voice thereof in him holds him to 't and forces him to see that all the treasure he 's heaping up for the last day's Jam. 5. 3. is indeed no other nor better then a treasuring up wrath for himself against the day of wrath Ro. 2. 5. This is a sowring ingredient in the midst of all the sweet and contentment this unpardonably guilty sinner desires to find in his own selfe-chosen way and self-chusing will He may know and conclude nothing remaines to him of benefit from Christ's sacrifice and intercession and so nothing at all from God but fiery indignation Heb. 10. 26 27. So of the first part of his punishment even at present in this world The second we shall find in considering the third particular To the 3d then By Gods over-ruling hand he shall be made to give all his heaped up treasures to him that is good before God whom he unchangably hates And this will be a tormenting consideration and sore vexation of his spirit his heaped up vanities wil prove unto him which is the concluding word of this Chapter All the sinner in the latter part of this verse labours for and gathers he must give or shal be given whether he will or no to the good man or spiritual saint in the former part In the parable of the talents Mat. 25. 14-30 we find that the evil servant who kept his own single earthly talent or earthly first-covenant life refusing to exchange it for Christ's heavenly is called Wicked and Slothful Servant and his Talent taken from him and given to him that had ten as having made the required Exchang by death to his advantage and great gain All the 〈◊〉 goodness and Comforts in the first Creation-Life and State kept up and held fast by Evil Angels and Men in Rebellion against God shall be finally taken from them and given to or Possessed by Spiritual Saints and Angels as Comprehended in and unspeakably out-done by the New-Creation Life and State where they receive their own and all others own again with Usury ver 27. Thus Christ Interprets his own Parable From him that hath not the durable Riches in New-creation Life shall be 〈◊〉 away all his Fading in the First and given to him that hath true Riches in the second with abundant Increase for ever ver 29. This is of like Significancy with that other faithfull saying and sure word of Prophecy whoever will spare or save his natural earthly Life from the death-work of the Cross shall lose it under the same Cross in final wrath and whosoever will hate and lose his natural and earthly for the sake of and love to Christs spiritual and heavenly the only right use of his single first-creation Life and Talent shall find it with Usury in Christ's heavenly Mat. 16. 25. Never was any thing in the former could make up any degree of true hapines to Man or Angel God convincingly shews and graciously offer 's his life to men waits with much patience and long-suffering for their accepting it on his termes the death of their own nature at best or in what ever variety of condition in Publican and Harlot or Scribe and Pharisee He knocks at the Dore of their hearts warn's counsells instructs reproves them invites entreats beseeches them by his Ambassadours of grace He calls out to them to hear his voice and not harden their hearts against him while the day of his gracious call and offers to them last's At length on their willful Provoking him beyond pardon the great Master of the New-Creation House or Building shuts the door and is gone Luk. 13. 25. Swearing in his Wrath they shall never enter into his Rest Heb. 3. 13. Then they may seek and knock while they will they 'l never find him Prov. 1. 28 nor any place for Repentance or change of their Rebellious Mind and desperate condition for ever Heb. 6. 4-6 Esau's Case Heb. 12. 17. An obedient Exchange by Death of Fading First-Creation Life for the Everlasting Second is unspeakable gain to Man The Rebellious keeping it up in Enmity to the Cross and Second or to the Spirit of God and its Crucifying Death-work upon it in order to set up its own Life in the Room is unspeakable loss to all that so do This Paul told the Self-Confident Professours at Philippi of in the fruitful Flourish of a First-Covenant Righteous Life even weeping Phil. 3. 18. and reproov'd the Corinthians for in like case 1 Cor. 4. 8. 10. as Christ himself when Ascended and Glorified the Laodiceans Rev. 3. 17 18. By the very same hand Cross or Gospel-Spirit of Christ will that Perishing Law-Life with all the Fruitfulness heap'd up Riches and meats thereof be taken from them in Final Wrath whether they will or no. CHAP. III. Vers. I. To every thing there is a Season and a time to every Purpose under the Heaven NExt to no difference from our Translation of this and the Seven following Verses in the Original Hebrew three Eastern Versions Chaldee Syriac and Arabick or the Septuagints Greek Translation In this Scripture to Verse 8th Inclusive have we the Character of Man in his whole Personal Constitution and Make by the First Creation or in whatever Flourish of the restor'd Wisdom and Exercise of a First-Covenant Righteous Life therein In Body Soul and Spirit no Life but Mortal by Creation And the same kind of Life restored in him since is much short of the perfection it was in at First Something of Filth of Flesh hangs about it still and Filth of Spirit that 's worse is inseperable from it since the fall Life and all therefore must go by a Holy Obedient death in Sacrifice to God If 〈◊〉 spared and Rebelliously kept it will be an Unholy life in unchangeable Enmity to God doing despite to his Divine and also to his New-Creature Gospel-Spirit of Grace and Truth In the Various Litteral Expressions here Relating to the
Body have we the Shadow of a great Mystical Truth relating to the Spirit living soul or inner Man of Man the life whereof also being Mortal is subject to and therefore figured out by the like changes as are Incident to Bodily Life in the Birth Flourish Decay Death and Resurrection thereof First then to the Figurative Shadow knowable to all and after to the Mystical Truth knowable to few to none aright save such as are of the same Spirit Solomon was when he Writ these Words 1. There' s a set time to all Visible things under the Litteral Heaven and Sun as the Answer and Accomplishment of God's most wise design and purpose concerning them There 's a time alotted for their Appearance and Manifestation and then for their Disappearing and Vanishing again Both these general Dispensations of God to them do Minister Important Instruction to Man The Positive Assertion of this Truth in general v. 1. does Solomon prove by particularizing the Various things Circumstances and Occurrents relating to Man's Bodily part and Life in reference to which the whole Visible Creation in the greater World without Man was set up before hand as requisite for his entertainment Gen. 1. and Ch. 2. 7. and then to the declinings and Death thereof under the Various Dispensations of God to this lower work of his own hand in Man And hereby is signified the like Various Dispensations of God and thence a like Variety of Condition Incident to the Spirit or inner Natural Man as to it s but Mortal First-Covenant-Life put into and 〈◊〉 up in it by Creation Man therein at best was but a Mystical Tree of good and Evil a changable thing a Fading Flower Since the Fall this Fleshy Tree is in a manner only alway's Evil. Man 's fallen nature herein is a Gursed Mystical Earth bringing forth Thorns and Thistles in Filth of Flesh or Spirit Gen. 3. 17 18. His Immortal Spirit in its Unstain'd Mortal First-Covenant Life and State before the Fall with all done or possible to be done in the Activity thereof all Riches Fruits Righteous Works Producible or Performable therein all was Vanity 〈◊〉 but Vanishing Shadows of durable substantial things the Everlasting Righteous New-Creature Life Wisdom 〈◊〉 things of God Man with all his natural First-Created Life and things is in another Sense under Heaven or below the Spiritual Heavenly Life of Christ the New-Creation Sun of Everlasting Righteousness and things of God Nor Man nor Angel in Innocency had any thing of that Life about them or Fruits thereof And in that Life only can any bring forth Fruit unto God They that say Adam should have held fast that Righteous Life he was Possess'd of by Creation kept where he was as Job once through a great mistake said he would hold fast his Restored Righteousness of that sort they that say this what else must they say This. That Man Restor'd by the second Adam to something of the lost Life of the First must hold it fast Establish himself there never part with or let it go again and Heaven is his own this is true Salvation and Eternal Life In their Lying Spirit of Divination do such Teachers warrant their Deluded Hearers safe and truly Blessed here causing them to hope they will confirm their Word Ezek. 13. 6. They follow Heb. walk after their own Spirit of vanity see nothing of God's they are vanity and see nothing but vanity the things of man which they presumptuously call the things of God and so teach Rebellion against the Lord. They establish themselves and others in a life and Righteousness that 's but Vanity a Fading Flower for Salvation And Irrefragably Confident they grow herein All the World wonder and run after them Rev. 13. 3. 1 Jo. 4. 5. Mean while no Man in the but Restor'd Worldly Spirit of Nature the Life Wisdom and Righteousness of man receives Christ Gospel-Testimony given by his Spirit of Truth in himself or followers Jo. 3. 32. That which indeed is the very Unpardonable Sinning after the Similitude of Adam ' s Transgression do Men Preach up as their undispensable Duty for Salvation The holding fast and keeping up what they received by the First-Creation against the everlasting Creature-Life Wisdom Righteousness and things of God cleerly shew'd and offered them by a second was the very Unpardonable Sin that gave the Irrecoverable fall to the Devil and his Angels Their fall evil Change and Punishment lies in this They retain all the Natural Life Glory and Excellencies of their First-Created State as by their wilful Folly and God's Righteous Judgment turn'd into and used in unchangable Enmity to God They kept not their first Estate but left their own Habitation Jude 6. What was that A State of Unstain'd Natural Purity and of changable Obedience in their Wavering Natural Principle to Spiritual Light by which cleerly shew'd and offered an Unchangably Righteous Creature-Life by a New-Creation on the Obedient-Surrender and loss of their Changable The Lord was pleas'd to deal more favourably with Man as of less Natural Capacity and so under lower Spiritual Conviction then Angels and then also as Over-reach'd and Overset by the Superiour Subtilty and Power of the Evil Angel taking from him the Fading Righteous Life Wisdom Excellencies and Corruptible Perfections of his Inferiour Humane Nature not leaving him them to Fight with against himself as he did to the Evil Angels But when this Life with the things thereof is gradually Restor'd by the Redeemer in Men Satan is presently at the same point with them as with Eve 2 Cor. 11. 3. that they shall not die at all they have Eternal Life Though it was not so in the first Adam yet when Restor'd by the Second and Men Confirm'd or Establish'd therein by him it is Indeed this Fixing Establishing Doctrine to and work upon them is Satan's not Christ's For it fixes them in unchangable enmity to Christ's Gospel-spirit and all his Gospel-things or truths Adam's attempt and design for keeping up the Righteous Life he was Created in and thence Refusing to Surrender and part with it for what was Presented to him in the Tree of Life was his very Sin The Losing or falling from the Righteous life he had was his punishment God took from him What he had his fading righteous Law-Life for Preferring it to his Everlasting New-Covenant Gospel-life The day he ate of the tree of good and evil or pleas'd himself with his own changable righteous life and the 〈◊〉 Meats or Delights thereof in preference to God's more excellent Creature-life and never-perishing meats thereof he died as threatned Gen. 2. 17. that is lost that fading righteous Life and so with all his Posterity became dead in trespasses and sins Now if Establishing our selvs in the restor'd Righteous Law-Life of our Nature Called our own be Asserted our duty and security for salvation then a sinning after the similitude of Adam's Transgression which done thus the second time after
they break with him and then he departs Jer. 31 32. In this sense God Repents Gen. 6. 6. that is changes his dispensation towards Back-sliding Man If Man turn his changable Righteous Life in the first into unchangable Enmity to God and his second-Covenant Life Christ will turn from a changable Husband and Saviour to them in the first into an unchangable Enemy to them in the second Isai. 63. 8. 10. If a Back-sliding people return to him he returns to them and repents of the Evil threat'ned them Exod. 32. 14. Jer. 26. 19. Jonah 3. 10. But he overthrew Sodom c And Repented not of the evil of Punishment Threat'ned because they Repented not of the evil of Sin by them Committed Jer. 20 16. On Man's obedient chang of his sickle Life and freedom of the Sons of Men for the unchangable Life and Glorious Liberty of the Sons of God all this Starting Repenting doings is past on all hands What God does for and in Man by his New-Creation-Workmanship will continue for ever and they in an everlasting Covenant Union with him Establish'd in all things and sure They 'l never depart from him nor he from them to do them good Jer. 32. 40. No breach incident to the new-covenant Jer. 31. 33 34. because manag'd in a Spirit on God's part and Man's too that can never err Sin or miscarry T is infallible Truth and Ever-lasting Righteousness in Christ and his Saints Whatever God yea or Man doth in this Spirit shall be for ever All the Fruits Labours Works produced or done therein are Incorruptible Everlasting will be for ever As the new Root and Tree so are the Fruits and very 〈◊〉 The Incorruptible Gospel-Tree will be known by its fruits in distinction from the Mystical Fleshly Law-Tree and Corruptible Fruits thereof T. Nothing can be put to it nor any thing taken from it God's offring and setting up his new-creature Life with the glory Wisdom and Righteousness thereof in the room of Man's obediently surrendred old is the main design and scope of all Scripture This 〈◊〉 where are Men with all the words of their Foolish Wisdom Setting up Law-Life for Salvation and Calling it a Gospel-State is directly Satan's Gospel-Work his Mystery of Iniquity with its hidden Works of darkness under the Form of Godliness and Righteousness of Man All the Mystical Spiritual sense of Scripture is by such excluded out of all their Teaching Those that thus take away or deny a spiritual Creature-Life in Christ the Whole Living Book and Word of God and so the Character Doctrin and declaration thereof in the Scriptures or Written Oracles of God do take not only some but all the principal intended things Engraven by God himself in the former or by his Holy Inspired Pen-men in the latter And then will God take from them any part of the truly good things in either and Inflict on them all the Plagu's Written in both Rev. 22. 18 19. Sure 't is no small retail-heresy that exclud's all Gospel Truth and the whole Doctrine of Salvation This does Man's Wisdom that 's Foolishness to God's and reckon's all the Word 's of God's and whole Gospel-Doctrin of his Cross upon nature at best Foolishness 1 Cor. 1. 18-25 It shuts up the Kingdom of Heaven excludes all Kingdom-Life and sense of Scripture But though Gospel-undertakers herein not only derogate from and diminish but what in them lies utterly Deny Despise and Destroy all true Gospel-Life and Doctrin in Christ Scriptures and Saints 't is not by all their or Satan's 〈◊〉 Wiles and Skill that any thing can be taken from it or added to it All the Opprobrious Titles of Hereticks Enthusiasts or Phanaticks Blasphemers Mad-men that they bestow on Christ Jo. 10. 20. and true Saints Hos. 9. 7. belong intirely to themselvs This will be undeniably Evidenc'd at Christ's second appearing and final Decision of all Controversies between true Spiritual Zion-Saints and these Hypocritical 〈◊〉 in Zion Isai. 66. 5. and 34. 8. that in the worded-dress of Spiritual Saint-ship and New-Covenant Principles are but a Law-spirited Generation that only personate and would pass for the true Heirs and so labour to 〈◊〉 them out of their right and take their Inheritance from them These are the Ravenous Wolves in the Spiritual Sheeps Clothing that bestow no other Titles on them but Devil and Mad as Inquisitors on Lutherans and so Kill them as not fit to live upon the Earth Act. 22. 22. The determining this Controversy will give an amazing Consternation and Disappointment to Hypocritical Sinners in Zion and unspeakable Joy to the all along this World under Satan's Reign and in Man's day oppressed Sion-Saints Is. 33. 14. This will be when Christ arises or comes forth to Judg Enemies and have Mercy upon Zion Psal. 102. 13. In his new-Creature-Spirit and Life God does whatsoever he will and Enables Saints to do so too even whatsoever he will's as universally Obedient to him in every thing No Man or Angel in single First-Creation-Light or Understanding can discern this Spirit of Life or any of the things thereof and therefore would make nothing of them all Proud Man and Angel will needs have any thing they can't see to be nothing But God hath so order'd his matters as to the final Salvation of Man that Men should fear before him yield to his term's of saving them and not Proudly and Presumptuously exalt themselvs against him in that Life and Wisdom the Death and utter abolition of which according to the declared Methods of his Wisdom is absolutely necessary to their being saved So only can any receive that Life in which infallibly to know and declare the whole Counsel and to do the whole Will of God after his own Heart Solomon having declared this Incorruptibly perfect New-Creature-Life that admits to Chang Addition or Diminution for ever when compleated being above all Death Dangers Enemies or Fears proceed's to shew the Weakness Insufficiency and unprofitableness of all other Life or things First-Creation Vanities compared therewith saying Vers. XV. That which hath been is now and that which is to be hath already been and God requireth that which is past Somewhat like what is said Ch. 1. 9. That which hath bin in former Generations is now a gradually Restor'd First-Covenant Righteous Life And that which is to be set up again in full perfection at Christ's second Comming for the Restitution of all things Act. 3. 21. hath already bin in Primitive Innocency But still still what is this that has been at first and shall be at last in full Perfection and in the gradual Renewals of it all along between A Starting Labile Versatile thing a fading flower altogether Vanity liable not only to such a fall as happen'd to Man at first into changable but also into unchangable Enmity to God and Eternal Death to Man This is a latter end worse then the beginning in Innocency or as Born dead in Trespasses and Sins This Life
that doth truth cometh to the light that his deeds may be manifest that they are wrought in God Jo. 3. 21. Deeds wrought by God in Man and Man in God Thus God Judges of and calls such works the Labours of Man in Christ's Gospel-Life See what is said in this case on Ch. 2. 24. and v. 12 13 of this Chap. Solomon does not here countenance Man's rejoycing in such Labours of his own Spirit as he reckon's vain in themselves and unprofitable to himself Ch. 1. 3. as to any final good to him therein or by Nothing short of the new-Creature-State and Man's Labours therein signify any thing towards eternal Life Gal. 6. 15. Neither Circumcision nor Uncircumcision righteous or corrupt nature or any thing done by Man in either can be of any avail or 〈◊〉 thereunto So have we found out these works of Man he is to 〈◊〉 in done in that Life which is his peculiar portion and new-Creation Birth-right gift from God If works wrought in Man's own spirit will and way were meant t' would be a Flat contradiction to the main scope of this whole book which Proclaim 's the absolute Vanity and insignificancy of all first-Creation Life and things at best as to Man's pleasing God or finding true blessedness for himself Such works are meant as Man may ought will cannot but rejoyce in with Joy unspeakable and Glorious Here 's Man 's inward Summum bonum a Life wherein he can do all things after God's own Heart Steddily Infallibly Eternally and so enjoy the transcendently yet higher Summum bonum without him the Divine Glory in Favour and Love shining upon him for ever First-Covenant Divines as well as Evil Angels and Heathen Philosophers place Man's Summum bonum in but first-Creation excellencies whatever other title they give it within the compass of natural Objects and in the activity of their natural State that 's a fading flower altogether Vanity The Spirit of truth by its Penmen acquaints us with other matters for hapiness another Life other excellencies objects and works Man is capable to be found in the possession and exercise of The spiritual Man's Joy and delight meets and center 's in the same works or things with God's True Saints are in a Union with his Divine Spirit in Will Understanding Desire Thought Love and Hatred They love what he loves with a perfect love Hate what and whom he hates with a perfect hatred Ps. 139. 21 22. All Man's Labours are vain in his own Spirit of Vanity Not so in the Lord 1 Cor. 15. 58. Paul rejoyc'd in that Gospel-Life he had by the Faith of the Son of God Gal. 2. 20. and his Labours therein but found his Law-Life and best works therein Dung when touching the Righteousness which is the Law or to be found in that Law-State blameless Philip. 3. 6. Enmity to God Tinctur's Sullies and desiles all that Life and Works at best with filth of Spirit T. For who shall bring him to see what shall be after him If Man Submit not to God's terms for receiving his new-Creation-Life who can bring him to see what shall be after him Either what will become of good or Evil Angels or Men in Eternal Life or Death after their fading Life of Vanity with all the things thereof is over and gone These grand and most concerning futurities things no natural Eye Heart or Understanding can see or imagine on all hands the things provided in Heaven for those that truly fear God or in Hell for incorrigible haters of him lie quite out of the reach of Man or Angel in their natural first-Creation State of Enmity and Vanity Darkness and Death The Spiritual Man in the true Preaching Spirit of Prophecy discern's or judges all things 1 Cor. 2. 15. and can declare Infallibly what all Men and Angels will come to as finally Obedient or Disobedient to God's term's of receiving Eternal Life He knowing the Terrours of the Lord 2 Cor. 5. 11. and what a fearful thing it is to fall into the hands or under the final Wrath of the Living God does Might and Main Labour in the Spirit of Christ to warn and caution Men as to the only way of entring into the Joy and escaping the Wrath of the Lord the Wrath to come By refusing so great Salvation as God offers them come they to Eternal Death Want and Vexation of Spirit Prov. 8. 34-36 They 'l want every thing that 's good and have every thing that 's evil in and upon them in Extreamity for ever unchangable Wickedness in them and positive Inflictions of God's Wrath as Punishment upon them without any Interruption or Relief Luk. 16. 24 25. to Eternity They have chosen rather in the declar'd known causes and way thereto to be Vessels of Dishonour and Everlasting Contempt then on God's term's to be made Vessels of Glory Honour Immortality and Eternal Life By Enmity to God's Divine and New-Creature Holy Ghosts or Spirits do they bring siery Indignation on their unpardonably guilty heads Heb. 10. 26 27. Ro. 2. 6-10 These great things that will be found and felt hereafter do evidence the great weight of these Words of Solomon and grand concern of Men to be circumspect in taking the true meaning of them Who but the awak'ned Spiritual Saint can foresee and tell the unutterable Confusions final Refusers of God's Counsel will be found in for ever The Cares and Pleasures of this Life choke Mens understandings as to any right and hearty enquiry after their grand concerns in the next The Noble Bereans did set themselvs to search the Scriptures for the Gospel-Kingdom and Righteousness of God Who does so now Those that in this World seek not the Kingdom and Righteousness of God in the next Mat. 6. 33. will never find it let them flatter themselvs in their Loose Negligent Inadvertent course while they will The most trifling outward Vanities of this World do universally amuse and take up Peoples time and thought so as to detain them in a deep oscitancy and regardlesness as to the unutterable Woes prepar'd in Tophet for Incorrigible sinners or unspeakable Joys in the Kingdom of God for Spiritual Saints Believe not your own Thoughts O ye Sons of Men about Salvation Lean not to your own Understandings Conferr not with Flesh and Blood Regard not the Voice of Strangers the Words of Man's Wisdom about it CHAP. IV. Vers. I. So I returned and considered all the Oppressions that are done under the Sun And behold the tears of such as were oppressed and they had no Comforter And on the side of their Oppressors there was power but they had no Comforter I Returned Heb. was Converted from my fallible wisdom to see the Affairs of Mankind in the infallible wisdom of God particularly to consider duely the manifold Oppressions under the Sun Even himself through his vastly expensive extravagancies had given occasion to his oppressed Subjects to bespeak his soolish Son 〈◊〉 after his Decease on this wise
evil Angels or Men in strength Psal. 103. 20. And Christ and God most high with their Infinite Almighty and irresistibly mighty divine and new-creation power all these are on the Saints side Power more then enough Yea Saints themselvs have that Life and Power of Godliness in them that will render them more than Conquerours Rom. 8. 37. Yea when but Babes and Sucklings Low and Weak in the Life of God or of his Spirit of Grace are they able to still quell or subdue the Enemy and the Avenger Ps. 8. 2. Here 's Power upon Power and so Comfort upon Comfort strong rich consolation to the spiritual in the greatest tribulation that can befall the natural man of the saint But still while visible and invisible enemies are permitted to oppresse them for their good during Christ's and their suffering season on the side of their oppressours is power but they have no comforter This is the case all along this world under Satan's reign till the holy angels be commission'd to come forth about their preparatory work to Christ's second comming for preaching the Everlasting Gospel for the wakening up and gathering Saints out of all Nations to Christ and for the giving of signal dashes on all their Worldly Enemies by the gradual pourings forth of the Vials of Gods Wrath upon them Till this are Saints Men wondred at in Scorn Zec. 3. 8. Men of contention with the whole Earth Jer. 15. 10. All in the but single worldly spirit of nature corrupt or righteous are against them to a Man to a Devil And as depriv'd of all worldly Power within or without are they in the Judgment and sight of their own reason as well as of their Enemies naked and exposed to the insulting Fury of all their said Adversaries to all their Proud Rhetorical Mockings and Insolencies without Relief But since Flesh and Blood are set aside as far Inferiour to a higher and more dangerous subtle and more Powerful sort of Enemies evil Angelical Principalities let us more particularly take notice of their more unperceived Practices and methods of proceeding against the true Saint They Accused God to Adam and Eve as envying the happy Life and State he had set them up in by Creation And so engag'd them in a Union of Mind with themselvs as far as they could to Envy Hate and 〈◊〉 themselvs above and against both the Divine and Creature-Life of God Isai. 14. 14. 2 Thes. 2. 4. And as Satan their Luciferian head falsly Accuses God to Man so Man to God Job 1. 9-11 and 2. 4 5. Satan is the Accuser of the Spiritual Brethren before God Day and Night Rev. 12. 10. that is continually This though abundantly convicted of Perjury and Falshood in all such Witness-bearing as in Job's case What reception can he hope for in his Testimony against true Saints at the Bar of their Infallible Friend and Judg What most gall's this Insolent Adversary To see Christ approach in the garb of an Enemy to the Saint with his two-edged Flaming Gospel Sword This may seem yet more strang to Man's Wisdom Why should this Sworn Mortal Enemy of Saints be troubled at Christ's comming as an Enemy upon them too He know's why Christ comes to kill and offer up his party the natural Man Life and Will in them in Sacrifice to God And he know's a Gospel-Spirit and Principle of Life and Action will be set up in them in the room thereof that 's Wiser and Stronger then he which he can never reach or touch Jo. 4. 4. and 5. 18. This is the Thing the Life he unchangably hates and dread's 'T is the Friend of the World and Devil and Enemy of God in the Saint that Christ cast's into the fiery Furnace of his Cross to destroy And this Destruction of Man's Flesh or fleshly natural Life and State makes way for his Salvation in God's Spirit This Devil Enmity to God is not cast out but by Fasting and Prayer Mat. 17. 21. the Impoverishing of nature the Mourning-State and Death thereof at best an abstinence from all the Serpents Diet all worldly desireables and earnest Prayer for and labour of the Spiritual Mind after the never-perishing Meats at Christ's Heavenly Table When Satan observ's Man in a long course of Faithful Obedience to Law-Light and can't fix him there but find's in him a dangerous Inclination to obey God's farther Gospel-Light as giving notice of a better State yet in the new-Creation Life or Land of Promise and so also fair warning of Christ's Approach with his Cross on that Law-Life he long own'd him in he bestirr's himself and labours might and Main to cause him to resist the work and so prevent the effects of this Cross. Job was sore put to 't for a season under the demolishing death-work thereof And Satan was in a wonderful toss through fear of what matters might come to with him That which Job fear'd did come upon him Job 3. 25. the Death of his Law-State at best And that which Satan chiefly fear'd came upon him too the Life of Christ's Gospel-Spirit that 's greater then he One First-Covenant Saint fix'd in Holy Flesh and the Law-Life thereof against God's Holy Spirit and the Gospel-Life and words thereof becomes a more Useful Creditable Instrument for his Service against the Gospel then a thousand Profane Persons in the corrupt nature that have no colour of Religion about them Till then his matters are sure with Man by a fix'd Enmity or the business is determin'd beyond all hopes of recovering him into a fix'd Enmity to the Cross he plies it in accusing God to such a Man and him to God Thus turn's he every Stone leaves no Means unattempted for the carrying on of his Oppressive and Destructive Designs upon Saints For shame says he to them be not baffled out of all Sense and Reason so as tamely to deliver up your selvs in a Life by Christ himself twice set up in you to a Murderer So Represents he Christ himself in the Shakings and Brandishings of his Spiritual Flaming Sword over their Heads as no other or better then a Murderer a Devil and Mad Jo. 10. 20. He offer'd at perswading Christ himself by an Apostle to spare his own Innocent Spotless Righteous Earthly nature Life or self Mat. 16. 22 23. But Christ kindled his Spiritual Gospel-fire on that Earth or earthly Law-Life in himself spoke no Peace but War and Death to 't Luk. 12. 49. 51. But when the subtil Enemy hath seemingly prevail'd with any hopefully secured and steel'd them with his Serpentine Armour and Doctrin against the harsh Accents and sharp Disciplin of the Cross as a most Absurd Unreasonable and Destructive thing he frisk's about turns his Dragon's-Tail upon them and Accuses them to God as those whom if he touch them to the quick in the Mystical Skin and Life of their righteous natural Spirit break the Mystical Bones cut asunder the Nervs thereof Enervate Abolish and take away all
transcendently above the highest Saint for ever But all Saints in new-Creature Life are in Personal Union with that which in him is in Personal Union with the Divine nature and thereby fitted to see and Enjoy the Divine Glory as coheirs with him of God Ro. 8. 17. They are thus one with him Personally as he and the Father are one Jo. 17. 21 22. We must Obediently suffer and die with the Man Christ as to the best and most righteous first-Covenant Law-Life in our restor'd nature or not live with him for ever in his Spiritual Gospel-Creature-Life 2 Tim. 2. 11 12. Such dead ones rest from all their sinful and unprofitable Labours in their own Spirit of Enmity and their righteous works or fruits done and brought forth by them in the Spirit of Grace follow stand by them before the Judgment Seat of Christ and justify them as owned and approved in their whole persons and all such works The changableness before the fall and enmity also since found in Man's whole nature render it not properly that is unchangably good and truly Holy in God's sight as under his Approbation-Seal Yea since the fall is Man at best in his single naturals hateful to and a hater of God and therefore can't be profitable to himself by any thing done therein as to true hapiness Wilful fixure in nature at best is unchangable Union with the Devil in Enmity to God So that which he willingly mistak's for Salvation is Everlasting Damnation to him In stead of the Saints Everlasting Rest he 'l find the Sinner's Everlasting Torment and Vexation of Spirit as the Fruit of all his Vain Labours Solomon therefore Preferr's the dead in and with Christ as to the Life of their own nature corrupt or righteous in the Profane Publican or Righteous 〈◊〉 to any yet alive in their own nature Vers. III. Yea better is he then both they which hath not yet bin who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the Sun Better are the compleatly dead in the Lord then either those Saints that yet live in the Mortal Body and have something of the remaining Uncrucified first-Covenant Life of their own Spirit about them so are yet under the Oppressive Practicings of Devils and Men without and Fleshly Lusts within them Warring against the Spirit Gal. 5. 17. Or those Saints who are yet Unborn The departed Spiritual Saint is better then the Saint yet in the Mortal Body amidst a throng of Enemies without and within surrounded with all sorts of worldly Allurements Disturbances wicked Men and Devils Paul therefore earnestly groan'd after deliverance from his earthly Tabernacle by the dissolution of it that he might be at home with the Lord in his Heavenly House So only comes Mortality to be compleatly swallow'd up of a life that 's above all death or chang 2 Cor. 5. 1-6 And if Saints departed enter into a full peace and rest Isai. 57. 1 2. and so a better condition then that of Saints in the Body more yet are they beyond such as shall be Saints that are yet Unborn who have all the said Miseries and Oppressions without and within wholly behind to pass thorow But the letter of this Scripture seem's to look another way that the yet Unborn may seem better then the actually engag'd in this Mortal World of Miseries and Troubles or then the deceas'd who has pass'd through them and that all sorts of deceased good and bad Men as not having yet seen the Oppressions and evil work that 's done under the Sun This as relating to the Miseries of all in this Mortal World and Life of Vanity only He that 's dead is freed from all these things be he unchangably good or evil for ever after The wicked cease from troubling them and the weary are at rest Prisoners no more hear the voice or feel the hand of the Oppressour Job 3. 17 18. The sense in which the yet Unborn is better then both they that are in or have pass'd thorow and out of the Miseries of this World singly consider'd without what follow 's to wit the Grievances and Oppressions incident to the natural Man of Saints or Sinners may seem to import a never being Born at all a meer nullity Such a nullity by an annihilation-death will all that finally perish ever desire and seek but never find as better than to be tormented for ever in Hell or afflicted with the miseries and Oppressions of a mortal Life on earth In this twofold sense had it bin good for Judas never to have been born or bin at all Mat. 26. 24. And this Job seem's to mean Job 3. 11 12. 16. and 10. 18 19. Vers. IV. Again I consider'd all travel and every right work that for this a Man is envied of his Neighbour This is also vanity and vexation of spirit Fallen Man is so brutishly wicked as to envy and hate every right work and worker in the but restor'd Spirit and Life of his own nature as condemning him for the contrary Some of them have affirm'd God gave not Man Free-will but with intent that he may lawfully walk in the uncontrolled liberty thereof And so is it lawful to hate the righteous Life and Action of their own nature in Legal Christianity or Heathen Morality Hence Speak they evil of all that run not with them into the same excess of riot 1 Pet. 4. 4. While such Brutes please themselves with and promise others such Liberty they are the servants of and will utterly perish in their own corruption 2 Pet. 2. 12. 19. Thus do they render the righteous works of restor'd nature which yet are but vanity vexation of spirit to the workers And hence does Satan puff up such persecuted conscientious workers with a confident opinion that they are Christ's true persecuted Gospel-Saints Thus does he play his game so as to be a Winner every way in both these bussling worldly Combatants corrupt and righteous keeping them all in his differing snares and at his beck to let them both loose as he sees occasion against the spiritual Saint One sort of them hates all that run not with them into litteral uncleanesses with greediness the other all that run not with them into mystical uncleanness The righteous first-covenant-professor is the odious Butt at which a profane party shoot their revengeful Arrows And they are at the same work towards the spiritual Saint Because his way 's are of another fashion from and better then theirs For this very cause Cain kill'd Abel 1 Jo. 3. 12. Cain mystically wicked the fixed Enemy of God in the establish'd righteousness of man a first-covenant Brother murthered his natural Brother as found a Second The right work 〈◊〉 here meant is what 's done in the Spirit of Grace not of Nature that can never deceive be deceived sin erre or miscarry All done and said in this spirit only is pleasing to God hateful to righteous men in restor'd Nature only All in the right
and the positive Inflictions of final Wrath upon his whole being for ever Sad gains Beware then of Satan's most destructive 〈◊〉 Counsel for sparing righteous first Covenant-self in Enmity to God and his Everlasting Creature-Life and Righteousness offered in the second If Satan could make an Apostle his SpokesMan for this to Christ himself guess at your danger of being Beguiled by the same old subtil Serpent that so Beguiled Eve at first and a World since Take heed of following this Enemie's pleasing Counsel and Example and so of Rejecting Christ's The highest Glories tallest Cedars in the first-Creation-State of Angel or Man are fading flowers perishing vanities Look about you and consider what ye lay hold on or trust in for happiness The same death of nature that qualified the slain Lamb to open the Sealed Book of the Mind and Visions of God can qualify any followers of him to read it when open'd Till they have a spiritual understanding read while they will the main Scope and Intent of the Author God himself is not seen or taken out The Scriptur's that are a Transcript or Copy of that whole Mind and Counsel of God about the Salvation of Angels and Men that 's Engraven in the Gospel-Spirit of Christ the Original Book and Living Word of God are a Book Sealed up from Learned and more from Unlearned Man all destitute of Spiritual Wisdom See else Isai. 29. 11 12. 1 Cor. 2. 14. But after all that can be said still still the Cross is a Stumbling-block and Foolishness and the truly Obedient followers of Christ under it are highly offensive to Moral Heathen or Legal Christian in the flourish and Wisdom of their unbroken naturalls They are what and where they were say or warn the Spiritual Seer what or while he will or can The more will be their sorrow for such destructive Self-Love and Pity They loath God and he them Zec. 11. 8. Who can help them All offended at the Cross of Christ become an offence to Christ. Where are they then who will be found uppermost Have they an arm like God Can they thunder with a voice like him Job 40. 9. If flesh Holy Flesh that can't Inherit the Kingdom 1 Cor. 15. 50. be kept up and that Holy Spirit in which Men can be rejected where will they be On supposal a Man should violently crow'd into the Kingdom in Holy Flesh and sit at Christ's Wedding Supper still what the better Bind him hand and Foot say's Christ and cast him into outer darkness where shall be Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth Why Because he has not the Spiritual Wedding Garment of Everlasting Righteousness but of the filthy ragged Righteousness of his own nature kept up and held fast in direct Enmity to and Rebellion against God The Man so handled will be Speechles he 'l see he has nothing to say for himself Mat. 22. 11-13 The hating the fading Life of our own nature that 's at best altogether Vanity is a requisite qualification of all true Disciples Luk. 14. 26. Jo. 12. 25. Loving our own loses us Christ's Eternal Life Hating our own is the only way to get it A fix'd self-Love in corrupt or Righteous nature is Eternal Damnation 'T is unchangable Enmity to God And what think you then Better is one handful with quietness then both hands full with Travel and Vexation of Spirit Better is it to go to Heaven with one Eye Hand or Foot then to Hell by keeping both and all Better go Slain to Heaven then alive to Hell Better die under Christ's Sacrificing hand or Cross then be catch'd alive in Satan's Snare a first-covenant Righteous Life the very Snare by and in which he takes Men at his Will 2 Tim. 2. 26. and so fixes them with himself in Enmity to God and the second Better go Poor Halt Maim'd Crucified to Heaven with Christ then Rich Wise Full Strong and Honourable in the fading natural Glory of a first-Covenant Life turn'd into unchangable enmity to God with the Devil to the lake of fire and brimstone prepared of old for both even all incorrigibly wicked Angels and Men. The Spiritual 〈◊〉 Eye or understanding set up in the 〈◊〉 natural Man of the Saint is that single Chast Dove-like Eye Mat. 6. 22. that fills the 〈◊〉 Body or Man full of Light This is the Eye or 〈◊〉 by which Man understands all things 1 Cor. 2. 15. not that Eye that turns and looks both way 's to good and Evil and that good it regards but fading 'T is Man's unexcusable Folly to 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Labour of his own Spirit to his Vexation and Everlasting Destruction rather then quit that for God's and unspeakable everlasting Joy and Blessedness But notwithstanding all the known advantages of quitting all evil with the Life of his own will for all good in the Life of God's Man will on in his own self-chosen way and course come what will Man's one handful in quietness and final Peace with God in his Gospel-Spirit of truth is transcendently better then both his Hands full of such Riches in his own Law-Spirit of nature as are Vanity and will prove Eternal Vexation of Spirit to him Mystical as well as Litteral Riches the Laodicean Treasures of nature in but a first-Covenant Righteous Life are heap'd up with Disquietment kept with Anxiety and fear of loosing from the known self-Evidencing Perishableness thereof So that Men are in continual Bondage all the days of their Life therein through fear of the Death and loss of all Ps. 39. 6. Heb. 2. 15. Out of this Life and Spirit of Bondage are true Saints brought into the Glorious liberty of the Sons of God made truly Rich Wise Strong and 〈◊〉 in his new-Covenant Spirit of Everlasting Life and 〈◊〉 Amidst all Jollity in the first-covenant House of Feasting Men can't but with Job 3. 25. have a Secret bottom-fear of losing all from the Perishing nature of all therein All there is gotten and kept with sore Travel and Vexation and then leaves a Man after all his Labour Sorrow and 〈◊〉 Anxiety and disquietment in Eternal Vexation of Spirit Vers. VII Then I returned and I saw Vanity under the Sun What Vanity This. Vers. VIII There is one alone and there is not a second yea he hath neither Child nor Brother Yet is there no end of all his Labour neither is his Eye satisfied with Riches neither saith he For whom do I Labour and Bereave my Soul of good This is also Vanity yea it is a sore Travel Here 's another Similitude or Comparison to manifest the truth already spoken to In Letter Solomon Character s the Vanity and Folly of the Covetous Man that Toil 's and Labours wholly for the Litteral Wealth of this World when destitute of any Heir Child or Brother to Inherit the same any second to Succeed and enjoy it after him Yet grow's he dayly more and more Solicitous about heaping up and encreasing this lowest sort of
Heir This. Man's whole Immortal being in a Resurrection of Damnation Jo. 5. 29. will have nothing of good to Inherit This second Child that shall stand up for ever in his stead v. 15. in an Immortality of being which in the true Saint will have everlasting Life Joy and Blessedness even God himself for his Inheritance will for ever be laid down in Sorrow under the Positive Inflictions of Wrath in unutterable Torment and Vexation of Spirit Inheriting Everlasting Darkness and Death So will this Covetous worldling doting wholly upon Vain False Deceitful Worldly Riches Litteral or Mystical and as wholly Neglecting Hating and Rejecting the true find no Heir to Inherit no Child Brother or Second that will have any of that fading good to Relieve or Comfort him for ever Whoever has no second no younger Spiritual Brother in his person no true Heir of Salvation that will help and fetch up his natural elder first-Covenant Law-Brother into his newness of Life Gospel-Life will find himself undone to all Intents and Purposes for ever The Old Man or Elder-Brother left alone by his own choice and Gods Righteous Judgment to shift for himself will find himself in a Resurrection of Damnation and Immortality of his whole being Body Soul and Spirit an Heir only of God's final Wrath a Dismal Inheritance But in the true Saint Holy as God is Holy Pure as Christ is Pure that is unchangably as Partaker of Christ's of God's Everlasting Righteousness and true Holiness is found a younger Spiritual Brother that will fetch up the Elder into the same Everlasting Righteous Life with it self And so will Crown all the Righteous Labours of the natural Elder Brother or Old Man in his Law-Life and nature with a Glory never to be done away in an Immortal Gospel-Life with Christ in God a Life suted to his Immortal being He that spares and saves his Old Law-Life of Enmity to God from the Death of the Cross will lose it in Eternal Death He that obediently delivers it up to a Temporal Death will find it again with Usury in Eternal Life These are of the true and faithful Sayings of Christ's Spiritual Law of Liberty Mat. 16. 25. This is the one thing necessary for the rendring Man truly acceptable to God or profitable to himself a true and right Heir of the Kingdom even the true Second Child or Brother Son and Heir The Old Man or Man in his old natural Spirit Life and State in whatever Variety of Condition found is under an absolute impossibility of ever finding true Rest Food or Satisfaction after which he has bin all along his day in this World Coveting and Labouring In a wilfull blindness Inadvertency and Stupidity he will not allow his own Heart or Understanding any fair Play by reflecting upon himself and considering his own Folly He does not so much as say in his Heart for whom do I Labour and to what end do I bereave my Soul of good And all this under a self-Condemning Light which tell 's me all I am Treasuring up and Labouring about is but a heap of Perishing Vanities From inordinate love to and evil Concupiscence after this shall I turn from hate and so bereave my Soul of that blessed new-creation-new-Creation-Life convincingly shew'd and offered me by God that would render me everlastingly blessed Unexpressible Madness Shall I chuse and Steal my own Eternal Death Torment Vexation Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth by Stealing from and Robbing God of his Mystical Tith's and Offrings withholding my nature from Sacrifice and Death Shall I with Esau greedily chuse and dote upon my own first-Creation Morsel and lose the new-Creation Birth-right while the true Spiritual Jacob's get and go away with all It highly concerns Man thus to commune with his own Heart and alter his vain Course for so great Salvation as is offer'd him Vers. IX Two are better then one because they have a good reward for their Labour The Birth of new-Creature Life in the true Saint makes with his natural Man the two that are better then one or then the natural Man single and alone however Perfect Wise Strong Honourable and Glorious The natural Man of the Saint is by his Spiritual under and with the Fountain-Spirit of Life in Christ fetch'd up by way of Death and Resurrection into the everlasting Life of the Spiritual in lieu of its fading natural This compleated the whole person is Spiritual I live yet not I but Christ in me say's Paul Gal. 2. 20. He had the two better then one He and the spirit of Christ. By the death of nature as to its own Law-Life and quickning of it up into Christ's Gospel-Life the Spirit of Christ lives in the whole Saint and he in it as his Ruler Lord and King But Man alone in his own nature however Wise and Righteous will find himself at length not only destitute of but in unchangable Enmity to that spirit of Christ in which alone any can be saved The natural Man in his own Uncrucified Will and self-chosen course therein remain's single and alone to his final ruine The reason why the said two are better then one is because they have a good Reward for their Labour Man fixed in his own Life and way and so in Enmity to God what reward can he expect but final Wrath as the meet Recompence of his Errour On the Obedient death of nature in which 't is impossible to please God in any thing is man rais'd into that Life of Grace in which 't is as impossible not to please him in every thing The Reward of this will be the full enjoyment and cleer Vision of God for ever Vers. X. For if they fall the one will lift up his Fellow but Wo to him that is alone when he falleth For he hath not another to help him up The Gospel-Spirit of Christ in the Saint takes his whole natural Man partly Crucified and partly not into its care and Protection And so the Fountain Gospel-Spirit in Christ himself takes the whole Man of the Saint into its Protection under the covering Shadow and Cherishing Influence of its twofold Cherubin-Wings as also under the joynt regard and care of his Infinite and Almighty Divinity The Saint is deeply concern'd in this case when Christ has committed to him set up in him and intrusted him with his unspeakable Spiritual Gift or Life that unchangable good thing to recommit that and himself back again to Christ for the Nourishing Strengthning and Encouraging it against all the Counterworkings of his Rebellious and in part uncrucified natural Mind or Man which will to its last Gasp without any Interruption fight against God and his Spiritual Till all the Mystical Nervs and Bones thereof be cut asunder and broken all the Life and Strength thereof utterly Extinguish'd and Abolish'd is it a perpetual Warrier against the Spirit of Christ in himself and Saints Paul found this fleshly Foe of his own House this Carnal Mind of Enmity
about him long after his Gospel-Conversion and true Spiritual Saint-ship Ro. 7. 15-23 On this he Cries out O Wretched Man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death v. 24. This Enemy within the Saint till fully run down into Death exposes him to frequent Slipps and sore Miscarriages as in David Solomon and other Saints has bin evident But that that 's Born of God in them and never Sin 's recovers their falling Miscarrying natural Man or Spirit by a gradual and at length total death-work thereof upon it into Harmony with it self Christ and God most high in a newness of Life for evermore This War of Spirit against Flesh Gal. 5. 17. is not finish'd but by the total death of the fleshly Mind Flesh will not leave fighting till dead and therefore ought not Spirit or the Spiritual Man in the Saint leave off Fighting while any thing of Life is left in it The continually sinning natural Spirit till fully Crucified will in the course of its own will need dayly forgiveness as well as an offending Brother even to Seventy-times seven Mat. 18. 21 22. Through the Propitiatory covering-Mercy-Seat which Spiritual Life brings the Saint under God so looks on his Obedient Spiritual Man as not to Impute to him the daily Sins of his natural Ro. 4. 7 8. Thus is the Spiritual Man also under Christ as a covering Shadow to the natural in the same person and qualified to help up or recover it out of all its failings and Back-sliding-Steps The Spiritual Man under the Holy Anointing is to the Decay'd Old Gray-headed Crucified natural the fresh Oyl David Pray'd for Psal. 71. 9. 18. that gives a new Verdure and fresh Lustre to the whole person of the Saint a Glory that excells and remains for ever Thus on all accounts to wit the Sins of the guilty natural Spirit or the Mystical Gray Hairs decay's Old Age and Death brought upon it by the demolishing Crucifying-work of Christ and the Spiritual as its only cure the spiritual is ready at hand to help it up out of all falls in his life-time and out of that grave or death that extinguishes all power of sinning or falling in him Christ and the spiritual man fetch him up into an everlasting harmony with them in their newness of Life T. But wo to him that is alone when he falleth for he hath not another to help him up Here 's the deplorable condition of all fixed in the life of nature and so in unchangable enmity to the spirit of grace that 's the only meet helper and lifter up of the natural spirit out of all its falls Submitting to the death of the natural Man is the only way by which the Saint receives that spiritual Life that can help it at all dead lifts out of its falls and out of that death that 's the only Cure of all evil in it into its never-sinning Life When Man chooses his fading creature-life before God's and God in judgement on him gives him his choice or chuses his delusions Isa. 66. 4. Who can help him up If God be against him who can be for him Himself he cannot help He is gone then on all hands All that finally refuse the terms of receiving the spirit of Grace reject it And all that wilfully reject it God will reject with all their false confidences in their own He will swear in wrath they shall never enter into his rest What then can they say or do or any other for them who will or can help them up when fallen under the final wrath of God Vers. XI Again if two lie together then they have heat but how can one be warm alone The natural man of the Saint receives light and warmth from the spiritual as fast as baptiz'd transform'd and rais'd into a marriage-union with it in its Life and so made an equal yoke-fellow to it under Christ's most easy and delightful yoke or government over both As fast as the natural and spiritual man of the Saint come to a right conjugal union as of twain made one new man the whole Saint and Christ do lye in the intimate imbraces of conjugal love with mutual delight and satisfaction in one another for ever A most comfortable spiritual warmth and cherishing influence from Christ does the Saint find in this mystical marriage-union with him figured by the litteral Eph. 5. 22-32 Christ and the Saint are one spirit as man and wife one flesh 1 Cor. 6. 16 17. Christ is head to all saints and every saint They members of his mystical body slesh and 〈◊〉 So is Christ's spiritual state of life and headship and saints relation to him therein expressed in the very words of the figurative litteral headship and relation of the man to the woman The marriage-union of the saint with Christ and their mutual love therein is indissoluble and everlasting because founded in a spirit of everlasting righteousness and love Saints are everlastingly subject and most delightfully obedient to him and he most delightfully kind to them beyond all words for ever God having from Everlasting set up his Creature-Son the Spiritual or second Adam Creator of the first the natural state was first in Creatures Angels and Men afterward that which is spiritual in the Life of the Creator he judg'd meet he should have a Wife as is figured in what he saw meet for the first Adam who had a litteral Woman taken and form'd out of his own Body Gen. 2. 20 -- 24. This Wife taken out of Christ Spirit of his Spirit is from the borrowed Language of the Litteral said to be Bone of his bone and slesh of his slesh The insinite divine King that set up his Creature-Son from Everlasting did from the said everlasting appoint a Marriage for him and a Wedding-feast to which all Men and Angels have been invited But abundance of both refuse to come For through their willful folly are they found unchangable haters of the Bridegroom Bride and Feast all the diet the never perishing meats at the heavenly Table and Marriage Supper of the Lamb in the Kingdom of his Father All the proud huffing self-exalting party of Angels and Men drive another Trade are at their worldly Farming and Merchandise labouring for feeding on and wholly delighting themselvs in a Life a Belly and Meats desires and desirables that will all perish and be destroy'd in God's final wrath upon such wicked wilfull abusers of all given them in the first-creation against God and all his things in the second But all such Men and Angels as submit to the death of the first for the Life of God in the second will be admitted in their true Wedding Garment the everclean Linnen the everlasting Righteousness of true Saint-ship to the Marriage-Supper Rev. 19. 7-9 Those Men that gladly answer the Lord 's Heavenly Call of them to the said marriage Supper out of the Life of their own nature the Mystical Land of their Nativity and
will both come to in Eternal Life or Death Vers. XIV For out of Prison he cometh to Reign Heb. Out of the House of Bond-Men or Bondage he goes forth to Reign Whereas also he that is Born in his Kingdom becometh Poor The true Saint finding the Land of his Nativity a narrow strait'ned place the Life of his own nature in the Image of the earthy at best to be but a State of Enmity Bondage and death come's out of this his own Mystical Countrey and Father Adam's House or natural State by a Holy death to reign in another Spiritual more excellent Life He find's his own Spirit of nature in whatever variety of condition a State of Bondage or House of Bond-Men a Prison a deep dark Dungeon a miery Pit of filth and corruption filth of flesh or spirit litteral or Mystical Sodomy or both out of which by the death thereof he find's it his unspeakable advantage to Ascend come or be brought forth into a larg place in a Life above all death to Reign whereas the old foolish King who will no more be admonish'd hear of the Cross or death-Doctrin of Christ's Gospel-Spirit on the restor'd Law-Life of his own wherein he sets up his Kingdom becometh Poor He is even now in this World by Christ and awak'ned Saints seen to be Miserable Poor Blind and Naked as Happy Rich Cleer-sighted and Well-cloathed as he think 's himself He will find this too true at last in eternal Poverty Darkness Nakedness and Death Here are the exceeding different Conclusions they come to even the old foolish King in the birth of a first-Covenant Life fixing himself there in unchangable Enmity to God and the second the incorrigible first-Creation sinner and the poor wise Child broken and undone as to all the fading Life Riches Wisdom and Glory of his own nature and so becoming a truly reigning new-Creation Saint in the spirit of Grace the reigning Gospel-Principle That restor'd natural State which the old foolish King sets up in as his Palace the House of his Kingdom to reign in the poor wise child find's to be a Prison and hasten's out of it as a Spirit of Bondage and Enmity into the true Palace-Light and Glorious Liberty of the Sons of God whom the Son mak's free indeed Where the Spirit of the Lord becom's the principle of Life and action there is true liberty Man's freedom or freewill at best is but a Liberty in Word Figure Letter Shadow not in deed and in truth No true freedom sure in a Spirit of Bondage and Enmity to God a Spirit that 's in Union with World and Devil as the spirit of nature is in all mankind corrupt or righteous Yea so far as uncrucifi'd even in the awak'ned Spiritual Saint himself Ro. 7. and Gal. 5. 17. That renew'd natural State the old foolish King make's his Palace will prove his everlasting prison and dungeon of darkness and death in which he will be shut up for ever as the evil Angels in their narrow Angelical nature All of them shall be dealt with as unchangable Enemies of God and that Heavenly Sanctuary-Spirit that 's his true resting place and the everlasting habitation of blessed Angels and Saints in Chains of everlasting darkness in which reserv'd to the Judgment of the great day The unpardonable sin of Men and Angels is the self-same even a fix'd Enmity against the Holy Ghost God's Gospel-spirit or Heavenly Sanctuary convincingly shewed and offered to them all They were all Created perfect in their own natures Humane and Angelical Ezek. 28. 15. and in Obedient Subjection to the Gospel-Spirit in the Light of it But they soon hated that Life turned from the Light that shew'd it them and this was their Apostasy All this from an evil self-love to the fading Life Wisdom and Glory of their own nature which they chose to set up in in a known contrariety to the reveal'd mind of God and unchangable Enmity to his Spirit of Grace the very Gospel-High-Priest of God the true Melchisedec by whose hand they ought all to have given up that selfish life in Sacrifice to God So become they all Mystical Sodomit's guilty of all the highest and most Criminal Mystical Spiritual Wickednesses Uncleanesses and abominable Idolatries God in Faithfulness Favour and Love to his Saints Plagu's and Chasten's this Rebellious Spirit of nature this Carnal mind of Enmity in them while he gives more then Heart can wish to it in-Enemies to their final ruin Heb. 12. 5-8 Psal. 73. 7. 14. God's giving the old doting Kings their Hearts desire and more is a sore and heavy Judgment on them though they take it for a great favour and Token of his Love to them Desolation and an utter consuming of them with Terrors the true Saint certainly foresees to be the eternal issue of all their Temporal flourish and Prosperity v. 18 19. All the old foolish King dotes on the poor wise Child cast's away as Dung So foolish are the old Mystical Kings and also litteral Heathen Kings of this World as to bandy together against the Lord and his anointed as if hopeful to prevail against the infinite Divine Lord and his Anointed King Jesus with his Saints and Followers Their design is to break their Bands a sunder and cast away from them all their Cords of restraint upon them He that sits in Heaven laugh's at all these foolish Kings He will speak to them in his Wrath and vex them in his sore displeasure Ps. 2. 1-5 Have they an arm like God Can they thunder with a Voice like him What madness to think of prevailing in this Rebellious Insurrection and Contest against the Almighty Divine and Irresistibly Mighty New-Creation Power of Christ These old foolish Humane Kings will all fare as their evil Angelical King the King of all such Kings or Rebellious Children of Pride Job 41. 34. They 'l all 〈◊〉 into the same Condemnation with him will all have their Portion in the same Lake of Fire and Brimstone the Tophet prepar'd of old for them all They 'l be all finally stripp'd of all Power of resisting the Will of God and forc'd to suffer the same to be done upon them in 〈◊〉 Wrath. Then with their everlasting Poverty will they have unutterable Shame and Confusion of Face All they refus'd obediently to part with will be forcibly torn from them in final Wrath. All their fading goodness or beauty 〈◊〉 Consume in their eternal Grave from their dwelling their whole Mystical Houses earthly Habitations or persons all the goodness of that natural State they chose for their dwelling Ps. 49. 14. There 's no middle State for ever between the poor wise Child that will be eternally rich in Heaven and the old rich foolish King that will be eternally poor in Hell The poor wise Child believ's and follow 's the Faithful Sayings of Christ's Spiritual Law or Gospel-spirit the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus He is content willing yea glad
shall never enter into his rest in the second And for their unpardonable Sin he will take from them all the fading beauty or goodness he had bestow'd on them in the 〈◊〉 So all 's gone God's first-Covenant-gift set up in unchangable enmity to his convincingly shew'd and graciously offer'd second is the unpardonable Sin against the Holy Ghost comprehending all the most criminal Sins or Abominations Man can be guilty of mystical spiritual Adultery idolatry Murder c. Ezek. 16. 15. 38. Ro. 2. 21 22. 1 Cor. 6. 9 10. Gal. 5. 19-21 The proud reigning 〈◊〉 old first Covenant Kings despise all these words to their own destruction But the poor of the Flock Christ's little ones content to be impoverish'd and run down into the barreness and death of their own however 〈◊〉 and enlight'ned nature understand own and obey all such words of the Lord 〈◊〉 11. 11. They are willing to be made Fools weak and despicable with Paul in the 〈◊〉 visage of a first-covenant State Image of the earthy that they may be all glorious within in the Image of the heavenly such as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rich strong and honourable in God in the spiritual Gospel-Life 〈◊〉 with Christ in God All that finally 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are the greatest Fools as to their greatest eternal concerns All that 〈◊〉 boggle and fly off at the Gospel-Tydings of the Cross and Death thereby to be brought upon nature resolving to maintain the sandy Foundation and untemper'd Walls of their earthly worldly first-Covenant Church-building for Salvation are be witch'd by Satan with their glittering Holy Flesh and things of Man and Devil into unchangable enmity to God's Holy Spirit and all the things of Christ and God This work Satan is at with first-covenant Professors in holy 〈◊〉 the self-same as with Eve 2 Cor. 11. 3. And through God's most wise permission has he wonderfully prevailed in all Ages and Generations and not less sure in this last and worst of times to keep men short of the Grace of God yea to fix them with himself in enmity to it and so deprive them of all advantages or benefits of both God's Covenants Many that begin well engage and set their hand to God's Spiritual mystical-Plow the Cross of Christ for running down nature in them toward the commanded Death suffering many things that way their foot in the same Gospel race of suffering with the thorow-pac'd resolv'd Gospel-Saint that follow 's the Lamb slain whithersoever he goes even to the mystical Death and Grave of nature many of these engaged Racers does Satan fetch back again to himself and sixes them with himself in first creation-Life and so in unchangable enmity to God and the second Gal 5. 7 8. and 3. 1-4 When come to the borders of the heavenly Canaan as Israel of the litteral they hate it and turn back to mystical if not also litteral Egypt sixing in the righteous or rolling back to the corrupt Spirit of nature and that as their professed Judgment for Salvation with Ranters After all high Spiritual enlightning partaking of the Light of the holy Ghost and offer'd the Life thereof and so tasting of that heavenly gift the good living word and wisdom of God and Powers of the World to come they Apostatize or fall away beyond all possibility of recovery or renewal of them again unto repentance Heb. 6. 4-6 The high Priest's among the Jews offer'd litteral Sacrifices Christ the true high Priest comes to Preach Death to nature in their very Persons as the true Gospel Sacrifice they ought obediently to give him to offer up in the fire of his Eternal Spirit as he offer'd our nature at best in himself to God most high For this they blasphem'd and crucified him The fix'd Shadowy Law-Priest's and their blind followers abhor the true Gospel-Priest with all his Spiritual Seers and Doctrine Many shuffling devices and inventions Devils Suggest and men find to shift off the Cross of Christ wave all the unpleasing words or doctrine thereof which indeed is the only way to and Door of entrance for any into the Kingdom of God Through a fellowship with their Lord in sorrows sufferings and manifold tribulations of and to their natural man inward and outward do true Saints enter with him into his everlasting joy All others must lie down in everlasting Sorrow eating the fruit of their own way be filled with their own devices under final wrath Had they own'd God's reproofs given by the mouth of true Wisdom his living word to them even the reproofs of Death to their nature and followed his instructions for Life they might have dwelt safely for ever and have been quiet from all fear of evil Prov. 1. 20-33 The Pisgah-Prospect into the new-creation Life or true Land of promise given to their natural understandings by Spiritual irradiations or Light should have invited moved and drawn their wills with cogent arguments to the most delightful embraces thereof on any terms Man convinc'd of the more excellent Gospel-Life and way and setting hand and foot to work in prosecution of it and towards attaining it is actually under the vow of surrendring nature to Death And this is upon record in that living corner-stone the fountain Gospel-Spirit or living creature-Word Wisdom or Book of God in Christ's person This was figur'd by the Stone Josua set up under an Oak by the sanctuary of the Lord that in figure heard the Spiritually enlightne'd Israelâ—â—s vow promise and engagement over and over for the true serving the Lord in his Spirit of truth the principle of the new and everlasting covenant accordingly will witness for or against them as they firmly hold or perfidiously fly off from the said engagement As for me and my house say's Josua we will serve the Lord. So will we answer'd the people again again again and again Jos. 24. 15. 18. 21. 24 yet after all these good words fair promises and engagements a world of them flew off and came to worse then nothing Christ the living Stone sigur'd by that Joshua set up will witness against and deal with all such according to their works and dealings toward him v. 26 27. Man must not dispute or deferr the performance of the said vow but with Paul should be forthwith obedient to the heavenly vision of the mind of God come roundly and readily off with his holocaust or whole burnt-offring of his natural State His eye must not pity nor hand spare any thing in it that God requires to be destroy'd as Saul spar'd Agag and best of the Cattel in letter and mystery whereas Abram spar'd not his very Son Isaac Nature at best Our true father Abraham though tempted to it by Satan and his own apostle Peter spared not the true Isaac our spotless nature in his own person but offer'd it up in the mystical fire of his eternal Spirit of grace unto God accounting with litteral Abram that God was able to raise him or it up again from the
dead into the everlasting righteous life of the true Melchisedec or sacrificing high-Priest of God and of our Gospel-profession Abram was a type of Christ's priestly Gospel-Spirit Isaac of his natural law-Spirit offer'd up by that Priest in his own person For this obedience God most high blesses the said true Abram Christ himself in and with the figure promising him an innumerable multitude of Spiritual Saints the true seed descendents and posterity of the second Adam Gen. 22. 16-18 The new covenant is a covenant of oath by which the Lord ratifies his mercies to all obedient enterers into it with him for ever by an oath and excludes all rebellious wilfull refusers of the terms of entring into it with an oath also Swearing in his wrath they shall never enter into his rest Heb. 3. 11. 18. And Heb. 6. 13-18 we sind the new-covenant promise to Abram establish'd with an oath and that oath it self made or confirm'd by two immutable things God's infinite divine and his immutably righteous and Glorious new-creature self or Spirit the living word and Eternal Wisdom of God in personal union with infinite divinity The terms of the first covenant on Man's part is to part with the vile affections and lusts of the corrupt Spirit of nature on God's to set up the restor'd righteous life thereof In the second is man to give up the very righteous life to God in sacrifice as a perishing vanity a fading flower which was God's part to give him in the first as the clean sacrifice for entering into the second Thus first God gave Abram an Isaac and then requir'd the offring of him up And so did Abraham by that very thing in mystery enter the second and was justified for ever before God Jam. 2. 21. This gives him and all his Spiritual seed compleat victory over all enemies so as to 〈◊〉 their Gates take away all strength and power from them Gen. 22. 17 18. They will in the 〈◊〉 mighty power of 〈◊〉 new-creation Gospel-Spirit tread all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 law-enemies evil Angels and 〈◊〉 under their 〈◊〉 Nothing is of greater advantage to the Saint then the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of his vow relating to the new-covenant sor the 〈◊〉 death of nature nothing of more dangerous 〈◊〉 then his deserring or delaying the performance of this vow Nothing gives greater advantage to the Devil against him then 〈◊〉 delay sor extinguishing his part in him the natural State The most 〈◊〉 resiless Implacable enemy that in his mighty power and 〈◊〉 roves up and down as a roaring Lion to devour all he 〈◊〉 light on will not 〈◊〉 to make his utmost advantage of such delay If he sind Saints lingring and loath with Lot to depart out of litteral or Mystical Sodom or both even the whole Life and lust of nature corrupt or 〈◊〉 he will labour might and main to turn their lingrings into a 〈◊〉 and absolute establishment there and so 〈◊〉 their hearts in them to do evil six them with himself there in unchangable enmity to God and Death to themselvs But God is 〈◊〉 to his Saints and lay's hold on them by his Angels as on ling'ring Lot to hasten them out of both the said Sodom's Gen. 19. 15 16. 〈◊〉 great mercy in the Lord and should be the earnest prayer of the Saint to him to hasten the execution of the guilty Sinner the 〈◊〉 party in him and so his deliverance srom all evil in enmity to God or compliance with the Devil 〈◊〉 uses his utmost power and skil to cause a delay in this case God gives his most saithful counsel and instruction to us to hasten the performance To be sure linger while we wil done it must be first or last or we perish for ever The sooner and speedier done the better sor us We should not look on Christ as Satan represents him a hard Master a bloody Husband but a most faithful Creatour and gracious Redeemer What Suggest's Satan to men does Christ come with a sacrificing Knife Fire and Sword speaking War and Death to a righteous Life of his own twice setting up in vou first by creation and then redemption Never believe it With God is no such variableness or shadow of turning He quoted Scripture to Christ himself 〈◊〉 unreasonable say's he to think God should pull down and destroy the Work of his own hands And when he has thus steel'd them with arguments for self-defence and keeping up themselvs in their own native Countrey and Father's House the restor'd life of the first Adam the image of the earthy as a most desireable land or state then fall's he to work the other way to bring a false and evil report on God's Countrey the new-creation land of promise or state of life This is the Far Countrey the man Christ is gone into where he lives for evermore This Far Countrey even a heavenly that God engages as his part in the new Covenant to bring men into on their obedient speedy departure out of their own does Satan bring an evil report upon First say's he you have but a report a hear-say of it you have no certain knowledg or experience of it And then 't is a Land that eateth up the Inhabitants thereof as the spies doing his errand therein said of the litteral Numb 13. 32 your destruction and very death it self is the propounded and declared terms on which only ye can enter into the possession of it So when brought by Christ's Spiritual Light to the very borders of the heavenly Canaan by and with his evil apostles and spies ministers of his Gospel that 's no Gospel are they easily perswaded induced to start aside and fly off as offended at both the promised land or life it self they should enter into and also at the loss oftheir own with all their mystical riches large possessions therein So in stead of speedily performing the commanded and vow'd sacrifice of their old nature in order to enter into and take possession of the said new land of promise they peremptorily and conclusively refuse the terms and consult with Satan and one another about a return back rather into Egypt litteral or mystical corrupt or righteous nature and there fix and establish themselvs in their own nature land or Countrey in unchangable enmity to God's This the rebellious fleshly Israel was at in letter and figure If holy flesh a righteous natural State and strict holy walking therein won't do 't for salvation they 'l not be saved This desperate resolution is a crime of a dangerous destructive complexion of an Ethiopian hiew 'T is the Leopards spot never the spot of Gods Children Spiritual Saints T is the highest folly imaginable If they 'l never obediently come out of their own land the fading life of their own nature they 'l never enter his even the life of his Spirit of Grace If they 'l not suffer and die with Christ in the former they 'l never live and reign with him in the
thereby Vers. VII For in the multitude of Dreams and many Words there are also divers Vanities but fear thou God This concluding Word on this subject is a Character of the first-creation Spirit or State as chosen by men in union of mind with the fallen Angels Solomon calls it many things and businesses a multitude of Dreams as v. 3. a multitude of business whence cometh a Dream The busie boundless wandring gadding Spirit of man cumbers it self as Martha with a heap of first-creation Vanities that can give him no true satisfaction All his conceited happiness therein is but a Dream His many Words and Labours about them are but divers Vanities a variety of glittering nothings things that God says are not perishing vanishing shadows All labour of man in his first creation life of Vanity all his Works Fruits Duties performance to God or Man therein is Vanity All inordinate love to and 〈◊〉 after the outward or inward litteral or mystical Riches and Treasures of that State in the most fruitfull Exercise of a first-covenant Life is but that Love of Mony Paul call's the Root of all 〈◊〉 For from this Love to his own Worldly Life and Riches thereof is man sound in direct enmity to God and his Gospel-Spirit and Riches which alone can make any truly Happy So all he is has or does all his Attainments Works Fruits Riches Possessions rested in will prove a most unhappy destructive Dream out of which when he awakes he will find himself to have bin all along deceived with Imaginary things that have no durable reality in them Christ convincingly shew's men this now and will hereafter convince them he hath so shewed it and fairly warned them thereby of their danger Let him then that Preaches up such a vain State with all the best things of man therein for happiness tell it but as a Dream not considently assert it to be a Gospel-State of Salvation but a Law-Dream Jer. 23. 28. Man's Chaff Dream Vain Glory Shadow Life and Image of the Earthy fix'd in in unchangable enmity to God's Wheat his Word Wisdom Righteousness durable Life Riches Food and Cloathing in the Image of the Heavenly is certain damnation What 's the Chaff to the Wheat the Words of Man's Wisdom in his lying Spirit of divination as to all Gospel things and truths of God into the Room whereof he thrusts the things of Man and says the Lord sayeth Ezek. 13. 6. to the Words of my Wisdom in my Gospel Spirit of Truth What are Man's Law-Dreams to my Gospel-Truths In stead of this dangerous Trade and destructive practice Solomon's advice is Fear thou God This fearing God and keeping his commandments he declar's Eccles. 12. 13. to be the whole Duty of Man the Conclusion and sum of the whole matter in all Books and Words of Right Instruction unto Life Follow after obey and close with the Lord 's own Counsels Teachings Leadings convincing discoveries of his mind and Gracious Offer's of that Gospel-Spirit that 's in unchangable union with his divine Spirit and you 'l ever know and do his whole mind and counsel and Worship him in Spirit and in Truth to his wel-pleasing acceptance and your Salvation His Spirit is that Love that 's the fulfiller of his whole Law Rom. 13. 10. Vers. 8. If thou seest the Oppression of the Poor and violent perverting of Judgment and Justice in a Province marvel not at the matter Heb. will or purpose for he that is higher then the highest regardeth and there be higher than they Her 's encouragement to right Fearers true Believers and beloveds of God that have abandon'd their own first-creation Life of vanity and enmity for his new-creation Spirit of Truth and Love In this are they too hard for all Enemies For the Almighty Divine and irrisistibly mighty new-creation Spirit of Christ and God are on their Side as also the Angels of his Power who in their Spiritual new-covenant Life of everlasting Righteousness and Truth transcendently excell in strength all first-creation Evil Angelical or humane invisible or visible Principalities Powers that are against the Saints of the most high Saints then are sufficiently furnish'd under the great Captain of their Salvation to deal with and be more then Conquerors over all Enemies all worldly Powers of Darkness and Gates of Hell Muster they never so strong Bluster Storm and Look as big as they can Saints Infallibly see and know where they shall have them in conclusion for ever even under their feet as the necks of the five Kings of Canaan were put under the feet of Josua's Captains Jos. 10. 24. Those Kings were a Type of all first-Creation Powers fix'd in Opposition to the second Spiritual Israelites know how to demean themselvs under all Oppressours the great mystical Goliah the Devil with his whole Army of Philistines evil Angels and men They have so learnt Christ in their Spiritual man which no Enemies can touch that they fear not them that can but kill the Body or whole natural man as to a first-covenant first-creation Life of vanity and have no more that they can do They know their great Captain Christ himself turns all Injuries done to their Body or natural man to their great advantage as hastning the Death of what 's to die in them and so compleating their conformity with himself therein the consequent whereof will be a compleating them in his resurrection-Life that 's above all Enemies and Deaths Their Way of ascending into his all-conquering Spiritual Life is the Death of their natural State They overcome by such Death of what can die as found in a state that can never die the certain result and issue of such a Holy obedient Death This way the Captain of our Salvation overcame Heb. 2. 10. And his good and faithfull Souldiers must fight as they have him for an example and not look for a final absolute Conquest any other Way than he obtained it Satan and his Party seem to conquer by killing the natural man or Body of Christ and Saints who finally conquer them all by being so killed They fight with exceedingly differing Weapons Enemies with Weak and Carnal Saints and their Captain-General with Spiritual and Mighty through God for pulling down all their Strong Holds and laying them all in the Dust. Another Riddle Enemies fight against the Spirit of God or Spiritual man in Saints but can hit or touch only their natural which their own Spiritual is fighting against in their own persons So though they have Perfectly contrary designes Christ Saints and all Enemies what'ere they strike at they all hit only flesh and Blood which cannot enter into the Kingdom of God but lets or hinders the Saint's fully entring till it be fully destroyed By suffering Devils and men seemingly to overcome him and his Saints as bringing death on their natural man do Christ and they overcome them all in their Spiritual which is greater then they and which they can never touch V.
14. 1 Joh. 4. 4. and 5. 18. Satan's Battels against and seeming Conquests over Saints the few that are saved Christs little flock are performed with a confused noise and Garments rolled in Blood Christ's and Saints victory over them is with burning and fewel of Fire by which the 〈◊〉 of and by the Lord will be the many that perish Isai. 9. 5. and 66. 16. Enemies kill Saint's Body's but they 'l kill their Spirits Souls and Bodies for ever in that Spirit they aimed at to kill but could never touch It will touch them to purpose at last But Who are the Oppressours here What the Oppression Who the Oppressed in the Province of this World Satan's universal Monarchy through a violent perverting of Judgment and Justice Much has been said 〈◊〉 these queries on Vers. 1. of Chap. 4. Evil Angels and Men are the invisible and visible Principalities and Powers that set themselvs to oppress the Saints of the most High the Poor and Needy as to the Treasures of their inward natural Man their Spirit and oft outward also as the Signal Tormenters of such Dwellers upon the Earth or fixed Inhabitants of the Earthy first-Creation State of Nature evill Angels and Men disturbers of the Peace of their Joynt worldly Dominion and tyranical Domination therein For they declare all that worldly Life and Strength they trust in for Happiness to be but a Bubble a Dream a fading Flower insignificant as to true happiness a fix'd confidence therein unchangable enmity to God and certain Damnation to themselvs Can the Rulers of this World visible or invisible bear such Doctrine concerning that State they set up in for Salvation Though Devils more fully know the Truth thereof will men under their strong delusions pleasing themselvs to think their sandy Foundation'd Church-building good and their matters right with God as therein doing him service let the true Saint's contrary spiritual true Gospel-Doctrine passe uncontrol'd or the Preachers and Owners of such Doctrine unpunished Never look for 't And least of all in these last and worst of Times in which the Scripture proclaim 's and warn's this Oppression will rise to a higher pitch than in all former Ages of this World under Satan the Prince and God the Moloch and Baal or King and Lord thereof King of Kings and of all the Children of Pride all proud self-exalters in this World as Christ King of all Spiritual Kings and meek subjected Children of his Kingdom in the next Satan the permitted God and Prince of this when he know's he hath but a short time to Reign his Kingdom drawing near a Period will more outragiously and Subtly then ever lay about him to hinder and prevent the Dawnings and commencing of Christ's Rev. 12. 12. He will then enrage his visible Powers in this World against Saints to the causing such a time of Trouble to them as never was or shall be Mat. 24. 21. As certain Tokens of Satan's expiring Reign and so of the approaching of Christ's the Love and Practice of all sorts of Iniquity litteral and mystical will abound and of all sorts of goodness decline and decay By both these will the Devil most dext'rously serve his designs as to all sorts of Oppression by the violent perverting of Judgment and Justice towards the Poor of Christ's Flock stripp'd of all natural Power or Relief visible or invisible He will use a prophane Party to destroy the common Rights and Properties of men on civil accounts And he will use first-Covenant Law-Brethren as by him turn'd into gospel-wolv's and yet dress'dup by him in Sheeps-cloathing Spiritual appearances to worry and hunt true Spiritual Gospel-Breth'ren in the second to Death But Saints are fore-warn'd of all this as to what they are to expect in the worst of times Mat. 24. 25. Joh. 16. 4. All 's by God's permission and under his over-ruling Power They ought not therefore to marvel or be dismay'd at the matter or will and purpose of God herein which is wholly for their Good Be not dismay'd for he or they that is or that are higher than the highest the Holy Angels do regard see and take notice of all as Standers by and Lookers on til fully impowr'd and comission'd to come forth in the effectual Preaching of the everlasting Gospel to Saints and pouring forth the Vials of Wrath on their Enemies And Christ and God yet unspeakably infinitely higher than the Holy Angels sit as 't were silent but exactly regarding and observing the injurious demeanour of Enemies towards his Saints together with Saints dutiful and quiet demeanour under such Injuries and worst Occurrents The spiritual Gospel-life of Christ in Elect Angels yea and in Saints too render's them as much higher then all evil first-creation Powers Angels or Men as the Heavens then the Earth And though the Good Angels come not forth in their immediately preparatory dispensation to Christ's second comming till peculiarly commission'd for such blessed work in the last and worst of times when enemies are grown most rampant and confident yet mean while even all along this World are they and have they bin sent by Christ as ministring spirits keepers and guardians to blessed Saints on earth heirs of salvation surrounded with enemies on all hands in this scrambling confounded world of cunning Devils and ignorant men ignorant as to all Gospel saving truths abundance of them not knowing or very little thinking what they are doing as even Paul once Act. 26. 9. Luk. 23. 34. Act. 13. 27. They protected Eliah from the king's 3 Captains and their fifties Elisha in Dothan from the Syrian Army and Hezekiah c. from the Assyrian Army before Jerusalem as Isaiah prophesied 2 Kings 19. 20. 35. By the decrees of Christ's spiritual Angelical Watchers over and observers of all men good and bad as Hesiod say's will the great Tree of all oppressing Worldly Monarchies be cut down when ripe for the Sicle Dan. 4. 17. Mat. 13. 39-42 Rev. 14. 19 20. That Devils are not ignorant of Holy Angels Guardianship over Saints appears by Satan's quoting Psal. 91. 11 12 to Christ himself Mat. 4. 6. They keep Saints also as the natural man of Christ himself in flesh from being induced by tempting Devils by the contrary workings of flesh and Blood in themselvs or persecuting-work of enemies without doores to stumble or be finally and unpardonably Offended at and so found offenders of Christ the corner-stone and foundation of the new-creation building on the Rock as coming on flesh and blood or their natural man with mystical fire and a flaming two-edged sword to kill slay and offer it up in sacrifice to God In the close of this world will they poure down the wrath of God gradually on the several parts or branches of Satan's universal Empire or worldly dominion till all be laid in the Dust under Christ's theirs and his Saints feet Rev. 16. Saints waiting in a lively hope for this ought to possess their Souls in faith and
patience and not marvel or be dismayed seeing cleerly the mind will purpose and method of God's wisdom in all at the most daring presumptuous practicers of highest wickedness against God or them They are sure of advantage by all they can do against them now And they are sure of having them under their feet hereafter for ever What would they have or can they wish more in this point God is for them who can be against them They must needs be more then conquerers If this threefold Cord will hold conjunctive divine and new-creature power in Christ the conjunctive personally united new-creature power in Christ and Elect Angels and Saints also for their security against all worldly Powers all 's safe Vers. IX Moreover the profit of the earth is for all the king himself is served by the field The chief intendment of this litteral truth which hit upon is properly and truly right interpretation is the fruits and products of man's nature in the renew'd old earthly or first-creation state thereof the Image of the earthy The profit of this is for all And this is figured by the fruits profits and products of the litteral Earth by which King and Subjects Rulers and Ruled even all Mankind are supported and maintain'd in their bodily life The fruits of the said mystical Earth or righteous earthly Life and state afford a natural food and clothing to the immortal spirit or inner man of man in his first-creation make and fashion of being In this make and life is man to serve or obey God as the fruits thereof serve or preserve him both but for a season till called out of this man 's own earthly life make and fashion of being into God's Heavenly which with the fruits and meats thereof is everlasting The Earthly state of man or Angel before the fall in a first-covenant law-life was figuratively represented by the Tree of good and evil signifying the corruptibility thereof and the danger incident to man or Angel by their own evil choice and use of it To prevent this evil both were strictly prohibited the feeding upon terminating delighting and establishing themselvs therein with a confidence to find true blessedness there to their immortal beings The so doing then was rebellion against the command of God and turned their natures into a direct enmity to that more excellent and durable creature-creature-life of God spiritual and heavenly a Gospel-state of everlasting righteousness and truth And the same miscarriage and abuse of all turned their earthly-state life or mystical field into a uselesness to themselvs so as to be of no true avail or profit to them but indeed a prison-state of darkness and death rendring their nature an accursed earth bringing forth nothing but Briars and Thorns Gall and Wormwood from a root of bitterness or enmity to God This brought the sinning Angels on their first sin under an absolute unchangable Curse and everlasting Burnings and man's mystical Earth or earthly life and state it brought nigh unto Cursing as bearing Thorns and Briars also and if he persist finally therein against all offered Grace and Mercy his end will be also to be burned in the same Lake of mystical Fire and Brimstone the unquenchable slames of God's wrath for evermore Heb. 6. 8. Adam's first sin left no profit in this mystical field or earth of man's nature All men since are born dead in trespasses and sins Their nature is a wast howling barren Wilderness full of ravenous devouring wild Beasts bestial thoughts foolish noisom lusts that hurt wound sink and drown them in destruction and perdition 1 Tim. 6. 9. The King or kingly superiour Angelical nature and the subject inferiour humane nature by their fall lost the right use and true profit of the mystical earthly first-creation field life or natural state Both were brought to feed on dust or the perishing vanities of this World or Worldly state having turn'd their Backs on God's never-perishing Life and Meats figured in the Tree of Life and offered to them both and all They forth-with forfeited and lost the paradisical-state of their corruptibly perfect natural in Subjection to that Light that shew'd and offer'd them God's incorruptibly perfect spiritual creature-Life State and Meats which was their first habitation or state of Innocency Fallen Angels as their greater punishment for their greater and more criminal first Sin against higher and clearer Light than man have the Dust of their not only corruptible but corrupted first-creation Field or natural State left them to feed on and are permitted to use all their Strength and advantages therein against God and his Saints But Man as a lesser punishment was instantly deprived of all both of the righteous Earthly Life of his nature and of the proper Food and cloathing thereof He is ever since born Naked Dead Helpless and Loathsome Ezek. 16. 5 6. He has nothing left but a meer bestial bodily Life and the lowest part of the Dust of this World in common with Brutes to feed upon even the gratifying contentments of bodily lust only He has nothing proper to him as a man left him to feed on But he is pardonable and recoverable into the righteous Life of a Man again by the Redeemer And when actually recovered into and set up afresh therein if he as wilfully against conviction abuse it again in sinning against and rejecting God's more excellent new-creature Gospel-Life at first represented in the Tree of Life he is gone for ever as fallen Angels at first were Yet is he left for a season after so irrecoverably and unpardonably gone to the self-confident exercise of his restor'd changable righteous first-covenant Law-Life and feeding on the meats and fruits thereof handed now to him from the Evil Angel that 's higher than he in that fading Life and Meats And so is he permitted by Christ to have more than Heart can Wish Psal. 73. 〈◊〉 therein to his dying hour yea and dye with great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and satisfaction to by-Standers that all 's well with him And thus goes the inferiour humane Beast into the Arms of the superiour and more subtil evil-angelical Beast of the first-creation World whom he has taken to be his God Gen. 3. 1. 2 Thes. 2. 4. Man's second personal sinning after the similitude of Adam's Transgression in restor'd nature against God's Spirit of Grace and Light thereof brings him to the same point with Devils a fixure or establishment in his own changably righteous nature which is unchangable enmity to God and his everlasting righteous Gospel-spirit of Grace If men suspect the offe'rd serpents 〈◊〉 as earthly he will gild over his earthly natural excellencies with the nearest resemblance of Christ's Spiritual and heavenly and then they 'l down for right heavenly never-perishing meat 's with all but the very elect And he wants not for apostles from amongst men transform'd by him and themselvs into the likeness of Christ's the supream Wolv's in sheeps clothing to carry on his work
Capacity and lawfull Calling in this World diligently performing his Duty and referring the issue and success of his labours to Providence without any carking solicitud's or murmuring repining thoughts against God when cross'd in his expectations and disappointed of his hopes has rest and quiet to himself therein Such a one however low in outward Riches Solomon preferr's as to outward worldly Happiness before the litteral covetous rich man that from excessive inordinate Love to such Wealth robb's and deprives himself of all right comfort therein His solicitous self-tormenting thoughtfulness for getting and keeping such Wealth and then fear of losing all again all which the other is freed from render him a very 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 His abundance of Riches fills his Heart with abundance of trouble and disquiet as well as his Coffers with Silver which will not suffer him to rest or sleep Through this vanity under the litteral first-creation Sun Solomon saw such Riches downright hurtfull to the Owners thereof instead of being of any benefit or advantage to them Semblably the inward Riches of man's Spirit under the mystical first-creation Sun the enlightning enlivening fructifying influence of Christ as a fleshly Bride-groom in his first-covenant Spirit Single upon man's nature Laodicean Treasures heaped up and trusted in and to by man for true Happiness produce the same restlesness and disquiet to him Full of solicitud's is he in getting and keeping and of Fears about losing all again as the litteral covetous rich man is Is there not a cause for such Jealousies and Fears All 's but a vain shew in Holy Flesh a first-covenant Spirit of bondage and fear about his known perishing vanities refusing Christ's convincingly shew'd and offer'd durable Riches and true Freedom even the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God in his Gospel-Spirit or perfect Law of Liberty to good only and that good unchangable That 's Freedom indeed to purpose Heb. 2. 15. 2 Cor. 3. 17. Joh. 8. 32. 36. Jam. 1. 25. and 2. 12. The Truth Christ's Gospel-Spirit of Truth makes us Christ's true freemen though in letter man's Servants 1 Cor. 7. 22. And the Master that 's free in letter if effectually call'd by Christ into his heavenly Life of true freedom is his Servant Christ's new-covenant Law or Gospel-Spirit of Life by its death-work on our old or first-covenant law-Spirit of Sin Bondage Enmity and Death sets us free from Sin and Death Rom. 8. 2. all vain Trouble Bondage and Fear He that 's so dead is freed from Sin Rom. 6. 7. ceases for ever from it 1 Pet. 4. 1. Vers. XIII There is a sore Evil which I have seen under the Sun namely Riches kept for the Owners thereof to their hurt This with the Verse before and four following joyntly Character the folly and misery of the litteral and mystical covetous rich Man the former as a Type of the latter One of them is fill'd with cares and solicitud's about making provision for his bodily ease the other is as busy about provisions for his Soul's ease Luk. 12. 16-19 Both of them trade but in perishing vanities 'T is but for perishing meats that gratify the evill Lust's the Belly Desire or Appetite of a mortal perishable Life of Body and Soul these two sorts of foolish Labourers Toil and fill their Heads and Hearts with vain self-tormenting cares and solicitud's All 's but to compass and finger the vain Delights of the Sons of men Nothing of the never-perishing Life and Meats of the Son of God delights of the Sons of God are admitted into their regard God is not in all or any of their thoughts Psal. 10. 4. Nothing of God's Christ's new-creature Life is sought after They 'l not come to him for it nor regard it when he comes and offers it to them Ioh. 5. 40. How oft would I have gather'd you together unto me under my divine and Creature-wings in this Life and ye would not Mat. 23. 37. Ye are all for your selves your own Life will have none of me or mine Then take your course ye shall never have mine at all never enter into my rest So will be left to your own desolate house for ever V. 38. The mystical rich man delightfully contemplat's the Beauty Fruitfulness and Riches of his own enlight'ned nature and too oft arrivesat this highest point of Spiritual wickedness as the result of his own wisdom to strike up an everlasting-covenant-union with the Devil He agrees to receive by his transforming Hel-fire-Baptism an advance of his own nature out of a narrower changably evil humane capacity into a wider and unchangably evil angelical This by suffering Satan to fill his Heart with his Spirit of unchangable enmity to God This is the making man's mystical House or Barns greater Luk. 12. 18 the enlarging and heightning his natural capacity by a kind of mystical death through Satan's false cross-work or counterfeit mortification for the death of man's Spirit of nature on his engagement by covenant and satisfying assurance that he will raise and catch him up out of that mystical Grave into his higher wiser stronger more excellent and capacious angelical nature Thus by bargain does he touch man's Spirit with the transforming alterative assimilating touch of his and translate him out of his narrower humane into his larger angelical capacity of the first-creation sort Man rather chooses this heightning and enlargment in his own way and after his own heart in the first-creation state of nature which renders him a man after the Devil 's own Heart in unchangable enmity to God then such destruction of his fleshly nature or whole natural state and life at best as leaves him no hopes of ever finding himself in a single natural first-creation-life more for ever but in a spiritual and heavenly by a new-creation in the new everlasting covenant Gospel-principle God's Spirit of Grace and Truth The assimilating transformingwork of Christ's Spiritual Cross or heavenly fire-baptism upon man would translate him if obediently submitting thereto and compliant therewith into the life of God's sacrificing Gospel high-Priest of our Profession or of that very Spirit and fiery law of liberty Deut. 33. 2. Jam. 1. 25 that puts his Law or lawless Spirit of bondage enmity and Death to Death with engagement by Covenant to raise it into the everlasting Life and Glorious liberty of the Sons of God Satan will Personate this very high Priest of God and God himself 2 Thes. 2. 4. And he will transform his higher Angelical excellencies and capacity into the likeness or neerest possible resemblance of Christ's new-creation Glories This is the top-stone of his mystery of iniquity the strongest delusion by which this most subtle old Serpent Dragon and roaring Lion deceives and devours men when and where God permitt's for his own most wise and holy ends Think what this choice of man under Gospel-conviction-Light to joyn unchangably with the Devil rather than with God deservs In order to secure their
followers are calculated and designed only to catch at something from them to accuse and charge them for right or wrong This was Christ's own case all along his Ministry on Earth among the Jewish Professors When brought Prisoner before the chief Priests and Council of the Jews very inquisitive are they for Witness against him to put him to Death but none can they get that will serve their turn Then they seek to pick something out of his own mouth to do their work For this the High-Priest ask's him Art thou the Christ the Son of the Blessed Tell us in a word Jesus said I am Oh! now we have him here 's enough out of his own mouth to condemn him what need we any further witnesses ye have heard the Blasphemy what think ye Guilty of Death say they as a cursed Jury of Rebels All 's of a batch Judges and Jury against Christ and his Followers They all condemned him as worthy of Death They never examine his Doctrine but cry tell us in a word this or that and lie at catch for an answer and then in another word condemn him for witnessing an infallible truth that 's their next word Then they spit on him buffet mock him and so on to his Crucifixion and Death Mark 14. 61. 65. What may the Servant expect when the Lord was thus handled So Luk. 22. 66-71 The Elders chief-Priests and Scribes lead him into their Council and all of them say to him Art thou the Son of God On his Answer they say What need of further witness For we our selvs have heard of his own mouth He has said enough at the Bar to take away his life though we had nothing else against him before What think ye Think bad enough no doubt all of a mind the whole rout of Wolves and Bears guilty of Death say all Christ asserted himself the Son of God Blasphemy cry they not considering whether true or false But Satan will such own not only for the Son of God but God most high himself He will assert himself to be God and the true new-creation Temple of God 2 〈◊〉 2. 4. in his transform'd appearance thereof and find followers and owners enow even amongst Professors Chief Priests Types of Christ by Office Elders and People of the Jews the only then professing people in the world Christ own'd himself the Son of God by way of Eminency above all other Sons of God begotten and Born of his Spirit Do any such dare to own themselvs Sons or Children of God in his new and everlasting Covenant-Principle his Gospel-spirit of Grace and Truth Dare they speak the words of that Spirit Words the Holy Ghost teaches and are these words contrary to their's and Satan's accursed other Law-gospel Down they go at a word for Blasphemers Guilty my Lord say the goodly Jurors all of a Pack chuse where you will Professors notion of grace is short They look 〈◊〉 it only as an act of favour from God as it is also and a transcendent gracious one But they consider not or own it as a distinct principle root and spring of life desire thought and action in man from the natural first-covenant or first-creation Law-principle A word to the wise But to undiscerning fools or worse wilful Rebels against conviction what words will serve the turn to recover them out of their folly and madness Here 's the great turning point for Eternal Life or Death Single nature corrupt or righteous fix'd in is certain Damnation Grace Salvation We are saved by Grace or in Grace through Faith or in the incorruptible new-covenant Gospel-Principles of everlasting Righteousness not in or by Nature which at best is but a fading Flower altogether Vanity not of our selvs or any thing performable by us in our own Nature the first-covenant Principle Eph. 2. 8 9. 'T is the gift of God the unspeakable gift of his Spirit of grace in us is Salvation to us Here 's a word to those that are only for a word and away about Christs Gospel-Doctrine for Salvation All ye talk of is but one thing say they 〈◊〉 therefore hear it in one word What need such a do with so many words about it Pray what 's yours and Satan's Gospel all that Man's and Satan's wisdom jointly preach up declare and warrant to be Salvation that indeed will prove eternal Damnation to all final and resolute followers and owners thereof what 's this but one thing as abovesaid That the righteousness of Man or Man in his restor'd righteous life according to the Law blameless is in a state of everlasting Salvation Did not Paul when all this most fiercely persecute Christ and all his Gospel-Saints and Truths And was he not as fiercely persecuted by such as soon as he became a Gospel-Saint What would ye have where must one be to get the least of Truth into your understandings and hearts What but this one thing the Righteousness of Man is the bottom-story of all your innumerable Books and Preachings for Salvation And what do all such gingling words such tinkling Cymbals amount unto A confused uncertain sound And if the Trumpet give an uncertain sound who shall prepare himself to the Battel What Battel the Battel of the Lord against the Mighty What Mighty Evil Angelical Principalities and Powers of this World If the righteous Life Armour Strength and Wisdom of Man be asserted fit to undertake them in all such Doctrine is a Lie All these are but as straw and rotten wood Job 41. 27. to the superiour Wisdom and Strength of evil Angels the mystical Leviathan or Goliah and his Philistine Army All such Doctrine from top to bottom in all variety of words and dress by Eloquence Wit Art and Method Reasons Uses Motives c. all is an absolute downright falshood Satan's Synagogue-Lie Rev. 3. 9. his accursed other Gospel the Laodicean Delusion v. 17. The Power of Godliness Life Wisdom Righteousness things of God all comprehended in his one Gospel-Spirit of Grace the unspeakable Gift these are the Gospel-onething necessary to be found in Man for Salvation Form of Godliness Righteousness Life Wisdom things of Man in his restor'd Law-spirit of Nature the first-Covenant Principle these make your one Law-thing you place Salvation in cloathing it only with the Gospel-words and titles of God's one thing to deceive See ye now where we both are with our several one-things And will ye allow God's one-thing and Christ's Gospel but one word and your one thing or Satan's Gospel-principle and state Millions in throng'd auditories and crowd's of numberless Books and Writings Must God's one-thing be decried for Heresie Blasphemy and a diabolical Fiction and the Devil 's and your one-thing be the only orthodox sober Truth or thing Fools when will ye be wise Psal. 94. 8. and look about you as to your most important concern which you yet leave at random and an all-adventures in the hands of your trusty Trojans your blind Leaders of
with Paul discovering Satan's devices and wiles herein directs Man here to get out of his vain wandering walk in the delusive destructive desires of his own spirit after any first-creation vanities And then does he direct and point him to Christ for his never perishing-perishing-life and meats with an eye of spiritual Faith fix'd thereon and affections accordingly unalterably set on things above all perishing vanities the dust of this World Col. 3. 1 2. the peculiar delights of the Sons of God When Men are once brought into the exercise of spiritual senses for this new diet in Christ's new-creature spirit of life as living and walking circumspectly and wisely therein they 'l have no savour or regard for Satan's meats let him gild them by his subtile artifices while he will or can to make them pass for spiritual Christ with his Spiritual meats once rightly seen and fed upon takes Men off from their wandring desire after Satan's meats and discovers the great danger of feeding on them Solomon in a right compassion to his fellow mortals would put a stop to the restless extravagant wandrings of their minds and hearts after Satan's many things a multitude of delusive vanities that can never give any true rest or satisfaction to them and six their eye or heart on Christ's one thing necessary that comprehends all things truly or unchangeably good Maries happy and better choice Ver. 10. That which hath bin is named already and it is known that it is Man neither may he contend with him that is mightier than he Man's first-Creation state is a State of Vanity And so are all the things he does deal's in seeks or feeds upon for his satisfaction That which hath bin is named already Man The convincing view of himself has bin given him by God and experienc'd by himself that he has nothing of goodness about him in his first-creation-make or natural state but 〈◊〉 His vain desire feeds only upon vain desirables dust the old Serpent's diet Till something of new-creation Life and Wisdom be found in him and experienc'd by him all 's Vanity within and round about him that he is able to take notice of or delight in His life and all his labour in his own Wisdom and Spirit is Vanity All 's but the number of a Man or Angel both are but the higher rank of Beasts in all their first-Creation excellencies or natural perfections Rev. 13. 18. Gen. 3. 1. All their life and things Wisdom Righteousness Glory Thoughts Desires Words and Actions are but perishing earthly sensual or natural things and if fix'd in devilish Jam. 3. 15. All such things at best while not fix'd in are admitted no comparison with the Glory Life Wisdom Righteousness and things of God communicated to and set up in spiritual Saints by a new and second Creation with all the Fruits Desires Thoughts Words and Actions perform'd or brought forth in his Gospel-spirit the new-Covenant principle of Life and Action The Glory of Man or Angel in the first-Covenant State that 's to be done away is no Glory to the Glory that excels and remains for ever 1 Cor. 3. 10. So the Righteousness or Wisdom of Man in the first is no Righteousness or Wisdom to that of God in the second Covenant-Saint But the things of Man or Angel turn'd into and used in unchangeable enmity to God become abundantly worse than nothing the greatest Wickednesses Madnesses and Follies their Righteousness Wisdom Light c. the greatest Wickedness Folly and Darkness The highest subtil'st and powerful'st Beast in the first Creation is the Devil and his whole evil angelical party Man the next Beast in degree below these is deeply concern'd to know the number of his own evil humane and this evil angelical Beast's name to take the right and full measure of them in their utmost Strength Poli cies Artifices Wiles Devices Subtilties and Methods of delusion in their whole Mystery of iniquity else what will become of him For these evil angelical Principalities and Powers he has to grapple with Eph. 6. 10 13. and if conquer'd as he is sure to be if he have nothing about him but his own Life Wisdom Strength and Armour of man he is undone for ever Unless therefore there be some way for man to become wiser stronger and more subtile than the Devil and all his Angels how can any escape their hands or be saved Will any say 't is a most presumptuous spiritual Pride in any man to pretend to this The proud self-exalting presumption lies wholly at their Door who refuse to have their own Nature humbled in order to this right exaltation Jam. 1. 9. 4. 10. They are the proud resisters of that Grace God bestow's on the humble Submitters to And this Grace enables them so to resist the Devil and his whole party of incorrigible wicked Angels and men the Powers of darkness and gates of Hell it self all their joynt consultings and forces as to make them all in and with their Captain-General the Devil flee before them and fall under them This whole Army of rebellious Luciferian self-exalters God will resist or fight against ver 6 7. Where will they be then but under Saints feet by being forc'd to pass with all their incorrigible stiff Necks or obstinately stubborn Spirits under their two-edged Sword Psal. 149. 6 9. In the evil angelical nature is comprehended the full sum and most absolute perfect Beauty Strength Power Wisdom and Glory that 's to be found in the first-Creation World But the least in God's Spirit of Grace the Kingdom-spirit of God will master and tread all this under foot Yet therein do wicked Angels set their heart as the heart of God as typ'd in the proud rich King of Tyre Ezek. 27. 3. 28. 12. Thou sealest up the Sum full of Wisdom and perfect in Beauty But with all this art to be utterly destroy'd for ever as follows v. 13 19. They say they are God and sit in the Seat or Temple of God in a counterfeit appearance of the New-creation Spirit of Christ the creature-Temple of the infinite Divine King in personal Union with the inhabitant and positively require all men to worship them as God or Gods many Gods with their many Lords self-exalted men under them 2 Thes. 2. 4. The very God the very Christ the very Apostles and Saints of Christ will discover and rout all these mysterious workers of Iniquity and destroy them for ever Saints will prove more then conquerors o're them all at last Down go all final incorrigible workers of mystical or literal Iniquity at long-run and never rise more literal and mystical Sodom Egypt and Babylon as figur'd Jer. 51. 64. What Wisdom short of God's in his-communicated Spirit of Grace the holy Ghost is able to discover these false Gods false Christs and their false Gospel-Ministers and Apostles in such beautiful disguise and taking false dress as they are permitted to come forth in to deceive Spiritual Wisdom
on his murdering work on the Prince of Life and Author of Salvation and at same time procur'd by them a pardon for a convicted murderer Act. 3. 14 15. That Men get by such fighting against the only spirit wherein and by they can be saved is their own everlasting destruction by the same hand they oppose executed upon them And what get they in their own way amongst a heap of delusive vanities nothing save an encrease of vanity and of their sin and guilt for their wilful rebellion therein against all the faithful warnings advice and commands of God's spiritual Law to the contrary for their good So will they find at length that by encreasing their heap of vanities they have bin heaping or treasuring up wrath to themselves against the last day They will be in such sense fill'd with their own devices and reap the sad fruits of their many inventions Prov. 1. 31. Eccles. 7. 29. under wrath and a total disappointment of all their vain opinions and labours about and for rest and happiness Abundantly the worse will they be for all they have bin done or had Vers. 12. For who knoweth what is good for Man in this life all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow For who can tell a Man what shall be after him under the Sun There 's great cause for these two pertinent queries concerning Man For in his natural state at best is he wholly ignorant of both these things viz. What 's best for him to do in this World or what will be after him under the Sun when he is departed out of it What 's truly good for him in order to true Blessedness here or hereafter he knows not But when convincingly shew'd all wherein from what hand on what terms or by what way and means 't is attainable if he refuse so great Salvation as is offer'd in God's Spirit and chuse the life of his own before and against it he spends all his days and labours in and about a shadow and so chuses his own damnation He is possess'd of no good but what will vanish and leave him for ever Psal. 39. 5. 49. 12. when he is stripp'd of all his fading good and finds himself unchangeably evil under unchangeable Wrath he will too late be forc'd to see the Truth here declar'd by way of question that he spent all his days in and all his hours about a shadow But To the second Query These are the sad things that will be after a Man has spent his days here in a shadowy state of Vanity as amus'd and diverted all along his vain life with variety of perishing Vanities under the influence of the God of this World Amidst a flush and confluence of these delusive entertainments he seems little concern'd what shall be after him or what will become of him for ever He obstinately deafens himself to all counsels and instructions about what indeed is eternal life or the way towards it the death of a fading natural one as meer aery notion fiction and enthusiastical delusion He strikes in with the God of this World as willing to be blinded by him against all Gospel-Light and things He desires not to be troubled with such matters but to live in 〈◊〉 perfect inadvertency and unconcernedness as to such good things as can't be lost and as in no danger of losing what he has which most certainly will be lost for ever Man's days in this World are but as a hand-breadth nothing to his endless sorrowful State hereafter Yet all his sollicitude is about his concerns here scarce a thought about his eternal concerns hereafter All duties and performances in a life of vanity do but add to and encrease vanity and what 's he the better as to true happiness or any thing towards it In every respect worse in none better For what he sinfully heaps up against conviction he more and more sinfully delights in As the heap of vanities encreases his evil love to and delight therein encreases So in all his labour he adds iniquity to iniquity on all hands His heap of vanities and his vain love to it encreases all in a known rebellion against God Here 's Man's destructive trade in vanities wilfully neglecting all God's Counsel and durable riches He neither lay's to heart the desperate consequents of his evil choice and dotage on his own perishing life and riches or the unspeakable happiness that would have come after and befallen him had he obediently exchang'd and parted with all for God's everlasting Solomon bewail's this twofold ignorance of unhappy Man as to the everlasting good things that would have fallen to his lot after this life above all conception or thought of his natural heart on a right choice or sorrows and torment for ever on a wrong in a state of everlasting darkness and death This is the unknown or unconsider'd state that will come after all his jollity and deceitful pleasure in his vain life under the Sun CHAP. VII V. 1. A good Name is better then precious Ointment and the day of death then the day of one's birth NOthing is properly good in God's sight but what 's unchangably so Christ would not suffer our nature in the changeable first-covenant life of the Law to be call'd good in his 〈◊〉 person Mat. 19. 17. The good name then here is the new name Rev. 2. 17. which imports and belongs to that newness of life in which only 't is possible to bring forth fruit unto God or be saved Rom. 6. 4. 7. 4. This is here asserted to be better then all the precious Ointment in its kind of first covenant Life Light Wisdom with all variety of Gifts and Abilities therein as also all spiritual enlightning Gifts receiv'd upon that foot or in that Law-state short of the very Gospel-life and more excellent way 1 Cor. 12. 31. call'd Love 1 Cor. 13. To this only belongs the new or unchangeably good name here This is the unspeakably more excellent Gift then the said precious Ointment All first-creation-Life and Goodness being corruptible God that sees all futurities and possibilities knowing it will change or be chang'd and lost calls it Corruption in or with which no man or Angel can enter into or inherit Incorruption the incorruptible Inheritance 1 Pet. 1. 4. the Kingdom of God 1 Cor. 15. 50. That incorruptible new-creation Life is convincingly shew'd and offer'd Men in lieu of their obediently surrendred natural and corruptible in which alone any can enter into and inherit it And this is imported in the new or good name here All old or first-creation life at best in Angel or Man is character'd by 〈◊〉 grass flower of grass Vanity a Dream and they therein said to be altogether Vanity Isa. 40. 6 -8. 1 Pet. 1. 24. Psal. 39. 5. Thus is the corruptible seed of a first-covenant life set up in both by the first-creation or restor'd in Man since lost by the fall which in
spiritual new-covenant life Our nature in Christ was straitned and sore pain'd under the progressive work of the Cross and pangs of Death thereby caused till accomplished Luk. 12. 50. His living Soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death Mat. 26. 38. as the Sacrifice under the crucifying Work of his own quickning Spirit the Gospel high-Priest and true Melchisedec The first Adam ought to have given up that Sacrifice to God by the same Priestly hand of and in the second True Saints with 〈◊〉 receive the sentence of death within them and find it their great advantage to have it speedily carried on upon them and their ease to have it perfected or accomplish'd The full death thereof kindly submitted to is perfect conformity to Christ's death and their perfect deliverance from all evil all wicked enemies within them and without and from all the danger of ensnaring vanities and tempting objects they are continually surrounded with which are gratifying to their natural life and desire corrupt or righteous while they have any activity thereof left about them So all former natural fruitfulness in a first-Covenant under Christ as a fleshly Bridegroom is turn'd into barrenness in which with Hannah they become a scorn and derision to such as continue fruitful Peninnah's in the first that house of feasting Paul that was an eminent somebody in the first when converted into the Gospel-life of the second was a stark fool a no-body to such some-bodies Phil. 3. 4. 1 Cor. 4. 10. 2 Cor. 10. 12. Rich wise full first-covenanters were the mystical strong Bulls of Bashan that gaped on Christ himself and so on Saints 〈◊〉 him round as ravening and roaring Lions Psal. 22. 12 13. These are the mystical 〈◊〉 cattel that thrust with side and sheulder and push all the weak poor lean wounded diseased 〈◊〉 under the Death-work of the Cross upon their natural man with their horns Ezek. 34. 20 21. Such lean barren diseas'd ones fools and as little Children are God's The fat wise and strong finally persisting there in enmity to the Cross the Devil 's He gets all such fat cattel The poor and lean get the Kingdom of God the rich and fit the Kingdom of the Devil by kinging it in the same Spirit with him against God But besides enemies without the grieved sorrowful natural man of the Saint within adds to the affliction All its whining passions and false reasonings under and against the Cross or Spirit of Christ in him are foes of his own house or in his own person in union with enemies without doors Thus is his tribulation compleated in that house of mourning that 's the ready road to Heaven But amidst all scornful despisings of first-covenant 〈◊〉 Christ as Bridegroom to his spiritual Spouse figur'd in Elkanah loves her transcendently more then any fruitful wife in the first and so is better to her then ten sons any possible fruits brought forth in that state 1 Sam. 1. 1 8. Amidst all bitternesses of the natural the spiritual hidden Man of the heart prays for the full birth of the 〈◊〉 figured by Samuel which when born turns the natural house or state of mourning into a spiritual house or state of everlasting feasting and rejoycing For this see Hannah's song of praise in the true house of feasting on God's having granted the prayer she put up to him in her house or state of mourning and barrenness 1 Sam. 2. 1 10. Christ foretold the sorrow of his Disciples on his departure from them as a fleshly Bridegroom in the first-Covenant till his return to them in the second according to the promise of the Father and of himself too which they were to wait for in that state of mourning to their natural Man Joh. 16. 20 -- 22. Act. 1. 4. Act. 2. 1 4 Christ's such return to them turn'd all their short sorrow into everlasting joy Joh. 16. 16 22 gives a full account of his fore-hand preparing his disciples in this case to look for him as a better Comforter in a new-Covenant Marriage-Union with him as risen from the dead A little while and ye see me no more in the first Again wait a little and ye see me in the second in a life I have in unchangeable Union with the Father They understood not this mystery They knew not what he said or what to make on 't Yea when risen he found two of his disciples in a drooping sad dejected Condition Luk. 24. 17. In a little short temporary wrath he forsook their sinning natural Man in a life of Enmity but with everlasting kindness he soon return'd to them in his never-sinning spiritual-life and set it up in them Isa. 54. 7 8. 'T is but once and for a little season the waters of the Cross figur'd by Noah's flood drown and overwhelm their natural Man extinguish all the life lust desire and thought thereof and then all joy for ever after in Christ's rocky spiritual life figur'd by Noah's Ark a state of everlasting feasting and rejoycing in the Kingdom of the Father v. 9 10. Christ will not leave them long comfortless in a state of Orphanship and Widowhood fatherless and husbandless as to their natural state He will soon be with them again in that Spirit of truth the merry self-confident first-Covenanteer receives not Joh. 14. 16 20. So then the Saints short mourning ends in everlasting feasting and rejoycing the others short rejoycing in eternal sorrow mourning darkness and death Mat. 5. 4. Luk. 6. 25. Who hath begotten me these even these Children or Sons of Peace these spiritual fruits peaceable fruits of righteousness brought forth in a newness of life to God The Faith of the Saint's spiritual Man answer's this question of his amaz'd natural ascribing all to the spiritual Bridegroom and better comforter then himself was in the first-Covenant No way but thro' the house of mourning and death as to all fading first-Covenant life of nature into Christ's spiritual house of everlasting rejoycing where all sorrow and sighing 〈◊〉 away for ever Isa. 35. 10. Psal. 126. 5 6. Rev. 21. 4. and 7. 17. The contrary state to the said mystical house of mourning is Man's flourish in a restor'd first-Covenant righteous life holy flesh and a fruitful living and walking therein as a present Victor and Master over or 〈◊〉 of the vile affections of the corrupt spirit of nature Rectified rational and intellectual powers keep the sensual in some degree of a first-creation rectitude and good order All this yet is vanity a fading flower And this with the fruits and enjoyments of it is all that 's found in the first-covenant house of feasting The final self-consident keeping here in refusal of and opposition to Christ's offer'd spiritual second-covenant life is certain damnation Satan has a seven-fold more dangerous hold of them and abode in them as his absolute temples and habitations for ever even of these mystical swept 〈◊〉 garnish'd houses in first-covenant life and second-covenant light then of
Christ's new and heavenly his natural for Christ's spiritual creature-life and possessions A conclusive refusal to part with all we have is a final parting-blow between God and Man Paul found Corinthian Professors bewitch'd Galatians and belly-God Philippians dangerously engag'd towards a sixure in this most presumptuous Sin and Error 1 Cor. 4. 8. 2 Cor. 11. 2 3. Gal. 3. 1 -4. Phil. 3. 18 19. And Christ found a first-Covenant party in enmity to the second in most or all the seven Churches Rev. 2. 3. In Laodicea scarce any other and all this under the outward dispensation and ministry of the Gospel owning themselves as Gospel-Professors And what or who else in a manner at this day can we find but such anti-Gospel-Gospellers in all variety of opinion form and way All the highly pretending and conceited Children of the Kingdom in the most sublimated Church-forms or purest Churches in but restor'd first-covenant Law-principles without advance by exchange and Gospel-conversion will be found at a loss and cast or kept out of the Kingdom of Christ as not at all of his new-Covenant Gospel-spirit of Grace and Truth 'T is in the heavenly Wisdom of this only Men can attain the sight and inheritance of the most glorious divine Sun and of the new-creation Sun of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mal. 4. 2. in the Mediator's person which is the greatest gain the highest prosit and advantage Man or Angel can receive or enjoy to all eternity This 〈◊〉 proves ver 12. Vers. 12. For Wisdom is a defence Heb. shadow and mony is a desence but the excellency of knowledg is that Wisdom giveth life to them that have it Here 's a distinguishing character of the first and second covenant spirits Lives Wisdoms with or by the effects riches and priviledges of each The Wisdom and mystical mony or riches of the first are a defence against the rude assaults the unruly brutish motions of the corrupt state of nature and do make up to Man all he thinks he needs for eternal life 1 Cor. 4. 8. Rev. 3. 17. But through the fading nature of all that life and riches and evil use of it in preference and opposition to the durable life and true riches in the Gospel-spirit of God all 's spoil'd Man's inordinate love to the former is that love of mony that 's the root of all evil against God and to himself evil of sin and punishment It renders all the mammon of unrighteousness as preferr'd to the 〈◊〉 riches of Christ in his infinite divine and everlasting righteous new-creation Life First-creation Life with the riches thereof is to be allow'd its due as good in its kind and lawful use for suppressing the unruly desires thoughts and motions of the corrupt state of Nature Man so using it is faithful to the Light afforded him by Christ in the first Covenant as a fleshly Bridegroom But then farther is he to follow this Bridegroom in the death and loss of all this fading life and riches Wisdom and Mony for what in spiritual conviction-Light is shew'd and offer'd him by Christ as a better Bridegroom and Comforter in the second This second and principal thing done as the passive part of obedience requir'd in the right and lawful use of all in the first Covenant law-state God is well-pleased and Man saved But be Man never so faithful in the active obedience performable in his law-life if he refuse to perform or yield to the requir'd passive obedience all his active turns in conclusion to no account at all Himself is turn'd out of God's house for ever as but that servant in his own law-spirit of bondage that refus'd to become a Son of God in his Gospel-spirit of glorious liberty that makes free indeed Jo. 8. 35 36. The truth the Gospel-spirit of Truth makes Man truly free ver 32. Where or in whomsoever that Spirit is is liberty 2 Cor. 3. 17. The Gospel-law of the Spirit of life is the perfect law of liberty It renders Man free not to but from all sin and death at last Rom. 8. 2. Jam. 1. 25. Man's spirit of bondage chosen before and against God's spirit of true freedom becom's a house a prison a state of eternal death to him If Man use his law-life aright as to the first end for which restor'd and miss the appointed and declared second all comes to worse then nothing for ever He misses that true Wisdom that gives and is eternal life to them that have it This the Law-life and best Wisdom of Man can never give or be to him Gal. 3. 21. Vers. 13. Consider the work of God for who can make that straight which he hath made crooked Consider well the life and state of Men and Angels as the first-creation Workmanship of God's hand and you 'l find it crooked first comparatively To the second make of them by his new-creating Workmanship all the fading goodness Life Wisdom Glory and Righteousness of the first are as nothing no Glory 2 Cor. 3. 10. If the Glory and other things of Man in the first be not only presumptuously compared with but preferr'd and exalted into a jusling competition with and opposition to the Life Glory Wisdom Righteousness Works Fruits and things of God offer'd them by a new and second Creation this renders all such things worse then nothing Yea if this be finally wilfully and conclusively done the Glory Wisdom Light Life Righteousness all things of Man are turn'd into unspeakable shame utmost folly and highest wickedness to which belong utter Darkness and eternal Death The corruptible seed 1 Pet. 1. 23. of God's left-hand planting in Man's or Angel's natural first-creation-make and state at its utmost growth flourish and fruitfulness amounts but to a fading flower Man in all at best is altogether Vanity This fleshly state of Life was figur'd by the tree of good and evil before the fall Since the fall 't is always evil root and branch tree and fruit silth of 〈◊〉 or spirit are found in all its operations fruits products or performances root and branch When Paul was eminent in the restor'd righteous law-law-life of Man how fiercely did he persecute the Gospel or new-Creature life of Christ in himself and Saints That was filth of Spirit enmity and despite to the very Gospel spirit of Grace in which any can be saved 't was a sinning against the holy Ghost but ignorantly When done knowingly and so wilfully t is the presumptuous unpardonable Sin unto Death God made Man upright set up in him a first-Covenant-life perfect in its kind but fallible corruptible changeable loseable as all mankind have sadly experienc'd by the first error of humane nature at best in the first Man Now what is corruptible God calls corruption The natural seed of a first-Covenant life cast into Man in his natural first-creation make and fashion of being was sown in corruption dishonour weakness By the obedient death of Man therein 't is rais'd in Incorruption Glory Power a spiritual
body or man His whole Body Soul and Spirit is fill'd and clothed with a Spiritual Life Glory and everlasting Righteousness Flesh and blood the comprehensive character of all Man or Angel were possess'd of by the first creation cannot inherit the Kingdom of God neither doth Corruption inherit Incorruption or attain the incorruptible Inheritance 1 Pet. 1. 4. Nor Man nor Angel in innocency had any such thing as eternal Life or everlasting Righteousness actually about them or in them that qualifies any for entrance into the Kingdom of God Man and Angel then set up by God's left-hand as we may say in a first-Creation-state if they knowingly and wilfully set up for themselves there in enmity to God and the second they will be found those lustful Goats that through inordinate love to evil covetousness and lust after their own fading life and things thereof so as to hate and reject God's by a new and second Creation at Christ's left hand sever'd from his obedient spiritual Sheep on his right and forc'd to receive the meet recompence of their error the vengeance of eternal fire Mat. 25. 33 -46. Jude 7. By chusing their corruption or natural state before God's Incorruption or incorruptible spiritual Life will they utterly perish in their own Corruption 2 Pet. 2. 12. The question here then amounts unto this Who can make the natural or first-Creation state of Man straight or unsubjected to change and miscarriage that God in the above-said sence has made crooked liable or subject to both This question imports an utter impossibility of making it straight Eccle. 1. 15. T is therefore peerless folly and madness in Man or Angel to attempt it or to establish themselves in it for happiness There 's no way possible for either to be happy but by the death and loss of all their own there for God's own which they can only arrive at and attain by the death of their spirit of nature and so a resurrection into the life of his spirit of Grace God positively requires both and all of them to part with their crooked changeable first-creation thing or things for his unchangeably straight and incorruptibly perfect new-creation life and things However straight the former appear in Mans day or discerning in the Light and Judgment of his Wisdom in God's t is crooked and so declar'd for Man to take notice of Man ought to consider the whole work of God from first to last beginning to the end his beginning with him in a first creation and ending or finishing Workmanship upon him in and by a second Men ought also to listen to his whole counsel and instruction to his convincing discoveries and revelations of the second and more excellent state they are offer'd by a new Creation and the way of attaining it The death of their crooked state is the undispensable means and way of being exalted into God's straight Their crooked set up in unchangeable enmity to his straight is certain damnation to them They ought to believe God's own report and declaration of their crooked natural state and look after his straight spiritual Life and State in a Spirit that can never sin 1 Joh. 3. 9. They ought not to stick at any cost or loss they can be at for Truth Prov. 23. 23. Luk. 14. 28. or for the life of God's new-creature-spirit of Truth and everlasting Righteousness Vers. 14. In the day of Prosperity be joyful but in the day of Adversity consider God also hath set the one over against the other to the end that Man should find nothing after him The good and evil day in the original are here translated the day of Prosperity and Adversity Here 's a two-fold day for Man in God's wise method and appointment set one over against the other which 't is man's duty and concern to take notice of and comply with recoycing in the former and duly considering the yet greater advantages to him in the latter To follow the Lord's counsel in both is his best course The spiritual mystery of these Words is the principal intendment But first in the litteral sence the greatest content joy and satisfaction man can find in the greatest outward Prosperity when surrounded with a confluence of all visible desireables in this World he must come to experience the loss of all first or last which he ought to consider In the perishable nature of all such enjoyments is discernably writ out a day of adversity over against his utmost prosperity therein The perishing nature also of that life and desire in him that 's gratified by such things the belly that 's for such meats does farther preach the same doctrine to him cautioning against the placing his happiness in such slippery uncertain things Death puts a full period to all such desires as are answer'd by such desireables Vanity on all hands proclaims a day of Adversity and darkness set over against the day of such Prosperity Unwarrantable over-value for love to and delight in such worldly things will cause a destructive worldly sorrow to man if he out-live them When run down into a despicable state of misery and want he knows not how to bear it or what to do with himself Life grows a burden Sometimes he makes away himself as weary of it But now as to the mystical principal sense of these words Here 's a most concerning caution to man in the utmost flourish fruitfulness and inward mystical riches of his nature in a first-covenant righteous life where belly and meats desires and desireables root and branch tree and fruits principles and operations are all but a higher sort of perishing vanities sigur'd out by the former All this yet is but a vain shew a dream a fools Paradise a shadow an image only of true durable life and substantial riches in the heavenly creature-image of the second Adam Man at best in all this fading glory and honour of his own nature is altogether vanity Ps. 39. 5 6. The first Adam was made in but the earthly shadowy Image of God the heavenly substantial creature-image of the infinite Divinity is found only in the second Adam and his spiritual descendents by a new birth or second creation A day of adversity then is written out in the perishing nature of all such inward as well as outward prosperity over against the highest prosperity therein All such mystical soul-riches life food clothing glory honour wisdom righteousness all will be gone again most certainly make themselves wings and flee away Prov. 23. 5. While then Man sets his eye or heart on such things which God says are not he is sure to meet with an amazing disappointment By new-creature things things of God which God's Wisdom reckon's the only creature-things that are man's wisdom things that are not will God bring to nought all those things of man which his foolish wisdom reckon's the only creature-things that are 1 Cor. 1. 28. In the day of man's prosperity in the restor'd first-Covenant
him in his spiritual Rom. 8. 13. The right death of what 's expos'd to all snares deaths and enemies attacks delivers out of and from them all from all snares of Satan on the right and left hand calculated to the self-interest palate and desire of Nature in the corrupt or righteous life and principles thereof in order to lodg all he can in unchangeable enmity to God with himself God warns all sorts of Sinners as to Satan's various snares if therefore caught therein 't is at their own peril Their destruction is singly of themselves by their own choice Ezek. 3. 17 21. Prov. 8. 36. Vers. 19. Wisdom strength'neth the wise more then ten mighty Men which are in the City The Wisdom or living Word of God the Gospel-Spirit of Christ makes all the truly wise partakers thereof Spiritual Saints stronger and wiser too then all that 's found in the first-creation-state of Men and Angels 1 Joh. 4. 4. This new-creature-wisdom of God by which the Worlds were made Gen. 1. 1. Jo. 1. 1 3. Col. 1. 15 -- 19. Heb. 1. 2. Wheresoever it is or in whomsoever admits no comparison of any first-Creation Power Glory or Excellencies with it Prov. 3. 13 19. 2 Cor. 3. 10. The evil Angels with their Luciferian head as the supream invisible Principalities Powers and Rulers of this dark World may fitly be represented by the ten mighty Men in the universal City Province or Dominion thereof The truly wise Saint in the Life Light Strength Power and Armour of God can discover all the devices and vanquish all the power the mystical Goliah and his Philistine Army can come forth against him with True Spiritual Davids in the new name and power of the Lord will be too hard for them all will be more then conquerours over the whole incorporated first-creation City of evil Angels and Men. Their weapons are spiritual and mighty through God to beat down the City and strongest forts thereof about the ears of the rebellious defendants that have fortified themselves against the new Jerusalem City of God The enemy has none but carnal weapons fleshly Wisdom Power Strength and Arms perishing Vanities Saints with spiritual will tumble down all their strong holds and every high thing that exalts it self against God and them They have in a readiness Power to revenge all such disobedience of Man and Angel when their own Gospel-life and obedience is compleated 2 Cor. 10. 4 6. Vers. 20. For there is not a just man upon earth that doth good and sinneth not This confirm's what is said v. 19. There 's not one man amongst all men in their earthy first-creation life and wisdom at best without sin in God's sight Yea their highest righteousness and wisdom oppos'd to God's are the most criminal wickedness and folly There 's none truly righteous among them all no not one None in their earthly spirit or natural state corrupt or righteous understands or seeks after God in his spiritual new-creation life So are they all unprofitable to themselves as to true blessedness because not one of them does that good in God's sight that 's of any conducibleness or tendency thereunto They rebel against swell with indignation and despite to his offer'd Spirit of Grace wherein alone any can ever please him or be saved Their throat is an open Sepulcher to belch out blasphemies threatnings and slaughter against it or any that own or talk of it in its own words and wisdom 〈◊〉 tongues are deceitful the poison of Asps is under their lips their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness against it their feet are swift to shed the blood of any that declare it From Cain downwards to the end of this World Satan's reign and man's day all 's of a piece one uniform spirit of contradiction to and rebellion against the Spirit of God and all its words Destruction and misery are in their way 's and the way of peace have they not known They have no fear of God before their eyes Yet flatter they themselves as true fearers of God at peace with him and in the very way to Salvation If good words fair speeches and most 〈◊〉 self-pleasing imaginations will do 't they are in a fair way to blessedness while they are serving their own belly gratifying their own lust and desire in direct enmity to God Christ all Gospel-Saints and Truths Rom. 16. 18. They 〈◊〉 peace peace to themselves and others where there 's no peace and say the Lord saith when 't is Satan and their own lying spirit of divination saith so Ezek. 13. 6 -- 10. They have not known or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 foot in the way of peace with God but Satan's way of enmity to him And in all this with their leader are they bold confident and fearless behave themselves as Satans Children of pride without fear Rom. 3. 9 -- 18. Job 41. 33 34. There 's not a just man upon Earth in the restor'd righteous life and image of the earthy that sinneth not There 's not a man perfectly free from filth of flesh the vile affections of the corrupt spirit of nature and filth of spirit or enmity to God and his Spirit of Grace is inseparable from the most restor'd righteous life of Nature since the Fall Only by the perfect death of the spirit of Nature under the Cross can this enmity be slain and utterly abolish'd out of any man So there 's a very great mixture of sin in any possible fading good found in or performable by man in his highest renewal Enmity to God lurks under all their fair shews in holy flesh form of Godliness righteousness of man This spoil's all The perpetually sinning life of Nature utterly abolish'd by death and the never-sinning-life of God's Spirit of Grace set up in the room thereof can render any man truly and fully just in God's sight He that 's so dead ceases or is freed from all sin justified before God for ever in a newness of life that 's above all death 1 Pet. 4. 1. Rom. 6. 7. Vers. 21. Also take no heed unto all words that are spoken lest thou hear thy Servant curse thee In letter here 's a prudent walking requir'd by not troubling ones self with regarding or harbouring any revengeful thoughts against others for their injurious words But as the chief intendment is advice here given to the spiritual wise Man as to his deportment towards the natural in his own person made clean wise aud righteous in first-creation principles The spiritual is to take heed to any words or doctrine proceeding from this natural so as to follow the direction or counsel of its fallible wisdom and judgment about things pertaining to God and his own Salvation lest he hear this natural Servant that would fain be dictating and ruling as a Master curse the spiritual Heaven-born Son in him Paul on his Gospel-conversion immediately conferr'd not with flesh and blood Gal. 1. 16. lean'd not to but turn'd from his own understanding
God and the true Spiritual New-creation Man or Heavenly creature-Life and Image of God in Christ blessed Angels and Saints The ring-leading Head of all thus fix'd is the Devil This Head as representative of the whole party of incorrigible wicked Angels and Men and comprehending them all is the Woman here the mystical Babylonish-strumpet guilty of unpardonable Adulteries and spiritual wickednesses against Christ the true Spiritual Lord and Husband of Angels and Men whom they ought all to obey and be eternally subject to in every thing The very person of the Devil as possess'd of the highest natural glories and excellencies by the first creation was therein the supream first-Covenant Spouse of Christ. But this Spouse soon apostatiz'd and became the grand mystical strange Woman and Adulteress that did from the date of her first sin and fall set herself to draw as many Angels and Men as she could into the same adulterous and murderous mind of enmity against Christ that spiritual Lord and Husband they all ought to submit to his terms of being married to for ever in the new and everlasting Covenant All that rebelliously keep up their own life and beauty in the first against him and the second will be judg'd as mystical Wedlock-breakers Murderers and most criminal Idolaters Ezek. 16. 15 38. The Devil by this practice in the top-excellency of first-creation life has render'd himself a bottomless pit of deceits and all sorts of spiritual wickedness endeavouring and abundantly prevailing through God's permission and Men's wilful folly to corrupt their spirits and fill their hearts with the same unchangeable enmity to Christ and God with himself By the Workmanship of this mystical Woman are Men rendered temples of her unchangeable evil Spirit The mouth of this strange woman is a deep pit he that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein This have we from Solomon also Prov. 22. 14. But whoso pleases God shall escape her Thus gives he a true account of the said bottomless pit with the sad condition of all that fall therein and the blessed priviledges of them that escape her All blind leaders with their followers in the first-creation-state excluding Christ and the second tumble together into this deep ditch or bottomless pit of unchangeable wickedness Mat. 15. 14. Luk. 6. 39. The very spirit of the Devil is this ditch or bottomless pit the mother of all mystical Whoredoms and spiritual abominations of the Earth Rev. 17. 5. Or in the earthly natural state lying in wait as a robber for a prey and encreasing the transgressors among Men Prov. 23. 27 28. All that in their renew'd spirit of Nature righteousness of Man or Form of Godliness in the first-Covenant finally deny and reject the Power of Godliness the New-creature-life Wisdom and Righteousness of God in the second are fallen into this bottomless pit of deceits All fix'd first-creation builders on the Sand absolutely reject exclude and deny that Spirit of Grace that 's the corner-stone and rocky foundation of the true Church The Woman here is indeed that strong powerful Man of Sin or Son of Perdition that by his superiour angelical strength and subtilty when faln was too hard for Man at best in innocency By the obedient death only of Man's spirit at best can he receive the life of that new-creation spirit of Christ that 's greater stronger and wiser then he 1 Joh. 4. 4. Then he is an over-match for the Devil able to fight and run down all evil angelical principalities and powers those wicked spirits with all their spiritual wickednesses in high places or counterfeit heavenly appearances Ephes. 6. 10 -13. When strong in the Lord and in the power of his might in the life armour or clothing of God's Spirit of Grace set up in and put upon him then is man able to still the said enemy and avenger Psal. 8. 2. This spirit in man is stronger then the strong man of sin who therefore cannot enter that House or Person it possesses nor spoil his house or goods Mat. 12. 29. Man wise strong and honourable in Christ but by first-covenant communications 1 Cor. 4. 10. Satan is too strong for and can spoil all he has or is All that is in his power Job 1. 12. So let Man want the Spirit stronger than Satan he 'l fall under him and be led captive at his will in and by that very first-covenant life he reckons to be saved in 2 Tim. 2. 26. The wisdom of it cannot discover his snares nor the strength of it withstand his power All 's but as straw and rotten wood to his superiour Angelical Wisdom Strength and Armour Job 41. 27. Flesh and Blood Man at best is so far from being fit to wrestle against evil Angels that they can make all that in Man serviceable to their designs for destroying him as on their side their friend in him In Christ's Spirit of life are Saints only fit to fight down both both Flesh and Blood the natural spirit at best and evil Angels at the back of it to strengthen that Foe of their own house that with them in all its affections and lusts fights and warrs against God and the true interest of their own souls The compleat death of this home-bred Foe but pretending Womanish Friend and Counseller in the Saint's own bosom Mic. 7. 5. is his full deliverance from all Satan's nets and snares For then he finds no part in him that he can tempt or touch please or hurt John 14. 30. When the Saint is crucified as to all worldly desires in him to all worldly desirables without him the God of this World finds nothing in him his Belial-party the enemy of God is extinguish'd and abolish'd The literal Woman by her snares and alluring Arts makes literal the mystical by her's spiritual and more criminal Sodomites T will be easier in the day of Judgment for the former then for the latter Mat. 11. 23 24. The light of Reason in all men may fence against the literal but the best Wisdom and Strength of first-Covenant holy Men is no defence against this mystical Woman's practices upon them Yea she turn's that very Wisdom and Strength with the perishing meats they feed on therein at Christ's earthly table and fruits they bring forth under Christ's Husbandly influence as a fleshly Bridegroom into so many Snares by which she catches them While she keeps them confident in holy flesh or knowledg of Christ after the flesh she renders them wholly regardless of his holy Gospel-spirit and words thereof save to oppose contradict and blaspheme all When Men give up themselves with Christ's first-Covenant gift of life and second-Covenant enlightning gifts and thereby a taste-of his new-Wine Hos. 2. 8. Heb. 6. 4 5. of the the Kingdom to Baal the Devil they become his most Gigantick opposers and strenuous fighters against all Gospel Kingdom-Truths and all that bring such things to their ears When men wilfully deafen themselves to the voice of
by her Nothing but what 's unchangeably good is properly and truly good before God No man then that has not some unchangeable good thing or goodness in him can please God Without a spiritual Faith or new-creature principle of life and action something of the life of the Faith of the Son of God Gal. 2. 20. distinct from and superiour to the most righteous life of the Sons of Men 't is impossible to please God Heb. 11. 6. Man wise strong and honorable in Christ as a fleshly Bridegroom that has restor'd the old first-creation righteous life of Nature in him and rendered him fruitful there 1 Cor. 4. 10. This is not yet the He that singly as so pleaseth or can please God For then what was Paul that had quitted all the advantages or priviledges that such knowledg of Christ himself after the flesh brings along with it and includes in it 2 Cor. 5. 16. He became a fool weak and despicable there having parted with all that as dung for the knowledg of Christ after the Spirit in his Gospel-life into which risen from the dead Phil. 3. 6 10. Rom. 7. 1 4. Christ requires his Law or first-Covenant Spouses to quit him there as he them die with him there in order to meet him in the life of the second First-Covenant Spouses or Children of Christ live in him but he comes properly to live in them in the second Gal. 2. 20. T is but the Life Wisdom and Righteousness of Man Christ restores and afresh sets up in Men in order to render them his first-Covenant Children and Spouses The Life Wisdom and Righteousness of God a spiritual immortal Gospel-life he sets up in the second in the room of their surrender'd fading mortal Law-life in the first Christ abolish'd death or crucified that Law-life in himself that was subject to death and so brought a Gospel-life and Immortality to light 2 Tim. 1. 10. This is true life in an absolute sence th' other but a shadow In the infallible Light or spiritual Understanding that accompanies and is found in Gospel-life are true Saints enabled to discover all the wiles of the mystical Woman here All the subtile practices and falshoods of evil Angels coming as false Christs and their false Apostles and Prophets Mat. 24. 24. 2 Cor. 11. 13 -- 15. in the dress language and neerest resemblance of the true Christ and his Prophets or Apostles lie open and naked before that understanding in spiritual Saints that judgeth or discerneth all things 1 Cor. 2. 15. That Spirit in which they can discern the deep things of God ver 10. the utmost depths and heigths of Satan can't lie hid from All his nets and snares are seen and all his power of darkness overset and master'd by this Gospel-spirit and marvelous light thereof When the mysterious methods of God's wisdom for Salvation are seen all the depths and methods of delusion Satan can use in the utmost stretch of his Serpentine Wisdom to destroy Men flie open All Satan's Apostles Ministers of his Gospel in whatever variety of doctrine form language or way in the same sandy fallible first-Creation Principles do all center in this point whatever their thought or intent be to run their hearers into the very arms of the Devil as their only security for Salvation If the Devil can impose himself upon them as Christ and God as he can 2 Thes. 2. 4. This must needs be the issue and result of all their teaching 2 Cor. 11. 13 15. Their end will be according to their works All 's earthly and so fewel for the fire of that Wrath that will be kindled on them and all their earthy doctrin life and works at the day of the Lord 's appearing in that Gospel-spirit and life they 'l be found in unchangeable enmity to 2 Pet. 3. 10. No wisdom of Man secures from this Woman here Adam in his unspotted naturals clear from all silth of flesh and spirit too was not fence-proof against the wiles of this Woman The womanish fading changeable first-Creation life in the evil Angel when fallen was too subtile and powerful for man in his inferiour womanish-womanish-life of the same kind to deal with before his fall Satan's first lie to Eve passes currant all along this World with multitudes of professors and high pretenders to the Gospel of Christ and Kingdom of God for the very Gospel of Christ to wit that the establish'd righteous life of the first Creation-state of Man is eternal life that man need not will not die at all Literal Sodom Egypt and Babylon are made up of Men sixed in corrupt Nature given up by themselves and therefore also by God to the vile affections enormous lusts and madnesses of that Ro. 1. 26. Mystical Sodom Egypt and Babylon are made up of Evil Angels and enlight'ned first-Covenant Brethren or Professors establish'd or six'd in the 〈◊〉 righteousness of Man and so in unchangeable enmity to the Gospel-righteousness of God These two sorts of Babylonians and Sodomites in these last and worst of times do or will so fill the scene with their super-abounding iniquities literal and mystical as to leave no room for any hearing of Christ's Gospel at all The spiritual Saint by his Gospel-life of that faith that overcomes the World 1 Joh. 5. 4. remains secure amidst this vast heap this innumerable multitude of Babylonians visible and invisible evil Men and Angels under the protecting shadow and comforting influence of Christ's new name that 's the strong Tower into which he runs and is safe Prov. 18. 10. Heb. is set a-loft to wit on that Rock that 's higher then he Psal. 61. 2. But all incorrigible wilful haters and refusers of Christ and his Gospel-truths will every one of them be taken in the snares of the said Woman So it follows Text. But the sinner shall be taken by her He that 's abhorred of the Lord falls into the mouth of this strange Woman whose heart is a deep pit full of snares and nets and her hands bands Who is this sinner the Lord abhors The fixed incorrigible hater and loather of God and his Spirit of Grace call'd God's Soul or Spirit as the spirit of nature Man's Soul Zec. 11. 8. All blind leaders with their followers tumble into this deep ditch or pit Prov. 23. 27. Luk. 6. 39. All whose minds are willingly blinded by the God of this World the Devil lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ who is the supream creature-image of God should shine into or upon them all such embrace Satan's accursed other contrary 〈◊〉 and his spirit of unchangeable enmity to Christ and his They are engaged what in them 〈◊〉 to shut up the Kingdom of Heaven 〈◊〉 off the 〈◊〉 of that Kingdom out of all hearing or reception and to 〈◊〉 open the Kingdom of the Devil asserting that to be the Kingdom of God and his Gospel Christ's So are they with their admirers engaged in 〈◊〉 of the bottomless pit
of deceits full of snares and nets as the very Kingdom of God and Salvation to men And they 〈◊〉 others to hope that they will confirm or make good their word Ezek. 13. 6. In a 〈◊〉 spirit of Divination do Devil and Man joyntly declare this and boldly affirm 't is in the Lord's Spirit of Truth they say so They say the Lord saith They see nothing but vanity and preach up nothing but perishing vanities the natural excellencies or fading things of Man or Angel in the first-creation for eternal Life They speak only of the world this world's vanities and the world hears them all the world wonder 's after them 1 Joh. 4. 5. Rev. 13. 3. All in the but earthly spirit of nature corrupt or righteous are for such Preaching or none at all Satan's Apostles or Ministers come forth in great variety of form language and way all making but a universal Babel of confusion running their hearers into the very bosom of the Devil the bottomless-pit of all deceits and falshoods as their only security for Salvation Men are deeply concern'd to take heed who they hear not such strangers to and enemies of Christ's Gospel Jo. 10. 4 5. and then what and how they they hear Mark 4. 24. Luk. 8. 18. that they rightly take the voice or words of the true Shepherd and his Spiritual Apostles or Messengers and obey them Many may hear right Gospel-words and not understand them Mark 4. 12. And then they 'l not follow or obey them but run still after Satan's Law-Gospel Those that distinguish not the Words of God's from those of the Serpent's Man's Wisdom how should they scape the snares of this grand mystical Adulteress If they suffer themselves willingly to be beguil'd into a perswasion that Satan's Gospel and that which true Saints call Christ's are all one they are caught in the snares of the Devil Satan's Apostles say those that pretend to be Christ's differ from them only in an affected singularity and disguise of words not matter While this shuffle will serve the turn Satan's Gospellers find it not needful or convenient to enter the lists for a debating the case with Sion-Saints about a true Gospel-state But if Christ's Gospel come forth in such sharp discriminating language as to evidence its distinction in the whole matter of it from Satan's and Man's then to prevent yet any farther trouble about it they sit in their Majesterial Chair and in general without meddling with any particular in it decry it for the most dangerous destructive blasphemy and falshood that ever was invented or impos'd upon Men worse then Popery or Mahumetanism then the grossest Idolatries or most brutish practices of any Heathens This general vilifying Christ's whole Gospel-doctrine and assertors of it as the vilest of doctrines and men they 〈◊〉 a far easier and safer way then to meddle with any particulars of it Thus far and at this rate only seems the shock of opposition to be given to it and manag'd against it at this day But if matters once grow to that pass that some valuable number of awaken'd Saints and spiritually convinced Men should be the Assertors Followers and Owners of the very Christ the very Gospel so as to give occasion to Satan's Gospel-ministers to say in the same levened sowr spirit of enmity to God with the Pharisees Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing behold the World is gone after them when this comes to pass enemies will go another way to work The Jews when they could not resist or bear up against the wisdom and spirit by which Stephen spake they could and did through the permission of God and instigation of the Devil silence him as they reckon'd with stones But he being dead yet speaketh as Abel and all other such witnessing Saints most injuriously slain for the Testimony of Jesus in the Spirit of true Prophecy The regenerating transforming assimilating touch of the Gospel-spirit of Christ sixes Man 's versatile changeable Law-spirit in eternal obedience to and harmony with God The degenerating transforming assimilating touch of the spirit of the Devil on Man's fixes it with himself in unchangeable enmity to God as the very principle of his life desire thought word and action By one or other of these unchangeable good or evil spirits comes man to be lodg'd up in a state of eternal life or death a bed of true rest and unspeakable joy Isa. 57. 1 2. or of everlasting sorrow Isa. 50. 11. torment and vexation of Spirit He that 's born of God's unchangeably good Spirit is secure from the transforming touch of the unchangeable evil-one 1 Joh. 5. 18. The touch of spirits is a qualifying alterative touch baptizes Man's changeable spirit into the unchangeable toucher the Spirit of God or of the Devil By the death of their own spirit that Satan can touch and 〈◊〉 into the life of God's Spirit he can 〈◊〉 touch by this way and means and this only are Saints 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 from all the nets and snares of this grand Adulteress the Devil The whole World all that take up in their worldly earthly life of nature run into them A babe a suckling in Christ's Spirit is too hard for 〈◊〉 Psal. 8. 2. Man in the highest restor'd perfections of his own is no body in his hands Job 41. The incorrigible first-creation sinner is taken by her the new-creation Saint who alone pleases God shall escape all her nets snares hands or bands for ever Vers. 27. Behold this have I found saith the Preacher counting one by one to find out the account Solomon in the Sanctuary-balance the al-searching new-Creation Spirit of true prophecy weigh'd one thing after another so as to give a clear and full account of what he was so inquisitive after an everlasting state of Truth and Righteousness He weigh'd and tried all parts of the first Creation the utmost goodness and excellencies found in Man and Angels before their fall or restor'd in Men since and in the total sum of all found the one thing necessary for the true blessedness of any wanting 'T is not in the whole first-Creation Land of the living Job 28. 21. or state of Life No such thing found he in the whole heap of this World's Vanities So arriv'd he at this negative satisfaction that there 's no hope of ever finding true happiness there He resolv'd therefore no longer to squander away his time with others in seeking for the living amongst the dead or true Life and Happiness in a Region of Darkness and of the shadow of Death No such life as will swallow up Death into Victory is to be found there nothing but what Death will swallow up into Victory and triumph over for ever This he declares Vers. 28. Which yet my Soul seeketh but I find not one Man among a thousand have I found but a Woman among all those have I not found No unchangeably good thing could he find in the first-creation What then found he One
incident to Men under the wonder-working Power and Grace of God in the King of Saints Hos. 1. 6 10. God requir'd Israel to own him King submit to the Government of his Spirit in Samuel the same Spirit in which Christ is universal King All in that Spirit are his true obedient Subjects Any Person or any People that will not have this spiritual heavenly King reign over them and in them though his earthly Jerusalem Citizens or first-covenant People see how they 'l be handled by him Luk. 19. 14 27. This great universal King lately offer'd to set up his Theocratical Fifth-Monarchy amongst us His earthly-Jerusalem-Citizens in a first-covenant spirit pretended to it as the Corinthian 〈◊〉 in Paul's Gospel-time in a spirit nor Christ nor he could own for a reigning principle 1 Cor. 4. 8. and a huge noise they made of owning the King Jesus in but a knowledg of him after the flesh in a restor'd Law-life the very principle and state the Jews would have 〈◊〉 him King in Joh. 6. 15. Such first-Covenant first-Monarchists Kings or Princes of this World crucified the true King Jesus 1 Cor. 2. 8. They blasphem'd and crucified him for owning a Kingship and Kingdom not of this World in his Gospel-spirit of Grace and Truth that would have made him a King in that Law-life and spirit they were of and in They cry up their Heathen Cesar for their King rather then such a King Jesus Shall I crucify your King says Pilate We have no King but Cesar say they Joh. 18. 36 37. 19. 12 15. A plain case and our's just He that was for the right King Jesus in his true reigning Spirit must be shuffled out of the World with his great Master as an Enemy both 〈◊〉 Cesar and them 〈◊〉 and a first-covenant People are joyntly for the rooting Christ and his true spiritual Anointed Ones out of the World as not sit to live in it Psal. 2. 1 -- 3. Act. 22. 22. And what got Israel by refusing the King Jesus or Government of God in the said Spirit of true Prophecy grievances enow What help none to remove them God would not as he fore-threatned them when busie about their new choice of Government Ye shall cry because of your King ye have chosen but the Lord will not hear you says Samuel Fair warning See all this 1 Sam. 8. 6 18. The law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus comes to strike down the ruling Power of that spirit in Man that 's but a Law of Sin and of Death and so by setting up his own kingly Rule and Power in him frees him from all evil and bondage Those that willingly submit to this death-blow of Christ on their ruling Law-spirit cast down their Crowns or ruling Power at his Feet and set the Crown on his Head in the day of their new-covenant Espousals to him owning his true Kingly-Spirit for their Ruler Cant. 3. 11. Christ struck down the earthy Law-king in Paul to the Earth and instantly set up his Gospel-spirit King and Ruler in and over him Act. 9. 3 4. The Law-spirit at best in fallen man is but the Amalekite-Ruler the Agag which tho' Saul spared in favour to it in himself as was implied in his unpardonable sin Samuel in the true Kingly Spirit of Jesus hewed in pieces when he said or thought as Man when the corrupt spirit of Nature is subdued and a Righteous Law-spirit set up in ruling authority in him surely the bitterness of Death is past here 's no Cross or Death-work by a Spiritual Gospel-Sword behind to be brought upon this Righteous Law-life 1 Sam 15. 32 33. Spiritual Friends of Christ have the whole counsel and mind of God made known by him to them First-covenant Servants in their Law-spirit of bondage holy flesh form of Godliness Righteousness of Man tho' as busy as may be in reading hearing preaching and obeying the letter of their Lord's Command in the Scripture are wholly strangers to the spiritual design sense or meaning of their Lord in all They know not what he does Joh. 15. 15. or has now done himself with our nature at best in his own Person nor will consider their duty in following him therein by giving it up at best in whatever state in their persons as God's requir'd Sacrifice He that keeps the spiritual Command of Christ believes or obediently submits to the Law of his Cross shall feel hear see or know no evil thing or word against him from Christ at last day when on his Judgment-Seat But he that believeth not quits not his Law-spirit or principle of life and action under the Gospel-Cross or spiritual Sword of Christ for the Gospel-Life of that very Sword or living Word of God will be damn'd Mark 16. 16. t. And a wise man's heart discerneth both time and judgment The spiritual wise man discerns an appointed time for the right use of a changeable first-Covenant Law-life and then as an antiquated Law-ceremony with the fading things and glory of it to be done away by a holy death as the Judgment and Command of God in Sacrifice to himself This Gospel-Sacrifice of Man at best was figured by the Law-Sacrifices of clean Beasts and Birds Spiritual Saints under the Law obediently gave up this Gospel-Sacrifice to God And all save a spiritual Seed refuse to give it under the Gospel When restor'd Law-life has serv'd its turn in man by his faithful performing Law-service to God therein suppressing the vile affections of the corrupt spirit of Nature 't is to give way to a better guide Christ's Gospel-Spirit or quicken'd up life thereof A Sentence or Judgment of Death upon the restor'd righteous Law-life of man must be submitted to by him with Paul 2 Cor. 1. 9. Law-life and the things thereof the Wisdom Righteousness Beauty Glory Fruits Works Duties Desires Thoughts Words Actions and all manner of performances therein kept up and finally preferr'd to Christ's Gospel-Life and things of God therein is the highest and most criminal Adultery and Murder Ezek. 16. 15 38. There 's an appointed time for Man and Angel too to die Heb. 9. 27. or lose that first-Covenant Law-life which was set up in them by creation The obedient loss of it under the Cross frees man from all guilt contracted by Sins past and all power of sinning any more for ever He thereby ceases from Sin and comes to be justified before God in a newness of life wherein he can never sin 1 Pet. 4. 1. Rom. 6. 7. 1 Joh. 3. 9. A change by the death of Nature of Law-life for Gospel under the working power of the Grace of God brings Men's matters to that blessed pass that no enemies will find any iniquity in them to charge them with nor will God himself Rom. 8. 33 34. Jer. 50. 20. The guilty sinner in the Saint that has committed innumerable 〈◊〉 is dead and gone and a spirit of everlasting Righteousness is become the single and sole principle
the natural earthy fleshly state of their whole person Body Soul and 〈◊〉 See all this 2 Cor. 5. 1 8. But quite contrary the wilfully disobedient to God's Time Way and Judgment of Death to their whole beings are under an absolute necessity of coming to the experience of the same twofold Death as to any natural life or goodness in Body or Spirit and they 'l receive in the room thereof the positive inflictions of Wrath upon their whole beings for ever in a resurrection of Damnation Joh. 5. 29. Dan. 12. 2. The immortality of their beings will hold them to 't in suffering under the Wrath to come that will never be gone or end No scaping the temporal death of their mortal Body or eternal death of their immortal Spirit and Body too as reduc'd by a resurrection into a fellowship with their Spirit in Torment for ever the Tophet prepar'd for them None of these Deaths has evil man the least Power to resist or avoid the temporal Death of his Body or Soul as to the mortal Life of both or the eternal Death and 〈◊〉 of both There 's no discharge from this twofold War of God upon him Fall he will most certainly in both For has he an Arm like God Job 40. 9. Think'st thou by thy wicked and rebellious contending with him to escape or find any thing short of thy eternal confusion t. Neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it Devils the supream rank of enemies rendred the highest spiritual wickednesses and rebels against God and his new-creation Spirit by fixing in their natural and first These grand patrons of wickedness and most gigantick fighters against God with their followers and subjects from amongst men will fall under the hand of the living God Heb. 10. 31. his irresistible Gospel-Sword Men-rebels with their proud evil-angelical helpers the mystical Rocks and Mountains or supream first-creation Principalities and Powers will all be inevitably forc'd to stoop and fall together under his all-conquering Sword and Power Job 9. 13. Rev. 6. 12 -17. No evil Angel or Man have power over their own spirit to preserve any life light or comfort therein against God's or his final Wrath to be executed thereby upon all and every one of them Nor can they by annihilation shuffle themselves out of the hands of God's avenging Justice No annihilation-Death will ever be found by them Rev. 9. 6. The misery therefore of them all will be as unavoidable as unexpressibly great upon them And 't will be undeniably evident they have all by their wilful obstinacy brought it upon their own guilty heads They have refus'd so great 〈◊〉 as was offer'd them in God's way and chosen so great misery in their own Prov. 8. 36. And who Devil or Man can imagin or take the right measure of God's final punishment upon them both till they feel and are irrecoverably under it The great sweeping temporal judgments the 〈◊〉 the storm of Fire and Brimstone on Sodom c. are but figures and shadows of the Vengeance of eternal Fire Jude 7. The deluge of sinal Wrath will drown all incorrigibly wicked Men and Angels in everlasting destruction and perdition for gratifying and drowning themselves in their own foolish and 〈◊〉 lusts 1 Tim. 6. 9. And as an aggravation of man's misery in this World he know's not when or how all this shall be brought upon him Evil shall come upon him he shall not know whence it rises 〈◊〉 shall fall upon him he shall not be able to put off and desolation shall come upon him suddenly which he shall not know Isa. 47. 11. 〈◊〉 knows not his time but as fishes or birds shall be taken in an evil net or snare falling suddenly upon him Eccl. 9. 12. Man knows not the time of his bodily death to which subject every moment of his life And if 〈◊〉 in enmity he soon sinds himself on such death under unchangeable wrath All his days upon Earth he fought under Satan's Banner against God his Saints and Truths So was he not only an Acceslory but principal Actor in bringing all his great eternal misery upon his own guilty head in a state of everlasting bondage and death Ver. 9. All this have I seen and applied my heart unto every work that is done under the Sun there is a time wherein one man ruleth over another to his own hurt This observation Solomon gain'd by the sad experience of the vanity of all things under the first-creation Sun literal or mystical Here 's 〈◊〉 a literal Truth when the Power of the Ruler is us'd to encourage wickedness in the ruled Such a one most certainly rules to his own 〈◊〉 For he is accountable for it And the mystical or principal sence is yet more true So the Ruler here is the Devil the permitted Ruler over the whole first-creation World from the beginning to the ending thereof This though he be gratified and pleas'd with will turn to his great damage when the Vials of Wrath come to be pour'd forth upon him as the meet recompence of all the wickedness he has bin instrumental to the practising of by Men in his rule over them The more universally he is obey'd and follow'd the more has he 〈◊〉 and the more will he be tormented for ever Both ruling evil-Angels and ruled evil-Men will 〈◊〉 unspeakable hurt in conclusion from all the wicked rule of the one and wicked obedience of the other Both will be cover'd with everlasting darkness and death Concerning such rule and obedience to it Solomon declares his farther observations as follows Vers. 10. And so I saw the wicked buried who had come and gone from the place of the holy and they were forgotten in the City where they had so done this is also Vanity Here 's the sad account of the faulty ruled from their willing obedience to the said wicked Ruler in the whole Progress of their lives as will be undeniably evident in the end Not Man in the dark corrupt but enlightned righteous nature that holy place or state is here meant This holy state being changeable will certainly be gone again as is plain Ezek. 18. 24 -26. God has provided a means to bring the whole Posterity of Adam into the first-covenant holy place or state but shews their liableness to apostatize or fall away from it again for ever and abundantly warn's them against it and of the most dangerous consequence thereof For then the guilt of the first sin and all the evil done in their own Persons will be justly charg'd upon them If the Righteous turn from his Righteousness and commit Iniquity he shall die He that has come to the first-covenant State or Place of the Holy as brought by the Redeemer thither out of his corrupt or unholy natural Place or State and is gone or departed thence back again into his unholy place comes to a final state of Death in which buried for ever in a grave from which there 's
no Redemption Psal. 49. 8. The first-covenant holy Place wilfully kept up against the second and most holy turns it into a most unholy Place a state of unchangeable enmity to God and death to Man 2 Pet. 2. 20 22. Heb. 10. 26 27. On this complicated twofold wilful sin against God and the distinct lights of his twofold Covenant as an enemy of all Righteousness does God bury and cover him with a spirit of unchangeable darkness So comes he to 〈◊〉 wholly forgotten in the City place or state where he hath so done The very name and memory of the whole earthly 〈◊〉 City or party of Men fix'd in the first-covenant holiness as turn'd into unchangeable enmity to God and the second will 〈◊〉 for ever They 'l be blotted out of all favourable regard or remembrance with God for ever The very state by them rebelliously chosen will 〈◊〉 made 〈◊〉 final prison and burying-place in which to 〈◊〉 for ever This get they by trusting in lying vanities Ver. 11. Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil Here 's a sad Account of the 〈◊〉 of all hearts as ready to abuse all the goodness and patience of God in deferring the execution of his sentence against their evil works God is of purer eyes than to behold with approbation any iniquity One time and way or other all sinners must be punish'd for all sorts of sins pardonable or unpardonable God punishes every evil work in Saints and puts the evil-worker in them their natural spirit to death at long-run under the fatherly chastisements of his Cross as we find it in Solomon's own case and all the posterity of our spiritual Lord David Psal. 89. 26 -36. Then he quickens and sets up the life of his Spirit of Grace in them that never can sin 1 Joh. 3. 9. In this can they fully please God and overcome the Devil This get they by the Gospel exchange-traffick God's infallible Gospel-Spirit and Wisdom for their fallible Law-spirit All that fix in their Law-spirit become unchangeable enemies of God and his Gospel And all God's patience towards them herein do they abuse to a farther hardning and waxing confident in their folly setting their hearts to do evil because his declar'd Sentence against them is not speedily executed upon them v. 11. and Rom. 2. 4 5. God 〈◊〉 them line and opportunities of manifesting the utmost of their wicked thoughts and intents against him and so do they ripen themselves for the Sicle of his just Vengeance Rev. 14. 19 20. God will be abundantly clear'd and justified in all his ways and dealings towards them his long patience with them and then final severity upon them after all No Men without the Law or in the Law no Heathens in the rational light of Nature no Jews or Christians in the first-Covenant life of the Law will be found destitute of such conviction of the insufficiency of their natural state for Salvation as will expose them to judgment for their secret enmity to God in staying there by his infallible Gospel-Spirit Rom. 2. 12 -16. 'T will then be undeniably evident that neither from the fashion of being or changeable life given them by a first-creation nor from want of sutable helps for directing them towards eternal blessedness in the second the miscarriage of any to their eternal ruin has bin necessitated Their evil mind growing worse and worse under all a Sentence of unchangeable Death comes at length to be most justly executed upon them Under all the favour of a first-Covenant life a-fresh restor'd in them and the life of the second in its own light shew'd and offer'd them in such a Land or State of Uprightness do they deal wickedly in enmity to God and the second Isa. 26. 10. Pharaoh under all the wonders in Egypt hardned himself more and more against the messages of God presumptuously calling them vain or lying Words Exod. 5. 9. The Priests Scribes Pharisees and professing Jews in the view of all Christ's Miracles grew more wilfully hard'ned against his Gospel-doctrin and murther'd his Person Thus did they in a Land of Uprightness the holy Place or first-covenant State of their enlightned righteous natural Spirit Man's just demeaning himself therein is an obedient submitting to God's doing Judgment on it out of love to his mercy or unspeakable Gospel gift of eternal Life Mic. 6. 8. By humbling himself with Christ Phil. 2. 8. to the Death of the former comes Man to walk for ever with God as Enoch Gen. 5. 24. in the latter A surrender of all our own in the first-creation for God's own in the second is a doing righteously in and with our Land or State of Uprightness This answers the very end for which God restores unto Man or brings him again into his first-creation 〈◊〉 or Land of Uprightness If Man will not then honour God with his substance Prov. 3. 9. by giving it all up in sacrifice to his Will but rebelliously keep it up in a known enmity to him his destruction is undeniably of himself as fully setting his heart to do evil Ver. 12. Tho' a sinner do evil an hundred times and his days be prolonged yet surely I know that it shall be well with them thatf ear God which fear before him In this and the next 〈◊〉 Solomon positively asserts a twofold truth concerning the obedient Saint and the incorrigible Sinner The Saint who alone truly sears God it shall be well with And as certain is it it shall not be well with the wicked because he does not fear before 〈◊〉 This fear of God that carries such great and certain good in it to the Saint and the want whereof causes great unchangeable misery to the incorrigible Sinner can import no less than an universal obedience to God and compliance with every of his 〈◊〉 Such obedience is seen by God in the incorruptible Seed of spiritual life and true Holmess before quickned into life or motion in the Saint This holy Seed secretly disposes men to obey the Lord according to their various degrees of natural and legal light as honest moral Heathens or first-covenant Believers Cornelius an Heathen Captain was own'd as such a fearer of God with all his Family under his conduct and example Act. 10. 2 22. and as so accepted with him v. 35. This Fear consisted in a faithfulness to his present light against the workings of corrupt nature and a readiness to receive and obey a greater light when offer'd as by Peter's Ministry So 〈◊〉 before his Gospel-conversion was faithful to his Law-light under that higher dispensation of God then Cornelius was before his Gospel conversion and forthwith obedient to Christ's Gospel-light as soon as shining upon him and made God's new dispensation to him Gal. 1. 16. Act. 9. 6. 26. 19. Both Cornelius and Paul walk'd according to their light yet not so resolutely confident or
Spirit are after a peculiar manner in the hand of God or under his peculiar regard care and approbation as obedient to him in all things Yet by any outward dispensations his Love to them or Hatred to his and their implacable Enemies can't be known For the natural Man or State is gratified in Enemies with more then heart can wish and in Saints or Friends under continual Chastisements Crosses and Disappointments In this cryptick Method or mysterious Course of God's dealing with Friends as Foes and Foes as Friends in all discernable appearances to Man's Wisdom will Man judg enemies the only Favorites of God and Friends rejected cast-aways hated by him for ever as Job's enlighten'd Friends did seem to reckon him when under the Cross Job 4. 7 -9. Psal. 73. 7 -14. Heb. 12. 6 -8. Solomon in the Wisdom of God and true Spirit of Prophecy farther declares Vers. 2. All things come alike to all there is one Event to the righteous and to the wicked to the good and to the clean and to the unclean to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not as is the good so is the sinner and he that sweareth as he that feareth an Oath In God's dispensations to the outward Man of Saints and Sinners all things come alike to all righteous and wicked good and bad clean and unclean So God's Love or Hatred cannot thereby be known God causes his Sun to shine and Rain to fall on the evil and good just and unjust Mat. 5. 45. From the afflicting or gratifying dispensations of God to the whole natural Man is the Wisdom of Man apt to take the measures of God's Anger or Love God affords invisible as well as visible good things of this World to the inner as well as outer natural Man the Spirit as well as Body of the rebellious as also of those who will prove obedient Saints This as one fruit of Christ's Redemption-work Psal. 68. 18. As to a first-covenant Benefit ' of Christ's death the common or general Salvation all Men are capable of may they be made wise strong and honourable in Christ yea by new or second-Covenant Light also shew'd offer'd and brought to tast and see how good and gracious the Lord is in his new-Covenant-life and after all irrecoverably apostatize and perish for ever 1 Cor. 4. 10. Heb. 6. 4 -6. If man finally keep up his restor'd first-creation changeable righteous Life in enmity to God and his second he perishes for ever If he prefer the Knowledg of Christ after the flesh in the restor'd righteous Life of the Law or conformity to him as born of a Woman under the Law to Christ after the Spirit or in his spiritual resurrection-Life he perishes for ever In this evil self-chosen life and way does God in Judgment gratify Men with invisible fading or natural good things beyond all they can wish Psal. 73. 7. The literal wicked in the corrupt and mystically wicked in the resin'd spirit of Nature may be gratified with all worldly desirables outward or inward to their bodies or spirits and perish for ever after all under the Wrath to come All this Solomon understood and declar'd The natural Understanding even in the spiritual Saint can't reach these mysteries of Providence in the promiscuous dispensations of God to good and bad as to all worldly desirables visible or invisible Psal. 73. The truly righteous good and clean 〈◊〉 his natural Life to God as fearing an Oath or the swearing an everlasting Covenant with the Devil in the first-creation state against God and the second So comes his heart in a newness of life to be set in him to do good in God's sight for ever He that swears that Covenant with the Devil is fully set to do Evil for ever Eccl. 8. 11. However undiscern'd the Saint's condition be to his Enemies under the love of God in this life God will at last manifest the difference between them that serve him and those that serve him not but swear everlasting Allegiance to the Devil Mal. 3. 18. whose Servants they are Rom. 6. 16. Vers. 3. This is an evil among all things that are done under the Sun ' that there is one Event unto all yea also the heart of the Sons of Men is full of evil and madness is in their Heart while they live and after that they go to the dead The death of Nature as to the mortal life of Body and Soul is the one Event to all Men. This fatal Period comes nature to in the wise and fool righteous and wicked The spiritual wise Man only is an unspeakeable gainer by all such losses as befals his nature with his fellows Out of the darkness and death brought on his natural state is he raised into the spiritual light and life of God The same darkness and death brought upon others in Wrath for refusing it in Love becomes their dreadful condition and portion for ever under Wrath. This exceedingly differing Event of the said same event the Death of nature in all Men is not consider'd or discern'd by Man's Wisdom Hence Solomon says how dies the wise Man As the Fool there 's no remembrance of the one more then of the other for ever Eccles 2. 16. in Man's day or Judgment The differing event of the Cross in Love or Wrath turning all first-creation Wisdom Light and Life into foolishness darkness and death Man's Wisdom sees not All wisdom beauty or desirableness in nature will perish and be forgotten in all Men for ever On this account as to any thing in nature the truely wise dies as the Fool. For both by death lose all the changeable Life and fading Glory of their own nature But the said wise 〈◊〉 obedient surrender of all receive a more excellent Life and Glory for ever and those that rebelliously keep it lose all for ever under Wrath in everlasting darkness So though the same Event happen to all as to the death of nature the event of that event is exceedingly different eternal life or death Those that do not obediently part with their own first-creation Life and Wisdom for God's in the second seem charact'red here by a heart full of evil and madness while they live and after that they go to the dead Yea they are dead while they live as 〈◊〉 in enmity to God which must needs be eternal death to them The best Works of righteous Nature fix'd in enmity to the Righteousness of God in his Spirit of Grace are but dead Works perform'd in a spirit of Enmity and Death True Repentance from dead Works Heb. 6. 1. imports Law-Conversion from nature dead in Trespasses and Sins Eph. 2. 1. to the righteous life of a Man But this second death of righteous nature by a fixure in enmity is worse then the former and exposes to the second death as the due punishment thereof the vengeance of eternal fire Rev. 20. 14. This is the latter end worse then any beginning which many self-confident
God and his spiritual heavenly eternal life and things with all the things by them loved perish for ever nor have they any more a Portion in any thing under the Sun any fading good thing done or found in the whole first-creation World of vanities And as their Love their Hatred and Envy shall also perish All their Envy and Hatred express'd by them in all ways imaginable against God and his everlasting creature-life the object of his divine Love and Delight in Christ blessed Angels and Saints shall perish It remains in them for ever for the encrease of their Torment under Wrath but they 'l be depriv'd of all power of expressing it for ever The life and things of their own nature which they have chosen to be the object of their fixed Love in preference to God's render them the objects of God's final Wrath. Vers. 7. Go thy way eat thy Bread with joy and drink thy Wine with a merry Heart for God now accepteth thy Works To the Saint as passing through the House of mourning and death to his spirit of nature under the Cross into the life of God's spirit of Grace wherein joyn'd to all truly living is this message of Life and Peace sent from God Eat thy Bread with joy c. Bread and Wine here are the hidden Manna and Wine of the Kingdom in Christ's Person even his divine and creatures-Glories his never-perishing meats Saints are to feed on in their spiritual when their natural Man or Spirit under the sharp discipline and death-work of the Cross is reduc'd to the utmost straits eating no pleasant Food or finding any more delight in the forbidden perishing first-creation life works or fruits and meats thereof Their spiritual hidden Man feeds on what 's incorruptible which renders them more beautiful in God's sight with Daniel and the three Children then any that feed on the choicest perishing Dainties of the mystical evil King's Table They feed on the never-perishing meats at their heavenly King's Table which nourish them up in his communicated never-perishing Life So do they eat and drink with a merry heart Joy unspeakable and glorious in the Holy Ghost The reason For God now accepteth thy Works This shews in what Spirit and on what Bread they feed and what Wine they drink with such a merry Heart All 's done in a spirit a newness of life all the Works or Fruits whereof are accepted of God Their feeding on Christ's heavenly meats renders them abundantly more glad then the utmost fruits and encrease of Corn and Wine figures of the choicest mystical first-creation diet can render the natural feeders on them Ps. 4. 7. True Saints dwell between Christ's Shoulders in absolute safety Deut. 33. 12. Peace and Comfort above all Enemies reach all evil or danger They have a Joy no Stranger or Enemy can intermeddle with or interrupt Prov. 14. 10. 'T is a Joy a Peace the World can't give nor take from them Joh. 16. 22 33. Vers. 8. Let thy Garments be always white and let thy head lack no ointment Saints waiting for Christ's clear manifesting or revealing himself in his Divine and Spritual Glories as object of their Faith and Hope are here call'd on to keep their Garments white and clean from all filth of flesh and spirit 2 Cor. 7. 1. that they may be fit to meet Christ at his coming as grown up into a compleatness and full purity of spiritual life in him purified as he is pure 1 Joh. 3. 3. in all holy Conversation and Godliness 〈◊〉 2 Pet. 3. 11 12. 1 Pet. 1. 15 16. And let thy head lack no oyntment Let thy Spiritual Man that 's head to thy natural be found in such a diligent performing its ruling authority over the natural and keeping thy whole person in obedience to Christ as not to provoke him to withdraw but more abundantly pour forth his holy anointing upon thee the most precious ointment of his new-creature spirit 1 Joh. 2. 20 27. Vers. 9. Live joyfully with the Wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy Vanity which he hath given thee under the Sun all the days thy Vanity for that is thy portion in this life and in thy labour which thou takest under the Sun Solomon continues his advice to the spiritual man of the Saint as Husband Head and Guide to his natural By reducing it to and keeping it in a universal obedience to Christ the Lord Husband and Head to the whole Man can he live joyfully in a loving union of mind with it David Paul and other Saints have found the natural spirit in its untransform'd unsubjected uncrucified state life will and way a prison an enemy a perpetual disturber of the spiritual mind of Christ in them through a universal contrary-mindedness thereto Psal. 120. 5 -- 7. Rom. 7. 18 23. Sarah's obedience to Abraham calling him Lord types out this twofold Truth the obedience of the whole Church to Christ and of the natural to the spiritual Man in every Saint The natural when by way of death and resurrection brought into Union of mind with the spiritual and so the whole person of the Saint with Christ then as Heirs together of the Grace of life their Prayers won't be hindred 1 Pet. 3. 6 7. as they must needs be while the natural mind is contrary instead of being subject to the spiritual in every thing Hence arise all discords inconsistencies and confusions found in Saints most of the days of the life of their Vanity under the Sun The nearer their natural is brought into a conformity with Christ in his death and resurrection Phil. 3. 10. the more pleasing grows their life and service to God and the more comfortable to themselves 〈◊〉 with the Wife of thy Youth Prov. 5. 18. This in mystery cannot be but so far as the said mystical Wife in the Saint is by suffering taught obedience Heb. 5. 8. to the spiritual ' The natural Spirit corrupt or righteous in its own earthy Life Will and Way is a like prison to the spiritual mind or man in the Saint as the fleshly body to his natural spirit So his whole natural Man in the uncrucified spirit of it is an uneasie irksome habitation to his spiritual directly contrary to the mind and interest thereof in every thing desire and thought Vers. 10. Whatsoever thine Hand findeth to do do it with thy might for there is no Work nor Device nor Knowledg nor Wisdom in the Grave whither thou goest Solomon advises not man here to do his own will that 's found in enmity to God in both the corrupt and righteous Life thereof but as by death and resurrection brought into that newness of Life in which as a 〈◊〉 yoke-fellow to his spiritual to be serviceable to his Generation Act. 13. 36. as to their eternal concerns by using all ways and means for laying before them the whole Counsel of God about their Salvation and discovering the whole counsel devices and
practices of Men and Devils in opposition thereunto Vers. 11. I returned and saw under the Sun that the Race is not to the swift nor the Battel to the strong neither yet Bread to the wise nor yet Riches to Men of understanding nor yet favour to Men of skill but time and chance happeneth to them all God reserves to himself the Prerogative of giving success or disappointment as to outward things and events where when and to whom he pleases as the supream and 〈◊〉 cause over-ruling all second By time and chance happening to all is meant such events as Providence oft gives in a direct contrariety and disappointment to Man's thoughts and expectations from second causes In mystery here is signified that Man in the utmost Power Skill or Wisdom of his restor'd natural state can't win the Race or Battel can't get true Riches Food or Clothing He can't so run and fight in his corruptible natural mortal Life and State as to vanquish all Enemies and obtain the incorruptible Crown Neither is the favour of God or his unchangeable love to Men or Angels in the highest Skill and Wisdom of that state The death and loss of all there is undispensably necessary to the finding a Life Spirit Wisdom Strength and Power to do gain and win all things more then conquer World and Devil be universally obedient and pleasing to God in every thing and wear the incorruptible Crown They that run and fight in but their own renew'd naturals are uncertain unsteddy runners and fighters run at an all-adventures and if they confidently fix there in a direct contrariety to the Command and Will of God Levit. 26. 21. Such Runners are certain of nothing but missing the great Prize So will prove cast-aways as Paul had if he had not brought under his body or that holy natural state wherein he was fighting against God's holy Gospel-spirit and Life 1 Cor. 9. 24 27. Solomon with Paul returning from the Light and Wisdom of his own Spirit to Christ's declares the Crown of Life durable Riches Food and Clothing victory over all Enemies and the peculiar favour of God for ever not attainable under the Sun or in the power and under the conduct of the natural spirit in the most heightned sublime Wisdom and Skill thereof Time and 〈◊〉 happens to all that strive in that spirit for the said great things All the fading good and comfort therein will pass away and so will they find uncertainty and chance to have bin inseparable from the nature thereof as they had bin abundantly warn'd in their mortal day on Earth Vers. 12. For Man also knoweth not his time as the Fishes that are taken in an evil net and as the Birds that are caught in a snare so are the Sons of Men snared in an evil time when it falleth suddenly upon them Here are the sad and certain consequents of Man's standing running or fighting in unsteady wavering first-Covenant Principles The Sons of Men at best in that life and state are but like Fishes and Birds sure to be caught in Satan's evil nets and snares Eccles. 7. 26. And God in his just Wrath will spread his net upon them as on King Zedekiah Ezek. 12. 13. 17. 20. They chuse that very life and state for their Portion that is the very snare thro' their fond wilful dotage upon and overvalue of it in and by which Satan catches them at his will and leads them into the same everlasting destruction with himself True Saints by Gospel-labours endeavour to waken Men out of this dreamish life and vain-shew in and by which Satan is drawing them into eternal Death as 〈◊〉 willing Captives and obedient Servants and so strongly deluding them as to make them verily believe they are making safe steps toward eternal Life in the very way of Salvation Saints labour to waken them out of this mistaking Dream that 's the very snare the Devil catches and holds them in as therein taken alive by him 2 Tim. 2. 24 -26. Man know's not the time God will deliver him up to Satan for ever yea send him strong delusion for being so wilfully deluded by the Devil and believing his lie rather then God's Truth that he may be damn'd 2 Thess. 2. 11 12. Under Satan's spirit of unchangeable darkness is Man kept ignorant of these dreadful consequents of his evil choice till there 's no remedy 2 Chro. 36. 16. till all the threatned evils come upon him suddenly in an 〈◊〉 time that he is no more aware of then Birds and Fishes of the evil net and snare they are caught in and made a Prey of The final Wrath of God will be upon them and the state by them chosen from which no escape for ever They shall not know how it comes what it is till upon them nor ever be able to put it off Isa. 47. 11. Vers. 13. This Wisdom have I seen also under the Sun and it seem'd great unto me Vers. 14. There was a little City and few Men within it and there came a great King against it and besieg'd it and built great Bulwarks against it Vers. 15. Now there was found in it a poor wise Man and he by his Wisdom deliver'd the City yet no Man remembred that same poor Man Christ is the poor wise Man in a spirit that 's in personal Union with his divine His little City are his little 〈◊〉 of true Saints deliver'd by his Wisdom from the great King the Devil that comes with all his power to besiege and build great Bulwarks against them He frustrates all the designs polices and practices of evil Angels and Men against them All this by taking our nature and impoverishing it even to a total abolition of all that Wisdom Glory Power and Excellency in which the great evil King and his Forces come against the little City he undertakes the defence of against them all By the death of that nature in himself and little City or flock which the Enemy can touch deceive and destroy Men by as the very snare they are caught in and raising himself and them into a life above their reach and power does he deliver them All his true Souldiers must follow this great Captain 's suffering steps for this conquest Heb. 2. 10 14. A being made fools weak and 〈◊〉 as to all worldly first-Covenant life strength and wisdom yea as nothing or no-body things that are not this is the only way to overcome all these wise strong and honorable therein the strong Bulls of Bashan Psal 22. 12. all enemies whatsoever 1 Cor. 1. 25 28. When Saints by obedience to the Cross on their nature are so totally impoverish'd and run down as to become spectacles of scorn to the whole world all evil Angels and Men 1 Cor. 4. 9. fix'd in their own worldly natural state even then and thereby are they fitted to trample them all under their feet in a life wisdom and power they dream not of the Power of
God This is the strange method of God's Wisdom for his despis'd little ones to be found more than Conquerers of all their proud self-exalting despisers and enemies The abolishing the worldly life of Nature out of Christ and his Army is the way to their being all found in that life and power of the World to come in which they overcome all that obstinatly set up in this This way the Man Christ triumph'd over all evil angelical and humane Principalities and Powers the Princes of this World Col. 2. 14 15. 1 Cor. 2. 6. All Men that finally take up in the first-creation are Satan's Subjects all that pass out of that by death into the life of the second are God's The poor wise Man that does all these wonderful things for his little City has infinite divine and infallible creature-wisdom and power in him And what can all the visible and invisible Powers of this World with all their Strength Devices and Bulwarks be before him He was made a poor Man by the death of our nature that he might make many rich in his spirit of Grace on the like obedient death of nature in them 2 Cor. 6. 10. 8. 9. Phil. 2. 6 8. Yet no Man remembers this poor wise Man No man in his own Wisdom receives his Gospel-Testimony Joh. 3. 32. takes his Counsel follows his Example Under the sinking weight of this charge will evil Men and Angels lie for ever They 'l not remember hearken to or follow this poor Man under his Cross into the like poverty and death of nature in them the only way into his everlasting Rest. Vers. 16. Then said I Wisdom is better than strength nevertheless the poor Man's wisdom is despis'd and his words are not heard The everlasting Wisdom of God's New-creation Gospel-Spirit is better then all the fading strength wisdom and power of Man and Angel in the first or old But the voice and words of this Wisdom from the impoverish'd natural man in Christ and his followers is not heard heeded or regarded by those that resolve to set up in that state of Nature for happiness which they preach death to as the only 〈◊〉 way and means for their being truly happy All such reproofs of death on the spirit of Nature and instructions of life in God's Spirit of Grace are despis'd and rejected by the wisdom of Man in first-Covenant Righteousness Even such are found all along this world a disobedient gain-saying People Isa. 65. 2. Rom. 10. 21. See the dismal and blessed consequents of not hearkning or hearkning to this poor wise Man's Counsels reproofs and instructions Prov. 1. 20 -33. Somethere are amongst the vast multitude of self-confident righteous men and also profane who at last are brought to regard this poor wise man's voice and his only the voice of his Spirit in himself and Saints 〈◊〉 still God has a little flock that are content to be made his little ones in Nature that he may make them his great ones and worthies too big and too many for all his and their enemies in his Wisdom and Spirit of Grace All do not finally provoke him Heb. 3. 16. Rom. 11. 1 -5. Christ then and his followers are not without all hearing from Men. For Vers. 17. The words of wise Men are heard in quiet more then the cry of him that ruleth among fools The words of Christ and his awaken'd Spiritual Saints the words of God's Wisdom which the Holy Ghost teaches and utters in both and all will be heard or obey'd by a spiritual Seed of Christ in meek broken-spirited quiet peaceable men Sons of Peace Their meek broken silenc'd natural spirit is of great price with God 1 Pet. 3. 4. as quitting its own vain corruptible life for that which is not corruptible but everlasting They instruct those that oppose them in meekness of Wisdom not returning railing for railing in the wrathful wrangling spirit and earthly wisdom of Nature that 's from beneath waiting with patience if God peradventure will give them Repentance or change of mind from Satan's lie to his Gospel-Truth 2 Tim. 2. 24 -26. See the different demeanour conversation and fruits of Saints in God's Heavenly Spiritual wisdom communicated to them and of incorrigible sinners in Man's and Satan's earthly devilish wisdom from beneath Jam. 3. 13 -18. Men in their wisdom render'd devilish by fixure in enmity to God's are the loud clamorous boasting self-exalting undertakers at teaching the way of Salvation who by their great cry and confused noise of their 〈◊〉 Cymbals their uncertain-sounding false Trumpet gain a ruling power amongst fools to the final destruction of blind foolish rulers and ruled leaders and followers All fall into the ditch or bottomless pit of deceits and destruction nets snares and death together Eccle. 7. 26. Mat. 15. 14. Such Rulers or Teachers and Leaders as a demonstration of their utmost folly and madness despise are offended at and absolutely reject all the words of God's Wisdom as folly and madness ver 12. Hos. 9. 7 8. 1 Cor. 1. 23. Joh. 10. 20. 7. 45 49. The quiet-spirited Saint in whom this self-confident spirit of enmity to God and all his Words of Counsel is broken down and silenc'd by the Cross listen to the Words of the true Shepherd or Teacher in himself and messengers and follow not but flee from the Stranger 's voice Joh. 10. 4 5. The spiritual Feet or Principles on which Christ's true Messengers or Apostles come to them are beautiful and all their right Words of reproof and instruction most welcome and desireable They esteem hear and obey the words of the truly wise as incomparably beyond all the cry and noise of Rulers among fools that presumptuously undertake an absolute impossibility even to declare the Mysteries of God's Wisdom in that wisdom of Man that 's foolishness to God's and all the words of God's to it Yet is their voice and cry readily heard and follow'd by Fools to the everlasting destruction of both and all Vers. 18. Wisdom is better then Weapons of War but one sinner destroyeth much good True Wisdom or the Spirit of Christ in Man is better then all the Wisdom Srength Power and Armour of Man or Angel in the first creation and yet more when all these are turn'd into and used in enmity to God For so became they the one sinner that from first to last 〈◊〉 against God Christ and Saints who must needs be unspeakably too hard for them All wicked Angels and Men in the finally abused first-creation state or spirit and life of nature make up and are the one sinner or uniform fighter against God in and with their first-creation Strength Armour and weapons of War And thus does this one comprehensive Sinner or perverted first-creation Spirit in all evil Angels and Men destroy much good even all the changeable goodness in that state which had they obediently return'd it back in sacrifice to God they might have receiv'd much good
he saith to every one that he is a fool Man 's own Wisdom is Folly not able to direct his steps in or so much as into the way everlasting Jer. 10. 23. Trusting therein and to renders him an enemy to true spiritual Wisdom that can do all And this manifests him to every one to be fool God will set up that Light in all that they and all others shall see them Fools as having wilfully chosen that Life and Wisdom they knew would fail them and consequently excluded themselves for ever from that which would have done their Work Thus become they everlasting monuments of their own madness and folly in eternal darkness and death under Wrath. Vers. 4 If the spirit of the Ruler rise up against thee leave not thy place for yielding pacifieth great offences The acknowledg'd literal gives aim at the mystical sence In letter Man ought not to leave his place of subjection to worldly Rulers but acknowledg the ruling Power by God's Providence permitted any to exercise over him however ill us'd This may and ought to be without any sinful compliance with such abused Power Even Saints must suffer as a passive owning that power so ill manag'd they can't actively obey All ought to keep their place of subjection to it so as not to rise up against dispute or deny the Rulers place and office however abus'd Such demeanour is the only safe way to pacify the Ruler's unjust wrath against them t. For yielding pacifieth great offences Yea Devils are not to be denied their invisible evil Angelical Principality and Power permissively given them in and over this World Luk. 4. 5 6. The Devil 's evil place of Rule and Power is not to be denied Even Michael the Arch-Angel Christ himself contending or disputing with the Devil about the body of Moses durst not bring against him a railing Accusation but said the Lord rebuke thee Jud. 9. So Zec. 3. 2. About Joshua another Type of himself The Devil contends or disputes by himself and Apostles for the body of Moses or life of the Law as eternal Life and Salvation according to his first short comprehensive lying Sermon to Eve ye shall not die This is eternal Life ye are already possess'd of by the first Creation A due demeanour towards the very evil Angels is an owning our place of inferiority to them in the life of but humane nature or our natural state at best 'T is acknowledg'd so in Christ himself Heb. 2. 7. The leaving our place of Subjection or Inferiority to evil visible or invisible Powers of this World is a leaving our place of right subjection and obedience to God and a giving advantage to the Devil to make us pay it him And so come we to the mystery here Christ of right is always the chief Magistrate and Supream Ruler over all in his very passive season and Satan's active Reign If his Spirit rise up against the guilty natural spirit of Man if he come with his spiritual Sword and Gospel-fire to slay and sacrifice it to God Obedience ought to be given to him herein by yielding subjection to this Supream Ruler over all as our true interest and safety This is the way to pacify God's provoked Wrath against us even the delivering up that spirit to death that 's found guilty of all sorts of offences against him and this undeniably evidenc'd by the all-discovering light of the two-edged flaming Sword that slays us Heb. 4. 12 13. No absolute reconciliation but by the death of the guilty Sinner in us the foe of our own house We ought to agree with this true Ruler in the way of his Cross the only way to Salvation when his Spirit rises against and he comes in the posture of an Adversary upon his and our enemy in us Mat. 5. 25. Such yielding up the perpetual Offender to death in order to be brought to live under the peaceable Rule of that Spirit of Life and Love that slays our spirit of Enmity and Death pacifies the Wrath of our most righteous Judg and brings this wonder to pass that we who in our own spirits have bin guilty of innumerable and unutterably aggravated follies and madnesses shall have no Iniquity found in us by Friends or Foes The guilty Sinner our natural spirit that always rebell'd in its life has obediently suffer'd death and there 's an end of all Iniquity By this means come we to be fill'd with a spirit of Life that 's in eternal union of mind will desire thought love and hatred with the infinite divine spirit Then let enemies that love nothing but such Iniquities they would charge us with search and accuse us while they will yea and let God that infinitely hates all Iniquity search us to the bottom by the joynt beamings forth of his infinite divine and all-searching infallible new-Creation Sun-lights still still no Iniquity will be found in us when fill'd with his own Spirit of everlasting Righteousness and Truth Vers. 5. There is an evil which I have seen under the Sun as an errour which proceedeth from the ruler Vers. 6. Folly is set in great dignity and the rich sit in low place Here 's just matter of complaint relating to the invisible or visible Magistrates of this World evil Angels or Men. Nothing more familiar to observation in the visible then their encouraging and advancing folly it self or grossly wicked and unworthy persons and thrusting down the rich in true wisdom the truly worthy into low place or no place out of all place yea and out of the World as not fit or worthy to live by reason of his unalterably contrary principle temper and spirit to such wicked Gamsters as resolve to make a prey of the People All discouragements injuries and oppressions imaginable are on this ground exercis'd on the most worthy Patriots whose Consciences permit them not to gratify and serve their corrupt wills interests and unruly lusts These are the things practis'd by wicked visible Rulers in a flat contrariety to their duty Rom. 13. 3 4. The invisible Rulers of this World evil Angels prefer the rich wise-fools in a first-Covenant righteous life as their choicest and most useful subjects before above and against the mystical poor or impoverish'd there in order to become wise rich strong and honourable in God or in a spiritual new-Covenant life hid with Christ in God Christ pronounceth Wo to the former and says Blessed are the latter Luke 6. 20 24. That that 's highly esteemed of Men in the first Covenant is abominable to God Luk. 16. 15. as set up in a fixed enmity to him and the second And the broken contrite impoverish'd natural Spirit of the Saint as to all others trust and glory in seems abominable and contemptible to them the fat full rich wise strong and honourable in the first 1 Cor. 4. 8 10. The rich in the first-Covenant are sigur'd by the Man with a gold Ring and goodly apparel whereas the poor and
needy natural man of the Saint causes him as a poor man in vile raiment to be bidden by man to sit here under his footstool importing the very height of contempt towards him while there 's a huge bussle for the giving the other a high place in honour and respect to him or rather to his mystical gay clothing kept on in enmity to the Cross but put off by the Spiritual Saint and refus'd ever to be put on again let men take it how they will Jam. 2. 1 -3. Cant. 5. 3. God requir's the putting off those first-Covenant Ornaments Devils and Men put such a preferring value upon that he may know what to do with us by setting up the life and clothing us with the everlasting Righteousness Beauty Glory and ornaments of the second Exod. 33. 5. Wise Holy first-Covenant righteous Men and God are of a directly contrary judgment in this case Rom. 2. 29. Those God highly esteems and loves they scorn and hate as the filth of the World the off-scouring of all things 1 Cor. 4. 13. Thus are they found in harmony with the invisible Principalities and Powers of this world the evil Angels They both and all center in this point a resolution in the earthly principle or natural spirit to despise and contend against the impoverish'd natural man of the truly wise rich strong and honourable spiritual Saint They shoot all their malicious revengeful arrows at him So are true Saints by their true Gospel-life Conversation words and way rendred with Jeremy Men of contention with the whole earth or whole earthy party of evil Angels and Men. This evil Solomon saw practis'd under the first-creation Sun or in the first-Covenant spirit the Law-principle of life and action as an errour both visible and invisible Rulers of this world are ioyntly guilty of in using their utmost power for discouraging persecuting and suppressing the truly wise and rich spiritual Saint the only sort of men in this world that God highly esteem's and loves On all these accounts as to the errours of the visible and invisible Rulers of this World he farther says Vers. 7. I have seen Servants upon Horses and Princes walking as Servants upon the Earth The chief sense of these words is that evil Angels are permitted the exercise of a ruling power over this World fulfilling their pleasure both in the corrupt and refin'd spirit and principles of Nature in men Both evil Angels and Men in the said spirit of Bondage are but servants and slaves in God's sight objects of his everlasting contempt and wrath When Christ whose Right it is takes to himself his great Power and reign 's he will take away all their power and tread them under his and his Saints feet for ever But all along this World are these evil Angelical Principalities and Powers in with and by evil visible ones jointly riding over Saints heads Psal. 66. 12. under Christ's overtopping spiritual Power ordering all for the carrying on his designed work of the Cross on the natural spirit of the Saint that 's a spirit of Bondage in them For this reason are the true Princes or spiritual heaven born Sons walking on the Earth in an inferiority and subjection to these slavish servile-spirited Rulers that in their true Princely life they may come to ride over all those Servants heads that have bin their Masters All along this World the said Servants are on Horseback and true Princes a-foot At entrance of the Reign of Christ or beginning of the next such Princes will tread all such Servants for ever under their feet and ride in triumph with their Lord and Master the great Captain of their Salvation over all their heads Col. 2. 15. Heb. 2. 10 14. The very Prince of Life when he had taken our slesh suffer'd death therein under the visible and invisible Princes of this world Act. 3. 15. True Saints following his suffering steps will be found on their mystical white Horses with their Lord at last Rev. 19. 11 -14. Christ refused any ruling Power as a Judge or King in that earthly life of the Law wherein he was to suffer and did in obedience to his Father under the hors'd Princes of this World in the said earthly life and worldly power He walk'd as a Servant on the earth under them and so must Saints in obedience to the will of God and conformity to his example Joh. 10. 17 18. They must lay down their natural wherein they are Servants that they may take up his spiritual life wherein Sons of God and to be Princes on 〈◊〉 Saints are spiritual chast Doves that know not where to set their foot or sind any visible relief or support in this World Gen. 8. 8 9. As kept for their Heavenly Country are they not suffer'd to find any rest short of it They are hunted out of all false rests by their evil Rulers who intend their utter destruction But they find the new Name of the Lord a strong Tower and Ark of safety both from enemies and the flood of God's final Wrath that will overflow the whole first-creation Land of the living all fix'd in their earthly life of enmity to his Heavenly Vers. 8. He that diggeth a Pit shall fall into it and whoso breaketh an Hedg a Serpent shall bite him The pit here is the same blind Leaders with their followers fall into Mat. 15. 14. Psal. 7. 15. Many that are reckon'd to dig deep in Scripture all their interpreting thereof amounts to no more then the digging this dangerous and destructive pit an opening the very bottomless pit of the Devil and asserting it to be the Kingdom of God a teaching unchangeable union with the evil one as God sitting in the Temple of God and shewing himself that he is God And in all their Ministry to this purpose seeing nothing but vanity and lying 〈◊〉 they say The Lord saith and make others hope they 'l confirm the word that they have true peace with God when indeed in unchangable union with the Devil Thus do evil Men giving heed to seducing Spirits and Doctrines of Devils cry up a fixure and establishment in the first-creation state of enlighten'd Righteous Nature in unchangeable opposition to God and his new-creation Spirit of Grace They prefer their Law-Spirit to his Gospel-Spirit which renders it the very bottomless pit they fall into under the final Wrath of God a deep ditch of stinking mire and silth for evermore Out of it there is no redemption 'T is very Hell Evil Angels Man's conclusive choice of that state makes it a pit of their own digging David found his own nature a deep mire where there 's no standing crying for deliverance out of it by a lifting him up out of his earthy spirit of nature into God's heavenly Spirit of Grace Psal. 69. 1 -- 3. The death of Nature under the Cross is our only way out of this miry pit of corruption into the life Christ will reign in t. And
life the true Shepherd call's for the surrender of by death in Sacrifice he and all that so do will find no harvest of true joy and comfort to be reap'd by them at last Vers. 5. As thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit nor how the bones do grow in the Womb of her that is with Child even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all In explaining his former words Solomon here uses the hidden ways of God in forming the fleshly body of Man and uniting his immortal Spirit with it in the Womb. These common things in the first creation over-setting Man's understanding as to the discerning or giving any certain account of are but typical to the yet far more mysterious and hidden things of Christ's new-creation-workmanship in Saints None know by the utmost improvement and skill of their own understanding how the Body is form'd in the Womb of the literal Mother or how the Spirit that had its radical creation and existence from the beginning in the mystical Womb of the Parent of Spirits comes in its appointed time to be united with its Body in the Womb. And how much shorter must Men come of discerning the yet more undiscernable mysterious works of God who maketh all things in both Creations or Worlds Heb. 1. 2. as forming and setting up his Spiritual Heavenly Eternal things in Man by his new-creation-workmanship The effects of the literal Wind are seen tho' not known whence it comes or whither it goes so are the effects of the new-creating Spirit of Christ in and upon all born of it Joh. 3. 8. As an irresistible Whirlwind it tear's down the earthly building and blow's up by the roots the fleshly tree of a perishing life in Saints andthen by the second new-building-operation of it does it make them new Vessels fill them with new-Wine even it s own Spiritual Kingdom-Life of everlasting Righteousness thro' which they become meet habitations of God Ephes. 2. 22. Now if Man be ignorant of his natural make or how the distinct parts of his being are brought together into a personal union in him by a first-creation much more is he of the abundantly more mysterious way and things of his new-creation birth Vers. 6. In the morning sowe thy Seed and in the evening withhold not thine hand for thou knowest not whether shall prosper either this or that or whether they both shall be a like good Here 's a confirmation of the said spiritual Truth In the morning or under Christ's first and earliest spiritual Convictions and Revelations or Discoveries of himself to thee in his spiritual Life sow thy Seed or readily use all diligence to make way for Christ's speedy influencing and quickning up his own Incorruptible Seed of Spiritual Life in thee Let not thy earthy natural carnal mind be hard'ned against Christ but break and kindly melt away under him that what hinders being removed his spiritual Seed may spring up in thee This done by us is call'd our sowing that spiritual Seed as the works wrought in the quickned up life thereof are called our works in God and God's in us Isa. 26. 12. Joh. 3. 31. works of Grace in the second-Covenant life not of Nature in the first And in the evening withhold not thine hand or natural spirit from sacrifice For this is it hinders the spiritual Seed from springing up towards an hopeful Harvest And so will the evening state of darkness and death to Nature be turn'd into an everlasting morning-light and life in the spirit of Grace For thou knowest not c. Man's receiving spiritual Light by which Christ in his spiritual life is shew'd and offer'd him is call'd a beginning in the Spirit a partaking of the Holy Ghost and tasting of the good living Word of God Gal. 3. 3. Heb. 6. 4 5. Then is he upon his trial for Eternal Life or Death as obedient or disobedient to the said spiritual Light And accordingly will he be evil or good barren or fruitful to God Delivering up the natural spirit to death is the only way to its becoming fruitful to God in a newness of life Rom. 6. 4. 7. 4. So as rais'd into the life of the spiritual Man do both the natural and spiritual become a like good in a life of everlasting Righteousness While Man is doubtful under the darkning demolishing death-work of the Spirit or Cross of Christ on his Nature what will be the issue as Job for some time was whether everlasting blessedness or misery the Light or Voice of the Spirit listen'd to will inform that both will prosper and be a like good both natural and spiritual Man thro' the death and resurrection of the former into the quicken'd up life of the latter So there will be a joynt birth of life springing up in the whole person of the Saint from the quickned spiritual Seed and both crucified and quicken'd earthly But spiritual Light resisted and life rejected Man's earthly state however righteous becomes that cursed mystical Earth whose end is to be burn'd Heb. 6. 7 8. Vers. 7. Truly the Light is sweet and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the Sun The light of the literal Sun is pleasant to the bodily eye But the days of darkness will be many after Man is cut off by the death of the body from such sight and pleasure The certain foresight of this can't but much allay his present delight In mystery Christ is the Sun or original of all 〈◊〉 creation intellectual light and life By his shining into Man does he render him wise strong and honourable in his own restor'd nature So becomes Man joyful and fruitful therein Yet all this light life and joy therein will pass away also as well as that of the bodily state And the succeeding days of darkness will be many even to all eternity as to those that never submit to the way of coming to experience Christ in an higher and better light and life shew'd and offer'd them The cross of Christ in love or wrath seizes and takes away all fading first-creation light or goodness from every Angel and Man good or bad This Solomon farther declares Vers. 8. But if a Man live many years and rejoyce in them all yet let him remember the days of darkness for they shall be many All that cometh is vanity Let a Man live never so long in the light and joy of a first-Covenant state under the mystical first-creation Sun or first-Covenant spirit and communications from Christ or shinings forth upon his Tabernacle there Job 29. 2 -4. he must consider and remember that all this will be gone and everlasting darkness succeed if Christ be not receiv'd in that spiritual life which will scituate him under his beamings forth as a Divine and spiritual new-creation Sun of infinite eternal and everlasting Righteousness Light Brightness and Glory Vers. 9. Rejoyce O young Man in thy youth and let thy heart cheer
thee in the days of thy youth and walk in the ways of thy heart and in the sight of thine eyes but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment Solomon here farther confirms his needful Caution for duly remembring the many days of darkness that will succeed in the room of all fading first-creation light literal or mystical and all delight or rejoycing therein Know that for all this God will bring thee into judgment This word is directed to two sorts of People such as live wholly in the corrupt spirit of nature gratifying only their bodily life lust eye and other senses with the visible objects and comforts of this world represented by the light of the literal Sun After the largest experience hereof he bids them at their peril go on but be sure God will bring them into judgment for all such things And his judgment on them will bring those days of darkness upon them which will be many even eternal darkness and death But the young man here chiefly meant is Man in the youthful flourish of his own restor'd nature and fruitful exercise of it in a first-Covenant life If he refuse to part with all this under the Cross to live and walk with God under the yet more excellent new-creation Spirit of Christ or mystical Sun of everlasting Righteousness eternal darkness and death will come upon him also in conclusion as well as on the other When such provoke God to give them up to their own self-chosen way so that he 'l no longer deal with them in Mercy or wait to be gracious to them but swear in Wrath they shall never enter into his rest they have nothing certain to expect but fiery indignation for ever Heb. 10. 26 27 which will turn all their light life and comforts into unchangeable darkness and death Vers. 10. Therefore remove Sorrow Heb. anger from thy heart and put away evil from thy flesh for Child-hood and Youth are vanity To prevent the said sad Judgment Solomon advises Man to remove Sorrow or Anger from his heart under and against the death-work of the Cross upon nature Be not offended or griev'd at this dispensation of God which is the only way in the methods of his Wisdom for Salvation Put away such Sorrow or Anger and be quietly yea gladly with Paul Gal. 16. 14. obedient thereto as the only way to everlasting Joy Joh. 16. 21 22. The pangs of Death to the natural Spirit figur'd by the Woman in travel will vanish on the birth of the spiritual Man-child in it and its quickning up into the new life of the said Child the true manly new-Creation life of Christ and God Our natural man under the Cross ought to put away Sorrow and Anger not reckoning its present sufferings fit to be compar'd with the joy of spiritual life set before us the exceeding weight of Glory that is to follow Thus did Christ himself and Paul reckon Heb. 12. 2. Rom. 8. 18. 2 Cor. 4. 17. All struggling Sorrow and Anger under the Cross makes it more uneasie Obediently submit to Christ herein and his Yoke will be found easie and Burthen light Mat. 11. 28 30. Those that learn of him will be meek lowly and quietly submit to his Cross and Father's Will and Command therein as he did 'T is the rebellious 〈◊〉 mind that 's troubled cries out and is angry and offended at this dispensation as unwilling to submit to this spiritual Law of the Cross is ready to say to Christ for this spiritual as Zipporah to Moses for the literal circumcision a bloody Husband art thou unto me Exod. 4. 25 26. t. For Childhood and Youth are vanity All the time of Man's non-age in first-Creation life at best the mind is carnal or 〈◊〉 which is enmity to God Rom. 8. 7. as found in a contrariety to the spiritual Law and mind of Christ. Hence man's whole work desire thought design and counsels therein are nothing but folly and vanity In the but restor'd first-Covenant righteous life of the Law and utmost youthful Vigour Activity Flourish and Fruitfulness thereof is even the true Saint but as a Servant in Child-hood non-age and minority ignorant of any such life he has the incorruptible seed of in him wherein to be Heir of all Gal. 4. 1. All Job Paul or any Saint has had but in that restor'd Spirit of bondage or of the Law has bin found Vanity and they themselves at best therein altogether vanity Psal. 39. 5. Such Childhood and Youth are vanity it self has nothing but vanity in it It s Life Works Fruits Wisdom Righteousness are nothing but vanishing shadows of the Creature-life Wisdom Righteousness and things of God CHAP. XII V. 1. Remember now thy Creatour in the days of thy Youth while the evil days come not nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say I have no pleasure in them HEre 's a farther reason for Man's remembring his Creatour in the youthful season of his bodily life and as figur'd by that the youthful vigor and flourish of his Spirit in the restor'd righteous first-Covenant life thereof Christ is a twofold Creatour of blessed Angels and Saints by a first and second-Creation-workmanship upon them of all other Men Angels and things a single Creatour by a first-Creation-workmanship only The former Eph. 2. 10. Col. 1. 18. the latter 16. As first-born of every Creature ver 15. fountain of all creature-being and life did he comprehend the immortal Spirits of all Angels and Men as radically existing in him v. 17. which are 〈◊〉 forth by him into a personal subsisting at their appointed seasons He that created all things is God God the Mediator in his conjunctive divine and creature-nature Joh. 1. 1 3. Heb. 1. 2. 3. 4. His creature-spirit is the fountain of all other creature-beings and the immediate hand by which brought forth in their distinct subsistencies and visibilities In all does he fulfil the will of the infinite Divinity who said Let there be this that and t'other and accordingly were all things created visible and invisible answering the existing beings given them in the Womb of the Mediator's vast original creature-being And as Angels and Men have their natural beings so that natural first-covenant light and life from Christ which fits them for the right exercise of their beings As perfect natural beings with a perfect natural life breath'd into and set up in their 〈◊〉 were they the product of Christ's 〈◊〉 creation-workmanship upon them They receiv'd their Beings Light and Life from him Saints over and above all this receive from him a spiritual everlasting righteous life and are made spiritual Vessels or sitted receptions thereof by his second or new-Creation-workmanship The fountain of this being and life is also in himself as head of the Church Col. 1. 18. The incorruptible seed 1 Pet. 1. 23. of this new life was cast into their Spirits from the date of their radical existing in the
shall be turn'd into a painful restless comfortless wearisom condition all former pleasures and delights into labour and sorrow Psal. 90. 10. Man's most concerning duty then is to listen to God's way for the receiving his fresh Oyl or holy Anointing that will give an everlasting newness of Life Vigour Strength and Beauty to his whole person wherein to feed upon never-perishing Meats the delights of the Sons of God If the rain of spiritual convictions and beamings-forth of spiritual Light be disobediently rejected and turn'd from after them will the clouds of God's final Wrath come upon Men from the same hand or spirit of Christ that caused the Rain thereof to fall and the Sun to shine upon them while it was to day with them Mat. 5. 45. Heb. 3. 15. Vers. 5. Also when they shall be afraid of that which is high and fears shall be in the way and the Almond-tree shall flourish and the Grashopper shall be a burthen and desire shall fail because Man goeth to his long home and the Mourners go about the Streets Here 's an account of the deplorable condition of the incorrigibly wicked under the Cross in final wrath They shall be afraid of that which is high that is of Christ the high and Almighty King coming forth in the brightness glory and irresistible power of his Divine and Spiritual creature-life to destroy all Rebels against his Kingly Gospel-Spirit In such his appearance will he be everlasting destruction to foes and Salvation to friends 2 Thess. 1. 7 -10. This high Lord the man Christ Jesus will manifest himself in the infinite 〈◊〉 of his Divinity and summon all Men and Angels before him to receive answerable to the things 〈◊〉 by them in obedience to or rebellion against his Gospel-spirit and divine Will in the Body or earthly State in their day on earth What a maze and consternation enemies will be then found in see Rev. 6. 15 17. Self-exalting Men with the mystical Rocks and Mountains they 'l have recourse to the supream evil Powers of this World the Devil and his Angels must both and all proud helpers Job 9. 13. And helped stoop bow and inevitably fall under the great Wrath of this universal Monarch Then will they be fill'd with fears in 〈◊〉 self-chosen way as undeniably discover'd in the evil thereof And then the Almond-tree shall flourish and the Grashopper be a 〈◊〉 The state they have chosen in enmity to God shall be their curse and punishment in the most flourishing life thereof represented by the fruitful Almond-tree and that Grashopper which shall be a 〈◊〉 as a sign and remembrancer of the warm Summer or flourishing season they once enjoy'd in the said natural State All this will encrease 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because they 'l find all the goodliness thereof faded away and all their desire towards or delight in it 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 because it can 〈◊〉 no longer any comfort or satisfaction to them All objects of desire and delight to the natural life of body or spirit shall by the wrath and curse of God cease and 〈◊〉 them for ever Rev. 18. 14. And then as their sorrowful complaint shall they go to their long home and the Mourners go about the Streets To their eternal home the Tophet Place or State of everlasting torment under wrath must they go where to go mourning and weeping for ever about 〈◊〉 streets of that accursed Babylonish City made up of innumerable Angels and Men unchangeably set to do and be evil in their earthly life of nature as fix'd in unchangeable enmity to God and his heavenly Spirit of Grace Vers. 6. Or ever the silver Cord be loosed or the golden Bowl be broken or the Pitcher be broken at the Fountain or the Wheel broken at the Cistern In these dark mystical Words the said Truth is farther signified The four obscure literal expressions here may fitly signify the dreadful Judgments of God on every part of Man's immortal being figur'd by the dissolved parts and powers of bodily life when once their Trial and his Patience towards them are come to a period Christ's convincing discoveries of himself by spiritual Light in the 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 Riches Glories and Fulnesses 〈◊〉 his blessed Person were as silver Cords of love by which they should have bin drawn and bound fast to him in 〈◊〉 Spirit or Principle of the new and everlasting Covenant which is called Love 1 Cor. 13. Rom. 13. 8 10. This Love this Gospel 〈◊〉 is the fulfiller of the Law of God in everypoint in every sense of 〈◊〉 literal and mystical in the utmost extent and to all intents and purposes to God's well-pleasing and man's Salvation Out of the golden Bowl of his heavenly creature-spirit Zech. 4. 2. has Christ pour'd forth the holy Oyl of spiritual Light into the mystical Pitcher of Man's natural spirit which abus'd and turn'd from the said Silver Cord is broken spiritual Light withdrawn all sight of Christ and converse with or knowledg of God therein and by cut off So the said Pitcher is broken rendered uncapable of receiving or holding such spiritual Waters or Convictions any more And the Fountain whence they flow'd shall be stopp'd up against them And then the Wheel by which in mercy the said Waters were drawn forth and convey'd to them will be broken at the Cistern and turn'd into a Wheel or dispensation of Wrath to them God having put an end to his dealing with them in a way of Mercy and Trial. By the same hand or Spirit of Christ by which Grace is shew'd and offer'd will God pour forth his Wrath on all wilful obstinate despisers of his Love The same thing seems signified by the Prophets breaking the staff of beauty and the staff of bands as tokens of God's refusing to have any more to do with that rebellious house of Israel that by playing the harlot with their own Beauty Ezek. 16. 15. or doting on their own fading Glory in the restor'd righteous life of the first-Covenant despis'd and rejected Christ as by the light of the second shew'd and offer'd as a spiritual Lord and Husband to them in an everlasting Life and Union signified by Bands Zech. 11. 10 14. On this God refuses to have any more to do with them in either Covenant having set up themselves with the Devil in the first in unchangeable enmity to him and the second Vers. 7. Then shall the dust return to the Earth as it was and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it See Chap. 3. 20. Dust here 〈◊〉 the mortal earthy life of the natural spirit as well as body of man As depriv'd of all the fading goodness thereof must the immortal beings of incorrigibly wicked 〈◊〉 and Men return to God and stand before him to receive his 〈◊〉 sentence and full execution thereof as subjects of his unquenchable wrath From the deep sense hereof Solomon cries out 〈◊〉 as in the beginning of his Book Chap. 1. 2. Vers. 8. Vanity of
and with the everlasting righteous Gospel-life of his spirit of Grace Joh. 10. 17 18. Joh. 14. 15 21 23. From the true Sonly fear of God and love to his Mercy or unspeakable Gospel-gift of eternal Life must we hate and do judgment or receive and also execute God's righteous Sentence of Death 2 Cor. 1. 9. on our most restor'd Law-state of Nature By such humbling our selves to the death of our Nature at best can we come to walk as Enoch with God in his Spirit of Grace that 's in unchangeable harmony of mind and will with his infinite divine Spirit Mic. 6. 8. How can two Men walk together and how much less God and man except they be agreed This is the concluding sum of all God requir's of us That we obediently keep and do all his Commands in his never-sinning or erring Spirit of everlasting Righteousness and infallible Truth The best works or fruits done or brought forth in our Law-life of enmity to God can never answer his requirings of us Can we love him with all our heart soul mind and strength in a spirit of direct enmity to him Luk. 10. 27. Direct contradiction The Gospel-spirit of Grace call'd Love is the fulfiller of the whole Law mind and will of God Rom. 13. 8 -10. Vers. 14. For God shall bring every work into Judgment with every secret thing whether it be good or whether it in be evil Rom. 2. 16. 2 Cor. 5. 10. The Man Christ will be found able to do all this Heb. 4. 〈◊〉 13. The sad consequents of rejecting the advice given v. 13. will be eternal misery torment and vexation of spirit on the irrecoverable loss of all the fading goodness or comforts of the natural state and an eternal exclusion from the once fairly shew'd and offer'd never-fading goodness and glory of a spiritual eternal life of everlasting righteousness This will be concluded by God's infallible Spirit of Truth whose Authority when Christ appears Judg himself on his Throne shall no longer be questioned or disputed as all along this World in Satan's reign and man's day it has but every tongue shall confess it as of right belonging to the Man Christ Joh. 5. 22 27. Phil. 2. 11. The undeniable truth of his 〈◊〉 Judgment will have a universal acknowledgement from all good and evil Angels and Men. By the irresistible beamings-forth of the light of that Spirit wherein he will judge and pronounce the Sentence of God's infinitely just and righteous mind and will shall the Books of all hearts and consciences be forc'd open or unlock'd so as to make enemies themselves witnesses for him against themselves on their amazing forc'd remembrance of and his setting all their innumerable sins and abominations naked and open in the view of themselves and all others And then will Christ also open his own infallible Book of Records in which he has registred and set down in indeleble characters from first to last according to the divine sight and judgment of God all done by or found in every Angel and Man good or bad Rev. 20. 12 13. The Books of all Men's and Angel's Consciences will be opened and then Christ's own Book the Book of Life out of which all Men shall be judged according to their works Out of and by all these Books will God's Judgement pronounc'd on Men be found clearly and undeniably righteous For the Records in the hearts and consciences of men will be found in exact harmony with what 's written in God's own Book which will lay the evil creaturé under undeniable guilt and just condemnation to the silencing and stopping every blasphemous mouth of iniquity And then also shall the secret hidden spiritual Life of Saints with the well-pleasing right works and fruits thereof unobserv'd and un-own'd yea blasphem'd by enemies be open'd and manifested to all for their eternal justification All secret evils that have lain hid in enemies under all fair shews in holy 〈◊〉 and all 〈◊〉 secret good works of spiritual Saints that have lain hid under the marr'd visage of their crucified natural man shall be brought into publick and general view So will the incorrigibly wicked be sent as justly condemned persons into everlasting punishment and the unchangeably Righteous into Life eternal Mat. 25. 31 -- 46. FINIS ERRATA PAge 102. line 21. for the in read in the. P. 176. l. 1. 〈◊〉 dul r. duly P. 323. l. 16. f. cammon r. common P. 380. l. last f. creation r Cretian Some 〈◊〉 mistakes and in stopping are left to the ingenuous Reader
departed out of their own Countrey and Father's House the mystical Land of their Nativity their natural state and life and are entred into God's new-creation spiritual mystical true Land of promise or state of life the Land of the truly living for evermore So know they how to walk before the living God the living word of God and all the truly living partakers thereof blessed Angels and spiritual Saints in that blessed new land and life They know how to walk with God in some degree towards what Enoch did and to demean themselves as orderly Gospel-spirited walkers before all the blessed inhabitants of that new Land of the living These poor ones little Children Mat. 18. 3. Brethren of Low degree in their own Spirit 〈◊〉 nature demolish'd defac'd and impoverish'd by the cross are the only right sort of true rejoycers because sure of an exaltation into that Gospel-life of Christ wherein they will certainly know to walk before all the said living God Christ blessed Angels and Saints Jam. 1. 9. The fix'd fool or wise in the natural state corrupt or enlighten'd are utterly uncapable of Repentance Pardon or Salvation for ever The door of Grace is fast shut upon them If then Christ had not a secret spiritual Seed of unfix'd ones amongstus whether in the corrupt or enlighten'd spirit of nature where were any true Church of spiritual Saints or so much as a hopefulness of such a thing this dark day on Earth Had not the Lord a very small remnant-Seed of true Saints among us we should be as Sodom and Gomorrha literal or mystical Both both in a wonderful degree however unconsider'd or unperceiv'd by such whose minds the God of this World has wonderfully blinded left the true Gospel-light of Christ should shine unto them 2 Cor. 4. 4. Vers. 9. Better is the sight of the Eyes than the wandring of the desire Heb walking of the Soul this is also vanity and vexation of Spirit The wandring desire or walking Soul is a fit character of Man's natural spirit exercis'd in a first-Covenant principle of life and action subject to all sorts of uncertainty Man therein lives and walks at all-adventures as the margin renders Lev. 26. 21. 'T is a starting turning Psal. 78. 57. versatile principle in which Man at first was liable to Apostasy and since his Apostasy any Men in that restor'd principle and life are exposed to the same as has bin sufficiently experienc'd by millions 'T is a tossing fluctuating principle unstable as water with Reuben Gen. 49. 4. Man therein is apt to be carried about with divers and strange Doctrin's tossed to and fro with every wind of false deceitful delusive and destructive Doctrine by the sleight and cunning craft of Men Ephes. 4. 14. and Devils Satan and his Gospel-ministries These false Doctrines or the matter of them the Wisdom Righteousness Glory things of Man or Angel in the first Creation asserted to make up an absolute Safety and Salvation to Man do utterly pervert and destroy him for ever They tend wholly to the establishing of Men with Satan's perishing Meats in unchangeable enmity to God This is a most evil wicked thing and state But it is a good thing that the heart be established with Grace or in that Gospel-spirit of Grace that 's in unchangeable union with God not with Satan's perishing but Christ's never-perishing meats Heb. 13. 9. Man's tossing roving rolling spirit wandring in its desire up and down to pick up a satisfaction in Satan's vast heap of first-creation vanities the perishing dust himself feeds on Gen. 3. 14. if permitted by God to make his own final choice brings him at length to be establish'd by such gratifying ensnaring captivating 〈◊〉 or things in unchangeable union with the Devil He feeds on Wind Hos. 12. 1. Ashes Isa. 44. 20. a deceived heart turn's him aside that he can't deliver his soul nor say is there not a lie in my right hand 〈◊〉 divers uncertain Doctrins or things the Spirit of God calls strang meats wind ashes lies Satan by 〈◊〉 has all first-creation vanities at his dispose all the Kingdoms of this World and glory of them as 〈◊〉 up to him to give to whomsoever he will Luk. 4. 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 on which he offer 's all to Christ himself or any thing thereof to others are that he or they take and own him for God and worship him as so v. 7. and 2 Thess. 2. 4. He can gloss over his vanities so as to answer 〈◊〉 palate gratify every extravagant desire of Man's wandring spirit being compleatly skill'd and knowing therein by the over-reaching subtilty of his superiour angelical nature and by his powerful insluence upon Man can he kindle blow up and inflame his desire or lust after his perishing desirables Yet farther if Man by spiritual conviction-light grow jealous and suspicious that his meats are dangerous and shy as to an eating of his dainties he will gild them over with the nearest possible resemblance and counterfeit appearance of Christ's never-perishing meats And so does he fetch many back from Christ that have tasted of his true heavenly meats begun well in his spirit or in obedience to his Gospel-light and ran well for a season Heb. 6. 4 -- 6. 1 Pet. 2. 3. Gal. 3. 1. -- 4. and 5. 7 8. The Devil is ready for Man at every turn can humour him to a hair while at his own choice as to what he will feed and live upon And in presenting his dusty diet in all variety thereof he uses all imaginable self-pleasing and most subtile arguments as to Eve to engage men to feed at his table till establish'd in his spirit of enmity to God and to his never-perishing Meats Hold your own say's he and ye shall be as God's Gen. 3. 5. God offers you a happiness in your eternal and unchangeable subjection to him 〈◊〉 teach you how to become Gods your selves in an absolute uncontroll'd soveraignty of your own wills like the most High as I have made my self Isa. 14. 14. What kind of Gods will he make them Gods or Princes of this World under him in unchangeable enmity to the true God most high He is the God of all such Gods King of all such Kings and Children of pride Job 41. 34. In stead of not dying at all as he flatters them they sink and dy with him once for all irrecoverably eternally While people are gadding abroad to change their way Jer. 2. 36. wandring like Bee's from one fading flower to another in Satan's first-creation field or worldly dominion they look not after God their backs are upon him they bow down to feed with the Serpent on dust their ears are deafned their eyes or minds blinded by him that they will not listen to God's Counsel look after his meats have no palate to savour or relish his things the things of God They are wholly of Satan's palate savour only natural first-creation vanities the things of Man or evil Angels Solomon
bondage and death in trespasses and sins These under the self-polluting practices of their unbridled brutish lusts carry folly and madness written in their foreheads to be seen and read of all men in and by the restor'd common light of Nature They hate the righteous life of their own nature with all reproofs and instructions towards their recovery into it They abuse what light of Reason they have rendring it a slave to those brutish powers of life it ought to direct and rule over so as to prog about and fetch in provisions for them The consequent hereof Solomon declares to be a dying before or not in their time saying Why shouldst thou die before thy time In a literal sence how oft do men hasten the death of their body by 〈◊〉 riot and luxury These are bloody-minded men that shall not live out half their days Psal. 55. 23. They wholly delight in the brutish lusts and pleasures of their degenerate nature polluted in its own blood Ezek. 16. 6. dead in trespasses and sins Eph. 2. 1. Solomon advises men not to be over-wicked or stay over-long in the brutified polluted state of fallen nature out of which the first-covenant 〈◊〉 of Christ do break forth by a being born of and knowing him 〈◊〉 the flesh into the righteous fleshly-life of the Law who also 〈◊〉 to break forth out of that fading righteous state with the spiritual new-Covenant Children of Christ when warn'd of and call'd thereunto become guilty of more criminal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and abominable Idolatries then they that remain wholly in their polluted Nature A being born but of the flesh or will of 〈◊〉 in Christ is vastly short of a being born of the spirit or will of God in him Joh. 3. 6. and 1. 13. That that 's born of his flesh is but flesh holy flesh righteous Nature makes but a first-Covenant Saint Spouse and Child of Christ which Paul wholly quitted as dung for the knowledge of 〈◊〉 after 〈◊〉 Spirit or in his Spiritual Resurrection-life This turn'd the Law-Saint in holy 〈◊〉 into a Gospel-Saint in God's holy new-creature Spirit of everlasting Righteousness 2 Cor. 5. 16. Phil. 3. 6 10. So became he a fool weak despicable as a crucified dead Man to them that were yet wise strong and honorable in Christ by the knowledge of him only after the flesh 1 Cor. 4. 10. or in but the first-Covenant But to the wicked here Christ has restor'd the first-Covenant Light of Rational Nature in every Man that comes into the World By this he shews or gives them a fair prospect into this first mystical Canaan or earthly Jerusalem-state and so a call into it even into the righteous cleans'd Life and State of their own Nature Those that refuse deliverance out of their polluted dead state of Nature do by this additional evil to their Hereditary Disease and Pollution from Adam pull the just charge of that original Sin upon their own guilty heads as delighting in it and chusing it in preference to any thing of the righteous life of Nature Adam had before his fall They render themselves literal Sodom incorrigibly and therefore unpardonably wicked to whom belongs the vengeance of eternal fire Jude7 as the meet recompence of such errour Rom. 1. 26 27. Will they reckon it too hard eternal punishment should be brought upon them in Hell for a little short brutish pleasure upon Earth In this also they greatly err not considering that their unchangeable enmity to God deserv's his unchangeable Wrath upon them Thus Man dies before his time chuses his state of death and pollution when he might receive the fairly offer'd Righteous Life of his own Law-Spirit of Nature again after which yet he may die eternally if he refuse by the right death and sacrifice of that to receive eternal Life in God's Gospel-Spirit of Grace But as an enemy of all Righteousness or Righteous Life God's and Man's too does he turn that but changeably dead state of Nature he was born in into a state of unchangeable eternal death a latter end worse then his beginning worse then that changeable curable recoverable state of death he was born in Such brutified monsters will not admit any thing of the least 〈◊〉 towards their Deliverance or Salvation not any thing towards 〈◊〉 rendring them clean sacrifices to God in a restor'd first-Covenant Life in order to receive his life in the second By this over-plus of wickedness does man hasten his own eternal ruine If he hate the Righteousness of man that he has seen much more does he hate the more excellent spiritual new-Creature everlasting Righteousness of God and much more yet the infinite and eternal Righteousness of the very Divinity that he has not seen 1 Joh. 4. 20. As still more and more above and contrary to the vile affections and lusts of his brutified self-polluting Nature Eternal death is the undeniably just recompence of all that finally refuse to submit to the Lord 's declared terms for their receiving eternal life whether they be found in corrupt or righteous Nature whether Publicans and Harlots common 〈◊〉 of the Gentiles or Righteous Scribes and Pharisees professing first-Covenant Jews or Christian Gentiles So have we the sence in which these two verses 16 th 17 th are spoken to two sorts of Men professors and profane one perishing by being over-much righteous the other by being over-much wicked The former will needs have his Righteousness and Wisdom to be everlasting and unchangeable above and beyond all that God has ever written or spoken of it crying Peace peace to himself and others therein as entitled thereby to eternal life and peace in and with God All this in a perfect contrariety to all God's Declarations Counsels and Warnings about it So they love and delight in what Christ makes the hating parting with and death of undispensably necessary to their being saved Eternal death is the meet recompence of such errour finally persisted in As for the overmuch-wicked ver 17. he sinks himself into a far worse condition then left in by his first Parents So come they both to a latter end worse than their beginning eternal darkness and death These two sorts of incorrigible sinners mystical and literal Sodomites bring upon themselves swift destruction by denying the Lord that bought them 2 Pet. 2. 1. One denying or refusing to receive him so much as in his first the other in his second or new-Covenant life And of the two the mystical Sodomite will have the worst on 't for ever under the wrath to come Mat. 11. 24. Vers. 18. It is good that thou should'st take hold of this yea also from this withdraw not thine hand for he that feareth God shall come forth of them all The good we should take hold or lay hands on is Christ's new-creation life of Truth the absolute unchangeable good thing that 's to be sought and pure as'd at any rate sold or parted with at no rate Prov. 23. 23.
first-covenant righteous wise strong and honourable in Christ come to for refusing to part with all that for Christ in the spirit of the second as risen out of the death of the first Rom. 7. 1 -4. These Sons of Men whose heart is full of evil and madness in this World while they live go after this life to the dead remain for ever in the Congregation of the dead Prov. 21. 16. in eternal darkness and never see Light This come they to with their Predecessours in the same obstinate madness and folly whose false doctrine or sayings they have prais'd own'd and follow'd against God and his Spirit of Truth Psal. 49. 13 19. Vers. 4. For to him that is joyned to all the living there is hope for a living Dog is better then a dead Lion The living Dog that being joyn'd to all the living has hope is the natural man of the spiritual Saint under the Cross rendered a fool weak and despicable as to all first-creation Wisdom Power and Glory with Paul 1 Cor. 4. 10. but is in an unchangeable union with all living for ever in the Spirit of Grace and so rich wise strong and honourable in God Tho' the Saint then in his broken impoverish'd natural man the barren disconsolate state of his desolate crucified 〈◊〉 be counted a Dog the filth of the world the off-scouring of all things by the Rich Full Wise Strong and Honourable in Christ 1 Cor. 4. 8 10 13. as to first-covenant attainments in and from him thro' a new and better life springing up in him however hid from them is he in a better condition then the dead Lion Who is this Man in all the riches wisdom and glory of a restor'd first-Covenant life figur'd by Dives as the crucified Saint's natural man by Lazarus All this Lion-like strength and power of nature fix'd in enmity renders Man but a dead Lion Fix'd enmity to God is everlasting death to Man This will all Lions in the boistrous blustering spirit and unbroken strength of nature find to be their condition as highly as they think of themselves Nothing of true spiritual everlasting life or strength have they about them This dead Lion scorns the living Dog as not seeing him in another spirit joyned to all the truly living Christ and all spiritual Saints and Angels The natural Man as a fleshly mystical Tree in the fruitful exercise of a restor'd first-Covenant righteous life when cut down spoil d and marr'd by the spiritual-Sword or Gospel-Cross Tree and Fruit Leaf Root and Branch yet is there hope thro' the scent of water even of Christ's Spiritual Water of Life that it will sprout up again in another life bud and bring forth boughs like a plant Job 14. 7 8. of God's right-hand planting by a new-creation the fruits and leaves whereof shall never wither or fade Psal. 1. 3. And so is the living Dog living with Christ in God better in himself and therefore in God's infallible sight then the said dead Lion ruffling in all the unbroken life and power of that restor'd natural state that 's crucified in the true Saint Such Lions have but a name to live They are dead Rev. 3. 1. as being the very mystical Law-Widows left by Christ in the first-Covenant and waxing wanton against him in the second chusing rather to be married again in the first to that other Man 1 Tim. 5. 6 11 12. Rom. 7. 3. the Man of Sin and Son of Perdition the Devil This brings Damnation or unchangeable Death upon them Ver. 5. For the Living know that they shall die but the Dead know not any thing neither have they any more a reward for the memory of them is forgotten Living spiritual Saints know their whole natural Man must die in conformity to Christ and the Will of God But the said dead Lion knows nothing has no right knowledge of the mind of God in obedience to his Will as to the appointed Death-pass out of his crucified nature into God's Spirit of Grace He sees not or knows this spiritual life in which risen Angels and Saints are everlastingly blessed The dead Lion in all his flourish being in a state of unchangeable Death will have no more any reward to his comfort only the meet recompence of his error madness and folly eternal darkness and death under which his memory will for ever be forgotten He knows nothing that 's truly good or desireable unchangeably good and he shall have nothing that 's changably or unchangeably good or desireable but only unchangeable evil for his everlasting portion Thro' the impassable Gulf 〈◊〉 between them and blessed Angels and Saints will such see those they unchangeably hate to be the objects of God's unchangeable Love and themselves of his unchangable Wrath. They 'l know nothing but what will aggravate their boundless misery and unexpressible torment for ever On the contrary the truly living know every thing 1 Cor. 2. 15. to the encrease of their unspeakable Joy They know that by the obedient death of nature they shall live for ever in God's spirit of Grace as the method of God's Wisdom whose whole Counsel about Salvation they fully comply with They glory with Paul in the Cross of Christ by which all worldly life and desire in them is crucified to all worldly vanities or desirables without them Gal. 6. 14. And so are they made alive to the World to come and have a new spiritual belly desire or appetite and palate springing up in their newness of life to savour relish desire and feed on things divine spiritual heavenly and eternal things of God only the peculiar delights of the Sons of God The said dead know none of these things in their dead state of unchangeable Union with the Prince of death the Devil wherein they are cast out of God's favourable Remembrance or regard for ever into outer darkness where will be weeping and gnashing of Teeth Vers. 6. Also their Love and their Hatred and their Envy is now perish'd neither have they any more a Portion for ever in any thing that is done under the Sun Here 's a lively description of the deplorable state of the mystical dead whose Love Hatred and Envy perish All delight and satisfaction in the restor'd fading life and good things of their own nature evilly chosen and rested in by them for happiness shall perish Belly and meats desires and desirables all will be gone And then the Wrath of God will be upon them for ever All the goodly dainties they lusted after will depart from them and never be found more Rev. 18. 8 14. For chusing their perishing things of Man not only in a preference but unchangeable enmity to the things of God in his new-Creation Life fall they under his unchangeable Wrath. So all their false evil destructive Love of any the best things in this World the Righteousness Wisdom and Glory of their own restor'd nature with the Fruits or Works thereof in enmity to
thereby even the promis'd gift of an everlasting righteous Life and so all their own fading good again with usury The Law or law-life in Man or Angel us'd unlawfully as kept up for Weapons of War in rebellion against Christ's Gospel-life is destroy'd by the said Sinner in evil Angels and Men. They thus destroy and frustrate all the good intended in and by their first-creation State and for ever exclude themselves from the immutable good of the second So destroy they much good even the whole good of the first and second Creation By the lawful use of the first they might have had all the good of both By the unlawful use thereof they spoil and lose all all the good given them in the former and offer'd them in the latter Then as six'd in unchangeable enmity to God they must fall and lie down for ever under the unchangeable Wrath of God as their undeniably just portion CHAP. X. V. 1. Dead Flies Heb. flies of death cause the Ointment of the Apothecary to send forth a stinking savour so doth a little Folly him that is in reputation for Wisdom and Honour THe dead flies or flies of death found in Men since the fall that cause the first-covenant precious Ointment of Christ the great mystical Apothecary or perfumer of Man's filthy loathsome corrupt polluted nature dead in trespasses and sins are a character of the 〈◊〉 to God's divine and creature-spirit which is filth of spirit in Man This enmity as the single product of the first sin is call'd the little folly in eminently restor'd righteous Man that with Job is there in great reputation for Wisdom and Honour Job 29. 7 -10 This little folly a changeable pardonable curable enmity to God in all comparatively with the great folly the incurable unpardonable great transgression or presumptuous sin unto death as thro' Man's wilful madness this changeable is turn'd into a fix'd unchangeable enmity to God in many this little folly what a noise it made in Job against the dispensation of the Cross when under it as we find at large by the reproofs Elihu and Christ himself came upon him with Job 32 to almost the end of that Book Man in the honour he was created in not understanding or duly considering the changeable nature of that honour and slipperiness of his standing in it soon fell and became as the Beasts that perish Psal. 49. 12 20. a brutified meer sensual creature as 't were having forfeited the righteous life of a Man And when restor'd by the redeemer out of that polluted bloody condition into the same kind of changeable first-covenant righteous life of a Man again Ezek. 16. 6. so as to remove and take off the punishment of the first sin the first sin it self is not hereby cured but through this very fresh coming of the command or Christ's setting up his first-covenant Law-life in him again does this sin of Enmity revive also which with and in dead nature lay as dead into an active bold confident daring presumptuous resisting of God and his Gospel-spirit as Paul experienc'd Rom. 7. 9 -11. And had he obstinately persisted in that course when convinced of his duty it had slain him for ever But he yielded to the death of that restor'd 〈◊〉 covenant law-life as the known means of abolishing that 〈◊〉 which reviv'd sprang up with it and is inseparable from it No way then to be rid of that enmity but by being rid of that life under the Cross. And no other way or on no other or lower and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 can God's Gospel-life of 〈◊〉 Righteousness be 〈◊〉 by or set up in us He therefore gloried in nothing save the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that by its twofold death and life-operation runs down the 〈◊〉 covenant life and 〈◊〉 up the second crucified all 〈◊〉 life and desire in his spirit to all this World's desirables and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it Gal. 6. 14. and set up a life in him the Palate Belly or 〈◊〉 and Desire whereof wholly and only savour'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 desir'd and 〈◊〉 after the things of God things eternal delights of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God He so became alive only to the World to come and that to him a meer Pilgrim and Stranger in and to this to the delights of the Sons of Men things seen temporal 1 Pet. 2. 11. 2 Cor. 4. 18. The dead Fly or little solly here is the same with the little leaven that leavens the whole lump Gal. 5. 9 of mankind which can be purg'd out of any no otherwise then by the death and Sacrifice of Nature at best from which inseparable And then with our sacrific'd spotless Nature in Christ our Pass-over shall we find that the destroying Angel even Christ with the same spiritual-Sword or Gospel-Cross will pass over us as to that use he will make of it in Wrath upon all fix'd incorrigible enemies Angels or Men. This fix'd leaven or Doctrine of the Pharisees in a sowr'd leaven'd spirit of unchangeable enmity in a 〈◊〉 Covenant righteous life against the second Law against Gospel is that Christ warn'd his Disciples to beware of Mat. 16. 6 11 12. For this cause did Christ sanctify our nature by the death thereof in himself that by the like death-sanctification the same fire-Baptism of his heavenly Spirit of Truth on our earthy-spirit of enmity and falshood he might sanctify it in us Joh. 17. 17 19. The enmity or Fly of death becoming unchangeable in Men renders them a most stinking abomination to God for ever Their Soul unchangeably loaths God's Soul or Spirit of Grace and his them Then Christ's fresh first-Covenant Gift that was for a season as salt to dry up the fleshly filth of their polluted nature loses its savour and the whole person becomes a stinking loathsome thing as all-over polluted with a spreading incurable Leprosy or most noisom Disease Vers. 2. A wise Man's heart is at his right hand but a fool's heart at his left Here 's a description of the truly wise and of the greatest fool The heart of the former is at his right hand fix'd and set to follow those right counsels of God in the life activity desire and thought of the incorruptible Seed of God's right-hand-planting in him by a new-creation which will set him at Christ's right hand when fools or lustful Goats in the activity life and desire of the corruptible seed of his left-hand-planting in them by a first-creation in which wholly set upon this worlds vanities will be found at his left-hand and doom'd to eternal punishment Mat. 25. 33 46. Saints give up their fleshly Tree with the fruits or works thereof their left-hand first-Covenant life to the death of the Cross that they may receive that right-hand second Covenant Gospel-life wherein to be wise unto Salvation Others of a perfectly contrary mind fool themselves into eternal damnation Vers. 3. Yea also when he that is a fool walketh by the way his Wisdom Heb. heart faileth him and