Scriptures always discoursing Gods dealings with men at a higher rate of esteem then this and suing himself to all the moves against them that they may be orderly and just as if the Soul of man would reason and debate with him concerning his ways for so indeed we find there is a spirit in man that in those that are good humbly and reverently desires to plead with him as in Job and Jeremy and in evil men contends and calumniates him as unequal till he convinces them of all their hard speeches against him And the comparison can never be equal betwixt man and any of the creatures under him for they melt away from the least pressure into death and cease there but man dated for Eternity is therefore of a much higher consideration nor have the other those notions of right and wrong of rewards for doing well and punishments for ill doing that are implanted in mans Soul God therefore passes into all the cases of his rational Creatures and determines upon them so that he will not regret or offend those Principles which he himself hath put into them but in all his Judgments and tryals of them he comprehends their right in his own and so sentences them to misery as that it could not be otherwise consistently with that Justice and Righteousness he is to declare All which are not only argued here in the world in the darkness and low state of Souls and in this mixture of things wherein a man cannot truly know love or hatred by any thing that is before him but in the clearness and open air of Eternity when the spirits of men will be at their highest pitch and multitudes of them aculeated with the sting of an endless doom while other Creatures lye still in their dust and covered in their ashes These immortal Souls challenging out of rottenness their bodies rise up plead with the Almighty concerning themselves From whence we infer that God doth not willingly afflict the children of men so much as here seeing it is he that hath put into them and excites in them these powers of debate with himself and those reasons upon which they argue and he doth it that he may be justified when he speaketh and be clear when he judgeth and that it may be known that all he doth is as we have said upon accounts of Interest in his own glory of sincerest intention for the good of his Creation and of necessity for the righteous Government of the world Of which accounts we shall treat particularly having first laid down the fundamental reason of Judgments The primary reason of Judgments is to be found in close connexion with Justice and the nature of punishment For Judgments upon a close description are the executions of punishment according to rules of Justice The essence of this Justice is in the distribution of every ones right to them by an exact ballance of reward and punishment according to works for the establishment of righteousness and order in the world which are both the beauty and peace of it The supreme care of this is in the hand of Original Righteousness and increate Justice whose the world and all the Creatures are and which is ever awake upon this its Paramount Function The nature of punishment is found only in pain without which we can have no possible notion of it for it always imports to us something grievous And it stands upon this reason Fruition and pleasure are the last ends in which the desires of man rest as his happiness this is always his reach and contention through what ways soever he steers himself When he travels through the mediums of honour or profit or when he immediately grasps pleasure it self or whether these be truly or but apparently what he names them the satisfaction arising from them is equally the design in all This pleasure or satisfaction is the tast or reflection of man upon the conveniency of things to his Nature ministring delight through the mutual touch and embrace of them one with another being thereto fitted by the wisdom and goodness of the Author of Nature This conveniency of things is called Good the Fountain of it is God himself the First Good the streams of it are derived from him upon the several Creatures which flow one among another True pleasure God hath by great skill woven into Holiness and gracious Action these things being of themselves most accordant to mans Soul and further by an eternal and unchangeable constitution which is the foundation of all propriety set it as the reward of obedience to these Laws of Goodness so that to him who perfectly observes them the reward is reckoned of debt that the mind considering first this pleasure springing from goodness may be led to that as the root of it then understanding it as a reward apportioned to virtuous actions may be yet more fully invited thereunto The whole complex of Good is hereby assured both in the present accommodations of things to this life and state and in the sum of it eternal life For godliness hath the promises of this life and of that which is to come and they are rendred to them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for honour glory and immortality the paths of which lead to that fulness of Joy in the presence of God and to those Rivers of pleasure at his right hand for evermore which are the most commensurate significations of Happiness On the other side that which stands opposite to pleasure as darkness to light or death to life is pain and it is the point from which the Fuga or aversation of the Soul hastens it with all vehemency This we style Evil for it is the disagreement of things to our Nature which awakening resentment causes greatest displeasure All this evil is by God seated in the heart of the evil of sin where its proper habitation is for every impure action being dissonant to the true make of mans Soul is as far from pleasure rightly so called as it is from goodness and it is moreover prepared for the avenge of disobedience as its due portion and reward From whence both the rise of unhappiness is known and the reason understood Death entred by sin and the wages of sin is death with all the preparations to it This evil of punishment is administred by the severe Touches of God himself as an adversary or the unfriendly pressures of the Creatures upon our Nature set on by his wrath either in the degrees now or that complement Scripture calls Hell where is wailing and gnashing of teeth in utter darkness or utter impossibility of enjoyment This constitution of things is the foundation of Religion the pleasurable both fruit and remuneration of obedience and the painful issue and recompence of transgression being adapted to the inclining of the mind on each side of it and the more necessary because through the wise disposition of things by God for the tryal of man virtue
distracted and uncertain when they have spoken like wise men in some things that Spirit of Truth and Wisdom not inhabiting them they fall into the wildnesses of mad men and the impertinencies of Fools whence all the superstition that hath been in the world hath continually sprung In Scripture all things are full and to the height but in others scanty and below the true elevation For though they speak at any time that is great and worthy God considered by it self yet not like his Servant Job They know not nor can pronounce the great Tetragrammaton the Eusebeia of the Gospel nor the true Evangelick Righteousness and soberness What they discourse is either so thin and airy through Philosophick attenuation that it loses its weight and substance its usefulness and intelligibility to common capacity or else it is too thick and gross Scripture knows only to speak plainly yet most divinely Of most things that have only some imperfect resemblances and half expressions Scripture is only able to interpret to them their Prophetick Dreams of Divine matters as Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar which by its explanations become excellent sense Lastly holy Oracles are the natural Soil the native Country of all Divine truths transplanted from them into more rigid and barren ground they lose their first sweetness or as Colonies sent from it they forget their Mother-City the true Jerusalem and by length of time grow first strange then inimick till by a captivation and recovery of them as spoils taken by the Sword and Bow of Original truth they are reduced instructed in their own descent and restored to their noble alliances Thus Religion draws home all those branches and stems of it self from those artificial Roots upon which they grew weakly or degenerated through the unnaturalness of the moisture conveyed to them from false Principles although if they might have had their own force and vigour they would have meliorated the worse but being over-power'd they lose their own excellency But from this general Discourse of Scripture we return to the particular case the fulness and sufficiency of it to teach every man concerning the Judgments of God what he is to know and to do touching their revolutions in the world Herein the Fundamental Doctrines plain Precepts Promises Comminations there to be found lead us to actions great and serious even as the Judgments themselves which are the most solemn of Providences all procedures of Justice carrying along with them highest gravity and requiring a suitable reverence And because we see them best in Examples which are admonitions taken out of words and printed into things we upon whom the ends of the world are come are made to sit upon the shoulders of former times through the favour of Scripture-history beholding the Saints of God in their holy humble and heavenly demeanour in bad times and their happy issue out of temptation On the other side the miscarriage of obstinate men with their sad Fates that whoso is wise to observe those things and prudent to know them may understand The ways of the Lord are right and that men upright and straight in themselves may walk in them but transgressors whose feet are crooked their motions indirect and they froward in all their paths cannot hold themselves on so strait a line but fall therein CHAP. II. An Explanation of the Nature of Judgments THe Judgments of God are like another Volumn of his Woâ—ks fitted first for our contemplation As the invisible things of him from the Creation of the world are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even his eternal power and Godhead so are the same arrayed in justice and righteousness apparent in those that are as it were unmade and decreated in his wrath For seeing that immense Essence cannot be comprehended in his own Globe of light and purity we need all the refractions he is pleased to make of himself that we may understand him These of his wrath which is holiness provoked by sin declare that part of his glory and there is no speech or language where their voice is not heard For their line is gone out through all the Earth and their words to the ends of the world In them hath he set a Tabernacle for his Justice which rejoyceth as a strong man to run his race and the acts of it in their season are new every morning For they are as the light that goeth forth Before we enter into the Rational parts of this Discourse let us stand and behold the state and order of Judgments as in Theory 1. Judgments are those evils that exceed the standard vanity and vexation of spirit that are the every days complaint of the whole Creation rational sensitive and insensate in their several kinds of deploration of themselves For these are the Covenant made with all things after the Fall and as it were the very terms and conditions upon which they stand in the world and not new things under the Sun to move wonder and search Yea that death and dissolution into which every thing below the Heavens sinks either by degrees or unawares and is lost in that dark amounts not to the nature of what we call Judgment but moves with life in such a kind of even vicissitude as day and night and inter-changes with as little noise But Judgments are the hand of God lifted up to shew a greater indignation The former are indeed the angry prints and Characters of a setled Justice that rests and fixes upon that radical pravity and evil of mans nature and keeps pace and constant motion with the continual actuations of it But as there is a difference between the distempered state and corruption of Mankind with its scintillations as from a perpetual fire and more notorious enormities so is there between the unintermitted discipline that chastises man as a Creature out of the first favor and grace with God and those more terrible approaches when he comes out of his place and does his strange work upon sinners that they dye not the common deaths of men Yet in both these viz. natural corruption and constant infelicity lye the seeds and matter which being either suddenly blown up or by degrees gathered together swell high in an instant or with leisure grow to a sum corresponding each other For as depraved Nature breaks out into outragious impiety or by repeated acts of it self rises to its measure so it is answered by God with sudden Thunder-claps of his wrath or the bringing out those Treasures that by daily additions have been amassed and are issued out in the just seasons appointed by him In the mean time as there are many excellent Rules of Religion and Morality consistent with the one which do not only govern particular persons who are Heroick herein but spread themselves by wholsome Laws and Counsels upon Communities and adorn the Chronicle of that Age of which they have first been the stability so are there great accounts of the goodness of
pure and those we have also of our own Souls whose due perfection and accomplishment is a participation of the divine Nature or likeness and therefore from the correlation between God and the Soul flows that pertinacious exaction of the Soul from it self that it be good and holy that it may have peace with God But because the Soul finds so much disorder and contrariety in it self to that awful Law so many transgressions against it that cannot be undone it can have no rest here but needs something that may countervail that guilt within it There can be none so convenient so great and potent as the pardoning mercy of God in Jesus Christ who by his obedience to death in our Nature carries up the supreme forgiveness of God Yet this not exhausting that Principle and perswasion of the Soul that it must be inwardly good it is most necessary the Doctrine of pardon by a Saviour should be filled with a spirit and influence of Holiness that this grace may not seem prostituted as an indulgence to sin Thus the foundations of our peace stand upon the free Grace of God and sincerity of Holiness as an evidence we are within the compass of that Grace To assure which the very same Spirit of Holiness alone able to diffuse the comforts of this peace comes in and anoints the Soul with the Joy of it till it enters into the full possessions of Salvation which is the final acquittal from evil Evil may in the mean time be used for chastisement and higher inticement to Holiness but loses its sting when that Justice that armed it is satisfied Thus a man acting upon the Principles of his own mind when he finds himself oppressed with evil is led into the Doctrine of Christianity for observing the hand-writing upon himself he reads God the Author of affliction hence flows the sense of sin since God afflicts not without cause sense of sin and the displeasure of God upon it makes it necessary to inquire after the Doctrine of pardon and repentance These are no where in their Oriency but in the Gospel of Jesus Christ The Doctrine of pardon and peace carry a man into expectations of good from God This being not found here the Soul is sent to the promises of Eternal life made known and brought to light by Christ These give joy in tribulations and hope of the Glory of God This crowns the Soul and sets it triumphant over all evil in the world Less then this can give us no true sense or construction of the great miseries of our condition nor with reason cluck us out of them into so much as the discourse of lasting rest and safety The Soul of man so busie as it is first to inquire the reasons of its unhappiness then to find the remedies of it hath great advantage of accepting that truth which tells it all that is within it concerning these things and explains them so far that it finds it self at the very utmost ends of these wonders and to have as much made known of them as is to be known Thus out of the eater comes forth meat and sweetness out of evil considered by the mind of man either acting its own reason and securing it self the best it can against what it cannot remove or turning it self upon those Principles ingraffed within it that lead it to the source and Antidotes of misery Both which convey it to the Discipline of Jesus Christ as the true relief of humane condition and its infelicity CHAP. XIII Of the more direct operations of Judgments towards Reformation wherein first of the efficacy they have in confining Sensuality and setting free Conscience and its proper Motions LEt us now approach the considerations of the more immediate powers of Judgment 1. They give a notable rebuke and abatement to sense and the sensual temper Judgments trouble all the air sensuality hath to breathe in and make it dark they pour out their vial upon its Sun and a night ensues so that it every where meets terrour and disappointment which bring it low and enfeeble it Now this is that sensuality that over-grows at once the proper motions of a Soul and Conscience and that spiritual world with which the converses of a spirit most properly lye When this is wind-bound and brought to an ebb either through the hand of God upon the body the primary seat of it or those external objects that feed and minister to it immediately the mind that lay in a swoon and oppressed emerges and rises up It hath its opportunity and uses its freedom through the great clefts and rents the strokes of God make in this vail and cloud the Soul espies the spiritual world the shadow of the material one removing off by reason of these commotions caused by Judgments The great accounts of mans sin and impenitency lye in the deep plunges and immersions of his Soul into sense and sensual things wherein he grows immoderate above the beasts through the vigours of an immaterial and immortal Spirit dissevered from its true objects and natural motions and carried down this stream From whence retaining all its own force but misguided it grows extreamly foul while it at once neglects heavenly and spiritual things for which it was made boldly transgresses all rules of goodness and cuts its way through every thing to its impure satisfactions The light that is true and pure is kept from all approach to it and its own native exercise is suppressed whence it comes to pass that God and Eternal things are covered from it and as it were wholly blotted out it lives in the unclean pleasures of the body which have all the influence and sway upon it But awakened by the Judgments of God the Soul inquires after its own world and meets it every where God having graciously disseminated it into every thing within it and without it even as the open eye in the day time greets the light where ever it goes That great deal of sensual noise and business being made to cease the false light being put out and the windows out of which lust looks dammed up the Soul hath nothing else to do it finds leisure then to do like it self and is even provoked to it by its own force carrying it always upon action and when it is taken off from that to which it is only inclaved it returns upon its proper motion when the noises of Chariots and their jumping wheels the sounds of musick the light of candles as in the overthrow of Cities are removed in that stilness Conscience is heard in that silence of foolish fires purer rays shine upon the Soul For the beams of truth and the distinct voice of it fall every where were there but an eye and ear to receive and take them in On the other side the capacities of the Soul are always fitted to them and were they not importuned and incumbred by other things they would be continually opening to and earnestly expecting
them Heavenly light and knowledge like God and his Providence is both within by its intimate diffusion of it self and without every thing in the world by its own unmeasurableness and so cannot be covered but because those organs that are to observe and work by it are disabled and turned another way and because men use every art and make all kind of vails and shuts between themselves and this spiritual light the Judgments of God make a collision upon the faculties of the Soul upon which the sparks hid within flye out and there is a forced kind of light in order to that which is more natural and continuing a great flame oft arising out of this little fire Although if the heart of man were not so thick in its insensibleness of God and the powers of it that should tend towards him afar off from him there were no such violence necessary in the case But things being as they are there can be no fairer opportunity presented to man to recover himself out of the snare of sensual things or the profound launches of his Soul into them then these severities of affliction which bridle the appetite in himself and render ungrateful or remove out of his reach the very things he lusts after for if the pain be in the body the Soul is filled with so dolorous a resentment from it that nothing appears fair to it when man is chastened with pain upon his bed and the multitude of his bones with strong pain his Soul abhorreth bread and his life dainty meats If the Judgment of God lyes on the pleasures of sense without it immediately enters within through the famine that presses or through the very anguish inflicted upon it by the contrariety of natural causes so that either way it is made to sit alone and keep silence In which interval rush in the thoughts of God and the obedience we owe to him a sense that we are made for greater things the excellency of peace with God and likeness to him our relation to Eternity in all which lye the most potent arguments to goodness which when they meet upon an irregular and unreformed estate fill the Soul with the sorrow that works into repentance and a zeal of recovering it self to a better condition For the inconvenience that sense feels in these pressures when the goodness of God is retreated and the hand of his displeasure stretched out is so great that it enters into the very reason and provokes that to inquire the cause even as the delights of sense distil upon the mind and close it up in a soft slumber and in apprehensiveness of it self and what is truly its interest fascinated with other pleasures In the mean time it exacts of it all its sagacity and vigour to be imployed in continuing and inlarging those fruitions So the discontents of the same sense pierce into the Soul and putting it into an agony call it up to another kind of exercise the consideration of the complaints it offers Now though while the bed was easie it was content to lye down and forget every thing yet when it misses of this and grows full of losses and is set to examine how this comes to pass by degrees it returns like the Prodigal in want to it self Its first inquiries and determinations stay as long as they can upon natural causes it undertakes and endeavours to solve things upon those Principles but being urged by the case it self and its own temper to search further it is sent from one thing to another till within the inmost fold of things it finds a divine Justice and upon it is resolved into a conscience and lays together the great obligations of repentance and humiliation By this light a man hath quite another sense of sin and the evil of it those actions he passed so favourably or carelesly upon have much a more ghastly and dreadful appearance Thus God excites a man to take a just account and make a righteous judgment of his own actions and to call that into suspition he never questioned before It is meet to be said unto God under chastisement I have done iniquity but will offend no more That which I see not teach thou me He searches and tryes his ways that he may turn to God For Judgments carrying with them the most close and sensible instructions of the displeasure of God convey also the quickest reasons of self-examination of repentance and change of a mans course to those who are neither sunk down to a brutish or Pharaoh-like impenitency nor risen up to the more heroick state of one chusing Holiness for it self and not of love For man having an affection of fear it is impossible he should not turn it upon that which is most dreadful when it appears to him or that that fear should not excite him to the removal of the danger the first of which is founded in that Law of Nature that every affection turns to the supreme object understood with greatest intention the second in that of self-preservation For the first it is certain the wrath of God is most terrible it being most commanding and pursues a man beyond the most formidable of evils death which is therefore so because in the opinion of Nature it swallows all sense of Being now sense of Being is the foundation of pleasure and delight but this keeps a man in the jaws of that second death which eternally ruminates upon him Our Saviour spoke highest reason Fear not them that kill the body and have no more that they can do but I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear Fear him that after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell I say unto you Fear him For the removal of this danger there is nothing conscience is more authoritative in then this There can be no firm at onement with God nor so much as expectation of good from him without repentance or reformation it ever appearing most unreasonable to it that God should give any ear to him that regards iniquity in his heart To conclude this conscience that is the most vigorous of all a mans powers being collected and congregated of the strength of all and acting upon those Principles that every man knows to be the most concerning if true and instead of demonstration for the truth of its grounds hath this advantage that they are deeply rivetted into the heart so that though there may be a stupefaction yet there can be no obliteration Against this stupefaction Judgments come making legible those Characters which at other times we dissemble and are as the fire to some sort of writing that makes apparent what was not before discerned CHAP. XIV Of Sense of particular Sins effected by by Judgments 2. UNder Judgments there is a sense of particular sins which reverberated upon the Soul by it self thus incouraged and inlivened by the presence of a divine Justice assisting it is of all things most astonishing prostrates the Soul and submits