it self and so fill and overwhelm our selvs in this Ocean of endless Perfection From this hight of Contemplation let us look back again upon the World which will appear to us but as a shadow of his Being a Molehill full of busy Ants or a show of self-moving Puppets acting their parts upon a Stage set up for that purpose which must be taken down when the Play is done This is true Liberty and Greatness of Mind full of truth and delight and worthy our selvs whom God hath made capable thereof They who travail over diverse Countries thereby greatly enlarge their Spirits and reflect upon that corner of the Earth in which they were born with other Eies then when they set forth The fansy of Lucian who placeth Charon on the top of an high hill viewing all the affairs of living men and looking on their greatest Cities as litle Birds nests is very pleasant Socrates by making himself a Citizen of the Universe became an Universall Freeman But all those Contemplations are still bounded within the Circle of a finite Nature Let us escape out of this Prison of the World and enfranchise our Souls by restoring them to their native and perfect Liberty Let us realize and eternize all things by enjoying them in him who is All in All which is such an Ingredient in all our Good things as doth not only Sanctify but Deify them and without which they are as vain and nothing in the Enjoyment as they are in their own Being without him Thus the Soul being united to God by that Union partakes of his Unity and Universality resting on him as in its Center and enjoying all the Creatures as so many Lines Streaming from him and again reflecting unto him having no other Inclination Motion nor End but only God himself in whom it dwells and abides for ever V. Of Christ. IN the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God All things were made by him and without him was not any thing made that was made The same Word was also made Flesh and so the Founder of the First World became the foundation of the second which is a World of Mysteries and of Faith as the first was a World chiefly of Nature and Reason Now these being two severall Worlds or Natures of things it is as irrationall to measure matters of Faith by Reason as it is to weigh the Aire or measure a Spirit It begins with the great Mystery of Mysteries the Trinity and so proceeding to the Incarnation of the Son of God endâ— in our Mysticall Union with Christ and God The Deity of the Creator may be plainly proved by the Creation which is the Work and Effect thereof but Divines say that the Works of the Trinity out of themselvs are undivided and so nothing in Nature can lead us to that distinction of Persons in the Godhead nor demonstrate it to us Yet there is nothing in this great Mystery contrary to Reason though it be far above it for they are not three Infinites not three and one in the same consideration but three in one that is three Persons in one Nature The Nature and Unity of God are both Infinitely diverse from ours therefore unless Finite Reason should limit Infinity it must acknowledge that it may be so and Faith beleeveth that it is so but neither Reason nor Faith can possibly comprehend how it is so because it is infinitely and incomprehensibly so The Incarnation of the Son of God is a Mystery almost as wonderfull as the former and evidently setteth forth the Mystery of the other for God the Son only is incarnate and not God the Father nor God the Holy Ghost though they all equally partake of the same Divine Nature which is incarnate Besides there are two Natures infinitely diverse united in one Person Therefore Arrians and Socinians who deny the Divinity of Christ do also deny the Trinity which is the ground thereof This Mystery is so far above all naturall Reason that it cannot possibly be comprehended by it and therefore most improbable to be the Invention or Conception thereof for certainly Reason would rather have produced something like it self or at least that which it might in some sort comprehend as all false Religions have done The sinfulness of all men doth evidently demonstrate the necessity of a Savior and the nature of sin being a transgression of the Divine Law of the Creator binding the Creature to perfect and perpetuall obedience shews the necessity of a Divine Savior There is no other Name under Heaven given among men whereby we may be saved nor hath any Religion or Philosophy offered to the World any other probable way of Mans Salvation and yet the Mind of Man is naturally so far from Saving Faith that it hardly entertains an Historicall Faith of Christs Divinity and Incarnation Men have stretched their Reason and Fansy to the utmost to find out any other way of Salvation rather then accept of this which is most Glorious and Divine Philosophers seem to weigh our Virtues with our Vices and according to the preponderation of either denominate us Good or Bad and so deliver us up to Reward or Punishment Whereas Man being bound to perfect obedience to the very utmost capacity of his Nature the least Sin attaints the Soul as one Act of Treason makes a Traitor The Poets Fansy a Purgatory in another world wherein all are to be clensed and purified as Virgil describes it Ergo exercentur panis veterumque malorum Supplicia expendunt aliae panduntur inanes Suspensae ad ventos aliis sub gurgite vasto Infectum eluitur scelus aut exuritur igne Quisque suos patimur Manes But though we should admit of such a washing away the Filth of sin yet this is no abolition of the Guilt Imprisonment is no paiment and punishment no satisfaction but the perpetuall Vengeance of an unsatisfied Justice and can no more restore a past defect then make that which is done to be undone Iulian the Apostate in despight of Christ set up a Poeticall Savior Aesculapius the God of Physike who comming down in the beams of the Sun his father should purge the World from Sin and Evill But this is a Creed of his own making and believed by none but himself Heathenish Religion taught the purging away of sin by the bloud of Bulls and Goats which shows the common opinion of the World that there should be some bloudy Sacrifice for sin But certainly if a mans own sufferings cannot expiate Sin much less the Suffering of Brute Creatures Mahomet and others have pretended to be Saviors of the World but none knows how nor doth all their Doctrine hold forth any probable Color or Shadow of effecting it whereas the Incarnation of that Son of God who took upon him the Humanity to that very end that he might satisfy for Man and so was no otherwise obliged to obedience and by his Divinity
that Fansie can work miracles or as Paracelsus that it can create any thing but though it cannot form a Being it can frame a Fantasm acting it within its own Theater and also delude the Senses by it which is as much as it receiveth from them even of those things which we really see or hear For the Thing it self remains without us where it was and that which comes to the Fansie is only a Show or Apparition thereof Thus Fansie irritateth the Bodily Humors and provoketh the Affections and those Imaginary Objects of Joy or Fear may as really affect the Mind as if they were reall But the worst of all are Intellectuall Errors and false Judgments for these seduce the Mind it self which being rectified would correct the inferior Faculties and betray us to vice and sin As the Heathen worshipped almost all things eminently delectable or formidable Pleasures War Diseases Riches Honor Virtue Princes a Good and Bad Genius Gods Supernall and Infernall and any thing rather then the true Deity so we still commit morall Idolatry with the same things by our fals opinions and adoration of them Contemplation of any vain thing as of a Beauty or the like doth strangely infect the soul tainting and dying it with the Image of the Object But above all vain Admiration ravisheth most I call that a vain Admiration which is not grounded upon Knowledge but meer Ignorance such as would be abated by a right Undestanding As he who sees only what is presented on the Stage is more affected with the Show then they in the Tiring room whose eys are conscious to the dressing personating of the Actors Thus to admire nothing was by the Philosophers whose ambition was to know all things in their causes made a chief part of true Happiness whereas the Admiration of things truly admirable is a farther degree of Happiness when we rationally know by what may be known that there is more excellency in the Object then we do or can know and therefore justly admire it So we admire the Divine Glory which is the highest enjoyment we can have of the Infinity thereof All these are only Juglings and deceptions of the Mind but vain Love bewitcheth and wholly possesseth it and the Delight which it causeth is as fals and vain for there can be no true Happiness in being deceived nor doth the Pleasure extend further or last longer then the Delusion A Dream may satiate Imagination but cannot fill the Belly and when a man wakes he finds himself more hungry and unsatisfied These Enchantments of the Mind dissolv in a moment at the presence of Truth who as she is the Daughter of Time will at last arise like a bright Sun and chase away all those vain shadows In the mean time the more we are ravished with the sense of any fals Happiness and thereby withdrawn from that which is true we are so much the more truly Unhappy II. Of the Degrees of Happiness HAppiness is founded in Knowledge and therefore only Knowing Creatures are capable thereof and according to their severall degrees of Knowledge they are capable of severall degrees of Happiness There are many Worlds in one and severall Shows and Faces of the same things The first and lowest is the gross Body of Heaven and Earth which though to us it appear glorious and beautifull is in it self dark and dull and without apprehension The Iron seems to embrace the Loadstone with great delight and to be rapt with an amorous Extasie so as Thales thought it animall and yet that motion is as void of the least sense of pleasure as the common inclination of Gravity to the Center The next is a World of Sense which is a Theater of Species and Emanations arising from the former being purified and sublimated to the hight of Sense which by a conjunction with them begets a lively and sprightfull delight The least Bee finds more pleasure in making and tasting a little Honey then the Sun all the self moving Planets in their perpetuall Courses benign Influences or the Plants in their most flourishing Vegetations Another World is the Shop of Fansie which is a faculty more spirituall then Sense refining and composing the simple Species thereof into various forms and figures and as it thus works within doors so it also apprehends the Beauty and Composure of exterior objects which is greater matter of delight then to view them at large It hath also a power of Meditating Admiring which is an higher kind of enjoyment then Sense Naturalists suppose Insects and some such Animals to be wholly without Imagination but certainly the more perfect enjoy it in a very notable degree That Discourse whereof they seem to partake is only the work of Fansie and a collation of sensitive notions Yet though Beasts excell Man in his outward Senses he probably excels them all in Imagination it being a faculty in the next degree to Reason and much advanced by it Hence we so far exceed them in all Mechanicall Artifices Nature hath furnished us with Hands as fit Instruments for such Workmen and so with a larger portion of this Ingenious faculty to direct and manage them Certainly Man hath more acquaintance with the Graces and doth not only enjoy much pleasure in the apprehension of Beauty Harmony Elegancy but also in the very prevarications therof we admire strange Deformities and behold them with Mirth and Delight and are much affected with Humors and â—ooleries which are as Satyrs or Monsters of the Mind Therfore Nature hath bestowed on us Laughter to express some extraordinary Affection whereof no other Sensitive Souls are capable This excellency of Fansie though somewhat above the nature of Beasts is yet below Reason and Judgment for many men who have least thereof excell in the other by a certain naturall aptness and felicity Beyond this Sphere of Fansie is the Intellectuall Orb or World of Intelligences which is an Academy of Sciences furnished with higher and more abstracted Notions whereby the Mind discovers the very Idea and Module of Nature and her wise Government by Causes and Effects the Law of Reason and Policy the being of Spirits and Divinity it self Out of this Intellectuall World Beasts are wholly excluded Language is the chief Instrument of a Rationall Life which they want As in Speaking or Books they may hear and see what is Sensible namely the Sound and Letters but understand not what is signified by them so though they hear the same Voice of Nature and view the same Book of the World with us yet they understand not the Intelligible or Philosophicall part thereof which is a Scene of things as far above Sense as that is above Vegetation Adam had a larger share of Paradise then the Brutes though he fed like them on Herbs and Fruits and joyed more in contemplating their Natures and translating them into fit Names then we now do in feasting on their Carcases Man chiefly excells in these
whatsoever he saith but being such it is most irrationall not to believ him for this were to confine the Infinite Creator of all things within the Finite Circle of this World and the Sphere of Nature which is the utmost extent of the Ken of Reason Surely this whole Universe is but a small portion of his power workmanship who is able to create new Worlds and a new Nature of things but this is the most naturall corruption of the Mind of Man to exalt it self against the Glory of God by setting up Naturall Light against Faith as Works against Grace and so confine God within our Compass as Conjurers deal with Spirits Certainly Adam in his primitive state was generally capable of believing any Divine Revelations which were or might be presented unto him That very Commandment concerning the forbidden fruit was a Statute specially enacted and published by God and no part of the Common Law written in his hart and his first sin was Infidelity since which we are all naturally most prone to it and the Saving Grace or Remedy is Faith Adams Faith was a work whereby he was to be justified and the chief part of his obedience and such a Faith was also in Christ the second Adam believing in God concerning those things which as Man he could not foreknow But this Kind differs much from Evangelicall Faith which doth not justifie as a work but as an Instrumentall Mean whereby we apply unto our selvs the Merits of another Yet though there be remaining in Mans Nature Faith aswell as Reason there is no saving Faith left in him but only such a malignant Faith as is in the Divels for as the Naturall man cannot know the things of God by a Practicall Knowledge producing Love and Obedience unless he be first taught of God so neither can he so know Christ nor believ in him unless it be given to him to believ This is Life Eternall that they might know thee the only true God and Iesus Christ him whom thou hast sent God is said to confound the wisdome of the Wise by the Gospel of Faith which declareth unto them that without believing they cannot be saved and yet without a supernaturall Grace they cannot believ Thus being confounded in themselves and not knowing how to escape they break through all and will not allow others that Faith which they have not themselvs though they cannot deny that it is possible for God to do that which is believed nor is it improbable that he should make them believ it for whom he hath prepared it As God is the chief Good and perfect Happiness of the soul so by Faith which is the highest Knowledge we have in this world the Soul enjoyes him and by him the most excellent Gifts and Graces whereof it is capable III. Of the Scriptures THe Scripture of Word of God in Paradise was the Morall Law written in Mans heart and the revelation of extraordinary commands After the fall God immediatly preached to Adam while the Church was confined within Families lie taught them by Visions and Revelations but when he began to found the Nationall Church of the Jews he delivered unto them written Laws and the Examples of former times from the very first Creation and so proceeded by Propheticall revelation to the End of the World and then was the Scripture finished and sealed up by the last of the Apostles as a perfect Institution or Pandect of all things requisite to be known or believed for the salvation of Man The First Evidence of the Divinity of the Scripture is that of all other Books in the world it most clearly and familiarly discovers unto us the God of Nature in a most glorious and worthy manner The Second this that the Morall Law and the summ of all Duties toward God and Man are in it most perfectly declared Though since the fall there may still remain in the Mind of Man some scattered fragments and obscure characters thereof yet they are so much defaced and disordered that they cannot be plainly read nor otherwise restored then by seting forth the second Edition by the same Author according to the first Originall without which we might have spent our whole Lives as the Philosophers did in doubting and disputing while we should be practicing and obeying The Third that it fully describeth the whole History of the world from the first Creation to the Dissolution thereof joining with those Precepts of the Law the Examples and Monuments of all Ages The Last that the Divine Sentence Nosse teipsum of which Iuvenal saith Coelo descendit is not only prescribed herein but also performed by this clear Mirror whereby the Face of the Soul and the Secrets of the Hart are made manifest and therefore we ought to confess that God is in it of a truth These Arguments which are naturall and rationall Demonstrations may be some perswasion to believ these supernaturall Truths with which they are accompanied As a man whom we know to be grave and true in all his other Discourses is the more credited in relating things strange and wonderfull or as Socrates said of the writings of Heraclitus What he understood was very good and so he did believ that to be which he understood not And in the matters of Faith which the Scriptures revele unto us there is no Unreasonableness though they are above Reason nor Inconsistency among themselvs yea the wholy Symmetry and Analogy of Faith is more glorious and beautifull then the very Law of Nature and Reason it self This blessed Harmony and just Proportion is the surest Index of all the parts and the best Interpreter of the most doubtfull points the neglect whereof hath introduced all Errors and Heresies in the Church which are no other then the Monstrous Mutilations Excrescences or Distortions of the particular Members of the Body of Faith not corresponding to the Whole commonly occasioned by wresting the Text or too curious criticising upon it Though that which is pick'd out of it sometimes may be true in it self yet if it be beyond the scope and meaning it is a belying of the Holy Spirit making him speak that which he never intended and this emboldens to do the like another time for the maintaining of such Opinions as are neither true in this Text nor in the Thing This is the dangerous Humor of our Age wherein men hunting after new Notions and sublime Mysteries gather up all these Allegoricall and Sophisticall Expositions which Calvin and other sound Textuaries have with great Judgement rejected and so patch up a new kind of Divinity with these Cento's of Scripture and their own specious Conceptions and strange Fansies As for the Stile of Scripture it is very admirable though by reason of the Idioms of the Times and Languages wherein it was wrote it may now seem to us uncouth and strange yet if we rightly attend it we shall finde in it a wonderfull mixture of Simplicity and Majesty Perspicuity
and that my Soul knoweth right well So comparing both together When I consider the Heavens the work of thy fingers the Moon and Starrs which thou hast ordained what is Man that thou art mindfull of him and the Son of Man that thou visitest him c. Naturalists are much affected with the Sucly of Nature and Poets express a fluent and sweet delight in describing her but there is more Life and Spirit and Angelicall Speculation in one of Davids Psalms then in all their writings this Spirituall use thereof being more sublime and divine then any naturall contemplations as the Cardinall plainly confessed when he found a Countriman meditating on a Toad and blessing God who made him a Man As Adam was created in a state of Perfection so he had a great advantage of us in other respects being created in the perfect maturity of Understanding and rising up suddenly from the Earth out of which he was taken whereby he had a quicker and fresher view of the World then we whose Minds are dulled through Custome and Use and the edge of our apprehensions much rebated thereby Let us therefore make triall whither the Imagination of such an advantage may not somewhat excite and sharpen our understanding Let a man suppose himself made as David speaks Metaphorically in the lowest parts of the Earth in an adult State of Body and Mind Surely if he could well discern it he would judge it to be the common dunghill of the VVorld and would wonder to find any Metalls or Jewells hid in the rubbish thereof And then coming neerer the Surface and meeting with heaps of rotten Carcases and a few noisome Living Creatures he would deem it a very Grave and Hell of all things and could never expect that it should produce any thing but filth and corruption But then lifting up his head above the Ground and seeing it covered with the curious Tapestry of Herbs and Flowers spread for him as a Prince to tread on painted with the variety of all pleasant Colors and perfumed with most fragrant Odors and enriched with many secret and excellent Virtues then beholding the Armies of standing Corn and Forrests of goodly Trees crowned with innumerable Leavs and Fruits and perceiving the severall kinds of Beasts and Birds like so many Automata or self-moving Engins stirring up and down about him in their severall Postures and Motions he must needs stand amazed at so strange a sight and praise the fruitfulness of the womb which bare them But looking back upon the deep and wide Sea which threatens the shore with his insulting waves he would fear least that roaring Monster should step in among them and swallow up all in his devouring Jaws till he perceiv how when he is swoln to the hight of his pride and fury he begins to retreat and fall back into his native den without doing the least hurt and fetches off the tall ships carrying them away upon his Back and furnishes all the Aquaeducts of the Earth with fresh Springs and Streams ministring drink to the whole Family Again considering the pure Aire which he scarcely felt or perceived and yet is so far from Inanity that it fills up all the Chinks and Cranies of the VVorld fanning the Earth with the VVings of VVind and driving the great Ships to and fro with various Gales of Breath sometimes causing a quiet Calm and universall peace among the Elements and suddenly muffling the face of Heaven with black Clouds and rowsing up the sleepy Ocean tossing and tumbling it over and over and tearing the Bowells of the Earth making the Sturdy Mountains to tremble and the Rocks cleav in sunder is again as suddenly pacified he knows not how nor by whose perswasion how it carrieth about the Limbikes of the Clouds which distill down fruitfull showers and drop fatness on the Earth and in a moment convey all the Gifts and Blessings of Heaven to it Lastly contemplating those vast Orbs or Worlds of Light in their swift Motions and perpetuall Courses which never fail one minute of their appointed Time nor wander an inch out of their constant Way blessing the Earth with their very smiles and illuminating it with their Glorious Light he must necessarily acknowledge and adore the great Creator who hath founded this stately Globe and doth manage the Universall Empire of Nature by Secret Laws and inward Principles And though he cannot discern him by outward Sight yet his Understanding will as easily discover him as it doth an invisible Spirit in a living Body Besides as a Christian he tasts the bloud of his Savior in all things which renders those reliques and fragments of nature more sweet to him then all the first Paradise of perfection was to Adam IX Of Providence A Theists though partly convinced by Nature draw their chief arguments against a Deity from Providence and the present state of things whereas indeed this is the greater argument against them and such as fortifies the other for had Nature still flowed in a constant Stream of Causes and Effects she might more probably have been supposed to be the only Fountain of all things but when we see Nature which alwaies intendeth the Best not able to fulfill her own Laws nor effect her Intentions and so fall short of that end which she prescribes to her self we may plainly perceiv that there is a higher Power which over-rules her for the Creature was made subject to Vanity not willingly but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope Again she being thus lapsed and diseased might easily decay and perish if the same Power did not still preserv and continue her in all her Species though Individualls dy daily How litle excess of drought or heat destroies the hopes of the whole Year A pestilentiall Aire may infect the whole world and an Age of successive Famines and Pests might prove an universall destruction of all Living Creatures But he left not himself without witness in that he doth good giving us rain from heaven and fruitfull seasons and filling our harts with food and gladness Let a man seriously consider how Strangely his own Life is preserved how many severall Ingredients are requisite to patch it up how many sorts of Materialls are necessary to build an House how many Utensiles to furnish it how many kinds of Creatures are spent in feeding him and almost as many in clothing him besides all other occasionall Instruments of Life and he may justly wonder at the daily provision which God hath made for him Let him also consider how many possible Deaths lurk in his own bowells and the innumerable hosts of externall Dangers which beleaguer him on every side how many invisible Arrows fly about his ears continually and yet how few have hit him and none hitherto mortally wounded him and he shall find the meditation of those things which now he so much neglects strangely affect him Vives reports of a Iew that having gone over a deep river on a