flow from his unvailed Person his naked presence and appearance As the Sun carrieth along with him in his Circuit a sweet flourishing Spring and Summer When God withdraws himself behind clouds of darkness and of night when he withholds the sweet beams and pleasant influences of his own face and person behind thick coverings strange forms and disguises Now man withers and dyes away in all the beauties and sweetnesses of the Divine Image in the place of these Deformity and Death spring up from that deficiency which is inseparable to the natural principles of the Creature which then discovers it self and overspreads the whole man with the shadow of Death and Hell when those principles are no more fed and supplyed from their eternal springs in the bosom of Christ. In this sense these words are most properly true Thy destruction is of thy self but thy Salvation is of me O Israel saith the Lord. 3. God in himself and in the person of the Lord Jesus as he is the essential Image of God is a most simple Unity comprehending all Varieties within himself In this Unity he is Love it self the first the supream the most pure the most potent unconfined love All pleasantnesses are in his Face and Presence he is the Bridegroom entirely fair and pleasant altogether delightful the Object of all Loves Desires the Seat of all Delights and Glories the Spring of Immortality and Eternity As himself is such in the highest affinity and resemblance is his work as it springs immediately from him his principal design and contrivance with which he begins in which he ends and rests eternally which he carrieth along as his first and Ultimate design throughout all things This then is one entire universal piece comprehending all Variety in it self this is one entire piece of sweetest Loves of riches Lights of purest Glories All scenes all forms of darkness and death are subordinate and subservient to this are parts of this are comprehended in this drawn forth from it terminated in it by a Divine and delightful skill set with a shining amiableness in their proper places overspread with a sweetness and lustre in the Unity of the grand design and finally in a manner most pure most harmonious most ravishing swallowed up into the eternal Lights in which the whole piece terminateth Of him and through him and to him are all things who is blessed for ever How true is it how exceeding large now is this truth in all senses in all languages Humane or Divine That God willeth not the death of a Sinner That Destruction is not of him As the Understanding of God is Truth it self the highest and most universal Truth the measure of all Truth so is the Will of God which is himself the first the highest the most comprehensive the unconsined Good the only reason and measure of all good We have passed through those Reasons which seem of greatest moment and to have greatest difficulty in them We hope that we draw near to our Haven and that with easie and gentle stroaks we shall now soon arrive at it The Reasons on this part which now remain seem to be rather mistakes arising from vulgar or general conceptions unexamined undistinguished than from the exercised judgments of wise and learned Spirits They are derived from the nature of things Moral Physical or Metaphysical I shall continue them in the same order with the precedent Reasons 4. Reason If the Will of Man be not free all Laws seem useless Answ. The force of this Reason seemeth to be entire and powerful on the contrary part If the Will of Man be free undeterminated by the dictates of the Understanding Laws have no more any signification or efficacy For the intent of these is clearly to work upon the Understanding Precepts and Prohibitions are Rules propounded Lights set up to the Understanding to inform what road or course is to be followed what to be carefully avoided in our Navigation through the Sea of this World that we may pass safely free from the danger of Rocks and Shelves to our desired Port. Rewards and Penalties are to be weighed and judged by the Understanding according to whose standard and estimate they have all their value Vexatio dat intellectum The proper end of Punishments and Rewards is to excite the Understanding The proper end of Precepts and Prohibitions is to enlighten the Understanding The excellency and efficacy of every Law is to impress upon us the sense of Good and Evil. So Moses the Law-Giver among the Jews saith to them I have set before you this day Good and Evil Life and Death What effect hath the sense of Good and Evil seated in the Understanding if the Will be guided by an absolute ungoverned arbitrariness within it self without Order without Harmony without Connexion without respect to the dictates of the Understanding How useless how fruitless are all impressions of Good or Evil if the Will be not by the Law of its own Essence by its own essential Principles determined to good sub ratione boni under the formal appearance of good 5. Reason Who meeteth not with this frequent experiment in himself which the Poet expresseth in the person of Medea as I remember Video meliora proboque deterior a sequor Better things I see approve The evil yet I choose and love Answ. This thin mist is easily scattered and cleared into a pure Air by the beam of one distinction between good propounded in the Thesis in its abstracted and general nature or in the Hypothesis cloathed with all its practical and individuating circumstances In the first it is the subject of the Dictamen practicum intellectus of the Understanding in its proposal of general Rules of practice to the Will In the other the good is the subject of the Dictamen practice practicum of the Understanding in its dictates and directions to the Will in arenâ upon the place in the singular and individual action now this moment lying before it with all its circumstances The Schools well distinguish between Act us signatus and Act us exercitus An Act marked out and described by the Understanding or an Act now immediately presenting it self unto a real existency out of all its Causes Whoever vieweth and distinguisheth exactly the sentiments of his Understanding the commerce between those and the motions of his Will maketh this clear discovery if I be not very much deceived That in the general conception and rule in the practical dictate and direction in the exactest contemplation and description of a moral Act one thing seemeth good to us when after this when we come upon the place to exercise the Act it self our sense is altogether changed The practically practical dictate of the Understanding its sentiments now in the moment of action in the presence and immediate impressions of all Circumstances differeth from the precedent Rules and passeth quite to a contrary Point to present that as the present good the good of the
between them In the horrour of these Dreams and in this sleep they may lie till â—…hey be awakened by that joyful sound of a Trumpet from Heaven or of an Arch-angel Arise and shine for thy light is come the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee Which St. Paul expresseth thus Awake thou that sleepest and stand up from the dead for Christ shall give thee light Then shall these Bridegroom-Souls with their beloved Brides their Bodies appear after this dark and tempestuous night of their sleep and dreams in the fresh and pleasant morning of a new day as new Heavens and a new Earth with their Beauties all new married anew to each other Some have imagined that these Souls together with their Bodies lying yet in their bosomes above before their descent and fall had a prospect of this terrible dream in that Image of the Divine Wisdom which did then shine clearly in their Natures and Essences It seemed to them an horrible Pit without any bottom a vast and howling Wilderness full of deformed and dreadful Monsters to which their sweet Beauties and Chastities dearer than their Lives would be exposed to be deflowred and defiled by them full of Dearths and Droughts full of fiery Serpents which with stings fixed in them with their infused Poyson would fill them all over with pains and horrors would subject them to that most deformed and most dreadful Monster the King of Terrors death it self Thus were they for their own sakes most averse to this descent and exile from their native home from themselves from their own true sweetest Purities Beauties and Beings But in that Divine Glass in which they saw this Prospect they saw also that this terrible Dream had a Divine mystery of wisdome and love in it that out of it was to arise from every part and circumstance in it a far more transcendent Glory to the supream Love their Father and Bridegroom They saw that this Love it self would go along with them through all though hidden and vailed reserving his own Purities and Sweetnesses in the midst of all They saw that he in the midst of those hidden Purities and Sweetnesses would preserve that Love which he had to them in eternity when he beheld them in that first-born Image of all loves and lovelinesses and that in these loves and lovelinesses he would conduct them and direct their way through this Wilderness They understood that he would be a seed of hope to them by the virtue of which they should certainly in the set time in their proper season ascend out of this Pit return home from this Exile then should they be received with an universal shout of Joys and Glories resounding from all things without them and within them when they should see all these sufferings break up into the most heightned Glories of the supream God the supream eternal Love and themselves with Raptures of highest pleasures transcending all Humane or Angel-like thoughts taken up into the fellowship of these Glories This imagination seemeth to some to be well-grounded upon and naturally to arise from that Scripture The earnest expectation of the Creature or the Creation was made subject to vanity not willingly but by reason of him or for his sake who subjected the same in hope because the Creature or the Creation it self also shall be delivered from the bondage of Corruption into the glorious liberty of the Children of God For we know that the whole Creation groaneth and travelleth in pain till now Reader I hope it will not be unacceptable to you that I have endeavoured to divert thee and my self by these Speculations which seem to be very pleasant representing to us the Soul as a Coelestial Bridegroom with its Bride and Bridal Chariot both in one its Body descending and returning as in a Caelestial Dance measured by the Musick of the Divine Harmony Let these things have with thee that weight of probability or truth which thou thy self shalt give to them in thine own judgment However I have thought them proper to my present end the illustration of that truth the harmony of things in the whole and of the several parts as they lie in the whole which seemeth to me to be clearly character'd in all the beautiful and bright lineaments of Reason it self which its essential form is an universal Harmony and to be expressed through the whole Scriptures as their proper design which are a Divine Draught or Description of the Divine Harmony in its eternal Original and in its Figure St. Paul saith That all things work together for good for those that love God The only true love of God is the immediate and proper Birth of the Divine Love its clearest and fullest effulgency and its most perfect reflection upon it self This is the essential Character of a Saint as he is the Spiritual man To this person St. Paul saith All things are yours this world lise and death things present and things to come you are Christ's and Christ is Gods God is the Head the beginning the end the measure of Christ. Christ is the Head the beginning the end the measure of a Saint A Saint is the head the beginning the end the measure of all things All things through the whole World through the whole compass of time in both those bright and black Regions of Life and of Death are exactly tuned each to other and struck with a Divine Hand of Power and Skill with all manner of sweetness to make the most agreeable and charming Musick to God to Christ and to a Saint as they dwell together in one heavenly Image and in one eternal Spirit All things even the most distant and most contrary meet together by a most admirable and ravishing consent in one most beautiful Harmony of a perfect universal eternal good to a Saint as he is in Christ as Christ is in God as all three lie together in the pure the soft the spacious bosome of Divine and eternal Love But I shall speak more fully of this universal Harmony in the Second Part when I shall have occasion to shew what place Sin hath in this Harmony how Disorder it self is reduced into Order by its powerful Charms how the Harmony is made perfect by a full Variety The Variety cannot be full without a Contrariety how in the contrariety the Law ariseth as a ministry of wrath out of which Sin takes its birth as a Contrary which is the proper correlate or mark or object of the Divine Contrariety and Wrath how this Divine Contrariety heightning it self to the utmost upon Sin and Sinners to declare to the utmost their irresistible contrariety to the Divine Nature and prevailing over them in the Person of Christ consuming them consumes it self together with them as a flame with its fewel like a flame it vanisheth into the pure Air Light and Heaven where all things now spring again and are seen new in the beautious Glories and ever-flourishing sweetnesses of an Universal
whole the first Image of every Creature in its distinct form in its whole compass as a part of the whole Thus is He the First-born the Excellency of Dignity the Exceliency of Strength both in respect to the Father of all and of every Birth He is the first effulgency or shining out of the Divine Glory in every form imitable or inimitable If this Nail were fastned by a Master of the Assembliés how unmoveably would it be fixed and be the frame of my design Socrates in Plato professeth to love his beautiful Friend because he alwayes generated in his mind within and his spâ—…ch without rational Discourses harmonious Forms of things beautâ—…ul Images conâ—…ting of agreeable porportions Reason in 〈◊〉 intellectual Spirit is a treasure of Divine prâ—…portions the patterns and principles of its Activity Every Intellectual Spirit by its Reason is a sacred Field replenished with Divine Powers Divine Springs and Forms of proportions and harmony which compose reason in the essence of it are at once Divine Flowers of Intellectual Beauties and Divine Springs a prolifick virtue of seminative and formative force by which they propagate themselves Our Jesus is this Field and this Paradise of Flowers and Springs in the Godhead the Understanding the Reason of the Godhead Every Workman according to the measure of his reason and wisdome hath in himself before he beginneth to work the form and perfection of his work This is the end which first moveth the Agent and setteth him on work This is the reason the rule of his works which giveth him both life to it and light in it This Harmony of skill or reason within is the Angelical Musick in the mind to which all things in the work without do move like Amphion's Lute by sound of which the Walls of Thebes were raised Thus the Workman works by wisdome For his God teacheth him Shall not the only wise God much more work in Wisdome Shall not He have the form of that Work which he intendeth perfect and plain with all its proportions in his Spirit before He begineth it Shall not He have his end the pattern the principle the reason and the rule of His Work in Himself Or doth He work blindly or by chance Or is He enlivened or enlightned from without for his Work Doth He not from the treasure and measure of all harmony in his own mind give to it its proportions and perfections Solomon bringeth in Wisdome as a Person in eternity speaking after this manner When God stretched out the Heavens when he laid the foundations of the Earth when he digged up a place for the Sea then I was with him St. John in the beginning of his Gospel takes the Vail off from his Person and discovereth this Wisdome in an eternal Person to be the Lord Jesus For he saith In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and by him were all things made This is the internal Word of the Mind the Wisdome of God the essential Image of the Godhead the Original the eternal Image of all things In this Word are eternally contained the Patterns the prolisick Virtues by which the whole Creation with all things in it are brought forth and formed This is the Word in the Mind of God in which the whole Creation is drawn forth in which it lieth in the first and most proper draught of it from the beginning to the end before it cometh forth in it self This is our Jesus bred with the Father in eternity ever before Him who thus day by day sporteth Himself and playeth with Him whiles in all his Work â—…e multiplieth and spreadeth forth round about him to the uttermost bounds of things Divine Figures of those Archetypal and exemplar Glories which he seeth in him Can this then be Can Jesus Christ thus be the ground of the Creation and of the whole Work of God in it Can the whole piece in all its proportions and perfection lie here in the Person of this Jesus in its first draught in its exactest patterns and the will of man with the motions of it be left out of this model Is not the Will of every Intellectual Spirit are not the motions of this Will the principal parts of this Work are they not those Hinges and Engines by which the whole is turned about in all the great revolutions of it Doth not the Catastrophe the final change doth not the finishings and perfections the Ultimate and most glorious closes of the whole on which the expectations of Men and Angels are fixt in which the full Harmony of the whole Work the full glory of the Workman do consist and are discovered depend upon these the Will and its motion If therefore these also lie in this Jesus the essential the personal Wisdome of God their first ground their most perfect pattern in eternity are they not here determined as in their first cause But thus much of the Mediatorship of Christ in the ground of it as the first ground of the whole work of God lies most fair most full and flourishing in his Person in eternity 2. Jesus Christ in his Mediatorship is the way of the whole work of God from the beginning to the end of it a most beautiful and a most pleasant way I shall set this way before us in two parts 1. Part. Jesus Christ is the first and universal Creature the first created Head the first the fairest Copy of the whole Angelical Nature with all its Glories of the whole Creation the Life-Picture taken immediately from the Life it self I shall not insist much on this as seeming perhaps not so clear not having been generally received neither doth it bring any new Argument to this Cause but only add new force to the Argument immediately before taken from the ground of the Mediatorship in Christ. Yet am I not willing to pass it by without a brief offer of those Reasons which seem to give clearness and countenance to it and that upon a two-fold Consideration 1. I gladly thus far gratifie the Arians and Socinians by complying with them in giving to our Lord Jesus as a Creature this pre-existency to the whole Creation and preheminence above it I cannot but conceive fair hopes that clear and candid Spirits among them will by this link in the golden Chain of Christ's Mediatorship in which God and all his Works are by an inseparable and harmonious order fastned each to other be easily lead to that first and highest Link of the Godhead of Christ the original eternal essential form of the Divine Essence sweetly conceived and compleatly finisht there as the womb and bosome of the first Love Neither can any more doubt but that those intelligent and ingenious Persons of which I speak will as delightfully by this same Link upon a wise contemplation of it be carried to those other lower Links of Redemption and Justification Sanctification and Salvation by Jesus Christ as the purchase the