into its natural extract or that such a substance can covet something future and as it were contrary to its own annihilation and yet become certainly annihilate This Desire I suppose all men will agree to be no ways incident to Beasts and therefore I beseech men for God's sake that if at any time there arise a desire in them or they wish or would that others should speak well of them rather than evil after their death then at that time they would seriously consider whether those motions are not from some Spirit to continue a Spirit after it leaves its earthly habitation rather than from an earthly Spirit a Vapour which cannot act or imagine or desire or fear things beyond its continuance For if the desire or fear of Posthume Glory or Posthume shame or punishment be congenial and connatural to all noble minds it is a pregnant and I think undeniable hint of their possible at least sempiternal existence after death Now a probability of our Souls being and existence and a possibility of its Eternal being after death being as much as native reason can suggest or inform any man for I do not think that any man from reason ever thought himself to be a God and of Eternal existence à parte ante as men say but had a beginning and by consequence if he had a beginning his duration support and conservation must necessarily depend on the same Eternal power that gave it beginning and that from the withdrawing that conserving power all things created have an end this probability and possibility from reason methinks should create some prudence and watchfulness in man and cause him whensoever he feels some inbred light glowing in him and yet after it has stirred burns so dimly in him that he knows not well which way to move to implore the aid of the Author of our own and all other beings and feeling something native to seek after somewhat of Tradition too to help it And that if there may be collected from reason some such thing in man as a capacity of Eternal life to make a quaere like him in the Gospel what shall I do to know it and inherit it that is enjoy it or live it with joy for fear at least otherwise we may so live as that we would desire to die and be extinct and find cause when nothing will help us to call on inanimate creatures even the Hills to cover us from his presence with whom there might have been fulness of joy All men living agree the Creator of the Universe to be good and gracious and loving to his creatures therefore let us search into that which the whole Christian World have always acknowledged to have been his Word and if we find not from thence assurance of Eternal life and by his Grace comfort from it conclude it is not to be found but not conclude before we have sought PART II. SECT I. Of the several faculties or operations of the Soul and therein first of Involuntary and Voluntary motion I Am now about to take the best view I can or my Soul is capable to do of its several faculties or operations distinct and apart one from the other and which together working in the Body we call the Soul of man What I have elsewhere said is an intricate maze full of little windings and turnings not to be traced out or fully discovered to it self I may here further say it is a brightness issued or darted from that glorious light so shining as somewhat to be seen and admired not at present wholly comprehended I never thought nor hoped to set down all that it is but only somewhat that it is we are not able to dissect the very case of it so as to find out the hundredth entry or passage for this Soul into the Body whereby that Lump is moved Some little kind of knowledge or notice we have got of its larger Rooms but for its smaller Inlets they have puzzled the most curious and quickest sight in the search and if my information be not false the most learned have acknowledged and confessed that upon the narrowest scrutiny they could possibly make in a dissection they could never yet find out by which ways or means Milk was made or conveyed from other parts of the Body to the Paps or Dugs The Soul must needs be of a more subtle nature than the Bloud from which some would have it to arise in Man as well as Beast and if that were granted we could scarce discover all the motions of the one without a perfect knowledge of the other which it seems is yet wanting and I am not desirous to lose my self in finding All that I desire to find is the cause and occasion of the Souls billows rage and tempestuousness and what helps there may be towards the allaying them to see whether our madness and folly does not with the raging of the Sea necessarily require one and the same stiller and quieter But from my search into the Soul I am not altogether ignorant that first from it there is a motion which we term for distinction sake Involuntary motion continuing without interruption during the whole time of the Souls residence with the Body as is the course or circulation of the Bloud the pulse breathing concoction nutrition excretion c. And also another kind of motion not always but admitting intermission and this arising from an introduction by some sense viz. the pressure of an external object upon each peculiar Organ of the Body proper and by the mediation of Nerves or Fibres conveyed inward to the chief domicils of the Soul from whence in its primary motion we are said to see hear feel tast or smell and so receives some counterpressure or resistance by stirring some Limb and making some noise which because seeming to depend upon some precedent fancy in our mind and capable of intermission we call Voluntary motion These and the like motions of the Soul are not the things I hunt after nor trouble my self to decipher since they may be quicker or slower without any apparent disease or combustion in the Soul of man But in short the Affections the Understanding and the Will together with the result from some of them the thing we call Conscience are those actions of the Soul I would at present in order enumerate be acquainted with and make legible to my self SECT II. Of the Affections of the Soul AFfections we commonly call them some Affects some Passions they are many and various in the Soul of man and there is little need of enumerating them they are too obvious upon several occasions in the Souls march here and they are a Troop without a wise conduct readier for mutiny than for service And though what we term sometimes Affections seem not properly so but are rather propensions or habits budding forth from Affections and taken for Affections we will at present muster some of them together under the notion
occasion to speak when I shall enquire which of the faculties of the Soul may seem primary in operation yet I think even native reason in some men is able so to throw a Vail over the senses and frame the imagination that there may be conceived in the imagination some more glorious and amiable thing than it can well conceive and from that conception it shall have readily attending it a sensitive love as we call it that is a motion of the heart from some Nerves or Tendons at least a fixation of the heart not to move too extravagantly but be readily obedient to the dictates of reason and I see no ground why we should with reason hope to quite discard them from its obedience or have our passions and affections clean rooted up lest by avoiding that which one kind of Philosopher resembled to the Itch that is be always desiring and joying loving and fearing c. we do light upon a kind of felicity which another Philosopher resembled to the felicity of a Stock or Stone I would not indeed willingly grieve but I had rather sorrow than never joy and the one can never be inherent without the other either rationatively or sensitively Reason I say has some ability and power yet left since our fall not only to correct and reduce the imagination but to direct and point it to seek after somewhat so that if all men should deny a pure rational love they may grant there may be a good sensitive love 'T is true the imagination from sense shews us no living creature better than our selves and we are apt to see through it as in a false glass some amiableness in our selves and so we become lovers of our selves more than lovers of God yet that little strength of reason does sometimes hinder and stop the imagination from presenting that false glass stays the affections from looking too much into it wins the imagination to take part with it self for a while in conceiving our vileness and then by consequence forces it to represent to the affections some amiableness in that being from whence all other things have their being and without which we cease to be any thing so as about some amiable good do the affections always move if they move From one of these two Mirrors I say do I think is the rise of the affections quatenus working in a Body the one of these Mirrors is clear yet false and only of the imaginations framing from sense the other is dark and cloudy unless amended by special grace but true and of reasons correcting The root of each Tree of affections whether bad or good springing from hence is Love Neither can I upon my review find cause to alter my opinion in my Treatise of comfort against loss of Children but do think that some innate faculty of love is the primary mover in the affections and thus I think it may sprout up and bring forth Trees of divers colour'd branches If we look in that false glass mentioned and by reflexion have a good opinion of our selves which is from a love of our selves there shoots out a branch called Pride or in short that is Pride If we become mounted in thoughts to exceed others that is Ambition if we see some cause as we think that others should have a good opinion of us that is Vain-glory if from this sight we are troubled that any other should seem to exceed us and withall there be an endeavour in us to exceed them that is Emulation but if it be only to supplant or hinder them that is Envy If we espy any opposition in another and behold that person as mean and not able to hurt us that is Contempt which is a kind of contumacy or immobility of the heart but if otherwise we discern an ability to hurt it is Frowardness Impatience Fretting Anger Hatred Malice or Revenge according to the nature of the Soil And here certainly Love must be agreed to be the root and to give being on either side There is no man ever opposes or does wrong for the wrongs sake it is to purchase to himself profit pleasure or repute and that is from the love of himself and therefore says Bacon wittily If a man do me wrong why should I be angry with him for loving himself better than me But to go on If we look after or espy ways or means to adorn beautifie and sustain our beloved selves be it by Money Lands or Goods that is Covetousness if we espy a failure in others of love mutual and reciprocal to our beloved selves where 't is expected that is Jealousie if we apprehend future danger or loss it is Fear if present Heaviness Sadness Sorrow if we espy any probable way or means of our acquiring or adding to our acquisitions Hope c. And after this manner might I reckon the springing or growth of all evil affections whatsoever On the other side if that true but dim glass be at any time presented or set before us and we receive any distant sight of an excellency and goodness in the Creator and continual preserver of the Universe our Love a little moves another way and raises a Tree of other manner of affections If we behold in that his Power his Justice or his Love there arises Fear if his Mercy then Hope Joy Comfort If we apprehend him a Protector against all injury Courage Trust and Fortitude if a Revenger of wrong Patience If we espy his providence and care there arises Contentedness if we discern our own inability Humility if our own evil dealings to others Meekness if our failings and errors Trouble Grief and Sorrow if affliction fallen on our Brethren Pity and Compassion and the like And were my opinion asked of the ground and cause of the most Heroick worthy or pious particular action ever done in the World I for my part should determine it in short to be the parties love to God or himself for if it be not the one that has made a man die willingly for his Country as the phrase goes I am sure 't is the other if not Charity some desire of a perpetual lasting Fame of his memory which is a love to and of himself Now whatever men pretend there neither is nor was nor will be any created Soul within a Body wholly exempt from any one passion or affection whatsoever And though some affections seem very contrary so as not to subsist together at least in any height or excess and therefore it was not without some wonder observed of Nero if I remember aright that he who singly beheld his Cruelty would believe he had no Lust and he who beheld his Lust apart would believe he had nothing of Cruelty in him yet they can and do subsist together And though some men may take their denomination from some one faculty or affection chiefly and most commonly predominant as for instance it may be said Moses was a meek man Nebuchadnezzar a proud man
regularly and orderly in reference to the end they were created than we and whoever shall duly look into their manner of working and more narrowly observe what kind of cunning or stratagem some of them use either in acquiring their food or else preserving or saving themselves from dangers must needs afford them the attribute of Reason or somewhat tantamount to it What subtle ways do some of them use towards the obtaining their desired prey what intrigues and fetches to let pass ordinary stories may a man see in a poor imprisoned Fox how he will sometimes counterfeit himself dormant till a prey be within his reach what ways have many Fowls to uncase a poor Shell-fish I my self have seen a Crow not able to swallow a large Acorn nor break it with her Bill leave the Pasture Fields where she first found it and mounting with it a considerable height let it fall in a Stony ground as if the very place were chosen out of Reason and repeat that action near twenty times and till I have disturbed her in it I have credibly heard and once saw it at a Chalk-pit that a Hare in a course has taken directly to a precipice and upon a sudden stopping at the edge thereof has cast down head-long her pursuing Dogs and that this poor creature has repeated this action again at other times And what origine of this cunning or sagacity can I give but something like Reason it being a distinct act and not deducible from the common natural instinct of that creature whose every days and nights work for the preservation of her self visible in a Snow seems so prudent that it would puzzle the wisest of us to find out or contrive so safe ways of artifice Well if we cannot afford them Reason let us not take from them those attributes the Scripture has allowed them of subtilty and wisdom which in our selves we esteem but as the effects and fruits of Reason The Serpent in the beginning was said to be more subtle than any Beast of the Field and our Saviour has admonish'd us to assume the Serpent's wisdom with the Dove's innocency The Ant is an exceeding wise creature says Agur and to her Solomon sends his sluggard to School and some Philosophers have termed that creature amongst others Political And we are told in other places of Scripture of the Ox and the Ass and the Crane and the Turtle and the Swallow by way of exprobation as if those creatures did often exceed us in the foresight and knowledge of those things which tended towards their own preservation And surely there is such a kind of forecast and wisdom in most if not in all other creatures besides Man that I cannot well tell how to appropriate the word Reason to Man alone unless we distinguish our selves in the very work of our creation and allow our whole Soul to be a coelestial durable flame and Reason to be a connative inherent light therein given to guide and direct all the other faculties towards the attainment of some ultimate end or enjoyment of some future permanent bliss and happiness and not barely for the preservation of the visible Body nor arising or springing merely from any passion of mind by the bare inlet of sense Such a Reason I may call it Right Reason as beholds things at a distance and weighs future events and distinguishes us from all other creatures as Aesop has distinguish'd one of his Frogs from the other That is by our Reason we are capable to foresee a possibility of failure of all things here and thereby prevent our falling into those gulfs for the satisfaction of our present lusts from whence we cannot after get out which no other creature is Indeed many other creatures besides our selves from that natural instinct of self-preservation common with us and fear of destruction have had some short flashing light of ratiocination if I may so call it and by that sudden flash quickly extinct elected or chosen the most likely place for a present continuing preservation and upon failure of water in the Brook have got down into a Well but no creature save Man ever yet beheld events at a distance and so weighed time and place as before-hand to take care upon failure of water in the Well how to get out again as Aesop makes his later Frog to do which thing indeed is properly and peculiarly an act of Right Reason SECT II. Wherein the Soul of man exceeds that of Brutes and its Immortality considered and maintained from Scripture NOw at present to leave all other creatures acting according to their abilities more regularly than our selves it would not be amiss here humbly to search into and behold our own and see how we act by a distinct and separate gift with abilities beyond and exceeding the natural capacities of any other visible creature In search of which it will be needful that we have recourse to our original frame and because that is already set down to us according to my capacity beyond the invention or just exception or correction of the most subtle opponent I will search no furthet than the Books of Moses and behold the Creation as he has described and delineated it wherein it is observable that after the Creation of Heaven and Earth and the separation of light from darkness and the gathering together of the Waters and the appearance of dry Land when he speaks of the formation of living creatures 't is not expressed as before Let there be Light and Let there be a Firmament c. but Let the Earth bring forth the living creature after his kind c. plainly intimating that in their composition there was no addition of new Matter or Spirit added but only together with their Earthly visible Bodies a product Soul of a corporeate substance attenuated and rarefied and so not capable of acting beyond its native original But when he comes to the formation of Man it 's said God created him in his own image and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and says the Text Man became a living Soul So as there seems to be from thence not only a gradual but a specifick difference between the Soul of man and that of all other creatures for that of other creatures being immediately made out of the same Matter with the Body is no other than a fluid bodily substance the more lively subtle and refined part of the Bloud called Spirit quick in motion and from the Arteries by the branches of the Carotides carried to the Brain and from thence conveyed to the Nerves and Muscles moves the whole frame and mass of the Body and receiving only certain weak impresses from the senses and of short continuance hindred and obstructed of its work and motion vanishes into the soft air But the Soul of man being breathed into him by God and the main principle of his life being derived from that infusion must be consequently of
delirium dotage or frenzy whereas in all other creatures their life terminates quickly after the beginning of any visible delirium in them or decay of their native or natural homebred intellect as I may call it SECT IV. The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from the manner of its acting in the inferiour faculties similar with Brutes THe Soul of man does in many things shew its different Original and Extract from that of other creatures not only by its extent and contraction but by its manner of working in those very faculties wherein they are similar and which are proper and necessary both for Man and Beast For though Beasts see as we do hear as we do tast as we do c. and have the like passions of desire and joy fear and sorrow with their concomitants yet their senses may be satisfied and their passions circumscribed within the same Elements from whence they have their Original Ours alone seem to be Prisoners here and of us only it is that Solomon has truly said The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear with hearing and then I cannot reasonably imagine the Creator of the Universe so unkind in his special work of Man as to make him with a desire inherent in him so capacious as never to be filled or satisfied and thereby allow a vacuum in the Soul of man which we admit not to be in Nature but must acknowledge and conclude that there is a possibility these very inferiour faculties of our Souls may be allayed and comforted with hopes at present and satiate hereafter with some fruition or else in their working we were of all creatures most miserable For I find no sufficient ground to think or believe that Man is endowed with two Souls the one consisting of motion sense passions or affections and natural the other rational supernatural and Divine For though while annexed to a Body here it shews its divers faculties whereof in another World it may not make the same use and some of the senses will need no imployment about such objects as they receive into them here yet so far forth as they can add any thing to our happiness hereafter we may imploy them and they are an essential part of this Divine and never-dying Soul and that in some sence and manner we may tast and see how good and gracious our Lord and Maker is We often term the inferiour faculties of the Soul brutish sensual and filthy not that they merely arise from the flesh but for the like reason as St. Paul calls Envy and Pride c. works of the flesh which yet are inherent in wicked Spirits as well as men as they are amongst men excited by carnal and sensible objects and are also perverted and turned aside by them from others of a more noble kind which they are capable of being affected with But they are still faculties of the Soul and as such are neither extinguished in the regeneration of it here nor as far as is consistent with the perfection of it and its state of separation in glory hereafter I think the Soul of man to be an Host or Army always in its march for the recovery of its proper Country in which march though some of the Rascal multitude will be laggering behind and be busie to make provision for the flesh yet they are accounted as part of the Army and triumph with the rest after Victory and acquiring their native Soil or else suffer with the rest upon an expulsion Undoubtedly we may love and joy and I know not why one kind of fear may not consist with great joy if we attain our end and the mark that is set before us and we shall have fear and sorrow shame and confusion of face weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth which are effects of passions if we miss that end Now because the very restlessness and inconstancy of the senses and affections here shews them part of a Soul that will have being and continuance after death I will therefore a little behold man in comparison with other creatures and try first how far our very senses and affections differ from those of Beasts and after see what more noble kind of faculties there are in us which they want SECT V. The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from its different operation in different persons WE differ in respect of our senses and passions not only from all other creatures but even from one another so much as might make a quaere whether they were not hunting after somewhat that no man could ever yet find out in this World There never was yet any one object grateful to any one sense of all men nor equally and alike to any two There are to be found those men who would not move out of their Cottage or be any whit pleased with the sight of the most glorious Pageantry the World affords One colour seems more beautiful and pleasing to one mans eye and another to anothers no one prospect is pleasing to all men some men will swoun at the sight of particular things That which we call Musick is harsh and grating to the ears of some men several men are taken most with peculiar Musicks some had rather hear the noise of the Cannons than the voice of the Nightingale and so è contra So that if that which is fabled of Orpheus his Art had been real and amongst the Beasts and Trees he had had several Men auditors the first might all have followed him but some of the latter would have staid behind Some men abominate Sweets as we call them and are ready to faint at the very smell of them and delight in what is generally termed stinking and noisome The tast in men is so different that it has raised a proverb and that varies in the same man several times in an Age. Our affections are various and wandring that which delights us to day may happen to vex us to morrow what we desire sometimes earnestly we presently spurn at like little Children What pleases at one time pleases not at another so as there is become a proverb of pleasing too Nay this pleasing and delight were it settled and fixed in men where it once takes hold and were there a calculation in this present Age besides that Ages differ of every Worldly thing some particular men did chiefly affect or principally delight in the things would not be concluded in a short Ode as I have touched but a Poet might run himself out of breath and be weary before he came to Me doctarum hederae c. Me gelidum nemus c. We have our Pannick fears and terrors or as the Text says are afraid where no fear is and we have flashing joys upon as small visible grounds and in short we are the only ridiculous creature here on Earth On the other side take the Beasts of the Earth the Fowls of the
less than the quick and violent agitation of some Divine flame thawing all the vital parts and drawing the moisture through the chief and clearest Organ of the body the Eye and not to be caused by any thing which is part of it self I do agree that every living Soul whether arising from the Body or by a greater Divine gift infused into or sent to actuate a Body has equally in either some influence upon the visible Body and according as the affections with the imagination are moved worketh visible effects therein and that Man and Beast such as have their parts similar may and do equally tremble for fear and the like But yet as to this kind of motion or extasie mentioned that is weeping for I know not how to term that or laughter either a passion but both strange attendants or consequents of some kind of passions I cannot adjudge it to arise from the acceptance of a bare representation of an offensive object through sense but by some inward distinct conception of a Soul as of it self though at the same time agitated or rouzed by passion For if it were from the first barely then the same effect could never proceed from any pleasing object the contrary whereof we find and men to weep as well upon the predominancy of joy in the Soul as sorrow nay weeping is a concomitant often of a weak anger which not able otherwise to satiate or satisfie it self has this help to vanish and resolve into tears as may be observed in Women and Children Now tears being the attendant the effect as may seem to some of clean contrary passions such as joy and sorrow are they cannot really be the proper and bare effect of any passion nor the sole work of any such Spirit as is no other than the refined and most curious part of the Bloud For that were able to cause only different effects upon different occasions or representations and still the same effect upon the same occasion so far forth as we are able to look into the ordinary works of Nature Indeed salt brackish and chrystal tears flowing in that abundance as at some time is to be seen would puzzle the most learned Physician as well as a Poet to alledge a right fountain as well as a cause and wonder in searching after the original Spring-head of them in the Body If I should alledge or affirm Laughter to be some denotation or demonstration of a pure intellectual Spirit separable from a Body and no ways arising from any other single or primary cause then such I hope I should not incur the censure or become the subject of laughter to all men though I might to some By Laughter I do not mean a bare dilatation or contraction of the mouth or lips and other parts of the face such a kind of grinning as is incident to Apes and no less to Dogs and such as in the latter we term fawning a kind of habit or faculty some men take up for peculiar purposes as seeming pleased with others actions and sensible of some such involuntary motion voluntarily counterfeit one nor yet any agitation of the lungs with expulsion of breath and other odd motions of the Body in others whereby perhaps they would seem to please themselves But I mean an absolute involuntary motion upon some sudden slight pleasing touch of the Spirits by some bare conception in the intellect different in notion from what is represented by the senses It is a thing that differs much from true joy and is often extorted from men in their greatest griefs and sometimes tortures of Body as is storied of that Villain who murthered the Prince of Orange that in the midst of his pains and while he was tormented with burning Pincers for a confession laughed at the fall of a number of Spectators from a Scaffold It is one of the first unnecessary as I may say motions in Infants it is incident to wise men as well as foolish and old as well as young though not in the same measure or degree and is and happens sometimes as well sleeping as waking Now I do take it to arise properly and peculiarly from the intellect's judging on the sudden though that Judgment is not always aright of somewhat of folly lapse or oversight in a rational creature or some ill or shrewd turn happening thereupon which from prudence might have been prevented and have been done or acted otherwise and I do not judge it to arise unless we will allow something of voluntariness in it after the manner I spake before upon any sight or action proceeding from an irrational or brute creature Therefore I do think that I my self should not with Crassus the Grandfather of Marcus that wealthy Roman as is so storied of him and that he never laughed but that once have laughed at the beholding an Ass eating of Thistles I think the Beast does it with a great deal of Art to save the pricking of his mouth but had I seen a man smelling on a Thistle to gratifie that sense and thereby in pricking his Nose much more offended another I do think I should have laughed Now though laughter be a thing more incident to the Fool than the Wise whose clearer Judgment is best able to correct its rise yet it proceeds from apprehension of the intellect ready to judge at all turns and quickest often in that notion when weakest and may denote at once some kind of inherent wisdom together with folly or frenzy in man that we being created to act most regularly and prudently from a disturbed intellect become often the most giddily erring and foolishest of creatures so as if Solomon said of mirth what doth it he might well say of laughter It is mad As for Speech which is a power or ability the Soul has so to move the Tongue and other Organs of the Body that from thence shall result such a modulation of the Air that each rational Soul from an articulate voice might apprehend others meaning and intent This formation of words made to be the Idea of the mind appears not nor could ever break out from the earthly extracted Soul of other creatures not that there is any absolute defect in their Organs for then no other Spirit could frame an articulate voice by them and we must deny the Devil 's speaking in the Serpent and some other Spirit for a time in Balaam's Beast for they have curious and admirable Notes and some of them have framed as plain a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with many other words as man can utter which has been a resultance from the ear when they were taught but no Index of the mind This gift and power of Speech I say is the chief outward livery badge or cognizance of the Soul by which Mankind is distinguished from and hath the advantage of all other creatures Brutes do indeed fellow together and apprehend and if I may so say understand one another by signs
preheminence above all other faculties of the Soul It is God's Deputy or Viceroy given ordained and sent to govern in it upon Earth to reduce it to obedience and keep it from Rebellion and yet in things of importance ever to consult its Prince If the Affections reject Reason and it be recalled or its power diminished for want of our obedience and we are left only to our own imagination our Affections become in a miserable and distracted condition they shall by that have strange impositions laid on them they shall be led a thousand ways jaded and tired but never satisfied If the Affections set up Reason for King and trust to that alone they are not in a much better state For though it be generally a safe yet it is a weak guide and not to be relied on alone For it being only some clearer sight than ordinary of an intellectual faculty of things here below though it somewhat quiet the affections for a time it can never absolutely reclaim them or reduce them to fasten on any thing beyond its own prospect or out of its own reach Though the intellect do become at any time inabled any ways to reach to the affections things in such excellent order and manner as that they may be with some pleasure embraced for the present without any cause of disgust and so accounted as good yet all those things within its reach being of a transitory and fading nature the best of the affections or the possessory affections as I may call them as Love and Joy can never be so replete therewith as that there will not be room for distrust and fear of a privation of those very things they enjoy I have only this reserve left in reference to this desirable good and excellent gift That an inherent Prudence in man the Flower of Reason and in some degree the Dowry of every rational Soul may with some secret Divine assistance conduce much to the present ease and rest and also future happiness of his Soul For that Prudence or Humane wisdom as we may call it putting no false gloss upon things nor therein so deceiving the affections in their enjoyment but shewing all things to them as vanity and withall that from Reason she is not able to shew them any thing beyond that inscription she does as it were prepare the affections to stand quiet ready and attendant for some other thing to be presented to them and to catch hold thereon upon any occasion or offer without any great turbulency or admitting fear or distrust to accompany them over-much in reference to the enjoyment or loss of any of those things which Reason has as it were once convinced them to be vain or forced them at some time to reject as such The affections will move of themselves in despite of us 't is a good guide they want to find out good which is always their aim Reason is a good guide but we often want a better There be many that say says the Psalmist who will shew us any good but not expecting with patience the light in the following verse which only puts true gladness into the heart think they can find it of themselves and though all pretend to that good run as various courses as imaginable For not looking fore-right upon the Goal nor considering whatever thing unnecessary we reach at and take up here in the way becomes a burthen to us and how at that Goal of death we must part with all the affections stoop in the course and catch at the Golden Apple in the way and sometimes a more trivial thing a Feather a puff every man at somewhat though never so mean and sordid I do yet think the Soul of man however it moves or from what power soever it moves to be in its proper genuine equipage of march here when Reason shines in her most bright and so as the affections principally and chiefly move according to her light when every faculty is as it were up and ready for motion each one attends the other and yet moves not far or any great distance but expects her directions When at any time the Soul looks through the windows of the Body Sense she makes use of that light no farther than for the present support of that building and uses the world as St. Paul expresses it as not using it But when we once become so unhappy as that one kind of affection takes up his quarters or repose here another there and quarrel about their Lodging and mutiny about their Guides too when they sometimes quite desert and reject the one to follow the other when though Reason will admit Sense in her company yet the Affections once up in Arms for Sense will not admit Reason then from each faculty of the Soul thus out of order and not performing its Office aright it happens that no one of them moves with ease or quiet neither shall we find any rest until we find some more than ordinary way or means of pacifying and right marshalling this disorderly multitude of unruly appetites and affections I am very much assured there never was sober rational man but at some time or other has had in his Soul some combate between his Affections and his Reason and withall has found his Reason baffled by them And therefore methinks that very Reason that cannot rule in the case and finds it so might however admonish and point to the Affections and set us on work if it be but to will or desire earnestly to find out some remedy or have it shewn us which Reason it self cannot extract from all the imagination is able to bring in nor is in the strength and power of the Soul Which brings me to my last part of enquiry what may be the best way and method to reclaim the disorders of the Soul and reduce it to some quiet estate and composure for the present PART IV. SECT I. Means to reclaim the Soul ABsolute power and ability in man from the greatest strength of Reason there is none and I dare say whoever takes it for granted in the premisses of his tryal will deny it in the conclusion What can that wholly allay the tumours in the Soul which is in some manner the very cause or occasion of those tumours It is the very appearance of Reason as I have said and shewing her self in the Soul that often begets these Agonies in it The passions are like some rude and unreasonable Rout that the more endeavour is used to reclaim them the more violent and outragious they become and the more fierce and heady in their excursions when it may be let alone and not opposed they would forthwith cool and vanish of themselves When we were Children and had none or very little Reason to govern our affections perhaps there might be some scuffle amongst our passions but nothing from thence that ever caused a wounded Spirit only some little scars or scratches which a short space
as I may term it of any durable Spirit in any visible creature but us his Image because although those other Spirits are of him and from him yet they are not capable to conceive they are of him and from him nay from any thing else and though some of them seem to work with intellect and will yet they really work to his glory as meer machines or engines without any design and desire to fulfil or will to transgress his eternal purpose that we can discern Now let us a little behold God in his Creation That is in his several visible creatures which is indeed the proper mirrour for our reason to look into for that cannot ascend higher of it self and we may presently behold somewhat more than is obvious to common ordinary sense and see his spirit working every where though not alike in wisdom I know we distinguish between animate and inanimate bodies vegetation and sense and the like yet in all bodies there are Spirits insensibly included in the tangible parts as in an integumen which are never almost at rest but from them and their motion proceed Concoction Maturation Putrefaction and the like and even in those inanimate bodies to which we allow not vegetation or sense there is a perception far more subtile than sense That is a kind of election to imbrace what is agreeable and to exclude or expel what is ingrate or nauseous as we find between bodies electrick and some other bodies And especially between Magnetick bodies and others as the Loadstone and Iron in which or between which there is a very disposition conforming unto contiguity or coition or union with one another For we cannot impute any coition of these two bodies to a bare attractive quality in the Loadstone since those who have made their several Experiments thereof do deliver unto us that if a piece of Iron be fastned in a bowl of Water and a small Loadstone inclosed in a kind of Boat of Cork be put into the Water it will presently move and make way to the Iron Nay a Needle touched will move towards a great body of Steel untouched And the atoms or dust of a Loadstone finely filed will adhere unto Iron that was never touched And as there is a kind of desire of union in some bodies so there is an antipathy in or between others as may be observed by Iron put into Aqua fortis upon which there will forthwith be an ebulition with noise and emication such an antipathy is there and such a combat and contest between Sulphur and Iron when they meet As for Plants and all Vegetables not to speak any thing of the sensible Plant or the reason of its contraction upon touching though we allow them not sense or passion We cannot deny somewhat of appetite and aversion to be inherent in them which in all creatures of motion is the product and mother of all passions they do surely attract what is proper for their nourishment and reject or secern what is improper and nauseous There are multitudes of Plants which of themselves as weak and feeble shall seem to tend directly to some other next adjacent bodies which may support them and even as it were espy and feel them out as hath been observed of the Vine the Ivy the Hop our ordinary Ginny or Kidney Beans in Gardens and many more And although that observation of perception in Plants may sometimes be taken upon false grounds and that it is often in reality rather some attraction by the warm Sun-beams of the body supported to the body supporting than any perception in the body supported I my self have seen that Herb or Weed we commonly call Cliver rooted some little distance on each side of an Hedge from each side North and South bent and inclined to the same Hedge as to its prop and support What there is of affection in Plants is not altogether a fruitless inquiry We commonly say and it may be not improperly That Laurel loveth the shade or delighteth in the shade And other Plants love and affect such and such a kind of soil Now to say nothing of the Palm-tree strangers to our Climate of which it is reported That if two of them of some difference in kind for there is some distinction made between them of Male and Female as we do of some other Plants grow near together they will most apparently incline to each other with the imbraces as it were of Lovers There is most certainly a kind of agreement and disagreement between divers and sundry particular Plants So as some of several kinds shall thrive separate and asunder upon a like soil and yet not contiguous and together And on the other side there are divers peculiar Plants which will not thrive or be at all unless adjacent contiguous or intermixt with some other of another kind As from peculiar Weeds growing amongst Corn only we observe Some of which kinds of Weeds are never or rarely to be found elsewhere than amongst Corn Nor will the soil ready manured for Corn if the same be neglected to be sown with Corn from ill husbandry or otherwise ever produce them There is a kind of Envy and Emulation between Plants and as it were a striving for the mastery as is observable in Trees contiguous and adjacent which ever mount higher than when they are apart and distant some space one from each other and although some other reason may be given for their mounting in height in case of proximity viz. a more vigorous inclination and erection ascendently towards the Sun whose beams are laterally obstructed by the neighbouring Trees Yet that reason holds not in smaller bodies as Grass and Corn where thickness or near adjacency rather dwarfs than otherwise And yet between Corn and Weeds there is observable a kind of strugling for the mastery in the beginning of Summer and sometimes the one and sometimes the other robbing its rival of nourishment do's very much enfeeble it and cause it to lose its strength verdure and freshness if not totally destroy it which the Poet methinks prettily expresses in these if I forget not words Et steriles dominantur avenae as if after a superiority they lorded it as we say over one another Now as we observe God has by the universal frame of Nature implanted some kind of spirit in every of his Works and some kind of abhorrence of a dissolution together with a secret endeavour in every particular of his Works tending not only towards the preservation of its peculiar being barely but its exaltation and well-being too as far as may be So it is no ways dissonant to our reason to conjecture or imagine that that wise Creator of all things should from those bodies which he was pleased to have separate from the earth and to have local motion Ordain a Spirit to arise rarified in them to some greater proportion than the other which should be not only pervious as in Plants but have some peculiar
very young upon their approach to their presence many years after unknown have had a secret joy within themselves without the least seeming precedent imagination of their being such I cannot say how much of truth there may be in the affirmation but if there be then that blind faculty of the Soul as we sometimes term Affection may move without the precedent assistance of its fellow faculties And it would seem no wonder to me if the imagination set on work thereupon after some search should at length pitch upon some such cause but certainly the imagination more or less must necessarily be set on work therein The two who journied to Emaus mention the burning of their hearts within them upon our Saviours talking to them without the least precedent imagination that I can collect that it was he who talked with them Nay the Text says their eyes were holden and sense is the ordinary inlet upon which the Imagination presents to the Affections That they should not know him And he calls them Fools and slow of heart to believe thereupon As if belief might arise from the motion of the heart without the precedent work of the Imagination from sense And truly Sir since I am verily I hope perswaded That every faculty in mans Soul is Divine and different from that of Beast which work only from sense I do not or can rationally think that the Affections motion depends solely upon the Imagination's presentation but that the Imagination is often irritated upon the Affections first Motion or strugling or otherwise through the good will and pleasure of some insensible power immediately working in us the one or the other is strangely set on work I must confess of Beasts I do think that Sense being the only port and inlet of the Soul and a thing through which every object makes its stroke the first Spiritual Motion is necessarily upon the Imagination Nay that Imagination is no other in them than some more refined curious part or quintessence of the Blood lodged immediately over those doors and cells of the Body which raises and creates some such kind of thing as will and affections in them rather than inclines any will or affection in them before created or inspired Because we never find such kind of Motion in them as either to affect or will above the reach of sense or contrary to sense But that through sense only from the Imagination there is raised in them an appetite to or aversion from such and such object And thereupon it is that they are neither misled or misguided by their Imagination neither is there any great or lasting Disease of the mind but what raised through sense only may be soon allayed and quieted therefrom First their Imagination misleads or misguides them not for having its dependance only thereon and working thereafter and not capable to work upon the impulse of any thing but what as of it self penetrates through Sense It receives every object in its more proper exact Nature Figure and Form than ours And it being most certain that their sense is generally more open and clear to receive than ours they mistake not or misapprehend not as we do Hence it is that they are seldom mistaken in the face of the Heavens in which we are so often of our selves deceived and that our Prognostick from their sense and their motion and contrivance thereupon is generally truer than what we can make from our own The hastning home of that little Creature the Bee by multitudes into their Hives is a more infallible sign of an ensuing storm than we are able to espy by the best help of our intellectual faculties sometimes otherwise imployed than from sense through a weak and disturbed sense and which the strange work thereof does not seldom disturb Indeed hence it is that a Beast if not stopped by force or by some more pleasing Imagination raised from present sense is able of it self which man cannot do to return to its ancient place of abode at a great distance how strangely soever or through what mazes soever conveyed from thence And we may observe in its ordinary motion it will return more directly I may say more knowingly by the paths it went and came than the wisest of men nay a Fool will do this much better than a Wise man because though his Imagination be subject to be recalled from attendance on Objects offering themselves through present sense and imployed on others by some sordid affection yet it is generally obedient to present sense and is not so much in subjection to reason as to assist that faculty or taken up by that in help of revolving or weighing of things past or future and the causes thereof I could never yet collect from the narrowest observation I could make any power or ability in Beast to revolve a thing in the mind without the help or introduction of present sense no nor any affection raised in them to work or recall the Imagination from its present work without its help I must confess lust or itching of the flesh or rather appetite a thing below an affection and inherent in Plants may and does seem to recall their Imagination in them sometimes and with a neglect of present sense set it on work so as to contrive for their prey or food or the like But for any Affection of it self an affection to do it I cannot observe Sense shews the female only the product of her body and thereupon the Imagination is stirred to raise and create a kind of affection to it which we call love so as in defence thereof anger may be kindled and in deprivation thereof sorrow may arise but the Imagination works for neither of these of themselves nor do they continue to be as I conceive longer than some Object makes the impulse through sense And therefore we shall observe there is no bleating or lowing but from bleating and lowing or the approach and beholding again the place where they usually fed or nourished their young or the like stop or divert that and their love or sorrow is at an end Darius his Horse as I have mentioned could neigh when he beheld the place where his lust was first raised but I question much when the impress the Imagination has made in such Creature is once wiped away for the present through some new introduction of sense whether it can be raised again without the fresh stroke of some Object relating thereto through sense Or whether the Horse were capable to revolve that act in his mind at any time without such means to introduce or raise a thought Now if the Imagination in Beast work only immediately upon Senses introduction as we have reason to conceive it does and that thereupon their affections are raised only their Affection necessarily attending their Imagination changes according to the change of Objects through Sense For what is created or raised by and through that merely may be fully satisfied through that
Memory and weak of Judgment whatever our Will or Affections are or seem to be and the sight of that might well put a stop to my Writing But you and every man who finds and owns himself under that Notion will I hope pass by and pardon my infirmities if there appear any discrepancy between these and my former thoughts already set down in relation to this Subject And the rather because you well know all my former Papers were out of my custody whilst I was imployed and busied in these I have already exceeded the bounds of an Epistle and will trouble you no further save in relation to some former demonstration of my weak judgement relating to this faculty of the Soul the Imagination under these four several following heads distinct and a part and those I am bold to set down as follows I. That the Imagination of all the faculties of an human Soul is most subject to infection change and alteration from the humours of the Body II. That the guidance regulation or Government thereof is least in our power of any faculty of the Soul III. That it being a faculty the Government whereof is so much out of or beyond our Power We are not answerable for its Transgression unless where some other faculty more in the power of our will through the light of Reason does apparently concur or comply with it Or that through the negligence of our Reason it was the cause of the Imaginations incorrigible rambling errors IV. That it shews its Divinity and extraction as well as any other faculty of the Soul in the manner of its Work That set on work in relation to its own motion it necessarily terminates with the allowance of Reason in the thoughts of one Eternal Wise Being or Mind Governour and disposer of all things That from such thoughts we are necessarily stirred and incited in all the faculties of our Soul to fly thither for relief and to receive direction and guidance from thence chiefly That yet herein necessary care is to be had and taken that we retain and in some measure make use of our Reason lest we become ensnared through the delusion of Satan I. Notwithstanding my Opinion of the Souls extraction its Divinity and Immortality its power here in a Body from Heavenly influence to mount sometimes above sense its strength to resist all foreign delusion through sense by Reason Its capacity to work without a Body or the help of that more present inlet bodily sense Yet it is in my judgement while it remains in a Body so far subject to some Mists and Vapours arising there from that the Imagination the Eye of the Soul is thereby often deceived And so far deceived thereby that Reason though it remain in its native strength cannot correct its wandring but is forced to yield its allowance and consent and to be led as it were captive by the Imagination This faculty the Imagination the Eye of the Soul through sense as well as otherwise necessarily and perpetually working and in motion Upon any distemperature of the Body whereby sense is in any degree or measure clouded or disturbed is apt of it self to frame and raise strange Idea's and make strange representations to the other faculties to the amazement and confusion of Reason To the allurement inticement or attraction of other faculties from that which before they naturally were bent and inclined to and thereby at length to the captivation of Reason it self This happens not from every humour or in every disease of the Body but in such disease and from such humor only as by fumes sent into the brain clouds or darkens that port or inlet to the Soul Sense Or so disturbs or obstructs those passages that they cannot afford that assistance to Reason as usual against the deceit of the Imagination Sense I say a passage way or means by the perfect openness and clearness whereof Reason oft makes a better and truer judgment of things than it can when those passages are a little obstructed and yet to the Imagination seem open and clear In sleep when that port Sense is as it were wholly shut up through fumes Reason without blame leaves the Imagination as sole Master in the Soul to frame and introduce Idea's of it self which in reality are not Yet upon the opening of Sense again they vanish or are presently rejected and cast out of the Soul as idle But when that port of Sense is open and the Imagination presents to the other faculties of the Soul as if what it presented were rightly and truly formed through Sense with the allowance of Reason and thereby a vain belief a thing somewhat more than a Dream is raised perhaps to the terrour and affrightment of the Affections Reason not able absolutely to contradict the Imagination because it seemed to have the concurrence of Sense is sliely drawn into a kind of consent and this not seldom occasioned through gross humors in the Body In which case there is in my opinion a kind of defect lett or disease in Sense though not apparent as well as fault in the Imagination The Imagination is capable of distemper two manner of ways corporally or spiritually as we say But those two kind of distempers of the Imagination the one from the Body to the Imaginations deception of its fellow faculties in the Soul the other from those fellow faculties as violent Affections to the deception or rather confusion of the Imagination it self being often confounded together and the one not sedom mistaken for the other and the fault of the Body imputed to the Soul and the fault of the Soul imputed to the Body I have thought good to set down here some kind of mark by which they might be distinguished though I offer it not with any great confidence as the light of an infallible truth appearing to me and it is this That if at any time we find and observe a Body healthful as in most Lunaticks and withal the Affections very vigorous and active and every design and bent of them ready to be put in execution by the will and the instruments thereof bodily members There we may rationally adjudge the distemper of that Soul to be occasioned no otherwise than by its own default or neglect and the Original cause of the disease to have been the too familiar intercourse and trust between the Affections and the Imagination from the neglect of Reason and a thing which Reason might have prevented But if we find and observe the Body infirm heavy and lumpish and not active or ready with the Affections to put in execution those things which are framed in the Imagination but that there is a kind of Terror or Horror observable over the Spirits and a doubting and distrust in the Soul there we may impute every false gloss and fictitious formation and contrivance of the Imagination to have its rise or result from some gross humors in the Body such as we call Melancholy such
them But there is none I suppose that ever admitted them so far rational or indeed so far imaginative as to search after the ground of their Imagination whether Sense barely or somewhat more or once to imagine or think after what manner they thought Now surely these thoughts arise in most of us as of themselves and if that proceed from any stroke through Sense barely I have no Reason and could I not fancy to my self there were existent that which eye never saw nor ear ever heard c. I wanted human Imagination and such an Imagination barely can never proceed from the Body Well Imagination in us alone revolved is a thing that most certainly declares our Divinity and extraction for it shews it self penetrable otherwise than by Sense Nay it appears being revolved to be made to work and lead the Will and consequently some Affection in direct opposition to Sense How were it else possible good men should be willing to die and leave this World 'T is not Reason alone and by it self can model and frame a more pleasant state 't is not all the bare telling us there is such will do it How were it possible as I have touched before that an evil man should be so weary of his life here as to let out his Soul with his own hands or by any voluntary act which Beast never did 'T is not any stroke through Sense alone can render his life more miserable to him than all others there is nothing but self-preservation and self-existence offers it self through Sense The Imagination alone is the cause It is wrought upon divers and sundry ways as Divine not subject to strokes through fense only but some way else and from somewhat else than corporeal We are assaultable divers ways and in sundry faculties of our Soul and I deny not but supernatural power not tied to order may work its effect originally in Affection or the Will but I do think this facile pliable restless and ever working faculty the Imagination is oftnest directly and particularly assaulted from insensible powers and the work of our conversion as well as destruction not seldom begun there The Imagination ever meets with somewhat Divine in its own work admit there were no other faculty apparently in conjunction with it at first It is commonly said that that man is of very weak parts or ordinary capacity or in an evil condition who cannot entertain himself with his own thoughts Now if he do but that first and no man can but do it sometimes that is think of his thoughts he will have Affection and Reason attendant and then he must needs see and be inflamed therewith that these thoughts of thought arose from somewhat more than Sense no Sense could lead him back to think of thinking or be the direct occasion thereof and proceeding further to weigh and consider the manner of his thoughts together with his sometimes strange Affections he will by a kind of necessary consequence observe that Imagination in man is not merely actuated through Sense and that by these two consequents First there will appear to him there was no certain method or order in the motion of the several faculties of his Soul but that sometimes the Affections seemed to move from the Imagination sometimes the Imagination from the Affections Next there will appear an independence and direct breach of his thoughts at peculiar Seasons and that without any new stroak through Sense for though there be generally as I have touched a concatenation of mans thoughts as certainly there is always in Beast until that link be broken by a stroke through Sense yet upon due examination man will find it otherwise at some time in himself I. That there is no direct approach from one human Soul unto another but through Sense I confess and agree and that he who would inform or rectify our Reason or Judgment and bend and incline our Affections to or from that thing it already stands bent or inclined must necessarily enter that way that is by Sense and thereby consequently first make some slight touch upon the Imagination So as the Soul seems generally to work from Sense first by the Imagination with the assent or allowance of Reason and next the Will and Affections and yet even in this manner of its work there is so suddain a stroke upon all of them as it were together that no man can directly affirm priority or posteriority in the work of either of those faculties of the Soul or that one is in time before or after other But when we are sometimes alone and the Soul works as it were of it self though indeed not of it self without any apparent stroke through Sense it may be nay appears upon a serious retrospect and consideration otherwise Do we not or may we not observe there has been sometimes a burning within us our Affections on the suddain kindled and inflamed in a kind of expectancy we well know not how or of what and so as it were creating thoughts in us divers from what we ever had or perhaps otherwise would ever have been Sometimes we find Reason suddainly enlightned to the disallowance and correction of our present as well as past thoughts Will and Affections whereby there is a strange mutation wrought in the Soul Sometimes we find such a thing as a Will wrestling and struggling in us to change and alter our present thoughts and Affections and they have been changed But more often may we observe a suddain irresistible thought arising in us without any help or assistance of Sense that we can perceive or observe nay sometimes in a direct opposition to Sense as it were we know not nor can find whence or how whereby our other faculties subjected as it were thereto some work is wrought tending in the conclusion to the glory of some all-powerful irresistible Will as we conjecture by the consequence and shall most certainly find in the end Now if the course and manner of the Souls work be not always the same but so various and seeming preposterous so alterable mutable or changeable in its work and yet that alteration is not made by any stroke through bodily Organs neither is there any apparent cause to be found why the Affections should be inflamed or Reason enlightned on the suddain in opposition to an evil or false Imagination or an Imagination suddainly raised in opposition to delectancy through present Sense then is the Soul in every part a thing most certainly Divine capable of insensible influence and not extracted from the Body For if it were of the Body and so necessarily required for its motion or agitation a stroke through bodily Organs the course of its motion would always be regular and continue after one and the same manner Man must see and feel and hear c. and perfectly conceive by his Imagination through Sense before he be affected and then I should be ready to grant the Imagination to be the Principal
make such a choice of a new one as that he may prove an old one and this requires circumspection and prudence in the doing The mutual view of Truth in two men as it is a most delectable prospect to each other and may be termed an happy interview between two Souls so it is in my opinion the most likely thing to engender between them a real and lasting Friendship I do not mean here by the sight of Truth Truth in the theory that thing of which we have sometimes a glimmering light only and no more and for which we proverbially reject Plato and Socrates's Friendship to admit her in our company and yet know not when we have her but naked Truth practick Truth Fidelity if you please so to call it or plain and upright dealing when a man upon no occasion will lie to deceive his Nieghbour nor be drawn or inticed to commit a falshood for the gain of the whole World and besides upon just occasion will open his mind plainly I know it is not prudent or requisite we should always speak what we think but if we do speak to speak as we think is ever best and most acceptable to a good man I do think that person whoever he was who first delivered it to us and set it down as an observable Maxim Obsequium amicos veritas odium parit to have been not only a Sycophant but ignorant of the ground of true Friendship and I would not advise any man to chuse his Friend from any Obsequiousness Fawning or Flattery If you can behold Truth naked in any man and can adjudge him to be of a setled mind and resolution not double-minded and so unstable in all his ways as St. Iames describes him we will render you the man if you please in Horace his words justum tenacem propositi virum and withall moderately wise such a man you ought to love and imbrace and with such an one you may safely contract Amity or Friendship But when you have so done you must trust in God to continue him such for I think you 'l love him no longer than he is such neither do I think it fit you should For I do think men are mutable and I do not look upon any League of Friendship how fast soever made like the Laws of the Medes and Persians but that the same is alterable and may be dissolved and abrogated without any just blame For though it be an human tye in the reciprocal aspect and mutual promise of each other yet having ever a respect to God as I said if we shall find our dearest Friend to sully the brightness of that Image which first invited us to love him and notwithstanding our admonition to cast off that and to assume and bear about him the image of Belial we may reject him Thus much I remember yet in Tully who would necessarily have all Leagues of Friendship inviolable and perpetual that he utterly condemns that Saying of Bias Ita amare oportere ut aliquando esset osurus and truly as a Christian I cannot commend it for that I believe we should hate no man upon any accompt much less that future hatred should possess our thoughts at the time we make a League of Friendship or begin to love in that sence But this I think may be a good rule herein and I will adventure to give it you in Latin Ita amare oportere ut cessante vel deficiente causâ originali amoris possis tuta fide non amare For Friendship should not be entred into by a vow and in such words as Marriage for better for worse Yet since it is an human and sacred League we should be careful not to be mutable herein though we are in other things the most mutable of any Creature but then only cease to love our Friend as our own Soul when 't is apparent to all the World as well as our selves that he bears no Love to his Soul himself nor will be prevailed with by any perswasion to regard it more It is a rare thing to find the heart of man to answer to man as in water face answereth face according to Solomon so much as for any short space much less to be of any continuance A man shall sometimes meet with St. Pauls case The more he loves the less he is loved But if men do now and then happen To take sweet counsel together and walk into the house of God as Friends according to David's expression Either of them may find the consequence thereof as he did there and elsewhere that the children of men are deceitful upon the weights And therefore there is little trust to be placed in this human tye or obligation but that is to be lodged chiefly or only in him who raises us up Friends beyond expectation and when even Our Father and Mother forsake us taketh us up This notwithstanding it may not be amiss for us though we never expect to tye that sure knot of Friendship so much talked of with any to see of what thred the Materials are or ought to be spun of which it is made to search out and view what kind of Love there is in man peculiar to man see the ground or inition of Friendship in what we call or most properly call Friendly Love and learn to reject no man who offers us this bond of Amity for want of that Authentickness we only imagine it requires viz. the Seal of Election and Grace which no man ever yet saw or could see I doubt in others unless in Imagination I have formerly thought and set down my thoughts in my Treatise de Anima which I exposed to your view Love to be the substantial part of an human Soul flowing from that immense Ocean of Love the great and wise Creator of the Universe and I do yet think it so and confined to or inclosed in an impure Earthly Body for some space of time where it does for the present necessarily work burns inward and sometimes flames outward and according to its motion or inflammation here either by Sense Reason or Grace we give it its denomination and attribute to it several names and sometimes call it Love sometimes Lust sometimes Charity and sometimes Friendship The Latines have the same names besides others viz. amor libido Charitas amicitia though they distinguish them not always according to that notion or in that sence I intend or mean to do in this place I say Love is the principal or sole proper active Ingredient if I may use that word of a Soul For as for Fear Envy Anger Hatred Malice or the like they are but induments or Apparel or Armour which Love puts on or bears about it as I said in its march or travel here It is that thing in man which has often possessed and taken up or imployed my thoughts how strangely diversly and variously it works in several men and no less diversly in
2. By his merciful Providence or restraining Grace 3. By his bountiful Providence or common renewing grace 4. By his Spirit or special renewing Grace How God according to all these may be invocated The danger of applying the operation of the Spirit to every work in man And how fit it is to clear the mind of such Errour Of the use of solitude in some particular Seasons as the most ready and likely way to discover Truth page 13 EPIST. III. Wherein he sets down some further grounds and Reasons of his opinion of the Mortality or utter annihilation of the Souls of Brutes upon their death No durable Spirit in any visible Creature but man of Sympathies and Antipathies in Plants and Animals The soul of Beasts essential with the Body and so subject to the same fate The Intellect in them in its height at the first whereas that in man is gradual Acts peculiar to reasonable Creatures as desire of dissolution and voluntary abstinence The Spirit of Brutes determined by Sense No Creature besides man lays up more than is sufficient to maintain it self We attribute greater gifts and Sagacity to mere Animals than they have as in Ants. That there may be as much Intellect in Creatures we converse not with as those we do The opinion of the utter annihilation of the spirit of Brutes hath no tendency to Atheism page 39 EPIST. IV. Wherein the Author Treats of man's ignorance in his search into the most ordinary work of Nature and concludes how much more dim-sighted we are when we look into the frame and structure of man's Soul Solomon's knowledge of Nature not universal much in Nature found out accidentally No one work of it fully to be understood How Nature doth change in its operations Of change in Colours and that the variety in them is unaccountable That there is a transcendent Wisdom ruling and appearing in all far above our reach And so there is great Reason for caution in our enquiries or affirmations page 60 EPIST. V. Wherein he further illustrates the inherent or native Power and Predominancy of the Affections above the other faculties of the Soul but more particularly treats of the Imagination its deception in us our miseries thereby and the remedies against its delusion Imagination in Brutes ariseth only from Sense That in them receives its objects in their proper Nature they are seldom mistaken in the face of the Heavens c. they cannot revolve in their mind or recall Imagination Imagination in them changeth according to its objects Imagination in us sometimes supplies the place of Reason as in the case of Transubstantiation c. deceives the Affections Imagination and in Conjunction with them is the cause of Error as in malice c. The good man the only rational man The difference 'twixt Reason and ratiocination Reason deceives not and is the chief principle of governing the Thoughts The advantage of sorrow in curbing the Imagination The Imagination subject to infection from the humours of the Body When we are answerable for its transgressions Thoughts cannot arise from Sense page 68 EPIST. VI. Wherein he treats of the various impress of the Divine Power upon each particular created substance much more upon the Souls of men wherein there is great dissimilitude And further shews how prone we are from thence to mistake in judging of the temper of others and our own Thence he proceeds to discourse of the Nature grounds measure and ends of Friendship page 128 EPIST. VII Of the different pursuits of the Souls of men wherein we are ready to accuse each other of folly though not our selves and yet in a degree are all weak and foolish That no pursuit of the Soul here is praise-worthy or commendable further than it intentionally advanceth God's glory which is the mark set before us and which if we do not behold in all our travails our labour in the issue will prove of as little profit as comfort page 156 EPIST. VIII Compleat Happiness here is merely in speculation That natural endowments in the Soul do conduce to the ease peace and quiet of it and are therefore desirable though we attain not happiness thereby Learning and Knowledge Wisdom Prudence and subtilty considered That even Prudence the most likely conduct to Happiness was never yet the constant concomitant of the clearest human Soul No satisfaction without the belief of a Providence page 166 EPIST. IX Wherein the Author maintains a divine Wisdom and Providence ruling in and over the Soul of man more especially and more apparently if considered than any work of Creation And that the Affections in the heart of man seem that part of the Soul whereon God more especially exerciseth his Prerogative moulding and changing them on the sudden to his secret purposes beyond and even contrary to any foresight conjecture or Imagination of the Soul it self page 185 EPIST. X. Of Credulity and Incredulity the rise of both and that Credulity of the two is of more pernicious consequence And of the evil of imposing on others or creating or raising a Belief on false or uncertain Principles Of the word notion and grace of Faith Of the strange variety of Beliefs in the World Of Liberty of Conscience page 195 ERRATA PAge 21. l. 10. for Esau's vine r. Isaiah's vine p. 44. l. ult for Hawk r. Hare p. 45. l. 39. for Have r. Cave p. 46. l. ult for substance r. subsistence p. 47. l. 2. for submit r. subsist ibid. l. 14. for gifts r. Fits p. 52. l. 9. for life r. Fly p. 53. l. 15. for their r. the 54. l. 25. dele since p. 56. l. 11. for that r. they ibid. l. 30. for piece r. Pease CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST Immoderate care for a Man 's own Posterity and sorrow for the loss of Children SECT I. Of Afflictions in general their Usefulness and Necessity and in particular the loss of Children considered with the use and end of it THE first thoughts which presented themselves to me and what I ever before firmly believed were these That first as there is one Eternal wise God Creator of Heaven and Earth and all things therein So secondly the same God has a care over all the works of his Creation and continually rules and disposes all things according to his infinite wisdom which act of his we call Providence To doubt of this were not only to deny all Scripture and relinquish my profession of Christianity but even to abandon my very Reason For from this first part of my belief I think there are few dissenters and although this Age affords a number of David's jolly sanguine Fools who at some time think otherwise in their hearts yet those same hearts from afflictions will think the same with mine unless they have hardned them on purpose to shut out all Deity and since at first they would have none to serve now they are resolved to let in none so long as they can oppose it to punish As to the second part
Air and the Fishes of the Sea too and so far as we can discern we find them agree in their desires and delights with one another of the same species They have each their particular Food and rest contented satisfied and pleased therewith during their whole course of nature 'T is not with them as with us what one loves another loathes 'T would be a difficult matter to find an hungry Ox that would refuse Hay either when he is young or old A man may well ask Iob's question Doth the wild Ass bray when he hath grass or loweth the Ox over his fodder 't is man doth only that or the like when he hath what his fleshly heart can desire The Beasts are more constant and content and their Soul seems settled and the inhabitant of its proper Region they neither fear nor joy in excess their choices and elections are still alike and every Cock like Aesop's Cock will yet to this day prefer the Barley-corn before a Jewel though amongst men some prefer the one and some the other I speak thus much for this cause only that viewing the Soul of man in its very inferiour faculties and finding it so various and disagreeing so little at a stay or at rest so fighting and combating so snatching and catching at it knows not what things neither useful nor profitable for the body or the mind it somewhat convinces me 't is a thing very capacious and that there is a place of fulness of joy or fulness of sorrow for it hereafter SECT VI. The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from the difference thereof between Parents and Children BEsides this some enquiry might be made into the different qualities of the Souls of men beyond those of Beasts in their ordinary workings though they inhabit or actuate Bodies which have their being from one and the same production For if the Soul of man were the ordinary work of Nature only a fine rarified vigorous quality in the Bloud Man receiving his body from his Parents by the ordinary course of Nature as other creatures do his Soul would always somewhat resemble that of his Parents too and Brethren twins especially would resemble one another in the faculties of their Souls as well as 't is often seen they do many ways in the Body But there is generally found as between Iacob and Esau such dissimilitude in the Spirits of Brethren and those of Father and Son Mother and Daughter as greater is not to be found between meer strangers in bloud which thing daily experience will not only demonstrate upon search but may be readily found in the Histories of Princes in all Ages Now the Soul of Beast being the bare product of flesh only and necessarily taking its rise and essence from the substance of its Parents if I may so call them for the word may be proper enough pario being only to bring forth or produce never varies much or altogether at any time from that of the Parent We shall never find an absolute Jadish Spirit in a Horse begot from free and well-bred ones nor a meer Curr from right good Hounds no not in one of his senses the Nose or smell But if in any case they excell or degenerate from their Stock 't is by degrees and not per saltum which thing per saltum may be found and observed in the Race of men And besides this variation of the Souls of men from Birth there sometimes happens on the sudden a strange kind of total Metamorphosis of the Soul of man so as one would scarce adjudge it the same but according to Scripture phrase that one becomes a new man and this without any alteration at all of the Bodies constitution Now if the Soul of man were not a substance of it self capable to be wrought on ab extra by somewhat without any introduction by the senses then no such alteration without the Bodies alteration could be made but through the senses and if such alteration were made from sense through the Organs of the Body then upon the shortest obstruction or letting in of prior forms again the Soul would consequently return to its pristine state according to that simile of the dog to his vomit c. which change or alteration in the Soul of man we see sometimes settled and remaining notwithstanding all interposition during a long following life Thus we find that men have utterly contemned and hated without any offence raised from the thing it self even with a perfect hatred that which was formerly their delight which kind of hatred never yet happened or was discernible in Beast Now if any man shall ask me At what time the Soul of man being a substance of it self distinct from the Body enters and possesses the Body I can make him a reply with as difficult a question At what instant doth this other arising product Soul from the Bloud begin its circulation and move If we know neither why should it seem more wonderful and strange to us for the God of Nature upon man's conception in the womb to create and have ordained a Spirit to actuate that conception which Spirit should continue for ever notwithstanding that conception should decay and perish for a time as well as that there should arise a Spirit from the Bloud to actuate move and govern the Body for a certain period of time which time we could never define certainly from any course of Nature And further that the wise Creator and Governour of all things should ordain that if the first created Spirit to inhabit a Body both together being Man should wander in disobedience from its Creator all others sent and entring into Bodies product from the Loyns of the first Body should be infected with the same wandring disease and have no cure but by Grace from the first Creator But I would not wander too much my self nor desire to pry into any of God's secrets further than he has thought fit to reveal by his Holy Word and so shall lay aside my thoughts of the manner of Man's creation every way wonderful as the Psalmist expresses it as also the consideration of the inferiour faculties for the present and try and see if there be not some sparks in the Soul of man which give such a light as can by no means naturally arise from any thing barely and simply terrestrial SECT VII The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from its unweariedness in searching c. and its reflex acts and operations WHy has the Soul of man in all Ages when it has been at any time withdrawn from that quick intromission of worldly objects by the senses and has not been hindred or obstructed by some mists fogs or lets of the flesh wherein at present 't is confined to work hunted after wearied and tired it self to find out and comprehend what it is not able to comprehend The first sin of man shewed at once the Soul's error and its
extract and being For the very innate desire of some distinguishing knowledge of good from evil could not have its motion from sense nor ever was introduced by sense There is a kind of knowledge springs it self from sense as the Ox knows his owner c. but knowledge by causes such as it is is peculiar to Humane nature and has no relation to sense Know indeed so as to comprehend we cannot knowledge in the abstract being the peculiar of the Divine nature If we had been capable to have known good and evil absolutely the Devil had used no Hyperbole in telling us Ye shall be as Gods But the very desire of knowledge even such a knowledge as the Soul is in some measure capable of that is by causes shews a Divine spark in us tending towards the cause of all causes which exercised about God's revealed will here might be more clear but mounting in desire is apt to lose its light and vanish Nay not only our desire but our fear or doubt of somewhat we know not nor can perfectly attain to by our search nor is reasonable fully to demonstrate must necessarily have its origine from somewhat more than sense If we at least fear a future being and continuance for ever and future punishment that very fear is either native and natural in our Souls or else arises in us from the Tradition of some others if from Tradition then sense being the Port and Inlet I allow to be Parent too but yet while we allow it to spring from Tradition in our selves we do by consequence allow it to be native in some one particular person and he who allows it native in any one must allow the Soul to be a substance of it self and not a resultance from the Body for thoughts of infinity could never first spring from a bare temporary finite existence I said I would lay aside the inferiour faculties of the Soul from my thoughts Desire and fear are affections I agree common to Brutes I know they desire and fear but I dare say never any one of them yet desired knowledge or feared any thing to happen after this life and therefore these as they are in us being in respect of the object no such affections as are led by sense or work by sense barely and so not having their essence from the Body are not to be accounted amongst the other inferiour faculties common with Brutes But to proceed and go a little higher Whence arise those accusing or excusing thoughts mentioned by St. Paul in the Soul of man though wholly ignorant of Scripture and having no accession of new Light so much as by Tradition Certainly it must be some glimmering of that coelestial native spark of Justice implanted in every Humane Soul I dare leave it without further pressure to any quiet sedate reasonable Soul to determine whether if there had never been any Divine or Humane Law written or divulged by Tradition against Murther but that that same fact by the Laws of his native Country were allowed and approved if done against meer Strangers whether I say in case of that man's private imbruing his hands in his Brother's bloud with no other colourable pretence or provocation than some slight worldly gain he should not upon the consideration that we men made not our selves but that every one was a fellow-member with other of the visible Universe and of equal native extract expect to find some inward regret disgust trouble or vexation of mind If he determine that he thinks he should the question will be about that consideration how it could arise For we find that or the like consideration has risen without the help of any outward Engine or sense nay when all the Spels imaginable have been used and applied to allay it Now no disgust or trouble or sorrow was yet perceived in any other Creature beside Man upon the destruction of his fellow creature or Man the Sovereign of creatures And whence is this but because their Soul is not extensive beyond its original nor has any motion but from sense that is it is not capable of any consideration For consideration weighing or pondering of a thing whether it be good or evil is a proper act of a reasonable Soul distinct from a Body and is somewhat more than desire of knowledge by causes 'T is the very exercise of Reason 't is the Soul's waving of its senses for a time and summoning its noble powers to tryal which have some little native ability This trying considering or weighing good from evil by Reason the ballance of the Soul is I say the Soul 's peculiar act from which act there may be very properly the Author to the Hebrews uses the like words a weariness of the mind and so it 's distinguished and is different from such acts of the Soul which Solomon saith are a weariness of the flesh For that kind of study which he respects viz. composing reading or hearing are no peculiar acts of the Soul as withdrawn from the flesh but are a bare introduction of somewhat to the Soul through the Organs of the flesh and so are a weariness to it Whereas the Soul after reception and some light of a thing by sense in considering the good or evil of it quite lays aside the senses for a time and so the mind is peculiarly affected SECT VIII The Immortality of man's Soul considered from things peculiar to Man as weeping laughter speech with some conclusion against Atheism THe Soul of man does not only shew it self and its original by the aforesaid manner of withdrawing it self or as it were by separation from the Body to be above the capacity of a Soul extracted or springing from the flesh but even by peculiar actions and motions through bodily Organs which a bare earthly or fleshly Soul does not There are three things generally held and esteemed proper and peculiar to Humane Nature and no ways incident to any other living creature whatsoever and those are Tears or weeping Laughter and Speech in each of which or from each of which may seem to appear somewhat more in Man than a product Soul part of the Body or extracted or raised from the Body though never so curiously or admirably framed I do not alledge each of them apart as any infallible demonstration of a Spirit distinct and separable from the Body yet coupled and joyned together they become of some seeming weight and strength to me to confirm my opinion It does not seem much wonderful at any time to behold a distillation from the Eyes that thing is to be found in Beast as well as Man not only from a disease or some distemper in the Bloud but upon every offensive touch of the Eye yet when neither of these are present or can be alledged for a cause to have the Body as it were melted on the sudden and send forth its streams through that unusual channel makes it seem to me no
and inarticulate voices And so we find Trade and Commerce maintained betwixt us and the Indians and that Mutes do act and understand by signs to admiration But whatever faculty is in the Beasts or whatever necessity may have taught and brought Men to that could not converse by words yet all the dumb signs in the World though managed to the best advantage can never equal the benefit we enjoy by Speech when we can thereby communicate our thoughts and maintain converse with freedom ease and pleasure This indeed is the Soul and life of Society and by the means of which we do as much exceed the other creatures in the happiness of it as in the principle that guides it which is our Reason We often abuse this Heavenly gift as other noble faculties of our Soul and not only say in our hearts that is silently by our actions but some of us in our tongues and by our Pens That there is no such thing as an Immortal Soul in man but 't is a Chimaera first forged in some melancholick brain and by consequence that there is no God For I must agree that if it can be made out that the World is a fortuitous juggling of Atoms and our Souls are only a natural fine product from thence and to vanish again with our Bodies Nature as we call it and term it is no such revengeful Deity that we need fear the disobeying of her private dictates but may safely challenge our tongues for our own and say Who is Lord over them But surely we must want sense to let in so many various works of Nature into our Souls view or any thing of reason to consider or judge of them after they are let in or else we should be convinced from the wise disposition thereof that there is somewhat more than chance and that Nature it self which is but a Law made by God to work by has dependance upon some infinite eternal wise Being call it some men what they please which we call God And for our Souls immortality the seeds thereof sown in our hearts and arising now and then in every one into doubts and fears if not more must be strangely trampled on by some evil one who is willing to let self-valuation in man grow as rank as may be in any case but this of the Souls immortality when all besides it is vanity Otherwise man of himself would never so undervalue his own Original and instead of revering himself an excellent old precept of the Philosopher as if there were some petty Deity within him unman himself become in a wrong sense poor in Spirit for so we may well think that Spirit is which has its rise and essence from the flesh only sully the Word of God with his own and falsly conclude in generalities from particulars that what befalleth man befalleth beasts as the one dieth so dieth the other that they have all one breath and that man hath no preheminence above a beast All go to one place all are of the dust and all turn to dust again And some have been so afraid of living hereafter and so desirous surely of companions to die with them like Beasts that in their Writings and Arguments for their vanishing or vanity I have seen the words of the following verse misplaccd for their purpose and instead of Who knoweth the Spirit of man that goeth upward and the Spirit of beast that goeth downward to the Earth by changing that which was an affirmation of the place whither the Spirit goeth though an interrogation of the knowledge of the Spirit what it is which I say indeed is difficult into an interrogation they have set it down thus Who knoweth that the Spirit of man goeth upward c. as if allowing these words for Apocrypha God created man to be immortal and made him to be an image of his own Eternity the wise man in the following chapter where he expresly says Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the Spirit shall return unto God who gave it had quite forgot what he said before whose meaning there in comparing Man and Beast together and concluding a like end to both no sober man ever thought to extend further than their Bodies For he begins There is a time to be born and a time to die our Bodies are born as theirs are nourished as theirs feel pain like theirs and die and rot as theirs and so shall continue no doubt till it shall please God at the last day to raise them again in incorruption And therefore all provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof whether in reference to a mans self or to his posterity that wise man found and held to be vanity and acknowledgeth it in his great works and buildings in his Vineyards Gardens and Orchards in his variety of Trees and Plants in his Pools of Water in his Villains and Cattel in his Riches and Power c. And upon his review as well as at first sight confirming our Saviours question What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole World c. he agrees there was no profit under the Sun of his labour which term or words under the Sun he often uses after and gives his reason besides the vexation of Spirit to our selves while we live here we know not whether we shall leave our labour to a wise man or a fool But if he had had any thoughts of our utter extinction after death he would not immediately in the following verse after he had proposed the question Who knoweth the Spirit of a man that goeth upward c. have said Who shall bring man to see what shall be after him which supposes an existence somewhere nor have concluded his Book with the fear of God and keeping his Commandments as the whole duty and proper labour of man telling us God shall bring every work into judgment whether good or evil if all were to be finished under the Sun But these men only at present are about to ratifie and make good the only thing that Solomon found which indeed he affirms with an Ecce as nothing else so sure That God had made man upright but they had sought out many inventions Were there not a possibility of that which seems a contradiction viz. that a man may sometimes as we say cum ratione insanire none would believe that a man should strive to argue and reason himself into nothing and yet this we find to proceed from otherwise very rational men and who would be angry at peculiar seasons if we should compare them to the Beast that perish and therefore let us beg of them and humbly intreat them to become fools with us and to consider and think whether so much as Desire of the remembrance and good opinion of others can be fixed and inherent in a material earthly substance necessarily and certainly to vanish again
of Affections and call them by name Desire Joy Fear Grief Sorrow Love Anger Hatred Malice Enmity Strife Debate Frowardness Peevishness Curiosity Indignation Revenge Cruelty Lust Luxury Jealousie Pride Boasting Vainglory Ambition Envy Emulation Detraction Contempt Impudence Admiration Covetousness Miserableness Parsimony Care Doubt Desperation Lamentation Amazement Pensiveness Sadness Distrust Anxiety Shame and many others Now herein we often give several names to one and the same Affection according to its degree in working or the subject matter upon which or from which it worketh We have Pusillanimity Timorousness Dastardliness Cowardliness Fear Amazement Dread and Terrour as well as the Latines have metus formido timor pavor tremor terror horror exanimatio and we have Love Fondness and Lust as well as they have amor dilectio libido and we have Anger Wrath Fury as well as they have ira excandescentia furor and we have Sorrow Grief Pensiveness Mourning as well as they have dolor moeror aerumna luctus the first of which last to wit dolor when they come to define they call it aegritudo crucians the second aegritudo flebilis the third aegritudo laboriosa and the fourth aegritudo ex ejus qui carus fuerit interitu acerbo and all is but Sorrow Now besides that some of the aforementioned words denominating our passions may be taken in a good sence as Love Fear Sorrow Joy Indignation Care c. so may we reckon up and adorn the Affections on the contrary part with as many commendable and well-sounding words which are as proper and peculiar for them as the other as Charity Peace Gentleness Calmness Meekness Purity Benevolence Alacrity Chearfulness Constancy Courage Valour Pity Compassion Tenderness Humility Caution Frugality Liberality Mercy Modesty Sobriety Content Comfort c. And I think our so accounted Divine and Moral Virtues are no more than well tuned Affections or germins springing from them by native Reason and the superaddition of Grace And where either the one or the other is wanting the result from them is very harsh and grating and of an evil sound I will for instance pick one out of the former sort of a sound most abominated and detested the term we fix upon the Devil as a thing inherent most proper and peculiar in him and that is Envy The word it self is of no original evil signification the Latine expresses it best from whence we derive ours invidia is from in videre to pry or look into the estate being or condition of another creature Now if from this looking into we conclude him happy and are pleased with it that is Joy and I think a good Joy of the mind if from our insight we conclude him unhappy and miserable and we are any whit displeased or troubled at it that is Pity or Compassion and I think that good too and a true fruit of Love and Charity which Tree of Love flourishes the better by that dropping or excrescence from it But if we either sorrow at the apprehension of another's happiness which effect hath with us appropriated the word Envy to it self or rejoyce at the apprehension of his unhappiness which we may call malum mentis gaudium then is our affection wrong-tuned and evil yet all terminates in joy or sorrow and sorrow is indeed but a privation of joy and those other many words are Coins made by us to express our selves in For Hatred Malice or the like I cannot apprehend there is any such thing as either in Nature that is subsisting by it self separate and diverse from other passions that which we call Malice or Hatred is but an evil desire or wish tending to the weakning or depressing or removing that object which we imagine obstructs the joy or comfort we would have or should arise from the excessive evil Love of our selves or others And for Anger which always has for his object to work upon something or other offensive 't is defined but ulciscendi libido a desire of revenge and according to the height of that act unless where it lights on inanimate things and so accounted Folly it may be termed Hard-heartedness Oppression Cruelty or the like SECT III. Of the rise of the Affections COncerning the rise of our passions or affections my thoughts and conjectures at present are these That there naturally is in every thing and every creature but especially out of its place some secret hidden appetite desire endeavour propension proclivity inclination tendence or motion called which you will to some place of rest quiet or good but often receives lets or impediments in that its tendence And the Soul of man being an emanation from a Divine Essence and God as I may say being the Center to which naturally it tends until it come to that beatifick vision it cannot be at rest Now a rational Soul naturally working by Love and Joy in its fruition for want of that fruition necessarily and by consequence Desires and Sorrows so as I do think Love and Joy Desire and Sorrow to be of the Essence of a Soul wholly disjoyned from a Body and rational acts of it not properly passions but when the Soul works in that manner through a Body then are they called passions Now the Soul conjoyned to a Body may have yet notwithstanding some love purely intellectual and rational by some reflexion and drawing in some amiableness as through the imagination though it cannot fully by the imagination reach the proper object of love to it self and this may be upon some consideration a proper and peculiar act of an Humane Soul as I have said of some infinite power goodness and wisdom in the creation and preservation of the Universe of which it is a minute particle And certainly the Soul of man may be discerned now and then to act in the Body as if it were out of the Body summoning its powers and drawing its forces together from some tending affection as if it were about to take its flight ravish it self from the Body lay aside its senses for a time and have no manner of commerce with them but did see with other eyes and seem to it self for a while as disjoyned from a Body Which kind of motion has undoubtedly been selt as I may say and observed by some in a pleasant healthful state and more especially after waking from quiet rest These gracious kind of prospects of the Soul are cause sufficient to make any man cry out with St. Paul cupio dissolvi c. but these kind of extasies are short and rare and the Soul is straightways forced to a return and act again as usually in and through a Body Now were it granted that no affection can move but from the imagination and that sense is the general Port and entrance into the imagination which thing at present I cannot grant but believe the imagination may receive some stroke from that thing which I call a pure intellectual rational love of which I shall have fitter
any of the four things mentioned by Agur and I may confidently speak in the words of Solomon to any such diver As thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit nor how the bones do grow in the womb so thou knowest not the work of God who maketh all 'T is not a thing I dare undertake to discover nor a thing I have absolutely desired to know But only to quiet and satisfie my self I have endeavoured to make some little search or enquiry which of the faculties of the Soul may seem a visum est only primary or most potent in operation not which in truth are for that shall never man certainly define And therefore let no man till he be able to find out himself the circulation of the Soul and the origine of that circulation and be assured to convince others in reason of that his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 blame me of sloth or ignorance but allow me something of intellect if it be but in finding out my own defect therein And yet because I am willing in some degree to satisfie my self and others too but not wade herein further than some light from Scripture which I believe to be the true proper light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world may seem to direct and mark out I shall set down somewhat of my thoughts concerning the priority precedency or prevalency in the faculties of the Soul one before or above another Whereabout though I may seem to dissent from the received opinion and learning of the World and therein be exploded by some yet I trust and hope I shall in no wise wrench or screw that Sacred Word for my purpose nor much swerve from the true and genuine meaning of that which I alledge to be the principal if not the only ground of my opinion I am not able to find out any great ground of contest to arise between any faculties of the Soul for priority or precedency that is any dispute or question thereabout unless between the Imagination and the Affections barely Now that which we call the Imagination or cogitation in the Soul of man we find to be an unconstant fluttering as well as a restless faculty which at no time can be found settled or made to fix long nay much or often upon any one single object unless some affection do first seem to draw it and set it on work and in a manner fasten it as its attendant for a time though then also it have some momentary flyings out and extravagancies And though it be a thing undeniable that the imagination may often move or rouze some affection which was quiet before yet it is a thing as undeniable that the imagination or cogitation never created or made any affection more than any affection ever created that for we must agree they are contemporary in the Soul and so neither hath the precedency But yet where one seems to work more often in obedience and to some ends and designs or safe lodging or pleasing of another we may allow that other some kind of excellency and so priority And this I am ready to afford to some affection lodged in the center of the Body or innermost place of recess for the Soul there secretly fixed by its Creator with some reason to direct and guide as well as imagination to whet it Indeed the imagination and the affections when they are orderly or regularly working if not at all times and seasons do whet and as it were give edge to each other but surely as the Love of God far exceeds the thoughts of him so the Soul being an emanation at first from that Spirit of Love Love of him may be said to be a cause of thoughts of him and that if the Soul were not naturally capable to love and tend some whither we could not so much as think Sense must be agreed while we live in the Body to be the chief though not the only inlet or Port to the Soul and that every object by and through sense has some touch in its entrance upon the imagination or else we shall make a strange Chimaera of the Soul But not barely resting upon sense we may allow some prior inherent quality upon which by sense the imagination may seem attendant and in subjection to And though at some times the imagination do appear as the usher of the affections yet the least affection once kindled and something there must be allowed to be kindled whether of it self bursting out into flame or however inflamed or kindled will often hale the thoughts to the object without any farther help of sense But many things are presented to the imagination by sense upon which no affection seems to stir or move that we are able to discern and thereupon we may allow the imagination's work or motion to be chiefly from something occult whatever use it sometimes makes of sense to which it is or may be in subjection and not prior but rather posterior SECT II. That it seems to be in the Affections rather then any other from Scripture THere is a common saying how true I know not that life is first and last in that part of man's Body which we call the Heart and it is generally agreed and believed and I find no reason to dissent much from that opinion that there is the principal seat of the affections and that That is the Cell wherein they chiefly move and work Now nothing is so much called upon in Scripture as the Affections nor any part of man's Body so often named as the Heart the chief and principal seat thereof as if that part were taken for the whole and the content for the contained and whole man Soul and Body were included in that one word Heart and no act or thought of man were significant without affection or did arise or work but from an affection I shall not in this place going about to shew some peculiar prerogative the affections seem to have over the other faculties of the Soul scrape up together and cite the multitude of Texts wherein God by his Prophets and Apostles seems to strike only at the root of the affections the Heart and call upon that particularly to be given him or inclined or bent towards him they are obvious enough and I believe a thousand such are readily to be found But I shall only mention some peculiar places occurring at present to my thoughts which seem to allow not only a native or dative power in the affections over the whole intellective faculty whether Imagination Memory or Reason but also some primary influence which they have upon them all or as if the other faculties had their rise or spring from them Thus generally whensoever the intellect is mentioned in Scripture it is coupled with the seat of the affections and taken for them as if from thence it rose and had its influence For if the very imagination had any motion of it self or by sense
course They are these passions which metamorphose a man into a furious Beast 'T is they which are able to destroy that best faculty or light of the Soul Reason and therefore Solomon's maxim is to be observed above any Custodi cor But Reason was never yet found of ability to destroy or wholly mortifie any one passion It may somewhat from Divine assistance regulate or calm lead or direct but if it should wholly destroy the affections as some have pretended to do by it it would prove in the condition of a Prince without Subjects that is indeed no Prince or Governour at all but we find the Subjects able sometimes for want of his vigilancy to destroy their Sovereign and set up a strange confused Anarchy amongst themselves Whatever faculty of the Soul we may give precedency to we sometimes too sensibly find the strength and power of our passions For besides that they are able to destroy one another and that love or hatred can drive away fear and fear is able sometimes to suppress love or hatred so as it seems more difficult to determine which of the passions are strongest then it would be of those things Darius his Guard disputed about while he was asleep They are all strong and either of them is of power enough oft-times to make us destroy our selves or at least neglect our selves and work more hurt to our Bodies than any other faculties of the Soul whatsoever Reason never destroyed any man the imagination might help to do it but never did it of it self but sorrow has done it if we believe the wise Son of Syrach And this common experience will tell every man who lives and is not yet destroyed that the slightest of the passions is able to keep us waking by its proper strength when the imagination were it not for some affection would let us sleep By the strength of that only I mean the imagination we seldom so much as awake from our sleep unless by some terrible presentment it do irritate the affections and then they are the cause and not the imagination and if we do awake thereupon Reason forthwith shews us the folly of our imagination and our affections become quiet But when they have their rise from sense more peculiarly than from the imagination then is the combate dubious they then go on in their rebellion and there is no mastery to be obtained over them by power but by fraud as it were The Will they outlaw which was ordained the subject of Reason and that necessarily carries with it the Organs of the Body as its ministers The aim of the Will may be good in general but that is not of power to distinguish between reality and apparency of good neither good the end nor virtues the way to that end have any corporal shape and therefore cannot be shewed as so to the senses whereby the affections might be reclaimed and made to fix upon any real good Besides Sense is only judge of present things Reason of future as well as present the imagination is somewhat capable of both And therefore if ever the affections become fixed on a real good 't is not that they are mastered but that next and immediately under God's special Grace often leading and directing them they are deceived into good hoodwink'd a little from sense and caught as it were by a wile or stratagem The imagination is slily drawn away from taking part with them and somewhat of real good is first from Reason as it were darted into the imagination and by the imagination conveyed unto them Affections being native visibly working in us as soon as we are born without controul for a long while unless ab extra as we say and no Reason to govern till they have encamped and fortified themselves the wise man might well say He that ruleth them is better than he that ruleth a City The City where they inhabit is a deceitful place many Caves and Vaults in it for them to lurk in we find it but too true when we enter into it and search it and think we have wholly won it We may well wish that Ieremy were a false Prophet and somewhat deceived himself in telling us it is deceitful above all things and therefore we have a hard task to make those Citizens there good Subjects and fit for another City whose maker and builder is God If ever they prove so they must be dealt withall like as with men wedded to their affections as we term them proverbially and as they are usually dealt withall that is allured and led not thrust and driven they are too stubborn to move that way SECT V. That some Affection is the substantial part of the Soul I Have thought and do think and believe which is somewhat more then a thought it is a thought with the concurrence approbation and allowance of ones Reason that the Soul of man is immortal and that the very Essence or substantial part of an Humane Soul disrobed of a Body or subsisting of it self is some restless working however at some times invisible affection and that if those more noble faculties of our Soul next and immediately under that bright heavenly Star are the Pilots to conduct us unto rest some affection as it seems to me is the chief Passenger in this frail and weak Vessel of the flesh St. Paul in that admirable Encomium of his of Charity tells us that it abides when many other gifts fail And if we shall know as we are known as he tells us in another place there will be then little use of the Invention Memory Reason or the like which are but the Handmaids to knowledge Neither can I rationally imagine after return of the Soul to its place of rest or for default thereof in its banishment to everlasting wandring any use of other faculties than the affections unless towards the exalting or heightning them in their several degrees whether love and joy on the one side or sorrow fear c. on the other The Soul of man being an emanation from that Divine love must necessarily partake of it love and not able at present by any natural light it has to reach unto it self its proper object lays hold on any thing rather than seem to vanish or be extinct and withall that it happens to have such several inclinations in man while it is here is surely by reason of some false imaginary light or the want of a true one and that we want both power and skill in the setting or tuning some strings of the affections as I may call them And 't is want of a clear inspect into our nature and frame that we become as David speaks a stubborn generation a generation that set not their hearts aright and whose Spirit cleaveth not stedfastly to God And I do further believe that all the faculties strength and power of the Soul which we have are given us towards the performance of that
first and great Commandment Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy Soul and with all thy mind The whole Soul beside seems naturally subservient if not subsequent to the affections motion and the motion of the Soul would be strange without them and not imaginable they being as necessary as they are useful And therefore I think we may as well cease to be by our own power as cease to affect and they who have gone furthest or most covertly herein have in going about to hide some particular affections shewed others more visibly and for the covering of their joy or sorrow fear or anger or the like have set up for predominant in their Soul a seeming contempt of all things which is an affection it self and for ought I know as subject to be faulty as any For surely the Soul may seem no less glorious in its march with all its parts and retinue than some of them provided it marches the right way and each faculty help and assist and not go about to destroy each other SECT VI. How the Affections move from the Imagination or otherwise IT does seem to me as I have said that the affections or some or one of them we properly so call are or is the chief inhabitant in this our Body from which or from whence there is or proceeds motion and operation voluntary Now if the Imagination be granted to be that glass in the Soul from whose reflexion they only move which for the present let us grant then do I conceive that glass may receive its light which it casts on them three manner of ways 1. By Sense 2. By Reason 3. By Divine Revelation immediately by God or mediately by his Word From the two first the imagination shews unto the affections this present visible World only but yet after divers manners From the third it shews them another World which sight from this last as it is more glorious so it is here more rare and men that once obtain it have their affections so fixed by it that they seldom quite turn away or utterly lose it 'T is that which I humbly conceive the Author to the Hebrews speaks of with a kind of impossibility of retrieving or renewing it if once men wilfully turn away from it Being says he once enlightned and having tasted of the heavenly gift and made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the World to come if these fall away c. Then immediately after he uses this expression But beloved we are perswaded better things of you and things that accompany salvation though we thus speak for God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love which you have shewed towards his name in that you have ministred to the Saints and do minister As if whatsoever light we had or whencesoever it came Love were the worker and labourer in our Harvest but of this I intended not to speak 't is a subject very unfit for me to handle God is gracious and merciful and as I am not able to depaint that light so it behoves me not to limit his power no not in my thoughts But how our affections move from that first or second light is my intended enquiry at present From this second kind of light viz. that of Reason by reflex from the imagination the present World is shewed to the affections with all its vanities whatsoever the certain period of man and all things else in it the falsity and mutability of it the futility of the love of it or care for it And from the reflex of this light though the affections are sometimes cooled towards the World and bent and inclined somewhat towards some greater and more perfect good yet finding it not they often suddenly fall away again and know not where to fix By reflex from the first light that of sense only the World is seen as Beasts see it for fleshly delights and for support and maintenance of the Body but with this difference between us and them that their Souls being of a bodily extract and terrestrial their affections move no further than in reference to some present utility of the things of the World for the Body Ours are coelestial and of continuance for ever yet necessitated in respect of the Body and for its sustentation to make use of this light from sense The concupiscible part of the Soul being first and most often moved from this light before Reason appears and shews her self aud yet never fully satisfied with any present thing it enjoys although it often receives its checks from reflex of that second light if it be not graciously restrained by the third and led to take some hold on that good wherewith it may be somewhat satiate in hope it grasps at innumerable things neither useful to Soul or Body shews only it is not terrestrial and yet withall that it is capable to lose in future its title and signature of coelestial SECT VII What light the Imagination receives from Reason and the weakness of Reason THe second way by which light is communicated to the Imagination and from thence reflected on the Affections is as I have said Reason which is the proper light and guide of an Humane Soul and by which it doth discover the vanity of this World But it is not the least wonder in Nature that after this light begins with any brightness to shine forth in Man never so little withdrawn from the noise and business of the World and in conjunction with sense for its assistance doth give him such a clear prospect of its vanity that a contempt of all its superfluous unnecessaries is raised in the heart and his affections are so far diverted for the present from it that a full and somewhat settled resolution is begot there not to let them possess that place any more That that man shall yet forthwith from a little pageantry here presented by the Eye or Ear have his imagination wheel about again and by consequence his affections as fast rivetted to the World as ever Surely there needs must be some Spirit or powerful Prince of the Air that does bewitch every rational man how else were it possible almost that such an one discerning his folly and madness by a far clearer and more excellent light than that which caused them shall again often return in despite of it to act over his folly and madness which he himself had condemned and his affections rejected If there were not the very light of Reason would prove sufficient so far to extinguish and dazle any weaker light that the affections might be held and kept within some ordinary bounds and limits But then withall we have ground to believe and as sure it is that when we find our sight from Reason thus strangely baffled and made as it were subject to a weaker light there yet remains and must be some
greater infinite power above that Prince of the Air who gave us our light of Reason and from whom we may expect support one who is able to strengthen his first heavenly gift by a second and if Reason it self be not Armour sufficient proof against the World or the Prince of this World where we now live there is somewhat to be asked and given that may be so which I shall speak of hereafter in due place I am at present in quest of Reason only that inherent Eye or light of the Soul of what use that may be towards our happiness or bliss Why truly unless it smooth out some way for the current of our affections and a little turn the stream of them it may prove in the latter end to have the quality Solomon attributes to knowledge increase our sorrow Be it never so great or shine never so bright Satan will allow it us and matters not though it be always imployed on Heaven so our affections be imployed on the World or at best only kept in that they move or search no whither beside it He knows well that for men to chain up or to condemn them to imprisonment within the Body is impossible When once from the light of Reason and its influence on mans Soul the affections shall become like a Water at full Tide seeming to move neither way if they return not to the Ocean they will be sure from so many Springs feeding them from Land to break in again upon that If Reason be but able so much as to give some stroke to the affections as I have touched in the definition of Conscience and doubtless every man has in some measure felt it then certainly 't is an earnest of some greater light which that Prince of the Air endeavours by all means to have hid from us And that the one may never lead us or direct us to the other whereby our affections might work another way and he be deceived of his hold he is willing we should believe that this our best native light Reason is but a pure emanation from the Body which if so how can we ever expect any other And 't is no slight artifice of his that he has brought us now-a-days to impute every sober serious thought arising in the Soul every check upon the affections every quid feci as Ieremy expresses it towards a return to some temperature of the Body and call it Melancholy and herein he has got the assistance of some of our bodily Physicians to attribute a little too much to that Mine wherein they dig their Oar. I would fain know what affinity there is between the thoughts of Judgment Justice Mercy or another World and the Body If I could find it I should then think the wiser sorts of Animals had such thoughts and could be melancholick too How the Body first espied any such thing with its Eyes is strange to me It is not the Body but Reason the off-spring from above and usher of some greater light that is of ability to behold some things future and when from the light of Reason the Soul shall stand for a while at amaze to behold what a thorny labyrinth she is got into whatever Flowers may grow in it knows not for the present which way best to move but desires direction from above in all her motions to attribute this to the Bodies temperature what ground have we Never let us seek for the Hellebore now in fashion for a cure If Reason be the Beam that which men call Melancholy will prove as steady a Hand to weigh things present and future in the Scales as any Airy temper in the Soul they call Sanguine And while Reason is in the Enquest it will neither hurt the Soul or Body but in some measure take an equal care of the one and of the other We might as well and upon as firm grounds impute every disease in the Body whatsoever to some impression of the Soul upon it as every motion or mutation of the Soul to some temperature or change in the Body There is no doubt some reciprocal operation between them and as they confess some diseases to have their origine from some passion in the Soul and yet not all or most diseases so shall I readily acknowledge that the Soul works many times diversly and in different form and manner in the Body according to divers lets and rubs it meets with there is brighter or dimmer according to the subject matter it works in and this without derogation from its Sovereignty or Immortality more then we do detract from the nature or quality of Fire when we say it gives a clearer light from Pitch than Brimstone I shall agree it is now and then dull and as it were lumpish and heavy from obstructions and whenever 't is stopped in its passage and its operation in its more noble and chief rooms and receptacles of the Body it makes its Exit I shall agree likewise that 't is tied by the Law of Nature to take thoughts and care not immoderate as well of the Body as it self and has Reasons allowance and accordance for it I am not endeavouring to bereave any man of his senses or hinder the Soul to look abroad that way or to make man expect to be fed and cloathed or healed of diseases from Heaven barely yet withall I think every defect or extravagance of the Soul every flight or turn of it is not rightly imputed to the Bodies temperature since we are able to discern its strange mutations and changes on the sudden even in a moment without any alteration of the Body or any seeming help of Sense and if it were possible to keep the Body always in one state condition and frame and deprive the Soul from all intromission of sense for a time Reason might consider its present and future being Yet 't is very requisite the Soul should move here as well by Sense as by Reason or any other light He who thinks he has it ravish'd from the Body here has it converted from a Pilgrim and Traveller to a Vagrant and a Wanderer And such there are too many who by the help of Satan would imagine themselves out of the Body while they are in it Extinguish their light of Reason and Sense too together sometimes by a new Light the World shall never be able to define nor say whence it arises unless from that Lake of Fire which has the title too of utter darkness 'T is not a little withdrawing of the Soul or consideration how it should or ought to act in the Body with the Body but this strange imaginary roving flight of it is that which may properly assume the attribute or title of Melancholly This is it surely in a literal derivation that is the suggestion or inspiration of some Black Fury SECT VIII The excellency and advantage of Reason and yet its inability and dependance REason in man may justly challenge the dignity and
those whom we shall scarce meet with in company but we shall receive a challenge from As to the first I have said somewhat but properly to hold a dispute against him we cannot either we must deny his premisses which we are unwilling wholly to do or else we must necessarily grant him his conclusion For the other so much a Sadducee as not to believe Angel or Spirit other than his own if that and resolving to believe nothing without a plain demonstration We must not provoking that spirit of his of which he thinks himself the only master and we think he is therein deceived answer him at his own weapon reason and indeed we have none other as of our selves and argue with him in calm manner if at all not philosophically not Aristotelically but as rationally and as plainly and as perswasively as we can or are able leaving the success to the guidance of that good spirit in which we our selves already believe 'T is a strange thing a man should admit of any ordinary inference or any indifferent argument à probabili as we say to satisfy his reason and raise a belief in any case but that which is of greatest concern to him the belief whereof would only do him good and which could not if upon a false ground possibly prejudice him or do him hurt If I should begin to talk of the nature of the elements how each several one as we divide them hath in it some latent quality or virtue of the other And that some particular species of one participates so much with or is of such cognation as we may say with the other that from some little reflexion or light from that other it shall in a manner change its quality and seem to be quite another thing than what it was And then tell one of these kind of men some such strange story of Naptha as Plutarch do's A kind of a sulphureous fattish soil to be found which taken out of the body of the earth and brought to light shall forthwith at a great distance from any fire take flame from thence and become of the nature of fire it self consuming every thing about it there is little doubt but I might without demonstration to sense obtain credit therein Now since we cannot make out that our soul conscious of its being and capable to enquire after the nature or original of its own and other beings is the bare product of flesh and blood or that it can be actuated from thence towards these kind of enquiries Why should not these men as readily believe that there is some spirit or intellectual mind far above our own from whence our own receives some influence or agitation and by which it is disposed ordered or governed I dare appeal to the secrets of any one of these mens hearts their conscience if they please to allow of that term Whether or no if I should have done him some great or grievous injury such as after all ineffectual indeavour of revenge should lye heavy upon his spirit or leave a sting there he should not by a kind of secret wish seem to invocate for we will not imagine he has so much of the Christian Tenet in him yet as wholly to forgive all offences and return good for evil some Nemesis or resort to some secret revenger of evil to punish my injustice towards him On the other side should I bestow so many gifts heap so much kindness and do so many good turns to that man as after all indeavours of requital in point of gratitude he should find he were in no wise able to make me sufficient recompence or amends he should not by a like secret wish invocate some good power above his own for a reward upon me If in either of these cases he thinks he should so do or upon examination of himself finds he has at any time so done in like cases then surely he naturally as I may say believes that which in word he denies viz. That there is some spirit above our own for if he verily believed from his heart there were no such thing as some all-knowing all-powerful and all-sufficient spirit a just rewarder of good and evil superintendent over us it were the most ridiculous thing imaginable for him barely to wish nay he could not wish me good or evil But if he has unawares by his own spirit recourse to some invisible power why should he not confess which he often swears by unawares too that there is a God Now though it may seem here from the present purpose give me leave to say in this place that it is some confirmation of my opinion in relation to the soul of brutes proceeding barely from their blood and vanishing therewith which thing I mean to insist upon more at large in some other discourse that it makes no foreign appeal in any case nor uses any weapon but bodily I do here think that God may punish us for the abuse of brute creatures and that their blood may seem to cry for vengeance but it cries only silently not intentionally from them For although we do really perceive a kind of gratitude as well as revenge in many creatures besides man yet we cannot observe no nor suspect upon just ground any recourse they have in prosecution of their love or anger to any superior power above themselves I do not think my Spaniel ever wished me good or evil if I could conjecture there were imprecatory thoughts in any creature save man and the weakest of men has them I should forthwith renounce and recant my present opinion of the annihilation of their spirit after death For if that spirit of theirs can wander out of the body any other ways than directly by sense it certainly neither vanishes with the body nor can be said to be mortal There are many such like cases as aforementioned of some strange foreign work in the soul of man which have occurred to my mind sufficient as I thought to convince any Atheist of the falsity of his assertions in point of the original of all things and the government or guidance of all visible creatures more especially our selves But lest I seem guilty of what I condemned in my former Epistle I shall forbear to insist thereupon and leave all to that attribute that superabundant stream flowing from the Deity and which is over all its works its mercy and loving kindness towards man And however any of us think or believe either of our selves or ought else in relation to our selves for the present it can be no uncharitable wish or desire no nor foolish one I hope that before we cease to be as we are that is have finished the race of all flesh we may so think and act as that at the end of that race we miss not of eternal rest body and spirit But if these two kinds of men amongst us I have often thought could be brought to some moderation shall I say to a
seats and cells fit for its proper work and operation towards the conservation of that body whereof it is a more refined part as necessary and requisite thereto and without which we cannot so much as imagine it were capable to have duration and continuance in that form it is But yet withal no ways comprehending or desiring any matter or thing further than in relation to the sustentation or preservation of the same body And therefore for such a Soul or Spirit to perish with the body and to resolve again into its first elements is not altogether incongruous to our reason And we may I think further conjecture in reason that though for his pleasure all things are and were created Yet he being worthy to receive glory and honour voluntary from some terrestrial creature For whose sake next and immediately after his own Glory and Honour it may seem to us all others were made He might endow the most excellent of his terrestrial creatures us men with such a spirit as might not only have some glimmering light of him here but might have continuance to magnify him for ever when the Earth and Heavens should be no more Yet herein again I must acknowledge that the thoughts of the immortality of our soul are more apt and ready to encounter and stagger our reason than the mortality or vanishing of that of Brutes Since we are not able with reason to imagine but that as I have already said in my Treatise de Anima whatsoever thing had a beginning may or will have an end and that there is nothing Eternal but God alone the Maker and Creator of all things out of nothing And therefore there is no perfect Medicine to cure those reeling cogitations of ours about our immortality but Gods promise in his Holy Word with his special grace to believe it to be his Word Nor any thing else to strengthen us therein more than some specifick and not barely gradual difference to be found out and espied between our Spirit and that of Beasts That is some acts or thoughts of man even extra-corporeal or peculiar to a soul or Spirit wholly separate and disjoined from a body and which indeed are no ways discernable in the wisest Animal whereof I have made some mention in my Treatise de Anima and which seriously and duely weighed and considered I leave to the World to judge of and shall repeat nothing of it here in relation to our present subject only or chiefly now inquiring about their Mortality or Immortality without questioning our own There are indeed many and various different kinds of operation between the soul of Beast and that of us in many things as not only sufficiently distinguish us without appropriating to our selves and wholly ingrossing the word rational but seem plainly to demonstrate their Soul rather essential with the Body and a peculiar substance of the body than ours and therefore more probably terminating in and with the body some whereof having now and then occurred to my thoughts and drawn my reason to accept and allow thereof I here present you and submit the weight and consequent thereof to your more serious or solid judgement though they have already somewhat prevailed over mine to conclude the Spirit of Beast though an admirable work in nature to be a thing only temporary and fading or mortal There is in all living Creatures whatever not humane either immediately upon their first being and motion or so soon as there is any vigorous bodily strength for motion a perfect clear and evident apparency of that intellect they at any time have or enjoy as a special present attendant of their being and subsistence And whatever Adages we have of a cunning old Fox or proverbial interdiction of catching old Birds with chaff I could never yet discern but that the young Fox or the young Hawk had the same compleat stratagems to preserve themselves as the old and that if they sooner fall as a prey to the Dog 't is want of strength rather then subtilty The Kitling sure needs no instruction to catch a Mouse with a kind of cunning watchfulness as soon as it hath strength and the young Bird makes her nest with as much curious art as the old one And what is somewhat wonderful most creatures at their first production into the world are able to distinguish sounds and capable to understand the very language of their kind I have observed a very young Lamb to distinguish the bleating of its Dam from twenty other doing the like almost at the same instant and to move at her bleat only and not otherwise 'T is observable in Fowls and I have taken more special notice of it in the Turky that whereas they use three or four several notes or tones to their young ones one of allurement for food another of attraction for covering with their wings a third for progression or motion along with them when they move a fourth of admiration and wonder or warning to preserve themselves upon apprehension of danger and approach of Birds of prey they have within an hour or two after they have been brought forth apprehended the differences of these several tones and readily observed the old one's dictates Especially it would almost amaze one to behold these little things of an hour or two old upon that alarm of danger how instantly they will couch down and approach the next covert to hide themselves Nay many of these Creatures need little of document from their Parents or Dams or yet our Mistress experience there being in them a Native intellectual perception as I may say of every special and more peculiar destructive nature or quality towards them in as much as we may observe Birds taken out of the Nest never so young and bred up in a Cage shall upon the first sight of an Hawk or other Bird of Prey brought into the room presently by their fluttering and otherwise discover a kind of knowledge of some approaching danger or adstant peril which upon the sight of any other Fowl or Beast they will not Whereas most probably or undoubtedly rather to a man brought up in a Have or otherwise never beholding before any creature save humane A Lyon and a Calf would prove equally terrible upon their first approach And whereas there are many Herbs Plants and Insects too of a poysonous nature and of an absolute destructive quality to Man and Beast if received into the body for food What creature is there to be found young or old except man not able by sense or otherwise to distinguish between what is agreeable and what destructive to his nature and will at all times most certainly avoid and reject the latter unless by man inserted or intermixt with some food agreeable to its nature We see many of these brute creatures even Physicians to themselves and all of them naturally avoiding such of the Elements as are destructive to them Let a Duck hatch Chickens trial whereof
has been made and no allurement or invitation she can make shall draw them into the water An Element equally destructive to our nature and yet from which we are often inforced to use some care and industry to preserve our own young ones I speak all this to shew and to make it somewhat apparent and plain that that kind of Intellect which is in Animals how great soever it may seem to be is nothing else but a more curious kind of perception with sense and motion than that of Vegetables or inanimate bodies and arising in the blood or other such like thin fluid substance in Insects because as soon soever as it has its full current and motion the intellect of those creatures is at the highest unless some actions of theirs from our documents seem to make an improvement of it which in reality is no addition of intellect but the exercising a prior inherent Intellect some other way towards their acquiring food or the like But the Soul of man though chiefly seated in the blood and upon a total effusion or shedding thereof necessarily leaving the body do's not in the most florid and vigorous condition thereof and in youth so much shew it self nor is so quick in discerning things obnoxious to the body as theirs and therefore may seem rather some wonderful way inspired than to be connative and of the substance of the body for certainly a separate created Spirit though of a wonderful knowledg and apprehension as subsisting of it self yet sent into the gloomy dark vault or tabernacle of a body wants not only the introduction of species by sense as some inlet to work upon but also some considerable space of time to shew its intellectual power and vigour rather than a spirit raised in a body for the substance and government only of the same body without which speedy work in Nature to some perfection the body would not long submit in that state And therefore in the case of a first created and after infused spirit only it sometimes happens from the darkness or closeness of its mansion it has little other visible operation than the very carrying its Tabernacle about with it as I instanced in the case of an Ideot in my Treatise de Anima and yet as to its excellence and sublimity in point of its original being and intellective power were it freed and discharged of those obstructions ithas far exceeds that of the wisest Animal So as immaterial and from thence probably immortal spirits want but room to display themselves or having room want some space of time to recover and expel some mists of their present obstruction and then by gifts only break out in any lustre To will a Spirit endowed with some kind of preservative intellect to arise from a body is equally the wonderful work of an Omnipotent Power with the creation of a body and endowing the same with a spirit ab extra as I may say and no less than either to endow an inanimate body with peculiar operative Qualities or Vertues But if it be once admitted and granted that in Animals the blood is the life or that the spirit is essential with the body whereof there is some sufficient ground from the course of Nature to believe its motion and tendence regarding nothing else It will necessarily and consequently follow That the whole spirit and body how ever we divide it by particular names is subject to one and the same Fate Destiny or Period As to these spirits of ours If they were a part of and coessential with our bodies I cannot see how it were either natural or possible that there could at any time arise in the soul a desire of disunion or dissolution from that body of which it self was a part Which desire in certain humane spirits has most certainly at sometimes appeared nay often worked its desired effect Nor is it reasonable to conjecture that any thing can possibly will or endeavour its own destruction or annihilation and therefore if our Souls were of the very essence of our Bodies we must grant A man could never voluntarily or intentionally make away himself the contrary whereof is manifest As to those spirits of theirs if they were distinct or any way separable from the body and no part thereof since they labour and groan under the Creation as much or more than we and are no less subject to passions of fear and the like then at sometime or other upon some displeasure or other there would be espied a voluntary indeavour of its separation by its own act to ease it self of those flames it felt for the present But this could never be observed in any of them by any of us but alwayes such a voluntary resistance of Separation as there is usually in us unless at such times as this separable Soul of ours is ravished with Hopes and Joyes or tortured with Despairs and Fears At least if the Soul of beast were a distinct thing from the body and separable therefrom it might now and then as well as ours be observed naturally to act after such a manner as in no wise barely and simply tended towards the preservation of the same body but seeming to neglect the body were somewhat fixed for a while upon a subject matter altogether unnecessary to the bodies ease quiet or well being Now if any man could be able to satisfy me of so much as a voluntary abstinence in any creature save Man at any time from any thing which might seem to afford delectation or nourishment to the body or satiate or please the same at such instant as there was a present appetite or desire and when there was no impendent fear or other passion to obstruct so as the body might seem to be at the same instant voluntarily neglected for the pleasing or satisfaction of the mind Much more if I were able to discern any kind of motion of the spirit of beast the most subtle or wise tending out of its proper element the Flesh and the preservation thereof and exercising its passions about qualities or accidents as to love Justice or Mercy to fear ignominy or contempt to desire to know or the like whereby it might seem to be capable of or merit a future reward or punishment and be a just subject thereof for nothing uncapable to act voluntarily beyond the preservation of it self can so be I should then be inclinable to think that there is rather a continuation and some transmigration of that Soul than any evaporation thereof and vanishing into the soft air or a reduction thereof into Earth with the body But besides what has been alledged and some places of holy Scripture which might be alledged seeming to give a period to the soul or spirit of beast together with the body It will be difficult for our imagination so long as we have any reason left to go along with it aid or assist it or else but correct it to assign a place for the
them thereby and that is a good effect if it happen of such a search as well as a ground for search I neither foresaw or conjectured any advantage likely to happen or any ease or quiet to be framed and raised in my own or any other Soul from an inquiry or search into that of Beast unless to keep us from mounting too high with our rationality We find little difference upon the first view between our selves and them in our frame unless that our Building is weaker than theirs and from a number of Causes more subject to corruption than theirs and our very Intellect as to the upholding or preservation of that Building exceeds not the Intellect of many Creatures nay comes far short of that of some And as to the Ports and entrances to it sense they generally far exceed us But after we have made some search perhaps we shall wonder at both and yet cannot but think and conclude our own to be of a more noble and celestial extract and therefore permanent and that in this thing only That we find it capable to search into the Nature and Original of others which certainly no other Creature ever did or can do into ours Out of meer curious speculation or to be accounted Wise or Learned I can safely or with a good Conscience declare unto you I never searched into or about the Soul of Beast but have ever held the opinion of the wise Son of Syrack without wholly borrowing it from him good counsel and here set it down to you in his own words because I cannot deliver it so well in any of my own What God hath commanded thee think upon with reverence and be not curious in any of his Works for it is not needful for thee to see with thine eyes the things that are secret Be not curious in superfluous things for many things are shewed unto thee above the capacity of men the medling with such hath beguiled many and an evil opinion hath deceived their judgement Which I wish all men did esteem as good and sound Counsel as I do my self As to any indeavour to impose my belief on others in so dubious a matter it do's not appear by what I have set down that I have so done I was not over earnest or eager in it I delivered nothing before as altogether indubitable neither do I now further than it receives the confirmation of God's word by me truly cited Nay I cannot rationally expect many Converts because to have such an effect wrought from human writing there is requisite an infallible demonstration such as may work upon mens Senses and Reason together at the same time which would prove a difficult matter in a discourse of a Soul 's Original whether of praeexistent matter or not I think we do well in such discourses as these or of this Nature if we deliver our selves or thoughts in such probable arguments as that when others first behold them by their proper Intellect there appear so much of seeming bulk at least in them that it causes those others to vouchsafe to weigh them by their own Reason and what I take to be our care and duty further is that we desire the God of truth so far as there is truth in them it may appear and be accepted of others and so received into their Belief which Rule I hope I have not transgressed EPIST. V. Wherein he further illustrates the inherent or native Power and predominancy of the affections above other faculties of the Soul but more particularly treats of the Imagination its deception its supplying the place of Reason in us our miseries thereby and the remedies against its Delusion THE Imagination or invention is reckoned by some as part of the Intellect and so a more noble faculty of the Soul And being placed in so high an Orb it is then apt to contemn the affections ranking them with those of Brutes because perhaps it hath rendred them a like disposed and inclined as they Wherein it may be resembled to some Steward that having helped to debauch his Lord and Master presently thinks the whole power as well as superintendency to rest solely in himself But how high soever the Imagination may mount in conceit yet Reason doth often correct it and discovers that some Affection how covertly latently or disguisedly soever doth set it on work and when it is roving and soaring throws out some lure that draws it down again Man indeed is not generally prone and ready to espy the predominancy of his own Affections above his Intellect but it is evident in the observation we make upon others In dealing with whom the first and chief enquiry is usually not what he is capable to apprehend or judge of the case but how he is or probably may stand affected whence it comes to pass that it is almost the constant evil fate of Princes and great men to have so much of food or Physick administred to that part of the Soul beyond any other as if it were granted on all hands that the Affections were the powerful part of the Soul and the Intellect but an ignis fatuus drove along before them a weak light at best and such as might be easily obscured So true is it that how noble faculties soever Reason and Invention c. are and how truly soever they move and point yet they are mostly set on work and as it were directed in their course by things of an inferiour Nature being herein like a curious Clock whose motion is carried on by the force of Leaden weights And it is to be feared that without some such kind of metal first drawing the lines of our affections there would remain a very faint kind of motion in the intellectual faculties and we should have amongst us very few Famous Divines Physicians or Lawyers but had need be all naturally pious heathful and peaceable I would fain have any one shew me how he so much as happens unless through some special Motion from above to think on good or discern or judge of it without some kind of affection as it were moving or strugling within or what his other faculties would work for if his Affections were laid aside or discarded what would they gratify and please since themselves they cannot unless in conjunction with other for they are in the Soul like the nobler parts in the Body void of sense yet feeding the craving appetite of more sensible parts by which we apparently move Plato I think not improperly calls desire or concupiscence in us The Horse of the mind Whatsoever Rider may be set upon it or whatsoever reins are laid over it or whatsoever power there is that holds those reins and sometimes restrains or guides and directs that Beasts which term we sometimes put upon the Affections we may not improperly say The original of such joint or complicated Motion is from that Horse I have read of some who having had their Children taken from them
only neither can there be ease or disease pleasure or displeasure in the Soul longer than Sense affords being to such Affection and this I think to be the case of Beasts because we never see them disquieted long or above measure nor refusing any grateful Object if some disease of the body resist it not we observe not their Imagination heightened by their lust nor their lust inflamed or raised from their Imagination but at such time only as Objects offer themselves through Sense and the one abstracted the other seem to vanish And surely were our degenerate lust and affections of the same extract it were impossible for us to be hurried away to that excess of any vile or base passion as to imploy our thoughts nights and days about a meaner or more sordid Object than Sense it self usually affords every moment But Affection in us is of another extract able to desire and imbrace what Sense cannot afford our Imagination of another capacity and reach penetrable and malleable as I may say otherwise than by sensible Objects Our Will and all other our animal Faculties subject to supernatural influences and that is the reason there is such daily combat between them and sometimes such lasting agony For the Imagination rowsed and called upon as it were from divers and sundry quarters and not able through Sense to work so as to satisfie one single affection It sometimes opposes Sense and raises a thousand Chimaera's to the astonishment and amazement of it self to the conclusion and distraction of the Affections and to the disquiet of the whole Soul so as whatsoever original cause we impute elsewhere the present apparent cause of our disease we may rightly impute to the Imagination and the rectifying thereof must needs be the readiest way towards a cure which I shall endeavour to speak of in the end of my following Discourse Do we not find our Imagination allured or inticed to work from the restless strugling of some affection Do we not again find it recalled by Reason arrested by our Will wrested at length by some foreign power from subjection to either and forced to work as we observe by consequence in obedience to some eternal decree leading all the others as captives And all this while Sense one and the same in all men might seem to offer it other subject matter for its present work Do we not or may we not observe in our selves at special seasons some mounting in desire to imbrace or lay hold on somewhat above the reach of Sense And would we not our Imagination could invent or find out some such thing Is it not thereupon set on work And though it cannot fully comprehend mere insensible things by any investigation yet is able to imagin or conceive there is something more glorious more pure more perfect c. that it can conceive whereby the Affections are a little quieted for the present and rest in a kind of hope and to this Reason freely consenting there is begat a kind of faith I would fain know how it were possible our own thoughts should be set on work in relation to what others thought of us or in what state we were in the eye of any righteous all-knowing Judg or argue and weigh or will in relation thereto or be concerned or troubled thereabout with fear or dread or ioy if sense were the only inlet to the Soul I am sure it cannot hurt us at present but from our desire to know and our imagination's presentation thereupon so as what our Imagination frames must be chiefly the cause of our disquiet or disease of mind if any happen Indeed as it is sometimes the window by which Heavenly light is admitted so it often proves the Postern-door by which some evil spirit sliely enters and the Key thereof is certainly some corrupt affection It is most subject to be turned about by every wind from within and from without most subject to be deluded and delude and since our Happiness here seems to depend very much upon its work we will endeavour to treat of it here a little more particularly than we have done either of it self or in conjunction with some other faculty of the Soul Indeed the several faculties of the Soul seem not many in number yet the Soul like some instrument of very few strings is capable to render such innumerable various sounds as are able to confound us in going about to distinguish them This we own upon trial to be the admirable work of our Provident Creator and Governour and judg it impossible to set any certain rules or bounds in its manner of work or so much as to fathom or know our own Yet this I think the sweet harmony or jarring discordance in this wonderful Instrument in relation to our selves and whether it renders a sound sweet and pleasant or harsh and grating consists very much as I conceive from the high or low or even straining that one string thereof in it the Imagination The Imagination is a most strange faculty and able to confound us and put us to a stand or a maze while we reflect on it 'T is that various and sometimes false light which puts the colours of good upon evil and evil upon good 'T is that strange resounding echo to the affections that renders their cry double and louder 'T is that which called upon by one affection to its help and assistance often raises and leads with it a thousand furies to disquiet us And if we may affirm as I think we truly may that the heat of the affections sometimes causes its work so also It is that bellows which increases their natural heat double and treble and driving them from their proper Object inflames them beyond all degree and measure to their utter destruction and confusion in the end I deny not but that Imagination in man continually and necessarily working is capable to work from divers causes it is diverted or called upon and imployed by various Objects minutely through Sense as we observe How else could we remember which is but an impress left in the Imagination for any time what we daily hear and see And when those windows of the Body seem shut up 't is often imployed upon such Objects as it formerly received thereby But I cannot but think that its work generally tends to the satisfying or feeding some affection not affection of its own creating from Sense as in Beast but some affection of equal extraction with it self originally pure and undefiled but now corrupt and depraved by its work through the slie insinuation or delusion of some evil Spirit and that from Sense alone the one nor the other nor both together could create in our soul those diseases we find and I may say often see and feel above the Beasts which perish This affection in us how pure soever or howsoever debauched is the thing ever chiefly aimed at in all addresses to the Soul as I have touched already and therefore
God we may make use of with our Reason for fear of a worse inconvenience we shall scarce be able to judge otherwise of our weakness and infirmities herein but have such a true sight of them as we ought to have and make us humble not proud in Spirit I do confess we seem to have some little power over our Affections from the very light or strength of Reason in us Not to let them move one way or other in relation to objects introduced in the Soul without some kind of precedent allowance because before they fix or indeed fly as it were out of the Body towards imbracing or rejecting any thing there is a kind of Consult But the Imagination in its first motion admits of no consult nor is capable of Reason's correction till after it has moved Nay 't is so swift and sudden of motion as nothing whatsoever can rightly be compared to it in velocity and swift rise 'T is well if we can any wise stop it or change it or alter its course in the end And surely whensoever that is done it is done by or through the Affections not Strength of Reason or power in Will immediately over it Affection first a little regulated by the light of Reason and made as it were to expect some directions towards the embracing true Happiness does much help towards the correcting our Imagination But in this correction we shall find or may observe the Imaginations better and more regular motion to be rather by the allurement of some Affection than the impulse of the Will or immediate strength of Reason Neither Reason nor Will can wholly reclaim it from following or complying with Sense nor force it to work clean contrary to a present affection So as we must resign it up to some Power or Will than our own if we expect it should be guided by any such thing as what we call Power or Will III. This being premised That we have no absolute Power or Dominion over the Imagination but that as it necessarily and perpetually worketh and we cannot quiet it so it sometimes worketh against our real Will and we cannot reclaim it for who is there who willingly as I may say lets it present death of Relations Friends and other losses c. sometimes before-hand and withal in such dreadful colours as it does and that all the rein that we may be said to have hold on is only from the power which our Reason hath over our Will not to let our Affections fasten on or long embrace what is presented to them by the Imagination if so be our Reason allow it not This I say premised Let us if you please here examine how far we may become liable to Divine Justice or Humane Justice either for our Errors happening or like to happen from the work of the Imagination as principal Whereabout having many times puzled my self in relation to the manner of the Souls working you shall here have my judgment or the allowance of my weak Reason with submission to a stronger your own But here again as all along in treating of the Soul we must suppose in the motion of any one faculty no other Principal faculty is wholly exempt and secluded but has some kind of seeming consequent motion with it As is observable in our very Dreams wherein men do not only imagine but seem at least to affect seem to argue and weigh and seem to will Nay some in pursuance thereof have bodily motion they talk they arise they walk c. For if the Imagination were not attended with those other faculties or did or could at any time work alone or singly of it self I should readily acquit it in most if not all cases as blameless Now then thus I think whatsoever false or naughty or vitious presentment of the Imagination that is a first entertainment in our thoughts what seems contrary to Gods revealed will or that law of his imprinted in our minds if search and inquiry were made is gratefully accepted by the Affections Reason then in its full power and strength though Reason so far restrain the will and them too as that there follows no overt Act thereupon I think doth make us culpable that is we sin Because were our Affections such as they should be or such as we might through our strength of Reason with the invocation of Divine assistance have made or rendred them they would not gratefully accept any thing that were evil but have a reluctancy against it and decline it from some prior instruction I may say rather than present correction But if the Affections upon the first touch of the Imagination do loath and abhor that evil the Imagination brings or lays before them We are in no wise answerable for the irregularity or evil contrivance of our Imagination If Reason be totally disabled to work in us that which is right the defect we call ideocy or perpetual madness without any negligence or default in us we are neither answerable as I think for our evil Imaginations evil Affections or Intentions nor consequently our evil Actions thereupon But if that disability came upon us by our own default or negligence I think of it otherwise in relation to God and punishable by him howe're it may be dispensed withal here by man If Reason be disabled naturally and inevitably though for some time only through the fumes of the Body and the very inlet Sense stopped as in case of sleep though the Imagination invent that which is evil and some of the Affections imbrace the same and the Will seems to agree and consent thereto yet is the Soul blameless before man I think and God too For that Sense being shut and the Imagination as well counterfeiting the same as supplying the place of Reason we may without any prior obliquity in our Soul seem only to have the consent of those other faculties to our Imagination Which other faculties will utterly abhor abominate and forsake what that contrived as soon as ever Sense is open again and that they have the influence of any clearer light to move by And therefore I cannot judge any man culpable for any Act of the Soul whatsoever in a Dream Let him seem to plot and contrive first then to strike wound or kill any man whatsoever I shall not condemn him Because it is not usually any natural malignity of Affection or any evil inclination in mans will that first forces the Imagination to conceive or entertain Evil against Sense but ardency a good and lawful Affection which forces the Imagination for the want of the light of Sense to raise a fear of deprivation of what we best love and they together such fear and fancy composing a Tragedy for there is no man but dreams oftner of the death of his Friends than of his Enemies often make us seem the Actors our selves I or any man may dream of the killing of his own most beloved Child without offence Nay a man may
by way of case put how doleful such an act would prove to him imagine and think of it waking and yet loath and abhor the Act nay tremble at the very thought of it And therefore it appears to me a strange folly as well as cruelty in Dionysius if the story be true That put one of his best friends to Death for dreaming he had cut his Throat and alledged no juster cause than this that what he thought on in the Day that he dreamed on in the Night Had the party that told his dream withal affirmed that his Affections seemed delighted and pleased with the Act I should have thought there had been some ground for the execution but without such declaration no colour of Justice for it If we voluntarily drown as we say our Reason with Wine we cannot excuse the irregular motion of the Imagination nor the assent or compliance of the Affections therewith much less the assent of our will and the putting our thoughts and designs in execution Yet I cannot allow that there is thereby an exaltation of the crime as some Lawyers would because there is an exaltation of the Imagination There are two sins indeed but the latter is not made greater by the former but rather the contrary In no other cases of Reasons disability whether temporary or perpetual whether that we call Delirium Lunacy or Phrenzy and all that we comprize under the general notion of non compos mentis I do verily think that if it happened or came by the default of our own Soul we are answerable to Divine Justice for the deliquity of our very Imagination and the consequent Acts thereof nay I cannot see why we should altogether exempt men from human censure and corporal punishment if the evil of their Imagination appear at any time by overt act provided that punishment extend not to the present separation of the Soul and Body so as to leave the Soul remediless by Death which for ought we know might recover its pristine state here and so purify it self for another state hereafter Most certain it is men can in these cases of Lunacy c. happening one way or other imagine and design evil and not seldom accomplish and compass their evil designs And therefore our great Lawyer in commenting upon the Statute of the 25th Ed. 3. of Treason wherein the very Imagination is struck at shews very little of a Philosopher whatsoever he shews of a Lawyer in my judgment by telling us That a man Non compos mentis a man who is not Master of his Reason or Reason is of no power or Authority in him as I expound it is totally deprived of compassing and Imagination I think he might more truly affirm that he who imagines the death of our Sovereign with any the least appearing assent of his Affections is Non compos mentis than that a man Non compos mentis cannot imagine or have his Will and Affections assent to that Imagination which we find but too often in these kind of men And truly since all our safety depends much on that of our Soverigns and that Lunacy may be so acted as the wisest of men cannot discern the reality thereof I think that Comment might well have been spared and the question left undecided till there had been a necessity for it which God prevent and so of his goodness direct all our thoughts as that they do not outrun our Reason too far and kindle in us such a blind zeal as requires at length a greater power than Reason to controul and suppress I must confess I have ever looked upon this one faculty in us Imagination sufficient to shew us that the extract of the Soul is Divine that as it may be and often is rather than any other faculty immediately influenced from that good Spirit and by it we are enabled sometimes to think that which is good without any precedent motion of any other faculty so it is most subject to delusion from infernal Powers That duly beheld it almost necessarily drives us towards an invocation of one Eternal wise Mind the Creator Preserver Guider and Director of all its works Which is the chief and last thing I designed to set down in this Treatise IV. We cannot deny unto Beast these four faculties of a Soul very fimilar with ours Imagination Memory Affection and Will But we may and do rationally suppose for we cannot observe more in them or the contrary that they imagine through Sense they remember again from Sense they affect by Sense and Will in pursuance hereof only and not otherwise as we have touched already neither can they or are they enabled to weigh and consider so as to raise within themselves an evidence of things unseen which is the proper act of Reason a thing merely incorporeal and necessarily moving upon the cooperation and making a judgment with the assistance or help of other faculties of themselves somewhat more than corporeal likewise So as all our faculties are of Divine extraction and capable to be wrought upon otherwise than through Sense though indeed they are most commonly roused and set on work through bodily Organs as those of Beasts Most certain it is that we do as well as in that excellent faculty Reason whereby we are enabled to ponder and weigh and try and judge of the reality and truth of things herein excell them and go beyond them That we do now and then wish our selves out of this Body which we could never do from Sense and desire a clearer evidence or manifestation and appearance of the truth and reality of our own being and all beings whatsoever the original from whence c. than Sense is able to assist us in or indeed can rightly afford us Then next are not all our Affections readily imployed upon things meerly incorporeal and insensible whenever they offer themselves or are offered thereto Do we not love and admire Truth Justice Mercy c. Do we not hate the contraries thereof falshood wrong and cruelty Every one will confess this But now how are things brought in this shape to the Affections Why chiefly by an Imagination capable of divine impression an Imagination that may be wrought upon otherwise than through Sense and able to introduce apparitions to the other faculties of the Soul without the least help or assistance by Sense so as human Imagination is most certainly divine 'T is no battery upon the Soul through Sense barely no inculcating or telling us by word or Writing that Vertue is amiable which properly make it so to us But first an Inquest our Imagination that presents and next a Judge our Reason that allows and approves of it within us as such Indeed Imagination in Beast lodged immediately over the doors of Sense do's from thence work so strangely to our admiration so circumspectly as I may say direct their Affections and Will as that it has obtained the allowance of some to supply the place of Reason in
faculty in mans Soul and the other faculties to be raised and created thereby and to work in obedience thereto as I hold it does in Beast But so long as I find I have willed I have affected I have imagined without the help beyond the reach and sometimes as it were in a direct opposition to Sense I shall continue to believe my Soul is somewhat more than an extracted quintessence of the Body and subject to the influence of some incorporeal power Nay were not the Imagination at least subject to the influence and stroke of some supernatural invisible insensible power II. There would necessarily be a certain concatenation of my thoughts and a dependance upon each other until they were interrupted and broke in sunder by some immediate stroke through Sense which happens not at all times as may be observed I do here agree that there is generally as I have touched a concatenation of all mens thoughts even at such time as they seem to ramble upon some prior inlets through Sense without any introduction or help through present Sense But yet narrowly inspected we shall find and observe the Imagination now and then to catch and lay hold on or rather to be caught with things strangely different from and independent of what it last entertained and that a thought may succeed a thought such as has neither the least dependance with the former nor yet can be found to proceed from the stroke of any Object through Sense present or prior For instance After a long sleep wherein the Imagination has roved some few hours and in those few hours has touched upon a thousand several things and each several prior thing might be found the cause of introduction of the subsequent if the impression were so deep or our memory so good in sleep as to afford us any ground for asearch and observation and judgment thereon we no sooner awake whether through a vain fear or joy attendant upon a vain Imagination or otherwise from a sufficient temporary refreshment of the Body c. but there is sometimes darted as it were into our Imagination we may say before our Reason is awake something as clean different from independent of and contrary to all our past thoughts as may be or is possible perhaps very divine thoughts such as were not in us at any time before possess us for a while and pass away again without due regard or examination perhaps good moral thoughts of Justice c. clean different from what we had at any time before arise in us and this in such dark and quiet silence of the night as no Sense could help it to catch hold on unless that of feeling by which these thoughts certainly could never arise Nay we will put this waking case of the Imagination if I were looking and lusting and withal contriving to satisfy my what some men may admit innocent Lust that is all my faculties were busied and imployed in the fulfilling thereof and no battery through Sense is made upon me nay no recollection from any former stroke through Sense occurs to me If I shall on the suddain be startled through Imagination and begin to think that which I never thought before my Will and Affectons still standing bent and inclined as they were before that the thing I am now about is evil be it Reason Conscience or Grace or whatsoever men are pleased to call it that is the cause of such thought most certainly my Imagination is not the Subject of a bare stroke through Sense only but somewhat more For to think clean contrary on the suddain to what a man thought without the help of Sense nay perhaps against the present delectancy of Sense shews more of a mere spiritual effect in the Soul than bare independency of thought can do And he who finds not and acknowledges this sometimes strange stroke upon his Spirit upon his Imagination at least if it go no further is wholly deprived of the custody of that seal or stamp of the Imagination which we call Memory or else is very stubborn The Soul is doubtless a good subject to think on If the very thoughts of it in general raise not such a sight and such a belief in man as shall make him endeavour to pursue that which is good and right in the sight of all men It will raise such a doubt attended with some kind of fear of its perpetuity as shall somewhat obstruct his pursuit of that which is evil and naught in the sight of all men But above all the very thought of his thoughts in particular how strangely they arise how inconsistently they work how insensibly they are imployed shall amaze him for the present and at length drive him to the invocation of some Spiritual Eternal Omnipotent being Lord evermore keep this door of our Soul this common passage that nothing enter thereby to the pollution or disfiguring this most admirable frame in Nature lodged in human Body for the present but made to endure after the dissolution thereof to thy Glory whether by misery or happiness and though parted from that Body for a time never to vanish Keep it shut against all deadly and destructive assaults from Satan and his Emissaries Never let it be wrought upon to contradict Sense directly and Reason too though it sometime surmount both through thy gracious influence When a man begins to think how far his thoughts are out of his power how little his own or of himself and who is there that now and then thinks not after this manner and that Sense is not the only inlet to the Soul but we are often led by the Spirit into temptation as well as guided to that which is good It is sufficient to make a man besides himself I confess and on the one hand if he pursue that which is palpably evil in the sight of most men to excuse his sloth with a kind of inability in himself to resist and on the other hand if he find out or light on that which is good but in his own conceit and Imagination to mount a little too much above himself and conclude he is graciously inspired This notion of an insensible Spirit working in man and this insensible thinking say some proceeds from a scurvy black humor in the Blood only called Melancholy Well let it be so thought by some for the present for it cannot be made out so long as we retain our Reason to correct our thought in some measure think not too highly nor too dejectly of our selves are not dismaid nor altogether confounded in thought And then in that thing called Reason Let any man first waving his objection of Melancholy as much a chimaera of his making in some cases as any God of mine shew me and convince me by any satisfactory argument why my thoughts if but thoughts alone have been thus intent and busied on this subject the Soul of man whence it is how and after what manner it works beyond many
thousands of men endued with more sprightly or lively Affection of clearer and quicker Invention of better and firmer Memory of stronger and sounder Judgement of every way greater abilities attended with fitter opportunities and greater leisure less pestered and troubled or sorrounded with wordly affairs or indeed the pleasures of the World And this at such times as I have strived to cast away the thoughts thereof and could willingly have pleased my self with sensible Objects even offering themselves as it were to my Affections and I shall adhere to him and become his Convert In the mean time I cannot believe the more than ordinary imployment of my thoughts on such subject proceeded from any peculiar humor in the Body nor that any stroke upon the Imagination through Sense at any peculiar instant before caused it Nor yet do I believe or so much as once think it to have been the immediate gracious influence or inspiration of that Holy Spirit I have always had so much strength of Reason left me as to keep me from that inflammation of Opinion and I pray God we may all so have howsoever he is pleased to work in us But this I think and find and know that mans thoughts are not always of himself and therefore I very well agree with the melancholy temper as it may be thought of those men who have prescribed us the following form of invocation of the Almighty Spirit of the World and that immediately before the hearing his Commands that it would please him Unto whom all hearts be open all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid to cleanse the thoughts of our hearts where I yet hold most of them are hatched or fostered at least our considerate thoughts by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit c. But I do not agree with that man that shall now a days affirm that his or any mans particular Thoughts are throughly cleansed at any time we cannot so judge by our Reason while we consider the vanity and folly of our Thoughts at most seasons and I am sure we have nothing else properly to judge by Some will tell me my Reason is carnal and cannot judge of Spiritual things I say Reason of it self is not carnal it is of Divine extraction I think I have made it so appear it is an heavenly gift already bestowed on us and by which chiefly we must try the Spirits wherher they are of God or no I and that too through Sense most commonly for he who tryes and judges otherwise does it from Imagination barely Some will tell us of their faith their zeal or love of God If it be pure and real I will readily admit it to proceed from that gracious Spirit But how can I or they themselves well judge it to be otherwise than by Reason from sensible and visible effects That may deceive us indeed but that is the best and safest Judge we have in us at any time I know not how to appeal to mens Spirits in that notion some accept the word viz. an immediate light or voice from Heaven that dictates but I appeal to the chiefest safest and best distinguishing faculty of their Spirit their Reason Whether in the case aforesaid relating to Gods express commands as well as those private ones written in our hearts If the thought of our Hearts were cleansed by the immediate inspiration of his Holy Spirit we should then look upon obedience towards our Superiors and Governours Chastity and Temperance towards our selves Truth and Justice nay Love and Charity towards all men as absolutely necessary and consequent as Zeal heat against Idolatry and Profaneness or our observation of days We cannot rationally think though that Spirit be not limited or confined that the good effect it has upon man will not be as visible in one equally known duty as another Or that we can be truly zealous though Imagination may sometimes render us so to our selves but we must be truly charitable I cannot yet think we ought to be so born again as afterwards to cast away our Reason or so much to neglect it as not duly to consult it a thing through which chiefly we are born again if we are born again but follow our Imagination only I do not think Reason was a thing given us directly to resist or oppose and wholly reject every stroke that first wounds or possesses the Imagination or Affections if it came not directly or apparently through Sense and presently conclude it the sole Embryo of the Imagination No Reason the best and strongest does many times give place for a trembling yet fast hold on Mercy from Eternal decrees But yet I think that in the most evident cases of an immediate work of some other Spirit than our own in and over our own we may nay we ought to retain and make use of our Reason by considering weighing and trying all sensible consequents that may happen whether good or evil and curb the Imagination and Affections for entertaining them in other colours than what upon due advice that only or chiefly puts upon them The worst enemy of mankind needs no greater advantage over mens Souls than to have them follow or be given up to follow their own Inventions or Imaginations without any dispute or struggling of present Reason within them to behold the deception and fallacy that may be therein He shall never want besides ordinary Sinners Enthusiasts Dreamers Visionists Prophets c. and with the help of some base Affection Statists and modellers of Governments enough to set the whole World in a flame and uproar And that they do not as the World now seems to go is God's wonderful providence over it If a man once come to lose the use of that rein or let it go or rather cast it away by the strength of some Affection that is devise and pursue that which he would not others should devise and pursue were his case theirs and that in justice too I doubt even his Prayers to God to direct the course of his thoughts or his present thinking only that that which he thinks is right will little avail him in the end For such particular persons as pretend and positively affirm to see visions and hear voices and declare them as senâ— of God I wonder there is any man of the least Reason that gives any credit to them or hearkens to or regards them further than with pity and commiseration when he observes the Imagination to be so far exalted as to be Master over and command Sense as well as Reason and to raise a fictitious Sense or conceive it self raised through Sense when indeed there is no such thing And yet we see such accepted for men in their wits as we say and allowed of by some Statists who would be angry perhaps we should tell them they wanted Reason although we may truly tell them without just cause of offence they do not lay aside all passion to exercise it If there were two
never so credible witnesses who should testify upon Oath a call or voice of this Nature to a third person and own as much as is recorded of those who journeyed with St. Paul to Damascus I profess I should very hardly give credit to any such thing now adays For being already sufficiently satisfied and convinced even in Reason that the Reason and necessity of supernatural Oracles Revelations and Miracles since God spake to us by his Son in those last days and the Christian Religion was fully established is at an end and ceased I shall rather believe there were some imposture in the case or the Imagination of those two laboured under the same fallacy with the third by infection from it and by a kind of Sympathy to which way of fallacy some of the learned have subjected this faculty of the Soul and that neither of them in reality heard ought 'T is Imagination only or chiefly which renders men thus bold and familiar with God which makes them so positive and dictating to man Reason is not so towring it is ever attended with humility and fear It is weak in us God knows and it is his Wisdom and Will it should be so yet a faith from thence though weaker and trembling is usually more lasting than from that predominant faculty in man Imagination 'T is Imagination that makes us believe well and highly of our selves and meanly of those whom it might seem in Reason God has placed over us dictating and prescribing forms of Government with a nolumus hunc or hunc regnare But in this very case Affection may rather seem to corrupt Imagination than Imagination to debauch Affection I did once mean to discourse to you of the general deception of mankind herein but I know you see and espy it and God alone is able to prevent it which I trust he will do in some measure and therefore lest I seem to some to be of any party I forbear and to all such as at present hearken to our argumentative as if they had Reason on their side Imaginatists I have only this to say If they have left them but half an Eye a Phrase sometimes used for an ordinary Reason and will but make use of it if they then do not find out and espy some self-Affection aiding and assisting most of our Contrivers Imagination in their Plat-forms and Expedients rather than Reason Let them then swallow down with them this as a good rational maxime That evil may be done that good may come thereon I have ever in my judgment looked on evil Affection and strong blind Imagination always so actually in conjunction together above other faculties to our confusion and so pernicious to our present and future happiness as nothing more I know not which to give the precedency to nor indeed well how to distinguish them in some cases Pride in general the Mother of all evil passion is defined and rightly defined to be nothing else but a good opinion or high conceit of a Man's self Spiritual Pride is somewhat more it is a bold presumptuous arrest of the Deity making him our Inmate to cover and colour our Pride and where that once is and takes possession 't is in vain to knock at the door of Reason If I should admit Reason it self to be wholly out of our power and that we were specially directed in our very judgment I can yet say truly with David Them that be meek shall he guide in judgment and if you who are God's Ministers over us could through his blessing once change or metamorphose that passion in us Pride into its contrary lowliness of mind then should we all see the vanity madness and folly of most of our past inventions then should we be all of one mind then should nothing be done by us through strife or vain-glory then would men obey and withal work out their own salvation with fear and trembling rather than through an exalted Imagination believe God worketh that in them which may be from the insinuation of Satan wherein that you may prevail in some measure God to whom be all Glory crown your labours Amen EPIST. VI. Wherein the Author treats of the various impress of the Divine Power upon each particular created substance more especially upon the Souls of Men And further shews how proue we are to mistake about the case and temper of others and our own and that they generally are not what they seem And thence proceeds to discourse of Friendship and of Love MY good and kind Friend for so I am bold to salute you in this Epistle wherein I mean to say somewhat of that human yet sacred tye Friendship Let a man behold any thing he will or can and search for the original cause of its so being and 't is somewhat a wonder to me he should prove so stupid and senseless not to behold it or at least not to afford it some proper attribute and allow it so much as the title of incomprehensibly Wise or the like since that that his name is near his wondrous works declare Some such different or distinguishable form there is in every visible Body whatsoever upon the face of the whole earth narrowly inspected or observed as that howsoever we generally stile all things the work of Nature our Intellect by and through our Sense is able to espy some Image of an infinite wise Essence ruling in and through that thing we call Nature for she of her self as a blind Goddess like Fortune could never imprint so various a stamp upon every individual unless directed by such a first power as is eternally one and the same and yet able to give various forms unto every created or extracted substance but would produce though not the same yet often some indistinguishable or unperceivable like I do not think it will be denied me by any rational man that amongst all the faces of men not the worst index of a Soul which have been or now remain upon the face of the Earth there never were two Visages as we say so like but that they might be easily known or distinguished from each other or the one from the other And if I should of my self further alledge that there never was one single grain of Corn nay so much as one single medal of the same metal with others and receiving its impress from one and the same stamp or mold but there might be found upon the same by diligent and curious inspection or observation some different form or mark sufficient to distinguish it from any other which could be produced of the same kind or species I should say no more than is true being confident that no man is able to produce two such Bodies together of any magnitude wherein I or some other may not be able to shew him an apparent diversity I would fain know how it otherwise comes to pass that the Bee knows any one of a separate Hive or
reject all moral Vertue and Goodness as insignificant will not be drawn to affect or love us otherwise than aforesaid nor imbrace us for any Justice or Mercy shewed them for as for Spiritual Graces theirs and ours are equally invisible we shall do well so to frame our ways as to please our Maker that if they become our enemies because we do not take the same imaginary flight with them they may at least be at peace with us and that if it be possible as much as in us lyes we may have peace with all men In the Christian World I doubt nay I believe there is least visibility of Friendship and this I take to be the cause that the very outward noble badge or cognizance of Christianity I will not say true Christianity by the help of Satan has so much elevated many Souls in opinion and fancy as to make them think no others who wear it not outwardly for ostentation and shew as themselves worthy their common Friendship It is a seeming unhappiness in our nature that our Affection cannot be long at rest and that Love in man only has such several Pilots or Guides Sense would have it stay at home chiefly and please or work for the Body that at least it should not move far nor otherwise than to bring in freight for the ease and pleasure of that Reason would it should traffick abroad and imbrace whatsoever that heholds good and virtuous laudable and amiable in another man and the man withal therefore Grace now and then raises it to mount upwards and beholding that fixed bright Star by which we all move attracts it in some measure to bend and incline thitherward without regard to danger It moves at all these several Summons or calls wherein that in Beast never stirs otherwise than from Sense But yet upon every turn and occurrence so weak is our light of Reason and so uncertain and often clouded through our sins is that other bright and gracious light that it is apt to be drawn and haled home again by Sense and then it catches up every weapon offensive and defensive for the Body Anger Fear and the like Thus are we tossed to and fro as it were by contrary Winds and often shipwracked before we come to shoot that dreadful gulf of Death and we may well cry out before the time O wretched men that we are who shall deliver us from this Body of Death Reason sooner than Sense will shew us some ground whereon we may anchor and fix our Love as it were in a good and pleasant harbour for a time but it self will often loosen it again by shewing us it is sandy that there is no trust in man nor in the children of men and that whatsoever we see of Justice or Truth or any thing of goodness in them for the present those are not things of permanency in them Men are various fickle and mutable in their Habits and in their Affections too We cannot rationally trust our selves We have no power over our selves 't is most certain And we have beheld some seemingly very rational for want of Grace destroy that Body they best loved their own with their own hands And how then can we place any setled trust in another Faith must throw us out at last an anchor for the Soul sure and stedfast and that must be of Love not that it directs or should direct our Love quatenus human that is and ought to be guided by Reason But it may inflame our Love to that height towards our Maker that we shall not be troubled above measure though we behold the inconstancy of human Nature and the falshood and treachery of our dearest Friends though they deceive us and all the World forsake us nay Though the Earth be moved and though the hills be carried into the midst of the Sea We may wish perhaps but as much setledness of Affection and seeming constancy of Nature amongst our selves as in those poor Creatures which serve us and were created next to God's Glory for our use that we might find ground to trust each other here and lodge our Affection safe out of our selves for a time in any fellow-member since we can behold no better by our Sense nor comprehend what is above us by our Reason But his Wisdom is infinite and unsearchable and yet perhaps may appear to us herein that we should trust even while here in none but him who is for ever one and the same and Lord over all And who if we love him will withhold nothing he sees good for us and become himself our Comforter in all our Afflictions EPIST. VII Of the different vain pursuits of the Souls of Men wherein we are ready to accuse each other of Folly though not our selves and yet are all Fools in some degree That no pursuit of the Soul here is praise-worthy or commendable further than it intentionally advances God's Glory which is the mark set before us and which if we do not behold in all our travails our labour will not profit IN my Treatise of the Soul I made some glance at the various and different pursuits of it in man that is the affectionary or imbracing part of it but I could not but behold withal the several opinions that men seem to have of the pursuit of each others Affection how vain every man thinks that to be which he himself affects not or desires But the beholding the variety of opinions and judgments in the case with the folly and madness of all men would have conduced little to the present cure of any Soul diseased and therefore I needed not to insert my thoughts thereabout in such Treatise but have reserved and now sent them to you for your perusal Truth is all our courses as various as they are in any excess and not necessarily relating to some other end than what they seem to an ordinary Spectator to tend after are equally frivolous and vain and though we are every one of us very dimm-sighted towards any espial of our own follies and ridiculous eager and longing pursuits yet are we quick and apt enough to see and deride the same madness and folly in others and we never need with the Psalmist attribute laughter to him who dwelleth in the Heavens from his only or alone beholding our futile contrivances since we our selves are able to afford it one another from the weak inspection we do or are able to make into any mans madness or folly but our own I do think the Creator of all things who affords himself that blessed center of rest unto our Souls and to whom our best and chiefest Affections might from very gratitude rationally tend has of his abundant wisdom and gracious goodness permitted and allowed them not only a divers and innocent vagrancy towards various and several terrestrial objects but withal so framed the Intellect and Judgment as that each several person shall in some manner or measure approve and allow
be building of Babels to get himself a name We shall find in every brave Spirit so intitled something of the Roman temper It would leave some mark of its being here and never considers of any such saying as Thou fool this night c. much less that the world may be and continue when neither the word Roman nor the name of any one Family or People now being on the face of the Earth unless what is already registred in Scripture shall be used in mens mouths or so much as known Let no man too confidently think of immortalizing his name either from Writing or the Press It was a bold thought as well as a saying which proceeded from one when he had finished his work that it should live in despight of Iupiters anger We may well think notwithstanding his elegance he never rightly understood his Iupiter that is an eternal power who making all things out of nothing is able to reduce all things to nothing and cause things which have been as if they never were This bold saying with some of the like of his fellow Poets though it be not actually confuted in our days is not therefore to be received as Oracular Though I believe the Creation of the World with others I find no firm or just ground to believe it is so near an end as some others have accounted it from Prophecies which I much doubt whether any of us ever yet rightly understood And then we may as well believe in Reason the future oblivion of all present actions as the present oblivion of most past ones and that of Nations for ought we know or can reasonably imagine indowed with as brave Spirits and as industrious to preserve their memory and deliver it over to Posterity as we our selves A thing the whole race of human Nature for want of truly beholding a present Vanity and another manner of future felicity has is and ever will be prone unto And I my self am prone to think that before any imaginary fifth Monarchy takes place that is before the World have an end there may be yet fifteen or more successively take place and amongst these 't is not altogether irrational to conjecture that God to punish us for our Pride and self-conceit here or other secret purposes best known to himself may raise up one of such power that he may give Laws unto the World One who may make such a destruction as that in after ages Learning and Arts may seem chiefly beholding to some of his Successors for its rise And yet in this rage and tempest to shew his own power and might according to his promise preserve intire his Holy word Some have imagined the Turk may do as much as I have said Well! we have authority to say Of that day and hour knoweth no man We reckon and account upon time while we live but as time is nothing to God so time will quickly be no more with us but we shall be swallowed up in Eternity Indeed upon a call to repentance St. Iohn Baptist's words are true and necessary the kingdom of Heaven is at hand Our passage is quick and speedy and our Souls now Earthly Inhabitants must in short space know their doom And were it imaginable that they with our Bodies could sleep and become as 't were insensible till that last day though they should sleep together Myriads of ages yet upon sound of the last Trump and their then awaking it could seem no otherwise to them than as yesterday Here do we often hunt after we know not what and think to catch hold on something stable and permanent but when our very Bodies awake again through their very instruments of Sense our Souls may behold themselves to have been here but in a dream This inscription on all things here Vanity whereof Solomon seems to have had a full and clear view and was the man who first delivered the same over to us in writing is a very good and I may say too a gracious sight and prospect and a very ready one I think to point us to inquire after if not find out something which is free and clear from such inscription But it is a further most gracious and glorious donative if we ever behold it and we must never expect to behold it as of our selves and from our own strength our Opticks are naturally too weak There have been many as well Heathens as others who have obtained a pretty fair view of the vanity of all things here below from their very light of Reason what any of them saw farther I cannot say nor will go about to determine but I should have thought that tenth Satyr of Iuvenal to have proceeded from somewhat more than an ordinary poetical rapture or fancy had it not been for the conclusion therein monstro quod ipse tibi possis dare When once we think we behold that sight as of and from our selves our eyes become weak and dazled and from too intent a view of this World we are disabled to see and contemplate the glory of another that sight must be reached unto us upon our humility in beholding the other and of our selves we cannot reach it But this is a needless instruction for you and improper for this place We were minded in our search to inquire and behold what and how far worldly imployments of the Soul were necessary and commendable Whereabout I never thought it good to indeavour to hang clogs and fetters on any mans but rather add wings to it Neither is it good to amaze men with speculative Notions but rather to incourage all men to be up and doing provided a way be opened first to behold that mark which every Soul should chiefly aim at and that is God's Glory And therefore if a man can behold that and place it as the prime object and make it the main end and chief Scope and design of all his work and motion Let him go on though he expect and promise himself thereby Power Honour Riches c. besides The Heathen in setting forth and painting of Virtue covered her with fair and rich outward ornaments and trappings because they thought no man would take hold on and imbrace her naked And 't is no more than what usually are found belonging to her Yet these appurtenances should not be looked on but in transitu and esteemed a dowry of Grace after Marriage not of necessary compact before But besides a good primary intention in every Souls motion it will be very necessary and requisite for every Soul to keep a due and constant watch over her self lest at any time unawares she sacrifice to her own nets For though her good motions like Springs may seem to proceed out of the Earth yet they are in truth from the Sea and though as the Earth we receive fruit and increase thereby we ought at no time to dam them up within our bowels lest they become putrid and unwholesome but allow
them a free passage and give them a quick return by way of acknowledgment to that bountiful Ocean of goodness as the necessary means of a fresh supply I know nothing but that Agrippa his Oration might be good nay so good as a Stander by might in a good Sense take it to be rather the voice of God than man but if his Auditors acclamation in applying it solely to him were gross flattery I am sure his reception in that strict and narrow Sense must needs be a damnable presumption Satan is a subtle Politician and doubtless many who in the beginning of their race have set forth with an eye only or chiefly fixed on the Glory of God and the general good of man have by baits thrown in and casually happening in the way diverted their eyes a little from the course they first steered and cast them inward on themselves and at last converted publick aims to private or at least so intermixed or allayed them as that they could not be taken for currant And when once our actions begin to carry upon them our own image and superscription it will be no difficult matter for the Devil to perswade us to own the Metal as well as the Coin and make us think and own our selves as well Miners as Forgers of our dependants fortunes and our own But he who steers chiefly towards God's Glory and holds out in a streight and steddy course whatever outward glorious acquisitions as we sometimes call them and Scripture allows he obtains collaterally As he will find no cause to condemn himself so neither do I and as no man I am sure can find just Reason to envy his Worldly Power Pomp and Authority knowing at the best and honestly obtained how transitory and fading all Worldly habiliments are So none of us can justly condemn or accuse such a man of vain glory but we may allow him some such Euge as David took up upon another account Good luck have he with his honour let him ride on And we who seem to want what such a man enjoys may by our contentedness in a mean estate with chearfulness and alacrity glorify God together with him since the World is able to afford Power Authority great Place and the like only to a few and small number of men This Gloria in excelsis by the way ought to be the Canticum of our Souls in all our travail and to have its rise from our strongest and best Affection It should be the Motto we carry along with us but in a white Banner as the Ensign of peace and not that of In nomine domini in a bloody and warlike one It is indeed a most angelical Anthem yet it must be taken whole as they sang it or not at all I have wondred at the once leaving out Gloria patri c. appointed to be as the bearing of those Heavenly Songs or Hymns of David and have sometimes thought it would never have been ordered to be omitted unless by those who desired neither peace on Earth nor good will towards men This is a thing if any to be preferred above our own salvation and I must take leave here to be of opinion It was this alone which made St. Paul wish himself Anathema for in my weak judgment I cannot take the meaning of those words usher'd in with such a serious protestation as I speak the truth in Christ I lye not my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost otherwise I cannot think his Charity did so abound or overflow as that he wished his brethrens salvation before his own as some For to wish evil to ones self is impossible and to wish anothers good before ones own is so too and also irregular we being at utmost commanded to love our Neighbour but as our selves the whole heart is only due to the Maker and Framer of all hearts for whose Glory all things were made But this I think is his meaning that were it possible God's Glory could once come in competition with ones own or other mens salvation the first were to be preferred by us And this he brings in as a Preface to his explanation of God's promise made to Abraham's Seed that all are not children of the promise which are Abraham's Seed but some others and is an answer to an objection which might be made by the Romans to whom he preached that promise as seeming contrary to the letter thereof Were God as cruel to some one peculiar part of his image as kind to others under the Notion of Predestination as some have represented him in their fancies and so rendred all his Precepts and his Promises of none effect which God forbid And were I assured notwithstanding all my diligence all my indeavours and earnest requests to perform his will that I might obtain his promise that I were one of that irrecoverably secluded number I do yet at this present think I could notwithstanding any such assurance make my exit in these very words Glory be to God on high or sanctisicetur or magnificetur nomen tuum And certainly who ever makes a true search into himself and consults his Reason whereby he will find God's prerogative far greater over us than the Potter over his Clay will find cause to do as much Well! he who keeps within such a path as points and tends directly to God's Glory and the general good of mankind God's visible Image without turning quite out of it into some other By-path or corner what ever ornaments or covering he gets which are often scattered in the way he may lawfully take up and wear and which we esteem and account of as good worldly Blessings But yet notwithstanding we so do when we consider how cumbersom they are and how troublesome they often prove to the owner and injoyer especially all outward ones which concern the Body barely and which when superfluous are reserved but for one Sense to feed upon that is the Eye we may with Reason reject them And though some men have made a shift sometimes to keep on those Plumes and Feathers of Honours Riches c. and wore them perhaps both safely and easily during their lives Yet since we are able dayly to behold how certainly they are shed or moulten by every mans Posterity if not stripped from them by force and violence and that usually in a very short space of time although they were thought by the Ancestor very fast pinnion'd to his progeny We can by no means exempt any of them from that title Solomon has given them Nay we have thought and said that even Fame her self which has the most lasting Feathers and strongest Wings may yet lose them and perish in oblivion And therefore there is no Reason for man to be very eager in the quest of any thing this World is able to afford him neither can we think but our most fortunate Worldly contrivers and happy men as we esteem them infected in some degree with
we see hear or feel the Effects As concerning any such like future motion the cause of the Wind whence it comes or whither it goes which the Text tells us we know not that is Reason's inquiry and it must be Reason's eye that beholds ought thereabout And what is from thence brought into the Soul is of some continuance a thing no ways incident to Beasts and that which we call belief which whatever it be continues the same till Reason be consulted again and inform otherwise If I believe the Wind to be fluent air If I believe it to be caused by some fermentation like that in our Bodies upon meeting of divers humors upon the concourse of several Atoms If I believe it is sent out of the caverns of the Earth c my belief in each case continues all the while the same till Reason frame another in my Soul Nay Sense shall not alter a belief without some consult of Reason and therefore a belief once raised or framed do's upon every touch of Sense make a kind of resort to Reason for its allowance or disallowance for its continuance as it is or its change For instance if I once believe that you love me or have a kindness for me If after I hear otherwise from others or see a strangeness in your countenance or feel some hard usage from you before the alteration of this first setled opinion or belief there will necessarily be some consult of Reason whether this or that may not be and yet your Affection continue firm Now if Reason do not weigh things by it self but listens only to the introduction of Sense so far forth as to change my belief without due examination this is the thing which I call Credulity and for which Reason is negligent and to blame Though I allow a Will in Brutes Imagination or Cogitation Memory and such a kind of Reason as by and through Sense co-operating with those faculties guides them in a regular motion and may be said to create a knowledge in them yet without Sense it is idle and nothing And can neither put a stop to the Affections in opposition to Sense nor create any such thing as a belief which is a matter effected above and beyond Sense though not clean contrary to Sense as some would have us to believe and through human Reason and is the consequent in such a Soul only as shall be able to work when the windows of Sense shall be shut up or Sense shall be no more Many Beasts are quick of Sense and so of knowledge I grant and may be said to be sensibly rational but not rationally sensible or so much as to consider their Sense or raise any belief about it And this is the utmost I am able to judge of their capacity for I must confess and acknowledge that could I discern more or could any man discover to me some certain indubitable sign of any such rational motion in them at any time as to give a check to their Affections which is the thing I call Conscience or create a light in them out of the reach of Sense and raise an evidence of things not seen which is the thing I adjudge to be Faith or Belief and which the weakest human Soul is in some measure capable of and I doubt not but Divine Grace does sometimes shine upon such beyond our inspection It would overthrow my opinion of their annihilation or else much shake and batter my belief of our own Immortality The Fowls of the Heaven are of so quick Sense as that thereby perceiving the alteration of the Air by a kind of adjunct Reason accompanying that Sense they know their appointed time as 't is said of the Stork and move accordingly yet being uncapable to foresee or judge of any cause thereof they cannot be said to believe ought thereabout before or after Undoubtedly the Ox may know his Feeder from another man as sure as the Feeder knows the Ox from another Beast but the Ox cannot believe any thing of the Feeder that he may or will hurt him upon a displeasure as the Feeder may of the Ox for that must proceed from Reason's inquiry or information above or beyond Sense Many Creatures when they feel pain or are sick and sensible thereof have such a kind of Reason ready attendant as often effectually works their cure without inquiry into natural causes and so may be said to know the cure but yet without an inspect into natural causes 't is impossible to believe it and therefore 't is that rational sight only that creates a belief and is in no wise the sight of Sense Now when from Reason there is raised in the Soul of man especially with concurrence of some Sense collateral as I may say to the thing believed a firm and indubitable belief of any thing we make use of the word knowledge and say we know and yet in truth there is no more than a belief in the case For instance I know I shall dye Now if I had never seen man dy or heard of death I should by my Reason observing my decay and waxing old as a garment verily believe some such thing but withal seeing and hearing continually of the death of others I rest assured I shall dy and so say I know But my own death being absolutely out of the reach of Sense I cannot properly be said to know so much neither does what I say therein amount to any more than a belief And so it is in many like cases where we say We know as where Iob says as we translate it I know that my redeemer liveth there is no more to be understood than a firm strong Faith the like of St. Iohn Baptist giving knowledge of salvation And so I think is St. Paul to be understood in that Chapter where he mentions knowledge so often Now a Beast neither knows or believes any thing of his own death for that as the causes and symptoms of death are out of the reach of his Reason which only accompanies Sense and is nought without it So his very death is out of the reach of Sense it self and he cannot know it For this reason perhaps some may think them the more happy Creature but if we consider it and make good use of our Reason we shall find that over and above that superlative prerogative of beholding in a manner and so believing future happiness we have here a great benefit and advantage by it above other Creatures and are enabled from hence to quit the Affections which otherwise would be disturbed by the often false alarms of Sense to which they are subject and so keep our Soul from being wounded by any thing from without Knowledge I say is a thing of the meaner extract the product of Sense and in no wise of Reason neither is Reason the parent thereof in any case unless in some case of Conscience a thing so much talked of and which I