to be always conformed to that exemplar shine forth together the created in subordination to the increated Of all which Body is altogether insensible and utterly incapable In the original therefore of man there is according to Scripture a clear distinction betwixt Spirit and Body 2. That the Scripture doth plainly own the distinction of the Soul from the Body in a state of conjunction with it I argue especially from the powers of mind and the actions of those powers wherein are laid and to which are directed continually all the Discourses and those pressing Reasonings Exhortations Admonitions and Reproofs we find in sacred Writings These powers according to the universal speech of mankind it calls Vnderstanding Faculty of Reason Conscience Judgment and the actions proceeding from these it names Thought Apprehension or Perceiving Consideration Reasoning Accusation and Apologie or Defence of Conscience Judging of Things and all these powers working out into these acts it comprehends in this word the Spirit of man and unites these acts with it speaking of these powers as the Essence of a man and of the acts as most connatural to that Essence to which also every mans knowledge and feeling within himself give as clear testimony and as full as the parts of Body give of themselves to Sense For the Spirit of a man knows the things of a man within him Now it is plain All these things are most improper to Body or so much as a brutal Spirit especially when they lift up themselves to the sense of a God and extend themselves to religious concernments when they receive those high proposals of the Gospel and Mysteries that lye out of the whole region of Sense so that though the organs and instruments of the body are sometimes spoken of and to in these cases yet it is only upon this account because they are such as by which the mind acts or are symbols and representations of this rational sense and motion These things being then so well known and every where met with in inspired Writings they are as great a demonstration of their consciousness to another greater and more excellent Being in man than Body as can be required seeing Body hath no fitness nor possible sublimation to these things that Scripture so wholly insists upon in relation to man There must be therefore another man a more excellent man within or else all thus spoken must have been in vain such powers and actions cannot be ascribed originally to the most excellent temper of Body or Tune of motions but must have a proper and peculiar substance to reside in and that whatever any one else will call it is that Scripture and common speaking calls Spirit And this being so plain and clear and of so general consent the Scripture without any industry as in a case presumed speaks of Spirit as one thing and Body as another distributes 1 Thess 5. 23. man into Body Soul and Spirit Body is well enough known Soul is either Spirit as it contains within it self the faculties of sensitive nature and takes the Government of them upon it self and the care and feeling of things that concern Body and the life of it or as it moves in the most excellent parts of Body that mediate betwixt body and mind and are fittest for the more immediate motions of Spirit in Body and so called Spirits Spirit is pure mind exalted to its own objects and the highest of those objects Divine Things This Spirit is that Inward Man holy 2 Cor. 4. 16. Writing speaks of renewed and repaired every day not in its substantial nature but in gracious and heavenly qualities of which it is the only residence and receipt and which are its true health and strength Lastly In this distinction of Soul and Body is founded that excellent discourse of the Apostle Rom. 8. 5 6 7 8 9 10 11. of Being in the flesh and in the Spirit of being carnally minded or of the carnal mind and of being spiritually minded or of the spiritual mind By which on one side he describes this mind allured and drawn down to Body and Flesh which comes to pass first through nearness to Body and closest sympathy with all those natural and sensitive motions which it self inspires Body with but chiefly by degeneracy the Soul comes to feel it self and places its enjoyments wholly in flesh and makes that the Center of its reigning passions and affections and so it self becomes carnal and sensual and cannot please God On the other side is described Mind lifted up above Body and out of Flesh by Grace and the Divine Spirit to an inseparable adherence to God and Christ and eternal things to which it advances its own motions in Body also presenting them a living and acceptable Sacrifice which is the rational service of a man consisting of Soul and Body Thus the Flesh and the Heart together cry out for the living God In the mean time this Spirit of the mind subdues and restrains its own motions arising from unholy Bodily inclination and affection Now to be carnally minded is death The mind unpurged and glued to Body dyes in that sense a Spirit can dye that is a death of separation from God and deprivation of Divine Beauty and Happiness and the Body whose ministery it uses and makes it the seat of its carnal pleasures and sensualities perishes also leaving no possible satisfaction any longer from them and yet that Body because it was the Body of that unpurged Soul and retains its order to it remains guilty and foul dust and rises again so that the Soul may suffer and its misery may be seen in a Body even as it sinned in Body which is the second death But to be spiritually minded is life and peace For Mind renewed and made the habitation of the Holy Spirit and its righteousness cannot it self dye no not as Spirits dye because of that blessed and immortal allyance for it lives in the enjoyment of God likeness to him lively motions of it self in all goodness and blessedness And though the Body is dead that is is under the sentence of death to be unavoidably fulfilled in the separation of the Soul from the Body upon which the Body becomes a dead lump and further it must dye that the Soul may obtain a perfect purification from sin which it cannot have while cemented with Body sin being so lodged in that Cement that there can be no perfect purification till that Cement be dissolved Then when that Cement is dissolved the separated Soul becomes perfect Spirit and Divine through the almighty efficacy of the Divine Spirit resiant in it and bearing it up to the perfection of the Divine life for ever Thus the Spirit is life because of righteousness And if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you he that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you That is The Body that
viz. That our Saviour intends no more than that mans killing the body is infinitely less than Gods destroying that Body and its whole life in Hell though after many Ages Yet it is observable in the first place our Saviour to imprint the fear of Divine Revenges places them not only upon the Body but upon the Soul as a distinct and greater part of man than body 2. And beyond this our Saviour plainly aims at the great odds there is betwixt a hand that can execute no further than dying once and in the body only and that almighty hand that sends down the Soul to Hell immediately and the Body at the Day of Judgment For he implies a man easily slips from mans severity by death for he may yet live and be happy in his Soul presently and in his Body at the Resurrection but death can give no escape from the stroke of God either to the Soul which incontinently falls under it nor to the Body awakened hereafter to endure it Now I know it is possible for Serpentine wits to glide off from these and many the like proofs of Scripture that might be produced for their way of elusion is very wonderful like that of Solomons Serpent upon a Rock that winding every way yet leaves no track of solid Reason behind it but yet I affirm that such concurrent Testimonies of Scripture are so conclusive that no sober consideration can escape from them unto which revealed Truth is also to be annexed Reason it self teaching us as I have already urged the effects of a Soul are too great to be ascribed to any power of Body and therefore seeing every Effect must have an equal Cause it is a high justification of the assertion of a Spirit to which those effects may be duly and worthily ascribed And therefore I shall further adventure to avouch from Scripture that the Soul is so much the Man that it hath the compleat substantial essence of a man so far in it self that in comparison of it the body is but prepared for a sensible mode or representation in which the Soul is to act and shew and illustrate it self visibly and sensibly and that man might thereby become of the order of the sensible and visible world beholding and judging by the ministery of sensitive organs of the beauty excellent array and variety of bodies in this Creation and himself appear the principal of them but retaining still a higher and nearer relation to the Invisible world to God to the state and life of Angels so that without any prejudice to his main being he may be removed out of the body thither and yet still be himself as to all the chief intents and purposes of his Creation and continue so till in the restitution of all things and the manifestation either of the goodness or severity of God after the manner of the sensible and visible Creation that is in such a plain way as seeing and knowing things by sense men be again set out by God in a bodily scheme or fashion at the Resurrection so that the Body it shall then have shall more compliably wait upon all the state and motions of the Souls happiness or misery The Soul then only visibly shews it self now in a body and is submitted to be in it but when it goes out of the body it wants nothing through the whole time of its separation that it had here but only the apparence of its motions in a body nor hath any thing added to it when it is cloathed with a body at the Resurrection but an opportunity for its glory or misery to be seen sensibly Even as God was excellent and perfect in himself from eternity when there was no Creation or any beside himself nor received he any thing or found any addition to himself by the Creation for all things that he made received their All from him but only he hath illustrated and manifested himself in the Creation and the Creatures do no more than shew the power wisdom and goodness of God in creating preserving and governing them After the same manner so far as we may with reverence compare any of the Creatures with the infinitely excelling Creator the Soul receives nothing from the Body or any of the parts of it but only such organs and instruments which it is to inspire govern and rule and thereby to shew its efficacy vigour and great endowments of understanding and virtue for all motions from the highest to the lowest derive from the Soul But as to the present case That the Soul falls in love with its self as dwelling in body and with its lower motions in it and forgets its own proper and higher motions of immediate converses with holiness and true wisdom and that rule of body committed to it according to these Laws this is only its sin weakness degeneracy and fall as of a created and mutable Being placed in a body All motions and appetites that we call in ordinary speaking motions of body and fleshly appetites are not any thing that body can first proffer to the Soul but those that the Soul communicates first by that universal life and motion it gives to body and then derives from its own communications the pleasure that it self finds from it self in body Yet is not the Souls good or ill management of Body all its holiness or sin there are many acts so retired that body shares not in their praise or guilt The Soul in such acts of goodness is like God and good Angels as if it had no body and as unconcerned in this world as God in his own immanent perfections and actions On the other side wicked men are in some wicked actions alone as it were from the body like Devils and damned Spirits those spiritual wickednesses the Apostle speaks of exercised in spiritual Impurities But to return The Souls acting and taking care of the body is but an inferiour and under-part of its administration and is for that higher end that there might be an image and likeness of God imprinted upon a body and sensibly seen in it by virtue of the Souls acting holily in and upon it This is the highest and most excellent part of its Government the pleasure it takes in the lower should be but an imitation of the Lord taking pleasure in his lower works who is never the less spiritual heavenly and divine for running through and governing the whole world of matter and rejoicing in his doings therein but is always in the perfect purity of his own Attributes and guides all things according to them But contrary-wise if the Soul makes its lower and less noble functions its principal and supreme and instead of moving the body rationally and religiously by it self continuing spiritual and intellectual it chiefly attends to and interests it self in its lower sensitive motions and so becomes carnal and sensual this is its great fall into sin and misery yet still it retains its prerogative of nature it is
fall down into a Dead Thing and so it could retain its own Life against any one but the Author of it and lose none of that for this power it had received from God and what it found fitted by God to its Activity and convenienc'd to its Life it could act quicken and manage But it was not a Quickning Spirit that is It had not power to make or give a new Life to continue a Body in Life or to raise a Dead Body or make it more Excellent or Lively than it found it prepared by God It had not a Power like the First-begotten from the Dead who can make corruptible put on Incorruption and mortal put on Immortality and be even swallowed up of Life who can change our vile Bodies that they may be made like his glorious Body by a Power that subdues all things to it self So then though the Soul could work to the utmost extent of Matter and Body and fill all Bodily Capacities yet it could not exceed them nor act according to it self because it was confin'd in Body but must work and act onely as the Soul of such a Body nor could it quicken and advance Body as it would it self nor better it above its Rank and Order set by the Creator and therefore the Soul could display it self and its own Spirituality onely so far as Body made by God the Body of this Soul could receive and convey into Action And though this was enough not onely to prefer Man to the top of this Lower Creation and to make him under the Creator Lord of All but to assure enough a greater than Body even a Spirit was there yet it could not discover how great and potent this Spirit was Thus the Soul was submitted by the wise Ordination of God to retire keep home and dwell in a Body being at the very first set in an Orb lower than it self and to manage fewer and lesser Talents according to the State of the Lower Creation and so by its Obedience Fidelity and Improvement to be advanc'd to richer and more Talents and to a Rule over greatest Cities that is to be exalted to the Heights and full Glory of a perfectest Immortality Thus was the State of Innocency wherein Body was much more fitted to the Excellency of the Soul though not to all its Excellency fitted to it onely according to the Lower State of Man in this World not according to that Supreme State of Immortality but differing as much from that as Possibility not to die doth from an Impossibility to die or as a Body Natural just fit to entertain a Soul in a temporary condition and to yield it self to its displays in a degree convenient to that differs from a Body Spiritual fram'd to bear and discharge all the highest Spiritualities of a Soul in its unchangeable Estate Yet this was much above the present Condition of Body under Sin even as Innocency and the Order Beauty and Goodness wherein Man was first enstated by God excell the Guilt unnatural Deformity and Confusion he labours under now Since Sin and Disobedience the Souls manner of Habitation in Body is fallen much lower and it is carefully to be consider'd how it fell lower for it cannot be conceived that any thing should be abated from the Life Vigour and Force of the Soul it self The Soul loses onely in the Holy and Happy State of it without any diminution in its Esence or Essential Life for it cannot lose in the degrees of those It must lose in the whole or not at all being one whole intire indivisible Self as hath been before asserted And thus it is onely a competent Subject for the Happiness or Misery of Eternity of which Fallen Angels are a plain Instance who notwithstanding their Fall continue Principalities and Powers and Dominions and though Wickednesses yet Spiritual Wickednesses and in High Places The Soul then losing nothing thus the Life Vigour and Vertue of its Nature must lie close accumulated and folded up where there is not room for an Explanation and free Expatiation as Light that could reach much further when stopp'd by any Dark Body is reverberated into it self We must therefore conceive that as a Punishment upon the Sin of Man there is a great withdrawing of Divine Blessing from the Lower Creation upon which ensues an interruption of the benign Order of Things one towards another so that they are continually at feud and in contest one with another hindering disturbing and mutually abating the Force and working to the destruction one of another to all which Inconveniences the Humane Body becomes subject and both in regard of its Temper and Composition more subject than many other parts of Matter for its Strength is not the Strength of Stones nor its Flesh of Brass nor clear and pure like the Heavens that abide of old Further It being the Body of that Soul that is the great Offender it is most liable to the Curse The Soul then whose Body was at first too narrow for all its Efficacies is now limited to one unequal to any one of them and very disturbing of their Execution For sometimes by the oppression of other Parts of Matter upon this Body all the livelier and brisker Particles of it are squeez'd out and exhaled whereby it becomes dull and instagnated sometimes it is overheated into furious and inordinate motion and so weakned and disordered in its great end of serving the Soul The Soul on the other side losing nothing of it self yet being sunk down from the Intellectual Spiritual Life and from the Happiness therein to be found which is its true Sphere becomes also negligent of acting and invigorating the Body and guiding the Service of it to such worthy Ends and with a wilful supineness falls down into the Animal Life and presently finding what State and Temper that Body with which it is joyn'd is of carries it self with all its Powers almost wholly thither If it be a duller Matter or Body it stays its own Effluxes the Stream of its Motion and tastes its Life and Enjoyment in that sloathfulness and sluggishness of Flesh as it were forgetting it hath any greater Virtue Force or other Office than what serves to the maintenance of so low a Life that the Soul wilfully enervates and deadens its own Activity by slumbring it in the drowsiness of a lazie Body so that this Sloath becomes the greatest of all Sloath because of the Pleasure this mighty Spirit hath in that Sloath having found it to be the Temper of that Matter wherein it hath sheath'd it self there being in this very Sloath as Philosophers teach of Rest of Bodies as forcible and great a Cause as there is of Motion Thus the great Force of a Soul is defeated this way the Body being like damp'd Powder that will not take the Fire and so the Fire lies still and does nothing to such Solomon cries out Yet a little sleep a little slumber a little folding of the hands
to sleep the description of an endless and incurable Sloath Prov. 24. 33. If the Body be a Composure more lively and spirituous and apt to overheat the Soul presently finds this and committing it self to the Inclinations of Body such Propensions are promoted and inraged according to the mighty Force of a Soul into the Excesses of Lust Rage and all Intemperance beyond the very Bruitish Nature that hath no such Spirit to act it and thus also the Might of the Soul is lost as the Force of the Fire with the Powder in a crack'd or foul Gun that is scatter'd and recoils with mischief or as an over-measure of Powder taking fire without direction the Effect of which is the slaughter and destruction of all about it So that every way nothing is atchieved worthy the Greatness of this Spirit Thus the Soul is doubly disabled by Matter wherein it is set both because that Matter is subject to so many disorders that can no way be perfectly cured and so it is unfit for the Souls use and also because the Soul crowds up its own Activities into a contentment with what it finds most natural and ready in that Matter with which it is joyned complies with it and troubles it self no further to amend it and the longer things continue so the more stiff and unreformable the Evil grows All which put together is a plain Reason why there are no greater Effects of a Soul in the World and how it comes to pass that the multitude of People in it give no other evidence of a Soul but in a provision of Natural Life and the Sensualities of Life somewhat above the Rank of Beasts Now upon the utmost stretch of this Reason there would be no Examples of greater Vertue or Heroickness among Men But because this State both of the Body and the Soul is below the Graciousness of the first Creation and that there are most merciful Relaxations of the Punishment due to the Sin of Man and many Advantages for the betterment of both Soul and Body vouchsafed by God through Christ the Mediator whose Benefits extend to them that do not know him hence it is that the State of Mankind excells it self in many great Instances For the Soul retaining its primitive Vigour and Life which are its very Nature and Being and Body being capable of Refinement to better use by the care of the Soul in the Sublimation of it even as Art polishes the Rude Matter directs it into the usefulness of any Instrument as Chymistry purifies and exalts it as the Skill of the Apothecary corrects and makes it medicinable so the Soul designing to mend the Body sets the Characters of Wisdom Virtue and good Ingeny upon it formes it to a graceful Mine and Deportment turns and twists the Motions of it to the Curiosities of Artifice chastises and reforms it to the Precepts of Virtue and subdues it to the Industry of Study and Contemplation hardens it to the fearless and resolv'd Actions of War quickens it to Service in greatest Works and Undertakings with whatever else we see in the World worthy of consideration to this purpose being the Inspiration of Mind and the Performance of Body commanded by it Now that which under such Pressures excites the Souls of Men to these Aspirings must chiefly be acknowledged to Divine Impressions awakening some Mens Spirits to the exercise of their richer and worthier Faculties of which Scripture gives abundant Testimony in all kinds And under this they may be ascrib'd to the different Magnitudes of Souls or the more advantageous Bodies Providence hath contriv'd for some rather than for others and then to the Instruction and Examples that fall from such Persons as Influences from the Heavenly Bodies and have their Effects upon many not onely of one Age or Country but of far distant Places and succeeding Times so that there have been still springing up great and incomparable Persons Mirrours of the Greatness and Potency of a Humane Spirit and their Actions as Monuments of it and under them multitudes of others though not of so high a degree yet endeavouring to raise themselves somewhat towards the Excellencies of Humane Nature But why upon these so fair Advantages the Excellency of Mans Soul is not more generally retrived may receive this farther Resolution As the Soul working by Body must have a well fitted and prepared Body to work immediately by so it 's further necessary to its Operations by Body that there be a conveniency and an accommodation of several Instruments and Materials besides and beyond Body for it to employ the Ministeries of Body upon and to work at a distance by that the Action may be memorable and great He that will build must first sit down and count the Charge The King that goes to War must consider the strength of his Armies the number of his Men the Conduct and Resolution of his Captains the sufficiency of his Treasure He that separates himself to intermeddle with all Knowledge must be furnish'd with the external as well as the internal Means of Science else his Success can never amount to Eminency Now the present State of the World is so impoverish'd by the Sin of Man that it can supply but Few in comparison of the Many so that the strait and low Condition the unattempting Education and manner of Life that very many the most of Mankind are confin'd to by reason of Want fore-prizes the nobler Darings of their Mind and plunges them so low that they cannot easily rise The Experiments of this Case have been very notable in sundry Persons whose Souls have been kept low and suppress'd by the lowness and narrowness of as they are call'd their Fortunes but have spread and soar'd aloft when their Sphere of Action hath been made more ample and high by accession of those Fortunes and we need not make any doubt but that if the Train had been laid in their Youth to Generous Employment they would have much more excell'd seeing their Souls have as it were started out in their riper years to worthy Menages being encourag'd by plenty of Means when their Education had been sordid And the same thing is proportionably to be believ'd of very many who yet live and die obscure and conceal'd and their name in darkness through Prejudices of a poor Condition while their Souls are in themselves as great as any And indeed it is not intended by God the degenerate State of this World should be so noble or free as to bear up the true and native Greatness of Souls in a Multitude and at their full extent of Action any more than he hath prepar'd the Firmament for many Suns A World of Personages Great for their Prowess Vertue Learning and Wisdom would exalt this State too high It is therefore so ordered that the Spirits of the most lie still and contracted by the very closeness of their Condition besides other Misadventures and are so diverted upon the little things they
dissent it can derive no happiness upon the Soul but on the contrary anguish and affliction This being then preconsidered let us now more pressingly search the nature of Mans Soul as it is in Scripture stiled The Heart and the Heart out of which are the Issues of Life first drawing the powers of Reason themselves and their motions and then shewing them as they are derived for so they are always into one of those two Channels Good or Evil. In the Heart then are all the powers of Motion 1. Here is the immediate directive Understanding or Judgment which determines to Action and this is a different thing from the Light of the Candle of the Lord which is always the same for this may be debased and corrupted it may mix it self with lower Considerations and in the generality of Men it does so even to the eclipsing and darkening the higher Light not in it self but in its oriency and brightness upon the Soul as the Sun is the same although its Light may be shadowed from us But this practical Understanding however it may be corrupted yet hath the more immediate conduct of all the actions and contains in it self the Gust Taste and Motion of the whole Soul and immediately foreruns Action for it determines things with their Circumstances it ballances diviner Reasons and Temptations on the contrary part together the Love and Fear of God on one side Inticements from Flesh and Blood and the World on the other Now there is a great difference between these two It is best to be holy and virtuous in it self and in general and It is best for me in particular and in this particular Action to be holy Between these two An Act of Judgment as it resides in the Understanding and an Act of Judgment as it inclines the whole Soul Motion and Action unto it This very practical Understanding is in Scripture called The Heart Let Prov. 23. 15. thy Heart be wise It is this Wisdom of the Heart that denotes a man Good not that most clear Light that shines from above and down upon the Heart not within it but so without it that it doth not reside in it and change it into it self 2. Here are the Will and Affections which are the resolution vehemency and keenness of the Judgment and carry the notion of the nearest and next Powers of Action 3. Here is the Memory presenting anew the Images of Things past and offering what hath been observed of them heretofore either as to their chuseableness or undeservingness Here is the Imagination displaying things new and old and so displaying them that in things of lesser importance their appearance is greater than themselves in Things of truest and greatest Importance by the help of Imagination well imprinted they come nearer to their own greatness and appear much greater than they would do else which is the great benefit of sanctified Imagination in regard of which David prays That God would keep it always in the imaginations 1 Chron. 29. 18. of the people to fear the Lord and keep his Laws 4. Here is the resort of all outward Objects with their several Characters of Commendation or Dispraise as Embassies in the Court of a Prince so are the several Proposes made and addressed here from those several Regions the Region above which makes Offertures of greatest Happiness and the Region below which sends also the glozed Tenders of Good 5. Here are the Habits rising up by the degrees of propensions inclination temper and readiness to Action till by repeated Action they are so settled that they become the Treasure of the Heart out of which it freely expends Mat. 12. 35. every moment and at a minutes warning as occasion calls it out And from all these arise restless motions moves and removes of the Soul it self and of the Things within it self about which it treats endless Thoughts Imaginations Remembrances Willings Hatings Desirings Aversations and Abhorrencies and these in infinite mazes cutting one another some weaving one with another and mutually strengthening themselves others contracting cool and suspend the Soul to either part sometimes the Prints that have prevailed are defaced and new ones take and these again thrust out and the former returning in continual vicissitudes sometimes the Understanding encourages the Affections and other Powers and they it as several Artificers in a Building at other times there is a Confusion of Languages among them and they bring forth only a Babel But at all times is found here that great contest between the higher Soul and the Reasons and Dictates of that and the contrary struggles of the lower through its correspondencies and intelligences with the Body and its Sensualities the encounters between the Law of the Mind and the Members which cause great distractions and rollings of the Soul this way and that way according to the liveliness of the one or the violence of the other Lastly From the Heart arise both sudden and every way formed and contrived Actions accomplished perfected and fledg'd for all the forming and beating out of actions to this or that shape are upon the Anvil of the Heart and those that break out on the instant had yet their first motion from thence even as all the Arteries and Veins are from the natural Heart and it hath its Pulses every where so this Heart we speak of hath in this Life Moral and Intellectual Now that which makes the Consideration of all we have spoken in this particular great is that according to these Issues of life is the state of a Man in Holiness or Sin and so he is in an order for Happiness or Misery hereby For by these and all these and no other thing whatever is a Man what he is with these a Man is holy with these he is wicked nothing else gives him his Temper his Character and when these are twisted together and holily moved by the Grace of God and incited by heavenly motions the Soul is then drawn with the Cords of Hos 11. 4. a Man but when they are united in Evil it is drawing Iniquity with a Isa 5. 19. Cart-rope and sin with the Cords of Vanity that is of a Vain Heart For these being neither the higher Reason alone necessarily resulting from the motion and excellency of an Understanding nor being only the meer sensuality or inclination of Body but truly the substance bulk and substantial powers and motions of a man what a man is in these he truly is Further the true genuine and sincere motions of these are they that try him for which ever Sin or Holiness have the Ballance and cast the Scale that a Man is For on one side the cunning Heart sends out some actions out of choice and inclination only in complyance with the higher Soul for which it cannot but have a reverence and again sometimes however it be in its own native state corrupt yet it is forced to receive or rather suffers the
represented to our sense and however the display of these things may pass into the Body and be all seen there yet we know the most excessive pleasures of Body interrupt the proper motions of Soul in which true Happiness or Misery lye for neither is a man drenched in an irrational pleasure nor tormented and he knows not why but there is an orderly motion a sense of sin and guilt of the supreme Justice of God in his righteous Executions of Judgment in Happiness an adoring of Infinite Grace and Mercy a Rational Taste of Holy and Divine Pleasures I shall now as a Conclusion draw up all this Discourse into these practical Conclusions flowing from the whole 1. Hereby I understand I have an immortal and everlasting Soul to take care of we look upon our selves as Flesh and Blood but we do not consider these Immortal Spirits and their great Powers Understanding Imagination Will Conscience Affections and the motion of these to be Everlasting We do not examine whether our Souls have a true Health Peace and Safety and a good Provision made for them Whether our Consciences are quiet and upon good grounds Whether our Affections are purified and holy For a man to consider his Soul thus is indeed to consider a mans self What shall it Luc. 9. 2â— profit a man if he gain the whole World and lose himself The Soul is a true Self and how dreadful will the mistake appear to men who have counted the Body and the Interests of that the only Self and this other true the greatest Self starts out A Self that now lyes under as many Covers as a Body under a multitude of Garments and so is concealed But then it breaking out and not being provided for that great principle of self preservation finding now its greatest Object will force a man to cry out with a most dreadful Ejulation and Complaint Oh this false Self that I have laboured for how hath it deceived me My very Self I never thought of and so have lost it What shall I give now in exchange for this my true Self 2. I hereby understand I am made for Holiness as the true Peace and Greatness of my Spirit for a converse with God for an attendance upon him for an observation of his Favour and Countenance towards me and that herein is the Life of my Spirit and on the other side I am very apt to be tempted to sin and drawn away from God to live at a distance from him to lose him and herein at last will be found the Torment and Hell of Souls and therefore I have greatest reason to be awakened about these things and earnestly to pray to God that he would put me into a high and vigorous action concerning them and to be extremely unsatisfied when I find my self insensible concerning them and therefore to labour earnestly to be in a good state and condition in relation to them 3. I hereby understand I am made and designed and shall certainly be unexpressibly Happy or Miserable to extremity and who can say this to himself without highest concern upon his own Soul If any one should tell us we were ordained to be one of these extraordinarily happy and prosperous or deplorably unhappy and were about to read our Fate or Doom to us and that we had considerable Reasons to believe such a one who would not with a most trembling suspense of mind wait what it should be When any one is to receive the Issue of his Cause from a Judge or Jury how high and impatient is his expectation But how much more should our Thoughts wait for this Issue of Things and God hath placed it in the motions of these our own Thoughts for when they move enlightened with his Countenance cleansed and annointed with his Grace ennobled with his Spirit delighted with his Consolations this is Heaven begun this is Happiness growing up When they are base for want of his Spirit impure with Lust and dishonourable Affections full of rancour and bitterness and all spotted and stained with guilt this is Hell in the Foundations of it laid And however my Soul lye still now yet when I see how many things draw out mens Souls even in this Life Education better Converse Solitude some great danger or loss in the world higher Condition Sickness some notable Discourse as in Foelix how much more must I needs think the change into Eternity will do it and therefore no silence of my Soul now can encourage me upon serious consideration to be careless of it 4. I hereby understand my unspeakable dependence upon the Grace of God and his Free Favour and hence learn to humble my self before him to nothing seeing my Happiness consists in those free Beams of his Favour in the light of his Countenance in his setting my Soul into a gracious Motion by his Spirit and raising the Motions of my Spirit to a high communion with him in Bliss for seeing I can so little yield my self the accounts of Happiness and receive them all from him and can so little move my self upon them when they are offered by him I am inconceivably bound and beholden to him both to open the Fountain of Life that is himself to me and to move me by his Spirit that I may move On the other side If he leaves me to my self what Evils shall I run into and treasure up torment and sharpen stings against my self by it and how can he inflame my Soul with his Indignation and to what degrees he pleases both now and for ever For if he hide the face of his Mercy who can behold him What Reason have I therefore to reverence him with Godly Fear and to acknowledge him with greatest dependency I humbly therefore say as the Apostle not only by the Grace of God I am what I am but by the Grace of God alone I hope what I hope to be 5. I hereby understand what a great necessity I have of Jesus Christ my Lord the Son of the Wisdom Glory Power and Holiness of God the Son of his Love for he is the Attonement His Blood offered by the Eternal Spirit is the most excellent Thing in Heaven or Earth and that only which can purge the Conscience the most excellent and divine Instrument of Pacification with God and within the Conscience it self Through him the Holy Spirit is given by him is there an entrance into that Holy of Holies that Heaven within the Veil for as the value of Souls for which our Lord gave himself exalts his Redemption the greatness of the Misery from which they are rescued the greatness of the Happiness to which they are exalted all glorifie the Saviour of Souls so do these Souls of a Nature so supreme require so great a Ransom and Mediator no lower no lesser a Price can countervail them and it argues them to be a Nature so supreme that so great a Mediator undertook so infinitely for them 6. Hereby I understand
very satisfactory solutions to those Pretences that are thought so mighty against the Doctrine of the Resurrection For when I consider that Body and Matter are always flowing and in a continual variation that they are not stable enough to be much valuable in making up the person of a Man I easily adjudge that Honour due to a more noble and excellent Being within for if we respect a Body distinctly who can give an account of the daily Decays and Reparations the Accessions and Diminutions of it the alterations of it in its ascendency from Infancy to Youth from Youth to Manhood the gradual declinations of it into Old Age Yet we still account it the same Person though it cannot be in a distinct sense the same Body therefore it must be the conjunction with the same never growing never decreasing Soul that makes it esteemed the same I then collect whatever of Matter is assumed into a Vital Union with the Soul and fitted for its operations is truly called its Body and do we not find the Soul hath the same love for the new parts of Matter that daily accrue to it so long as they continue in conjunction with it and that it loses its love to those parts of Matter before united with it assoon as they are loosed and flye from it It imprints rationality upon them by its own use of them and they become wild irrational and insensible again in their departure from it they are as guilty as Matter can be when the Soul vitiously inspires them and as virtuous as Bodily parts can be when it uses them in virtuous Motions the Soul is punished when they being united with it are in disorder and finds pleasure in their ease and good condition It is yet indifferent to Matter it self whether the parts of it burn in a Feaver or are in the most equal temper and so throughout all the varieties of Bodily State and it is as indifferent to the Soul whether these material particles are of its older or newer assumption into the participations of its own life and resentment its care for and concern in them is all one This then being laid as a certain ground for I think it cannot be denyed that the sameness of the Soul retains with it self the whole account of the sameness of the person no man need intangle himself in unnecessary scruples concerning the Resurrection or think the Wounds of Atheism deep and incurable upon this point of Christianity For first Let us take that which seems the most natural sense of the Apostles Discourse of this point 1 Cor. 15. 36 37 38. That the dying Body is as Seed thrown into the Earth which Joh. 12. 24. dyes that is dissolves and melts as it were into the Earth and communicates its seminal virtue to it and from thence it rises in the very same kind of Body though with much advantage and flourish of Nature we may then conceive a great part of the whole lump or universe of Matter communicated with the seminal virtue of Humane Bodies full of that Vis plastica which lyes hid and dead now But as God doth according to the several Seasons of his own appointment raise out of the Earth the ordinary Seeds so doth he in that great Period or Harvest of the World draw out of the whole Plot of Nature the Bodies of every Man Woman and Child the seminal virtue of which remain all along though conceal'd And as the rising again of Seeds in common Nature in the main follows the kind of Seeds dying into the Earth so it is in this higher and proper Resurrection Yet there are very great variations of circumstances too between the Seeds sown and their rising again so there is in this Resurrection insomuch that though there is certainly so much as to distinguish and appropriate every mans Body to himself and so much that a vitious unclean and unsanctified Body sown rises the same and a holy purified Body made the Temple of the Holy Ghost rises such and this latter with advantage and that so great that the Apostle tells us We know not what we 1 Joh. 3. 2. shall be only this we know we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is And the Apostle Paul resolves it into this God gives a Body as it pleases him a Body spiritual incorruptible and immortal conformed to the glorious Body of the Son of God and so united with the Soul for Ever And further than this to approach in a more strict and literal sense to the Article of the Resurrection In all the revolutions of Matter out of one shape into another or the vicissitudes of it in the Bodies of Men entring first into the Body of one Man then of another there is yet no loss of Matter the Omnisciency of God keeps it all under a strict account distinguishes it all his Omnipotency preserves and disposes it he knows how and is able to summon it from every corner there can then be no want of any particle of any man and however some of the same Matter may have been common to many Men yet we may with ease conceive some substantial parts of all Humane Bodies kept so distinct by God as to make up out of them to every Man his own Body at the Resurrection in as full a sense as Eve was made of the Rib of Gen. 2. 22. Adam and taken out of Man for we cannot suppose that done without any addition but that God made that the Foundation and built upon it by his own Omnipotency and yet the whole was so like Adam that he knew Eve was Bone of his Bone Flesh v. 23. of his Flesh even so the Soul shall know its own Body notwithstanding any alteration or addition And how little an addition needs in the making up a spiritual Body Resurrection is too great a Mystery to search into but this is plain The same Soul with so much the same Body much eases the Doctrine of the Resurrection to our Thoughts Nor do I intend this should be understood as the least intimation that there is not further proof from Scripture reconcileable with the principles of true Reason to ascertain this Article of Christian Faith in the utmost latitude it is asserted by the Church but I have only taken advantage from the greatness of the Soul to shew how far the Doctrine of the Resurrection may be verified against the boldest infidelious Sadducee There remains nothing then but a general review of the state of the Soul in these Bodies of the Resurrection upon which I have made frequent remarques already and shall only give now this brief Recapitulation The Bodies of that future state are so proportioned and qualified that they do not at all damp the lively operations of a blessed and for ever appeased or the enraged motions of a disturbed and tormented Mind The Bodies of the Saints are fitted to the choice and beatifying Action of their Souls and those of the Condemned have such kind of Bodies as give way to the play of a Conscience full of the stings of guilt and rebukes of Justice of the horrours of sin and restless Exagitations of it self for could these motions be dulled by Bodies there would neither be scope for Divine Mercy nor Justice in the other World But then it is that the Bodies of Men are prepared for the greatest capacities of Pleasure or Pain Fine to take in every intimation of either of freest reception and strength to endure and bear in a state of immortality and incorruption to last which is the difference between the present state of Bodies and the future for even an Excess of Pleasure here gluts and overcharges Bodily Nature and oppresses it from pain and pressure it vanishes or is ground to Powder by it But this immortal state of Bodies is filled with Happiness Pleasure and Delight and yet those Bodies not surcharged and full of Unhappiness and Misery yet they abide by it shrink not from but rejoin themselves to all they endure having put on immortality Now this Misery and Unhappiness of the Body arises first from the guilt and confusion of the Soul that falls upon it even as we see the sorrow of the Mind here in the World prints it self upon the outward Man and the shame and secret confusions of guilt of which the Mind is full diffuse themselves upon the whole surface of exterior Nature and make the aspect mean and confounded On the other side the Peace Righteousness and Heavenly Joy of the Saints break out and illustrate their Bodies even as we see now a chearful Heart makes a Countenance full of Light and a good frame of Soul beautifies the whole Man A Mans Wisdom now makes his Face to shine and in Eternity the clearness shall not be only doubled but in endless degrees grow brighter even to the brightness of the Sun for so they shall shine out in the Matt. 13. 43. Kingdom of their Father 2. The Bodies of Saints have a distinct Happiness and Glory besides that which flows from the Soul and it is that by which Almighty Goodness and Wisdom fits them to the state of the Soul a Fashioning there is of Bodies like to the Glorious Body of Christ which returns with greatest delight and satisfaction upon the Soul On the contrary the Bodies of wicked Men not accomplished with that Glory but punished with a deformity increase the unhappiness and torment of the Soul We see the Soul now takes pleasure in the grace and happy order of its Body and is dejected by any thing loathsom and to be abhorred in it This will be much more in the unchangeable state God so disposing that the Soul and Body lye closer and nearer one to another and the passes and reciprocations of Good and Evil are much freer and more penetrating and therefore Heaven and Hell are so often described in Scripture by things proper to Bodies because they are most sensible to us now and because too the Happiness or Misery though it be for the Souls sake alone originally and principally yet as far as the Nature of Body united to the Soul extends do fully and on every side inclasp and encompass Bodies as well as Souls for Ever FINIS
was the habitation of the Spirit or Soul renewed and purged from sin that Spirit or Soul being it self the habitation of the Divine Spirit this Body because it hath still a relation to such a Soul loses its sinful taint while it moulders into dust and is raised a Body incorruptible and spiritual that is a habitation fit for the Spirit now made perfect and is filled thereby with the glory of life and immortality which is eternal life and all by virtue of that Divine Spirit that dwelt in that Soul while it was lodged and dwelt in that Body And herein lying the true substantial sense of this most weighty Paragraph of the Apostle how plainly doth it express the distinction of the Soul from the Body and that the Soul is a substance of it self independent upon Body and Body altogether dependent upon it even while it is most immers'd into Body For first The Soul it self gives all the life to its own impure pleasures and sinful reposes in bodily delights to which else Body is able to contribute no more than Oyl to the Flame which of it self we know always lyes still and dark 2. Spirit it self assisted by Grace retires into spiritual enjoyments and quenches and dryes up its own sensual affections to Body and blasts the satisfactions received from thence even before that Oyl be wasted by the decays of Body or dryed up by death Lastly It self carries its own fate if I may so call it and the fate of the Body along with it into eternity for according to what the Soul it self is so is its own happiness or misery and the Body of necessity follows its condition so that it self is plainly All and the Body only a Cypher attending the state of this principal Figure 3. The distinction of Spirit and Body in death is conveyed to us in very plain and easie terms and such as carry their meaning very open if not disturbed and prevented by ill interpretation Let us take a view of the clearness of Scripture herein First Solomon in his Ecclesiastes having considered with some passion and vehemency the little or no apparent preheminence of men above Beasts in their death that as one dies so dies the other they send out one common vital breath and go all to one place he then casts the account of this into the common heap of vanity and comes to a very warm enquiry Who knoweth Eccl. 3. 21. the Spirit of a man that goes upward and the Spirit of a Beast that goes downward Yet thereby resolving the main case enough viz. that these outward appearances laid so much to disadvantage are but only in the Body and outside the difference between the Spirit of a man and the Spirit of a Beast is still very great as great as between Heaven and Earth and the motion as contrary when they dye as upward and downward but still he complains that this is not possible to be seen by Sense and there are very few that reach it to any purpose by Reason and Religion and this saith he is one of the great points of the vanity of all worldly condition that both so great a principle of Truth and so great a dignity of Humane Nature should lye so far off be so indiscernable Here is then an equality in the outside or Bodies of men a dying and Beasts but a great inequality or excellency of men above Beasts which comes home to what we are asserting And thus Solomon understood of the Spirit of a man as is now explained he makes us more certain when after his travel over all things he comes to describe man in his end and does it thus The Dust returning to the Earth Eccl. 12. 7. as it was and the Spirit returns to God that gave it he allots to the several parts into which he distributes man a several motion and a several rest according to the several originals of each The Dust or Body returns to the Earth from whence it was taken the Spirit survives and hastens back to God that gave it Agreeably the care of holy men at death or in any great apprehensions of danger that presented death to them was to commend their Spirit to God as David Into thy hand I commend Psal 31. 5. my Spirit which words were prophetick of the dying words of our Saviour Father into thy hand I commend Luc. 23. 46. my Spirit and thus Stephen breathed out his Soul Lord Jesus receive Acts 7. 59. my Spirit Now in that Solomon affirms of the Spirit of man in general that it returns to God the Judge of all whether it be the spirit of a good man or a bad man or whether it be for happiness or misery and that thereupon holy persons recommended their Souls into the hands of God as a faithful Creator I know not how any thing can be more determinative of the distinction of Body and Soul in death For such words are not words of meer resignation of life back again to the Fountain of Life but an entrustment and dependent recommendation and not of a life to be secured only for the Resurrection but of a Spirit immediately going to God for else they might with as much care have committed Body to him who weighs the dust of the Earth in a Ballance much more that of the Bodies of men whom he will raise again most of all that of his Saints which he will raise to glory If there were not such an immediate return of good mens Spirits to God why doth the Apostle chuse to be Phil. 1. 23. dissolved or set at liberty that he might be with Christ Or why doth he profess in the name of Christians in general we desire rather to be absent 2 Cor. 5. 6. from than at home in the body that we might be present with the Lord What tolerable account can be given of such speeches for what composition is it that suffers dissolution that some part and what part is that might have immediate being with Christ Or who is it that would be set at liberty Or that is absent from the body or at home in it if not this supreme man the Soul Or why should death be preferred for the sake of a nearer and more immediate presence with Christ if all the man dye with the body Or what man is it that the Apostle speaks of caught up into the third Heaven and makes a doubt whether in the body or out of it Or how could there be such a being in the body or out of the Body if the body were all if there were nothing but body Or lastly why doth our Saviour amplifie the dread of the vengeance of God upon man above theirs that kill the body and have no more that they can do whereas the hand of God destroys Luc. 12. 4 5. both body and soul in Hell For let it be expounded to the greatest advantage of the opinion that encounters the Souls immortality