gust of the Bodily Life the suggestions of the Intellectual Nature will be like the sudden immission of light upon sore eyes burdensome and offensive and the man is no more capable of the force and power of such argumentations than a Swine of Morality or the savage Tygers of Ingenuity and Goodness I come now to your second Question which is Whether upon the quitting this Body the Soul be immediately carried either to Heaven or Hell The Holy Scriptures which give us all imaginable certainty of a blessed reward of our Faith and Patience at the Great Day of Recompences when God shall have put all his enemies under his feet are very silent in delineating and depainting out to us the state and condition of the Soul between Death and the Resurrection Yet this we are assured of in general That the Souls of Good and Holy Men are alwaies under the careful eye of Heaven and live in joy and felicity farr above the troubles and discontents that attend this obscure and evanid life they lead on Earth and on the contrary That shame and misery await the refractory and irreclaimable spirits of Impious persons upon their separation from their terrestrial bodies But whether the one be in Heaven properly so called and partake of those great diffusions of Glory which shall be conferred on the children of the Resurrection and the other in Hell that is in that place of torment prepared for the Devil and his Angels or into which Death and the Grave shall be cast when time shall be no more immediately upon their disunion from their Bodies the Sacred Writ hath no-where determined He therefore who will seek further may indeed light upon some probable Conjectures which may bear the visage and phisnomy of truth but can never positively assert them as convictive and indubitable The only remain in Speculations of this Nature is To decide them by free and unprejudiced Reason and Philosophy and if by that light and conduct the mind of man fall upon any conclusion consentient with the Attributes of God or those eternal and immutable laws implanted and wrought in the essential frame of the Creation though I do not say it is impossible for him then to erre yet his miscarriage will be exceeding pardonable pleasant and ingenuous I confess the world hath been long contented to live in an easie and affected ignorance and men either out of a deplorable proclivity to vice and impiety or from a stupid and blockish zeal to Religion willingly profess that all things are uncertain and sit down in this that we can know nothing as if the wise and benign Author of our Beings had made the very essential principles of our Natures fallacious and that we should then be most of all deceived when we think we have the clearest apprehensions and most distinct Idea's of the things we converse about Reason is the Image of God in the Soul of Man and when assisted by the Divine Wisdome is the only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to discriminate between truth and falshood And though it be true that an honest and sincere heart be dear and precious in the eyes of God and sufficient to instate a man in that happiness which attends the faithful adherents of the Kingdome of Light yet he that employes his faculties in searching out such considerable truths in Nature and Providence as may benefit the world and do good to the generations of men ennobles his Soul and widens it for the reception of some greater good and influence from that inexhaustible Fountain which gave life and being to the whole frame of Nature But I fear my Pen has been too luxuriant in pleading for the free use of Natural Reason and I have need of your pardon and shall make amends by falling immediately upon the Question in hand I say therefore So far as the Light of Nature is able to judg the Soul doth not immediately go to Heaven or Hell in their strict significations upon it's separation from the body but that there is some middle State of Being between Death and the Resurrection And that you may not think I take in the ashes of the Church of Rome and seek to revive and blow up that ridiculous Doctrine of Purgatory I shall crave leave to tell you that by this middle State I mean no such condition of Being as that wherein a man from his impious transactions in this life shall undergo very sharp and acute torments the protraction or abbreviation of which yet depend upon the will and pleasure of his Holiness and mercenary Priests and after such a time of penance and purgation be delivered and translated into Heaven but such a state wherein by a due purification of their minds and subjugation of those stubborn lusts and desires which exalt themselves against the life of God and which were not throughly tamed in this life the Soul of man becomes wholly dead to every inordinate affection and daily kindles that fire of Divine Love till at last it arise to a perfect flame and triumphantly carry up the duly prepared soul like Elijah in his fiery chariot to the beatifical vision and enjoyment of God And this is no more than what Reason it self assures us of For he that shall consider that the operations of the Spirit of God upon mens hearts and their progress in Holiness and Virtue are wrought successively by parts and distant proportions and that a man is not a Saint in an instant or by the Piety and Religion of a day but attains and reaches to that glorious Crown by patient continuance in well doing and that by sharp and unwearied conflicts with Lust and Sin by habitual and persevering acts of Virtue and an undaunted Resolution he must demonstrate himself a true and faithful disciple and souldier of the Son of God must necessarily conclude either that the infinitely far greater part of men are damned yea those who have had very small and few opportunities of doing good to themselves or others in this life or else that there is a time and place of bettering themselves and where that benign Spirit who expressed his dear compassion in hovering over the new born world will be as ready to help forward the tender inchoations of the life of God and perpetually raise and lift up those fettered souls into the true liberty of the sons of Heaven and Immortality As the efformations of the spirit of Nature out of fitly-prepared Matter are not instantaneous but gradually arrive to their perfection and maturity So are the operations of that Universal Spirit of Love and Goodness upon the hearts of men where-ever he meets with fit and kindly dispositions and capacities And surely no man can without blasphemy think that God ever was or will at any time or place be wanting to the faithful endeavours and attempts of sincere persons after the participation of his own Image and the renovation of their minds and spirits into that divine frame
A Private LETTER of Satisfaction to a FRIEND Concerning 1. The Sleep of the Soul 2. The State of the Soul after death till the Resurrection 3. The reason of the seldom appearing of Separate Spirits 4. Prayer for departed Souls whether lawful or no 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Origen Printed in the Year 1667. SIR I Received yours In which upon the sudden death and abruption of your dear Lady having wasted her silent hours in pensive sighs and moistned her funeral Cypresse with a shower of tears you have now converted the Griefs into Patience and a noble Charity and made your sorrows the Scene of Divine Speculations concerning the memory of your dead Saint And admitting her into your retired thoughts such as she desired to be that is amiable and pleasant Not to discompose the quiet serenity of your mind by any afflictive circumstance but to administer a lenitive to your sadness and elevate and advance your joyes To this end you have propounded these following Questions To which out of a due sense of gratitude and of that service and obedience I owe you I shall not detract to give you the best Solution I can 1. Whether the Soul when separated from this terrestrial body sleeps till the general Resurrection 2. Whether upon the quitting this body she be immediately carryed either to Heaven or Hell 3. Why Separate Souls do seldome appear 4. Whether it be not lawful to pray for our reparted Relatives or whether the duties and obligations of friendship are extinct by their death That there is in us a Principle of life and motion wholly independent upon matter and which by an intrinsick virtue actuates this stupid and heavy body we carry about us I think there are few so gross and sensual as to deny At least if there be any such I shall not now concern my selfe with them but take into consideration that odd Hypothesis which some have fallen upon who fancy the soul though distinct from the body to fall into such a profound sleep as never to be awakened but by that shril-sounding Trump which shall eccho through the arched roof of Heaven and rouz the dead from the silence of their dormitories to appear before the just tribunal of the Son of God Which if examined to the bottom will prove little less than a piece of Epicurism and a branch of new modell'd Atheism to exclude and banish all hopes of a future reward in those immortal regions of love and joy out of the minds and spirits of men It will be necessary as well for the promoting of righteousness and holiness as the discouraging vice and impiety to shew the lubricous and brittle foundation upon which this doctrine is built In order to which we may consider the Soul of man as a spiritual Essence capable of acting and subsisting if God so please after she is disengaged from this weight of dull mortality to which by a vital harmony and essential congruity she became at first united Which happy Crasis being worn out by the length of time or discomposed through the violence of a disease or some other disordered motions in the body that sweet Tye is presently dissolved and broken and the Soul freed from her terrestrial prison becomes a denizon of another world For what cords or springs can retard a spirit Or what walls can detain and imprison so subtil and penetrative a Being as the Soul of man For that the Soul at any time separates from the body is not from her own actual will but from the vitiated temperament of the body she is united with which by harsh and uneven motions becomes very unpleasant and disharmonious to her inward sense or plastick life so that being once loosened from the body she regains a vital energie or power far more vigorous than before and attains to a clearer perception of things than when cloystred within these walls of flesh No law of Fate or Immutability can stop her flight from the insensate Corps which is no longer in a capacity of entertaining it's departing Guest So then this sleep of the soul must be resolved into the cessation of her operations upon her disunion with the body For Death say they quite obliterates and wipes off all those various phantasms with which the mind was stored here below which being excited and stirred up in her by the presence of their several objects now that she is dispread and fallen back as it were into that universal Life can never re-enter her knowledg nor can she be conscious of ought but must lye thus senselesse for ever unless that benign Spirit which first brought her into Being awaken her from this mortal Sleep But he that shall consider those several powers and faculties the great Creator of the World who made all things well bestowed upon the Soul of man and how orderly in their due time and place they awaken into act will be forced to confess that Infinite Wisdome has so happily contrived it that she shall never want proportionate instruments of action whatsoever state the various revolutions of an unerring Providence shall place her in Those clear eyes of Heaven and divine Omniscience foreseeing all the possible fates of men beheld them not only as being inhabitants of this terrestrial World but as those that were not farr removed from the confines of eternity and capable of dwelling in that Kingdome of light and glory which no mortal eye can behold and live and to this end endued them with such powers as should make them happy both in the enjoyment of themselves and God in that condition of Being wherein they are While we are here in this Region of mutability we are in a state of banishment from our native home and the life of the body grown so powerful and vigorous that the gentle touches and soft vibrations of our more divine part are scarce perceptible within us Those fatal Inclinations which at first pent up our spirits which lay wide as the World embracing the Creation in an extensive love and sunk them down to a boundless indulgence and regard of sense and corporal pleasures are now most lively and active and the more near approaches we make to this muddy life the more gross and feculent are the apprehensions and Idea's of our minds The scorching flames of Envy and degenerate Malice dry up the gentle dews of heaven that enlarge and widen the soul with a divine fertility the vile and impure motions of Lust bemire the internal beauty of this Daughter of heaven and every caitive affection captivates her to a new invented pleasure and a further deflection from her Original and Primitive good This is the lowest degree of life that is seated in the Soul of man this is that pleasing Magick which bewitches and enchants the Mind with these poor and contemptible Goods Thus Adam lost his Paradise by listning to the charming voice of his new espoused Bride and thus we fell with him and became mancipated and
to the other Principle according as the strength of Natural corruption or the auxiliaries of Reason prevail upon him he must conclude I say that such Persons as these dying cannot be immediately rewarded with the Bliss and Glories of Heaven because they have not as yet performed the condition upon which that Felicity is entail'd which is to be changed and renewed in the spirit of their minds to be purified throughout and become holy as God is Holy partaking of his Nature and becoming in all things conformable to the Holy Jesus as to a perfect and compleat Copy of all Virtue and Righteousness Nor will the Goodness of Almighty God whose Spirit is alwayes taking hold of every heart that retains any capacities and dispositions for the reception of it's own Nature frustrate such auspicious beginnings but rather cherish and fold them like a tender mother in it's loving arms till it bring them to that due perfection which alone can render them the proper subjects of Immortality and Life It will follow then that such as these and such are the greatest part of mankind are fit and adequate objects of our Prayers Nor can the small and only conjectural knowledg which we have of the state of separate Souls make us ever a whit the more remiss in performing these exercises which are the only ones we can shew of love and charity to our departed friends if we remind our selves of what I before hinted and shall now further prosecute viz. That the unfallen Angels and the Spirits of good and holy men departed this life and all just persons upon Earth who are daily breathing after and aspiring to the highest pitch of a Christian life are one Polity Society or Corporation which reacheth from that Blessed and Glorious Seat of Majesty which we more eminently call Heaven to this Globe of earth whereon we live so that all those intermundane Spaces are replenished with several ranks and orders of invisible Agents who are as the benign-eyes of God beholding the administration of the affairs of the Earth and protecting the sincere lovers of truth from the tyranny and invasion of the Airy Principality and there is no need we should fancy them beyond the Stars when they have quitted their bodies where all that they can do if haply they can attain so much is to be compassionate Spectators of our Calamities being unable to afford the least relief or succour but look upon them as not farr distant from us where they may not only behold the several transactions of men but really assist and abette their innocent and pious attempts after the divine life and Nature And the more good and purified they are from the contagion of mortal concretions the more compassionate and benign Inspectors will they be of humane affairs and more concerned in their behalf for their advantage and welfare Having thus farr discoursed from the reason of the thing it self I may cast in the suffrage of the antient Fathers of the Church to let you see the Sense of Antiquity that prayers for the dead were in use even in the early dawning as it were of Christianity Tertullian de Corona Militis hath these Words Oblationes pro defunctis pro natalitiis annua die facimus And in his Book de Monogamia Pro anima ejus nempe mariti oret refrigerium interim adpostulet ei in prima Resurrectione consortium offerat annuis diebus dormitionis ejus Damascen Orat. defunctis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 See likewise Dionys Areopag de Ecclesiast Hierarch mihi pag. 147 148. Saint Austin likewise in the ninth Book of his Confessions chap. 12. and 13. sets down at large the prayers he made for his mother Monica and her husband Patricius And if any yet desire further Testimony let them consult the antient Liturgies of the Church where are set down particular Forms of Prayer for the dead for such I mean who deceased in the Communion of the Church Nec ullus invenitur sayes the learned Grotius alicujus authoritatis Scriptor qui ei mori contradixerit St. Chrysostome likewise in Homil. ad Pop. Antiochen ad Hom. 3. in Epist ad Philipp as he is cited by Cassander in his Consultat p. 239. affirms that this Form qua Ecclesia omnibus suis membris in Christo quiescentibus locum refrigerii quietis pacis postulat was of Apostolical institution And although sayes he p. 240 it were not agreed upon by all In what state the Soul was after her departure from the body Omnes tamen hoc officium ut testimonium charitatis erga defunctum ut professionem fidei de immortalitate Animarum futura Resurrectione Deo gratum Ecclesiae utile esse judicarunt Adde to this which in such a case as this may have it's weight that our blessed Saviour coming into the World to amend and correct the manners of mankind and to introduce a Religion which should be Universal over the whole world did as it were on purpose to gratifie both Jews and Heathens as well retain whatever was good and laudable in either of their Religions as expunge whatever was useless or of a bad consequence and yet we never find either in the History of the Gospels or in any credible Author that ever he reprehended that custome of praying for the Dead which was in use even at his coming into the world as the antient Talmudick Form composed as it 's thought by the Jews in their Babylonian captivity and that Apochryphal Writer of the second Book of Macchab. chap 12. sufficiently testifie And Calvin himselfe Instit 3. c. 5. confesses that Prayer for the dead was in use above a Thousand three Hundred years ago Those two places Ecclesiast chap. 11. v. 3 and Apocalyps chap. 14.13 some make use of to prove that Men immediately upon the dissolution of their Souls from their bodies go immediately either to Heaven or Hell and therefore our prayers are impertinent because their state whatever it be is fixed and irreversible belong little to that purpose As for the first the words of which are these If the clouds be full of rain they empty themselves upon the earth and if the Tree fall toward the South or toward the North in the place where the Tree falleth there it shall be it hath no relation to this purpose but properly belongs to the case of Charity as Castellio hath noted Dum abundas largire Mortuus largiri non poteris ut lapsa arbor jam nequit in quam velit partem ferri The other likewise as little promotes their Design if we look well into the words which are these Blessed are the dead which dye in the Lord from henceforth yea saith the Spirit that they may rest from their labours and their works do follow them which verse must have a connexion with the precedent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Here is the patience of the Saints namely in holding constantly the profession of the faith in the midst of those Persecutions which should shortly come upon them upon which occasion the Spirit of God accounts them happy who die 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quickly for they hear no more the voice of the oppressor but are taken away from the evil to come and rest from their labours that is are freed from troubles and persecutions for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies A like speech is that Eccles 4. upon mention of the oppressors and the no comforter it followes v. 2. Wherefore I praised the dead that are already dead Thus Sir I have at last finished that Task you imposed upon me in the performance of which I shall esteem my self infinitely gratified if by it you will please to account me Sir Yours c. June 25. 1665. FINIS Argum. 1. Argum. 2. Argum. 3. 11. Cor. v. Argum. 1. Arg. 2. These verses not extant in our vulgar books * Act â— 59 2 Tim. 1.12 Lib. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sect. 42. * Eorum sententiam sic exprimit nobis Strabo lib. 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vid. insignem de hac eorum sententia locum apud Porphyr lib. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sect. â—8
on the Soul when departed from her decayed tenement and convey her to that place and society which the rectitude or obliquity of her moral Nature hath fitted her for There are two opposite Principles or contrary Natures in the World between which there is an eternall and irreconcilable Feud viz. Sin Righteousness to one of which every man ioyns himself and becomes a member of a society or body Politick and carries on 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an immortal warr Sin is nothing but a deflection from the divine Nature a transposition or undue connexion and dis-harmonious union of some principles in the Creation which raises a perturbation and disorder in the Soul of man and when confirmed by repeated acts becomes a habit and incrassates obnubilates the mind crowding it into narrowness and servility But righteousness is a concord or agreement and suitableness with those living laws impressed upon every moral agent when the Soul acts adequately and conformably to those innate notions of truth and holiness and this enlarges and sets free the Spirit of man from Tyranny and slavery And hence it comes to pass that the actions of men are not as the transient effects of necessary causes as a stone to fall downwards but being the results of spontaneous principles have a moral influence of good or evil upon their future states and conditions For men arrive not to the utmost degrees and completion of goodness or iniquity in a moment but as in Naturals so likewise Morals there is a latitude required and things ascend gradually to their perfections and consequently the wicked or righteous Nature respectively dispreads it self and incorporates and conjoyns the Soul either with Hell or Heaven in this life For Hell in a moral sense is nothing but an Orbe of sin and unrighteousness a state of penury anxiety and sucks in and draws as it were with hidden cords and strings every thing that is like to it self so that every wicked man truly carries the beginnings of Hell and miâ—ery within his breast and to this purpose is that of Porphyry 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Spirit is said to be in Hades because it partakes of the dark nature and void of light But Heaven is the region of serenity and quiet a state of righteouâ—ness peace and joy and takes hold of every thing congenerous to its own Nature elevating and winding the spirits of men off from their commerce with vice and the alluring objects of sense and transforming them into it's own beauteous Image and pulchritude and the further they recede from the Cuspis of the love of wickedness and the unrighteous Nature the more liberty they find and when once they are so farr risen that the utmost projections of this dark shadow cannot touch them then are they arrived to an eternal and boundless freedom Every man therefore so fatally adjoyning himself either to Heaven or Hell in this life it will inevitably fall to his share to be happy or miserable when departed out of it which cannot be except the Memory and Sense of his past actions return upon his separation from the body And that it does so is not only a probable but necessary consequence from the Nature of the Soul For Memory being a radicated faculty of the Soul and having no greater dependance upon the body than all other exertions and operations of the mind whatsoever it will remain safe and entire notwithstanding the various turnings and transmutations of corporeal principles Indeed were Memory and those other Faculties which not without great reason we attribute to a knowing and intelligent Principle the sole effects of the re-action or tremulous motions of certain pieces of matter striking upon each other it were a necessary deduction from thence that Death should spoil their sport and quite deface and obliterate whatever their nimble friskings and incertain agitations might represent unto us but this is already sufficiently demonstrated to our hands to be both frivolous and precarious by an excellent Person who has divested Matter of all cogitative powers and properties And if we well weigh the state of the Soul after death it will appear that Memory will then be more vivid and lively and Conscience which is nothing but a reflexe act of Memory more sensible and awakened For the great cause of all our weak and imperfect actions in this life is the stubbornness and inobsequiousness of matter to the powers of the Soul whereby they become dull languishing and inactive but when death shall give us entrance into another World and the Soul united to a more ductil and pliable vehicle her operations will become more sprightly and the Memory bring into view many and diverse things which before it was not able to command the Conscience afflict or cheer according to her deportment in the former life Neither is this any more than what we find already in the natures and causes of things For if Memory being lost by the violence of a disease or some other extraordinary indisposition of the body yet returns and is regained upon the cessation and amotion of the distemper and reduction of the spirits to their pristine temperament I see no reason why it should thus totally be despoiled by Death there being oft-times a greater change and perturbation in some malignant diseases than we see happen to sound and healthy persons whom the casualties of Warr or other sudden Fate hath brought to an untimely end This only difference is assigned which yet when severely examined carries no great moment with it that when Nature or Art hath expelled the morbifick matter and restored the body to a healthfull vigour and the spirits depurated and rectified from their vitiosity become accommodate instruments for the operations of the Soul her vital union with matter continues which in Death say they is totally lost and dissolved and how the Soul unbared from all commerce with matter can be capable of acting seems utterly unintelligible Whether therefore the Soul does or does not act without the help of matter when her garments of mortality are laid aside is not my present purpose to discuss Only I shall cast in this by the way that no man can be demonstratively certain that the Soul cannot act without the assistance of matter but if he remind himself of that intimate dependance the Soul hath upon matter in this life even in her sublimest exercises for I omit here the power of moving the body which is likewise performed by the motion of matter directed according to the will and pleasure of the Soul as also her sympathy with the mutations and alterations of the Air whereby the mind becomes more elevate and serene or cloudy and dull and those infinite varieties likewise which a man may observe in his own temper and constitution not to instance in any other but those of an extraordinary joy and cheerfulness of spirit at sometimes and at others as great a pensiveness and melancholy of which a
of their hope That of St. Paul Phil. 1.23 makes little to their purpose who think the Soul goes presently to Heaven upon the dissolution of the body for To be with Christ signifies no more than that our Souls are received by Christ into merciful joyful and safe custody as dear pledges committed to his trust and care till Hades shall deliver up it's dead and then we who before were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 invisible shall come forth and be presented to the view of the World and receive that great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Crown of Righteousness which Christ has laid up for St. Paul and you and me and all that long for his appearance The sum of all is this that it cannot be made good either from Scripture or Reason that the Souls of men departed this life go immediately upon their separation to Heaven or Hell in a Scholastical sense For this we have the suffrage of Justin Martyr who disputing with Trypho the Jew taxes those as erroneous who say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Your third Demand carries with it more dâ—fficulty and while I discourse of it I am wholly in the dark and can only give you a Conjectural Essay which if it may be subservient to my purpose that is please and gratifie your fancy and like the little dots or characters in Brachygraphy bring to your mind a more copious illustration of the present Theme I shall obtain my desire I consider therefore the whole World under God the great Monarch of the Creation so many I mean as participate of Reason and Intellect to fall under a Political Government and it seems altogether necessary that among the aereal Inhabitants it should be so for they being a mixed and heterogeneous number of good and bad if there were not a due execution of those Eternal and Sacred Laws enacted by the Counsel of Heaven for the promoting and establishing Piety and Virtue and the everting and eradicating Vice and Impiety the condition of all good and holy men would be unspeakably grievous and miserable there being so many degenerate Spirits who are only awake to the life of the Body and being wholly dead to all sense of Pity and Compassion please themselves in wreaking the rage of their furious and exorbitant Lusts upon the Innocent and Virtuous whose calamity must needs be Eternal should not that just Nemesis which pervades the essential contextures and inmost capacities of the whole Creation erect a Polity and Kingdom of Light to preside over and curb the lawless actions of the dark Associates And as the Condition and state of separate Souls is in a manner quite different from ours so their Laws and Mulcts are diverse and are best known to those that live under them But whatever they are 't is most certain their Penalties are severely executed upon offenders And for the due effecting of this and conserving the peace and quiet of this great Empire of Intellectual Agents there are Aethereal Princes set over the several Kingdomes of the World and in subordination to them are the Governours or tutelary Angels of Provinces and little Exarchats and last of all every mans particular Genius or guardian Angel so that this Government reaches even from Heaven to Earth and none can through subtilty or power free themselves from it Considering therefore The blew Arch or Concave of Heaven is so full of eyes and careful Inspectors of the several actions and demeanours of separate Spirits and their punishments so sharp and heavy 't is not to be thought that they will easily be induced to violate any of their Laws of which perchance this may be one of concealing their state from us Mortals unless some one begg a Patent or dispensation to satisfie the importunity of a relict Friend or discharge the obligation of an Oath And this may be one reason why we hear so little news from the aereal Regions Another great Cause of their so seldome appearing to us may be the dâ—fficulty and uneasiness of incrassating their Vehicles Thus have I seen of twenty boyes bathing and washing in the streams scarce one delight in diving to the bottom and if perchance he do his stay is so small and inconsiderable that had he been sent on Embassie to the Fishes the time would scarce permit him to have Audience before he were constrained to disappear And I am the more confirmed in this perswasion from those assiduous Apparitions of Spirits among the Laplanders whose Air being gross and clammy 't is no hard matter for a Daemon to condensate it to visibility and from hence it was that those people used to interr their deceased Friends under their hearths that so the warmth and heat of the fire accelerating the putrefaction of their bodies and rarefying the Crasie consistency of the Air might prohibit their otherwise more frequent Visits And he that shall recollect some of those many stories of Phantasms and the Apparitions of Spirits which every age supplies us with and take notice of those artifices and wayes which in all probability they make use of when they intend to shew themselves to the frail eyes of men he cannot but conclude it to be a pain and affliction to constipate and hold together the gross particles and glutinous suffusions of their Vehicles for any considerable time Hence it is that those Spectra which infest the Earth are generally maleficent Daemons whose spirital part grown fat and dull through a perpetual indulgence to their lower Faculties like Swine they take a great complacency in dabling and soaking their vehicles in the miry and caliginous tracts of the Air and often become visible by fermenting and agitating the stagnant blood of their despicable bodies they left behind them and which the charity of men laid to rest in the Earth And by the way this is the reason why sometimes the Spectra have never been seen or heard of after the burning and consuming of their bodies which furnished them with effectual instruments and provision for their gamesome or wicked attempts But if this be not ready at hand they descend into the nasty Caverns of the Earth and attract to them the thickest fumes and exhalations or else suck in the impure and fulsome steams arising from the blood of slain beasts like the Zabii licking the blood of the Aegyptian Sacrifices which is nor only a kind of Nutriment to their vehicles but the most likely means to transform themselves into whatsoever visible shape they please To this purpose is that of Porphyrie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 scil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And this no doubt is the reason why the Familiars and Imps of Witches make themselves a kind of Teat in some part or other of the bodies of their accursed Consorts whereby they exhaust their blood and spirits and render their visages for the most part horrid and gastly like themselves when they appear to them From the consideration of these
bettered as I think I have sufficiently proved they are by what I have said in answer to your second Question they may likewise receive good and advantage by our Prayers For to think that the Soul of man is immediately snatched up into the highest bliss and happiness in Heaven or depressed into the torments of Hell is not only contrary to Reason but repugnant to the sense of Antiquity which unanimously determines a time 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Purgation before she can be admitted into the society of the Spirits 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of just men made perfect and if our Prayers can be in any measure beneficial to men in this life they may have the same effects and purposes upon them in the other For let any man that thinks otherwise consider what he means by Heaven and if he have any congruous and rational apprehension and Idea of it he must necessarily conclude it to be a state of the highest purity and holiness and the farthest removed from the infectious pollution of Mortality and dreggs of the Terrestrial Life and then let him reflect upon the moral Natures and Dispositions of the greatest part of Mankind when they leave this world and see how many vitious habits and inclinations towards the complacencies and inordinate pleasures of sense remain unmortified how stubborn and inflexible their wills are yet to sincere Goodness and Righteousness and how vigorous the Animal and bodily Life is notwithstanding the continual contradictions and oppositions of Reason and higher principles and how very few of those which are sincerely good and righteous to their utmost powers have brought themselves under the Divine Life so as to awaken in them that high and comprehensive principle of Life and Immortality let him I say consider these things and then tell me whether he can rationally averr That the Souls of men immediately upon their solution from their bodies are carried into those degrees of happiness which are competible only to Heroically good and Virtuous Spirits Nor can this enervate the force of this Argumentation to say That all the sins which a good man is guilty of in this life proceed from his union and conjunction with this terrestrial Body which continually administers fuel to the flames of inordinate Passions and irregular Desires and Actions and consequently when he is freed from the strait and narrow Laws of Mortality he will become necessarily Good and it will be as impertinent to pray for his emendation and perfection in Holiness as when we see the Sun leaving our Hemisphere to pray that he may rise and enlighten the world again to morrow For besides the ridiculousness of supposing the Soul of man immediately upon it's relinquishing the Body to arise to such prodigious degrees of Sanctity and Wisdom and Goodness that she becomes an Angel or Demi-god or I know not what transcendent Being and so perfectly cleared and purified from all spots and defilements contracted in this life as that glorious Eye of Heaven the Sun cannot espie a blemish in her besides this I say one may well question Whether the Soul of man will be so Necessarily and Fatally Good in the other state as the Objection seems to inferr since that she is never out of the reach of danger till she hath attained her heavenly Body which Christ the righteous Judge shall bestow upon her at the general Resurrection but is alwayes encompassed about with the same invisible enemies which attended her in this life there being a mixture and complexion of good and bad Spirits as of Mankind upon Earth nor can she be totally freed from the extravagant impulses and motions of her body though it be farr more passive and yielding to those gentle impresses and strokes she layes upon it to countermand it's luxuriant sollicitations to Impurity and Vice And though we should grant her to be Heroically good which is all that can be desired yet her own Will the principle of her first Rebellion and Apostacy still remains and she can have no greater security of her non-retrogradation and falling back again then the Angels or she her self enjoyed before her unhappy lapse so that even here there is required a timely care and vigilancy and if the most virtuous Person upon Earth may stand in need of Good Mens Prayers to be excited to this careful industry and inspection over his wayes then may they likewise in the other world The Similitude therefore is ill applyed from the necessary and inevitable laws of Matter and corporeal Motion to the emergent and spontaneous effects of free Agents for unless we will make those bright Suns of Immortality the Souls of men to be purely Mechanical Contrivances and despoil them of all liberty and innate principles whereby to guide and determine their actions we cannot imagine that their Apogee's and Perigee's the excess and diminution of their rayes and beams of Righteousness should be so fatal and determinate as the Rising and Setting of the material Sun which illuminates the World But lastly If we are to pray for nothing which we are certain will come to pass whether we pray or no I do not see how any man can say those Petitions in that most excellent Prayer our Blessed Lord himself hath taught us wherein we desire God's Name to be hallowed his Kingdom to come and his Will to be done for all these things will certainly be effected and accomplished although we never pray that they should Or what need we pray as our Church enjoyns us in her compleat and exact Service and Office of Burial that God would shortly accomplish the number of his Elect and hasten his Kingdom Will not such Prayers as these according to this Rule be wholly useless and insignificant Did not Christ pray for his Apostles in the dayes of his Flesh whom yet he knew certainly to persevere and continue faithful unto Death But I need not multiply Instances in this case He that will follow therefore the duct of Reason which alone ought to be Judge in this case where the Scriptures are silent must necessarily subscribe to this That those who go out of this Body with love and affection to Sin and Vice must receive a punishment proportionable to the inequality and obliquity of their spirits and be fatally carried to such places of the Universe as are sutable to the coursness of their tempers and so on the contrary That Virtuous minds shall be rewarded with such degrees of Felicity and take up their station in rhose Habitations which are most congruous and agreeable to their Natures and Geniusâ—s and consequently that those who have not conquered their Lusts nor subdued their rebellious Habits but are taken away in the contest between the law of Sin and the law of the Mind that is when the man is neither wholly alive to God nor Sin but in the intermediate state carrying a warr within him and acting perpetually with a reluctancy and adhering sometimes to the one and then