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
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
evil Genii we may proportionably guess at the state of those better Souls who have nothing more to do upon the Earth when they are once departed from it or if they appear again it is upon a great necessity and for a weighty occasion and then they scorn and abhorr those ignoble wayes of making themselves objects of our Senses and having effected their design they are no more heard of but rest in peace and quietness chiefly aiming at the loosening and freeing themselves from their commerce with the impurer parts of matter For as the other do delight in incrassating so these are continually intent upon attenuating their Vehicles and awakening to life their aethereal congruity which having attained they become invisible to the Aereal Inhabitants And as when we traverse the hills and suck in the purer gusts of air we are more vivid and cheerful and 't is an affliction to stay in a thicker and unwholsome Region so these purer Spirits having free access to the tops of mountains and more serene Quarters of heaven find themselves sensibly pained when they descend into these lower tracts and coagulate their looser bodies into a visible consistency To give some further light to the Physical consideration of this Argument in reference to the Apparitions both of Good and Bad Spirits it may be it will require almost as deep a degree of Fancy to constipate their aery Bodies to visibility as it doth to attain to that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or separation and disjunction of the Soul from this terrestrial Body without Death and then it is no wonder if so few appear to us For though the matter of their Vehicles may be very pliable and easily formed into any shape yet the efformation of it into this or the other particular 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 depends not so much upon the will or arbitrarious power as upon a very strong imagination impressed upon and reaching the plastick Faculty and it seems to be no more in their power to condense their Bodies into visibility than it is in ours to rarifie our Blood into Steam and vapour Their bodies therefore naturally falling into humane shape and retaining the characteristical personality they bare in this world if at any time they constrain them to represent another effigies or contract and constipate the laxe and diffuse particles of their vehicles so as to become sensible to us it cannot be counted a spontaneous action that is effected by an arbitrary power but depends upon the strength of Imagination which although it act more quick and perceptibly upon their tenuious bodies yet all effects are not equally produced by the same degree of Fancy or Imagination Thus the signature or impression of a Cherry upon the Foetus in the womb is more easily produced than the transformation of all it's members into those of a Cat or Dog And as it is storied of Cardan that by use and custome he had so altered his body that he could when he pleased fall into a perfect 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so I deny not but some separate spirits may by practice and the aid of the Spirit of Nature which may not improbably be thought assistant at such Feats as these without any great pain or trouble become visible Having given you this brief account of the Question I shall digress a little if I may call it so to another Speculation not unlike the former and that is Why Good Angels and pure and defecate Souls whose exalted State makes them no less lovers of Men than when their radiant Goodness was clothed with Humanity and dwelt among them should nevertheless hide it by their short and seldome Converse with the World The great Cause of it therefore seems to lye in the general wickedness and impurity of mens lives insomuch that wickedness has delug'd the World and Impiety and Vice like a mighty torrent swept away the ruinous and broken remains of Virtue and defaced the air and features of the Divine Image so that Holiness looks like a strange and unknown thing as if it were as much forsaken of God as despised of men For surely did a real Spirit of truth and righteousness prevail in the hearts of mankind and were they inoffensive and harmless as the Sons of God and virtue laying aside all Envy Pride and Self-interest and expelling the principles of the impious Nature and becoming in all things conformable to the mind and temper of the Holy Jesus there would be no such strangeness between Heaven and Earth but the communications of the Divine and Terrestrial Nature would be more frequent and the Holy Angels and the departed Souls of Just Men would descend upon Earth and visit the World and Men would be made one Polity with them and to Dye would be no more than to walk out of a close Prison into the free and unbounded Air. For what else can there be that should impede or put a stop to such happy entertainments since their pretensions and designs on both parts are the same that is the carrying on the Divine Life in triumph to its utmost completion and perfection and the utter eversion of the Kingdome of Sin and Darkness The Angels though much more noble than we yet are no narrow and self-contracted Beings sporting themselves in the circles of their own glory in an utter oblivion or abhorrence of the poor and calamitous condition of the Inhabitants of the Earth but full of love and benignity remembring them as those who were once invested with the same happiness themselves now enjoy and therefore are careful Observators of them and Promoters of their felicity Nor can we imagine that Death can alienate the affections of pious and holy men departed this life from their fellow mortals or make them less compassionate and studious of their good and welfare but rather increase and fann their Love into Flames and gentle Ardors and having more knowledge and a greater resentment of their wants and necessities become not uninteressed Spectators but earnest Abettors of their innocent and faithful attempts in recovering their ancient glory 'T is to be hoped therefore that the time will come before the periods of this World are run out and unravell'd that the Divine Life shall have a general conquest over the hearts and minds of men and a Spirit of Love and Righteousness overspread the face of the Earth and men shall be fully assured and convinced even to outward sense of the immortality of their Souls and the joyes of a future life by the frequent entercourse and converse of holy and benign Spirits with them in these regions of the Earth To resume and conclude my former argument That the apparitions of separate Souls are rare and infrequent proceeds from the causes above recited but that there have been some in all ages serves to carry on that great design of Providence in assuring men of the future subsistence of their Souls and confronting that dull and sottish spirit of Atheism
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
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
enslaved to the body and that eternal Fire which was first kindled from heaven sensibly decayed and vanished and darkness took away the light of the day and hid the beams of truth and righteousness from our eyes leaving us wandring in a night of error without any guide save that now and then a ray of glory pierced through those clammy mists and left an impression upon us sufficient to let us know that it sprang from an heavenly source and fountain But when the edge of this luxuriant principle shall be taken off and men dye to their grosser bodies another and farr more ample degree of life shall awake in the Soul For there being in the spirit of man such a gradual subordination of faculties and all so closely connected to their indiscerpible head and center 't is very natural to conceive that upon the extinction or cessation of a lower power a more extended and enlarged Capacity should arise and spring up in its room Thus Death being nothing but a Consopition of some inferiour faculties will be so farr from drawing over the whole man this benumming drousiness that it will bring into play those hidden powers which like some keys in musick lay dead and silent till struck by the careful hand of Nature to keep up that Vniversal Harmony which the Eternal Mind wrought in the essential contexture of the Creation All the powers of the Soul do not operate at once with an equal degree of intenseness and vigour but as the dull and heavy life of sense and corporeity is emacerated by repeated acts of mortification and made sequacious and obedient to the dictates of the intellectual man so the mind and divine life becomes more subtil and abstracted from matter assimilating its self to that Holy One whose perfection it is to be wholly spiritual and immaterial And we our selves plainly perceive that when the mind is bent and fully carried out upon the contemplation of an object the external Sense is very much debilitated and abated so that the Vibrations of corporeal motion upon the Organs both of sight and hearing are for a time suspended and unconcerned which plainly inferrs that the Soul cannot attend to two distinct powers at the same time in their highest actings and capacities but that as the operations of the one are brought low and decrease so the other are invigorated and augmented And who can rationally averr that the actings of the soul shall cease when divested of these garments of mortality since that there is a gradual declension derivation of all her powers from the perceptive part or first and primary substance of such an essentially-incorporate Spirit as the soul of man For the higher life contains and includes the lower and still as we ascend upward life is more large and compleat till we arive at the highest of all which whoever hath throughly awakened is installed in the greatest Happiness humane nature is capable of flying beyond the regions of death and dissolution and seated above the reach of envy and malice in the great diffusions and communications of heavens glory and beatitude All life is not destroyed at once nor can the power of death and the grave exceed the dissolution of the Souls vital congruity of actuating a terrestrial body whatever looks beyond this remains safe and secure as the laws of heaven so that we need not fear an eternal oblivion should creep upon us or that we should slide out of being when we cease to converse with men and have our Ashes crowded into their narrow urns To carry on this Argument a little further and to pleasure and gratifie our fancies we may conceive the Soul of man to be a Circle whose Center is that noble and divine part full of essential Intellect and perception the Area those exterior branches or essential emanations from the first central power and activity which descend 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by abatement from the Primary substance the will and Reason being the nearest the source of life and vigour the Imagination a degree lower from whence we go down to the Senses which take cognisance of external objects and make a true and faithful representation of them in the seat of perception and still the further they are removed from their origin and Spring the more straitned and confined they grow till they arrive to the Periphery wihch is the Plastick and deepest or lowest power and the most narrow and contracted of all Thus we see how all the powers of the soul lye in a natural graduality and subordination to the eye and Center of this little World which like the Sun the bright Eye and Center of the world fills the whole Aire with rayes of light to its utmost confines and circumference Having thus illustrated the Nature and Powers of the Soul it 's easie to imagine she not being an independent homogeneal Mass like a lump of matter but one part the gradual result and efflux of the other that some vital congruity may be layed asleep and Death may cause a cessation of the actings of some faculties without the total consopition of the Soul The Moral state and condition of the soul after death is such as to every considerative and ingenuous Spirit will give sufficient security against those irrational fears of her Sleep and senselesness when she has left the body Though men here strayed from God the fountain of their bliss and happiness and defaced the beautiful Image of their Creator by a vigorous prosecution of the exorbitant motions and pleasures of sense yet he regards and careth for them remembers that his own good hands first gave them being and pities the unhappy miscarriage of so noble a part of his Creation And therefore as a tender Mother shoves off her prety infant from her that it may return again with fresh and more ardent embraces so God the benign Father of Spirits is pleased for a while to banish his own dear Offspring into this region of mortality that he may more endear them to himself and enhance the price of heavenly joy by begetting in them an impatient desire and breathing after it And to this end that All-comprehensive Wisdome which made all things well and fitted the capacities of his Creatures to those severall states they were to run through hath cloathed the souls of men with coats of skins and made them inhabitants of the Earth not that they should make the Paternal bounty and indulgence of God an occasion of a riotous licentiousness and take heart from his kindness to be the more vitious but to curb their lawless wills and restrain their irregular appetites refine and purifie their minds and Spirits to a high degree of Generosity Sobriety and Goodness For in this life it is that men lay the Trains and Seeds of their future happiness or misery and that just Nemesis which passes through the universe and interestes it self peculiarly in the affairs of rational Agents will inevitably seize
dead or rather annihilated for not to be and not to be conscious of ones Being are much one and their recuperation to life is to them as it were a new Creation neither know they why they are rewarded or punished because Death and that Narcotick state which immediately follows it according to this extravagant Dream washes away the memory of all past actions whatsoever To this we may adde the Apparition of Moses and Elias in their Celestial robes to our blessed Saviour at his Transfiguration upon Mount Tabor when his Face shone like the Sun and his rayment became pure and white as the light and those two divine Personages foretold the good events of his Death and spake words of comfort to him under the consideration of his inglorious and humble Passion which is an evident proof that the Souls of Moses and Elias did not sleep when they left their Bodies but that they now live and act in the felicities of Jesus to whom in the dayes of his flesh they brought relief and solace And if it were otherwise I do not see how the Apostles affections could be carried out in so vehement and longing a desire to be freed from this Earthly body for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Tabernacle signifies and is used Wisd 9.15 and by Pythagoras in Hermippus and to be possessed of that Building of God which he calls likewise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a house which is from heaven that is a heavenly body for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 both answer to the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so St. Chrysostome understands it where to the Apostle's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he thus speaks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is what house tell me An incorruptible Body To this sense Gorgias Leontinus in Stobaeus uses the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when he calls our earthly body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a putrid and decaying Tenement for if he enjoyed nothing of this great Reward till the Resurrection but upon his dissolution from the body were deprived of all Sense of his Being it would be farr more desireable for him and all other Christians to continue still in this World then to groan to be delivered from the burden and encumbrances of the flesh only to fall into a state of inactivity and silence being neither conscious of themselves nor of any thing in the external Creation What Christ once said to his Disciples may very accommodately be applyed to this present Case In my Fathers house are many mansions if it were not so I would have told you And surely if the Souls of men after death fall into such a dead and heartless condition as not to know they are in Being the infinite goodness and veracity of almighty God so wonderfully displayed to the World in the Son of his love would never have deceived the hopes and expectations of the wisest and best Persons even to this present age but timely have corrected and prevented so Universal an error especially in so weighty a Concernment as this wherein the manner of their reception into the other World differs so widely from the Schemes and representations they drew of it in this Nay if it be an errour the Veracity of God is deeply engaged to discover it because the greatest Prop which upholds and maintains its credit amongst men is founded upon the most holy revelations of his will Before I descend to the second Demand give me leave to insert these two Paragraphs 1. That Sensuality is the great Patronesse of this heartless and dull fancy of the Soul's Sleep after death 2. That when the Intellectual man is refined by purity and holiness it will lift up the Soul far above these panick fears It was the love of Sense and corporeal pleasures that first sunk us from our happiness and drew the Sable Mantle of death over the comely pourtrayture of Gods Image in our Souls and it is this which still degrades us and makes us unlike our Maker This outward World is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Great Magician or Enchanter as the Platonick Philosopher calls it which with its Syren Musick bewitches and allures the Mind from the still and quiet contemplation of the beauties and pulchritude of the moral and intellectual World for all those charming complacencies and exterior phantasms with which the Soul is so ravished and captivated are nothing but so many emissions and radiations of the external World variously striking upon and moving the Senses or bodily life so that the declining Soul according to the diversity of its degeneracy becomes more or less dispread and incorporated with the outward World 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Porphyry speaks Where the motions of Sense are predominant there is a recession from Intellect There is in every man an Animal and an Intellectual Nature the one respects 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sensible objects the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intellectual and things abstracted from Sense Now the more we check and controul the Luxuriancy of the Animal or bodily life the more refined and vegete are those higher powers of the Soul in the exercise of which consists her true life For what more besotts the perceptive faculties of a man than those grosser pleasures of the Sensitive life And who Philosophize more grosly concerning the future state of the Soul than those who make it the greatest part of their happinesse to enjoy to the full whatsoever pleasure their degenerate wills and lusts shall suggest unto them But he that by a wise and timely management of those powers the provident care and goodness of God hath vouchsafed to him hath so gallantly maintained the Nobility and heavenly Nature of his Soul that he soares above terrene vanities disdaining to mingle with the unsatisfactory pleasures of the corporeal World and by a due and severe castigation hath brought low that exorbitant principle by which he is connected to this Earthly body he hath subtiliz'd his mind and is united to that Omnipresent and alcomprehensive Intellect and foresees his reception into the other life and presages that happy and blessed state he shall then enter upon when the links and cords of mortality shall be broken or worn asunder Such a one I say is confident that it shall go well with him when he hath finished the last Act of life upon Earth and that if there be any Beng more excellent than Matter any Providence ruling and presiding over the affairs of the world he shall not then slide out of Being nor cease to Act when he goes hence and is no more seen These Speculations therefore require a due preparation of mind And every man cannot be convinced by them because few are in a fit capacity and disposition for the entertainment of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Like is known by its like and it the inward sense and touch of mens spirits be adapted only to the relish and
which is gone abroad into the world That there is something in us that looks beyond the periods of this fleeting life and survives our ashes and is capable of acting freely and nobly when these carneous fabricks shall fall asunder and be cramm'd into their narrow Urns. The Soul of man while 't is held captive in the shackles and fetters of flesh and blood is but in a Sleep or a longer Dream and the expiration of this terrestrial period which we call Death is the expergefaction or awakening those nobler Faculties to a sense of Divinity and unmasking the intricate and perplexed apprehensions of the mind from error and falshood And hence it was that the Indian Brachmans affirmed The life of man in this World to be like the state of the Foetus in the Womb and Death to be the Birth to Life truly so called to a Life of Happiness in the Blest Regâ—ons above in the quiet Plains of Heaven the Seat of the Immortal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Genii where the winds never ruffle up a cloud to intercept the light of the Sun 's brighter face nor Snow or Showers ever pass through but an undisturbed calm and serenity of an Eternal Day overspreads the utmost limits of these Blissful Mansions Your last Question propounded is concerning the lawfulness of Praying for the Dead and Whether the mutual obligations of friendship cease when they are removed from the ruinous fabricks of their Earthly Bodies And truly methinks it is a Problem worthy your eximious and generous mind which is not contented only to make use of all the instances and opportunities of doing good to mankind in this life but your pious charity would likewise follow them into the next and if it might be make them as happy as God at first created them For as I have often heard you discourse it is a pain and affliction great as the tearing and rending our bodily life to a noble and free spirit to perswade himself that when our Piety hath committed our dead Friend's body to the Earth its common Parent and besprinkled his Hearse with a Funeral tear and it may be for some small time after breathed out a fresh gale of Sighs upon the sight of a Picture or any thing which with his last words and dying groans he recommended to us as his Memorial that then he should be banished out of our minds and no more regarded than if he had never lived in the world or were now quite extinct and put out of Being I cannot therefore attribute this unconcernedness for the state and condition of departed Souls to any thing else but to that poverty and narrowness of spirit which makes men look upon themselves as private and particular Beings sent into the world to promote and advance their self designs and little interests in contradistinction to all the rest of mankind forgetting that they are a part of Gods Creation and members of that great Body Politick which reaches from Heaven to Earth and is extended every way through the vast comprehensions of immense Space and therefore that all the Creatures ought to have a share in their love and that the more perfect their Natures are the more they ought to be widened and enlarged in Charity and an universal Benignity towards all especially towards mankind in promoting to their utmost power the completion of their happiness For although men when they go away hence become invisible to us and we are in part at loss in reference to their affairs and concerns yet nevertheless we are assured they are in Being and members of that great Society of which we our selves make a part and therefore are not to be accounted such strangers to our thoughts and devotions and if their Prayers can at all prevail and be effectual in our behalf I do not see why the Prayers and Oraisons of a Good and Holy Person upon Earth may not enter the eares of Heaven and derive a blessing upon them supposing them to stand in need of those things he desires in their behalf That separate Souls are not unmindful of us when they have left the prisons of Flesh and Blood and inherit a new and stranger freedome cannot easily be denied unless we will say that the more perfect they grow the less charity and love they retain towards those who want those degrees of felicity they have arrived unto 'T is true those holy Spirits which depart hence are seated far above the reach of Envy or Passion and the dead Wife is not troubled at the songs sung at the next Bridal Feast nor grieved to see another inherit the Joyes of her Husbands-bed but yet they are not removed so farr as to beget in them an utter oblivion of those they have left behind nor doth the augmentation of their Happiness diminish their love towards us Mortals who begin our lives with weeping as a sure presage of our future calamities and the fiâ—st tribute we pay to the light of the Sun is to present him with a tear and watry eyes There is then without doubt a Relation continued still which not only the laws of their Friendship but their own native goodness which dispreads it self every way when freed from the contagion of Earthly Concretions will never suffer them to rescind To this purpose Josephus brings in Abraham thus bespeaking his son Isaac before that fatall stroke design'd to let out that pure Soul into the Skies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And St. Ambrose gave some things in charge to his dying brother Satyrus that he should do for him in the other world And as they present themselves before the Throne of Majesty in humble Petitions for us so certainly something belongs to us to do for them and we must by all those wayes we can preserve and continue the memory of our dead Friends and of all good men which can no wayes be better done than by desiring God with hearty and constant Prayer to call home his banished to him that those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those little particles and shreds of Divinity as Epictetus calls the Souls of men may be gathered up and re-united to the first and al comprehensive Good and when the periods of this world shall be expired they may have a joyful Resurrection and a perfect consummation of their Bliss in the Immortal Regions of Glory and Felicity Thus St. Paul prayed for Onesiphorus 2 Tim. 1.18 The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day who 't is probable was at that time dead because the Apostle salutes the house of Onesiphorus and not Onesiphorus himself who doubtless had he been alive and part of his family would have been named particularly in the first place and not afterwards distinct from his House But I do not lay so much stress upon this If therefore the dead are in a state and capacity of being
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