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
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
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
and temper which is dearer to God than any thing in the world Nay he can never do it for it is as possible for the Sun to withhold his beams from shining upon the earth and leave the disconsolate world to an eternal night of sorrow and darkness as for God the Sun of Heaven to be divided from that which is his own life and suspend his kindly influence from the tender productions of his Nature I can sooner believe that darkness should desert it's black and pitchy caverns and sport with light and the day or that the Elements should change their natures and the Frame and beauteous order of things be tumbled into an eternal confusion as once to entertain a thought that God should be unkind and severe to the pious breathings of an innocent and harmless Soul There being therefore in the world so many truly Religious persons who affectionately pant and aspire after a greater communication of the life of God and yet are denied those opportunities of perfecting their minds which others enjoy by reason of that place and station assigned them by the wise and unerring Providence of God in this transitory life there being likewise so great a part of the world lying yet under a squallid barbarity wholly oppressed and loaden with the ruines of their broken Natures whom yet the Son of God thought not unworthy his care and love surely it would be a great eye-sore and blemish in Heavens righteous Oeconomy and dispensation in the World if there were really no time or means allowed for the recovery of these lapsed Souls whose condition though it be very sad and calamitous yet it is not desperate nor are they sunk below the compassions of their Maker but still lye under a benign aspect and though the Sun of Righteousness seem to set in a cloud and leave their Hemisphere to a night of darkness yet there is hopes that there will come a time if it be not already wherein he will rise again with healing in his wings and visit the desolate and dejected regions of the world with his chearing heat and vigour and their entangled pinions be again set loose and their plumes freely dispread in the open and boundless tracts of Immortality and Joy It is not the will and pleasure of God that any innocent person should perish and therefore we may conclude that there is some time and place where the young and tender efformations of God's holy life in the more harmless Pagans and such who lived in the dark and ignorant age of the world shall be brought to their due measure of maturity and perfection For to think they are damned is not suitable to that everlasting Goodness which is the source and root of the Divine Perfections And that they are not immediately translated into Heaven properly so called will appear from the Oeconomy of Providence in the world and the Nature of the thing it self As an Appendix to this we may add That Heaven is rather a State than a Place and consists in the frame and temperament of a mans mind and spirit and if we could imagine a degenerate and sinful person taken up into Heaven unless God did likewise miraculously change and alter the present temper and disposition of his mind it would be a pain and affliction to him and he would be no more capable of dwelling in that glorious brightness than Owls and Night-birds to face the Sun and steadily behold that amazing lustre When the benign Creator of all things produced the glorious Fabrick of Heaven and Earth and replenished all the empty regions of the World and the vast capacities of immense Space with diverse sorts and degrees of Beings he so wisely ordered and disposed every thing that nothing should act beyond it's sphere but proportionately to those powers and faculties it became invested with for so the order and frame of the world required Thus the beasts of the field cannot live perpetually in the water nor fish in the air because the vital congruities of the one are adapted to the gross and more compacted body of the Earth the other to the fluid and yielding Element of the Water The Angels which are an Order of Spirits above the rank of Humane Souls cannot actuate and inform a terrestrial body nor can man in his earthly state become an inhabitant of the thinner tracts and regions of purest Aether When therefore in the beginning God created Mankind foreseeing that they would not alwayes continue in the immortal mansions of Paradise but eat and dye and instruct themselves by unhappy experiments in the frail and imperfect fate of this lower World he fitted them with such vital powers and congruities as might capacitate them for action that so the revolutions of the wheel of Providence though wide and seemingly intricate and perplext may at last appear equal and unerring There being then a peculiar Crasis or congruity required to inform that heavenly Body which shall be the reward of departed Saints at the Day of God and that not to be awakened but by a long and regular depuration of the Mind and perfect submission and resignation to the will of God we cannot rationally imagine that any one should pass immediately from the Body to those regions of Light and Glory before this Divine Principle be sufficiently invigorated and the others perfectly laid asleep And to think that God will immediatly call forth into act this Aethereal congruity of life in the soul of every pious Man departed this life is to set the miraculous power of God at a very cheap and easie rate Besides that it despoils the Nature of the Creature and renders useless and ineffectual such Faculties as without this supernatural check and controul would in their due time awake for the orderly accomplishment of that to whose production we entitle the immediate operation of the Divinity Nor doth it less entrench upon the Wisdom of God by drawing such a Scheme of things wherein God must continually unbare his arm and upon every occasion exert his eternal power for the effecting of that which would certainly arise in it's order and proportion by the attempts and operations of rational agents accompanied with the concurrence and assistance of divine grace and benediction For so we see that God works in men now and we may as well think that God should take every man immediately into heaven upon his first embracing the Gospel and by his infinite power make him a perfect Saint as that he should do the same for them upon their death-beds or upon their dis-union from their bodies Farr be it from us to entitle such precarious and unaccountable actions to the Deity but rather believe that the constancy and immutability of his Nature is such that he alwayes works orderly and according to those Laws and Rules he hath placed in the World unless a visible and certain good of a part or the whole Creation intervene and cannot so advantageously be effected
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
man can give no account or reason from any external cause but only from the purified and more subtle or fulsome and gross steams ascending into the brain and withall consider that the great Crown of our Faith and Patience the happiness and reward of glorified Spirits to purchase which for mankind the ever blessed Son of God left the sacred mansions of Heaven the bosome of blessedness and veiled his glory under the clouds of flesh and blood shall be an ethereall and heavenly body which Plato calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a resplendent vehicle and St. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spiritual body he I say that attentively perpends this that the instruments of the Souls operations both in this life and the next are corporeal will likewise think it probable that she is not wholly denudated of Matter in the intermediate space between death and the resurrection at what time she shall be possessed of her long expected joy and her vile body shall be transformed into the similitude of the glorious body of the Son of God Supposing then the Soul vitally united with matter after death she will both act and also be capable of pleasure or pain which are the unavoidable concomitants of her transactions in this life For can we imagine that God will put a stop to the course of Nature and alter that order and constitution of things which bears upon it the signature and Image of his eternal Wisdome Surely it cannot be that he should frustrate the hopes and expectations of men when all things so favourably conspire to give them an energetical and vital reception into the other World And if God do not drench the Souls of men in this lake of oblivion and soporiferousness which we have all the reason in the world to believe and ought to be confident that he will not they will infallibly be instated upon their dereliction of their earthly bodies into a condition of happiness or misery which will altogether take away that fanciful dream of their sleep till the great day of judgment For although here the voice of Conscience may be drowned by the clamours of Sense and those many Diversions arising from the present state of affairs in this life yet when death shall draw aside the curtain of mortality and those various objects which so often presented themselves to our view pass away like a shadow leaving nothing to the Soul but the vast prospect of an eternal Tragedy the conscience will then awake and pierce her with an extraordinary resentment and vexation For besides that the Soul shall see all her wicked attempts and designs blasted upon Earth the memory of her name cursed and detested and become throughly apprehensive of the miscarriage and iniquity of her past life and have a full and clear sight of all her impious actions stript of their painted gloss and varnish in their proper colours and genuine circumstances besides this I say the Fame of her unrighteous demeanour will go before her into the other World and quickly be dispread over the secret regions and receptacles of Spirits by those vigilant spectators who take cognizance and give intelligence of humane affairs which cannot but afflict her even unto death to see her self abandon'd both of good Angels and the spirits of just and holy men and confined to the society of degenerate Fiends and Daemons reserved to the judgâ—ment of the great Day And these fiery stings and gripeings of conscience shall rage perpetually and if we can imagine any intermission it will be but like the sleeps of the wind in a storm or the broken sighs of a tempest to recover its exhausted spirits and return with a greater impetuousness and fury But to take a view of those good and holy persons whom the Father of spirits has called out of this present life who yet are in as small a probability of being overtaken by this long night as the other there wants not sufficient employment to keep them vigilant and active For whether it be that they delight in converse and society they will find those immense tracts of space not empty desarts and wildernesses but replenished with diverse sorts of Beings some equal to others more noble than themselves who all studiously endeavour to promote and carry on that great and general design of the diffusion of the Life and Nature of God over the whole Creation they may there likewise meet with many of their departed Friends and Relatives with whom they may again renew their antient leagues of friendship and entertain an amicable correspondence and familiarity or whether they be contemplative and affect a solitary retiredness and recess from the rest of the World they may there call to mind their almost obliterate Speculations and please themselves in the exertions of the innate Idea's and notions of their minds and raise within them a high sense of joy and delectation in finding out many choise Theorems of Nature and Providence besides many other advantages which are not allowed or permitted to this state So that there is no fear the Soul should sleep or cease from acting when loosened from this earthly body The resurrection of the Sonne of God from the dead is so palpable a pledge of the Soul 's living and acting after death that he must commit a rape upon his faculties and do violence to all his intellectual powers who will not be convinced by it For that he should by wicked hands be bereaved of his innocent life and so throughly slain that his malitious enemies the Jews never question his death and which further confirms the truth of it lye three dayes buried in the grave and afterward rise again and exercise the proper functions of a living man and that not for some small and inconsiderable time but conversing forty dayes with his Disciples upon Earth to take away all cause and suspicion of delusion and then ascend in the sight and presence of his Disciples and Friends to the comprehensions of that Glory which not long before his death he prayed to his Father to glorify him withall this I say is a full and convictive Demonstration even to outward sense that that dull and lethargick stupour shall never take away sense and action from our Souls when they depart from their living graves and monuments of flesh and blood And as it was with him so shall it be with us in our order measure and proportion Christ our head lives and is seated at the right hand of God in the highest glory and felicity for he there makes intercession for his Church and because he lives we his members shall live also He is a living Vine and all the members of his mystical body are living branches not only in a moral but natural and physical sense For God is not the God of the dead but of the living 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for all live unto him Now if the Souls of men fall into so permanent a sleep they are
by the ordinary course of Natural Agents And now let us consider how very few there are that have arrived to such eminent degrees and measures of virtue as to be capable of this exalted state of mind and what multitudes of sincere and hearty lovers of truth and righteousness are snatcht away by the rude arms of death before the luxuriant branches of the Animal or Brutish life are taken wholly away and Reason will extort this confession from us that there must be a time of purgation in some state on this side Heaven wherein the infant productions of the Divine Nature may arise to their full maturity and perfection For it cannot consist with that eternall Goodness which is the rule and measure of all the actions of the Deity to send the greatest part of Mankind into the World there to lead a frail and miserable and at best but a short life subject to infinite casualties and imperfections and which yet blemishes Heaven 's righteous Oeconomy having but very few and those weak means and ineffectual helps as to the recovering the broken and decayed Image of God in their Souls for the want of which notwithstanding they shall be thrown into everlasting misery I say it cannot consist with the Benignity and Goodness of God to deal thus with his Creatures Wherefore if we will not admit of this we must seek out some other Hypothesis to salve up those flaws and defects which otherwise will appear in the beauteous Order and ministration of Providence Not to omit any thing which might give light to the present Question I shall consider the use of those terms and expressions in Holy Scripture which by many are extended and drawn to the contrary Sense and me-thinks from thence some few glimmerings ray forth on purpose as it were to allure the lovers of knowledge to a diligent search and inquisition after it In my Fathers house sayes the Son of God are many mansions but I go to prepare a place for you The whole world is the house of the great King and in it are many Outer-Courts and different Places both higher and lower Rooms fitted for the several capacities and states of all his Servants and yet there was a place whither all holy Souls shall arrive and which was not then ready From whence 't is plain that the Souls of the Patriarchs and holy men which lived before the Coming of the Messias were not entred into the Coelum Beatorum that is into Heaven properly so called but were in a state of joy and happiness which the Greek Fathers call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Luk. 16 and the Latin Refrigerium and Somnum pacis where they conversed with God as the Prophets did in their Dreams in which they received great degrees of favour and revelation and were refreshed with the frequent visits and society of Angells till they arose to their ethereal State And this is the Receptacle of all good men in whom the fire of Divine Love is not so enflamed and kindled as to melt their less pure bodies into a Celestial splendor And to this accords that speech of Christ to the penitent thief This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise that is in the joyes and felicities of pious Souls for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is by the Greeks and Philo called the Garden where Adam was placed And hence when the felicities of a future life began to be discovered more clearly the state of holy Souls expecting the resurrection of the dead was called by the Jews 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The reason of which was as Grotius in Luk. 23. conjectures because of the analogy between them that as the Garden of Paradise in which Adam was in his state of innocency abounded with pleasures and delights so doth this receptacle of pious and devout souls after death And hence it was that St. Paul in 2 Cor. 12.2.4 was first shewn the joyes of the children of the Resurrection and least his resolute and active Soul should be troubled with the long expectation of such ineffable felicity the comforts and refreshments of Paradise and antepasts of Heaven were likewise discovered to him Which were denoted to the sons of sense under the notion and figure of a Garden because they could not conceive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nisi sub figura 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 intellectual things but under a sensible Scheme And to this are opposed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifie the state and condition of such irreclamable spirits as are sunk below all the principles of Righteousness and justice and make it their whole design to obliterate those Idea's out of their minds Now as Paradise and Hell signifie the distinct condition of good and bad Spirits so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hades denotes the common receptacle of them all and is opposed both to this Life and the Resurrection and answers to the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Gen. 37.35 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning which could not be meant of the Grave as if his son had been buried for he supposed him to be torn in pieces by wild beasts but of the region or state of Invisibility for so Hades properly signifies Thus Heraclitus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 speaking of the Helmet of Hades which makes men invisible he sayes It is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the end or death of every man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to which he that comes becomes invisible It is more than probable therefore that Paradise signifies no other but according to the Jewish notion a place of delight and pleasure appropriated to the Spirits of just men such as the Poets understood by their Elizian field which Pindar Olymp. Od. 2 as he is cited by Eugubinus in his book de perenni Philosophia excellently well describes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For that our Saviour by Paradise did not understand those aethereal Regions of bliss and joy which are the portion and inheritance of defecate and sublime Spirits will be evident in that he himself was not there but in the intermediate space between his Death and Resurrection preached 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to the spirits in prison that is to those who in the dayes of Noah were drowned in that general Deluge and now were released and set at liberty by the approach of the Son of God such as the Prophet Zach. 9.11 12. calls Prisoners of hope lying in the lake where there is no water that is where there was no constant stream of joy to refresh their present condition but yet they were supported with certain showers and gracious visitations from God and illuminations
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