Truth wrapt up one within another which cannot be discern'd but onely by divine Epoptists We must not think we have then attained to the right knowledge of Truth when we have broke through the outward Shell of words phrases that house it up or when by a Logical Analysis we have found out the dependencies and coherencies of them one with another or when like stout champions of it having well guarded it with the invincible strength of our Demonstration we dare stand out in the face of the world and challenge the field of all those that would pretend to be our Rivalls We have many Grave and Reverend Idolaters that worship Truth onely in the Image of their own Wits that could never adore it so much as they may seem to doe were it any thing else but such a Form of Belief as their own wandring speculations had at last met together in were it not that they find their own image and superscription upon it There is a knowing of the truth as it is in Jesus as it is in a Christ-like nature as it is in that sweet mild humble and loving Spirit of Jesus which spreads itself like a Morning-Sun upon the Soules of good men full of light and life It profits litle to know Christ himself after the flesh but he gives his Spirit to good men that searcheth the deep things of God There is an inward beauty life and loveliness in Divine Truth which cannot be known but onely then when it is digested into life and practice The Greek Philosopher could tell those high-soaring Gnosticks that thought themselves no less then Jovis alites that could as he speaks in the Comedy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and cried out so much 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 look upon God that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Without Vertue and real Goodness God is but a name a dry and empty Notion The profane sort of men like those old Gentile Greeks may make many ruptures in the walls of God's Temple and break into the holy ground but yet may finde God no more there then they did Divine Truth is better understood as it unfolds itself in the purity of mens hearts and lives then in all those subtil Niceties into which curious Wits may lay it forth And therefore our Saviour who is the great Master of it would not while he was here on earth draw it up into any Systeme or Body nor would his Disciples after him He would not lay it out to us in any Canons or Articles of Belief not being indeed so careful to stock and enrich the World with Opinions and Notions as with true Piety and a Godlike pattern of purity as the best way to thrive in all spiritual understanding His main scope was to promote an Holy life as the best and most compendious way to a right Belief He hangs all true acquaintance with Divinity upon the doing Gods will If any man will doe his will he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God This is that alone which will make us as S. Peter tells us that we shall not be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour There is an inward sweetness and deliciousness in divine Truth which no sensual minde can tast or rellish this is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that natural man that savours not the things of God Corrupt passions and terrene affections are apt of their own nature to disturb all serene thoughts to precipitate our Judgments and warp our Understandings It was a good Maxime of the old Jewish Writers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Holy Spirit dwells not in terrene and earthly passions Divinity is not so well perceiv'd by a subtile wit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as by a purified sense as Plotinus phraseth it Neither was the antient Philosophy unacquainted with this Way and Method of attaining to the knowledge of Divine things and therefore Aristotle himself thought a Young man unfit to meddle with the grave precepts of Morality till the heat and violent precipitancy of his youthful affections was cool'd and moderated And it is observed of Pythagoras that he had several waies to try the capacity of his Scholars and to prove the sedateness and Moral temper of their minds before he would entrust them with the sublimer Mysteries of his Philosophy The Platonists were herein so wary and solicitous that they thought the Mindes of men could never be purg'd enough from those earthly dregs of Sense and Passion in which they were so much steep'd before they could be capable of their divine Metaphysicks and therefore they so much solicite a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they are wont to phrase it a separation from the Body in all those that would 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Socrates speaks that is indeed sincerely understand Divine Truth for that was the scope of their Philosophy This was also intimated by them in their defining Philosophy to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Meditation of Death aiming herein at onely a Moral way of dying by loosening the Soul from the Body and this Sensitive life which they thought was necessary to a right Contemplation of Intelligible things and therefore besides those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which the Souls of men were to be separated from sensuality and purged from fleshly filth they devised a further way of Separation more accommodated to the condition of Philosophers which was their Mathemata or Mathematical Contemplations whereby the Souls of men might farther shake off their dependency upon Sense and learn to go as it were alone without the crutch of any Sensible or Material thing to support them and so be a little inur'd being once got up above the Body to converse freely with Immaterial natures without looking down again and falling back into Sense Besides many other waies they had whereby to rise out of this dark Body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they are wont to call them several steps and ascents out of this miry cave of mortality before they could set any sure footing with their Intellectual part in the land of Light and Immortal Being And thus we should pass from this Topick of our Discourse upon which we have dwelt too long already but that before we quite let it goe I hope we may fairly make this use of it farther besides what we have openly driven at all this while which is To learn not to devote or give up our selves to any private Opinions or Dictates of men in matters of Religion nor too zealously to propugne the Dogmata of any Sect. As we should not like rigid Censurers arraign condemn the Creeds of other men which we comply not with before a full mature understanding of them ripened not onely by the natural sagacity of our own Reasons but by the benign influence of holy and mortified Affection so neither should we over-hastily credere in fidem alienam subscribe to the Symbols and Articles of other men They
are not alwaies the Best men that blot most paper Truth is not I fear so Voluminous nor swells into such a mighty bulk as our Books doe Those mindes are not alwaies the most chast that are most parturient with these learned Discourses which too often bear upon them a foule stain of their unlawfull propagation A bitter juice of corrupt affections may sometimes be strain'd into the inke of our greatest Clerks their Doctrines may tast too sowre of the cask they come through We are not alwaies happy in meeting with that wholsome food as some are wont to call the Doctrinal-part of Religion which hath been dress'd out by the cleanest hands Some men have too bad hearts to have good heads they cannot be good at Theorie who have been so bad at the Practice as we may justly fear too many of those from whom we are apt to take the Articles of our Belief have been Whilst we plead so much our right to the patrimony of our Fathers we may take too fast a possession of their Errors as well as of their sober opinions There are Idola specûs Innate Prejudices and deceitfull Hypotheses that many times wander up and down in the Mindes of good men that may flie out from them with their graver determinations We can never be well assur'd what our Traditional Divinity is nor can we securely enough addict our selves to any Sect of men That which was the Philosopher's motto 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we may a little enlarge and so fit it for an ingenuous pursuer after divine Truth He that will finde Truth must seek it with a free judgment and a sanctified minde he that thus seeks shall finde he shall live in Truth and that shall live in him it shall be like a stream of living waters issuing out of his own Soule he shall drink of the waters of his own cisterne and be satisfied he shall every morning finde this Heavenly Manna lying upon the top of his own Soule and be fed with it to eternal life he will finde satisfaction within feeling himself in conjunction with Truth though all the World should dispute against him SECTION II. AND thus I should again leave this Argument but that perhaps we may all this while have seemed to undermine what we intend to build up For if Divine Truth spring onely up from the Root of true Goodness how shall we ever endeavour to be good before we know what it is to be so or how shall we convince the gainsaying world of Truth unless we could also inspire Vertue into it To both which we shall make this Reply That there are some Radical Principles of Knowledge that are so deeply sunk into the Souls of men as that the Impression cannot easily be obliterated though it may be much darkned Sensual baseness doth not so grosly sully and bemire the Souls of all Wicked men at first as to make them with Diagoras to deny the Deity or with Protagoras to doubt of or with Diodorus to question the Immortality of Rational Souls Neither are the Common Principles of Vertue so pull'd up by the roots in all as to make them so dubious in stating the bounds of Vertue and Vice as Epicurus was though he could not but sometime take notice of them Neither is the Retentive power of Truth so weak and loose in all Scepticks as it was in him who being well scourg'd in the streets till the blood ran about him question'd when he came home whether he had been beaten or not Arrianus hath well observed That the Common Notions of God and Vertue imprest upon the Souls of men are more clear and perspicuous then any else and that if they have not more certainty yet have they more evidence and display themselves with less difficulty to our Reflexive Faculty then any Geometrical Demonstrations and these are both availeable to prescribe out waies of Vertue to mens own souls and to force an acknowledgment of Truth from those that oppose when they are well guided by a skilfull hand Truth needs not any time flie from Reason there being an Eternal amitie between them They are onely some private Dogmata that may well be suspected as spurious and adulterate that dare not abide the tryall thereof And this Reason is not every where so extinguish'd as that we may not by that enter into the Souls of men What the Magnetical virtue is in these earthly Bodies that Reason is in mens Mindes which when it is put forth draws them one to another Besides in wicked men there are sometimes Distasts of Vice and Flashes of love to Vertue which are the Motions which spring from a true Intellect and the faint struglings of an Higher life within them which they crucifie again by their wicked Sensuality As Truth doth not alwaies act in good men so neither doth Sense alwaies act in wicked men they may sometimes have their lucida intervalla their sober fits and a Divine spirit blowing and breathing upon them may then blow up some live sparks of true Understanding within them though they may soon endeavour to quench them again and to rake them up in the ashes of their own earthly thoughts All this and more that might be said upon this Argument may serve to point out the VVay of Vertue We want not so much Means of knowing what we ought to doe as Wills to doe that which we may know But yet all that Knowledge which is separated from an inward acquaintance with Vertue and Goodness is of a far different nature from that which ariseth out of a true living sense of them which is the best discerner thereof and by which alone we know the true Perfection Sweetness Energie and Loveliness of them and all that which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which can no more be known by a naked Demonstration then Colours can be perceived of a blinde man by any Definition or Description which he can hear of them And further the clearest and most distinct Notions of Truth that shine in the Souls of the common sort of men may be extreamly clouded if they be not accompanied with that answerable practice that might preserve their integrity These tender Plants may soon be spoyl'd by the continual droppings of our corrupt affections upon them they are but of a weak and feminine nature and so may be sooner deceived by that wily Serpent of Sensuality that harbours within us While the Soul is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 full of the Body while we suffer those Notions and Common Principles of Religion to lie asleep within us that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the power of an Animal life will be apt to incorporate and mingle it self with them and that Reason that is within us as Plotinus hath well express'd it becomes more and more 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it will be infected with those evil Opinions that arise from our Corporeal life The more deeply our Souls dive into our Bodies the more will
property he gives of it viz. to collogue with Heaven Lib. 10. de Legibus where he distinguisheth of Three kinds of Tempers in reference to the Deity which he there calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which are Totall Atheism which he saies never abides with any man till his Old age and Partial Atheism which is a Negation of Providence and a Third which is a perswasion concerning the Gods 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they are easily wone by sacrifices and prayers which he after explaines thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that with gifts unjust men may find acceptance with them And this Discourse of Plato's upon these three kinds of Irreligious 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Simplicius seems to have respect to in his Comment upon Epictetus cap. 38. which treats about Right Opinions in Religion there having pursued the two former of them he thus states the latter which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as the other two as a conceit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quòd muneribus donariis stipis distributione à sententia deducuntur such men making account by their devotions to draw the Deity to themselves and winning the favour of Heaven to procure such an indulgence to their lusts as no sober man on earth would give them they in the mean while not considering 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Repentance Supplications and Prayers c. ought to draw us nearer to God not God nearer to us as in a ship by fastning a Cable to a firm Rock we intend not to draw the Rock to the Ship but the Ship to the Rock Which last passage of his is therefore the more worthy to be taken notice of as holding out so large an Extent that this Irreligious temper is of and of how subtil a Nature This fond and gross dealing with the Deity was that which made the scoffing Lucian so much sport who in his Treatise De sacrificiis tells a number of stories how the Daemons loved to be feasted and where and how they were entertained with such devotions which are rather used Magically as Charms and Spells for such as use them to defend themselves against those Evils which their own Fears are apt perpetually to muster up and to endeavour by bribery to purchase Heaven's favour and indulgence as Juvenal speaks of the Superstitious Aegyptian Illius lacrymae mentitaque munera praestant Ut veniam culpae non abnuat ansere magno Scilicet tenui popano corruptus Osiris Though all this while I would not be understood to condemn too severely all servile fear of God if it tend to make men avoid true wickedness but that which settles upon these lees of Formality To conclude Were I to define Superstition more generally according to the ancient sense of it I would call it Such an apprehension of God in the thoughts of men as renders him grievous and burdensome to them and so destroys all free and cheerfull converse with him begetting in the stead thereof a forc'd and jejune devotion void of inward Life and Love It is that which discovers it self Paedantically in the worship of the Deity in any thing that makes up but onely the Body or outward Vesture of Religion though there it may make a mighty bluster and because it comprehends not the true Divine good that ariseth to the Souls of men from an internall frame of Religion it is therefore apt to think that all it 's insipid devotions are as so many Presents offered to the Deity and gratifications of him How variously Superstition can discover manifest itself we have intimated before To which I shall onely adde this That we are not so well rid of Superstition as some imagine when they have expell'd it out of their Churches expunged it out of their Books and Writings or cast it out of their Tongues by making Innovations in names wherein they sometimes imitate those old Caunii that Herodotus speaks of who that they might banish all the forrein Gods that had stollen in among them took their procession through all their Country beating scourging the Aire along as they went No for all this Superstition may enter into our chambers and creep into our closets it may twine about our secret Devotions actuate our Formes of belief and Orthodox opinions when it hath no place else to shroud itself or hide its head in we may think to flatter the Deity by these and to bribe it with them when we are grown weary of more pompous solemnities nay it may mix it self with a seeming Faith in Christ as I doubt it doth now in too many who laying aside all sober and serious care of true Piety think it sufficient to offer up their Saviour his Active and Passive Righteousness to a severe and rigid Justice to make expiation for those sins they can be willing to allow themselves in A SHORT DISCOURSE OF ATHEISM Job 21. 14 15. They say unto God Depart from us for we desire not the knowledge of thy waies What is the Almighty that we should serve him and what profit should we have if we pray unto him Plutarchus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Contents of the ensuing Discourse That there is a near Affinity between Atheism and Superstition That Superstition doth not onely prepare the way for Atheism but promotes and strengthens it That Epicurism is but Atheism under a mask A Confutation of Epicurus his Master-notion together with some other pretences and Dogmata of his Sect. The true knowledge of Nature is advantageous to Religion That Superstition is more tolerable then Atheism That Atheism is both ignoble and uncomfortable What low and unworthy Notions the Epicureans had concerning Man's Happiness and What trouble they were put to How to define and Where to place true Happinesse A true belief of a Deity supports the Soul with a present Tranquillity and future Hopes Were it not for a Deity the World would be unhabitable A SHORT DISCOURSE OF ATHEISM WE have now done with what we intended concerning Superstition and shall a little consider and search into the Pedigree of ATHEISM which indeed hath so much affinity with Superstition that it may seem to have the same Father with it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Superstition could be well content there were no God to trouble or disquiet it and Atheism thinks there is none And as Superstition is engendred by a base opinion of the Deity as cruell and tyrannicall though it be afterwards brooded and hatcht by a slavish fear and abject thoughts so also is Atheism and that sowre and ghastly apprehension of God when it meets with more stout and surly Natures is apt to enrage them and cankering them with Malice against the Deity they so little brook provokes them to fight against it and undermine the Notion of it as this Plastick Nature which intends to form Living creatures when it meets
But indeed Lucretius himself though he could in a jolly fit of his over-flush'd and fiery fansy tell us Et ridere potest non ex ridentibu ' factus Et sapere doctis rationem reddere dictis Non ex seminibus sapientibus atque disertis yet in more cool thoughts he found his own common notions too sturdy to be so easily silenc'd and therefore sets his wits a-work to find the most Quintessential particles of Matter that may be that might doe that feat which those smooth Spherical bodies Calor Aer and Ventus for all come into this composition could not doe and this was of such a subtile and exalted nature that his earthly fansy could not comprehend it and therefore he confesses plainly he could not tell what name to give it though for want of a better he calls it Mobilem vim as neither his Master before him who was pleased to compound the Soul as Plutarch relates of four ingredients 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But because this Giant-like Proteus found himself here bound with such strong cords that notwithstanding all his struggling he could by no means break them off from him we shall relate his own words the more largely I find them lib. 3. Sic calor atque aer venti caeca potestas Mista creant unam naturam mobilis illa Vis initîum motus abs se quae dividit ollis Sensifer unde oritur primum per viscera motus Nam penitus prorsum latet haec natura subéstque Nec magis hac infra quidquam est in corpore nostro Atque anima'st animae proporrò totius ipsa Quod genus in nostris membris corpore toto Mista latens animi vis est animaeque potestas Corporibus quia de parvis paucisque creata est Sic tibi nominis haec expers vis facta minutis Corporibus latet Thus we see how he found himself overmaster'd with difficulties while he endeavoured to find the place of the Sensitive powers in Matter yet this is the highest that he dares aim at namely to prove that Sensation might from thence derive its Original as stiffly opposing any Higher power of Reason which we shall in lucro ponere against another time But surely had not the Epicureans abandoned all Logick together with some other Sciences as Tully and Laertius tell us they did they would here have found themselves too much prest with this Argument which yet some will think to be but levis armaturae in respect of some other and have found it as little short of a Demonstration to prove the Soules Immortality as the Platonists themselves did But herein how they dealt Plotinus hath well observed of them all who denied Lives and Souls to be immortal which he asserts and make them nothing but Bodies that when they were pinch'd with the strength of any Argument fetch'd frō the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Soul it was usuall amongst them to call this Body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Ventus certo quodam modo se habens to which he well replies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Where by this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems to be nothing meant but that same thing which Lucretius called vim mobilem and he would not allow it to be any thing else but a Body though what kind of Body he could not tell yet by it he understands not meerly an Active power of motion but a more subtile Energie whereby the force and nature of any motion is perceived and insinuated by its own strength in the bodies moved as if these sorry Bodies by their impetuous justling together could awaken one another out of their drowsie Lethargie and make each other hear their mutuall impetuous knocks which is as absurd as to think a Musical instrument should hear its own sounds and take pleasure in those harmonious aires that are plai'd upon it For that which we call Sensation is not the Motion or Impression which one Body makes upon another but a Recognition of that Motion and therefore to attribute that to a Body is to make a Body privy to its own acts and passions to act upon itself and to have a true and proper self-feeling virtue which Porphyrie hath elegantly expressed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In the sensations of living creatures the Soul moves as if unbodied Harmony her self should play upon an Instrument and smartly touch the well-tuned strings but the Body is like that Harmony which dwells inseparably in the strings themselves which have no perception of it Thus we should now leave this Topick of our Demonstration onely we shall adde this as an Appendix to it which will further manifest the Souls Incorporeal and Immaterial nature that is That there is a Higher Principle of knowledge in man then meer Sense neither is that the sole Original of all that Science that breaks forth in the minds of men which yet Lucretius maintains as being afraid lest he should be awaken'd out of this pleasant dreame of his should any Higher power rouse his sleepy Soul and therefore he thus layes down the opinion of his Sect Invenies primis ab sensibus esse creatam Notitiam veri neque sensus posse refelli Nam majore fide debet reperirier illud Sponte sua veris quod possit vincere falsa But yet this goodly Champion doth but lay siege to his own Reason and endeavour to storm the main fort thereof which but just before he defended against the Scepticks who maintained that opinion That nothing could be known to which he having replied by that vulgar Argument That if nothing can be known then neither doe we know this That we know nothing he pursues them more closely with another That neither could they know what it is to know or what it is to be ignorant Quaeram quom in rebus veri nil viderit ante Unde sciat quid sit scire nescire vicissim Notitiam veri quae res falsique crearit But yet if our Senses were the onely Judges of things this Reflex knowledge whereby we know what it is to know would be as impossible as he makes it for Sense to have Innate Idea's of its own antecedent to those stamps which the Radiations of external Objects imprint upon it For this knowledge must be antecedent to all that judgment which we pass upon any Sensatum seeing except we first know what it is to know we could not judge or determine aright upon the approach of any of these Idola to our Senses But our Author may perhaps yet seem to make a more full confession for us in these two points First That no sense can judge another's objects nor convince it of any mistake Non possunt alios alii convincere sensus Nec porrò poterunt ipsi reprehendere sese If therefore there be any such thing within us as controlls our Senses as all know there is then must that be of an Higher nature then our Senses are
we shall adde but this one thing further to clear the Soul's Immortality and it is indeed that which breeds a true sense of it viz. True and reall goodness Our highest speculations of the Soul may beget a sufficient conviction thereof within us but yet it is onely True Goodness and Vertue in the Souls of men that can make them both know and love believe and delight themselves in their own Immortality Though every good man is not so Logically subtile as to be able by fit mediums to demonstrate his own Immortality yet he sees it in a higher light His Soul being purged and enlightned by true Sanctity is more capable of those Divine irradiations whereby it feels it self in conjunction with God and by a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Greeks speak the Light of divine goodness mixing it self with the light of its own Reason sees more clearly not onely that it may if it please the supreme Deity of its own nature exist eternally but also that it shall doe so it knows it shall never be deserted of that free Goodness that alwaies embraceth it it knows that Almighty Love which it lives by to be stronger then death and more powerful then the grave it will not suffer those holy ones that are partakers of it to lie in hell or their Souls to see corruption and though worms may devour their flesh and putrefaction enter into those bones that fence it yet it knows that its Redeemer lives and that it shall at last see him with a pure Intellectual eye which will then be clear and bright when all that earthly dust which converse with this mortal body filled it with shall be wiped out It knows that God will never forsake his own life which he hath quickned in it he will never deny those ardent desires of a blissfull fruition of himself which the lively sense of his own Goodness hath excited within it those breathings and gaspings after an eternal participation of him are but the Energy of his own breath within us if he had had any mind to destroy it he would never have shewn it such things as he hath done he would not raise it up to such Mounts of Vision to shew it all the glory of that heavenly Canaan flowing with eternal and unbounded pleasures and then tumble it down again into that deep and darkest Abyss of Death and Non-entity Divine goodness cannot it will not be so cruel to holy souls that are such ambitious suitors for his love The more they contemplate the blissfull Effluxes of his divine love upon themselves the more they find themselves strengthned with an undaunted confidence in him and look not upon themselves in these poor bodily relations and dependences but in their eternal alliances 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Arrianus sometimes speaks as the Sons of God who is the Father of Souls Souls that are able to live any where in this spacious Universe and better out of this dark and lonesome Cell of Bodily matter which is alwaies checking and clogging them in their noble motions then in it as knowing that when they leave this Body they shall then be received into everlasting habitations and converse freely and familiarly with that Source of Life and Spirit which they conversed with in this life in a poor disturbed and streightned manner It is indeed nothing else that makes men question the Immortality of their Souls so much as their own base and earthly loves which first makes them wish their Souls were not immortal and then to think they are not which Plotinus hath well observed and accordingly hath soberly pursued this argument I cannot omit a large recital of his Discourse which tends so much to disparage that flat and dull Philosophy which these later Ages have brought forth as also those heavy-spirited Christians that find so little divine life and activity in their own Souls as to imagine them to fall into such a dead sleep as soon as they leave this earthly tabernacle that they cannot be awakened again till that last Trumpet and the voice of an Archangel shall rouse them up Our Authors discourse is this Enn. 4. lib. 7. c. 10. having first premised this Principle That every Divine thing is immortall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Let us now consider a Soul saith he not such an one as is immerst into the Body having contracted unreasonable Concupiscence and Anger 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to which they were wont to distinguish between the Irascible and Concupiscible faculty and other Passions but such a one as hath cast away these and as little as may be communicates with the Body such a one as this will sufficiently manifest that all Vice is unnaturall to the Soul and something acquired onely from abroad and that the best Wisdome and all other Vertues lodge in a purged Soul as being allyed to it If therefore such a Soul shall reflect upon it self how shall it not appear to it self to be of such a kind of nature as Divine and Eternall Essences are For Wisdome and true Vertue being Divine Effluxes can never enter into any unhallowed and mortall thing it must therefore needs be Divine seeing it is fill'd with a Divine nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by its kindred and consanguinity therewith Whoever therefore amongst us is such a one differs but little in his Soul from Angelicall essences and that little is the present inhabitation in the Body in which he is inferiour to them And if every man were of this raised temper or any considerable number had but such holy Souls there would be no such Infidels as would in any sort disbelieve the Soul's Immortality But now the vulgar sort of men beholding the Souls of the generality so mutilated and deform'd with Vice and Wickedness they cannot think of the Soul as of any Divine and Immortall Being though indeed they ought to judge of things as they are in their own naked essences and not with respect to that which extraessentially adheres to them which is the great prejudice of knowledge Contemplate therefore the Soul of man denuding it of all that which it self is not or let him that does this view his own Soul then he will believe it to be Immortall when he shall behold it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fixt in an Intelligible and pure nature he shall then behold his own Intellect contemplating not any Sensible thing but Eternall things with that which is Eternall that is with it self looking into the Intellectuall world being it self made all Lucid Intellectuall and shining with the Sun-beams of eternall Truth borrowed from the First Good which perpetually rayeth forth his Truth upon all Intellectuall Beings One thus qualified may seem without any arrogance to take up that saying of Empedocles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Farewell all earthly allies I am henceforth no mortall wight but an Immortall Angel ascending up into Divinity and reflecting upon that likeness of it which I find
Soul hath no such stock of principles to trade with nor any proper notions of its own that might be a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of all Opinions it would be so indifferent to any that the foulest Errour might be as easily entertained by it as the fairest Truth neither could it ever know what guest it receives whether Truth or Falshood But yet our Author found himself able to swallow down this absurdity though when he had done he could not well digest it For he could not but take notice of that which was obvious for any one to reply That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so reflecting upon it self may find matter within to work upon and so laies down this scruple in a way not much different from his Masters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. but the Soul it self is also intelligible as well as all other intelligible natures are and in those Beings which are purely abstracted from Matter that which understands is the same with that which is understood Thus he But not being Master of this notion he finds it a little too unruly for him and falls to enquire why the Soul should not then alwaies be in actu quitting himself of the whole difficulty at once by telling us that our souls are here clogg'd with a Hyle or Matter that cleaves to them and so all the matter of their knowledge is contained in sensible objects which they must extract out of them being themselves onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or in potentia ad intelligendum Just as in a like argument Chap. 8. he would needs perswade us That the Understanding beholds all things in the glass of Phansie and then questioning how our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or First principles of knowledge should be Phantasmes he grants that they are not indeed phantasmes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but yet they are not without phantasmes which he thinks is enough to say and so by his meer dictate without any further discussion to solve that knot whereas in all Reflex acts whereby the Soul reviews its own opinions and finds out the nature of them it makes neither use of Sense or Phantasmes but acting immediately by its own power finds it self 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Simplicius observes But to return This Hyle or Matter which our Author supposeth to hinder a free uninterrupted exercise of Understanding is indeed nothing else but the Souls potentiality and not any kind of divisible or extended nature And therefore when he thus distinguisheth between his Intellectus Agens and Patiens he seems to mean almost nothing else but what our ordinary Metaphysitians doe in their distinction of Actus and Potentia as Simplicius hath truly observed when they tell us that the finest created nature is made up of these two compounded together For we must know that the genius of his Philosophy led him to fancy an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a certain subject or obediential power in every thing that fell within the compass of Physical speculation or that had any relation to any natural body and some other power which was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that was of an active and operating nature and consequently that both these Principles were in the Soul it self which as it was capable of receiving impressions species from the Phansie and in a posse to understand so it was Passive but as it doth actually understand so it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Active And with this Notion he begins his 5. Chap. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that is Seeing that in every nature there is something which as a First subject is all things potentially and some Active principle which produceth all things as Art doth in Matter it is necessary that the Soul also partake of these differences And this he illustrates by Light Colours resembling the Passive power of the Intellect to Colours the Active or Energetical to Light and therefore he saies it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 separable unmixt and impassible and so at last concludes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the state of Separation this Intellect is alwaies that which it is that is it is alwaies Active and Energetical as he had told us before 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the essence of it being activity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and this onely is immortal and eternal but we doe not remember because it is impassible In which last words he seems to disprove Plato's Reminiscentia because the Soul in a state of Separation being alwaies in act the Passive power of it which then first begins to appear when it is embodied could not represent or contain any such Traditionall species as the Energeticall faculty acted upon before seeing there was then no Phansie to retain them in as Simplicius expounds it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because in all remembrance we must reflect upon our Phansie And this our Author seems to glance at it being indeed never out of his eye in these words we have endeavoured to give an account of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But the Passive intellect is corruptible and without this we can understand nothing in this life And thus our fore-named Commentator doubts not to glosse on them CHAP. IX A main Difficulty concerning the Immortality of the Soul viz. The strong Sympathy of the Soul with the Body answered An Answer to another Enquiry viz. Under what account Impressions deriv'd from the Body do fall in Morality WE have now done with the Confirmation of this Point which is the main Basis of all Religion and shall not at present trouble our selves with those difficulties that may seem to incumber it which indeed are onely such as beg for a Solution but doe not if they be impartially considered proudly contest with it and such of them which depend upon any hypothesis which we may apprehend to be lai'd down in Scripture I cannot think them to be of any such moment but that any one who deals freely and ingenuously with this piece of God's truth may from thence find a far better ansa of answering then he can of moving of any scruples against the Souls Immortality which that most strongly every where supposes does not so positively 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lay down as presume that we have an antecedent knowledge of it therefore principally teaches us the right Way Method of providing in this life for our happy subsistence in that eternal estate And as for what pretends to Reason or Experience I think it may not be amiss briefly to search into one main difficulty concerning the Soul's Immortality and that is That strange kind of dependency which it seems to have on the Body whereby it seems constantly to comply and sympathize therewith and to assume to it self the frailties and infirmities thereof to laugh and languish as it were together with that and so when the Body is compos'd to rest our Soul seems to sleep together with it and as the Spring of bodily Motion
seated in our Brains is more clear or muddy so the conceptions of our Minds are more distinct or disturbed To answer this difficulty it might be enough perhaps to say That the Sympathy of things is no sufficient Argument to prove the Identity of their essences by as I think all will grant yet we shall endeavour more fully to solve it And for that purpose we must take notice that though our Souls be of an Incorporeal nature as we have already demonstrated yet they are united to our Bodies not as Assisting forms or Intelligences as some have thought but in some more immediate way though we cannot tell what that is it being the great arcanum in Man's nature that which troubled Plotinus so much when he had contemplated the Immortality of it that as he speaks of himself Enn. 4. lib. 8. c. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But indeed to make such a Complex thing as Man is it was necessary that the Soul should be so united to the Body as to share in its passions and infirmities so far as they are void of sinfulness And as the Body alone could not perform any act of Sensation or Reason and so it self become a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so neither would the Soul be capable of providing for the necessities of the Body without some way whereby a feeling and sense of them might be conveyed to it neither could it take sufficient care of this corporeal life as nothing pertaining to it were it not sollicited to a natural compunction and compassion by the indigencies of our Bodies It cannot be a meer Mental Speculation that would be so sensibly affected with hunger or cold or other griefs that our Bodies necessarily partake of to move our Souls to take care for their relief and were there not such a commerce between our Souls and Bodies as that our Souls also might be made acquainted by a pleasurable and delightful sense of those things that most gratifie our Bodies and tend most to the support of their Crasis and temperament the Soul would be apt wholly to neglect the Body and commit it wholly to all changes and casualties Neither would it be any thing more to us then the body of a Plant or Star which we contemplate sometimes with as much contentment as we do our own bodies having as much of the Theory of the one as of the other And the relation that our Souls bear to such peculiar bodies as they inhabite is one and the same in point of notion and speculation with that which they have to any other body and therefore that which determines the Soul to this Body more then that must be some subtile vinculum that knits and unites it to it in a more Physical way which therefore Proclus sometimes calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spiritual kind of vehicle whereby corporeal impressions are transferr'd to the Mind and the dictates and decrees of that are carried back again into the Body to act and move it Heraclitus wittily glancing at these mutual aspects and entercourses calls them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Responsals or Antiphons wherein each of them catcheth at the others part keeps time with it and so he tells us that there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a way that leads upwards and downwards between the Soul and Body whereby their affairs are made known to one another For as the Soul could not have a sufficient relation of the state and condition of our Bodies except it received some impressions from them so neither could our Souls make use of our Bodies or derive their own virtue into them as they doe without some intermediate motions For as some motions may seem to have their beginning in our Bodies or in some external mover which are not known by our Souls till their advertency be awakened by the impetuousness of them so some other motions are derived by our own Wills into our Bodies but yet in such a way as they cannot be into any other body for we cannot by the meer Magical virtue of our Wills move any thing else without our selves nor follow any such virtue by a concurrent sense of those mutations that are made by it as we doe in our own Bodies And as this Conjugal affection and sympathy between Soul and Body are thus necessary to the Being of Mankind so we may further take notice of some peculiar part within us where all this first begins which a late fagacious Philosopher hath happily observed to be in that part of the Brain from whence all those Nerves that conduct the Animal spirits up and down the Body take their first Original seeing we find all Motions that first arise in our Bodies to direct their course straight up to that as continually respecting it and there onely to be sensated and all the imperate motions of our Wills issuing forth from the same consistory Therefore the Animal spirits by reason of their constant mobility and swift motion ascending to the place of our Nerves origination move the Soul which there sits enthron'd in some mysterious way and descending at the beck of our Wills from thence move all the Muscles and joynts in such sort as they are guided and directed by the Soul And if we observe the subtile Mechanicks of our own Bodies we may easily conceive how the least motion in these Animal Spirits will by their relaxing or distending the Nerves Membranes and Muscles according to their different quantity or the celerity and quality of their motions beget all kind of motions likewise in the Organical part of our Bodies And therefore that our Souls may the better inform our Bodies they must perceive all their varieties and because they have such an immediate proximity to these Spirits therefore also all the Motions of our Souls in the highest way of Reason and Understanding are apt to stir these quick and nimble spirits alwaies attending upon them or else fix them too much And thus we may easily see that should our Souls be alwaies acting and working within us our Bodies could never take that rest and repose which is requisite for the conservation of Nature As we may easily perceive in all our studies and meditations that are most serious our Spirits are the more fix'd attending the beck of our Minds And except this knot whereby our Souls are wedded to our Bodies were unloosed that our Souls were loose from them they could not act but presently some Motion or other would be imprest upon our Bodies as every Motion in our Bodies that is extraordinary when our Nerves are distended with the Animal spirits by a continual communication of it self in these Nerves like so many intended Chords to their original moves our Souls and so though we alwaies perceive that one of them is primarily affected yet we also find the other presently by consent to be affected too And because the Soul hath all Corporeal passions and impressions thus
through them into the thing signified thereby and so embraced Shadows in stead of Substance and made account to build up Happiness and Heaven upon that Earthly Law to which properly the Land of Canaan was annex'd whereas indeed this Law should have been their School-master to have led them to Christ whose Law it prefigured which that it might doe the more effectually God had annexed to the breach of any one part of it such severe Curses that they might from thence perceive how much need they had of some further Dispensation And therefore this state of theirs is set forth by a State of bondage or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For all External precepts carry perpetually an aspect of austerity and rigour to those Minds that are not informed by the internal sweetness of them And this is it only which makes the Gospel or the New Law to be a Free Noble and Generous thing because it is seated in the Souls of men and therefore Aquinas out of Austin hath well observed another difference between the Law and Gospel Brevis differentia inter Legem Evangelium est Timor Amor. This I the rather observe because the true meaning of that Spirit of Bondage which the Apostle speaks of is frequently mistaken We might further if need were for a confirmation of this which we have spoken concerning the Typicalness of the whole Jewish Oeconomy appeal to the third and fourth chapters of the Epistle to the Galatians which cannot well be understood without this Notion where we have the Jewish Church as a Type of the true Evangelical Church brought in as a Child in it's Minority in servitude under Tutors and Governours shut up under the Law till the time of that Emphatical revelation of the great Mysterie of God should come till the Day should break and all the shadows of the Night flee away That I may return from this Digression to the Argument we before pursued this briefly may be added That under the Old Covenant and in the time of the Law there were amongst the Jews some that were Evangelized that were re non nomine Christiani as under the Gospel there are many that do Judaize are of as Legal and Servile Spirits as the Jews children of the Bond-woman resting in mere External observances of Religion in an outward seeming Purity in a Form of Godliness as did the Scribes and Pharisees of old From what hath hitherto been discoursed I hope the Difference between both Covenants clearly appears and that the Gospel was not brought in only to hold forth a new Platform and Model of Religion it was not brought in only to refine some Notions of Truth that might formerly seem discoloured and disfigured by a multitude of Legal rites and ceremonies it was not to cast our Opinions concerning the Way of Life and Happiness only into a New mould and shape in a Pedagogical kind of way it is not so much a System and Body of saving Divinity but the Spirit and vital Influx of it spreading it self over all the Powers of mens Souls and quickening them into a Divine life it is not so properly a Doctrine that is wrapt up in ink and paper as it is Vitalis Scientia a living impression made upon the Soul and Spirit We may in a true sense be as Legal as ever the Jews were if we converse with the Gospel as a thing only without us and be as far short of the Righteousness of God as they were if we make the Righteousness which is of Christ by Faith to serve us only as an Outward Covering and endeavour not after an Internal transformation of our Minds and Souls into it The Gospel does not so much consist in Verbis as in Virtute Neither doth Evangelical dispensation therefore please God so much more then the Legal did because as a finer contrivance of his Infinite understanding it more clearly discovers the Way of Salvation to the Minds of men but chiefly because it is a more Powerful Efflux of his Divine goodness upon them as being the true Seed of a happy Immortality continually thriving and growing on to perfection I shall adde further The Gospel does not therefore hold forth such a transcendent priviledge and advantage above what the Law did only because it acquaints us that Christ our true High priest is ascended up into the Holy of holies and there in stead of the bloud of Bulls and Goats hath sprinkled the Ark and Mercy-seat above with his own bloud but also because it conveys that bloud of sprinkling into our defiled Consciences to purge them from dead works Farr be it from me to disparage in the least the Merit of Christ's bloud his becoming obedient unto death whereby we are justified But I doubt sometimes some of our Dogmata and Notions about Justification may puff us up in far higher and goodlier conceits of our selves then God hath of us and that we profanely make the unspotted righteousness of Christ to serve only as a Covering to wrap up our foul deformities and filthy vices in and when we have done think our selvs in as good credit and repute with God as we are with our selves and that we are become Heaven's darlings as much as we are our own I doubt not but the Merit and Obedience of our Saviour gain us favour with God and potently move down the benign influences of Heaven upon us But yet I think we may sometimes be too lavish and wanton in our imaginations in fondly conceiting a greater change in the Esteem which God hath of us then becomes us too little reckon upon the Real and Vital Emanations of his favour upon us Therefore for the further clearing of what hath been already said and laying a ground upon which the next part of our Discourse viz. Concerning the Conveiance of this God-like righteousness to us by Faith is to proceed We shall here speak something more to the business of Justification and Divine Acceptance which we shall dispatch in two Particulars CHAP. V. Two Propositions for the better understanding of the Doctrine of Justification and Divine Acceptance 1. Prop. That the Divine judgment and estimation of every thing is according to the truth of the thing and God's acceptance or disacceptance of things is suitable to his judgment On what account S. James does attribute a kind of Justification to Good works 2. Prop. Gods justifying of Sinners in pardoning their Sins carries in it a necessary reference to the sanctifying of their Natures This abundantly proved from the Nature of the thing OUR first Proposition is this The Divine judgment and estimation of every thing is according to the truth of the thing and Gods acceptance or disacceptance of things is suitable and proportionable to his judgment Thus S. Peter plainly tells us Act. 10. God is no respecter of persons But every one that worketh righteousness is accepted of him And God himself posed Cain who had entertained those unworthy
and all created things so little that we reckon upon nothing as worthy of our aims or ambitions but a serious Participation of the Divine Nature and the Exercise of divine Vertues Love Joy Peace Long-suffering Kindness Goodness and the like When the Soul beholding the Infinite beauty and loveliness of the Divinity and then looking down and beholding all created Perfection mantled over with darkness is ravish'd into love and admiration of that never-setting brightness and endeavours after the greatest resemblance of God in Justice Love and Goodness When conversing with him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a secret feeling of the virtue sweetness and power of his Goodness we endeavour to assimilate our selves to him Then we may be said to glorifie him indeed God seeks no glory but his own and we have none of our own to give him God in all things seeks himself and his own glory as finding nothing Better then himself and when we love him above all things and endeavour to be most like him we declare plainly that we count nothing Better then He is I doubt we are too nice Logicians sometimes in distinguishing between the Glory of God and our own Salvation We cannot in a true sense seek our own Salvation more then the Glory of God which triumphs most and discovers it self most effectually in the Salvation of Souls for indeed this Salvation is nothing else but a true Participation of the Divine Nature Heaven is not a thing without us nor is Happiness any thing distinct from a true Conjunction of the Mind with God in a secret feeling of his Goodness and reciprocation of affection to him wherein the Divine Glory most unfolds it self And there is nothing that a Soul touch'd with any serious sense of God can more earnestly thirst after or seek with more strength of affection then This. Then shall we be happy when God comes to be all in all in us To love God above our selves is not indeed so properly to love him above the salvation of our Souls as if these were distinct things but it is to love him above all our own sinfull affections above our particular Beings and to conform our selves to him And as that which is Good relatively and in order to us is so much the Better by how much the more it is commensurate and conformed to us So on the other side that which is good absolutely and essentially requires that our Minds and Affections should as far as may be be commensurate and conform'd to it and herein is God most glorified and we made Happy As we cannot truly love the First and Highest Good while we serve a designe upon it and subordinate it to our selves so neither is our own Salvation consistent with any such sordid pinching and particular love We cannot be compleatly blessed till the Idea Boni or the Ipsum Bonum which is God exercise its Soveraignty over all the Faculties of our Souls rendring them as like to it self as may consist with their proper Capacity See more of this in the Discourse Of the Existence and Nature of God Chap. 4. and more largely in that Latine Discourse shortly to be printed Pietati studere ex intuitu mercedis non est illicitum CHAP. VI. The Fourth Property or Effect discovering the Excellency of Religion viz. That it begets the greatest Serenity and Composedness of Mind and brings the truest Contentment the purest and most satisfying Joy and Pleasure to every holy Soul God as being that Uniform Chief Good and the One Last End does attract and fix the Soul Wicked men distracted through a Multiplicity of Objects and Ends. How the restless appetite of our Wills after some Supreme Good leads to the knowledge as of a Deity so of the Unity of a Deity How the Joys and Delights of Good men differ from and far excell those of the Wicked The Constancy and Tranquillity of the Spirits of Good men in reference to External troubles All Perturbations of the Mind arise from an Inward rather then an Outward Cause The Stoicks Method for attaining 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and true rest examined and the Insufficiency of it discovered A further Illustration of what has been said concerning the Peacefull and Happy State of Good men from the contrary State of the Wicked THe Fourth Property Effect of True Religion wherein it expresseth its own Nobleness is this That it begets the greatest Serenity Constancy and Composedness of Mind and brings the truest Contentment the most satisfying Joy and Pleasure the purest and most divine Sweetness and Pleasure to the Spirits of Good men Every Good man in whom Religion rules is at peace and unity with himself is as a City compacted together Grace doth more and more reduce all the Faculties of the Soul into a perfect Subjection and Subordination to it self The Union and Conjunction of the Soul with God that Primitive Unity is that which is the alone Original and Fountain of all Peace and the Centre of Rest as the further any Being slides from God the more it breaks into discords within it self as not having any Centre within it self which might collect and unite all the Faculties thereof to it self and so knit them up together in a sweet confederacy amongst themselves God only is such an Almighty Goodness as can attract all the Powers in man's Soul to it self as being an Object transcendently adequate to the largest capacities of any created Being and so unite man perfectly to himself in the true enjoyment of one Uniform and Simple Good It must be one Last End and Supreme Good that can fix Man's Mind which otherwise will be tossed up and down in perpetual uncertainties and become as many several things as those poor Particularities are which it meets with A wicked man's life is so distracted by a Multiplicity of Ends and Objects that it never is nor can be consistent to it self nor continue in any composed settled frame it is the most intricate irregular and confused thing in the world no one part of it agreeing with another because the whole is not firmly knit together by the power of some One Last End running through all Whereas the life of a Good man is under the sweet command of one Supreme Goodness and Last End This alone is that living Form and Soul which running through all the Powers of the Mind and Actions of Life collects all together into one fair and beautifull System making all that Variety conspire into perfect Unity whereas else all would fall asunder like the Members of a dead Body when once the Soul is gone every little particle flitting each from other It was a good Maxim of Pythagoras quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Oportet etiam hominem unum fieri A divided Mind and a Multiform Life speaks the greatest disparagement that may be it is only the intermediation of One Last End that can reconcile a man perfectly to himself and his
and Love Secondly Of the Sense he felt of his loss Thirdly Of that Honour which he gave him or that Respect and Regard which he had unto him I shall speak a little of all these and then parallel our Case as well as I can to Both. 1. Observe Elijah's Eminency Superiority Dignity and Worth which is both signified in the word Father and also in the other Expressions the Chariot and Horsemen of Israel The Talmudists say of the word Abba which is near of kin as can be to this in the Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Abba is a word of honour and glory even as Rabbi whence the Latine Abbas and our English Abbot have been derived to denote the greatest person in a Society And therefore whom he here calls Father is called verse 3 and 5. Master or Lord Know'st thou not that Jehovah will take 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thy Lord or Master from thee today Elijah was the Head in the Body of the Prophets the Dux gregis a main leading man among the rest And this was by reason of his Wisdome Experience and gray-headed Understanding expressed in the word Father He was a Sage and grave person such an Head as was full of Prudence Skill Advice wherein were molded many sober and wise Resolutions many weighty and mature Determinations profound and deep Notions holy and pious Counsels for the teaching of rawer and greener heads He was one that did imitate God the Father of all and in some sort represent him here below being an Oracle among men And such Instruments God hath alwaies in the world Men of greater height and stature then others whom he sets up as torches on an hill to give light to all the Regions round about Men of publick and universal influence like the Sun it self which illuminates all and is not sparing of its beams Men whose Souls come into the world as the Chaldee Oracle speaks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 clothed with a great deal of Mind more impregnated then others with Divine notions and having more teeming Wombs to inrich the world with the fruit of them Men of wide and capacious Souls that can grasp much and of inlarged open Hearts to give forth that freely unto men which the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Fatherly Mind as the same Oracle calls God hath given unto them that so in some sort they may become Fathers in the world in subordination to God The Sun of Righteousness Jesus Christ is described with seven stars in his right hand Revelat. 1. which were the Angels of the Churches Men its like who were adorn'd and beautified with more then ordinary brightness of Mind and Understanding and did sparkle with more then common heat of Love and Piety and did shine as Lights in the world in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation Elijah was such an one and so was the other Elias John the Baptist a burning and a shining light and so also shall we find our Father that is deceased to have been 2. Take notice of the Care which Elijah took of Elisha and that first as a Master of his Scholar and secondly as a Father of his Son or if you will have both in one as a Fatherly Master Elisha calls him by this name of Father because he was his Scholar and they used commonly to give this title to their Masters or Teachers whence Pirke Avoth among the Jews Capitula Patrum is a Book that contains the wise Sayings Apophthegms of their Doctors And so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the New Testament that which is received by Tradition from their Fathers signifies nothing else but what their Doctors and learned men in the Law delivered to them and therefore they are sometimes called the Traditions of the Elders Jubal is called the Father of such as handle the Harp Gen. 4. 21. which signifies the same with that which is said of his Brother verse 22. He was an Instructer of artificers in brass and Iron And hence Solomon saith so often My Son hear the instruction of a Father So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 my Father my Father in the Text is nothing else but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 my Master my Master Elijah taught and instructed him out of the Law but with such a care and Fatherly affection that Elisha was truly his Son as well as his Scholar one whom he loved and tendered whom he wrap'd as a child in his Mantle when he was following the plough whom he begot into another shape and made another man in whose heart he sowed the seeds of true righteousness and godliness that he might doe more good in the world For what God doth by Men that they many times are said to doe Hence the Apostles call Christians their little children and dear children whom they had travailed in birth withall till Christ was formed in them They lay in the Apostles wombs they brought them forth Christians and so were truly their Spiritual Fathers And we may still see such noble Souls which God continues amongst men whose mouths as Solomon saies are as a well of life whose lips feed many and whose tongues are as choice Silver Men that are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 common Fathers and will embrace every body as a Son so they be but willing to be taught that have the whole World for their School and are instilling wholesom notions and rectified apprehensions into mens Minds and implanting the Truth which is after Godliness in their hearts Men that in all meekness tenderness and Fatherly affection reprove those that oppose themselves that endeavour to bring them into their wombs that if it be possible they may beget the life of God and of his Son Christ in their Souls Men who cherish and foster the least gasping panting life that is in any Soul who endeavour to free this life from any obstructions that dull and oppress it and so in every sense prove themselves to be the true Fathers of the Church Common Fathers as before I expressed it neither bound up in themselves nor addicted to any particular Sect but minding the good of all Who think that they were not born for themselves nor to be linked to this or that Body or party of men but are to be perfect as their heavenly Father is perfect who doth good to all even to the evil and unthankful A 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or natural affection there is in them which makes them think that every mans childe is their own and if they could hatch any heavenly life in them they would willingly cover them under their wings Such a person was S. Paul who went through fire and water had a pilgrimage through this world upon nothing but briers and thorns out of his great love that he bare to men The care of all the Churches lay upon him and no man could be weak but he was weak also no man was offended but
these Three our Respect Affection and Sense of our loss His name is most worthy to be had in a more especial remembrance and highly deserves to be rank'd among our Benefactors he having indowed our Library with all the Books that he had and we wanted and I have reason to believe that if he had not been so suddenly surprised by those forgetful Lethargick fits he intended to bestow more upon us then his Books which yet were both many and choise ones being above six hundred for number and many of them large and costly and for the matter of them many Hebrew Books besides some Arabick many Mathematick Books many Books of History both Ancient and Modern as also of Philosophy and Philology both Sacred and Profane And whensoever we commemorate his Love unto us let it be with some Encomium let us mourn quòd talem amiserimus that we are deprived of such a person but let us rejoice and give thanks to God quòd talem habuerimus that we ever had such an one who hath done us so much good they are the words of S. Hierom to Nepotian with a little alteration But let me tell you in conclusion of all that herein would be shown our greatest Love and Affection which we bare to him this would be the greatest Honour of him if we would but express his life in ours that others might say when they behold us There walks at least a shadow of Mr. Smith And O that I might beg with Elisha a double portion among those that I desire should share in the gifts and graces of this Elijah This is the highest of my ambition that many might but possess the riches that lodg'd in this one They disgrace their Master who have not skill in that which they say he professed but they who tread in his steps and excell in his Art shine back again upon him from whom first they received their light Let me seriously therefore exhort every one of us to imitate this Master in Israel Imitate him in his Industry if not in his Learning shake off all laziness and sloth do not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 embody and enervate your Souls by Idleness and base neglect do not emasculate them and turn them into flesh by drowsiness or vain pleasures Imitate his Temperance his Patience his Fortitude his Candour and Ingenuity his Holiness and Righteousness his Faith and Love his Charity and Humility his Self-denial and true Self-resignation to the will of God in a word all those Christian Vertues which lived in him let them live in us for ever Let us die to the world as he did before we die let us separate our Souls from our Bodies and all bodily things before the time of our departure and separation come Let us take an especial heed lest we doe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as most men doe lest we suffer this lower and earthly world lest we be drawn forcibly into its embraces and so held from rising aloft but let us turn up our Minds continually to Heaven and earnestly desire pati Deum to suffer God to be mightily and strongly attracted by him from all Earthy and Sensible delights to an admiration and love of his Everlasting Beauty and Goodness Let us labour to be so well acquainted with Him and all things of the Higher world and so much disingaged in our Affections from this and all that is in it that when we come to go out of this world we may never look back and say O what goodly things do I leave what a brave world am I snatched from would I might but live a little longer there Let us get our Hearts so crucified to the world that it may be an easie thing to us to shake hands with and bid a farwell to our Friends the dearest things we have our Lands Houses Goods and whatsoever is valuable in our eyes Let us use the world as though we used it not let us dye daily as our dear Friend did and so it was easie to him to dye at last Dye did I say shall I use that word or rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is flown away as Nazianzen speaks his Soul hath got loose and now feels her wings or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he hath changed his habitation he is gone into the other world as Abraam went out of Ur into Canaan or as the same Father saies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he hath taken his journey into another countrie a little before his Body He hath left his Body behind him awhile to take a sleep in the dust when it awakes at the Resurrection it shall follow also to the same place Then shall it be made a Spiritual body then shall it have wings given to it also and be lovingly married again to the Soul never any more to suffer any separation And at that time we shall all meet with our dear Father and Friend again who now are here remaining crying out O my Father my father c. Then shall all tears be wiped away from our eyes and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying neither shall there be any more pain Then we shall not need such a Light as he was for there is no night there and they need no candle neither light of the Sun for the Lord God giveth them light and they shall reign for ever and ever Amen Of this Edition Of the Author * Act. 7. 22. * Num. 12. 3. * Heb. 11. 24 c. * Rom. 4. Heb. 11. Jam. 2. * De Verbis Resipuit Noe. * Num. 12. 8. * Exod. 33. 11. * Ephes. 6. 6 7. * Rom. 5. 7. * Ephes. 6. Mat. ch 5 6 7. * Act. 26. 29. * Rom. 2 29. * Rom. 2. 29. * Luk. 16. 15. * Acts 7. 21 22. * Hebr. 11. * Psal. 16. Of the Discourses Page 347. Matth. 23. * Heb. 5. Rom. 8. Col. 3. 2 Tim. 3. * Titus 3. 3. Gal. 4. * This was of old confess'd and boasted of by Lucretius more then once in his Poems * Matthew 17. See also Acts 3. 22. Deut. 18. 15. 1 Tim. 1. * Page 280. 1 Kings 4. 29. * Psal. 51. 12. * 1 Cor. â—4 3 9. Matthew 23. 1 Thess. 5. * Ch. 4. 13. Ver. 8 9. Plotin En. 1. l. 6. â— Pet. â— * Eth. Nicom l. 1. 1. 2. 3. 4. * For so that word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 must here signifie if indeed it be not corrupted and to be read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a word which some other Lexicographers use in this case * as Lusian in his De Sacrificiis speaks too truly though it may be too profanely * Lib. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Satyr 6. Lib. 1. Lib. 5. * Lib. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sic Edit Complut * Cap. 38. * Chap. 23. 8. Psal. 4. 7. * Lucret. lib. 3. * Lib. 1. Lib. â— * Lib. 4. de placitis Philosophorum * Enn. 4. l.
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL CHap. I. The First and main Principles of Religion viz. 1. That God is 2. That God is a rewarder of them that seek him Wherein is included the Great Article of the Immortality of the Soul These two Principles acknowledged by religious and serious persons in all Ages 3. That God communicates himself to mankind by Christ. The Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul discoursed of in the first place and why pag. 59. Chap. II. Some Considerations preparatory to the proof of the Souls Immortality pag. 63. Chap. III. The First Argument for the Immortality of the Soul That the Soul of man is not Corporeal The gross absurdities upon the Supposition that the Soul is a Complex of fluid Atomes or that it is made up by a fortuitous Concourse of Atomes which is Epicurus his Notion concerning Body The Principles and Dogmata of the Epicurean Philosophy in opposition to the Immateriall and Incorporeall nature of the Soul asserted by Lucretius but discovered to be false and insufficient That Motion cannot arise from Body or Matter Nor can the power of Sensation arise from Matter Much less can Reason That all Humane knowledge hath not its rise from Sense The proper function of Sense and that it is never deceived An Addition of Three Considerations for the enforcing of this first Argument and further clearing the Immateriality of the Soul That there is in man a Faculty which 1. controlls Sense and 2. collects and unites all the Perceptions of our several Senses 3. That Memory and Prevision are not explicable upon the supposition of Matter and Motion pag. 68. Chap. IV. The Second Argument for the Immortality of the Soul Actions either Automatical or Spontaneous That Spontaneous and Elicite Actions evidence the distinction of the Soul from the Body Lucretius his Evasion very slight and weak That the Liberty of the Will is inconsistent with the Epicurean principles That the Conflict of Reason against the Sensitive Appetite argues a Being in us superiour to Matter pag. 85. Chap. V. The Third Argument for the Immortality of the Soul That Mathematical Notions argue the Soul to be of a true Spiritual and Immaterial Nature pag. 93. Chap. VI. The Fourth Argument for the Immortality of the Soul That those clear and stable Ideas of Truth which are in Man's Mind evince an Immortal and Immaterial Substance residing in us distinct from the Body The Soul more knowable then the Body Some passages out of Plotinus and Proclus for the further confirming of this Argument pag. 96. Chap. VII What it is that beyond the Highest and most subtile Speculations whatsoever does clear and evidence to a Good man the Immortality of his Soul That True Goodness and Vertue begets the most raised Sense of this Immortality Plotinus his excellent Discourse to this purpose pag. 101. Chap. VIII An Appendix containing an Enquiry into the Sense and Opinion of Aristotle concerning the Immortality of the Soul That according to him the Rational Soul is separable from the Body and Immortal The true meaning of his Intellectus Agens and Patiens pag. 106. Chap. IX A main Difficulty concerning the Immortality of the Soul viz. The strong Sympathy of the Soul with the Body answered An Answer to another Enquiry viz. Under what account Impressions deriv'd from the Body do fall in Morality p. 112. DISCOURSE V. OF THE EXISTENCE NATURE OF GOD. CHap. I. That the Best way to know God is by an attentive reflexion upon our own Souls God more clearly and lively pictur'd upon the Souls of Men then upon any part of the Sensible World pag 123. Chap. II. How the Contemplation of our own Souls and a right Reflexion upon the Operations thereof may lead us into the knowledge of 1. The Divine Unity and Omniscience 2. God's Omnipotence 3. The Divine Love and Goodness 4. God's Eternity 5. His Omnipresence 6. The Divine Freedome and Liberty p. 126. Chap. III. How the Consideration of those restless motions of our Wills after some Supreme and Infinite Good leads us into the knowledge of a Deity pag. 135. Chap. IV. Deductions and Inferences from the Consideration of the Divine Nature and Attributes 1. That all Divine productions are the free Effluxes of Omnipotent Love and Goodness The true Notion of God's glory what it is Men very apt to mistake in this point God needs not the Happiness or Misery of his Creatures to make himself glorious by God does most glorifie himself by communicating himself we most glorifie God when we most partake of him and resemble him most pag. 140. Chap. V. A second Deduction 2. That all things are supported and govern'd by an Almighty Wisdome and Goodness An Answer to an Objection made against the Divine Providence from an unequal distribution of things here below Such quarrelling with Providence ariseth from a Paedanticall and Carnall notion of Good and Evil. pag. 144. Chap. VI. A third Deduction 3. That all true Happiness consists in a participation of God arising out of the assimilation and conformity of our Souls to him and That the most reall Misery ariseth out of the Apostasie of Souls from God No enjoyment of God without our being made like to him The Happiness and Misery of Man defin'd and stated with the Original and Foundation of both pag. 147. Chap. VII A fourth Deduction 4. The fourth Deduction acquaints us with the true Notion of the Divine Justice That the proper scope and design of it is to preserve Righteousness to promote encourage true Goodness That it does not primarily intend Punishment but only takes it up as a mean to prevent Transgression True Justice never supplants any that it self may appear glorious in their ruines How Divine Justice is most advanced pag. 151. Chap. VIII The fifth and last Deduction 5. That seeing there is such an Entercourse and Society as it were between God and Men therefore there is also some Law between them which is the Bond of all Communion The Primitive rules of God's Oeconomy in this world not the sole Results of an Absolute Will but the sacred Decrees of Reason and Goodness God could not design to make us Sinfull or Miserable Of the Law of Nature embosom'd in Man's Soul how it obliges man to love and obey God and to express a Godlike spirit and life in this world All Souls the Off-spring of God but Holy Souls manifest themselves to be and are more peculiarly the Children of God pag. 154. Chap. IX An Appendix concerning the Reason of Positive Laws pag. 158. Chap. X. The Conclusion of this Treatise concerning the Existence and Nature of God shewing how our Knowledge of God comes to be so imperfect in this State while we are here in this Terrestriall Body Two waies observed by Plotinus whereby This Body does prejudice the Soul in her Operations That the better Philosophers and more contemplative Jews did not deny the Existence of all kind of Body in the other state What
Reason and Sensuality run one into another and make up a most dilute unsavourie and muddie kinde of Knowledge We must therefore endeavour more and more to withdraw our selves from these Bodily things to set our Souls as free as may be from its miserable slavery to this base Flesh we must shut the Eyes of Sense and open that brighter Eye of our Understandings that other Eye of the Soul as the Philosopher calls our Intellectual Faculty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which indeed all have but few make use of it This is the way to see clearly the light of the Divine World will then begin to fall upon us and those sacred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those pure Coruscations of Immortal and Ever-living Truth will shine out into us and in Gods own light shall we behold him The fruit of this Knowledge will be sweet to our tast and pleasant to our palates sweeter then the hony or the hony-comb The Priests of Mercury as Plutarch tells us in the eating of their holy things were wont to cry out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sweet is Truth But how sweet and delicious that Truth is which holy and heaven-born Souls feed upon in their mysterious converses with the Deity who can tell but they that tast it When Reason once is raised by the mighty force of the Divine Spirit into a converse with God it is turn'd into Sense That which before was onely Faith well built upon sure Principles for such our Science may be now becomes Vision We shall then converse with God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whereas before we convers'd with him onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with our Discursive faculty as the Platonists were wont to distinguish Before we laid hold on him onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with a strugling Agonistical and contentious Reason hotly combating with difficulties and sharp contests of divers opinions labouring in it self in its deductions of one thing from another we shall then fasten our minds upon him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with such a serene Understanding 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 such an Intellectual calmness and serenity as will present us with a blissful steady and invariable sight of him SECTION III. AND now if you please setting aside the Epicurean herd of Brutish men who have drowned all their own sober Reason in the deepest Lethe of Sensuality we shall divide the rest of Men into these Four ranks according to that Method which Simplicius upon Epictetus hath already laid out to us with a respect to a Fourfold kinde of Knowledge which we have all this while glanced at The First whereof is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or if you will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Complex and Multifarious man that is made up of Soul Body as it were by a just equality and Arithmetical proportion of Parts and Powers in each of them The knowledge of these men I should call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Plutarch's phrase a Knowledge wherein Sense and Reason are so twisted up together that it cannot easily be unravel'd and laid out into its first principles Their highest Reason is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 complying with their senses and both conspire together in vulgar opinion To these that Motto which the Storcks have made for them may very well agree 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their life being steer'd by nothing else but Opinion and Imagination Their higher notions of God and Religion are so entangled with the Birdlime of fleshly Passions and mundane Vanity that they cannot rise up above the surface of this dark earth or easily entertain any but earthly conceptions of heavenly things Such Souls as are here lodg'd as Plato speaks are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 heavy behinde and are continually pressing down to this world's centre and though like the Spider they may appear sometime moving up and down aloft in the aire yet they doe but sit in the loome and move in that web of their own gross fansies which they fasten and pin to some earthly thing or other The Second is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The man that looks at himself as being what he is rather by his Soul then by his Body that thinks not fit to view his own face in any other Glass but that of Reason and Understanding that reckons upon his Soul as that which was made to rule his Body as that which was born to obey and like an handmaid perpetually to wait upon his higher and nobler part And in such an one the Communes notitiae or common Principles of Vertue and Goodness are more clear and steady To such an one we may allow 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 more clear and distinct Opinions as being already 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a Method or course of Purgation or at least fit to be initiated into the Mysteria minora the lesser Mysteries of Religion For though these Innate notions of Truth may be but poor empty and hungry things of themselves before they be fed and fill'd with the practice of true Vertue yet they are capable of being impregnated and exalted with the Rules and Precepts of it And therefore the Stoick suppos'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the doctrine of Political and Moral vertues was fit to be delivered to such as these and though they may not be so well prepared for Divine Vertue which is of an higher Emanation yet they are not immature for Humane as having the Seeds of it already within themselves which being water'd by answerable practice may sprout up within them The Third is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He whose Soule is already purg'd by this lower sort of Vertue and so is continually flying off from the Body and Bodily passion and returning into himself Such in S. Peter's language are those who have escaped the pollutions which are in the world through lust To these we may attribute a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a lower degree of Science their inward sense of Vertue and moral Goodness being far transcendent to all meer Speculative opinions of it But if this Knowledge settle here it may be quickly apt to corrupt Many of our most refined Moralists may be in a worse sense then Plotinus means 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 full with their own pregnancy their Souls may too much heave and swell with the sense of their own Vertue and Knowledge there may be an ill Ferment of Self-love lying at the bottome which may puffe it up the more with Pride Arrogance and Self-conceit These forces with which the Divine bounty supplies us to keep a stronger guard against the evil Spirit may be abus'd by our own rebellious Pride enticing of them from their allegiance to Heaven to strengthen it self in our Souls and fortifie them against Heaven like that supercilious Stoick who when he thought his Minde well arm'd and appointed with Wisdome and Vertue cry'd out Sapiens contendet cum ipso Jove de felicitate They may make an aiery heaven of
therefore the true Cause and Rise of Superstition is indeed nothing else but a false opinion of the Deity that renders him dreadfull and terrible as being rigorous and imperious that which represents him as austere and apt to be angry but yet impotent and easy to be appeased again by some flattering devotions especially if performed with sanctimonious shewes and a solemn sadness of Mind And I wish that that Picture of God which some Christians have drawn of him wherein Sowreness and Arbitrariness appear so much doth not too much resemble it According to this sense Plutarch hath well defined it in his Book 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this manner 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a strong passionate Opinion and such a Supposition as is productive of a fear debasing and terrifying a man with the representation of the Gods as grievous and hurtfull to Mankind Such men as these converse not with the Goodness of God and therefore they are apt to attribute their impotent passions and peevishness of Spirit to him Or it may be because some secret advertisements of their Consciences tell them how unlike they themselves are to God and how they have provoked him they are apt to be as much displeased with him as too troublesome to them as they think he is displeased with them They are apt to count this Divine Supremacy as but a piece of Tyranny that by its Soveraign Will makes too great encroachments upon their Liberties and that which will eat up all their Right and Property and therefore are slavishly afraid of him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fearing Heaven's Monarchy as a severe and churlish Tyranny from which they cannot absolve themselves as the same Author speaks and therefore he thus discloseth the private whisperings of their minds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. the broad gates of hell are opened the rivers of fire and Stygian inundations run down as a swelling flood there is thick darkness crouded together dreadfull and gastly Sights of Ghosts screeching and howling Judges and tormentors deep gulfes and Abysses full of infinite miseries Thus he The Prophet Esay gives us this Epitome of their thoughts chap. 33. The Sinners in Zion are afraid fearfullness hath surprized the hypocrites who shall dwell with the devouring fire who shall dwell with everlasting burnings Though I should not dislike these dreadful astonishing thoughts of future torment which I doubt even good men may have cause to press home upon their own spirits while they find Ingenuity less active the more to restrain sinne yet I think it litle commends God and as little benefits us to fetch all this horror astonishment from the Contemplations of a Deity which should alwayes be the most serene and lovely our apprehensions of the Deity should be such as might ennoble our Spirits and not debase them A right knowledge of God would beget a freedome Liberty of Soul within us and not servility 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Plutarch hath well observ'd our thoughts of a Deity should breed in us hopes of Vertue and not gender to a spirit of bondage But that we may pass on Because this unnaturall resemblance of God as an angry Deity in impure minds should it blaze too furiously like the Basilisk would kill with its looks therefore these Painters use their best arts a little to sweeten it and render it less unpleasing And those that fancy God to be most hasty and apt to be displeased yet are ready also to imagine him so impotently mutable that his favour may be won again with their uncouth devotions that he will be taken with their formall praises and being thirsty after glory and praise solemn addresses may by their pompous furnishing out all these for him be won to a good liking of them and thus they represent him to themselves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And therefore Superstition will alwaies abound in these things whereby this Deity of their own made after the similitude of men may be most gratified slavishly crouching to it We will take a view of it in the words of Plutarch though what refers to the Jews if it respects more their Rites then their Manners may seem to contain too hasty a censure of them Superstition brings in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wallowings in the dust tumblings in the mire observations of Sabbaths prosternations uncouth gestures strange rites of worship Superstition is very apt to think that Heaven may be bribed with such false-hearted devotions as Porphyrie hath well explain'd it by this that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an apprehension that a man may corrupt and bribe the Deity which as he there observes was the Cause of all those bloudy sacrifices and of some inhumane ones among the Heathen men imagining 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 like him in the Prophet that thought by the fruit of his body and the firstlings of his flock to expiate the sinne of his Soul Micah 6. But it may be we may seeme all this while to have made too Tragicall a Description of Superstition and indeed our Author whom we have all this while had recourse to seemes to have set it forth as anciently Painters were wont to doe those pieces in which they would demonstrate most their own skill they would not content themselves with the shape of one Body onely but borrowed severall parts from severall Bodies as might most fit their design and fill up the picture of that they desired chiefly to represent Superstition it may be looks not so foul and deformed in every Soul that is dyed with it as he hath there set it forth nor doth it every where spread it self alike this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that shrowds it self under the name of Religion wil variously discover it self as it is seated in Minds of a various temper and meets with variety of matter to exercise it self about We shall therefore a little further inquire into it and what the Judgments of the soberest men anciently were of it the rather for that a learned Author of our own seems unwilling to own that Notion of it which we have hitherto out of Plutarch and others contended for who though he hath freed it from that gloss which the late Ages have put upon it yet he may seem to have too strictly confined it to a Cowardly Worship of the ancient Gentile Daemons as if Superstition and Polytheism were indeed the same thing whereas Polytheism or Daemon-worship is but one branch of it which was partly observed by the learned Casaubon in his Notes upon that Chapter of Theophrastus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where it is describ'd to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which he thus interprets Theophrastus voce 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Deos Daemones complexus est quicquid divinitatis esse particeps malesana putavit antiquitas And in this sense it was truly observed by Petronius Arbiter Primus in orbe Deos fecit Timor The
of depressing all those In-bred notions of a Deity and to reason themselves out of their own sense as the old Scepticks did and therefore it may be it might be wish'd that some men that have not Religion had had more Superstition to accompany them in their passage from Ignorance to Knowledge But we have run out too farre in this Digression we shall now return and observe how our former Author takes notice of another piece of Vulgar Superstition which he thinks fit to be chas'd away by Atheism and that is The terrours of the world to come which he thus sets upon in his Third book Animi natura videtur Atque Animae claranda meis jam versibus esse Et metus ille for as praeceps Acheruntis agendus Funditus humanam vitam qui turbat ab imo Omnia suffundens mortis nigrore And afterwards he tells us how this Fear of the Gods thus proceeding from the former Causes and from those Spectres and gastly Apparitions with which men were sometimes terrified begat all those Fantastick rites and ceremonies in use amongst them as their Temples sacred Lakes and Pools their Groves Altars Images and other like Vanities as so many idle toyes to please these Deities with and at last concludes himself thus into Atheism as a strong Fort to preserve himself from these cruel Deities that Superstition had made because he could not find the way to true Religion Nunc quae sausa Deûm per magnas numina gentes Pervulgarit ararum compleverit urbes Suscipiendáque curarit solennia sacra Quae nunc in magnis florent rebúsque locìsque Unde etiam nunc est mortalibus insitus horror Qui delubra Deûm nova toto suscitat orbi Terrarum in festis cogit celebrare diebus Non ità difficile est rationem reddere verbis Thus we see how Superstition strengthened the wicked hands of Atheism so far is a Formal and Ritual way of Religion proceeding from baseness and Servility of Mind though back'd with never so much rigour and severity from keeping it out And I wish some of our Opinions in Religion in these dayes may not have the same evil influences as the notorious Gentile Superstition of old had as well for the begetting this brat of Atheism as I doubt it is too manifest they have for some other Thus we should now leave this Argument only before we passe from it we shall observe two things which Plutarch hath suggested to us The first whereof is That howsoever Superstition be never so unlovely a thing yet it is more tolerable then Atheism which I shall repeat in his words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We should endeavor to take off Superstition from our Mindes as a Film from our Eyes but if that cannot be we must not therefore pluck out our Eyes and blind the faith that generally we have of the Deity Superstition may keep men from the outward acts of sin sometimes and so their future punishment may have some abatement Besides that Atheism offers the greatest violence to mens Souls that may be pulling up the Notions of a Deity which have spread their Roots quite through all the Powers of mens Souls The second is this That Atheism it self is a most ignoble and uncomfortable thing as Tully hath largely discussed it and especially Plutarch in the above-named Tractate of his written by way of Confutation of Colotes the Epicurean who writ a Book to prove That a man could not live quietly by following any other sects of Philosophers besides his owne as if all true good were onely conversant 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 about the belly and all the pores and passages of the Body and the way to true happinesse was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or else 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Plutarch hath not more wittily then judiciously replied upon him What is all that Happiness that arifeth from these bodily pleasures to any one that hath any high or noble sense within him This gross muddy and stupid Opinion is nothing else but a Dehonestamentum humani generis that casts as great a scorn and reproach upon the nature of mankind as may be and sinks it into the deepest Abysse of Baseness And certainly were the Highest happiness of mankind such a thing as might be felt by a corporeal touch were it of so ignoble a birth as to spring out of this earth and to grow up out of this mire and clay we might well sit down and bewail our unhappy fates that we should rather be born Men then Brute beasts which enjoy more of this worlds happiness then we can doe without any sin or guilt How little of Pleasure these short lives tast here which onely lasts so long as the Indigency of nature is in supplying and after that onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a flying shadow or flitting dreame of that pleasure which is choak'd as soon as craving Nature is satisfied remains in the Fancy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Plutarch hath well observed in the same Discourse And therefore Epicurus seeing how slippery the Soule was to all Sensual pleasure which was apt to slide away perpetually from it and again how little of it the Body was capable of where it had a shorter stay he and his followers could not well tell where to place this beggarly guest and therefore as Plutarch speaks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one while they would place it in the Body and then lead it back again into the Soul not knowing where to bestow it And Diodorus and the Cyreniaci and the Epicureans as Tully tells us who all could fancy nothing but a Bodily happiness yet could not agree whether it should be Voluptas or Vacuitas doloris or something else it being ever found so hard a thing to define like that base Matter of which it is begotten which by reason of it's penurie scantness of Beings as Philosophers tell us doth effugere intellectum and is nothing else but a shady kinde of Nothing something that hath a name but nothing else I dare say that all those that have any just esteem of humanity cannot but with a noble scorn defy such a base-born Happiness as this is generated onely out of the slime of this earth and yet this is all the portion of Atheism which teaches the entertainers of it to believe themselves nothing else but so many Heapes of more refined dust fortuitously gathered together which at last must be all blown away again But a true Belief of a Deity is a sure Support to all serious minds which besides the future hopes it is pregnant with entertains them here with Tranquillity and inward serenity What the Stoick said in his cool and mature thoughts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is not worth the while to live in a world empty of God and Providence is the sense of all those that know what a Deity means Indeed it were the greatest unhappiness that might be to have been born into such
Immortality of the Soul which if it be once cleared we can neither leave any room for Atheism which those I doubt are not ordinarily very free from that have gross material notions of their own Souls not be wholly ignorant what God is for indeed the chief natural way whereby we can climbe up to the understanding of the Deity is by a Contemplation of our own Souls We cannot think of him but according to the measure and model of our own Intellect or frame any other Idea of him then what the impressions of our own Souls will permit us and therefore the best Philosophers have alwaies taught us to inquire for God within our selves Reason in us as Tully tells us being participata similitudo rationis internae and accordingly some good Expositours have interpreted that place in S. John's Gospel chap. 1. He is that true light which enlightens every man that cometh into the world which if I were to gloss upon in the language of the Platonists I should doe it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Eternal VVord is the light of Souls which the Vulgar Latine referr'd to in Signatum est supra nos lumen vultus tui Domine as Aquinas observes But we shall not search into the full nature of the Soul but rather make our inquiry into the Immortality of it and endeavour to demonstrate that CHAP. II. Some Considerations preparatory to the proof of the Soul's Immortality BUT before we fall more closely upon this viz. the demonstrating the Soul's Immortality we shall premise three things 1. That the Immortality of the Soul doth not absolutely need any Demonstration to clear it by but might be assumed rather as a Principle or Postulatum seeing the notion of it is apt naturally to insinuate it self into the belief of the most vulgar sort of men Mens understandings commonly lead them as readily to believe that their Souls are Immortal as that they have any Existence at all And though they be not all so wise and Logical as to distinguish aright between their Souls and their Bodies or tell what kind of thing that is that they commonly call their Soul yet they are strongly inclined to believe that some part of them shall survive another and that that Soul which it may be they conceive by a gross Phantasm shall live when the other more visible part of them shall moulder into dust And therefore all Nations have consented in this belief which hath almost been as vulgarly received as the belief of a Deity as a diligent converse with History will assure us it having been never so much questioned by the Idiotical sort of men as by some unskilful Philosophers who have had Wit Fancy enough to raise doubts like Evil Spirits but not Judgement enough to send them down again This Consensus Gentium Tully thinks enough to conclude a Law and Maxim of Nature by which though I should not universally grant seeing sometimes Errour and Superstition may strongly plead this Argument yet I think for those things that are the matter of our first belief that Notion may not be refused For we cannot easily conceive how any Prime notion that hath no dependency on any other antecedent to it should be generally entertain'd did not the common dictate of Nature or Reason acting alike in all men move them to conspire together in the embracing of it though they knew not one anothers minds And this it may be might first perswade Averroes to think of a Common Intellect because of the uniform judgments of men in some things But indeed in those Notions which we may call notiones ortae there a communis notitia is not so free from all suspicion which may be cleared by taking an Instance from our present Argument The notion of the Immortality of the Soul is such an one as is generally owned by all those that yet are not able to collect it by a long Series and concatenation of sensible observations and by a Logical dependence of one thing upon another deduce it from sensible Experiments a thing that it may be was scarce ever done by the wisest Philosophers but is rather believed with a kind of repugnancy to Sense which shews all things to be mortal and which would have been too apt to have deluded the ruder sort of men did not a more powerful impression upon their own Souls forcibly urge them to believe their own Immortality Though indeed if the common notions of men were well examined it may be some common notion adherent to this of the Immortality may be as generally received which yet in it self is false and that by reason of a common prejudice which the earthly and Sensual part of man will equally possesse all men with untill they come to be well acquainted with their own Souls as namely a notion of the Souls Materiality and it may be it's Traduction too which seems to be as generally received by the vulgar sort as the former But the reason of that is evident for the Souls of men exercising themselves first of all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Greek Philosopher expresseth meerly by a Progressive kind of motion spending themselves about Bodily and Material acts and conversing onely with Sensible things they are apt to acquire such deep stamps of Material phantasms to themselves that they cannot imagine their own Being to be any other then Material Divisible though of a fine Aethereal nature which kind of conceit though it be inconsistent with an Immortal and Incorruptible nature yet hath had too much prevalencie in Philosophers themselves their Minds not being sufficiently abstracted while they have contemplated the highest Being of all And some think Aristotle himself cannot be excused in this point who seems to have thought God himself to be nothing else but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he styles him But such Common Notions as these are arising from the deceptions and hallucinations of Sense ought not to prejudice those which not Sense but some Higher power begets in all men And so we have done with that The second thing I should premise should be in place of a Postulatum to our following Demonstrations or rather a Caution about them which is That to a right conceiving the force of any such Arguments as may prove the Souls Immortality there must be an antecedent Converse with our own Souls It is no hard matter to convince any one by clear and evident principles fetch'd from his own sense of himself who hath ever well meditated the Powers and Operations of his own Soul that it is Immaterial and Immortal But those very Arguments that to such will be Demonstrative to others will lose something of the strength of Probability For indeed it is not possible for us well to know what our Souls are but onely by their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their Circular and Reflex motions and Converse with themselves which onely can steal from them their own secrets All those Discourses
which have been written of the Soul's Heraldry will not blazon it so well to us as it self will doe When we turn our own eyes in upon it it will soon tell us it 's own royal pedigree and noble extraction by those sacred Hieroglyphicks which it bears upon it self We shall endeavour to interpret and unfold some of them in our following Discourse 3. There is one thing more to be considered which may serve as a common Basis or Principle to our following Arguments and it is this Hypothesis That no Substantial and Indivisible thing ever perisheth And this Epicurus and all of his Sect must needs grant as indeed they doe and much more then it is lawful to plead for and therefore they make this one of the first Principles of their Atheistical Philosophy Ex nihilo fieri nil in nihilum nil posse reverti But we shall here be content with that sober Thesis of Plato in his Timaeus who attributes the Perpetuation of all Substances to the Benignity and Liberality of the Creatour whom he therefore brings in thus speaking to the Angels those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he calls them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. You are not of your selves immortal nor indissoluble but would relapse and slide back from that Being which I have given you should I withdraw the influence of my own power from you but yet you shall hold your Immortality by a Patent of meer grace from my self But to return Plato held that the whole world howsoever it might meet with many Periodicall mutations should remain Eternally which I think our Christian Divinity doth no where deny and so Plotinus frames this general Axiom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that no Substance shall ever perish And indeed if we collate all our own Observations Experience with such as the History of former times hath delivered to us we shall not find that ever any substance was quite lost but though this Proteus-like Matter may perpetually change its shape yet it will constantly appear under one Form or another what art soever we use to destroy it as it seems to have been set forth in that old Gryphe or Riddle of the Peripatetick School Aelia Laelia Crispis nec mas nec faemina nec androgyna nec casta nec meretrix nec pudica sed omnia c. as Fortunius Licetus hath expounded it Therfore it was never doubted whether ever any piece of Substance was lost till of latter times some hot-brained Peripateticks who could not bring their fiery and subtile fancies to any cool judgement began rashly to determine that all Material Forms as they are pleas'd to call them were lost For having once jumbled and crouded in a new kind of Being never anciently heard of between the parts of a Contradiction that is Matter and Spirit which they call Material Forms because they could not well tell whence these new upstarts should arise nor how to dispose of them when Matter began to shift herself into some new garb they condemn'd them to utter destruction and yet lest they should seem too rudely to controul all Sense and Reason they found out this common tale which signifies nothing that these Substantial Forms were educed ex potentia Materiae whenever Matter began to appeare in any new disguise and afterwards again returned in gremium Materiae so they thought them not quite lost But this Curiosity consisting onely of words fortuitously packt up together being too subtile for any sober judgment to lay hold upon and which they themselves could never yet tell how to define we shall as carelesly lay it aside as they boldly obtrude it upon us and take the common distinction of all Substantiall Being for granted viz. That it is either Body and so Divisible and of three Dimensions or else it is something which is not properly a Body or Matter so hath no such Dimensions as that the Parts thereof should be crouding for place and justling one with another not being all able to couch together or run one into another and this is nothing else but what is commonly called Spirit Though yet we will not be too Critical in depriving every thing which is not grosly corporeal of all kind of Extension CHAP. III. The First Argument for the Immortality of the Soul That the Soul of man is not Corporeal The gross absurdities upon the Supposition that the Soul is a Complex of fluid Atomes or that it is made up by a fortuitous Concourse of Atomes which is Epicurus his Notion concerning Body The Principles and Dogmata of the Epicurean Philosophy in opposition to the Immateriall and Incorporeal nature of the Soul asserted by Lucretius but discover'd to be false and insufficient That Motion cannot arise from Body or Matter Nor can the power of Sensation arise from Matter Much less can Reason That all Humane knowledge hath not its rise from Sense The proper function of Sense and that it is never deceived An Addition of Three Considerations for the enforcing of this first Argument and further clearing the Immateriality of the Soul That there is in man a Faculty which 1. controlls Sense and 2. collects and unites all the Perceptions of our several Senses 3. That Memory and Prevision are not explicable upon the supposition of Matter and Motion WE shall therefore now endeavour to prove That the Soul of man is something really distinct from his Body of an Indivisible nature and so cannot be divided into such Parts as should flit one from another and consequently is apt of it's own Nature to remain to Eternity and so will doe except the Decrees of Heaven should abandon it from Being And first we shall prove it ab absurdo and here doe as the Mathematicians use to doe in such kind of Demonstrations we will suppose that if the Reasonable Soul be not of such an Immaterial Nature then it must be a Body and so suppose it to be made up as all Bodies are where because the Opinions of Philosophers differ we shall only take one viz. that of Epicurus which supposeth it to be made up by a fortuitous Concourse of Atomes and in that demonstrate against all the rest for indeed herein a particular Demonstration is an Universal as it is in all Mathematical Demonstrations of this kind For if all that which is the Basis of our Reasons and Understandings which we here call the Substance of the Soul be nothing else but a meer Body and therefore be infinitely divisible as all Bodies are it will be all one in effect whatsoever notion we have of the generation or production thereof We may give it if we please finer words and use more demure smooth language about it then Epicurus did as some that lest they should speak too rudely and rustically of it by calling it Matter will name it Efflorescentia Materiae and yet lest that should not be enough adde Aristotle's Quintessence to it too they will be so trim and courtly
in defining of it that they will not call it by the name of Aer Ignis or Flamma as some of the ancient vulgar Philosophers did but Flos flammae and yet the Epicurean Poet could use as much Chymistry in exalting his fansy as these subtile Doctors doe and when he would dress out the Notion of it more gaudily he resembles it to Flos Bacchi and Spiritus unguenti suavis But when we have taken away this disguise of wanton Wit we shall find nothing better then meer Body which will be recoiling back perpetually into it's own inert and sluggish Passiveness though we may think we have quicken'd it never so much by this subtile artifice of Words and Phrases a man's new-born Soul will for all this be but little better then his Body and as that is be but a rasura corporis alieni made up of some small and thin shavings pared off from the Bodies of the Parents by a continuall motion of the several parts of it and must afterwards receive its augmentation from that food and nourishment which is taken in as the Body doth So that the very Grass we walk over in the fields the Dust and Mire in the streets that we tread upon may according to the true meaning of this dull Philosophy after many refinings macerations and maturations which Nature performs by the help of Motion spring up into so many Rational Souls and prove as wise as any Epicurean and discourse as subtily of what it once was when it lay drooping in a sensless Passiveness This conceit is so gross that one would think it wanted nothing but that witty Sarcasm that Plutarch cast upon Nicocles the Epicurean to confute it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But because the heavy minds of men are so frequently sinking into this earthly fancy we shall further search into the entralls of this Philosophy and see how like that is to a Rational Soul which it pretends to declare the production of Lucretius first of all taking notice of the mighty swiftness and celerity of the Soul in all its operations lest his Matter should be too soon tired and not able to keep pace with it he first casts the Atomes prepared for this purpose into such perfect Sphaerical small figures as might be most capable of these swift impressions for so he lib. 3. At quod mobile tantopere est constare rotundis Perquam seminibus debet perquámque minutis Momine uti parvo possint impulsa moveri But here before we goe any further we might inquire what it should be that should move these small and insensible Globes of Matter For Epicurus his two Principles which he cals Plenum and Inane will here by no means serve our turn to find out Motion by For though our communes notitiae assure us that whereever there is a Multiplicity of parts as there is in every Quantitative Being there may be a Variety of application in those parts one to another and so a Mobility yet Motion it self will not so easily arise out of a Plenum though we allow it an empty Space and room enough to play up and down in For we may conceive a Body which is his Plenum onely as trinè dimensum being longum latum profundum without attributing any motion at all to it and Aristotle in his De Coelo doubts not herein to speak plainly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Motion cannot arise from a Body For indeed this Power of motion must needs argue some Efficient cause as Tully hath well observed if we suppose any Rest antecedent or if any Body be once moving it must also find some potent Efficient to stay it settle it in Rest as Simplicius hath somewhere in his Comment upon Epictetus wisely determin'd So that if we will suppose either Motion or Rest to be contein'd originally in the nature of any Body we must of necessity conclude some potent Efficient to produce the contrary or else attribute this Power to Bodies themselves which will at last grow unbounded and infinite and indeed altogether inconsistent with the nature of a Body But yet though we should grant all this which Lucretius contends for how shall we force up these particles of Matter into any true and real Perceptions and make them perceive their own or others motions which he calls Motus sensiferi For he having first laid down his Principles of all Being as he supposeth neither is he willing to leave his Deities themselves out of the number he onely requires these Postulata to unfold the nature of all by Concursus motus ordo positura figurae But how any such thing as sensation or much lesse Reason should spring out of this barren soil how well till'd soever no composed mind can imagine For indeed that infinite variety which is in the Magnitude of parts their Positions Figures and Motions may easily and indeed must needs produce an infinite variety of Phaenomena which the Epicurean philosophy calls Eventa And accordingly where there is a Sentient faculty it may receive the greatest variety of Impressions from them by which the Perceptions which are the immediate result of a Knowing faculty will be distinguish'd Yet cannot the Power it self of Sensation arise from them no more then Vision can rise out of a Glasse whereby it should be able to perceive these Idola that paint themseves upon it though it were never so exactly polish'd and they much finer then they are or can be Neither can those small corpuscula which in themselves have no power of sense ever produce it by any kind of Concourse or Motion for so a Cause might in its production rise up above the height of its own nature and virtue which I think every calm contemplator of Truth will judge impossible for seeing whatsoever any Effect hath it must needs derive from its Causes and can receive no other tincture and impression then they can bestow upon it that Signature must first be in the Cause it self which is by it derived to the Effect And therefore the wisest Philosophers amongst the Ancients universally concluded that there was some higher Principle then meer Matter which was the Cause of all Life and Sense and that to be Immortal as the Platonists who thought this reason sufficient to move them to assert a Mundane Soul And Aristotle though he talks much of Nature yet he delivers his mind so cloudily that all that he hath said of it may passe with that which himself said of his Acroatici Libri or Physicks that they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nor is it likely that he who was so little satisfied with his own notion of Nature as being the Cause of all Motion and Rest as seemingly to desert it while he placeth so many Intelligences about the Heavens could much please himself with such a gross conceit of meer Matter that that should be the true Moving and Sentient Entelech of some other Matter as it is manifest he did not
But secondly he grants further That all our Sensation is nothing else but Perception and therefore wheresoever there is any hallucination that must arise from something else within us besides the power of sense quoniam pars horum maxima fallit Propter opinatus animi quos addimus ipsi Pro visis ut sint quae non sunt sensibu ' visa In which words he hath very happily lighted upon the proper function of Sense and the true reason of all those mistakes which we call the Deceptions of Sense which indeed are not truely so seeing they arise onely from a Higher Faculty and consist not in Sensation it self but in those deductions and Corollaries that our Judgments draw from it We shall here therefore grant that which the Epicurean philosophy and the Peripatetick too though not without much caution pleads for universally That our Senses are never deceived whether they be sani or laesi sound or distempered or whatsoever proportion or distance the Object or medium bears to it for if we well scan this business we shall find that nothing of Judgment belongs to Sense it consisting onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Perception neither can it make any just observation of those Objects that are without but onely discerns its own passions and is nothing else but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and tells how it finds it self affected and not what is the true cause of those impressions which it finds within it self which seems to be the reason of that old Philosophical maxim recited by Aristotle l. 3. de Anima cap. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that these Simulachra were onely in our Senses which notion a late Author hath pursued and therefore when the Eye finds the Sun's circle represented within it self of no greater a bigness then a foot-diameter it is not at all herein mistaken nor a distempered Palate when it tasts a bitterness in the sweetest honey as Proclus a famous Mathematician and Platonist hath well determined in Plat. Tim. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Senses in all things of this nature doe but declare their own passions or perceptions which are alwaies such as they seem to be whether there be any such parallelum signaculum in the Object as bears a true analogie with them or not and therefore in truth they are never deceived in the execution of their own functions And so doth Aristotle l. 3 de Anima c. 3. conclude That errour is neither in Sense nor Phansy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it is in no Facultie but onely that in which is Reason Though it be as true on the other side that Epicurus all his Sect were deceived while they judged the Sun and Moon and all the Starrs to be no bigger then that Picture and Image which they found of them in their own Eyes for which silly conceit though they had been for many Ages sufficiently laugh'd at by wise men yet could not Lucretius tell how to enlarge his own fancy but believes the Idolum in his own Visive organ to be adequate to the Sun it self in despight of all Mathematicall demonstration as indeed he must needs if there were no Higher principle of knowledge then Sense is which is the most indisciplinable thing that may be and can never be taught that Truth which Reason and Understanding might attempt to force into it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Though Reason inculcates this notion ten thousand times over That the Sun is bigger then the Earth yet will not the Eye be taught to see it any bigger then a foot breadth and therefore he rightly calls it as all the Platonical and Stoical philosophie doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and it may well be put among the rest of the Stoicks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thus I hope by this time we have found out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some more noble Power in the Soul then that is by which it accommodates it self to the Body and according to the measure and proportion thereof converseth with External Matter And this is the true reason why we are so apt to be mistaken in Sensible objects because our Souls sucking in the knowledge of external things thereby and not minding the proportion that is between the Body and them mindless of its own notions collates their corporeal impressions with externall objects themselves and judgeth of them one by another But whensoever our Souls act in their own power and strength untwisting themselves from all corporeal complications they then can find confidence enough to judge of things in a seeming contradiction to all those other visa corporea And so I suppose this Argument will amount to no lesse then a Demonstration of the Soul's Immateriality seeing to all sincere understanding it is necessary that it should thus abstract it self from all corporeal commerce and return from thence nearer into it self Now what we have to this purpose more generally intimated we shall further branch out in these two or three Particulars First That that Mental faculty and power whereby we judge and discern things is so far from being a Body that it must retract and withdraw it self from all Bodily operation whensoever it will nakedly discern Truth For should our Souls alwaies mould their judgment of things according to those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and impressions which seem to be framed thereof in the Body they must then doe nothing else but chain up Errours and Delusions one with another in stead of Truth as should the judgments of our Understandings wholly depend upon the sight of our Eyes we should then conclude that our meer accesses and recesses from any Visible Object have such a Magical power to change the magnitudes of Visible Objects and to transform them into all varieties of figures fashions and so attribute all that variety to them which we find in our corporeal perceptions Or should we judge of Gustables by our Tast we should attribute to one and the self-same thing all that variety w ch we find in our own Palates Which is an unquestionable Argument That that Power whereby we discern of things and make judgments of them different and sometimes contrary to those perceptions that are the necessary results of all Organical functions is something distinct from the Body and therefore though the Soul as Plato hath well observed be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 various and divisible accidentally in these Sensations and Motions wherein it extends and spreads it self as it were upon the Body and so according to the nature and measure thereof perceives its impressions yet it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 indivisible returning into it self Whensoever it will speculate Truth it self it will not then listen to the several clamours and votes of these rude Senses which alwaies speak with divided tongues but it consults some clearer Oracle within it self and therefore Plotinus Enn. 4. l. 3. hath well concluded concerning the Body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should a man make use of his
Body in his Speculations it will entangle his mind with so many contradictions that it will be impossible to attain to any true knowledge of things We shall conclude this therefore as Tully doth his Contemplation of the Soules operations about the frame of Nature the fabrick of the Heavens and motions of the Stars Animus qui haec intelligit similis est ejus qui ea fabricatus in coelo est Secondly We also find such a Faculty within our own Souls as collects and unites all the Perceptions of our several Senses and is able to compare them together something in which they all meet as in one Centre which Plotinus hath well expressed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That in which all those several Sensations meet as so many Lines drawn from several points in the Circumference and which comprehends them all must needs be One. For should that be various and consisting of several parts which thus receives all these various impressions then must the sentence and judgment passed upon them be various too Aristotle in his de Anima 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That must be one that judgeth things to be diverse and that must judge too 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 setting all before it at once Besides we could not conceive how such an immense variety of impressions could be made upon any piece of Matter which should not obliterate and defacē one another And therefore Plotinus hath well disputed against them who make all Sensation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which brings me to the Third Thirdly That Knowledge which the Soul retains in it self of things past and in some sort Prevision of things to come whereby many grow so sagacious in fore-seeing future Events that they know how to deliberate and dispose of present affairs so as to be ready furnished and prepared for such Emergencies as they see in a train and Series of Causes which sometimes work but contingently I cannot think Epicurus himself could in his cool thoughts be so unreasonable as to perswade himself that all the shuffling cutting of Atomes could produce such a Divine piece of Wisdome as this is What Matter can thus bind up Past Present and Future time together which while the Soul of man doth it seems to imitate as far as its own finite nature will permit it to strive after an imitation of God's eternity and grasping and gathering together a long Series of duration into it self makes an essay to free it self from the rigid laws of it and to purchase to it self the freedome of a true Eternity And as by its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Platonists are wont to speak its Chronical and successive operations it unravels and unfolds the contexture of its own indefinite intellectual powers by degrees so by this Memory and Prevision it recollects and twists them up all together again into it self And though it seems to be continually sliding from it self in those several vicissitudes and changes which it runs through in the constant variety of its own Effluxes and Emanations yet is it alwaies returning back again to its first Original by a swift remembrance of all those motions and multiplicity of operations which have begot in it the first sense of this constant flux As if we should see a Sun-beam perpetually flowing forth from the bright body of the Sun and yet ever returning back to it again it never loseth any part of its Being because it never forgets what it self was and though it may number out never so vast a length of its duration yet it never comes nearer to its old age but carrieth a lively sense of its youth and infancy which it can at pleasure lay a fast hold on along with it But if our Souls were nothing else but a Complex of fluid Atomes how should we be continually roving and sliding from our selves and soon forget what we once were The new Matter that would come in to fill up that Vacuity which the Old had made by its departure would never know what the Old were nor what that should be that would succeed that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that new pilgrim and stranger-like Soul would alwaies be ignorant of what the other before it knew and we should be wholly some other bulk of Being then we were before as Plotinus hath excellently observed Enn. 4. l. 7. c. 5. It was a famous speech of wise Heraclitus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a man cannot enter twice into the same River by which he was wont symbolically to express the constant flux of Matter which is the most unstable thing that may be And if Epicurus his Philosophy could free this Heap of refined Atomes which it makes the Soul to be from this inconstant and flitting nature and teach us how it could be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some stable and immutable thing alwaies resting entire while it is in the Body though we would thank him for such a goodly conceit as this is yet we would make no doubt but it might as well be able to preserve it self from dissolution and dissipation out of this gross Body as in it seeing it is no more secured from the constant impulses of that more gross Matter which is restlesly moving up and down in the Body then it is out of it and yet for all that we should take the leave to ask Tully's question with his sober disdain Quid obsecro terrâne tibi aut hoc nebuloso caliginoso coeno aut sata aut concreta videtur tanta vis memoriae Such a jewel as this is too precious to be found in a dunghill meer Matter could never thus stretch forth its feeble force spread it self over all its own former praeexistencies We may as well suppose this dull and heavy Earth we tread upon to know how long it hath dwelt in this part of the Universe that now it doth and what variety of Creatures have in all past Ages sprung forth from it and all those occurrences events which have all this time happened upon it CHAP. IV. The second Argument for the Immortality of the Soul Actions either Automatical or Spontaneous That Spontaneous and Elicite Actions evidence the Distinction of the Soul from the Body Lucretius his Evasion very slight and weak That the Liberty of the Will is inconsistent with the Epicurean principles That the Conflict of Reason against the Sensitive Appetite argues a Being in us superiour to Matter WE have done with that which we intended for the First part of our Discourse of the Soul's Immortality we have hitherto look'd at it rather in Concreto then in Abstracto rather as a Thing complicated with and united to the Body and therefore considered it in those Operations which as they are not proper to the Body so neither are they altogether independent upon it but are rather of a mixt nature We shall now take notice of it in those Properties in the exercise whereof it hath less commerce with the Body
and more plainly declares its own high descent to us That it is able to subsist and act without the aid and assistance of this Matter which it informes And here we shall take that course that Aristotle did in his Books de Anima and first of all inquire Whether it hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some kind of Action so proper and peculiar to it self as not to depend upon the Body And this soon offers it self in the first place to us in those Elicite motions of it as the Moralists are wont to name them which though they may end in those they call Imperate acts yet have their first Emanation from nothing else but the Soul it self For this purpose we shall take notice of Two sorts of Actions which are obvious to the experience of every one that observes himself according to a double Source emanation of them which a late Philosopher hath very happily suggested to us The first are those Actions which arise up within us without any Animadversion the other are those that are consequent to it For we find frequently such Motions within our selves which first are before we take notice of them and which by their own turbulency and impetuousness force us to an Advertency as those Fiery spirits and that inflamed Blood which sometimes fly up into the head or those gross and Earthly Fumes that disturb our brains the stirring of many other Humours which beget within us Grief Melancholy Anger or Mirth or other Passions which have their rise from such Causes as we were not aware of nor gave no consent to create this trouble to us Besides all those Passions and Perceptions which are begotten within us by some externall motions which derive themselves through our Senses and fiercely knocking at the door of our Minds and Understandings force them sometimes from their deepest debates musings of some other thing to open to them and give them an audience Now as to such Motions as these are it being necessary for the preservation of our Bodies that our Souls should be acquainted with them a mans Body was so contrived and his Soul so united to it that they might have a speedy access to the Soul Indeed some ancient Philosophers thought that the Soul descending more deeply into the Body as they expresse it first begot these corporeal motions unbeknown to it self by reason of its more deep immersion which afterwards by their impetuousness excited its advertency But whatsoever truth there is in that Assertion we clearly find from the relation of our own Souls themselves that our Soul disowns them and acknowledgeth no such Motions to have been so busy by her commission neither knows what they are from whence they arise or whither they tend untill she hath duly examined them But these Corporeal motions as they seem to arise from nothing else but meerly from the Machina of the Body it self so they could not at all be sensated but by the Soul Neither indeed are all our own Corporeal actions perceived by us but only those that may serve to maintain a good correspondence intelligence between the Soul and Body and so foment cherish that Sympathy between them which is necessary for the subsistence and well-being of the whole man in this mundane state And therefore there is very little of that which is commonly done in our Body which our Souls are informed at all of The constant Circulation of Blood through all our Veins and Arteries the common motions of our Animal spirits in our Nerves the maceration of Food within our Stomachs and the distribution of Chyle and nourishment to every part that wants the relief of it the constant flux and reflux of more sedate Humours within us the dissipations of our corporeal Matter by insensible Transpiration and the accesses of new in the room of it all this we are little acquainted with by any vital energie which ariseth from the union of Soul and Body and therefore when we would acquaint our selves with the Anatomy and vital functions of our own Bodies we are fain to use the same course and method that we would to find out the same things in any other kind of Animal as if our Souls had as little to doe with any of these in our own Bodies as they have in the Bodies of any other Brute creature But on the other side we know as well that manythings that are done by us are done at the dictate and by the commission of our own Wills and therefore all such Actions as these are we know without any great store of Discoursive inquiry to attribute to their own proper causes as seeing the efflux and propagation of them We doe not by a naked speculation know our Bodies first to have need of nourishment and then by the Edict of our Wills injoyn our Spirits and Humours to put themselves into an hungry and craving posture within us by corroding the Tunicles of the Stomach but we first find our own Souls sollicited by these motions which yet we are able to gainsay and to deny those petitions which they offer up to us We know we commonly meditate and discourse of such Arguments as we our selves please we mould designs and draw up a plot of means answerable thereto according as the free vote of our own Souls determines and use our own Bodies many times notwithstanding all the reluctancies of their nature onely as our Instruments to serve the will and pleasure of our Souls All which as they evidently manifest a true Distinction between the Soul and the Body so they doe as evidently prove the Supremacy and dominion which the Soul hath over the Body Our Moralists frequently dispute what kind of government that is whereby the Soul or rather Will rules over the Sensitive Appetite which they ordinarily resolve to be Imperium politicum though I should rather say that all good men have rather a true despotical power over their Sensitive faculties and over the whole Body though they use it onely according to the laws of Reason and Discretion And therefore the Platonists and Stoicks thought the Soul of man to be absolutely freed from all the power of Astral Necessity and uncontroulable impressions arising from the subordination and mutual Sympathie and Dependance of all mundane causes which is their proper notion of Fate Neither ever durst that bold Astrologie which presumes to tell the Fortunes of all corporeal Essences attempt to enter into the secrets of man's Soul or predict the destinies thereof And indeed whatever the destinies thereof may be that are contained in the vast volume of an Infinite and Almighty Mind yet we evidently find a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a liberty of Will within our selves maugre the stubborn malice of all Second Causes And Aristole who seems to have disputed so much against that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Souls which his Master before him had soberly maintained does indeed but quarrel
Latitude abstracted from all Profundity the Perfection of Figures Aequality Proportion Symmetry and Asymmetry of Magnitudes the Rise and propagation of Dimensions Infinite divisibility and many such like things which every ingenuous Son of that Art cannot but acknowledge to be the true characters of some Immaterial Being seeing they were never buried in Matter nor extracted out of it and yet these are transcendently more certain and infallible Principles of Demonstration then any Sensible thing can be There is no Geometrician but will acknowledge Angular sections or the cutting of an Arch into any number of parts required to be most exact without any diminution of the whole but yet no Mechanical art can possibly so perform either but that the place of section will detract something from the whole If any one should endeavour to double a Cube as the Delian Oracle once commanded the Athenians requiring them to duplicate the dimensions of Apollo's Altar by any Mechanicall subtilty he would find it as impossible as they did and be as much laugh'd at for his pains as some of their Mechanicks were If therefore no Matter be capable of any Geometrical effections and the Apodictical precepts of Geometry be altogether unimitable in the purest Matter that Phansie can imagine then must they needs depend upon something infinitly more pure then Matter which hath all that Stability and Certainty within it self which it gives to those infallible Demonstrations We need not here dispute with Empedocles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. We know earth by earth fire by fire and water by water that is by the Archetypal Idea's of all things in our own Souls though it may be it were no hard matter to prove that as in this case S. Austin did when in his Book de Quant animae he would prove the Immortality of the Soul from these notions of Quantity which come not by any possible Sense or Experience which we can make of bodily Being and therefore concludes they must needs be immediately ingraven upon an Immaterial Soul For though we could suppose our Senses to be the School-Dames that first taught us the Alphabet of this learning yet nothing else but a true Mental Essence could be capable of it or so much improve it as to unbody it all and strip it naked of any Sensible garment and then onely when it hath done it embrace it as its own and commence a true and perfect understanding of it And as we all hold it impossible to shrink up any Material Quality which will perpetually spread it self commensurably to the Matter it is in into a Mathematical point so is it much more impossible to extend and stretch forth any Immaterial and unbodied Quality or notion according to the dimensions of Matter and yet to preserve the integrity of its own nature Besides in these Geometricall speculations we find that our Souls will not consult with our Bodies or ask any leave of our Fansies how or how far they shall distribute their own notions by a continued progress of Invention but spending upon their own stock are most free and liberal and make Fansie onely to serve their own purpose in painting out not what Matter will afford a copie of but what they themselves will dictate to it and if that should be too busie silence and controul it by their own Imperial laws They so little care for Matter in this kind of work that they banish it as far as may be from themselves or else chastise and tame the unruly and refractory nature of it that it should yield it self pliable to their soveraign commands These Embodied Bodies for so this present Argument will allow me to call them which our Senses converse with are perpetually justling together contending so irresistably each for its own room and space to be in and will not admit of any other into it preserving their own intervals but when they are once in their Unbodied nature entertained into the Mind they can easily penetrate one another 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Soul can easily pyle the vastest number up together in her self and by her own force sustain them all and make them all couch together in the same space she can easily pitch up all those Five Regular Bodies together in her own Imagination and inscribe them one in another and then entring into the very heart and centre of them discern all their Properties and several Respects one to another and thus easily find her self freed from all Material or Corporeal confinement shewing how all that which we call Body rather issued forth by an infinite projection from some Mind then that it should exalt it self into the nature of any Mental Being and as the Platonists and Pythagoreans have long since well observed how our Bodies should rather be in our Souls then our Souls in them And so I have done with that Particular CHAP. VI. The Fourth Argument for the Immortality of the Soul That those clear and stable Ideas of Truth which are in Man's Mind evince an Immortal and Immaterial Substance residing in us distinct from the Body The Soul more knowable then the Body Some passages out of Plotinus and Proclus for the further confirming of this Argument AND now we have traced the Immortality of the Soul before we were aware through those Three Relations or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or if you will Degrees of knowledge which Proclus in his Comment upon Plato's Timaeus hath attributed to it which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The First is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a naked perception of Sensible impressions without any work of Reason The Second 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Miscellaneous kind of knowledge arising of a collation of its Sensations with its own more obscure and dark Idea's The Third 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Discourse and Reason which the Platonists describe Mathematical knowledge by which because it spins out its own notions by a constant series of Deduction knitting up Consequences one upon another by Demonstrations is by him call'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Progressive kind of knowledge to which he addes a Fourth which we shall now make use of for a further Proof of the Immortality of the Soul There is therefore Fourthly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is a naked Intuition of Eternal Truth which is alwaies the same which never rises nor sets but alwaies stands still in its Vertical and fills the whole Horizon of the Soul with a mild and gentle light There are such calm and serene Idea's of Truth that shine onely in pacate Souls and cannot be discerned by any troubled or fluid Fancy that necessarily prove a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some Permanent Stable Essence in the Soul of man which as Simplicius on Epictet well observes ariseth onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from some immoveable and unchangeable Cause which is alwaies the same For these Operations about Truth we now speak of are not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 any Chronical Energies
in my self When true Sanctity and Purity shall ground him in the knowledge of divine things then shall the inward Sciences that arise from the bottome of his own Soul display themselves which indeed are the onely true Sciences for the Soul runs not out of it self to behold Temperance and Justice abroad but it s own light sees them in the contemplation of its own Being and that divine essence which was before enshrined within it self I might after all this adde many more Reasons for a further confirmation of this present Thesis which are as numerous as the Soul's relations productions themselves are but to every one who is willing to doe his own Soul right this Evidence we have already brought in is more then sufficient CHAP. VIII An Appendix containing an Enquiry into the Sense and Opinion of Aristotle concerning the Immortality of the Soul That according to him the Rational Soul is separable from the Body and Immortall The true meaning of his Intellectus Agens and Patiens HAving done with the several Proofs of the Soul's Immortality that great Principle of Naturall Theology which if it be not entertain'd as a Communis Notitia as I doubt not but that it is by the Vulgar sort of men or as an Axiome or if you will a Theoreme of free and impartial Reason all endeavours in Religion will be very cool and languid it may not be amiss to enquire a little concerning His opinion whom so many take for the great Intelligencer of Nature and Omniscient Oracle of Truth though it be too manifest that he hath so defaced the sacred Monuments of the ancient Metaphysical Theology by his profane hands that it is hard to see that lovely face of Truth which was once engraven upon them as some of his own Interpreters have long agoe observed and so blurr'd those fair Copies of divine learning which he received from his Predecessours that his late Interpreters who make him their All are as little sometime acquainted with his meaning and design as they are with that Elder philosophy which he so corrupts which indeed is the true reason they are so ambiguous in determining his Opinion of the Soul's immortality which yet he often asserts and demonstrates in his Three Books de Anima We shall not here traverse this Notion through them all but onely briefly take notice of that which hath made his Expositours stumble so much in this point the main whereof is that Definition which he gives of the Soul wherein he seems to make it nothing else for the Genus of it but an Entelechia or Informative thing which spends all its virtue upon that Matter which it informs and cannot act any other way then meerly by information being indeed nothing else but some Material 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 like an impression in wax which cannot subsist without it or else the result of it whence it is that he calls onely either Material Forms or the Functions and Operations of those Forms by this name But indeed he intended not this for a general Definition of the Soul of man and therefore after he had lai'd down this particular Definition of the Soul lib. 2. cap. 1. he tells us expresly That that which we call the Rational Soul is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or separable from the Body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it is not the Entelech of any Body Which he laies down the demonstration of in several places of all those Three books by enquiring 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as he speaks lib. 1. cap. 1. whether the Soul hath any proper function or operation of its own or whether all be compounded and result from the Soul and Body together and in this inquirie finding that all Sensations and Passions arise as well from the Body as from the Soul and spring out of the conjunction of both of them which he therefore calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as being begotten by the Soul upon the Body he concludes that all this savours of nothing else but a Mateterial nature inseparable from the Body But then finding acts of Mind and Understanding which cannot be propagated from Matter or causally depend upon the Body he resolves the Principles from whence they flow to be Immortal which he thus sets down lib. 2. cap. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that is Now as for the Mind and Theoreticall power it appears not viz. that they belong to that Soul which in the former Chapter was defined by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but it seems to be another kind of Soul and that onely is separable from the Body as that which is Eternal and Immortal from that which is Corruptible But the other Powers or Parts of the Soul viz. the Vegetative and Sensitive are not separable 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as some think Where by these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 some which he here refutes he manifestly means the Platonists and Pythagoreans who held that all kinds of Souls were immortal as well the Souls of beasts as of men whereas he upon that former enquirie concluded that nothing was immortal but that which is the Seat of Reason and Understanding and so his meaning is that this Rational Soul is altogether a distinct Essence from those other or else that glory which he makes account he reaps from his supposed victory over the other Sects of Philosophers will be much eclipsed seeing they themselves did not so much contend for that which he decries viz. an exercise of any such Informative faculties in a state of Separation neither doe we find them much more to reject one part of that complex Axiome of his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That which is sensitive is not without the Body but the Intellect or Mind is separable then they doe the other The other difficulty which Aristotle's opinion seems to be clogg'd withall is that Conclusion which he laies down lib. 3. c. 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is commonly thus expounded Intellectus patiens est corruptibilis But all this difficulty will soon be cleared if once it may appear how ridiculous their conceit is that from that Chapter fetch that idle distinction of Intellectus Agens Patiens meaning by the Agens that which prepares phantasmes and exalts them into the nature of intelligible species and then propounds them to the Patiens to judge thereof whereas indeed he means nothing else by his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but onely the Understanding in potentia and by his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the same in actu or in habitu as the Schoolmen are wont to phrase it and accordingly thus laies down his meaning and method of this notion In the preceding Chapter of that Book he disputes against Plato's Connate species as being afraid lest if the Soul should be prejudiced by any home-born notions it would not be indifferent to the entertaining of any other Truth Where by the way we may observe how unreasonable his Argument is for if the
conveyed to it without which it could not expresse a due benevolence to that Body which peculiarly belongs to it therefore as the Motions of these Animal Spirits are more or less either disorderly and confus'd or gentle and compos'd so those Souls especially who have not by the exercise of true Vertue got the dominion over them are also more or less affected proportionably in their operations And therefore indeed to question whether the Soul that is of an Immortal nature should entertain these corporeal passions is to doubt whether God could make a Man or not and to question that which we find by experience in our selves for we find both that it doth thus and yet that the Original of these is sometimes from Bodies and sometimes again by the force of our Wills they are impress'd upon our Bodies Here by the way we may consider in a moral way what to judge of those Impressions that are derived from our Bodies to our Souls which the Stoicks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not because they are repugnant to Reason or are aberrations from it but because they derive not their original from Reason but from the Body which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and are by Aristotle more agreeably to the ancient Dialect called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 material or corporeal Idea's or impressions And these we may safely reckon I think amongst our Adiaphora in Morality as being in themselves neither good nor evil as all the antient Writers have done but onely are form'd into either by that stamp that the Soul prints upon them when they come to be entertain'd into it And therefore whereas some are apt in the most severe way to censure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all those Commotions and Passions that first affect our Souls they might doe well more cautelously to distinguish between such of these motions as have their origination in our Bodies and such as immediately arise from our Souls else may we not too hastily displace the antient termini and remove the land-marks of Vertue and Vice For seeing the Soul could not descend into any corporeal act as it must doe while it is more present to one body then another except it could partake of the griefs and pleasures of the Body can it be any more sinful for it to sensate this then it is for it to be united to the Body If our Soul could not know what it is to eat or drink but onely by a meer ratiocination collecting by a drie syllogisticall discourse That meats and drinks preserve the health and fabrick of the Body repairing what daily exhales from it without sensating any kind of grief in the want or refreshment in the use of them it would soon suffer the Body to languish and decay And therefore as these Bodily infirmities and passions are not evil in themselves so neither are they evil as they first affect our Souls When our Animal Spirits begot of fine and good blood gently and nimbly play up and down in our Brains and swiftly flie up and down our whole Bodies we presently find our Phansies raised with mirth and chearfulness and as when our Phansies are thus exalted we may not call this the Energy of Grace so if our Spleen or Hypochondria swelling with terrene and sluggish Vapours send up such Melancholick fumes into our heads as move us to sadness and timorousness we cannot justly call that Vice nor when the Gall does degurgitate its bitter juyce into our Liver which mingling it self with the blood begets fiery Spirits that presently fly up into our Brain and there beget impressions of Anger within us The like we may say of those Corporeal passions which are not bred first of all by any Peccant humours or distemperatures in our own bodies but are excited in us by any External objects which by those idola and images that they present to our Senses or rather those Motions they make in them may presently raise such commotions in our Spirits For our Body maintains not onely a conspiration and consent of all its own parts but also it bears a like relation to other mundane bodies with which it is conversant as being a part of the whole Universe But when our Soul once mov'd by the undisciplin'd petulancy of our Animal spirits shall foment and cherish that Irrational Grief Fear Anger Love or any other such like Passions contrary to the dictates of Reason it then sets the stamp of sinfulness upon them It is the consent of our own Wills that by brooding of them brings forth those hatefull Serpents For though our Souls be espoused to these Earthly Bodies and cannot but in some measure sympathize with them yet hath the Soul a true dominion of its own acts It is not the meer passion if we take it in a Physicall sense but rather some inordinate action of our own Wills that entertain it and these passions cannot force our Wills but we may be able to chastise and allay all the inordinacy of them by the power of our Wills and Reasons and therefore God hath not made us under the necessity of sin by making us men subject to such infirmities as these are which are meerly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Greek Philosopher hath well called them the blossomings and shootings forth of bodily life within us which is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Humanity And if I mistake not our Divinity is wont sometimes to acknowledge some such thing in our Saviour himself who was in all things made like to us our sinfulness excepted He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefs as the Prophet Esay speaks of him and when he was in bodily agonies and horrours the powerfull assaults thereof upon his Soul moved him to petition his Father that if it were possible that bitter Cup might pass from him and the sense of death so much afflicted him that it bred in him the sad griefs which S. Peter expresseth by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Act. 2. the pangs or throes of death and that fear that extorted a desire to be freed from it as it is insinuated by that in Heb. 5. 7. he was delivered from what he feared for so the words being nothing else but an Hebraism are to be rendred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And we are wont to call this the language and dictate of Nature which lawfully endeavours to preserve it self though presently an higher principle must bring all these under a subjection to God and a free submission to his good pleasure as it was with our Saviour who moderated all these passions by a ready resignment of himself and his own Will up to the Will of God and though his Humanity crav'd for ease and relaxation yet that Divine Nature that was within him would not have it with any repugnancy to the supreme Will of God A DISCOURSE Concerning THE EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF GOD Agapetus ad Justinianum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 M. T. Cicero l. 1. De Legibus
made for us as our Saviour hath taught us when he tells us that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath and as sincere and reall Christians grow up towards true perfection the lesse need have they of Positive precepts or Externall helps Yet I doubt it is nothing else but a wanton fastus and proud temper of spirit in our times that makes so many talk of being above Ordinances who if their own arrogance and presumption would give them leave to lay aside the flattering glasse of their own Self-love would find themselves to have most need of them What I have observ'd concerning the Things absolutely good I conceive to be included in that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mention'd Dan. 9. everlasting righteousness which the Prophet there saith should be brought in and advanced by Messiah this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the Righteousness which is of an eternall and immutable nature as being a conformity with Eternall and Unchangeable Truth For there is a Righteousness which thus is not Eternall but Positive and at the pleasure of God that dictates it and such was the Righteousness which Christ said it became him to fulfill when he was baptiz'd there was no necessity that any such thing should become due But the Foundation of this Everlasting righteousness is something unalterable To speak more particularly That the Highest good should be loved in the Highest degree That dependant creatures that borrow all they have from God should never glory in themselves or admire themselves but ever admire and adore that unbounded Goodness which is the Source of their Beings and all the Good they partake of That we should alwaies doe that which is just and right according to the measure we would others should doe with us these and some other things which a rectified Reason will easily supply are immutably true and righteous so that it never was nor can be true that they are unnecessary And whoso hath his Heart molded into a delight in such a Righteousness and the practise thereof hath this Eternall righteousness brought into his Soul which Righteousness is also true and reall not like that imaginary Externall righteousness of the Law which the Pharisees boasted in CHAP. X. The Conclusion of this Treatise concerning the Existence and Nature of God shewing how our Knowledge of God comes to be so imperfect in this State while we are here in this Terrestriall Body Two waies observ'd by Plotinus whereby This Body does prejudice the Soul in her Operations That the Better Philosophers and more Contemplative Jewes did not deny the Existence of all kind of Body in the other state What meant by Zoroaster's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What kind of knowledge of God cannot be attain'd to in this life What meant by Flesh and Blood 1 Cor. 15. FOR the concluding of this Discourse as a Mantissa to what hath been said we shall a little consider how inconsistent a thing a Perfect knowledge of God is with this Mundane and Corporeall state which we are in here While we are in the Body we are absent from the Lord as S. Paul speaks and that I think without a mysterie Such Bodies as ours are being fitted for an Animal state and pieces of this whole Machina of Sensible Matter are perpetually drawing down our Souls when they would raise up themselves by Contemplatior of the Deity and the caring more or less for the things of this Body so exercises the Soul in this state that it cannot attend upon God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without distraction In the antient Metaphysicks such a Body as this is we carry about us is call'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. the dark Den and Sepulchre in which Souls are imprison'd and entomb'd with many other expressions of the like importance and Proclus tells us that the Commoration of the Soul in such a Body as this is according to the common vote of Antiquity nothing else but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a dwelling or pitching its Tabernacle in the Valley of Oblivion and Death But Plotinus in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seems not to be easily satisfied with Allegoricall descriptions and therefore searching more strictly into this business tells his own and their meaning in plainer terms that This Body is an occasion of Evil to the Soul two waies 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it hinders its Mentall operations presenting its Idola specûs continually to it 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it calls forth its advertency to its own Passions which while it exerciseth it self about too earnestly it falls into a sinfull inordinacy Yet did not the Platonists nor the more Contemplative Jews deny the Existence of all kind of Body in the other State as if there should be nothing residing there but naked Souls totally devested of all Corporeall Essence for they held that the Soul should in the other World be united with a Body not such a one as it did act in here which was not without disturbance but such as should be most agreeable to the Soul which they call'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Spirituall Vehicle of the Soul and by Zoroaster it was call'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a kind of Umbra or Aereal Mantle in which the Soul wraps her self which he said remain'd with her in the state of glory 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in the Jewish language it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 indumentum quoddam interius as Gaulmin hath observed in his De vita morte Mosis But to return the Platonists have pointed out a threefold knowledge of God 1. one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2. the second 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 3. the last 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and this last they affirm'd to be unattainable by us it being that ineffable Light whereby the Divinity comprehends its own Essence penetrating all that Immensity of Being which it self is The First may be attain'd to in this life but the Second in its full perfection we cannot reach here in this life because this knowledge ariseth out of a blissfull Union with God himself which therefore they are wont to call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Contact of Intellectuall Being and sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is that I may phrase it in the Scripture words a beholding of God face to face which is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arcanum facierum the Jewish writers speak of which we cannot attain to while we continue in this concrete and bodily state And so when Moses desir'd to behold the face of God that is as the Jewes understand it that a distinct Idea of the Divine Essence might be imprinted upon his Mind God told him No man can see me and live that is no man in this corruptible state is capable of attaining to this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or visio facierum as Maimonides expounds it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Understanding of the
living man who is compounded of Body and Soul is utterly unable clearly to apprehend the Divine Essence to see it as it is And so S. Paul distinguisheth the knowledge of this life as taken in this complex sense and of the life to come that now we see 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a glass which is continually sullied and darkened while we look into it by the breathing of our Animal fansies passions and imaginations upon it and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 darkly but we shall see then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 face to face which is the translation of that Hebrew phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And in the like manner does a Greek Philosopher compare these two sorts of Knowledge which the Soul hath of God in this life and in that to come 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Soul will reckon all this knowledge of God which we have here by way of Science but like a fable or parable when once it is in conjunction with the Father feasting upon Truth it self and beholding God in the pure raies of his own Divinity I shall conclude all with that which S. Paul expresly tells us 1 Cor. 15. 50. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdome of God where by Flesh and Blood he seems to mean nothing else but Man in this complex and compounded state of Soul and Body I mean corruptible earthy Body and it was a common Periphrasis of this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 amongst the Jews 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the like sense is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Flesh Blood in those and other places in the New Testament used where this phrase occurs viz. Matth. 16. 17. Gal. 1. 16. Ephes. 6. 12. Heb. 2. 14. But in opposition to this gross earthy Body the Apostle speaks of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Spirituall Body v. 44. such as shall put on incorruption and immortality v. 53. and consequently differing from that Body which here makes up this compounded animall Being and accordingly our Saviour speaks of the children of the Resurrection that they neither marry nor are given in marriage nor can they die any more but are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or as it is in S. Matthew and Mark 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Angels of God and so the Jewish writers are wont to use the same phrase to express the state of Glory by viz. that then good men shall be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sicut Angeli ministerii OF PROPHESIE OR A DISCOURSE Treating of The Nature of Prophesie The Different degrees of the Propheticall Spirit The Difference of Propheticall Dreams from all other Dreams recorded in Scripture The Difference of the True Propheticall Spirit from Enthusiasticall Imposture What the meaning of those Actions is that are frequently in Scripture attributed to the Prophets whether they were Reall or onely Imaginary The Schools of the Prophets The Sons or Disciples of the Prophets The Dispositions antecedent and preparatory to Prophesie The Periods of Time when the Propheticall Spirit ceased in the Jewish and Christian Churches Rules for the better understanding of Propheticall Writ 2 Pet. 1. 21. For Prophesie came not in old time by the will of man but holy men of God spake being moved by the Holy Ghost Philo Jud. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 OF PROPHESIE CHAP. I. That Prophesie is the way whereby Revealed Truth is dispensed and conveighed to us Man's Mind capable of conversing and being acquainted as well with Revealed or Positive Truth as with Naturall Truth Truths of Naturall inscription may be excited in us and cleared to us by means of Propheticall Influence That the Scripture frequently accommodates it self to vulgar apprehension and speaks of things in the greatest way of condescension HAving spoken to those Principles of Naturall Theologie which have the most proper and necessary influence into Life and Practise and are most pregnant with morall goodness we come now to consider Those pieces of Revealed Truth which tend most of all to foment and cherish true and reall Piety But before we fall pressly into any strict Enquiry concerning them it may not be amiss to examine How and in what manner This kind of Truth which depends solely upon the Free will of God is manifested unto mankind and so treat a little concerning Prophesie which indeed is the onely way whereby This kind of Truth can be dispensed to us For though our own Reason and Understanding carry all Natural Truth necessary for Practice in any sort engraven upon themselves and folded up in their own Essences more immediatly as being the first participations of the Divine Minde considered in its own Eternal nature yet Positive Truth can only be made known to us by a free influx of the Divine Mind upon our Minds and Understandings And as it ariseth out of nothing else but the free pleasure of the Divinity so without any natural determination it freely shines upon the Souls of men where and when it lifteth hiding its light from them or displaying it forth upon them as it pleaseth Yet the souls of men are as capable of conversing with it though it doe not naturally arise out of the fecundity of their own Understandings as they are with any Sensible and External Objects And as our Sensations carry the notions of Material things to our Understandings which before were unacquainted with them so there is some Analogical way whereby the knowledge of Divine Truth may also be revealed to us For so we may call as well that Historical Truth of Corporeal and Material things which we are informed of by our Senses Truth of Revelation as that Divine Truth which we now speak of and therefore we may have as certain and infallible a way of being acquainted with the one as with the other And God having so contrived the nature of our Souls that we may converse one with another and inform one another of things we knew not before would not make us so deaf to his Divine voice that breaks the rocks and rends the mountains asunder He would not make us so undisciplinable in Divine things as that we should not be capable of receiving any Impressions from himself of those things which we were before unacquainted with And this way of communicating Truth to the Souls of men is originally nothing else but Prophetical or Enthusiastical and so we may take notice of the General nature of Prophesie Though I would not all this while be mistaken as if I thought no Natural Truth might be by the means of Prophetical influence awakened within us and cleared up to us or that we could not lumine prophetico behold the Truths of Naturall inscription for indeed one main end and scope of the Prophetical Spirit seems to be the quickning up of our Minds to a more lively converse with those Eternal Truths of Reason which commonly lie buried in so much fleshly obscurity within us that we discern them not And therefore the Scripture
treats not only of those Pieces of Truth which are the Results of God's free Counsells but also of those which are most a-kin and allied to our own Understandings and that in the greatest way of Condescention that may be speaking to the weakest sort of men in the most vulgar sort of dialect which it may not be amiss to take a little notice of Divine Truth hath its Humiliation and Exinanition as well as its Exaltation Divine Truth becomes many times in Scripture incarnate debasing it self to assume our rude conceptions that so it might converse more freely with us and infuse its own Divinity into us God having been pleased herein to manifest himself not more jealous of his own Glory then he is as I may say zealous of our good Nos non habemus aures sicut Deus habet linguam If he should speak in the language of Eternity who could understand him or interpret his meaning or if he should have declared his Truth to us only in a way of the purest abstraction that Humane Souls are capable of how should then the more rude and illiterate sort of men have been able to apprehend it Truth is content when it comes into the world to wear our mantles to learn our language to conform it self as it were to our dress and fashions it affects not that State or Fastus which the disdainfull Rhetorician sets out his style withall Non Tarentinis aut Siculis haec scribimus but it speaks with the most Idiotical sort of men in the most Idiotical way and becomes all things to all men as every sonne of Truth should doe for their good Which was well observed in that old Cabbalistical Axiome among the Jewes Lumen supernum nunquam descendit sine indumento And therefore it may be the best way to understand the true sense and meaning of the Scripture is not rigidly to examine it upon Philosophical Interrogatories or to bring it under the scrutiny of School-Definitions and Distinctions It speaks not to us so much in the tongue of the learned Sophies of the world as in the plainest and most vulgar dialect that may be Which the Jews constantly observed and took notice of and therefore it was one common Rule among them for a true understanding of the Scripture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lex loquitur linguâ filorum hominum Which Maimonides expounds thus in More Nevoch Par. 1. C. 26. Quicquid homines ab initio cogitationis suae intelligentiâ imaginatione suâ possunt assequi id in Scriptura attribuitur Creatori And therefore we find almost all Corporeal properties attributed to God in Scripture quia vulgus hominum ab initio cogitationis Entitatem non apprehendunt nisi in rebus corporeis as the same Author observes But such of them as sound Imperfection in vulgar eares as Eating and Drinking the like these saith he the Scripture no where attributes to him The reason of this plain and Idiotical style of Scripture it may be worth our farther taking notice of as it is laid down by the forenamed Author C. 33. Haec causa est propter quam Lex loquitur linguâ filiorum hominum c. For this reason the Law speaks according to the language of the sons of men because it is the most commodious and easie way of initiating and teaching Children Women and the Common people who have not ability to apprehend things according to the very nature and essence of them And in C. 34. Et si per Exempla Similitudines non deduceremur c. And if we were not led to the knowledge of things by Examples and Similitudes but were put to learn and understand all things in their Formal notions and Essential definitions and were to believe nothing but upon preceding Demonstrations then we may well think that seeing this cannot be done but after long preparations the greater part of men would be at the conclusion of their daies before they could know whether there be a God or no c. Hence is that Axiome so frequent among the Jewish Doctors Magna est virtus vel fortitudo Prophetarum qui assimilant formam cum formante eam i. e. Great is the power of the Prophets who while they looked down upon these Sensible and Conspicable things were able to furnish out the notion of Intelligible and Inconspicable Beings thereby to the rude Senses of Illiterate people The Scripture was not writ only for Sagacious and Abstracted minds or Philosophical heads for then how few are there that should have been taught the true Knowledge of God thereby Vidi filios coenaculi erant pauci was an antient Jewish proverb We are not alwaies rigidly to adhere to the very Letter of the Text. There is a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Scripture as the Jewish interpreters observe We must not think that it alwaies gives us Formal Definitions of things for it speaks commonly according to Vulgar apprehension as when it tells of the Ends of the heaven which now almost every Idiot knows hath no ends at all So when it tells us Gen. 2. 7. that God breathed into man the breath of life and man became a living soul the expression is very Idiotical as may be and seems to comply with that vulgar conceit that the Soul of Man is nothing else but a kind of Vital breath or Aire and yet the Immortality thereof is evidently insinuated in setting forth a double Original of the two parts of Man his Body and his Soul the one of which is brought in as arising up out of the Dust of the earth the other as proceeding from the Breath of God himself So we find very Vulgar expressions concerning God himself besides those which attribute Sensation and Motion to him as when he is set forth as riding upon the wings of the Wind riding upon the Clouds sitting in Heaven and the like which seem to determine his indifferent Omnipresence to some peculiar place whereas indeed such passages as these are can be fetch'd from nothing else but those crass apprehensions which the generalitie of men have of God as being most there from whence the objects of dread and admiration most of all smite and insinuate themselves into their Senses as they doe from the Aire Clouds Winds or Heaven So the state of Hell and Miserie is set forth by such denominations as were most apt to strike a terror into the minds of men and accordingly it is called Coetus Gigantum the place where all those old Giants whom divine vengeance pursued in the general Deluge were assembled together as it is well observed by a late Author of our own upon Proverbs 21. 16. The man that wandreth out of the way of understanding in coetu Gigantum commorabitur And accordingly we find the state and condition of these expressed Job 26. 5. Gigantes gemunt sub aquis qui habitant cum iis Nudus est infernus
in his Preface to the Psalms and the rest of the Hebrew Scholiasts suppose divers Authors to have come in for their particular Songs in that Book And these divine Enthusiasts were commonly wont to compose their Songs and Hymns at the sounding of some one Musical instrument or other as we find it often suggested in the Psalms So Plutarch lib. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 describes the Dictate of the Oracle antiently 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 how that it was uttered in verse in pomp of words Similitudes and Metaphors at the sound of a Pipe Thus we have Asaph Heman and Jeduthun set forth in this Prophetical preparation 1 Chron. 25. 1. Moreover David and the Captain of the hâ—ast separated to the service of the Sons of Asaph and of Heman and of Jeduthun who should prophesie with harps c. Thus R. Sal. expounds the place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When they play'd upon their Musical instruments they prophesied after the manner of Elisha who said Bring me a Minstrel 2 Kings 3. And in the fore-mentioned place ver 3. upon those words who prophesied with a harp he thus glosseth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 As they sounded upon the harp the Psalms of praise and the Hallelujahs Jeduthun their Father prophesied And this sense of this place I think is much more genuine then that which a late Author of our own would fasten upon it viz. that this Prophesying was nothing but singing of Psalms For it is manifest that these Prophets were not meer Singers but Composers and such as were truly called Prophets or Enthusiasts So ver 5. Heman is expresly called the Kings Seer the like in 2 Chron. 29. 30. ch 35. 15. of Asaph Heman Jeduthun 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon which our former Commentator glosseth thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unusquisque eorum erat Propheta 'T is true the Poets are anciently called Vates but that is no good argument why a Singer should be called a Prophet for it is to be considered that a Poet was a Composer and upon that account by the Ancients called Vates or a Prophet and that because they generally thought all true Poets were transported So Plato in his Phaedrus makes Three kinds of Fury viz. Enthusiastical Amatorious and Poetical But of this matter we shall speak more under the next head which we are in a manner unawares fallen upon which is to enquire in general into the qualification of all kind of Prophets CHAP. VIII Of the Dispositions antecedent and preparatory to Prophesie That the Qualifications which did fit a man for the Prophetical Spirit were such as these viz. Inward Piety True Wisdome a Pacate and Serene temper of Mind and a due cheerfulness of Spirit in opposition to Vitiousness Mental crazedness and inconsistency unsubdued Passions black Melancholy and dull Sadness This illustrated by several Instances in Scripture That Musick was greatly advantageous to the Prophets and Holy men of God c. What is meant by Saul's Evil Spirit OUR next business is to discourse of those several Qualifications that were to render a man fit for the Spirit of Prophesie for we must not think that any man might suddenly be made a Prophet This gift was not so fortuitously dispensed as to be communicated without any discrimination of persons And this indeed all sorts of men have generally concluded upon and therefore the old Heathens themselves that only sought after a Spirit of Divination were wont in a solemn manner to prepare and fit themselves for receiving the influx thereof as R. Albo hath truly observed Maam. 3. c. 8. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The ancient Gentiles made themselves Images and offered prayers and frankincense to the Stars that by this means they might draw down a spiritual influence from some certain Stars upon their Image For this influence slides down from the body of the Star upon the man himself who is also corporeal and by this means he foretells what shall come to pass And thus as he further observes the Necromancers themselves were wont to use many solemn Rites and Ceremonies to call forth the Souls of any dead men into themselves whereby they might be able to presage future things But to come more closely to our present Argument The Qualifications which the Jewish Doctors suppose necessarily antecedent to render any one habilem ad prophetandum are true Probity and Piety and this was the constant sense and opinion of all of them universally not excluding the vulgar themselves Thus Abarbanel in praefat in 12 Proph. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pietas inducit Spiritum Sanctum The like we find in Maimonid More Nev. par 2. cap. 32. who yet thinks this was not enough and therefore he reckons up this as a vulgar error which yet he saies some of their Doctors were carried away withall Quod Deus aliquem eligat mittat nullâ habitâ ratione an sit sapiens c. That God may chuse of men whom he pleaseth and send him it matters not whether he be wise and learned or unlearned and unskilfull old or young only that this is required that he be a vertuous good and honest man For hitherto there was never any that could say that God did cause the divine Majestie to dwell in a vitious person unless he had first reformed himself But Maimonid himself rather preferrs the opinion of the wise Sages and Philosophers of the Heathen then of these vulgar Masters which required also some Perfection in the nature of him that should be set apart for Prophesie augmented with study and industry Whence it cannot be that a man should goe to bed no Prophet and rise the next day a Prophet as he there speaks quemadmodum homo qui inopinatò aliquid invenit And a little after he adds Fatuos hujus terrae filios quod attinet non magis nostro judicio prophetare possunt quà m Asinus aut Rana These Perfections then which Maimonides requires as Preparaterie Dispositions to render a man a Prophet are of Three sorts viz. 1. Acquisite or Rational 2. Natural or Animal lastly Moral And according to the difference of these he distinguisheth the Degrees of Prophesie c. 36. Has autem Tres perfectiones c. As to these Three Perfections which we have here compriz'd viz. the Perfection of the Rational facultie acquired by study the Perfection of the Imaginative facultie by birth and the Perfection of Manners or vertuous Qualities by purifying and freeing the Heart and affections from all sensual pleasures from all pride and from all foolish and pestilent desire of glory As to these I say It 's evident that they are differently and not in the same degree participated by men And according to such different measures of participation the degrees of the Prophets are also to be distinguished Thus Maimonides who indeed in all this did but aim at this Technical notion of his That all Prophesie is the proper result of these Perfections as a Form arising
Despair Fretfulness against God pale Jealousies wrathfull and embittered Thoughts of him or any struglings or contests to get from within the verge of his Power and Omnisciency which would mantle up their Souls in black and horrid Night I mean not all this while by this holy Boldness and Confidence and Presence of Mind in a Believer's converse with the Deitie that high pitch of Assurance that wafts the Souls of good men over the Stygian lake of Death and brings them to the borders of life that here puts them into an actual possession of Bliss and reestates and reestablishes them in Paradise No That more general acquaintance which we may have with God's Philanthropy and Bounty ready to relieve with the bowells of his tender compassions all those starving Souls that call upon him for surely he will never doe less for fainting and drooping Souls then he doth for the young Ravens that cry unto him that converse which we are provoked by the Gospel to maintain with God's unconfined love if we understand it aright will awaken us out of our drowsie Lethargy and make us aske of him the way to Sion with our faces thitherward This will be digging up fresh fountains for us while we goe through the valley of Baca whereby refreshing our weary Souls we shall goe on from strength to strength until we see the face of our loving and ever-to-be-loved God in Sion And so I come to the next Particular wherein we shall further unfold how this God-like righteousness we have spoken of is conveighed to us by Faith and that is this A true Gospel-faith is no lazie or languid thing but a strong ardent breathing for and thirsting after divine Grace and Righteousness it doth not only pursue an ambitious project of raising the Soul immaturely to the condition of a darling Favourite with Heaven while it is unripe for it by procuring a mere empty Pardon of sin it desires not only to stand upon clear terms with Heaven by procuring the crossing of all the Debt-books of our sins there but it rather pursues after an Internal participation of the Divine nature We often hear of a Saving Faith and that where it is is not content to wait for Salvation till the world to come it is not patient of being an Expectant in a Probationership for it untill this Earthly body resignes up all it's worldly interest that so the Soul might then come into its room No but it is here perpetually gasping after it and effecting of it in a way of serious Mortification and Self-denial it enlarges and dilates it self as much as may be according to the vast dimensions of the Divine love that it may comprehend the height and depth the length and breadth thereof and fill the Soul where it is seated with all the fullness of God it breeds a strong and unsatiable appetite where it comes after true Goodness Were I to describe it I should doe it no otherwise then in the language of the Apostle It is that whereby we live in Christ and whereby he lives in us or in the dialect of our Saviour himself Something so powerfully sucking in the precious influences of the Divine Spirit that the Soul where it is is continually flowing with living waters issuing out of it self A truely-believing Soul by an ingenuous affiance in God and an eager thirst after him is alwaies sucking from the full breasts of the Divine love thence it will not part for there and there only is its life and nourishment it starves and faints away with grief and hunger whensoever it is pull'd away from thence it is perpetually hanging upon the arms of Immortal Goodness for there it finds its great strength lies and as much as may be armes it self with the mighty Power of God by which it goes forth like a Gyant refreshed with wine to run that race of Grace Holiness that leads to the true Elysium of Glory and that heavenly Canaan which is above And whensoever it finds it self enfeebled in its difficult Conflict with those fierce and furious Corruptions those tall sons of Anak which arising from our terrene and sensual affections doe here encounter it in the Wilderness of this world then turning it self to God and putting it self under the conduct of the Angel of his presence it finds it self presently out of weakness to become strong enabled from above to put to flight those mighty armies of the aliens True Faith if you would know its rise and pedegree it is begotten of the Divine bounty and fulness manifesting it self to the Spirits of men and it is conceived and brought forth by a deep and humble sense of Self-indigency and Poverty Faith arises out of Self-examination seating and placing it self in view of the Divine plenitude and Allsufficiency and thus that I may borrow those words of S. Paul we received the sentence of death in our selves that we should not trust in our selves but in him The more this Sensual Brutish and Self-Central life thrives and prospers the more divine Faith languisheth and the more that decays and all Self-feeling Self-love and Self-sufficiency pine away the more is true Faith fed and nourished it grows more vigorous and as Carnal life wasts and consumes so the more does Faith suck in a true divine and spiritual life from the true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who hath life in himself and freely bestowes it to all those that heartily seek for it When the Divinity united it self to Humane nature in the person of our Saviour he then gave mankind a pledge and earnest of what he would further doe therein in assuring of it into as near a conjunction as might be with Himself and in dispensing and communicating himself to Man in a way as far correspondent and agreeable as might be to that first Copy And therefore we are told of Christ being formed in us and the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us of our being made conformable to him of having fellowship with him of being as he was in this world of living in him and his living in us of dying and rising again and ascending with him into Heaven and the like because indeed the same Spirit that dwelt in him derives it self in its mighty Virtue and Energy through all believing Souls shaping them more and more into a just resemblance and conformitie to him as the first Copy Pattern Whence it is that we have so many waies of unfolding the Union between Christ and all Believers set forth in the Gospel And all this is done for us by degrees through the efficacy of the Eternal spirit when by a true Faith we deny our selves and our own Wills submit our seves in a deep sense of our own folly and weakness to his Wisdome and Power comply with his Will and by a holy affiance in him subordinate our selves to his pleasure for these are the Vital acts of a Gospel-Faith And according to this which hath been said I
true face of Vertue and a good Bodily temperament will serve it as a flattering glass to bestow beauty upon a deformed and mis-shapen Mind that it may seem vertuous But it is not a true Spirit of Religion whatsoever those wanton wits may call it that is thus Particular and confin'd No that is of a subtile and working nature it will be searching through the whole man and leave nothing uninformed by it self as it is with the Soul that runs through all the portions of Matter and every member of the Body Sin and Grace cannot lodge together they cannot divide and share out between them two several Dominions in one Soul What is commonly said of Truth in general we may say more especially of true Goodness magna est praevalebit it will lodge in the Souls of men like that mighty though gentle Heat which is entertained in the Heart that alwaies dispenseth warm Bloud and Spirits to all the members in the Body it will not suffer any other Interest to grow by it it will be so absolute as to swallow up all our carnal freedom and crush down all our fleshly liberty as Moses his Serpent did eate up all the Serpents of the Egyptian Magicians so will it devour all that viperous brood of iniquity which our Magical Self-will by her witchcraft and enchantments begets within us like a strong and vehement Flame within us it will not only singe the hair or scorch and blister the skin but it will go on to consume this whole Body of death it is compared by our Saviour to Leaven that will ferment the whole mass in which it is wrap'd up it will enter into us like the Refiner's fire and the Fuller's Soape like the Angel of God's presence that he promised to send along with the Israelites in their journy to Canaan it will not pardon our iniquities nor indulge any darling lust whatsoever it will narrowly pry into all our actions and be spying out all those back-waies and dores whereby Sin and Vice may enter That Religion that runs out only in Particularities and is overswayed by the prevailing power of any Lust is but only a dead carkass and not indeed that true living Religion which comes from Heaven and which will not suffer it self to be confin'd that will not indent with us or article upon our tearms and conditions but Sampson like will break all those bonds which our fleshly and harlot-like wills would tie it with and become every way absolute within us And so I pass to the Second thing wherein men are apt to delude themselves in taking an Estimate of their own Religion viz. CHAP. III. The Second Mistake about Religion viz. A meer complyance of the Outward man with the Law of God True Religion seats it self in the Centre of mens Souls and first brings the Inward man into Obedience to the Law of God the Superficial Religion intermeddles chiefly with the Circumference and Outside of men or rests in an outward abstaining from some Sins Of Speculative and the most close and Spiritual wickedness within How apt men are to sink all Religion into Opinions and External Forms A Mere compliance of the Outward man with the Law of God There is an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Philosophy hath acknowledged as well as our Christian Divinity and when Religion seats it self in the Centre of mens Souls it acts there most strongly upon the Vital powers of it and first brings the Inward man into a true and chearfull obedience to the law of God before all the seditious and rebellious motives of the External or Animal man be quite subdued But a Superficial Religion many times intermeddles only with the Circumference and Outside of men it only lodges in the suburbs and storms the out-works but enters not the main Fort of mens Souls which is strongly defended by inward Pride Self-will particular and mundane Loves fretting and self-consuming Envy Popularity and Vain-glory and such other Mental vices that when they are beaten out of the visible behaviours and conversations of men by Divine threats or promises which may be too potent to be controll'd retreat and secure themselves here as in a strong Castle There may be many who dare not pursue Revenge and yet are not willing to forgive injuries who dare not murther their enemy that yet cannot love him who dare not seek for preferment by Bribery who yet are not mortified to these and many other mundane and base-born affections they are not willing that the Divine prerogative should extend it self beyond the Outward man and that Religion should be too busie with their Inward thoughts and passions if they may not by proud boasting set off their own sorry commodities upon the publick stage and there read out their own Panegyricks yet they will inwardly applaud themselves and commit wanton dalliance with their own Parts and Perfections and not feeling the mighty power of any Higher good they will endeavour to preserve an unhallowed Autaesthesie and feeling sense of themselves and by a sullen melancholy Stoicisme when Religion would deprive and bereave them of the sinfull glory and pleasures of this Outward world they then retire and shrink themselves up into a Centre of their own they collect and contract themselves into themselves Thus when this low life of mens Souls is chased out of the External vices and vanities of this World by the chastisements of their own Consciences or many times by bodily oppressions it presently retires into it self and by a Self-feeling begins more to grasp and dearly embrace it self When these External loves begin to be starved and cooled yet men may then fall into love with and courting of themselves by Arrogancy Self-confidence and dependence Self-applause and gratulations Admiration of their own perfections and so feed that dying life of theirs with this Speculative wantonness that it may as strongly express it self within them as before it did without themselves Men may by inward braving of themselves sacrilegiously steal God's glory from him and erect a Self-supremacy within exerting it self in Self-will and particular loves and so become Corrivals with God for the Crown of Blessedness and Self-sufficiency as I doubt many of the Stoicks endeavoured with a Giant-like ambition to doe But alas I doubt we generally arrive not to this pitch of Religion to deny the world and all the pomp and glory of this largely-extended train of Vanity but we easily content our selves with some External forms of Religion We are too apt to look at a garish dress and attire of Religion or to be enamoured rather with some more specious and seemingly-spiritual Forms then with the true Spirit Power of Godliness Religion it self We are more taken commonly with the several new fashions that the luxuriant Fancies of men are apt to contrive for it then with the real power and simplicity thereof and while we think our selves to be growing in our
be pleniores Deo then those that are really inform'd and actuated by the Divine Spirit and do move on steddily and constantly in the way towards Heaven as the Seed that was sown in the thorny ground grew up and lengthened out its blade faster then that which was sown in the good and fruitfull soil And as the Motions of our Sense Fancy and Passions while our Souls are in this mortal condition sunk down deeply into the Body are many times more vigorous and make stronger impressions upon us then those of the Higher powers of the Soul which are more subtile and remote from these mixt and Animal perceptions that Devotion which is there seated may seem to have more Energy and life in it then that which gently and with a more delicate kind of touch spreads it self upon the Understanding and from thence mildly derives it self through our Wills Affections But howsoever the Former may be more boisterous for a time yet This is of a more consistent spermatical and thriving nature For that proceeding indeed from nothing else but a Sensual and Fleshly apprehension of God and true Happiness is but of a flitting and fading nature and as the Sensible powers and faculties grow more languid or the Sun of Divine light shines more brightly upon us these earthly devotions like our Culinary fires will abate their heat and servour But a true Celestial warmth will never be extinguish'd because it is of an Immortal nature and being once seated vitally in the Souls of men it will regulate and order all the motions of it in a due manner as the natural Heat radicated in the Hearts of living creatures hath the dominion and Oeconomy of the whole Body under it and sends forth warm Bloud and Spirits and Vital nourishment to every part and member of it True Religion is no piece of artifice it is no boiling up of our Imaginative powers nor the glowing heats of Passion though these are too often mistaken for it when in our juglings in Religion we cast a mist before our own eyes But it is a new Nature informing the Souls of men it is a God-like frame of Spirit discovering it self most of all in Serene and Clear minds in deep Humility Meekness Self-denial Universal love of God and all true Goodness without Partiality and without Hypocrisie whereby we are taught to know God and knowing him to love him and conform our selves as much as may be to all that Perfection which shines forth in him THUS far the First part of this Discourse which was designed according to the Method propounded to give a particular account of mens Mistakes about Religion The other part was intended to discover the reason of these Mistakes But whether the Author did finish that Part it appears not by any Papers of his which yet came to my hands If he did and the Papers should be in others hands for the Author was communicative if they or any other Papers of the Authors be sent to M r William Morden Bookseller in Cambridge the like care shall be taken for the publishing of them as hath been for this Collection THE EXCELLENCY and NOBLENESS OF TRUE RELIGION 1. In its Rise and Original 2. In its Nature and Essence 3. In its Properties and Operations 4 In its Progress 5. In its Term and End Psalm 16. 3. To the Saints that are in the earth and to the excellent in whom is all my delight Greg. Nazianzenus in Orat. 11. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Idem in Orat. 23. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hieronymus ad Celantiam Ep. 14. Nescit Religio nostra personas accipere nec conditiones hominum sed animos inspicit singulorum Servum Nobilem de moribus pronunciat Sola apud Deum Libertas est non servire peccatis Summa apud Deum est Nobilitas clarum esse virtutibus THE EXCELLENCY and NOBLENESS OF TRUE RELIGION Proverbs 15. 24. The Way of life is above to the wise that he may depart from hell beneath The Introduction IN this whole Book of the Proverbs we find Solomon one of the Eldest Sons of Wisdom alwaies standing up and calling her blessed his Heart was both enlarged and fill'd with the pure influences of her beams and therefore was perpetually adoring that Sun which gave him light Wisdome is justified of all her Children though the brats of darkness and children of folly see no beauty nor comeliness in her that they should desire her as they said of Christ Esay 53. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That Mind which is not touch'd with an inward sense of Divine Wisdom cannot estimate the true Worth of it But when Wisdom once displays its own excellencies and glories in a purified Soul it is entertained there with the greatest love and delight and receives its own image reflected back to it self in sweetest returns of Love and Praise We have a clear manifestation of this sacred Sympathy in Solomon whom we may not unfitly call Sapientiae Organum an Instrument which Wisdom herself had tuned to play her divine Lessons upon his words were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 every where full of Divine sweetness matched with strength and beauty 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or as himself phraseth it like apples of gold in pictures of Silver The mind of a Proverb is to utter Wisdom in a Mystery as the Apostle sometime speaks and to wrap up Divine Truth in a kind of Aenigmatical way though in vulgar expressions Which method of delivering Divine doctrine not to mention the Writings of the ancient Philosophers we find frequently pursued in the Holy Scripture thereby both opening and hiding at once the Truth which is offered to us A Proverb or Parable being once unfolded by reason of its affinity with the Phancy the more sweetly insinuates it self into that and is from thence with the greater advantage transmitted to the Understanding In this state we are not able to behold Truth in its own Native beauty and lustre but while we are vail'd with mortality Truth must vail it self too that it may the more freely converse with us S. Austin hath well assign'd the reason why we are so much delighted with Metaphors Allegories c. because they are so much proportioned to our Senses with which our Reason hath contracted an intimacy and familiarity And therefore God to accommodate his Truth to our weak capacities does as it were embody it in Earthly expressions according to that ancient Maxim of the Cabbalists Lumen Supernum nunquam descendit fine indumento agreeable to which is that of Dionysius Areop not seldom quoted by the School-men Impossibile est nobis aliter lucere radium Divinum nisi varietate sacrorum velaminum circumvelatum His words in the Greek are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thus much by way of Preface or Introduction to these words being one of Solomon's excellent Proverbs viz. The way of life is above to the wise Without any mincing or
the Epicure by his inferior and Earthly part but by an Immortal Essence and that of him which is from above and so does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 climbe up to the height of that Immortal principle which is within him The Stoicks thought no man a fit Auditor of their Ethicks till he were dispossess'd of that Opinion That Man was nothing but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as professing to teach men how to live only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they speak Perhaps their Divinity was in some things too rigid but I am sure a Good man acts the best of this their doctrine in the best sense and knows better how to reverence himself without any Self-flattery or admiration then ever any Stoick did He principally looks upon himself as being what he is rather by his Soul then by his Body he values himself by his Soul that Being which hath the greatest affinity with God and so does not seek himself in the fading Vanities of this life nor in those poor and low delights of his Senses as wicked men doe but as the Philosopher doth well express it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and when the Soul thus retires into it self and views its own worth and Excellency it presently finds a chast and Virgin-love stirr'd up within it self towards it self and is from within the more excited and obliged 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Simplicius speaks to mind the preserving of its own dignity and glory To conclude this Particular A Good man endeavours to walk by Eternal and Unchangeable Rules of Reason Reason in a Good man sits in the Throne governs all the Powers of his Soul in a sweet harmony and agreement with it self whereas Wicked men live only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being led up and down by the foolish fires of their own Sensual apprehensions In wicked men there is a Democracy of wild Lusts and Passions which violently hurry the Soul up and down with restless motions All Sin and Wickedness is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Sedition stirred up in the Soul by the Sensitive Powers against Reason It was one of the great Evils that Solomon saw under the Sun Servants on horseback and Princes going as servants upon the ground We may find the Moral of it in every wicked man whose Souls are only as Servants to wait upon their Senses In all such men the whole Course of Nature is turned upside down and the Cardinal points of Motion in this little world are changed to contrary positions But the Motions of a Good man are Methodical Regular and Concentrical to Reason It 's a fond imagination that Religion should extinguish Reason whenas Religion makes it more illustrious and vigorous and they that live most in the exercise of Religion shall find their Reason most enlarged I might adde that Reason in relation to the capacitating of Man for converse with God was thought by some to be the Formal Difference of Man Plutarch after a large debate whether Brutes had not Reason in them as well as Man concludes it negatively upon this ground Because they had no knowledge and sense of the Deity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In Tully's account this Capableness of Religion seem'd to be nothing different from Rationality and therefore he doubts not to give this for the most proper Characterism of Reason That it is Vinculum Dei Hominis And so with them not to name others of the same apprehensions animal Rationale animal capax Religionis seem'd to be of the like importance Reason as enabling and fitting Man to converse with God by knowing him and loving him being a character most unquestionably differencing Man from Brute creatures 3. A Good man one that is informed by True Religion lives above himself and is raised to an intimate Converse with the Divinity He moves in a larger Sphere then his own Being and cannot be content to enjoy himself except he may enjoy God too and himself in God This we shall consider two ways 1. In the Self-denial of Good men they are content and ready to deny themselves for God I mean not that they should deny their own Reason as some would have it for that were to deny a Beam of Divine light and so to deny God in stead of denying our selves for him It is better resolved by some Philosophers in this point that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to follow Reason is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to follow God and again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But by Self-denial I mean the Soul 's quitting all its own interest in it self and an entire Resignation of it self to him as to all points of service and duty and thus the Soul loves it self in God and lives in the possession not so much of its own Being as of the Divinity desiring only to be great in God to glory in his Light and spread it self in his Fulness to be fill'd alwaies by him and to empty it self again into him to receive all from him and to expend all for him and so to live not as its own but as God's The highest ambition of a Good man is to serve the Will of God he takes no pleasure in himself nor in any thing within himself further then he sees a stamp of God upon it Whereas wicked men are imprisoned within the narrow circumference of their own Beings and perpetually frozen into a cold Self-love which binds up all the Innate vigour of their Souls that it cannot break forth or express it self in any noble way The Soul in which Religion rules saies as S. Paul did I live and yet not I but Christ liveth in me On the contrary a Wicked man swells in his own thoughts and pleaseth himself more or less with the imagination of a Self-sufficiency The Stoicks seeing they could not raise themselves up to God endeavour to bring down God to their own Model imagining the Deity to be nothing else but some greater kind of Animal and a Wise man to be almost one of his Peers And this is more or less the Genius of Wicked men they will be something in themselves they wrap up themselves in their own Being move up and down in a Sphere of Self-love live a professed Independency upon God and maintain a Meum Tuum between God and themselves It 's the Character only of a Good man to be able to deny and disown himself and to make a full surrender of himself unto God forgetting himself and minding nothing but the Will of his Creator triumphing in nothing more then in his own Nothingness and in the Allness of the Divinity But indeed this his being Nothing is the only way to be all things this his having nothing the truest way of possessing all things 2. As a Good man lives above himself in a way of Self-denial so he lives also above himself as he lives in the Enjoyment of God and this is the very Soul and Essence of True Religion to unite the Soul in
consist in Bodily pleasure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and when the molestation is gone and the just constitution of Nature recovered Pleasure ceaseth But the highest Pleasure of Minds and Spirits does not onely consist in the relieving of them from any antecedent pains or grief or in a relaxation from some former molesting Passion neither is their Happiness a mere Stoical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Happiness of the Deity is not a mere Negative thing rendring it free from all disturbance or molestation so that it may eternally rest quiet within it self it does not so much consist in Quiete as in Actu vigore A Mind and Spirit is too full of activity and energy is too quick and potent a thing to enjoy a full and complete Happiness in a mere Cessation this were to make Happiness an heavy Spiritless thing The Philosopher hath well observ'd that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is infinite power and strength in Divine joy pleasure and happiness commensurate to that Almighty Being and Goodness which is the Eternal source of it As Created Beings that are capable of conversing with God stand nearer to God or further off from him and as they partake more or less of his likeness so they partake more or less of that Happiness which flows forth from him and God communicates himself in different degrees to them There may be as many degrees of Sanctity and Perfection as there are of States and Conditions of Creatures and that is properly Sanctity which guides and orders all the Faculties and Actions of any Creature in a way suitable and correspondent to that rank and state which God hath placed it in and while it doth so it admits no sin or defilement to it self though yet it may be elevated and advanced higher and accordingly true Positive Sanctity comes to be advanced higher and higher as any Creature comes more to partake of the life of God and to be brought into a nearer conjunction with God and so the Sanctity and Happiness of Innocency it self might have been perfected Thus we see how True Religion carries up the Souls of Good men above the black regions of Hell and Death This indeed is the great 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Souls it is Religion it self or a reall participation of God and his Holiness which is their true restitution and advancement All that Happiness which Good men shall be made partakers of as it cannot be born up upon any other foundation then true Goodness and a Godlike nature within them so neither is it distinct from it Sin and Hell are so twined and twisted up together that if the power of Sin be once dissolv'd the bonds of Death and Hell will also fall asunder Sin and Hell are of the same kind of the same linage and descent as on the other side True Holiness or Religion and True Happiness are but two severall Notions of one thing rather then distinct in themselves Religion delivers us from Hell by instating us in a possession of True Life and Blisse Hell is rather a Nature then a Place and Heaven cannot be so truly defined by any thing without us as by something that is within us Thus have we done with those Particulars wherein we considered the Excellency and Nobleness of Religion which is here exprest by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The way of life and elsewhere is stiled by Solomon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A tree of life true Religion being an inward Principle of life of a Divine life the best life that which is Life most properly so called accordingly in the Holy Scripture a life of Religion is stiled Life as a life of Sin and Wickedness is stiled Death In the ancient Academical Philosophy it was much disputed whether that Corporeal and Animal life which was always drawing down the Soul into Terrene and Material things was not more properly to be Stiled Death then Life What sense hereof the Pythagoreans had may appear by this practise of theirs They were wont to set up 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Empty coffins in the places of those that had forsaken their School and degenerated from their Philosophy and good Precepts as being Apostates from life it self and dead to Vertue and a good life which is the true life therefore fit only to be reckoned among the dead For a Conclusion of this Discourse The Use which we shall make of all shall be this To awaken and exhort every one to a serious minding of Religion as Solomon doth earnestly exhort every one to seek after true Wisedome which is the same with Religion and Holiness as Sin is with Folly Prov. 4. 5. Get Wisedome get understanding and v. 7. Get Wisedome and with all thy getting get understanding Wisedome is the principal thing This is the summe of all the Conclusion of the whole matter Fear God and keep his Commandements for this is the whole duty business and concernment of man Let us not trifle away our time and opportunities which God hath given us wherein we may lay hold upon Life and Immortality in doing nothing or else pursuing Hell and Death Let us awake out of our vain dreams Wisedome calls upon us and offers us the hidden treasures of Life and Blessedness Let us not perpetually deliver over our selves to laziness and slumbering Say not There is a lion in the way say not Though Religion be good yet it is unattainable No but let us intend all our Powers in a serious resolv'd pursuance of it and depend upon the assistance of Heaven which never fails those that soberly seek for it It is indeed the Levity of mens spirits their heedlesseness and regardlesseness of their own lives that betrays them to Sin and Death It is the general practice of men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 extempore vivere as the Satyrist speaks they ordinarily ponderate and deliberate upon every thing more then how it becomes them to live they so live as if their Bodies had swallowed up their Souls their lives are but a kind of Lottery the Principles by which they are guided are nothing else but a confused multitude of Fancies rudely jumbled together Such is the life of most men it is but a meer Casual thing acted over at peradventure without any fair and calm debates held either with Religion or with Reason which in it self as it is not distorted and depraved by corrupt men is a true Friend to Religion and directs men to God and to things good and just pure lovely and praise-worthy and the directions of this Inward guide we are not to neglect Unreasonableness or the smothering and extinguishing the Candle of the Lord within us is no piece of Religion nor advantageous to it That certainly will not raise men up to God which sinks them below men There had never been such an Apostasy from Religion nor had such a Mystery of iniquity full of deceiveableness and imposture been revealed and wrought so powerfully in the Souls of
besets us and run with patience the race that is set before us Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith who is set down at the right hand of the throne of God as a great and mighty Conquerour who will declare the perfection of his own power in our weakness if we lay hold of his strength Though we are not able to change our own natures or to rise above the source of our Animall and Selfish Beings by our own power yet let us endeavour to subdue all those External vices of Luxury and Wantonnesse of Injustice Revenge and the like let us withdraw the fewel of Pride Malice Vain-glory and whatsoever else holds us in captivity to Hell and with confidence apply our selves to him who is an Almighty Saviour and when he joyns his Almighty strength with us we need not fear any thing He shall tread down Satan under our feet and we shall one day tread upon the Lion and Adder the young Lion and the Dragon shall we trample under our feet we shall break the Serpent's head though he may bruise our heel Though God may suffer him so far to serve his own rage and the hellish malice of such as are in league with him as to pull down with violence our earthly Tabernacles yet while we so suffer by him we are conquerors over him I should now conclude all and leave you with this General application but that the present Occasion hath drawn it down for me to a particular case Did we not live in a world of professed wickedness wherein so many mens Sins goe in open view before them to judgement it might be thought needless to perswade men to resist the Devil when he appears in his own colours to make merchandise of them and comes in a formal way to bargain with them for their Souls that which humane nature however enthrall'd to Sin and Satan in a more mysterious way abhors and none admit but those who are quite degenerated from humane kind That which I shall further adde shall be by way of Caution onely to suggest two things which are the forerunners to such Diabolical contracts and put temptations into the hands of the Tempter 1. Those Hellish passions of Malice Envy and Revenge which are the black Form and Image of the Devil himself these when they are once ripened fit men for the most Formal converse with the Devil that may be That nature cannot easily abhorr him which is so perfectly conformed to him 2 ly The use of any Arts Rites or Ceremonies not understood of which we can give no Rational or Divine account this indeed is nothing else but a kind of Magick which the Devil himself owns and gives life to though he may not be corporeally present or require presently any further Covenant from the users of them The Devil no question is present to all his own Rites and Ceremonies though men discern him not and may upon the use of them secretly produce those Effects which may gain credit to them Among these Rites we may reckon Insignificant forms of words with their several modes and manner of pronunciation Astrelogical arts and whatsoever else pretends to any strange Effects which we cannot with good reason either ascribe to God or Nature As God will onely be convers'd withall in a way of Light and Understanding so the Devil loves to be convers'd with in a way of Darkness and Obscurity The End A SERMON PREACHED AT THE FUNERAL OF M r JOHN SMITH late Fellow of Queens College in Cambridge who departed this life Aug. 7. 1652. And lyes interred in the Chappel of the same College WITH A SHORT ACCOUNT of his Life and Death BY SIMON PATRICK then Fellow of Queens College Prov. 10. 7. The memory of the Just is blessed 2 KINGS 2. 12. And Elisha saw it and he cryed My Father My Father the Chariot of Israel and the Horsemen thereof WHen I saw the blessed Spirit of our Brother shall I say or our Father making hast out of that Body which lyes before us these words which I have now read came into my Mind And methought I saw the good Genius of this place which inspired us with so much sense of Learning and Goodness taking its flight and leaving this lower world At whom my Soul catch'd as I fansied Elisha to have done at Elijah and I cryed out O my Father My Father c. Desirous I was me-thought that his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 might have been a little while deferr'd that I might have stai'd the wheels of that Triumphant chariot wherein he seemed to be carried that we might have kept him a little longer in this world till by his holy breathings into our Souls and the Grace of God we had been all made meet to have some share in that inheritance of the Saints in light and so he might have gone to Heaven with his Train taking all his Friends along with him as Attendants to that Glory and Honour wherewith I make no doubt he is crowned It grieved me in my thoughts that there should be so many Orphans left without a Father a Society left naked without one of her best Guardians and Chieftains her very Chariot and Horsemen unto whose instruction and brave conduct not a few of us will acknowledge that they owe much of their skill and abilities For I do not fear to say as Antoninus doth of the Best man that he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Priest or Minister of God's who was very subservient to him in his great work If he was not a Prophet like Elijah yet I am sure he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Gr. Nazianzen I think speaks of S. Basil an Interpreter of the Spirit and very well acquainted with his mind a man sent down from heaven for our good and is now gone thither from whence he came leaving us behind him here a company of poor Fatherless children the Sons of this Prophet weeping and crying out O my Father my Father the Chariot of Israel and the Horsemen thereof Which sad note would have been most fitly sung just at the Ascension of his holy Soul yet give me leave to descant a while upon it now that we are come to inter his Body which was the dark Shadow where that admirable and illustrious Learning Wisdome and Godliness walk'd up and down and shone through upon the world You will easily see at the first glance that Something will here offer it self to be said of Elijah and Something of Elisha Of Elijah in that he is called Father the Chariot and Horsemen of Israel of Elisha in that he applies this relation to himself saying My Father My Father Concerning Elijah we may observe First His Superiority Eminency and Dignity Secondly His singular Care which he took of others Thirdly His great Usefulness or the Benefit which his Country enjoyed by him Concerning Elisha we may observe the Expression of Three things likewise First Of his great Affection