Selected quad for the lemma: soul_n
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A52535
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A discourse of natural and reveal'd religion in several essays, or, The light of nature a guide to divine truth.
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Nourse, Timothy, d. 1699.
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1691
(1691)
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Wing N1417; ESTC R16135
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159,871
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385
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to receive the Grievances of the People and to Administer Justice promising withal that if he ever came to the Crown he would redress such Abuses holding also a more intimate Correspondence with such as were disgrac'd and disgusted with the Court all which he receiv'd with great familiarity embracing them in his Arms and kissing them By these Arts of Popularity and Condescension he is said to have stoln or rather ravish'd the Hearts of David's People Such then were the Methods of former Times as well as of later Ages and such they will be to the end of the World And as these were human Policies so were they blown up too by the like human Artifice For Hushai the Archite a sure Friend of David's claps on a Mask for a time and gets within King Absalom by crying God save the King God save the King And when Absalom in a surly manner rallied him for abandoning his Soveraign Lord and Master Hushai with a Gentellesse non pareille with an unparallell'd softness and with the utmost Artifice of a double refin'd Courtier cajol'd Absalom in making God's Providence and the Consent of the People to be the ground and measure of his Allegiance saying Nay but whom the Lord and this People and all the men of Israel choose his will I be and with him will I abide 2 Sam. 16. And then subjoins whom should I serve should I not serve in the presence of his Son as I have serv'd in thy Father's presence so will I serve in thy presence For which seasonable and well manag'd Piece of Flattery or Court Loyalty he was admitted into the Number of Absalom's Privy Councellors and by that means did discover and defeat Achitophel's Advice which drew on the Restauration of his old Lord and Master Nay though God in these or any other Passages of the Old Testament had declar'd his Will in the most ample manner imaginable concerning such Revolutions and that they were brought to pass by him of his deliberate Appointment and Institution in the same manner as any other Positive Law whatsoever yet is not this any good Argument to prove such Alterations in other Nations to be de jure divino For the Jewish Government was a Theocracy or Government where God did visibly preside raising up Judges Deliverers and Prophets by his special Inspiration from time to time even from the Children of Israel's leaving Egypt to the days of Samuel Then indeed it was that the People desiring to be like the rest of the Nations round about them Petition'd for a King which shews though it were not according to God's Counsel and Good-liking as God himself testified saying that in asking for a King they did reject him from being their King yet so it was that God hearkned to them where by the way we may observe how God acted in this Alteration of the Jewish Government conformably to the Wills and previous Inclinations of the People naming the Person to them whom he caus'd to be Anointed so that 't was not here as 't was in other Kingdoms which were Elective or Hereditary for God Translated the Kingdom from the House of Saul to the House of David nor did Adonijah David's Elder Son succeed but Solomon the like Interruption of Descent we may observe in others also And yet for all this no Man doubts but that in Kingdoms now adays the Hereditary Descent of the Crown in a right Line is very Consonant to the Law of God and he that should produce the Examples of the Jewish Successions to the contrary would be lookt upon as a Mad-man The Ordinary Method by which God now adays does govern these Affairs is by the Civil Laws and Sanctions of a Kingdom and the Suffrages of the People not excluding the Law of Nature which gives Precedence to Primogeniture These Ordinances we are sure do proceed from the God of Order whatsoever falls out otherwise must be lookt upon as extraordinary and out of the common Road. But some will say That the most high ruleth in the Kingdom of men and he giveth it to whomsoever he will Dan. 4. 17. And truly by as good Authority may a Thief take away my Cattel Put the Case then that a Thief were Arraign'd for stealing and Pleading not Guilty the Court should ask him how he would be try'd By the Word of God says the Thief as H. Peters answer'd in something a worse Case How says the Judge have you the Word of God on your side yes says the Thief for I have the Cattel jure divino Prove that quoth the Judge Why thus quoth the Thief The Lord taketh away and the Lord giveth therefore 't is the Lord who gave me the Cattel nor did he give any thing but what was his own for it is written of him Psalm 50. Mine are the Cattel upon a thousand hills Would such a Plea of my knavish Sophister pass Muster think you No verily for the Jury doubtless if it were not a very Ignoramus one would find him Guilty and the Judge too would with a Jure Divino recommend them to the Gallowâ— The Case is perfectly the same in both these places of Scripture and the Thief is to the great Robber as the Pyrat was to Alexander And if such places as these may give Kings a Divine Right to their Crowns I cannot see but that Subjects too when they rebel against them and make them Prisoners have God also on their side for it is written of him That he bindeth their Kings in Chains c. and we know who they were who blasphemously applied it to the best of Kings this Nation ever enjoy'd And when all is done 't is but to cant it out to the old Tune This is the Lord 's doing and it is marvellous in our Eyes The Arguments taken from the New Testament have something more of difficulty in them being Preceptory as that of the thirteenth to the Romans where every Soul is required to be subject to the higher Powers for there is no Power but of God the Powers that be are ordained of God Whosoever therefore resisteth the Power resisteth the Ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation and a little after verse 5. we are required to be subject not only for Wrath but also for Conscience sake The like we meet 1 Epist of Peter c. 2. of submitting â—â—r selves to every Ordinance of Man for the Lord's sake To these I answer That the Powers or Ordinances which St. Paul speaks of were settled Governments and such as had all the Qualifications and Conditions requisite to Constitute a Legislative Power For St. Paul wrote his Epistle Anno Christi 59 and the 2d of Nero's So that there was now Bacon ad An. Christi 59. more than an Hundred Years past since the first Usurpation of Julius Caesar There was the Succession of Six Emperors of the Julian and Claudian Family in a Legal Descent and although Julius Caesar was a
and present Enjoyments Who would scruple to enrich himself by Fraud Robbery and Murder or to gratifie his Lusts by Rapes Adultery or any other Enormity were he sure there were no Punishnent to be met with after Death The consequence of which disorders could be no less than the subversions of all Property and Civil Government Upon these and such like Considerations we may in the last place observe that the wisest and most learned Men through all Ages and Countries of the World believ'd the Soul's Immortality such as Hermes and Pythagoras who by the few Fragments Hermes in Paenrand cap. 1. that are extant of him in Ancient Writers was of the same Belief Socrates at his Death adher d to this Belief also and resisted the Strength and Malignity of his Poison by this Antidote that his Soul shortly should enjoy the Society of the Vertuous and Blessed in the other World This Doctrine was much improv'd by Plato and his Followers especially Platinus who was the most learned of that Sect and who wrote ex professo divers learned Books upon this Argument the summ of which is that the Soul of Man is not deriv'd from the Nature of the Parents but immediately from God that though it subsist in the Body yet its Operations are independent on it Forasmuch as the Soul the more it withdraws it self from all sensible Objects the more distinct and clear is Ratiocination From whence we conclude that when it shall totally be separated it shall apprehend things in an instant by Intuition without the helps of reasoning by Ratiocination is nothing but a Combat of the Mind to evince something of which it doubts which doubtings spring from the gross and cloudy Suggestions and Obstacles of the Body from which being once deliver'd there will be no place left for Doubt and Hesitation As for the Stoicks their Doctrine seemed to lead them to a different persuasion since they plac'd all the Felicity of Man in the Practice of Vertue with regard to no other reward So that our Moral Actions ceasing as certainly they do after Death all is at an end And this Doctrine of theirs though it carried with it a great many of noble Sentiments yet it failing in the true end of Man's Felicity it oblig'd them to maintain a great number of Paradoxes in its defence whereas had they understood the Immortality of the Soul and future Rewards after Death that had been sufficient to have supported them in a vertuous course of life maugre all the disasters that might assault them and which these Philosophers endeavour'd to oppose by so many noble Precepts of their Doctrine Seneca in some places seems dubious yet in his Consolatory Epistle to Mercia upon the Death of his Son he is altogether Divine Epictetus also a Stoick and the Glory of his Sect and Age asserts every where the Soul's Immortality But above all Tully the Flower of Roman Tuscul Quaes lib. 1. Eloquence and himself a Philosopher of Plato's School is every where most Copious and Ravishing when he comes to speak of the Capacities and Future State of the Soul Many says he think the Eternity of Souls to be incredible because they cannot comprehend the essence and qualities of a separated Soul but can they let me ask them define what a Soul is even in the Body of what form it is what its dimensions are and what is the place of its abode And a little after for my own part when I seriously reflect upon the Nature of the Soul it seems to be much more difficult and obscure to know what the Soul is whilst it is in Conjunction with the Body where it seems to be lodg'd as in a foreign Inn than to understand the same when it quits the Lodging in which it sojourns and takes its Journey home-wards to Heaven the place of its constant Habitation For if we cannot understand that which we never saw we may as well disown all knowledge of God as of a separated Soul but Spirits are to be understood and known only by Spirits And by and by he concludes whatsoever that thing is which perceives which understands which wills which is always Vigorous and Masculine must needs be Celestial and Divine and therefore Eternal for we can form no other Notions of God but as of a Mind abstracted from all material Concretion understanding all things moving all things and being it self ended with an Eternal Activity All which the same Divine Oratour prosecutes most copiously in his Book de Senectute telling us that it was not the Itch of Disputation which drew him to this Persuasion but having built his Belief upon the Authorities of Pythagoras and Socrates he declares farther that such is the celerity of the Soul's Thoughts so great its Memory of past and foresight of future things so many are its Arts Sciences and other Inventions that 't is inpossible that the Nature which comprehends such excellent things should be Mortal and therefore since the Mind is always a working and has this principle of Motion from it self and knows also no period of its Motion because it can never divide from it self and serve the nature of the Soul is void of all Mixture and Allay and contains nothing heterogenious to it self he concludes that it must be indivisible and uncapable of Dissolution following as he says the Doctrine of Plato in this particular To Conclude he says that if I do err in this Belief of the Soul's Immortality I do err willfully nor will I ever retract this beloved Errour whilst I live or if it should be possible that being dead I should be void of all sense as some Minute Sophisters do fancy I shall not fear to be reproached by them Nor was this Doctrine of the Soul's Immortality the constant Belief of the wisest Greeks and Romans only but also of the Persians too as appears by the excellent Discourse of dying Cyrus upon this subject recorded by Xenophon And as for the Poets they universally tell us of a future State after Death wherein the Wicked shall be punish'd and the Just rewarded and what their sense was in this matter we may read in Lucan in that noble Description he makes of Pompey's Apotheosis From all which Considerations we have a most undeniable proof of its Eternal Verity It being impossible that a Doctrine established upon all the Principles of Reason of such an universal consent and believ'd by the wisest best and most learned Men of all Ages in opposition to all humane Interests and sensual Suggestions whatsoever should be the effect only of uncertain Conjecture or of a premeditated Collusion CHAP. XXVIII Of Natural Religion as a means to Salvation HAving shewn in the precedent Chapters of this Discourse that the wiser Heathen had not only a knowledge of the true God as the Creator and Preserver of the Universe but a knowledge also of the Immortality of the Soul and of a future State where good Men should receive