less than the quick and violent agitation of some Divine flame thawing all the vital parts and drawing the moisture through the chief and clearest Organ of the body the Eye and not to be caused by any thing which is part of it self I do agree that every living Soul whether arising from the Body or by a greater Divine gift infused into or sent to actuate a Body has equally in either some influence upon the visible Body and according as the affections with the imagination are moved worketh visible effects therein and that Man and Beast such as have their parts similar may and do equally tremble for fear and the like But yet as to this kind of motion or extasie mentioned that is weeping for I know not how to term that or laughter either a passion but both strange attendants or consequents of some kind of passions I cannot adjudge it to arise from the acceptance of a bare representation of an offensive object through sense but by some inward distinct conception of a Soul as of it self though at the same time agitated or rouzed by passion For if it were from the first barely then the same effect could never proceed from any pleasing object the contrary whereof we find and men to weep as well upon the predominancy of joy in the Soul as sorrow nay weeping is a concomitant often of a weak anger which not able otherwise to satiate or satisfie it self has this help to vanish and resolve into tears as may be observed in Women and Children Now tears being the attendant the effect as may seem to some of clean contrary passions such as joy and sorrow are they cannot really be the proper and bare effect of any passion nor the sole work of any such Spirit as is no other than the refined and most curious part of the Bloud For that were able to cause only different effects upon different occasions or representations and still the same effect upon the same occasion so far forth as we are able to look into the ordinary works of Nature Indeed salt brackish and chrystal tears flowing in that abundance as at some time is to be seen would puzzle the most learned Physician as well as a Poet to alledge a right fountain as well as a cause and wonder in searching after the original Spring-head of them in the Body If I should alledge or affirm Laughter to be some denotation or demonstration of a pure intellectual Spirit separable from a Body and no ways arising from any other single or primary cause then such I hope I should not incur the censure or become the subject of laughter to all men though I might to some By Laughter I do not mean a bare dilatation or contraction of the mouth or lips and other parts of the face such a kind of grinning as is incident to Apes and no less to Dogs and such as in the latter we term fawning a kind of habit or faculty some men take up for peculiar purposes as seeming pleased with others actions and sensible of some such involuntary motion voluntarily counterfeit one nor yet any agitation of the lungs with expulsion of breath and other odd motions of the Body in others whereby perhaps they would seem to please themselves But I mean an absolute involuntary motion upon some sudden slight pleasing touch of the Spirits by some bare conception in the intellect different in notion from what is represented by the senses It is a thing that differs much from true joy and is often extorted from men in their greatest griefs and sometimes tortures of Body as is storied of that Villain who murthered the Prince of Orange that in the midst of his pains and while he was tormented with burning Pincers for a confession laughed at the fall of a number of Spectators from a Scaffold It is one of the first unnecessary as I may say motions in Infants it is incident to wise men as well as foolish and old as well as young though not in the same measure or degree and is and happens sometimes as well sleeping as waking Now I do take it to arise properly and peculiarly from the intellect's judging on the sudden though that Judgment is not always aright of somewhat of folly lapse or oversight in a rational creature or some ill or shrewd turn happening thereupon which from prudence might have been prevented and have been done or acted otherwise and I do not judge it to arise unless we will allow something of voluntariness in it after the manner I spake before upon any sight or action proceeding from an irrational or brute creature Therefore I do think that I my self should not with Crassus the Grandfather of Marcus that wealthy Roman as is so storied of him and that he never laughed but that once have laughed at the beholding an Ass eating of Thistles I think the Beast does it with a great deal of Art to save the pricking of his mouth but had I seen a man smelling on a Thistle to gratifie that sense and thereby in pricking his Nose much more offended another I do think I should have laughed Now though laughter be a thing more incident to the Fool than the Wise whose clearer Judgment is best able to correct its rise yet it proceeds from apprehension of the intellect ready to judge at all turns and quickest often in that notion when weakest and may denote at once some kind of inherent wisdom together with folly or frenzy in man that we being created to act most regularly and prudently from a disturbed intellect become often the most giddily erring and foolishest of creatures so as if Solomon said of mirth what doth it he might well say of laughter It is mad As for Speech which is a power or ability the Soul has so to move the Tongue and other Organs of the Body that from thence shall result such a modulation of the Air that each rational Soul from an articulate voice might apprehend others meaning and intent This formation of words made to be the Idea of the mind appears not nor could ever break out from the earthly extracted Soul of other creatures not that there is any absolute defect in their Organs for then no other Spirit could frame an articulate voice by them and we must deny the Devil 's speaking in the Serpent and some other Spirit for a time in Balaam's Beast for they have curious and admirable Notes and some of them have framed as plain a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with many other words as man can utter which has been a resultance from the ear when they were taught but no Index of the mind This gift and power of Speech I say is the chief outward livery badge or cognizance of the Soul by which Mankind is distinguished from and hath the advantage of all other creatures Brutes do indeed fellow together and apprehend and if I may so say understand one another by signs
led into the paths of truth and righteousness and become acquainted with his will And this we look upon as effected by his Holy Spirit through his Word one God blessed for ever Such new accession of light and such a blessed gift as this were the Writers of Holy Scripture no doubt endowed withal whose words and actions were in demonstration of the spirit and with power the effects whereof we have heard and beheld and felt in a great part of this visible world Now for that we have a promise this admirable strange effect in man shall not wholly cease but that God will be with us to the end of the world and we talk much now a days of the light of the Holy Spirit It may not be amiss since we have a caveat Not to believe every spirit and withall authority given us to try the spirits whether they are of God for every man to try his own spirit at least and see whether that of it self already sent be not the spirit only which he often mistakes and vouches for the immediate dictates of the Almighty and calls it a new light the spirit of God within him and so becomes a little too bold with the Almighty I am afraid it has in some men and that many a man has so little understood himself and less his Maker that he has mistaken the suddain and strange flashes of some kind of lightning from his own inherent affections for another spirit which feeding with conceit he has brought to such a flame in himself that at last his reason has given place and approved it to be something more than what is under its regiment or correction even the light of that spirit of truth whereas did a man by his reason keep a narrow watch over his affections it might observe every the most ordinary affection able to raise its peculiar spirit that is such a flame in the soul as with the assistance of the imagination shall hurry it with the body in obedience to it and force reason into a belief for the present that its motion is from the light of truth of which in time it may stand convinced to have been mislead and misguided We do not improperly call the product of that predominant affection in man Pride the spirit of pride and the consequent thereof the spirit of contradiction and these may be the spirits which for the present enthral our reason and make us believe better of our selves than others do of us and think God worketh in us immediately and of his gracious dispensation that which is effected by our own spirit through his most just and wise providence To exclude God that is One eternal omnipotent wise working spirit out of any action especially that which is good might prove of evil and dangerous consequence Yet since his way is in the sea his paths in the great waters and his footsteps are not known as is expressed We may be too presumptuous in being too confident of the knowledge of his present manner of working in our selves I do own it is he that hath endowed us all with an intellectual mind or Soul and given some of us that strength of reason which is in some measure capable to search after him and behold some of his ways and doubtless many of the heathen were not excluded from such a sight and he has enlightened others by his holy spirit to declare unto us his good will and pleasure which we call his Word And to others of us has he by that Holy spirit with which those holy Writers were inspired given grace to lay hold on that word and all the promises therein Notwithstanding which and a saving faith at the last we may not for the present safely challenge that good spirit of God to be the sole or chief guide of all our thoughts and actions for if it were so then were it impossible for us to err as I conceive which daily we do and grieve that Holy spirit as is expressed by which we are sealed to the day of redemption There are as I of my weakness am best able to conceive for I never saw or searched Writers on such subject either towards the enlightning or confirming me therein four more especial ways by which God worketh over us and in us 1. By his common and ordinary Providence 2. By his merciful Providence 3. By his liberal and bountiful Providence 4. By his Spirit His ordinary providence I call that which extends over all the works of his creation as well irrational as rational which though irrational bodies are no ways sensible of or its working yet has he therein an eye over them in their bodily preservation and feedeth the young ravens that call upon him And within this care or eye of his are we comprized too and no way excluded By his merciful providence I mean his withholding us from committing those enormous crimes to which we are prone by nature through the lusts of the flesh even against the very light of reason which thing perhaps you will term his common restraining grace and this he extends to Heathens as well as others as may be observed in the story of Abimelech and his withholding him from touching of Sarah By his liberal and bountiful providence I mean this That God having endowed our souls with that more than ordinary gift of reason by which we seem originally capable in some degree or measure to discern good from evil He more especially overlooks that gift of his and more especially worketh therein towards the enlightning thereof So that of his bounty and goodness alone it is that our humane reason is at any time brought to a clearer sight than ordinary of justice mercy temperance patience or the like and beholds the beauty thereof above their contraries whereby we imbrace them with our affections and this I hope I may without offence allow the name of his Common renewing grace to In which sence or notion if any shall alledge his capacity of coming to the knowledg of the present work of the spirit of God in him I mean not to contradict him because I behold every mans reason his rational soul to be in some sence the spirit of God which being enlightned from him a-new for the inclining the affections to imbrace that which is morally good we may more properly say then 'T is the spirit of God that worketh in us But many Heathens as well as Christians have doubtless in great measure participated of this grace for so I call it now it being from the mere good will and pleasure of God without any motive or inducement from man and owned the same to be his good work in them and yet never otherwise enlightned missed of the truth and could not be said to have any light from his Holy spirit but to err even to perdition notwithstanding the aforementioned grace I and justly to perish too For such is the wise just disposition
Heaven if I understand the word nor that reason can demonstrate what God is though it may tell us what God is not And therefore I think reason may be as well too blame for marching too far or soaring too high for its learning or knowledg as sitting quite still or groveling on the earth and permitting the imagination to introduce what forms of a Deity will or best may gratify any the most predominant present affection an habit which has been too much in fashion of late and now a little withdrawing makes way for the other excess I may have said too much my self in this little it has exceeded my original intent and purpose yet this further I must say and begg your pardon and others who shall chance to see it if I say amiss that my wishes are we may all in this great concern carefully avoid extreams and that as we do not set up such a God by faith as reason is able daily to confront so we set not up such a God by reason as there needs no faith to lay hold on For my weak opinion is nay my present resolution is As never wholly to desert my reason for the adoration of any God So never to adore any thing for God my reason is able fully to comprehend EPIST. II. Wherein he treats of the cause of Action or Motion under the notion of Spirit and endeavours to shew our often mistakes in applying our thoughts and actions to the operation of that Spirit of truth in us which though good in themselves may proceed from other cause and advises to solitude at particular seasons as the most ready and likely way to behold in some degree the light of truth BEcause Soul or Spirit hath been heretofore at special seasons the subject of my thoughts and because there are many amongst us who would seem to have great knowledge of a Deity and may be thought too familiar with God under a colour or pretence of being daily enlightened with his Holy Spirit affirming its constant working in them And others quite Aliens and strangers to God not barely by their life and conversation but by their outward profession too and who deny in words as much or more than in the deeds that there is any such thing as a Spirit which in St. Iohn our Saviour tells us God is and that what we term Spirit is a mere Chimaera fansied in our brains Both which kind of persons being equally to modest Society and civil conversation and I may say enemies to true Religion I have adventured with all submission to your more weighty thoughts and solid judgement to present you with my sometimes opinion in reference to what we most properly and peculiarly term Spirit and wherein I say ought in relation to that Spirit of truth I humbly implore its aid that nothing escape my Pen which may in any wise if seen lead others into error or in the least diminish the goodness power glory might Majesty c. dominion of the Almighty First I have thought and do think That we can not rationally attribute or impute the cause of any action or motion whatsoever to ought else than somewhat which we in no wise able to comprehend by our sense term or call a Spirit and that without some such thing the world were an insignificant Lump That from such thing all things live and move and have their being is not to be doubted whether we call it Nature or ought else This Spirit gone forth or sent into the visible world which now has visible effects as I take it to be some emission of that Eternal spirit at the Creation from the Word so I think it generally worketh unknown to its self the will of that Eternal Spirit neither can it cease of it self to work but if re-assumed or gathered again as is expressed in Iob all flesh would perish together c. And that all flesh and all other things Sun Moon c. do not perish is the work of Gods ordinary I trust I may so call it Providence the confirmation Seal of his Creation Such vivifying Spirit as this which men may call nature if they please is gone out into the world and shall continue working every where no doubt until the appointed end of the world yet not apprehensive of its being nor capable of understanding in the least to what end it works may probably cease to work after the manner it now worketh And this kind of Spirit receives no new influence nor seems capable of any new influence from above yet is ordered by what we call Providence But where there is any Spirit conscious of its own working and in some measure capable to conceive from whence it is or at least desirous to enquire after or know the original of its being that Spirit seems to me to be some special emission more than ordinary at the beginning or Creation of the visible world to be of duration and continuance A thing now as it were subsisting of it self and which vanishes not nor can vanish or will be re-assumed again But being as I may say the very Spirit or breath of the Almighty and able to look back towards its original and fountain is capable of some new influence and as I may say regeneration and such is the Spirit of man And therefore we in no wise deny but that the Spirit of man may receive some new light for its motion otherwise than barely and simply by sense the Organ of the body And that no other though intellectual Spirit inferiour thereto can so do or is capable so to do Now of created Spirits superiour to our selves or of greater capacity in point of intellect than our selves as I read or hear of none save Angels created all good as well as we so I cannot conceive that any created or circumscribed Spirit from any power of it self to intermix it self with our Spirit or so move in us as that it may be properly said we are possessed with any other Spirit than our own and therefore 't is most properly said When we are tempted we are drawn away of our own lusts Though I confess I think objects may be brought by the assistance of some such spirit and laid down before our senses or presented to our fancy whereby our lust may seem to begin to move though indeed our lusts be the original of our error But forasmuch as our own spirit is some image of and has its being from the Almighty that is one eternal all powerful spirit it being capable by its reason for no otherwise 't is so to distinguish between good and evil in some measure and to know the will of that almighty One It doubtless may be and is capable also not only to have its reason enlightned from thence but to receive some such new accession of light as that it may not only have a clearer sight of that bountiful Creator than reason is able to afford it but be
can we acknowledge a belief of a better fountain if so good in some of our present spiritualists without a breach upon our reason whateever our charity may incline us to I am so far from denying the often immediate blessed effects of that spirit of truth in the soul of a true believer that I would not be thought to make use of my reason in the least so as to interpose it as a cloud or mist between that and any mans Soul to obscure it if I could from the light thereof I would sooner wish or be content not barely to lose my reason but he changed into a brute as to visible shape than do it Yet since I challenge and own my very reason from one and the same Godhead however miraculously and diversly working as several persons I hope I may even from that without offence or grieving that Holy Spirit tell men they may possibly err in the opinion of its effects and through some inherent lurking pride have their conceit raised to that height as to believe and therefore would have us believe they bare the fruit of that spirit when Sedition a work of the flesh is more manifest to our reason Indeed Saint Paul has told us the works of the one are manifest but not the fruit of the other though it has its fruits and therefore why men should cry up their fruit to be the undoubted product of that ever blessed spirit until they can manifest the same so to be and be able to convince our reason by some infallible demonstration that it could not proceed from ought else I find no just or sufficient ground That true faith an invisible thing and best seen by works though by any outward work it cannot infallibly be known is the very effect of that blessed spirit we may safely affirm but further than so I cannot see how we can without danger affirm its immediate operation in us or retain a positive belief that any particular effect wrought by us or in us did proceed merely from the motion of that blessed spirit dwelling in us If any it may to my weak judgement be in some such particular case as this when the soul sometimes on the suddain beholds as it were at one intuition all earthly things as vanity and rejects them with a kind of longing desire to behold somewhat that is not such and to have some present fruition thereof And this at such time as the soul may seem at ease and quiet and is surrounded and as it were courted with all wordly affluence and prosperity and seems to have wordly honours laid down before it in its path not when it rejects and seems to contemn those things out of a sullen temper because it either cannot attain them or is crossed in the fruition of them When this happens I cannot think it to be the mere work of the Soul it self nor of the deity either in any ordinary providence and care over it but some special grace moving it and darted as it were into it from that blessed spirit towards beholding an everlasting true joy by faith Besides this there may be other cases happen which may induce us to think that there is something more than ordinary moves in us from above as this When a man shall by his reason with the invocation perhaps of divine assistance have weighed the good and evil of some particular action and all circumstances in relation thereto as near as he can and concluding of the lawfulness thereof perhaps through the fallacy of some covert and latent affection in him shall pursue the same If afterwards he chance to be stopped in his full cariere not by any audible voice or visible light as Saint Paul that is not to be expected now a days and whenever 't is averred I will determine it the effect of Melancholy or which is worse averred upon contrivance with an intent to deceive but by some secret whisper as it were or suddain conviction of his error and the light of the truth breaking out as at once upon his soul on the suddain which doubtless has happened to some men I should be ready to acknowledge it as the work of some extraordinary spirit from without and not his own For this cannot be said to be the effect or stroke of his own conscience that is the dictates of his reason contrary to what he acted before For in this case he no ways erred against that but as we put the case consulted it made the best use of it he could with an invocation of the divine power to enlighten the same Yet in neither of these cases do I think it safe or convenient the party in whom such effect is wrought should presently determine it in his own thoughts to be the undoubted immediate work of that good spirit within him lest if he should err those thoughts embolden him to continue therein against the plainest demonstration of truth in future much less to discourse and proclaim it to be the very light of that spirit of truth in him lest he induce others to be led away by every fantastick light their brain is able to forge within themselves They on whom God himself breathed they on whom tongues as of fire visibly sate they who saw Christ after his resurrection and had power to work wonders in his name might safely make use of their own tongues to declare their immediate knowledge of the will of that Almighty spirit and not be thought too familiar with the Deity in declaring its manner of working But for us to take the same liberty and casting aside all thoughts of moral goodness fall to talking and describing of that strange admirable effect that being born again of the spirit sometimes wrought in the soul of man which we cannot possibly comprehend how or when or where it is wrought may be of dangerous consequence I think and further to glory as if we were the only men in these latter days on whom this spirit is poured is such an arrogance in my apprehension that a sober Heathen might well think us distracted If we would needs glory let us make use of Saint Pauls own subject ready at hand our infirmities We shall find little else if we examine our selves that we have any tenure of or may call our own or that we can have such knowledge of True faith as I said which I take to be the peculiar work of that spirit in man is a trembling though a fast hold on the Deity and proclaims not the body to be the temple of the Holy Ghost otherwise than by the good works done therein the beholding of which and we can behold them as good though we cannot be infallibly assured they always proceed from that spirit is the readiest way to draw others to glorify that God whom we adore not to dissect it as I may say in ordinary discourse no not in the Pulpit and tell men exactly after what manner
those whom we shall scarce meet with in company but we shall receive a challenge from As to the first I have said somewhat but properly to hold a dispute against him we cannot either we must deny his premisses which we are unwilling wholly to do or else we must necessarily grant him his conclusion For the other so much a Sadducee as not to believe Angel or Spirit other than his own if that and resolving to believe nothing without a plain demonstration We must not provoking that spirit of his of which he thinks himself the only master and we think he is therein deceived answer him at his own weapon reason and indeed we have none other as of our selves and argue with him in calm manner if at all not philosophically not Aristotelically but as rationally and as plainly and as perswasively as we can or are able leaving the success to the guidance of that good spirit in which we our selves already believe 'T is a strange thing a man should admit of any ordinary inference or any indifferent argument à probabili as we say to satisfy his reason and raise a belief in any case but that which is of greatest concern to him the belief whereof would only do him good and which could not if upon a false ground possibly prejudice him or do him hurt If I should begin to talk of the nature of the elements how each several one as we divide them hath in it some latent quality or virtue of the other And that some particular species of one participates so much with or is of such cognation as we may say with the other that from some little reflexion or light from that other it shall in a manner change its quality and seem to be quite another thing than what it was And then tell one of these kind of men some such strange story of Naptha as Plutarch do's A kind of a sulphureous fattish soil to be found which taken out of the body of the earth and brought to light shall forthwith at a great distance from any fire take flame from thence and become of the nature of fire it self consuming every thing about it there is little doubt but I might without demonstration to sense obtain credit therein Now since we cannot make out that our soul conscious of its being and capable to enquire after the nature or original of its own and other beings is the bare product of flesh and blood or that it can be actuated from thence towards these kind of enquiries Why should not these men as readily believe that there is some spirit or intellectual mind far above our own from whence our own receives some influence or agitation and by which it is disposed ordered or governed I dare appeal to the secrets of any one of these mens hearts their conscience if they please to allow of that term Whether or no if I should have done him some great or grievous injury such as after all ineffectual indeavour of revenge should lye heavy upon his spirit or leave a sting there he should not by a kind of secret wish seem to invocate for we will not imagine he has so much of the Christian Tenet in him yet as wholly to forgive all offences and return good for evil some Nemesis or resort to some secret revenger of evil to punish my injustice towards him On the other side should I bestow so many gifts heap so much kindness and do so many good turns to that man as after all indeavours of requital in point of gratitude he should find he were in no wise able to make me sufficient recompence or amends he should not by a like secret wish invocate some good power above his own for a reward upon me If in either of these cases he thinks he should so do or upon examination of himself finds he has at any time so done in like cases then surely he naturally as I may say believes that which in word he denies viz. That there is some spirit above our own for if he verily believed from his heart there were no such thing as some all-knowing all-powerful and all-sufficient spirit a just rewarder of good and evil superintendent over us it were the most ridiculous thing imaginable for him barely to wish nay he could not wish me good or evil But if he has unawares by his own spirit recourse to some invisible power why should he not confess which he often swears by unawares too that there is a God Now though it may seem here from the present purpose give me leave to say in this place that it is some confirmation of my opinion in relation to the soul of brutes proceeding barely from their blood and vanishing therewith which thing I mean to insist upon more at large in some other discourse that it makes no foreign appeal in any case nor uses any weapon but bodily I do here think that God may punish us for the abuse of brute creatures and that their blood may seem to cry for vengeance but it cries only silently not intentionally from them For although we do really perceive a kind of gratitude as well as revenge in many creatures besides man yet we cannot observe no nor suspect upon just ground any recourse they have in prosecution of their love or anger to any superior power above themselves I do not think my Spaniel ever wished me good or evil if I could conjecture there were imprecatory thoughts in any creature save man and the weakest of men has them I should forthwith renounce and recant my present opinion of the annihilation of their spirit after death For if that spirit of theirs can wander out of the body any other ways than directly by sense it certainly neither vanishes with the body nor can be said to be mortal There are many such like cases as aforementioned of some strange foreign work in the soul of man which have occurred to my mind sufficient as I thought to convince any Atheist of the falsity of his assertions in point of the original of all things and the government or guidance of all visible creatures more especially our selves But lest I seem guilty of what I condemned in my former Epistle I shall forbear to insist thereupon and leave all to that attribute that superabundant stream flowing from the Deity and which is over all its works its mercy and loving kindness towards man And however any of us think or believe either of our selves or ought else in relation to our selves for the present it can be no uncharitable wish or desire no nor foolish one I hope that before we cease to be as we are that is have finished the race of all flesh we may so think and act as that at the end of that race we miss not of eternal rest body and spirit But if these two kinds of men amongst us I have often thought could be brought to some moderation shall I say to a
Since we often afford an helping hand to their destruction by laying their heaps and banks open to the power of Northern blasts and cold as being how ere so wise for themselves noxious to our grounds and fruit How many Spirits or Souls of that other wise creature the Bee do good Housewifes at a peculiar time toward the approach of the fall send together in transmigration by Brimstome to some other place Truly the Ant in great numbers may be thought as well to make a voluntary transmigration as that there is any transmutation of species in them as some hold since this is most certain that every kind of them at such an age or period of time become winged and leaving their heaps or banks to the younger Brood or Frye flee away and are seen no more But that they convert to a life of another species I believe no more than that there is a conversion of species of those little black Clobheads which we call Tadpoles bred in Ponds of the spawn of Frogs by the accession of legs and quite different features from what they had before As to that other most subtle and wise creature so termed in Scripture the Serpents if our Adders and Snakes may come under that notion How many of them do some Winters cast into a profound and lasting sleep as may be observed from the paucity of them seen in a Summer suceeding a sharp and tedious Winter So as those which have but shallow caverns or holes to sleep in are scarce thought ever to awake again These are but a species or two of many thousands for ought I could ever perceive as wise in their kind as they whose bodies Winter leaves altogether inanimate We make our predictions of a plentiful Summer from the sharpness of the Winter preceding and we give our reasons sometimes from some native or inherent warmth in Snow the contraction of the pores and keeping in the spirits in the earth by cold the retardation of all plants attraction of their sap and moisture too soon thereby and then their more vigorous operation and exhaleing of the same upon the more near approach of the Sun beams with the like which though they may be good reasons of our plenty too Yet I am apt to think the exanimation of innumerable Insects hurtful to plants and fruits from the sharpness of the winter or it 's imbecilitating their Eggs or Seed for production is a reason of more weight than all others usually given For he who will at the Spring time but walk into his Gardens or Fields with a light in the night season may espy a various multitude of little creatures who as the Psalmist expresses it all wait on God for their meat in due season Which as ordinary Earthworms and of them there are divers kinds too are not to be seen in the day time nay some of them so small and of colour earthy as they are not easily discernible but upon a green plant This every provident Gardiner is sensible of and does not impute the nipping off or little holes in his tender Plants like common Country people to Easterly Winds which may indeed wither or discolour but neither bite nor perforate To find out or imagine bodies ready prepared for all these spirits at an instant frosty time would puzzle the best Intellect or strongest imagination Should we pass by these spirits inherent in all these little creatures as insignificant and because we are not able with our eyes to see behold or distinguish any parts or blood in them laugh at those trite sayings Formicae sua bilis inest Habet musca splenem and find out some pretty distinction between their Spirits and the Spirits of Beasts of visible parts and greater bulk Certainly since their Shambles are fuller of their bodies in Winter than in Summer and most of them especially wild creatures bring forth young only in some peculiar Summer months We shall need the like help as in our case of Insects to salve the errors of a transmigrating imagination In case of oviparous creatures as all Fowl I would willingly know Whether after the Egg conceived and formed from treading or copulation there be not a spirit therein contained and included And yet they who can imagine an immortal spirit in the Chicken will hardly allow it I believe in the Egg or that upon corruption of the Egg or conversion of it to draught there is any transmigration and yet no doubt the spirit in the egg and the spirit in the chicken are one and the same only in the one case by gentle and proper heat continued for some space rarified to a greater degree and proportion than in the other and by consequence is subject to receive its termination and period with the body of one as well as of the other If we think the life and motion in the Chicken be a new peculiar spirit introduced by heat then do we allow our selves a power not only of sending spirits in transmigration to other bodies by our destruction and devouring of the present but creating I will not say alluring and drawing spirits from one body to another at our will and pleasure and so kill bodies at a distance which thing would have made a Lady I knew who hatched a Hawk in her bosome a little more proud of the act than she was and thought herself equal if not superior to Livia of whom Pliny relates a like story and I think it was but of a Chicken I am unwilling to move out of my own element and to indeavour any discovery about the spirit or souls of Fishes what becomes of them Those aquarious Spirits in our standing Lakes and Pools do usually in a very hard winter undergo the same fate of many Insects and want at that time a numerous company of bodies ready prepared to receive them and no less at other times that is in peculiar Summer months when they lay their spawn do they want innumerable spirits to animate the same more than that instant season can well afford either from the destruction of insects or any kind of moving body But I think we need not trace after these Spirits by Sea or Land or trouble our heads with any narrow search upon such a subject since whatever becomes of the souls of other living creatures is rather a curious and unnecessary enquiry than in any wise advantageous to our own any ways useful or profitable to our subsistence or any ways tending towards the well ordering or governing our Passions or Affections unless it may be in this only that from the assurance of the duration of the soul of Beasts as something more excellent than bare Earth or other Element we become more careful how we abuse or unnecessarily vex them Which without knowledge thereof we have sufficient ground to forbear and since beholding our selves and them together undoubtedly the workmanship of one and the same God of Nature we cannot but be if we be barely
as Reason in its greatest strength could not rectify or prevent though it strived to resist Nor are the Affections to be accused justly of any inflammation or disorder through the delusion of Satan or otherwise Neither can we justly think there has been any wilful defect or neglect in the Soul to occasion it Further thus when Pride or self-Love or Covetousness with their Off-spring and Darlings Anger Revenge Hatred Envy and the like distemper the Imagination and cause it to wander without any order or Government raising false and fictitious sights in the Soul the usual resort is abroad and in relation to others vileness or baseness overlooking all that is really or may be espied in Imagination at home and in this case we cannot so well impute the distemper to humors naturally bred in the Body as to the Devil and a wilful negligence in the Soul But when men without any great or visible Errors in the Affections condemn themselves falsly when the Imagination works at home and nothing seems vile or odious to a man but himself to himself I judge the fallacy to arise merely from dark and dusky vapours in the Body nay I cannot see how it should proceed from any unruly or depraved Passion by which the Soul shut up as it were a Prisoner from free communication with other Souls labouring of it self and in travail to be relieved for want of help a consternation is suddainly raised in the Affections and from them again the Imagination suddainly and violently set on work Sense before clouded is almost destroyed it becomes as useless as in a Dream the Imagination becomes without controul from without and is sole Master and will be sole Master till these vapours are dispelled or allayed which is best done as I think by Bodily Physick When I once see men come to Visions and Revelations and pronounce and proclaim them as given or sent to direct and instruct others thereby I shall very much suspect their Soul more nocent or more defective than their Body But if I find nothing but self-censure and self-condemnation in man unless in case of a very apparent wicked life before I have ever been so charitable as to think strange and dreadful seeming Apparitions in the Soul rather to be raised first in the Imagination through some defect or obstruction in bodily Sense than that the Imagination through Affection deludes Sense and that the Soul of it self is purer than we can well judge of through our Senses barely Most certain it is and experience tells us how subject this one faculty in us Imagination is to sudden change and mutation from things meerly Earthly received into the Body how a little Wine will sometimes clear and elevate it how the anointing with peculiar Oyls will dull and infest it how particular Herbs and Plants will presently distract and confound it Neither can we I think rationally observe the sudden alteration of any one faculty of the Soul from any distemper of the Body barely but this I neither cease to love what I loved nor hate what I hated nor believe what I believed nor will what I willed from any sudden fumes of the Body nor indeed until the Imagination by its continued disturbance from thence shall have raised and put on other colours on the Objects and through its influence it has over the other faculties in time subjected them to accept such Colours as true The Imagination is many times suddenly changed and altered distracted and confounded from meer Bodily Diseases and so it being as I have said the Eye of the Soul all the other faculties from thence are led into Error the evil consequents whereof the Body only or chiefly faulty certainly God in Mercy will not look upon as punishable or take vengeance thereof to which I shall speak somewhat more at large in the third place but first declare how far I think the work of this faculty is out of or beyond our power II. It is a common saying with every one of us when any Foreign Power lays a restraint upon our actions We can think what we please or what we list Which if it were universally true might perhaps in some cases render us more miserable than men of themselves can make us by disquieting those Affections which they cannot disquiet but through our own thoughts Which are often strangely diverted and the Soul at better ease than if that faculty were in our absolute power But blessed be God since our will is not generally so good as it should be the Will has no such native power over the Imagination 'T is not the strongest Reason the best Will nor any other inherent gift of a Soul placed in the most healthful athletick sound and clear Body that is able wholly to direct this faculty or guide it in any good or regular course for any space of time Whatever men pretend Indeed I have heard of some men who have so far gloried in their abilities this way and with all their devotion towards God for he is now and then formally brought in when we are minded to glory of our selves as to affirm They have been able to pray several hours in fervency of Spirit without the least wandring or extravagant thought Such are very divine men we may well think and happy were we all if we could be so in some less degree But yet I wish no man deceive himself herein and that through his own Imagination ex post facto as we may say chiefly and so have a belief thereof raised from the immediate work of that faculty rather than grounded on Reason or what indeed is the impress of a right Imagination perfect and sound memory Surely to raise this belief of and in a mans self a man must be in what we so call a Trance Sense must be closed and shut up for a time against all Battery In which case we 'll grant the Imagination to be sole or chief Master in the Soul and then 't is no marvel if it deceive men into such a temporary belief But I dare appeal to any such seeming devout Enthusiast if he has been at the receiving that holy Mystery a Spiritual Banquet whereat men usually are or should be as intent and careful to keep their thoughts from wandring as in any case whether presently after he were not able to tell me the colour of the Bread whether white or brown the fashion of the Chalice or the kind of Metal what Vestment the Priest had on what looks or gesture or action he used in the administration thereof and the like Now if he will confess the remembrance of any such thing which I dare say he cannot truly deny I may be bold to tell him His thoughts somewhat wandred For Memory being no other than the impress of Imagination or a cogitation renewed his cogitation did a little ramble and was through sense imployed about visible Earthly things And so long as we retain our Senses which I pray
which hurry us headlong we know not whither are grounded in opinion and fancy 'T is not barely application of Truth from without but serious consideration of Truth within must cure us And every one perhaps will do it best in following Cicero's way when he could receive no comfort from his friends upon the death of his Daughter Tullia and compose a cordial de consolatione himself This was the way of my cure and this I conceive is best for every man But he who cannot do this of himself may yet think well of that medicine the operation whereof has been experimented by the Author and rather take his probatum est than anothers opinion and to such do I propose my case and the considerations respecting it And because the perfect knowledge of the cause may be sometimes thought as material and necessary as the disease it self and men being apt to take up that exclamation in relation thereunto Was ever sorrow like my sorrow c. and think another mans cause but trivial I am content whoever sees this should know and judge of mine It was thus My Ancestors having continued many descents possessed of a small but competent Estate under the notion of antient Gentlemen left me the eldest and I fear the last of the family to struggle with and retrive their several former incumbrances which my care and assiduity with God's blessing performed I married the daughter of a Gentleman of an antient honourable Family and by her had several Sons and Daughters to reap the fruit of my care as I thought whereupon I was ready to say I had all that my heart could desire And though I might place my Affections on some other things more than was either becoming in bare sobriety or requisite in prudence yet these stole away the strength thereof and I took greatest complacency therein After I began to sing this earthly Requiem to my Soul it pleased God to put some stop thereto by taking away one or two of my children and at length to leave me a pledge of his mercy I trust and not a subject for his future trial of me one only Daughter remaining The death of each of my children were arrows which stuck fast in me and pierced me sore but the last coming on the suddain upon the most healthful and least expected and in the neck as I may say of another made so deep a wound in my Soul that it caused me to despise all other his worldly blessings and to begin to question with him like Abraham Lord God what wilt thou give me seeing I go childless Such an overflowing frothy sorrow it begat in me that the very allaying thereof in some measure I have Reason to impute to the merciful loving kindness of a bountiful good and gracious God assisting and strengthening me 'T is true there yet remain such reliques of the Disease that whenever either the countenance or pretty Sayings of any of my Children offer themselves to my thoughts it causes a chillness over all my Spirits which I look on as remediless in any one who carries about him the least bowels of natural Affection and such I trust may well consist with Grace But I have brought it to that that the smart is no greater than the Wound requires in any one whose bowels are not petrified and whose heart is not wholly senseless and mortified Next and immediately under God's grace this cure has been thus far effected by my own thoughts and consideration if they may be said to have been mine And after the cure I was willing to make them publick that I might not hide his righteousness within my heart or keep back his mercy and truth but declare the same to those who come after Indeed I cannot but here acknowledge that these thoughts or Meditations brake forth very abruptly and it may be in many particulars blame-worthy from the heat within But to hear one man speak feelingly may sometimes work deeper impressions upon an Auditor than another eloquently and a poor Prisoner who has found out a way to free himself from his Fetters may gain more attention from his discovery than a great Professor in the Art My thoughts have been too much busied God knows about the World and besides that my Calling and Profession never required Books adorned with Rhetorick as some of those who may chance to see this know to make their exit in any artificial dress and if in a plain garb they shall work any good Effect upon any other labouring under or in danger to labour under the same or the like disease Let that person then assuredly know that God had a design for his good as well as mine in my particular Affliction And indeed such is the universal care he has of Mankind that every one might if he would reap some benefit in anothers loss He who is not at present assaulted may yet prepare himself for a defence and he who beholds the bruises of another may walk more carefully and take heed lest he fall He who has lost no Children or has none to lose may yet see and consider the vanity of disquieting himself in heaping up riches and knowing not who shall gather them These my rude thoughts which have eased me may possibly incite another to more sober considerations of God's Wisdom and Providence and Man's folly And then I hope that man will not blame me for thinking only according to those abilities God has given me since every one of us will confess that the wisest of us are but the best conjecturers and 't is God only that knows and though I have thought rudely and amiss yet it being not willingly I hope my want of Learning or Wisdom may receive Pardon from God and at least a charitable Censure from man I was somewhat the rather induced to commit these my rambling Thoughts to Paper from some hopes that such as chance to see them would not look on them as the Cry or Trumpet of one that indeavours to drive men into the Sanctuary from a gainful Art and yet stays himself without the Vail but the genuine search and effect of trouble and sorrow which never finds Rest till it enters there Here are indeed some little Essays of our own sufficiency but tending and pointing to a better Physician of our Soul and Body to one that is able to shew us the true method of cure and without whom we shall never be able to find the shadow of any certain rule but groap about till wearied and fainting and find our Errors only on the other side of our Graves THE CONTENTS BOOK I. SECT I. Considerations against immoderate care for a man 's own Posterity and Sorrow for the loss of Children taken in general from the Providence of God from the usefulness and necessity of Afflictions and those brought down to the case Page 1 SECT II. Particular considerations to moderate our passions such as 1 the advantage of God's
2. By his merciful Providence or restraining Grace 3. By his bountiful Providence or common renewing grace 4. By his Spirit or special renewing Grace How God according to all these may be invocated The danger of applying the operation of the Spirit to every work in man And how fit it is to clear the mind of such Errour Of the use of solitude in some particular Seasons as the most ready and likely way to discover Truth page 13 EPIST. III. Wherein he sets down some further grounds and Reasons of his opinion of the Mortality or utter annihilation of the Souls of Brutes upon their death No durable Spirit in any visible Creature but man of Sympathies and Antipathies in Plants and Animals The soul of Beasts essential with the Body and so subject to the same fate The Intellect in them in its height at the first whereas that in man is gradual Acts peculiar to reasonable Creatures as desire of dissolution and voluntary abstinence The Spirit of Brutes determined by Sense No Creature besides man lays up more than is sufficient to maintain it self We attribute greater gifts and Sagacity to mere Animals than they have as in Ants. That there may be as much Intellect in Creatures we converse not with as those we do The opinion of the utter annihilation of the spirit of Brutes hath no tendency to Atheism page 39 EPIST. IV. Wherein the Author Treats of man's ignorance in his search into the most ordinary work of Nature and concludes how much more dim-sighted we are when we look into the frame and structure of man's Soul Solomon's knowledge of Nature not universal much in Nature found out accidentally No one work of it fully to be understood How Nature doth change in its operations Of change in Colours and that the variety in them is unaccountable That there is a transcendent Wisdom ruling and appearing in all far above our reach And so there is great Reason for caution in our enquiries or affirmations page 60 EPIST. V. Wherein he further illustrates the inherent or native Power and Predominancy of the Affections above the other faculties of the Soul but more particularly treats of the Imagination its deception in us our miseries thereby and the remedies against its delusion Imagination in Brutes ariseth only from Sense That in them receives its objects in their proper Nature they are seldom mistaken in the face of the Heavens c. they cannot revolve in their mind or recall Imagination Imagination in them changeth according to its objects Imagination in us sometimes supplies the place of Reason as in the case of Transubstantiation c. deceives the Affections Imagination and in Conjunction with them is the cause of Error as in malice c. The good man the only rational man The difference 'twixt Reason and ratiocination Reason deceives not and is the chief principle of governing the Thoughts The advantage of sorrow in curbing the Imagination The Imagination subject to infection from the humours of the Body When we are answerable for its transgressions Thoughts cannot arise from Sense page 68 EPIST. VI. Wherein he treats of the various impress of the Divine Power upon each particular created substance much more upon the Souls of men wherein there is great dissimilitude And further shews how prone we are from thence to mistake in judging of the temper of others and our own Thence he proceeds to discourse of the Nature grounds measure and ends of Friendship page 128 EPIST. VII Of the different pursuits of the Souls of men wherein we are ready to accuse each other of folly though not our selves and yet in a degree are all weak and foolish That no pursuit of the Soul here is praise-worthy or commendable further than it intentionally advanceth God's glory which is the mark set before us and which if we do not behold in all our travails our labour in the issue will prove of as little profit as comfort page 156 EPIST. VIII Compleat Happiness here is merely in speculation That natural endowments in the Soul do conduce to the ease peace and quiet of it and are therefore desirable though we attain not happiness thereby Learning and Knowledge Wisdom Prudence and subtilty considered That even Prudence the most likely conduct to Happiness was never yet the constant concomitant of the clearest human Soul No satisfaction without the belief of a Providence page 166 EPIST. IX Wherein the Author maintains a divine Wisdom and Providence ruling in and over the Soul of man more especially and more apparently if considered than any work of Creation And that the Affections in the heart of man seem that part of the Soul whereon God more especially exerciseth his Prerogative moulding and changing them on the sudden to his secret purposes beyond and even contrary to any foresight conjecture or Imagination of the Soul it self page 185 EPIST. X. Of Credulity and Incredulity the rise of both and that Credulity of the two is of more pernicious consequence And of the evil of imposing on others or creating or raising a Belief on false or uncertain Principles Of the word notion and grace of Faith Of the strange variety of Beliefs in the World Of Liberty of Conscience page 195 ERRATA PAge 21. l. 10. for Esau's vine r. Isaiah's vine p. 44. l. ult for Hawk r. Hare p. 45. l. 39. for Have r. Cave p. 46. l. ult for substance r. subsistence p. 47. l. 2. for submit r. subsist ibid. l. 14. for gifts r. Fits p. 52. l. 9. for life r. Fly p. 53. l. 15. for their r. the 54. l. 25. dele since p. 56. l. 11. for that r. they ibid. l. 30. for piece r. Pease CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST Immoderate care for a Man 's own Posterity and sorrow for the loss of Children SECT I. Of Afflictions in general their Usefulness and Necessity and in particular the loss of Children considered with the use and end of it THE first thoughts which presented themselves to me and what I ever before firmly believed were these That first as there is one Eternal wise God Creator of Heaven and Earth and all things therein So secondly the same God has a care over all the works of his Creation and continually rules and disposes all things according to his infinite wisdom which act of his we call Providence To doubt of this were not only to deny all Scripture and relinquish my profession of Christianity but even to abandon my very Reason For from this first part of my belief I think there are few dissenters and although this Age affords a number of David's jolly sanguine Fools who at some time think otherwise in their hearts yet those same hearts from afflictions will think the same with mine unless they have hardned them on purpose to shut out all Deity and since at first they would have none to serve now they are resolved to let in none so long as they can oppose it to punish As to the second part
be revealed in us then have we got on an Helmet as St. Paul calls it then have we an Anchor sure and stedfast then instead of sorrowing are we become rejoycing as he terms it in hope David stiled the man after God's own heart could find comfort in his rod and his staff and was both sensible of the goods of affliction and that God out of very faithfulness sends it But beside these Cordials to be extracted Adversity has other natural fruits and is a School wherein more have profited many ways than Prosperity it is indeed the fire most apt to refine the whole nature of man and take off those drossie humours which disquiet the mind We shall find little either purity or virtue in our settled Waters there must be certain seasons for the Angel of affliction to come down and trouble us like the Pool of Bethesda before virtue shall arise from us It is a common old Fable but has a good Moral of the Wager between the Wind and the Sun which should soonest rob the wayfaring man of his Cloak all the stormy blasts which came from the first made him but to hold it the faster and closer to him but the bright shining rays of the later did so insensibly melt him that he was forced to throw it off and expose himself as it were naked to danger Our moral virtues are our coverings which we embrace in adversity and cast off in prosperity It has been observed that Rome never had braver or better men than at that time when Hannibal stood before the Walls And the best man of Rome if we may take the Oracle of Apollo's word for it Scipio Nasica did afterwards oppose Cato in open Senate against the razing of Carthage for this very reason that it might stand as a bridle against Rome's exorbitances since peace and prosperity would as well destroy them as it had done other Nations viz. the Persians Graecians c. And although prosperity was the blessing promised in the Old Testament and God's peculiar people the Iews possessed in peace a Land flowing with Milk and Honey and Houses full of all good things which they filled not Wells digged which they digged not and Vineyards and Olive-trees which they planted not that Kings bowed down unto them and their Posterity multiplied like the Sand of the Sea yet not only David who had his particular affliction in his Children tells us 't is good c. but in the full height of their prosperity his Son Solomon their most flourishing King who enjoyed as many worldly comforts as any man whatsoever and wanted none of those things the World calls felicities when he had considered all things and sufficiently described the vanity thereof and told us they are not only vanity but vexation of Spirit he gives adversity as we term it the preheminence and tells us that it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting that sorrow is better than laughter that the heart of the wise man is in the house of mourning but the heart of fools in the house of mirth Solomon has in the Christian part of the World obtained the reputation of Wise and surely we may justifie him in these sayings to the residue of it if men would consider the nature and quality of each of these kind of passions apart For joy or mirth Worldly is a dilatation or relaxation of all the faculties of the Soul and so apt to loosen or slacken the reins of Reason and give the Soul a free range over the World and Worldly objects when as sorrow is a summoning of them into the heart holds them in for a time draws and contracts again the reins of Reason and unless it degenerate into fearful despair never breaks them but has at length a kind of inward joy to accompany it so as if in laughter the heart may be sorrowful which I doubt not many have experimented men want but the contrary motion or sorrow barely and simply without other ingredient to experiment that in tears the heart may be joyful If we descend to the New Testament which is our chief Tenure there we find no benediction on prosperity but the contrary and a wiser than Solomon our Saviour himself whom the Scriptures term to be vir dolorum in his Sermon on the Mount begins with a blessing on adversities Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted and Blessed are ye that weep now for ye shall laugh nay in mundo pressura hath been thought so sure a mark of a Christian that some of the Ancient Fathers and Saints have earnestly prayed for it and have been ready to doubt of their Sonship for want of chastisement Prosperity it self is in no kind exempt from vexation of Spirit neither Solomon's great Estate nor his honour nor his very increase in wisdom excused him even there he found the increase of knowledge to be the increase of sorrow Prosperity at the best has its cares and its troubles its anxious thoughts and fears and there we are generally our own Lictors and Tormentors And when we once take up the Cross in that sence and become our own Executioners upon the Rack we can find no Physician to fly to but disquiet our selves in vain as the Psalmist says whereas whenever the Cross is laid on us we have recourse to God the Physician of our Souls who is ready to sweeten and allay those troubles he sees not fit wholly to remove And indeed the one is the ready cure of the other and often I doubt not in mercy sent to take us off from afflicting our selves and to teach us to throw down that burthen which is so heavy and take up his which in comparison thereof through his gracious and merciful assistance is light and easie So true is that of David 't is better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men whether others or our selves Having somewhat considered Afflictions in general my next step was to descend to the particular loss of Children who being the express Image of our selves and in whom we expect to live after we are dead are most apt to creep insensibly into our hearts and to steal away the strength of our affections from all other objects wherefore the loss of them usually works so deeply upon us that thereupon we are ready to think God is very angry with us and that therefore he will blot out our name and memorial from off the face of the Earth Yet as in Afflictions in general so in this here I thought it not amiss for every one who professes himself a Christian to look in the first place how far Children are or may be as a blessing to us These we find in the front of blessings in the Old Testament Be fruitful and multiply which is also repeated to Noah immediately after the Floud and Abraham
it to produce more than an harsh unpleasant and not lasting fruit The fruits of the Spirit of which Love and Joy are by the Apostle reckoned as the principal come to us by gift and addition not by culture or alteration Nay if we have learn'd that Lesson of content and by consequence have sometime joy and peace with St. Paul it is so much the infusive document of a gracious Master and so far from being acquired by our native understanding that we daily want his reiterated Grace to call on us to learn and when we are heavy laden to come unto him for ease If we have learn'd to tred the waters and to walk upon a tempestuous Sea for some steps we shall notwithstanding find cause with St. Peter to cry out Lord save me or I perish which cry is yet my cry For I do declare unto the World that I have not at any time found the recovery from a disease to be a sufficient charm against its return It will come again sometimes and if it come there will lie a necessity upon us and we shall be forced for the cure to use over again the same sanative ingredients and the most approved Recipe in sorrow is and ever will be that of St. Iames If any man be afflicted let him pray call on him who works in us to think to will and to do according to his good will and pleasure and has said he is near to all them that call upon him yea that call upon him faithfully 'T is he from whom comfort springs as light out of darkness and 't is he from whom we must expect as it were a new creation and beg he may say Let there be light in us and there will be light And in his light as the Psalmist says there is life that is a vigorous active state able to dispell all the black clouds raised by Sin and Satan He is the comforter who must put true joy and gladness into our hearts by the merits of his Son and the secret inspiration of his Holy Spirit and they are his comforts alone which must refresh our Souls in the multitude of the sorrows we have in our hearts St. Paul is pleased to stile him the God of all comfort who comforteth us in all our tribulations that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we our selves are comforted of God And in one place he calls him the God of patience and consolation with a kind of inference that God ever crowns his Grace of patience with his Blessing of consolation And he does declare God to be the sole proper and peculiar Fountain of comfort in an instance of his gracious working upon himself Nevertheless says he God that comforteth those that are cast down comforted us by the coming of Titus For the coming of Titus out of Achaia into Macedonia at that time cannot seem to have in it any natural energy to work so much upon St. Paul for that coming appears to us a matter of no great consequence only St. Paul seems to shew us that God so disposed his heart at that time that that should work as a Cordial to him which of it self barely had no such natural operation Nay in one place God does as it were appropriate the issues of comfort to himself by a reiteration I even I am he that comforteth you From the diversity of humours in our natural temper has arose that Adage of fortuitum est placere and from the same diversity we may inferr and change the word à Domino est placere Because we daily see men affected and delighted not from any inherent quality in the subject because to effect that the thing per se must have somewhat of good in it but properly and peculiarly nothing is good save God only and therefore to make a thing seem good and delightful to us it must first have his stamp and impress upon it visible to us And if the Psalmist s demand should be applied to outward goods and one in that very notion should cry out who will shew us any good he will find no perfect solution without the effect in the sequent verse Lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance and then will Rod and Staff and Fire and Faggot comfort us The light of whose countenance that we may all have in some measure let us more especially pray to him and give praise with the best member we have David's own words and imitate somewhat that Divine Psalmist I must acknowledge I ever found some comfort in my sorrows by reading those Divine spiritual Soloquies of his and do not think but that every other man may and that however they may upon the reading in prosperity glide over his heart in adversity they will fix and settle there There is no pattern in them for stupidity nor no sullen expression of My punishment is greater then I am able to bear but this or the like Then cried I unto the Lord and he delivered me out of my distress And to cry unto him in the very words of that compendious excellent Prayer being the Collect appointed in our Church-Liturgy for the fourth Sunday after Easter for I cannot find a better may be no unfit conclusion Almighty God who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men grant unto us thy people that we may love the thing which thou commandest and desire that which thou dost promise that so amongst the sundry and manifold changes of the World our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found through Iesus Christ our Lord. Amen To which may not improperly be added that for the sixth Sunday after Trinity O God! who hast prepared for them that love thee such good things as pass mans understanding pour into our hearts such love towards thee that we loving thee above all things may obtain thy promises which exceed all that we can desire through Iesus Christ our Lord. Amen Amen These following Ejaculations were used in the state of the disease O Lord thy hands have made me and fashioned me thou art he that broughtest me out of my mothers womb and hast shewed thy strength in my weakness Many and grievous have been my infirmities since my youth up and yet walk I in the Land of the living I have been more infirm than my Brethren which are gone before me yet hast thou granted me length of days I have provoked thee more than they yet hast thou spared me out of the abundance of thy mercy Thou hast to the wonder of others spared me whose thoughts have been when shall he die and his name perish Thou hast taken away more righteous than my self and placed me in their rooms to take my pastime like Leviathan in this World But I have not rightly considered thy doings nor to what end thou hast done these things For thou hast enlightned
me with knowledge and hast left me no covering for my faults wherefore I am ashamed and confounded at my own follies Notwithstanding this thy gift and loving kindness towards me I have gone astray and provoked thee more than my Fathers have done wherefore I am become sore oppressed and grieved from thy heavy displeasure I have placed my affections on transitory things which though lighter than vanity have weighed thee down in the ballance of my Soul And notwithstanding my follies and transgressions I have said in my heart What evil happeneth unto me Not remembring that though thou art a God of patience and long-suffering yet thou wilt not leave sin unpunished Wherefore thou sentest out thine arrows of warning and destroyedst my first-born yet I considered not it was thy doing Thrice didst thou repeat thy summoning Judgments after in the same manner and though I was sore troubled yet returned I not with my whole heart to thee But was ready and willing to impute the cause to my own natural infirmities rather than my acquired sins still forgetting that death came by sin Notwithstanding thou of thy goodness and tender compassion towards me in this World didst leave me two Infants as a comfort and as a pledge not to abuse thy grace But I sinned yet more and rejoyced in the gift more than in thee the giver I set my affections on things below and not on things above and rather sought and endeavour'd the planting of my Name here than in the Book of Life Therefore hast thou destroyed my vain hopes by a sudden blast when I least expected it She was flourishing like a Flower of the Field and thy sudden blast went over her so as the place thereof knew her no more In the morning was she fresh and flourishing and in the evening cut down and withered O Lord it was thy immediate hand that did it enforced to strike from my daily continued provocations Neither can any that knows that thou art both just and merciful to all the works of thy Creation impute it to any ordinary natural cause O that my sins should be as the murtherers of my production whilst thou sparest the offender himself But here again hast thou shewed thy mercy and loving kindness in taking them to bliss rather than casting me into utter darkness Thou hast shewed thy mercy to the most loathsom and vilest of thy Creatures who is not only stench and rottenness but an infectious sore I am become a gazing-stock and the talk of all them that know me and live round about me They may say or at least be ready to think within themselves These things are fallen on him for his transgressions and thou punishest him in justice whilst they do not remember that thou art merciful But O Lord let not the evil wishes of the envious who behold my prosperity in other things prevail against me but pardon their offences and shew them that I and mine are under thy protection And out of the multitude of my sins and ttansgressions shew me which of them have more especially provoked thee to make me fruitless that I may more especially abhor them turning from every evil way Had I taken so much delight and joy and comfort in thy Word as in a frail Babe of flesh surely thou hadst not bereaved me thereof Had I honour'd my Father in the flesh I might have had joy in my own Children but now it is far from me Have I endeavoured to heap up Riches and knew not who should enjoy them Have I considered the vanity thereof and yet neglected to do good and distribute wherewith thou wouldst have been well pleased and art thou therefore angry with me and leavest me desolate Many O Lord have been the devices of my heart although I well knew thy counsel only would stand I have seen and read the destruction of other Families how their name has perished how thou pullest down one and raisest up another and yet my heart has rather inclined to the World than to thee my God and advancer But grant O Lord that neither the cares of this World nor the deceitfulness of Riches may choak any good Seed of well-doing either sowed or sprung up in my heart Thou hast commanded us not to set our hearts upon them O shew me thy ways and incline my heart unto thee and not unto covetousness And if I must part with all to follow thee give me an heart to do it I trust thou hast not increased my outward accessions to suffer me to be deceived therewithall or given me Riches because thou sawest I should not have been innocently poor I confess O Lord they are Briars and Thorns yet growing and ready to choak every good Plant but do thou raise in me from thence a plentiful Harvest of good works Make me a faithful Steward of what thou hast committed to my charge or else leave me naked as I came into the World For thou knowest I have ever acknowledged what I enjoy to be from thy gift and never sacrificed to my own Nets Thou hast given me what I never asked and bereaved me of what I most desired but who is able to comprehend the methods of thy Judgments Surely there is something to which our affections ought to tend in which the desire of man can have no excess Is there nothing to be found amiable but what is corruptible shall charity abide when all things cease and for the present know not where to fix it self Shall we at best behold the chequered and bright Clouds raised from the Earth and forget the Sun which gives them brightness and cause him at present to withdraw his beams and leave us in obscure darkness Shall he that gives us all things withdraw himself for want of our beholding him in that notion when we cannot do that but by his immediate gift too When thou O Lord dartest forth the light of thy countenance those little Rays we are capable to behold through the Vail of this flesh make all things amiable and particulars only seem so from a false light of our own imaginary creation He who endeavours to behold thee as thou art or further than thou hast been pleased to shew thy self deservedly becomes blind and perishes by his too near approaches We cannot behold thy light but by reflexion only let us see so much as that we may admire and love thee The invisible things of thee are understood only by the things that are made and thou art seen only by the beauty and greatness of thy Creatures or thy immediate free gift O shew me the light of thy countenance in some measure stablish me again by thy free Spirit and send some Balm into that Soul which thou hast wounded I know the Creator of all things cannot altogether shut up his mercy and loving kindness from his Creatures in displeasure I am as much the work of thy hands as the greatest Monarch Thy ways and methods and thy decrees O Lord
Air and the Fishes of the Sea too and so far as we can discern we find them agree in their desires and delights with one another of the same species They have each their particular Food and rest contented satisfied and pleased therewith during their whole course of nature 'T is not with them as with us what one loves another loathes 'T would be a difficult matter to find an hungry Ox that would refuse Hay either when he is young or old A man may well ask Iob's question Doth the wild Ass bray when he hath grass or loweth the Ox over his fodder 't is man doth only that or the like when he hath what his fleshly heart can desire The Beasts are more constant and content and their Soul seems settled and the inhabitant of its proper Region they neither fear nor joy in excess their choices and elections are still alike and every Cock like Aesop's Cock will yet to this day prefer the Barley-corn before a Jewel though amongst men some prefer the one and some the other I speak thus much for this cause only that viewing the Soul of man in its very inferiour faculties and finding it so various and disagreeing so little at a stay or at rest so fighting and combating so snatching and catching at it knows not what things neither useful nor profitable for the body or the mind it somewhat convinces me 't is a thing very capacious and that there is a place of fulness of joy or fulness of sorrow for it hereafter SECT VI. The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from the difference thereof between Parents and Children BEsides this some enquiry might be made into the different qualities of the Souls of men beyond those of Beasts in their ordinary workings though they inhabit or actuate Bodies which have their being from one and the same production For if the Soul of man were the ordinary work of Nature only a fine rarified vigorous quality in the Bloud Man receiving his body from his Parents by the ordinary course of Nature as other creatures do his Soul would always somewhat resemble that of his Parents too and Brethren twins especially would resemble one another in the faculties of their Souls as well as 't is often seen they do many ways in the Body But there is generally found as between Iacob and Esau such dissimilitude in the Spirits of Brethren and those of Father and Son Mother and Daughter as greater is not to be found between meer strangers in bloud which thing daily experience will not only demonstrate upon search but may be readily found in the Histories of Princes in all Ages Now the Soul of Beast being the bare product of flesh only and necessarily taking its rise and essence from the substance of its Parents if I may so call them for the word may be proper enough pario being only to bring forth or produce never varies much or altogether at any time from that of the Parent We shall never find an absolute Jadish Spirit in a Horse begot from free and well-bred ones nor a meer Curr from right good Hounds no not in one of his senses the Nose or smell But if in any case they excell or degenerate from their Stock 't is by degrees and not per saltum which thing per saltum may be found and observed in the Race of men And besides this variation of the Souls of men from Birth there sometimes happens on the sudden a strange kind of total Metamorphosis of the Soul of man so as one would scarce adjudge it the same but according to Scripture phrase that one becomes a new man and this without any alteration at all of the Bodies constitution Now if the Soul of man were not a substance of it self capable to be wrought on ab extra by somewhat without any introduction by the senses then no such alteration without the Bodies alteration could be made but through the senses and if such alteration were made from sense through the Organs of the Body then upon the shortest obstruction or letting in of prior forms again the Soul would consequently return to its pristine state according to that simile of the dog to his vomit c. which change or alteration in the Soul of man we see sometimes settled and remaining notwithstanding all interposition during a long following life Thus we find that men have utterly contemned and hated without any offence raised from the thing it self even with a perfect hatred that which was formerly their delight which kind of hatred never yet happened or was discernible in Beast Now if any man shall ask me At what time the Soul of man being a substance of it self distinct from the Body enters and possesses the Body I can make him a reply with as difficult a question At what instant doth this other arising product Soul from the Bloud begin its circulation and move If we know neither why should it seem more wonderful and strange to us for the God of Nature upon man's conception in the womb to create and have ordained a Spirit to actuate that conception which Spirit should continue for ever notwithstanding that conception should decay and perish for a time as well as that there should arise a Spirit from the Bloud to actuate move and govern the Body for a certain period of time which time we could never define certainly from any course of Nature And further that the wise Creator and Governour of all things should ordain that if the first created Spirit to inhabit a Body both together being Man should wander in disobedience from its Creator all others sent and entring into Bodies product from the Loyns of the first Body should be infected with the same wandring disease and have no cure but by Grace from the first Creator But I would not wander too much my self nor desire to pry into any of God's secrets further than he has thought fit to reveal by his Holy Word and so shall lay aside my thoughts of the manner of Man's creation every way wonderful as the Psalmist expresses it as also the consideration of the inferiour faculties for the present and try and see if there be not some sparks in the Soul of man which give such a light as can by no means naturally arise from any thing barely and simply terrestrial SECT VII The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from its unweariedness in searching c. and its reflex acts and operations WHy has the Soul of man in all Ages when it has been at any time withdrawn from that quick intromission of worldly objects by the senses and has not been hindred or obstructed by some mists fogs or lets of the flesh wherein at present 't is confined to work hunted after wearied and tired it self to find out and comprehend what it is not able to comprehend The first sin of man shewed at once the Soul's error and its
them at least question a Deity and divine retribution from the like passion they say others believe one viz. Fear And if they are sensible of something invisible to be feared under some notion of justice and like Metrodorus I think the name is in Cicero fear what they deny there needs no conviction of opinion but rather extortion of confession which is the peculiar work of a Deity by distress affliction or the like If I could once prevail with any man to ransack as I may say his own Soul seriously to consider and observe the strange motions tendencies operations and sudden alterations therein I should have greater hopes of some clear manifestation to that man of an eternal wise working spirit in and through the same than from any outward prospect and beholding its work under what notion soever Atoms c. in and through the whole Universe beside Certainly God would shew himself to any one who did but seriously and humbly behold view and consider himself which we can never shew a man by any outward demonstration That sight must arise from within How some endowed with so great perfection of Intellect beyond the ordinary sort of men and able to discern a vast disproportion or difference of spirit and yet none of body between themselves and others should not fall into some admiration at some time or other with a kind of thankfulness to somewhat or other is to be wondered at Every mans Soul is not only an image of God but looked into of its self is the clearest glass to represent the most perfect shadow that can be of that Original There is some spark of fire in man beyond the reach or finger of chance which if he might be prevailed with to uncover and view himself would afford some light which all the raking or blowing from another cannot do God himself can and will shew himself so far as he sees good and none else can shew him to that person who will not vouchsafe humbly to look into himself If there be any such thing as a beast in the likeness of a man and one should fight with it I may ask St. Pauls question What advantageth it I begg your pardon and others c. for such an expression besides the meaning of the Text I am not prone to impose such a title or attribute upon the meanest human creature but surely if we once come to that pass as to reject an infinite wise just eternal Being a Reward and punishment hereafter and disclaim our own immortality our prerogative above beasts is very small and I am sure we may not improperly take up the subsequent words Let us eat and drink for to morrow we dye for which ends and purposes t is to be feared some men have owned though they have not been fully convinced of that opinion The world did and do's and will abound with Atheists that is persons living as without a God in the world or duly weighing divine retribution But whether those on whom we most commonly fix and impose that title best merit the same is some question There is no great distinction to be made between men denying God in constant daily works yet owning him in words and denying him in words yet owning him in some measure by works unless we should term the first sort real Atheists and the other professed ones only and conclude the latter are of more evil consequence because the first sort or kind require the intellect to discern or espy them and the latter only sense forasmuch as the tongue which is such an unruly member infects even through sense but actions do it not so readily but require the intellect to judge and discern whether the party be an Atheist or no. Had I not in beholding the Soul in an human body happened to consider that admirable power it has to frame an articulate noise given chiefly to magnify its Maker and withal how it is otherwise imployed I had not first so much as mentioned such a thing or called one Atheist and Davids dixit insipiens in corde I cannot intend much further For however it be spoken from the heart that is voluntarily and with some kind of affection going along with it yet I do verily think there never was man so confident or that ever so assuredly believed there was no God as I and thousands others do that there is one and that seeming negative opinion were at an end if every man would permit his tongue to declare his belief or at least his doubt and not use it to obey some appetite of being singular and thwart the general received opinion of the world from some desire to be esteemed wise or learned Methinks this question were enough to convince any man that he is not an Atheist in belief Why is he or how comes he to be at any time just and faithful Why a lover of truth Why do's he regard his promise and sometimes perform it to his disadvantage If he will not own this belief of a God by word others may espy it in him for I dare say never any man was yet able so to obliterate the image of God in himself but some mark or impress thereof might at some time be observed by another and therefore let us condemn nothing in man but that unruly member set on fire of Hell over which too there is now and then a kind of fatal necessity of contradicting it self in these reputed Atheists none sooner or more readily unworthily invocating that name they deny than they I have yet that good opinion of many professing or rather saying there is no God That they are actually in some measure just merciful liberal and charitable which is some owning him in their work however it happens they deny him with their lips and they must necessarily secretly own and confess the belief of a Deity from themselves and some of their own actions unless they are able to demonstrate to me or others how these excellent extracorporeal qualities as I may term them as justice mercy c. or a goodness of mind universally inclined or inclinable to all beyond and quite out of its individual self or progeny can possibly arise from a bare concretion of Atoms We have lived in I hope passed an age when generally the tongues of men owned a God publickly enough and might seem to have been a little too familiar with him given him high and excellent Attributes enough called on his divine providence and summoned it down for the justification of every wicked action When Reason God's vicegerent in the Soul seemed quite abandoned and Conscience was defined a new light from above to gratify the affections of some and the fancies of others And t is no great wonder if upon a sudden change and alteration some men run into the contrary extream That when reason begins to take place again there start up a philosophical generation of men upon the stage some say the world
the spirit of God worketh or should work in us As if we were as familiarly acquainted with that spirit as our own which few of us little regard much less understand that eternal that omnipotent that incomprehensible that dreadful spirit I may say for certainly no man can seriously exercise his thoughts thereabout without fear and trembling by whose breath we are as easily consumed as made therefore let us fear to be too bold with it Well! can it be any offence against that good spirit for a man to behold his own unworthiness to doubt or fear its absence or to question whether we mistake not some pleasing motion of our own spirit for it 'T is not the present comfort we receive from our cogitations nor yet our actions that is any infallible sign that we have thought or acted from that good spirit merely 'T is an infallible sign rather that we have not wilfully acted against the present superintendent of our own spirit our reason and that is the utmost we can be assured from thence I may mean well and please my self with the sincerity of my present cogitations in relation to this very subject of the spirit think I have spoken the words of truth and soberness yet it would be a strange presumption in me though I acknowledge the favourable assistance of a divine power in every good thought to affirm that good spirit more especially working in me unless I could be able to convince the world and rest assured too my self of the indubitable truth of that which I have said But that I do not I rather fear I have in many particulars thought amiss and surely he who has not that fear always moving in him is very arrogant and who has it must necessarily discard such high thoughts in himself at least he must keep them from reigning in him Have not many men thought they have done God good service in some action and yet repented them of the action Have not every of us now and then pleased our selves with beholding as we thought the light of some divine truth which upon second cogitations and second weighing we have rejected as our own false conceipt and seemed to be angry and vexed with our selves which is the chief ingredient of repentance for receiving or allowing such an opinion Now as it is impossible to err from the immediate light of that good spirit so I am confident God was never so unkind to any as to suffer any inward vexation of mind in relation to the embracing of that he immediately inclined the mind to by his Holy spirit And therefore let not some honest well-meaning men as doubtless there are many from the present comfort they receive of the integrity or innocency of their own heart be induced through that song of requiem as I have mentioned chanted to them from others to think that all that which they for the present verily believe is the demonstration of that spirit of truth dwelling in them There is a vast and wide difference between God's working in and through our spirit by his providence as I have mentioned and by his Holy spirit We may err by the first and those errors foreseen by him are ordered to his glory but never by the second nay give me leave to say as well as think we may wilfully sin by God's providence Not that he is the author of sin but by leaving us sometimes unto our selves he so after a manner as it were leads us into temptation which we are taught to pray against by one that well knew our infirmities in the flesh though he sinned not And therefore 't were well we mistake not the one for the other There is no man that I know so uncharitable to think any good meaning Christian man wholly devoid of that good spirit But wishes that from thence he may in due time have a clear sight of the truth A thing at present very remote from the prospect of the best or wisest of us Let him be but so charitable to himself as to wish the same We have our desire He lays aside his present confidence and boasting There are many well-meaning men and of a seeming humble spirit to themselves who are ready perhaps therefore to impute all their good thoughts to the work of that good spirit in them but I wish their own spirit deceive them not For I take this delusion to arise not always or so commonly from humility and the love of truth as it does from secret pride and the love of liberty Saint Paul has told us Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty and if we are led thereby we are not under the law This pleases us so in a literal sense that we are ready to let go our reason to believe we have the spirit to guide us in all things But we might rationally suspect that those who harp to us so much upon that string would rather enslave us to themselves As for liberty we have enough already in any sence and 't is well if we use it not either for an occasion to the flesh or for a cloke of maliciousness And for the Law we need not fear or desire to be exempt from it 't is fulfilled in one word the same Apostle tells us and that one word is Charity a thing chiefly to be recommended to all which I have insisted upon elsewhere and which I pray God send us through that spirit and then we shall not bite and devour one another under colour of I know not what spirit perhaps through the very spirit of delusion In all sins or offences we say the understanding the will and the affections are all more or less faulty but where the will is most too blame there is the offence ever the greater Now if it be an offence to vouch the Holy spirit upon every small occasion and to play with it as we may say in too familiar a discourse of it Men had need take great care and heed that their will be not most to blame in that case I think you will not and I dare not go about to define what that sin is which totally excludes us from mercy But if any man upon examination of that deceitful thing his heart shall chance to find he has at any time upon any wordly design whatsoever pretended some light from that Holy spirit Or so much as indeavoured to obscure the light of reason in others which is able to shew unto subjects their duty of obedience that there is no power but of God and the powers that be are ordained of God by amuzing them therewith and this for the advancement of himself in place power or dignity whether that we call temporal or that we call spiritual I will be bold to tell him he has been very presumptuous and has committed a great offence Well these two sorts of persons I first mentioned the mere Spiritualist and the mere Naturalist are
reconcilation for they are opposites it might prove an happy thing for this Island And truly I cannot imagine a readier way to reconcile them than to perswade every of the Leaders in each opinion if we could prevail therein now and then to withdraw himself from all company and seriously consider himself our spiritualists with the invocation of divine assistance though the other not have some rational discourse or intercourse with himself alone in relation to his past actions or opinions after what strange manner his soul has worked Not only why his will and affections have pursued and imbraced that which his intellect has rejected but why his intellect without apparent cause from without should sometimes reject that which at other times it receives and receive that which at other times it rejects Whether that be not guided by affection sometimes as well as affection by that Or whether they with the imagination have not wrought together of themselves for want of a better guide rather than of any spirit from above And what is that we seem to drive at all our lives and why With many such like enquiries This I call a busy solitude and recommend it if that may move ought as the readiest way for some little light of truth which we pretend to but too much to break in upon the soul. And O that some men would with their reason and the spirit in conjunction together if that might be throughly and impartially view and consider their imperfections the daily errors and lapses of their own soul whether through the precipitance of passion or otherwise howsoever Then surely notwithstanding they might trust to the merits of a Saviour through that blessed Spirit I dare say they would not boast of its daily effects in themselves nor go about to perswade others of its daily motion in them clean contrary to reason and so much difference and distinguish themselves from all others by the spirit only I know no hurt this rational solitude could do our Anti-Atheists and such as almost deify themselves I do not observe those great spiritualists much given to melancholy a thing which sets the imagination on work without any reason at all and from which I confess there may be much danger in solitude they are generally busy and medling enough and over and above their inspiration assume and challenge to themselves a great deal of rationality beyond other men They have their reason ready at hand and surely we must needs allow them strength of reason if the greatest policy or subtilty be always the product of the strongest reason which I cannot think but the looking beyond and beholding all policy as vain to be it and then that reason of theirs if they would first lay aside all prejudice and passion might in an humble solitude work that effect which in the end might bring them truer comfort than what they at present feel or pretend to from the spirit But they are not the men to whom I would chiefly recommend solitude lest from thence they feed their passions through their reason rather than subdue them thereby as it often happens It is the plain downright Atheist resolved in company to believe nothing without a plain demonstration and who perhaps alone with himself might from himself receive a kind of demonstration Men may pronounce a vae soli but so long as a mans reason is able upon occasion to put a stop to the career of his imagination and not only suffer it to ramble beyond sense but even contrary to sense in which case only it is we are subject to destroy our own bodies We do think notwithstanding God's wise and provident care of a companion for man in the creation and the advantage and comfort we receive from company above all other creatures It may be good for man to be sometimes alone It matters not much who was the first Author of that saying Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus whether Scipio the African or any other if so be upon consideration it be found to have no less of weight in it than any of those of the Sages Surely we must needs think upon weighing it proceeded from a more than ordinary divine soul and one who from solitude found somewhat of enjoyment more than ordinary Scipio if we believe history received as great and publick applause from publick action as any man whatsoever and might have pleased and enjoyed himself we may well think in company as much as any man And therefore if it were he we might the rather give credit to the saying and hope to find that company and complacency in solitude we never yet found This let me tell any man that he who considers his past actions by himself searches rationally into himself if he once come to behold his own imperfections and that sight he will not miss of if his intellect be not strangly bewitched by his affections he will from thence fly in desire to find out and behold somewhat that is perfect which if he should not at present do as I am almost assured he will do in fine that little acquaintance he gets with himself will otherwise find him imployment sufficient to verify that saying of Scipio And this is the thing I would always have specially recommended to an Atheist We have an English expression in relation to a delirium or dotage of being besides our selves we so translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or insanis Paul and truly he who travels all the world over in quest of an original cause of all things and looks not into himself is in my opinion as well really and truly as literally so 'T is a strange thing one would think men in their search after God should go furthest from him run to the least and I think most inconsiderable particle of his creation and fansie atoms to be the cause of mind without a mind No it must be a greater mind that is the cause of a lesser mind and a perfect mind of an imperfect mind we our selves seem nearest to a Deity and what should we go further to search for it A man 's own soul is in my opinion that glass which narrowly looked into shews not only it self unto its self but something beyond it and above it Did ever any man observe the motion of his soul and not at that time see his ignorance and impute folly to some of his actions And can he behold ignorance and folly and not believe there is some such thing as knowledge or perfect wisdom Can he observe his own weakness without acknowledging some absolute power Can he find such a thing as falshood in himself and not believe there is truth Can he observe himself sometimes harsh and cruel and not acknowledge that there is such a thing as mercy Did he never injure man and if that escape not his sight how will he be able to deny but that there is such a thing as justice and so for the like
as I may term it of any durable Spirit in any visible creature but us his Image because although those other Spirits are of him and from him yet they are not capable to conceive they are of him and from him nay from any thing else and though some of them seem to work with intellect and will yet they really work to his glory as meer machines or engines without any design and desire to fulfil or will to transgress his eternal purpose that we can discern Now let us a little behold God in his Creation That is in his several visible creatures which is indeed the proper mirrour for our reason to look into for that cannot ascend higher of it self and we may presently behold somewhat more than is obvious to common ordinary sense and see his spirit working every where though not alike in wisdom I know we distinguish between animate and inanimate bodies vegetation and sense and the like yet in all bodies there are Spirits insensibly included in the tangible parts as in an integumen which are never almost at rest but from them and their motion proceed Concoction Maturation Putrefaction and the like and even in those inanimate bodies to which we allow not vegetation or sense there is a perception far more subtile than sense That is a kind of election to imbrace what is agreeable and to exclude or expel what is ingrate or nauseous as we find between bodies electrick and some other bodies And especially between Magnetick bodies and others as the Loadstone and Iron in which or between which there is a very disposition conforming unto contiguity or coition or union with one another For we cannot impute any coition of these two bodies to a bare attractive quality in the Loadstone since those who have made their several Experiments thereof do deliver unto us that if a piece of Iron be fastned in a bowl of Water and a small Loadstone inclosed in a kind of Boat of Cork be put into the Water it will presently move and make way to the Iron Nay a Needle touched will move towards a great body of Steel untouched And the atoms or dust of a Loadstone finely filed will adhere unto Iron that was never touched And as there is a kind of desire of union in some bodies so there is an antipathy in or between others as may be observed by Iron put into Aqua fortis upon which there will forthwith be an ebulition with noise and emication such an antipathy is there and such a combat and contest between Sulphur and Iron when they meet As for Plants and all Vegetables not to speak any thing of the sensible Plant or the reason of its contraction upon touching though we allow them not sense or passion We cannot deny somewhat of appetite and aversion to be inherent in them which in all creatures of motion is the product and mother of all passions they do surely attract what is proper for their nourishment and reject or secern what is improper and nauseous There are multitudes of Plants which of themselves as weak and feeble shall seem to tend directly to some other next adjacent bodies which may support them and even as it were espy and feel them out as hath been observed of the Vine the Ivy the Hop our ordinary Ginny or Kidney Beans in Gardens and many more And although that observation of perception in Plants may sometimes be taken upon false grounds and that it is often in reality rather some attraction by the warm Sun-beams of the body supported to the body supporting than any perception in the body supported I my self have seen that Herb or Weed we commonly call Cliver rooted some little distance on each side of an Hedge from each side North and South bent and inclined to the same Hedge as to its prop and support What there is of affection in Plants is not altogether a fruitless inquiry We commonly say and it may be not improperly That Laurel loveth the shade or delighteth in the shade And other Plants love and affect such and such a kind of soil Now to say nothing of the Palm-tree strangers to our Climate of which it is reported That if two of them of some difference in kind for there is some distinction made between them of Male and Female as we do of some other Plants grow near together they will most apparently incline to each other with the imbraces as it were of Lovers There is most certainly a kind of agreement and disagreement between divers and sundry particular Plants So as some of several kinds shall thrive separate and asunder upon a like soil and yet not contiguous and together And on the other side there are divers peculiar Plants which will not thrive or be at all unless adjacent contiguous or intermixt with some other of another kind As from peculiar Weeds growing amongst Corn only we observe Some of which kinds of Weeds are never or rarely to be found elsewhere than amongst Corn Nor will the soil ready manured for Corn if the same be neglected to be sown with Corn from ill husbandry or otherwise ever produce them There is a kind of Envy and Emulation between Plants and as it were a striving for the mastery as is observable in Trees contiguous and adjacent which ever mount higher than when they are apart and distant some space one from each other and although some other reason may be given for their mounting in height in case of proximity viz. a more vigorous inclination and erection ascendently towards the Sun whose beams are laterally obstructed by the neighbouring Trees Yet that reason holds not in smaller bodies as Grass and Corn where thickness or near adjacency rather dwarfs than otherwise And yet between Corn and Weeds there is observable a kind of strugling for the mastery in the beginning of Summer and sometimes the one and sometimes the other robbing its rival of nourishment do's very much enfeeble it and cause it to lose its strength verdure and freshness if not totally destroy it which the Poet methinks prettily expresses in these if I forget not words Et steriles dominantur avenae as if after a superiority they lorded it as we say over one another Now as we observe God has by the universal frame of Nature implanted some kind of spirit in every of his Works and some kind of abhorrence of a dissolution together with a secret endeavour in every particular of his Works tending not only towards the preservation of its peculiar being barely but its exaltation and well-being too as far as may be So it is no ways dissonant to our reason to conjecture or imagine that that wise Creator of all things should from those bodies which he was pleased to have separate from the earth and to have local motion Ordain a Spirit to arise rarified in them to some greater proportion than the other which should be not only pervious as in Plants but have some peculiar
has been made and no allurement or invitation she can make shall draw them into the water An Element equally destructive to our nature and yet from which we are often inforced to use some care and industry to preserve our own young ones I speak all this to shew and to make it somewhat apparent and plain that that kind of Intellect which is in Animals how great soever it may seem to be is nothing else but a more curious kind of perception with sense and motion than that of Vegetables or inanimate bodies and arising in the blood or other such like thin fluid substance in Insects because as soon soever as it has its full current and motion the intellect of those creatures is at the highest unless some actions of theirs from our documents seem to make an improvement of it which in reality is no addition of intellect but the exercising a prior inherent Intellect some other way towards their acquiring food or the like But the Soul of man though chiefly seated in the blood and upon a total effusion or shedding thereof necessarily leaving the body do's not in the most florid and vigorous condition thereof and in youth so much shew it self nor is so quick in discerning things obnoxious to the body as theirs and therefore may seem rather some wonderful way inspired than to be connative and of the substance of the body for certainly a separate created Spirit though of a wonderful knowledg and apprehension as subsisting of it self yet sent into the gloomy dark vault or tabernacle of a body wants not only the introduction of species by sense as some inlet to work upon but also some considerable space of time to shew its intellectual power and vigour rather than a spirit raised in a body for the substance and government only of the same body without which speedy work in Nature to some perfection the body would not long submit in that state And therefore in the case of a first created and after infused spirit only it sometimes happens from the darkness or closeness of its mansion it has little other visible operation than the very carrying its Tabernacle about with it as I instanced in the case of an Ideot in my Treatise de Anima and yet as to its excellence and sublimity in point of its original being and intellective power were it freed and discharged of those obstructions ithas far exceeds that of the wisest Animal So as immaterial and from thence probably immortal spirits want but room to display themselves or having room want some space of time to recover and expel some mists of their present obstruction and then by gifts only break out in any lustre To will a Spirit endowed with some kind of preservative intellect to arise from a body is equally the wonderful work of an Omnipotent Power with the creation of a body and endowing the same with a spirit ab extra as I may say and no less than either to endow an inanimate body with peculiar operative Qualities or Vertues But if it be once admitted and granted that in Animals the blood is the life or that the spirit is essential with the body whereof there is some sufficient ground from the course of Nature to believe its motion and tendence regarding nothing else It will necessarily and consequently follow That the whole spirit and body how ever we divide it by particular names is subject to one and the same Fate Destiny or Period As to these spirits of ours If they were a part of and coessential with our bodies I cannot see how it were either natural or possible that there could at any time arise in the soul a desire of disunion or dissolution from that body of which it self was a part Which desire in certain humane spirits has most certainly at sometimes appeared nay often worked its desired effect Nor is it reasonable to conjecture that any thing can possibly will or endeavour its own destruction or annihilation and therefore if our Souls were of the very essence of our Bodies we must grant A man could never voluntarily or intentionally make away himself the contrary whereof is manifest As to those spirits of theirs if they were distinct or any way separable from the body and no part thereof since they labour and groan under the Creation as much or more than we and are no less subject to passions of fear and the like then at sometime or other upon some displeasure or other there would be espied a voluntary indeavour of its separation by its own act to ease it self of those flames it felt for the present But this could never be observed in any of them by any of us but alwayes such a voluntary resistance of Separation as there is usually in us unless at such times as this separable Soul of ours is ravished with Hopes and Joyes or tortured with Despairs and Fears At least if the Soul of beast were a distinct thing from the body and separable therefrom it might now and then as well as ours be observed naturally to act after such a manner as in no wise barely and simply tended towards the preservation of the same body but seeming to neglect the body were somewhat fixed for a while upon a subject matter altogether unnecessary to the bodies ease quiet or well being Now if any man could be able to satisfy me of so much as a voluntary abstinence in any creature save Man at any time from any thing which might seem to afford delectation or nourishment to the body or satiate or please the same at such instant as there was a present appetite or desire and when there was no impendent fear or other passion to obstruct so as the body might seem to be at the same instant voluntarily neglected for the pleasing or satisfaction of the mind Much more if I were able to discern any kind of motion of the spirit of beast the most subtle or wise tending out of its proper element the Flesh and the preservation thereof and exercising its passions about qualities or accidents as to love Justice or Mercy to fear ignominy or contempt to desire to know or the like whereby it might seem to be capable of or merit a future reward or punishment and be a just subject thereof for nothing uncapable to act voluntarily beyond the preservation of it self can so be I should then be inclinable to think that there is rather a continuation and some transmigration of that Soul than any evaporation thereof and vanishing into the soft air or a reduction thereof into Earth with the body But besides what has been alledged and some places of holy Scripture which might be alledged seeming to give a period to the soul or spirit of beast together with the body It will be difficult for our imagination so long as we have any reason left to go along with it aid or assist it or else but correct it to assign a place for the
righteous merciful to our Beasts Thus much more I have adventured to speak in reference to the Soul of Beasts that curious and admirable effect of Nature that Chimistry in nature by which we conceive there is extracted a kind of Intellect out of matter yet such as necessarily ceases to be or work out of its house of clay but falls and perishes with it as we conjecture and is not so immediately from the breath or spirit of the Almighty as our own because we cannot observe in or from its motion or operation any thing which might seem to tend or reach after eternity or perpetuity or any imployment of any thoughts about that more remote author of its being the first original indepent cause of all God In my search into my self or in my Treatise de Anima and comparing the soul of man and beast together I did endeavour to find out the native Strength and Power and set down the just Extent Limits and Bounds of each without diminishing ought from the one or adding to the other that thereby I might behold their several original extract This I did by the best and clearest light my Reason was able to afford and from thence I could never espy any just ground to conclude any future duration of the Spirit of Beast as that of ours but rather the contrary Now the chief ground as I conceive which has begot an opinion in some men of their Duration and Immortality is some false opinion or admiration of an Intellect in them beyond its compass and ability or what they are naturally endowed withal Men have been very apt and prone sometimes in their search into the works of Nature to bestow their own reason on other Creatures and amplified theirs to have their own magnified and would be esteemed quick-sighted in curiously finding out what they never had or enjoyed We have often attributed to Brutes greater gifts than God through Nature ever bestowed on them Their Intellect has been strangely gilt by some of us and made to pass for currant amongst others when in reality it is but ordinary Earth and from thence extracted and if we can but once find and espy as we think some remote prospect of theirs it is no marvel if we ascribe duration and perpetuity to them as well as to our selves An instance whereof I will first here lay down before you and then fully convince you as I think or any other of the falsity of that common Tenet Amongst others the wisdom of the Ant is much extolled and magnified and it is a received opinion from some learned and eminent Men that that Creature for the preservation of the Corn she carries to her Nest or Heap for her support in Winter bites of the ends to prevent the shooting out of the Nutriment thereof into Blade and Stalk Now to shew the apparent falsity hereof and that there is no such provident wisdom in this Creature nor any such foresight of it into the Works of Nature We must first find out if we can what kind of Ant it is for there are divers kinds to which this provident wisdom is attributed Of Ants so called there are many of various kinds and different colours some greater and some smaller some conversant only in Pasture grounds or Orchards raising multitudes of little Hillocks out of the Earth and scarce discernible to move much further than those Banks most of a red colour Others of a black colour and usually about some hollow Tree Others more conversant about houses and very troublesome to the Owners Others more conversant about woody places and raising a great heap of Sticks Straws and other light adjacent matter and this is the great brown Ant the Poet so finely and elegantly describes which I conceive to be the provident wise Ant intended For of other kind I could never discern that carried any thing to their Heap Food or otherwise Now I must first take leave to deny from sight this constant seeming wise course of theirs For I have seen Corn spring and shoot from their Heaps and opening their Heap have taken it into my hands and viewed its Sprouts into Blade and Root Not that I think it usual or common with them to bring any Corn at all thither unless the same casually scattered next their Heap and Path was with other things as a light portable matter for them brought to their Heap For I could never yet discern them to feed on any Corn but only on tender Buds of Fruit-Trees and other Trees Grass Flowers and sometimes Fruit neither indeed shall a man find their Path by which they go and return tend towards any Corn-Field at any time but to some particular Trees where one shall see their quick and numerous passage up and down Now besides that there are innumerable kinds of Seeds which may come under the notion of Grain or Corn so round as that no end is discernible I would the Discerner and finder out or at least the Assertor of this Wisdom in the Ant would shew me the two ends of a piece which if he should I can shew him if he please to stay the Experiment both Blade and Root proceed from one end in some particular Grain and Kernels and that if it be cut into parts and one end cast away the other will notwithstanding sprout grow up thrive and flourish But to confute this Error as I said He who has ever observed their Heaps and moved them after a great rain shall find such a pretty contexture or way of laying those little sticks and straws that the place where they lay their Eggs unless sometimes they bring them up nearer to the Sun and whither they chiefly resort shall be very dry after the greatest Showers Now if they have such a way of Architecture that they can lay up their Corn dry and that it will so continue then there is no need of biting off the ends for without moisture it will never sprout though the ends continue on but if that be denied and that they lay up their Corn so as it it may be moistened from Rain then though it be bit and uncapable of sprouting that moisture in the Heap will soon convert it to Putrefaction and Earth and take from it all nutritive quality before the approach of Winter the time they may seem to need it But besides this whosoever observes all kinds of Insects which move upon the face of the Earth shall find none of them unless such as are kept vigorous from the heat of other greater living Bodies viz. Worms Lice or the like to want nourishment the greater and sharper part of Winter but lye as it were dead and stupified till again revived and re-inspirited by the more near approach and warmth of the Sun-Beams And except it be for such time they have always Herb their common food so as we do vainly impute to them a false Wisdom of our own imagination Yet there is a pretty and
a present fancy shall render with the assistance of some formerly debauched or deceived Affection Now howsoever I adjudge affirm or maintain Affection to be the original cause of motion or work in the Soul I do not adjudge it originally to blame or to be the chief and principal cause of every uneasy or evil motion in the Soul but that the Imagination is first and chiefly to be blamed and that Affection would never imbrace any thing as good or reject any thing as evil which are not so in their Nature if the Imagination did not first present them as such Human Affection originally good naturally tends in desire to that which is good But because the Imagination the perspective by which it looks abroad is not able of its own strength to afford it a full and true prospect of any such thing it many times presents unto it in haste things as good and beautiful which in truth are not which once accepted by the Affections as good from that false glass they adhere thereto and are not easily removed but disturb us whensoever we are informed the contrary by others beating upon our Reason through sense or indeed that our Reason of it self shall too late inform us otherwise 'T is from the checks of Reason at peculiar seasons that that saying of video meliora c. has arose not from the Imagination which is most apt to delude us that we follow and are most prone to follow and if we are once given up shall surely follow as Scripture it self seems to intimate placing the foolishness of our hearts subsequent and attending on the vanity of our Imagination And therefore we should strive as far as we are able to rectify that one faculty in the beginning Does not experience daily shew us this one faculty in the Soul has deluded every thing that may be called an Affection in us by representing things on the right hand in a far more pleasant and delightful and on the left in a far more horrid and uncouth dress than in truth they are or prove to be when we become really acquainted with them and by our Affections seem to taste them Every man who has promised himself Place or Power with the delight thereof to gratify Ambition or Revenge Honour to gratify Pride Riches to gratify a Covetous desire Fleshly pleasure to satisfy a more than Beastly lust and enjoyed either I am sure will own it to himself and that a Mahometan Paradise best agrees with fancy alone and by it self as it were for whatsoever may be called an Affection no sooner tasts it but it loaths it and wants the Imagination to put fresh colours on it again to raise a fresh or as it were a new desire The things which the Imagination at first presents as ingrateful to the Affections we are rarely so long and so well acquainted with because we shun them and turn from them in thoughts as often as we can as with the help of experience to make a true judgment of our Imaginations false gloss thereon and we are never willing to stand out the trial This I am verily perswaded that that most dreadful Gulph of Death is chiefly so framed from the Imagination and is not such without its deception And that those who have shot it if they could return to us again and declare what might be most for our ease and quiet in relation thereto would bid us not to read the Treatises thereof which some have made and framed by their Imagination but advise us to exercise our thoughts towards the performance of moral duties rather than busy them about that which serves but to aggravate and enhaunce terror And I do further believe how e're we accuse our Affections therefore that it never was suddain joy or suddain fear or grief as is storied that has killed men those Passions are not so much to be blamed how suddainly soever they are awaked they only imbrace or avoid as they seem directed but that it is a strange suddain exaltation of the Imagination a thing seated in the brain which from its violent heat and motion there is able to dissolve and dissipate our vital Spirits and stop this breath of life in our mortal Bodies I do not impute our common distractions and disturbance of mind grounded as may seem to most in fears and jealousies so much to the fault of mens Affections as their Imaginations though Affection be to blame too Affection in man is generally good and inclinable to peace and quiet and if it work the contrary 't is from some false light of things darted from the Imagination however raised or kindled therein There are many thousands no doubt who from the bottom of their hearts wish and desire the quiet and peace of their Country and Nation and yet at this instant very much help to foment its differences and are ready to bring upon it the contraries thereof Trouble and War and this from a false and vain Imagination only or chiefly that we might be happier than we are because we seem not at present so happy as we would be Which deceit of the Imagination men usually observe when 't is too late and wish themselves again but as happy as they have been But it is a strange thing that they who have once observed it and found themselves deceived thereby should a second time suffer their Affections to labour under the same fallacy and not observe from Reason back'd as it were from Experience that we may be deceived thereby and therefore carry such a suspicion of the Imagination in our Soul as not to let our Affections too deeply ingage with theirs who may possibly indeavour their own advancement rather than our reformation and amendment and aim at the delusion of our Imagination by mormo's and spectrum's raised and shot into it through sense absurdly enough rather than the enlightning our Reason by offering us any thing of weight or truth Nay when the Imagination without the least ground or concurrence of Reason has once framed a belief in some men and thereby captivated their Affections how ready are these faculties together to spread the infection through Sense in others by the most ridiculous ways and means that may be Every Apparition every Blazing-Star must portend if not infallibly denote to others as well as themselves Sedition Troubles Wars Subversion of Monarchy or what else men readily would And truly so every such thing does if we exercise not our Reason and it happens once to become a general belief amongst us from the fallacy of our Imagination by the Devils Emissaries that there is such a portent but if men would be prevailed with to make use of their Reason I affirm and they would see these Apparitions portend no such thing But that it is in our power at all times to change the seeming evil consequent of these Signs or Face of the Heavens and I will plainly tell you how Let every one of us
God we may make use of with our Reason for fear of a worse inconvenience we shall scarce be able to judge otherwise of our weakness and infirmities herein but have such a true sight of them as we ought to have and make us humble not proud in Spirit I do confess we seem to have some little power over our Affections from the very light or strength of Reason in us Not to let them move one way or other in relation to objects introduced in the Soul without some kind of precedent allowance because before they fix or indeed fly as it were out of the Body towards imbracing or rejecting any thing there is a kind of Consult But the Imagination in its first motion admits of no consult nor is capable of Reason's correction till after it has moved Nay 't is so swift and sudden of motion as nothing whatsoever can rightly be compared to it in velocity and swift rise 'T is well if we can any wise stop it or change it or alter its course in the end And surely whensoever that is done it is done by or through the Affections not Strength of Reason or power in Will immediately over it Affection first a little regulated by the light of Reason and made as it were to expect some directions towards the embracing true Happiness does much help towards the correcting our Imagination But in this correction we shall find or may observe the Imaginations better and more regular motion to be rather by the allurement of some Affection than the impulse of the Will or immediate strength of Reason Neither Reason nor Will can wholly reclaim it from following or complying with Sense nor force it to work clean contrary to a present affection So as we must resign it up to some Power or Will than our own if we expect it should be guided by any such thing as what we call Power or Will III. This being premised That we have no absolute Power or Dominion over the Imagination but that as it necessarily and perpetually worketh and we cannot quiet it so it sometimes worketh against our real Will and we cannot reclaim it for who is there who willingly as I may say lets it present death of Relations Friends and other losses c. sometimes before-hand and withal in such dreadful colours as it does and that all the rein that we may be said to have hold on is only from the power which our Reason hath over our Will not to let our Affections fasten on or long embrace what is presented to them by the Imagination if so be our Reason allow it not This I say premised Let us if you please here examine how far we may become liable to Divine Justice or Humane Justice either for our Errors happening or like to happen from the work of the Imagination as principal Whereabout having many times puzled my self in relation to the manner of the Souls working you shall here have my judgment or the allowance of my weak Reason with submission to a stronger your own But here again as all along in treating of the Soul we must suppose in the motion of any one faculty no other Principal faculty is wholly exempt and secluded but has some kind of seeming consequent motion with it As is observable in our very Dreams wherein men do not only imagine but seem at least to affect seem to argue and weigh and seem to will Nay some in pursuance thereof have bodily motion they talk they arise they walk c. For if the Imagination were not attended with those other faculties or did or could at any time work alone or singly of it self I should readily acquit it in most if not all cases as blameless Now then thus I think whatsoever false or naughty or vitious presentment of the Imagination that is a first entertainment in our thoughts what seems contrary to Gods revealed will or that law of his imprinted in our minds if search and inquiry were made is gratefully accepted by the Affections Reason then in its full power and strength though Reason so far restrain the will and them too as that there follows no overt Act thereupon I think doth make us culpable that is we sin Because were our Affections such as they should be or such as we might through our strength of Reason with the invocation of Divine assistance have made or rendred them they would not gratefully accept any thing that were evil but have a reluctancy against it and decline it from some prior instruction I may say rather than present correction But if the Affections upon the first touch of the Imagination do loath and abhor that evil the Imagination brings or lays before them We are in no wise answerable for the irregularity or evil contrivance of our Imagination If Reason be totally disabled to work in us that which is right the defect we call ideocy or perpetual madness without any negligence or default in us we are neither answerable as I think for our evil Imaginations evil Affections or Intentions nor consequently our evil Actions thereupon But if that disability came upon us by our own default or negligence I think of it otherwise in relation to God and punishable by him howe're it may be dispensed withal here by man If Reason be disabled naturally and inevitably though for some time only through the fumes of the Body and the very inlet Sense stopped as in case of sleep though the Imagination invent that which is evil and some of the Affections imbrace the same and the Will seems to agree and consent thereto yet is the Soul blameless before man I think and God too For that Sense being shut and the Imagination as well counterfeiting the same as supplying the place of Reason we may without any prior obliquity in our Soul seem only to have the consent of those other faculties to our Imagination Which other faculties will utterly abhor abominate and forsake what that contrived as soon as ever Sense is open again and that they have the influence of any clearer light to move by And therefore I cannot judge any man culpable for any Act of the Soul whatsoever in a Dream Let him seem to plot and contrive first then to strike wound or kill any man whatsoever I shall not condemn him Because it is not usually any natural malignity of Affection or any evil inclination in mans will that first forces the Imagination to conceive or entertain Evil against Sense but ardency a good and lawful Affection which forces the Imagination for the want of the light of Sense to raise a fear of deprivation of what we best love and they together such fear and fancy composing a Tragedy for there is no man but dreams oftner of the death of his Friends than of his Enemies often make us seem the Actors our selves I or any man may dream of the killing of his own most beloved Child without offence Nay a man may
the Ant it s own Eggs though I find not that quick inspect in other Creatures as may be observed in the stirring of their several heaps But my meaning here is not to trouble your more serious thoughts about Flies but to let you know mine in reference to the Souls of men chiefly with some grounds and reason thereof They have been these That amongst all the works of Nature or more properly the God of Nature no such great and various dissimilitude is to be found as in that chief and principal work of his the Souls of men whether of themselves or arising from the subject wherein they work shall not in this place be my chief enquiry But since we daily find and observe or may so at least a Soul of a great magnitude inclosed in a narrow Body or Prison and a very narrow small contracted Soul in a large one A vigorous and active Soul in a weak Body A feeble in a strong and well built one A bright and beautiful in a cloudy and deformed one A black and deformed in a clear and beautiful one nay any in any we have no Reason to conjecture that it receives any chief or sole power of its operation from thence much less its strange vicissitudes and changes since Seasons may be observed when though through the Organs of Sense all the most pleasant worldly objects are let into the Soul it will be dismal and sad and sometime notwithstanding all the gastly Spectacles which can be presented to her she will be pleasant and joyful and all this as well at such times as the Body is strong and vigorous as when it is weak and feeble as well sickly as healthful and as well healthful as sickly And that the Body should cause a visible mutation in the Soul when there is none discernible in it self by the very Soul that inhabits it will hardly obtain a rational assent but that they are as they are by original Creation or some external actuation We vary from one another in relation to our Soul 's acting far beyond what any Creature does from others of the same species with it self Some similitude or likeness of the Souls motion is to be found in them but none or very little amongst us And this various and different kind of operation in us as to Intellect and Affection both shews an original dissimilitude for being as much alike one another in Body as any Creature of one species we should act as much alike if the Soul had its being from the Body rather than any accidental or casual one happening from some formation of the flesh Do we not observe all Brute Creatures of one and the same Species though in several Climates to use the same way of policy in point of their preservation Do they not build their Nests alike and do they not express their Intellect alike whether by obedience or disobedience to us whether by their crouching fawning or resistance Are they not alike cunning But are there two men to be found in the World think you who left to themselves without instruction or without a Precedent or Plat-form before them would do as they do in their kind Surely besides the various form of each one would prove a Lucullus and another a Diogenes one would think no dwelling too spatious and beautiful for him and the other would think a mean and plain one were most useful and best became him We differ in the manner of expressing our Intellect legibly equally as in our Intellect Could we behold the formation of the Issues of several mens brains upon any subject matter we should find one mans begun at the head anothers at the foot a third at the middle and none alike but every mans variously One would bring forth his Brat with all its lineaments and features at the first and yet perhaps a weak one another his very deformed with much labour and pains licked into form according to that erroneous Tenet of the Bear and yet perhaps a strong one And were licking or rather correction and amendment of the most perfect and exact piece committed to divers men successively we should find in some space it would prove like Theseus his Ship renewed by planks it might retain the first name but would not have one jot of the old materials remaining We scarce comment or expound alike in any degree or measure that agreement of the Seventy or seventy two Interpreters is related as a wonder and were I assured of the truth of the relation I should so esteem it nay one of the greatest wonders the World ever afforded in story In this great and chief work of the Creation the Soul of man especially wrought and effected for the setting forth the Glory of the Creator wherein there are diversities of gifts and diversities of administrations and diversities of operations and one God who worketh all in all It is no wonder that we are altogether ignorant either in our selves or others of the power and manner of its operation but are inforced to leave that to the Creator and are only able to behold and see the great variety and strange dissimilitude of human Souls beyond those Spirits of other Creatures how unlike every one is to another and sometimes to it self for want of a gracious influence and thereby behold that one single and simple essence darting out its various rayes upon all the World and our selves chiefly It is we alone that may be most like that essence who are most unlike one another by his drawing us to himself and as it were renewing this wonderful Image of his perhaps variously defaced but happily mutable Did ever man yet behold two Souls naturally as we say in common acceptation alike There is one who venturing upon comparisons in the case amongst others brings in Demosthenes and Cicero together and tells us in his entrance upon their lives how fortune might seem to have framed them out of one mold and Nature fashioned their qualities alike and yet in the Conclusion he tells us that as their Phrase differed and the one was grave and harsh the other jesting and pleasant so one of them was sharp perverse froward and sowre of Nature the other complaisant the one modest and bashful the other full of ostentation and extremely ambitious of Glory or vain-glorious the one excessively Covetous even to corruption and the selling of his eloquence the other not so but liberal and just And surely had he been throughly acquainted with their several dispositions he might have found divers other contrary qualities in them and perhaps not two alike in any degree and those mutable too and their tempers so to vary that he might have seen his pleasant man sometimes froward and his froward sometimes pleasant and not been able to give a reason thereof I do agree that a curious Painter is able by his Art to give such a true representation of any face that we shall know it to be meant of such
of such honest tendency of his own Affections beyond those of another mans moving another way and take such satisfaction and acquiescence therein and now and then to hugg and please himself in his own choice as either to pity or deride another whose labour or indeavour is exercised in a different way though that of either unless in relation to the advancement or setting forth the glory of that first cause which few behold is equally vain Do we not think our State Politicks look on all others as Fools and Ideots And on the other side some whose Affections are not so Worldly mounting though perhaps they carry about as able a purveyor or contriver for their Affections laugh at those gins and traps those men lay to catch themselves as often as another Surely if a man could become a discerner of the thoughts he might espy in a number of Mechanicks very mean if not derisory ones of a man imploying his time beating his brains as we say or at study for some rare new or useful invention although without some such labour or study at first such a kind of Democritus had neither known his craft or mystery so called nor had been acquainted with that God he adores and so much labours for Mammon And on the other side every ordinary Virtuoso is ready to deride and contemn such a Craftsman whose ordinary course of life in his Shop has little more of sagacity to be imputed to it than that of a Spider in his Web nimbly running and catching at every one that enters to suck some profit or advantage therefrom Neither of these perhaps beholding a wise disposal from above or so much as once extracting from their Intellect any such Moral as might be deducible from such like story or Fable as is made of a blind and lame man's meeting together that the ones sight was given to direct the others legs and the others legs to assist his eyes or sight Now though some things have obtained the general assent of the best and clearest Intellects as we observe by the daily pursuit to be good and desirable as Power Dominion and Empire Ornaments rather than goods and allowed as good to please the Ringleader of Affections to Perdition Pride Yet that judgment is passed over before the enjoyment and though Pride will not suffer it publickly to be reversed I dare boldly say 't is ever done in private and were it not for somewhat of Pride every publick man would become private Indeed the Soul which pursues dominion may at preview expect beautiful Attendants and Concomitants and to have many if not most desirable goods in its power as Riches Pleasure Ease c. I and Wisdom too by imputation Yet were it possible to resort to the greatest Favourite the World ever had in that case and for instance let that Favourite be the first Caesar and obtain his response as to his own happiness while here I do believe and am fully perswaded in my self it would be to little or no other effect than what we have received at home from one of our own Nation already That men in great power and place must borrow other mens fancies and opinions to think themselves happy by because they are never so in their own I would not be thought here to descant upon those whom this cross is barely laid on doubtless God makes it more easy to them that we can reasonably imagine but I speak of such as snatch up this cross to lay it on their own backs who certainly are Fools therein and I know not why we may not well account that man Caesar of the number There was never any thing attributed to him or said of him and much has been said which I protest I ever held upon serious thoughts worthy emulation unless his great mercy and clemency which every private man is capable to appear with though not in the same luster and splendor Solomon's truth is able to extort confession from any man in a sedate and sober temper with an only added to it that that is to be desired of a man is his goodness and it was a magnanimous and noble saying of Alexander whom upon comparison with the other I cannot but ever prefer to Taxiles a great and wise King by the story I will fight with thee in honesty and courtesie because thou shalt not exceed me in bounty and liberality A great Commander though not so great as either of the other could once say that were not the mercies of God great and infinite men of their profession and course of life could have little hopes of any future bliss of happiness And certainly as little real happiness or quiet is to be expected here even in this World by one whose course of life is a very bereaving of many innocent Souls of their very outward and present peace ease and rest And yet we would most willingly be all Caesars if we could obtain that Title Power and Dignity without labour and pains What 's the cause of all this Why I will say it is Pride and 't was that only that in labour and travel brought forth those words from Caesar That he had rather be the first man in a mean Village than the second man in Rome which I think neither was a wise or a manly Saying though others will think otherwise and that it was the thought of future fame and glory that framed it Fame with her painted wings memorious fame well 't is a great sign of the Souls immortality that seeing she must not always abide here would leave a perpetual remembrance of her self behind And yet as it is vain to think that the Soul of the right Caesar is at all sensible of its fame with us so I offer whether any of us may not if we please be an imaginary Caesar and that 's as well in this case of Fame For if a man will but take the advice given to the covetous man in the Fable who had lost his hid treasure that he should take and hide a stone and imagine it to be Gold and it would have the same effect towards his happiness So let a man but think that after his death that Soul which is so much magnified by the name of Caesar shall be his It will be then all one as if he had been the man while he lived But who is so mad to part with any one Virtue for Honour as necessity often inforces if a man will needs get it It was a pretty Saying and it may be a true one of the Priest to Marcellus about to build a Temple to Honour and Virtue that those two Gods could not dwell together under one roof nor I think be brought together to attend on one Soul unless Honour were Native with it A man of a stirring Spirit if he be not building Temples here for Diana that is gains a thing not of so great esteem in the World though as generally affected he will usually
often call for and place that no beautiful nor pleasant thing Suspicion as a Centinel in the Soul I do believe there is a righteous and good God in Heaven continually beholding all human actions and a rewarder and punisher thereof according to demerit and since I do believe so much I may conjecture that he would not frame human Nature capable of any bodily affliction or suffering but what by his gift of patience and contentedness might be born with some kind of pleasure or delight The Mind or Soul distinct and of it self is not vulnerable in any part but where it yields of it self and I am sure pleasure which is the health of the Soul will sooner arise in being deceived from a good and innocent intent and meaning than in deceiving from a bad and evil one and therein the deceived has the advantage and therefore I do not nor dare not recommend that thought to any one Wise or Prudent we would all be whether we know when we are so or not It is a very pleasant prospect some have said sitting on the side of an hill to behold the Errors in the vale below but then a man had need be very well seated and fixed left that through some mist arising from thence or some giddiness or inadvertency in himself he rowl down into the same or the like Errors he beholds If I could espy out or find a ground for this kind of sedency that it ever were or could be possibly obtained and held while we remain here on Earth I would presently grant that man might be happy here whatever became of him hereafter and that a wise man in no other notion than the Heathen took him were certainly an happy man In case of Prudence as I define it I will agree with him who says that while she is present a Deity is seldom absent at least there is a Deity ready at hand to assist and help but I do not agree with him that she I mean Prudence was ever yet within the power of any Mortal or at his beck or call or that I am able to shew her to any man in such manner as that he may lay hold on her and detain her He with others who seems to undertake so much has done no more than what Solomon had done before him endeavoured to shew us the vanity of all things which indeed is a prospect from Prudence and which most sober men see by fits and yet often court those things they beheld as deceitful and which usually carry repentance and sorrow as their attendants So as to see vanity do's not amount to a clear sight of all things conducing to Happiness Prudence is a flitting companion of human Nature if she rise with us she may hap not to lye down with us and if she lye down with us she may hap not to rise with us If the Spaniard had his wish and the World should be able to rise wise one morning it is to be doubted or feared above half of it would go to bed foolish So much is a man apt to differ from himself and that from causes sometimes appearing and sometimes not A great and wise Statesman was wont to say from some experience 't is like that that was seldom or never good and sound Counsel which was given soon after dinner and surely there may be found many other and far greater obstructions to Prudence than fumes arising from a full stomach The Soul is subject to many imperfections as long as 't is subjected to work in a Body and to become tired as well as stifled or blinded If Alexander could always behold sleep as the earnest of death a man of a meaner capacity may see it and term it the emblem of folly and find that his Intellect that is the better part of his Intellect for I do not mean his Imagination but his Reason is not able sometime to watch for his will one hour nay one moment We may sometimes find Reason or Prudence in the Soul that is Reason in her best native dress and behold her as an handmaid to Happiness and quiet and she may often prove no less and so we claim and challenge her to be under our jurisdiction when ever we find her but yet still she is often out of the way when we want her and would have her nay when we have most need of her We may think to borrow her or lend her and indeavour to shew her to another but if we do we must lend the party our eyes too at the same instant and season for he who is Prudent himself if at any time he will take upon him to make another so had need be as well able to infuse his own or some discerning Spirit into him as afford him his rules and documents to walk by We are too ignorant and blind I fear in finding out or discerning the manner of conveyance of very human Prudence as we call it whence it is and by what ways and methods 't is attained Prescriptions or directions for Prudence in the Soul are good and yet may be compared to our Physicians methodus medendi towards recovery or health of the Body the method may be orderly observed and a man never the better it may be somewhat worse The best and most prudential saying is no otherwise to be looked upon than a Recipe which works on several Subjects several Effects and several Effects on the same Subject at several Times and Seasons We may grant Solomon to be as great a Doctor as any in that case but none of his precepts are so far approved as to be Universally infallible and without exception It is generally true indeed which he says as for instance in this A soft answer turneth away wrath but we meet sometimes or at particular seasons with tempers and constitutions where a rough blustring or bold answer shall soonest work that effect Though he generally tells us there is a time for all things he could never prefix that time to particular occasions or particulars to time that must be left to every mans Prudence or rather to God That may be Prudence to day which will not prove so to morrow For though we are able sometimes to judge rightly of anothers disease we are apt to be deceived in the secret inclination or suddain alteration of tempers with which we deal And therefore he himself is forced to leave us at large with some such excellent general sayings as these The preparations of the heart are in man but the answer of the tongue is of the Lord. Commit thy works unto the Lord and thy thoughts shall be directed The heart of man purposeth his way but the Lord directeth his steps The lot is cast into the lap but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. Mans goings are of the Lord how can a man then understand his own way And that power to a please a mans very Sense at
course They are these passions which metamorphose a man into a furious Beast 'T is they which are able to destroy that best faculty or light of the Soul Reason and therefore Solomon's maxim is to be observed above any Custodi cor But Reason was never yet found of ability to destroy or wholly mortifie any one passion It may somewhat from Divine assistance regulate or calm lead or direct but if it should wholly destroy the affections as some have pretended to do by it it would prove in the condition of a Prince without Subjects that is indeed no Prince or Governour at all but we find the Subjects able sometimes for want of his vigilancy to destroy their Sovereign and set up a strange confused Anarchy amongst themselves Whatever faculty of the Soul we may give precedency to we sometimes too sensibly find the strength and power of our passions For besides that they are able to destroy one another and that love or hatred can drive away fear and fear is able sometimes to suppress love or hatred so as it seems more difficult to determine which of the passions are strongest then it would be of those things Darius his Guard disputed about while he was asleep They are all strong and either of them is of power enough oft-times to make us destroy our selves or at least neglect our selves and work more hurt to our Bodies than any other faculties of the Soul whatsoever Reason never destroyed any man the imagination might help to do it but never did it of it self but sorrow has done it if we believe the wise Son of Syrach And this common experience will tell every man who lives and is not yet destroyed that the slightest of the passions is able to keep us waking by its proper strength when the imagination were it not for some affection would let us sleep By the strength of that only I mean the imagination we seldom so much as awake from our sleep unless by some terrible presentment it do irritate the affections and then they are the cause and not the imagination and if we do awake thereupon Reason forthwith shews us the folly of our imagination and our affections become quiet But when they have their rise from sense more peculiarly than from the imagination then is the combate dubious they then go on in their rebellion and there is no mastery to be obtained over them by power but by fraud as it were The Will they outlaw which was ordained the subject of Reason and that necessarily carries with it the Organs of the Body as its ministers The aim of the Will may be good in general but that is not of power to distinguish between reality and apparency of good neither good the end nor virtues the way to that end have any corporal shape and therefore cannot be shewed as so to the senses whereby the affections might be reclaimed and made to fix upon any real good Besides Sense is only judge of present things Reason of future as well as present the imagination is somewhat capable of both And therefore if ever the affections become fixed on a real good 't is not that they are mastered but that next and immediately under God's special Grace often leading and directing them they are deceived into good hoodwink'd a little from sense and caught as it were by a wile or stratagem The imagination is slily drawn away from taking part with them and somewhat of real good is first from Reason as it were darted into the imagination and by the imagination conveyed unto them Affections being native visibly working in us as soon as we are born without controul for a long while unless ab extra as we say and no Reason to govern till they have encamped and fortified themselves the wise man might well say He that ruleth them is better than he that ruleth a City The City where they inhabit is a deceitful place many Caves and Vaults in it for them to lurk in we find it but too true when we enter into it and search it and think we have wholly won it We may well wish that Ieremy were a false Prophet and somewhat deceived himself in telling us it is deceitful above all things and therefore we have a hard task to make those Citizens there good Subjects and fit for another City whose maker and builder is God If ever they prove so they must be dealt withall like as with men wedded to their affections as we term them proverbially and as they are usually dealt withall that is allured and led not thrust and driven they are too stubborn to move that way SECT V. That some Affection is the substantial part of the Soul I Have thought and do think and believe which is somewhat more then a thought it is a thought with the concurrence approbation and allowance of ones Reason that the Soul of man is immortal and that the very Essence or substantial part of an Humane Soul disrobed of a Body or subsisting of it self is some restless working however at some times invisible affection and that if those more noble faculties of our Soul next and immediately under that bright heavenly Star are the Pilots to conduct us unto rest some affection as it seems to me is the chief Passenger in this frail and weak Vessel of the flesh St. Paul in that admirable Encomium of his of Charity tells us that it abides when many other gifts fail And if we shall know as we are known as he tells us in another place there will be then little use of the Invention Memory Reason or the like which are but the Handmaids to knowledge Neither can I rationally imagine after return of the Soul to its place of rest or for default thereof in its banishment to everlasting wandring any use of other faculties than the affections unless towards the exalting or heightning them in their several degrees whether love and joy on the one side or sorrow fear c. on the other The Soul of man being an emanation from that Divine love must necessarily partake of it love and not able at present by any natural light it has to reach unto it self its proper object lays hold on any thing rather than seem to vanish or be extinct and withall that it happens to have such several inclinations in man while it is here is surely by reason of some false imaginary light or the want of a true one and that we want both power and skill in the setting or tuning some strings of the affections as I may call them And 't is want of a clear inspect into our nature and frame that we become as David speaks a stubborn generation a generation that set not their hearts aright and whose Spirit cleaveth not stedfastly to God And I do further believe that all the faculties strength and power of the Soul which we have are given us towards the performance of that
first and great Commandment Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy Soul and with all thy mind The whole Soul beside seems naturally subservient if not subsequent to the affections motion and the motion of the Soul would be strange without them and not imaginable they being as necessary as they are useful And therefore I think we may as well cease to be by our own power as cease to affect and they who have gone furthest or most covertly herein have in going about to hide some particular affections shewed others more visibly and for the covering of their joy or sorrow fear or anger or the like have set up for predominant in their Soul a seeming contempt of all things which is an affection it self and for ought I know as subject to be faulty as any For surely the Soul may seem no less glorious in its march with all its parts and retinue than some of them provided it marches the right way and each faculty help and assist and not go about to destroy each other SECT VI. How the Affections move from the Imagination or otherwise IT does seem to me as I have said that the affections or some or one of them we properly so call are or is the chief inhabitant in this our Body from which or from whence there is or proceeds motion and operation voluntary Now if the Imagination be granted to be that glass in the Soul from whose reflexion they only move which for the present let us grant then do I conceive that glass may receive its light which it casts on them three manner of ways 1. By Sense 2. By Reason 3. By Divine Revelation immediately by God or mediately by his Word From the two first the imagination shews unto the affections this present visible World only but yet after divers manners From the third it shews them another World which sight from this last as it is more glorious so it is here more rare and men that once obtain it have their affections so fixed by it that they seldom quite turn away or utterly lose it 'T is that which I humbly conceive the Author to the Hebrews speaks of with a kind of impossibility of retrieving or renewing it if once men wilfully turn away from it Being says he once enlightned and having tasted of the heavenly gift and made partakers of the Holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the World to come if these fall away c. Then immediately after he uses this expression But beloved we are perswaded better things of you and things that accompany salvation though we thus speak for God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love which you have shewed towards his name in that you have ministred to the Saints and do minister As if whatsoever light we had or whencesoever it came Love were the worker and labourer in our Harvest but of this I intended not to speak 't is a subject very unfit for me to handle God is gracious and merciful and as I am not able to depaint that light so it behoves me not to limit his power no not in my thoughts But how our affections move from that first or second light is my intended enquiry at present From this second kind of light viz. that of Reason by reflex from the imagination the present World is shewed to the affections with all its vanities whatsoever the certain period of man and all things else in it the falsity and mutability of it the futility of the love of it or care for it And from the reflex of this light though the affections are sometimes cooled towards the World and bent and inclined somewhat towards some greater and more perfect good yet finding it not they often suddenly fall away again and know not where to fix By reflex from the first light that of sense only the World is seen as Beasts see it for fleshly delights and for support and maintenance of the Body but with this difference between us and them that their Souls being of a bodily extract and terrestrial their affections move no further than in reference to some present utility of the things of the World for the Body Ours are coelestial and of continuance for ever yet necessitated in respect of the Body and for its sustentation to make use of this light from sense The concupiscible part of the Soul being first and most often moved from this light before Reason appears and shews her self aud yet never fully satisfied with any present thing it enjoys although it often receives its checks from reflex of that second light if it be not graciously restrained by the third and led to take some hold on that good wherewith it may be somewhat satiate in hope it grasps at innumerable things neither useful to Soul or Body shews only it is not terrestrial and yet withall that it is capable to lose in future its title and signature of coelestial SECT VII What light the Imagination receives from Reason and the weakness of Reason THe second way by which light is communicated to the Imagination and from thence reflected on the Affections is as I have said Reason which is the proper light and guide of an Humane Soul and by which it doth discover the vanity of this World But it is not the least wonder in Nature that after this light begins with any brightness to shine forth in Man never so little withdrawn from the noise and business of the World and in conjunction with sense for its assistance doth give him such a clear prospect of its vanity that a contempt of all its superfluous unnecessaries is raised in the heart and his affections are so far diverted for the present from it that a full and somewhat settled resolution is begot there not to let them possess that place any more That that man shall yet forthwith from a little pageantry here presented by the Eye or Ear have his imagination wheel about again and by consequence his affections as fast rivetted to the World as ever Surely there needs must be some Spirit or powerful Prince of the Air that does bewitch every rational man how else were it possible almost that such an one discerning his folly and madness by a far clearer and more excellent light than that which caused them shall again often return in despite of it to act over his folly and madness which he himself had condemned and his affections rejected If there were not the very light of Reason would prove sufficient so far to extinguish and dazle any weaker light that the affections might be held and kept within some ordinary bounds and limits But then withall we have ground to believe and as sure it is that when we find our sight from Reason thus strangely baffled and made as it were subject to a weaker light there yet remains and must be some
Memory and weak of Judgment whatever our Will or Affections are or seem to be and the sight of that might well put a stop to my Writing But you and every man who finds and owns himself under that Notion will I hope pass by and pardon my infirmities if there appear any discrepancy between these and my former thoughts already set down in relation to this Subject And the rather because you well know all my former Papers were out of my custody whilst I was imployed and busied in these I have already exceeded the bounds of an Epistle and will trouble you no further save in relation to some former demonstration of my weak judgement relating to this faculty of the Soul the Imagination under these four several following heads distinct and a part and those I am bold to set down as follows I. That the Imagination of all the faculties of an human Soul is most subject to infection change and alteration from the humours of the Body II. That the guidance regulation or Government thereof is least in our power of any faculty of the Soul III. That it being a faculty the Government whereof is so much out of or beyond our Power We are not answerable for its Transgression unless where some other faculty more in the power of our will through the light of Reason does apparently concur or comply with it Or that through the negligence of our Reason it was the cause of the Imaginations incorrigible rambling errors IV. That it shews its Divinity and extraction as well as any other faculty of the Soul in the manner of its Work That set on work in relation to its own motion it necessarily terminates with the allowance of Reason in the thoughts of one Eternal Wise Being or Mind Governour and disposer of all things That from such thoughts we are necessarily stirred and incited in all the faculties of our Soul to fly thither for relief and to receive direction and guidance from thence chiefly That yet herein necessary care is to be had and taken that we retain and in some measure make use of our Reason lest we become ensnared through the delusion of Satan I. Notwithstanding my Opinion of the Souls extraction its Divinity and Immortality its power here in a Body from Heavenly influence to mount sometimes above sense its strength to resist all foreign delusion through sense by Reason Its capacity to work without a Body or the help of that more present inlet bodily sense Yet it is in my judgement while it remains in a Body so far subject to some Mists and Vapours arising there from that the Imagination the Eye of the Soul is thereby often deceived And so far deceived thereby that Reason though it remain in its native strength cannot correct its wandring but is forced to yield its allowance and consent and to be led as it were captive by the Imagination This faculty the Imagination the Eye of the Soul through sense as well as otherwise necessarily and perpetually working and in motion Upon any distemperature of the Body whereby sense is in any degree or measure clouded or disturbed is apt of it self to frame and raise strange Idea's and make strange representations to the other faculties to the amazement and confusion of Reason To the allurement inticement or attraction of other faculties from that which before they naturally were bent and inclined to and thereby at length to the captivation of Reason it self This happens not from every humour or in every disease of the Body but in such disease and from such humor only as by fumes sent into the brain clouds or darkens that port or inlet to the Soul Sense Or so disturbs or obstructs those passages that they cannot afford that assistance to Reason as usual against the deceit of the Imagination Sense I say a passage way or means by the perfect openness and clearness whereof Reason oft makes a better and truer judgment of things than it can when those passages are a little obstructed and yet to the Imagination seem open and clear In sleep when that port Sense is as it were wholly shut up through fumes Reason without blame leaves the Imagination as sole Master in the Soul to frame and introduce Idea's of it self which in reality are not Yet upon the opening of Sense again they vanish or are presently rejected and cast out of the Soul as idle But when that port of Sense is open and the Imagination presents to the other faculties of the Soul as if what it presented were rightly and truly formed through Sense with the allowance of Reason and thereby a vain belief a thing somewhat more than a Dream is raised perhaps to the terrour and affrightment of the Affections Reason not able absolutely to contradict the Imagination because it seemed to have the concurrence of Sense is sliely drawn into a kind of consent and this not seldom occasioned through gross humors in the Body In which case there is in my opinion a kind of defect lett or disease in Sense though not apparent as well as fault in the Imagination The Imagination is capable of distemper two manner of ways corporally or spiritually as we say But those two kind of distempers of the Imagination the one from the Body to the Imaginations deception of its fellow faculties in the Soul the other from those fellow faculties as violent Affections to the deception or rather confusion of the Imagination it self being often confounded together and the one not sedom mistaken for the other and the fault of the Body imputed to the Soul and the fault of the Soul imputed to the Body I have thought good to set down here some kind of mark by which they might be distinguished though I offer it not with any great confidence as the light of an infallible truth appearing to me and it is this That if at any time we find and observe a Body healthful as in most Lunaticks and withal the Affections very vigorous and active and every design and bent of them ready to be put in execution by the will and the instruments thereof bodily members There we may rationally adjudge the distemper of that Soul to be occasioned no otherwise than by its own default or neglect and the Original cause of the disease to have been the too familiar intercourse and trust between the Affections and the Imagination from the neglect of Reason and a thing which Reason might have prevented But if we find and observe the Body infirm heavy and lumpish and not active or ready with the Affections to put in execution those things which are framed in the Imagination but that there is a kind of Terror or Horror observable over the Spirits and a doubting and distrust in the Soul there we may impute every false gloss and fictitious formation and contrivance of the Imagination to have its rise or result from some gross humors in the Body such as we call Melancholy such