that Tabernacle and particularly often Heb. 9. Jesus Christ saith to the Jews Destroy this Temple and in three days I will build it up The Spirit addeth there expresly That he spake of his Body in St. John The Humane Nature of Christ in the Flesh was a moveable Tabernacle to be taken down and so figured by the Tabernacle in the Wilderness The Humanity of Christ in the Resurrection in the Spirit was the true Temple immoveable immutable eternal in the Heavens answering to Solomon's Temple on Mount Sion or Mount Moriah In the Tabernacle under the Law there was a three-fold Perfection 1. All things there were exact Figures of the Pattern upon the Mount 2. These Figures were taken immediately from the Pattern it self formed wrought and ordered by the same Spirit in Bezaleel Aholiab Moses Aron the Priests and the Levites 3. The Pattern it self in its Glory dwelt in the Tabernacle The Scriptures laid together seem to demonstrate Jesus Christ to be this Pattern upon the Mount The Law is said to have the shadow of good things to come 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not the very Image of the thing Heb. 1. 1. This very Image can be no other than the first the principal the substantial Image the Pattern it self upon the Mount This word is applied to Jesus Christ Col. 1. 15. He is said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Image of the invisible God And that the very Image the Original Image is understood appears by that which is added The first-born of every Creature The Jewish Rabbins teach us That the Tabernacle was a model of the whole Creation of the Divine World as it is the Head of the Creation and at the Head of the Creation appears in a created Figure of the Angelical and of the visible World These were represented by the Holy of Holies the holy place and the outward Court Thus far they were right but in this they fell short that they looked not to the beginning and end of these The Messias in in his own Mediatory Glory and in his Fathers Glory as he was the Pattern of these upon the Mount and as these stood originally in him But according to this Type in the Tabernacle in his Flesh and in his Life on Earth he fulfilled all Righteousness the Righteousness of the Creature the Law and the Letter the Righteousness of God and of the Gospel Jesus Christ saith of himself What I see my Father do that do I The words that I speak are not mine but my Fathers he doth the Works The Humane Nature of Christ in Flesh his Motions his Rest all his Words and his Works answered to the Pattern upon the Mount his own heavenly Image in the Glory of God and were formed from that Pattern by the same Spirit forming his Humane Nature subsisting in it and acting it The Father saith he hath sent me and I live by the Father The mission of the Father and his living by the Father were his springing forth from the Father according to the eternal Image of things in the Father by the Spirit of the Father in his Birth Life and Death Thus he fulfilleth all Righteousness according to the Law as it was at first engraven on the heart of man as it was afterwards renewed on Tables of Stone in the Moral Ceremonial and Judiciary parts of it The Pattern it self also the heavenly and Divine Image with the Original Righteousness and Glory dwelt in this Flesh of Christ in all his Motions and Rests filling the figures with the substance Thus it is said of him The Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us full of Grace and Truth Joh. 1. 14. It is said again vers 17. The Law was given by Moses but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ. Grace is eternal Love the naked Face of God as it shines and smiles with all pleasantness in it opposed to the Law as it is a Ministry of Wrath and a Vail upon the Divine Nature Truth is the very Image the Pattern the everlasting Righteousness the Original and eternal Glory of God opposed to the shadows the fading Righteousness the vanishing Glory of the Law Thus this Tabernacle of Flesh in the Unity of Christ's Person was full of Grace and Truth The everlasting Love and everlasting Righteousness with their Sweetnesses Strengths and Glories which never fade nor pass away at once formed filled and rested upon their own perfect and spotless figures in the flesh of Christ. So he fulfilled the first part of his Mediation and our Redemption while as an universal Person comprehending all Mankind and the whole Creation in himself He presents himself in his Birth in his Life unto God in the place of all and all in himself as a perfect Figure of the Divine Righteousness and Glory as in an exact Harmony so in an inseparable immediate Union with its Pattern 2. The second Part of Christ's Mediatory Work in our Redemption comprehendeth the Sufferings and Death of the Lord Jesus The Sufferings of Christ are to be considered in the manner and the merit of them The manner of the Sufferings of Christs are set forth in diverse Scriptures Isa. 53. 6. God laid the Iniquity of us all upon him And vers 10. He made his Soul an offering for Sin St. Paul seems to relate to these Prophesies when he saith 2 Cor. 5. ult Him who knew no sin hath God made sin for us It is frequent in the Hebrew Language and Idiom to express Sin and metanomically the Sacrifice for sin the panishment of sin by the same word Gal. 3. 13. Christ hath purchased us from the Curse of the Law being made a Curse for us A cursed Person is a Person charged with all guilt and filth and universal abomination and detestation to God to Angels and Men. A Person devoted to Divine Vengeance and Wrath excluded from all things holy and good exposed to the opposition and enmity of all things holy and good set apart to be cut off and quite taken away in the shamefulest dreadfulest and direfulest manner Thus God personally in our flesh suffered Our Jesus takes away our Sins the Sins of the whole World Joh. 1. by taking them upon himself He stands in the place and person of all Sinners He beareth the Sins of the whole World upon himself Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the World Joh. 1. The Greek word comprehendeth both senses to take up and to take away He is set as the abominable execrable detestable thing in the Eyes of God and of all the Creatures He is devoted by the most solemn most sacred Curses to bear the weight of all Guilt to satisfie the Divine Justice to sustain the Divine Wrath to the utmost As the Sin-Offering was all consumed by fire and was burnt without the Camp so went Jesus out of the City separated from the Society of all in Heaven and on Earth bearing his shame and to endure the pain The
most beautiful Ideas of his Skill and Wisdome Shall he not here lay on the greatest Riches of his Divine Goodness Shall he not stamp on these the most glorious Seal of his Truth his Faithfulness to the work of his hands Shall he not give the most heightned life and sweetning to this Seal of his Goodness Truth and Skill Doth not he understand that the perfection of the whole work lies that the praise and glory of the Workman depends principally if not entirely upon these Joynts on which the motion of the whole in so high a degree depends I will briefly conclude this part of my Discourse Reader think of God as Sweetness it self all pure unmixt unconfined Think of God as the Spirit of Love Beauty Joy all in one in their most abstracted Essences in their highest Exaltation in their greatest amplitude in their most potent vigour incorruptible eternal Think of God as the purest and richest Spring without beginning or end as the clearest Sea without bottom or bounds of all Perfections in the highest degree of Pleasantness of all Pleasantness in the highest Perfection Think of all things together with thy self in this God the Unchangeable Original of all according to their first and truest forms according to their eternal Truths one Goodness and Sweetness together with this goodness and sweetness it self one Spirit with this Spirit of all Loves Beauties and Joys in Divine figures divinely distinct as the first and fullest Variety in the first and entirest Unity When thou hast thought thus of God now think whether all things within thee do not with the fullest concurrence meet in this one only most passionate desire that this God may alone conduct his whole Work the whole course of all things that he may be present may act may appear alone in every part in every motion of it as filling so many figures and shadows of Himself After all consider whether that ground in which is founded the desire of this as the most perfect good the Object of all desires be not as firm a foundation for the belief of this no less agreeable Truth to the Understanding than it is of good to the Will Can Goodness and Truth be separated when Truth is Goodness in its essential Image in its fullest fairest reflection Shall not the most perfect Workman bring forth the most perfect Work the best from the best Shall not the highest God the most true of Himself thus do who is the supream Good whose Will is Goodness it self where as Ficinus upon Plato speaks the highest Voluntariness and the highest Necessity most beautifully and most pleasantly meet in the most inviolable band of the most true the most perfect Good 2. Head of Arguments I pass now to the second Head of Arguments taken from the Mediation of Christ and opposed to that Liberty of the Will which is placed in a freedome from the predetermination of its Acts in its essential Principles and superior Causes My method of treating of the Mediation of Christ and directing my Discourse upon it to the service of my present design shall be this I will endeavour with all humility and holy reverence by the conduct of that sweet Light which falls from the Face of Christ by the guidance of his Eyes the only Fountain of Grace and Truth to set before us the Lord Jesus in those three principal Parts of his Mediation as he is 1. The ground 2. The way 3. The end of the whole Work of God 1. Jesus Christ is the ground of the whole Work of God This is the first and principal part of Christ's Mediation in which he is the Golden Head of the whole Image of things in Grace and Nature This well understood according to the weak capacity of our Understanding here below seemeth to make all the other parts of the Mediatorship with the whole tract of things plain and pleasant That which in Divinity and Philosophy is understood by the name of a Person is an Intellectual Being compleatly existing Therefore God Angels which are called Gods and Men made in the Image of God which are also dignified with the Name of God in the holy Scripture are only stiled and esteemed Persons The reason of the Name I humbly conceive to be this Every Intellectual Spirit according to the propriety of its Nature and Essence comprehendeth entirely within it self the principle of its own Essence its essential form and operation by comprehending in it self the whole nature of things The Understanding in its perfect Act and Being in its largest compass are said by Philosophers to meet in a mutual proportion and union the one being the proper and adequate Object of the other Therefore the Greeks call every Intellectual Spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the whole The prime operation of every Intellectual Spirit is contemplation The first and immediate Object of its contemplation is its own Essence In this Glass of living and immortal Light all other things according to their proper essences in their several and essential forms appear to it most clearly and delightfully as its own Births and Beauties God the first and most perfect the Father and King of all Intellectual Spirits is the truest Person He alone in truth subsisteth in himself existeth without and above all things He truly containeth the whole compass of things in their unchangeable Truths and Substances within himself although he Himself be the most absolute and most abstracted Unity Angels and Men in the perfection of their Natures are no more than shadowy persons They have only shadowy Essences a shadowy comprehension of shadows God then alone most perfectly and substantially enjoyeth Himself in the contemplation of Himself which is the Beatifical Vision of the most beautiful the most blessed Essence of Essences This Act of Contemplation is an Intellectual and Divine Generation in which the Divine Essence with an eternity of most heightned Pleasures eternally bringeth forth it self within it self into an Image of it self According to the Perfection in which God knoweth Himself and enjoyeth Himself so is the Perfection of this Image As those are so is this clear distinct and full The more distinct the beam is from the first Light in its emanation the more strong and full is the reflectiou This Divine Image then is at once most perfectly distinct from its Divine Original most exactly equal to it and most perfectly one with it As then God is so is this essential eternal Image of God a compleat and distinct Person in it self in every point with the highest and most ravishing agreeableness answering the Divine Esseunce in its spring out of which it ariseth If this Image were not a compleat Person Gods knowledge and fruition of Himself would be incompleat without the pleasing and proportionate returns of an equal Loveliness Life and Love If this Image were not most perfectly distinct from the bosome out of which it flourisheth the knowledge and enjoyment of God would be confused more
Contexture of Beams living in and springing immediately freshly every moment from this entire Person which is all one most clear and lively Face of the most compleat and Original Beauty The Divine Person is not hid but shown by this Garment Mi Jesu pelluces Our Jesus shines all clearly thorow it far more clearly than a beautiful Person swimming all naked in a clear stream or the richest Diamond in a Case of purest Christal The Person here the Divine Sun is at once the eminent Head of all the Beams shining above them the vigorous Root of all the Beams springing up in them the pleasant and glorious flower flourishing forth from the end of every Beam the full Glory filling with it self each part of the Beam and every where in every Beam presenting it self entirely to every eye All the Beams in One are one entire Image of this Sun Every distinct Beam a distinct Birth and Figure of a distinct Ideal Light and Glory in this Sun Yet is the Sun in that full compass of all its Glories seen by every eye in every Beam For so is this Divine Sun the essential Idea of the Godhead the same one undivided entire full in all the Ideas in all the Original Forms and Patterns of each Creature The Beams here are Daughters Sisters and Brides to the Sun They flow forth immediately from it They stand upon the same root of the Divine Nature and Personality God is the only Person in this Jesus Both are cloathed with the same Image Both by mutual embraces lie in the bosoms of each other wrapt up together in the same Joys and Glories Yet are the Beams and created Beauties in this Mediatory Image not only distinct as the Ideas in the Godhead where the most perfect Distinction is married to the most absolute Unity with a most exact equality But all the Forms of created Glory here have besides a distinction from their Sun the Divine Glory and from each other a diversity also an inequality a subordination in an hypostatical or personal Unity But I now anticipate my self This will have a more proper place in the following Character of our Jesus in his Mediatory Kingdom 4. Christ here in his created Nature is a Spirit a great and universal Spirit comprehending the whole Creation eminently in himself before it have a subsistence in it self The whole Creation is here in greater majesty in greater clearness and glory than in it self when it is freshest and fairest It is the very Iustre and effulgency of the Godhead it self all transparent the Divine Essence at once shining thorow it filling it cloathing and comprehending it as a Temple founded upon it self framed by it self of its own most immediate Light and clearest brightness The King's Daughter is said to be all glorious within and her Garments of wrought Gold Psal. 45. The first Marriage is that of the most High and holy Trinity to which eternity it self is the Marriage-day celebrated with Joys and Glories transcending all measures or bounds The Father and the Son are here mutually the Bridegroom and the Bride while both are in both the Father in the Son the Son in the Father the Love-Spring in its lovely and beautiful Image the Lovely-Image the first and highest Beauty in its Love-spring the first the sweetest the fruitfullest Love and Fountain of Loves The Holy Spirit the conspiration of both these in One is their Marriage-band and Marriage-bed where they preserve entire their Unity and their Distinction in a most blissful Union to make their Loves and Joys more full From this Marriage-bed doth flow the God-like Race of Divine Ideas surmounting all numbers and natures of things The second Marriage is in this Middle-Glory between the Uncreated and created Beauty joyned together in one Divine eternal Person and Spirit The Divine Nature is here the King and the Bridegroom this created Spirit is the Kings Daughter his Queen and his Bride This Queen is described to be all glorious within and to have her Garment of wrought Gold The Hebrew word within signifieth properly in her Person in her naked Face which are within all her Garments and Vails Her God her Bridegroom Jesus in his essential Image her eternal Idea is her Person her Face her internal Form Thus is she all glorious within For the Lamb himself her Bridegroom is her Glory The Glory of the Lord himself in his eternal Splendors enlightneth all within This Queens Garment is all of wrought Gold The word Wrought signifieth properly a work of Eyes set all over the Garment So Dr. Hammond expoundeth it Her Garment was all over set with round Oes like so many Eyes or Suns wrought in Gold The created form of this Spirit being the pure lustre of the eternal Sun the Divine Essence is the Queen's Garment The numberless Ideas of the Divine Nature in each of which the Godhead it self is entire in its Sacred Unity comprehending all its Ideas or Variety in a Variety entirely thorowout infinitely fresh and new form in this Garment secondary Ideas their own most immediate fairest and fullest Effulgencies or Life-Pictures In every one of these is this Queen also according to the Original Patterns in her Father King and Bridegroom compleat with all the full Glories of her Person and equally distinct in a new Variety of all her Glories as a new Queen a new Person a distinct Spirit These are the Divine Suns and Eyes in the Garment of this Queen in which the eternal Eyes and Suns shining in the Divine Essence look forth as thorow Casements of pure living and immortal Christal Each Form each distinction of every kind in the Creation here below is such an eye such a Sun wrought in Gold such a Spirit of incorruptible Glory such a Bride and Queen to the eternal King Every one in particular is a spiritual and heavenly Member all together make up the spiritual and heavenly Body of our Jesus in this Personal Kingdom of his where he in his own Person is a Kingdom to himself containing the Creator with the Creation in all their Amplitudes and Varieties married together into one Person Spirit and Glory which is to it self Bride-groom Bride Ofspring and All. See if this be not that heavenly Hierusalem the Hierusalem above which is indeed free in the spacious embraces and unlimited Amplitudes of the Godhead which at the same time is by the inviolable sweetness of a sweetly-invincible necessity the eternal Law of supream Love confined to these embraces in which she becometh the glorious Virgin-Mother of us all Is not this the Hierusalem whose heavenly transparencies whose Divine lustre whose unstain'd incorruptible Beauties and Virtues are figured by Gold Pearls precious Stones and Glass Glass of Christal Is not this that Bride of the Lamb which cometh down from God out of the Heaven of the essential Image of the Godhead as out of the Bosom of her Father and Bridegroom with this Character in which the perfection of Beauty and
Spirit and Person in heavenly unexpressible sweetnesses This is my first Request to you 2. Study and practise that great Command of Love as the Lesson of thy whole Life with which alone thou art to entertain thy self and all the heavenly Company both here and in eternity This is the first and great Command That thou love God with thy whole self and then That thou love thy Neighbour as thy self which is a second Law a second Love like unto the first Indeed it is so like that it is one with it Be thou thy self in thy whole Person the Sacrifice of a whole Burnt-Offering ascending in a Sacred flame of heavenly love to God the only and eternal Beauty As the zeal of the House of God which is Love flaming did eat up David and Christ so let this heavenly Love of the Divine Beauty which is the Beauty it self descending in a pure and sweet flame upon thee by consuming thee convert thee into one spiritual flame with it self Now live thou no where but where thou lovest in thy Beloved Let thy Beloved alone now live in thee when thou hast thus lost thy self by an heavenly Love in thy Beloved in thy God when thou hast thus by the Sacred and sweet mystery of this Love found thy Beloved thy God in the place of thy self Then love thy Neighbour as thy self Love thy Neighbour in thy Jesus thy God Love thy Jesus thy God in thy Neighbour Let this Neighbourhood of Divine Love be as large as the God of Love himself is Let every other Person and Spirit which lives and moves and hath its being in God within the encompassing upon the Ground and Root of the Divine Being be thy Neighbour thy Brother another self as thy self to thy self the Object to thee of an heavenly and incorruptible Love Upon this Commandment saith Jesus Christ hang all the Law and the Prophets This Love is the Centre and the Circle of all the Works of God of all Motions and Rests of all mysteries in Nature and Grace in Time and Eternity Plato saith That three sorts of Persons are led to God The Musician by Harmony the Philosopher by the beam of Truth the Lover by the light of Beauty All these Conductors to the supream Being meet in this Love of which we speak the first and only true Beauty being the first Birth the first Effulgency the essential Image of the supream Goodness is also the first the supream the only Truth the Original the measure the end of all Truth which by its amiable attractive Light conducteth all Understandings in the search of Truth and giveth them rest only in its transparent and blissful Bosom This also is the first the only the universal Harmony the Mufick of all things in Heaven and on Earth the Musick in which all things of Earth and of Heaven meet to make one melodious Consort While the holy Lover then pursues the tracts of this Beauty through all the works and ways of God he is encompassed with the Light of Divine Truth shining through him and round about him He is carried on in the Spirit by the force of the Divine Harmony He carrieth along this Harmony of things charming all things round about him as he passeth on So he seeth the God of Gods at last on Mount Sion the perfection of Beauty Harmony Truth and Goodness which all Center in the Divine Love the Divine Unity the band of perfection 3. Let no differences of Principles or Practices divide thee in thine affections from any person He who seems to me as a Samaritan to a Jew most worthy of contempt and hatred most apt to wound or kill me may hide under the shape of a Samaritan a generous affectionate Neighbour Brother and Friend When I lie wounded and dying neglected by those who are nearest to me most esteemed by me This person may pour Wine and Oyl into my Wounds with tender and constant care at his own expence bring me back to life and joy How evident hath it been in the History of all times that in Parties most remote one from the other most opposed one to the other Persons have been found of equal excellencies in all kinds of equal integrity to Truth and Goodness Our most Orthodox Divines who have been heated and heightned with the greatest zeal of Opposition to the Pope as the Antichrist yet have believed a Pope to have ascended from the Papal Chair to a Throne in Heaven Had my Education my Acquaintance the several Circumstances and Concurrances been the same to me as to this person from whom I now most of all dissent that which is now his sense and state might have been mine Have the same just equal tender respects and thoughts with the same allowances of another which thou requirest from him to thy self It is a Rule in Philosophy That there is the same reason of Contrarieties Two opposed Parties or Persons by reason of the opposition for the most part looking through the same disturbed and coloured Medium behold one another under the same uncomely form in the same displeasing Colours Hath there not been frequent experience of those who by being of differing Parties alienated exasperated having their fansies filled with strange Images of each other when they have been brought together by some intervening Providence have discovered such agreeable Beauties of Morality and Humanity such an harmonious agreement in essential in radical Principles of Divine Truth of the true and ever lasting good that they have conversed with highest delight they have departed with an higher esteem of each other their Souls have been inseparably united with Angelical kisses and embraces Some entertaining Strangers have entertained Angels Do thou so believe that in every encounter thou mayest meet under the disguise of an Enemy a Friend a Brother who when his Helmet shall be taken off may disclose a beautiful and a well known face which shall charm all thy Opposition into love and delight at the sight of it But now Reader I fall at thy feet I take hold of thy knees by all things moving and obliging I beseech thee If there be any Bowels or comforts of Love any Peace Pleasantness Strength Prosperity in Union any good in Unity that thou wouldst take deeply into thine Heart and treasure up safely there and frequently with fixed studious eyes contemplate this as I humbly conceive it most sure and reconciling Truth which I shall now as I am able represent to thee Often yea for the most part two opposed Parties have something on each side excellently good something exorbitantly evil although perhaps in unequal degrees Both mutually set after an unmoveable manner before their eyes their own good the evil on the other part Thus they blind their minds to all sense or belief of any good there Thus they lift up themselves above all sense of their own evil So they heighten themselves by self-justifications by mutual Condemnations unto an extinguishing of every beam
of good to an encrease of their evils unto a blackness of darkness until by these mutual mistakes they have drawn on upon themselves mutual and absolute ruine How much better were it to obey that Precept of the Holy Ghost which offereth it self to us like an Olive-branch in the mouth of this Sacred Dove To look every man not to his own things but to the things of another O that now I had an hundred Mouths an hundred Tongues a voice like Thunder like the Voice of God that rends the Rocks to cry to all sorts of Persons and Spirits in this Land in all the Christian World through the whole Creation Let all that differ in Principles Professions or Opinions and Forms see that good which is in each other and the evil in themselves Joyn in thiâ—… to extirpate the evil the common evil your common enemy and so quench that fire which burns upon your Estates your Houses your Relations your Bodies your Souls even to the nethermost Hell Unite the good which is in you so shall the good on one side make up that which is imperfect and defective in the good on the other side unto a perfection of good in both So shall the good on one side be as a proper Antitode to extinguish the evil on the other side Thus while the evil is the privation the loss of your selves and the good your true-selves as Hor ace calls Virgil Dimidium animae meae you will meet like two halves of each other filling up the circle of each others Being Beauties Joys and be now compleated in one How unexpressible would the fruits of this Union be How would it heighten you in all the Beauties and Blessednesses of Truth and Goodness in which your immortality and conformity to God are placed yea how would this Union strengthen those outward Interests and sweeten those natural Enjoyments for whose sake now like Adders you stop your Ears to the wisest Charmer and the most potent Charms that would draw you home into the bosom of each other for whose sake now you cast down to the ground all ingenuity and integrity You make your way over their sweetest Beauties and tenderest Bowels to the heart-blood of one another until you have drowned in blood those very darling Interests and Enjoyments together with your own Lives and Persons your native Country the Christian World the face of the whole Earth But ab when will poor Mankind on Earth be wise to understand its own good or be good that it may me wise Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lorld VVe wait for thy Salvation thy Jesus O God! To him shall the gathering of the people be the true Shiloe for whom this Glory is reserved It seemeth indeed according to my humble sense necessary to divide those Principles and Practices which divide Mankind into three Heads 1. Some seem to be of a nature perfectly indifferent neither good nor evil but according to the intention and spirit which acteth them 2. Some differ in the degrees mixtures or varieties of good and evil 3. Others differ in the whole kind of good and evil In this last state of things it is the part of every Child of Light to maintain the Divine Love in his Spirit like the Sun in the Firmament encompassing the whole Earth from one end to the other shining upon all both good and bad upon dry and sandy Desarts the Habitations of wild Beasts and venemous Serpents as well as cultivated Gardens flourishing with wholesome Herbs pleasant Flowers and all sorts of fruits Thus God himself is propounded to us for a Pattern by the Son of God Distinguish between the good and evil Love takes pleasure in the good Hate the evil Advance the good Oppose the evil upon all occasions with all your forces But every where distinguish carefully with all tenderness of Spirit between the person and the evil of the person Be wise as Serpents but innocent as Doves according to the Counsel and Command of Jesus Christ who is the supream VVisdom and Love both in one Discern the evil with a quick and curious eye guard your selves with all your might from it maintain an aversion an enmity to it eternally irreconcilable Thus be a Serpent to the evil but at the same time be a Dove to the person without gaul without any thing to offend moaning over it groaning for it as your Mate till it be recovered from the evil which captivates it into a fellowship with you in the purity and love of the Divine Nature Have always most tender bowels for and a most sensible sympathy with all Mankind in their greatest Deformities and Defilements as thy Brethren tyed unto thee by a double Consanguinity 1. All men are made of the same blood in Adam 2. All men are redeemed by the same blood of the Lord Jesus who hath given himself a Ransom for all to be testified 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the proper times Each person which hath his part in this Ransom hath its proper time for its discovery in him Thine may be now sooner This person also now most of all lost in the depth of all evils may have his proper time yet to come for the taking off the disguise of these filthy Rags from him for the discovery of the Glory as of a Son of God in him As his time comes later so it may come with a fuller Glory As Zipporah said to Moses whether bitterly or in the sweet sense of a Sacred mystery pointing to the Messias Thou art an Husband to me in bloods So look thou on every man as a Brother to thee in both these bloods of which one was once pure and precious as that of the Sacred Image of God in Paradise The other is eternally pure and precious as the blood of God himself Forgiving one another freely for Christ's sake is the language of St. Paul Look upon every person through this twofold Glass the Blood and the Beauties of Christ. Christ hath died for all The natural Being of every person hath his Root in the Grave of Christ and is watered with his blood Christ lives in all His Resurrection is the life of the whole Creation He is the VVisdom the Power the Righteousness of God in every work of Nature as well as of Grace He is the Root out of which every natural as well as every spiritual Plant springs which brings forth himself through every natural existence and brings forth himself out of it as the flower the brightness of the Glory of God He is the Root and Truth of all things All things are by him and for him to the praise and glory of God in him His Name is excellent through all the Earth Read then this Name of Excellency of Glory the Name of Christ in every part and point of the â—…arth the darkest the lowest the least forgive the spots upon this Name in every person for the Names-sake engravâ—…n upon it Receive
one another into the Glory of God is the Rule of St. Paul Divines distinguish between the person together with the nature of the Deâ—…il and the evil The person the nature springs forth from God and so is good hath a Divinity and Glory in it a Divine Root a Divine Image It stands in the Glory of God as a Flower in the Garden a Bâ—…am in the Sun it is maintained by a continual emanation from the bosom of the supream Glory Thus thou art to receive every person clouded with the greatest evils as he is the work of Nature and of God into the Glory of God Thus every other person is to be thy Neighbour thy â—…rother in the Glory of God and the Object of a Divine Love No evil as evil is the nature or choice of any person but the mishap and the disease Truth is the only Object of every Understanding the only white at which it aims Like the Mary-gold it opens it self only to this Sun or that which shines upon it in the glorious form of this Sun and so descends in seeming beams of this Divine Beauty into its bosom Good is the only Object of the VVill. As the Needle toucht by the Load-stone is governed in its motion and rest by the North-pole so is the VVill moved and attracted by that alone which toucheth it with a sense of good It resteth in no bosom but that which courteth and wooeth it undâ—…r the Divine Form of good with the seeming Charms of this its only Beloved and Bridegroom St. Paul saith Sin deceived me and slew me No person is willingly dâ—…ceived in his belief of Truth on disappointed in his expectation of good Every evil is a degree of death a diseafe in the end death When it appeareth like it self all things fly from it as from death But as Cupid in the form of the young and flourishing Prince Ascanius by treacherous embraces and kisses breath'd a fatal poyson into the veins of the Carthaginean Queen So doth sin and evil by the hellish enchantments of the Prince of Darkness form it self into the most alluring resemblance of the heavenly Image composed of Truth and Goodness meeting in one immortal form It adorneth it self all over with the most curious and sparkling Counterfeits of all its most amiable most Divine Sweetnesses and Beauties Thus it insinuates it self into the eyes and hearts of the Sons of God and fills them with its false sweetnesses enflames them with a false Love as the poyson and fire from Hell Yet still in the midst of these enchantments and deaths as the Athenians in the midst of their Atheism and Idolatry had an Altar inscribed To the unknown God The Understanding and the Will according to their own proper natures stand in every natural Spirit as Altars in a Temple shining and burning with continual fires by night and by day aspiring to the highest and clearest Heavens through all opposed Clouds of Darkness while this inscription in clear Characters appeareth engraven round these Altars To the Unknown Good the Unknown God to the unknown Truth the unknown Jesus If any person then be faln into any evil Let those that are spiritual restore him with a spiritual skill with a spirit of Meekness and Divine Love Apply Reproofs Chastisements to evil persons in their seasons as a Brother gives an Antidote to a beloved Brother that by a mistake hath been surprized and drunk in poyson or as one hand applies a Medicine to the other hand or to the eye when it suffers by any wound or distemper If thou art an Angel and hast to do with a Devil use no reviling Language for so the Angel himself is by the Spirit of God markt with a Character of Honour for this that he used no reviling Speeches to the Devil Preserve thy self from that bitter zeal which St. James mentioneth upon which he setteth so evil a mark branding it deeply with the fire of Hell as a Devil transfiguring himself into the form of an Angel If there be saith he amongst you bitter envying this wisdom is not from above but earthly sensual and devillish We read it bitter envying In Greek it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 bitter zeal Take heed of suffering thy zeal against the evil to be mingled and tempered with a bitternâ—…ss against the person As Lightning from Heaven melts the Sword but doth no harm to the Scabbard Discover thou in all thy Reproofs and Chastisements an equal love to the person and hatred to the evil an equal desire to destroy the evil and save the person Or rather let thy zeal against the evil be love to the person flaming forth and burning with a great but with a sweet and Divine force that it may consume the Dross for the Golds-sake to which the dross cleaves that of the Gold thus refined it may make a Jewel for the Bosom or a Crown for the Head of Jesus Christ. Suffer not thy zeal against evil to be like the Locusts from the bottomless-pit which have faces like men hair soft and delicate like women Crowns of Glory upon their heads like Angels but venemous and killing stings in their tails Let it not be like Culinary fire or the fire of Hell black sooty and devouring but like the fire from the golden Altar mingled with sweet Incense filling all round about and carrying up that upon which it feeds as a Sacrifice to Heaven with the rich Odours and Perfumes of a Divine Love If I be lifted up to Heaven by manifold excellencies together with Corazin and Bethsaida from whence I look down upon another far beneath me lying like Sodom and Gomorrah in a loathed and hated deep of darknesses defilements disgraces Let me then think That this Sodom may have a better Spirit a better ground of good at the bottom of its Spirit than my self That if the seed of Love and Light which hath been sown in me had been sown with the like advantage there it would have far excelled me in its fruits Yea let me think that it may not only have a better ground but a Divine seed hid deep in that ground beneath all this soil and dung beneath all this darkness deformity and deadness of its Winter-season which may rise up in its proper Spring into pleasant Flowers and Fruits as the Garden of God Thus let me think and let these thoughts instruct me to love every other person removed to the greatest distance from me cast down to the greatest depth beneath me as my Neighbour my Brother my self This is my double Request to thee gentle Reader 1. That thou love every other person as thy Neighbour thy Friend thy self with that Divine Love in whose flame thou sacrificest thy self and all things to receive thy self again and all things together with thy self in a more excellent and durable form 2. That thou suffer nothing to stain the Candour of this Love whose Reasons being altogether Divine subject all other reason to themselves
chiefly turneth about in respect to its Beauty and Deformity its Misery and Felicity its Eternity have no Connexion with or Dependance upon the other parts of the work the Image or Original Model in the Divine mind Can there be an Order here in the whole Can all the parts in the whole have an harmonious proportion to each other Can the Work outward agree with the inward Model the whole agreeing with the whole and each part answering each part Can this work be perfect Can it be wrought in Judgment Is the whole way of this work the way of Judgment Is there in each step of it the foot-step of a Divine Understanding the impression of a Divine Wisdom which is an entire uninterrupted Order Do all the parts in this Work according to the Model or Image in the mind of the Work-man lie together in one whole piece in one beautiful body knit together by fit joynts and bands ministring to each other by these joynts and bands mutual strength beauties and perfections from the same Head whose Unity runneth through shineth in the whole and all its several parts thus uniting them as one body to each other and to its self Doth not this supposition of such an independent Liberty in the Will to Contrarieties and Contradictions naturally lead us to an imagination of two Gods one Good the other Evil striving together in the composure of the same work bringing in consusion upon it by crossing and interrupting each other according to the sense of the Manichees Or doth it not favour that Opinion of some Platonists of a matter the subject of the Divine Work co-eternal with the Divine Spirit the Work-man which being in some parts of it altogether intractable resisting the skill and power of the Archytect or working Spirit receiveth not the Divine form which that would introduce could not be made beautiful and so brought Confusion War all Evil into the Work Or if that seem more probable would it not incline us to the belief of fortuitous motions of numberless Particles confusedly concurring which have neither beginning rule nor end of themselves their shapes or motions What skilful Poet makes his Poem so that the great Chain and final Catastrophe in the conduct and government of which the chief beauty of the whole Work is plac'd from which arise the greatest Consequences together with the perfection and praise of the whole piece should be derived from a meer Contingency which hath no coherence with any antecedent part which receiveth no force from any thing of any reason proportion or order in the whole which hath no place nor form in the design of the Poet Would any wise Work-man who had an absolute power over his work who brought forth from himself entirely both the matter and form of it according to his will frame a work in which the great end of the principal parts and of the whole should be undetermined by being dependant upon the great and chief motion of the work which can have no complete Idea in the mind of the Worker from which it may receive its form which is uncapable of having any certain conformity to the will of the Workman to derive from thence an agreeable sweetness and goodness through the veins of the whole and of all the parts that the spirit which hath wrought it may have rest and complacency in the work it self in the harmony of the work within it self and in the harmony of it with the Model in its own Understanding Would he frame a work which in this its principal motion should be altogether out of its own power should have no natural no moral necessity or certainty from any antecedent causality and reason which should be altogether fortuitous which should be thus rendred altogether uncapable of being one entire piece where all the parts first contained in the Potentiality and Unity of the whole flowing forth from it by virtue of that Unity are united among themselves by their mutual Relations and Proportions making up a beautiful harmony in the whole This in all learning and observation hath been esteemed the first and chief part of wisdom to fix determinately with full strength of inclination thought and contrivance the end of every work This the second part next to it particularly stiled Prudence to dispose and direct all the means efficaciously and infallibly to those ends Object 1. Perhaps some one will say That the parts of the Divine Work have their coherence connexion and proportion while this grand motion of which wespeak the determination of the Will flows from the power of the Will which flows from God the Fountain of causality in the centinued stream of second causes Answ. This indeed is often spoken of Let us see if it be well understood if there be no fallacy or ambiguity latent or manifest in this Assertion If the power of the Will be the cause of its determination if God in the order of second causes be the Author of this Power then also is the determination of the Will from Him after the same manner by the force of that Rule Quicquid est causa causae est causa causati The cause of any cause is also the cause of the effect produced by that cause Now is the Will no more free with an undetermined freedome or liberty being thus predetermined in its superior causes from which it receives both the power of determining and the determination of its power Now is the power of its Will in its state of acting not undetermined or indifferent to contradictory and contrary terms or bounds of its motion If it be replyed that the power of the Will in determining it self is from God in the natural course of things but the act of that power in the determination of it self from the power of the Will alone with an absolute and universal independancy upon all things antecedent to it either natural or moral Although this be very difficult to be understood yet I shall not at present make any other opposition to it than this that it leaves my present Argument untoucht in its full strength and vigour Object 2. There is something of greater moment which perhaps may seem to shake the structure and strength of this Reason The great and Ultimate ends of God in his Work are the glories of his Goodness and his Justice In this the Divine Wisdom shines out with a lustre dazling the eyes of our Reason of every created Understanding in finding out this the most proper and effectual way to these ends viz. The setting up of intellectual Spirits free in the determination of themselves to good or evil and compensating this good and this evil with suitable torments suitable triumphs Answ. Three Answers offer themselves to this Objection 1. Answ. This also yieldeth that on which the whole weight of the Argument against Free-will lieth the righteousness and wickedness of intellectual Spirits that is the highest Beauty the foulest Deformity upon the
relations from the Creature to it self Thus doth the Divine goodness in the Divine VVill terminate the relation of every created VVill to it self in the agreeableness or disagreeableness of every Act. This supream goodness then hath in it self the measure of this agreeableness and disagreeableness which it receiveth not from without but hath originally in it self So all the acts of the VVill according to their conformity with or deformity from the first goodness derive themselves from their proper Original in that goodness Accordingly the Goodness and the Will of God hath a complacency in every Act of the VVill if it be agreeable to it or an aversion from it if it be disagreeable Thus is the created VVill in all its motions with their several most exact distinctions the Object of the eternal VVill in its love or hatred Every faculty or power hath an essential relation to its proper object and dependance upon it It is drawn forth by it into the most proper Acts of its essence and receiveth from it the perfection of its essence which consisteth in its Activity The supream VVill the supream Goodness being perfectly eternally in Act hath all its Acts all its Objects by which it is actuated perfectly eternally from and in it self Object You will say How can this be Can the Divine VVill which is infinitely pure in the beauties of Holiness in the joys of all blessedness comprehend in it self Good and Evil agreeableness and disagreeableness to it self which are the proper measures and essential forms of all good and evil Can it comprehend in it self Objects of Love and Hatred Can this Fountain send forth from it self sweet and bitter waters How is it holy if there be these mixtures How is it happy if it be thus divided within it self Answ. The Flats and Sharpes the Bases and Trebles the Concords and Discords of Musick are all comprehended by the spirit of the Musician in one Act of Harmony in one simple and undivided Act of Harmony This single Act of Harmony by its proper force first invented and formed all Musical Instruments prepared them for it self through all the diversity of touches and motions actuated them that it might compleatly figure and display upon them and upon all things round about them it self in its own full sweetness according to all those rich varieties virtually and eminently comprehended within it self in one simple Act. So in one indivisible Act or Idea of beauty in the Spirit of the Painter lie together all the differing lines lights shades and colours by which that Idea reflecteth it self in Picture upon the eyes and spirits of the Beholder In like manner the far greater perfection the Will of God being a simple 〈◊〉 of Goodness supreamly indivisible and eternal containeth originally eminently within it self complacency and aversion love and hatred with their several objects in their several forms and degrees in their several risings and fallings most properly and harmoniously suited to each other From it self doth this supream Goodness bring forth its own Objects like tuned Instruments wound up or let down every way prepared for the diffusion and discovery of it self upon them in those Varieties of love and hatred complacency and aversion with their several steps or modifications which as so many distinct forms or virtues of the Divine Goodness dwell together there in the highest and most absolute Variety as in the fullest and most unconfined Unity The Will of God is commonly and rightly distinguished into positive and permissive Evil is by the permissive Good from the positive Will of God All the determinations and motions of the Will in every Spirit are at least from the permission of the Divine Will I will not now enquire how the most perfect Goodness can be permissive in that in which it is positive This only I take which is universally granted That there is no permissive Will in God without a positive Act. He permitteth nothing without a positive Act of his Will for that permission If the permission of any Act in the will of man antecede that Act then is that act or motion of the humane will the Object of a positive Act of the Divine Will for the permission of it before it be brought forth here below This objective existence in the Divine Will is either the Copy or the Original to that motion in the will of the Creature If it be universally received by all Understandings from the universal Harmony and principles of Truth that the Divine Nature can take no Copy receive no Impression of any thing from any thing without it self it necessarily followeth that all motions in the will of man flow from that antecedent existence which they have in the Divine Will as the Objects of that Thus that I may not be too long upon this Head of Arguments drawn from the Divine Nature I have contracted three sorts of Arguments into one Those from the Will the Goodness the Power of God being drawn together under that of the Divine Power I have in it built upon this sure ground The VVill of God is the first the supream the essential Goodness The Goodness of God is his Power As every thing depends upon the VVill of God in its permission or positive Act As all things in their measures of Good or Evil lie together in the Divine Goodness the Original the eternal measure of all Good and Evil so have all Powers all Acts and Motions of Power their first spring their exact form and rule in the Power of God 5. Argument The fifth Argument is the Knowledge of God This is in our present cause a most celebrated Argument I shall therefore endeavour to represent the state of it with all exactness clearness and integrity that I can bring to it I shall divide this Argument into two parts 1. The first is the perfection of the Divine Knowledge 2. The second is the Original 1. Part. The first part is the perfection of the Divine Knowledge This consisteth in two things 1. The Comprehensiveness 2. The distinctness of the Knowledge VVe then know perfectly when we know all things capable of being known when we know each thing in its proper distinction in all its distinct forms properties and relations Shall not He who made the eye see Shall not the Fountain of Knowledge contain all Knowledges after the most exact and eminent manner Shall not He know all things most accurately by whom all things know and are known St. Peter saith to Jesus Christ as to God Lord Lord thou knowest all things thou knowest that I love thee See two things remarkable here 1. The universality of Christ's Knowledge extending its self to all things 2. A confirmation of this by a particular instance Thou knowest that I love thee The instance is most pertinent to our present purpose It is that peculiar Object of Knowledge which is the ground and subject of this Discourse the Will of Man the motions of the will the freest
latter being the shadow of the former Then he adds The Light shined in Darkness but the Darkness comprehended it not This seemeth to be a clear allusion to the work of the first day when God called Light out of Darkness dividing at the same time between the Light and the Darkness The Light now shined in the midst of the Darkness enlightning the Darkness so that it still remaineth incomprehensible to the Darkness as that abode in its own natural form divided from the Light All generally agree that Moses comprehended the History of the whole Creation in this Chapter And under the Covert and Vail of the visible part as a figure divinely describeth the Intellectual Angelical and more Divine part as the immediate Original and Life of this Figure We have an Image of this in the Body of Heaven with the Sun-shining in it by day or the Moon and Stars by night when they present themselves to our eyes by plain figures of themselves formed in a flowing stream here below The Jews therefore say That a man of Flesh and Blood cannot understand the first Chapter of Genesis St. Paul affirmeth That the invisible things are perceived being understood by the things that are made By these words he seemeth plainly to signifie that while Moses painteth out to us the visible world and framing of it his design is to set before us a lively Picture of the invisible part of things which is as the heavenly Person whose Picture is drawn on this Table The Light then which is the work of the first day being not only Sensitive but Intellectual is the first Creature the first and most immediate effulgency irradiation or out-shining of the Godhead the beginning of the Creation of God St. Paul saith That which makes manisest is Light Then the first Light is the first the most eminent the amplest the clearest the compleatest manifestation of God and so of the whole Creation as its golden Head The first day according to the Hebrew Idiom is the one day which Idiom hath this mystery wrapt up in it That the Unity the Fountain of numbers is the first in order from which we begin to number This Light which is the first Creature the work of the first day is the first procession of the Divine Unity without it self It retains therefore the highest Image of this Unity and partakes of it in the highest degree that any created Nature is capable of This is the Unity of the Divine Person or subsistency in a distinct created Essence or Form Thus you have in this lovely Form of the purest the sweetest of all created Lights the Person of Jesus Christ as he is the first Creature divinely subsisting in the Godhead This is that Light which while it shineth with a derived brightness in the midst of that darkness which is the first matter of every Creature it remaineth in the Unity and Divinity of its Person and subsistence vailed to the highest and most glorious of all Creatures For even in this blessed Person the darkness is a dividing Vail between the Nature and the Godhead in which that Nature subsists The Jewish Masters by a two-fold tradition seem to seal up this mystery for Posterity First they number the Soul of the Messias among those sacred and sublime Glories which were before the world Secondly They mysteriously affirm the Light of the first day to be a Light in which the whole work of Creation in all the parts of it with all its Revolutions from its first beginning to its last end are clearly and distinctly seen But say they at the fall of man by Sin this Light was hid beneath the Throne of God until the days of the Messias Can any thing more plainly express our Jesus as He is the first and universal Creature the first the fairest the clearest draught of the whole Creation in the whole course and conduct of it pre-existent to every Creature comprehending all the works of God from the first line to the last finishing of it in one most delightful View in one most agreeable Prospect in one Spirit and Form of purest sweetest life more than Angelical only less then Divine yet subsisting in a Divine Person If the will of man with its motions be seen and pre-exist here are they not here predetermined But I have said before that I would neither insist long upon this Point nor lay any thing of the weight of this Cause upon it being it self by few received or understood I divided my discourse of the Mediatorship into three Heads 1. Christ as he is the ground of all the Works of God in which also lies the ground of his Mediatorship 2. Christ as he is the Way 3. Christ as he is the End of the whole Work of God There are two parts in the way 1. Christ as he is the beginning of the Works of God the first Creature 2. Christ as the coming forth and the conduct of every Creature from the beginning to the end is in him and by him This I am now to take in hand Christ is Mediator as he is the way of the coming forth and the conduct of the Work of God in the whole and every part of it As in a Plant the seminal Spirit hath treasured up in it the seminal Reasons the whole Harmony all the proportions of the Plant in the whole Plant and in every part of it as this seminal Spirit hath in it self the formative power of the Plant according to the proportion as this Spirit putteth forth it self into every part of the Plant springeth up together with it gives it its proper measures and proportions suited to the Harmony of the whole Plant appears in each part as a living Image of that particular proportion or harmony which with an invisible Beauty flourisheth within it self resides on every part of the Plant with the full harmony of the whole being one and the same altogether undivided in the whole Plant and in all its parts Thus is Christ after a more eminent and divine manner the seminal Spirit of the whole Creation I have before represented him from clear Scriptures as the Wisdome and Power of God by virtue of which he is clearly a Spirit containing in himself the seminal Reasons and the formative Power by which every Creature is formed universally in its production and in its conduct Jesus Christ is frequently known in the Scriptures by that Name of the Seed which though it relates eminently to the state of Grace and Glory where it cometh up into its ripe fruit and entire form yet doth it relate to the state of Nature For by virtue of this Seed Adam was the Son of God By this Seed and in it were all things made as Plants springing forth from it although the Seed were yet come up in them only into the green Leaf or smiling Blossoms at the best That Name given in Greek to Jesus which is translated the Word signifieth as properly Reason Jesus
Therefore the School-men say of the sending giving powring forth the coming of the Spirit to us to be in us That it is only Novus modus apparendi A new manner of appearing The Holy Spirit the third Person in the Trinity from whom the other two Persons are ever undivided God blessed for ever is ever in every Creature in every Spirit He only changeth his Appearances and Effulgencies there By the change of his Appearance he changeth and formeth each Creature each Spirit in all its Changes Thus he turneth to himself the Heavens and the Earth as the Clay to the Seal according to the Language in the Book of Job How divinely pure and pleasant a prospect or living Picture is now the nature of things while God himself according to the distinct Idea or eternal exemplar of each Creature cometh forth and appeareth together with it as Twin-brothers as Twin-Loves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one the reflection of the other while a Third Love breaks from both these in which they are blest and made perfect with a mutual Union and the fruition of each other The ever-glorious and eternally-joyous Trinity of the highest and first Love seems to multiply and figure it self in each Creature All Creatures now seem to be in a lively and living Beauty represented by the two Breasts of the heavenly Spouse Like two Twin-Roes of a lovely kind two Twin-Loves the Births of their heavenly Mother the Universal and Divine Image in the Person of Christ feeding among the Lillies the Ideal eternal Lights and Beauties of her soft and shining Bosome But all this is to be understood of simple Nature abstracted from the Corruption by Sin with which in the midst of the pure peaceful pleasant Varieties the charming Harmonies the golden Calms and Gardens of Divine Love cometh in a scene of War and Death of tempestuous Seas fields of Blood Contrariety and Enmity God willing to shew the Power of his Wrath. That God who is the God of Love that Will which is Love it self All Love in the beloved Soul to the beloved Soul here in its faln state puts on this strange person of an Enemy Under this dark Disguise and horrid Vizat he hideth all his Beauties and Sweetnesses he acts a part of Wrath. But this it self at last appears to the beloved Soul to be a most delightful Love-part While by it the Variety is made more full being extended to the greatest Contrariety and utmost extreams While in the reconciling of these the Divine Harmony is more full and ravishing The Divine Love heightned to an excess of Sweetness and triumphant Joys The Wisdome of the Design more admird and adored in its rich and glorious Depths All expectations of Men and Angels are suspended most happily deceived and in the end infinitely transcended But how have I wandred and delightfully lost my self by drinking in eagerly this Wine of Angels and glorified Saints the Sweetness of this Divine Light and Love I will now pass from this second Distinction to the third for the illustration of the Divine presence in the soul. 3. Distinction God is one with the Soul not formally but transcendently God is not one with the Soul formally as the formal and proper Essence of the Soul or of any created Spirit much less as a Constitutive part of its Essence This would make God and that Spirit essentially one The Essence of that Spirit would reciprocally be the Essence of God That Spirit would be essentially God Is not this the utmost heighth of Ignorance Profaneness Impiety Blasphemy Giant-like Lucifer-like to war with God for the Throne of his Godhead Besides all this evil how great were the loss to every Spirit of Angels and Men Their Sun which makes the eternal Day and Spring were now set in an hopeless Night of Clouds and Confusions All their Loves Hopes and Joys aspiring to an infiniteness above themselves would now all droop and die in their own Bosome The beginning the end of them all is taken away That distinction of things which is the Mother of all Lives Loves Beauties and Pleasures as Unity is the Father of them would now sink into a rude undistinguished Darkness the first and the fountain of all Distinctions being taken away in taking away the Distinction of the Divine Nature from the created form of things How unpleasant were it to the Eye below to be perswaded that there were no Sun besides it self above it self Now the joy in beholding the face of the Sun and of Heaven the taking in of the sweet Light of Heaven and the Sun the charming Delights in the Varieties of Lights and Shades of Colours and Pictures in the Light and the Sun-shine were no more 2. God is transcendently one with the Soul as he is with all things by the transcendency of his Unity and his Infiniteness He comprehendeth all things in one in Himself after a manner altogether incomprehensible As he is the first the Universal Cause the most immediate the most intimate the inseparable the Ideal Cause of all things He is the Unity of every Unity the Being of Beings the Essence of every Essence not formally but transcendently not after a finite but an infinite manner Cusanus saith God is the Sun in the Sun not formally finitely but after a transcendent infinite manner He is so the Sun in the Sun that he is all things with the fulness of the Divine Nature and eternity in that form 4. Distinction God is present with and in the natural form of the Soul as in an earthly and shadowy Image He is present according to his heavenly his eternal form in this shadow as vailed and hidden beneath it As Jesus Christ at his Incarnation so the first man by his Creation was made under the Law the Law the Glory of the created Image improved and heightned The Holy Spirit saith of the Law That it is a shadow of good things to come not the very Image It is commonly said That the Law is the Gospel vailed the Gospel the Law unvailed Jesus Christ as he is the essential Image the brightness of the Glory of God is the first Adam vailed beneath a shadowy Image He is there as the Truth the Original the Root of this shadow bringing it forth bearing it in himself comprehending it He is in it as the Spirit and beautiful form of a Plant in the Seed ready to spring forth through it to transfigure it into the similitude of its own Beauties to fill it so transfigured with its own Divine Life Virtues and Fruits in the proper season St. Paul makes the first man in his pure State and in his Fall a Type or Figure of Him who is to come Jesus Christ Rom. 5. God in the Light of his Glory Jesus Christ according to his heavenly Image hidden in God The Soul according to its Divine Life in the state of Grace are all present vailed in the natural man as in their
proper shadow Some think this following sense to be intended by St. Paul in these words Christ is the Image of the invisible God the first-born of the whole Creation or of every Creature Col. 1. God in that same second Person which is the Godhead in its essential Image which in the fulness of time took flesh of the Virgin Mary in the beginning of Time came forth from the secret and unaccessible Light of Eternity in a shadowy Image This Image was the full figure of his Person with all its Divine Glories according to the capacity of a shadow This was the whole Creation compleat in its first Draught All the Glories of the Divine Nature which are imitable were here first distinctly figured in the primitive and pure forms of all the Creatures Thus was he the Image of the Invisible God the first-born of the whole Creation in general and of each Creature in particular Thus was He in the Language of the Jews the great Adam who brought forth the little Adam in his own likeness Thus was Jesus Christ in Adam at once the life of all in his essential Glories the Original Copy or first Draught of the Creature in the whole compass of it of each Creature in particular All this in the Humane Soul in Adam as the only perfect and proper Figure of this Original I understand nothing in this interpretation of St. Pauls words contrary to the Analogy of Faith or the Scriptures There seemeth to be in it a compleat Harmony and order in the nature of things according to this sense 1. All things stand first in an Uncreated Subsistence and Essence Then in an Uncreated Subsistence or Person they come forth into Created Essences or Natures Lastly By this medium uniting all they pass in Created Subsistencies and Essences into created Persons and Natures 2. Jesus Christ gradually descends from his essential Glories into an Universal Original Figure of himself of the whole Creation of each Creature Through this He passeth into the particular form of faln man in the Womb of the Virgin So he descends to the nethermost parts of the Earth ascends again through all forms of things with all united in his own Person above all Heavens and fills All. After this manner the Lord Jesus is the Mediatour of the Creation as well as of the Reconciliation and Regeneration All things are made by him and nothing that is made or brought forth from the beginning of things to the end comes forth without him As according to his appearances in Grace or Glory the Saints appear together with him so according to his Appearances in Nature all things appear together with him He lives and subsists in the form of every Creature Every Creature subsists by its transcendental Union with him in Nature Thus it is most true That we are in this World as he is in this World We are Sojourners together with him in his Land He suffers in all our Sufferings is straitned in all our straitnings He is in all things made like unto us Sin only excepted He carries along in every particular form the Universal Harmony the Divine Glory even in all the sufferings and straitnings of every Creature The Universal Harmony and Divine Glory is to him the liberty the joy of Paradise Heaven Eternity in each straitning and suffering Sin only is the breach of this Harmony the violation of this Glory not by a privation only but a Contradiction and Enmity founded in the privation This can bear no part in the Divine Harmony save as it is reduced into Order and the Harmony carried on through the Wrath and Righteousness of God in the Death and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus But I desire to leave my self and my Reader free in this Point I have now finished in four Distinctions my Answer to the first part of the Objection made against the Variety of forms in the Unity of the Soul In this part of my Answer I have endeavoured to state the presence of God with and in the Soul of man as perspicuously as my dark and narrow mind is capable of taking in and expressing a Divine Mystery of so great an amplitude and such an heigth of Glory I pass now to the second part of my Answer which concerns the Angels 2. Answer Angels with the whole Company of invisible substances or separated Forms and immortal Spirits are contained in the Unity of the Soul these two wayes 1. They are Superior and Universal Causes subordinate to the first Cause Thus they are most intimately and inseparably present in the Constitution of the Soul As Entity or Being and substantiality in their Superiour and Universal Nature descend into incorporeal Spirits and through these into Corporeal Shapes and Bodies so do all the Angels greater in Might and Glory cloath themselves with the Incorporeal Form of the immortal Soul communicating all their divers Virtues Powers and Glories to this Form in which themselves subsist and live together with it being an head of Glory to it 2. All Angelical Immortal Spirits are another way in the Soul as making up the full diversity of all Forms in it and so composing its Essence Thus all Angels all Essences all Forms of things in their immortal Substances as Intellectual Spirits meet in the proper Unity under the peculiar Character and Diversity of each Intellectual Soul as in some obscure resemblance Variety of colours in a particular colour or as all the Elements in each Element in each mixt Form under the proper Character of the predominant Element or Form 3. Answer The Intellectual Soul containeth all Corporeal Forms or Bodies in it self two wayes 1. Virtually 2. Formally 1. The Soul hath in it self all Bodies virtually from the Angels above it as the shining Bosome where the eternal Spring through Jesus Christ powres forth its living streams Here the Soul drinketh in the Essences and essential forms of things in their Angelick Truth and Goodness These feast and fill the Understanding and the Will In the Understanding or Angelick Light of the Soul they shine as the Exemplars or Patterns of all below in the visible World In the Will as in the Angelick Love of the Soul they lie as in the Womb or in the seminal Virtue or executive Power which brings them forth 2. This Soul comprehends the Corporeal World in it self formally The Essences of all Bodies as they are Objects only of the Understanding and not of Sense so are they according to the Nature and Law of all Essences Intellectual Unities and Forms in the Unity or essential Form of this Intellectual Spirit The Soul in these distinct Essences floweth forth into these shadowy forms with which our Senses the shadows of the Intellectual Light are entertained The Intellectual Unity diffuseth it self into the continued parts of these divisible Forms This Unity formeth the Proportions of the parts in their mutual Correspondencies knitteth them together unto a mutual sympathy in each natural Body For as I have
Love in the shadowy Image having lost it self in the enmity at the Fall The Divine Love it self in its eternal Image disguiseth it self in a form of wrath flaming forth with unquenchable burnings until it have devoured the Enmity and the shadowy Image it self in the Enmity unto the discovery of the eternal Love vailed beneath its shadow and buried in the Enmity All thus consumed meet again in the triumphant and pure flame in which the Divine Love meets with and embraceth it self But thus much of the second Revolution 3. Now the Soul with the whole nature of things in the shadowy Image the shadowy Harmony the shadowy Righteousness of its first Creation is lost by the dissolution of the Unity in discord and Deformity Sin Death and the Divine Wrath. Now Gâ—… in the essential Image the essential Harmony the essential Rightâ—…usness which is Love it self loveliness it self Power Wisdome the Essence of God declares himself our Jesus our Saviour He declares himself without the Law or the Prophets not from any Merit or Power in the Creature but of meer Grace from the sweet innate force of the Divine Harmony in himself by the beauties of which he is powerfully attracted and acted to the Musick of which he moves in all his actings with highest pleasure This essential Image and Harmony from the beginning lies hid beneath the shadowy Image at the bottom of it as the substance to the shadow which hath no possibility of subsisting in any point or degree of Being without it St. Paul calls this The mystery hid in God from the foundation of the World that is hid beneath the foundation of the World which was a Vail cast over the eternal Glories while they figured themselves in Divine shadows upon this Vail But now our Jesus the second Person in the Trinity the essential Image the essential Harmony the Righteousness of God becomes a Creature springs up from beneath the foundations of the Creation into an Humane Soul and Body in the midst of it ruines This Jesus is the Original Image of the Creation of Man of every Creature the Root the Rule the Actor of all who virtually eminently comprehends all in their distinct Ideal Forms within himself as so many eternal Beauties in his own eternal Beauty who bringeth them forth from himself beareth them in himself as Flowers in their Garden-beds who figureth himself in the riches of his glorious Varieties upon them to make of the whole one beautiful Figure of his own Beauties a Daughter Sister and Bride to himself He therefore now the Seed of Hope of Promise sown in the Soul dying together with the Soul in the Fall now comes up through this death in the form of a man faln man the Image of the whole which contains the whole in it self Thus he reduceth the Contrariety to the Unity He restores the Harmony he atones and reconciles all all manner of wayes 1. He bringeth all the Contrariety into the Harmony by bearing the Fall Guilt Shame all Deformities all Deaths the Divine Wrath the ruines of the Fall in himself who is the eternal universal Harmony and Righteousness Thus eternal Life dies without Death giving an eternal Life and Glory to Death in his Person Thus the Righteousness of God is made Sin for us without Sin He is altogether lovely every thing of him is not only lovely but loveliness it self Yea more loveliness a knot a spring of loveliness So sings the spiritual Bride of her Beloved in that Song of Loves The bushes of his Hair black as a Raven the Bird of Death in their order and place springing forth from his head of finest Gold the purest light of Glory encompassing it with their deep shade and setting it off are Divine Beauties 2. This Person the eternal the universal Image and Harmony of the Godhead of all Glories of all things gives himsâ—… in the extremities of all Sufferings unto Death to be a Sacrifice to the Holiness Justice Wrath and Glory of God He is a Sacrifice of infinite value and force a Sin-Offering expiating all Sin with a transcendency of Merit A Peace-Offering which charms the most offended spirits which changeth into a Golden Calm of Divine Love and Joy the most raging tempests of wrath raised through the whole nature of things from the breast of the eternal Spirit 3. He bears in his own Person the whole Contrariety the Contrariety of evil in the enmity of Sin to the Divine Good in its Love and Glory The Contrariety of the Divine Good in its Love and Glory to the evil in the deformity and enmity of Sin All the fiery darts of both these Contrarieties in their utmost force and fury meet in his Bosome the Bosome of Divâ—…e Beauty and Love exposed nakedly to them both Thus he fills up the design of his Father to make known the power of his Wrath. Thus he draws forth to its largest compass and heightens to its utmost point this Scene of wrath to make the Variety full and the Harmony absolute 4. Jesus the supream Harmony the everlasting Righteousness by dying carries the descent of things to the lowest point He makes an end of Sin Sufferings Death and Wrath for ever by the dissolution and end of the seat the subject of all these the shadowy Image the Creation of Nature in his own person The death of Jesus Christ is as the midnight of things The Sun of the eternal Image and Glory having by its course in the shadowy Image touched the utmost bound of distance from it self now begins its return to it self again 5. This Jesus by his Resurrection carries up with him in his own Person all things the whole Creation the shadowy Image with its Primitive Purity and Paradise the shadowy Image with its fall ruines and deaths into the Glory of the eternal Image unto an Union with it immediate naked entire eternal in one Light in one Spirit Where there is now no more any vail or shadow Now all appear Beauties and Glories divinely-harmonious being seen in their proper place and order in the Divine the Eternal the Universal Harmony 6. Lastly The Lord Jesus now in an humane Soul and Body being risen from the Dead and ascended up on high comprehends reconciles fills all things shining through all assimilating all to himself in the spiritual Glory of his own essential eternal Image in his own Person the most glorious unbounded Head of all Now according to the fulness the fruitfulness the Divine Order of the Ideas the Original Images of all things in the most ample and blissful Harmony in his Person He comes up he springs forth in his Spirit in the Spirit of this Divine Image this Harmony and Glory with the fulness of his Person of this Divine Image Harmony and Glory in the Soul of Man As he springs up he rends the Vail behind which he ever resided he reveals himself to the Soul in the Universal Harmony of his Person and his whole work
Head its inward Principle 3. The Soul of man in its Restitution by Christ hath Jesus Christ as a quickning Spirit in him as the principle of its Life as its life it self I saith Christ am the Resurrection and the Life I saith St. Paul by the Law am dead to the Law I am crucified with Christ and now I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me He saith St. Paul that is joyned to the Lord is one Spirit Man is now become the heavenly Image of God and one Spirit with Jesus Christ in Glory As he hath now the Understanding of Christ according to St. Paul so hath he also the Will of Christ. This heavenly Bridegroom and heavenly Bride are one Divine Spirit bear one Divine Image have one Life one Righteousness one Glory one Understanding one Will and dwell together in one Light as God is Light in one Love as God is Love in one immortal Joy unspeakable and glorious The Soul now is a chast and spotless Bride which bringeth forth all the rich and heavenly fruits of her Spirit her Understanding her Will her whole Life inward and outward by her own heavenly Husband alone by the sweet force of her Union with him and the Divine Virtue of his embraces that they may be fruits to God that is Divine Fruits having the life virtue and sweetness of the Divine Nature in them the form and beauty of the Divine Nature upon them for a feast of Joys and Glory to God himself to feast both his Eyes and his Heart If then the Soul restored be one Spirit with Christ as in the Spirit of Christ so in the Spirit of a Saint the most pleasant liberty and most potent necessity meet in one The Divine Harmony of the supream and universal good is at once the spacious and blissful Field of this Paradisical freedom and the golden Chain of this most grateful and most glorious necessity The Spirit of Christ is eternity it self which as it spreads it self beyond and above all consinements to a Variety endlesly fresh and flourishing is the sweetest Liberty As it comprehends all things in a most entire undivided Unity the supream Crown and Circle of all true Life and Glory is the highest necessity Eternity hath nothing past or to come in respect to it self being far above all Changes all Beginnings and Ends of things It is the supream Power which rules them all and the supream Wisdom which measures them The Soul then now become one Spirit with Christ is in that Spirit together with Christ seated upon the Throne of Eternity by its Union with this Spirit it reigns upon this Throne over all things by having this Spirit in it self by being one Spirit with this Spirit it hath in it self that soveraign Power and supream Wisdom it is one with that soveraign Power and supream Wisdom which rules and measures all things Thus the glorious Bride of Eternity having her heavenly Bridegroom in her embraces cloathed and crowned with the same heavenly Image being now in the true state of her own proper person in her sirst and last state in her own proper unvailed Substance and Original here with her Bridegroom is her own rule and measure in this heavenly Image which is her true substantial self her Eternity She is also a rule and measure to her self in the earthly and shadowy Image and in all her Pilgrimage through the Regions of time below whether they be the sweeter shadows of the Light above or the melancholy shades of a deeper Darkness This is the true Liberty of Man and the freedom of his Will which is as the liberty and freedom of the true eternal good diffusing it self into all the unsearchable riches of its manifoldly various Varieties varying setting off sweetning and heightning it self by all the ravishing excesses of Harmony of Light of Love by all the extreams of Darkness Discord Contrariety and hate reducing and binding up these also into a most ravishing Harmony by the excesses by the victories and triumphs of the Divine Light and Love So keeping together with this sportful Liberty the golden the firm Adamantine necessity of being it self still through all that is good the true and eternal good This Divine Liberty of the spiritual Bride which is her Kingdom in her self over all is divinely expressed by the blessed Bridegroom himself in that most mysterious Song of himself and his Love composed by himself in the Person of Solomon He there in one place chargeth the Daughters of Jerusalem that is all the holy Angels and spotless Spirits by which the affairs of the whole Creation are administred By the Roes and Hindes of the field that is by all those Pleasures Loves and Lovelinesses with which he sports himself in the midst of them in the Paradise above who alone is the lovely Roe and the lovely Hind That they awake not nor stir up his Love until he please Cant. 2. 7. Thus it is manifestly in the Hebrew although our Translators have changed the Feminine into the Masculine and set the Bridegroom in the place of the Bride But the sense which the words grammatically import is this That as the heavenly Bride is one Spirit with her Bridegroom she sits above together with him upon his Throne in eternity from thence together w th him gives to all the heavenly Ministers their Commissions that nothing moves in her own person or round about her here below as she is in her shadowy disguise and pilgrimage but as it is ordered by her self above in the bosome of her Bridegroom And according to that order executed by the heavenly attendance which wait continually round about the Throne of her Bridegroom 2. Reason If the Will of Man be not free and do not freely determine it self in all moral Actions being undetermined in its own Principles or by any superior Causes what entrance doth sin find How doth any thing of a stain or guilt lie upon the Soul How is God just in the effects of his Wrath upon those that sin if they sin by an inevitable necessity of Nature and a predetermination by the connexion of Causes or by the immediate and intimate operation of the first and universal Cause I shall give my Answer by several steps 1. Sin hath no positive being if it hath God who is the first and universal Being the Fountain of Being is directly by himself and not by accident only the Author of Sin in its formality as Sin Otherwise we must with Manes set two Gods upon two distinct Thrones one of Light or Good the other of Darkness or Evil. Or we shall be forced with some Heathen Philosophers to establish two first Beings equally Uncreated and eternal One God the Agent The other Matter the Patient So where the Agent subdues the matter to it self all Forms of Goodness Beauty Life and Joy spring forth where the matter invincibly resisteth the power of the Agent there are the Regions of all Evil Darkness Death
or nature Where the sense of deformity is there will also be the fear of infamy and so the shame When Venus and Mars were discovered in Vulcan's Net an immortal laughter arose among all the Gods who were Spectators as we read in Homer When the Soul once in its first Creation cloathed with a Divine Beauty and so placed in the Paradise of a Divine Light and Joy seeth it self despoiled of this heavenly Robe in the nakedness of those deformities of the darkness into which as hidden in the depth of its own nature it sinks when the Divine beams that raised it out of that dark Deep and enriched it with its heavenly Ornaments are retired can it be without a sense of this deformed nakedness without shame without impressions made upon it by the apprehension of that state in which the innumerable company of heavenly Spectators now behold it with a disesteem and aversion suitable to that state Neither is the justness of the aversion and disesteem in all the heavenly Spirits or of the shame in this faln Spirit lessened but rather encreased and heightned by this that the deformity springeth up with an inevitable necessity from its own proper nature for the discovery of that which this faln Soul is in it self together with every Creature and the distinction now manifested between that which is of God as the Fountain in Eden whence alone all Paradisical Beauties and Joys flow in the Creature and that which is of the Creature it self which is in it self a dark horrid and bottomless pit where all wastness woe disorder deformity confusion desolation Deaths and Hells dwell together and whence in swarms they break forth as from a cursed womb like the smoke and the locusts from the bottomless pit in the Revelation the discovery of this in the faln Spirits makes their shame and abhorrency of themselves more just and high as also the Songs of Praise which the heavenly Spirits day and night sing to their Creator and Preserver as more highly just so more highly sweet and glorious Thus much for the shame let us now pass to the guilt Guilt is the obligation of the Sinner to the Justice of God Justice and so most eminently the Divine Justice which is the measure of all Justice is that which giveth to every thing its due that which is proper to it it s own That is due to every thing which is proper and suitable to it according to its place in the whole for the preservation restrauration or perfection of the Order in the whole When a Spirit by the abstraction of the Divine Beauty and Virtue is now sunk into its natural weakness and deformity nothing now is any longer its own nothing now is suitable to it but that power of darkness that principle of waste emptiness of even dreaded and hateful nothings Now the path in which the supream Justice presiding over the Universal Order and Harmony of things acts most pertinently towards it is to abandon it to those powers of darkness which rise up from its own proper Root to display themselves more fully upon it in their ugly and hateful shapes in their tormenting horrors in their horrid torments the dissolutions of the blissful Unity in distracting divisions and confusions the extinguishing of the sweet and beautiful Light in affrightful shades of amazing darkness The chief skill in Pictures consisteth in the evenness and justness of placing the shades that according to the degrees of the declining Light the shades may gradually increase until they sink into the deepest obscurity or be bounded by a new light springing up out of these shades Such is the Law of the Divine Justice which is the great and wise Spirit of the Universal Harmony in this Divine Poem or Picture the work of the Creation as the heavenly form of goodness or beauty in the best and most beautiful season which draws it self from any part of this work Privation the principle and form of all evil spreads its black-wings over it encreasing its hellish shades and darknesses upon it in the bosome of which it hatcheth all the ugly Births of deformity woe and horror with an amazing interminating infiniteness until the sacred Light of the Divine goodness and beauty arising upon it bound those unformed shades reducing all to and binding up all with the Adamantine Chains of a triumphant Harmony in the Glory of God In this third step we have endeavoured to fix the shame and guilt of sin upon the Sinner but glory upon the Divine Justice in the sufferings which come by sin 4. Step. We are in our next step to give an answer for God to those who in their Expostulations ask why he is yet angry The solution of this doubt is obvious and common Anger resteth in the bosome of Fools Fury is not in him who worketh all things according to the counsel of his Will His Wisdom and his Will are both one His Justice and his Power are both one and one with the other two his Wisdom and his Will As he is one pure Act of Omnipotency of Beauty of Love of Joy of all Excellencies at their greatest heighth and in one so is he Wisdom Will Justice Power all in one He is Power as he is a pure Act of Almightiness He is Wisdom as he is a pure Act of highest and most Universal Harmony He is Justice as he is a pure Act of entire and most perfect Order He is Will as he is a pure Act of highest and most diffusive goodness of the richest sweetest and fullest loveliness which are the proper Objects and so perfections of the Will He is Will as he is a pure Act of most heightned and comprehensive Love Joy Complacency which are the most proper and perfect Operations of the Will Fury then is not in him who thus worketh all things according to the counsel of his Will where Justice Power Wisdom and Will meet in one at their purest heights in their greatest freedoms in their most proper and perfect Operations Anger is then attributed to God per Anthropopathiam while by the suiting of the Language to the capacity of the Hearers God is represented to us in the form and in the fashion of a man It is also a metonymical way of speaking which expresseth the effect by the cause So the Scripture speaking with the Tongue of a Man as the Jews express it representeth those effects of the Divine Providence by the names of the anger of God the wrath of God which answer to those effects that commonly proceed from anger and wrath in men Job faith in one place When the scourge falleth alike upon the innocent and the wicked God laugheth at it When wicked men suffer for their sins when innocent persons are refined by their sufferings the Eye of God is fixed upon his own Divine Loveliness and Glory alike in both The purest and most perfect Love acteth him toward this most pure and perfect Loveliness and Glory alike
a delightful sweetness both in the Subject and in the sense and all the various perfections or proportions of the whole and of the several parts concentring in each part giving a perfection to it and receiving a perfection from it and thus reflecting the distinct and united perfections of the whole and of all the parts mutually and endlesly upon each other and so shine forth carrying as in triumph upon every sparkling beam the multiplied reflections as so many Coelestial Venus's exactly answering one another and all in one into the beholding and ravisht eye But this will be confirmed and made more clear to us in that which followeth Fourthly God maketh all things for eternity verse 14. I know that whatsoever God doth that shall be for ever God's ever is eternity Eternity as we learn from Philosophers and Divines is a perfect Unity comprehending all Variety within it self even Time also with all its successions divisions and distances without and above time succession division or distance It is defined to be Tota totius boni simul semel possessio A whole possession of the whole good at once and in one Thus God worketh all things from eternity in eternity and for eternity Thus he maketh every thing beautiful as it is seen in the light of eternity which alone is the light of Truth Time being the shadow of Eternity and a Vail upon it for in this light in which the Works of God are all wrought in which alone a true judgment may be made of them every particular is seen as it lies in the whole as a part of the Variety in the whole Variety and in the Unity The whole Variety and the Unity appears entire and compleat in every part so the fulness of the Divine Work the fulness of the Divine Beauty and Glory spread through the whole Work is united in every part and fulfilleth all in all Object Perhaps you will say Are moral privations as well as natural is sin also comprehended in this discourse Hath God also set a season for that and made that beautiful in its time Then is it no more sin if it be not a deformity Then is it a grace if it be a beauty A Divine Grace if it be a Divine Beauty And a Divine Work if it be made by God How genuinely does the Opinion of the Ranters flow from these Principles That then only we see things in the Light of the Gospel the only true and eternal Light when we see no more any distinction between Good and Evil Grace and Corruption the deformity of Sin and the beauty of Holiness the Works of God and the Works of the Devil all say they seen by an eye truly illuminated is a Divine Work a Divine Grace and Beauty Answ. I reply first in general to ranting Principles and Practices as St. Paul doth with abhorency and detestation God forbid far be it far be these Principles from the mind and life of every good man as they are far from the Divine Truth from the Mind Life and Work of God formed by the Devil from a Seed of enmity to God unto the Glory of the Gospel in the Womb of the blackest darkness in the darkest depth of the bottomless pit But my more particular and distinct Reply is this 1. If sin be a positive Form of Being then it is originally and eternally comprehended in the first Being the only Fountain of Being it floweth from it lieth in the frame and order of the Universal Being It beareth upon it the impression and character of the first Being with its Beauty it beareth a part with the whole or universal Being making up the perfection of the whole and cloathed with it crowning it and crowned by it All this upon that supposition will necessarily be true of it most properly most directly by it self and not indirectly or by accident only But according to the narrow compass of my knowledge or understanding this supposition and consequent both are contrary to the common current and general stream of Philosophy and Divinity 2. If sin be a privation of Grace it is to be considered two wayes 1. In Principio 1. In its Principle 2. In Termino 2. In its Term or Subject 1. The privation of Grace is to be considered in its Principle As a privation hath no Being so it hath no Principle in a proper sense if we may apply such language to it Privation which is no Being with its particular modification and bounds hath for its proper Principle Non-entity or not Being in its universal sphere or compass as the narrow and mid-land Seas are divided from the vast unbounded Ocean But the Principle from which the privation of Grace ariseth in its Subject by consequent and by accident is Grace it self in its first Principle with-holding or with-drawing it self The Principle of Grace is God alone the Privation of Grace as it is the with-drawing or the with-holding of this Principle in its Operations or Influences so it is immediately consequent to originally comprehended in the Acts of the Divine Will and the Divine Wisdom This privation of Grace lying thus in the Principle of Grace comprehended in the Acts of the Divine Wisdom and Will as their term and bound hath its part and place in the Divine design It is now and here in this Prospect a part of the Variety as a Contrariety It lies within the embraces of the whole Variety it lies in the bosom of the Unity which is the Spring the Seat the Throne of the Variety So the whole Variety in the Unity the Unity in its full Variety and at once after the manner of eternity spring up in it shine through it look forth clearly and compleatly in the face of it richly cloath it all over After this manner is the privation of Grace in its Principle in the Acts of the Divine Will and the Divine Wisdom a Divine Workmanship a Divine Beauty Agreeable to this is that common Principle of our Divines That God hath his influence upon Sin to order it to bound it in all its circumstances to reduce the disorder of it into order to make it serviceable to the order and the beauty of the whole In this sense Proclus affirms in his Divinity That there is neither Privation or Corruption 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Totis that is according to his sense In Divine Intellectual Spirits which by the light of Eternity comprehend in themselves in one view the whole Work of God the whole nature of things with all their Varieties and Contrarieties as an entire piece an entire Image The Divine Workmanship the Divine Beauty of the supream Spirit whose Unity is figured upon For here the Divine Form and Beauty of the whole resting upon every Privation or Corruption makes that also in the whole a Divine Unity and Perfection 2. Privation is to be considered in Termino vel Subjecto that is in the Intellectual Spirit as the Seat or Subject Divines say That
the Act of creating as it is in God its Principle is God as it is in the Creature where it is terminated is the Creature In like manner the Privation of Grace as it hath its beginning in the Author of Grace from an Act of the Divine Wisdom and Will designing or determining the with-holding of it is thus Divinely-beautiful and good The same privation of Grace as it is terminated and seated in a created Spirit is an evil of Sin the highest deformity the first the greatest evil the fountain of all evils most properly in its own nature and in the Eye of God As being the first and foulest privation of the first Good or the heighest Beauty and the Fountain of all following Privations extending their poisonous and baleful shades to the bottomless pit to the nethermost Hell God saith in the Prophet Isaiah of Nebuchadnezzar he is a Rod in my Hand but he thinketh not so Nebuchadnezzar was as in the hand of God but as a Musicians Quill The Acts of Enmity Tyranny and Cruelty exercised by him and upon the people of God were from the Divine Musician the Master of the universal Musick skilful stroaks and tender touches upon his Harps or Lutes which are his Saints making the universal the eternal Harmony compleat in their Persons and in his whole Work But the same Acts as they were from Nebuchadnezzar were a disorder a breach of the Harmony a Contrariety of an enmity which is the highest opposition to it In the same sweet and beautiful sense of Divine Love that loveliest figure of our Lord Jesus saith to his Brethen concerning their savageness selling sacrificing him to their envy and malice directed against the Divine Glory declaring it self in him by heavenly Visions Ye thought evil against me God meant it unto good Gen. 50. 20. Thus he comforted them concerning their greatest sins who were now humbled for them After the same manner to the same end the Truth himself the Lord Jesus by his Spirit striketh upon the heart of the Jews who had crucified him that now themselves might bleed inwardly from the sense of that precious blood of his which they had shed Act. 2. 23. Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and fore-knowledge of God ye have taken and with wicked hands crucified See that Act the most bloody and direful that ever the Sun saw by which the Suns Sun in Flesh and on Earth suffered the most mournful and tragical Ecclipse attributed at once to the determinate Counsel of God and to the wickedness of men Here that was eminently true which was represented by the former Scripture in the figure that which men thought evil against their Jesus their only Joy their God their only Good and Glory the same thing the cursed sale and cruel sacrificing of their God he meant unto good to bring to pass as at this day to save much people alive to bring many Sons to eternal Life and Glory A learned man cites from Aristotle in his Metaphysicks a passage in which he affirms That all the several parts are referred to the good of the order in the whole as the end of all Upon this he discants that this good of order depends upon the vilest as well as the most precious things that it consisteth in the interval and proportion between these That in respect to this order the vilest things are determined and framed with the same most exact skill as the most curious things Thus the sufferings of Joseph the crucifying of Jesus as they lay eternally determinate in the determinate Counsel of God designed and fashioned there unto good the highest Good the supream End the universal Order the Divine Glory which wraps up in it the blessedness of all the Saints so it self was a part of the Order a part of the Glory a Grace a Beauty a Perfection in the universal Order and Divine Glory But as this proceeds from the hearts and hands of Men the Instruments of it who like Nebuchadnezzar thought not so like Josephs Brethren thought it for evil like the Crucifiers of Christ were wicked in it It is a deordination a disorder a real evil the worst of evils not only a falling short of the Glory of God which is the Divine Image and effulgency in the Harmony of things as St. Paul describes Sin nor yet a transgression and breach only of the Law which is the rule and measure of this Order as another Apostle defines sin but an Enemy to it as all sin is in its root and essence according to the Language of St. Paul in another place So the discord in Musick is truly in its own particular nature and apart a discord so a black crooked line a dark shade is in it self truly black crooked dark offensive to the eye contrary to Light Rectitude and Beauty although the discord be a part of the Harmony this line and shade a part of the Beauty in the whole Object But you will perhaps say All these things seem hitherto to confirm the Ranters in their licentious Principles and Practices For why should not Sinners with the freedom of all sinful pleasures rest and rejoyce in the absoluteness of the Divine Conduct the Perfection of the Divine Order and Beauty which giudes them through all which accompanieth them in all as the Motion and Musick of those heavenly Spheres the Divine Wisdom Power and Goodness comprehending all things with their courses as Stars fixed in them what place is there here for shame guilt displeasure or punishments Answ. I am sensible of the weight of this Work in which I have by degrees engaged my self and how unfit my shoulders are for it When that wise Queen of Sheba saw the attendance of Solomons Servants and the order of his House there was no more any spirit left in her What then is the order in the House of God in his Work from the beginning to the end of it What the attendance and ministry of all the parts of this Work as the Servants in this House according to the Divine Order What Cherubim or Seraphim would have any more any Spirit left in it while it contemplates this Order which at the height of its most ravishing Contemplations remains still for the excess of Glory incomprehensible to it This is that Wisdom in a mystery which the most princely Spirits and Understandings of the whole Creations in their natural capacities are unable to take in What then is my spirit what my faculty that I should be capable of taking off the Vail from this Divine Chain of heavenly Pearl so closely and curiously set to behold in my self by any imperfect glimps to present any glance of it in its Divine lustre and order to other eyes and to preserve it from the feet of Swine or mouth of Dogs What am I that I should attempt to take the Cloud off from this heavenly Paradise which is in the midst of us before us round about us in which all things and
him If any man be in Christ saith St. Paul he is a new Creation old things are passed away 2 Cor. 5. It is a known story recited by Plutarch That of a great Cry with dreadful shrieks and groans to Thamus a Pilot as he passed by a desolate Island in the Reign of Tiberius under whom Christ was put to death Great Pan is dead this great All is dead The Heathen figured the whole Creation in the Person of their God Pan the Angelical Coelestial and Elementary parts of it 2. The Death of Christ is an universal Resolution or Return of all things as they stand in Christ into their first and Divine Principles The Light the Life the Forms the Essences of all things return into their Ideal Forms their incorruptible Originals and Patterns their pure eternal Springs in the Mediatory Form and Divine Nature of Christ. The shadowyness returns into that blessed shade that fell immediately from the Person of Christ in Glory that Primitive and Divine Darkness which was before the first Day the Womb of the first Light and of the whole Creation which composed those Nights of Beauty Peace and Pleasure the Nights of the six Days the Night of the seventh Day and all the Nights of Paradise Thus was Jesus with the good Thief and all things with him in him in Paradise at his Death The Jewish Rabbins distinguish Paradise from Heaven thus Heaven is a state of Divine Glory and Pleasure above in the open Light of â—…e Godhead Paradise is a state of Divine incorruptible Glory and Pleasure below beneath the shades of the Earth This is that pure primitive Divine Darkness of which I speak which was the shade out of which the pure Earth with all the unstained Forms of things at first arose and into which they now return again in Christ. This is the Divine sleep of all things in the Death of Christ their retirement into their Divine Patterns their sweet and entire rest in them their contemplation and fruition of all the immortal Joys and Glories of their Patterns and of themselves in those Joys and Glories as a Divine dream in this sleep within this sweet this amiable this more than Angelical shade which over-spreads them Here they desirously and delightfully wait for the Day of the Resurrection from the Face of God which they see by degrees dawning and rising upon them when the sweet Peace of this lovely shade shall break up into the more full and glorious sweetness of the supream Light and that eternal Day St. Paul expresseth all this to us when he teacheth us That Christ hath gathered up all things into one in himself Col. 2. The Greek word properly signifies there the Resolution or Return of things back into their first Principle their Original Spring and Pattern 3. The third and last part of the Mediation of Christ in our Redemption as it was accomplished in his own Person is his Resurrection and Ascension These two agree are the same in nature and kind differing only in degree The Resurrection of Christ is the breaking up of that primitive shade which over-spread him into a clear Light of Glory Now he springs up and flourisheth throughout his whole Person and all things together with him in his Person in the Beauty and Immortality of his Mediatory Form He is now become an entire Spirit in his Humane Nature both Soul and Body This two Scriptures make clear to us Jesus Christ saith to Nicodemus Joh. 3. 6. That that which is begotten of the Spirit is Spirit The word there is a Substantive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spiritual substance or substantial Spirit Now it is manifest in the Scriptures that the Resurrection of Christ in the Body was an immediate Generation by the eternal Spirit So Divines interpret and apply those words Heb. 1. 5. cited from the second Psalm Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee Suitable to this is that Scripture Rom. 1. 4. Declared the Son of God with power according to the holy spirit by the Resurrection from the dead Two things are manifest from this Scripture 1. That Jesus Christ was raised from the Dead by the immediate Power and Operation of the holy Spirit 2. That this Resurrection was a Divine Generation by the Spirit through which he was brought forth into the proper Form of the Son of God That which we read declared 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth properly defined or determinately formed This receives further Light from St. Peter 1 Pet. 3. 18. Being put to death truly in the flesh but quickned in the spirit We read it by the Spirit but in Grâ—… the Flesh and Spirit do so exactly answer one another in the construction and manner of expression that one would think nothing to be plainer than the intention of the Holy Ghost to signifie that the Flesh and the Spirit had both the same relation to the Person of Christ in those different states of his dying and rising again that by this change the Spirit came in the place of the Flesh and that the Flesh was changed into a Spirit as by a natural Generation that that was Water or Air is made Fire The words are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In the same sense in which he died in Flesh or to the Flesh So he rose again in the Spirit or to Spirit That same Body which died a fleshly compounded mortal substance rose again a simple pure immortal Spirit As the Humanity of Christ rose again a Spirit so it rose in an immediate inseparable Union with the eternal Spirit upon the same Root into the same Life and Image St. Paul instructeth us in this mystery 1 Cor. 15. 45. The first Adam was made a living Soul the last Adam a quickning Spirit vers 45. The subject of St. Paul's Discourse there and in many verses before is the Resurrection of the Body He said immediately before It is sown a natural Body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Body proper for a Soul It is raised a spiritual Body a Body proper for a Spirit vers 44. He illustrates this afterwards The first man is of the Earth earthly the second man is the Lord from Heaven vers 47. Then he distinguisheth them by the names of the earthly and the heavenly man or the Super-Coelestial vers 48. He likewise distinguisheth their two Images the Image of the earthly and the Image of the heavenly or super-coelestial vers 49. Then he concludes with a a positive and emphatical Declaration But this I say brethren that flesh and blood cannot enter into the Kingdom of God vers 50. From these Scriptures laid together these particulars seem evidently to arise 1. Jesus Christ by the Resurrection in his whole Humane Nature both Soul and Body is a supernatural super-coelestial Spirit far above the nature of Souls or Angels in the first Creation 2. The humanity of Christ hath now its Root in Heaven in that Heaven out of which it comes forth