possession And you having flung away that precious Legacy of your dying Lord namely the Love of one another what Injustice is it that an Alien take it up and flourish it in your sight to your utter Shame and Reproach And truly he writes as one that knows his advantage passing well in this regard as you may see if you read his Introduction chap. 4. sect 35. to the end of the chapter as also sect 51 of the eleventh chapter to the end thereof 5. Fourthly Whereas you place all your Piety in an hypocritical Flattery of Christ's Person and have overwhelmed and smothered the Life of Religion with an unsupportable load and luggage of needless and thankless Ceremonies or else have wounded it to death with the acuteness and spinosity of harsh and dry Opinions not heeding at all the renovation of your own minds nor of theirs that are committed to your charge into the lively Image of Christ which assuredly does mainly consist in Christian Love how just is it with God to permit such an Enthusiast to arise who shall make it the great Arcanum of his Religion to slay Christ according to the flesh that is according to the History you having slain him so cruelly and remorslessly according to the Spirit that is extinguished his Life that ought to be in us by substituting your own foolish Opinions and loathsome Ceremonies in the place thereof Nay indeed you have handled the matter so that you have made Christ according to the flesh be the Executioner of himself according to the Spirit making every Article concerning Christ an Engine for either Sensuality or Strife In brief the exteriour oeconomie of Christian Religion being intended for the inward perfecting of our Minds in true Righteousness and Holiness which is Christ in us according to the Spirit you by your Devices defeating this end doe naturally take away the means thereto and thus yourselves are the principal Murderers of Christ even according to the flesh too and H. Nicolas is only your appointed Executioner And therefore it is as I said but just with God you having so long and so constantly abused all the Articles of the Creed to a contrary purpose then was intended by his gracious counsel that he permit such a Mock-prophet to arise that should hazard the peoples misbelief of all and Allegorize away all that solid and useful Truth of the History of Christ into a mere moral or mystical sense as if the Letter were but a Parable or Fable 6. Fifthly In that this Sect we speak of do rattle so about your ears with the loud noise of Perfection though for my own part I am well assured the best of them are far enough from it yet in the mean time I cannot but interpret it an exprobration and reproach to the great abhorrency you have to so searching a doctrine that will touch and wound your Hypocritical hearts with the sense and conscience of wilful sinfulness which you would cloak under that colour of Impossibility of being as you should be as also to your false dealing with those under your charge whom you do bedwarfe and becripple by your poisonous medicines would make them alwaies sorry boies with bibs and aprons or else conceal their age and keep them alwaies in minority for advantage sake like those infortunate Orphans that are betraied into the hands of treacherous Guardians What wonder is it therefore that those that truly hunger and thirst after Righteousness being starved at home with those dilute and corrupt doctrines of the Needlesness of Sanctity of invincible Infirmity slight Attrition frivolous Penances venal Indulgences crawl out abroad to seek better food and so get into the lap and suck the nipples of this sweet Enchantress the lovely Family of the Love whose breasts do promise such strong nourishment that they that drink thereof do not only pass from children to men but from being men doe become Gods 7. And Sixthly and lastly While I contemplate the universal face of Christendome what a Den of Thieves and Murderers it is become what a Region of Robbers and Oppressors what a Sty of Epicures what a Wilderness of Atheism and Prophaneness in a manner wholly inhabited by Satyrs and salvage Beasts when I consider within my self how generally men live as if there were nothing to come after this life and how many already have drunk down that doctrine That there is indeed nothing to come hereafter of which notwithstanding the History of Christ his Death Resurrection and Ascension and his appearing out of Heaven to Paul as he was a going to Damascus are as palpable pledges as Divine Providence could produce as also of his visible Return to Judgement according to the Scriptures I say when I consider how little effect all this has had for the raising of mens minds to an heavenly Conversation but that they live as if they were utterly sunk from this belief I cannot imagine any thing more reasonable then to conclude That out of very Wrath and Indignation God has raised this false Prophet to them that it might be with them according to the Proverb Like lips like lettice Like Prophet like People As if God should thus expostulate with Christendome Behold I have given to you my only-begotten Son out of my own bosome whose authority I ratified unto you by audible Voices from Heaven by mighty Signs and Miracles done by him while he was alive I gave him a sacrifice for sin to reconcile you to my self and to endear your affections unto him and me that ye might cordially follow his Example and keep his Precepts I raised him from the dead and exhibited him visibly to his disciples as an undoubted pledge of a blessed Immortality to them that believe on him which I further confirmed by his Ascension into Heaven and his appearing to that chosen Vessel of mine who has so fully prefigured unto you his glorious Return to Judgment and the Resuscitation of all his Saints into that Eternal Happiness which they had fallen from And now I demand of you what could I have done more for the gaining you back to my self and for the resettling you again in my Heavenly Paradise But because you are so besotted with Earthliness and Sensuality as to make no use of the inestimable advantages of the Gospel but have set your Happiness upon things here below behold I have raised up unto you a Prophet according to your own hearts desire who will help on the completion of your Infidelity and in the midst of a many fine words and sweet friendly phrases close up your eyes in Unbelief and so having sealed unto you by his witchery and enchantments this assurance That the Mystery of Christ reaches no further then the things of this life you may use the present market and enjoy your worldly lusts to the full 8. This surely if I understand any thing is the sense and meaning of God's permission that such a Prodigie as Familisme should appear with so
Dispensation are we well approved of by God and being justified thus by faith we have peace with him through our Lord Iesus Christ Rom. 5.1 So that this Iustification is not a mere belief that Christ died for us in particular or that he was raised from the dead whereby anothers Righteousness is imputed to us but a believing in God that he has accepted the bloud of Christ as a Sacrifice for sin and that he is able through the power of the Spirit to raise us up to newness of life whereby we are encouraged to breath and aspire after this more inward and perfect righteousnesse Which advantages God propounds to all the hearers of the Gospel without any respect of works or former demurenesse of life if so be they will but now come in and close with this high and rich dispensation and be carried on with couragious resolutions to fight against and pull down the man of sin within themselves that this living and new way of real Divine righteousnesse may be set up and rule in their hearts I say if they be encouraged to this holy enterprise by Faith in Christ for the remission of sins and for the power of his Spirit to utterly eradicate and extirpate all inward corruption and wickednesse this Faith is presently imputed to them for Righteousnesse that is they are and are approved by God as dear children of his and as good men and are of the seed of the Promise For they are born now not of the will of man nor of the will of the flesh but of the will of God and their will is wholly set upon righteousnesse and true holinesse which they hunger and thirst after as sincerely and eagerly as ever they did after their natural meat and drink and God who feeds the young Ravens is not so cruell as to deny them this celestial food which food they reach at and as it were wrest out of his hands by Faith in the power of his Spirit whereby they account themselves able to doe all things 9. And this is the only warrantable notion that I can finde of being justified by faith Nor do those places above recited prove any other then this For that which seems to make most of all for another viz. Rom. 4.5 But to him that worketh not but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly his faith is counted for righteousness may very well be interpreted according to that tenour of sense I have already declared For that is the great and comfortable priviledge of the Gospel that without any respect of former works if so be we do but now believe remission of sins in Christ and believe in his power that justifies the ungodly i. e. that makes just the ungodly and purifies and purges them from all sin and iniquity from which by their own naturall power they could not purged and restores them to inward reall righteousnesse by the working of his Spirit this Faith is imputed for Righteousnesse For they that do thus believe are good and righteous men for matter of sincerity so that they have peace with God through the bloud of Christ and by the power of that Spirit that is now working in them are renewed daily more and more into that glorious image and desirable liberty which arises in the further conquest of the Divine life in them and makes them righteous even as Christ was righteous And now the hardest is satisfied the other places alledged will easily fall of themselves by the application of what has been said concerning this nature of Faith and Iustification 10. As for those places of Scripture that seem to attribute the Righteousness of Christ to us as where he is said to be made unto us wisedom righteousness sanctification and redemption the sense is only this that he works in us wisedom righteousness c. Otherwise it might be inferred that we shall have only an imputative Redemption and that we shall not be really saved and redeemed As for that other As by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners so by the obedience of one man many shall be made righteous I say it is a place against themselves For by Adam we became really sinners and sinful contracting original corruption from his loins therefore by Christ we are to be made really righteous And this was the end of his obedience that was obedient even to the death of the crosse that we being buried with him by baptisme into death like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life Rom. 6. Wherefore there really being no ground in Scripture for this childish mistake and it being as unreasonable that one Soul should be righteous for another as that one Body should be in health for another if I shew that the Scripture it self does expresly require of us that we be righteous and holy in our own persons there is then nothing wanting to the full discovery of this childish and ungrounded conceit of being righteous without any Righteousness residing in us 11. And in my apprehension this very Text of S. Iohn is a clear eviction of this Truth it plainly declaring that they are mistaken who ever conceit themselves righteous without doing righteousnesse or without being righteous in such a sense as Christ himself was righteous There are also several other Testimonies of the Apostles to the same purpose some whereof I have noted already as where he saith That Christ was manifested to take away our sins and that he came to destroy the works of the Devil and that he that is born of God sinneth not because the seed of God abideth in him that is a permanent Principle of Divine life and sense whereby he seeth and abhorreth whatsoever is wicked and unholy And again 1 Ioh. â— Hereby we know that we know him if we keep his commandements He that saith I know him and keepeth not his commandements is a lyar and the truth is not in him but whose keepeth his word in him verily is the love of God perfected Hereby know we that we are in him He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked Like that 2 Tim. 2.19 Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity CHAP. VI. 1. Their alledgement of Gal. 2.16 as also of the whole drift of that Epistle 2. What the Righteousnesse of faith is according to the Apostle 3. In what sense those that are in Christ are said not to be under the Law 4. That the Righteousness of faith is no figment but a reality in us 5. That this Righteousnesse is the New Creature and what this new Creature is according to Scripture 6. That the new Creature consists in Wisedom Righteousness and true Holiness 7. The Righteousnesse of the new Creature 8. His Wisedom and Holinesse 9. That the Righteousness of faith excludes not good Works The wicked treachery of those
reap For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting 5. The aim therefore of the Apostle is not to extenuate or discountenance real Vertue and Righteousnesse but to point us to it and shew us where it may be had Not in dayes or years not in New Moons or Festivals not in Circumcision nor in the dead letter of the Law but in Christ and the Spirit of God in the renewed Image of God in the new birth in the new life in the second Adam from Heaven in the new Creature But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Iesus Christ by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world For in Christ Iesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision but a new creature Which the Apostle elsewhere cals the new man That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man that is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the Spirit of your minde And that you put on the new man which after God is created in righteousnesse and true holinesse that is not in external Ceremonial holiness or outward sanctimonious shew but in the regeneration of the inward Spirit to a new life from the very heart And again Colos. 3. vers 9. Lie not one to another seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds and have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him where there is neither Greek nor Iew circumcision nor uncircumcision Barbarian Scythian bond nor free but Christ is all and in all 6. This new Creature then is nothing else but the Image of God in the Soul of man So witness both these Texts The new man which after God is created in Knowledge Righteousness and true Holiness The very same that Plato speaks at once in his Theaetetus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To be like God is to become Holy Iust and Wise. But because most men even the old Adam in us take themselves to be holy just and wise it will be seasonable here to see what Iustice Holinesse and Wisedom this is that is in the new Creature 7. And who can tell it so well as he that is it Matth. 5. Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old Thou shalt not kill and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgement But I say unto you that whosoever ◠angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgement and whosoever shall say unto his brother Racha shall be in danger of the Councell but whosoever shall say Thou fool shall be in danger of hell-fire Ye have heard that it was said by them of old Thou shalt not commit adultery But I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart Again it was said of old Forswear not thy self But I say unto you Swear not at all but let your communication be Yea yea and Nay nay for whatsoever is more then these cometh of evil Ye have heard it also said An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth But I say unto you Resist not evil Ye have heard also Thou shalt love thy neighbour but hate thine enemy But I say unto you Love your enemies Bless them that curse you Do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despightfully use you and persecute you Behold the exact and unblameable Righteousnesse that is in the regenerate Soul far above the doctrine or thoughts of either the Legal Pharisee or mere Moralist External Righteousness in the outward man or to be internally just as far as corrupt Reason suggests is but filthy rags in respect of this Righteousnesse Christ requires of us and the new Creature doth bring into us once grown up to its due stature in us Let every man examine himself by this Rule 8. And as this Iustice is far above yea sometimes contrary to the Justice of the Natural man for with him to hate his enemies to recompense evil with evil is just so the Holiness is far transcending the Holinesse of either the ancient or modern Scribes and Pharisees and Zelotical Ceremonialists For all outward Ceremonies of Time or Place of Gesture or Vestments Rites or Orders they are all but Signes and Shews but the Body is Christ. Lastly that the natural man phansie not himself Wise as who is not of all precious things the most forward to appropriate that to himself that he phansie not himself Wise before he be Holy and Iust let him examine his Wisedom by that square in the third Chapter of S. Iames's Epistle Who is a wise man and endowed with knowledge amongst you Let him shew out of a good conversation his works with meekness of Wisedom But if you have bitter envying and strife in your hearts glory not and lye not against the truth This wisedom descendeth not from above but is earthly sensual and devilish For where envying and strife is there is confusion and every evil work But the Wisedom that is from above is first pure then peaceable gentle and easie to be entreated full of mercy and good fruits without partiality without hypocrisie The Righteousnesse then of the new Creature is a Righteousness far above the letter of Moses's Law though exactly performed it 's Holiness more resplendent then the Robe of Aaron and all his Priestly attire or whatsoever Ceremonies else God hath instituted or man invented it 's Wisdome far above all the thin-beaten subtilties of either the wrangling Sects or disputacious Schools without contention or bitter contradiction 9. So that it is plain from the constant scope of the Apostle both in this Epistle and every where else That he does not vilifie true Vertue and Morality but drives at an higher pitch and perfection thereof and that the Righteousness of Faith which he prefers before the Righteousness of Works is not by way of exclusion of Good Works out of the Righteousness of Faith but of urging us to exacter and more perfect works of Righteousnesse then could be performed under the dispensation of the Law How wicked a treachery therefore is it against the Church of Christ and how impudent a piece of boldness in those false Teachers that would bear men in hand That this doctrine of the being approved in the eyes of God by a dry and dead Faith devoid and destitute of all real sanctity and holiness is not only a Christian truth but the most choice and principal doctrine in all Christianity when there is not any footstep of any such thing in all the Instructions and Informations of either Christ or his Apostles CHAP. VII 1. That no small measure of Sanctity serves the turn in Christianity 2. As appears out of Scriptures already alledged 3. Further
and the high pitch thereof together with the mighty assiâ—â—ance hereunto The Promise of the Spirit of God moving and cooperating in the inward man to the finishing and completing all his works in us that we may be holy and blameless without spot or wrinkle or any such thing We have also prevented all perverse glosses of false Teachers whereby they would slacken and enervate the strength and efficacy of these three Powers of the Gospel we have hitherto spoken of by introducing a bare fruitless and steril Faith or the Imputation of an external Righteousness that according to their compute is further removed from us then the highest Star Which errour were it as harmless as groundless any peaceable good Christian could be content to connive at it but it being an old mischievous Stratagem against the Church and so noted by the wisedom of the Apostles an evil Machination found out by the Prince of darkness to undermine the Kingdom of Christ no faithful Adherent to the interest of the Lord Jesus and the advancement of his Rule and Power in the World can with a good conscience slightly pass it over but will use his best endeavour to undeceive the world in so dangerous a mistake 2. And though I be now hasting apace to the next joynt of the Evangelical Engine I am describing yet I cannot passe on with satisfaction to my self before I have also added to the suffrages of the Apostles who unanimously have voted this opinion of being righteous without doing righteousnesse a very dangerous Imposture and Deceit some rational Considerations that may make us still more sensible of the ill consequences thereof For my own part I must confesse that it is to me a thing utterly inconceivable how a man can be righteous here without Righteousnesse or happy hereafter without Righteousnesse here or how any true Christian can please himself in a Palliation more then a Cure or can be satisfied with any thing but that Manna that came down from heaven the very Flesh and Bloud of Christ in that sense I have interpreted it or without feeding his Soul with that real Spirit of Righteousness or the Divine Nature which is meat indeed and drink indeed For I do not understand how the condition of these Opposers of so Essential and Fundamental a Truth can be any other then what the Prophet Esay has prefigured in those that fight against Ariel the Altar of Holocausts where the whole beastly nature is to be burned by the consuming Fire of God and that lay siege against Mount Sion the Hill of that Drinesse and Thirst which God has promised to irrigate with living Springs of water It shall be as when an hungry man dreameth and behold he eateth but he awaketh and his soul is empty or as when a thirsty man dreameth and behold he drinketh but he awaketh and behold he is faint So shall the multitude of the Nations be that fight against Mount Sion This is the condition of all Sects whatsoever that are contrary to them that thirst and hunger after righteousness For these shall be really satisfied the dew of Divine grace shall plentifully showr down upon this Sion and they shall be filled with Spiritual Manna from Heaven whereas the other their hunger and thirst that is their wants and defects being real but not after real Righteousness are fed only by imaginations and dreams and whenever they awake out of them will finde themselves destitute 3. Nay what is yet worse a man may almost conclude that they are not so much as in a capacity of dreaming of celestial food For that is a function of life to dream of such things as are agreeable to such a species of living creatures and those that dream of such things as are congruous to their nature it is because they have had an enjoyment of them and do sometimes enjoy them according to the order of Nature And certainly he that is a true Christian is not a mere natural man but is that New Creature that is framed in righteousness and true holinesse and therefore he must be fed out of such Principles as he was generated from not of the will of man but the Spirit of God and therefore he does not only dream of but really feed of that Manna that is from Heaven that inward essential Righteousnesse that is from God And as it is impossible for one man to eat to drink and to breath for another in a natural way so also is it alike impossible for any one person to eat and drink and breath in a spiritual way for another And if we were wholly alive to that life that is most certainly in every Christian rightly so called we should think it as inconvenient that any one should be righteous for us as that he should be in health for us For what comfort would it be while we are in a tedious fever a sharp fit of the stone or gout that some other person should be sound and at ease for us 4. And therefore it is too shrewd an indication that men in this imaginary perswasion are in a manner past feeling as the Apostle speaks as being devoid of all divine life and sense otherwise Sin and Immorality would be as harsh to their Souls as these Diseases are painful to their bodies And hence it is that S. Iohn saith That he that is born of God sinneth not because the seed of God remaineth in him as I have noted above For what Principle of life sins against it self what Beast wilfully wounds it self what Tree blasts it self what life will so much as hurt it self any way Will the Eagle swim in the Sea or the Dolphin fly in the Aire Will not all Creatures keep them to their own Element and Original and fly their contrary Element as that which brings destruction or at least a great deal of diseasement to them What regenerate man then can endure to come near the Region of Sin It can be no more pleasant to him then the Smoke to his eyes or the Saw to his hearing How can I do this wickedness and sin against God Nay how can I cut and launce and scorch my self my better self even Christ which lives in me with whom I suffer as often as his image suffers And this may serve for a more generall taste of the unreasonablenesse of this wicked and mischievous Imposture that has ever more or lesse attempted the Church of Christ. But I shall bring you in a more punctual Bill of the losses and damages done thereby CHAP. XI 1. That the want of real Righteousness deprives us of the Divine Wisedom proved out of Scripture 2. As also from the nature of the thing it self 3. That it disadvantages the Soul also in Natural speculations 4. That it stifles all Noble and laudable Actions 5. And exposes the imaginary Religionist to open reproach 6. That mere imaginary Righteousness robs the Soul of her peace of Conscience 7. And of
who is the Truth that makes one free indeed by not admitting or gainsaying these high and divine inventions of theirs concerning God and Christ wherewith they have wrapped him and clothed him though they doe but what Dionysius did to the golden vestments of Iupiter take them off and put on a linsy-wolsy one may well be suspected and accused of Blasphemy and injury to God when it is nothing but a refusal of the groundless Conclusions of rash and inconsiderate men or else worse that of purpose cloth God and Christ and represent him to the people in such a dress as will make most for the countenancing their own Hypocrisie Profit and Interest I will only name one instance of many How has the Roman Clergy forced and rack'd their wits to make good the grand mystery of Transubstantiation whose ordinary Priests must have greater power of working miracles then the Devil could invent to puzzle our Saviour withall For what is the turning a stone into bread in comparison of turning bread into God incarnate And yet a Mass-priest after the uttering of a few formal words of Consecration has brought about the prodigie And he that will be so bold as to call bread but bread and not Christ or God how can he chuse but be thought to blaspheme But yet this Blasphemy is not against the Nature of God or Christ but against the forgery and fictions of men and so indeed is no more Blasphemy then Bread is Christ or mans Phansy the Deity The Rule therefore that Christians are to take notice of here is this There being so much Humour and Interest and Stupour of Education that may begin or continue false conceptions of God if any one professe himself that he cannot conceive such things as some so peremptorily and imperiously obtrude upon his belief that he is not straightway to be accounted a Blasphemer of God it haply being but a dissent only from the conceits of men 5. The second Aspersion cast on our Saviour was That that miraculous good that he did was from the power of Satan not of God And methinks it is not hard to find something parallel to this in some Aspersions cast upon his true members by rash Pharisaical censure Which is this The eximious and exemplary life of good and holy men is many times by those that are more addicted to such a dress or outward platform of Religion consisting of certain Ceremonies and Opinions then to the truth and essence of Religion it self imputed to corrupt natural principles such as Vain-glory and the esteem of the World Political advantage and the like which answers to the Pharisees giving out that Christ cast out Devils by Beelzebub the Prince of the Devils So say our modern Pharisees of such as are not of their Sect if those men live never so holily and unblamably in this present evil World exercising Vertue and avoiding Vice that it is not from any Divine Principle in them but from the instigation of Pride the Prince of Vices 6. So in the third place They that affect even more then a Iudaical strictness in the observation of the Sabbath though God knows it is too many times that their consciences may be the more free to work unrighteousness all the week after yet they will take upon them to censure them of no less crime then Prophaneness that observe neither the same measure of Superstition nor Hypocrisie with themselves 7. Fourthly Neutrality and cold Indifferency in publick controversies how can it possibly chuse but seem very abominable to the Pharisee or formal Professour For they knowing no other Religion then what consists in certain dispensable and unnecessary Opinions and Performances when they are shaken and hazarded he that will not engage to the utmost then as if God and true Religion it self were at stake cannot but be deemed very unworthy and detestable Whenas to be but coldly and indifferently affected in things indifferent is in all reason to be esteemed just and good 8. Nor is it a whit strange to hear the Pharisaical Tribe complain of the true regenerate Christian as Unjust whenas the one acts according to an outward Rule or Tradition which was made for the meeting with their own wicked and untamed corruptions malo nodo malus cuneus and which notwithstanding they craftily and perversly make use of by leguleious cavills to the injuring of one another or them that are better then themselves but the true Christian acts and judges according to the living Law of Equity and the Eternal Love of God springing up in his heart 9. Sixthly As for the accusation of Railings and Revilings even a sober and wel-carriaged Christian may well be subject to that calumnie For the Pharisee bearing himself very high in the opinion of his own either Formal or Phantastical righteousness making a shift rather any way to perswade himself he is righteous and religious then by partaking of true Religion and Righteousness indeed he acting therefore according to the nature he really has not according to what he phansies himself to be it cannot but happen that the true Christian endued with the Divine nature and spirit of Righteousness not intending at all to raile or revile but using the most easie and unaffected propriety of words calling a Spade a Spade as the Proverb is doing but so as Adam did in innocency giving the creatures names according to their natures it cannot but happen I say that the Actions and Persons being foully bad of such as notwithstanding be in their own conceit as good as any when they be called by what names express the truth of their natures and no more that yet they will presently judge the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Railer and Reviler 10. Now for tumultuary Zeal I must confess that Pharisaical Hypocrisie is such an abominable provoking thing in the sight of all the Sons of God that it can scarce fail scorching and heating their tender and lively spirits no more then a natural flame can fail to swinge and pain our natural flesh which none of us can suffer with such patience but we are ready to testifie our sensibleness both by gestures actions and words Besides that in a moderate and well-guided zeal against the Pharisaical Interest all being so rotten there so sore and patched over with pitiful plaisters the least Action or Opposition will make them cry out even afore they be hurt being conscious to themselves how unsound and unable they are to abide the least measure of rough handling So that the least vigour of Opposition in good earnest against their hypocritical and unwarrantable waies will by them be deemed but bitter and tumultuous Zeal Eighthly The just and seasonable bemoanings of the dear servants of God and fellow-members of Christ when Nature is very much oppressed with adversity or torment are not to be judged rashly the Symptomes of Impatience or Despair For the expressing of the sense of ones Misery is no Vice since the suppressing
Solomon in defining her to be the true Mother that could not endure that the Child should be divided and killed And whatever Church is cruell and remorsless in either Temporall persecution or the Eternall damnation of such men as believe in Christ according to the plain and easie meaning of the Scripture and live accordingly she may approve her self to be an imperious Harlot but no discerning spirit will ever take her for the true Mother that new Ierusalem which is the Spouse of Christ or Wife of the Lamb. Wherefore those are very weak Christians that are so low-belled by this terror as to be taken up and captivated by the Church of Rome and acknowledge her the mother-Church by force of that Argument that demonstrates the contrary to say nothing of their disingenuous abuse of the Charity of the Reformed Churches But for my own part I confess that for sureness I had rather exercise my Charity in wishing them Converts from Popery then express any great confidence of their being safe in that Religion Not that it is possible for me who cannot infallibly demonstrate to my self that all that lived under Paganisme are certainly damned to imagine that all that have gone under the name of Papists have tumbled down into Hell But the case is much like that in Shipwrack on the sea or Pestilence in a City where we will suppose not a house free no man can pronounce that it is impossible that such or such a person should escape nor that any of them are in any tolerable safety The danger is alike to them that adhere to the Apostate Church for though there be a possibility of some mens being saved by an extraordinary or miraculous Providence they breaking through all those impediments and snares that are laid in their way and attaining to a Dispensation above the Church they live in as haply some under Paganisme did yet it cannot be denied but that the Oeconomie of that Church naturally tends to the betraying of Souls to Eternall destruction that falling out which our Saviour said of old of the Pharisees They compass sea and land to make one profelyte and when he is made he becomes twofold more the child of the devil then themselves For he will not stint his Hypocrisie in Religion by the measure of their gain that invented the forme and submit to it for their End but for his own namely that he may excuse himself from all reall holiness by keeping to the observation and profession of their vain inventions And thus are the Commandements of God made of none effect by their Traditions In brief the whole frame of that Church is fashioned out so near to the ancient guise of Idolatrous Paganisme or else to the liveless and ineffectual forme of Judaisme both which Christ appeared on purpose to destroy as either contrary or ineffectuall to Salvation and does explicitly recommend to the world a pure and spirituall worship that we should worship the Father in Spirit and in truth or lastly is so full of Contradictions and Impossibilities in their feigned Stories and imperiously-obtruded Opinions that the natural result of being born under such a Religion or of turning to it is either to become a besotted Superstitionist to believe or do any thing that others will have him to do which is a sign the Spirit of Regeneration has not yet passed upon him and that there is no life nor light in him or else which is too frequent to turn down-right Atheist it being so grosly discernable that the Tenents of their Church are impossible and their Practices fraudulent fitted chiefly for filthy lucre and their Ceremonies useless thankless and ridiculous And therefore if any be saved in the Church of Rome they are such as are not truely of it but above it and fend for themselves as well as they may by some pardonable sleights of Prudence accompanied with an impregnable innocency of Spirit and readiness of doing all possible good they can they sparing their own lives and liberties upon no other account then that and out of a perswasion that he that commanded them to be wise as Serpents as well as innocent as Doves has given them no commission inconsiderately and to no purpose to betray themselves into the power of his usurping Enemy But for others that are perfect Papists and swallow down all that Church proposes to them without chewing or distasting any thing it is a Demonstration there is no Principle of life in them but that they are like dead earthen pitchers which receive poison and wholesome liquors with a like admittance And if there be no principle of life there is no seed of Salvation in a man For it is most certainly true and the Scripture it self doth witness to it That unless a man be born from above he cannot see the kingdome of God That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit This is the new Creature that is created in wisdome righteousness and true holiness The first of which the Church of Rome expunges in that it gives no leave to a man never so regenerate to judge for himself but he must say as the Church sayes right or wrong and for the other two all their superstitious Ceremonies put together adde nothing to them but rather stifle and sufflaminate them Again S. John tell us That he that hates his brother is in the dark and walketh in the dark and knows no whither he goes But others may know it as appears by another saying of the same Apostle Every one that hates his brother is a murderer and no murderer hath eternall life abiding in him But on the contrary he affirms That Love is of God and that he that loveth is born of God and knowes God Now to apply the Case to these Rules If Love be an essential Character of a Regenerate soul and Hatred of Errour Darkness and Eternal Death or to come yet closer If Hatred it self be Murder what will Murder it self be added thereunto And if any thing be Murder I demand whether this be not namely to take away the life of a member of Iesus Christ who does fully and freely profess the Ancient and Apostolick Faith according to the Letter or History of the New Testament and does seriously compose his life according to the Precepts therein contained and does onely declare against and reject the Contradictious Opinions and Idolatrous Practices that have no ground at all in Scripture nor Reason but are quite contrary to both I say if this be no Murder there is no Murder in the world and how guilty the Church of Rome is of this Crime all the world knowes Wherefore this being one of the Principles of that bloudy Church and he that is a perfect Papist being of one mind and suffrage with his Church in all things for she will be held no less then Infallible 't is apparent that no through-paced Papist can ever go to
Reason who pretend not to dictate but demonstrate out of Scripture the Sleep of the Soul confidently suggesting to the better gaining Proselytes to their own that the contrary opinion is not Christian but Heathenish derived from the Philosophy of Plato which the Greek Fathers had imbibed and thence introduced into the Church of Christ. To the First of which I answer That our Adversaries Demonstrations for the Sleep of the Soul are but their own Imaginations and Dreams upon the mistaken Text. It is beside my scope to insist long on this matter I shall onely give you a tast of the weakness of the rest of their Arguments by proposing and refuting of those that seem the strongest Their main proof is from the whole tenor of the 15 of the 1 Cor. and more particularly from the 32 verse If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus what advantageth it me if the dead rise not Hence they think may certainly be concluded That the Soul before the Resurrection of the Body has not the Perception or Enjoyment of any thing otherwise the very Remembrance of those sufferings for Christ might be a solace for Paul when he was out of the Body 3. But to answer this Difficulty with the fuller satisfaction let us premise some few things to prepare the way to it As first That the Schemes of speech in Prophets and men inspired are usually such as most powerfully strike the Phansie and most strongly beat upon the Imagination they describing things in the most sensible palpable and particular representations that can be According to which Figure the General Resurrection is set off by mens awaking out of the dust of the Earth and coming out of the Graves when as yet many thousands have wanted Burial their bones rotting on the surface of the Earth and as many thousands have had their intombement in the Waters 4. Secondly That the Holy Writers do not pen down their Conceptions in so strict a Scholastick Method that they keep precisely and punctually to one Title but by a free vibration of Phansie give a touch here and a touch there according as they were moved and actuated by that Spirit that exhibits more to their Minds at once then their Tongue has leasure orderly and distinctly to utter and are more earnestly taken up in making good the main and most usefull scope of their discourse then to satisfie mens Curiosities in particular Niceties 5. Thirdly That many Words in Scripture have a lax and ambiguous sense and that therefore they are to be understood according as Circumstances and Likelyhood of Truth determine and that these Termes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are of that nature they sometimes signifying the raising up again of a Body out of the grave sometimes merely vivificating of the Body or recovering a Person to life other sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the very same with the Jewes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Grotius observes which signifies nothing else but Eternal life or a Blessed Immortality Others enlarge the Signification further and make 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Conservation in Being And Death seeming to us so dangerous a passage as if we were in hazard of either falling asleep or sliding into a Non-subsistence Divine Conservation because we begin then a new state of life is not unfitly termed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as giving us as it were a new Subsistence setting us upon our feet again and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as keeping us awake when we seemed in danger of letting go all functions of life Which meaning of the words a late Interpreter handsomely makes good comparing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 9.17 with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Exod. 9.16 which the Seventy render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The manner of which 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Conservation is excellently set out by this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which may imply a kinde of jogging or stirring up which is used to recover or prevent ones falling into a swoon and God is the grand Author of Life and Motion as the Apostle speaks 6. Fourthly and lastly That the Corinthians being a people given notoriously to the pleasures of the Flesh there is no question to be made but the Temptations of the place had also drawn away some Members of the Church there at Corinth and made them also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now there being nothing that does so much extinguish all Hopes and Apprehensions of a Life to come as Carnal and Sensual pleasures it is very likely that those corrupted members fell away in their own judgments from the belief of any Reward after this life and so with Himeneus and Philetus or with the David-Georgians and our modern Nicolaitans allegorized away the real meaning of the Resurrection or the Blessed Immortality into a mere moral sense under pretence whereof they might ostentate themselves more Spiritual and knowing Christians then the rest and yet with less fear and remorse of conscience indulge to themselves all loosness and liberty of enjoying every tempting pleasure of this mortall life 7. Wherefore to the present Argument I answer in general out of this last and the foregoing Premiss That the purpose of the Apostle in this 15 to the Corinthians is to shew That there is a Life after the death of this Body and a Blessed Immortality to be expected A palpable pledge whereof was God's raising of Christs body out of the grave and exhibiting him alive to his Disciples Which was a Sign very significant and expressive of the thing this Blessed Immortality mainly consisting in being clothed with those Heavenly Ethereal and Paradisiacal bodies which Christ will bestow upon those that belong to him at the last day 8. Out of the First I answer That though S. Paul speak in such a Phrase as fixes our Imagination on the Earth only as is plain from that comparison of seed sown and rotting in the ground for men sow not seed upon the Water yet in whatsoever Element the Souls or Bodies of the Saints be found Earth Water or Air nay though we should grant with some that sundry Souls of holy men act in Aery vehicles in this interval betwixt their Death and the Day of Judgment yet it is no more prejudice to them then to those that are found alive in the flesh For none are excluded from the enjoyment of their glorified bodies 9. Out of the Second and Third I answer That S. Paul might very well have Three conceptions vibrating in his minde while he wrote concerning this Mystery the one more Simple and General of the Life and Subsistency of the Soul out of this Earthly Body the other more Special of a Blessed Immortality and the Third most Determinate of all which represented the manner of this Blessedness in being invested with glorified bodies And out of this General I shall direct a
Adversaries term it of the Soul 's being able to act after the death of the Body from the Philosophy of Plato it had been even impossible for them to forgoe the latter part concerning the Pre-existent life of the Soul before she comes into these Bodies which is the thing I have all this while driven at CHAP. IX 1. Proofs out of Scripture That the Soul does not sleep after death as 1 Peter 3. with the explication thereof 2. The Authors Paraphrase compared with Calvin's Interpretation 3. That Calvin needed not to suppose the Apostle to have writ false Greek 4. Two waies of interpreting the Apostle so as both Grammatical Soloecisme and Purgatory may be declined 5. The second way of Interpretation 6. A second proof out of Scripture 7. A third of like nature with the former 8. A further enforcement and explication thereof 9. A fourth place 10. A fifth from Hebr. 12. where God is called the Father of Spirits c. 11. A sixth testimony from our Saviours words Matth. 20.28 1. BUT that this so Usefull and Comfortable a Doctrine of the Soul 's living and subsisting after the shipwrack of this Body may be firmly established I shall further adde what plain Evidences there are in Scripture for the proof thereof For as for those of Reason I shall refer you again to my above-named Treatise Book 2. ch 16 17 and 18. And I conceive that of 1 Pet. 3. v. 18 19 20. is none of the meanest if Prejudice and Violence wrest it not out of its genuine sense which any man may easily apprehend to be this For Christ also has once suffered for sins the just for the unjust that he might bring us to God being put to death as to his Body or Flesh but yet safe and alive as to his Soul and Spirit By which also he went and preached unto the separated Souls and Spirits in prison which sometimes were disobedient viz. in the days of Noe. 2. That solid interpreter of Scripture Iohn Calvin expounds it in the main according to this Paraphrase only for being alive as to his Soul or Spirit he reads it vivificatus Spiritu meaning by Spirit the Spirit of God But it is plain that the Antithesis is more patt and punctual as we have rendred it and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is as warrantably interpreted to be alive as to be made alive as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to be grave not to be made grave Beside 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Greek Septuagint signifies not only to revive one dead but to save alive according to which sense we have translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is also another slight difference betwixt us in that he had rather have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 translated a watch-tower then a prison Which we should easily admit who alledge this place against the Sleep of the Soul but he acknowledging also that the other sense is good we have not varied from the common Translation The greatest discrepancy is that he conceives that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is put for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Dative for a Genitive absolute but I leave him there to compound that controversie with the Grammarians The truth is the learned and pious Interpreter thought it more tolerable to admit that the Apostle writ false Syntax then unsound Doctrine the fond opinion of the Papistical Purgatory being a worse Soloecisme in Religion then to Latinize in Greek or put a false Case is in Grammar 3. But this being too loose a Principle wholy unsatisfactory to our Adversaries to phansie the Holy Writers to soloecize in their language when we do not like the sense he had better have taken some other course more allowable to save us from the peril of Purgatory and in my judgment there are two either of which will suffice to fence us from the Assaults of the Romanists 4. The first is By observing a latitude of sense in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For as Aristotle notes in his Metaphys lib. 4. cap. 12. the particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in composition does not only signifie perfect privation but also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from whence we may well translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who in times past were not so obedient or so believing as they should be and who were so bad that they might be punished in their bodies and perish in the Deluge but yet so good that at length they must attain to an higher degree of eternal life by Christ's preaching to the dead as is also intimated in the following chapter of this Epistle ver 6. Wherefore acknowledging but Two states viz. of either Hell or Paradise we say that these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were in the very lowest degree of Paradise in which they were kept as in an inferior Mansion which was as a kind of prison or close custody unto them their desires aspiring higher till there was made a great accession unto their happiness upon Christ's appearing and preaching unto them And this is the very sense that Calvin aims at in his Commentarie upon this place 5. But there is yet another Interpretation which we will propound in the second place as free from the fear of any Purgatory as the former and requires no immutation at all in our foregoing Paraphrase We 'll admit therefore that these Disobedient Souls were in Hell not in the lowest Region but in the more tolerable parts thereof It does not at all from hence follow because Christ in his Spirit exhibited himself to these preached to them and prepared them by the glad tidings of the Gospel after carryed them to Heaven with him in Triumph as a glorious spoil taken out of the jaws of the Devil that there is any Redemption out of Hell now much less any Purgatorie For there were two notable occasions for this such as will never happen again For it respects the Souls of them that were suddenly swept away in the Deluge and the Solemnity of our Saviours Crucifixion and Ascension He even in the midst of Death undermining the Prince of Death and at his Ascension victoriously carrying away these First-fruits of his Suffering and presenting them to his Father in the highest Heaven But to expect from this that there should be still continued a daily or yearly releasment out of Hell or Purgatory is as groundlesly concluded as if because at the solemn Coronation of some great Prince all the prison-doors in some City were flung open Malefactors should infer that they will ever stand open all his whole Reign Thus we see how safe also the easy and obvious sense of this place is which I thought fit to rescue from the torture of other more learned and curious Expositors that it might be able to give its free suffrage for the Confirmation of a Point so usefull as this we have in hand For it is plain that if Christ preached to the dead they
were not asleep at so concerning a Sermon 6. Again 2 Cor. 5. v. 8. We are confident I say and willing rather to be absent from the Body and to be present with the Lord. Here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 plainly intimates a going out of this Mortal Body not a change of it into an Immortal one therefore we may safely conclude that this courage and willingness of the Apostle to die implies an enjoyment of the presence of Christ after death before the general Resurrection Else why should he rather desire to die then to live but that he expects that Faith should be presently perfected by Sight as he insinuates in the foregoing verse But assuredly better is that enjoyment which is onely by Faith then to have no enjoyment at all as it must be if the Soul cannot operate out of this Body 7. A like Proof to this and further Confirmation of the Truth is that of Philipp 1.21 22 23 24. where the Apostle again professing his courage and forwardness to magnifie Christ in his body whether by life or by death uses the like Argument as before For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain But if I live in the flesh it will be worth my labour yet what I should chuse I wote not For I am in a strife betwixt two having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needfull for you 8. The genuine sense of which Place is questionless this That while he lived his life was like Christ's upon Earth innocent but encumbred with much hardship and affliction bearing about in his body the marks of the Lord Jesus but if he died he should then once for all seal to the Truth of his Martyrdome and not onely scape all future troubles which yet the love of Christ his Assistance and Hope of Reward did ever sustain him in but which was his great gain and advantage arrive to an higher fruition of him after whom he had so longing a desire But if to be with Christ were to sleep in his bosome and not so much as to be sensible he is there it were impossible the Apostles affections should be carried so strongly to that state or his judgement should determine it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so exceedingly much better especially his stay in the flesh being so necessary to the Philippians and the rest of the Church and what he suffered and might further suffer in his life no less a Testimony to the Truth then Death it self 9. Fourthly Those phrases of S. Peter 2 Pet. 1.13 Yea I think it meet so long as I am in this Tabernacle to stir you up and put you in remembrance Knowing that I must shortly put off this Tabernacle c. And so vers 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in all likelyhood alludes to the same as if his Soul went out of the Body as out of a Tabernacle All these Phrases I say seem to me manifestly to indicate that there is no such necessary Union betwixt the Soul and the Body but she may act as freely out of it as in it as men are nothing the more dull sleepy or senseless by putting off their cloaths and going out of the house but rather more awakened active and sensible 10. Fifthly Hebr. 12. There God is called the Father of Spirits the Corrector and Chastiser of our Souls in contradistinction to our Flesh or Bodies and then vers 22. lifting us up quite above the consideration of our Corporeal condition he brings us to the Mystical mount Sion the City of the living God the Heavenly Jerusalem and to an innumerable company of Angels to the Universal assembly and Church of the first-born which are inrolled in heaven and to God the Iudge of all and to the Spirits of just men made perfect Now I demand what Perfection can be in the Spirits of these just men to be overwhelmed in a senseless Sleep or what a disproportionable and unsutable representation is it of this throng Theatre in Heaven made up of Saints and Angels that so great a part of them as the Souls of the Holy men deceased should be found drooping or quite drown'd in an unactive Lethargie Certainly as it is incongruous in it self so it is altogether inconsistent with the magnificency of the representation which this Author intends in this place 11. Sixthly Matth. 10.28 The life of the Soul separate from the Body is there plainly asserted by our Saviour Fear not them that kill the Body but are not able to kill the Soul but rather fear him who is able to destroy both Body and Soul in Hell i. e. able if he will to destroy the life both of Body and Soul in Hell-fire according to the conceit of those whose opinions I have recited in my Treatise Of the Immortality of the Soul Book 3. chap. 18. or else miserably to punish or afflict both Body and Soul in Hell the torments whereof are worse then Death it self For as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and perire signifie to be excessively miserable so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and perdere may very well signifie to make excessively miserable But now for the former part of the verse but are not able to kill the Soul it is evident that they were able if the Soul could not live separate from the Body For killing of the Body what is it but depriving it of life wherefore if the Soul by the death of the Body be also deprived of life it is manifest that she can be killed which is contrary to our Saviour's Assertion CHAP. X. 1. A pregnant Argument from the State of the Soul of Christ and of the Thief after death 2. Grotius his explication of Christ's promise to the Thief 3. The meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 4. How Christ with the Thief could be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and in Paradise at once 5. That the Parables of Dives and Lazarus and of the unjust Steward implie That the Soul hath life and sense immediately after death 1. WE have yet one more notable Testimony against our Adversaries Our Saviour Christ's Soul and the Thief 's upon the Cross did subsist and live immediately upon the death of the Body as appears from Luke 23.42 43. And he said unto Iesus Lord remember me when thou comest into thy Kingdome And Iesus said unto him Verily I say unto thee This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise As if he should thus answer Thou indeed beggest of me that I would be mindfull of thee when I come into my Kingdome but I will not deferre thee so long onely distrust not the unexpected riches of my goodness to thee For verily I say unto thee That this very day shalt thou be with me in Paradise And there is no evasion from this Interpretation the Syriack as Grotius noteth interpointing betwixt I say unto thee and Today and all the Greek copies as Beza affirmes joyning
reaching to every Individual thing or Person in the world It being as easie for God to see all things as to see any one thing his Perception being Infinite and therefore Undistractable and Indefatigable Now his Goodness and Power being no less immense it will necessarily follow That there is not any thing that befalls the meanest Creature in the whole Creation but that it was suitable to the Goodness of God either to cause it or permit it For though it may seem at the present harsh to that particular Being yet at the length it may prove for its greater Advantage at least it may be deemed good for the Universe as Marcus Aurelius solidly and judiciously ever and anon does suggest and I think he is but a shallow Philosopher that cannot maintain this Cause against all Atheistical surmises and cavills whatsoever CHAP. III. 1. His Third Assertion That there are Particular Spirits or Immaterial Substances and of their Kinds 2. The Proof of their Existence and especially of theirs which in a more large sense be called Souls 3. The Difference betwixt the Souls or Spirits of Men and Angels and how that Pagan Idolatry and the Ceremonies of Witches prove the Existence of Devils 4. And that the Existence of Devils proves the Existence of Good Angels 1. MY Third Assertion is That there are Particular Spirits or Immaterial Substances Which will easily flow from what is so firmly proved already That there is one Omnipotent Omniscient and infinitely-Benign Spirit which we call GOD who therefore acting according to his nature we cannot doubt but that he has created innumerable companies of Spirits to enjoy themselves and their Creatour Which are either purely Immaterial having no communion at all with Matter with the Greeks again divide into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into pure Intellects or Minds and simple Unities or else such as although according to their very Substance or Essence they be Immaterial yet have a propertie of being vitally united with and also affected by the Matter To these Spirits for want of a better term I must take the boldness to abuse a known word to a greater latitude of sense and give the name of Souls to them all because they do vitally actuate the Matter be it Aethereal Aereal or Terrestrial Whether there be not also a middle sort betwixt these Souls and pure Intellects a man may well doubt which differ from Intellect in having an immediate power of moving the Matter and from Souls in not being vitally joined therewith but acting merely as Assistent Formes such as the Aristoteleans phansie their Intelligencies to be 2. For the Existence of the Three first Orders we have intimated already a considerable Argument which reaches all the Orders of Spirits indifferently The last Order falls not only under the knowledge of more abstracted Reason but also under Experience it self For that there is a Spirit in the Body of Man is evident to us because we find such Operations in us as are incompetible to Matter if we more closely and considerately examine them This Spirit that thus acts in us is called a Soul But that there is some such analogical Principle in the Aereal or Aethereal Genii the actions and conditions of some of them do confirm For if their Nature were not such as we have described that is if they did not inhabit and vitally actuate corporeal Vehicles how could they ever sin or fall For it is out of the conjunction of these two Principles Spirit and Vehicle that there ever could be brought in any inward Temptation Distraction or Confusion in any of the Orders of the Genii or Angels But Pure and Simple Abstract Beings seem utterly Impassible and therefore Impeccable Wherefore it is very highly probable That all fallen Angels which we ordinarily call Devils are of the Fourth Order of Spirits which we have described 3. Which Spirits of the Genii fallen or not fallen notoriously differ from these Spirits of men in that they are not capable of informing an Humane or Terrestrial Body and therefore bear themselves above them as a Superior Being and out of their pride and scorn have ever since their fall either by fraud or force universally entangled poor contemptible Mankinde in sundry performances of Idolatrous worship unto them which they could not have done if men were not lapsed as well as they Wherefore the Pagans Superstitions and the History of Witches will make good that there are Devils and that they are of that nature we speak of 4. And I think this being evinced no man will question but that there are also Good Angels to conflict with and moderate the Bad. For God will not let the great Automaton of the Universe be so imperfect as to be forced to step out perpetually himself to do that which some Noble part of his Creation might perform nor set those things one against another that are quite of another kinde Besides those Philosophers that have wrote of these things with most judgment do not easily conclude That there are any other created Intellectual Beings but such as are capable of being vitally united with some Vehicle or other Which if it were true is nothing prejudicial to us the admission of the Three First Orders being little or nothing serviceable to our design And lastly it is improbable but that the Fall of the Angels being from a Free principle as some fell so others stood and that there has ever been since their fall both Good and Bad Angels in the world in that sense as I have explained the Nature of the Angels or Genii whether Good or Bad. CHAP. IV. 1. His Fourth Assertion That the Fall of the Angels was their giving up themselves to the Animal life and forsaking the Divine 2. The Fifth That this fall of theirs changed their purest Vehicles into more gross and feculent 3. The Sixth That the change of their Vehicles was no extinction of life 4. The Seventh That the Souls of Men are immortal and act and live after death The inducements to which belief are the Activity of fallen Angels 5. The Homogeneity of the inmost Organ of Perception 6. The scope and meaning of External Organs of Sense in this Earthly Body 7. The Soul's power of Organizing her Vehicle 8. And lastly The accuracy of Divine Providence 1. WE add Fourthly That these Angels before their Fall had a twofold Principle of Life in them Divine and Animal and that their Fall consisted in this In leaving their obedience to the DIVINE LIFE and wholy betaking themselves to the ANIMAL LIFE without rule or measure 2. Fifthly That this Rebellion had an effect upon their Vehicles and changed their pure Aethereal Bodies into more Feculent and Terrestrial understanding Terrestrial in as large a sense as Cartesius does which will take in the whole Atmosphere They have forfeited therefore these more resplendent mansions for this obscure and caliginous Air they wander in and have now in
as with the Ocean who changes his name according to the Coasts he beats upon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Dionysius notes in his Geographicall Poem 6. And if they took into their Religious consideration the worship of the Genii or Spirits whether such as whole appearance was so horrid and terrible that it caused affrightment or such as whose benign aspect was accompanied with a more pleasing wonderment and joy these they look'd upon also as eminent manifestations of that One Eternal Deity which runs through all things giving life and Being to all whom therefore they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whom though they make three viz. Iupiter coelestis Iupiter marinus and Iupiter infernalis the latter two whereof they also call Neptune and Pluto yet it is one Eternal Spirit say they which we worship in these Three whose Kingdome and Dominion is over all though the administration thereof differ according to the nature and merit of them that are Governed The same Apology we may make for that Honour we do to the deceased Heroes whose noble persons and refined Spirits the Divine excellencies more illustriously shone through then ordinary For in truth we do not so much worship them as God shining through them as he that bows to the Sun or Moon through a glass-window intends not his obeisance to the glass but to those Celestial Luminaries nor do we bow our body to those Luminaries but to God who to us appears through all things CHAP. IV. 1. The Heathens Festivals Temples and Images 2. Their Apology for Images 3. The Significancy of the Images of Jupiter and Aeolus 4. Of Ceres 5. Of Apollo 6. Their Plea from the significancy of their Images that their use in Divine worship is no more Idolatrous then that of Books in all Religions as also from the use of Images in the Nation of the Iews 7. Their Answer to those that object the Impossibleness of representing God by any outward Image 8. That we are not to envy the Heathen if they hit upon any thing more weighty in their Apologies for their Religion and why 1. NOW according to the various appearances of This One Divinity that puts forth it self every where our Ancestors instituted various Religious Rites and Ceremonies appointed sundry sorts of Festivals and Sacrifices built Temples set up Altars with several inscriptions and erected Images proper and significative of that or this Divine Power which at set times and places they were to worship To which Religious Customes under which we were born we submitted our selves without being obnoxious as we conceive to any just imputation of Idolatry 2. For we worshipped not those Images which were thus erected no more then any other Nation does the Holy Volumes of their Law or Religion when either they pray out of them have them read or use them in the administring of an Oath For that reverence that is done is not done to the Book but to him whose Word it is said to be to him whom they pray to or swear by and those Images to us are not unlike the Religious Books of others they being very expressive of the circumstances of the exertion of that Divine Power which we at any time adore As you may see in the Images of Iupiter Aeolus Ceres Apollo and the rest 3. For Iupiter who was their God of Thunder as he bore in his left hand a royal Scepter his right hand was charg'd with Thunder according to that of the Poet Cui dextra trisulcis Ignibus armata est Aeolus the God of the Winds he was made standing at the Mouth of a Cave having a linnen garment girt about him and a Smiths bellows under his feet at his right hand stood Iuno covered with a cloud putting a Crown upon his head as having given her Kingdome to him and on his left hand stood a Nymph up to the middle in Water which Iuno gave him to wife Which Image is very significative of the Nature and Causes of the Windes and so intelligible if we do but take notice that Iuno is the Aire that it wants no further explication 4. Ceres was made in the figure of a country-woman sitting upon an Oxe having in her right hand a Plough-share and a basket of Seeds hanging from her arme in her left hand a sickle and a flayle Iuno the Goddess of the Aire and of the Clouds was on one side and Apollo or the Sun on the other intimating how the warmth of the Sun and kindly showrs are to second the labour of the Husbandman or else nothing will prosper 5. The figure of Apollo or the Sun was thus His Image had a Youthful countenance in his right hand he held a Quiver of arrows and a Bow in his left an Harp under his feet was a terrible Monster in the form of a Serpent having three heads viz. of a Wolf of a Lion and of a fawning Dog on the Top of his head was a golden Trivet and about his temples a Crown of Twelve precious stones The meaning whereof though it may seem abstruse at first sight yet if you consider it a while it very fitly sets out the nature of the Sun and of Time whose knowledge depends on him and of Knowledge which depends on Time His Bow and Arrows signify nothing but the darting of his Beams from so far a distance whence he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the Poets and his youthful countenance nothing but his unfading vigour which Age seems not at all to diminish His Harp signifies the dance of the Planets about him as if he sate and played to them or at least according to the other Hypothesis as if he led the dance himself playing on his Harp and the rest of the Planets followed him The twelve precious stones signifie the twelve signes of the Zodiack with which he is incircled and the three-headed Serpent deciphers Time in the threefold notion of it Past Present and to come The time past as Macrobius notes like a ravenous Wolfe devouring the memory of things the time present being urgent and raging like a Lion through its instant actuosity and the time to come flattering us with hopes like a fawning Dog And lastly the golden Trivet or Tripod denotes the Threefold object of Knowledge which Time affords them that are wise such as Homer makes Calchas the Priest of Apollo to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Who knew what was what is and what 's to come So that it is apparent how strange soever the use of these Images may seem that it was no other then that of Books they raising our minds and it may be with a greater advantage of devotion and admiration into the sense and consideration of that Divine Power which we were to adore 6. Wherefore that imputation is very unjust that would charge us with Idolatry properly so called as if we did worship the Idols themselves But to use Images in Divine worship there being
other World But of this enough CHAP. XVII 1. The Third Observable The Mediation of Daemons 2. This Superstition glanced at by the Apostle in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And that Daemons are the Souls of men departed according to Hesiod 3. As also according to Plutarch and Maximus Tyrius 4. The Author's inference from this position 1. THE Third thing Observable is their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 By 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Daemons I mean their Dii Medioxumi or rather Those Spirits that were Mediatours as I may so call them betwixt the Supreme Deities and Men. According to this sense is that of Plato in his Symposion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. God intermingles not himself with man but all the Converse and conference betwixt the Gods and Men is performed by Daemons And the same Philosopher saies plainly and expresly That these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 receive the praiers and oblations that men make and present them to the Gods and bring back from them rewards and injunctions which they communicate some way or other to men But this is not Plato's opinion alone but of most of the ancient Philosophers that would venture to say any thing at all in Religion as of Zoroaster Thales Pythagoras Celsus Plutarch Apuleius and who not Nay this conceit is so natural that it is found among the rude Americans who profess that their Zemes are no other then Mediatours and Messengers from the great God that is Eternal and Invisible as Peter Martyr relates in his first Decad lib. 9. concerning the Inhabitants of Hispaniola 2. This opinion of the Heathen was glanced at by the Apostle Coloss. 2.18 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Grotius observeth upon the place Nor does the difference of the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 make any difference in the thing the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Philo has noted and either of them is competible to the Soul out of the Body as the same Author also acknowledgeth But 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies also the Soul in the Body according to Xenocrates in Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. In like manner that he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. happy who has a good 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Genius as Xenocrates says that be is happy or has a good Genius that has a good Soul For the Soul is every man's Daemon or Genius But the more proper sense and that which we mean in this place is that of Philo to whom we may add the suffrage of Hesiod out of Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. But Soules that have quit themselves from Generation and are for the future free from the incumbrances of the Body become Daemons carefull Inspectours over mankind according to Hesiod From whence haply 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 divido it signifying the very same that Anima separata 3. And Plutarch himself subscribes to Hesiod's opinion That Souls freed from their Bodies become Daemons or Genii and that they goe up and down the Earth as being observers and rewarders of the actions of men and that though they be not actors themselves yet they are abbettors and encouragers of them that act as old men that have left off the more youthfull sports love to set the younger sort to their games and exercises themselves in the mean time looking on So Plutarch in his De Genio Socratis and Maximus Tyrius endeavour at large to prove that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Genii are nought but the Souls of men departed who are occupied much-what in such emploiments as they were in the flesh 4. From whence it will follow that Good men that were full of humanity love to mankind will prove good Genii by how much their Love is greater and their Spirits more free and universal that they will have a more generall inspection or at least they will be more fit for it were they but armed with sufficient Power and Authority from above answerable to that noble dear affection they bear to man and in that themselves have been in the flesh and tasted what belongs to our condition they will be the more kindly Mediatours and Negotiatours in our affairs So reasonable is this opinion of the Pagans concerning the Intercession of their Genii but their Worshipping of them as rash they having no sufficient warrant thereunto CHAP. XVIII 1. The Fourth and last thing to be noted namely their Heroes who were thought to be either begot of some God or born of some Goddess the latter whereof is ridiculous if not impossible 2. The former not at all incredible 3. Franciscus Picus his opinion of the Heroes feigned so by the Poets as begot of the Gods that they were really begotten of some impure Daemons with Josephus his suffrage to the same purpose 4. The Possibility of the thing further illustrated from the impregnation of Mares merely by the Wind asserted by several Authors 5. The application of the History and a further confirmation from the manner of Conception out of Dr. Harvey 6. Examples of men famed for this kind of miraculous Birth of the Heroes on this side the tempus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1. THE Fourth and last thing I would propound to your view is their Heroes which are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 also that is the Souls of men departed this life but there was something special in their Birth in that they were conceived to be born of some Goddess impregnated by a man or of some woman impregnated by some God From whence Plato would give the reason of the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as if it were from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Love Because the Heroes were begot by some God or Goddess falling in love with Mortals Such was the birth of Aeneas as Antiquity has conceited who was begot on Venus by Anchises and of Achilles the Son of Thetis by Peleus But that Goddesses that is Spirits susteining the person of Women should bring forth Children though there be pretended true stories of such things and that it may be it is not impossible yet it seems to me very incredible 2. But that the Genii or Spirits which Antiquity called Gods might impregnate Women so that they might bring forth children without the help of a man seems not to me to be at all incredible and most of your Heroes have been reported to be such the greater number of the most famous of them being certain By-blows of Iupiter upon several women he fell in love with For he is said to beget Hercules upon Alcmena Pelasgus of Niobe Sarpedon of Laodamia Dardanus of Electra Amphion of Antiope Minos and Rhadamanthus of Europa of Leda Castor and Pollux and Perseus of Danae His four last Adulteries are handsomely comprized in a Distich by the Epigrammatist with the fashion or fraud he
out Lord save us we perish So natural decorous and becoming are all the Actions and Miracles of Christ. 5. There is only one behinde Instantia monodica as a man may call it an Example not parallel'd in the whole History of the Gospel which is The cursing of the Fig-tree the meaning whereof has puzzled many as the narration it self has scandalized some as if this act was guilty not only of Levity but of a ridiculous kinde of Ferocity with a semblance of Injustice if Injustice can be committed against a Tree For was there any reason that a Tree should be cursed for not bearing fruit when the time of year was not yet for the bearing thereof This seems very odd and preposterous But if it be rightly understood there is nothing more grave more sober nor more weightily mysterious 6. For my own part I make no question but that the genuine meaning of it is this and what it signifies it sets out to the very life viz. That the most acceptable and desireable fruit of the everlasting Righteousness was not then found in the Iudaical dispensation nay I add further That it was never intended that that Tree should bring forth any such fruit but only the fair Fig-leaves of an External and Ceremonial Righteousness and a more overly and Legal kind of Morality but the more perfect fruits of the regenerating Spirit were not to be found there though Christ came into the world to exprobrate to them the want thereof and so to put a period to the Iudaical dispensation so as that it should quite wither away and fall to nothing as we find it come to pass at this very day Which Consideration amongst others that occur in Scripture more evidently confirms what we finde true in effect That according to the Eternal counsell of God Christ was mainly intended for the Gentiles and that breaking this shell of Iudaisme in which he was brooded under so many Types and Shadows he should take his flight thence and after spread his wings from one end of the Earth to the other 7. But this Mystery having something of seeming harshness in it to men of less profound minds such was the sweetness and inoffensiveness of our Saviour's temper that he would neither scandalize them nor grate too hard against the Iudaical Oeconomy which that Nation so highly reverenced and therefore recorded this Truth only in this Enigmatical miracle 8. And thus to speak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was not only usual with the Prophets but practised also by our Saviour himself in other cases as well as in this As in the manner of his healing him that was born blinde John 9. where the Ceremonies he useth seem very uncouth and strange before one knows the meaning of them but rightly understood they must be acknowledged admirably fit for the purpose I mean not for curing of the blinde For what can clay and spittle and the water of a pool avail for the restoring of Sight to one that was born blind but for mysteriously setting out some grand Truths concerning Iesus 9. As that he was the Son of God or that Eternal Word whereby God created the World and framed man of the Earth in token whereof he tempers Clay and Spittle he being about to rectifie and amend the workmanship of his own hands To which Erasmus seems plainly to allude in his Paraphrase upon the place Ejusdem autem Autoris est restituere quod perierat qui condider at quod non erat Besides another Truth of very great importance which is set out to the very life in this Typical cure viz. That we are to expect the Renovation of our minds and our Regeneration from that power that created us That no man can come to Christ as he is a visible person unless the Father that is the Eternal Divinity draw him or as the Apostle speaks to the Corinthians That no man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost 10. Now I say That Christ's tempering Clay and Spittle does emblematize the Eternal Deity that created all things and his acting first upon the blinde man so sending of him to the pool of Siloam by which undoubtedly is meant Shilo or the Messias this does plainly figure out the forementioned Truths That those that do come to Christ and faithfully adhere to him are prepared and given to him of God and that by Faith in him they are purg'd and purified from all blindness and filthiness by the assistance of that Spirit which is promised to all that believe in him according to what Christ himself has pronounced He that believeth on me out of his heart shall flow streams of living waters which he understands of the Spirit of which these waters of Siloam are therefore a very fit Figure or Emblem they fitly denoting even from the very name as I have already intimated the clearing and healing Spirit of Christ who is the Shilo or Siloam wherewith we are to be washed and cleansed from that foulness and earthly-mindedness which we had contracted in the state of Nature or First creation before the act of Regeneration has passed upon us 11. We have considered the Miracles of Christ let us give a short glance on his Prophesies In which that which is mainly considerable is that they are very few Which I look upon as a reprehension and reproach of that natural itch in mankind to Divinations and Predictions of which Impostors usually much boast and a Nation of America though more Atheistical then all the rest are so vehemently set upon that they often even grow mad again with that study But very little fell from our Saviour's mouth by way of Prophesie but what was in a manner of indispensable concernment to be foretold Such as his own Sufferings and Resurrection the Destruction of the City the General Iudgment He exercised also his power of Divination in his conference with the woman of Samaria but his applications there were so serious that he forgot the sense of hunger being more pleased with the attempts of her conversion and her Country-men then with the most delicate junkets that could be set before him He foretold also who should betray him but it was to demonstrate that both his Betraying and all his Sufferings else they being foreseen might have been avoided and therefore that he underwent them willingly To which also those Predictions tend When I am lifted up I shall draw all men unto me as also of the good Shepheard laying down his life for his sheep and then presently adding And other sheep I have which are not of this fold meaning the Gentiles who were to be brought in by his Death Which is a plain Demonstration that Christ suffered death voluntarily out of his entire love to the World and that he knew aforehand what an Effectual instrument his Passion would prove for the conversion of the Gentiles to
Bloud as common and unholy as that of the malefactors that were crucified with him the Wrath of God being not all atoned as they say by his suffering because it is unjust that an Innocent man should be punished for those that are guilty But what Unjustice is done to him that takes upon him the debt or fault of another man willingly if he pay the debt or bear the punishment provided that he that may exact or remit either will be thus satisfied 10. But such trivial and captious intermedlers in matters of Religion that take a great deal of pains to obscure that which is plain and easie deserve more to be flighted and neglected then vouchsafed any answer For all their frivolous Subtilties and fruitless intricacies arise from this one false ground That the Soveraign Goodness of God and his kind condescensions and applications to the affections of man are to be measured by Iuridical niceties and narrow and petty Laws such as concern ordinary transactions between man and man But let these brangling Wits enjoy the fruits of their own elaborate ignorance while we considering the easie air and sense of Sacrifices in all Religions shall by this means be the better assured of the natural meaning of it in our own CHAP. XIV 1. That Sacrifices in all Religions were held Appeasments of the Wrath of their Gods 2. And that therefore the Sacrifice of Christ is rather to be interpreted to such a Religious sense then by that of Secular laws 3. The great disservice some corrosive Wits doe to Christian Religion and what defacements their Subtilties bring upon the winning comeliness thereof 4. The great advantage the Passion of Christ has compared with the bloudy Tyranny of Satan 1. HOW General the Custome of Sacrificing was in all Nations of the World is a thing so well known that I need not insist upon it and That their Sacrifices were accounted an Appeasment of the Wrath of the Gods and Expiation for their faults is also a Truth so conspicuous that it cannot be denied Hence these Sacrifices we speak of were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Latine Placamina Februa Piamina Much of this nature you may read in Grotius De Satisfactione Christi cap. 10. where he does not only make good by many Expressions and Examples That the Sacrifices of the ancient Heathen pacified the Anger of the Gods but also which is nearer to our purpose That the Punishment of those that were thus reconciled and purged was transferred upon the Beast that was sacrificed for the clearing whereof he alledges many citations and these two amongst the rest One out of Cato Cum sis ipse nocens moritur cur victima pro te Since thou thy self art guilty why Does then thy Sacrifice for thee die The other out of Plautus Men ' piaculum oportet fieri propter stultitiam tuam Ut meum tergum stultitia tuae subdas succedaneum that is to say Is it fit that I should be made a piacular Sacrifice for your foolishness that my back should bear the stripes that your folly has demerited 2. Wherefore this being the sense of the Sacrifices we speak of in all the Religions in the World it is more fit to interpret the Death of Christ who gave himself an Expiation for the sins of the World according to that sense which is usual in the mysteries of Religion then according to the entangling niceties and intricacies of secular laws 3. But as for those busie and Pragmatical spirits that by the acrimonie of their wit eat off the comely and lovely gloss of Christianity as aqua Fortis or rather aqua Stygia laid on polish'd metal what thanks shall they receive of him whom yet they pretend to be so zealous for the most winning and endearing circumstances of his exhibiting himself to the World being so soiled and blasted by their rude and foul breath that as many as they can infect with the contagion of their own Errour Christianity will be made to them but a dry withered branch whenas in it self it is an aromatick Paradise where the Senses and Affections of men are so transported with the Agreeableness of Objects that they are even enravished into Love and Obedience to him that entertains them there And nothing can entertain the Soul of man with so sweet a Sorrow and Joy as this Consideration That the Son of God should bear so dear a regard to the World as to lay down his life for them and to bear so reproachfull and painfull a Death to expiate their sins and reconcile them to his Father 4. But this is not all the Advantage he had to win the Government of the World unto himself For not only his exceeding Love to Mankind was hereby demonstrated but the cruel and execrable nature of that old Tyrant the more clearly detected For whereas the Devil who by unjust usurpation had got the Government of the World into his own hands tyrannizing with the greatest cruelty and scorn that can be imagined over Mankind thirsted after humane bloud and in most parts of the World as I have already shewn required the sacrificing of men which could not arise from any thing else but a salvage Pride and Despight against us This new gracious Prince of God's own appointing Christ Iesus was so far from requiring any such villainous Homage that himself became a Sacrifice for us making himself at once one Grand and All-sufficient 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Piamen to expiate the Sins of all Mankind and so to reconcile the World to God CHAP. XV. 1. An Objection concerning the miraculous Eclipse of the Sun at our Saviour's Passion from it s not being recorded in other Historians 2. Answer That this wonderfull Accident might as well be omitted be several Historians as those of like wonderfulness as for example the darkness of the Sun about Julius Caesar's death 3. Further That there are far greater Reasons that Historians should omit the darkness of the Sun at Christ's Passion then that at the death of Julius Caesar. 4. That Grotius ventures to affirm this Eclipse recorded in Pagan writers and that Tertullian appeal'd to their Records 5. That the Text does not implie that it was an universal Eclipse whereby the History becomes free from all their Cavils 6. Apollonius his Arraignment before Domitian with the ridiculousness of his grave Exhortations to Damis and Demetrius to suffer for Philosophy 1. WE have seen how Reasonable the History of Christ's Passion is neither do I know any thing that may lessen the Credibility of it unless it be the miraculous Eclipse of the Sun Not that the Eclipse it self is so incredible but that it may seem incredible that so wonderfull so generally-conspicuous an Accident of Nature should be recorded by none but by the Evangelists themselves Learning and Civility in those times so universally flourishing and there being no want of Historians to recount such things This Objection makes a great shew at first but
but the incomparable Dignity of the Person of Christ and the weighty circumstances of Providence that gave such ample testimony to him which made the world turn Christians rather then Apollonians that is made them rather embrace the Gospel then continue in Paganisme though reformed after the neatest and most refined manner by the noblest and gallantest personage that ever was purely Pagan the famous Apollonius 2. But that he may have the field clear to himself it will not be amiss to digress a little further and take notice of some few others that put in for an Equality with him or a Superiority above him and the chief of them are these Three Mahomet David George and the begodded man of Amsterdam whom I dare not venture to bring into the list without a Preface for pardon and excuse for that which looks so like a piece of dishonour and disrespect to our blessed Saviour But Duessa till unstripped will compare with Una you know the story in Spencer and the bold ignorance of some does ordinarily make others take a great deal of pains to explain and evince that which to any indifferent man is usually true at first sight Which kind of undertakings though they be no great arguments of a mans wit yet they are of his faithfulness and sincere love to the Truth which is far better 3. First therefore to speak a little of the two latter David George and him of Amsterdam those two meal-mouth'd Prophets that court the world to follow them by so many mystical good-morrows making the whole Gospel but as one long-winded Fable and themselves the onely inspired and infallible Lights of the World because they phansie they have found the right 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of it So that their excellency seems to consist mainly in these Two things in a resolved infidelity or stout misbelief of the History of Christ so far as it is Miraculous and a dexterity in a moral Mythology thereof whereby the Gospel is utterly abrogated and more fundamentally destroy'd then the Law of Moses is by the Gospel For there was never any Christian so immodest as to deny the Miracles of Moses and so consequently the Truth of the History of the Old Testament which these do in the New by which you may judge what they do concerning the Old also For it is most likely they believe there were never any such things as Miracles done any where 4. But if they believe there were Miracles let them shew their Reasons why they distrust that what is recorded of our Saviour is but a Fable and let them produce Miracles themselves to demonstrate to us that we believe a falsehood and that God has sent them upon such a special errand as they pretend If they can do no Miracles God is no witness unto them but they witness only of themselves and therefore are mere Fanaticks and distemper'd Enthusiasts having nothing to drive them forwards to so bold and prodigious an enterprise as the superannuating of Christianity and the abrogating of the office of the Person of Christ but the pride and fury of their own inflam'd Spirits and a phantastical conceit of themselves as if God had inlightened them more then all the world besides 5. If according to the impulse of that Spirit of infidelity in them they conceive there never was nor ever will be any Miracles done in the world but that all things are carried according to the course of Nature they betray themselves in this that they are so far from being extraordinarily illuminated that they are more blinde and blockish then every ordinary man that has the fear of God before his eyes and that they are what some suspect them to be a skulking kinde of Epicureans and Atheists But this I dare boldly say that strip their style of all Scripture-phrases and all allusions to the History of Christ and of the old Testament you shall finde nothing affirmed in these Authors that will rise higher then the faith of Epicurus Democritus or Lucretius they positively affirming nothing but what any ordinary moral Pagan would affirm nay not so much as the Better sort that held the Immortality of the Soul 6. But this is the wicked plot of the Devil in this Sect that he clothes their Style with Scripture-language that they may as it were wear the colours of the Kingdome of Light and so covertly destroy or win the Christian Souldiers from their allegiance to Christ and lapse them into the bondage of the dark Kingdome So that that mighty prop of Faith in those precious promises of the Gospel being taken away their heart may fail them in the hour of temptation and they may be wrought by degrees into a full compliance with every transitory pleasure which the natural man relishes whether in riches honour or satisfaction of the flesh and that upon whatever terms the world shall propound it to them So far therefore are those two forward fellows of Delph and of Amsterdam from approving themselves so great lights of the World as they pretend that they are more dark in their Understanding then many of the Heathen who had some kind of glimpse of a world to come believed the Existence of Spirits and the power of Miracles 7. Which Consideration would make a man think that they were not so much as honest through-crackt Enthusiasts but rather knowing Cheats and Impostours who being down-right Epicureans but of something a finer contexture could abuse their rapturous and Enthusiastick complexion to deceive the whole Christian world calling them off from Christ to an admiration of themselves which might be a considerable profit as well as no small pleasure to them and under pretense of teaching them the Great Mystery of the Gospel might endeavour to undermine the Gospel by taking away the Substantial History of it wrapping up ordinary Precepts of life such as any moral Pagan can give concerning Vertue in the mysterious dress of the Birth Death Resurrection and Ascension of Christ making the whole Mystery of Christianity nothing but a finely-contrived Fable to set out some trivial moral Truths such as are acknowledged by almost every Atheist and Epicurean and the practice whereof reaches no further then the more advantageous managements of the pleasures and enjoiments of this present life 8. I do not deny but that the frequent use of Scriptural allusions and phrases in their writings may raise in well-meaning men a sense beyond the feeling of them that wrote them But where Faith in Christ is extinct and of those promises that he made so clearly known to the world by his Resurrection and Ascension I conceive that this is an infallible argument that the Divine life is extinct also and that it is from some impurity of Body Soul or Spirits that a man sinks below that belief and that his Vertues then are but Complexional or merely Moral such as are found in a cicurated Beast or some better-natur'd Brute This in all likelihood was the
Ierusalem ceased so to be when the Jews had ceased to be God's people The trampling the holy City he interprets of the building of a Temple there to Iupiter Capitolinus As if that Temple stood but three years and an half But he would terminate these years from the beginning of the building of this Temple to the sedition of Barchochab but brings no History to make good his device and if he could make this time of Barchochab good it were yet good for nothing unless he could also pull down the Temple at the three years and an half 's end The Two Witnesses he would have the Two Churches in Aelia the one speaking Hebrew the other Greek as if the Spirit of God divided these into Two that professed one faith and were of one mind not distinguished in any thing save in outward language The bodies of these slain Witnesses lying in the streets of the great City three days and an half this he interprets of the oppression and persecution by Barchochab which certainly was very short if but three days and an half long neither does he here bring any proof of History nor is it probable that divine Prophecy would affect the preciseness of half a day or three days and an half in such a general prefiguration of things as the Apocalypse is Besides how unlikely is it that Ierusalem that had now lost all its glory and power should be styled by the name of the great City The chiefest ground that they have to think so is that expression as if our Lord was crucified there But I answer that our Lord in a literal sense was not crucified either in Sodome or Aegypt which 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 immediately referres to nor in a spiritual sense more in Ierusalem then in the rest of the Roman Empire Wherefore this City is nothing else but the degenerate Polity of the Apostate Church where Christ is persecuted as he complained to Saul in his true and living members Where also Christ according to the Spirit that is the Divine life is rightly said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be crucified not in the time past only but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 indefinitely was is and will be crucified so long as this power of Apostasy holds up For the Praeter Tense in Prophecy is very usual for the Future But if any one disrelish this more Mystical sense I shall substitute that of Mr. Mede's which the coursest Literalist cannot evade namely that by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is understood the Extent of the whole Romane Empire within which Christ was literally crucified See Mr. Mede upon the Text. The Vision of the Woman crowned with twelve starres which number signifies the pure and Apostolical Church her being in the wilderness 1260 days he interprets of the extinguishing the Church to outward sight at least at Rome by the Miracles and Sorceries of Simon Magus which yet is a suspected History and her appearing onely in the country and villages which are but as a Desart in respect of the populosity of that renowned City But the time of 1260 days he makes out by no History To say nothing how this interpretation depends on another very harsh one namely the expounding And her child was caught up unto God and to his throne of the disappearing of the Church by the seductions of Simon Whenas to be carried up to the throne of God surely signifies Magistracy as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Magistrates As is intimated also in the foregoing part of the verse that he should rule the nations with a rod of iron The Vision of the Whore sitting upon the Scarlet Beast with seven heads and ten horns and if you will of the Beast coming out of the sea Chap. 13. For we may put them together they being the same according to Grotius his own confession This Beast he makes the Sin of Idolatry Which is quite out of the way of interpreting Prophetick Schemes where Beasts signifie Kingdomes or Dominions as is plain out of Daniel But the Ten horns he will allow to be Ten kings in which he were right if he had acknowledged a body fit to bear them The Seven heads he makes the seven Caesars Claudius Nero Galba Otho Vitellius Vespasian Titus But if the Caesars be heads there must be more heads then seven for there were four Caesars before Claudius and I think thirty after Titus that were not Christians But Claudius saith he is the first that banished the Christian Teachers Which act was yet so inconsiderable that the First persecution was fixt on Nero and the other Nine noted persecutions were after Titus the last of them raging a little before Constantine the Great So that there is a juster reason that this Beast should have above thirty heads then but seven Again in this Beast which the Prophet Iohn resembles to a Leopard in his body and to have the feet of a Bear and the mouth of a Lion he will have Claudius who before was one of the heads of the Beast now to be the Body thereof and Domitian who is later then the last of these Seven Caesars and so in order more like the Tail to be the Mouth of the Beast and in chap. 17. to be the Beast it self So much of forcedness and incoherency is there in the making out this false Hypothesis That also is harsh in my judgement the making presently one of these Heads which were before Caesars to be the Capitol at Rome though it be said to be wounded to death that by the stroke of a sword and to be healed also which methinks are very unnaturally applicable to a Hill or a Tower He pretends he has hit the time of the forty two months this Beast should make warre but he referrs to no History and Helvicus affixes the beginning of the Second persecution to the Tenth of Domitian's reign Whence it will not be Three years and an half but rather Six years that he wars against the Saints But the chiefest artifice of his misinterpretation is upon Chap. 17. of the Revelation Where the Beast that was and is not and is to ascend out of the bottomless pit and to go into perdition he again applies to Domitian making nothing of transfiguring a single Head into a whole Beast But the description is more accurate vers 10 c. The seven heads are seven kings five are fallen and one is and the other is not yet come and when he cometh he must continue a short space And the Beast that was and is not even he is the eighth and is of the seven and goeth into perdition And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings which have received no kingdome as yet but receive power as kings one hour with the Beast The five kings here that are fallen saith Grotius are Claudius Nero Galba Otho and Vitellius which how fond a conceit it is I have already demonstrated And one is
also of the worth and value and of the fitness and accommodateness of so ample a Reward 3. For Philosophy herself can witness That according to the greater purity of our Spirits the Motions and Passions of our Minds are changed and become more holy and divine our Thoughts and Apprehensions more clear our Love to God more ardent and sincere our Benignity to men more free and general and all the Faculties of our Soul in a ready posture to comply with the best commands or suggestions of Reason or Religion Of what infinite importance therefore must it be to have such a Body as is not only perpetually thus compliable with the Best motions of the Soul but by virtue of its Heavenly purity does naturally encline the Mind to such Thoughts Motions and Affections as are most acceptable to God and most enravishing to her self Which consideration does evidently demonstrate that high Reason that is in our Religion in the Promise of a glorified Body as the greatest Reward of our earnest colluctations and obedient endeavours in this life For nothing but Divine Inspiration or some infallible Method of Philosophy could discover to the Mind of man so concerning a Point 4. But to doubt whether Christ can cloath us with such Bodies as those or enliven our whole man in whatsoever bodies we be found into that Immortality and Life which accrues to us by transforming our vile bodies into the similitude of his glorious Bodie is either to forget or not to believe what mighty power he had when he was here upon earth how merely by his word he calmed the raging of the seas silenced the tempestuousness of the windes multiplied a few loaves and a few fishes so in the very eating of them that he fed many thousands therewith in the wilderness which was an eminent specimen of his power of transforming Matter into what modification he pleased besides his healing of the sick not only those that were present and believed on him but also the absent to which you may add the raising of the dead which comes nearer to our purpose as also the Resurrection of those that rose with him to signifie his enlivening power who himself so miraculously rose from the Grave 5. By which wonderfull works he did plainly demonstrate That what he professed of himself was true That as the Father has life in himself so he has also given the Son to have life in himself that is the power of vivification or enlivening of others as you may see by the context John 5. v. 26. And not only so but he has given him also the power of punishing as well as rewarding as it follows in the next verse And he hath given him authority to execute judgement because he is the Son of man viz. That Son of man that upon his sufferings and after his being risen from the dead should have all power given to him in Heaven and in Earth Which we may easily believe whenas he had so vast a power in the lowest ebbe of his Humiliation when he went up and down afflicted despised and neglected being attended only by a few contemptible fisher-men and others of like inferiour condition and yet then he opened the eyes of them that were born blind and at a distance healed the sick and being unaccompanied with any visible pomp or power with one word of his mouth drove away a Legion of Devils at once What shall he not then be able to doe when he shall return in the highest Glory and Majesty that the visible Divinity can appear in when the Heavens shall be filled with the brightness of his Camp and all the Nations of the World shall be astonished at the dreadfull splendour of his coming 6. Shall not he then who in his dejectment could raise to life not only a faithless but senseless corps enliven those that at his glorious Appearance are so filled with Faith Love Joy Desire and Admiration that their empassioned Souls are ready to leave their Bodies if it were possible to come and doe their homage to their long-expected Saviour and Redeemer Shall not that Divine and Omnipotent Power then that worketh round about him so cooperate with those kindled Affections as to change their very Bodies into an ability of naturally ascending up to him and joining with him Or is it hard for him to convert Flesh or Air into a pure Aethereal Fire to awake such a Facultie in the Soul as shall kindly and vitally inactuate it who turned Air into Flesh and prepared the dead carcase of Lazarus so fittingly for reunion with the Soul that he raised him out of the Grave on the fourth day Wherefore this Resurrection Life and Immortality we speak of being neither impossible for Christ to give nor our nature uncapable to receive it remains that we shall enjoy it because Christ both himself and by his Apostles has so plainly and expresly promised it CHAP. VII 1. Caecilius his scoffs against the Resurrection and Conflagration of the World That against the Resurrection answered already 2. In what sense the soberer Christians understood the Conflagration of the World 3. That the Conflagration in their sense is possible argued from the Combustibleness of the parts of the Earth 4. As also from actual Fire found in several Mountains as Aetna Helga and Hecla 5. Several instances of that sort out of Plinie 6. Instances of Vulcanoes out of Acosta 7. The Vulcanoes of Guatimalla 8. Vulcanoes without smoak having a quick fire at the bottome 9. Vulcanoes that have cast fire and smoak some thousand of years together 10. Hot Fountains Springs running with Pitch and Rosin certain Thermae catching fire at a distance 1. THe Third thing we propounded comprized in Christ's Return to Judgment is the Conflagration of the world a Point as incredible to most of the Heathen as the Resurrection of the dead and the comparing of them both together made it the more ridiculously-incredible to them as you may see by that Jear that Caecilius gives the Christians in Minucius Felix Quid quod toti Orbi ipsi Mundo cum sideribus suis minantur incendium ruinam moliuntur quasi aut Naturae divinis legibus constitutus aeternus ordo turbetur aut rupto omnium elementorum foedere coelesti compage divisâ moles ista quâ continemur cingimur subruatur Nec hâc furiosâ opinione contenti aniles fabulas astruunt annectunt Renasci se ferunt post Mortem Cineres Favillas Nescio quâ fiduciâ mendaciis suis invicem credunt Putes eos jam revixisse Anceps malum gemina dementia Coelo astris quae sic relinquimus ut invenimus interitum denunciare sibi mortuis extinctis qui sicut nascimur interimus aeternitatem repromittere To which you may add how they menace burning and meditate ruine to the whole Earth and to the Heaven it self with the Stars thereof as if the Eternal Order constituted by the divine
of Second causes partly Natural partly free Agents amongst whom the highly-exalted and supereminently-divine Soul of Iesus is the chief we discover a power able to effect more then we have declared concerning the Conflagration of the Earth And when this will suffice how over-evidently are we assured of the feisableness of this Atchievement from what S. Peter has suggested concerning the absolute power of the Word of God by whom all things are and who is a perpetual Spectatour of his Works For the spirit of the Lord filleth the world as the Wise man speaks and that which containeth all things has knowledge of the voice And it is as true that all things lye open to his sight and that the Earth is alwayes under the present eye of God Wherefore he that perpetually looks on is it hard to conceive that at last at some solemn period of time he may in a special manner step out into action if need so require and he be invoked thereunto 7. Wherefore the Faithful being gathered from all the corners of the Earth and carried up to Christ their Saviour and joyning with his Legions of Light there being then left in the Earth and in the inferiour Parts of the Aire none but obdurate Adherents to the dark Kingdome which shall now be made more externally dark then ever black pitchy clouds covering the whole face of the Sky and making Night fall upon the Inhabitants of the World even at mid-day in the midst of this sad silent and louring aspect of the Heavens He that in the flesh was heard and answered by Thunder when he prayed saying Father glorifie thy name shall by the same interest in the Eternall God cause such an universal Thunder and Lightning that it shall rattle over all the quarters of the Earth rain down burning Comets and falling Starres and discharge such claps of unextinguishable fire that it will do sure execution whereever it falls so that the ground being excessively heated those subterraneous Mines of combustible Matter will also take fire which inflaming the inward exhalations of the Earth will cause a terrible murmur under ground so that the Earth will seem to thunder against the tearing and ratling of the Heavens and all will be filled with sad remugient Echoes Earthquakes and Eruptions of fire there will be every where and whole Cities and Countries swallowed down by the vast gapings and wide divulsions of the ground Nor shall the Sea be able to save the Earth from this universal Conflagration no more then the Fire could preserve her from that overspreading Deluge for this fiery Vengeance shall be so thirsty that it shall drink deep of the very Sea nor shall the water quench her devouring appetite but excite it For such is the nature of some Fires as history every where testifieth 8. Wherefore the great channel of the Sea shall be left dry and all Rivers shall be turned into smoak and vapour so that the whole Earth shall be inveloped in one entire cloud of an unspeakable thickness which shall cause more then an Aegyptian darkness clammy and palpable to be felt which added to this choaking heat and stench will compleat this External Hell a place of Torment appointed not onely for the prophane Atheist and Hypocrite but also for the Devil and his Angels where their pain will be proportionated according to the untamedness of their Spirits and unevenness of their perverse Consciences CHAP. X. 1. The main Fallacies that cause in men the Misbelief of the Possibility of the Conflagration of the Earth 2. That the Conflagration is not only possible but reasonable The first Reason leading to the belief thereof 3. The second Reason the natural decay of all particular structures and that the Earth is such and that it grows dry and looses of its solidity whence its approach to the Sun grows nearer 4. That the Earth therefore will be burnt either according to the course of Nature or by a special appointment of Providence 5. That it is most reasonable that Second way should take place because of the obdurateness of the Atheistical crew 6. That the Vengeance will be still more significant if it be inflicted after the miraculous Deliverance of the Faithful 1. I Hope by this time we have prevailed so far as to perswade the Possibility of the Conflagration of the World in that sense we have explained it And truly I know nothing that should keep a man from assenting to it as possible but that dull Fallacie whereby we conclude That nothing can be done but what we have seen done or phansie we could doe our selves And this is the reason that makes the Atheist misbelieve Creation because he himself can make nothing but out of prejacent Matter and a settled course of things causes so deep an impression in our Senses that we can hardly phansie they will ever alter Which makes some men never think of Death especially if they have never been sick a flattering impossibility by reason of so long continuance of life stealing into their hopes as if they should never die And therefore that great Monarch was fain to have one to rub up his memory every day with a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Remember that thou art mortal Well may we phansie then such unalterable Laws of Nature as shall secure the Earth from such a destruction as we speak of when we are led unawares into so favourable a conceit of our own life or fortune after we have for a competent time been well settled in either as not at all to think of the mutability of our condition Wherefore I hope any one that is aware of this ordinary Fallacie will easily recover himself into so much use of his Reason as not to conclude the Conflagration of the Earth impossible because he knows not how to burn it himself or that it will alwaies continue unburnt because it has been unburnt thus long 2. But that which I drive at is to shew that the belief of a Christian is not only of things possible but reasonable which I have in some sort made good already by discovering the manifold treasures of the fiery and combustible principles in Heaven and Earth to which I add further First That Providence ordering all particular corporeal things by number weight and measure it is reasonable that the continuance of this present stage of things be numbred that is have its number of years set so that there be a full pause or Period a last Exiit and Plaudite to this Tragick Comedie 3. Secondly Whatever particular corporeal structure has a Beginning unless it be a Body inacted with a glorified Spirit will also have an End naturally of it self and that which will have an End is subject to decaying And for my own part I question not but that the Earth is of such a nature and that it waxes old by degrees will grow more more dry steril in succession of Ages whereby it
the Scripture-learned teach them which is plainly to deny the History of Christ and to profess our selves mere Infidels Out of which Spirit of Infidelity he has so distortedly allegorized all the clauses of the Creed that to such as are not bewitched and besotted by his fanatick blasts to a better opinion of him then he deserves he must needs appear an Infidel Lastly in his Introduction Chap. 9. sect 35. there again he does boldly affirm That it is certainly mere lies what the Letter-learned institute or set forth how clear soever in understanding if they be yet unreformed by the Love and her Service And in the following Section he plainly declares That the Scriptures are not to be taught nor held forth Historically but as Prefigurations of the Promises that are fulfilled in his Service of the Love Whence it is evident he had no belief in the Letter of the Scripture nor of the miraculous History of Christ and of the Predictions concerning him whereby our Faith should be affixed to his Humane Person Against which he useth all diligence imaginable as if not simple Care but an inspired Envy or Satanical Spite against the honour of his Person did actuate him in all his Writings 2. To which purpose I conceive is that Caution in his Introduction That no man bind his heart to any outward thing which he is served with to the Righteousness of life For of all outward things nothing can be more serviceable then the Humane Person of Christ who suffered for us and redeemed us from the wrath to come if we stand faithfull in the Covenant Those places also where he saith That the Godly life is the very Saviour himself and that no man knows Christ nor can confess him unless his shape be in him that is his Life and Image be in him seem intended as justling against the External Person of Christ as also what he saith Chap. 22. namely That no other Foundation may be laid then that Iesus Christ who from everlasting was and is and abideth for ever whereby I doubt not but he intends the exclusion of his Humane Person whose compute began but about 16 hundred years agoe But the most wonderfull sleight he puts him off by is his Mystical meaning of Christ's celebration of the Passeover with his Disciples Which we shall easily understand if we take notice what he means by Flesh in his Writings namely by Flesh is meant the Letter or History In his Prophecy of the Spirit of Love Chap. 13. ver 4. Verily therefore they do all erre very much that judge according to their understanding out of the earthly Being or out of the Flesh or Letter God's truth which is Heavenly and Spiritual See also Introduct ch 14. sect 20. Now if you will but read his Evangely chap. 21. sect 3 7 8 10. also chap. 22. sect 5 6. and chap. 25. sect 1 2. you shall find in brief for it were too tedious to write these allegorical Ambages that the right Celebration of the Pascha or Passeover with Christ is That he namely Christ after the Flesh they are his own words should be slain that is that Christ according to the Letter or History should be abolished that he may be entertained only according to the Spirit Which is the great Arcanum of this Sect of the Family Behold saith he this is the right Passeover with Christ and the right Supper which the upright Believers and Disciples of Christ keep with Christ to wit that they depart even so with Christ out of the Flesh that is that Christ according to the History or Letter be crucified or slain in them that is nullified and rejected as a mere Legend or Fable and pass into the Spirit that is the spiritual Mystery of Christ the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Moral of the Fable and out of the Death or Mortality that is out of the dead Letter into the Eternal Life of everlasting Immortality In which sonorous language that you may not promise to your self any such lasting purchase there is nothing meant but the state of Perfection which these Familists phansie to themselves here upon Earth and is everlasting in no other sense then in succession they promising themselves that their Sect will continue for ever and therefore he adds wherethrough sin and all destruction becomes vanquished namely by this state of Perfection wherein sin and every imperfect and destroyable state is swallowed up For they having come to the highest there is no change of things though their persons be mortal according to their own doctrine This Allegorie of the Passeover is so odd a conceit that did I not suppose the Author deeply Fanatical I should suspect it accompanied with a sly jearing and scorn against the History of Christ and to be the product of a scoffing Atheistical Spirit For no Atheist could exercise his wit here with more villainous sliness against the truth of the Scriptures then thus Which makes me sometimes think that he was not simply Fanatical but either Atheistical or possessed by the Devil himself in the mean time not knowing whose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was 3. And thus we have had a taste in general how sedulously this Author endeavours to out the Person of Christ. We shall now pursue the matter in two main heads the Office of his Priesthood and his coming visibly to judgment in his Humane person To which is annexed the promise of a glorious Resurrection and Eternal Life in a plain and true sense without any shuffling or equivocating That he makes nothing of the atonement of Christ's personal sufferings he does in my judgment too plainly discover chap. 13. sect 8. of his Documental Sentences where rather then he will acknowledg the usefulness of that Advocate with the Father Iesus Christ the righteous who is a propitiation for our sins he does pronounce him that sins by violence or Temptation to be guiltless as the ravished virgin Deuteronomie 22 that so there may be no need of Christ's Sacrifice whose personal death and Priestly office he never takes notice of to this purpose As you may observe further Exhortat chap. 20. from sect 19 to the end of the chapter Where although he supposes a mans stumblings and fallings daily very great and terrible before him and that for that cause he is very wofull of heart feels the pricking of sin the darts of death and condemnation of Hell and so is in much anguish and affliction of mind yet is there no application at all of the Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross nor any help nor comfort at all held out by his sufferings though it was the most proper place that could be to mention them And chap. 24. in the praiers he puts up there in stead of making use of the mediation of that Christ that felt the pains of death on the Cross for us he makes use only of Gods supposed Promise or Covenant he has made with the House of
the Love sect 3. and 7. See him also upon the Beatitudes sect 6. And it is no wonder we hear nothing of that Reconciliation made by the Cross of Christ for he does plainly aver sect 34. That the true being in the Love is that peace with God and man mentioned Ephes. 2.14 and the true Testament that standeth fast for ever And Exhortation chap. 12.44 Remission of sins is gained only by submitting to the House of the Love The same that David George boasted of his doctrine Therefore my beloved children change ye not nor turn away your selves from the House of Love For there is in the same the stool of grace to an everlasting remission of sins over all such as cleave thereon and to a peace and rest of the life to all such as humble them there-under By such slips and omissions as these those that are not very dull of perception may easily spel out his meaning Which yet is more clear by other places of his Evangely chap. 13. Where he setleth the Everlasting Priesthood not upon Christ's person but makes this Kingly Priest no person at all but a thing a state or condition of him and his followers here upon earth And therefore he calls there this mystical Christ The Lords Sabbath The seventh day in the Paradise of God The perfection c. And chap. 22. he makes the entrance of Christ into heaven and his visible ascending up thither and sitting at the right hand of God and sending down the holy Ghost at the day of Pentecost which was a real effect of his eternal Priesthood and Intercession with God for his Church nothing but the appearing of him according to the Spirit out of the Heavenly Being in their Minds or Souls upon which he sent down his Spiritual or Heavenly Powers Wherefore this Mystical Christ is the only high Priest that he acknowledgeth and will allow him no otherwise then in this mystical and spiritual sense to be an everlasting and true Christ of God See the place of which you will assure your self I have given the right sense if you compare it with chap. 26. sect 10 11 12. where he more plainly affirms That it is the upright being of the Love Christ after the Spirit which he calls the true light which is that high Priest that abideth for ever at the right hand of God in the Heavenly Being Which phrase Heavenly Being alwaies signifies morally or mystically with him and means something within us And yet he has the impudence to alledge Acts 1. v. 11. where Christ is said to ascend into Heaven literally and naturally so called his disciples gazing upon him as he went up Thus you see how industriously nay how madly and rashly he shuffles out the Humane person of Christ from his Priestly Office every where And as he will have the Heaven or most Holy within us so will he have his Sacrifice and Passion within us too Introduct chap. 8.38 Where doe any now saith he keep the Supper of Christ where they break distribute and eat the bread which is the true Body of Christ to a remembrance of Christ that he hath suffered in us for the sins cause the death of the Cross and so his death is published till he come in his glory Where it is plain that the Crucifixion of Christ is a mystery in us and it is insinuated a duty too For the Body and the Flesh of Christ is Christ according to the History Which Christ according to the Flesh is to be slain in us if we celebrate the Passeover aright and thus we must publish his death till he come in glory that is in the Spirit 4. And truely no other is his glorious coming to judgment with this Sect then this Mystical and Spiritual coming which was the second part I intended to pursue which I question not but I shall make as clear as noon-day Of this there are so many Testimonies and so pregnant that the only fear is of being too copious in the proof of this matter Revel Dei cap. 7. There his illuminate Elders together with his Family of Love are the Heavens in which Christ the Son of God comes gloriously and triumphantly to judgment to reign with God and his righteousness everlasting upon earth Which plainly excludes the ending of the World and that coming of Christ that all Christians expect And chap. 15. sect 6. he affirms that in this Eighth day which is the day of the Spirit of Love all the dead that are deceased in the Lord Iesus Christ do rise from the death and all Generations of Heaven and Earth do become judged in the judgement of God with equity Again in his Introduct Chap. 1. he saith That now the true glorious God who is the Resurrection and the Life revealeth his Saints out of his bosome where since the time they fel asleep they have rested untill this day of the Love because they should now in these last times in the resurrection of the righteous be manifested with Christ in glory to a righteous judgement of God on the earth And chap. 12. he there also affirms That in this day of the Love there appear and come to us livingly and gloriously all God's Saints which in times past died and fell asleep in God And chap. 22. there he also tells us how that in sure and firm hope of everlasting life the upright believers have rested in the Lord Iesus Christ till the appearing of his coming which is now in this day of the Love revealed out of the heavenly Being with which Iesus Christ the former Believers of Christ who were fallen asleep rested or died in him are now also manifested in glory being raised from the dead to the intent that they should reign alive with him over all his enemies To which you may add what he has wrote chap. 16. in his Prophecy of the Spirit of Love Make you to flight make you to flight yea get you now all out of the way ye enemies of the Lord and of his service of the Love and give the Lord with his holy ones the roome yet shall ye not escape the vengeance of God For he saith the Lord cometh to judge betwixt the Family of the Love and the rest of the world where-through the Earth is now moved the Heavens troubled the Elements melt with heat and the token of the coming of the Son of man appears in Heaven with which rumour or rushing noise of the power of God and his holy ones the last trumpet doth also presently give forth her sound through whose blast of her vehement sound and through the appearing of the coming of Christ the dead shall stand up and arise unto the judgement of God who having revenged the bloud of his holy ones that the sinners have spilt and shed upon the earth he puts this pure Family in peaceable Possession thereof that they may reign there-over or judge the same with righteousness from henceforth world without
fruit of Godliness properly so called Nor can we applie our hearts seriously and sincerely to this kind of Godliness long but we shall find answers to our praiers and breathings after God beyond both our own expectation and the belief of others and therefore enjoying the victory through the Divine grace that is sufficient for us and getting so glorious a triumph over our lusts we finding our Souls transported with an high sense of thankfulness to our Redeemer and Benefactour who wants nothing of our retributions himself the stream of our affections is naturally driven downwards to his Church to the Saints that dwell upon earth and those that excell in vertue or at least pretend unfeigned endeavours after it And this is properly brotherly Kindness which carries our affections to those that profess the same Religion with our selves Which brotherly Kindness arises not only out of this consideration of thankfulness toward God but out of the very temper and condition of the Soul thus purified according to what S. Peter intimates that having purified our Souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit the end and result thereof is the loving our brethren Or else what serves this Purification for Shall Envy shall Hatred shall Lust shall Ambition shall Luxury shall those enormous desires and affections be cast out of the Soul by Sanctity and Purity that she may be but a transparent piece of ice or a spotless fleece of snow Shall she become so pure so pellucid so crystalline so devoid of all stains and tinctures of all soil and duller colours that nothing but still shadows and Night may possess that inward diaphanous Purity Then would she be no better then the nocturnall Air no happier then a statue of Alabaster All would be but a more cleanly sepulchre of a dead starved Soul But there is no fear of so poor an event upon so great preparations For Love and Desire are so essentiall to the Soul that she cannot put them off but change them She is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Psellus calls her an immaterial and incorporeal fire an unextinguishable activity and will catch at some Object or other And therefore if she has ceased to love the world and the Lusts of her own body she will certainly love the body of Christ the Church and study how to help them and advantage them Nor can she stop here but this pure and quick flame mounts upwards and is reflected again downwards and vibrates every way reaching at all Objects in Heaven and in Earth as natural fire enters all combustible matter And therefore in her pure and ardent speculations of the Godhead and his unlimited Goodness and also her observations of the capacity of the whole Creation of receiving good both from him and one another she overflowes those narrow bounds of brotherly Love and spreads out into that ineffably-ample and transcendently-divine grace and vertue universal Charity which is the highest accomplishment the Soul of man is capable of either in this life or that which is to come and thus at last she becomes perfect as her Father which is in Heaven is perfect 5. This is that most excellent way which S. Paul speaks so transportedly and triumphantly of 1 Cor. ch 13. Where having first numbred out the manifold Gifts that God bestowed upon his Church as Preaching Prophesying working of miracles gifts of healing and diversity of tongues he immediately breaks out in the rapturous commendations of Charity above all Though I speak with the tongues of men and of Angels and have not Charity I am become as a sounding brass and a tinckling cymball And though I have the gift of Prophecie and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have no Charity I am nothing And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned and have not Charity it profiteth me nothing And after he has raised our expectation and estimation of this Heavenly grace with these high words of his he does not as the vain Enthusiast does heat our phancies and leave our judgment in the dark but he does very distinctly and copiously describe to us the nature of this Divine vertue so that we may plainly know where to be and what to seek after and how to be satisfied whether we have attained to it or no. 6. Charity suffereth long and is kinde Charity envies not Charity vaunteth not it self is not puffed up doth not behave her self unseemly seeketh not her own is not easily provoked thinketh no evill complies not with iniquity but rejoiceth with the truth Beareth all things believeth all things hopeth all things endureth all things This is a very full and lively description of Love and Charity and the character of the sweetest and Heavenliest perfection that is communicable to the nature of man and so warmly poured out from the sincere heart of this rich possessour of it the holy Apostle that it is to me more moving then all the canting language of the highest fanatical Pretenders to the profession of this Mystery 7. This is the highest participation of Divinity that humane nature is capable of on this side that Mysterious conjunction of the Humanity of Christ with the Godhead and therefore this is that whereby we become the Sons of God as S. Iohn has evidently declared in his 1. Epistle general ch 4. Beloved let us love one another for Love is of God and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God He that loveth not knoweth not God for God is Love And vers 10. Herein is love not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be a propitiation for our sins Beloved if God so loved us we ought also to love one another No man hath seen God at any time If we love one another God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us And again vers 16. God is Love and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him Several other Testimonies there are of the high estimate the true Church of Christ has of this holy Vertue of Love but what I have already cited is sufficient to shew how urgent the Precepts of the Gospel are for this excellent branch of the Divine life which we call Charity as also how inexcusably injurious impious and blasphemous to Christ those fanatical Impostors are that revolt from the Church superannuate Christ's offices and antiquate the Christian Religion under a pretence of an higher dispensation and Revelation upon which they have set the Title or Superscription of Love adorning themselves with the Churches colours that by this evil stratagem they may the more safely fall upon her and destroy her at least seduce the most simple and many times the best-meaning members of the Church from their true Head Christ Jesus who ransom'd them with his own most precious bloud Whose Soveraignty over
this was in stead of all other Righteousness to him and that he was reputed as righteous all over now although he were not so at all in any other things 7. Now for Iustification we shall best understand the meaning of the word from the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 First therefore besides the forensal acception 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies to be just Gen. 38.26 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thamar is more righteous then I. So Eccles. 31.5 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He that loves gold will not be just Secondly it signifies to appear just Psa. 51.4 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is that thou maist plainly appear or approve thy self to be just And Psal. 143. â— For in thy sight no man living 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shall appear just Thirdly and lastly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies to make just and pure to free from vice and sinfulness Psalm 73. v. 13. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Therefore have I cleansed my heart in vain And Eccles. 18.22 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nec tuam probitatem usque ad mortem differas saies the Translation And Rom. 6.7 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He that is dead is freed from sin Also Act. 13.39 And by him all they that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the Law of Moses i. e. Ye are more throughly cleansed and purged from sin and wickedness then you could be ever under the Law of Moses Which is consonant to other passages in Scripture as That the Law makes nothing perfect and again If there had been a Law that could have given life then verily righteousness might have been of the Law And now we have found out a warrantable sense of these words we shall be able more expeditely to discover the sense of the foregoing places of Scripture alledged for this pernicious conceit of a Christians being righteous without any real Righteousness in him 8. Wherefore to that in the 4. to the Romans whose force will be the greater if we adde that also which is written a little before in the 3 chap. v. 28. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the Law and what he inferrs also vers 9. That Iews and Gentiles and all are under sin Wherein the meaning of the Apostle is to magnifie as was most fit the ministration of the Gospel and so he signifies to the world that whatsoever is discovered hitherto is imperfect lapsed and ruinous all but weak and sinful before the coming in of Christ even the works of the Law themselves and that smooth external Righteousness of mere Morality and Ceremony So that all the world are found guilty before God and by the deeds of the Law there shall be no flesh justified in his sight For by the Law is but the knowledge of sin vers 20. it gives no strength to perform Wherefore now reckoning nothing upon all these things we are as it were to begin the world again and to endeavour after such a Righteousness as is by Faith in Christ Jesus and not to rest in any thing that may be done by the ordinary power of the flesh but to aspire after that Righteousness which is communicable to us by that Spirit which raised Jesus Christ from the dead But neither Abraham nor any one else can be justified by any carnal righteousness of their own but that highly-spiritual act of Abraham reaching beyond the common rode of Nature who against hope believed in hope that was that which commended Abraham so much to God And thus from the Example of Abraham would the Apostle commend the Christian faith to the world and in particular to the Jews the Offspring of Abraham For at the end of the fourth chapter he makes this use of Abraham's faith being imputed to him for Righteousness that is reputed by God as a very excellent good act as it indeed was that we might also be brought off to believe on him that raised up â—esus our Lord from the dead who was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification In which verse are contained the two grand priviledges of the Gospel that is the forgiveness of sins upon the satisfaction of Christs death and the justifying of us that is the making of us just and holy through a sound faith in him that raised Jesus from the dead Which interpretation the 11 verse of the 8 Chapter doth sufficiently countenance But if the Spirit of him that raised up Iesus from the dead dwell in you he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortall bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you viz. to Righteousness as is plain out of the foregoing verse And if Christ be in you the body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of righteousnesse that is The body of death which we desire to be delivered from as the Apostle speaks appears by the presence of Christ in us to be thus deadly a body by reason of sin we feeling for the present nothing but an heavy indisposition to all holinesse and goodnesse in the body and its affections and all sinfulnesse and unclean Atheisticall suggestions from the flesh which is death to the Soul For to be carnally-minded is death So that by reason of the sinfulnesse of our body and the sad heavinesse thereof it appears as deadly and ghastly a thing to us as Mezentius his tying the living and the dead together when once Christ is in us but our Life is then that Righteousnesse which is of the Spirit we finding a comfortable warmth and pleasure in the gratefull arrivals of that holy and Divine sensation But he that raised Christ from the dead will in due time even quicken these our mortall bodies or these dead bodies of ours and make them conspire and come along with ease and chearfulnesse and be ready and active complying Instruments in all things with the Spirit of Righteousness Which belief is a chief Point in the Christian Faith and most of all parallel to that of Abraham's who believing in the Goodness and Power and Faithfulness of God had when both himself and his wife Sara were dry and dead as to natural generation and so hopeless of ever seeing any fruit of her womb who had I say Isaac born to him who bears Ioy and Laughter in the very Name of him and was undoubtedly a Type of Christ according to the Spirit For Isaac is the Wisedom Power and Righteousness of God flowing out and effectually branching it self so through all the Faculties both of mans Soul and Body that the whole man is carried away with joy and triumph to the acting all whatsoever is really and substantially good even with as much satisfaction and pleasure as he eats when he is hungry and drinks when he is dry And thus by our entrance and progress in so holy a
mean The evidence that we are to be inwardly and really righteous and not only so but in an extraordinary manner are the two Powers of the Gospel that comprehend our great and ultimate duty of being holy as he that has called us is holy of becoming perfect as our Father which is in Heaven is perfect The following Gospel-Powers all of them are aids and helps to this design The first whereof is The Promise of the Spirit through Christ's Intercession the second The Example of Christ the third The Meditation on his Passion the fourth on his Resurrection and Ascension and the last on the last Iudgement These Powers are of such admirable efficacy if rightly applied that they are able to pul down every strong hold and to cast out all evil imaginations and every high thing that exalts it self against the knowledge of God and to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ as the Apostle speaks No strength of habituated sin no violence of any lust shall be able to stand before them 3. The first of these Powers is The Promise of the Spirit I do not mean for the doing Miracles for that was but a transient business and accommodate only to the first Ages of the Church but for through-sanctification and cleansing us from all our sins and for our perfect growth in Righteousness and Holiness That this Power is a concomitant to the Dispensation of the Gospel in all true Believers is apparent both from the predictions of the Prophets and from the mouth of our Saviour and his blessed Apostles Esay 44. Hear now O Iacob my servant and Israel whom I have chosen Thus saith the Lord that made thee and framed thee from the womb and will help thee Fear not O Iacob my servant and thou Iesurun whom I have chosen For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty and floods upon the dry ground I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed and my blessing upon thy offspring And they shall spring up as among the grass and the willows by the water-courses Which Prophecie is most properly applicable to the Church of Christ who is the true seed of Iacob those wrastlers with God and strivers to get in at the narrow gate that leads to life they are the true Iesurun the upright of heart and sincere seekers after God those that truly hunger and thirst after righteousness and therefore God will satisfie them by the supernatural assistance of his blessed Spirit Again Ezekiel 36. ver 25. prefiguring the blessed dispensations of the Kingdome of Christ Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness and from all your Idols will I cleanse you A new heart also will I give you and a new Spirit will I put within you and I will take the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you an heart of flesh And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and ye shall keep my judgments and doe them Also Esay 41. v. 10. where certainly according to analogie of interpretations of Prophecie the seed of Abraham being a Type of the Spiritual Church of Christ and their warfare not carnal but spiritual nor the waters promised by Christ such liquors as run in Brooks and Rivers but emanations of the purifying and refreshing powers of the Spirit of God we may see with what close and faithfull assistance God is pleased to adhere to his true Israel in whom there is no guile but they are sincerely waging war and to the utmost resisting all the Temptations of the World the Flesh and the Devil But thou Israel my servant Iacob whom I have chosen the seed of Abraham my friend fear thou not for I am with thee be not dismaied for I am thy God I will strengthen thee yea I will help thee yea I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness Behold all they that were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded they shall be as nothing and they that strive with thee shall perish Thou shalt seek them and shalt not find them even them that contended with thee they that war against thee shall be as nothing and as a thing of nought For I the Lord thy God will hold thy right hand saying unto thee Fear not I will help thee Fear not thou worm Iacob and ye men of Israel behold I will make thee a new sharp threshing-instrument having teeth thou shalt thresh the mountains and beat them small and shalt make the hills as chaffe Thou shalt fan them and the wind shall carry them away and the whirlwind shall scatter them and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord and shalt glory in the holy One of Israel When the poor and needy seek water and there is none and their tongue faileth for thirst I the Lord will hear them I the God of Israel will not forsake them I will open rivers in high places and fountains in the midst of the vallies I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water This Prophecie is an exquisite description of those full and complete Victories the Church gets against Sin and Satan by the supernatural assistance of the Spirit of God Which Promise is again repeated in the following chapter which though it be larger then the former and part cited already to another purpose yet I cannot refrain from transcribing the whole it being so plain a Prophecie of Christ as appears from the fore-part thereof and of the power of his Kingdome through the Spirit for the vanquishing of all sin and wickedness in them that do truly believe Behold my servant whom I uphold mine elect in whom my soul delighteth I have put my spirit upon him he shall bring forth judgement to the Gentiles He shall not cry nor lift up nor cause his voice to be heard in the street A bruised reed shall he not break and smoaking flax shall he not quench he shall bring forth judgement unto truth He shall not fail nor be discouraged till he hath set judgement in the earth and the Isles shall wait for his Law Thus saith God the Lord he that created the Heavens and stretched them out he that spread forth the earth and that which cometh out of it he that giveth breath to the people upon it and spirit to those that dwell therein I the Lord have called thee in righteousness and will hold thine hand and will keep thee and give thee for a covenant of the people for a light of the Gentiles To open the blind eyes to bring out the prisoners from the prison and them that sit in darkness out of the prison-house I am the Lord that is my name and my glory will I not give to another neither my praise to graven images Behold the former things are come to pass and new things do I declare before they spring forth I
said Does this offend you What if you shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before That will be a very strange and stupendious spectacle to you and such as will assure you of my Divinity but withall remove my body so far from you that you cannot then if you would mistake so grosly as to think I speak of this body and bloud I carry now about with me It is the Spirit that quickneth the flesh profiteth nothing The words that I speak unto you they are Spirit and they are life that is to say They are touching the spiritual body which is the inmost Temple of the holy Ghost and which you are in some measure to partake of here and which shall have its compleat refinement when I shall crown you with the perfection of Life Eternal at the last day Or They are simply concerning the Spirit and that Life which I my self am according to my Divinity viz. The Eternal Word in whom is the Life and that Life is the light of men This is that which you are to feed on and to drink into your Souls when you have not my particular bodily presence with you For this Word and Spirit is every where to be taken in by them that breath and thirst after this Heavenly sustenance of their Souls and so is that fulfilled which he declares v. 56. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my bloud dwelleth in me and I in him For the eating of the flesh is in some measure partaking of the spiritual body and the drinking of the bloud the imbibing that life therewith that rayes out from the Eternal Word into all purged and purified hearts whereby Christ dwelleth in them and they in him and God in all 3. Again Iohn 7.37 In the last day that great day of the Feast Iesus stood and cryed saying If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink He that believes on me as the Scripture hath said out of his belly shall flow rivers of living waters Which he spake of the Spirit which they that believe on him should receive as the Text it self expounds it And therefore is a good ratification of the Mystical sense of those Prophecies we rehersed out of Esay But these things are spoken more plainly and without a Metaphor Ioh. 14.15 If ye love me keep my Commandements And I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter that he may abide with you for ever Even the Spirit of truth whom the World cannot receive because it seeth him not neither knoweth him but ye know him for he dwelleth with you and shall be in you Which Precept and Promise is like that of Esay chap. 58. which is that if we seriously compose our mindes to do due acts of obedience to God he will pour out his Spirit upon us Then shall thy light break forth like the morning and thy health shall spring forth speedily and thy righteousness shall go before thee the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward He shall guide thee continually and satisfie thy soul in drought and make fat thy bones and thou shalt be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters fail not That is as any spiritual Christian would be apt to interpret the place If thou thirst after Righteousnesse and in the mean time to thy utmost power do the outward functions thereof in thy duties to God and man at length this Spirit of truth will break forth like the morning light within thee and the emanations of the holy Ghost will so throughly refresh thee and strengthen thee that with ease and pleasure thou shalt walk in all the wayes of God which shall be like the flowry Alleys of a Paradise to thee both to thine inward and outward man 4. Not that our endeavours or desires are any obligation to God by way of merit on our part but it is his mercy to the Soul that does in good earnest pant after him For till he has compleated his work in us all our works are worth nothing and whenever they are worth any thing they are not ours but his And to this sense speaks Paul to Titus chap. 3. But after that the kindnesse and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared Not by works of righteousnesse which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the holy Ghost which he shed on us or poured out upon us as the Original has it abundantly through Iesus Christ our Saviour Like that of the Prophet Thou shalt be like a watered garden 5. Adde to these Ioh. 3.5 Iesus answered Verily verily I say unto thee Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he can in no wise enter into the kingdom of God That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit And Rom. 8.9 But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you Now if any man have not the Spirit of God he is none of his And vers 26. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities for we know not what we should pray for as we ought but the Spirit it self maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered And also 1 Cor. 3.16 Know ye not that ye are the Temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you And lastly Ephes. 3.14 For it were infinite to reckon up all places of Scripture that tend to this purpose For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ of whom the whole Family of Heaven and Earth is named That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthned with might by his spirit in the inward man That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith that ye being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all Saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height and to know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge that ye may be filled with all the fulness of God who is able to do abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us To him therefore be glory in the Church by Christ Iesus throughout all ages world without end Amen CHAP. X. 1. A Recapitulation of what has been set down hitherto concerning the Usefulnesse of the Gospel and the Necessity of undeceiving the world in those points that so nearly concern Christian Life 2. The ill condition of those that content themselves with Imaginary Righteousnesse figured out in the Fighters against Ariel and Mount Sion 3. A further demonstration of their fond conceit 4. That a true Christian cannot sin without pain and torture to himself 1. VVE have now abundantly proved out of places of Scripture The necessity of inward Sanctification and reall in-dwelling Righteousness
of God Be not deceived neither Fornicatours nor Idolaters nor Adulterers nor Effeminate nor Abusers of themselves with mankind nor Thieves nor Covetous nor Drunkards nor Revilers nor Extortioners shall inherit the kingdome of God And Hebr. 12.14 Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. And thus we see that all the Happiness of man and his real good is utterly subverted and destroyed by this mischievous imagination of being righteous otherwise then by true and living Righteousness 10. And it is as plain that this imposture will rob God of his Glory as well as defeat man of his Happiness For whether we understand by the Glory of God the Image of God communicable to men as the Image that is the light of the Sun is the glory of the Sun or whether we understand the acknowledgment of that Excellency and Perfection that is in God first deeply conceived in our hearts and then fully and freely professed by our mouths both these are assuredly taken away by this false conceit And of the former there is no doubt being that the Spirit of Righteousness is that very Glory of God or Image of Christ. Wherefore whatever does intercept this does really eclipse the Glory of God And it is as true also of the other For seeing that the most rich and precious Excellencies of the Divine Nature cannot be discovered by the Soul as they ought to be but by becoming Divine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If thou beest it thou seest it as Plotinus speaks it must needs be that they cannot be worthily admired and extolled by any Soul but such as is Divine that is such a Soul as God has poured the Spirit of Righteousness and true Holiness on without which it is impossible to see God To all which Particulars that concern every private man you may add that great summe of an incomputable damage that respects the Publick For what Peace or Faithfulness can there be amongst men where the professed Mysterie of their Religion is the Explosion of real Righteousness Or what can possibly take place in stead thereof but Fraud and Falshood foul Lusts phrantick Factions rude Tumults and bloudy Rebellions To which you may cast in the loss of our very hopes that the World should ever grow better or that the holy Promises of God should take effect For there is not a more cruel or butcherly weapon for the slaying of the Witnesses nor a more impregnable Fort against the approaching Kingdome of Christ and that millennial Happiness which many good and faithfull Christians expect then this hell-hatch'd doctrine of Antinomianisme CHAP. XII 1. Of the attending to the Light within us of which some Spiritualists so much boast 2. That they must mean the Light of Reason and Conscience thereby if they be not Fanaticks Mad-men or Cheats And that this Conscience necessarily takes information from without 3. And particularly from the Holy Scriptures 4. That these Spiritualists acknowledge the fondness of their opinion by their contrary practice 5. An appeal to the Light within them if the Christian Religion according to the literal sense be not true 6. That the Operation of the Divine Spirit is not absolute but restrained to certain laws and conditions as it is in the Spirit of Nature 7. The fourth Gospel-Power The Example of Christ. 8. His purpose of vindicating the Example of Christ from aspersions with the reasons thereof 1. WE have now gone through the Three first Powers of the Gospel of which Three the last namely The Promise of the Spirit may seem so sufficient of it self to some without any thing further and I am sure does so to others that professedly they take up here and exclude or at least neglect all that advantage that accrues from the History of Christ and hereby do antiquate the Christian Religion These are those great Spiritualists that talk so much of The Light within them and the Power within them and boast that they want nothing without to be their Guide and Support but that they can goe of themselves without any external help For keeping to the Light within them the Power of God and the Spirit of God will assist them and will lead them into all truth And truly I cannot but say Amen to what they declare For I know assuredly that it is most true if they would leave off their canting language and say in down-right terms That keeping sincerely to the dictates of Reason and Conscience and the perpetually denying themselves in such things as they know or suspect to be evil with devout addresses to the Throne of Grace for the assistance and illumination of the Holy Spirit to discover and overcome all Errour Falseness Pride and Hypocrisie that may lurk in their hearts I say I am well assured that this Dispensation faithfully kept to will in due time lead unto all Saving Truth and that such a one at the last cannot fail to become a Christian in the soundest and the fullest sense such as firmly adhered to Christ in the first and most unspotted Ages of the Church But if they will call any hot wild Imagination or forcible and unaccountable Suggestion the Light within them and follow that this is not to keep to Reason and Conscience but to be delivered up to a reprobate sense and to expose a mans self to all the temptations that either the Devil or a mans own Lust or a sordid Melancholy can entangle him in 2. Wherefore by the Light within them they must understand an accountable and rational Conscience within them unless they be perfect Fanaticks or Mad-men or what is worse mere Impostors and Cheats who would pretend to a Conscience but yet irrational and unaccountable to any one and hereby have the liberty of doing what they please being given up at length to nothing but Fury and Lust. And then lastly This Conscience within them is not a thing so absolutely within them that it can take no information from what is without For it is manifest that this Lamp of God that burneth in us is fed and nourished from external Objects For the invisible things of him from the Creation of the World are clearly seen being understood by things that are made for by these from without are we advertised of his Eternal power and Godhead And as we are thus taught by the outward Book of Nature concerning the Existence of God and his general Providence in the world as to the necessities of life both of Men and Beasts so may we also by external VVritings or Records be more fully informed of a more special Providence of his to the Sons of men concerning the State in the other world and of that Eternal life manifested by Christ. But I grant that it is still this Light within us that judges and concludes after the perusal of either the Volumes of Nature or of Divine Revelation 3. But as he that gives his Mind to Mathematicks Architecture Husbandry
in it but what they themselves have bestowed upon it For every Substance is of it self an Individual Substance and Universals but a Logical notion arising from our comparing of Substances of like nature together Neither is there any Substance but by due preparatory modifications may be capable of being united with some other Individual Substance and these Two Individual Substances become One whole Substance Which yet are not so One as that they cease to be Two Numerical Substances because they arâ—â—o otherwise said to be One I am sure are no otherwise One then by the apt Union of one with another Which yet hinders not but that they are still and if they are they are Two namely my Soul and Body are still this Individual Soul and this Individual Body though they be as they term it Hypostatically united For it onely implies conjunction not confusion of Substances nor any losse of the Individuality of the Substances thus conjoined For there is no Substance conjoinable with another but remains this Individual Substance even for that very reason because it is a Substance every Substance being of it self Individual as I have already said and yet conjoinable with another Substance whence it is plain that the Scholastick notion of Suppositum is a mere foolery 6. Out of which we may easily understand how that the Humanity of Christ and the Eternal Word may be Hypostatically united without any contradiction to humane Reason unsophisticated with the fopperies of the Schools and both their Hypostases remain still entire Of which I will exhibite this as a more sensible representation Suppose a vast Globe made all of solid Gold saving one very small section which we will suppose of Silver This individual Gold and this individual Silver remaining still this individual Gold and Silver make up one entire Globe which is not an entire Globe without either So in Christ made up as I may so speak of the Second Hypostasis of the Trinity and of that humane Person that conversed at Jerusalem He is that individual Silver and the other that individual Gold and both these together One Christ the sphere of whose Divinity filling all things and being every where at hand cannot but be a warrantable Object of our Praiers and Invocations as the passive Humanity of Christ the prop of our Faith and confidence by his bitter Passion and Intercession 7. What Superstition therefore can there be or least suspicion of Idolatry when we pray unto Christ if we do but think of him to whom we pray For the Eternal Godhead does so outshine every thing in this Object of Devotion that our minde is in a manner wholly transported into God though with a due reflexion of honour upon the Person of our Saviour in virtue of whose Death and Intercession we make our addresses Which Truth might also passe with the Jew without any scruple at all if he do but call to minde with what devout Humility their fore-fathers have adored the presence of Angels To whom in their Law Iehovah the most holy name of God is also attributed And if an Angel that sustains the Person of God onely by way of Embassy has this divine honour how much more then is due to Christ who is Iehovah not onely by Title and external Function but by real Union with the Eternal Son of God Which the Platonists in their Triad also call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the same in Greek that Iehovah is in Hebrew 8. Or if they could imagine that there was so extraordinary a kind of Union of these Angels with God where so high a name is attributed to them as being in such an universalizing Rapture that they had lost the sense of their own Personalities and were wholly actuated by God who used them as fully and commandingly as our Soul does our Bodies yet this may fall short in a two-fold respect of that Union which is betwixt the Humanity of Christ the Eternal Word For first it may not be of the same kinde but differs as much it may be as the union of a Spirit with a dead Corps does from the union of the Soul of Man in an healthful body Or if it could be admitted that there was some Principle excited and awaked or some way inserted into the Essence of an Angel whereby he might have real and vital union with God yet it being but temporary it is not to be compared with this lasting and durable union in the Messias Nor does the visible presence of the Angel warrant Divine worship more to him then to Christ. For Christ according to his higher and more adorable nature is every where present 9. I conclude therefore that the Divinity of Christ is not at all repugnant to Reason I mean his Real and Physical union as I may so call it with the Eternal Word For being that it was this VVord or Eternal VVisdome whereby God made all things it is very decorous and congruous that that great Instrument of the restoring so choice a piece of his Creation as Man is should be united particularly to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Eternal VVord Nor is it unconceivable how he may be united particularly and immediately to this Hypostasis and not the other two from what we observe in Nature For even the Faculties of the Soul residing in the same part of the Soul according as the part of the Body is tempered or modified one Faculty may exert it self in the part and another be silent and take no hold thereon And further it is evident that though the Holy Spirit of God and the Spirit of Nature be every where present in the World and lie in the very same points of space yet their actions applications or engagings with things are very distinct For the Spirit of Nature takes hold only of Matter remanding grosse bodies towards the centre of the Earth shaping Vegetables into all that various beauty we finde in them but does not act at all on our Souls or Spirits with divine illumination no more then the Holy Spirit meddles with remanding of Stones downwards or tumbling broken tiles off from an house Which things rightly considered and improved make this Mystery intelligible enough for those that are fit for such Speculations So that I need adde nothing more having already proceeded further then I intended in zeal against the fraud of some and indiscretion of others who so confidently maintain That some main Points in Christian Religion are not onely obscure which I willingly acknowledge and that thereby our Religion is the more Venerable but also repugnant to Reason which I utterly deny and shall in its due place shew the sad inconvenience of so rash an Assertion CHAP. III. 1. That the Communicableness of Christian Religion implies its Reasonableness 2. The right Method of communicating the Christian Mystery 3 4. A brief example of that Method 5. A further continuation thereof 6. How the Mystagogus is to behave himself towards
be not to act according to it and to act contrary thereto intolerable For it were the wounding and tormenting a principle of life in us or the Spirit of Christ in us whereby we are not only aided and assisted to every good work but take a natural delight therein whereas under the Mosaical law we have no conformity of Spirit to either the purer Moral precepts or any complacency in the luggage of a company of insipid and burdensome Ceremonies and yet the Mosaical Dispensation though it give no strength to perform what it requires yet like Pharaoh's hard task-masters requires the same tale of brick though they withhold the straw 6. And this gives us some light into the nature of the Two Covenants in reference to the Prophecie of Ieremie But it being an argument of very great consideration I will not content my self with so scant an account thereof but make a more copious deduction of the whole matter out of Paul Gal. 4. that we may the more fully understand so important a Mystery and when I have from thence discovered the excellency of the state of the Second Covenant I shall adde such things as tend to the more useful knowledge of the entrance into it and advance in it CHAP. VII 1. The different states of the Two Covenants set out Galat. 4. by a double similitude 2. The nature of the Old Covenant adumbrated in Agar 3. As also further in her Son Ismael 4. The nature of the New Covenant adumbrated in Sarah 5. As also in Isaac her Son and in Israel his offspring 6. The necessity of imitating Abraham's faith that the Spiritual Isaac or Christ may be born in us 7. The grand difference betwixt the First and Second Covenant wherein it doth consist With a direction by the by to the most eminent Object of our Faith 8. The Second main point wherein this difference consists namely Liberty and that First from Ceremonies and Opinions 9. Secondly from all kind of Sins and disallowable Passions 10. Lastly to all manner of Righteousness and Holiness 1. TEll me ye that desire to be under the Law do ye not hear the Law For it is written that Abraham had two Sons the one by a bond-maid and the other by a free-woman But he who was of the bond-woman was born after the flesh but he of the free-woman was by promise Which things are an Allegorie for these are the Two Covenants the one from the Mount Sinai which gendereth to bondage which is Agar For this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and answereth to Ierusalem which now is and is in bondage with her children But Ierusalem which is above is free which is the Mother of us all Here the story of Agar and Sarah Ismael and Isaac is made to set out and that very appositely and lively the two different conditions of those that are under the Law and those that are under the Gospel that thereby the advantage and excellency of one above the other being laid open before the eyes of the Galatians they might not hereafter be any more in a tottering and fluctuating condition or sophisticate and adulterate the precious purity of the Gospel with Iudaical superfluities and useless if not now hurtfull Ceremonies but stick fast to Christ alone not going back from him to Moses nor yet mingling Mosaical Rites and Ceremonies with the plainness and sincerity of Christ. In the words we have recited there is a double Similitude We will in each first lay out the particulars of the Protases and then pass on to the Apodoses The particulars of the First are Agar Abraham's bond-woman Ismael the Son of the bond-woman and the manner of the birth of this Son of the bond-woman he was born after the flesh that is according to the ordinary course of Nature Now in the Apodosis Ierusalem that now is that is the Church of the Jews answers to Agar Abraham's bond-woman and those of that Church to Ismael the Son of the bond-woman and to the being born after the flesh the being born out of the outward letter of the Law The particulars in the Second Protasis are Sarah the free-woman and Isaac the Son of Abraham which he had of this free-woman and lastly the manner of his birth it was not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it was not after the ordinary course of Nature but the extraordinary power of God signified in his promise And now in the Apodosis Ierusalem that is from above that is the Church of true Christians answers to Sarah the Free-woman and those of that Church to Isaac the Son of the Free-woman and their being born of the Spirit not of the letter to the being born by promise not according to the flesh And now if we compare the particulars of these two Protases one with another in their due order we shall find a main difference or rather contrariety For Agar and Sarah differ as Bondage and Freedome and Ismael and Isaac as bond and free and the condition of their births as Nature and God And consequently there must arise a real difference or contrariety in the particulars of the Apodoses viz. betwixt the Old terrestrial Ierusalem and the New one from above betwixt the Jew Pharisee or outward Legalist and the true and real Christian and lastly betwixt the Flesh and the Spirit And so to speak compendiously this Text of the Apostle is nothing else but a description of the different conditions of the Two Covenants set out in an historical Allegorie taken from Agar and Sarah and their two Sons c. I shall therefore now fall upon them in that order as I have laid them out 2. And First therefore of Agar the bond-woman which signifies the Covenant of the Law given upon Mount Sinai For this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia Which is spoken Synecdochically from a Town there called Agra by Plinie and by Dion Agara and the people 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Greek Geographers as Grotius has pertinently observed This allusion therefore to Agar on Mount Sinai where the Law was given does commend to us more handsomely and facilitate the Allegory taken from the story of Agar and Sarah But if there were not this Geographical advantage the Application will be found very sutable and apposite even without it And much of the nature of the Old and New Covenant is hinted at even in the names themselves as in this of Agar which they ordinarily interpret Peregrina What the relation of habitude is betwixt the Soul of man and the things of the Old Covenant is very fitly set down in the meaning of this Name Agar For verily as for those things that were Positive and Ceremonial in the Law of Moses they are but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 things strange and of no affinity with the Soul and as for those things that are most precious and most indispensably good in the Law of Moses the Soul in
no better a dispensation then under the Law is plainly a Stranger to them For the Law conveies no life but all congruity sympathy and vital affinity must arise out of a Principle of life And hence it is that the Law makes nothing perfect and that Righteousness cannot be of the Law as I have above intimated out of the Apostle The Law therefore giving no life a mere Legalist is even a stranger to those things he practices and imitates under the Law and acts so as the Parot speaks by external imitation not from a due inward Faculty Secondly This Agar her condition was a bond-woman and what I pray you is it to be in bondage or not sui juris but to be constrained to act ad nutum alterius And in this condition are all those that are under the Law For they do not act according to a free inward and living Principle in them but are fain to be curb'd and fettered by an outward imposition which is perfect and proper bondage And there is no bondage but to doe or suffer otherwise then a man would himself 3. Thirdly Of this Agar is begot Ismael What 's that Ismael may signifie these two things viz. either one that has only a knowledge of God by hearsay from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 audire and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Deus or so far as some external letter conveies it to him resolving all his faith in things concerning God into an outward Scripture only and haply is so earthly and carnal that he would scarce believe there were a God unless it were for the Scripture Or else from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 obedire from obeying God in a servile and external forc'd way For Obedience implies some kind of reluctancy or that that which we obey in goes something against the hair with us but yet in obedience to the Commander we doe it nevertheless as being bound to obey And this is most of all proper to them under the first Covenant For that Law not giving life there is no Principle of life and natural and genuine compliance of the Soul of man with the spirituality of the Law under the First Covenant and therefore that of the Law which he endeavours to perform must needs go cross to him and it will be merely the obedience to the Precept not the love of the thing that will make him endeavour the performance And this is the true condition of Agar's Son Ismael And it would not be unseasonable to add also that he is a great and fierce Disputer upon the letter a notable Polemical Divine and his ignorance and untamedness of his carnal heart makes him very bold and troublesome his hand is against every man and every mans hand against him as the Scripture witnesses of him But I will not insist upon these things Fourthly and lastly This Ismael the Son of Agar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was begotten and born after the flesh or according to the ordinary and accustomary power of Nature And such an one is he that is merely under the First Covenant He is not born of the Spirit or regenerated 〈…〉 nary power and assistance of God which he that is un 〈…〉 Covenant takes hold of by Faith in the Promise but toiles and tugs with that Understanding and ordinary Naturall power is in him of externally conforming himself to the proposed Rule and under this poor dispensation when he is come to the best of this his either birth or growth he is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is but Flesh and not Spirit For that which is born of the Flesh that is of our own natural abilities is but Flesh but that which is born of the Spirit that is of God and his Divine seed in us that is Spirit the true Spiritual man the Lord from Heaven Heavenly in a Mystical sense But this under the Law is but the Son of the Flesh or the Earth is not a Son of that Ierusalem that is from above the Heavenly Ierusalem which is the Mother of as many as are real and true Christians For this is Sarah the Free-woman but the old Ierusalem is in bondage with her Children as the Apostle plainly tells us 4. And thus far have I described the condition or nature of the Old Mosaical Covenant so far forth as is intimated in the Text. I proceed now to the Second or New Covenant under Christ. And the first Particular in the Protasis here is Sarah Domina a Free-woman libera à vitiis ac ritibus as the Interpreter speaks very well one that is not commanded into obedience by others but is sui juris does what she pleases and so she may very well for nothing pleases her but what is good and therefore fit to be done For Sarah or the New Ierusalem from above is of one Spirit and one mind with Christ. And this is the true Church of Christians in whom the body of sin being dead they are free from it as the Apostle speaks to the Romans being quit thereof they walk freely and safely etiam custode remoto that surly Paedagogue the Law no longer dogging them at the heels For whatever it can suggest from without the Spirit of God whispers to them from within or indeed that living Form of all holinesse and righteousnesse the Image of Christ recovered in them guides them as easily and as naturally to as our external Senses guide our Natural man in this outward and visible world This therefore is the condition of the Church of Christ and every true member of it at least arrived to its due maturity and perfection that every Soul there is as Sarah Domina as a Queen Regent in her little world her self acting nothing forcedly but freely as from a living principle and keeping those under her in due order and subjection Which condition undoubtedly the Scripture does point at in such phrases as these He hath made us Kings and Priests and elsewhere You are a Kingly Priesthood and the like 5. Secondly Of this Sarah was born Isaac which signifies Laughter and is a signe of Chearfulness and Ioy. Because he that is a true Christian acts and walks with joy and chearfulnesse in the waies of holinesse and righteousnesse And herein is he mainly distinguished from Ismael who acts merely out of obedience to an external form and so forces himself against the hair to do or omit that which were it not that he was bound in obedience to do or omit he would take the boldnesse to neglect his inward principle being contrary to it As for example he would revenge did not the Law forbid him he would immerse himself into all manner of Sensual pleasures were he not aw'd as an hungry dog by the lash and penalty of the Law and so in other things But the Soul of a true Christian in whom Isaac is born does not act what is good or omit what is evil out of any force or fear of
any external inconvenience but naturally as I may so speak that is from a Divine nature and power in him and therefore with as much chearfulnesse and willingnesse as the natural man does eat and drink And of this Isaac was born Iacob who was called Israel which Philo the Jew interprets one that sees God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but you may be remembred that Ismael in the first signification of his name noted one that did onely know God by hear-say which is quite contrary to the seeing of God For that priviledge is proper to the true Christian to whom Isaac is born and from him Israel but he is quite out of the line of Ismael having now nothing to do with hear-saies and conjectures and fruitlesse disputacity upon the mistaken letter and Polemical Divinity and vain and ridiculous altercations and janglings for he is now a Citizen of that New Ierusalem from above and the onely true Ierusalem according to the notation of the name which they will have to signifie The vision of Peace He is a living stone of the Temple of Him that is greater then Solomon where there is not heard the noise of any axe or hammer Thirdly and lastly This Isaac was not born according to the flesh but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Per eam vim extraordinariam quam Deus promiserat for it is a Metonymy as the Interpreter rightly has noted Isaac was not born according to the power of Nature for that Natural power of begetting and bearing Children was then extinct in Abraham and Sarah by reason of old age as the Text tells us but he was born by the power of God working extraordinarily in Nature which power Abraham having a faith in and believing the promise he at the appointed time saw and enjoied the effect of it And this is the precious Christian Faith so mainly necessary and yet so little spoken of by them that spake much in matters of Divinity For without this Faith in the power of God Isaac will not be born in us and if he be not born in us I know no warrant we have to conclude our selves Christians or men under the Second Covenant Wherefore it is a point mainly necessary to be insisted upon that we may at length be really that which we pretend to be that is Sons of the Free-woman and not of the Bond-woman that the true Isaac may be in us which is Christ according to the Spirit the Wisdome and Power of God a Divine vigor and life whereby we are inabled with joy and chearfulnesse to walk in the waies of God 6. And verily it was this so necessary and useful Faith that was so commended in Abraham that it was imputed to him for righteousnesse as I have above noted viz. his believing the Promise of God in things above the ordinary power of Nature For it is the nature of men that make large professions of God and Divine Providence yet never to believe him further then in Natural Causes and humane probabilities But this is not so much to believe God as Nature nor to depend on him but on our own cold and ineffectual Reason concluding from accustomary probabilities Which if Abraham had done it might well have forfeited the birth of his Son Isaac And it will be very reasonable to examine our selves if we do not now hinder the birth of the spiritual Isaac by reason of our unbelief For we finding the generality of men so evil as they are and being conscious to our selves of abundance of corruption and all manner of weaknesse and proclivity to what is bad and finding it so common a thing for men to continue in their evil wayes and not to put off their wonted habits and that in our own attempts and resolutions we have been often baffled and cast back again we are likely through a spirit of Infidelity to conclude that that which is so hard to flesh and bloud and is so seldome seen in the course of the World will not be at all effected in us and therefore either live as it happens or at least make very small progresse in matters of true Religion and Piety I am sure fall short of that high calling whereunto we are called viz. that glorious liberty of the Sons of God from the slavish inveiglements of all uselesse Ceremonies and real sins And this is for want of Abraham's Faith who believed contrary to all probability of Nature that for all his decaied body and Sarah's barren womb yet God would raise up seed to him and that they should have a Son in their old age We are therefore to imitate Abraham the Father of the faithful and what we finde our selves weak in not to distrust but that God in his good time can make it out to us and therefore with patience and perseverance to presse forward and by Faith in the power of God who raised Christ from the dead to expect that after we have been made conformable to his death we shall also partake of the Resurrection from the dead For Christ in our Souls wading through the death with us that is supporting and strengthening us in our greatest Agonies brings up himself and us into a glorious Resurrection from the dead which you may call a Birth if you please as well as a Resurrection using but the same liberty that is already in the Scripture where speaking of his Resurrection the Apostle cites that in the second Psalm Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee And this is the Son who as he professes of himself if he make us free we are then free indeed For he is the Son of Sarah the Free-woman and we being of one Spirit with him do ipso facto become free 7. And if we would compendiously declare the grand difference betwixt the First and Second Covenant it does consist mainly in these two points we are upon First That a true Christian or one attained to the End and Scope of the Second Covenant is what he is by Faith in a supernatural power working him to it Secondly That that condition he has attained to is a condition of true and perfect Freedome properly so called But he that is under the First Covenant is what he is by the power of Nature onely and by applying himself as well as he can to the external Rule he has set before him And verily he that does no more then thus in Christianity it self that is outwardly apply himself to the Letter of the Gospel has not arrived to the End of the Gospel nor is Isaac yet born in him but is under an outward legal Form in stead of the Law of the Spirit of Life And he cannot be born of the Free-woman forasmuch as the Law of the Spirit of Life is wanting in him which does really free us from the Law of Sin and Death But now by reason that a true Christian arrives to that happy condition he is in by a Supernatural power
Libertinism as you may see more at large in that Chapter 5. Wherefore it appears out of what already has been said That there are Terms to be performed on out part in this New Covenant as well as there are Promises on God's part and that Christianity is no such loose remiss and inert Religion as some Deceivers would make it which we shall make still more plain from several other testimonies of Scripture Matth. 11. The Kingdome of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force Whence is plainly intimated that no lazy or careless endeavours will carry us on to the enjoiment of the Promises of the Covenant As elsewhere He that laies his hand to the plough and looks back is not fit for the Kingdome of God And Luke 13.24 Strive to enter in at the streight gate For I say unto you many shall seek to enter in and shall not be able Because streight is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life but wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and many there be that goe in thereat As it is in the parallel place of S. Matthew Which plain places of Scripture one would think should awake those filthy dreamers out of their mischievous conceits opinions whereby they would make us believe the Evangelical dispensation is so soft and delicate a thing that there is no laying of the hand to the plough no crouding or striving but that we shall be carried to heaven on that easie featherbed of unactive Faith or fanatick Libertinism Whenas the Evangelical Oracles tell us that we are to work out our Salvation with fear and trembling that we are to run and to wrastle to fight and to resist even unto bloud 1 Cor. 9.24 Know ye not that they that run in a race run all but one receiveth the prize So run that ye may obtain And every one that strives for the victory is temperate in all things Now they doe it to obtain a corruptible crown but we an incorruptible I therefore so run not as uncertainly so fight I not as one that beateth the air But I keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest by any means when I have preached to others I my self should become a cast-away And yet S. Paul was as chosen a vessel as the choicest of these pieces that befool themselves so with self-flattery that they think they have found an easier way to Salvation then Paul himself knew that think they shall get the victory and the crown by not fighting against their own corruptions but by beating the Air with knackish forms of gracious speeches and vain grandiloquence that tends to nothing but the masking of their own Hypocrisie and unfaithfulness in the Covenant and to the seduction and ruine of others 6. But S. Paul however they would abuse some passages in him to the favouring of their ill cause is an utter disclaimer of such false doctrine and does yet more expresly tell us That the promises of the Gospel are conditional This is a faithfull saying saith he to Timothy 2 Epist. chap. 2. If we be dead with him we shall also live with him if we suffer we shall also reign with him if we deny him he will also deny us If we deal unfaithfully in the Covenant yet he is faithful and cannot deny himself He will stand to his Covenant in all the intents and purposes thereof whether to punishment or reward And Rom. 8. There is therefore now no condemnation to those that are in Christ Iesus but their qualification presently follows that walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit and ver 8. They that are in the flesh cannot please God But ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit if so be the Spirit of God dwell in you and if this Spirit be in you the body is dead unto sin And again If ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if through the Spirit ye mortifie the deeds of the body ye shall live And ver 16. The Spirit it self bears witness with our spirits that we are the Children of God And if Children then Heirs heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ if so be we suffer with him that we may also glorified with him Which plainly implies that the Inheritance of Heaven or Kingdome of glory is a conditional Kingdome or Inheritance And not to speak of Kingdoms we shall not so much as have remission of sins but upon condition Matth. 6.14 15. For if ye forgive men their trespasses your Heavenly Father will also forgive you But if you forgive not men their trespasses neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses What can be more evident then this CHAP. IX 1. What it is really to enter into this New Covenant 2. That the entring into this Covenant supposes actual Repentance 3. That this New Covenanter is born of water and the Spirit 4. The necessity of the skilfull usage of these new-born Babes in Christ. 5. That some Teachers are mere Witches and Childe-Suckers 1. WE have therefore undeniably demonstrated That this New Gospel-Covenant is a conditional Covenant and but that Hypocrisie and Impietie has made mens souls so degenerate that Sense and Non-sense is alike to them they would from the very sound and signification of the word perceive that there are mutual Terms and Conditions implied or else it could be no Covenant This therefore being premised we shall the better understand what is that due affection and qualification of mind that is required of him that would enter into this Covenant or what it is whereby he has really entred into it For it is not a mere Historical Faith or Belief of those things that are in the New Testament and an acknowledgment that they all tend to the peace and salvation of man and that he is obliged to live up to the utmost of his power to those holy Precepts that are there conteined but further there is a love and liking of the said Precepts as well as a desire of the enjoiment of the promise of Eternal life and a sincere resolution of endeavoring to live as near as he can according to those Evangelical Rules and a chearfull expectation of Divine assistance that God will enable him by the cooperation of his Holy Spirit to make such due progresses in life and Godliness as shall become an unfeigned professour of Faith in Christ Jesus 2. He that upon the perusal of the Records of the Gospel as they are found in the New Testament or by what other way soever the substance thereof is communicated to him and so upon information of his errours and mistakes whether in opinion or practice is thus affected as we have declared it is manifest that he has already repented him of his sins and errours and is in a real mislike of his former Conversation so far forth as it was unconformable to the mind of Christ. So that the state
shun the breath of such a Seducer as of one that is infected with the pestilence and whose converse is death and the eternal ruin of our very Souls 2. The Second Principle that he is closely to keep to is That I had almost said Omnipotent Faith in God through Christ I mean the belief of the assistance of his holy Spirit to overcome all manner of sin in us For if we keep up duely to this nothing will be able to withstand us but by patience and perseverance we shall be able to beat out Satan out of his strongest holds According to thy faith so be it unto thee is true as well in Christs healing our Souls as in his curing the bodies of the sick when he was upon earth This is a prime branch of that saving Faith and the greatest strength and sustentation we have to keep us from sinking back into sin and from being drown'd and carried away with the flouds of ungodliness If we let this hold go all is gone For they that doe not believe that they have power to resist sin must of necessity give up themselves captives to it And this is that which makes S. Paul so affectionately devout in the behalf of the Ephesians that God would be pleased to give them this special gift of Faith for their strength and corroboration of the inward man chap. 3. For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ That he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man That Christ may dwell in your hearts by Faith that ye being rooted and grounded in love c. according as I have elswhere rehearsed And in the Doxologie immediately following this prayer of what unconceivable efficacy the operations of the Spirit are in us the Apostle again does intimate in a very high strain Now unto him that is able to doe exceeding abundantly above what we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us unto him be glory in the Church by Christ Iesus throughout all ages world without end Which words plainly imply that such is the inexhaustible richness of Grace and Assistance from the Spirit of God that the effect of its inward workings in us is for the present not imaginable much less expressible Wherefore our Faith cannot be too great in this supernatural Principle and the greater it is the greater courage and the more speedy and more absolute victory 3. And yet there is still another Principle that will further actuate our Faith and make us still more lively resolute and invincible and that is The Love of Christ which every young Christian is to warme himself with and inflame his courage more and more which he will best do by frequent Meditations upon Christs Passion what shame what sorrow and pain he underwent to gain the love of Souls and so to try them to himself in those sweet and inviolable bands of sincere love and friendship that by this golden chain he may pull them up after him from Earth to Heaven Let therefore our new-Covenanter as often as he reflects upon the exceeding great love of his Saviour and finds his heart begin to grow hot being touch'd with a ray from that celestial Flame that bright Sun of righteousness that now shines at the right hand of God let him be sure to remember what compensation he requires for all that dear affection he has shewn to us The lesson is but short and therefore must not be forgotten If you love me keep my Commandements CHAP. XI 1. The diligent search this new-Covenanter ought to make to finde out whatsoever is corrupt and sinful 2. That the truly regenerate cannot be quiet till all corruption be wrought out 3. The most importunate devotions of a living Christian. 4. The difference betwixt a Son of the Second Covenant and a Slave under the First 5. The Mystical completion of a Prophecy of Esay touching this state 1. THE young Christian being thus armed with Faith and Love and an unwavering sense of his duty in becoming holy even as he that called him is holy he will be then both willing and ready to look his enemies in the face and to seek them out if he cannot at first sight finde them and to pull them out of every hiding-place of Hypocrisy and bring them into the open light and slay them And if after diligent search he can finde none yet he will be so modest as to distrust the measure of his skill and will be earnest in Prayer to God to discover what inward hidden wickedness there may lurk yet in him to the end that the old Leven may be utterly cast out and that there may be nothing left that is contrary to the Scepter of Christ and the Kingdome of God in his heart 2. For indeed it is impossible that one is truely regenerate and has the seed of God and the life of his Spirit actually in him should be quiet till all that which is unholy and corrupt be wrought out But the case is much-what as in the natural body that is sick either death or health will in a competent time possess the body If the morbifick matter be not carried away by sweating purging or some evacuation or other Life it self will be carried away but if that which is contrary to life be remov'd Health must certainly take place 3. And so it is in the Divine life it self when it has taken root and growth whatever is contrary to it is burdensome to it like that tyrannick project of tying the living and the dead together Wherefore the true Christian can never be at ease and rest till he has cast off that heavy load the body of sin the old man that stinks earthily and unsavourly if he be perceived at all and indeed so unsufferably that the divine life and sense in a man cannot endure it Nor can endure to be in a condition so sensless that there should be any of that â—our Leven left and yet there be no perception of it And therefore the most importunate address to the throne of Grace in a living Christian is that God would be pleased to discover whatever ugliness or deformity there is in him in either practise or principle Which God of his mercy does by degrees not all at once that there may not arise overmuch distraction and confusion But if we be not wanting to our selves the work will be accomplish'd in due time and the Kingdom of heaven as well within as without will be as a grain of Mustard-seed The Crisis of the disease will be in a competent time as I said before and our whole man re-enlivened with the Spirit of God and restored to the state of righteousness peace and joy in the Holy Ghost 4. For verily to be quiet upon any other terms but these is not to be a Son of the Second Covenant but a careless
Reprobationers have defined it namely That God has irresistibly decreed from all Eternity to bring into Being innumerable Myriads of Souls of men exceeding far the number of them that shall be saved who as without their own consent they were thus thrust into the World so let them doe what they will are certainly determined to unspeakable torment so soon as they go out of it and at the last day shall be adjudged to an higher degree of misery so great and so exceeding that all the racks and tortures that the Wit or Cruelty of the most enraged Tyrants could ever invent or execute would be ease and pleasure in Comparison of it and that these Pangs and Torments shall remain fresh upon them for ever and ever 8. This is the Representation of that sour Dogma Which to Reason is as contradictious as if one should name a square Circle or black Light and as harsh and horrid to the eares of the truly-Regenerate into the nature of God who is Love it self as the highest blasphemie that can be uttered Nor is the nature of those that are irreligious enough so much estranged from the Knowledge of God but that they think if there be any at all he cannot be such a one that laid such dark plots from all eternity for the everlasting misery of his poor impotent and unresisting Creature that never did any thing but what the Divine Decrees determined he should doe and therefore was alwaies the Almighties obedient servant For which at last he must be condemned to eternall punishment by him whom he did ever obey The serious and imperious obtrusion of such a dismal Conceit as this for one of the greatest Arcanums of Religion will make the free Spirit and over-inclinable to Prophaneness confidently to conclude That the whole frame of Religion is nothing but a mere Scar-crow to affright Fools and that there is no Hell at all since such Innocent Persons and constant Obeyers of the Divine Decrees must be the Inhabiters ot it CHAP. III. 1. The true Measure of Opinions to be taken from the designe of the Gospel which in general is The setting out the exceeding great Mercy and Goodness of God towards mankinde 2. And then Secondly The Triumph of the Divine Life in the Person of Christ in the warrantableness of doing Divine Honour to him 3. Thirdly The advancement of the Divine Life in his members upon Earth 4. The Fourth and last Rule to try Opinions by The Recommendableness of our Religion to Strangers or those those that are without 1. I Might adde several other Opinions in several parts of Christendome that tend very much to the defeating and eluding the serious End and purpose of Religion but before I go any further I shall set down the main designes of the Gospel of Christ that we may have a more plain and sure Rule and Measure to try all Opinions by The designe therefore of the Gospel in general is the magnifying of the Goodness and Loving-kindness of God that he has afforded mankinde so glorious a light to walk by so effectual means to redeem them from the love of the perishing vanities of this present world and to recall them back again to himself and to the participation of the ineffable joyes pleasures of his celestial Kingdom For God so loved the World that he gave his only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life For God sent not his Son into the World to condemn the World but that the World through him should be saved And Titus 3. For we our selves also were sometimes foolish disobedient deceived serving divers lusts and pleasures living in malice and envy hateful and hating one another But after that the Kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appeared Not by works of Righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost which he shed on us abundantly through Iesus Christ our Saviour To which sense also the Apostle speaks Ephes. chap. 2. And you who were dead in trespasses and sins Wherein in times past ye walked according to the course of this world according to the Prince of the power of the Aire the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh fulfilling the desires of our fleshly minde and were by nature the children of wrath even as others But God who is rich in mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sins hath quickened us together with Christ by grace ye are saved and hath raised us up together and made us sit together in Heavenly places in Christ Iesus That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us through Iesus Christ. To which lastly you may adde Tit. 2.11 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men Teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live soberly righteously and godly in this present world c. These Scriptures give plain testimony of this more general designe of the Gospel 2. The next designe is an external exaltation of the Divine Life that did so mightily and conspicuously appear in the Person of our Saviour Christ as I have already abundantly declared How the mystery of Christianity comprehends in it chiefly this designe of exalting into Triumph the Divine Life above the Animal and Natural and that either externally in the religious worship we do our Saviour and is done even by Hypocrites and wicked Persons or else internally in the advancing of true Faith and Holiness in his living members and sincere followers of his doctrine Philip. 2. Let the same minde be in you which was in Christ Iesus Who being in the forme of God thought it no robbery to be equal with God But emptied himself and took upon him the forme of a servant and was made in likeness of men And being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to the death even the death of the Cross. Wherefore hath God also exalted him and given him a name above every name That at the name of Iesus every knee should bow of things in Heaven and things in Earth and things under the Earth and that every tongue should confess that Iesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father And Hebr. 1. Thy throne O God is for ever and ever the Scepter of righteousness is the Scepter of thy Kingdom Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity therefore God even thy God hath anointed thee with the oile of gladness above thy fellows that is to say hath exalted thee to this due honour and rule having put all things under his feet Angels themselves not excepted as S. Peter tells us 1 Epist. 3.22 Who is gâ—ne into Heaven
others nay to advance our affection with the superaddition of pity they living in something a more dark mansion then others which will plainly appear if we applie their Opinion to the rest of the Rules and the Particulars of them which we have set down 4. For if we make application to the First that tells us that the design of the Gospel is the Manifestation of the exceeding superabundant Loving-kindness of God to the World who would not any should perish but that all should come to repentance as S. Peter speaks This sad Opinion of the Predestinatours does confront this design at the very first sight making the Goodness of God such an half-faced thing nay I may say of a more thin and sparing aspect then the sharpest new Moon nay an infinitely less proportion if their dolefull stories be true For to speak summarily of the business Some very exceeding small number shall necessarily by the free grace of God be eternally saved but the rest necessarily damned to ineffable eternal and unsupportable torture This is that glorious redundant Grace of the Gospel according to them Which free Spirits will think the worst news and most mischievous that ever was communicated to the World The worst because so extreme few shall be saved The most mischievous because it will hazzard all men to be damned according to the ordinary course of Reason For whenas things are determined already who need stir a foot unless to please himself and reap the present joies of this life 5. For it is very irrational for us to be sollicitous and trouble our selves to bring that to pass which will every jot as soon come to pass without our trouble So that unless a man be beyond all conceit foolish and sottish and cannot reason concerning things he will be necessitated almost I am sure very strongly invited to be as loose and wicked as his own heart or the temptations of the World can suggest to him Whence it is plain that this doctrin in it self though it may impose upon some by the shew of Humility is a Supplanter and Destroier of the whole Divine Life Root and Branch that is It weakens mens Faith also in the Gospel if this be peremptorily obtruded upon them to be all the Design of it it slakes all endeavour of good practice takes them off from the aspiring to that blessed Regeneration and Renovation of their minds into Purity Love and Humility it self which they most pretend to And therefore most generally though they seem to crouch to God yet are they very prone to be too-too rigid sour and even cruel to men full of Pride Dissension and Confusion So that the Unworthiness of this Opinion is discernible also by the Third Rule 6. And does entrench something also upon the Second For whereas according to their own concession the value of the bloud of the Son of God was such that it might have been a Ransome for ten thousand Worlds what a check would this be to a mans more affectionate Veneration of him upon the Cross when he thinks he has restrained the purpose of his suffering to so exceeding few Nothing but Self-Love and Self-Flattery can well bear up a mans devotion What an adorable thing have they made the tender Compassion of God in Jesus Christ whenas he is represented to us according to their explication of the Mystery at the same time to have found out a full satisfaction to his Justice for the sins of the whole World and yet at that very moment to have decreed in a manner all the World to eternal damnation and this forsooth to make manifest his Justice which is sufficiently manifested by the death of his Son Is not that freer grace that is intended for all and they put in a capacity of receiving it if they be not wanting to themselves then that which is only necessitated on some very few and for want of which the rest must necessarily perish Wherefore upon these terms a man cannot conciliate that venerable affection which is due to our Saviour nor indeed beget a belief of the Narration in more nasute and sagacious men Which is an entrenchment against the Fourth Rule also which should awe us from peremptorily affixing any thing to our Religion that will make it less recommendable to them that are without as certainly this Opinion does to all indifferent men Which makes me amaz'd at the sedulous obtrusion of it by some men whom I can charitably conclude to be as well as hey are accounted in their way religious and godly For it is a piece of unsufferable Pride and Conceitedness to think themselves infallible in a point where free men at least as pious and religious if not more have seriously and industriously concluded the contrary especially when such gross inconveniences are discernible therein CHAP. V. 1. That Election and Reprobation conferrs something to Humility 2. That some men are saved irresistibly by virtue of Discriminative Grace 3. That the rest of Mankind have Grace sufficient and that several of them are saved 4. The excellent use of this middle way betwixt Calvinisme and Arminianisme 5 6. The exceeding great danger and mischief of the former Extremes 1. THere is nothing makes this Opinion pardonable but that shew as I said that it bears of Humility and haply it is in some regard really serviceable thereto And I should take it to be very instrumental to take away all Pride and Arrogance or attributing any thing to our selves or contemning our neighbours if the Professours of it were generally of so meek so humble and so lowly a Spirit whenas they are too often over-harsh fierce and contemptuous of others But this may not be the fault of the Opinion but of the Opinionist though that sad severity of God tied up in this same pretended Mystery is no enforcing example of Kindness and Humanity 2. But to the end that choice and lovely vertue of Christian Humility may want no motives nor encouragement and that that pleasure that some Souls may justly take in the free acknowledgment of God's irresistible Grace and over-powering Operations upon their Spirits may not be suffocated nor extinguished we shall make such an accomodation betwixt both parties that unless Envy and Repining at the Goodness of God toward mankinde make them still dissatisfied I question not but that they will rest contented I profess therefore and do verily think That there is such a thing as Discriminative Grace as they call it in the World and that to such a difference for good that some few of Mankinde by virtue thereof will be irresistibly saved but that the rest of the world are Probationers that is have free will and are in a capacity of being saved some greater some less and that whosoever is damn'd it is long of himself For as Siracides saith God has no need of the wicked man 3. And that this may not seem to be a mere Subterfuge like that of some others
persons at great distances off nor doth cease till a due distance after the congress 7. Concerning Preaching that which is most remarkable is this That whereas there are three chief kindes thereof namely Catechizing Expounding a Chapter and Preaching usually so called whereof the first is the best and the last the least considerable of them all this worst and last is the very Idol of some men and the other rejected as things of little worth But assuredly they are of most virtue for the effectual implanting the Gospel of Christ in the mindes of men and of the two as I said Catechizing the better because it enforces the catechized to take notice of what is taught him and what is thus taught him is not so voluminous but that he can carry it away and remember it for ever and withall the most Useful as being the very Fundamentals comprized in the Christian Creed or the first and most natural results from them tending to indispensable duties of life and therefore will alone if sincerely believed and faithfully practised carry a man to Heaven But the next profitable way of Preaching is Expounding of a Chapter provided that he that does so makes it his only business without any vain excursions to shew his reading to render those places of the Chapter that are obscure easie and intelligible to the capacity of the Auditors with some brief but earnest urging of their duties from such passages as most necessarily tend thereto This will make the private Reading of Scripture pleasant to his charge And it will prove the more effectual for their good if he contain himself within the New Testament and fetch only so much out of the Old as will be subservient for the full understanding of the New There is nothing so likely to convince the Conscience as this when men are able to reade and understand the Text of Scripture it self and are sensibly beat upon by the power of that Spirit that is found in those Writings far beyond all the fine Speeches and Phrases of humane Eloquence Which yet is the greatest matter in this Third way of Preaching and the truest use that can be made of it namely not to fill the peoples head with unprofitable or hurtful Opinions but by the artifice of a more florid and flowing style to raise the affections of the Auditors to the love and pursuit of such things as are commanded us by the Precepts of the Gospel I confess therefore This exercise may be of laudable use in such a Congregation where all the people are throughly grounded in the Fundamentals of Christianity and are well skilled in the knowledge of the Bible otherwise if the other Two necessary wayes of Preaching be silenced by this more overly and plausible way it is to the unspeakable detriment of the flock of Christ. Which will happen even then when it is performed after the very best manner How great then is the evil think you when the exercise of their popular Eloquence is nothing but a Stage of ostentation and vain-glory to the Speaker and begets nothing but an unsound blotedness and ventosity of Spirit in his hearers and admirers they being intoxicated with lushious and poisonous Opinions which tend to nothing but the extinguishing of the love and endeavour after true Righteousness and Holiness and the begetting in them a false security of minde and abhorred Libertinisme Had it not been far better that they had rested in the Fundamentals of their Faith comprised in the Apostles Creed with an obligation on their Conscience to live according to the Laws of Christ and his holy Precepts then to be led about and infatuated by the heat and noise of such false Guides 8. Concerning Praying it is an Epidemical mistake That men think extemporary Prayers are by the Spirit and that the Spirit is not in a Set Form Whenas in truth the Spirit may be absent in the highest extemporary heats and present in the use of set Forms where there may appear greater calmness and coolness For the Spirit of Praier does not consist in the invention of words and phrases which is rather a Gift of Nature as the Faculty of extemporary speaking in other cases is proceeding from heat and phansy and copiousness of the Animal Spirits but in a firm belief in God through Christ and in an hearty liking and sincere desire of having those holy things communicated to us that we pray for And therefore he that reads or hears a publick Liturgy read in such a frame of minde as I have described does as truly pray by the Spirit as he that invents words and phrases of his own For there is nothing Divine but this holy Faith and Desire the rest is mere Nature And it is a demonstration how ignorant these men are that talk so loud of the Spirit whenas they cannot so much as discern what is truly Spiritual from what is but Animal and Natural To which you may adde That if none pray by the Spirit but those that invent their own words the whole Congregation are very Spiritless Prayers they all hanging upon the lips of the Minister who alone will be acknowledged to pray by the Spirit Whose pretended assistance is not yet always so powerful as to protect him from the incurring of the danger of Non-sense and of making the Publick Worship of God insipid or else distasteful and loathsome or which is even as ill contemptible and ridiculous 9. Wherefore it is far more safe as it is undoubtedly more solemn to use a publick Liturgy that bears the authority of the whole Church then to venture so holy and devotional a performance upon the uncertainty of any mans private spirit who will be but tempted to ostentate his own conceited Eloquence or forced to discover his own weakness and folly Whenas a set Form will prevent all Pride and knackishness and preserve the publick worship in its due reverence and honour especially where it is contrived with that cautiousness that nothing is expressed therein that engages the Minde in controverted Opinions but speaks according to the known tenour of Scripture undepraved by humane glosses 10. But you will say if a Minister be cut so short in these performances of extemporary Praier and expatiating Preachments how shall he be able to give any eximious Testimony of his abilities in his calling how shall he have the opportunity of shewing his Gifts To which I answer That the end of the Ministry is not the Ostentation of any mans particular Gifts but the Edification of the People which are better edified by diligent catechizing and faithful and judicious expounding of the Scripture then by loose and ranging Discourses out of the Pulpit where he that speaks having taken leave of his short Text may fill the ears of his Auditors with nothing but the noise of his own conceits and inventions whenas in the Exposition of a whole Chapter suppose at a time the peoples mindes will be kept closer to those
infallible Oracles and will more easily discern the prevarications of their Teacher But for the greater assurance against any foul play of this kinde his misinterpretations of these Holy Writings to Loosnesse and Libertinism should be the forfeiture of the exercise of his Function 11. Besides I do not speak so much to exclude Preaching as to bring Catechizing and Expounding into more request which are abundantly more useful and edifying Nay I think that some well-tuned strains of unaffected Eloquence at the chief Festivals of the Year and in occasional Exhortations to the people upon observation of what is most amiss amongst them done with a great deal of seriousness and gravity as also at publick Fasts and Thanksgivings were a thing of excellent use and of the more efficacy it being the more seldom But for other days If our Saviour Christs Sermon on the Mount were read with much reverence and emphatick distinctness it being the advice of so sacred and infallible a person in whose mouth there was neither Errour nor Guile who was the Son of God clothed with the formalities of our flesh on purpose to take the chair awhile amongst us and to read us sound and warrantable Lectures of Divinity in whose behalf God the Father condescended to do the Office of a Praeco and commanded silence out of the Clouds saying This is my beloved Son hear him who was so faithful and compassionate a Pastour to his Flock that he laid down his life for his Sheep and so beloved of his Father that he was miraculously raised from the dead and taken up into heaven and lastly who shall visibly descend thence and judge every man according to his works If this Sermon I say of wholsome advice and holy Precepts were read distinctly and reverently to the people how can it but be more edifying and work more upon their spirits for their good then the sophisticated and affected Rhetorick of a fallible Mortal Besides the keeping out the danger of being either choaked with the crooked and spinose Controversies of Polemical Divinity or of being poisoned or intoxicated with the unwholsome sugar-sops of Antinomianism and Libertinism 12. And lastly to answer still more home to the point If thou hast a desire to magnifie thy Ministry in an eximious manner in stead of ostentating thy Gifts exercise and improve thy Graces to the highest thou canst Endeavour to the utmost to be an unblemished Example to thy flock of Humility of Brotherly kindeness of Obedience to the Magistrate of Temperance of exact Iustness in thy dealing of Compassion to the poor and needy Use thy best Prudence to keep Peace and Love amongst thy charge as it becomes Christians and to invite the more able to a charitable relief and help of those that are in want and necessity that no unsupportable distresse may make the lives of our fellow-members comfortless as also privately to reprove those that are guilty of any scandalous miscarriages but with the wisest and discreetest applications that may be that thy Reprehensions as they ought so they may appear to proceed from nothing but from love and from care and conscience of thy duty In which if thou wouldest not lose thine authority and confidence thou must live exactly in the indispensable Laws of Christ thy self nor make these solemn Reproofs but for the breach of such But if thou be really vitious thy self in these or to make thy self seem more holy rebuke for the neglect of some petty mock-vertues of thine own chusing thou shalt not fail to be either odious or ridiculous But here the great Hypocrisie is this That to compensate their neglect in these indispensable and highly-concerning Duties of the Ministry they abound in empty Lip-labour and endeavour to conciliate authority to themselves by their pretended spiritual Gifts of extemporary Praying and Preaching in stead of that unblemished Sanctity of life of useful Prudence in behalf of their Charge and of Christian Goodnesse and Charity And that they may keep up their credit more certainly with the people they lay their foundation wisely namely by giving them to understand that there is no hope of living as we should do or any need thereof and so making their whole flock as rotten as themselves both in Principles and Practice there being none left to reprove the false Prophet by either example of life or contrariety of doctrine he thus secures to himself his authority entire by his admired clack of the Tongue which some call The knack of preaching and praying Which yet where better intended is of as little efficacy as a Tar-bottle hung out on a Thorn-bush if compared with personal application and private information and reproof For that is like the Adfriction of the pastoral medicine to a diseased Sheep without which the formality of the Bottle on the Bush will do no cure let the flock be gathered about it never so solemnly 13. Touching the Communion None are to be excluded therefrom that professe their belief of the Holy Scriptures of the Apostles Creed in the plain literal and Historical sense thereof unless they stand guilty of some gross and scandalous sins which are to be nominated in some known Law concerning this matter and not to be left to the uncertainty of any private Ministers Judgement and do persist therein impenitent and unreclaimed For it were the greatest treachery to the party that could be by admitting him to this Holy Communion to make him more secure in such sins as will be sure while they are unrepented of to exclude him from that Heavenly Communion of Saints for ever Besides the Scandal and Offence to the rest of the serious and sincere-hearted Communicants to whom the sight will appear as ugly as if one having fallen over head and ears into the dirt should in that black miry hue droppingly dirty place himself at table amongst persons of quality whom the Master of the Feast had invited upon some special entertainment And as for the Posture of the Communicant as there are none that are so curious as to reduce it to that in which Christ and his Disciples celebrated his last Supper so none ought to be so captious as to take offence if one receive the Communion kneeling in devotion to God and humble thankfulnesse for that great Benefit that is signified thereby namely the Death of Christ with the Results thereof and the participation of his body and bloud in that sense I have spoken of elsewhere nor if another take it sitting as it is a celebration of a Supper or that he may clear himself of the suspicion of Idolizing the outward Elements of Bread and Wine For it is as well unjust as uncharitable to be at all scandalized at actions that have such innocent and allowable grounds and the most unsufferable at the celebrating of such a Mystery as is wholly made up of love and affection to Christ and to one another I confess an Uniformity would look better in outward shew but
That the punctual Correspondence of the Event to the Prediction of the Astrologer does not prove the certainty of the Art of Astrology 5. The great Affinity of Astrology with Daemonolatry and of the secret Agency of Daemons in bringing about Predictions 6. That by reason of the secret or familiar Converse of Daemons with pretended Astrologers no argument can be raised from Events for the truth of this Art 7. A Recapitulation of the whole matter argued 8. The just occasions of this Astrological excursion and of his shewing the ridiculous condition of those three high-flown Sticklers against Christianity Apollonius Cardan and Vaninus 356 BOOK VIII CHAP. I. THE End and Usefulness of Christian Religion in general 2. That Christ came into the World to destroy Sin out of it 3. His earnest recommendation of Humility 4. The same urged by the Apostle Paul 361 CHAP. II. 1. Christs enforcement of Love and Charity upon his Church by Precept and his own Example 2. The wretched imposture and false pretensions of the Family of Love to this divine Grace 3. The unreasonableness of the Familists in laying aside the person of Christ to adhere to such a carnal and inconsiderable Guide as Hen. Nicolas 4. That this Whifler never gave any true Specimens of real love to Mankinde as Christ did and his Apostles 5. His unjust usurpation of the Title of Love 6. The unparallel'd endearmentâ— of Christs sufferings in the behalf of Mankiâ—d 364 CHAP. III. 1. The occasion of the Familists usâ—rpation of the Title of Love 2. Earnest precepts oâ—t of the Apostles to follow Love and what kind of Love that is 3. That we câ—nnot love God unlesse we love our neighbour also 4. An Exposition of the 5 and 6 verses of the 1 chapter of the 2 Epist. of S. Peter 5. Saint Paul's rapturous commendation of Charity 6 His accurate description thereof 7. That Love is the highest participation of the Divinity and that whereby we become the Sons of God Aâ—d how injurious these Fanaticks are that rob the Church of Christ of this title to appropriate it to themselves 368 CHAP. IV. 1. Our Saviour's strict injuction of Purity from whence it is also plain that the Love he commends is not in any sort fleshly but Divine 2. Several places out of the Apostles urging the same duty 3. Two more places to the same purpose 4. The groundless presumption of those that abuse Christianity to a liberty of sinning 5. That this Errour attempted the Church betimes and is too taking at this very day 6. Whence appears the necâ—ssiâ—y of opposing it which he promises to do taking the rise of his Discourse from 1 Iohn 3.7 373 CHAP. V. 1. The Apostle's care for young Christians against that Errour of thinking they may be righteous without doing righteously 2. Their obnoxiousness to this contagion with the Causes thereof to be searched into 3. The first sort of Scriptures perverted to this ill end 4. The second sort 5. That the very state of Christian Childhood makes them prone to this Errour 6. What is the nature of that Faith Abraham is so much commended for and what the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 7. A search after the meaning of the term Justification 8. Justification by faith without the deeds of the Law what may be the meaning of it 9. Scriptures answered that seem to disjoin Reall Righteousness from Faith 10. And to make us only righteous by imputation 11. Undeniable Testimonies of Scripture that prove the necessity of real Righteousness in us 376 CHAP. VI. 1. Their alledgement of Gal. 2.16 as also of the whole drift of that Epistle 2. What the Righteousness of faith is according to the Apostle 3. In what sâ—â—se those that are in Christ are said not to be under the Law 4. That the Righteousness of faith is no figment but a reality in us 5. That this Righteousness is the New Creature and what this new Creature is according to Scripture 6. That the new Creature consists in Wisdome Righteousness and true Holiness 7. The Righteousness of the new Creature 8. His Wâ—sdome and Holiness 9. That the Righteousness of faith excludes not good Works The wicked treachery of those that teach the contrary 384 CHAP. VII 1. That no small measure of Sanctity serves the turn in Christianity 2. As appears out of Scriptures already alledged 3. Further proofs thereof out of the Prophets 4. As also out of the Gospel 5. And other places of the New Testament 6. The strong Armature of a Christian Souldier 7. His earnest endeavour after Perfection 388 CHAP. VIII 1. That the Christians assistance is at least equal to this task 2. The two Gospel-powers that comprehend his duty 3. The first Gospel-aid The Promise of the Spirit with Prophecies thereof out of Ezekiel and Esay 4. Some hints of the mystical meaning of the last 5. Another excellent prediction thereof 391 CHAP. IX 1. The great use of the belief of The Promise of the Spirit 2. The eating the flesh of Christ and drinking his bloud what it is 3. Further proof of the Promise of the Spirit 4. That we cannot oblige God by way of Merit 5. Other Testimonies of Scripture tending to the former purpose 395 CHAP. X. 1. A Recapitulation of what has been set down hitherto concerning the Usefulness of the Gospel and the Necessity of undeceiving the world in those points that so nearly concern Christian Life 2. The ill condition of those that content themselves with Imaginary Righteousness figured out in the Fighters against Ariel and Mount Sion 3. A further demonstration of their fond conceit 4. That a true Christian cannot sin without pain and torture to himself 398 CHAP. XI 1. That the want of real Righteousness deprives us of the Divine Wisdome proved out of Scripture 2. As also from the nature of the thing it self 3. That is disadvantages the Soul also in Natural speculations 4. That it stifles all Noble and laudable Actions 5. And exposes the imaginary Religionist to open reproach 6. That mere imaginary Righteousness robs the Soul of her peace of Conscience 7. And of all divine Ioy 8. Of Health and Safety 9. And of eternal Salvation 10. That God also hereby is deprived of his Glory and the Church frustrated of publick Peace and Happiness 400 CHAP. XII 1. Of the attending to the Light within us of which some Spiritualists so much boast 2. That they must mean the Light of Reason and Conscience thereby if they be not Fanaticks Mad-men or Cheats And that this Conscience necessarily takes information from without 3. And particularly from the Holy Scriptures 4. That these Spiritualists acknowledge the fondness of their opinion by their contrary practice 5. An appeal to the Light within them if the Christian Religion according to the literal sense be not true 6. That the Operation of the Divine Spirit is not absolute but restrained to certain laws and conditions as it is in the Spirit of