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A59601 Immanuel, or, A discovery of true religion as it imports a living principle in the minds of men, grounded upon Christ's discourse with the Samaritaness : being the latter clause of The voice crying in a wilderness, or, A continuation of the angelical life / mostly composed at the same time by S.S. Shaw, Samuel, 1635-1696. 1667 (1667) Wing S3038; ESTC R35174 154,749 423

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acts and carcase-services and to think it is nothing else but a running the round of duties and ordinances and a keeping up a constant set and course of actions such an external legal righteousness the Apostle Paul after his conversion could not take up with but counted it all loss and dung in comparison of that Godlike righteousness which was now brought into his soul that inward and spiritual conformity to Christ which was now wrought in him Phil. 3. 9 10. I know indeed that men will be loth to confess that they place their Religion in any thing without them but I pray consider seriously wherein you excell other men save only in praying or hearing now and then or some other outward acts and judge your selves by your nature and not by your actions 2. The Active spirit of Religion where it is in the soul will not suffer men to take up their rest in a meer pardon of sin and they are but slothfull souls that could be so satisfied Blessed is the man indeed whose inquities are pardoned Psal 32 1 2. but if we could suppose a soul to be acquitted of the guilt of all sin and yet to lie bound under the dominion of lusts and passions and to live without God in the world he were yet far from true blessedness A reall hell and misery will arise out of the very bowels of sin and wickedness though there should be no reserve of fire and brimstone in the world to come It is utterly impossible that a Soul should be happy out of God though it had the greatest security imaginable that it should never suffer any thing from him The highest care and ambition indeed of a slavish and mercenary spirit is to be secured from the wrath and vengeance of God but the breathings of the ingenuous and holy soul are after a divine life and Godlike perfections This right gracious tempe you may see in David Psal 51. 9 10 11 12. which is also the temper of every truly Religious soul 3. The Active spirit of Religion where it is in the soul will not suffer men to take up their rest in meer inn●cency freedom from sin and they are slothful souls that could count it happiness enough to be harmless I doubt men are much mistaken about holiness it is more than meer innocency or freedom from the guilt or power of sin it is not a negative thing there is something active noble divine powerfull in true Religion A soul that rightly understands its own penury and self-insufficiency and the emptiness and meanness of all creature-good cannot possibly take up its rest or place its happiness in any thing but in a real participation of God himself and therefore is continually making out towards that God from whom it came and is labouring to unite itself more and more unto him Let a low-spirited fleshly minded Pharisee take up with a negative holiness and happiness as he doth Luke 18. 11. God I thank thee that I am not so and so a noble and high-spirited Christian cannot take up his rest in any negation or freedom from sin Every godly soul is not so learned indeed as to be able to describe the nature and proper perfection of a soul and to tell you how the happiness of a soul consists not in quiete but in actu vigore not in cessation and rest as the happiness of a stone doth but in life and power and vigour as the happiness of God himself doth But yet the spirit of true Religion is so excellent and powerfull in every godly soul that it is still carrying it to the fuller enjoyment of an higher good and the soul doth find and feel within itself though it cannot discourse Philosophically of these things that though it were free from all disturbance of sin and affliction in the world yet still it wants some supream and possible good to make it compleatly happy and so bends all its power thi● herward This is the description which you will everywhere find made in Scripture of the true spirit of holiness which hath alwayes something positive and divine in it as Is● 1. 16 17. cease to do evil learn to do well and Ephes 4. 22 24. Put off the old man put on that new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness And accordingly a truly godly soul to use the Apostles words though he know nothing by himself yet doth not thereby count himself happy 4. The Active spirit of true Religion wh●re it is in the Soul will not suffer men to take up their rest in some measures of grace received and so far as the soul doth so it is sluggish and less Active than it ought to be This indeed oft times comes to pass when the soul is under some distemper of proud selfishness earthly-mindedness or the like or is less apprehensive of its object and happiness as it seems to have been the case of the spouse Cant. 5. 3. Some such fainting fits languishings su●ferings in sensibleness must be allowed to be in the Godly soul during its imprisoned and imperfect state But we must not judge our selves by any present distempers or infirmities The nature of Religion when it acts the soul rightly and powerfully is to carry it after a more lively resemblance of God which is the most proper and excellent enjoyment of him A mind rightly and actually sound is most sick of love and the nature of love is not to know when it is near enough to its object but still to long after the most perfect conjunction with it This well of water if it be not violently obstructed for a time is ever springing up till it be swallowed up in the Ocean of divine love and grace The soul that is rightly acquainted with itself and its God sees something still wanting in itself and to be enjoyed in him which makes it that it cannot be at rest but is still springing up into him till it come to the measure of the stature of the fulness of its Lord. In this holy loving longing striving active temper we find the great Apostle Phil. 3. 12 13 14. And by how much the more of divine grace any soul hath drunk in the more thirsty is it after much more 5. The Active spirit of true Religion where it is powerfully seated in the minds of men will not suffer them to settle into a love of this animal life nor indeed suffer them to be content to live for ever in such a kind of body as this and that soul is in a degree lazy and slothful that doth not desire to depart and be with his Lord. The godly soul eying God as his perfect and full happiness and finding that his being in the body doth separate him from God keep him in a poor and imperfect state and hinders his blissfull communion with the highest good groans within itself that mortality were swallowed up of life with the Apostle 2 Cor. 5. 4. I
instead of the infinite fulness of God Now there seem to be three things in a formal hypocrite that do especially force a kind of devotion and shew of religion from him viz. Conscience of guilt self-love and False apprehensions of God First There is in all men a natural conscience of guilt arising from that imperfect and glimmering light that they have of God and of their duty towards him which though it be in some men more quick and stinging in others more remiss and languid yet I think is not utterly choaked and extinguished no not in the worst and most dis●ol●●e men but that it doth sometimes beget a bitter sadness in the midst of their sweetest merriments and doth disturb their most supine and secure rest by fastning its stings in their very souls at some time or other and filling them with agonies and anguish and haunting them with dreadful apparitions which they cannot be perfectly rid of no more than they can run away from themselves This foundation of hell is laid in the bowels of sin itself as a preface to eternal horrour Now although some more profligate and desperate wretches do ●uriously bluster through these briars yet others are so cought in them that they cannot escape these pangs and throws except they make a composition and enter into terms to live more honestly or at least less scandalously In which undertaking they are carryed on in the next place by the power of self-love or a natural desire of self-preservation For the worst of men hath so much Reason left him that he could wish that himself were happy though he have not so much light as to discover nor so much true freedom of will as to choose the right way of happiness Conscience having discovered the certain reward and wages of sin self-love will easily prompt men to do something or other to escape it But now what shall they do why Religion is the only expedient that can be found out and therefore they begin to think how they may become friends with God they will up and be doing But how come they to run into so great mistake about religion why their false and gross apprehensions of God do drive them from him in the way of superstition and ●ypocrisie instead of leading them in the way of sincere love and self-resignation to him Self being the great Diana of every natural man and the only standard by which he measures all things he knows not how to judge of God himself but by this and so he comes to fancy God in a dreadful manner as an austere passionate surly revengeful Majesty and so something must be done to appease him but yet he fancies this angry Deity to be of an impotent mercena●y temper like himself and not hard to be appea●ed neither and so imagines that some cheap services specious oblations external courtesies will engage him and make him a friend a sheep or a goat or a bullock under the old Testament a prayer or a Sacrament or an Almes under the new For it is reconciliation to an angry God that he aims at not union with a good God he seeks to be reconciled to God not united to him though indeed these two can never be divided Thus we see how a man void of the life and spirit of Religion yet forces himself to do God a kind of worship and pay him a kind of homage 2. Sometimes men may be said in a sense to be forced by other men to put on a vizard of holiness a dress of Religion And this constraint men may lay upon men by their tongues hands and eyes By their tongues in the business of education often and ardent exhortation and inculcation of things divine and heavenly and thus an unjust like the unjust Judge in the Gospel though he fear not God sincerely yet may be overcome by the importunity of his father friend minister tutor to do some righteous acts This seems to have been the case of Joash King of Judah the spring head of whose religion was no higher than the instructions of his tutor and guardian Jehojada the high-priest 2 King 12. 2. By their hands that is either by the enacting and executing of penal laws upon them or by the holy example which they continually ●et before them exempla trahunt By their eyes that is by continual observing and watching their behaviour when many eyes are upon men they must do something to satisfie expectations of others and purchase a reputation to themselves It may be said that sometimes God doth lay an external force upon men as particularly by his severe judgements or threatnings of judgements awakening them humbling them and constr●ining them to some kind of worship and religion Such a forc'd devotion as this was the humillation of Aha● 1 King 21. and the supplication of Saul 1 Sam. 13. 11 12. For God himself acting upon men only from without them is far from producing a living principle of free and noble Religion in the Soul Now the better to discern this forc'd and violent Religion I will briefly describe it by three or four of its properties with which I will shut up this point 1. This forc'd Religion is for the most part dry and spiritless I know indeed tha● Fancy may be screw'd up to a high pitch of joy and frolickness so as to raise the mind into a kind of a rapture as I have formerly hinted in my disc●orse upon these words A meer artificial and counter●●it Christian may be so strongly acted by imagination and the power of self love that he may seem to himself to be fuller of God than the sober and constant soul You may see how the hypocritical phatis●●● sw●ll●● with ●●●conceit gloryed over the poor man that had been blind but now saw more than all they Joh. 9. 34. Thou wast altogether born in sin and dost thou teach us and indeed over the whole people Joh. 7. 49. This people that knoweth not the law is cursed A counterfeit Christian may rise high as a Meteor and blaze much as a Comet which is yet drawn up by meer force from the surface of the earth or water And as to the external and visible acts and duties of Religion which depend much upon the temper and constitution of the body it may easily be conceived and accounted how the mimical and mechanical Christian may rise higher in these and be more zealous watchful and cheerful than many truly religious and godly men as having greater power and quickness of fancy and a greater number of animal spirits upon which the motions and actions of the body do mainly depend The animal spirits may so nimbly serve the soul in these corporal acts that the whole transaction may be a fair imitation of the motions of the divine spirit and one would verily think there were a gracious principle in the soul itself This seems to be notably exemplified in cap●ain Jehu whose religious actions as he would fain have them
discovered their Fathers nakedness If we did really value our selves by our souls and our souls themselves by what they possess of the Image of God if we did rightly prefer the advancement of the Divine life before the gratification of the animal it is easie to conceive how we should prefer patience before prosperity faith in God before the favour of men spiritual purity before temporal pleasures or preferments humility before honour the denyal of our selves before the approbation of others the advancement of Gods image before the advancement of our own names an opportunity of exercising gracious dispositions before the exercising of any temporal power or secular authority and in a word the displaying of the beauty glory and perfections of God before health wealth liberty livelihood and life itself We should certainly be more indifferently affected towards any condition whether prosperity or adversity and not be so fond of the one nor weary of the other if we did verily value them only by the tendency that they had to further Religion and advance the life of Christ in our souls This would certainly make men more sincerely studious to reap Gods end in afflicting them and less longing to see the end of their afflictions And as for treacheries plottings invasions usurpations rebellions and that tumultuous zeal for Relaxation which this impatience of oppression and fondness of deliverance do so often grow up into I dare say there is nothing like Religion in the power of it for the effectual healing of them The true spirit of Religion is not so weary of oppression though it be by sinful men as it is abhorrent from deliverance if it be by sinfull means May 1 Cor. 3. 1. I not be allowed to allude to the Apostle and say whereas there is amongst you this zeal contention and faction are ye not carnal and walk as men Is not this the same which a meer natural man would do strive and struggle by right and by wrong to redeem himself from whatsoever is grievous and galling to the interest of the flesh Might it not be reasonably supposed that if Religion did but display itself aright in the powerfull actings of faith hope and humility it would quench this scalding zeal and calm these tempestuous motions of the soul and make men rather content to be delivered up to the adversary though the flesh should by him be destroyed so by the spirit might be saved and the divine life advanced in the way of the Lord. Oh how dear and precious are the possession and practice of faith patitnce humility and self-denyal to a godly soul in comparison of all the joyes and toyes treasures pleasures ease and honour of the world the safety and liberty of the flesh How much more then when these must be accomplished by wicked means and purchased at the rate of Gods displeasure And because the Kingdom of Christ is so often alleadged to defend and patronize these strange fervours and frenzies let me here briefly record to all that shall read these lines the way and method of Christ himself in propagating his own Kingdom It will not be denyed but that Christ was infinitely studious to promote his own Kingdom in the best and most proper sense But I no where read that he ever attempted it by force or fraud by violent opposition or crafty insinuation Nay he reckoned that his Kingdom was then truly promoted when these tumultuous impatient imperious proud lusts of men were mortified Nothing had been more easie with him considering his miraculous power infalsible Mat. 11. 29. wisdom and the mighty interest and party which he could by these have made for himself in the world than to have raised his own Kingdom upon the ruines of the Roman and to have quite shuffled Caesar out of the World but indeed nothing more impossible considering the perfect innocency and infinite Sacredness of his temper nor any thing more contradictious considering the proper notion of his Kingdom which he professes not be secular and so not be maintained by fighting But if you would John 18. 16. ver 37. know in what sense he was a King he himself seems to intimate it in his answer to Pilate Thou saist that I am a King to this end was I born that I should bear witness unto the truth So then it seems where ever there is truth and holiness predominant there is Christ really enthroned and actually triumphant Where Religion doth vitally inform animate and actuate mens souls it doth make them rightly to understand that the Kingdom of Christ is not the thriving of parties the strengthning of factions the advancement of any particular interest though it seem to be of never so Evangelical a complexion nor yet the proselyting of the World to the profession of Christianity or of the Christian World to the purer and more reformed profession of it though these latter would be a great external honour to the person of Christ but that it is most properly and happily propagated in the spirits of men and that where ever there is faith patience humility self denyal contempt of this world and pregnant hopes of a better pure obedience to God and sincere benignity to men here and there is the Kingdom of God Christ Regnant and the Gospel in the power and triumph of it And may not these things be and be most conspicuously in a persecuted condition of the Church That certainly was an high instance of the mighty power of the Divine life in our blessed Saviour which the Apostle Peter records of him who when he was reviled reviled not again 1 Pet. 2. 23. when he suffered he threatned not but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously The same divine principle dwelling plentifully in our souls would instruct us to the same behaviour according to the precept given by the same Apostle Not rendring evil 1. Pet. 3. 9. sor evil or railing for railing but contrariwise blessing c. How vainly do men dream that they serve the interest and advance the Kingdom of Christ by fierce and raging endeavours to cast off every yoke that galls them and kicking against every thorn that pricks them when indeed they serve the interest of the flesh and do under a fine cloak gratifie the meer animal life and Sacrifice to self-love which is as covetous of freedom from all retrenchments and confinements as Religion it self can be It is said indeed that when the Churches had rest they were edified and multiplyed but when they suffer according to the will of God they Acts 9. 31. 1 Pet. 4. 14. 2 Cor. 12. 19. are then glorified for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon them As the Apostle Paul professes of himself in that most noble and heroical passage of his to the Corinthians Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me Secondly Religion will not fail rightly to dispose the
to bribe Gods justice or engage mens charity to purchase favour with God or man or his own clamarous conscience but he prays because he wants and loves and believes he wants the fuller presence of that God whom he loves he loves the presence which he wants he believes that he that loves him will not suffer him to want any good thing that he prays for And therefore he do's not bind up himself severely and limit himself penuriously to a morning and evening Sacrifice and solemnity as unto certain rent-seasons wherein to pay a homage of dry devotion but his loving and longing Soul disdaining to be confin'd within Can●nical hours is frequently soaring in some heavenly raptures or other and sallying forth in holy ejaculations He is not content with some weak assays towards Heaven in set and formal Prayer once or twice a day but labours also to be all the day long sucking in those Divine influences and streams of grace by the mouth of faith which he beg'd in the morning by the tongue of prayer which hath made me sometimes to think it a proper speech to say the faith of Prayer as well as the prayer of faith for believing and hanging upon Divine grace doth really drink in what Prayer opens its mouth for and is in effect a powerful kind of praying in silence By believing we pray as well as in praying we do believe A truly godly man hath not his hands tyed up meerly by the force of a National Law no nor yet by the authority of the fourth commandment to keep one in seven a day of rest As he is not content with meer resting upon the Sabboth knowing that neither working nor ceasing from work doth of itself commend a Soul to God but doth press after intimacy with God in the duties of his worship so neither can he be content with one Sabboth in a week nor think himself absolved from holy and heavenly meditations any day in the week but labours to make every day a Sabboth as to the keeping of his heart up unto God in a holy frame and to find every day to be a Sabboth as to the communications of God unto his Soul Though the necessities of his body will not allow him it may be though indeed God hath granted this to some men to keep every day as a Sabboth of Rest yet the necessities of his Soul do call upon him to make every day as far as may be a Sabboth of communion with the blessed God If you speak of Fasting he keeps not Fasts meerly by vertue of a civil no nor a divine institution but from a principle of godly sorrow afflicts his ●oul for sio and daily endeavours more and more to be emptied of himself which is the most excellent Fasting in the world If you speak of Thansgiving he do's not give thanks by laws and ordinances but having in himself a law of thanksulness and an ordinance of love engraven upon and deeply radicated in his Soul delights to live unto God and to make his heart and life a living descant upon the goodness and love of God which is the most divine way of thank offering in the world it is the hall●lujah which the Angels sing continually In a word wherever God hath a tongue to command true godliness will find an hand to perform whatever yoke Christ Jesus shall put upon the Soul religion will enable to bear it yea and to count it easie too the mouth of Christ hath pronoun●'d it easie Mat. 11. 30. and the spirit of Christ makes it easie Let the commandment be what it will it will not le grievous 1 Joh. 5. 3. The same spirit doth in some measure dwell in every Christian which without measure dwelt in Christ who counted it his meat and drink to do the will of his Father Joh. 4. 34. 2. And more especially the true Christian is free from any const●aint as to the inward acts which he performeth Holy love to God is one principal Act of the gracio●s soul whereby it is carryed out freely and with an ardent lust towards the object that is truly and infinitely lovely and satisf●ctory and to the enjoyment of i● I know indeed that this springs from self indigency and is commanded by the soveraignty of the supream good the object that the Soul eyes but it is properly free from any constraint Love is an affection that cannot be excorted as sear is nor sor●●d by any external power nor indeed internal neither the revenues of the King of Persia or the treasu●es o● Aegypt cannot commit a rape upon ●● Heb. 11. 26. neither indeed can the soul it self raise and lay this spirit at pleasure which made the Poet complain of himself as if he were not sole Emperour at home Non amo te Sabidi nec possum dicere quare c. Though the outward bodily Acts of Religion are ordinarily forced yet this pure chast virgin-affection cannot be ravished it seems to be a kind of a peculiar in the soul though under the jurisdiction of the understanding By this property of it it is elegantly described by the spirit of God Cant. 8. 7. if a man would give all the substance of his house for love it would utterly be contemned It cannot be bought with money or money-worth cannot be purchased with gifts or arts and if any should offer to bribe it it would give him a sharp and scornful check in the language of Peter to Simon Thy money perish with thee love is no hireling no base born mercenary affection but noble free and generous Neither is it low-spirited and slavish as Fear is therefore when it comes to full age it will not suffer this Son of the Bond woman to divide the inheritance the dominions of the Soul with it when it comes to be perfect it casteth out fear sayes the Apostle 1 Joh. 4. 18. Neither indeed is it directly under the authority of any law whether humane or Divine it is not begotten by the influence of a divine law as a law but as holy just and good as we shall see more anon quis legem dat amantibus ipse Est sibi lex amor the Law of Love or if you will in the Apostles phrase the spirit of love and of power in opposition to the spirit of fear 2 Tim. 1. 7. doth more influence the godly man in his pursuit of God than any law without him this is as a wing to the Soul whereas outward commandments are but as guides in his way or at most but as spurs in his sides The same I may say of holy delight in God which is indeed the flower of love or love grown up to its full age and stature which hath no torment in it and consequently no force upon it Like unto which are holy confidence Faith and Hope ingenuous and natural Acts of the Religious Soul whereby it hastens into the Divine embraces as the Eagle hastneth to the prey swiftly and speedily
every body that so much as lookt towards it and by all means kept it even as his life For where is the like eager and ardent disposition to be found in a Christian towards God himself Tell me is it possible for a man that vehemently loves a Virgin to be content all his life long to Court her at a distance and not care whether ever he do actually enjoy her or no or must not such an one necessarily pursue a matrimonial and most intimate union with her let us now confess the truth and every one judge himself 2. This dull and earthly body is not so indifferently affected towards meat and drink and rest and the things that do serve its necessities and gratifie its temper Hunger will break down stone walls and thirst will give away a kingdom for a cup of water sickness will not be eased by good words nor will a drowsie brain be bribed by any entertainments of company or recreation no no the necessities of the body must and will be relieved with food and physick and sleep the restless and raging appetite will never cease calling and crying to the soul for supplies till it arise and give them Behold O my Soul consider the mighty and incessant appetites and tendencies of the body after sensual objects after its suitable good and proper perfection and be ashamed of thy more remiss and sluggish inclinations towards the highest good a God-like perfection 3. No creature in the whole world is so languid slow and indifferent in its motions towards its proper rest and centre How easie were it to call Heaven and earth to witness the free pleasant cheerfull eager addresses of every creature according to its kind towards its own centre and happiness The Sun in the Firmament rejoyces to run its race and will not stand still one moment except it be miraculously overpowred by the command of God himself the rivers seem to be in pain till by a continued flowing they have accomplisht to themselves a kind of perfection and be swallowed up in the bosome of the Ocean except they be benummed with cold or otherwise overmastered and retarded by forraign violence I need not instance in sensitives and vegetatives all which you know with a natural vigour and activity do grow up daily towards a perfect state and stature Were it not a strange and monstrous sight to see a stone setling in the ayre and not working towards its centre such a spectacle is a godly soul setling upon earth and not endeavouring a nearer and more intimate union with its God Wherefore Christians either cease to pretend that you have chosen God for your portion centre happiness or else arise and cease not ●o pursue and accomplish the closest union and the most familiar conjunction with him that your souls are capable of otherwise I call Heaven and Earth to witness against you this day and the day is comming when you will be put to shame by the whole creation Doth every even the meanest creature of God pursue its end and perfection and proper happiness with ardent and vehement longings and shall a soul the noblest of all creatures stand folding up itself in itself or choaking up its wide and divine capacity with dust and dirt shall a godly soul the noblest of all souls hang the wings suspend its motions towards the supream good or so much as once offer to faint and languish in i●s enterprizes for eternal life Tell it not at Athens publish it not at Rome lest the Heathen Philosophers deride and hiss us out of the world But you will ask me when a Christian may be said to be sluggish and unactive and who these lazy souls are I will premise two things and then give you a brief account of them First When I speak of a sluggish and spiritless Religion I do not speak as the hot-spirited Anabaptists or Chiliasts who being themselves acted by a strange fervour of mind miscalled zeal are wont to declaim against all men as cold and benummed in their spirits who do not call for fire from Heaven to consume all dissenters under the notion of Antichristian who are not afraid to reproach the divine holy gentle yet generous spirit of Religion calling it weak womanish cowardly low cold and I know not what These men I believe so far as I can guess at their spirit if they had lived in the dayes of our Saviour and had beheld that gentle meek humble peaceable and pacate spirit which did infinitely shine forth in him would have gone nigh to have reproved him for not carrying on his own Kingdom with sufficient vigour and activity if not have judged Christ himself to be much Antichristian I hope you see nothing in all my discoveries of the Active spirit of Religion that savours of such a fiery spirit as this is Secondly when I do so highly commend the Active spirit of true Religion and the vigorous temper of truly Religious souls I would not be understood as if I thought all such souls were alike swift or that any such soul did alwayes move with like swiftness and keep a like pace towards God I know that there are different sizes of Active souls yea and different degrees of Activity in the same soul as may be seen Cant. 5. 3. compared with the sixth verse of the same chapter and in many other places of Scripture But yet that none may flatter and deceive themselves with an opinion of their being what indeed they are not I will briefly discover the sluggishness and inactivity of Christians in a few particulars I pray take it not ill though the greatest part of Christians be found guilty for that is no other than what Christ himself hath prophesied 1. The Active spirit of Religion in the soul will not suffer men to take up their rest in a constant course of external performances and they are but slothful souls that do place their Religion in any thing without them By external performances I mean not only open and publick and solemn services but even the most private and secret performances that are in and by the body and ab extra to the soul It is not possible that a soul should be happy in any thing that is extrinsecal to itself no not in God himself if we consider him only as something without the soul The devil himself knows and sees much of God without him but having no communications of a divine nature or life being perfectly estranged from the life of God he remains perfectly miserable I doubt it is a common deceit in the world men toyle and labour in bodily acts of worship and Religion in a slavish and mercinary manner and think with those labourers in the parable that at the end they must needs receive great wages and much thanks because they have born the heat and burden of the day Alas that ever men should so grosly mistake the nature of Religion as to sink it into a few bodily
pleasures profits or preferments into it yet it is a well of living water and will work its passage out The hungrings of the godly soul are not cannot be satisfied till it come to feed upon the hidden Manna nor its thirstings quenched till it come to be swallowed up in the unbounded Ocean of life and love But I see I cannot divide springing up from Eternal Life nor pursue the term of Religion but I must also take in the motion of the Religious soul whereby he pursues it which I have already handled in my discourse therefore I will quit this head and take a short view of the second The secondary and more improper notion of Eternal Life I told you was that which takes in the circumstances or appendices of it And here we must needs allow that the holy Scriptures do openly avonch some of these circumstances as those especially of the first rank that I named of some of which it seems to make great account and possibly the Scripture may some where or other imply all the rest even those of the inferiour rank Again we will allow that many of those phrases which the Scripture uses to describe the blessed state of the other world do principally respect these appendices of the souls essential happiness Such perhaps are the Crown of Righteousness mentioned by the Apostle 1 Tim. 4. 8. The price of the high Calling mentioned by the same Apostle Phil. 3. 14. The House which is from Heaven spoken of 2 Cor. 6. 2. A Kingdom an incorruptible Inheritance a place prepared Mansions a reward praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ 1 Pet. 1. 7. And that glory honour and peace spoken of by the Apostle Paul Rom. 2. 10. These are all Scripture descriptions of the other state and I suppose we may grant them to have a peculiar reference to this secondary and preter-essential happiness of the soul Though I know not any necessity there is to be so liberal in our concessions for it may be fairly said concerning all or most of them that the design of these phrases is not so much to establish this less proper notion or to point ou● to the circumstances of the glorified state as to insinuate how much more ample and glorious that state shall be than this in which we now are as a prize is looked upon as somewhat more excellent than what is done or expended to acquire it it must needs be so esteemed by runners and wrestlers a Kingdom is a more glorious state than that of subjection and an Inheritance is incomparably more ample than the pension that is allowed the heir in his minority But these things being conceded it doth not appear how far or under what notion the religious soul as such doth spring up into these additional glories and thirst after them I know there are many that speak very highly of these appendices and allow the godly soul a very high and irrespective valuation of them And this they do principally infer from the examples of Christ himself as also of Moses and Paul Give me leave therefore to suggest something not to enervate but to moderate the Argument drawn from these persons and after that I shall briefly lay down what I conceive to be most Scriptural and rational in this matter First As for the example of Christ it seems to make not much for them in this matter For however the Text is very plain that for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross and this joy seems plainly to be his session at the right hand of God Heb. 12. 2. Yet if by this joy we understand a more full and glorious possession of God and a more excellent exaltation of his humane nature to a more free fruition of the divine then it cannot be applied to any thing but the springing up of the gracious soul into its essential happiness which I have already contended for as being the proper genius of such a soul or if by this Joy and Throne we understand the power that Christ foresaw he should be vested with of leading captivity captive trampling under feet the powers of hell and darkness and procuring gifts for men which seems to me to be most likely then it belongs not at all to men neither can this example be drawn into imitation As for the instance of Moses who is said to have had respect to the recompence of the reward Heb. 11. 26. It is not yet granted that that recompence of reward relates principally to these appendants of the souls essential happiness neither can it I suppose be evinced But though I should also allow that which I encline to do yet all that can be inferred from it is but a respect that Moses had as our Translation well renders it or some account which he in his sufferings made of this recompence which was a very warrantable contemplation The Apostle Paul indeed doth openly profess that he looked for and desired the coming of Christ from Heaven upon the account of that glorious body which he would then cloath him with Phil. 3. 20 21. And so he might sure and yet not desire it principally and primarily but secondarily and with reference And this leads me to the general answer that I was preparing to give which is this Some of these circumstances which I named especially that of the glorified body may be reduced to the essential happiness of the soul or included in it so as that the soul could not otherwise be perfectly happy It is the vote of all Divines I think that a Christian is not compleatly happy till he consist of a soul and body both glorified And indeed considering the dear affection and essential aptitude that God hath planted in the humane soul for a body we cannot well conceive how she should be perfectly happy without one And this earthly body is alas an unequal yoak fellow in which she is half stifled and rather buried than conveniently lodg'd so that it seems necessary even to her essential happiness that she should have some more heavenly and glorious body wherein she may commodiously and pleasantly exert her innate powers and whereby she may express her self in a spiritual and noble manner suitable to her own natural dignity and vigour and to her infinitely-amiable and most beloved object Concerning the rest of the circumstances which cannot be thus reduced I conceive that such of them as are necessary to the essential happiness of the soul by way of subserviency may be eyed and desired and thirsted after secondarily and with reference as I said before that is under this notion only as they are subservient to that essential blessedness I confess I do not understand under what other notion a religious soul can lift up it self unto them I mean not so far forth as it is holy and religious and acts suitably to that divine principle which the Father of Spirits or rather the Father of our Lord