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
AN EXPLANATION OF The grand Mystery OF GODLINESS OR A True and Faithfull Representation OF THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL Of our Lord and Saviour JESUS CHRIST the Onely Begotten Son of GOD and Sovereign over Men and Angels By H. More D. D. 1 Tim. 3.16 And without controversie great is the Mystery of godliness God was manifested in the flesh justified in the Spirit seen of Angels preached unto the Gentiles believed on in the world received up into glory Acts 1.10 11. And while they looked stedfastly toward Heaven as he went up behold two when stood by them in white apparell Which also said Ye men of Galilee why stand ye gazing up into Heaven this same Iesus which is taken up from you into Heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into Heaven Gal. 1.8 Though an Angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel then this let him be accursed LONDON Printed by I. Flesher for W. Morden Bookseller in Cambridge 1660. To the READER READER 1. IF thine own Curiosity has given thee the trouble of perusing what I have wrote hitherto that thou maiest not suspect thy task will prove endless give me leave to informe thee that there is no small hopes that this Discourse may prove the last from my hand that shall exercise thy patience In which if thou wilt not believe me on my bare word the better to ease thee of thy fears I shall back it with some reason I must indeed confess That free Speculation and that easie springing up of coherent Thoughts and Conceptions within is a Pleasure to me far above any thing I ever received from external Sense and that lazy activity of Mind in compounding and dissevering of Notions and Ideas in the silent observation of their natural connexions and disagreements as a Holy-day and Sabbath of rest to the Soul But the labour of deriving of these senses of the Mind with their due advantages and circumstances to the Understanding of another and to find out Words which will prove fâ—â—thful witnesses of the peculiarities of my Thoughts this verily is to me a toil and a burden unsupportable besides the very writing of them a trouble so tedious that if any one knew with what impatience and vexatiousness I pen down my Conceptions they might be very well assured that I am not onely free from but incapable of the common disease of this Scripturient Age. 2. No smal Engines therefore could ever move so heavy and sluggish a Soul as mine to so ungratefull a piece of drudgery as thou thy self maiest collect from my very Writings themselves the subjects of them being matters of the highest consequence that the Mind of man can entertain her self withall The writing whereof was in a manner a necessary result of my natural Constitution which freeing me from all the servitude of those petty designs of Ambition Covetousness and the pleasing entanglements of the Body I might either lie fixt for ever in an unactive idleness or else be moved by none but very great Objects Amongst which the least was the Contemplation of this Outward world whose several powers and properties touching variously upon my tender senses made to me such enravishing musick and snatcht away my Soul into so great admiration love and desire of a nearer acquaintance with that Principle from which all these things did flow that the pleasure and joy that frequently accrued to me from hence is plainly unutterable though I have attempted to leave some marks and traces thereof in my Philosophical Poems 3. But being well advised both by the Dictates of my own Conscience and clear information of those Holy Oracles which we all deservedly reverence That God reserves his choicest secrets for the purest minds and that it is uncleanness of Spirit not distance of place that dissevers us from the Deity I was fully convinced that true Holiness was the onely safe Entrance into Divine knowledge and having an unshaken belief of the Existence of God and of his Will that we should be holy even as he is holy there was nothing that is truly sinful that could appear to me assisted by such a power to be unconquerable Which therefore urged me seriously to set my self to the task Of the Experiences and Events of which Enterprize my Second and Third Canto of the Life of the Soul is a real and faithful Record 4. My enjoyments then increasing with my Victories and Innocency and Simplicity filling my mind with ineffable delight in God and his Creation I found my self as loath to die that is to think my Soul mortal as I was when I was a child to be called in to go to bed in Summer evenings there being still light enough as I thought to enjoy my play Which solicitude put me upon my first search into the Nature of the Soul which I pursued chiefly by the guidance of the School of Plato whose Philosophy to this very day I look upon to be more then Humane in the chief strokes thereof But launching out so very early into so deep a Theory I think it not amiss to advertise the Reader that he would do well where he finds a difference in my discoveries to interpret and also rectifie if need be my First thoughts by my Second my Philosophick Poems and whatever is writ in that Volume by my later and better concocted Prose These were the first Essaies of my Youth and how great and serious the Objects of my Mind were therein thou canst easily judge 5. And after this where I seem most light and trivial and play the sportful Satyrist against Enthusiastick Philosophy my design even then was as seasonable serious and of as grand importance as I could possibly undertake which I have more then sufficiently demonstrated in those Writings themselves And though some over-subject to the Fanatick disease have looked upon that unexpected sally of mine as a very extravagant exploit yet I did easily bear with their ignorance deeming it in my silent thoughts in some sort parallel to that of the peevish Hebrew who reproached Moses for slaying of the Egyptian not knowing that it was a preludious act to his delivering of his whole nation from the bondage of Aegypt 6. And I hope I may speak it without vanity that what is discovered concerning Enthusiasme in my Enthusiasmus Triumphatus together with that which is comprehended in this present Volume will contribute no small share to a rightful and justifiable subduing of so dangerous a distemper and to the slaying or at least fettering that wild Beast that the Devil himself rides upon when he warres against the Lamb whose Throne I have seen shaken with the pushings of this monsters horns for these many years together though never clearer then now of late And I dare pronounce with a loud voice aforehand That if ever Christianity be exterminated it will be by Enthusiasme Of so great consequence is it rightly to oppose so deadly an evil Which
rejecting their Messias 2. From the many Sects amongst Christians 3. Their difference in opinion concerning the Trinity 4. The Creation 5. The Soul of Man 6. The Person of Christ 7. And the Nature of Angels 1. HItherto we have argued the Obscurity of the Christian Mystery from the Reasons and Causes thereof whereby we have evinced That it ought to be Obscure and that therefore in all likelyhood it is so But the Effects are so manifest that if we do but briefly point at them it will be put beyond all doubt That it is so indeed Let us now instance in some few Why are the Iews yet unconverted or rather why did they at first cast off their Messias but because the Prophesies in Scripture were so Obscure that they had taken up a false Notion of him and of the Condition he was to appear in For they expected him as a mighty Prince that should restore the kingdome to Israel and that Victory Peace Prosperity and Dominion should be accumulated upon the Iewish nation by his means Which opinion I conceive the Lowness of the Mosaical dispensation under which they lived that perpetually propounded to them worldly advantage as a reward of their obedience and the Obscurity of the Predictions of the Messias engaged them in For they being either Figurative and Allegorical or mingling sometimes the state of his Second coming with his First their eager eye being so fully fixt upon what sounded like worldly happiness they could mind no other sense but that in these Enigmatical writings Which yet proved clear enough to as many as God had prepared and belonged to the election of Grace But he might if it had pleased his Wisdome so to do have made all things so plain that we should not need at this day to expect the calling of the Iews but they might have been one Body with us long since But their Rejection is a greater assurance to us of the Truth of our Religion we being able to make it good even out of those Records that are kept by our professed Enemies Besides a man can no more rationally require that all Israel should have flowed in at the first appearance of Christ then that his Second coming should be joyned with his First or his First drawn back to the next Age after Adams fall nor that more rationally then that Autumne should be cast upon Summer and both upon Spring The Counsels of God are at once but the fulfillings of them ripen in due order and time 2. But though we let go the Iews and contain our selves within the compass of those that either are or would be accounted Christians their Opinions and Sects both have been and are so numerous that the very mention of so confessed a Truth may sufficiently evince the Obscurity of those Divine Oracles to which they all appeal I will instance only in things of greater moment which will be a sure pledge of the certainty of their innumerable dissensions in smaller matters 3. Wherefore to say nothing of that more intricate Mystery of the Triunity in the Godhead where the curious Speculators of that difficult Theory are first divided into Trinitarians and Anti-Trinitarians and then the Trinitarians into Heterusians Homousians and Homoeusians we shall see them disagreeing not onely in the Distinction of the Persons but concerning the Essence it self Some affirming God to be Infinite others Finite some a Spirit others a Body othersome not onely a Body but a Body of the very same shape with mans Of which opinion the Aegyptian Anthropomorphites were so zealously confident that they forced the Bishop of Alexandria out of fear of his life to subscribe to their gross conceit 4. Again concerning the Creation of the world some affirme That God made it of Matter coaeternal with and independent of himself Others that he created it of Nothing Others that he made it not at all but that it was made as some would have it by good Angels others by the Devil 5. Concerning the Soul of man some say it subsists and acts before it comes into the Body Others onely in the Body and after the solution of the Body Others in the Body alone Others not there neither as holding indeed no such thing as a Soul at all but that the Body it self does all Which some hold shall rise again others not but that the whole Mystery of Christianity is finished in this life 6. Concerning Christ some were of Opinion that he was onely God appearing in humane shape others onely man others both others neither 7. Concerning Angels some affirm them to be Fiery or Aery Bodies some pure Spirits some Spirits in Aery or Fiery Bodies Others none of these but that they are momentaneous Emanations from God Others that they are onely Divine Imaginations in men which can be by no means allowed unless we should admit the Holy Patriarch Abraham to have arrived at such a measure of dotage as to provide cakes and a fatted calf to entertain three Divine Imaginations which visited him in his tent But certainly such slight and exorbitant glosses as these can argue nothing else but a misbelief of the Text and indeed of all Religion and that the Interpreter is no Christian but either Atheist or Infidel Wherefore to leave such Spirits as these to the confident Dictates of their own foul Complexion we shall rather take into consideration some Few but Main points wherein certain men otherwise Rational enough in their sphere and hearty Assertors of the Authority of Scripture disagree from the Generality of other Christians The first of them is Concerning the Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Godhead The second Concerning the Divinity of Christ. The third and last Concerning the State of the Soul after Death Which Points though I must confess they are of subtle speculation yet they seem so necessary and essential the two former especially to Christian Religion that I think it fit not to pass them over with a bare mention of them nor yet to speak much in so profound and Mysterious a matter CHAP. IV. 1. That the Trinity was not brought out of Plato's School into the Church by the Fathers 2. A Description of the Platonick Trinity and of the difference of the Hypostases 3. A description of their Union 4. And why they hold All a due Object of Adoration 5. The irrefutable Reasonableness of the Platonick Trinity and yet declined by the Fathers a Demonstration that the Trinity was not brought out of Plato's School into the Church 6. Which is further evidenced from the compliableness of the Notion of the Platonick Trinity with the Phrase and Expressions of Scripture 7. That if the Christian Trinity were from Plato it follows not that the Mystery is Pagan 8 9 10. The Trinity proved from Testimony of the Holy Writ 1. NOw concerning the First The Trinity say they objecting against it in general is nothing else but a Pagan or Heathenish Figment brought out of the Philosophy
and what he utters concerning the Spirit chap. 16.14 He shall glorifie me for he shall receive of mine and shew it unto you Wherefore I say the Fathers being every way so fairly invited to bring the Platonick Notion of the Trinity into the Church assuredly if themselves had been Platonists and had fetched the Mystery from that School they would not have failed to have done it 7. Secondly Admit that the ancient Fathers were Platonists and brought the Mystery of the Trinity into the Church of the Christians it does not straight follow That it is therefore a Pagan or Heathenish Mystery Pythagoras and Plato having not received it from Pagans or Heathens but from the learned of the Iews as sundry Authors assert the Iews themselves in long succession having received it as a Divine Tradition and such is Platonisme acknowledged to be by Iamblichus who sayes it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And assuredly if there had not been some very great reason for it men so wise and profoundly knowing as Pythagoras Plato Plotinus and others would never have made so much adoe about it 8. Thirdly and lastly I say it is not only impious but vain and foolish to asperse that Mystery with the reproch of Paganisme that is so plainly to them that be not prejudiced set down and held forth in the Holy Scripture For the very Forme of Baptisme prescribed by our Saviour evidently enough denotes Three Divine Hypostases Of the Father there is no question Concerning the Divinity of the Sonne we shall speak more fully in the Second point we proposed That the Holy Ghost is not a mere Power Property or Attribute of God but an Hypostasis one free enough from being swai'd by Tradition or Authority of any Church and as himself conceits a very close and safe adherer to Scripture does grosly enough acknowledge while he makes it some created Angel that bears the sacred Title of the Holy Ghost and undergoes those Divine functions that are attributed to him But we need not maintain Truth by any mans Error it being sufficiently able to support it self and therefore we will make use of no advantage but what Scripture it self offers us And this Forme of Baptisme affords us something to the evincing that the Holy Ghost is not an Attribute but an Hypostasis For sith that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is to give up a mans self to the Discipline Government and Authority of this or that Person it is the most natural sense to conceive that all Three mentioned in the Forme are Persons we being so well assured that two of them are But there are other passages of Scripture that will make the point more clear Rom. 15.13 The God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing that ye may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost Now if the Holy Ghost were but a Power not a Person what a ridiculous Tautology would it be for the sense would be through the power of the holy power Again John 16.13 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are very ill Syntax were it not that there is a Personality in the Holy Spirit which by what follows is most undeniably evident For he shall not speak of himself but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak To receive of one and communicate to others by way of hearing and speaking what can that belong to but a Person or Hypostasis To this you may adde also Mark 13.11 Whatsoever shall be given you in that hour that speak ye for it is not you that speak but the Holy Ghost Now that this Hypostasis is not a created Angel amongst other Reasons the Conception of Christ may well argue it being more congruous That that spirit that moved upon the waters and created the world should form that holy Foetus in the womb of the Virgin then that any created Angel should apply himself to that work for he had not then been the Son of God but of an Angel as in reference to his birth in time 9. Besides this one Individual Spirit in Scripture in represented as every where ready to sanctify to regenerate to distribute various gifts and graces to the Church to have spoke by the mouth of the Prophets to be a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a discerner of the thoughts of the heart Baptisme also and Benedictions are imparted in his name he is also called to witness which is a piece of Divine worship all which seems more naturally to be understood of him whom we properly call the Spirit of God then of any particular created Angel whatsoever 10. We shall onely adde one place more which will put all out of doubt to them that do not doubt of the Text it self 1 John 5.7 There are three witnesses in Heaven the Father the Word and the Spirit and these three are One What can be writ more plain for the proof of the Triunity of the Godhead But for those that suspect the Clause to be supposititious I shall not trouble my self to confute them that task being performed so solidly and judiciously by a late Interpreter that nothing but Prejudice and Wilfulness can make a man depart unsatisfied with so clear a demonstration Wherefore secure of this Point Concerning the Trinity we go on to the next concerning The Divinity of Christ. CHAP. V. 1. That the natural sense of the First of S. Iohn does evidently witness the Divinity of Christ. 2. A more particular urging of the circumstances of that Chapter 3. That S. Iohn used the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Iewish or Cabbalistical notion 4. The Trinity and the Divinity of Christ argued from Divine worship due to him and from his being a Sacrifice for sin 5. That to deny the Trinity and Divinity of Christ or to make the Union of our selves with the Godhead of the same nature with that of Christ's subverts Christianity 6. The uselesness and sauciness of the pretended Deification of Enthusiasts and how destructive it is of Christian Religion 7. The Providence of God in preparing of the Nations by Platonisme for the easier reception of Christianity 1. THat Christ is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a mere Creature but a divine Hypostasis or truly really and Physically not Allegorically and Morally joyn'd with that Divine Hypostasis which is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if men would not bring their own sturdy preconceptions but listen to the easy and natural aire of the Text the Beginning of S. Iohns Gospel would put out of all controversy For I 'le appeal to any supposing the Union of Christ's Humanity with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be true in what fitter more significant or better-becoming way could it be expressed then already it is in the Beginning of that Gospel Wherefore to interpret it in any other sense is to delude themselves and to abuse the Scripture through the prepossessions of their
more Particular answer to that of the 32 of this Chapter where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may be either interpreted if the Souls of just men deceased obtain not their glorified or heavenly Bodies For though it were granted that they did in the mean time live and act in Aery vehicles yet that State and Region as the Earth being common to good and bad they had yet obtained no peculiar reward for their hardship and toil here Or else which is the more safe sense by far it may be interpreted at large of the life and subsistency of the Soul after its departure according to the last signification of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the third Premiss And thus is the strength of the main proof of the Psychopannychites utterly enervated 10. But there are other places of Scripture which they misapply to the same purpose as the Answer of our Saviour to the Sadducees question concerning the Resurrection I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Iacob God is not the God of the dead but of the living Hence our Adversaries would conclude That the Souls of the departed do not live because if they did our Saviour's argument would be invalid for the Resurrection For if Abraham's Spirit were now alive God might be his God though his Body never rise But this is easily satisfied out of the second Premiss By Resurrection there being understood a Life hereafter and the Opinion of the Sadducees being That there is neither Angel nor Spirit nor Life to come he does not exactly tie himself to that particular circumstance of a blessed Immortality that consists in the enjoyment of glorified Bodies but answers more at large concerning the subsistence of Souls of men departed that they are and live and that therefore there are Spirits and so handsomly confutes the whole Doctrine of the Sadducees by that citation out of their own Pentateuch and a skilful application thereof CHAP. VII 1. A General Answer to the last sort of places they alledge that imply no enjoyment before the Resurrection 2. A Particular answer to that of 2 Cor. 5. out of Hugo Grotius 3. A preparation to an Answer of the Author 's own by explaining what the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signifie 4. His Paraphrase of the six first Verses of the forecited Chapter 5. A further confirmation of his Paraphrase 6. The weakness of the Reasons of the Psychopannychites noted 1. THE third and last way of proving the Sleep of the Soul is from such Passages in Scripture as seem to joyn the Hour of our Death immediately with the Day of our Resurrection as in 2 Cor. 5. Where the Apostle seems to intimate that there does nothing intercede betwixt the solution of our Earthly Tabernacle and being clothed with the Heavenly which not being till the Day of Judgment it is a sign that the Soul is in no condition unless that of Sleep till then So likewise in 2 Tim. chap. 1. and chap. 4. In the former he speaks of his Depositum which he intrusts God with till that Day and prays that Onesiphorus may finde mercy at that Day and in the latter he speaks of a Crown of righteousness that the Lord the righteous Judge will give him at that day as if all were defer'd till then But in my conceit it is a weak kinde of Argument Because the Souls of the Saints receive not their great reward till the Day of Iudgment that therefore they receive nothing at all nay that they are in a worse state then in this life as having lost all Sense of Existence or Being Their opinion to me seems more tolerable then this who though they do not presently mount them up in their Ethereal Chariots to Heaven yet permit them to move and to act in their Aereal Vehicles at a less distance from the Earth But that Last day being a day of that high Solemnity dreadful Glory and Majesty it is no wonder that for the better moving of the Minds of men he so often mentions that time without taking any notice of the interceding Space For thereby it also seems more nigh as a distant Object does to the sight no visible thing coming between 2. Now for the second to the Cor. 5. chap. There be two waies of clearing that difficulty there The one of Hugo Grotius in which a late learned Interpreter of our own does also insist expounding as they may well the third verse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thus If so be we shall be found in the number of those that are still clothed with these Earthly bodies not stript naked of them by death This Interpretation the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 going afore makes still the more warrantable as also that following phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is used by the Apostle in a parallel case This Exposition utterly destroys all the force of the Psychopannychites Argument taken from this place For whereas the Apostle seems to speak as if immediately upon the solution of this Earthly they were to be invested with a Heavenly Tabernacle which is mainly to be gathered out of the second and fourth verses it is only upon the supposition that the day of the Lord might come while they were yet clothed with flesh 3. But because this Interpretation may seem to be something derogatory to the Apostle's Knowledge as if he were pendulous and uncertain whether the day of Iudgment might not be in his time which some men will not bear I shall propound another that they may take their choice The former seems to have a special advantage in the proper sense of those two words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and if we can but come off well here we shall carry on the rest handsmooth We premise therefore thus much concerning the meaning of those two words That as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies simply to put on a garment so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may well signifie to put on an inward garment For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will signifie within in composition as the Latine word In does in Inducula Inducium and Interula all which signifie an inward Garment and the two former they ordinarily derive from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this proper signification of the word And as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signifie to put on an inward garment so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signifie an addition of an inward garment to an outward for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will signifie in composition as if the sense were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not to be content to wear an upper garment only but to put on also an inward as we do in winter add an half-shirt or a wastcoat Or if this look like too curious a Criticism let 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the same that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
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
their polluted Vehicles less of Heaven then the meanest Regenerate Soul that dwels in these Tabernacles of Earth and that of the Prophet is most true of them that their Sun is gone down at mid-day 3. Sixthly That the Destruction of these Aethereal Vehicles was not an utter Extinction of life to them but onely an Exclusion from the life and pleasures of that Supernal Paradise which they enjoyed in those Heavenly Vehicles For that they now live and move and act is manifest in that the whole World rings of their exploits and villanies 4. Seventhly That the Souls of men which are as much Immortall they being Spirits as those of the faln Angels are are not devoid of life after the death of this Body For as the Souls of the fallen Angels descended from thinner to thicker without the loss of Sense and Life so do our Souls ascend from thicker to thinner habitations with the like if not greater security of acting and living after the Death of the Body 5. Which we shall the easilier believe if we consider how contemptible and homely a thing that Organ is which is the ultimate and immediate conveigher of whatever we perceive in the outward world and which is most remarkable in which alone the Soul has any Sense at all of any thing that arrives to her cognoscence Which if it be not the Animal Spirits within the Brain which makes most of all for us I confess with Cartesius I think it most probable to be the Conarion then which nor Water nor Air nor Aether nor any other Element else seems more Simple and Homogeneal So that the advantage seems not to be in the nature of that Organ but it is because the Soul by those lawes that brought her into the Body has placed her Centre of Perception there 6. Which little Pavilion of the Soul's Centre of Perception being of so gross consistence as it is and becoming thereby less Passive and Alterable it was very requisite that there should be that curious frame of the external Organs of the Eye the Ear the Nose and other parts to strengthen those motions and impressions that they transmit so that they may be able forcibly enough to strike upon the Conarion or at least strike through the Organs and penetrate to the Animal Spirits in the Brain supposing them the most inward and immediate Organ of Perception And that the Conformation of the external Organs of Sense is such that they are to admiration fitted to this end is a thing so well known amongst the Anatomists that I need not insist on the proof of it as it is also among Physitians That none of the external Organs have any Sense at all in them no more then an Acousticon or a Dioptrick glass From whence is discovered the Unreasonableness of their Despair that conceit that when the Soul is devested of her Organical Body she can have no Sense nor Perception of any thing For this curious Organization tends to nothing else but the proportionating the vigour of Motion to the difficulty of its passage through the Nerves or to the grossness of the consistency of the Conarion Which Organical contrivance therefore may not be at all needfull in the Soul separate from the Body the Centre of Perception being placed bare in a more tender and passive Element such as Air Aether and the like So that it will be the greatest wonder in the world that the Soul should sleep after death so small a thing being able to waken her 7. Besides it is not Unreasonable but that She and other Spirits though they have no set Organs yet for more distinct and full perception of Objects may frame the Element they are in into temporary Organization and that with as much ease and swiftness as we can dilate and contract the pupil of our Eye and bring back or put forward the Crystalline humor 8. And not only to respect the Natures of Humane Souls but also the Will and Purpose of God there was never any yet that pretended to knowledge in Philosophy that denied the Immortality of the Soul in this sense which we contend for but they deni'd first a Particular Divine Providence which for my own part I think it is impossible for any one to deny that will diligently and indifferently search into the matter And therefore this Seventh Assertion may very well stand That the Souls of men are Immortal and act and live after Death Of this Subject I have wrote more lately and more fully in my Treatise Of the Immortality of the Soul to which the Reader may have recourse CHAP. V. 1. The Eighth Assertion That there is a Polity amongst the Angels and Souls separate both Good and Bad and therefore Two distinct Kingdomes one of Light and the other of Darkness 2. And a perpetual fewd and conflict betwixt them 3. The Ninth That there are infinite swarms of Atheistical Spirits as well Aereal as Terrestrial in an utter ignorance or hatred of all true Religion THE Eighth Assertion is That every Angel Good or Bad is as truly a Person as a man being endued also with Life Sense and Understanding whence they are likewise capable of Ioy and Pain and therefore coercible by Laws And mutual Helps being able to procure what Solitude cannot they must of necessity be Sociable and hold together in Bodies Politick and obey for either hope of advantage or fear of mischief Out of the whole masse therefore of the Angelical Nature taking in also according to Philo the Souls of men be they in what Vehicles they will there arise since their Fall two distinct Kingdoms the one of Darkness whose Laws reach no further then to the Interest of the Animal life the other of Light which is the true Kingdom of God and here the Animal life is in subjection and the Divine life bears rule as the Divine life is trodden down in the other Kingdom and the Animal life has the sole Jurisdiction 2. Now the inward life and spring of Motion in each Kingdom being so different it follows that these two Kingdoms must alwaies be at odds and that there must be a perpetual conflict till victory Which we shall still more easily conceive if we admit what is very reasonable That the Kingdom of Light reaches from Heaven to Earth that is That as there are found on the same surface of the Earth Animals both wilde and gentle harmless and poisonous and men good and bad pious and impious so likewise even in the same Regions of the Air that there are scatter'd Spirits of both Kindes good and evil Subjects of the Kingdom of Darkness and the Kingdom of Light In the order of those Aereal Angels the ancient Philosophers ranked the Souls of men deceased whether Vertuous or Wicked unless they had reached to an extraordinary and Heroical degree of Purity and Perfection for then they conceited that they were carried up to those more high and Aethereal Regions 3. Ninthly That there
The three Branches from this Root Humility Charity and Purity and why they are called Divine 3. A Description of Humility 4. A Description of Charity and how Civil Justice or Moral Honesty is eminently contained therein 5. A Description of Purity and how it eminently contains in it what ever Moral Temperance or Fortitude pretend to 6. A Description of the truest Fortitude 7. And how transcendent an Example thereof our Saviour was 8. A further representation of the stupendious Fortitude of our Saviour 9. That Moral Prudence also is necessarily comprized in the Divine life 10. That the Divine life is the truest Key to the Mystery of Christianity but the excellency thereof unconceivable to those that do not partake of it 1. AND now I have advanced the Animal life so high by adding this Middle Nature to it that you may perhaps marvail upon what I shall pitch that may seem more precious and desirable unless it be some wonder-working Faith whereby a man might cast out Devils and command mountains to remove and be carried into the midst of the Sea But it is so far from proving any such like priviledge that the Tumour of the natural Spirit of man would please it self in that I am afraid when I shall describe it he will have no relish at all of it scarce understand what I mean and if he do yet he will look upon it as a dry insipid Notion without any fruit or pleasure therein But however I will declare it to him as well as I can and that nothing may be wanting I shall First give a short glance at the Root of this Divine life also which is an Obediential Faith and Affiance in the true God the Maker and Original of all things From this Faith Apostate Angels and lapsed Mankind are fallen but the Soul of the Messias ever stood upright wading through the deepest Temptations that humane Nature could be encumbred with 2. But this Holy and Divine life to such as have an eye to see will be most perceptible in the Branches thereof though to the Natural man they will look very witheredly and contemptibly These Branches are Three whose names though trivial and vulgar yet if rightly understood they bear such a sense with them that nothing more weighty can be pronounced by the tongue of men or Seraphims and in brief they are these Charity Humility and Purity which where-ever they are found are the sure and infallible marks or signes of either an unfallen Angel or a Regenerate Soul These we call Divine Vertues not so much because they imitate in some things the Holy Attributes of the Eternal Deity but because they are such as are proper to a Creature to whom God communicates his own nature so far forth as it is capable of receiving it whether that Creature be Man or Angel and so becomes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For such a Creature as this and Christ was such a Creature in the highest manner conceivable has conspicuously in it these three Divine Vertues namely Humility Charity and Purity 3. By Humility I understand such a Spirit or gracious property in the Soul of man or any Intellectual Creature as that hereby he does sensibly and affectionately attribute all that he has or is or can do to God the Author and Giver of every good and perfect gift This is the highest piece of Holiness and the truest and most acceptable sacrifice we can offer to God thus lively and freely to acknowledge that all we have is from him From whence we do not arrogate any thing to our selves nor contemptuously lord it over others In this Grace is comprehended an ingenuous Gratitude which is the freest and most Noble kind of Iustice that is A full renouncing of all Self-dependency a firm and profound Submission to the Will of God in all things and a Disgust or at least a Deadness to the glory of the World and the applause of men 4. By Charity I understand an Intellectual Love by which we are enamoured of the Divine Perfections such as his Goodness Equity Benignity his Wisdome also his Iustice and his Power as they are graciously actuated and modified by the forenamed Attributes And I say that to be truly transformed into these Divine Perfections so far forth as they are communicable to Humane nature and out of the real sense of them in our selves to love and admire God in whom they infinitely and unmeasurably reside is the truest and highest kind of Adoration and the most grateful Praising and Glorifying God that the Soul of man can exhibit to her Maker But in being thus transformed into this Divine image of Intellectual Love our Mindes are not onely raised in holy Devotions towards God but descend also in very full and free streams of dearest Affection to our fellow-Creatures rejoycing in their good as if it were our own and compassionating their misery as if it were our selves did suffer and according to our best judgement and power ever endeavoring to promote the one and to remove the other And this most eminently conteins in it whatever good is driven at by Civil Iustice or Moral Honesty For how should we injure those for whose real welfare we could be content to die 5. By Purity I understand a due moderation and rule over all the Joyes and Pleasures of the Flesh bearing so strict an hand and having so watchful an eye over their subtil enticements allurements and so firme and loyal affection to that Idea of Celestial Beauty set up in our Mindes that neither the Pains of the Body nor the Pleasures of the Animal life shall ever work us below our Spiritual Happiness and all the competible enjoyments of that life that is truly Divine And in this conspicuously is contain'd whatever either Moral Temperance or Fortitude can pretend to For ordinarily he is held Temperate enough that can but save his brains from gross sottishness and his Body from diseases but this Purity respects the Divine life it self and requires such a Moderation in all the affairs of the Flesh that our Bodies may still remain unpolluted Temples and meet Habitations for the Spirit of God to dwell in and act in whether by way of Illumination or Sanctification and Animation to interiour duties of Holiness And as for Fortitude it is plain that this Purity of the Soul having mortified and tamed the exorbitant lusts and pleasures of the Body Death will seem less formidable by far and this mortal Life of lesser value 6. But the greatest Fortitude of all is when Love proves stronger then Death it self even in the deepest and most bitter sense of it and not so much the weakness and insensibleness of the Body nor yet the full carreer or furious heat and hurry of the naturall Spirits makes Pain and Death more tolerable but the pure courage of the Soul her self animated onely by an unrelinquishable
Virginia Mexico Peru and Brasilia But it would be as tedious as needless to harp so long on one string by so voluminous an Induction and it is more warrantable to be sparing then over-lavish in so copious and confessed a matter Whoever reads those Writers which are numerous enough that can inform them in this inquiry he will assuredly find That the Religion of the Heathen reached no further then the Objects of the Animal life and that though they may go under several names yet that they are the same things every where viz. Wrath Lust and Sensuality or such things as are in subserviency to these as Corn Wine and other Requisites for the necessities or delights of Man as also those Powers that have an influence upon these as the Sun Moon and Stars Fire Water Air and the like 8. We may adde to these Inanimate things Eminent persons whom they could not but acknowledge as their great Benefactors Such were their Law-givers Kings and Commanders that fought their battels successfully the first Inventours of Arts or any useful contrivance for the convenience of life Wherefore the most subtil defenders of the worship of the Pagans let them elude the charge of Idolatry as well as they can or Polytheism yet they can never avoid the imputation That their serving of God in the Heathens Ceremonies is not any thing more then the acknowledging that Power that is able to gratifie or grieve the Spirit of the mere Natural Man CHAP. VIII 1. That Judaism also respected nothing else but the Gratifications of the Animal life as appears in all their Festivals 2. That though the People were held in that low dispensation yet Moses knew the meaning of his own Types and that Immortality that was to be revealed by Christ. 3. That their Sabbaths reached no further then things of this life 4. Nor their Sabbatical years and Iubilees 5. Nor their Feasts of Trumpets 6. Nor their Feast of Tabernacles 7. Nor their Pentecost 8. Nor lastly their Feast of Expiation 1. AND truly that the absolute Transcendency of the Christian Religion may be the better understood I cannot here omit that Iudaism does very much symbolize with Paganism in this point we are upon For though the Iewes were very right and orthodox in this in that they did direct their worship to that One and only true God that made Heaven and Earth and is the Author and Giver of every good gift and that without the offence and scandal of Idolatrous worship yet under this dispensation of Moses he seems openly to promise nothing more to the people of the Iewes then the present enjoyments of this Natural life nor threatens any thing but the plagues thereof as seems manifest Deuteronomy 28. where the Blessings of obedience to Moses his Law and the Cursings of disobedience are largely set down 2. Not but that I can easily believe that Moses himself understood the Mystery of Immortality and the Promise of those Eternal joyes to be revealed by the Messias in the fulness of time as also the meaning of all the Types that refer unto him and that his Successors also in that nation their Holy Men or Prophets had some measurable Knowledge thereof But my meaning is that the Generality of the Iews were locked up in this lower kind of Dispensation and that Moses his Law in the Externals thereof drives at no higher then thus as is apparent from all the Festivals thereof they none of them concerning any thing more then the enjoyments and conveniences of this present life 3. For as for their Sabbaths they were but a Memorial of the Creation of this visible world the belief whereof the Sadducees embraced as well as others though they denied that there was either Angel or Spirit for there is not any mention of the Creation of any such thing in the external letter of Moses and therefore the Appearances of Angels they look'd upon as only present Emanations from God which ceased as he disappeared 4. And for their Sabbatical year as also the year of Iubilee which was celebrated at the end of seven times seven years besides that they are not without a reflection upon the Creation of the World which was compleated at the seventh day wherein therefore God rested the other reasons according to the Text of Moses reach no further then the things of this present life For as concerning the Sabbatical year the Precept runs thus Six years thou shalt sow thy land and gather the fruits thereof but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lye still that the poor of thy people may eat in like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard and with thy olive-yard And for the Iubilee it is evident that it had a secular use for the releasment of Servants and restoring of lands to their first owners who were necessitated to sell them Those Feasts therefore were instituted in order to a Political good 5. Their Feasts of Trumpets and their New-Moons seem indeed to have an higher use to call the people together to hear the Law but I told you before that the Blessings and Cursings of the Law were merely Temporal And for their Sacrifices of Thanksgiving and of Atonement they were in reference to what is Good or Evil to this life of the Flesh. 6. Their Feast of Tabernacles was instituted in remembrance that the Children of Israel dwelt in Tabernacles and Boothes when God brought them out of the land of Aegypt As also their Passeover was a more particular representation of the manner of their delivery out of the hands of the Aegyptians as you may see Exodus the 12. 7. Their Pentecost that is the fiftieth day after the Passeover in this they offered two wave-loaves as upon the second day of the Passeover they offered a sheaf of the first fruits of their Harvest so that those Solemnities respected merely the Fruits of the Earth 8. And lastly as for the Feast of Expiation wherein the Scape-goat carried away the sins of the people and the evils deserved thereby into the wilderness being as I have already intimated that those plagues or evils denounced in Moses his Law be but of a secular consideration it is plain that this particular Ceremony in the Religion of Moses in the letter thereof reaches no further then the Pleasures or Aggrievances of this mortal life It being reserved for Christ alone to bring the most certain and most comfortable News of that Eternal Joy which we shall be made partakers of with him for ever in the Heavens who was to abolish Death and to bring Life and Immortality to light through the Gospel as S. Paul speaks CHAP. IX 1. The Preeminency of Judaism above Paganism 2. The Authors of the Religions of the Heathen who they were 3. How naturally lapsed Mankind fals under the superstitious Tyranny of Devils 4. The palpable effects of this Tyranny in the Nations of America 5. That that false and wilde Resignation in the Quakers does
naturally expose them to the Tyranny of Satan 6. That their affectation of blinde impulses is but a preparation to Demonical possession and a way to the restoring of the vilest Superstitions of Paganism 1. WHat shall we say then is there no real difference at all betwixt Iudaism and Paganism Yes a great deal For though they both seem to agree in this that they neither reach further in their End then the gratifications of the Animal life it being indeed incredible that their Souls that are so low sunk that they cannot see beyond this present state should emerge to so high a pitch of Sanctification as is understood by that life we call Divine yet Iudaism has the preeminence far above Paganism First In that those rich discoveries of the Gospel are so exactly adumbrated and shadowed out in the Mosaical Types that a man may be assured that they were prefigured by them Secondly That the worship of God according to the Rites of Moses is more pure and devoid of all suspicion of Idolatry which the Religion of the Heathen was not as has been already declared 2. Lastly In that God himself was the Institutour of the Religion of the Jews whenas the Rites of the Heathen were found out and appointed either by Angels as some would have it such as were the Overseers and Guardians of severall Nations and Countreys who if they were good the Inhabitants of the earth it seems revolted from them and corrupted their primitive institutions so long ago that the knowledge of them never arrived to or hands or else at the best they were but the better sort of lapsed Spirits or crafty Political men or impure and malicious Devils And so far as History will give us light all the Religions of the World saving those of Moses and Christ have no better Authors then those of the Three last kinds as you may gather out of what has been already spoken and too many of them I suspect have been ordained by the foulest and wickedest of all the lapsed crew 3. For Mankinde being so much sunk and fallen from God by the temptation of the Devil like a Bird or prey he follows his prize and hunts there where his game is most hovering over the sons of men whom he having struck down to the earth le ts not his hold go but having once seized upon them keeps them as long as he can within his own power it falling to his share to domineer over men as naturally as wicked men to circumvent and domineer one over another I mean the more powerful and subtle over the more weak and unwise 4. Of which the whole New-found World seems to be an ample Testimony there being very few places in America but such as were discovered to be palpably and visibly under the power of the old Serpent their religious Rites and Ceremonies being as uncouth and antick and more bloody and cruell then those that Witches are known to be tied to here For the mind of these Apostate Spirits is that the Remnant of the Law of Nature and Light of Reason in man should be quite obliterated and that mankind should be wholy their Vassals and that they should forget the Nobleness of their own condition and stoop to whatsoever they require of them which are commonly such things as become none but Mad-men and Beasts 5. And therefore it is a very dangerous and false kind of Resignation in those that would pretend to a more then ordinary pitch of Religion to bid adieu to the Rules of Humanity and Reason under the pretence of the exercise of Self-denial For thus giving away their own Will in those things that are laudable and good they give room for the Devil to enter and to possess them Soul and Body and to drive them to the most vile sordid the most uncivil and ridiculous nay the most wicked and impious actions that Humane Nature is liable to as is too much already found in some of that Fanatick Sect of the Quakers who under pretence of crucifying the Dictates of Reason and Humanity and every thing they find their Spirit carried to smother that Lamp of God in them and being thus got in the dark are the scorn and laughing-stock of Satan that sworn enemy of mankind the Devil and delusive Spirits like so many Ignes Fatui lead them about in this bewildring Night that they have voluntarily brought upon themselves by not making use of that Talent that God already had given them but flinging of it away as an unholy thing 6. This is true of several of them by their own Confessions and things of a like Nature to these are evident in most of them whether themselves will confess it or no but let them pretend what they will most certain it is That that Spirit that leads them from the Scriptures from the use of Reason from common Humanity from their Loyalty to Christ that died for them and whom God has exalted above all powers and principalities whatever either amongst men or Angels that Spirit I say that seduces them from such indispensable points as these is none other then he that seduced man at first and would again bring him into a slavish subjection to himself by despoiling of him utterly of all those tender touches of Spirit and warrantable suggestions of Reason and Natural Conscience or the laudable Customes of his Education to act merely upon blind impulses of which no account is to be given that thereby he may be the easier possessed by him and be hurried to any vileness of wickedness to any cruelty or uncleanness without stop or resistance and that the Law of Christ being extinguished the most foul and barbarous forme of Religion amongst the Gentiles may be restored For the virulent enmity of this Sect against the Ministers of the Gospel is no obscure argument that they are acted by the Envy of the Devil whose Kingdome already has in part and shall still fall more and more by the hand of our Saviour whose Triumphs that we may see how just they are we must not passe over Paganisme so favourably as we have but discover the beastly and bloody Tyranny of Satan upon the Nations of the Earth in his more execrable Rites and Ceremonies the abominableness whereof demonstrates That they had no other Institutour but himself CHAP. X. 1. The Devil 's usurped dominion of this world and how Christ came to dispossess him 2. The Largeness of the Devil's dominion before the coming of Christ. 3. The Nation of the Iews the light of the world and what influence they might have on other Nations in the midst of the reign of Paganisme 4. That if our Hemisphere was any thing more tolerable then the American it is to be imputed to the Doctrine of the Patriarchs Moses and the Prophets 5. That this Influence was so little that all the Nations besides were Idolaters most of them exercising of obscene and cruel Superstitions 1. THat the Kingdomes of
of glorifying God by them and laying foundations of Faith for the people to believe in him as the true Messias 2. Which belief yet he would not accelerate too fast that it might not prevent his Suffering nor yet accelerate his Suffering too fast before he had done the due preparatory works which he had to do Which made him sometime to seem unwilling to do over-publick Miracles as that at the wedding of turning water into wine and after he had fed the multitude he hid himself that they might not make him King and several times when he miraculously healed men with more privacy he strictly charged them that were thus healed to tell no man as well that he might not over-hastily precipitate belief in men as I have already intimated as also to keep himself from the rage of the Pharisees till the due time of his Suffering was at hand In the mean while his Miracles and Doctrine was to distill into the mindes of men by degrees to prepare them for a fuller belief upon his Resurrection from the dead 3. It would be too voluminous a business to rehearse the story of every particular Miracle and to descant upon it What we have thus advertised in general is most considerable and most profitable to be noted Nor need we adde any thing to facilitate the belief of them to those that are not such Infidels as not to believe the Existence of either God or Spirit For others will very easily conceive that Christ being joyn'd with that Eternal Word that healeth all things might heal those that are absent either by his word or by the Ministery of Angels who were alwaies to attend him And it is no wonder that Christ should never be mistaken in any attempt or presage he being so livingly united with the Eternal Wisdome of God and being of one Will and Spirit with him not disturb'd or distracted with any excursions or impetuosities of his own Will 4. The whifling Atheists impute all to the natural power of Imagination and please themselves mightily in the abuse of those passages in the Gospel that seem to assert that Christ was hindred from working of Miracles because of the Unbelief of the people as it is said in the Gospel of S. Mark that he could do no mighty works because of their unbelief But it was not a natural but moral impossibility he could not induce his minde thereto he being provoked to so just indignation against his own Country that despised him But say in good sadness poor blind and baffled souls How can the natural strength of Imagination heal the absent to say nothing of the present sick of ordinary diseases such as the Leprosy Palsy and Dropsie who ever cur'd those by mere Imagination How then shall Imagination recover Sight even to them that were born blind how shall it raise the dead in whom there is no Imagination at all as in Iairus his daughter and Lazarus who had lien four days in the grave Can Phansy feed five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes or four thousand besides women and children with seven loaves and a few little fishes being almost hunger-starv'd by three dayes recess into the wilderness 5. Which things though not so substantially performed are notwithstanding in some measure imitated by Witches and Magicians I mean in their junketings whose viands are observed to afford so little satisfaction to nature that they leave oftentimes the partakers of them as weak and faint almost as if they had eaten nothing as Bodinus relates of the Magical entertainments of that Nobleman of Aspremont whose guests by that time they had rid a little space from his house were ready to faint and fall down both horse and man for hunger and also to be of such a fugitive consistence that they ordinarily vanished at the taking away of the cloth whenas in both these Miracles many Baskets full of the fragments were reserved CHAP. VI. 1. Of Christs dispossessing of Devils 2. An account of there being more Daemoniacks then ordinary in our Saviours time As first from a possible want of care or skill how to order their Mad-men or Lunaticks 3. The second from the power of the Devil being greater before the coming of Christ then after 4. That not onely Excommunication but Apostasy from Christ may subject a man to the Tyranny of Satan as may seem to have fallen out in several of the more desperate Sects of this Age. 5. An enumeration of sundry Daemoniacal symptoms amongst them 6. More of the same nature 7. Their profane and antick imitations of the most solemn passages in the History of Christ. 8. A further solution of the present difficulties from the premised considerations 9. A third and fourth Answer from the same of their cure and the conflux of these Daemoniacks into one Country 10. A fifth from the ambiguity of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 11. The sixth and last Answer That it is not at all absurd to admit there was a greater number of real Daemoniacks in Christs time then at other times from the useful end of their then abounding 1. AS for our Saviours dispossessing or ejecting of Devils out of men as his raising of the dead was a pledge and prefiguration of that power he professed was given him of crowning them that believed on him with life and immortality at the last day so was this a very proper Prelude to that utter overthrow he was to give the Kingdome of Satan he being to dispossess him of all places at last There 's nothing can seem harsh to them that believe there are Spirits and none but sensuall profane and foolish men will misbelieve such things there is nothing I say can seem harsh in this kind of Miracle unless it be the multitude of persons then possessed or the multitude of Devils in one possessed person whose name was Legion 2. But as for the First there may be many Answers none whereof want their use and weight Wee 'l begin with what seems of meaner consideration first where we will not omit to mention that the Redundancy of Daemoniacks in Christs time above what we observe in later Ages may proceed from the differences of the skill and care that was then had of Mad-men and Lunaticks in Iudea and the adjacent Countries of the Gentiles from whence no small part of them came and what is used now a-daies It is I say questionable whether they had so good provision for distracted people at those times and in those places for keeping them within and ordering their distemper to the greatest mitigation they were capable of For the stronger it is the more effectual allurement is there to bring some evil Spirit or other into the body of a man For he ceasing to be his own another does the more naturally become the master of him As he that is not his own man through the soveraignty of drink will find also many other masters buisy about him all the boyes
quite conttary to this is so far from such like Tyranny and cruel and handling of others that to satisfie us concerning the justly-suspected wrath of his Father he undergoes all this load himself to win us off to a more perfect and chearful Obedience to his holy Precepts by so great and sensible an Engagement The weight and power of his Scepter being mainly to be felt in the sense of Love which is the strongest â—ie imaginable even to natural Ingenuity But the power of the old Serpent was exercised in fear and terrour and despightfull scorn upon poor distressed mankind There being this great advantage therefore of winning of the Hearts of men from the Kingdome of Darkness to the power of God by Christ's afflictions and sufferings it is no wonder that he submitted himself to them though they were so unspeakably grievous 2. And indeed what can be imagined more grievous then that lively Representation of his bitter Passion unless the Passion it self When in the Mount of Olives at his devotions he was in such an Agony that he sweat as it were great drops of bloud that fel from his face to the ground Besides the despightfull mockings and spittings in his face with cruel and bloody scourgings The consideration whereof would drive a man to any hardship to approve himself faithfull and thankfull to so loving a Saviour What then will the contemplation of his direfull and Tragical Crucifixion where so Divine a person nay where the Son of God in the flesh being disgracefully placed betwixt two thieves his holy and spotless Humanity was so deeply pierced with the present sense and real Agony of Death that the weight and burthen thereof enforced him to cry out Eloi Eloi My God My God why hast thou forsaken me And here he may appeal from the Cross to all the World in the words of Ieremiah Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow 3. Which Sorrow and Passion had it not been as real and as great as it is recounted how slight and ludicrous a matter would the Mystery of Christianity be How prophane therefore and execrable are those wretches that would turn that to the disgrace of Christ which is the Glory of the Gospel as if our Saviour was less Perfect by being thus Passive and so sensible of pain But it is plain that these bold and insolent Enthusiasts which boast so much of Perfection as to equalize themselves or their blind guides with Christ nay prefer them before him I say it is plain they are so ignorant that they doe not know in what the true Perfection consists 4. For I have already declared That in the person of Christ that only which was truly Divine was to have the triumph and victory unassisted with any thing that is precious and praise-worthy in the eyes of the world And the true Perfection approveable before God is found only in that which is Divine not Natural or Animal such as would be applauded by a mere Carnal man And such is Stoicism and Spartanism a power as well relished by wicked men and Apostate Angels nay I may say better then by the holy and regenerate And it is an Exercise of far greater Faith and Obedience to the Divine will to undergoe pain and affliction when it searches us so deep and stings us so vehemently then when by any forced Generosity and Stoutness of Spirit or any Natural or Artificial helps whatsoever we bear against the sense thereof and quit our selves in this heat and stomachfulness as if we were invincible and invulnerable Champions 5. If it had fared thus with Christ at his Death the Solemnity of his Passion had been lost Indeed it had been no Passion nor would have caused any in them that read the Story But his Sufferings being so Great and so Real as they were it is the greatest Attractive of the Eyes and Hearts of men towards him that could possibly be offered to the World Which himself was very well aware of and did foretell it in his life-time When I am lifted up I shall draw all men unto me 6. Which Effects of his Passion those Miraculous Accidents that attended it seem also to presage For what was that rending of the vail of the Temple from the top to the bottome at Ierusalem what were those Earthquakes in more remote places out of Iudea and the torn or cloven Rocks but a Presage how the Earthly Minds and Stony Hearts of all men in time as well Iews as Gentiles would be shaken and broke in pieces with sorrow and grief at his Sufferings who is the Saviour of the World Nay what did the Sun the very life and Soul of the natural world what did that deliquium or swounding fitt of his betoken but that this sad spectacle of the Crucifixion of Christ would so empassion the minds of all ingenuous men and so melt their Hearts with love affection to this universal Saviour that they would willingly die with him that they might also live with him and rejoice with him for ever in Heaven 7. I speak not this to exclude other Significations of these Prodigies For they may also have their truth and use as well as these especially some of them as That of the Eclipse of the Sun which may also signifie that the true light of the world he that was termed by the Prophet The Sun of Righteousness was then a suffering and That of rending the vail of the Temple which no question denoted the rescinding of the Mosaical Rites and Ceremonies and the abrogation of the High-Priests office Christ now having taken away the partition-wall and given every Believer free access to the presence of his Father by his own Death whereby he has reconciled us to God 8. Which offers us a third Reason why this Passion of Christ should be so Tragical as it was and the weight thereof so unsupportable For he bore then the wrath of God for the sins of the World being smitten as the Prophet speaks for our transgressions and the iniquities of us all were laid upon him that is he was an Universal Sacrifice for all Mankind Which the proud and self-conceited Enthusiast that phansies himself so well within that he contemns all external Religion unless it be of his own invention being not at leisure to consider boldly and blasphemously traduces him for weak and delicate that willingly underwent the greatest pain that ever was inflicted upon any mortal that bore a weight more heavy then mount Aetna and too big for the shoulders of any Atlas to bear 9. As little to the purpose are the leguleious Cavils of some Pragmatical Pettifoggers as I may so call them in matters of Divinity who though they be favourable enough to the Person of Christ and seem to condole his ill Hap that he fell thus into the hands of Thieves and Murtherers yet set no price at all upon his Death no more then upon theirs that died with him accounting his
a Specimen of a wonderfull power residing in him in his Transfiguration on the Mount and that he carried that about him then that was able to swallow up mortality into life though it was usually restreined as a light in a dark lanthorn His Divinity therefore with his inward exalted Humanity I mean his Soul took hold again of His Body and did vitally irradiate it so that he was as naturally united with it as any Angel is with his own Vehicle or any Soul of man or any other Animal with their Bodies Nor was it any greater wonder that Christ should rarifie his Body into a disappearing Tenuity then that Angels and Spirits condensate their Vehicles into the visibility and palpability of a Terrestrial Body the same Numerical Matter still remaining in both CHAP. III. 1. The Ascension of Christ and what a sure pledge it is of the Soul's activity in a thinner Vehicle 2. That the Soul's activity in this Earthly Body is no just measure of what she can doe out of it 3. That the Life of the Soul here is as a Dream in comparison of that life she is awakened unto in her Celestial Vehicle 4. The activity of the separate Soul upon the Vehicle argued from her moving of the Spirits in the Body and that no advantage accrews therefrom to the wicked after death 1. THere is no reasonable allegation therefore against the Resurrection of Christ And as Usefull and Intelligible a Mystery is his Ascension For we are not less assured by his ascending into Heaven of the life and activity of the Soul out of an organical terrestrial Body then by his Resurrection of her Immortality For the body of Christ in his Ascension though it left the earth in all likelihood organiz'd and terrestrially modified yet passing through the subtil Air and purer Aether it cannot be conceived but that it assimilated it self to the Regions through which it passed and became at last perfectly Celestial and Aethereal whatsoever was Earthly or Feculent being absorp't or swallowed up into pure Light and Glory 2. Nor can it seem harsh to any that has well considered these things that the Soul freed from this Terrestrial dungeon should have so great power and activity over a thinner Vehicle the subtiltie thereof in all likelihood contributing much to this activity and vigour Of which though she have but a small spark at first yet the power of the Minde being kindled therewith may as she pleases convert her whole Vehicle into an Aethereal flame For we are no more to measure what she can doe being rid of the fatall Entanglements of this Earthly prison by what she does in it then we can of the prowess and activity of some Captive Champion when he is set free by what he does in fetters and hard bondage or of her own agility reason and perspicacitie when she is awake by her stupidity and inconsistency of thoughts while she is asleep 3. For the whole life of man upon Earth day and night is but a Slumber and a Dream in comparison of that awaking of the Soul that happens in the recovery of her Aethereal or Celestial body Which though it be unless it please her occasionally to mould it into any organiz'd shape one Simple and Uniform Light which we may call an Aethereal star as Ficinus calls those of less purity stellas aereas yet all the more noble functions of life are better performed in this Heavenly Body then in the Earthly such as Intellection Volition Imagination Seeing Hearing and the like The same may be said of the Passions of the Mind they being more pure more pleasing and more delicate then can possibly happen or at least for any time continue with us in this life 4. What I have affirmed of this Aethereal Body this Uniform and Homogeneal Orbe of Light cannot seem rashly spoken to them that understand the immediate Organ of Sense in those Bodies we are now united with Which I have already intimated to be either the Animal Spirits or the Conarion as unlikely a seat of Sense as the Air or Aether and either of these as unlikely to be disobedient to the power of the Soul as the Animal Spirits now are in the state of conjunction And therefore it being undeniable but that the Soul does move them some way in the Body I see no difficulty but in her releasement from the Body she may be able to act upon her Vehicle of like Tenuity with them so as to mould and transfigure it even as she pleases that natural charm that lull'd her Active powers asleep while she was in the Body loosing its force now she is out of it Which notwithstanding will prove no advantage to the wicked they being thereby awakened into a more eagre and sharp torment and more restless Hell CHAP. IV. 1. Christ's Session at the Right hand of God interpreted either figuratively or properly 2. That the proper sense implies no humane shape in the Deity 3. That though God be Infinite and every where yet there may be a Special presence of him in Heaven 4. And that Christ may be conceived to sit at the Right hand of that Presence or Divine Shechina 1. TO the Ascension of Christ we are to add his Session at the Right hand of God his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and his Intercession with God for his Church And for the First there is no difficultie therein whether we understand the phrase Figuratively as Calvin seems to doe For then by his Sitting at the Right hand of God nothing else is signified but that he is next to God in the administration of his Kingdome that he is as his Right hand to sway his Scepter over men and Angels to bruise the wicked as with a rod of Iron and to receive the righteous into favour or whether we understand it Properly as some others would have it to be understood For there is no inconvenience to acknowledge the Glorified body of Christ to be in humane shape and that this organized light will sit as steadily on an Aethereal throne as a Body of flesh and bones on a throne of Wood or Ivory 2. Nor does that expression of the Right hand of God implie any absurdity in it as if God himself were an Essence also in Humane shape and that he had a Left hand as well as a Right and the rest of the parts of the Body of a man For from the words of the Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a man may as well prove that he has many Right hands as any at all which shews plainly that the Anthropomorphites have no ground for their fond conceit from such passages of Scripture as these 3. But yet though God be Infinite and consequently every where at once nothing hinders but that there may be some special presence of him in one place more then another whither if a man had access he may be truly said to converse with God face to face We will
others out of the captivity of the Kingdome of darkness and Tyranny of Devil 5. Wherefore if any man start up and pretend an Equality with Christ he is ipso facto convinced of ignorance in the Mystery of Godliness and deprehended to be an Impostour and a Lyar or he is haply a Beast and an Epicure denying the Immortality of the Soul and thereupon building all his slights and contempts of the Personal knowledge of our Saviour he deeming him as all men else wholly Mortal and therefore utterly to have perished above sixteen hundred years agoe CHAP. VI. 1. An objection against Christ's Soveraignty over Men and Angels from the meanness of the rank of Humane Spirits in comparison of the Angelical Orders 2. An Answer to the objection so far as it concerns the fallen Angels 3. A further inforcement of the Objection concerning the unfallen Angels with an Answer thereto 4. A further Answer from the incapacitie of an Angels being a Sacrifice for the Sins of the World 5. And of being a fit Example of life to men in the flesh 6. That the capacities of Christ were so universal that he was the fittest to be made the Head or Soveraign over all the Intellectual Orders 7. Christ's Intercession his fitness for that Office 8. What things in the Pagan Religion are rectified and compleated in the Birth Passion Ascension and Intercession of Christ. 1. BUT it may be further objected That although it be very Reasonable that the Angels and the Spirits of men whether in the body or out of the body be reduced under some Political form of Government yet it seems very incongruous and disproportionable that some one of the lowest rank of all the Orders of Rational Creatures should be made the Soveraign over all over Angels and Archangels and all Principalities and Powers whatsoever whether in Heaven or in Earth 2. But to this I answer That though the Superiour Orders of Intellectual Beings may have far more strength and natural Understanding in them then Man yet the Humanity of Christ may not be inferiour to them in Humility and an holy adhesion to God in Self-resignation and Faith in him who is the Root of all things in Love also and dear Compassion over the whole Creation and in a word in whatever appertains to the Divine life But as for the lapsed Angels let them be otherwise as cunning and knowing in all Arts and Subtilties of Nature let them be as powerfull as Gigantick as they will even to the overturning mountains and striking down steeples at a blow yet Christ has infinitely the preeminence of them in those Divine accomplishments I have recited nay he has a Principle beyond them removed above their Sphere as man has a Principle beyond Beasts And therefore it is no more wonder that God has constituted him Lord over these rebellious Titans then that Man is made superiour to Lions Elephants Whales and other mighty and monstrous Creatures 3. But you 'l say Though it seem just that the usurped Empire of the Devil be taken from him and given to Christ yet there is no reason that the unfallen Angels should be brought under his sceptre they being naturally of an higher order then himself and having forfeited nothing by rebellion or disobedience to God And therefore it had been more Reasonable for God to have united himself Hypostatically as they call it with some Angel then with Humane nature But what art thou O man that pretendest to be so wise as to give laws to God may not he dispose of his own and of himself as he pleases Besides there being so great a Revolt in the Angelical Orders who tempted also Mankind into their lapse the pretermission of them all in the conferring of so great an Honour as was conferred upon Christ was but a just check and slight cast upon all their Orders at once the Angelical bloud as I may so say being tainted with Treason Again the revolt and rebellion of the Apostate Angels being nothing else but a wilde and boundless giving themselves up to the pleasures and suggestions of the Animal life and Christianity as I have already defined it nothing else but a Triumph of the Divine life over the Animal this Triumph Scorn and Insultation over the Animal life is more exactly pursued by how much in every place those things that seem of most value to it are left out as slighted and disregarded and the whole Mystery of the Recovery of the lapsed Creation to God performed by him who undertook it without the false pomp of those needless circumtances of highness of Order Nobleness of Birth worldly Authority Strength and Beauty of body Subtilty of Wit Knowledge of Nature Plausibility of Eloquence or whatsoever else seems precious to the mere Natural or Animal Spirit So that upon this very account the Angels were to be excluded from this function 4. But fourthly and lastly If any Angel would have been competitour with our Saviour in this Honour that question put to Zebedee's Children might well have dash'd him out of countenance in his competition You know not what you ask can you drink of the cup that I am to drink of and be baptized with the Baptisme that I am to be baptized with that is Can you undergoe that shamefull and scornfull death of the Cross Certainly an Angel cannot For if he could be born into the World in Humane flesh and suffer those agonies the Soul of the Messias did this Angel were no Angel but an Humane Soul But perhaps you 'l replie that though an Angel cannot suffer death in an Humane body yet he is so capable of torment and punishment that he may be made an Expiation for the Sinnes of the World But I demand how we that are so much concerned in it shall know of that suffering For the Transactions of men are a spectacle to the Angels but the Transactions of Angels are not discerned by men by reason of the Tenuity of their Vehicles But this suffering Angel would have appeared on purpose Yet how unsatisfactory and phantastical would this have been conceived in comparison of the real and assured Passion of our Saviour Christ. 5. Besides If an Angel had undertaken this office he could not have been so fit an Example of life to us as Christ who was a man subject to the same infirmities with our selves and who really felt what belong'd to the imbecillity of our natures For the Passions of his Minde were no more abated nor destroyed by his union with the Deity then the Passibility of Matter is by being united with a Soul Wherefore Christ wading thus faithfully without sin or blame throughout all the incumbrances of the Flesh which are greater then those that the Angelical Orders are liable unto is a very concerning spectacle of both Men and Angels But what an Angel could do would but very little concern us men 6. Wherefore he who was of so universal a capacity as to be an
utmost of that Light which was in those two grand Boasters which compar'd with that in Christ bears not so much proportion as the flame of a stinking Lamp to the glorious lustre of the Sun Insomuch that if they had not been both by themselves and others either equalized to or preferred before our Saviour I should not so much as have vouchsafed to have made any Comparison betwixt them or ever to have mentioned them in my Writings CHAP. IX 1. Mahomet far more orthodox in the main points of Religion then the above-named Impostours 2. The high pitch this pretended Prophet sets himself at His journey to Heaven being waited upon by the Angel Gabriel His Beast Alborach and of his being called to by two Women by the way with the Angels interpretation thereof 3. His arrival at the Temple at Jerusalem and the reverence done to him there by all the Prophets and holy Messengers of God that ever had been in the world 4. The crafty political meaning of the Vision hitherto 5. Mahomet bearing himself upon the Angel Gabriel's hand climbes up to Heaven on a Ladder of Divine light His passing through Seven Heavens and his commending of himself to Christ in the Seventh 6. His salutation of his Creatour with the stupendious circumstances thereof 7. Five special favours he received from God at that congress 8. Of the natural wilyness in Enthusiasts and of their subtile pride where they would seem most humble The strange advantage of Enthusiasme with the rude multitude 9. And the wonderfull success thereof in Mahomet Other Enthusiasts as proud as Mahomet but not so successfull and why 1. THE Third pretended Prophet and Head of the Nations is Mahomet who though he haply be not so moralized a man or at least not so cautious as these Two we last spoke of but more openly entangled in the pleasures of the Flesh if he be not belied then these two Sadducees were and more able to enjoy himself in those pleasures yet be it luck or choice or mere policy he seems more orthodox in the grand points of Religion then they he holding not only the Existence of a God and of Angels and Spirits but also the Immortality of the Soul and a solemn Judgment to come wherein every man shall receive according to what he has done in the flesh whether it be good or evil 2. The Success of this pretender has been so wonderfully great in the world that I think it not amiss to make somewhat a longer stay upon him then upon the two former We shall therefore take notice what pitch he sets himself at and after endeavour to level him and reduce him to his due place If we will then believe his own testimony we shall find him so much favoured by God and the Heavenly Powers as to be carried up into the highest Heavens at least by Vision But he tells the story of himself as if it was a real transaction viz. That once about midnight the Angel Gabriel knocked at his door and told him that he should travail up to Heaven for God Almighty would speak with him That the Angel brought along with him a milkùwhite Beast called Alborach something bigger then an Ass but less then a Mule which the Angel bad Mahomet get upon but the Beast kicking and refusing his Rider the Angel asked him why he did so for he never did nor ever could receive upon his back a better man then Mahomet But Alborach answered he would not admit him unless he would promise to procure him an entrance into Paradise which Mahomet promising he got up and the Angel led the Beast by the rains of the bridle till they were come to Ierusalem Now as they were in their way upon their journey Mahomet heard the voice of a certain woman crying to him aloud Mahomet Mahomet but the Angel forbad him to answer and when they had gone further another woman called him after the same manner but the Angel commanded him to hold his peace And that afterward he asked the Angel what these women were to which the Angel replied that the First was the Promulgatress of the Iewish the Second of the Christian law and that if he had answered to the first woman all the Mauri had become Iews if to the second Christians 3. When they had come to the gate of the Temple at Ierusalem that Mahomet lighted off from his beast Alborach and that he and the Angel went into the Temple where all the Prophets and Messengers of God that ever came into the world met him and saluted him saying Ioy to the Messenger and honourable Prophet of God Afterwards waiting on him in great pomp to the Chappell Mihrab with much reverence they desired him that he would pray for them all which when he had done they besought him also that he would be mindfull of them when he came into the presence of God This done they all went away and Mahomet and the Angel were left alone in the Temple 4. By which crafty figment Mahomet assuredly meant nothing else but a justification of himself for beginning a Third Sect distinct from the Religions of Iews and Christians and the recommendation of himself to the World as the greatest Prophet that ever yet appeared on earth But we are not come to the height of the Vision yet 5. The Angel and Mahomet afterwards coming out of the Temple found a Ladder made of Divine light which reached from Earth to Heaven whereby they both Mahomet bearing himself upon the Angels hand ascended up thither passing through seven Heavens The first of pure Silver where Adam was the second of Gold where Noah the third of a certain precious Gemme wherein was Abraham the fourth of Smaragdus wherein Ioseph the fifth of Adamant wherein Moses the sixth of Carbuncle wherein Iohn the Baptist was found and the seventh of Celestial light wherein was Iesus Christ. All these venerable personages welcomed Mahomet with loving salutations and kind embraces and commended themselves to him but in the seventh Heaven Mahomet seems to commend himself to Christ. The infinite numbers monstrous figures and immense bignesse of Angels that he sets off his Vision by for the greater astonishment of his Followers I thought good to omit as being too vile and tedious and he is not got to his journies end yet 6. The Angel Gabriel takes leave of him in this seventh heaven telling him he may goe no further with him but that God alone now must be his guide Mahomet therefore holding on his journie was carried on the tops of incredible heights and sublimities wading through much water and deep snow insomuch that he had been quite spent had not a voice refreshed him saying Mahomet come hither and salute thy Creatour He following therefore the sound of this voice saw so great a Light that he was almost blinded therewith For the Face of God was cover'd with veiles of Celestial light seventy miles thick to which he approached within the space
no not the fear of death or torment could hinder them from being open witnesses to the World of all those things which they had seen and most certainly knew concerning the crucified Iesus the Son of God and Saviour of Mankind 3. We have seen in general how requisite this Supernatural assistance was to the Apostles We shall now take notice in particular how congruous at least decorous the First appearance thereof was at the day of Pentecost The Apostles together with other Disciples being met in an upper room at Ierusalem and being all of one mind and of one faith and expectation of the promise of the Spirit at the above-named day of Pentecost of a suddain there came upon them a sound from Heaven as of a mighty rushing winde which filled the house where they were sitting and there appeared unto them cloven Tongues like as of Fire which sate upon each of them and they all filled with the Holy Ghost began to speak with other Tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance 4. Supposing a God a Providence and the Ministry of Angels and Spirits there is not a jot of this impossible or incredible But we shall also take notice of the Congruity of circumstances which are either for an handsome Symbolical sense or else for a more indispensable convenience as I conceive the Day to be and their assembling thus together on this day of Pentecost in one place For their seeing what happened thus miraculously to every one of them is a stronger confirmation of all their faiths and they are the more sufficient witnesses to all the World of what thus miraculously befell them And the Day of Pentecost was the most convenient time for this to happen because of the greater concurse of people on that day 5. But it does not exclude that more Mystical and Symbolical sense of S. Austine's That as the written Law was given to the Iews on the fiftieth day after the Passeover so the Law of the Spirit which was to be written in mens hearts was thus wonderfully begun here on the same day by the preaching of the Apostles on whom the Spirit descended in such an extraordinary manner Nor does that other sense concerning the Unity of place exclude that Moral intimation of Grotius Deus dona sua promisit unitati That also of their being seated in an upper room must signifie Morally or nothing considerable for else the more removed from the Earth the never nearer to God especially within the smell of the Atmosphere Which Philosophick contemplation Apollonius pursues with a great deal of pomp and gravity indoctrinating Damis while they were travailing on mount Caucasus which the neighbour Inhabitants look'd upon as the holy Mansion of the Gods as other hills also are call'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from that opinion that a man is never the nearer the knowledge of Religion and Vertue if he were mounted upon the highest Athos Olympus or all the Caucasus's in the World unless he contemplate religious and Divine matters not so much in a pure and subtile Air as from an undeprav'd and sincere Spirit 6. But that which is of the greatest significancy is the mighty rushing Wind and the fiery cloven Tongues The former whereof is an Emblem of the External violence which God would doe to the World in the introducing of the acknowledgment of his Son into it For without doubt those wonderfull Miracles that were done by the Apostles beat so strongly upon the outward Senses of men that they were after a manner forcibly driven to acknowledge that the hand of God was with them and that the doctrine which they taught was true The knowledge whereof at last with the fame of their Miracles filled the whole World as that Sound from Heaven and mighty rushing Wind filled the whole house where they sate I am sure the chief Priests complained betimes that the Apostles had filled all Ierusalem with their doctrines 7. The latter viz. the Fiery cloven Tongues the fieriness of them intimates the searching penetrating melting and purifying power of the Spirit as their being cloven or divided the effect of the living word which accompanied their preaching which we may better call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 then the Stoicks their meager Reason For this is that which is sharper then any two-edged sword dividing the very joints and marrow and piercing to the inmost penetrals of the heart as may be observed at the preaching of Peter's Sermon Or not to be altogether so Mystical or Spiritual 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 these divided or cloven tongues may be only an external symbol of that inward power given them to speak and understand several Tongues though they were never taught them Which was a gift of very sober and necessary use as all the Miracles are that were done either by Christ or his Apostles they being to preach to men of several Nations then sojourning at Ierusalem and afterwards to travail into several Countries to convert men to the Faith 8. This is a solid account of all the Circumstances of that great Miracle done partly upon and partly by the Apostles after Christ's Ascension into Heaven Which Divine power ever after assisted them in all their travails and labours in the Gospel as you may see in the Acts. Where you shall find them not only endued with this miraculous power themselves but by prayer and imposition of hands conferring it upon others for the benefit of the Church where you shall see them healing the sick making the lame to walk raising the dead casting out devils and doing over again all the most considerable Miracles of our Saviour and some which he never did as the speaking with tongues and healing by the mere shadow of their bodies which seems more wonderfull then by the touching of the hem of Christ's garment To which you may adde what strangely happened to them as upon their praiers and devotions how the house shaked under them as in an Earthquake through the sensible presence of the Divine power attending them Their being transported through the Air by the hand of an Angel from one place to another Their being visited by Angels in prison who opened the prison doors and made the fetters fall off from their bodies of their own accord The transfiguration of their countenances into an Angelical glory and the appearance of Christ from Heaven to them in a splendour more bright and radiant then the Sun at mid-day as it happened to Paul as he was travailing to Damascus The Credibility of which things as also of the Resurrection and Miracles of Christ the Success it self does plainly argue 9. For it seems utterly impossible that Christ a man cut short of all accomplishments that are plausible to flesh and bloud being neither arm'd by the power of Eloquence the knowledge of Philosophy the authority and honour of the World nor the advantages of Birth or Fortune but on
in themselves congruous and reasonable Which we shall first make good concerning the Visible Pomp and glorious Appearance of the person of Christ in the Air attended by his holy Angels he descending as it were with the noise of Battel and Alarm of War an Archangel sounding a Trumpet before him as the Heavenly Camp marches on and moves For he will certainly appear in an Equipage most terrible and glorious and in this solemn and dreadful Order he will face the bold prophane and Atheistical World who by no other means would be convinced of either a Providence or a Deity but with supercilious looks and scornfull speeches have contemned all the hopes of future Reward and laught at the Religious for weak-brain'd Fools or Mad-men But then shall the hearts of the faithfull be filled with joy they seeing so comfortable an Appearance of him whom their Soul longed for who will reward all their Injuries Sorrows and Reproaches with condign Honour and Happiness Nay I may say that Christ will then vindicate himself from all those scorns and revilements that bold and prophane Wretches out of their Sensuality and High-mindedness have cast upon him from Age to Age pleasing themselves and gratifying other Epicurean Brutes of like impiety with themselves with their ungodly jears and scoffs against him who was the highest Example of Divine Perfection that ever appeared in the World Nay I adde further That there is in a manner a Necessity of this Personal Return of Christ thus in glory to judge the World according to his promise that these Blasphemers may not be encouraged to reckon him with such Impostours as David George and Mahomet who though they prefixed a shorter time to their followers shall not again be heard of till they appear before his Tribunal of whom we speak 2. And as for those that do believe that the Person of Christ does still subsist that he was so miraculously born so gloriously transfigured on the Mount so wonderfully raised up from the dead and did so conspicuously ascend into Heaven two Angels in bright garments affirming to them that beheld him that he would thus return again viz. in a personal Visibility what stranger thing is it that he should return then that which they acknowledge to be true of him already And how fit is it that he should still retain this Supremacy over the World none else having bought it so dearly as himself did by his most bitter Death and Passion and he that is so compassionate a Mediatour by reason of his Humane nature will prove the more fit and equal Judge And that there will be a Period and full pause of the Generations of men upon earth I have already little less then demonstrated though it be enough to shew there is no incongruity nor inconvenience in it For that is sufficient to stop modest men from either inventing or embracing such evasive Allegories as do elude the Testimony of the Scripture in an Article of so weighty a concernment as this 3. And as for those that are greater Infidels and look upon the above-framed description of Christ's coming to Judgement to be exceeding improbable if not impossible I say nothing but the very dulness of Atheisme it self can make them conceit thus For it being once admitted That there are Angels as well as men this glorious Appearance of Christ with the holy Angels is as easie and natural to admit as the Martial Pomp of a mighty Army or the Solemnity of a great Assize But that there are Spirits or Angels and that they can appear to men in what Region of the Aire they please History affords innumerable instances And how much for the miraculousness of it does this pompous Approach of Christ in the clouds differ from those fightings and skirmishings of whole Armies in the Aire of which all Ages almost and all Historians ring as well sacred as prophane The clattering also of Armour and the sound of the Trumpet have been very frequently heard from the Heavens as Plinie and other Historians do report Virgil and Ovid record these things with verses sutable to the solemnity of the Prodigies Armorum sonitum toto Germania coelo Audiit Georgic lib. 1. All o're the Heavens the noise of Armes was heard In Germanie And Ovid concerning the same matter Arma ferunt inter nigras crepitantia nubes Terribilesque tubas auditaque cornua coelo Clashing of Armes amidst black pitchy clouds Was heard with Trumpets hoarse and Cornets loud So that the Apostles prediction of Christ's coming thus visibly to judge the world attended with the heavenly Hosts and the Archangel sounding a Trumpet before him is so far from being impossible that it has in some manner and measure been already in the World though those astonishing Prodigies fall infinitly short of the Glory and Terrour of the Day of Judgement 4. Besides if we may compare small things with great as certainly we may the analogy being so conspicuous what particular judgement and vengeance of note has God done in the World wherein there has not been a sensible administration of Angels forerunning it I might make a very copious induction but I will keep my self within measure Before sweeping Plagues and Warrs how frequent are these Apparitions Cardan makes mention of several of the first kind Before the plague at Galaratum there appeared to a young man as he was riding thither in a rainy Night a Cart all covered with fire which gallop he as fast as he would was ever over against him he heard the voice also of Rusticks saying Cave Cave Take heed Take heed This Spectre attended him till he got to the Temple of St. Laurence which was without the town gate and there sunk into the ground both Cart Oxen Rusticks and Fire and all The same Author relates also of a stranger prodigie of a Pestilence in Peru upon the banks of the river Consote near Carthage where there appeared to certain women washing there as their custome was a man of a huge stature with his belly cut up and exenterated and two children in his armes he spoke to them and told them that all the Christian women should die and the greatest part of them also This Spectre was also seen on horse-back on the side of the Hills running swifter then the wind A mighty Plague followed that destroied almost all the Inhabitants of the place That also out of Fincelius is very remarkable The appearing of twelve or fifteen men in Marchia of huge and horrid statures in the corn field with sithes in their hands mowing down Oates with might and main so that the very hitting of the sithes was plainly heard afarre off but in the mean time no Oates were cut down People endeavoured to apprehend them but they ran too swift for them and yet they nevertheless mowed as laboriously in their flight as before A great Plague ensued thereupon I could adde to these what I have been credibly informed
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
Truth whose Foundation is no less firm then what is built upon these undeniable Grounds That there is a God and a Perfect and Particular Providence That there are Angels and Spirits of men really distinct from their Bodies and That the one as well as the other are lapsable Which things I have demonstrated partly in this present Treatise partly in other Writings and I appeal to all the World if they have any thing solid to oppose against what I have writ Moreover That this Lapse of Men and Angels is their forsaking of the Divine Life and wholy cleaving to the Animal without any curb or bounds whereby as well the fallen Angels or Devils as Man himself are become as much as respects the inward life mere Brutes being devoid of that touch and sense of the Divine Goodness And therefore their Empire is generally merely like that of the Beasts according to Lust and Power where the stronger rules with Pride and Insolency over the weaker and so the Devils being a degree above men of more wit and power then they it naturally falls to their shares to tyrannize over Mankind who were in the same condemnation with themselves having become Rebels to God as well as they 3. And it is but a piece of Wisdome and Justice in that great Judge and Dramatist God Almighty to permit this to be for a season And therefore the generality of the World were to be for a time under the Religion and Worship of Devils who were wild and enormous Recommenders of the mere Animal life to the sons of men without any bounds or limits themselves in the mean time receiving that tribute of abused Mortals which was most agreeable to their Pride and Tyrannical natures that is Religious Worship and Absolute Obedience as I have proved by many Examples in History 4. And that God should stand silent all this time is no wonder partly from what I have intimated already and partly because he is out of the reach of any real injury in all this as also because the Object of this irregular Fury of both Men and Devils in which they please themselves so much is but the Effect of that one Power from whence are all things or some shred or shadow of the Divine Attributes For I have shewn fully enough That all the Branches of the Animal life are good and laudable in themselves and that only the Unmeasurable Love and Use of them is the thing that is damnable The great Rebellion therefore of both Men and Angels is but a phrantick dotage upon the more obscure evanid and inconsiderable operations or manifestations of that Power which hoots into all 5. In this low condition is held the Kingdome of Darkness who maugre all their Lawlesness and Rebellion do ever lick the very dust of his feet from whom they have revolted For there is no Might nor Counsell against the Eternal God but his Will shall stand in all That all-comprehending Wisdome therefore was not outwitted by these Rebels but she suffered them to introduce a Darkness out of which herself would elicite a more marvellous and glorious Light and let them prime the tablet with more duskish colours on which she was resolved to pourtray the most illustrious beauty that the eyes of man could desire to look upon 6. And that there is a Lapse of Men and Angels is very manifest That of Man is so plain that not only the better sort of Philosophers such as the Pythagoreans and Platonists but the making of Laws and appointing of Punishments and mens general confession of their Proneness to Vice and Wickedness doth abundantly testifie And that there are wicked Spirits or evil Genii as well as good the Religion of the Pagans and the Confession of Witches and the Effects of them in the possessed are a sufficient argument 7. Now that Wisdome as I have said that orders all things sweetly is not in the least measure baffled by this Misadventure of the fall of Angels and Men but looks upon it as fit fuel for a more glorious triumph of the Divine Life And that noted Aphorisme amongst the Pythagoreans who laid no Principles for mean ends comes in fitly here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the Worser is made for the service and advantage of the Better And the Kingdome of Darkness no question by Him that rules over all is very dextrously subordinated to the greater advantage of the Kingdome of Light it yielding them a due exercise of all their Faculties in the behalf of the Divine life which God most justly does magnifie above all things as also a most successfull victorie and triumph So that the Period of Ages ought to end so exact a Providence attending things as a very joyfull and pleasant Tragick Comedie This the Reason of man will expect upon supposition that there is a God and Providence as most certainly there is both especially if one quality of Souls and Spirits be better and more precious then another and the Divine life the most lovely Perfection of all 8. Which is as true as touch to all that have once tasted the Excellency of it and the Ignorance of the blinde is no argument against the certain Knowledge of them that see For one Soul Angel or Spirit though they may be the same in Substance as all Corporeal things are the same in Matter may differs as much from another as Gold Diamonds and Pearls do from common Dirt or Clay or the most exquisite Beauty from the horriblest Monster That therefore that is base shall be rejected and that which is precious and noble shall be gathered up in that day that the Lord shall make up his Jewels 9. And that there will be such a visible Day of Vengeance wherein the whole Earth shall burn with the wrath of God not only the common Fame throughout all Ages and Places of the Final Conflagration of the World and natural Reasons in Philosophy but also a necessity of some universal palpable and sensible Punishment on impudently-prophane and Atheistical People is a warrantable Inducement to believe 10. The great Good therefore that does arise out of this Revolt of Men and Angels is a setting the Activity of the Creation at an higher pitch and making the Emanations of all manner of Life felt more to the very quick exciting and employing all the Faculties and Passions of Souls and Spirits in a greater degree of life and motion with more vigilancy and a more favoury sense of acquired enjoiments then if there had been no such opposition betwixt the Light and Dark Kingdomes 11. Now therefore though God may seem at first to give the Dark Kingdome and Animal life the start of the Divine yet he is in due time by some very effectual means so to raise up so to back and assist the Divine Life against the Powers of Darkness that she may be found to have very visible Victories against the usurpation of Satan over the sons of men Wherefore
have vented 4. Who also held That Angels and Devils are onely Good men and Bad men or their Vertues and Vices in whose footsteps this scholar of his Hen. Nicolas treads very carefully as appears from his Revel Dei cap. 14. where he makes the Righteousness the true Spirits or holy Angels As also elsewhere he saith that he that has the seven deadly sins in him is possest of the seven horriblest and destructionablest Devils intimating that the rest of the Vices are Devils also but not so destructionable And he insinuates further in the same place that the Seven Devils cast out of Mary Magdalen were those seven deadly Sins And I am certain that the most knowing of the Family have freely professed that there are no Devils nor Witches nor Angels but those in us Which things being supposed it is necessary either to cast away the Scriptures or else to allegorize them away into a mere moral or mystical sense as these Enthusiasts have done 5. They believing therefore the Existence of neither Angel nor Spirit of necessity they must believe no Immortality of the Soul And that they believe no such thing there is still a further evidence in that he never exhorts any man to Holiness upon that account which yet is he most powerful argument to make men good that can be propounded nor ever makes use of such places of Scripture as imply a blessed Immortality to come after this life in the literal meaning of them His encouraging his followers to comply with any Superstition be it never so uglily idolatrous rather then to expose themselves to danger agrees also well with this Supposition And some have noted that they have alledged this reason for it That the temple of God may not be destroied Whereby they mean their humane persons which they suppose lost irrecoverably in the death of the body And that there may be no doubt at all that this is their opinion I will conclude with a reference to one of his Epistles where he speaks to this very question which he does with so many hacks and hesitations with so much shuffling and doubling and insinuations to the contrary that no rational man can be unsatisfied but that he held it mortal For if he had held it immortal it had been impossible he should have concealed his opinion or intimated any thing to the contrary it being so useful a doctrine for others and so commendable for himself to profess Which obdurate conceit of his made him allegorize away all the Articles of the Creed and so deny the Resurrection of Christ as well as of all others that believe on him and being secure as he thought that he does not now subsist he could not dream of any Christ that could be Head of the Church but that mystical one he insists so much upon the Upright Being of the Love the Perfection of all And verily if there be nothing to come after this life I dare allow him to be as great a Prophet as either himself or his followers desire he should be esteemed 6. He is therefore upon his own Hypothesis very consonant to himself in removing the Humane person of Christ as a thing that has perished one thousand six hundred years ago and in riveting the Godhead into his own person so thwackingly and substantially as that he may give the World to understand that he was as much God as that Christ that died at Ierusalem and that all those that attained to the perfection of the Love were so too that he might abundantly compensate thereby the loss of that one that died upon the Cross having fallen into the hands of merciless sinners This I say is a consistent dream of his and that it is no more but a dream I partly have already and shall still more clearly demonstrate in this present Discourse 7. In the mean time it is very plain that though he sets out himself in such Seraphical language and adorns his own person with such gorgeous Titles as if nothing ever yet appeared in the World so holy and divine yet he is indeed much inferiour to the better sort of Pagans as being nothing more then an Enthusiastick Sadducee or a Fanatick Deist if so much For I wonder what a kind of God he imagins to himself to whom he makes the Senate of Heaven so unmannerly as to use such formes of speech to him as he does Revel Dei cap. 21. Go to then let it even be so O God it is vouchsafed thee that thou shouldest first bring forth a Declaration of thy right But I have no mind to dive any further into this depth of Satan from which I pray God deliver every good Christian CHAP. XVIII 1. The great mischief and danger that accrues to the World from this false Prophet 2. The probable Ferocity of this Sect when time shall serve and eagerness of executing his Bloudy Vision 3. That Familisme is a plot laid by Satan to overthrow Christianity 4. What the face of things in likelyhood would be supposing it had overrun all 5. The Motives that inforced the Authour to make so accurate a Discovery of this Imposture 1. OUT of the Description we have given hitherto we may easily compute the great mischief that accrues to the World from this false Pretender to Revelations whereever his Witchcraft has power to seize the spirit of a man For first That admirable Wisdome of God in the outward frame of Christian Religion as it respects the Person of Christ his endearing Passion his glorious Resurrection and Ascension his comfortable Intercession and his joyful Return to judgement when our Immortality shall be completed in heavenly Glory all this is swept away and therewith our assurance of Eternal Life And besides this that there may be nothing wanting to the perfecting of that monstrous Evil that is hatched in this Family it may prove a Pandora's box to Mankind even in this life if a more benigne Providence do not prevent it For they having as I have told you a full licence from their infallible Prophet to dissemble and aequivocate to comply with any Religion whatever they may multiply hiddenly in great numbers to the hazard of a State or Commonwealth For being taught by their illuminate Elders That there is nothing to be expected after this life it must needs make them hang their lips very longingly after the greatest enjoyments they can of this present World The Possession and Rule whereof their Prophet has promised them with such magnificent words and Enthusiastick Grandiloquence that they cannot but be inflamed into violent attempts upon the first occasion that they shall phansy safe to make use of And what full right do you think will they imagine themselves to have to fly upon all whenas they phansy the Head of their faction to be no less then Christ himself come to judge the World in righteousness 2. Wherefore if some sullen fellow amongst them of a peremptory and imperious Spirit
where though his degenerate Spirit was afraid of so holy a Neighbourhood nor could abide the belief of so present a Numen Thus has the Annual Course of the Earth dashed off all that Superstitious power and sanctity that ancient Paganisme has given and the Aristotelean Atheist would now give to the Sun Planets and Starres and we are forced even by the light of Nature and humane Reason to acknowledge the true Principle from whence all miraculous things come that is a God every where present in whom we live and move and have our being 6. Besides this suppose that all Prodigies Apparitions and Prophecies were from the intermediate Influence of the celestial Bodies these Intelligences or that Anima Coeli working thereby upon the persons of men to inspire them and turning the Aire into representations and visions to converse with them This covering is too scant to hide the folly of this sorry Sophist his Supposition plainly ruining it self For he does acknowledge that those Inspirations and Prophecies are true that are thus derived from those â—idereal Powers But it is evident that those that have been the most illustrious Prophets have had converse with Angels and talked with them and have so recorded the matter to the World As for example the Prophet Daniel who discoursed with the Angel Gabriel Christ also discoursed with Moses and Elias on Mount Tabor and Moses with the Angel of God on Mount Sinai Besides Christ who was so highly inspired and assisted from Heaven has over and over again pronounced a future Happiness after this life All which allowing them for a while to be the dictates or representations of the Astral Influences I demand of Vaninus how he comes to be wiser then those that were so miraculously assisted That these Visions of Angels should not be so as they that saw them have related That Moses and Elias should not be the Spirits of Moses and Elias but onely transient Figurations of the Aire raised by the Influence of the Heavens Moreover I would ask of him if he think that that Heavenly assistance that can according to his own acknowledgement inform men of things to come at a thousand years distance for such was the prediction of the death of Iulius Caesar in the Senate though a matter very contingent cannot certainly inform them whom it pleases so wonderfully to assist whether the Souls of men be mortal or immortal which is far more cognoscible to those aethereal Powers then the other Wherefore this wretched Figment of his to excuse himself from the acknowledgement of the Existence of Angels or Daemons and the Subsistence of the Soul after death from which he so much abhors will stand him in no stead but argues him more intoxicated whifling and giddy in admitting the truth of such Narrations and yet denying the genuine consequences of them then they that give no credence to the Narrations themselves 7. That which was objected of Christianity justling out Iudaisme and of Mahometisme in a great part of the World justling out Christianity is partly false and partly nothing to the purpose That Christianity has properly justled out Iudaisme is very false For Iudaisme has rather been ripened into the perfection of Christianity then been stifled and sufflaminated by any Counter-blast of those sidereal Influences he dreams of For we see how things have gone on in one continued design from Abraham to Christ as the Prophecies and the Predictions in Scripture plainly testifie God promised to Abraham that in his seed all the Nations of the Earth should be blessed Iacob foretells on his death-bed that the Jewish Polity and Religion should not fail till the Messiah a Iew and Son of Abraham was come to whom the gathering of the Gentiles should be and so in other Prophecies which we have already recited and applied From whence it is manifest that it is the hand and counsel of God who is constant to himself and whose Wisdome and Providence reaches from end to end that has begun and carried on this matter according to his own will and purpose and not any Bustles or Counter-blasts of various Aspects of the Heavenly bodies that do and undo according to the diversities and contrarieties of their Schematisms and Configurations 8. Nor could any thing but Levity of minde and Vain-glory induce Cardan to pretend the calculating of our Saviours Nativity whenas the year of his Birth is so uncertain amongst the most accurate Chronologers and Astrology it self a thing wholly groundlesse and frivolous as I shall demonstrate anon Nor is it any specimen of his Wit but of his grosse Impiety so boldly to equalize the rise of Mahometisme to that of Iudaisme and Christianity as if Moses Christ and Mahomet were all Astrall Law-givers alike assisted and inspired from the influence of the Stars A conceit that Vaninus is so transported with that he cannot tell what ground to stand upon when he cites the passage out of Cardan he is so tickled with Joy But that this exultation of his is very childish and groundlesse appears both in that he falsly attributes Prophecies Divine Laws and Miracles to the influence of the Stars a superstitious errour that arises only out of the ignorance of the right Systeme of the World and then again if it were true that he imagines Mahomet who was a mere crafty Politician and did neither Miracles nor could prophesie to be a Law-giver set up by the miraculous Power of the Heavens such as enables Divine Law-givers and Prophets to do reall Miracles To which you may adde the ridiculous obstinacy of this perverse Sophist who the more we give him of what he contends for viz. that Mahomet also is a Star-inspired Prophet that is to say illuminated from the Anima coeli which according to his opinion is the highest and most infallible principle of miracles and divine wisedom the more ample testimony we have against his own folly that so peremptorily denies the existence of Daemons and Subsistence of the Soul after Death Which are openly avouched by this third Witnesse of his own introducing and therefore he abhorring so from such Truths as are certainly dictated from the Celestiall Bodies did not excesse of Pride and Conceitednesse blinde his judgement and make him senseless he could not but have found himself stung with that lash of the Satyrist O curvae in terris animae coelestium inanes But I have even tired my self with running the Wilde-goose chase after these fickle and fugitive Wits whose carelesse flirts and subsultorious fancies are as numerous as slight and weak against the firm and immovable foundations of solid Reason and Religion 9. I should now pass to the Fourth Part of my Discourse did not the reflexion upon the insufferable impudence of Cardan in pretending to cast our Saviours Nativity and that villainous insulting of Vaninus thereupon as if all Religion was but an Influence of Nature and transent blast of the Starres invite me nay indeed provoke me
nothing should be exhibited to their belief but what they will all affirm they have a satisfactory conception of they will at last tread down Religion to nothing For they will not stint themselves there I mean in the rejection of the Divinity of Christ and of a Triune Deity but the notion of Angels and Spirits and of an Immateriall Soul and lastly of any Being whatsoever that is truly spiritual will appear so inconceivable to some that at last Religion will be tumbled down as low as mere Body and Matter and will find no Object but the visible World and the Sun and Starrs must be the greatest Deities And so either the ancient Pagan Superstition or else down-right Atheisme must take place CHAP. IV. 1. The due demeanour of a Christian Mystagogus in communicating the Truth of the Gospel 2. That the chiefest care of all is that he speak nothing but what is profitable for life and godliness 3. A just reprehension of the scopeless zeal of certain vain Boanerges of these times 4. That the abuse of the Ministery to the undermining the main Ends of the Gospel may hazard the continuance thereof 5. That any heat and zeal does not constitute a living Ministery 1. SOme such account as this will the prudent Communicatour of the Mystery of Christianity give to him that asks a reason of his Faith declaring his sense of things with meekness and fear as S. Peter speaks that is to say with patience and mildness towards him whom he informs and with holy respect and reverence towards God whose Messenger in some sort he is and therefore ought to be careful that he mistake not his errand in any thing nor mingle of his own what he has no commission to speak nor distort the truth out of fear or favour nor make himself suspected by any levity or affected vanity in style or words that are misbecoming a matter of so great importance For quaintness of wit and studied eloquence may tickle the Ear for a time like a Musical aire the while it is playing but a faithful and serious declaration of the most weighty parts of our Religion will wound the very Heart and captivate the Soul to the Obedience of Christ. 2. And above all things he that either of himself adventures or has any better call to this office let him ever have in his eye the Usefulness of the Mystery he indeavours to communicate remembring that that is an Universal property thereof and that if either his inadvertency or curiosity has carried him into any Useless speculations or Theories he is most certainly led out of his way and that he is now imparting humane inventions which are nothing at all appertaining to the Gospel of Christ that he is now feeding his charge not with the sincere milk of the Word but the brackish sweat of some over-heated Brain This is the most common and the most dangerous mistake that is to be observed in this Function as if their very Art and Faculty were to let fly words for whole hours together whereof not one is directed or intended towards the mark and scope of the Gospel which is the rooting out of Sin and destroying the Kingdome of the Devil 3. And yet it is a wonder to see the zeal and heat and hear the noise of these Boanerges these Sons of thunder as if every sentence were fire and lightning from Heaven against the strong holds of Sin and Satan and that they would humble every thought to the obedience of Christ who came into the World to redeem us from all iniquity and to purchase to himselfe a Church pure holy and undefiled without either spot or blemish Which End notwithstanding is for the most part not onely not aimed at but too often crossed and supplanted by Hypocritical insinuations of either the Needlesness or Impossibility of these things To be short For the most part the discourse is so off and on that a man knows not what they would have but it is as if one should bring Grey-hounds into the field and let them slip and cry allooe when yet there is no game before them Which noise though it may make them skip up and look about a while yet they will presently finde themselves unconcern'd there being nothing in sight for them to pursue 4. But if they would exhort to follow peace and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord this were worth our pursuance indeed as being the known and certain end of the preaching of the Gospel But if we see no such design therein and therefore act opposite to it and vilify the dawnings of that Day of righteousness that is to arise upon the World and to make that Habitations of Christendome a Land of joy and peace and discourage the people of God by telling them dreadful stories of the Sons of Anak those invincible Giants whenas there is nothing too hard nor invincible to the true Iosua our Lord Jesus the wisdome power of God verily it is to be feared that this Function which was intended by God a Fortress against Sin if it prove by unskilful zeal such a Bulwark of unrighteousness that He may dig it down and remove it as a ruinous wall of a garden whose dead rubbish and stones ever falling on the innocent herbs and flowers do smother and stifle them or as an old decaied hedge which is to be pull'd up and carried away the quick-set being grown 5. But if we will work the works of the Lord in faithfulness and according to the design of the Gospel we our selves shall become part of that Quick-set and be made living stones to hold up one another in the Temple of God And that those that are not thus enlivened may not take themselves to be so by reason of their extraordinary promptitude and vivacity I must not forbear to declare that this life we speak of is no natural heat nor the external effects of it Nor is that a living Ministry according to this sense that makes shew of the greatest zeal For verily it is well known that cooling Physick may be administred in very hot broth And it is too-too possible that such things may be delivered with the greatest heat and fervency imaginable which once received into the Minds of the hearers are so far from warming them afterwards and spiriting them to true holiness and righteousness that they even slake and extinguish the desire thereof which yet is no less a crime then stifling the life of God in the World as much as in us lies and undermining the Kingdome of Christ upon Earth These things I could not but take notice of concerning the Communication of the Gospel as being of very great use as well to the Hearer as the Teacher that neither the one might mistake himself nor the other be deceived by him CHAP. V. 1. The nature of Historical Faith 2. That true Saving Faith is properly Covenant and of the various significations of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
to him and from his being a Sacrifice for sin 5. That to deny the Trinity and Divinity of Christ or to make the Union of our selves with the Godhead of the same nature with that of Christ's subverts Christianity 6. The uselesness and sauciness of the pretended Deification of Enthusiasts and how destructive it is of Christian Religion 7. The Providence of God in preparing of the Nations by Platonisme for the easier reception of Christianity 11 CAAP. VI. 1. The danger and disconsolateness of the Opinion of the Psychopannychites 2. What they alledge out of 1 Cor. 15. set down 3. A Preparation to an Answer advertising First of the nature of Prophetick Schemes of speech 4. Secondly of the various vibration of an inspired Phansie 5. Thirdly of the ambiguity of words in Scripture and particularly of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 6. And lastly of the Corinthians being sunk into an Unbelief of any Reward after this life 7. The Answer out of the last and foregoing Premisse 8. A further Answer out of the first 9. As also out of the second and third where their Objection from verse 32. is fully satisfied 10. Their Argument answered which they urge from our Saviours citation to the Sadducees I am the God of Abraham c. 15 CHAP. VII 1. A General Answer to the last sort of places they alledge that imply no enjoyment before the Resurrection 2. A Particular Answer to that of 2 Cor 5. out of Hugo Grotius 3. A preparation to an Answer of the Author 's own by explaining what the Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may signifie 4. His Paraphrase of the six first Verses of the forecited Chapter 5. A further confirmation of his Paraphrase 6. The weakness of the Reasons of the Psychopannychites noted 19 CHAP. VIII 1. That the Opinion of the Soul 's living and acting immediately after Death was not fetched out of Plato by the Fathers because they left out Preexistence an Opinion very rational in it self 2. And such as seems plausible from sundry places of Scripture as those alledged by Menasseh Ben Israel out of Deuteronomy Jeremy and Job 3. As also God's resting on the seventh day 4. That their proclivity to think that the Angel that appeared to the Patriarchs so often was Christ might have been a further inducement 5. Other places of the New Testament which seem to imply the Preexistence of Christ's Soul 6. More of the same kinde out of S. John 7. Force added to the last proofs from the opinion of the Socinians 8. That our Saviour did admit or at least not disapprove the opinion of Preexistence 9. The main scope intended from the preceding allegations namely That the Soul 's living and acting after death is no Pagan opinion out of Plato but a Christian Truth evidenced out of the Scriptures 21 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 25 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 imply That the Soul hath life and sense immediately after death 28 BOOK II. CHAP. I. HE passes to the more Intelligible parts of Christianity for the understanding whereof certain preparative Propositions are to be laid down 2. As That there is a God 3. A brief account of the Assertion from his Idea 4. A further Confirmation from its ordinary concatenation with the Rational account of all other Beings as first of the Existence of the disjoynt and independent particles of Matter 31 CHAP. II. 1. That the wise contrivances in the works of Nature prove the Being of a God 2. And have extorted an acknowledgement of a General Providence even from irreligious Naturalists 3. That there is a Particular Providence or Inspection of God upon every individual person Which is his Second Assertion 32 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 34 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 35 CHAP. V. 1. The Eighth Assertion That there is a Polity amongst the Angels and Souls separate both Good and Bad and therefore Two distinct Kingdomes one of Light and the other of Darkness 2. And a perpetual fewd and conflict betwixt them 3. The Ninth That there are infinite swarms of Atheistical Spirits as well Aereal as Terrestrial in an utter ignorance or hatred of all true Religion 37 CHAP. VI. 1. His Tenth Assertion That there will be a final Overthrow of the Dark Kingdome and that in a supernatural manner and upon their external persons 2. The Eleventh That the Generations of men had a beginning and will also have an end 3. To which also the Conflagration of the world gives witness 39 CHAP. VII 1. His Twelfth Assertion That there will be a Visible and Supernatural deliverance of the Children of the Kingdome of Light at the Conflagration of the World 2. The Reason of the Assertion 3. His Thirteenth Assertion That the last vengeance and deliverance shall be so contrived as may be best fit for the Triumph of the
Celestial Vehicle 4. The activity of the separate Soul upon the Vehicle argued from her moving of the Spirits in the Body and that no advantage accrews therefrom to the wicked after death 141 CHAP. IV. 1. Christ's Session at the Right hand of God interpreted either figuratively or properly 2. That the proper sense implies no humane shape in the Deity 3. That though God be Infinite and every where yet there may be a Special presence of him in Heaven 4. And that Christ may be conceived to sit at the Right hand of that Presence or Divine Shechina 143 CHAP. V. 1. The Apotheosis of Christ or his Receiving of Divine Honour freed from all suspicion of Idolatry forasmuch as Christ is God properly so called by his Real and Physicall union with God 2. The Real and Physical union of the Soul of Christ with God being possible sundry Reasons alledged to prove that God did actually bring it to pass 3. The vain Evasions of superficial Allegorists noted 4. Their ignorance evinced and the Apotheosis of Christ confirmed from the Immortality of the Soul and the political Government of the other World 5. That he that equalizes himself to Christ is ipso facto discovered an Impostour and Lier 144 CHAP. VI. 1. An Objection against Christ's Soveraignty over Men and Angels from the meanness of the rank of Humane Spirits in comparison of the Angelical Orders 2. An Answer to the Objection so far as it concerns the fallen Angels 3. A further inforcement of the Objection concerning the unfallen Angels with an Answer thereto 4. A further Answer from the incapacitie of an Angels being a Sacrifice for the Sins of the World 5. And of being a fit Example of life to men in the flesh 6. That the capacities of Christ were so universal that he was the fittest to be made the Head or Soveraign over all the Intellectuall Orders 7. Christ's Intercession his fitness for that Office 8. What things in the Pagan Religion are rectified and compleated in the Birth Passion Ascension and Inercession of Christ. 146 CHAP. VII 1. That there is nothing in the History of Apollonius that can properly answer to Christs Resurrection from the dead 2. And that his passage out of this life must go for his Ascension concerning which reports are various but in general that it was likely he died not in his bed 3. His reception at the Temple of Diana Dictynna in Crete and of his being called up into Heaven by a Quire of Virgins singing in the Aire 4. The uncertainty of the manner of Apollonius his leaving the World argued out of Philostratus his own Confession 5. That if that at the Temple of Diana Dictynna was true yet it is no demonstration of any great worth in his Person 6. That the Secrecy of his departure out of this world might beget a suspicion in his admirers that he went Body and Soul into Heaven 7. Of a Statue of Apollonius that spake and of his dictating verses to a young Philosopher at Tyana concerning the Immortality of the Soul 8. Of his Ghost appearing to Aurelian the Emperour 9. Of Christ's appearing to Stephen at his martyrdome and to Saul when he was going to Damascus 149 CHAP. VIII 1. The use of this parallel hitherto of Christ and Apollonius 2. Mahomet David George H. Nicolas high-pretending Prophets brought upon the stage and the Author's Apology for so doing 3. That a misbelief of the History of Christ and a dexterity in a moral Mythology thereof are the greatest excellencies in David George and H. Nicolas 4. That if they believed there were any Miracles ever in the world they ought to have given their reasons why they believe not those that are recorded of Christ and to have undeceiv'd the world by doing Miracles themselves to ratifie their doctrine 5. If they believed there never were nor ever will be any Miracles they do plainly betray themselves to be mere Atheists or Epicures 6. The wicked plot of Satan in this Sect in clothing their style with Scripture-language though they were worse Infidels then the very Heathen 7. That the gross Infidelity of these two Impostours would make a man suspect them rather to have been crafty prophane Cheats then honest through-crackt Enthusiasts 8. That where Faith is extinct all the rapturous Exhortations to Vertue are justly suspected to proceed rather from Complexion then any Divine principle 152 CHAP. IX 1. Mahomet far more orthodox in the main points of Religion then the above named Impostours 2. The high pitch this pretended Prophet sets himself at His journey to Heaven being waited upon by the Angel Gabriel His Beast Alborach and of his being called to by two Women by the way with the Angels interpretation thereof 3. His arrival at the Temple at Jerusalem and the reverence done to him there by all the Prophets and holy Messengers of God that ever had been in the world 4. The crafty political meaning of the Vision hitherto 5. Mahomet bearing himself upon the Angel Gabriel's hand climbes up to Heaven on a Ladder of Divine light His passing through seven Heavens and his commâ—nding of himself to Christ in the Seventh 6. His salutation of his Creatour with the stupendious circumstances thereof 7. Five special favours he received from God at that congress 8. Of the natural wilyness in Enthusiasts and of their subtile pride where they would seem most humble The strange advantage of Enthusiasme with the rude Multitude 9. And the wonderfull success thereof in Mahomet Other Enthusiasts as proud as Mohamet but not so successful and why 155 CHAP. X. 1. That Mahomet was no true Prophet discovered from his cruel and bloudy Precepts 2. From his insatiable Lust. 3. From his wildeness of Phansy and Ignorance in things What may possibly be the meaning of the black speck taken out of his Heart by the Angel Gabriel 4. His pretence to Miracles as his being overshadowed with a cloud when he drove his Masters Mules 5. A stock of a Tree cleaving it self to give way to the stumbling Prophet The cluttering of Trees together to keep off the Sun from him as also his dividing of the Moon 6. The matters hitherto recited concerning Mahomet taken out of Johannes Andreas the Son of Abdalla a Mahometane Priest a grave person and serious Christian. 158 CHAP. XI 1. Three main Consequences of Christ's Apotheosis 2. Of the Mission of the Holy Ghost and the Apostles power of doing Miracles 3. The manner of the descent of the Holy Ghost upon them at the day of Pentecost 4. The substantial Reasonableness of the circumstances of this Miracle 5. The Symbolical meaning of them 6. What was meant by the rushing winde that filled the whole house 7. What by the fiery cloven tongues 8. A recital of several other Miracles done by or happening to the Apostles 9. The Congruity and Coherence of the whole History of the Miracles of Christ and his Apostles argued from the Success 161 CHAP. XII 1.