to be always conformed to that exemplar shine forth together the created in subordination to the increated Of all which Body is altogether insensible and utterly incapable In the original therefore of man there is according to Scripture a clear distinction betwixt Spirit and Body 2. That the Scripture doth plainly own the distinction of the Soul from the Body in a state of conjunction with it I argue especially from the powers of mind and the actions of those powers wherein are laid and to which are directed continually all the Discourses and those pressing Reasonings Exhortations Admonitions and Reproofs we find in sacred Writings These powers according to the universal speech of mankind it calls Vnderstanding Faculty of Reason Conscience Judgment and the actions proceeding from these it names Thought Apprehension or Perceiving Consideration Reasoning Accusation and Apologie or Defence of Conscience Judging of Things and all these powers working out into these acts it comprehends in this word the Spirit of man and unites these acts with it speaking of these powers as the Essence of a man and of the acts as most connatural to that Essence to which also every mans knowledge and feeling within himself give as clear testimony and as full as the parts of Body give of themselves to Sense For the Spirit of a man knows the things of a man within him Now it is plain All these things are most improper to Body or so much as a brutal Spirit especially when they lift up themselves to the sense of a God and extend themselves to religious concernments when they receive those high proposals of the Gospel and Mysteries that lye out of the whole region of Sense so that though the organs and instruments of the body are sometimes spoken of and to in these cases yet it is only upon this account because they are such as by which the mind acts or are symbols and representations of this rational sense and motion These things being then so well known and every where met with in inspired Writings they are as great a demonstration of their consciousness to another greater and more excellent Being in man than Body as can be required seeing Body hath no fitness nor possible sublimation to these things that Scripture so wholly insists upon in relation to man There must be therefore another man a more excellent man within or else all thus spoken must have been in vain such powers and actions cannot be ascribed originally to the most excellent temper of Body or Tune of motions but must have a proper and peculiar substance to reside in and that whatever any one else will call it is that Scripture and common speaking calls Spirit And this being so plain and clear and of so general consent the Scripture without any industry as in a case presumed speaks of Spirit as one thing and Body as another distributes 1 Thess 5. 23. man into Body Soul and Spirit Body is well enough known Soul is either Spirit as it contains within it self the faculties of sensitive nature and takes the Government of them upon it self and the care and feeling of things that concern Body and the life of it or as it moves in the most excellent parts of Body that mediate betwixt body and mind and are fittest for the more immediate motions of Spirit in Body and so called Spirits Spirit is pure mind exalted to its own objects and the highest of those objects Divine Things This Spirit is that Inward Man holy 2 Cor. 4. 16. Writing speaks of renewed and repaired every day not in its substantial nature but in gracious and heavenly qualities of which it is the only residence and receipt and which are its true health and strength Lastly In this distinction of Soul and Body is founded that excellent discourse of the Apostle Rom. 8. 5 6 7 8 9 10 11. of Being in the flesh and in the Spirit of being carnally minded or of the carnal mind and of being spiritually minded or of the spiritual mind By which on one side he describes this mind allured and drawn down to Body and Flesh which comes to pass first through nearness to Body and closest sympathy with all those natural and sensitive motions which it self inspires Body with but chiefly by degeneracy the Soul comes to feel it self and places its enjoyments wholly in flesh and makes that the Center of its reigning passions and affections and so it self becomes carnal and sensual and cannot please God On the other side is described Mind lifted up above Body and out of Flesh by Grace and the Divine Spirit to an inseparable adherence to God and Christ and eternal things to which it advances its own motions in Body also presenting them a living and acceptable Sacrifice which is the rational service of a man consisting of Soul and Body Thus the Flesh and the Heart together cry out for the living God In the mean time this Spirit of the mind subdues and restrains its own motions arising from unholy Bodily inclination and affection Now to be carnally minded is death The mind unpurged and glued to Body dyes in that sense a Spirit can dye that is a death of separation from God and deprivation of Divine Beauty and Happiness and the Body whose ministery it uses and makes it the seat of its carnal pleasures and sensualities perishes also leaving no possible satisfaction any longer from them and yet that Body because it was the Body of that unpurged Soul and retains its order to it remains guilty and foul dust and rises again so that the Soul may suffer and its misery may be seen in a Body even as it sinned in Body which is the second death But to be spiritually minded is life and peace For Mind renewed and made the habitation of the Holy Spirit and its righteousness cannot it self dye no not as Spirits dye because of that blessed and immortal allyance for it lives in the enjoyment of God likeness to him lively motions of it self in all goodness and blessedness And though the Body is dead that is is under the sentence of death to be unavoidably fulfilled in the separation of the Soul from the Body upon which the Body becomes a dead lump and further it must dye that the Soul may obtain a perfect purification from sin which it cannot have while cemented with Body sin being so lodged in that Cement that there can be no perfect purification till that Cement be dissolved Then when that Cement is dissolved the separated Soul becomes perfect Spirit and Divine through the almighty efficacy of the Divine Spirit resiant in it and bearing it up to the perfection of the Divine life for ever Thus the Spirit is life because of righteousness And if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you he that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you That is The Body that
was the habitation of the Spirit or Soul renewed and purged from sin that Spirit or Soul being it self the habitation of the Divine Spirit this Body because it hath still a relation to such a Soul loses its sinful taint while it moulders into dust and is raised a Body incorruptible and spiritual that is a habitation fit for the Spirit now made perfect and is filled thereby with the glory of life and immortality which is eternal life and all by virtue of that Divine Spirit that dwelt in that Soul while it was lodged and dwelt in that Body And herein lying the true substantial sense of this most weighty Paragraph of the Apostle how plainly doth it express the distinction of the Soul from the Body and that the Soul is a substance of it self independent upon Body and Body altogether dependent upon it even while it is most immers'd into Body For first The Soul it self gives all the life to its own impure pleasures and sinful reposes in bodily delights to which else Body is able to contribute no more than Oyl to the Flame which of it self we know always lyes still and dark 2. Spirit it self assisted by Grace retires into spiritual enjoyments and quenches and dryes up its own sensual affections to Body and blasts the satisfactions received from thence even before that Oyl be wasted by the decays of Body or dryed up by death Lastly It self carries its own fate if I may so call it and the fate of the Body along with it into eternity for according to what the Soul it self is so is its own happiness or misery and the Body of necessity follows its condition so that it self is plainly All and the Body only a Cypher attending the state of this principal Figure 3. The distinction of Spirit and Body in death is conveyed to us in very plain and easie terms and such as carry their meaning very open if not disturbed and prevented by ill interpretation Let us take a view of the clearness of Scripture herein First Solomon in his Ecclesiastes having considered with some passion and vehemency the little or no apparent preheminence of men above Beasts in their death that as one dies so dies the other they send out one common vital breath and go all to one place he then casts the account of this into the common heap of vanity and comes to a very warm enquiry Who knoweth Eccl. 3. 21. the Spirit of a man that goes upward and the Spirit of a Beast that goes downward Yet thereby resolving the main case enough viz. that these outward appearances laid so much to disadvantage are but only in the Body and outside the difference between the Spirit of a man and the Spirit of a Beast is still very great as great as between Heaven and Earth and the motion as contrary when they dye as upward and downward but still he complains that this is not possible to be seen by Sense and there are very few that reach it to any purpose by Reason and Religion and this saith he is one of the great points of the vanity of all worldly condition that both so great a principle of Truth and so great a dignity of Humane Nature should lye so far off be so indiscernable Here is then an equality in the outside or Bodies of men a dying and Beasts but a great inequality or excellency of men above Beasts which comes home to what we are asserting And thus Solomon understood of the Spirit of a man as is now explained he makes us more certain when after his travel over all things he comes to describe man in his end and does it thus The Dust returning to the Earth Eccl. 12. 7. as it was and the Spirit returns to God that gave it he allots to the several parts into which he distributes man a several motion and a several rest according to the several originals of each The Dust or Body returns to the Earth from whence it was taken the Spirit survives and hastens back to God that gave it Agreeably the care of holy men at death or in any great apprehensions of danger that presented death to them was to commend their Spirit to God as David Into thy hand I commend Psal 31. 5. my Spirit which words were prophetick of the dying words of our Saviour Father into thy hand I commend Luc. 23. 46. my Spirit and thus Stephen breathed out his Soul Lord Jesus receive Acts 7. 59. my Spirit Now in that Solomon affirms of the Spirit of man in general that it returns to God the Judge of all whether it be the spirit of a good man or a bad man or whether it be for happiness or misery and that thereupon holy persons recommended their Souls into the hands of God as a faithful Creator I know not how any thing can be more determinative of the distinction of Body and Soul in death For such words are not words of meer resignation of life back again to the Fountain of Life but an entrustment and dependent recommendation and not of a life to be secured only for the Resurrection but of a Spirit immediately going to God for else they might with as much care have committed Body to him who weighs the dust of the Earth in a Ballance much more that of the Bodies of men whom he will raise again most of all that of his Saints which he will raise to glory If there were not such an immediate return of good mens Spirits to God why doth the Apostle chuse to be Phil. 1. 23. dissolved or set at liberty that he might be with Christ Or why doth he profess in the name of Christians in general we desire rather to be absent 2 Cor. 5. 6. from than at home in the body that we might be present with the Lord What tolerable account can be given of such speeches for what composition is it that suffers dissolution that some part and what part is that might have immediate being with Christ Or who is it that would be set at liberty Or that is absent from the body or at home in it if not this supreme man the Soul Or why should death be preferred for the sake of a nearer and more immediate presence with Christ if all the man dye with the body Or what man is it that the Apostle speaks of caught up into the third Heaven and makes a doubt whether in the body or out of it Or how could there be such a being in the body or out of the Body if the body were all if there were nothing but body Or lastly why doth our Saviour amplifie the dread of the vengeance of God upon man above theirs that kill the body and have no more that they can do whereas the hand of God destroys Luc. 12. 4 5. both body and soul in Hell For let it be expounded to the greatest advantage of the opinion that encounters the Souls immortality
Spirits whose property it is more perfectly to do this Now that these are true Characters of a Spirit besides that we have some kind of intuitive knowledge or down-right look into these things by the very virtue of a Spirits knowledge of it self and that general sense and experience we have of our own Beings and the motions and activities of them it may yet farther be assured by what we find and perceive daily to be the disadvantages of bodies for we find by effects as hath already been insisted upon that there must be a higher order of Beings than body which we call Spirits and that of this order the Supreme Being is the first and that inferiour natures are so because they are made in his Image and likeness we must then ascribe to the Supreme Spirit such essential Attributes and Characters wherein he is infinite as may answer those effects for which we seek so great a Cause and so in created Spirits seeing there are depressions and inconveniences that peculiarly belong to body by reason of which we cannot allow to them such and such effects that are plainly above them we must therefore fix such Characters upon these spiritual Natures which we say are created in Divine likeness as may ennoble them above those inconveniences which befall mean matter As when first we ascribe to Spirit simplicity It is easie to argue that the more any thing is simple sincere and one with it self with the more certainty it doth hold its own subsistence in that it can run no hazard but of its entire single essence whereas compounded Beings are in perpetual danger of a dissolution and the more one and single any thing is with the more force and power it proceeds to its effects seeing it moves at once with its whole self and a perfect union of its strength whereas also compounded Beings must be accountable for their parts which must be made good that there may be a full force for the effect but parts being but loosly set together if any be lost the whole is impaired and weakened according to the nobleness and value of the part it hath lost Lastly that self-communion and communication whereby any Being hath its center every where in it self and hath in every point of it self the center of its own Intelligence of it self is vastly necessary that any efficient may work with counsel and design and the full improvement of it self to every thing it would bring to pass so that these things are hereby manifested to be true Characters of such a Being as we call Spirit infinite in the infinite Spirit in created Spirits sutable and proportionable to the rank of their Creation and so in the Soul of man though under the restraint and disadvantages of a Body joined with it in which we are particularly to take notice of the great force and consequences of these Characters 1. From hence it follows The Soul is a most active Being of greatest life vigour and motion in a perpetual intellectual self-motion like the Sun that is always playing its beams and light God hath prepared the Soul for such a motion in its very creation he designed it for motion and set it into motion a rational motion of understanding will affection imagination and remembrance self-reflexion and conscience In these it hath a most lively agitation of it self as soon as ever it was in being from the very first moments of its being and in the very nature of its being it became a perpetual motion a self-motion or mover of it self we may perceive it in the quick and free motion of Thought the continual motion of Thought that never rests The purity fineness and simplicity of it assures it cannot but be natural to it to move and move it self God impressed it with life and action in the very make of it seeing it is all self and all of it received motion alike from the first mover it can have no heavy and sluggish parts to heave from their rest and carry along with it by which its motion being controlled should grow dull The most vivacious parts of Body and which are most active having so much load so much dull matter to inspire and move on are easily damped but it is not so with Spirit And then from without Bodies continually have their motion arrested by encountring other Bodies of a contrary intention imprinted with the just opposite motion but Spirit finds nothing abroad to cool but every thing provokes every thing stirs up their motion For it is moved to move self by every thing that presents it self to it and the more object the more motion like a violent recoil from a hard body the motion back is made fiercer Every thing the Soul meets instead of abating its motion reflects it with a new force and returns it upon more vehement examination and enquiry that is more earnest motion if it be in things pertaining to its knowledge but if in things related to its affection the action is more forcible upon it self with pleasure or vexation according to the nature of what is encountred Whatever is to be abated from this account of the Souls motion must be imputed to the inconvenience of its working by Body whose chanels are so tender and brittle and cannot endure too great vehemency in compassion to which the motion is moderated the conduits are so strait and obstructed through the Senses unexercised to the uses and ends of the Soul that its action cannot stream out like it self Lastly the instruments and organs grow weary and heavy by the disadvantages and rencounters the parts of matter have between themselves upon which the Souls motion seems slower and tired also Yet there is no time wherein Thought stands still though in the narrowest Soul and how meanly soever it be employed as it is in ignorant and sordid minds But further there are at all times great Examples of the lively motions of the Soul of man in wise and excellent persons and of the greatness and vehemency thereof which is yet a thousand fold greater and will be perfect in the everlasting state Its motion will be then wound up to the highest and there will be no allay from a heavy Body then all the thoughts affections powers will sally out with an unimaginable life Oh how necessary is it that we prepare by holy motion and action now to that motion that it may be blessed seeing there is no rest from it there is no quieting it nor so much as slackning the swiftness of it If it be not a motion that makes happy and blessed it is yet as high a motion but in misery and to the perfection of misery 2. Hence it follows the Soul is immortal because it is perfectly it self and so separated from all things else for the alteration of things in matter is from their composition one thing having many meeting to make it up and these either struggling and contesting among themselves the stronger subduing
of Spirits to behold in the whole Creation especially in their own Natures the great Perfections of God surmounting themselves and much more the rest of the Creatures as Infinite doth Finite that so God may be understood and accordingly ador'd by them seeing Spirits in his own Image of Understanding and Likeness can alone so far know him as in a true and proper sense to adore him and the Glory of God in such an Adoration being the end of Creation it argues the necessity of such Creatures and so accomplish'd thus to give him his Glory As therefore by reviews of the Creatures in general and particularly of our own Minds and by Observations of what excells amongst all it is possible without Scripture though more darkly to find out the Perfections that are to be ascrib'd infinitely to God and when we come to Scripture and find that agreeing with though exceeding Natural Knowledge in its Attributions to God we have by this combination of Scripture and Reason Revealed and Natural Knowledge the praeeminence being easily yielded to Revealed the most satisfying Assurances of God we can have On the other side by considering the Excellencies and Perfections attributed to God in his Word and finding the same Lines drawn upon our own Minds observable both in the Discourses of Scripture concerning them and in our own experience though but according to the degree and model of Creatures we understand our own Souls more fully so that as the consideration of our selves the Creatures leads us without Revelation to understand God though not so clearly so these Oracles revealing God and all his Attributes more certainly and evidently to us reveal also our selves more plainly because they tell us we are made in his Image and Likeness and so by knowing God with greatest clearness we know our selves also most clearly for the Knowledge of our selves as to what concerns the clearness of it depends upon our Knowledge of God by the Scriptures more than our Knowledge of God depends upon the Knowledge of our selves by Natural Knowledge without Scripture Yet still the Knowledge of our own Souls where Men have no Revelation leads them best to the Knowledge of God as the Knowledge of God by Revelation leads us best to the Knowledge of our own Souls because God and the Soul do mutually represent one another God the Original Prototype and Infinite Exemplar Man's Soul the humble Representation and Copy Upon which Reason the Apostle having said We are his off-spring Acts 17. 28 29. immediately argues Forasmuch as we are the off-spring of God we ought not to think the Godhead like to silver and gold Our own Nature deriving from God instructs us better concerning him for seeing we our selves far excel all those things however heightned by Art he that gave us those Excellencies must needs have them in himself and in a transcendency As he that built the house hath more honour than the house and the Life excels the Picture So on the other side the Excellencies and Perfections of the Divine Being are every where given us in Scripture as the Rule of Composure for Man's Soul which could not be reasonable were not the being of it first given in the Image and Likeness of God and susceptive of the Divine Nature that is of the Virtues of it Touching the Souls Likeness to Angels we need not labour much but rather in comparing them with God the Original of both and occasionally onely illustrate the Doctrine of the Soul by observation of what we are taught in inspir'd Leaves concerning them though Philosophy hath not been altogether ignorant herein In general they are of a middle state between God and us nearer to God in that they are a higher Rank of Spirits disengag'd from Body much nearer to us in that they are Finite Spirits and God infinitely above them In speaking then of the Likeness of Man's Soul to God we must again have recourse to his Creation and when God had said Let us make Man in our own Likeness and Image and form'd the Body as a curious Statuary doth a most exact Statue he then breath'd into it the Breath of Life Now this Breathing of God argues he gave a great semblance of himself and that God deriv'd something from himself to Man's Soul that should more immediately express himself and was taken from himself as the Life Thus our Saviour breath'd upon his Apostles and made them Partakers of a Spirit that had a great Likeness to his own in the Infallibility and Heavenliness of his Doctrine the Power of working Miracles the Holiness of their Ministry and whole Apostolick Function God breathing Mans Soul it became so like him that some have call'd it A Particle of the Divinity a Kiss of God an Imprint of himself Now this Likeness of Man's Soul to God I believe not to be first in those moral Resemblances of the Truth Holiness and Goodness of God which speak God the best and in which to be like God is Mans Rectitude and Integrity and the Foundation of his Happiness as a Rational Agent nor onely in the Intellectual Faculties but also in those Attributes which speak God the Greatest though these be in this present state of Man much obscured even as the other Of the Soul of Man an Invisible Spirit hath been already discours'd Of other the Greatnesses of God giving a glance an eye of themselves upon Mans Soul we may also apprehend There is a Resemblance of his Infiniteness and Ubiquity of Presence in that swift and sudden Motion of Mans Soul from East to West summoning things of farthest distance into its presence by Thought and Intellectual Consideration the Intelligence he endeavours to hold with all the Action and Business of the World both Natural Civil and Moral the Correspondency he hath with Things Divine and Heavenly The Freedom and Liberty of the Increated Will is reflected in some degree in the Liberty of Mans Will that can be no way forc'd or compell'd in the vastness of his Appetite and Desire which though now irregular yet speaks the Original Greatness of his Soul and that Joy unspeakable he was intended for The Dominion of God in Mans Dominion over the Creatures and the vast and restless Ambition and Desire of Power and Empire so natural to him The Eternity of God in the Immortality and at last Unchangeableness given to Mans Soul The Divine Blessedness in the Lustre and Glory Man affects the Well-being he so inseparably from his Nature desires the Happiness he is capable of to which he was design'd and to which he is exalted by the Salvation of Christ From hence there is something like Creation in the great Works that have been done by Men and something in Humane Contrivances and Administrations like Providence And that there is a Force and Potency of Mans Spirit in a proportion resembling that Power of God that brings Things to pass in Matter or like the force of Angels that have wrought
man must confess and cannot deny his own Actions a man must confess and cannot deny his own Actions to himself nor a general Character of himself to himself every man is accused or defended by his own Knowledge Every man knows his own sincerity good intention good action and is conscious of the contrary Hence the condemnation and the horrour a man receives within himself and so the comfort and joy of a man is clear and certain The heart knows its own sickness Prov. 14. 10. and its own joy and a stranger cannot intermeddle with either he cannot interpose against the judgment of the Soul upon it self This is our 2 Cor. 1. 12. rejoycing the testimony of our Conscience A man proves himself and Galat. 6. 4. his own work and hath rejoycing in his own good sense of himself or trouble in his own Censure and not in that of another As a man knows and finds himself in himself in a natural sense so in a moral The Spirit of a Man knows the things that are within him We may say in this case as in things of secrecy I know what I know and as in things of certainty what I know I know The sum is this In things that are under direction no man can refuse deny or resist the presence of his own Knowledge in what he does know any more than he can resist the day To him therefore that knows it is sin and commits it or good and omits it to him it is sin of a deep dye In things of sentence and judgment upon a mans self if a mans heart condemns him God is greater than his Heart His Knowledge and purity are greater and therefore condemns him more but yet God knows a man together with his heart and condemns him together with it and most of all within it If a mans heart condemn 1 Joh. 3. 20 21. him not he hath confidence and just ground of it towards God because the very witness of a mans heart concerning him is true and is no lye There may be some very particular cases in which a man may be so clowded as to deem more severely of himself than his state deserves and there may be some dreams in which a man fancies himself better than he is but not such as deserve to abate from this general account of mans Soul for these mistakes are but temporary and by close attention it may vindicate it self from them But the great objection against the Soul being such a Light is this Object If the Soul of man be such a Candle of the Lord how comes it to pass that men are so ignorant of things and of themselves Answ 1. These things are to be discoursed according to their own Truth their first Nature and Constitution Now the Soul of Man was created so and it is still so in its own Nature though there are many accidental Coverings and Obscurings of it in Men as sometimes the Light of the Sun hath grown pale and wan and the shinings of it withdrawn 2. There fell indeed a great dimness upon this Light by the sin of Man and there need Lights from without and much Exercise from within to recover it so in great Judgments the Sun hath been turned into Sackcloth and the Moon into Blood 3. There is much to be attributed to its present state as thrust down into a gross Body where it is covered like a Diamond inclosed in Clay or like those Lamps that burnt in Vaults and under ground 4. How much is to be imputed to those Steams and Vapours of Lust and Fogs of Sensual Appetite that rise up and obscure the Soul like the Sun in a Cloud or Mist 5. There is a freedom of the Soul and Understanding like that of the Eye though some things dart in upon it that it must see and though turning it self every way it must also see what it would not see yet it can endeavour and in part effect the turning it self from the observation of things most proper to it and consider those that pertain only to the present life whither with all its vehemency it carries its Light But lastly and especially There is much more a Man knows of himself and Things than he seems to know How many things that are not found nor can be drawn into the discourse of some ignorant men much less into their practice that yet when you tell them of they receive not as things they never knew but only as such they have not dealt with or usually conversed with and upon more notable occasions they break out from them in whom they were not suspected to have a place And concerning men themselves though in their careless demeanour towards themselves they flatter their own hearts and do not bring their full Eye and Light upon themselves yet they have a secret notice of themselves a private mark of their own condition which they know is much more true than that forced or false Opinion they endeavour to breed and nurse up of themselves In sum therefore I think the most ignorant man hath this Light in his Soul however covered he hath it though it doth not outwardly shew it self but lyes still now as it doth in Children without the notable discoveries of what it notwithstanding truly is and will one day appear to be We should all therefore seriously consider what we are what Souls we have There is such a Lamp in us though it be but as under a Bed or Bushel As it is most necessary to consider what Dust we are in our Bodies so to apprehend what Spirit we are in our Souls it is a great degree of wisdom to know the frail condition of our Mortality but it is a far greater to know the Immortality of our Souls As Princes in their Glory and in whom Mortality was advanced to the highest were admonished by Remembrancers chosen on purpose that they were of the same Clay with other men capable of the same Corruption Disease Death so they that carry their Souls lowest should be put in mind by Men of greatest Understanding Piety serenity of Conscience and others of quickest Anguish and trouble of mind what Souls they have Every man may see in them what themselves are and that those Spirits within them will be at last either shining Suns or flaming Torches For ever For in Eternity God will certainly call out all Souls to their Office and Function in Light whether it be to Life and Happiness or to Condemnation and Misery How great is the Mercy then when God calls out and uncovers this Light now and puts it into Motion and enlightens it far higher with the Knowledge of himself in Christ so making it directive consolatory healing light from the healing wings of the Sun of Righteousness so making us Lights Burning Burning and Shining Lights in his Light which always makes happy Let us continually ascend to the Father of Lights in Christ That Light that we may be
Seraphims dwelling in that Everlasting Light and Love wherein God and Christ inhabit Let us fear though this Light shall indeed always burn yet lest it burn black lest it cast the Darkness of Misery in the midst of Knowledge and the Blackness of utter Disconsolateness while it blazes with conviction that we become not wandring blazing Stars full of the Light of conviction but which turns us out as Fugitives from God and our selves like Cain having no peace no rest in our Knowledge Wandring Stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness For Ever For so as this Candle of the Lord shall burn such as this Light is holy and comfortable or condemning and tormenting so shall our state be and that to Everlasting I am now come down as low in the Description I first gave of the Soul as to speak of it as it is the Source and Fountain of all the Actions of a man for so it is whether they are natural or moral And as for natural It is the most easie description of the Soul to say it is the Author of them even as when we would describe God with greatest easiness to be understood we call him the Creator of Heaven and Earth the Preserver of all things that gives to all their Being Breath and Motion so we understand the Soul with least difficulty when we speak of it as that which guides and conducts and gives spirit to all the motions of Body all the powers of that That which a lower Soul doth in Beasts that the higher doth in Man but in a more noble way For when God made Adam and formed him of Earth and prepared all the Instruments of Motion and Action in the Body when this excellent and curious Machine lay dead before him he breathed into it the Soul to stir and move it and to carry all the Action of it Or as a Musicians Instrument exactly made and strung the Musicians Art comes as a Soul upon it stirs it and tunes the sound of it and then strikes it into Harmony and Melody The first Body given to Man was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Body subsisting acted by a Soul as the Body given in the Resurrection is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Body that shall subsist and be acted by a Spirit that is A Soul at the highest exaltation What is that then that sees in the Eyes That hears in the Ears That touches in the Hand and feels in the whole Body This is no other than the Soul and it does all this with the superiority of a Rational Agent much otherwise than the Soul of a Beast can do for there is a vein of Reason and Understanding that is Rational Reflections directions to Rational ends running along in the Souls acting the Body When this Soul leaves this Body though all the Instruments remain yet the power ceases But of this I will no further enquire because it is not to the main purpose In the second place As we rise higher concerning God we express him an Infinite Wisdom and Understanding an Infinite Justice and Mercy a Holiness and Purity unspotted governing the World in Righteousness and Truth and exercising compassions in it which are nearer approaches to the Being of God so hath the Soul Powers of its own Senses and Affections that closely describe it What is it that Understands That Reasons That designs and contrives Whence are the Notions of Right and Wrong Good and Evil and the several Tendencies and Operations either way Whence are rational and moral Joys Desires and Delights Whence are intellectual Sorrows and Complaints All these are evidently and apparently from such a Spring as the Soul and to these it is we must now attend and that we may do it with better advantage let us observe that Oracle of Solomon given us in the way of Counsel Keep thy heart with all Diligence for out of it are Prov. 4. 23. the Issues of Life viz. Those lively Motions and Actions wherein the peculiar life of a Man is discovered and which tend if steered and directed aright to endless life To discourse hereof I must again reflect upon the Spirit of a Man the Candle of the Lord in regard of whose Light it is said to Man Keep thy Heart for it is more than if the Heart of Man were only bidden to keep it self But to this higher act of the Spirit of Man are all the directions of the Word of God addressed that it would bear up it self and control all the lower Motions of the Soul This therefore I conclude upon That from the Spirit of a man as it is the Candle of the Lord shines a Ray that is by God preserved according to its Nature distinct from all the Interest and Intrigues of the Soul as it is corrupted that it may always bear witness to himself and be a Law within a Man being not only a Witness and a Judge but a Receiver of the Divine Displeasure in the notices of it and an Executioner of it upon the Soul and so in Men finally rebellious and disobedient it becomes an Instrument of punishment And this Light it is a certain necessary and immediate act of an Understanding that cannot but be always the same that can never be altered it being always for God and Goodness against Sin and the very Sinner in whom it dwells and must and will be the same even in Hell it self where the Devils believe and tremble Jam. 2. 19. and know they are justly punished For as the Sun looking upon things most impure always declares and discovers them as they are and can do no otherwise thus the Candle of the Lord cannot but lay open all the foulness that is in a Man all the love a Man hath to himself and the compassion of his own Being cannot bribe it All the rage against God and Holiness that is in Hell can never alter this else the sting of guilt and horrour of conscience so great a part of Hell would be taken away The Light of the Soul as we have before discoursed is the highest Director of a Man to all that is good and is ever ready to be consulted with if the Good it proposes be embraced it rejoyces in it applauds praises and congratulates the Soul and derives joy pleasure and happiness upon it But if that Good be not embraced or the contrary Evil entertained which is disswaded it then chides upbraids and afflicts a man and if there be no Repentance it extremely afflicts and afflicts for ever enforcing self-abhorrence and condemnation upon the Soul And this untainted part which is no other but the pure result of Reason and true Understanding is always in Glory applauding the Justice of God against the sinful Soul in which it lives and is the very instrument of Misery upon it as depraved for this Light being but a single Act of the Understanding and not obeyed but a solitary Verdict of the Mind from which the rest
even those who if Religion be true have no ground of peace but the greatest of horrour and amazement This is indeed from a Patience of God to the world and a Judgment also upon it for so far as it would lead only to the Terrours of Despair so it is a long-suffering but as Insensibleness consigns men over to Irreligion and the consequent Damnation so it is an exceeding great Judgment And yet it is an Indulgence too of common Providence that Mankind enjoys a general peace and quiet of condition and are not in immediate hellish despairs 3. Hence formality in Religion gives many men satisfaction they cannot be satisfied without it their Mind being so far awakened concerning it and yet there being some part dark they take up with a Shadow in the place of true substantial Goodness 4. Hence a just and sober demeanour in the World hath that strength to compose the Mind we may ordinarily observe For all degrees of Innocency and Integrity all Freedoms from Guilt and not being privy to things unworthy our selves are a great defence to the Thoughts and these things are so espoused to Christianity that where they are found indeed and in the due Heights they are never found divided the one from the other but there may be semblances or some degrees of these as is very plain in the Instance of the Young Man in the Gospel he had a truly ingenuous sense of Things and so well natured that when Christ proposed to him a Precept above his Orb he did not sourly reject it but was sorrowful Mark 10. 22. he could not rise to it yet still he was at a distance from true Christianity But so far as a man attains in the semblances and degrees of these he hath also answerable semblances and degrees of tranquillity of Mind of loveliness and worth our Saviour loved the Young Man for so much as v. 21. he had This made those great Spirits among the Heathen whose generous Actions we read of To this Head may be referred all high and notable Actions and Undertakings all worthy Studies and Employments which derive a virtue from that intrinsick value of Goodness and participations of the Favour and approbation of God that is upon them and uphold the Mind and further so entertain and employ it that it doth not fall into disturbances Yet so far as these things however excellent are not universal and uniform in all things or not indued and ennobled with true Piety Love of God adherence to him in the Mediator so far they come short of the sincere and perfect satisfaction of the Mind Hence most men are but in an equal poize between the Comforts and Fears that arise from a true sense of Religion between the Heroick temper of Christianity and the danger of an unconverted Estate God not seeing good to give so high a sense of the Danger nor so triumphant a sense of the Happiness as that the one should in regard of trouble of Mind the other in regard of surpassing joy make all Things in the World nothing as either would do Yet notwithstanding from the high sense of Religion there hath been at some times so high an action and so triumphing a Comfort that as the Martyr said A Bed of Flames was no other than a Bed of Roses many have offered themselves to death not accepting Deliverance they have altogether abandoned all the Pleasures Profits and Advantages of Bodily Sense and worldly State that they might obtain a better Resurrection and on the other side some under the horrours of Despair have as much cast away from them all the comforts and enjoyments of the present life and have seized upon Hell as it were before they went out of the World or hastened to it as Judas Again some good men not having the communications of the Favour of God have fallen into horrid Agonies of Mind and have been restored anew to Comforts according as God hath shone out or withdrawn himself And through the non-actuation of Grace into their Hearts have fallen into some great sins and under spiritual desertions abating from the excellency of a Holy Life and consequently into discomforts or want of spiritual Consolation And contrariwise Men not sound in Christian Obedience bear up betwixt some conformities to religious Action and the hopes they derive from thence without sinking down into great despondencies All which cases plainly and sensibly may be resolved into the former Grounds and Principles laid concerning the Government of God ordering and disposing the state of Mens Souls here in the World Object If against all this it should be said It is the Body and the various changes upon that that give these various Tempers to the Mind Answ It must be in the first place allowed that the Mind sees much by the Body and things are accordingly presented as the Body is prepared just as the Eye sees imperfectly through a dim Glass and things appear double in a cracked one yet this only signifies that the Actions of the Mind so far as they depend upon the Body are either disturbed or assisted by the fitness or unfitness of the Instrument The Heats of a Fever by the excess of spirits flying up disturb the brain and over-act it Now the Soul acting in and by these Spirits and in and by this their excessive Motion sallies out into a multitude of Thoughts which are indeed roaving and disorderly as is the Motion of the Spirits which are its Instrument thus the Sun seems in haste and in a hurry uneven and transported appearing through rolling Clouds and flying Vapours Again Sometimes the Spirits are aiery and soaring even into Rapture and then the Soul disports it self among them in that we call Wit and highly exalted Phancy as the Sun reflects its Beams into that beautiful variety and pleasant mixture of Colours in the Rainbow when it finds a Clowd prepared In these cases the Motion is greater than agrees with the order of the Soul in the Body and so it is violent and sometimes furious yet still it argues the greatness of the Soul and its activity shewing it self to the utmost advantages it receives from the Bodies Motion whether it be orderly or disorderly wherein the activity is the Souls and the disorder chargeable upon the Body only the Soul even as the Sun is always the same in it self But besides all this It is most evident that the Mind hath considerations of Peace and Disquiet some in which the Body is not concerned at all further than the Mind concerns it and some that first come into the Mind by representation from without yet having made no dint at all upon the Body are considered and judged of first by the Mind and so by degrees affect the Body according to the apprehensions the Mind entertains of them either with vigour or languishment yea there have been Examples wherein the Soul being it self surprised with excess of Joy or Sorrow hath in a moment
THE Great Soul OF MAN OR The Soul in its likeness to God its Nature Operations and everlasting State DISCOURSED By Tho. Beverley LONDON Printed for William Grantham at the Black Bear in S. Pauls Church-yard 1675. THE PREFACE TO THE READER THE Discourse of a Soul may be censured a Nicety by some who think all expence of Time and Pains for the refining Mens Intellectuals in Religious Matters a waste and prodigality either from sloth and stupidity which having seised upon them they lay themselves down upon the first Rudiments of the Doctrine of Christ and resolving themselves to stick there are angry with all that endeavour to go on to Perfection as making too much ado and aspiring to be over-wise not remembring the severe reproof upon those who notwithstanding their standing in the Profession of Christianity are still such as have need of Milk and not of Heb. 5. 12 13 14. strong Meat through the not exercising their senses to discern betwixt Good and Evil. Or else in others it arises from the little love and regard they bear to Religion and a secret favour for Atheism upon which they design to keep all Divine Things under as gross and course Representations as may be that so they may take advantage against them as if they were of the same Leaven with Mahometane or Popish Fictions To this purpose they are carried with great vehemency against the whole nature of Spirit and particularly against the Soul of man as a distinct Being from the Body well knowing the Doctrine of a Future State is both ascertained and ennobled from a clear understanding and assurance of such a Spirit whereas on the other side by wrapping up all in Body that Future State becomes Bodily and Material also and so the Happiness or Misery of it may be blown off as pleasant Tales or frightful Stories for the Body so plainly mouldring into Dust and Rottenness it easily becomes a matter of greatest incertainty whether ever it shall rise again or not Besides how doth it derogate from the Glory and Certainty of the Divine Being when for the denying the spirituality of Mans Soul all things are plunged down into the thick Matter and the Nature of Spirit deemed an aiery and phantastick or downright an incompossible Notion so that hereby all foundations are destroyed But now if the Soul of Man be as particularly as may be understood and reasoned into in its Faculties and Operations if its immortality and continuing life and motion after it leaves the Body be clearly asserted and upon as great moments of Argument as can be desired be demonstrated if its sentiments of Good and Evil its apprehensions of a Supreme Justice be so illustrated that they may be even felt and perceived within us so that they can be no more denyed than the several impressions made upon the Body if what the Scripture in great condescention vests under such Symbols as that it may strike common Imagination and alarm the most vulgar apprehension be by a Compare of Scripture with it self and the use of manly Reason sublimated to its true spiritual intention there will arise from all this a daily improvement of Divine Knowledge and Vnderstanding a substantial sense and assurance of the Supreme Spirit and his Being liveliest fore-thoughts strongest assurances of a Future State and consequently the most powerful engagements to lay hold upon Eternal life and to fly from the wrath that is to come which are those two immense Globes of the Future State or the World to come To which ends this following Discourse is endeavoured and that it may be blessed by God with success is the Prayer of T. BEVERLEY The omission of distributing this Treatise into several Chapters is supplyed by the following Table The HEADS of this TREATISE THE Introduction pag. 1 Of Invisible Beings and the proof of them 11 Of the Soul a Spirit distinct from the Body 41 Of the Nature of a Spirit precisely considered 76 Of the Souls Activity and Self-Motion 81 Of the Souls Immortality 84 Of the Souls Self-communication and so being an Vnderstanding 96 Of the Souls likeness to God in its Puissance 115 Of Eternity and the Souls participation of it 156 Of the Soul considered distinctly in its Intellectual Powers 184 Of the Soul considered in the Activity of its Powers 219 Of the Soul of Man the true seat of Happiness or Misery present and everlasting 235 Practical Conclusions arising from the whole Discourse 296 A Brief Inference concerning the Resurrection 308 ERRATA PAge 13. line 26. read Rind of Matter p. 57. l. 10. after Beasts read in regard of their Souls l. 12. for thus read that l. 16. for returning read returns p. 229. l. 6. for contracting read contrasting p. 250. l. 7. blot yet p. 225. l. 26. read Cariere p. 275. l. 9. for another read others THE Great Soul OF MAN Job 32. 8. There is a Spirit in Man and the Inspiration or Breathing of the Almighty giveth them Understanding IT is a great Subject The Soul of Man and the whole estate of it Now and for Ever of which we have so dark and confused apprehensions that we can express very little clearly Darkness of Conception issues it self into Darkness of Expression For the forming of the apprehensions of the Mind the Dictates and Results of our Reason into clear and eloquent expression fit to instruct and perswade is a gift of the Divine Wisdom and Goodness in appendage to our Reason and it much follows the state and degree of our Reason Christ the wisdom of God spake as never man spake The Tongue of Angels excels even as the Vnderstanding of Angels Adam understanding the natures of the Creatures and fully comprehending them gave them fit names and such as carried the Images and very presences of things imprinted upon them as some sounds now create the words that signifie them Since so great a ruine of our natures in him as our Reason is much declined and degraded so is also our Eloquence For though words because they are known agreed upon to signifie such and such things call the mind to the consideration of those things and the more advantagiously they are put together the more they prevail yet those words and our contexture of them are as much beneath the primitive Eloquence as the Understandings of men now fall below the wisdom of Innocency Nevertheless still according to the Readvancement of the Understanding so the Faculty of Discourse rises also Solomon in his Wisdom and clear Understanding spoke with Grandeur of whole Nature from the Cedar in Lebanon down to the Hyssope that grows upon the Wall and of all Piety and Morality in words of greatest acceptance and recommendation And proportionable have been the Discourses and Writings of the Men of Great Name for Learning and Knowledge in every Age. But in nothing is the Faculty of Discourse more maim'd and imperfect than in Things of a Nature spiritual and retired from Body
of the coursness and thickness of matter as Breath Wind Air. This way of expressing these Beings hath been common to Language in general and particularly to Scripture which attributes to God that he is a Spirit and to Angels and the Souls of men under him And yet it may without injury to the cause be granted that this name may not have been original to these natures but derived from those things that have been more removed from Sense than others and from thence transferred to the most excellent part of the Temperament or whatever is most vigorous in any Being and yet least under the cognisance of Sense and so at last ascribed to Beings supposed to be wholly removed from Sense and all this doth but still enlighten the main notion of a Spirit for hereby it was intended to represent them in their native purity and separation from Body by those things that had least of the dregginess of matter and yet were well known so comprehending at once both their spirituality and reality their spirituality expressing them by things most refined their reality in that those things how fine soever were yet sufficiently known to be and to be of greatest reality and effect Hereunto may be reduced the mention Scripture makes of the Spirit of a Eccl. 3. 21. Beast Touching which leaving to Philosophical Disputes the abstrusity of its nature whether it be the highest of material or lowest of spiritual natures I only observe It deserves not the name of a Spirit in compare with the Soul of man in that it is most evident the Scripture speaks nothing of its likeness to God power of Reason moral action or immortality but degrades it from these when it says while the Spirit of a man goes upward the Spirit of a Beast goes downward that is as it is prepared for lowest uses so its state motion and last rest are altogether here below and therefore it cannot correspond in what is now to be spoken of a Spirit yet because it extends it self to actions beyond the measure of other material Beings unaccountably to Sense it is called a Spirit and yields light also to the general notion of a Spirit and shews the infinite Wisdom and Architecture of the Author of all created Beings who formed these Spirits so as to excel the possibilities of matter supposing they do excel them so little as to be disputed with some appearance of Reason whether they are any more than matter mechanized with highest and most curious skill that is to say the handy-work of God in matter But to return Whatever can be spoken in relation only to the word Spirit is of smaller moment the greatest concern is what is intended by it Whether it be no more than a meer mode notion or manner of speaking used to express the lively Temperament vigour or force of a Body only Or whether it mean a substance of an excellent nature distinct and separate from a Body In answer to which That the generality of those that have or do use this word Spirit concerning the Soul of man have and do understand it in this latter Sense is of very little dispute and that the Scriptures do as much as words or expressions can do to assure us they mean so also I shall endeavour to make good by observing what the Scriptures say concerning 1. The original of mans Soul and its first entrance into the Body 2. What expressions it makes use of to shew the distinction of the Soul from the Body while in it 3. How it expresses its distinction from Body and separation from it in death For the first The original of mans Soul we must have recourse to the History of mans Creation and we shall Gen. 1. 24 26. Gen. 2. 7. find that the wisdom of Scripture puts a great difference between the Creation of man and the other Creatures of life in that God consults and resolves to make him in his own Image and likeness and by an immediate hand first builds a Body as a receptacle for the life he intended him and when his Body was framed raised and contrived with all its organs offices and ministeries so that there wanted nothing that should complete and sum up the perfection of a Body he breathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life and from that breathing of God he became a living Soul A Soul living that life that proceeded from himself a life that proceeded from God and entered into that prepared Body and quickened it whereas God only commanded the Earth and it brought forth every other living Thing That and its life together The Command of God impregnated the Earth and then as at once it brought forth the living Creature and its life so that in the creation of this lower life and the subjects of it there appears nothing of that method and solemn order observed in mans creation nor did the Breath of God pass into them as it did into man when it filled all the several organs and instruments of the Humane Body with the motions proper to a Body and such a Body and which is far beyond all this The same Breath of God gives man Reason and understanding as we have already expounded this Breath out of Elihu's words and as he speaks in another place The Spirit of God made him and the Breath of the Almighty gave him life This inspiration of the Almighty comprehends this lower life in man that sensitive Beings live and that yet higher life of Religion and obedience to the Creator with which Body hath least to do For in the very Creation God put Wisdom into the inward parts and gave understanding to the heart and by the word of Creation he said to man The fear of the Lord that is wisdom and to depart from evil that is understanding That is As God created all things by saying Let it Be and pronouncing it good in confirmation of his Creation so he said to man by implanting it in his heart and approving it for very good The fear of the Job 28. 28 Lord that is wisdom and to depart from evil that is understanding As in the universal Creation he saw and declared he prepared and searched out wisdom that is he found out v. 27. within his own understanding fit natures for all things This was his preparing and searching out wisdom and then he gave the proper natures he had designed that was his declaring wisdom thus at the same time he both made up the beauty of the Universe and proclaimed his own infinite understanding And so particularly in the frame of man he was infinitely wise forming man into the propriety of such a nature as man should be that is a Soul whose perfection it should be to fear God and to depart from evil that was made with a power to do so upon Reason and Counsel in which at once the wisdom of God the original wisdom and the wisdom of man the derivative wisdom
viz. That our Saviour intends no more than that mans killing the body is infinitely less than Gods destroying that Body and its whole life in Hell though after many Ages Yet it is observable in the first place our Saviour to imprint the fear of Divine Revenges places them not only upon the Body but upon the Soul as a distinct and greater part of man than body 2. And beyond this our Saviour plainly aims at the great odds there is betwixt a hand that can execute no further than dying once and in the body only and that almighty hand that sends down the Soul to Hell immediately and the Body at the Day of Judgment For he implies a man easily slips from mans severity by death for he may yet live and be happy in his Soul presently and in his Body at the Resurrection but death can give no escape from the stroke of God either to the Soul which incontinently falls under it nor to the Body awakened hereafter to endure it Now I know it is possible for Serpentine wits to glide off from these and many the like proofs of Scripture that might be produced for their way of elusion is very wonderful like that of Solomons Serpent upon a Rock that winding every way yet leaves no track of solid Reason behind it but yet I affirm that such concurrent Testimonies of Scripture are so conclusive that no sober consideration can escape from them unto which revealed Truth is also to be annexed Reason it self teaching us as I have already urged the effects of a Soul are too great to be ascribed to any power of Body and therefore seeing every Effect must have an equal Cause it is a high justification of the assertion of a Spirit to which those effects may be duly and worthily ascribed And therefore I shall further adventure to avouch from Scripture that the Soul is so much the Man that it hath the compleat substantial essence of a man so far in it self that in comparison of it the body is but prepared for a sensible mode or representation in which the Soul is to act and shew and illustrate it self visibly and sensibly and that man might thereby become of the order of the sensible and visible world beholding and judging by the ministery of sensitive organs of the beauty excellent array and variety of bodies in this Creation and himself appear the principal of them but retaining still a higher and nearer relation to the Invisible world to God to the state and life of Angels so that without any prejudice to his main being he may be removed out of the body thither and yet still be himself as to all the chief intents and purposes of his Creation and continue so till in the restitution of all things and the manifestation either of the goodness or severity of God after the manner of the sensible and visible Creation that is in such a plain way as seeing and knowing things by sense men be again set out by God in a bodily scheme or fashion at the Resurrection so that the Body it shall then have shall more compliably wait upon all the state and motions of the Souls happiness or misery The Soul then only visibly shews it self now in a body and is submitted to be in it but when it goes out of the body it wants nothing through the whole time of its separation that it had here but only the apparence of its motions in a body nor hath any thing added to it when it is cloathed with a body at the Resurrection but an opportunity for its glory or misery to be seen sensibly Even as God was excellent and perfect in himself from eternity when there was no Creation or any beside himself nor received he any thing or found any addition to himself by the Creation for all things that he made received their All from him but only he hath illustrated and manifested himself in the Creation and the Creatures do no more than shew the power wisdom and goodness of God in creating preserving and governing them After the same manner so far as we may with reverence compare any of the Creatures with the infinitely excelling Creator the Soul receives nothing from the Body or any of the parts of it but only such organs and instruments which it is to inspire govern and rule and thereby to shew its efficacy vigour and great endowments of understanding and virtue for all motions from the highest to the lowest derive from the Soul But as to the present case That the Soul falls in love with its self as dwelling in body and with its lower motions in it and forgets its own proper and higher motions of immediate converses with holiness and true wisdom and that rule of body committed to it according to these Laws this is only its sin weakness degeneracy and fall as of a created and mutable Being placed in a body All motions and appetites that we call in ordinary speaking motions of body and fleshly appetites are not any thing that body can first proffer to the Soul but those that the Soul communicates first by that universal life and motion it gives to body and then derives from its own communications the pleasure that it self finds from it self in body Yet is not the Souls good or ill management of Body all its holiness or sin there are many acts so retired that body shares not in their praise or guilt The Soul in such acts of goodness is like God and good Angels as if it had no body and as unconcerned in this world as God in his own immanent perfections and actions On the other side wicked men are in some wicked actions alone as it were from the body like Devils and damned Spirits those spiritual wickednesses the Apostle speaks of exercised in spiritual Impurities But to return The Souls acting and taking care of the body is but an inferiour and under-part of its administration and is for that higher end that there might be an image and likeness of God imprinted upon a body and sensibly seen in it by virtue of the Souls acting holily in and upon it This is the highest and most excellent part of its Government the pleasure it takes in the lower should be but an imitation of the Lord taking pleasure in his lower works who is never the less spiritual heavenly and divine for running through and governing the whole world of matter and rejoicing in his doings therein but is always in the perfect purity of his own Attributes and guides all things according to them But contrary-wise if the Soul makes its lower and less noble functions its principal and supreme and instead of moving the body rationally and religiously by it self continuing spiritual and intellectual it chiefly attends to and interests it self in its lower sensitive motions and so becomes carnal and sensual this is its great fall into sin and misery yet still it retains its prerogative of nature it is
still the source and life of all motion though sinful for body alone cannot sin nor any way can it be guilty but as the Souls body The Soul then is All Thus it is now in the Resurrection it will be much more so when the body is so drawn up into the state of the mind that the mind hath no opportunity to be carnal in it and with it because it hath no longer such a low body as this for even the bodies of miserable Spirits are in this part so refined that the Soul can have none of its carnal delights in them which it had in these In that space of time then between death and the Resurrection the Soul must needs be no less compleat in it self for though it hath a fitness in it to animate a body yet that is as unnecessary to its absolute perfection as Gods actual Creation and Government of the world was to his power and wisdom whereby he created and governs and although at the Resurrection it appears in a body again yet this is from the ordination of God to set a beauty upon the visible Creation in which he will then fully display that part of his glory in the glorious body of his Son and Saints conformed to him and set out his justice and wrath visibly also in the dusky bodies of those that rise to everlasting shame and contempt That the Soul thus separated from the body is thus perfect I argue from that expression of our Saviour that they which are accounted worthy to obtain Luc. 20. 35. that world and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like and equal to the Angels so that though the Soul hath a power to act order and guide the motions of such a body as it is joined to now yet they are no way necessary to its true perfection for its highest state of perfection even in body is without the exercise of such acts viz. in the Resurrection And further they that are equal to the Angels have no more need of a body than the Angels have that is not as to themselves or their own perfection but only to serve the order of Divine Wisdom in the various disposition of the Creation a body and a body suited to this free and exalted state of the Soul is given to them Further The perfection of the separated Soul may be argued from the Apostles discourse of the state of immortality immediately entred into as soon as ever the weak and cumbersome Tabernacle of Earth is dissolved Through the gracious provision of God the Soul is invested with life and immortality and all the blessedness and entertainment of Heaven as the most natural receptacle and becoming robes of good Spirits without which they would be naked and Souls not so received but left naked of that blessedness are immediately shrowded in blackness and darkness hellish blackness and darkness For though Souls are indeed determined by the righteous judiciary appointment of God each sort to their own place yet the natures of these things themselves are so wisely contrived as fairly to comply therewith so that holy Souls uncloathed become Spirits Divine heavenly and blessed but Souls unpurged as soon become dark hellish and miserable Now that happy Souls immediately upon leaving the body enter into such a state is very plain in that they desire earnestly this state but if for want of bodies they lay asleep or if being nothing but body the whole man should lye so long in the earth as till the Resurrection it were a much worse state than the present for the time might be much better improved in the World than in the Grave and there would be no reason to groan for so long and dark an interval instead of a life of Grace converse with God and doing good in the world which is the life of holy men It may indeed be said It is safer every way to be laid up in the Grave and more quiet and this interval is not felt nor perceived in the dust but a thousand years seem as short as an hour now this is so far from an answer that it tends to subvert the great principle of a future life for ten thousand Ages and an everlasting duration beyond could as little be perceived There can be no complaint that so many Ages of duration were run out before men which lay out of life came into it nor can there be any sense of the want of life where it was never had and in like manner there can be none by them that are quite gone out of life But if this way of reasoning were good it might be as well for good men if there were no Resurrection at all for they that are thus muffled up cannot make any appeals to God for nor so much as know there is reason to desire a Resurrection nor resent the want of it and so would have no loss But if good men suffer loss in this total suppression of life they must suffer proportionably in those huge spaces of death the Saints of God dying in the beginning of the world have already and are still to lye under till the end of the world Further This silence and interval of life is equal as to the case we are now speaking of to Not Being and seems so to obliterate all the former state and the good or evil done in it as to acquit and discharge it as if it had never been to those whose actions are so quite broken off and so perfectly forgotten by themselves It is therefore certainly most agreeable to Reason as well as Scripture there should be at least a continuation of that sense and understanding we had of our actions in this world when we are passed out of it whether in relation to happiness or misery that all should not begin anew in our acknowledgment of them and evil men that have been some thousands of years out of Being as men should yet be forced to own those things they did so long ago having also been so many other things since in the various shapes the matter of their Bodies may easily have been supposed to pass into and in which they may have deserved better or at least been more innocent and harmless and if there be nothing higher than that matter tuned to rational motion as men of this opinion suppose we may easily allow an expiation may have been made by that same matter for the offences committed while it made up such a man in the innocency or better demeanour of it self in some other state into which it removed afterward and so on the other side the matter that hath been virtuous while it was such a man may afterwards come to be debauched in its future disguises and so a demerit of its former worthy performances ensue and thus body not be found by either sort of men such as they left it So unreasonable are these Hypotheses that are set up
against the Souls immortality Nor would it easily be believed that there should be a segregating care of God to keep every mans body distinct so as never to serve any other purpose in the material Creation it being against evident experience though we do not at all doubt of his calling home so much of that matter to unite with the Soul at last wherever it may have wandred as is necessary to the verity of the Doctrine of the Resurrection it being united to a Soul always distinct and able to give a distinctness to the matter to which it is reunited But indeed upon the whole matter I conclude it of greatest probability that the Scripture doth most often in its discourses of immortality and the Resurrection intend the whole state of eternity or future life from the Souls first leaving the body and entrance into an everlasting condition throughout the endless Ages of eternity without precise distinctions of the periods before and after the Resurrection of the body there being only a circumstantial difference between the Soul in a body or out of it Yet this state is generally expressed by the Resurrection both because that gives greatest assurance to Spirits in bodies and seems to them the most bulky solid and intelligible subsistence and also because the Resurrection is the consummation of all things in relation to Gods righteous Government of the world and judgment upon it and the illustration or manifestation thereof in that way his wisdom hath thought most meet that is in a visible sensible way with respect to mankind Including then and confessing this Article of the Resurrection of the Body as most true and certain I say the Scripture doth by the Resurrection express the whole state of an everlasting condition whether out of the body before the Resurrection or in the body after the Resurrection yet always fixed primarily in the Soul For except the Resurrection be thus understood there could be no reason to them that acknowledge a Soul why the very foundations of Religion should be rested so much upon this principle of the Resurrection for they might be well secured by the firm belief and full acknowledgment of a future state of happiness or misery reward or punishment in the Soul a compleat Being without the body as in the Soul made apparent by a body But if we thus expound the Resurrection of the whole future state and that this future state for the former reasons is expressed most of all by the notion of Rising again with the body there is both a reason why all Religion is rested upon it because the whole life to come is intended by it and also why rising again in the body is the fittest expression of that state because by us as in bodies the future state is best understood so For this separated state of the Soul is that Hades that state of invisibility in which according to the Rules we go by and the apprehensions of things we have in this world men seem to be lost and we account them so in the state of the dead as to be wholly removed from the notions we as men of this world have of life though even then they live to God to whose eye the visibility and invisibility of his Creatures is all alike and he calleth those that are invisible to us as visible and is their God even as he is of those most visible to us his account of them is as strict his care and provision equal or rather superior He is not ashamed to be called their Heb. 11. 16. God for he hath provided them a City and that they are invisible to us lessens them not at all to him they stand as fair in his Register of Beings in his Book of life Out of this Hades therefore Christ arose the first begotten from the dead and ascended indeed into a glory out of sight but yet he left thereby such an argument of a future state as we are most able to accept And this very same Hades or state of invisibility shall give up all that are now in it into the most visible representations of happiness or misery Having now settled the distinction betwixt Body and Spirit I come to give such descriptions of Spirit and spiritual nature as may make further discovery of mans Soul and for a general description of Spirit I would chuse to express it in this manner Spirit is the most perfect kind of Being that hath none of the disadvantages and incumbrances of body but hath all the force and advantage that can possibly be supposed in body or ascribed to it much transcended in it self the reality and substance body seems to us to have Spirit hath much more the motion or force body hath impressed upon it is much higher and more excellent in Spirit as much more excellent as self motion exceeds motion meerly imprinted the Sense Body seems to challenge is a thousand times quicker in Spirit and of a nature unexpressibly higher more refined and surpassing and so throughout all priviledge of Being is much more and more exalted in Spirit But more particularly we may deem of Spirit by these Characters of it 1. Spirit is purely and perfectly what it is without any mixture or allay without any incumbrance of less noble parts it is wholly and perfectly it self That expression of God concerning himself I am what I am may in a degree be accommodated to every Spirit It is what it is Thus the Soul of man an inferiour Spirit is in the Image of God the Supreme Spirit The Body is several things several humours and parts amassed and distributed into some order distant in situation different in their allay some more excellent some baser But Spirit is All one one All All of an excellency All one Thing this may be truly said of the Soul though not in that high sense as of God 2. It is a Being that cannot be divided or separated It is like a beam of the Sun who can cut off a beam in the midst It flyes back and recoils into it self so does the Soul the Spirit of a man You can take nothing off from it for what can you take but it self seeing it is All self It is like virtue like light nothing can be pared off from virtue or light All is one and the same the very nature of these things forbids precision the Soul goes all together and never loses or leaves any thing of it self behind it 3. It is a Being of perfect communion and communication with it self like a Diamond cut to greatest advantage you see it at one glance at one eye the whole runs as it were into every point thus the Spirit of a man shines every way into it self and rebounds upon it self The more fine pure and active any thing though in bodily nature is the more it reciprocates with it self and runs as it were every part into every part of it self as Light Fire Air which therefore resemble
the weaker or by the forcibleness of outward impression upon one or more of the ingredients a dissolution of that composure is brought to pass The Heavens and heavenly Bodies being purer and more uncompounded have stood so many Ages with so little alteration A Spirit being simply and entirely it self can neither be forced asunder by feuds within it self nor by violence from without there being nothing in its substance to make any intestine War nor any thing weaker or stronger to subdue or be subdued and therefore it receives all strokes upon its whole self as an Anvile that is beaten closer and more united by all the Hammers that fall upon it All the griefs and troubles and disquiets that rise up in it are only the crosses and counter motions and actions of its sentiments and apprehensions yea the very dismal falls of Divine Displeasure upon it do but awaken and stir up sad and grievous apprehensions in it but do not in the least touch the essence or substance of the Soul to weaken it This is that death the only death of the Soul that it is capable of a darkness in the loss of that Beauty and excellency of holy motion and in the deprivation of happiness and blessedness the favour of God a loss of its perfection without any diminution of Being And though it be now in the Body and seems to be lost in the ruines of that yet it is indeed so perfectly it self so separable in its nature from the Body as I have already discours'd at large so distinct and complete in it self that it is only acquitted from that in death not at all altered or changed in its substantial self So then this simplicity of the Soul witnesses the Immortality of its nature and that it cannot be dissolved like the things of this world that consist in the union of several things that conspire and meet together and afterwards flye asunder but the Soul hath nothing to lose or part from but its whole self being one simple thing One All and All One there can be no dissolution Nay the things of this world although they are several things united and made up so into one as several things can be and when those several things flye asunder that one thing is dissolved yet because the parts still continue to be they become something else for there can be no annihilation or bringing things back to nothing but by the omnipotency that created them so that all the death and dissolution that is in whole nature is but only a continual flux and reflux a perpetual passing out of one shape figure nature into another which because things love to be as they are look for the present like death perishing and the decay of the world it self although the composition for that time being is only brought to ruine and although the parts it may be are meliorated made more beautiful and advanced as when a Vessel of Silver designed for baser use is broken to pieces purged in the Refiners fire and then made a Vessel of honour and the materials of a meaner and decayed Building taken down and laid into a nobler Structure yet while this is doing it hath the appearance of spoil and destruction whereas indeed all even to the very Fragments is gathered up that nothing may be lost not so much as the filth of the Vessel or the dust of the Building We may then thus far derive from lower Nature what may make the Immortality of the Soul an easier Notion to us For we see It is the twisting things together with such unequal strengths of the Parts in motion one against another and the liableness of those Parts to the impression of Forreign Motion that let in the Mortality and Frailty that is in worldly Things that so by the prevalency sometimes of one thing sometimes of another there might be those continual Changes and Vicissitudes that God hath appointed for Purposes most agreeable to the greatness and mysteriousness of his most wise Government and Providence But the simpler and more self any thing is the more hardly it is altered till we come to that which is call'd First Matter and Motion which in the abstract Notion of them and as they are by themselves cannot be chang'd or lost but by annihilation For that we call First Matter or Matter as we understand it unimpress'd by Form or Particular Nature though as it is in Particular Nature it by always dying out of one Shape Figure Nature into another is yet so immortal in it self that it cannot it self perish but by annihilation And that Motion which is us'd by God for the twirling this Matter into so many several Forms and is perpetually flitting from one part of it to another and is even driven and expuls'd by the Contrasts it hath with it self as it is in those several parts of Matter from one to another cannot yet be spent in the Sum or any Degree of it be abated in the Total These two because thus abstracted they are perfectly and intirely themselves have thus much of Immortality that they never take End till an End is put to them by Almighty Efficiency But Matter is laid by God and so lies as a Foundation of his Works that cannot be removed and Motion is the Instrument he hath prepared for the management of those his Works and these in their simple selves have no Jars within nor cannot be touched by any extern Hand but as they are in composition undergo those several Changes and hasten out of the posture into another as it pleased God being still the same in themselves For all that Matter can be squeez'd into is Matter and all that Motion can be overcome into is Motion and so they will be till they are disannull'd by God And thus the Soul it s own Substance it s own Motion receiving both from God in its very Being and so being all Self as an unshaken Rock or First Matter bears and lies under all the disposes of God and as highest Life turns every way with subserves his admirable Administrations upon it self which are all in Righteousness Holiness Justice and Mercy This Spirit I say lies under all possible Impressions that can be made on a Soul and yet it is a Soul still it is always the same It is always the same as to its Essence and cannot be so altered or changed as to become another Thing It must be it self or it must be nothing and all Action upon it can but provoke it to Intellectual Action So it is found and so it is left by every thing that comes near it except God should come to make a final Determination upon its Being There is no change upon the Substance of a Spirit but Annihilation The State and Condition and Quality of it may be chang'd from Good to Evil from Evil to Good from Happiness to Misery from Misery to Happiness the very Being remains unalterable while it is The onely way
Frame as if they had treated and still held intelligence one with another But in Diseases they grow strange to one another their Language like that of Babel is confounded and in death utterly silenc'd But the higher the Life still the more appearance of Understanding because there is a higher Self-communication till we come indeed to the Life of Understanding and so up to the highest Life and highest Understanding which is also the highest most true and perfect Self-communication that is the Life and Vnderstanding of God who hath not onely a Life and Understanding within himself but also of and from himself An Eternal Self-communication or Reflection of himself to and within himself upon himself And this Infinite Spring of Being and Self-communication never ceases nor can cease to communicate himself to himself ever knowing understanding himself enjoying conversing with himself which is Eternity of Life for he that does thus can never have been out of Being nor can ever die A perpetual Circle of deriving himself from himself to himself A purest Intellect and Mind ever beholding and most divinely resenting it self in unintermitted Knowledge and understanding of it self and so living for ever For what understands lives and what understands highest lives highest and what understands for ever lives for ever All Creatures of Life even of highest Life the Life of Understanding have in an abated sense onely Life within themselves or a Self-communication having receiv'd it at first and receiving it still every moment from God In Christ was Life as in the Johan 1. Fountain that is that high Life of Vnderstanding and this Life was the Light of Men that is the Spring and Original of their Understanding And this Understanding in resemblance of God's Life is the proper Life of the Soul For the Soul lives by feeling it self in these Self-communications by perceiving its own Cogitations Conceptions Comprehensions Affections and whatever else are the natural Results and Activities of a Rational and Intellectual Life even as we feel and perceive Natural Life by the several Motions and Self-communications of that Life And this Life if we speak strictly of it as it is a Life of Reason and Understanding hath no Contrary it hath no Adversary to encounter nor is there any Privation of it conceivable except by the destruction of the Soul it self into nothing For this Life is as near to the Soul as Lustre and Splendor is to Light if you take it away the very Nature it self is lost all the Wickedness and Misery in Hell cannot quench it For who more knowing sagacious restless in all Motions natural to Spirits than the Devils That which comes nearest to the stupefying this Life is being sunk down into Body in the lower state of which yet this Life remains though greatly cover'd and conceal'd and it cannot be long so conceal'd This Life is therefore in this regard plainly a Life immortal except God himself by an immediate hand extinguish it and this cannot be believ'd seeing it is so near a resemblance of his own Life For that he should make an Intellectual Life so high in its Nature to so low a purpose is not agreeable with the Wisdom of all the Works of God Now this Understanding as we have said is Self-communication For as Reasoning or Ratiocination is the communicating of Things one with another in a way of compare a collating of them one with another and ballancing them together and then giving the account and the quicker and more sudden this motion is made the more lively is the Ratiocination and the more excellent is the Understanding So the Principle of this Ratiocination every moment confers with it self what it hath attain'd by this course of Reason and reciprocates with it self all it hath observ'd God in an infinite manner knows himself within himself and all that is in a moment by an Omnipresent Understanding but according to the advantage the Soul hath to work with as it is in the Body or in the state of separation from it so the Understanding of Man goes a greater or lesser Circle for the communicating with Things but every moment it communicates with it self what it gathers by its communication with other things This self-communication both of the Divine and Humane Spirit the Apostle thus expresses to us The Spirit 1 Cor. 2. 10 11. searches the deep or most retired things of God There is nothing in God reserv'd or afar off from himself he eternally communicates his whole self with himself so he hath given to Man to understand himself The things of a man knows no man but the spirit of a man that is within him and that knows them So then a Man hath a power of self-communication or understanding the things within himself Yet God communicates with Mans Soul nearer than he can with himself that is he understands more of Man than Man himself does he is greater than our 1 Joh. 3. 20. Psal 139. 2. hearts and knows all things he understands our thoughts afar off The Reason is He is the Fountain of this Life of Understanding In him we intellectually live and move and have our being and he knows in himself what is done in us by the vertue that goes out of him for the doing of it for he communicates with himself all that he enables his Creatures to do From all this then it appears That to understand any thing is to communicate with it The Mind communicates with all it understands and the Nature of Understanding is communicating with Things and self-communication The Mind communicates with it self all it receives by communication with other Things The Understanding goes out to understand things at a distance from it It communicates with them It enters into their Natures as far as it can Yet it is not in this chiefly an Understanding but that it reflects within it self its own Observations in that it communicates with it self all the while it communicates with other things and feels within it self its own Perceptions as the Eye perceives its own Receptions In this it is chiefly an Understanding not like a dead Instrument or Trepan that enters within things and knows not that it does so that takes hold without any apprehension or like the Eye of a Beast that looks upon things without Knowledge and comes no nearer them than Sense can do Things that cannot communicate themselves within themselves cannot understand Understanding encreases it self by more plentiful and continual Self-communication Understandings encrease one another by mutual communication and grow greater Understandings and as it were into one common Understanding This is the proper Nature and the Specification of an Understanding and the Soul in its very Essence is an Understanding 4. The fourth Consequence from the Nature of a Spirit is That the Happiness or Misery of it must needs be exceeding great For since such a Being cannot but have great Capacities for one of these States whichsoever of them it
turns them for Creation Conservation or the Change of Things as he pleases What is his Favour or Displeasure but the highest Efficacies of Kindness or Severity of Joy unspeakable and full of Glory or of weeping and wailing without all ease or remedy How do all Spirits Good and Holy cast their Crowns before him and laud him with eternal Acknowledgments of both their Being and Happiness to his Grace and Goodness and Acclamations to his Praise And that Stream from himself that feeds with Being and Spirituality those so unhappy and wretched Spirits deposed from their Glory and Perfection necessitates them to survive the Instances of his Justice and Holiness to the admiration and everlasting wonderment of the Blessed yet with profoundest Reverence of unstain'd Holiness and their own astonishment and horror without end 2. If the Soul is a Being so excellent how foul is Sin that defiles it like a Poyson that presently darkens a Diamond or infects the very Beams of the Sun or soils the Light We should ever resist Temptations to sin with the sad consideration of defiling so excellent and immortal a Spirit 3. It shews how excellent the Price must be that redeems such a Spirit Great is the Redemption of the Soul by Christ the Renovation of the Soul by the Holy Spirit 4. We should consider this Spirit that though now it is enclos'd in the Body yet seeing it is prepar'd to much higher and more excellent motion it must burst out it cannot be always held it must have a freedom that it may expatiate it self Else so great Powers having so little Action now must have been prepar'd in vain 5. We should meditate much upon this great Character of a Spirit It cannot die It is so it-self that it cannot die It s very Being is Intellect Life and Motion so that it cannot cease to live except it cease to be God who alone hath power over it hath design'd it to be for ever and fram'd it for perpetuity and so that it can have no Adversary of its Life or Being It is so separate from all things else that nothing of Body can come near its Essence or Life What Sword or Fire can cut off or consume Thought much less the Soul the Original or Spring of it What most subtle thing in Nature can destroy the Affection of Love or Fear much less so attaque the Judgment or Reason as forcibly to suppress them They can kill the Body but they have no more that they can do No created Spirit how principal soever can come near the Being of the lowest orbed Soul thus to touch it Sathan the great Enemy of Spirits knows this so hopeless an attempt as never once to plot it All his intendments against Humane Spirits are onely to sway them to Evil and so precipitate them into Misery but yet they cannot be master'd by the highest Archangel so much as in the Government of themselves except they surrender and betray their own Absoluteness One Spirit may imprint Thought upon another offer Argument endeavour to induce Affection but the Soul is at its own choice for acceptation and whether it accept or not its Being is still the same its Power of Self-reservation the same so double-guarded is the Soul in this great Privilege of being It self Guarded in its Essence or Life guarded in its Liberty and Freedom which argues it a Being of greatest account Now in that it must always live Holiness and Happiness the enjoyment pleasure and perfection of its Life are with greatest earnestness and upon greatest necessity to be sought Sin and Misery such a degradation of its Life that the Scripture calls them Death are by all means to be avoided and escaped from And seeing it hath a Secret of its own Freedom that no Spiritual Principality or Power can enter into or invade it can onely charge its Ruine upon it self But in the Supreme Spirit God himself is all its strength who perpetuates his first Inspiration maintains its Immunities guides its Motions aright when it had lost it self redeems it from that great enemy-Enemy-Spirit by his Son the Lover and great Friend of Souls governs it by his own Holy and Good Spirit and is the Happiness and Glory of it for ever Oh the care that is due to such a Soul as this A care due from it self to it self yet miserably neglected by it self in its true self for it self as engag'd in a Body out of which it is yet always hasting and leaves it in death it self being in greatest danger of a death exceedingly worse though of another nature in the bringing about of which the malice of Hell is always busie and employ'd chusing that as a much higher effect of its spite and cruelty than Annihilation if it had been within the Power of Devils to turn a Soul into nothing 6. Lastly What unspeakable Sentiments of Happiness or Misery doth a self-moving a self-communicating Spirit enter into when it enters into its own place For there it meets those immense Objects God his Favour or Displeasure the true appearances of Sin and Holiness the General Assembly of Spirits happy and miserable with their universal and endless Condition It self appearing to it self in its full extent of Nature Duration and Relation to all these Now its self-motion and self-communication which are its very Being and therefore perfect in its own native Element are active to the highest Self-motion turns it every way with unutterable swiftness upon these Objects and Self-communication makes all its own converts unintermittingly all its Observations upon them into most beatifying or afflictive Resentments according to the Order it stands in to those Objects of Happiness or Misery Two principal Accounts of the Soul of Man are now dispatch'd the first of Invisible Beings the second of the Nature of a Spirit in which I laid down for a Ground That the Right apprehension of the Divine Nature and Being is the Key of the Knowledge of Mans Soul As therefore I endeavour'd to explain those two Points by it so I come now more fully to pursue the Resemblance the Soul of Man hath with God and in this next place to speak of it in the Potency Force and Excellency of its Being and Faculties first taking occasion to make this industrious Reflexion upon the Souls likeness to God It is an usual Observation That every Creature resembles God in that very regard that it hath a Being however obscure it be and the more any Creature advances in Being the clearer the Representation of God till the Scale of Creatures leads us up to those that God hath exalted into the nearest likeness to himself that Created Natures are capable of and these are Rational Spirits Angels and Souls of Men of which Angels are a higher Order and at greater Freedom being out of Bodies and the Souls of Men a lower Order being under the disadvantage of Bodies yet in themselves like to God and like to Angels Now it is the Privilege
Matter to work upon nor work with Infinite Understanding brought forth Matter and stirr'd it as he pleas'd And though there is no comparison between Understanding Finite and Infinite yet by this it appears there is no contradiction for Understanding to produce Matter when there was none nor to move it when it is We know too there must be some way by which our Souls though acknowledged to be Spirits move our Bodies known enough to be gross and material and that meerly by Thought and Consideration what is to be done and that they obey them speedily and with ease although we are not able to expedite all the Questions that may be mov'd in relation hereunto In the sum I think it not to be doubted but that many of the extraordinary and wonderful Atchievements of Men the even prodigious Valours and mighty Prevalencies of some Warriours that have in heat of Fight mov'd like Lightning have been the true and proper Effects and Sallies out of a Soul through the Freedoms given by God to such Persons for the bringing about those Changes he hath resolv'd upon by their Victoriousness and Conquests And to conclude in all those things that have been done by Men not plainly miraculous nor exceeding the Power of Created Spirits I know no reason why the Wonder should be plac'd any where else but upon that admirable Freedom such Souls by especial Grant from God have had to work like themselves and so to exceed the ordinary Operations of Men. And though this doth not equal their present State to nor bring up their Services to the Services of Angels that Order of Creatures God in his Wisdom hath appointed for the greater and more remarkable Expeditions and Actions in the World as being always ready and as we say in procinctu excelling in prepared and unincumbred strength always upon the guard and hearkning to the voice of his word yet in that such great and mighty Works do shew forth themselves in the Soul and there have been so great and wonderful Persons in all Ages of Famous Memory in their several kinds and vertues in whom the Greatness of this Soul hath broken forth it is a marvellous Instance that the Soul of Man is a Great Potent and Excellent Spirit of vast Activities in its own Nature and that it hath a near resemblance of God and Alliance to Angels that however it be for a little time made lower than Angels yet it shall be brought into a Condition wherein it shall be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 equal to Angels For though I make no doubt some Men have greater Souls than others as one Star differs from another in Magnitude and as Bodies differ in Strength Beauty and Proportion yet there is the main Excellency of a Humane Body wherein all agree So it is in the Souls of Men the Soul of one Man is a Measure and carries the Pourtraicture of the Souls of Men in their Universal Nature even as Face answers Face in the water so the Soul of one Man returns the Soul of another Man Against all this it lies as a great Objection That the greatest Effects of a Soul we can observe are not great and high enough for such a Being as I have describ'd Mans Soul to be and the great Effects we do see are found onely in some lesser numbers of Men. Let us then inquire into these two things Why the Effects are not greater wherein Souls display themselves and Why we see them not more generally and universally among Men For the first it is to be considered The Soul in the Body is like an Artificer that works by a very dull and unapt Instrument though himself of excellent Skill like a valiant Warriour with a Sword of Lead or as Samson if confin'd to the general Laws of Humane Nature he had fought with the Jaw-bone of an Ass onely or like the Eye though never so quick looking through a dull Glass or in a Dark Room or like a strong and valorous Man in a Cage or close Dungeon or like a Light in a Dark Lantern or like a strong Man asleep All this is the State of the Soul in the Body or like a Prince of Just Authority in Captivity or like a Jewel clos'd up in Clay or a Beauty shrouded under a course Covering To judge of the Soul now and according to such Rules as it acts by in the Body that it shall never be greater and more active than it appears is to conclude the Soul of a Child shall never shew it self greater and more active than it appears while the Child is in Swadling Clothes Or as if the Infant in the Cloyster of the Womb could make a Judgment of it self and think it self in as good a condition or better than it should be in the open Air and that what it is there it must be always The Soul sees now through a glass darkly and is in the condition of a Child and of a Child shut up in the Womb. That the Body is now a great hinderance to the Soul is apparent by the necessity that the Soul must be separated from it and that it must be dissolv'd into Dust or changed and that in the Resurrection our Bodies must be Spiritual Bodies fit to cast the Glories and display the Excellencies of a Soul to discharge the Activities of the highest Elevation of a Spirit But to return to the present State of the Soul in the Body why it is order'd thus that the Body should be such an Instrument out of Tune to the Soul such an excellent Harmonist such a Dungeon to the Mind Princely in its Creation We may give it thus In the very first and most innocent state the Soul was so framed by God that though the Powers of it were much larger than Body and independent upon it yet that they should for a certain season be restrain'd to the Body to govern take care of and act it according to its Nature and Measures according to its Preparations to run along under the Powers of the Soul in their Motion and not be destroy'd by the over-vehemency This Body the Soul was able and fit to act to the utmost of its Capacities and far beyond them and yet it was so moderated as not to over-act them but it could not raise this Body or the Matter of it above its Natural Excellency That was reserv'd in the Creators Power alone as a Reward of the Souls Obedience in that Body for the present time allotted to it The Soul could not make the Body what it would have it be or fit it to all it would have it do when it found it short It could not enable body to all things a Soul had Power for or a desire to For it was but a Living Soul and not a Quickning 1 Cor. 15. 45. Spirit that is It had a Life given it by God and such a Life that it should be always a Living Soul that it should never decay and
fall down into a Dead Thing and so it could retain its own Life against any one but the Author of it and lose none of that for this power it had received from God and what it found fitted by God to its Activity and convenienc'd to its Life it could act quicken and manage But it was not a Quickning Spirit that is It had not power to make or give a new Life to continue a Body in Life or to raise a Dead Body or make it more Excellent or Lively than it found it prepared by God It had not a Power like the First-begotten from the Dead who can make corruptible put on Incorruption and mortal put on Immortality and be even swallowed up of Life who can change our vile Bodies that they may be made like his glorious Body by a Power that subdues all things to it self So then though the Soul could work to the utmost extent of Matter and Body and fill all Bodily Capacities yet it could not exceed them nor act according to it self because it was confin'd in Body but must work and act onely as the Soul of such a Body nor could it quicken and advance Body as it would it self nor better it above its Rank and Order set by the Creator and therefore the Soul could display it self and its own Spirituality onely so far as Body made by God the Body of this Soul could receive and convey into Action And though this was enough not onely to prefer Man to the top of this Lower Creation and to make him under the Creator Lord of All but to assure enough a greater than Body even a Spirit was there yet it could not discover how great and potent this Spirit was Thus the Soul was submitted by the wise Ordination of God to retire keep home and dwell in a Body being at the very first set in an Orb lower than it self and to manage fewer and lesser Talents according to the State of the Lower Creation and so by its Obedience Fidelity and Improvement to be advanc'd to richer and more Talents and to a Rule over greatest Cities that is to be exalted to the Heights and full Glory of a perfectest Immortality Thus was the State of Innocency wherein Body was much more fitted to the Excellency of the Soul though not to all its Excellency fitted to it onely according to the Lower State of Man in this World not according to that Supreme State of Immortality but differing as much from that as Possibility not to die doth from an Impossibility to die or as a Body Natural just fit to entertain a Soul in a temporary condition and to yield it self to its displays in a degree convenient to that differs from a Body Spiritual fram'd to bear and discharge all the highest Spiritualities of a Soul in its unchangeable Estate Yet this was much above the present Condition of Body under Sin even as Innocency and the Order Beauty and Goodness wherein Man was first enstated by God excell the Guilt unnatural Deformity and Confusion he labours under now Since Sin and Disobedience the Souls manner of Habitation in Body is fallen much lower and it is carefully to be consider'd how it fell lower for it cannot be conceived that any thing should be abated from the Life Vigour and Force of the Soul it self The Soul loses onely in the Holy and Happy State of it without any diminution in its Esence or Essential Life for it cannot lose in the degrees of those It must lose in the whole or not at all being one whole intire indivisible Self as hath been before asserted And thus it is onely a competent Subject for the Happiness or Misery of Eternity of which Fallen Angels are a plain Instance who notwithstanding their Fall continue Principalities and Powers and Dominions and though Wickednesses yet Spiritual Wickednesses and in High Places The Soul then losing nothing thus the Life Vigour and Vertue of its Nature must lie close accumulated and folded up where there is not room for an Explanation and free Expatiation as Light that could reach much further when stopp'd by any Dark Body is reverberated into it self We must therefore conceive that as a Punishment upon the Sin of Man there is a great withdrawing of Divine Blessing from the Lower Creation upon which ensues an interruption of the benign Order of Things one towards another so that they are continually at feud and in contest one with another hindering disturbing and mutually abating the Force and working to the destruction one of another to all which Inconveniences the Humane Body becomes subject and both in regard of its Temper and Composition more subject than many other parts of Matter for its Strength is not the Strength of Stones nor its Flesh of Brass nor clear and pure like the Heavens that abide of old Further It being the Body of that Soul that is the great Offender it is most liable to the Curse The Soul then whose Body was at first too narrow for all its Efficacies is now limited to one unequal to any one of them and very disturbing of their Execution For sometimes by the oppression of other Parts of Matter upon this Body all the livelier and brisker Particles of it are squeez'd out and exhaled whereby it becomes dull and instagnated sometimes it is overheated into furious and inordinate motion and so weakned and disordered in its great end of serving the Soul The Soul on the other side losing nothing of it self yet being sunk down from the Intellectual Spiritual Life and from the Happiness therein to be found which is its true Sphere becomes also negligent of acting and invigorating the Body and guiding the Service of it to such worthy Ends and with a wilful supineness falls down into the Animal Life and presently finding what State and Temper that Body with which it is joyn'd is of carries it self with all its Powers almost wholly thither If it be a duller Matter or Body it stays its own Effluxes the Stream of its Motion and tastes its Life and Enjoyment in that sloathfulness and sluggishness of Flesh as it were forgetting it hath any greater Virtue Force or other Office than what serves to the maintenance of so low a Life that the Soul wilfully enervates and deadens its own Activity by slumbring it in the drowsiness of a lazie Body so that this Sloath becomes the greatest of all Sloath because of the Pleasure this mighty Spirit hath in that Sloath having found it to be the Temper of that Matter wherein it hath sheath'd it self there being in this very Sloath as Philosophers teach of Rest of Bodies as forcible and great a Cause as there is of Motion Thus the great Force of a Soul is defeated this way the Body being like damp'd Powder that will not take the Fire and so the Fire lies still and does nothing to such Solomon cries out Yet a little sleep a little slumber a little folding of the hands
to sleep the description of an endless and incurable Sloath Prov. 24. 33. If the Body be a Composure more lively and spirituous and apt to overheat the Soul presently finds this and committing it self to the Inclinations of Body such Propensions are promoted and inraged according to the mighty Force of a Soul into the Excesses of Lust Rage and all Intemperance beyond the very Bruitish Nature that hath no such Spirit to act it and thus also the Might of the Soul is lost as the Force of the Fire with the Powder in a crack'd or foul Gun that is scatter'd and recoils with mischief or as an over-measure of Powder taking fire without direction the Effect of which is the slaughter and destruction of all about it So that every way nothing is atchieved worthy the Greatness of this Spirit Thus the Soul is doubly disabled by Matter wherein it is set both because that Matter is subject to so many disorders that can no way be perfectly cured and so it is unfit for the Souls use and also because the Soul crowds up its own Activities into a contentment with what it finds most natural and ready in that Matter with which it is joyned complies with it and troubles it self no further to amend it and the longer things continue so the more stiff and unreformable the Evil grows All which put together is a plain Reason why there are no greater Effects of a Soul in the World and how it comes to pass that the multitude of People in it give no other evidence of a Soul but in a provision of Natural Life and the Sensualities of Life somewhat above the Rank of Beasts Now upon the utmost stretch of this Reason there would be no Examples of greater Vertue or Heroickness among Men But because this State both of the Body and the Soul is below the Graciousness of the first Creation and that there are most merciful Relaxations of the Punishment due to the Sin of Man and many Advantages for the betterment of both Soul and Body vouchsafed by God through Christ the Mediator whose Benefits extend to them that do not know him hence it is that the State of Mankind excells it self in many great Instances For the Soul retaining its primitive Vigour and Life which are its very Nature and Being and Body being capable of Refinement to better use by the care of the Soul in the Sublimation of it even as Art polishes the Rude Matter directs it into the usefulness of any Instrument as Chymistry purifies and exalts it as the Skill of the Apothecary corrects and makes it medicinable so the Soul designing to mend the Body sets the Characters of Wisdom Virtue and good Ingeny upon it formes it to a graceful Mine and Deportment turns and twists the Motions of it to the Curiosities of Artifice chastises and reforms it to the Precepts of Virtue and subdues it to the Industry of Study and Contemplation hardens it to the fearless and resolv'd Actions of War quickens it to Service in greatest Works and Undertakings with whatever else we see in the World worthy of consideration to this purpose being the Inspiration of Mind and the Performance of Body commanded by it Now that which under such Pressures excites the Souls of Men to these Aspirings must chiefly be acknowledged to Divine Impressions awakening some Mens Spirits to the exercise of their richer and worthier Faculties of which Scripture gives abundant Testimony in all kinds And under this they may be ascrib'd to the different Magnitudes of Souls or the more advantageous Bodies Providence hath contriv'd for some rather than for others and then to the Instruction and Examples that fall from such Persons as Influences from the Heavenly Bodies and have their Effects upon many not onely of one Age or Country but of far distant Places and succeeding Times so that there have been still springing up great and incomparable Persons Mirrours of the Greatness and Potency of a Humane Spirit and their Actions as Monuments of it and under them multitudes of others though not of so high a degree yet endeavouring to raise themselves somewhat towards the Excellencies of Humane Nature But why upon these so fair Advantages the Excellency of Mans Soul is not more generally retrived may receive this farther Resolution As the Soul working by Body must have a well fitted and prepared Body to work immediately by so it 's further necessary to its Operations by Body that there be a conveniency and an accommodation of several Instruments and Materials besides and beyond Body for it to employ the Ministeries of Body upon and to work at a distance by that the Action may be memorable and great He that will build must first sit down and count the Charge The King that goes to War must consider the strength of his Armies the number of his Men the Conduct and Resolution of his Captains the sufficiency of his Treasure He that separates himself to intermeddle with all Knowledge must be furnish'd with the external as well as the internal Means of Science else his Success can never amount to Eminency Now the present State of the World is so impoverish'd by the Sin of Man that it can supply but Few in comparison of the Many so that the strait and low Condition the unattempting Education and manner of Life that very many the most of Mankind are confin'd to by reason of Want fore-prizes the nobler Darings of their Mind and plunges them so low that they cannot easily rise The Experiments of this Case have been very notable in sundry Persons whose Souls have been kept low and suppress'd by the lowness and narrowness of as they are call'd their Fortunes but have spread and soar'd aloft when their Sphere of Action hath been made more ample and high by accession of those Fortunes and we need not make any doubt but that if the Train had been laid in their Youth to Generous Employment they would have much more excell'd seeing their Souls have as it were started out in their riper years to worthy Menages being encourag'd by plenty of Means when their Education had been sordid And the same thing is proportionably to be believ'd of very many who yet live and die obscure and conceal'd and their name in darkness through Prejudices of a poor Condition while their Souls are in themselves as great as any And indeed it is not intended by God the degenerate State of this World should be so noble or free as to bear up the true and native Greatness of Souls in a Multitude and at their full extent of Action any more than he hath prepar'd the Firmament for many Suns A World of Personages Great for their Prowess Vertue Learning and Wisdom would exalt this State too high It is therefore so ordered that the Spirits of the most lie still and contracted by the very closeness of their Condition besides other Misadventures and are so diverted upon the little things they
have to do with and so straitned by them that they think of nothing further and if they do yet finding no scope or opportunity they repent the Attempt and retreat back again For alas the Necessities of Mankind in these Bodies are so consuming and expensive and the Riches of the Creation hidden deep and removed far from use or else scanty and daily wasted that but some of Mankind can be set out for Glory and their Undertakings equipp'd for Grandeur for what one Man hath and uses another wants the Abundance of that one Man is the Poverty of many about him How few then can make proof of the Designs and Action of a Soul Further there are continual Supplantations and Underminings of Humane Nature and the Virtue of it by it self the Endeavours of some to rise are surpriz'd and counter-wrought by the Jealousies of others who thereupon suspect their own diminution or Ruine The World is full of Suspicion Surmise Envy and ill Apprehension because there is not enough for this Soul of Man whereby to shew it self as great as it is and would fain appear to be This Region is so stinted that every Greater Intelligence in it thinks it could it self enlighten and move the whole and is offended with a Joynt-Light as eclipsing and drowning some of its own Heaven onely entertains an innumerable Company of Glorious Spirits in their full Lustre Their number is Ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands without the jealousie or envy of any one Yet in this very low condition of Souls the Soul it self is not the less but conceal'd as many excellent and most potent Things in Nature A Diamond may be easily cover'd that none of the Beams of it can be seen the sharp Steel lies quiet in the Sheath the Fire that could inflame the whole Course of Nature is hid in the Flint How often is the Glory of the Sun muffled up in a Cloud And to ascend higher not onely the Angelical but the Divine Glory is much reserv'd while it is much seen Verily Isa 45. 15. thou art a God that hidest thy self O God of Israel the Saviour of thy People Now this thing ought not to be to Practical Inference us a Matter of meer Notion or Speculation but of most serious consideration for this Greatness and Potency of our Souls determines it self supremely and finally into an Ability and Power to bear Eternal Happiness or Misery and all else is but accidental and by the By to it It was not made great for any Name of things that is named in this World or call'd Great here how great soever All things that are Arguments of Potency now do but fall in the true intention of the Souls being made so puissant a Being is that it might sustain those weights of Glory Likeness to God Everlasting Enjoyment of him without being fainted or overwhelmed But if it miscarry from this Happiness or fall short of this Glory all this its Might and Puissance enable it still to survive and bear the massie displeasure of God angry for Sin and the most forcible and terrible Recoils of its own guilty and enraged self upon it self Now a Being thus Potent and Great as to subsist in that Everlasting Blessedness or Misery can together and comprehensively do those smaller Great things that are esteem'd so in this World and yet if it should never do any such nor have the occasion of doing them to be created to the Intents and Purposes of an Eternal Condition makes it compleatly necessary it should be made so Great as we have asserted And if it were not so we could make but a very imperfect account to what ends the Souls of some Princely and incomparable Young Men are prepared whose rising and growing Vertue appears onely so long as to spring Heroickly and to give proof of a Divineness in the Bud and then by Death to fade in this World as early as it blossoms and have no opportunity left to ripen In these at once we see both the Greatness of a Soul and that this World is not its proper Sphere or so much as near it for if it were such Souls had been made in vain so Great But the State of Eternity justifies the Wisdom of God in breathing so rich a Principle of Life notwithstanding so little Action here because what is so superabundant now is then all of use and nothing to spare And to press this Consideration further and more generally the State of Eternity reduces the Souls of Men universally to thus much of Equality that they are all alike stripp'd out of the Cumber and Incommodiousness of a Body and brought to the nakedness and simplicity of Spirit which is the greatest Advancement of Being in an abstract Notion of Being that a Creature is or can be receptive of Nor is Spiritual Motion fetter'd or tied up any longer by indigency of subservient Ministeries All have that which is full enough to their State Souls are then at the height of Immortality and Unchangeableness under a Full-sail Activity every way equal to so great a Nature whether it be employ'd in Fruitions or Indurances Let us then expatiate thus into Meditation We that are but of so many Foot of Body and must be lodg'd in so many Foot of Earth the measure of the Grave have Souls whose Capacities and Action are vaster than the whole Creation of Matter We that dwell in houses of clay and Job 4. 19. have our foundation in the dust have yet great and potent Souls If we could perswade our selves we are more than this Hand-breadth of Bodily Condition and present Life we should prepare our selves for so great a State of Being the State that is proper to Souls All we toil and sweat for that we design and care for in the World is Self-preservation Self-enjoyment and Well-being Why then should we not mind these in our largest and most excellent Quality We value our selves in that which is least and throw our selves away in the main and whole Sum. Let us then continually reason with our selves Our Souls are great when we go out of the Body we become Great Spirits However the Soul keep up close in the Body yet it may be dilated beyond all possible Imagination as they say An Angel of Gold may be beaten out to cover a whole Acre of Ground We see to what a vastness Education Study Advancement in the World extends the Souls of some Men that made little appearance at first To how much a more immense Amplitude will the State of Eternity stretch out the Receipt of a Soul and what an abundance of Happiness or Misery will it then take in How little then or how great soever we seem now all will then be resolv'd into this final Condition of our Immortal Souls and the Happiness of these rests in the Favour of God a Likeness to him in Holiness springing out into an Eternal Enjoyment of him And while we
endure one Posture of Misery for ever most adverse to all our Faculties and yet they so rais'd and held up as perfectly to take in and endure that Misery and that Misery so extracted and spirituous as to penetrate them throughout and not coming in by Drops and lesser Rivulets but Eternity being all alike crowds in upon every Moment whereas now either the Torment is dull'd and rebated or instill'd and proportion'd by such a Succession as carries hope of Change or if it be extreme it presently does all it can do for it consumes what it hath to work upon On the other side How great is the Happiness of Eternity One smooth plain undisturbed Blessedness without any diversity For Ever The highest Faculties in their perfectest State gratified with highest Enjoyment Faculties so strong that they cannot flag the Enjoyment so unfathomable that we can never feel Bottom in it One Moment of endless Pleasure A Moment for it hath no Tediousness A Moment for it hath no Change but is all one and yet it is endless and eternal An Eternity the Duration of which we cannot so much as take notice of being in one Ecstasie of Enjoyment When we see miserable Men and Women going up and down the World living and dying without any Observation it damps the sense of these things and who would think that such are prepared for such an unchangeable State But how strange is it that Men hearing so often of Immortality out of the Gospel and that there is so much in their own Souls resounding to it that they are not Men concern'd to lay hold upon Eternal Life and to fly from the Wrath that is to come Let us look upon this great Level Ocean that hath not so much as one Wave of Change rising up in it this huge and vast Champaign swelling with no Hills sinking with no Dales And this know Men may go down to Hell in a moment thinking they die and end together They may perish without feeling it before-hand or so much as a Conceit about it But whoever are sav'd by Christ they perceive themselves Immortal Christ 2 Tim. 1. 10. brings Life and Immortality to light in their Souls and kindles the sense of it within them those to whom he gives Eternal Life they find this Life begin in the apprehensions they have now of Eternity 4. O how vain are those troublesom turmoiling Thoughts and Cares we have about Time and the Things of it Trundling rolling wheeling Time that hath no continuance that is so made on purpose the Things that cast it are so weak that they are restless in their sudden Changes O Wheel as it was cried out in Ezekiel Ezek. 10. 13. O changing Time every Moment something differing Let us onely mind it as it hath reference to Eternity for therein it is onely of moment Eternity that bears it up it self unconcern'd in its changeableness yet receives it into it self and swallows it up in it self 5. How necessary is it to change while we may from Sin to God to take the advantage of Time in the true Conversion of our selves to God seeing Eternity endures no Change To be wicked in our Eternal State is Wickedness unalterable there are no Reviews or Amendments there To turn is the Advantage offer'd to Sinners within Time In Eternity Repentance finds no place On the other side Eternal Life is Love of God Delight in Holiness without end The Motions of Spirits in Eternity are so swift and perpetual one way that there is not the least Moment to design a Change in A Motion that is always one and the same and is a Rest while a Motion Even as the most rapid Motion of a Globe round that is so swift and rapid that it is not discern'd and so even and just that it looks like standing still So is the State of Eternity Action to the height and most unalterable What I have hitherto discours'd of the Soul hath tended chiefly to illustrate it in those things that do immediately concern its Natural Perfections or its very Being and the Privileges it therein hath as it was made in the Image of the Divine Being and its Perfections For that it is an Invisible Spirit Immaterial Immortal of such mighty Operations and vehement Motions is of immediate Relation to its Being simply considered Now these Excellencies of the Soul I have endeavoured so to abstract in the Discourse of them that they might appear so far as is possible in their so abstract and distinct Consideration and yet as the very Thred and Nature of the Thing led me I have taken care to follow their close and inseparable Connexion or to speak more truly their perfect Union or Sameness with Intellect and to observe the Operations to be the same with Intellectual and Moral Operations that flow from an Understanding To which purpose I have laboured in this Assertion That such a Being as the Soul of Man is must be an Understanding and such Operations as those proper to Mans Soul must be Intellectual Operations however clouded and obscur'd while in the Body But I shall now address my self more fully to treat of the Soul as it is this Intellectual Spirit in its Intellectuality or Intelligency it self and of its Intellectual and Moral Operations wherein it is universally acknowledg'd to be made in the Image of God So that the former Parts of the Discourse describ'd what a kind of Being and of what exalted Motion this Intellect or Understanding is and that an Intellect can be no less than such a Being or no less a Being than such a one and of such a Motion can be an Understanding and that such a Being so moving must be can be no less can be no other than an Understanding What now follows shall be design'd more closely to discover what the Intellectuality of this Great Being and its Self-motion are or what Understanding it self and the Motions of Understanding are In which pursuit I will first make some display upon this great Matter in that frequent Resemblance of it by Light the Scripture so much delights to use concerning it The Spirit of a Man is the Candle Prov. 20. 27. of the Lord shining into and searching the innermost parts of the Belly The Soul of Man as it is an Understanding is a great Light reflected upon it self This is the Soul a Beam from the Sun a Candle lighted from the Light of Heaven and the Light of this Candle is ever streaming out and reflowing upon it self like a Diamond always playing with and in its own Light It may be cover'd over and hid it may be masqued with the thickness and grosness of Earthly Vapours from Body but it is inseparable from its Nature to be Light It cannot but in some degree shine and send out it self though its Beams be but pale and wan but when it hath any greater freedom or when it industriously and resolvedly moves it self there is a Circle of
Rays about it that have broken out from it self In its Creation in its Native Splendour to allude to that of the Prophet It was an anointed Cherub upon Ezek. 28. 13 14. the Holy Mountain of God it walk'd up and down in the midst of the Stones of Fire and every Precious Stone was its Ornament It was of an Angelical Brightness near to God and Divine Glories and all the Excellencies of Understanding were its proper Lustre and in Eternity it will again rend all its Clouds and shine without interruption and For Ever The Soul of Man is a Light begotten of the Father of Lights and the James 1. 17. Heb. 12. 9. Father of Spirits Lights and Spirits explain one another for Rational and Intellectual Spirits and their Intellectual Accomplishments are all Lights The Increated and All-creating Spirit is the Father of them with whose perfect Light there is no variation nor shadow of turning He is Light as well in that as he is All-understanding as All-pure and in him is 1 John 1. 5. no Darkness at all either of Ignorance or Unrighteousness The Son of God is The Light To the All-knowing Spirit the Light shineth John 1. 7 8. Psal 139. 12. as the Day The Darkness and the Light are both alike to him because Himself is All Light The Angels are Seraphims shining and burning Lights He maketh his Angels Spirits his Ministers a Flame of Fire The Life of the Souls of Men that is their Life of Reason is Light lighted from the Son of God for his Life communicating it self is the Light of Men He is that True Light John 1. 9. that inlightneth every Man that cometh into the World Light then being chosen by the Divine Wisdom as the most easie and familiar Conveyance of the Nature and Excellency of Spirits in general as they are Intellects and particularly of Mans Soul as it is an Understanding Let us consider the principal Sense and Intention avoiding the Notices of lower and collateral Similitude between Light and the Soul of Man That which will best conduct us to our main purpose is the Description the Apostle gives us of Light That it makes manifest For whatever says Ephes 5. 13. he makes manifest is Light To which our own Experience fully agrees for we can make no Discovery nor Judgment of Things but by Light that expounds all things to us and is the first and plainest Commentary upon Nature When we therefore say Man's Soul is a great Light reflected upon it self we speak this Sense The Understanding of Man manifests and lays open and makes known within the Soul and within it self for it self is the Soul whatsoever is known to the Soul or the understanding of man is that which discovers and discloses to it self all that is known to it for thus our Saviour says The light of the body is the Eye because it receives the light and sees by it so the Understanding is the Eye of the Soul and further it is its own light so that it is its own Eye and its own Light but the manner and way how this is to be understood and by which the Understanding discharges this great Function is of further enquiry There can be no doubt of the thing it self for besides the great proofs the Soul of man hath given hereof in those many successful Experiments it hath made in all kinds of knowledge even those that have denyed a Soul distinct from Body and Matter in its Essence yet cannot but acknowledge There is some excellent motion in man by which he understands and perceives more than the Beasts of the Field There is in some sense or other A Spirit in man and the breath of the Almighty gives them understanding This then being out of doubt let us consider the infinity of Divine Knowledge and so attain the measures of Humane Understanding in the resemblances of him in whose likeness it was made We read of the Son of God the true Light that he perceived Mark 2. 8. in his own Spirit the thoughts of men The Son of God an omniscient Spirit knows all things in the light of his own Spirit in that infinite understanding essential to him created Spirits the Souls of men having a measure of this perfection a communication of it though not as Christ may also in a degree perceive in and by their own Spirit God then understands all things within himself he being all Eye all Light able perfectly to see into and comprehend all things that either are or are possible to be or that can possibly stand in the place of Object and all this within himself For himself being fully known to himself as an infinitely seeing and self-reflected eye other things that are or may be are also within himself as the original of all Being and Motion And as his own Understanding and Contrivance what they should be and his pleasure they should be what he contrived them gave them being and motion and there is no other way of being and motion thus and on this account and infinitely beyond what we can conceive and express God knows what is what is done by the virtue that is in himself and continually goes out of himself so that by virtue of himself perfectly known to himself all other things are perfectly known to himself also Thus known to God are all his Works from the foundation Act. 15. 18. of the World Even to him who is all Eye all Light all Object and before whose infinite eye all things stand present at once as one single point so naked and open that they are all perfect surface and outside while it self rests on them The Soul made in this Image is in its degree Eye and Light an intellectual Eye an intellectual Light The motions of the reasoning contemplating Soul are like the motions of the Sun an illuminating motion light and sparkles flye out the openings of its faculties are like the openings of the Eye-lids of the morning like some Eyes that see in the dark by their own fire for what can the motions of an Understanding Conscience Reason intellectual Memory be but moral and intellectual Light It s very self is its Eye and its motion it s inlightened air Thus it bears the Image of the Divine Understanding in its visive power And that it may in some lower degrees perceive in its own Spirit we may very rationally suppose there are some fundamental Ideas some Images some Notions or Verities pourtrayed upon and given to the Soul that are as so many rays from the Father of Lights and Truth and make it like the Eye full of Light and it being natural to the Soul to move it self at least assoon as ever it is excited by Object from without it first makes a survey upon things abroad with the observation of which it immediately retires into it self to find what is within and when ever the Soul thus moves through the intimacy of these
the eternal enjoyment of him and the comforts of God delighting all these and the Oyl of Grace gliding along upon them even down upon the Body like the precious Oyntment on the Head of Aaron going down to the skirts of his Garments how sweet would these interweavings of the Soul and its truest and everlasting Joys be even unspeakable and full of Glory On the other side when a Man is first racked and stretched into vast and insatiable Desires without satisfaction and rolled up and down upon a thousand uneasie Thoughts concerning them and instead of mitigation and cooling allays hath the guilt of his unworthy Actions and the fears of a Justice to disquiet him how uneasie must such a Mans Soul of necessity be to him and if these are wreathed close about him and pressed home upon him by the Indignation of God let out against him as the former is a little Image of Heaven so is this of Hell Now it is certain No man hath power over his own Spirit either to damp the gracious and merciful movings of his Divine Spirit or to keep out and forbid the angry entrances of Divine Displeasures and Revenges God is the God of the Spirits of all Flesh and acts them as he pleases No man can imprint upon himself the reasons of Comfort or Disquiet or flash into his own Soul Joy or Sorrow but under the guidance and supreme government of God who giveth quietness so as none can make trouble and so hides his face that none can behold him As he pleases he casts down and raises up and none can stay his hand so much as within themselves or say unto him What dost thou So great is his Freedom herein that he sometimes answers Men that are strangers to him in the joy of their hearts all their lives and his word of Blessing goes along with the ordinary favours he does them so that the Fears of Wrath to come are hid from them and on the other side those whom he hath made his Friends and will use so for ever are covered with a Cloud nay sometimes he sets them as a mark for his arrows and even cuts them off with his Terrours For he is the great Actuator of Mens Spirits without whom as the first Mover the whole Motion of Nature would stand still and he disposes them so that a Man doth nor can to any satisfactory account find out himself and he therefore feels his greatest security in resting upon God and being guided by him 4. But Eternity is that vast season in which God brings all to a righteous certainty and which he hath appointed for Happiness without allay or Misery without mixture which may be made out three ways 1. In that in Eternity the whole power of the Soul runs together one and the same way In this life the holiest Men have great allays of their holiest and best Motions and counter-motions of Discontent and Unbelief to their greatest Comforts Evil men have generally at least some pleasures hopes motions to their advantage notwithstanding all the crosses they meet with in the World or the secret sounds of horrour they have at certain times in their Consciences In this World the Soul sends out parties of it self divers ways or to several ends The Judgment may be pleased in the main and yet the Affections disturbed or these more still and yet the Judgment dissatisfied and disturbed One Thought goes out in high discontent another flyes after it recalls and reconciles it On the other side one Thought leaps out of the Soul with pleasure another reproves daunts and dejects it with a correction of its haste But in Eternity the Soul is united in its Motions which way one Faculty goes all go and the Thoughts are all concentred as in one whole and entire Thought of Joy or Torment 2. In Eternity there is but one state of the Soul and the prospect of the Soul is but one In this World change of place conversation difference of Events raise different Affections and Motions of Mind varieties of businesses occasions and tempers upon them do so distract and move all sorts of Men up and down that there is nothing pure and unconfounded In Eternity there is one state of Soul and so one action there is nothing to mix with either condition It is one Happiness or one Misery Even the most sad and dismal prospect the prospect upon Hell and Eternal Misery gives to the Saints reason of admiration and highest adoration of God in their deliverance from it On the other side the most glorious Blessedness and Happiness of Heaven is to Men in Hell when they look up to it their highest Amazement and inflames their Torment by reason of their envy against God and those that dwell with him in Heaven their reflections upon their own Misery and Rage against themselves Thus one State one Action one Happiness one Misery and all to the height fill Eternity 3. Then it is that God proceeds to the highest actuation of the Soul drawing out all the powers of it and setting open all the Windows of Heaven upon it pouring into it all the always full and ever flowing Vials of his Love Grace and Mercy or of his Power Wrath and Justice which as they are unintermitted themselves in their streams so it is impossible the Soul that is moved or driven by them should rest from an action answerable to them 4. In Eternity there is a Body fitted to the Happiness or Misery of the Mind In this World Happiness is dulled by the stupidities or clogged with the slowness of the Bodies Motion or grows cloying by its incapacity to receive more The pains and griefs of it call the Mind from its enjoyments to take pity on it so that the inconveniences of the Body allay the happiness of the Mind on the other side this Body submits it self to speedy dissolution if its own pains are extreme and its griefs if leisurely and tolerable are abated by being so as if over burdensome they destroy The troubles of the Mind are much blunted by the grossness of Body in which the Mind cannot feel perfectly its own sentiments and the pleasures and divertisements of that Body do often allay the anguish of Conscience as Cain grew to some quiet with himself by building a City But in Eternity Gen. 4. 17. the Body is also spiritual that is wholly prepared to the use and service of the Spirit and to receive and attend and display its Motions and condition to feel its pleasures and pains to bear its Glory or Deformity openly all kinds of these present bodily Pleasures and Pains Beauties or Deformities being then wholly removed For either the Happiness or Misery of meer Body is neither worthy of God nor of the Soul but would be on the one side a sottish Pleasure on the other side like the tormenting of a Beast and so not agreeable to God or the discourse of Scripture however things may be
and more especially as they are Divine and relate to God Because the knowledge of the Things themselves is most lost and the Understanding so cramp'd concerning them To be able therefore in such Treaties to speak so as to compare Spiritual things with Spiritual that is to observe the Decorum Spiritual Things require to be spoken with there is necessary the Divine Revelation of Scripture and the assistance of the Holy Spirit For so to speak is that Divine Vtterance or Elocution which the Apostle joins with Knowledge and magnifies as an Act of Grace to Fallen man in order to his Recovery derived from Jesus Christ the restorer of Humane Nature and is in various degrees distributed to the professors of Christianity and conveyed to them in the diligent Exercise of themselves in Sacred Writings 2. The Dulness and Inattentiveness of Hearers makes things hard to be interpreted especially things of great Retreat from ordinary Apprehension We cannot speak them plainly enough to make people conceive of them so as to be affected with them Yet notwithstanding we having so often occasion to converse with these great Sounds A Soul An Immortal Spirit and its Eternal State there is as great an obligation to search the Things as far as we can lest they appear to us no more than great sounds without as great a Substance whereas indeed their Substance and Reality exceeds their Sound how great soever And to encourage us in this most industrious search we are first to oppose to the Difficulty this Consideration That it is not so much the Unintelligibleness of the things themselves as the want of a due Intention of Mind in our inquiries as also an humble application of our selves to the Divine Assistance that makes it so hard to speak and hear of these Spiritual Subjects as Wise men and Christians For Discourses of them made up of such words as the spirit of God teaches jointed and put together by the same Wisdom and then aright received how significant and potent would they be how clearly representative to the Understanding how perswasive upon the whole Soul And seeing in these things we have a kind of natural Knowledge and Experience like Natural Arithmetique and Mathematiques which yet being adorn'd and cultivated by Art are much improved but especially because we have the Word of God so great a light to our feet and lamp to our paths in our Discourse concerning them and the promise of the Blessed Spirit to assist our Inquiries into Truth There is great reason of Confidence the closer our Researches and the more industrious our Explanations of the things are the brighter our apprehensions and the more prevailing our Knowledge of them will grow so as to enlighten and perswade others also Committing then this Undertaking to Divine Assistance I have chosen this great assumption of Elihu concerning Man to rest this Discourse upon There is a Spirit in Man and the Inspiration of the Almighty giveth him Vnderstanding Not that the Soul of Man and its excellent Nature deriving it self in Creation from God inspiring it is precisely and in the first place here intended or the original proceeding of the Finite Vnderstanding from the Infinite But the mighty Vigor and Force of this Spirit stirred up by God and the Understanding acted to the Height by a more gracious inspiration enlivening assisting and setting it on work in some peculiar persons and to some peculiar ends and employment is that which this Eloquent Reasoner immediately means and hath a particular respect to himself in it as notably assisted by God in his following Discourses Yet it plainly appears he alludes to that History of the First Creation the Tradition of which all Wise and Good men had conveyed and assured to them by undoubted Monuments for it very much agrees with and resembles that relation There is a Spirit in man says Elihu a mighty and Gen. 1. 26. excellent Spirit In the Image and Likeness of God as Moses describes it And the Breath of the Almighty giveth him understanding as Elihu speaks Which in the words of Moses is thus expressed God breath'd into his Face Gen. 2. 7. the Breath of Life and Man became a living Soul That Inspiration gave that Soul of Life whose Nature is Vnderstanding or Intellect and its Life Rational and Intellectual And herein rest fundamentally those extraordinary Vigors of which Elihu here speaks when God by a secondary Donation and Grace enables this Spirit and Vnderstanding to act like it self and to appear as it is For all excellent motions of Soul inspired by God into eminent personages are but Fairer Exemplifications of Creation and the Vniversal Nature of mans Soul So that while Elihu intends something further he assures the main position That Man in general hath a Great Spirit or Soul in him and an Vnderstanding or Intellect given him by immediate inspiration from God in Creation To give then a description of this Great Soul of man as a foundation of the whole Treaty concerning it I shall do it under these three following Heads 1. As it is considered in its substantial and Essential Nature and so I describe it An Invisible Spirit and Immortal made in the Image and Likeness of God and nearly allyed to Angels the very Nobleness and Excellency of mans Being above Brutes and Common matter 2. As it is to be understood in its immediate Emanations and Motions of it self and so it is An Intellectual Light indued with all the powers of Rational and Moral Action It is that by which a man breaths in the free and open Air of Reason and Intelligence It is the principle of such Action as is far above sense for if rightly ordered it bears the lofty Characters of Good Holy Virtuous and because it cannot sink upon a Common level if disorderly and irregular it carries the black indeed but Tremendous names of Sin Wickedness Vice 3. As it is to be known in its Resentments and so It is that which tastes and enjoys all Good or feels and endures discerns and perceives Evil and Misery If that be well the whole is well If that be wounded and in Torment there can be no Ease or Remedy And it is prepared to be a Great and Ample Receipt of and a most vehement Agent in its own Everlasting Happiness or Misery This Soul is that which is Eternally Happy or Miserable And though this Spirit be hid in the Body and the Body seems to be All yet it can indeed do nothing nor feel any thing but as the Soul does by it and this Body because as it is now it is an Instrument unfit is laid aside in Death without any prejudice to the Souls Action or Resentment but to the unspeakable Exaltation of it and at last a Body more fit for its use is given to it and which is every way proportion'd to its state whether of Happiness or Misery Now whosoever shall well weigh and consider this Soul will stand
to us as to some of old that we read of in the Scripture and in a retirement what affrightment would it be to us how unable were any sort of men to bear such an approach and yet the force of their Beings is not in their appearance but in the Essence it self for the appearance they take upon them and throw off again at pleasure and they only condescend to Sense by these appearances that are therefore no part of their strength that lies treasured up wholly in their Essences so that their being seen adds nothing to them but as we dwell in Body they are represented more plainly to us and so seem more potent and dreadful also to us Now when we are to dye we are to enter into the whole world of these invisible Beings and how shall we be able to bear so great a presence if we do not prepare our selves for the encounter It is true we shall be fitted the more to endure such a state thus far that we shall be uncloathed of flesh and blood in which we are so amazed with any thing of the other world but then it is further to be considered if we are not reconciled to that Supreme Being whom though as the Apostle hath assured us No man hath seen or can see yet because of that his displeasure is so much the swifter and the more penetrating and we but the more fitted to suffer under it by our being dis-incumbred from present gross matter and the horrible dread of that whole world will rise up against us with more immediate impression But to him that is reconciled to God by Jesus Christ all things in Heaven are reconciled also and he passes through those Hosts as a man that passes through the most terrible Armies under the protection of the General or as a stranger through foreign Countries with the especial gracious Convoy of the Prince nay higher than thus as a particular Favourite and Friend of the Prince Now there is an Order of these Invisible Beings most blessed God the happy and only Potentate Jesus Christ God over all blessed for ever the Angels of Glory the blessed Saints There is highest and truest blessedness most certainly to be found among them nor are they the less but the more happy for being invisible nor is their happiness therefore fantastick aiery or not solid because not seen For so fine and pure as not to be seen and yet to be gives the greatest presumption of the vividness and power of any thing that can be given of it the quickest motions are too quick for sight and the life of discourse is not that which the ear hears differing nothing from common sound but that which the mind perceives Beings invisible do not know one another less than men in Bodies but the most quick communications pass between them Invisibility is but a just distance from Sense as greatness retires and reserves it self from vulgar eyes and every days sight that it may be more adored at solemn times of appearance Christ ascending up into his glory a Cloud received him out of their sight but as the Apostle speaks of him so we may say of the whole state of Invisible Things That 1 Tim. 6. 16. in his time he will shew him and them who is the only blessed Potentate he will shew them in such representations as are proper to them some fully possessing the mind some filling the very Sense as it shall be heightened and exalted by the Resurrection of which the glorious Body of Christ shall be the supreme Object How earnest then should we be in seeking a communion in this blessedness in laying hold upon this eternal life in seeking honour glory immortality while we are in the world not in the least disswaded that they are not seen but looking the more earnestly upon them by faith because they are not like the things that prophane Sense every day blows upon and are therefore continually perishing for being so dull and gross as to be seen they are also of a composition dissolvable and apt to flye in pieces whereas eternal things whose nature is purer are not exposed to common eyes This is indeed Christianity while we look not upon the 2 Cor. 4. 18. things that are seen but upon the things that are not seen for the things which are seen are but for a moment but the things which are not seen are eternal But as there is a blessed and happy order of invisible Beings so there is an Order of Beings invisible most wretched and miserable the Devil and his Angels and wicked men damned to their fellowship How black is this state How dreadful is the wrath and misery of their punishment It is like the stroke of lightning sooner felt than seen and the destruction that is the effect of it greater deeper more sudden and universal and leaving more dread behind it than those things that work by the light and leisure of senses cognisance and observation If any should think there wants evidence of these things let him think also it may not be the want of evidence but the want of our suitedness to them It is because the Soul is swallowed up of Sense that any man wants evidence and we are angry that we cannot by Sense comprehend things that are not related to it but are nearly allyed to understanding to Faith Many things give full satisfaction of themselves to learned men yet can offer none to men unlearned so do these objects display themselves with great clearness to men of purified minds that cannot make themselves known to Souls plunged down into Sense and the thick matter The best expedient for the cure of such men is first to believe the assertions of men of refined minds inviting others to what themselves have found and then to receive the assurance that will arise from their own compliance with and experience of divine things But further we want most the prevalency of what we believe rather than meerly belief we may be more strongly perswaded of this invisible world than we know our selves to be yet by reason of the great unaptness of the fleshly state in regard of mind adhering so to it the consideration hath not the force answerable to the belief because it is suppressed and the want of force in the belief lessens our feeling of the belief which we indeed have and must have the principle of it being united with our very Souls Having now asserted that there is an order of invisible Beings and that the Soul is such a one I come in the next place to call them Spirits and so to treat of the Soul as a Spirit There need be no contention about the word Spirit it being but a word or name chosen to express the notion men have in all times had of these insensible and immaterial Beings which they have made easie to themselves and others by whatever among sensible natures is most subtile and fine and had least
then of the Souls coming to an end must be by Annihilation or being crush'd to Nothing by Infinite Power Concerning which let us further consider It is true the Essence and Existence of the Soul are several things that is There is the Nature of the Soul in general and this is one thing and is call'd its Essence and this considered in a possibility of Actual Being or not Being as it may be or may not be When it is we call it Existence or Actual Being and this is another thing from its Essence Therefore it might either not have come into Being at all or after it is come into Being it may be turn'd out of Being by the immediate Power of God who gave it Being who onely can annihilate or bring to nothing that which is In all these things the Soul is beyond all expression excell'd by God who onely as the Apostle speaks hath immortality For he it is alone that in the truest sense is what he is so inconceivably and perfectly Himself that he is onely of and from himself and Himself so infinitely that he comprehends and embraces in himself the whole Divine Nature and there is not a second God He is alone and besides him there is no God he knows not any other with him there is no variation nor shadow of turning neither in his Being nor in any of the Attributes of his Being Most Great and Good Most Happy and for ever Best For he hath all within himself and there is nothing without him of any compare with him not any thing but what receives Being from him so that neither from within nor from without can there be any occasion of change in him He it is whose Essence and Existence are one and the same Thing His Essence in the very true Notion of it rises up into immediate and absolute Existence For there is no other Notion of his Essence but in his Existence It is his very Essence or Nature to Be. He is never so little as in a possibility to Be but always so great that it is impossible he should not Be. He is without the allay of a possibility to Be which also includes a possibility not to Be. He is the highest and most perpetual Act of Being Eternal in the very Life of Being To grant the Nature of God no incompossible Notion is to wrap up a Mans self in the conclusion he is and that unchangeably For he is a necessary Being a Being that cannot but Be. And it is of much consideration concerning his Being that there should be such a Lock upon the Mind of Man that it can no sooner grant There may be a God but it is surpriz'd with this There must be a God for the very Nature of Deity concludes a necessity of Being Absolute Being God is Paramount in these Prerogatives of Being and the Soul cannot be likened to him from whom it hath its All. But yet a much truer and nobler Immortality have the Spirits and Souls of Men than Matter and Motion before spoken of seeing Spirit is design'd prepar'd for and in its own Nature and immediately in it self of much higher Excellency Purity Self-motion fit for Intelligency and all Rational Enjoyment as much above any Notion of Matter or appearance of it in any Form or acted by any Motion or into any Nature whatever as Heaven is above Earth And beyond this It is the Nature of Spirits having their Substance Nature Motion all within themselves to be always distinct and to have Subsistence in themselves proper and peculiar to themselves and divided from all others whereas the others as they are made up in such and such Natures and out of which they are not found are continually altering and changing and passing out of one Form into another and have no other actual Subsistence in themselves but what they have in these so continually variated Appearances For the whole Stock of Matter and Motion that is in the World is made use of by God in common and these two are always running every way into all the successive Compositions the Creator hath design'd them for and as they are govern'd by him But all the whole Nature of Spirit that hath ever been in the Creation from the very Beginning hath without any confusion or running one Spirit into another been preserv'd in strictest distinction and separation one from another so many proper Subsistences always known to God understood and taken notice of by him in this their distinctness and so are and shall be known to themselves for ever and as such they shall be manifested and exposed to the universal Assembly of themselves Angels and Men and judg'd according to their Works because they have been their own and not anothers with them So then though the Spirits and Souls of Men even as Matter and Motion are dependent upon the Pleasure of the Creator whether they shall continue in Being or not if we speak of the thing absolutely yet it is very evident from the consideration of the whole state of the matter that Spirits are the most proper and natural Inhabitants of Immortality and howsoever it may please the Creator to determine upon the other Parts of the Creation yet there is as great assurance as Reason can rise unto and higher yet from Divine Revelation that he intends that our Souls should be for ever seeing he hath made them with Faculties and Powers of Action Intellectual Moral and immediately respecting himself which are so connatural to the true state of Immortality and so plain an approach to and resemblance of him who only hath Immortality that it is almost impossible to a serious Considerer to think that there could be any other designation of them by God but for an immortal duration seeing he hath so prepared them for such a Condition who does nothing in vain nor does so debase his own Image as to draw the Lineaments of it in Dust It remains then That the Soul in the Nature given it by Creation and in the designation of the Almighty who gave it that Nature is an Immortal Spirit 3. From the Character of a Spirits self-communication it follows The Soul is an Vnderstanding For the highest degree of Self-communication is Understanding Even in things artificial when any thing seems to communicate with another and to receive Intelligence from another and imparts it again to it there is a semblance of understanding as in the Sympathetique answer of one Lute to another When the Heaven hears the Earth in the Prophets phrase it seems to understand it The mutual Returns of one Creature to another are a kind of Understanding in them or rather that Great Understanding of God runs through them all and is an Understanding in their behalf Life within the compass and sphere of that Being that hath it is self-communicated Motion for all the Parts are in a confederacy one with another and at an agreement among themselves for the motion of the whole
is it must needs be exceeding great both because it feels it self throughout in either of them and must needs do so in regard of the Reciprocation Self-communication of all its Powers and Motions and in regard of the Fineness and Purity of its Being not abated by Grosness Distance and Distinction of Parts but the Whole running into it self as also in regard of the Forcible motion of a Spirit which carries therefore its Griefs or Pleasures with the rapidness of its own motion and either blesses or torments it self according to the vehemency of its Nature The Spirit or Soul of Man in the Body discovers somewhat hereof but in lower degrees by reason of the distribution of it self to the several Parts Pleasures Pains and various Concernments of Bodily Nature which while the Soul condescends to and complies with it seems to imitate so that it tastes generally intermixed Pleasures onely and suffers but alleviated Griefs because this agrees most with the Condition of Body that hath nothing pure And further while it is thus interested it s own proper Motions and Activities are both damp'd and confin'd For Body is dull and strait and if the Soul dwells in it and acts by it it must proportion it self to it or else it cannot be its Instrument Yet these Properties of the Soul are not altogether imperceptible even in Bodily state for as the Soul is conform'd very far to the Body in those Regards so hath the Body its Conformities to the Soul and those much more necessary seeing it is acted and moved by it For even Bodily Sense pays this resemblance to Spiritual that in every Part it bears Sympathy with what is felt in any one Part Yet this is because the Soul enlivening the whole Body and undertaking for every Part feels in it self as in the Center the state of every Part though it feels according to the manner nature and situation of the several parts of the Body In some degree of Likeness also the vigour of the Souls Resentments are seen in the most spirituous Pleasures or acute Pains of Body that are able to move Nature high which fall out onely in a lively Constitution and not taken off so as to chill the Pleasure or dull the Pain because the Soul hath more Active Bodily Powers to shew it self by and wherein it can give greater Testimony of its own vivid Motion though but in concernedness for the Body Thus the Pains of Stone and Gout are much sharper because they abate so little from the Constitution and the vigours of Health are necessary for the receipt of Pleasure But the Soul is much more in things proper to it self All Center where every one of its proper Pleasures and Pains meet that is Spiritual Joys and Sorrows and then the liveliness persistency of its Nature carries up to a height all its Enjoyments or Sufferings But this is never so clear as in its separated and free estate for then especially as it is said of Eternity It is all drawn as it were into every Moment So whatever can be suppos'd in any Point of the Intellectual Nature if we could so distinguish in the same instant runs through all which is the first Height of the Happiness or Misery of a Spirit In the next place the Happiness or Misery of a Spirit can be no other than a Happiness or Misery of a Spiritual nature and so cannot but be great for that is the Nature of every thing Spiritual It is all what it is and nothing else Every thing but Spirit hath a great deal of cumber a great deal of Clothes and Habiliments upon it But Spirit is purely it self Spiritual Happiness hath no clog upon it Spiritual Misery hath no Sheath upon it it is all Edge And when we are entred into the Region of Spirits there will be no heaviness of Body nor diversions of that in the way The Bodies of the Resurrection when we receive them will be fitted to the velocity and swiftness of our Minds and prepar'd so wholly for them as most perfectly to attend their condition Object But because we see the Body now such an Obstruction to all Motions of Soul it may be doubted whether there may not be a state of Souls as insensible or more insensible than now To resolve this the Scripture tells us God makes the Happiness of his Saints like a River of highest Pleasure and the punishment of Evil like a sea of flaming Brimstone both to the height therefore it withal appears the Faculties are rais'd to the height also Else there could be no such Happiness nor any such Punishment Insensible things enjoy nothing endure nothing and the lower the Sense the lower of necessity is also the Enjoyment and the Pain There must be therefore an exaltation of the Faculties to the highest Life that in the meeting of the Object and the Faculties there may be greatest Satisfaction or Misery Yet it may be understood upon this very account there may be Glories and Punishments of higher and lower degrees according to the advancement or low estate of the Faculties and that the state of the other World may be proportion'd to this that he who by a Soul more enlarg'd in this World he who by five Talents gain'd Luc. 19. 17 19. Luc. 12. 47 48. ten or that knew his Masters will and yet did it not these being agreeably of higher apprehensions and quicker motions in this World are in the World to come by the continuing elevation of those Powers made Rulers over more Cities or beaten with more stripes but those of fewer Talents and meaner Sentiments keep still their Ranks being Rulers over fewer Cities or beaten with fewer stripes Yet in each of these the state of their Souls here and in Eternity differs as much in regard of their apprehensions and the clearness of their Faculties as Twilight and Noon-day From this state of things that hath been given it may be briefly inferr'd in these Particulars following 1. If the Souls of Men that are an Inferiour Spirit are so active and high in their motion then how exalted and infinitely adorable are all the Perfections of that Supreme Spirit lifted up out of all Height That Eternal-Fountain-Author-Spirit how infinitely pure is his Being without any variation or shadow of turning dwelling in such a Light and Lustre of his own Divinity that nothing can so much as approach or come within any distance of Although his Spirit runs through All yet there is an infinite separation of Excellency between God and all things How clear and bright is his Understanding before whom Hell is naked and Destruction hath no covering Darkness and Light are all one to him because Light and Glory are always round about him and Hell is but the displeasure of his Holiness against Sin like a Flame that dazles and scorches together A Fire devours before him and burns up his Enemies on every side How potent are his Efficacies which way soever he
are here in the World in this State of our Souls lies our true Greatness and Worth Some that seem so inconsiderable that no Man looks after them yet being greatly Holy greatly favoured of God Great Spirits all Heavenly the world Hebr. 11. 37 38. is not worthy of them though they wander up and down on montains in sheep-skins and goat-skins and be hid in dens and caves of the earth Others Great in the World and being also truly Good the Back-parts of their Greatness are onely seen Yea even in Bad Men how small or great soever they are in the World yet that they pertain to an Everlasting Condition that they have Immortal Souls this makes them of greatest consideration To convert them to God is therefore a great and excellent Work To save a Soul from death how great is the Service and how great is the Reward They that do it shall shine as the Stars in the Firmament How great a Regard to the meanest or worst of Men should it draw that they pertain to an Eternal Judgment The Consideration of the Soul as a Being Invisible and a Spirit having invited an often mention of its Eternal or Unchangeable Condition to which this present State is subordinate and disembogues it self into it as the Rivers do into the Ocean I come in the next place to make a modest Research into the Nature of Eternity and the Souls Relation to it But in speaking of Eternity I know he alone is able to declare it who inhabits Isa 57. 15. it God himself or the Angels those Blessed Spirits who were early assum'd into larger Participations of it Yet seeing we also are design'd to the same Participations it concerns us as far as we can to understand the Wonder of it Eternity then in its first and highest Sense is not any thing distinct from God but his stable unchangeable Being from everlasting to everlasting There is no other Eternity than this properly and strictly taken from which is cast upon the Mind that contemplates a Being so surrounded with it self and its own invariable Perfection a Notion of Everlasting Duration and that which is comprehended by it because by reason of the narrowness of our Understanding it is conceiv'd in a distinction from the Divine Being it self we in a secondary Sense call Eternity But even as what we term Vbiquity is that which results to us from the Notion or Apprehension of God the Immense Being filling all so much as even Imaginary Space while he himself is the onely true Vbiquity even so Eternity is the Infiniteness of God's Being filling all Imaginary Duration and so filling it that the Divine Being it self is that very Eternity of which Everlasting Duration is but the Shadow that falls from it as Unbounded Space does from his Omnipresence God then the Supreme Eternal or rather Eternity is a Being that must always have been and ever must be It is most impossible to conceive he should ever not have been or ever not be And he is a Being that never could and can never be otherwise than he is So that there are no Marks of Distinction that could ever be taken from his Being or from the State and Condition of his Being He is He was He is to come are all Rev. 1. 8. united into one Eternal Point or Period in him and thus express'd I Exo. 3. 14. A M A Being without any variation Jam. 1. 17. or shadow of turning A thousand years to him are but 2 Pet. 3. 8. as yesterday when it is past and one day as a thousand years And if it had been said Ten thousand millions of Years are but as a Minute when it is past it had been all one in this Case for there is no New Thing to him or in him but all is a Just now For his Being is the most solid substantial Being that cannot possibly submit to any Alteration What is Infinitely Perfect can admit no Change This is the One Just Even Smooth Eternity And understanding God thus we understand Eternity And though it be no where but in himself and where he communicates the Likeness of it yet Eternity in a secondary Sense becomes a distinct Notion or Sense of a Mode of Being in our Minds and it is a changeless Duration of any Being in the self-same State for if there be not Duration there must be Change and if there be Change it is not a Duration on all sides for then there could be no Change Now this Notion of Eternity could never have come into our Minds if it had not been planted there by his Hand who dwells in it on purpose that we might know himself by it nor had there been a substantial Rest for such a Conception if his Being had not given it All else is but Imaginary Duration Eternity then in this our apprehension of it is one great smooth Sea without any Curl of Change or as a vast unmeasurable Plain wherein the Eye hath no bound nor so much as Note of Distinction no Rise no Fall like a great Mountain that all Generations have pass'd and repass'd one hath gone another come and that hath slidden away too but the Mountain hath stood firm It is like a Rock that hath stood innumerable Ages without so much as scaling about which the huge Waters have continually wav'd and roll'd themselves and dash'd asunder by which smaller Vessels have pass'd to and again gallant Ships and Potent Armadaes have sail'd by and sunk or moulder'd away this in the mean time without any variation It is like an Hour spent in highest Pleasure no Moment no Minute of which is so much as felt It is like a deep Contemplation in which the Mind is so lost so retir'd from Body that it reckons not any Motion it keeps no account of Time for it nor observes whether any Time pass'd It is like an undefinable Point of Just now In the next place to give the greater Light to Eternity let us state the Nature of Time And Time to speak substantially of it is nothing but the Coming of a Thing or a World of Things into Being that were not in Being before For this makes a new Note in what we conceive as Duration And therefore when the World was made the Scripture says In the Beginning There was then a new Date because there was something then that had not been before In Whole Eternity there was nothing New All was alike One Now these things coming in by the way of Change viz. the exchange of the State of Nothing for the State of Existency are also every Moment subject to change and in a continual hover up and down and while all these things are performing their Motion in their Changes and Vicissitudes the Mind of Man considering them under such a Mode or Circumstance of their Being there arises a Notion or Representation of that whole Space which putting all together we call Time in the largest sense
which he hath weigh'd out all things they are to be For Ever For the most Perfect of all Things now and that are absolutely the highest of his Creation that is Spirits and that which is the Top of their Condition as that to which the Last Judgment affixes them is are design'd by God for For Ever 3. The proper Exercises of Man's Soul which are in Understanding Righteousness Holiness declare the designment of it for Eternity For these things being such evident Beams from the Divine Glory and Being cannot die and those Natures that have their Action plac'd in them are thence argued Immortal For seeing these things in themselves in their pure and abstract Notions are unchangeable the Soul being a Seat so peculiarly dedicated to them and immediately fitted for them and a very Principle of them as made by God it is a very great presumption of its Eternal State There remains nothing I intend further touching this Vastness of Eternity concerning which all Discourse is but as the drop of the Bucket or the small dust of the Balance nothing and less than nothing but more clearly to exalt the Eternity of God above that of his Everlasting Creatures and to fall into Practical Meditations upon Everlasting Duration 1. It is in the first place certain No Created Being hath an Eternity before Time Of God onely and of no Created Being can it be said It never began Thus it always was It never made any new Date From Everlasting to Everlasting onely God is Of him onely it can be said He was Ever as he is and is to come 2. Of no Creature can it be said absolutely or in regard of it self though it be in its Everlasting State It must be or It must be thus It can be no otherwise It can be onely said so upon account of the unchangeable Decree of God There is a high agreeableness in the Nature of Spirits to Be but this It must be is onely proper to God Of him onely to acknowledge He may be is as hath been said to infold our selves in a positive Assurance He is and must be He is no precarious Being not a Being at the Free-will of any no Chance Being not a convenient Being onely A Being of which it may be said It is better and best he should be though this be true and that infinitely But he is an Infinitely necessary Being His Being is the First the Eternal the Fundamental Verity 3. He onely is his own Eternity He alone lifts up his Hand to the Heaven Deut. 32. 40. and says I live for ever He lifts it up in the Triumph and Power of Being All Creatures depend upon his Eternity Himself and his Eternity are One Himself is Eternity and Eternity is himself To speak otherwise of Eternity is onely to speak as children to speak out of weak apprehension to weak apprehension In the Perfect State we shall put away these childish things from us A Creature cannot be said with propriety to be Eternal but in a low Sense in a Sense expressing Gods Communication of himself The Creature 's Everlasting is measured by God's Eternity His own Being is the onely unmeasurable Measure the unaccountable Account of his Eternity even as his Righteousness Truth Omnipotency are all Himself and there are no other of these but himself and his Communications Even so is his Eternity Into what lowest and most profound Meditation 1. Adorations of the Divine Being should the Thought of Eternity cast us Oh infinitely rich and amazing Perfection of Being Life and Blessedness What can be worthy of our Thoughts but thy self onely What are all the Creatures of this World compar'd with thee but despicable and even to be abhorr'd Nothings Why do we not always gaze with humblest and most astonishing yet most delightful and ravishing admiration upon thee If we could stand near and behold Angelical Glories and Heights not as thy Servants here have done in Bodily unfitness but in the Freedom of Spirits and then compare with thy infinitely surmounting Glory we should even disdain while yet we honour and value them as thy Creatures of the highest Order as Thrones and Dominions under thee to interrupt our Adorations of thee to worship them and see what reason they have to cover their Faces before thee and that thou mayest charge the loftiest Seraph with Folly Their Longeve State would shrink into a Moment old comparing it with thy never-beginning Eternity and that Being of theirs which compar'd with Mortality seems so substantial would appear if brought near to thee but a Shadow which thy Being casts upon them at the highest but a Beam from thy Splendour Let our Souls never cease beholding and contemplating thee till we lose our selves and All things till we find all again in thy most Blessed and Eternal self in thy Son the substantial Image of thy Eternity in thy Spirit eternally breathing from and resting in thy self Yet let us put that Value upon our selves that thou hast put upon us in communicating with us such a Beam of thy Eternity in making us Spirits in resolving us for an unchangeable and unalterable State 2. This teaches us the Vanity Folly and even Ridiculousness of Atheistical Scoffers that dream thus Why did not God create the World sooner Why did his Wisdom Power Goodness sleep so many Ages ere it began to manifest it self and make the World As if Eternity had Sooner and Later as if that infinitely extended unbounded changeless State both backward and forward arising to us immediately and necessarily from the consideration of God could be call'd to account by the Measures of Time If the World had been Millions of Years older than it is there had still been an Eternity before it A Being with whom a thousand years are but as yesterday when it is past Nor is there any thing more requisite in Time but that the Creatures of it should run the Race set them by the Infinite Creator and so fix in their unchangeable Condition 3. We should often reason with our selves We are made for this unchangeable endless State and if it be not Happiness how then can we endure it this stable never-altering State We find now all Confinement though not to Pain but onely to one Posture to one Place to one Company to one Action tedious this is because we find not a perfect enjoyment of Good in them We are even weary of Pleasures because they are but thin and shallow Even of those things that at the first we wish our selves a Perpetuity in we afterwards grow weary and they are tiresom to us because we come suddenly to all that is in them Divine Things are burdensom to us because though they have endless Delights yet our Faculties are not suited nor raised enough to them Nay those things that are grateful to the Sensual Appetite yet if they surcharge it are not its Pleasure but its great Disease O therefore how little shall we be able to
the Soul quick of apprehension that presently enlarges much further upon it and many Instances there are of those who have cut their own way to Knowledge and such a one as hath been altogether untrodden before them Notwithstanding this the advantage of Instruction is evident and most evident in that part of Knowledge which concerns us towards God the Knowledge of his gracious Intentions towards us and our Duty to him wherein Divine Revelation hath been always the first and is ever the most sure and undoubted Guide Yet even in this the Spirit of Man is the Candle of the Lord For God doth not that he may make known himself create any new Understanding but applies himself in Grace to his first Creation the Soul of Man of which there is no abolition by Divine Illumination but as the Scripture speaks of the Sun the Light of it grows seven-fold The Candle that burnt dim and was even choak'd up is trimm'd and becomes Light on all sides and sends out its Beams from every part The Sum then is this The Soul of Man is the same Candle of the Lord whose Natural Power of Understanding is rais'd and made more clear by the Irradiation of Instruction whether the Power be an innate Force of Trying and Judging of Things by it self as it is a Faculty able to try and judge by the Nature of its Being or by some implanted Sentiments given to it with its Being or by Maxims to be collected by it self through the ministery and mediation of Sense However these things be it is always of the Nature of Understanding that there be a Resentment and Feeling of the agreeableness of Truth to it self There must be a Knowing in its own Spirit by every Intelligence the Reasonableness and Verity of the Things propos'd or there can be no Understanding Even Faith it self is an Intellectual that is an Explicite not an Implicite Act else it would be but a meer childish Memory of what hath been receiv'd as Catechism But all true Acts of Understanding have a Taste and Relish and what is propos'd to Mind must have a Gustfulness to it Knowledge and Faith not at all differing in this but onely that in things of Knowledge the Understanding arrives at that Knowledge or at least acquiesces in it upon Grounds more its own in things of Faith by Assurances more out of it self yet having Instruments of its own for the acceptation of such when so offer'd Characters and Tests within it self of what is offer'd whether it be worthy to be believ'd Resentments within it self of Pleasure or Trouble according to the Quality of what it hath receiv'd when so offer'd To draw all this that hath been spoken to what is mainly to be intended that is That the Understanding is the Candle of the Lord especially lighting us to himself Let us therefore inquire after some Principles that are Standards in the great Concernments we have with God which whether they are settled in the Soul by the Hand that created it or do immediately result from the Observation of Things without improved by the Mind running through its own Circuits and Trains of Reason concerning them or whether it is led into them by the Instructions God is still giving into the World or whether all these concur to their establishment in the heart of Man yet they are such as are universally consented in and are the Foundation of Religious Practice and also such a Receptacle for supernatural Revelation that there it may be tasted acknowledged and savoured as Divine with these as with a Helm the great Governour of Spirits turns them whither soever he listeth either for Conviction or Conversion Repentance and Reformation or as he pleases to Self-condemnation And all the boisterousness of their contrary affections are overrul'd and controll'd hereby Such Principles I esteem these Four Princip 1 That there is a God The Soul cannot move but it acknowledges God a Soul cannot look up but it sees God and this Principle in the Soul is a great Light God hath so carved himself into Understanding that there cannot be an Understanding in Motion and Activity but there must be a sight a conception an apprehension of such a Being as God as the Eye cannot open but it sees the Light or if it seems to lye hid yet upon the least collision as between the Flint and Steel upon any conflict of Thought with it self or with the Propose of this Truth from without this Light breaks forth It is manifest in men because God hath shewed it to them Rom. 1. 19. that is In the very making them Souls he hath set it in them In the first solemn action of the Understanding the acknowledgment of a Supreme Being rebounds and leaps up to them the Soul no sooner sees any thing by inward sense but it sees God the Author as a Man that sees the impression in the Wax presently thinks of the Seal Many Men endeavour to reject and disannul this Principle but they cannot deface it much less wear out the apprehension And when the Soul hath considered further and more vehemently the more it reasons the more it confirms and settles it self in the assurance of the Divine Being even when it endeavours to Reason out this Belief of it it prevails the more And besides what it hath within concerning God The invisible Things V. 20. of him from the Creation of the World are clearly seen being understood by the Things that are made and done even his eternal Power and Godhead So that the Soul can neither consider without nor within but it sees God Princip 2 That we have a Soul Many have violently oppressed this Sense thus far as to deny a Soul a Spirit distinct in its Essence yet they cannot but acknowledge a vehemency of Motion an Activity that teaches us more than the Beasts of the Field Every man must say There is a Spirit in Man above any other Creature a force and excellency of Motion the Motion of Reason and Understanding No Man can stir but he finds There is a Breath of the Almighty that gives him Vnderstanding Now these two Principles as they do mutually enlighten one another so they give great and illustrious light to all holy Practice they enlighten themselves for he that apprehends a God whose very Being is absolute Perfection retires out of all things bodily and weak to conceive aright of him and find him out and when he is thus understood the Notion of an inferiour and subordinate Spirit that yet hath a likeness to him is easie And whoever finds out in himself a diviner part than Body hath an easie ascent to God in whom all the lesser Perfections of his own Being are transcended and at the height And how do they both shine upon holy Practice seeing God is the great both Exemplar and Argument of all Goodness And no Man can suppose himself to have received such great powers of Understanding for mean much
strongly agitated impressions of enlightened Conscience upon it But this is not accounted of with God who sees and trys the Heart and knows the ground and motion of all There is also that unworthier way of the Heart when meerly to contrive its easier passage to sensual Enjoyments it only counterfeits some agreeable actions to the higher Soul and pays its Vows to those ignoble ends that it may have some greater advantages to Voluptuousness Riches or Honour which is the grossest kind of Hypocrisie On the other side there are many Infestations and troublesom Inrodes of sensuality upon a man that are truly preponderated by the Diviner Principle that yet do not debase him in account with God such as the Apostles Thorn in the Flesh as it is interpreted 2 Cor. 12. 7. by some and the Law of the Members in contest against the Law of the Mind that yet doth not prevail into the Character of a Man whose Heart is upright with God The keeping then of the Heart is of greatest moment and it must be our care that the Treasure and Temper of it be good our observation must be ever awake upon all that passes out of it that we may take its true Character Our endeavour must be earnest to reform all we find out of order to get it swayed by Holiness to stop the evil Motions of it till we have so discouraged them as to alter the very Temper of it to incline it continually upon all holy and good Actions till we have endeared them to it to take heed of all Proffers and Proposes to it that we may not suffer it to be tempted to guard it to offer it to all holy and gracious Converses to chastise it continually in all it does ill to encourage it in all it does well and that we may do all this we must devocare mentem supremam è Coelo we must bring that highest Mind enlightened by Grace into the Government and Command of it and detrudere Corpus in imas Terras we must thrust down Body the love of which seduces and corrupts the Heart as low and as much into subjection as may be and above all we must commit it continually unto God for the safety and all the power of even this Supreme Mind is the Free Princely Spirit of Ps 51. 12. God establishing it and always joining it self with it as wickedness is kept a-foot by being acted by the Spirit of wickedness This Heart now let us consider It is always a beating the Pulses of it are every minute and every where the motion of it is vehement as Fire to what a boundless measure of sin and iniquity will it rise if suffered But to what vast degrees of good might it also rise if its Motions were improved to good And so consequently to what degrees of Happiness or Misery may it rise or fall We must use therefore all our care to be always with it that we may guide its Motion that in respect to Evil we may restrain and suppress its Motion as we do that of Fire that in relation to Good we may promote and advance it that in regard of it self we may always provide it enough of true good to feed upon that it may not inflame nor break it self by grinding it self Yea we must take care of the very Rest of it for even that is accounted equal to Action Rest in any sinful Action till we have removed from it by Repentance is a continuation of that Action even as Gods Rest from Creation yet upholding and preserving all Things is expressed by Working as our Saviour speaks My Father worketh hitherto and I work So men uphold sin by their acquiescence in it without Repentance though they do not proceed to new Acts. The nature of the Soul being now thus far expressed It remains as the top and sum of all to shew that it is made with great and large Receipts for Happiness or Misery Whether we consider it immediately in the substantial Nature or whether we consider it in the Faculties and Motions of it 1. In the immediate substantial Nature of it as hath been already made plain It is immortal made to continue for ever Whatever melts away from its misery the misery of that is not considerable If a Prince would put an Assassinate to death with an extreme but leisurely torment and he dyes at the very first approach of it he deceives his punishment So that Happiness is not desirable that smothers the Being that should enjoy it by the greatness of it self but the Soul made for For Ever is great in either of these the Happiness of it infinitely desirable the Misery of it most formidable because it can abide and survive in either 2. It is Immaterial and of such a Fineness and Purity of Substance that it pierces far into all Reasons of Joy or Trouble and is penetrated by them The sympathies of it in Happiness or Misery are sudden and universal as the Light spreads it self through the Air in a moment it receives in all parts the Light the Sun gives and instantly thus the Soul the Favour or Indignation the Smiles or Frowns of God when they indeed break out upon it it is most sensible presently sensible all over and most intimately sensible But of these things I have already spoken Let us further consider the Faculties themselves whereby it is fully fitted to take in Happiness or Misery and to execute them in it self The Faculties indeed compared with Gods Favour or Displeasure are but the Instruments and Organs God gives the Breath and the Power yet they are fearfully and wonderfully made by God to these great ends both in their Capacities and Activities 1. The Understanding is that great Receipt of all Principles of Light and Truths as may conduce either way and this is such a capacity as must receive whatever God offers so plainly to it as he will have it received Thus God manifested himself in the Hearts of the Gentiles however prejudiced against the Knowledge of the true God they could not resist it but that they must needs be without Excuse For that which might be known of God was still manifest in them for God had shewed it to them So the work of the Law was written in their Hearts and they shewed it by their thoughts accusing or excusing and this they could not help A Table must receive what is written upon it and in the accounts of being Happy or Miserable upon these Principles of Truth through the Apologies or Accusations of Conscience and the Motions of the Favour or Displeasure of God upon them the case is the very same Now this Understanding first entertains and then lodges Truth and when that Truth is enlivened and stirred up sutable impressions of Pleasure or Grief are made and from thence stream down with all their force into the Rest of the Soul the Understanding being indeed so much the Soul that all the rejoicings and complaints
of it are presently heard and resented through the whole and the Soul so much it self under several names that what is in one Faculty of it is immediately in all if the impression be indeed to the life saving only that since the degeneracy of Mankind there remains as I have already shewn a single Light in the higher Understanding that may be refused in its dictates by the rest of the Soul Suppose then the Understanding beyond the possibility of Resistance convinced by such a manner of Demonstration that it cannot but receive of those things that are the true and perfect Reasons of Joy or Sorrow and in their perfection also the Soul must needs be in the same manner affected it is now when we plainly and undeniably find our selves within the embraces of any great good or the gripes of Evil but with this difference that so much as the perceptiveness of the Understanding surmounts at any time or the Good and Evil themselves surpass so much must the Joy or Grief surmount and surpass also Although therefore it be true that the multitude of Men and Women are but half perswaded of those Things wherein Heaven Hell consist yet this is only because God is not yet pleased to excite the Understanding after that powerful manner of Conviction he can use but still every man is at the Mercy of Divine Power and Pleasure when he will do it He may do it now but in Eternity he will do it and with such a clear representation as rises up into immediate Bliss or Woe 2. The next Faculty to be considered is the Great Will that is the Spring of all Affections and their Motions How endless are the Motions of this Will With what a great Covetousness doth it covet Good and how long What an immense aversation and abhorrence of Evil hath it Let then this Will be denyed Good or pressed upon with Evil or let it be gratified with Good and secured from Evil what either joy or pain will follow Yet further Let us weigh the Active part of both these Faculties and then the Enjoyment or Suffering will rise much higher 1. First then apprehend but Thought mightily set on work which is the Understanding in its natural Motion and if this be but earnestly moved though it be without tormenting matter yet how painful is it When there is not an Oyl a pleasantness and sweetness dropping down upon Thought it is like stretching the Joints and Sinews of the Body by immoderate motion which if moderate would have been refreshing or like a great blow that carries the whole force along with it and falls into the Air only upon which all the weight of the Body is ready to follow with a violence most ungrateful to Nature When a man hath a multitude of Thoughts he had need have the comforts of God to delight his Soul A Man had need have good bounds for his Thoughts else he loses himself in the Wild of them he had need of good matter to feed them with else they inflame like Millstones feeding on themselves make but this good a Man may think For Ever and it will easily appear he may be happy or miserable For Ever For let these thoughts be such as interest a Man in the Reasons of Torment Pain and Horrour and how grievous may be his state What experience may every one have of the trouble and turmoil of the anguish of Thoughts a Man may lye easier upon a Rack than upon some disquieting vexatious Thoughts On the other side how sweet and pleasant are Thoughts full of the Ravishment of Divine Consolations How delightful is the entertainment they give without tediousness or satiety 2. Imagination is something beyond Thought for Thought runs upon things nearer to what they are in themselves but Imagination makes them something beyond themselves or aggravates according to their true circumstances with greatest life Indeed Imagination cannot exceed in Divine or Everlasting Things yet it is of use to bring in and represent to and fill the Thoughts it reflects things with a multiplicity of Images like the Parelii of the Sun and stays those Images with great Effect and so it is of great use in Comfort or Discomfort 3. The Memory which doth revive and call things together and present them anew to the Thoughts and Imaginations summoning and congregating and staying Things their due time for consideration This is a great Instrument too of Happiness or Misery I will remember the Years of the Right Hand of the most High was the Relief of and Recovery of Davids Spirit Remembring my affliction and Lam. 3. 19 20. my misery the wormwood and the Gall my Soul hath them still in remembrance and is bowed in me Remembring this Vale of Tears exalts the lightsome state of the Holy Hill of God and Remembring the Good things of this Life an inflammation of misery 4. The Conscience is a high and most curious Engine fitted by God to these ends What Joy like the Testimony of Conscience good and serene The very office of which is to applaud the Soul and give it greatest Joy in its acceptance with God and likeness to him and on the other side to make acclamations to the Justice of God and condemn the guilty and impure Soul within it self to its greatest horrour and amazement Come we now to the Active part of the Will that is the Affections which are but the Will boiling up with great love to its Happiness or abhorrence of its Misery and according as the Affections are stirred with desire of Good and flight from Evil so are they either unexpressibly gratified in an union with that Good and the utmost distance of the Evil or enraged with the despair of the Good that is at an infinite remove from its enjoyment and detestation of the Evil so abhorred yet pressing and forcing on it self to be endured from which different Motion of the Affections spring plainly and sensibly those different conditions of Happiness or Misery Lastly When the Understanding hath been both the Theatre and Spectator of all these Motions it comes to examine over again whether there because for them and when upon strictest enquiry it finds the cause deserves the whole that hath passed and being by the Divine Power held close to this Observation it then passes it self into that grand Act of the Soul we call Judgment upon which all the powers of the Soul either everlastingly triumph and shout in loud praises to infinite Mercy or the Veins of Conscience open and bleed afresh and as by a most undoubted authority the Heart renews and continues its everlasting Plaints The fundamental capacities of the Soul for Happiness and Misery being now settled I come now to discourse the correspondent fundamental accounts of that Happiness or Misery as they are united with the Soul and its actuations of it self And these first in relation to its eternal condition 1. The first and most essential account of Happiness
is the Favour of God in Christ his Frown Wrath and Rebukes are the most fundamental reason of Misery His Favour and reconciled Face on one side his Wrath for sin on the other We are not able yet to understand the absolute dependence of the Soul hereupon because the present course of Providence allows men in their seeming subsistencies upon the Comfort they receive from the Creatures of this World God himself in the mean time retiring from their Observation But this is certain the smiles of God unexpressibly enliven encourage and bear up the Soul his Rebukes daunt deject and amaze it However these are now for the most part closely conveyed under the appearances of the Creatures for us or against us yet God is indeed under them but it is much more plain and manifest in the more immediate angry or gracious touches of God upon the Conscience and will be far more evident in the state of the World to come His loving kindness is better than life and when he with rebukes corrects Man for iniquity he maketh his beauty to consume away like a moth whatsoever seems most flourishing being so blasted withers immediately All the horrours we have heard or read of have received their sting from this Wrath and all Consolations from his Favour for in his Favour is life the Eyes of all Creatures are upon God Every created Thing in its proper way turns its Eye upon the Creator much more the Soul the Spirit immortal turns upon God the Father of Spirits that it may live It is not consistent with the Glory of God that he should allow any Thing to be Happiness but Himself and his Favour Even all the inward Rectitude of Mind cannot be this Happiness immediately For as if there were a Goodness of which Gods Nature were not the Rule and Measure and that Will which always stands just with that Nature that would be above God and so God would not be the Supreme Righteousness that is Not God So if there were any implanted Happiness in any Creature and that it needed not God as to the Essence of its Happiness God would not be God to it or if its happiness were in any Thing out of it self and not in God that would be a God to it This Consideration presses to this That Happiness is in the Light of Gods Countenance shining out upon the Rational Soul There is nothing necessary as the Fountain of Happiness but God nothing can supply his place In thy presence is fulness of Joy at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore with thee is the Fountain of Life In thy Light shall we see Light but if thou hidest thy Face we are troubled if banished and driven from thy everlasting presence we are for ever miserable for whom can we have in Heaven but thee and there is none upon Earth besides thee 2. Subordinately to this there can be no peace but in the Heart made truly and inwardly Good besides all storms from without there is an estuation a tide from corruption within full of trouble and vexation Every sin loved and delighted in is a secret hollow where an Earthquake is bred it is a wound that secretly disquiets it All impure Affections Passions of Dishonour in the Soul make it like the troubled Sea that cannot rest Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost make their repose in Righteousness The effect of Righteousness is quietness and assurance Isa 32. 17. for Ever Even as the Favour of God never embraces any but a holy Soul so hath he ordained that the Evil and corrupt Heart should be in it self unpeaceful and full of turmoil within both in regard of the foulness and deformity very horrible to the Thoughts whenever understood as also in regard of the great distraction and horrible convulsion the mind is forced into when it comes to any thing of true Sense 3. The actuation or gracious motion of the Favour of God towards the Soul and the actuation of his Holy Spirit upon the Soul made inwardly Holy and Good are highly necessary for the making the Spirit of a Man truly sound and vigorous in encountring Evil happy and comfortable in it self for else the Soul may be becalmed if these Motions of Grace from God lye still and not able to bear up it self And therefore Men sincerely good are often in great discomposures when God withdraws himself from them In the cloudings of his Face they are troubled in retreats of his Grace not exciting them they languish and cannot stir up themselves to take hold of him and then their sinful Calm ends in trouble On the other side the reasons of horrour and amazement are not seen by senseless and secure Men till Conscience enlightened discovers them and the flamings of Divine Displeasure make them boil up These then are the true substantial solid and natural Reasons of Happiness or Misery rejoycing or tribulation to the Soul and the Soul is plainly the Sense of them And as for the lesser and smaller interests of this present World and the life of it the observation of these two following Principles will determine and state the case of the soul in relation to them and so that it will further appear that all the touches of Good and Evil upon Man are originally and principally in his Soul 1. The first is That if God is pleased to let out his Favour in any of these outward Things and to moderate the desires and motions of the Soul so that there is a proportion between those motions and desires and the condition in which a Man is there is nothing further of necessity to him he is well enough But whenever the desires run out beyond the measures and proportions of his Condition it is with great disquiet and incredible restlesness of Mind though the thing beyond what he has be but small in it self and nothing compared with what is enjoyed When Haman had that abundance of Esth 5. 13. Glory yet his desires running out to a very little thing beyond what he had a very nothing to it the obeisance of poor Mordecai yet it made a nothing of all he had for it all availed him nothing 2. When the goodness of God is pleased to restrain outward Evils in fit degrees and to preserve the mind from ingaging it self by too close reflexions upon any disadvantage or to bend it so close upon better considerations to lessen and make tolerable that disadvantage the Spirit of a Man thus guarded will bear any infirmity but when the Spirit is let out to a continual pondering and aggravating to it self a very small Counter-accident and the Reasons that should abate it are hidden and carryed off from it a very little thing becomes unappeasably vexatious and the Spirit so wounded is it self its own insupportable burden Who can when God gives a sting to such a Cross bear it And when the Spirit of a Man runs forcibly upon it that Man may turn back and
recoil with highest Rage and Cruelty upon himself As we see Ahitophel though but 2 Sam. 17. 23. an ordinary thing befell him yet his Spirit being wounded with it he went and hanged himself whereas David 1 Sam. 30. 6. besieged with outward Distress on every hand and finding the surges of Grief within yet was upheld by Divine Reasons He at the same time both diverted his own Spirit from the Evil qualified the Evil it self and fortified his mind encouraging himself in the Lord his God Thus all Contentation and Pleasure Enjoyment and Happiness and the contrary Discontent Vexation Suffering and Misery both here and in Eternity are laid in the disposes of God upon the Spirits of Men filling those capacities he hath therein contrived with such infusions of his Favour or Displeasure as in Wisdom Righteousness and Goodness he hath and shall determine to them and also putting themselves upon such Exercise and Motion and that upon such principles within themselves as must perfectly own acknowledge and agree with those his Divine Attributes and the determinations he makes upon the Souls of men according to them Yet there is always this difference between this present state and the things pertaining properly to it and that of Eternity and the things proper to that that the former are altogether indifferent and nothing more needs but that the Mind be in an equal posture towards them But the things of an eternal consideration are of a perfect necessity so that Happiness and Misery will be for ever in act according to them Upon these Grounds thus laid we may judge of many cases of ordinary and evident experience that concern both Natural and Religious Affairs 1. We see some Men in a low and mean condition with a little of the World much more contented than those in a higher the desires of the one being no larger than their Condition but the minds of the other running out beyond their greater Estate from whence it is evident that man liveth not by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God nor by the abundance of any thing they have but by God giving a suitableness between the Desire and the Enjoyment when God lets out the desire beyond that all else is as nothing at all 2. Again Some men bear far greater Crosses with much more ease than others do far lesser the Spirit of one man centring upon the grief and inconvenience and the other gliding off from it 3. The generality of men having their minds level and but equal at best with their Bodies are very sensible of all the disadvantages and inconveniences of Body Some more heroick and singular persons are far above them and little concerned in them and some strangely insensible and unactive in their Souls bear them without any more than the just pressure upon the Body requires lumps of Clay their Souls are so sheathed in their Bodies that they discover no Soul give no sign of a Spirit they live and dye like Beasts they bear all with the strength of sensitive Nature they shew no Spirit at all till at last they split into innumerable and endless Complaints and Crys except we suppose a loathsom stupidity and fearful darkness of utter want of Consolation and Enjoyment to be the second death of such persons On the other side Some that have great force of Mind and yet are deeply affected to Body exasperate and inflame any bodily Distemper and aggravate it by their terrible impatiences and the same thing falls out to them in Infamy Disgrace Loss or great Disappointment according to the measure business and activity of the Spirit about them so is the thing great or small in mens own account and resentment 4. From an Over-Ballance of Mind it comes to pass that upon several accounts Men become wholly inattendant to their Bodies Some separating themselves with desire Prov. 18. 1. to intermeddle with all Knowledge have been wholly careless of all things else Others ingaged in motions of great Valour and Enterprise have so little valued the Fate of a present life that in the heat of Valour and Fight they have not so much as felt the wounds they have received their Minds being as it were separated from their Bodies Some plunged in deep sorrow and trouble have without the least relenting and compassion done the greatest cruelty upon themselves Some under great disappointment of their Designs have revenged it with greatest rigour and resolution upon their own Flesh as Scaevola with an undaunted constancy burnt the hand that missed in killing Porsenna and so deprived him of the Glory he so earnestly designed himself in that Action Others touched with the Conscience of a great Offence through the vehemency of that have thought all other pains of Nature worthy only of neglect as Cranmer held that hand in the Flame that had signed his Recantation Yea very Debauchees in the Risque of their Vices though their name even their Flesh and their Body have been consumed mourn not while they are in their Carrier but at last they are so restless and importunate in wickedness plotting and performing it doing it with both hands that they have no leisure to think of any thing else and are afraid indeed to offer any such leisure to themselves and to avoid it are always driving on in wickedness they prolong their days Eccl. 8. 12. in and as it seems by it thus far that their earnestness bears them up so that they do not fall into reflexions upon the sad end of it their Spirits are carried so whole and together to it that they have no interruption And if their pursuit be crossed and vexed with hindrances and contrariety of accidents it becomes very outragious and is a continual sickness for so it is said Amnon was 2 Sam. 13. 2. sick for his Sister Thamar All these and multitudes of the like are plain Instances of the Mind governing our Contentment or Discontent in these Affairs and however it inslave it self as it seems to the Body and its satisfactions yet still it is indeed the Vigour Force and mighty action of this Mind that is ever superiour when it doth most debase it self and it is not the Body of Flesh but it self in that Body or that Flesh or as the Apostle calls it a Fleshly Mind that thus designs and acts with a high hand for its own satisfactions And if it be thus in things wherein it seems to be fleshly how much more in those things wherein Body hath no Feeling no Interest From these Grounds we may also discern the several states of Men in Religion 1. The great Insensibleness of it in the minds of most men makes them without any desire or motion after it they see no beauty in it why they should desire it 2. Hereupon also though Men have the greatest reason of trouble in relation to their state towards God yet having no reflections they are wholly untroubled
and concealed The similitude with himself he at first enstamped them with shall be plainly discovered It shall then be seen what Understandings Wills Affections Consciences he hath given them and that a Soul is not so small a Thing as it seems to be in the Worlds History of Beings And these two things are very subservient to the discovery of one another the Excellency of God and the Valuableness of the Soul for God revealing himself and his own Holiness and Happiness in their full Beauty and Greatness the Soul that was shrivell'd up in ignorance of true Good opens and stretches out it self as the Eye to the Sun or as the Appetite to the most gustful or delicious meat and when the Soul is drawn out to its own Largeness then will it know the vanity of all things besides God and that its great Affections and Desires cannot be satisfied by any thing Lower or Lesser than he is but shall feel the extremities of want the necessities of inraged and unsatisfied desire in the loss of him and the great Motions of Mind will make fiercest reflections on the Evil of Sin and the Righteous Displeasure of God But on the other side Happiness in the Favour and Enjoyment of God shall flow in upon the extended Desires and Affections and the excellency of the Mind shall adore and admire the greatness of Divine Glory and the blessedness of enjoying it 3. God hath resolved upon Degrees of Happiness and Punishment Now the more the Soul is enlightened and its Faculties heightened the more capable it is of Glory Thus one Star differs from another in Glory having a greater Orb for the reception of Light having a purer and quicker Light So also the more the Faculties are enlarged the more capable they are of Woe and Punishment and to be beaten with more stripes The more therefore any one finds his Faculties now quickened and opened the more he may apprehend and so be the more excited to fear the danger and lay hold on the Happiness 4. Seeing all depends upon the Actuation either of the Mercy and Goodness of God or his Indignation from hence appears both the Freeness of his Grace and Mercy in Christ in the glorification of his Saints and the Liberty of his Indignation and Wrath in the Punishment of wicked men For though all things that God does in these things are contrived into the greatest Conveniences and Aptness to their several Ends yet if he did not continually move them in whom all things live move and have their Beings that do live and move or have any being all would lye still and there is no other Power that could excite them for who can move before him or besides him seeing he moves all himself and he who is moved only by himself and from himself can receive no Motion from any other The Apostle therefore thus expresses both sides of these things What if God willing to shew his Wrath and Rom. 9. 22. make his power known and that he might make known the Riches of his Mercy So then he hath mercy on V. 18. whom he will have mercy and whom he will he hardeneth These things being thus fixed let us further enlarge upon them by way of Consectary And first we are led by them to these three Petitions 1. Let us pray that God would keep and contain our Desires and Reflexions within due bounds that we may not exceed our Condition by unruly Appetite nor pore too much upon the Disadvantages and Vexations of our Condition For if our Souls are let out above due measure how full of Torment and Agony may we be He fashions the hearts of Men alike or to an equality to their Condition for he as the Potter moulds the Clay and fits it to this or that Figure The Father of Spirits forms the Spirit of Man within him and he doth it in Mercy or Judgment as he pleases yet with righteousness and plenty of Justice Most necessary it is therefore that into his Hand we at all times commend our Spirits not only when we are going out of the Body into those unknown Regions but while we are here in the Body that we may be kept within due Measures Further It is most necessary to pray That God would feed us with Food Prov. 30. 8. 1 Chron. 4. 10. convenient for us that he would bless us indeed and enlarge our Border to just proportions and that he would keep away Evil from us in such a degree that it may not grieve us piercing us too deep that we may not fall into Temptations murmurings and discontents against God into Rages and Fury against our selves This is to bless us indeed when our Minds and our Condition are equally poiz'd when Divine Providence proportions our Condition to our Minds and our Minds to our Condition When God does not thus preserve Mens Souls how do they fall as Saul under an Evil Spirit forsaken of God They fall first upon the edge and point of their own edged pointed Thoughts and then upon their Sword And thus it would be with all Men did not God sweeten their Spirits with his Blessings of Goodness as with the joys of Harvest and sustain them with his benign Influences as with the gladness of Corn Oyl and Wine God gives us many Documents of the force and vehemency of our Souls in the examples of some transported with Divine Joy even to Ravishment another falling into greatest Agonies of Mind and Thought in the dark and sad part of whose condition we are not to think that they had greater sins or sharper thoughts than others but they are our Examples and teach us what we should be if God did not qualifie us now and what we shall be in Eternity if not reconciled to God and thereby also to our selves we shall fall with greatest Fury and Rage upon our selves For it is but a little thing what a Man executes with his own Hand upon his Body now in comparison of those Rages wherewith he will fall upon himself in Eternity 2. We have need to pray That God would draw out our Souls now that we might see them and know them for we do not enough understand our Souls we consider them not because we lye still But why should it be hard to conceive That as Mens Souls are now awakened by Study Observation Action so much more by entring into another World the most stupid Soul may be awakened being let loose out of the Body It should be therefore our most earnest Prayer that God would open us to our selves that we may not make provision for our selves only as so little as we seem to be and lest when we come to dye we fall into those horrible amazes that will arise from being mistaken in our selves but that seeing and knowing what we are we may make so great a provision for our selves as our case requires and so not be for ever miserable through our not so much
represented to our sense and however the display of these things may pass into the Body and be all seen there yet we know the most excessive pleasures of Body interrupt the proper motions of Soul in which true Happiness or Misery lye for neither is a man drenched in an irrational pleasure nor tormented and he knows not why but there is an orderly motion a sense of sin and guilt of the supreme Justice of God in his righteous Executions of Judgment in Happiness an adoring of Infinite Grace and Mercy a Rational Taste of Holy and Divine Pleasures I shall now as a Conclusion draw up all this Discourse into these practical Conclusions flowing from the whole 1. Hereby I understand I have an immortal and everlasting Soul to take care of we look upon our selves as Flesh and Blood but we do not consider these Immortal Spirits and their great Powers Understanding Imagination Will Conscience Affections and the motion of these to be Everlasting We do not examine whether our Souls have a true Health Peace and Safety and a good Provision made for them Whether our Consciences are quiet and upon good grounds Whether our Affections are purified and holy For a man to consider his Soul thus is indeed to consider a mans self What shall it Luc. 9. 2â— profit a man if he gain the whole World and lose himself The Soul is a true Self and how dreadful will the mistake appear to men who have counted the Body and the Interests of that the only Self and this other true the greatest Self starts out A Self that now lyes under as many Covers as a Body under a multitude of Garments and so is concealed But then it breaking out and not being provided for that great principle of self preservation finding now its greatest Object will force a man to cry out with a most dreadful Ejulation and Complaint Oh this false Self that I have laboured for how hath it deceived me My very Self I never thought of and so have lost it What shall I give now in exchange for this my true Self 2. I hereby understand I am made for Holiness as the true Peace and Greatness of my Spirit for a converse with God for an attendance upon him for an observation of his Favour and Countenance towards me and that herein is the Life of my Spirit and on the other side I am very apt to be tempted to sin and drawn away from God to live at a distance from him to lose him and herein at last will be found the Torment and Hell of Souls and therefore I have greatest reason to be awakened about these things and earnestly to pray to God that he would put me into a high and vigorous action concerning them and to be extremely unsatisfied when I find my self insensible concerning them and therefore to labour earnestly to be in a good state and condition in relation to them 3. I hereby understand I am made and designed and shall certainly be unexpressibly Happy or Miserable to extremity and who can say this to himself without highest concern upon his own Soul If any one should tell us we were ordained to be one of these extraordinarily happy and prosperous or deplorably unhappy and were about to read our Fate or Doom to us and that we had considerable Reasons to believe such a one who would not with a most trembling suspense of mind wait what it should be When any one is to receive the Issue of his Cause from a Judge or Jury how high and impatient is his expectation But how much more should our Thoughts wait for this Issue of Things and God hath placed it in the motions of these our own Thoughts for when they move enlightened with his Countenance cleansed and annointed with his Grace ennobled with his Spirit delighted with his Consolations this is Heaven begun this is Happiness growing up When they are base for want of his Spirit impure with Lust and dishonourable Affections full of rancour and bitterness and all spotted and stained with guilt this is Hell in the Foundations of it laid And however my Soul lye still now yet when I see how many things draw out mens Souls even in this Life Education better Converse Solitude some great danger or loss in the world higher Condition Sickness some notable Discourse as in Foelix how much more must I needs think the change into Eternity will do it and therefore no silence of my Soul now can encourage me upon serious consideration to be careless of it 4. I hereby understand my unspeakable dependence upon the Grace of God and his Free Favour and hence learn to humble my self before him to nothing seeing my Happiness consists in those free Beams of his Favour in the light of his Countenance in his setting my Soul into a gracious Motion by his Spirit and raising the Motions of my Spirit to a high communion with him in Bliss for seeing I can so little yield my self the accounts of Happiness and receive them all from him and can so little move my self upon them when they are offered by him I am inconceivably bound and beholden to him both to open the Fountain of Life that is himself to me and to move me by his Spirit that I may move On the other side If he leaves me to my self what Evils shall I run into and treasure up torment and sharpen stings against my self by it and how can he inflame my Soul with his Indignation and to what degrees he pleases both now and for ever For if he hide the face of his Mercy who can behold him What Reason have I therefore to reverence him with Godly Fear and to acknowledge him with greatest dependency I humbly therefore say as the Apostle not only by the Grace of God I am what I am but by the Grace of God alone I hope what I hope to be 5. I hereby understand what a great necessity I have of Jesus Christ my Lord the Son of the Wisdom Glory Power and Holiness of God the Son of his Love for he is the Attonement His Blood offered by the Eternal Spirit is the most excellent Thing in Heaven or Earth and that only which can purge the Conscience the most excellent and divine Instrument of Pacification with God and within the Conscience it self Through him the Holy Spirit is given by him is there an entrance into that Holy of Holies that Heaven within the Veil for as the value of Souls for which our Lord gave himself exalts his Redemption the greatness of the Misery from which they are rescued the greatness of the Happiness to which they are exalted all glorifie the Saviour of Souls so do these Souls of a Nature so supreme require so great a Ransom and Mediator no lower no lesser a Price can countervail them and it argues them to be a Nature so supreme that so great a Mediator undertook so infinitely for them 6. Hereby I understand
the great and extreme Evil of sin for if the breaches and disorders of the Creation are so great arguments of the Evil of sin how much more the breaches the wounds the horrours of Conscience There had never been such a Thing as a wounded Spirit had it not been for sin There had been only perfect Peace Glory and Honour Happiness Pleasure Joy and Blessedness of Spirit sin introduced Debasement and Misery 7. I hereby understand what a worthless inconsiderable Thing the World is if truly estimated because it is neither that which can be or ought to be the Happiness of a Man because not the Happiness of the Soul and if God be pleased to raise any Soul above it what can it be now Indeed a Man may be quiet with it for a time but the Soul set upon God and Christ and Eternal things is set where it may rest for Ever and it may be so highly set and raised upward that it may have no need of the World nor of any thing in it for in the greatest want of it even now in this life the Spirit born up by God and Christ by sense of and interest in him and Eternal Happiness will bear its infirmity but because this World can do nothing to help in the amazements of Conscience in the Agonies of Death in the Terrours of Eternity wherein can it serve us But Godliness hath the promise 1 Tim. 4. 8. of this life and of that which is to come Now our meat and drink may be to do Gods will much more will it be the perfect enjoyment of Eternity This World then and the life we live in it is only of use to make friends of that we may be received into everlasting Habitations to sow to the Spirit with to cast this life and all the interests of it as a Corn of Wheat into John 12. 24 25. the ground for except it dye into a higher and more excellent life it abides alone we know the utmost can be made of it it can never rise higher than it is and all that can be made of it the total account is but dying unhappy man but being thus sown it rises in a flourish much more excellent and brings forth fruit unto Eternal life 8. Hereby I understand the state of this World and of all men in it and their Motion even as I understand how the Happiness or Misery of Eternity lyes For when I think of Thoughts Memory Affections Conscience always and for ever in act and motion either upon the Consolations or Terrours of God and those Powers or Motions inwardly Good and Holy or Evil and Wicked so is Happiness or Misery So when I see in the World such an even poise as there is between the vigorous life of Grace and Comfort and the suppressions of it through so great concernedness either in the pleasures or afflictions of this present life in Good Men I herein see and understand God doth not call out the Spirit to those high and illustrious Motions of Grace that are proper to so excellent a state as Grace is and hence I conclude the strength and enjoyment of Good Men is not comparable to what it might be upon so excellent Principles Again On the other side when I see a like poise in the state of Evil Men between the Trouble and Disquiets of this World and the Pleasures of it between some secret Fears of a future State and the insensibleness of it I plainly apprehend the Patience of God preserves Men from those Horrours they are so every way capable of And when either of these Conditions are brought near to an agreement or full correspondence with those Principles upon which they are fixed that is to those Joys unspeakable and full of Glory or to those Woes and Agonies of Mind that cannot be eased they approach nearer to what they shall be For Ever And from both these I collect the certainty of a Future and Everlasting State 9. I hereby understand what it is to lose a Soul It is not to be discharged and acquitted from a Soul to be as the Beasts as the Israelites desired to be as the Heathens about them How glad would wicked men be at last if this could be if their Spirits might go downward if they could be rolled up into utter senselesness or become nothing if Rocks might fall upon them and the Mountains cover them But this cannot be Men cannot be Beasts though they desire it God hath known them above all the residue of this lower Creation and brings them to a reckoning so exact that none can be lost in this sense The number of Souls cannot be lessened or wanting The loss then of a Soul is to be lost from true Beauty Excellency and Goodness to have an abhorred Deformity so that they cannot endure to behold themselves who have lost the Image of God If ever any Man did recoil from himself beholding an ugliness where naturally should be a Beauty or did abhor himself being confounded with the sense of his own unworthy Actions the height hereof is in Hell both the Deformity and the Apprehension of it And this is one degree of the loss of a Soul its horrible degradation from it self Further It is to be lost from Life and Blessedness into an Eternity of Woe and Misery as a Man is lost that is taken Captive and made a Slave that is condemned to the Mines or Gallies to be for Ever the Captive of Justice the Slave of the Wrath and Justice of God This is the loss of a Soul and it is the greatest loss like the loss of the Eyes to the Body or the loss of Life it self in comparison of which Riches are nothing a loss that a Man would redeem with a thousand Worlds and the Pleasures of so many World 's heaped together and instead thereof undergo the severest mortification of many Ages of life and suffer Martyrdoms repeated without number that he might recover the lost Jewel his Soul And to conclude It is the worst way of losing by which a Soul is lost it is a losing it by sin and wickedness not like losing life in a Noble Cause wherein a Man perishes with Grandeur and Majesty Hoc tantùm nobile feci quòd perii Not so well as losing what we value by meer misfortune but as a Man that by Gaming and Debauchery loses his Estate or by Treason and abhorred wickedness loses both Life and Honour together There is no way of losing a Soul but by wickedness which makes it always a most accursed loss And they that are so lost are an abhorring of God Good Angels Holy Souls and even of themselves like the Carcases spoken of by Esay the Prophet Whose Worm bred out of themselves dyes not and the fire prepared to consume them is not quenched and they are for Ever an abhorring of all Flesh Lastly From these just Measures I have in the former Discourse given of a Soul I find