to be their Captain who led them into Canaan and miraculously conquered all the inhabitants and setled Israel in possession of the Land There they long remained under the government of a Chieftain called a Judge successively chosen by God himself Till at last they mutinied against that form of Government and desired a King like other Nations Whereupon God gave them a bad King in displeasure but next him he chose David a King of great and exemplary holiness in whom God delighted and made his Kingdom hereditary To David he gave a Son of extraordinary wisdom who by God's appointment built the famous Temple at Jerusalem yet did this Solomon by the temptation of his Wives to gratifie them set up Idolatry also in the land which so provoked God that he resolved to rend ten Tribes of the twelve out of his sons hand which accordingly was done and they revolted and chose a King of their own and only the Tribes of Juda and Benjamin adhered to the posterity of Solomon The wise Sentences of Solomon and the Psalms of David are here inserted in the Bible The Reigns of the Kings of Juda and Israel are afterwards described the wickedness and idolatry of most of their successive Kings and people till God being so much provoked by them gave them up into Captivity Here is also inserted many Books of the Prophesies of those Prophets which God sent from time to time to call them from their sins and warn them of his fore-told judgments And lastly here is contained some of the History of their state in Captivity and the return of the Jews by the favour of Cyrus where in a tributary state they remain'd in expectation of the promised Messiah or Christ Thus far is the History of the Old Testament The Jews being too sensible of their Captivities and Tributes and too desirous of Temporal Greatness and Dominion expected that the Messiah should restore their Kingdom to its ancient splendour and should subdue the Gentile Nations to them And to this sense they expounded all those passages in their Prophets which were spoken and meant of the spiritual Kingdom of Christ as the Saviour of Souls which prejudiced them against the Messiah when he came so that though they looked and longed for his coming yet when he came they knew him not to be the Christ but hated him and persecuted him as the Prophets had fore-told The fulness of time being come in which God would send the Promised Redeemer the Eternal Wisdom and Word of God the Second in the Trinity assumed a Humane Soul and Body and was conceived in the womb of a Virgin by the holy Spirit of God without man's concurrence His Birth was celebrated by Prophesies and Apparitions and applause of Angels and other Wonders A Star appearing over the place led some Astronomers out of the East to worship him in the Cradle Which Herod the King being informed of and that they called him the King of the Jews he caused all the Infants in that country to be killed that he might not scape But by the warning of an Angel Jesus was carried into Egypt where he remained till the death of Herod At twelve years old he disputed with the Doctors in the Temple In this time rose a Prophet called John who told them that the Kingdom of the Messiah was at hand and called the people to Repentance that they might be prepared for him and baptized all that professed Repentance into the present expectation of the Saviour About the thirtieth year of his age Jesus resolved to enter upon the solemn performance of his undertaken work And first He went to John to be baptized by him the Captains being to wear the same Colours with the Souldiers When John had baptized him he declared him to be the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world and when he was baptized and prayed the Heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily shape like a Dove upon him and a voice came from Heaven which said Thou art my beloved Son in thee I am well pleased The first thing that Jesus did after his Baptism was when he had fasted forty days and nights to expose himself to the utmost of Satan's temptations who thereupon did divers ways assault him But Jesus perfectly overcame the Tempter who had overcome the first Man Adam Thenceforth he preached the glad tidings of Salvation and called men to repentance and choosing Twelve to be more constantly with him than the rest and to be witnesses of his works and doctrin he revealed the mysteries of the Kingdom of God He went up and down with them teaching the people and working miracles to confirm his doctrin He told them that he was sent from God to reveal his will to lost mankind for their recovery and to bring them to a fuller knowledge of the unseen world and the way thereto and to be a Mediator and Reconciler between God and Man and to lay down his life as a Sacrifice for sin and that he would rise again from the dead the third day and in the mean time to fulfill all righteousness and give man an example of a perfect life Which accordingly he did He never sinned in thought word or deed He chose a poor inferiour condition of life to teach men by his example to contemn the wealth and honours of this world in comparison of the favour of God and the hopes of immortality He suffered patiently all indignities from men He went up and down as the living Image of Divine Power Wisdom and Goodness doing Miracles to manifest his Power and opening the doctrin of God to manifest his Wisdom and healing mens bodies and seeking the salvation of their souls to manifest his Goodness and his Love Without any means by his bare command he immediately cured Fevers Palsies and all diseases cast out Devils and raised the dead to life again and so open uncontroled and numerous were his Miracles as that all men might see that the Omnipotent God did thereby bear witness to his Word Yet did not the greatest part of the Jews believe in him for all these Miracles because he came not in worldly pomp to restore their Kingdom and subdue the world but they blasphemed his very Miracles and said He did them by the power of the Devil And fearing lest his fame should bring envy and danger upon them from the Romans who ruled over them they were his most malicious persecutors themselves The doctrin which he preached was not the unnecessary curiosities of Philosophy nor the subservient Arts and Sciences which natural light revealeth and which natural men can sufficiently teach But it was to teach men to know God and to know themselves their sin and danger and how to be reconciled to God and pardoned and sanctified and saved How to live in holiness to God and in love and righteousness to men and in special amity and unity
disconsolate Disciples who had but lately sinfully forsaken him He giveth them no upbraiding words but meltingly saith to her Go to my brethren and say unto them I ascend unto my Father and your Father to my God and your God He after this familiarly converseth with them and instructeth them in the things concerning the Kingdom of God He maketh an Vniversal Pardon or Act of Oblivion in a Covenant of Grace for all the world that will not reject it and appointeth Messengers to preach it unto all and what ever pains or suffering it cost them to go through all with patience and alacrity and to stick at nothing for the saving of mens souls He gave the holy Spirit miraculously to them to enable them to carry on this work and to leave upon record to the world the infallible narrative of his Life and Doctrine His Gospel is filled up with matter of consolation with the promises of mercy pardon and salvation the description of the priviledges of holy Souls justification adoption peace and joy and finally He governeth and defendeth his Church and pleadeth our cause and secureth our interest in Heaven according to the promises of this his word Thus is the Gospel the very Image of the Wisdom and Goodness of God And such a Doctrin from such a Person must needs be Divine 2. And the Method and Style of it is most excellent because most suitable to its holy ends not with the excellency of frothy wit which is but to express a wanton fancy and please the ears of aery persons who play with words when they should close with wisdom and heavenly light such excellency of speech must receive its estimate by its use and end But as the end is most Divine so the light that shineth in the Gospel is Heavenly and Divine the Method of the Books themselves is various according to the time and occasions of their writing the objections against them are to be answered by themselves anon But the Method of the whole Doctrin of Christianity set together is the most admirable and perfect in the world beginning with God in Unity of Essence proceeding to his Trinity of Essential Active Principles and of Persons and so to his Trinity of Works Creation Redemption and Regeneration and of Relations of God and Man accordingly and to the second Trinity of Relations as he is our Owner Ruler and Chief Good And hence it brancheth it self into a multitude of benefits flowing from all these Relations of God to Man and a multitude of answerable duties flowing from our Correlations to God and all in perfect method twisted and inoculated into each other making a kind of cirulation between Mercies and Duties as in mans body there is of the arterial and venal bloud and spirits till in the issue as all Mercy came from God and Duty subordinately from man so Mercy and Duty do terminate in the Everlasting Pleasure of God ultimately and man subordinately in that mutual love which is here begun and there is perfected This method you may somewhat perceive in the description of the Christian Religion before laid down 3. And the style also is suited to the end and matter not to the pleasing of curious ears but to the declaring of heavenly mysteries not to the conceits of Logicians who have put their understandings into the fetters of their own ill-devised notions and expect that all men that will be accounted wise should use the same notions which they have thus devised and about which they are utterly disagreed among themselves But in a Language suitable both to the subject and to the world of persons to whom this word is sent who are commonly ignorant and unlearned and dull That being the best Physick which is most suitable to the Patients temper and disease And though the particular Writers of the Sacred Scriptures have their several Styles yet is there in them all in common a Style which is spiritual powerfull and divine which beareth its testimony proportionably of that Spirit which is the common Author in them all But of this more among the Difficulties and Objections anon But for the discerning of all this Image of God in the Doctrine of Jesus Christ Reason will allow me to expect these necessary qualifications in him that must discern it 1. That before he come to supernatural Revelations he be not unacquainted with those natural Revelations which are antecedent and should be foreknown as I have in this book explained them with their evidence For there is no coming to the highest step of the Ladder without beginning at the lowest Men ignorant of things knowable by Natural Reason are unprepared for higher things 2. It is reasonably expected that he be one that is not treacherous and false to those Natural Truths which he hath received For how can he be expected to be impartial and faithfull in seeking after more Truth who is unfaithfull to that which he is convinced of or that he should receive that Truth which he doth not yet know who is false to that which he already knoweth Or that he should discern the evidence of extraordinary Revelation who opposeth with enmity the ordinary light or Law of Nature Or that God should vouchsafe his further light and conduct to that Man who willfully sinneth against him in despight of all his former teachings 3. It is requisite that he be one that is not a stranger to himself but acquainted with the case of his heart and life and know his sins and his corrupt inclinations and that guilt and disorder and misery in which his need of mercy doth consist For he is no fit Judge of the Prescripts of his Physician who knoweth not his own disease and temperature But of this more anon § 8. III. The third way of the Spirits witness to Jesus Christ is Concomitantly by the miraculous gifts and works of Himself and his Disciples which are a cogent Evidence of Gods attestation to the truth of his Doctrine § 9. By the Miracles of Christ I mean 1. His miraculous actions upon others 2. His miracles in his Death and Resurrection 3. His predictions The appearance of the Angel to Zachary and his dumbness his Prophesie and Elizabeth's with the Angels appearance to Mary the Angels appearance and Evangelizing to the Shepherds the Prophesie of Simeon and of Anna the Star and the testimony of the wise Men of the East the testimony of John Baptist that Christ should baptize with the Holy Ghost and with Fire and that he was the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the World These and more such I pass by as presupposed At twelve years of age he disputed with the Doctors in the Temple to their admiration At his Baptism the Holy Ghost came down upon him in the likeness of a Dove and a voice from Heaven said Thou art my beloved Son in Thee I am well-pleased When he was baptized he fasted forty dayes and nights and
him who will live such a Holy Life 114 CHAP. XIV That there is a Life of Retribution after this proved 119 CHAP. XV. Of the Intrinsecal Evils of SIN and of the PERPETVAL PVNISHMENT due to the Sinner by the undoubted Law of Nature 156 CHAP. XVI Of the present sinfull and miserable state of the World 176 CHAP. XVII What Naturall Light declareth of the Mercy of God to Sinners and of the Hopes and Means of Mans Recovery 182 PART II. Of CHRISTIANITY and Supernatural Revelation CHAP. I. OF the need of a clearer Light or fuller Revelation of the Will of God than all that hath been opened before p. 191 CHAP. II. Of the several RELIGIONS which are in the World 198 CHAP. III. Of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION and 1. What it is 204 CHAP. IV. Of the Nature and PROPERTIES of the Christian Religion 229 CHAP. V. Of the CONGRVITIES in the Christian Religion which make it the more easily credible and are great Preparatives to Faith 241 CHAP. VI. Of the WITNESS of JESVS CHRIST or the great demonstrative Evidence of his Verity and Authority viz. The SPIRIT In 4. parts 1. Antecedently by PROPHECY 2. Constitutively and Inherently the Image of God on his Person Life and Doctrine 3. Concomitantly by the Miraculous Power and Works of Christ and his Disciples 4. Subsequently in the actual Salvation of men by Renovation Opened Notes added 258 CHAP. VII Of the subservient Proofs and Means by which the forementioned Evidences are brought to our certain knowledge 302 How we know the antecedent Prophetical Testimony and the Constitutive Inherent Evidence How we know the Concomitant Testimony of Miracles 1. By Humane Testimony 2. By Evidence of Natural Certainty 3. By Divine attestation in the Testifyers Miracles The Proofs of that Divine attestation with the Witnesses 1. In the holy Constitution of their Souls and Doctrine 2. In their Miracles and Gifts 3. In the success of their Doctrine to mens sanctification How the Churches testimony of the Disciples Miracles and Doctrine is proved 1. By most credible Humane Testimony 2. By such as hath Natural Evidence of Certainty 3. By some further Divine attestation The way or Means of the Churches attestation and Tradition The Scriptures proved the same which the Apostles delivered and the Churches received How we may know the 4th part of the Spirits Testimony viz. The Successes of Christian Doctrine to mens sanctification What Sanctification is and the acts or parts of it Consectaries from p. 302. to 350 CHAP. VIII Of some other subservient and Collateral Arguments for the Christian Verity 350 CHAP. IX Yet Faith hath many Difficulties to overcome What they are and what their Causes 365 CHAP. X. The Intrinsecal Difficulties in the Christian Faith resolved or 24 Objections against Christianity answered 371 to 424 CHAP. XI The Extrinsecal Difficulties or 16 more Objections resolved 424 CHAP. XII The reasonable Conditions required of them who will overcome the Difficulties of Believing and will not undoe themselves by wilfull Infidelity 444 The summ of all in an Addresse to God 453 457 CHAP. XIII Consectaries I. What Party of Christians should we joyn with or be of seeing they are divided into so many Sects 464 CHAP. XIV II. Of the true Interest of Christ and his Church and the Souls of Men of the means to promote it and its Enemies and Impediments in the World Which being only named in brief Propositions should be the more heedfully perused by those that dare pretend the Interest of Religion and the Church for the proudest or the most dividing practices and those which most directly hinder the successefull preaching of the Gospel the pure Worshipping of God and the saving of Mens Souls 466. The Conclusion or an Appendix defending the Souls Immortality against the Somatists or Epicureans and other Pseudo-philosophers OBJECTION I. MAtter and Motion only may do all that which you ascribe to Souls p. 495 OBJECT II. By Sense Imagination Cogitation Reason you cannot prove the Soul to be incorporeal and immortal because the Bruits partake of all these 523 OBJECT III. Humane Souls are but Forms and Forms are but the qualities or modes of Substances and therefore perish when seperated from Bodies 535 OBJECT IV. The Soul is material and consequently mortal because it dependeth upon matter in its Operations and therefore in its Essence 539 OBJECT V. No immaterial Substance moveth that which is material as a principle of its Operations but the Soul so moveth the Body Ergo 540 OBJECT VI. The Soul in our sleep acteth irrationally according to the fortuitous motion of the spirits Ergo 543 OBJECT VII Reason is no proof of the Souls Immateriality because Sense which the Bruits have is the more perfect apprehension 543 OBJECT VIII Sensation and Intellection are both but Reception The Passivity therefore of the Soul doth shew its Materiality 544 OBJECT IX There is nothing in the Intellect which was not first in the Sense c. Ergo the Soul that can reach but things corporeal is such it self 547 OBJECT X. That which things Corporeal work on is Corporeal but c. 551 OBJECT XI That is not incorporeal which knoweth not it self to be so nor hath any notion but Negative and Metaphorical of Incorporeal Beings 551 OBJECT XII The Soul is generated Ergo corruptible 555 OBJECT XIII Omne quod oritur interit That which is not eternal as to past duration is not eternal as to future duration But c. 567 OBJECT XIV You have none but Moral Arguments for the Souls Immortality 568 OBJECT XV. You seem to confess that it is not the endless duration of the Soul but only a future state of Retribution which you can prove from Nature alone 568 OBJECT XVI Both Soul and Body are like a Candle in fluxu continuo Ergo being not long the same are uncapable of a Life of Retribution 569 OBJECT XVII The Soul returneth to the Anima Mundi or Element of Souls and so loseth its Individuation and is uncapable of Retribution 571 OBJECT XVIII The Fictions of the Platonists about their several Vehicles and such like do make their Doctrine the more to be suspected 574 OBJECT XIX The Souls actings will not be such as they are now by Corporeal Spirits and Idea's Ergo it will be uncapable of Retribution 578 OBJECT XX. The belief of the Souls Immortality doth fill men with fears and draw them to superstition and trouble the Peace of Kingdoms c. 579 In Objection about the Worlds Eternity What Christianity saith about it 582 The Testimony of Socrates and Zenocrates of the Souls Immortality 589 â—icero's Doctrine and his redargution of the Somatists at large 590 The Stoicks neerness to the Doctrine of Christianity with their particular Moral Tenets and their Praises by the Learned and Pious Mr. T. Gataker 595 The Stoicks Platonists and other Philosophers opinion of the sufficiency of Virtue to be Mans Felicity against the Epicurean Doctrine of Pleasure Vindicated It importeth a
and various instances these exceptions do but confirm the general truth that such there are I have said so much of them in two other Writings that I shall now say no more but this That those Judges ordinarily condemn them to die who themselves have been most incredulous of such things that so great numbers were condemned in Suffolk Norfolk and Essex about twenty years ago that left the business past all doubt to the Judges Auditors and Reverend Ministers yet living who were purposely sent with them for the fuller inquisition That the testimonies are so numerous and beyond exception recorded in the many Volumes written on this subject by the Malleus Maleficorum Bodin Remigius and other Judges who condemned them that I owe no man any further proof than to desire him to read the foresaid Writings wherein he shall find Men and Women Gentlemen Scholars Doctors of Divinity of several qualities and tempers all confessedly guilty and put to death for this odious sin And he shall find what compacts they made with the Devil promising him their Souls or their service and renouncing their Covenant with God All which doth more than intimate that men have Souls to save or lose and that there is an Enemy of Souls who is most sollicitous to destroy them or else to what end would all this be When people are in wrath and malice desirous of revenge or in great discontents or too eagerly desirous after overhasty knowledge in any needless speculation the Devil hath the advantage to appear to them and offer them his help and draw them into some contract with him implicit at least if not explicit I have my self been too incredulous of these things till cogent evidence constrained my belief Though it belong not to us to give account why Satan doth it or why upon no more or why God permitteth it yet that so it is in point of fact it cannot be rationally denyed And therefore we have so much sensible evidence that there is a happiness and misery after this life which the Devil believeth though Atheists do not 2. And though some are as incredulous of Apparitions yet evidence hath confuted all incredulity I could make mention of many but for the notoriety I will name but two which it is easie to be satisfied about The one is the Apparition in the shape of Collonel Bowen in Glamorganshire to his Wife and Family speaking walking before them laying hold on them hurting them in time of Prayer the man himself then living from his Wife in Ireland being one that from Sect to Sect had proceeded to Infidelity if not to Atheism and upon the hearing of it came over but durst not goe to the place The thing I have by me described largely and attested by learned godly Ministers that were at the place and is famous past contradiction 2. But to name no more he that will read a small Book called The Devil of Mascon written by Mr. Perreand and published by Dr. Peter Moulin will see an instance past all question The Devil did there for many months together at certain hours of the day hold discourse with the inhabitants and publikely disputed with a Papist that challenged him and when he had done turn'd him and cast him down so violently that he went home distracted He would sing and jest and talk familiarly with them as they do with one another He would answer them questions about things done at a distance and would carry things up and down before them and yet never seen in any shape All this was done in the house of the said Mr. Perreand a Reverend faithfull Minister of the Protestant Church in the hearing of persons of both Professions Papists and Protestants that ordinarily came in for above three months at Mascon a City of France And at last upon earnest Prayer it ceased Mr. Perreands piety and honesty was well known and attested to me by the Right Honourable the Earl of Orrery now Lord President of Munster in Ireland and attested to the World by his most learned worthy honourable Brother Mr. Robert Boyl in an Epistle before the Book neither of them persons apt to be over-credulous of such unusual things yet both fully satisfied of the truth of this story by Mr. Perreands own Narratives with whom they were very familiar See the other Testimonies cited in my Saints Rest Part 2. Q. But how doth this signifie that there is any future state for man Answ 1. Commonly these Apparitions do expresly referr to some sin or duty which are regardable in order to a further Life Sometimes they come to terrifie Murderers or other great Offenders and sometimes the Devil hath killed men outright which yet were no more painfull than another death if it fetcht not their souls into a greater misery sometimes they are used to tempt people to sin to witchcraft to revenge to idolatry and superstition to which use they are common among many of the Indians And all this intimateth some further hurt which sin doth men after this present life which they take not here for their pain but their pleasure 2. Many of these Apparitions say that they are the souls of such and such persons that have lived here If it be so then the question is granted And whether it be so I suppose is to us uncertain For why a condemned Soul may not appear as well as Satan notwithstanding that both of them are in that state of misery which is called Hell I yet could never hear any sure proof But because this is uncertain 3. At least it sheweth us that these evil Spirits are neer us and able to molest us and therefore are ordinarily restrained and that their natures are not as to any elevation so distant from ours but that a converse there may be and therefore that it is very probable that when the souls of the Wicked are separated from their bodies they shall be such as they or have more converse with them and that the good Spirits shall be the companions of the souls of men that here were not far unlike themselves When we perceive that we live among such invisible Spirits it is the easier to believe that we shall live with such of them hereafter as we are most like 3. I may adde to these the instance of satanical Possessions For though many diseases may have of themselves very terrible and strange effects yet that the Devil I mean some evil Spirit doth operate in many is past all contradiction some will speak Languages which they never learnt some will tell things done far off some will have force and actions which are beyond their proper natural ability Most great Physicians how incredulous soever have been forced to confess these things and abundance of them have written particular instances And the manner of their transportations their horrid blasphemies against God with other carriages do commonly intimate a life to come and a desire that Satan hath to
dishonour God and destroy the souls of men as well as their bodies 4. And lastly the Temptations and suggestions of Satan yea and oft his external contrived snares are such as frequently give men a palpable discovery of his agency that there is indeed some evil Spirit that doth all this to the hurt of Souls Were there no such Tempter it were scarce credible that such horrid inhumane Villanies should ever be perpetrated by a rational Nature as Histories credibly report and as in this Age our eyes have seen That men should ever even against their own apparent interest be carryed on obstinately to the last in a wilfull course of such sins as seem to have little or nothing to invite men to them but a delight in doing hurt and mischief in the World Whence is it that some men feel such violent importunate suggestions to evil in their mindes that they have no rest from them but which way soever they goe they are haunted with them till they have committed it and then haunted as much to hang themselves in desperation Whence is it that all opportunities are so strangely fitted to a sinners turn to accommodate him in his desires and designs And that such wonderfull successive trains of impediments are set in the way of almost any man that intendeth any great good work in the World I have among men of my own acquaintance observed such admirable frustrations of many designed excellent works by such strange unexpected means and such variety of them and so powerfully carryed on as hath of it self convinced me that there is a most vehement invisible malice permitted by God to resist Mankinde and to militate against all Good in the World Let a man have any evil design and he may carry it on usually with less resistance Let him have any work of greatest Natural importance which tendeth to no great benefit to Mankinde and he may go on with it without any extraordinary impedition But let him have any great design for Common good in things that tend to destroying sin to heal divisions to revive Charity to increase Virtue to save mens Souls yea or to the publick common felicity and his impediments shall be so multifarious so far fetcht so subtile incessant and in despight of all his care and resolution usually so successfull that he shall seem to himself to be like a man that is held fast hand and foot while he seeth no one touch him or that seeth an hundred blocks brought and cast before him in his way while he seeth no one do it Yea and usually the greatest attempts to do good shall turn to the clean contrary even to destroy the good which was intended and drive it much further off How many Countreys Cities Churches Families who have set themselves upon some great Reformation have at first seen no difficulties almost in their way And when they have attempted it they have been like a man that is wrestling with a Spirit Though he see not what it is that holdeth him when he hath long swear and chafed and tired himself he is fain to give over yea leave behind him some odious scandal or terrible example to frighten all others from ever medling with the like again I have known that done which men call a Miracle a sudden deliverance in an hour from the most strange and terrible Disease while by Fasting and Prayer men were present begging the deliverance And presently the Devil hath drawn the persons in such a scandalous sin that God had none of the honour of the deliverance nor could any for shame make mention of it but it turned to the greater dishonour of piety and prayer though the wonder was past doubt I have known men wonderfully enlightened and delivered from courses of Error and Schisme and being men of extraordinary worth and parts have been very like to have proved the recovery of abundance more And they have been so unresistibly carryed into some particular Errors on the contrary extream that all the hopes of their doing good hath turned to the hardening of others in their Schism while they saw those Errors and judg'd accordingly of all the reasons of their change But especially to hinder the successes of godly Magistrates and Ministers in their reformings and their Writings for the winning of Souls it were endless to shew the strange unexpected difficulties which occurre and lamentably frustrate the most laudable attempts Nay I have known divers men that have had resolute designs but to build an Alms-house or a School-house or to settle some publick charitable work that when all things seemed ready and no difficulty appeared have been hindered in despight of the best of their endeavours all their dayes or many years Yea men that purposed but to put it in their Wills to do some considerable work of Charity have been so delayed hindered and disappointed that they were never able to effect their ends By all which it is very perceivable to an observing minde that there is a working invisible Enemy still seeking to destroy all Godliness and to hinder Mens salvation Perhaps you will say that if this be so you make the Devil to be stronger than God and to be the Governour of the World or to be more in hatred to goodness than God is in love with it I answer No but it appeareth that his Enmity to it is implacable and that he militateth against God and mans felicity and that sin hath so far brought this lower World under Gods displeasure that he hath in a great measure forsaken it and left it to the will of Satan Yet hath he his holy seed and Kingdom here and the purposes of his Grace shall never be frustrated nor the Gates of Hell prevail against his Church And if he may forsake Hell totally as to his felicitating presence he may also penally forsake Earth as to the greater number whilest for ought we know he may have thousands of Orbs of better Inhabitants which have not so forfeited his love nor are not so forsaken by him I have been the larger in proving a Life to come of Retribution to the good and bad because all Religion doth depend upon it and I have my self been more assaulted with Temptations to doubt of this than of Christianity it self though this have more of Natural Evidence And I have set down nothing that I am able rationally to confute my self though every Truth is liable to some snarling exceptions of half-witted and contentious men No man that confesseth a Life to come can question the necessity of a Holy Life But I have thought meet first to prove that a Holy Life is our unquestionable duty as the prius cognitum and thence to prove the certainty of the future state For indeed though God hath not hid from us the matter of our Reward and Punishment Hopes and Fears yet hath he made our Duty plainer in the main and proposed it first to our knowledge and
our confessions as well without it and when the tongue is made the natural instrument to express the mind and there are variety of other signs it is incredible that all the world should ever even so early hit upon this one strange way of expression without some special revelation or command of God 2. And it cannot be said with any credibility that God made any other revelation of his will to the world for Sacrificing beside what is made in Nature and in holy Scripture for who ever dreamt of such a thing or hath delivered us any such revelation and told us when and to whom and how it was made 3. And it is not credible that it was taken up erroneously by all the world as their vices or superstitions are for though it is past question that error hath caused the abuse of it through the world yet for the thing it self there is no probability of such an original For what can we imagin should induce men to it and make all Nations how various soever their Idols are to agree in this way of worshipping and propitiating them There is nothing of sensuality in it that by gratifying a lust of the flesh might have such an universal effect And it must be some universal Light or some universal Lust or Interest that must cause such an universal concord Nay on the contrary you shall find that Tradition and the custom of their Fore-fathers is the common argument pleaded for sacrificing through all the world even in the Ancients Historical reports of it 4. Therefore it remaineth very probable at least that they received it indeed by tradition from their fore-fathers and that could be from none originally but the universal progenitor of mankind who was capable of conveying it to all his posterity for no History mentioneth any later original nor could any later than Adam or Noah have made it so universal And no man can imagine why God should institute it if it were not to intimate the translating of our punishment into our Redeemer and to point us to the great Sacrifice which is truly propitiatory and is the great demonstration of his Justice who in Mercy doth forgive § 7. II. The second Witness of the Spirit which is inherent and constitutive to the Gospel of Christ is that image of God the unimitable character of Divinity which by the holy Spirit is put into the doctrin of Christ as the very life or soul of it together with the same on the pattern of his own life 1. On Christ himself the unimitable Image of God in his Perfection is a testimony of his veracity which I ascribe to the holy Spirit as the ultimate Operator in the Trinity even that holy Spirit by which he was conceived and which fell upon him at his Baptism and which Matth. 12. his enemies did blaspheme Many men have so lived that no notable sin of commission hath been found or observed in them by the world at a distance But the most vertuous except Christ was never without discernable infirmities and sins of omission No man ever convicted him of any sin either in word or deed His obedience to the Law of God was every way perfect He was the most excellent Representative of the Divine Perfections The Omnipotency of God appeared in his Miracles The Wisdom of God in his holy Doctrin and the Love of God in his matchless expressions of Love and in all the Holiness of his life He was so far from pride worldliness sensuality malice impatiency or any sin that the world had never such a pattern of self-denial humility contempt of all the wealth and honours of the world charity meekness patience c. as in him He obeyed his Father to the death He healed mens bodies and shewed his pity to their souls and opened the way of life even to his enemies He instructed the ignorant and preached repentance to the impenitent and suffered patiently the unthankful requitals of them that rendred him evil for good He endured patiently to be reviled scorned buffeted spit upon crowned with thorns nailed to a cross and put to death and this upon the false accusation and imputation of being an evil doer In a word He was perfect and sinless and manifested first all that obedience and holiness in his life which he put into his Laws and prescribed unto others And such Perfection is inseparable from Veracity Obj. How know we what faults he might have which come not to our knowledge Answ 1. You may see by his enemies accusations partly what he was free from when you see all that malice could invent to charge him with 2. If the Narrative of his Life in the Gospel have that evident proof which I shall anon produce there can remain no doubt of the perfect holiness and innocency of Christ in his Person and his Life Object We find him accused of many crimes as of being a gluttonous person and a Wine-bibber of blasphemy and impiety and treason Answ The very accusations are such as shew their falshood and his innocency He is called a gluttonous person and a Wine-bibber because he did eat and drink as other men in temperance and sobriety and did not tie himself to a wilderness life of austerity in total abstinence from common meats and wine as John Baptist did and as they thought he that professed extraordinary sanctity should have done They accused him of eating with publicans and sinners because he went to them as a Physician to heal their souls and lived a sociable charitable life and did not observe the Laws of proud Pharisaical separation They accused him of blasphemy and treason for saying the truth that he was the Son of God and the King of Israel And of impiety for talking of pulling down the Temple when he did but prophesie of his own death and resurrection And this was all that malice had to say Object He carried himself contemptuously to Magistrates He called Herod the King That Fox The Scribes and Pharisees he railed at and called them hypocrites painted sepulchres a generation of vipers c. When he was called to answer whether they should pay tribute to Cesar he doth but put off the resolution by ambiguity instead of an open exhorting them to obedience and saith Give to Caesar the things that are Caesars And when he was called to for tribute for him he payeth it but as a way to avoid offence having pleaded first his own immunity Answ 1. His speeches of Herod and the Scribes and Pharisees are not revilings but a free and just reprehension of their sin which being done by God's commission and in his Name and for his cause is no more to be called reviling than an arrest of a Felon or Traitor in the Kings name or an accusation put in against him for his crimes should be so called God will not forbear damning impenitent rebels though they call it cruelty nor will he forbear the reprehension and shaming of their
so doth prove the Divine approbation of his Doctrine without which he could not have the command of mens Souls 7. Note also that the Gospel proposeth to the Soul of man both Truth and Goodness and the Truth is in order to the Good and subservient to it That Christ is indeed the Saviour and his Word infallibly true is believed that we may be made partakers of his Salvation and of the Grace and Glory promised And when the Spirit by the Gospel hath regenerated and renewed any Soul he hath given him part of that grace in possession and hath procreated in him the habitual love of God and of holiness with a love to that Saviour and holy Word which brought him to it So that this Love is now become as a new Nature to the Soul and this being done the Soul cleaveth now as fast to Christ and the Gospel by Love as by Belief not that love becometh an irrational causless love nor continueth without the continuance of Belief or Belief without the Reasons and Evidence of Verity and Credibility But Love now by concurrence greatly assisteth Faith it self and is the faster hold of the two so that the Soul that is very weak in its Reasoning faculty and may oft lose the sight of these Evidences of truth which it did once perceive may still hold fast by this holy Love As the man that by reasoning hath been convinced that hony is sweet will easilier change his mind than he that hath tasted it so Love is the Souls taste which causeth its fastest adherence to God and to the Gospel If a caviller dispute with a loving child or parent or friend to alienate their hearts from one another and would perswade them that it is but dissembled love that is professed to them by their relations and friends Love will do more here to hinder the belief of such a slander than Reason alone can do and where Reason is not strong enough to answer all that the caviller can say yet Love may be strong enough to reject it And here I must observe how oft I have noted the great mercy of God to abundance of poor people whose reasoning faculty would have failed them in temptations to Atheism and Infidelity if they had not had a stronger hold than that and their Faith had not been radicated in the Will by Love I have known a great number of women who never read a Treatise that pleaded the Cause of the Christian Religion nor were able to answer a crafty Infidel that yet in the very decaying time of Nature at fourscore years of age and upward have lived in that sense of the Love of God and in such Love to him and to their Saviour as that they have longed to die and be with Christ and lived in all humility charity and piety such blameless exemplary heavenly Lives in the joyfull expectation of their Change as hath shewed the firmness of their Faith and the Love and Experience which was in them would have rejected a temptation to Atheism and Unbelief more effectually than the strongest Reason alone could ever do Yet none have cause to reproach such and say Their Wills lead their Vnderstandings and they customarily and obstinately believe they know not why for they have known sufficient reason to believe and their understandings have been illuminated to see the truth of true Religion and it was this knowledge of Faith which bred their Love and Experience but when that is done as Love is the more noble and perfect operation of the Soul having the most excellent object so it will act more powerfully and prevailingly and hath the strongest hold Nor are all they without Light and Reason for their belief who cannot form it into arguments and answer all that is said against it Obj. But may not all this which you call Regeneration and the Image of God be the meer power of fantasie and affectation and may not all these people force themselves like melancholy persons to conceit that they have that which indeed they have not Answ 1. They are not melancholly persons that I speak of but those that are as capable as any others to know their own minds and what is upon their own hearts 2. It is not one or two but millions 3. Nature hath given man so great acquaintance with himself by a power of perceiving his own operations that his own cogitations and desires are the first thing that naturally he can know and therefore if he cannot know them he can know nothing If I cannot know what I think and what I love and hate I can know nothing at all 4. That they are really minded and affected as they seem and have in them that love to God and Heaven and Holiness which they profess they shew to all the world by the effects 1. In that it ruleth the main course of their lives and disposeth of them in the world 2. In that these apprehensions and affections over-rule all their worldly fleshly interest and cause them to deny the pleasures of the flesh and the profits and honours of the world 3. In that they are constant in it to the death and have no other mind in their distress when as Seneca saith Nothing feigned is of long continuance for all forc'd things are bending back to their natural state 4. In that they will lay down their lives and forsake all the world for the hopes which faith in Christ begetteth in them And if the objectors mean that all this is true and yet it is but upon delusion or mistake that they raise these hopes and raise these affections I answer This is the thing that I am disproving 1. The love of God and a holy mind and life is not a dream of the Soul or a deliration I have proved from Natural reason in the first Book that it is the end and use and perfection of man's faculties that if God be God and man be man we are to love him above all and to obey him as our absolute Sovereign and to live as devoted to him and to delight in his love Man were more ignoble or miserable than a beast if this were not his work And is that a dream or a delusion which causeth a man to live as a man to the ends that he was made for and according to the nature and use of his reason and all his faculties 2. While the proofs of the excellency and necessity of a holy life are so fully before laid down from natural and supernatural revelation the Objector doth but refuse to see in the open light when he satisfieth himself with a bare assertion that all this is no sufficient ground for a holy life but that it is taken up upon mistake 3. All the world is convinced at one time or other that on the contrary it is the unholy fleshly worldly life which is the dream and dotage and is caused by the grossest error and deceit Object But how
shall I know that there is indeed such holiness in Christians as you mention and that it is not dissembled and counterfeit Answ I have told you in the fore-going answer 1. If you were truly Christians you might know it by possession in your selves as you know that you love your friend or a learned man knoweth that he hath learning 2. If you have it not your selves you may see that others do not dissemble when you see them as afore-said make it the drift of all their lives and prefer it before their worldly interest and their lives and hold on constantly in it to the death When you see a holy life what reason have you to question a holy heart especially among so great a number you may well know that if some be dissemblers all the rest are not so Obj. But I see no Christians that are really so holy I see nothing in the best of them above civility but only self-conceit and affectation and strictness in their several forms and modes of Worship Answ 1. If you are no better than such your self it is the greatest shame and plague of heart that you could have confessed and it must needs be because you have been false to the very light of Nature and of Grace 2. If you know no Christians that are truly holy it must needs be either because you are unacquainted with them or because your malice will not give you leave to see any good in these that you dislike And if you have acquainted your self with no Christians that were truly holy what could it be but malice or sensuality that turned you away from their acquaintance when there have been so many round about you If you have been intimate with them and known their secret and open conversation and yet have not seen any holiness in them it can be no better than wilful malice that hath blinded you And because a negative witness that knoweth not whether it be so or not is not to be regarded against an affirming witness who knoweth what he saith I will here leave my testimony as in the presence of God the searcher of hearts and the revenger of a lie yea even of lies pretended for his glory I have considered of the characters of a Christian in the twenty particulars before expressed in this Chapter § 10. and I have examined my soul concerning them all and as far as I am able to know my self I must profess in humble thankfulness to my Redeemer that there is none of them which I find not in me And seeing God hath given me his testimony within me to the truth of the Gospel of his Son I take it to be my duty in the profession of it to give my testimony of it to unbelievers And I must as solemnly profess that I have had acquaintance with hundreds if not thousands on whom I have seen such evidences of a holy heavenly mind which nothing but uncharitable and unrighteous censure could deny And I have had special intimate familiarity with very many in all whom I have discerned the Image of God in such innocency charity justice holiness contempt of the world mortification self-denial humility patience and heavenly mindedness in such a measure that I have seen no cause to question their sincerity but great cause to love and honour them as the Saints of God yea I bless the Lord that most of my converse in the world since the 22d year of my age hath been with such and much of it six years sooner Therefore for my own part I cannot be ignorant that Christ hath a sanctified people upon earth Object But how can one man know another's heart to be sincere Answ I pretend not to know by an infallible certainty the heart of any single individual person But 1. I have in such a course of effects as is mentioned before great reason to be very confident of it and no reason to deny it concerning very many A child cannot be infallibly certain that his father or mother loveth him because he knoweth not the heart But when he considereth of the ordinariness of natural affection and hath always found such usage as dearest love doth use to cause he hath much reason to be confident of it and none to deny it 2. There may be a certainty that all conjunctly do not counterfeit when you have no certainty of any single individual As I can be sure that all the mothers in the world do not counterfeit love to their children though I cannot be certain of it in any individual Object But it is not all Christians nor most that are thus holy Answ It is all that are Christians in deed and truth Christ is so far from owning any other that he will condemn them the more for abusing his Name to the covering of their sins All are not Christians who have the name of Christians in all professions the vulgar rabble of the ignorant and ungodly do use to joyn with the party that is uppermost and seem to be of the Religion which is most for their worldly ends be it right or wrong when indeed they are of none at all Hypocrites are no true Christians but the persons that Christ is most displeased with Judge but by his precepts and example and you will see who they are that are Christians indeed Object But what if the preaching or writings of a Minister do convert and sanctifie men it doth not follow that they are Saviours of the world Answ What ever they do they do it as the Ministers and Messengers of Christ by his Doctrine and not by any of their own by his Commission and in his Name and by his Power or Spirit Therefore it witnesseth to his truth and honour who is indeed the Saviour which they never affirmed of themselves Object What if Pythagoras Socrates Plato the Japonian Bonzii the Indian Bramenes c. do bring any souls to a holy state as its like they did it will not follow that they were all Saviours of the world Answ 1. They have but an imperfect Doctrine and consequently make on the minds of men but a lame defective change and that change but upon few and that but for a few Ages and then another Sect succeedeth them So that they have no such attestation and approbation of God as Christ hath in the renovation of so many thousands all abroad the world and that for so many ages together 2. They did not affirm themselves to be the Sons of God and the Saviours of the world if they had God would not have annexed such a testimony to their word as he doth to Christs 3. The mercy of God is over all his works He hath compassion upon all Nations and setteth up some candles where the Sun is not yet risen The Light and Law of Nature are his as well as the Light and Law of Supernatural Revelation and accordingly he hath his instruments for the communication of them to
are all baptized into one body whether we be Jewes or Gentiles bond or free and have been all made to drink into one Spirit And in 1 Cor. 14. the gift of speaking with tongues was so common in the Church of the Corinthians that the Apostle is fain to give them instructions for the moderate use of it lest they hindered the edification of the Church by suppressing prophecy or instruction in known tongues And therefore he perswadeth them to use it but more sparingly And James 5.14 15. exhorteth Christians when they were sick to send to the Elders of the Church that they may pray for them and anoynt them and they may be forgiven and recover By which it seems it was no unusual thing in those times to be healed by the Prayers of the Elders Yea the very Hypocrites and ungodly persons that had only the barren profession of Christianity had the gift of Miracles without the grace of Sanctification And this Christ foretold Matth. 7.22 Many shall say in that day Lord have we not prophesied in thy Name and in thy Name cast out devils and done many wonderfull works Obj. But all were not healed by them Paul left Trophimus at Miletum sick Why doth not Paul cure Timothy of his weak stomack and infirmity without drinking of Wine if he could do it Answ 1. Certainly they did not cure all men that were sick For then who would have dyed It was none of the intent of the Spirit of Christ in working Miracles to make men immortal here on earth and to keep them from Heaven 2. And it is easily confess'd that the Spirit was not at the command or will of them that had it And therefore they could not do what and when they pleased but what the Spirit pleased And his operations were at his own time and disposal And this proveth the more fully that it was the testimony of God and not the contrivance of the wit of man 3. And miracles and tongues were not for them that believed but rather for them that believed not And therefore a Trophimus or a Timothy might be unhealed § 35. 3. These Miracles were oftentimes wrought even for many years together in several Countreys and places through the World where the Apostles and Disciples came and not only once or for a little space of time Dissimulation might be easilyer cloaked for a few acts than it can be for so many years At least these gifts and miracles continued during the Age of the Apostles though not performed every day or so commonly as might make them uneffectual yet so frequently as to give success to the Gospel and to keep up a reverence of Christianity in the World They were wrought not only at Jerusalem but at Samaria Antioch Ephesus Corinth Philippi and the rest of the Churches through the World § 36. 4. They were also wrought in the presence of multitudes and not only in a corner where there was more possibility of deceit The Holy Ghost fell on the Apostles and all the Disciples at Jerusalem before all the people that is They all heard them speak in several tongues the wonderfull works of God even the Parthians and Medes and Elamites and the Inhabitants of Mesopotamia Judaea Cappadocia Pontus Asia Phrygia Pamphylia Egypt Lybia Cyrene Rome Jews and Proselites Cretes and Arabians Act. 2.8 9 10 11 12. It was three thousand that the Holy Ghost fell on Act. 2.38 Those that went into the Temple and all the people saw the lame man that was cured by Peter and John Act. 3. The death of Ananias and Sapphira was a publick thing so that fear fell on all and hypocrites were deterred from joyning with the Church Act. 5. The gifts of tongues and interpretation were commonly exercised before Congregations or multitudes And crowds of people flocked to them to be healed As with Christ they uncovered the roofs of the houses to lay the sick before him so with the Apostles they strove who might come within their shadow or touch the hem of their garment or have Cloaths or Napkins from them that they might be healed So that here was an age of publick Miracles § 37. 5. All these miracles were uncontrolled that is They were not wrought in opposition to any controlling Truth which hath certain evidence contradicting this nor yet were they overtopt by any greater miracles for the contrary A miracle if God should permit it to be wrought in such a case might be said to be controlled either of these two wayes 1. If a man should work Miracles to contradict the certain light of Nature or perswade men to that which is certainly false 2. If men should do wonders as Jannes and Jamâ—res the Egyptian Sorcerers which should be overtopt by greater wonders as those of Moses and as Simon Magus and Elymas by Peter and Paul In these cases God could not be said to deceive men by his power or permission when he giveth them a sufficient preservative But these Miracles had no such controll but prevailed without any check from contradictory Truths or Miracles Thus Christ performed his Promise Joh. 14.12 Verily verily I say unto you he that believeth on me the works that I do shall he do also and greater works than these shall he do because I goe unto the Father § 38. III. The third testimony of the Spirit to the truth of the Apostles witness was the marvellous success of their doctrine to the sanctifying of souls which as it could not be done without the power and Spirit of God so neither would the righteous and mercifull Governour of the World have made a company of profligate lyars and deceivers his instruments of doing this excellent work by cheats and falshoods This I spake of before as it is the Seal of Christs own doctrine I now speak of it only as it is the Seal of the Apostles verity in their testimony of the Resurrection and Miracles of Christ Peter converted three thousand at once Many thousands and myriads up and down the world were speedily converted And what was this Conversion They were brought unfeignedly to love God above all and their neighbours as themselves Act. 2.42 46. They continued stedfastly in the Apostles doctrine and fellowship and breaking of bread and prayer And all that believed were together and had all things common not by levelling but by lone and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men as every man had need and did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart praising God and having favour with all the People Act. 4.32 The multitude of Believers were of one heart and of one soul neither said any of them that ought of the things that he possessed was his own but they had all things common All that are in Christ have his Spirit and are spiritually minded and walk not after the flesh but after the spirit Rom. 8. They that are Christs have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts
interest of their sect or cause and party 6. Nor by your own partial interest which will make you judge of men not as they are indeed and towards God but as they either answer or cross your interests and desires 7. Nor must you judge of all by some that prove hypocrites who once seemed sincere 8. Nor must you judge of a man by some particular fall or failing which is contrary to the bent of his heart and life and is his greatest sorrow 9. Nor must you come with a fore-stalled and malicious mind hating that holiness your self which you enquire after for malice is blind and a constant false interpreter and a slanderer 10. You must know what Holiness and Honesty is before you can well judge of them These conditions are all so reasonable and just that he that liveth among religious honest men and will stand at a distance unacquainted with their lives and maliciously revile them upon the seduction of false reports or of interest either his own interest or the interest of a faction and will say I see no such honest and renewed persons but a company of self-conceited hypocrites this man 's confirmed infidelity and damnation is the just punishment of his wilful blindness partiality and malice which made him false to God to truth and to his own soul § 107. It is not some but All true Christians that ever were or are in the world who have within them this witness or evidence of the Spirit of Regeneration As I have before said Christ will own no others Rom. 8. 4 5 6 7 8 9. 2 Cor. 5.17 Luk. 14.26.33 If any man have not the Spirit of Christ the same is none of his If any man be in Christ he is a new creature old things are passed away behold all things are become new He that forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be my disciple Gal. 5.24 They that are Christs have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts Indeed the Church visible which is but the congregate Societies of professed Christians hath many in it that have none of this Spirit or grace but such are only Christians equivocally and not in the primary proper sense 1 Joh. 5.7 8 9 10. There are three that bear record in heaven the Father the Word and the holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three that bear witness on earth the Spirit and the Water and the Blood and these three agree in one If we receive the witness of men the witness of God is greater for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself He that believeth not God hath made him a liar because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son § 108. The more any one is a Christian in degree the more he hath of this witness of the sanctifying Spirit in himself and the holier he is § 109. The nearer any Philosopher or others are like to Christians the nearer they come to this renewed Image of God § 110. As this Image of God the holiness of the soul is the very end and work of a true Saviour so the true effecting of it on all true Christians is actually their begun salvation and therefore the standing infallible witness of Christ which should confound unbelief in all that are indeed his own This which I spake of the fore going Chapter is a testimony in every holy soul which the gates of hell shall not prevail against He that undertaketh to cure all of the Plague or Stone or Gout or Fever that will take his medicines and be ruled by him is certainly no deceiver if he do that which he undertaketh He that undertaketh to teach all men Arithmetick Geometry Astronomy Musick c. who will come and learn of him is certainly no deceiver if he do it What is it that Jesus Christ hath undertaken Think of that and then tell me whether he be a deceiver He never undertook to make his Disciples Kings or Lords or rich or honourable in the world nor yet to make them the best Logicians Orators Astronomers Mathematicians Physicians Musicians c. but to make them the best men to renew them to the love of God in holiness and thereby to save them from their sins and give them repentance unto life Nor hath he promised this to all that are baptized or called Christians but only to those that sincerely consent to learn of him and take his counsel and use the remedies which he prescribeth them And is it not certain that Christ doth truly perform this undertaking How then can he be a deceiver who doth perform all that he undertaketh Of this all true Christians have a just demonstration in themselves which is his witness Object But Christ undertaketh more than this even to bring us to everlasting blessedness in heaven Answ It is our comfort that he doth so but me-thinks its easie to believe him in that if he perform the rest For 1. I have proved in the first part of this Book that by the light of nature a future life of retribution must be expected and that man is made for a future happiness 2. And who then should have that happiness but the holy and renewed souls Doth not natural reason tell you that so good a God will shew his love to those that are good that is to those that love him 3. And what think you is to be done to bring any man to heaven but to pardon him and make him holy 4. And the nature of the work doth greatly help our faith For this holiness is nothing but the beginning of that happiness When we find that Christ hath by his Spirit begun to make us know God and love him and delight in him and praise him it is the easier to make us believe that he will perfect it He that promiseth to convey me safely to the Antipodes may easily be believed when he hath brought me past the greatest difficulties of the voyage He that will teach me to sing artificially hath merited credit when he hath taught me the gradual tones the Scale of Musick the Sol-fa-ing the Cliffs the Quantity the Moods the Rules of time c. He that causeth me to love God on earth may be believed if he promise me that I shall love him more in heaven And he that causeth me to desire heaven above earth before I see it may be believed when he promiseth that it shall be my great delight when I am there It is God's work to love them that love him and to reward the obedient and I must needs believe that God will do his work and will never fail the just expectations of any creature All my doubt is whether I shall do my part and whether I shall be a prepared subject for that felicity and he that resolveth this resolveth all He that will make me fit for
me who I know canst neither be deceived or by any falshood or seduction deceive On thee therefore O my dear Redeemer do I cast and trust this sinful soul with Thee and with thy holy Spirit I renew my Covenant I know no other I have no other I can have no other Saviour but thy self To thee I deliver up this soul which thou hast redeemed not to be advanced to the wealth and honours and pleasures of this world but to be delivered from them and to be healed of sin and brought to God and to be saved from this present evil world which is the portion of the ungodly and unbelievers to be washed in thy Bloud and illuminated quickned and confirmed by thy SPIRIT and conducted in the ways of holiness and love and at last to be presented justified and spotless to the Father of spirits and possessed of the glory which thou hast promised O thou that hast prepared so dear a medicine for the clensing of polluted guilty souls leave not this unworthy soul in its guilt or in its pollution O thou that knowest the Father and his Will and art nearest to him and most beloved of him cause me in my degree to know the Father acquaint me with so much of his will as concerneth my duty or my just encouragement leave not my soul to groap in darkness seeing thou art the Sun and Lord of Light O heal my estranged thoughts of God! is he my light and life and all my hope and must I dwell with him for ever and yet shall I know him no better than thus shall I learn no more that have such a Teacher and shall I get no nearer him while I have a Saviour and a Head so near O give my faith a clearer prospect into that better world and let me not be so much unacquainted with the place in which I must abide for ever And as thou hast prepared a Heaven for holy souls prepare this too-unprepared soul for Heaven which hath not long to stay on earth And when at death I resign it into thy hands receive it as thine own and finish the work which thou hast begun in placing it among the blessed Spirits who are filled with the sight and love of God I trust thee living let me trust thee dying and never be ashamed of my trust And unto Thee the Eternal Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son the Communicative LOVE who condescendest to make Perfect the Elect of God do I deliver up this dark imperfect soul to be further renewed confirmed and perfected according to the holy Covenant Refuse not to bless it with thine indwelling and operations quicken it with thy life irradiate it by thy light sanctifie it by thy love actuate it purely powerfully and constantly by thy holy motions And though the way of this thy sacred influx be beyond the reach of humane apprehension yet let me know the reality and saving power of it by the happy effects Thou art more to fouls than souls to bodies than light to eyes O leave not my soul as a carrion destitute of thy life nor its eyes as useless destitute of thy light nor leave it as a senseless block without thy motion The remembrance of what I was without thee doth make me fear lest thou shouldest with-hold thy grace Alass I feel I daily feel that I am dead to all good and all that 's good is dead to me if thou be not the life of all Teachings and reproofs mercies and corrections yea the Gospel it self and all the liveliest Books and Sermons are dead to me because I am dead to them yea God is as no God to me and Heaven as no Heaven and Christ as no Christ and the clearest evidences of Scripture verity are as no proofs at all if thou represent them not with light and power to my soul Even as all the glory of the world is as nothing to me without the light by which it 's seen O thou that hast begun and given me those heavenly intimations and desires which flesh and bloud could never give me suffer not my folly to quench these sparks nor this bruitish flesh to prevail against thee nor the powers of hell to stifle and kill such a heavenly seed O pardon that folly and wilfulness which hath too often too obdurately and too unthankfully striven against thy grace and depart not from an unkind and sinful soul I remember with grief and shame how I wilfully bore down thy motions punish it not with desertion and give me not over to my self Art thou not in Covenant with me as my Sanctifier and Confirmer and Comforter I never undertook to do these things for my self but I consent that thou shouldest work them on me As thou art the Agent and Advocate of Jesus my Lord O plead his cause effectually in my soul against the suggestions of Satan and my unbelief and finish his healing saving work and let not the flesh or world prevail Be in me the resident witness of my Lord the Author of my Prayers the Spirit of Adoption the Seal of God and the earnest of mine inheritance Let not my nights be so long and my days so short nor sin eclipse those beams which have often illuminated my soul Without thee Books are senseless scrawls studies are dreams learning is a glow-worm and wit is but wantonness impertinency and folly Transcribe those sacred precepts on my heart which by thy dictates and inspirations are recorded in thy holy word I refuse not thy help for tears and groans but O shed abroad that love upon my heart which may keep it in a continual life of love And teach me the work which I must do in Heaven refresh my soul with the delights of holiness and the joys which arise from the believing hopes of the everlasting Joys Exercise my heart and tongue in the holy praises of my Lord. Strengthen me in sufferings and conquer the terrors of death and hell Make me the more heavenly by how much the faster I am hastening to heaven and let my last thoughts words and works on earth be likest to those which shall be my first in the state of glorious immortality where the Kingdom is delivered up to the Father and GOD will for ever be All and In all of whom and through whom and to whom are all things To whom be glory for ever Amen CHAP. XIII Consectaries 1. What Party of Christians should we joyn with or be of seeing they are divided into so many Sects I Shall briefly dispatch the Answer of this Question in these following Propositions § 1. GODLYNESS and CHRISTIANITY is our only Religion and if any party have any other we must renounce it § 2. The Church of Christ being his Body is but One and hath many Parts but should have no Parties but Vnity and Concord without Division § 3. Therefore no Christian must be of a Party or Sect as such that is as
the bruits have sense imagination thought and reason by matter and motion only without immortal or incorporeal substances therefore by sense imagination thoughts or reason you cannot prove that man hath more III. Forms are but Accidents that is Qualities or the mode of matter and not Substances different from matter therefore it is so with humane souls IV. The soul dependeth upon matter in its operations and acteth according to it and not without it therefore it is material and consequently mortal V. No immaterial substance moveth that which is material or is the principle of its operations but the soul moveth the body as the principle of its operations ergo VI. If in our dreams the thoughts do operate only according to the accidental irregular motion of the spirits and sometime be so unactive that we do not so much as dream then the soul is nothing but the said active spirits or some material corruptible thing but c. ergo VII Sense is a more perfect apprehension than Reason therefore Bruits which have sense have as noble and perfect a kind of soul as man or at least reason is no proof of the immateriality of souls VIII Sensation and Intellection are both but Reception and and the soul is but a patient in them Ergo it is not a self-moving and so not an incorporeal substance IX Nothing is in the understanding but what is first in the sense Ergo the understanding can reach no further than to sensible things Ergo it is it self of no higher a kind X. Corporeal objects move the soul Ergo it is corporeal For things material cannot work upon that which is immaterial XI If the soul were incorporeal it would know it self to be so but it is not only ignorant of that but hath no true notion but meerly negative of immaterial beings XI That which is generated is corruptible but the soul is generated as is proved by Senertus and many others XIII Quicquid oritur interit that which is not eternal as to the past duration is not eternal as to the future duration but all Christians maintain that the soul is either created or generated and not of eternal duration as to what is past and all the Philosophers or most who took it to be eternal as to future duration went on that ground that it was so antecedently XIV You give us none but moral arguments for the soul's immortality XV. Nay you confess that the soul 's eternal duration cannot by you be proved by any natural evidence though you think you so prove a life of Retribution XVI The soul and body are like a candle where oyl and week and fire which are all are in flexu continuo and as there is not the same individual flame this hour as was the last so neither have we the same individual souls Ergo they are uncapable of a life of Retribution hereafter XVII If the soul be a durable substance as we must confess no substance is annihilated it is most likely to come from the anima mundi or some universal soul of that orb or system of which it is a part and so to return to it again as the beams to the Sun and so to cease its individuation and consequently to be uncapable of a life of Retribution XVIII The Platonists who hold the souls immortality and some Platonick Divines too have so many fopperies about its vehicles regions and transmutations as maketh their principal doctrine the less credible XIX If the soul should continue its individuation yet its actings will be nothing like what they are in the body nor can they exercise a memory of what they did in the body as having not the material spirits and nerves by which memory is exercised and therefore they can have no proper retribution especially punishment for any thing here done XX. The belief of the immortality of the soul doth fill men with fears and take up their lives in superstitious cares for a life to come which might be spent in quietness and in publick works and it fills the world with all those religious sects and controversies which have so long destroyed Charity and Peace These are the Objections which I have here to answer OBJECTION I. MAtter and Motion without any more may do all that which you ascribe to souls Answ When nothing seemeth to us more false and absurd than the matter of your objection you cannot expect that your naked assertion should satisfie us without proof and a satisfactory proof must reach to all the noblest instances and must have better evidence than the bold and confident affirmations of men who expect that their conceptions should be taken for the flower of reason whilst they are pleading against the reasoning nature it self And to what Authors will they send us for the proof of this assertion Is it to Mr. Hobs We have perused him and weigh'd his reasons and find them such as reflect no dishonour on the understandings of those who judge them to be void of probability as well as cogent evidence But after so smart a castigation as he hath received from the learned D◠Ward now Bishop of Exeter and from that clear-headed Primate of Ireland Dr. Bramhal I hope it will not be expected that I trouble my self or my Reader with him here Is it to Gassendus He writeth for the immaterial created humane soul himself And Charity obligeth me not to charge him with prevarication whatsoever to Cartesius or any where else he writeth which seemeth injurious to this Doctrine And if Sorberius number it with his honours in vita Gassendi that Mr. Hobs could not sufficiently admire his works Qui Heroem nostrum nunquam majorem apparere pronunciabat quam in retundendis larvis tenues in auras tam facilè diffugientibus gladio imperviis nec ictum clava excipientibus ita enim sentiebat vir emunctae naris de Meditationibus Cartesii de illa Gassendi disquisitione c. It was because he weighed not honour in an English ballance nor judged not of an English-man by an English judgment nor himself well perceived what was indeed honourable or dishonourable in his friend If you send us to Epicurus and Lucretius they are so overwhelmed with the number of adversaries that have fallen upon them that it is a dishonour to give them another blow Besides all the crowd of Peripateticks Platonists and Stoicks even the moderate latitudinarian Cicero hath spit so oft in the face of Epicurus that when Gassendus hath laboured hard in wiping it he thought meet to let this spot alone But because it is onely this sort of men that are the adversaries with whom we do contend I will this once be so troublesome to the Reader as to give him first some general countercharges and reasons against the authority of these men and next some particular reasons against the objected sufficiency of Matter and Motion to do the offices which we ascribe to souls And 1. When I find
therefore if Rarity be only by the multitude and greatness of interspersed Vacuities and the rarity and subtilty of matter be but the scantness or smallness of its quantity in that space then it would be but next kin to annihilation and the rarest and most subtile matter would be coeteris paribus the basest as being next to nothing For instance Sir Kenelme Digby telleth Gassendus from two accurate Computers that Gold in the same space is seven thousand six hundred times heavier than Air so that Air is in the same space seven thousand six hundred times neerer to nothing than Gold is and the whole Air betwixt us and the Heavens hath interspaces that are vacuous to the same proportion of 7600 to one And then we may well say that datur inane Nay quaere whether it be more proper to say that all between us and Heaven is a Vacuum or not when it is to be denominated from the space which so far exceedeth all the rest as 7600 to one And then if the aether be something more subtile it must be still more neer to nothing and consequently be most vile But I am satisfied that dung is not so much more excellent than Light as it is more gross And that these terrestrial bodies are not the most noble nor have most of Entity or Substance because they are more gross Therefore though Gassendus put off Sir K. Digby by saying only that the said disproportion is no inconvenience I see not how these inconveniences will be answered I am satisfied that nothing is not so good as Entity and yet that the most subtile and invisible substances are the life of the World and of greatest excellency and force But what will hence follow about penetrability I know not But I know that it 's little about these things which men understand of what they say The fiery nature seemeth as Patricius saith to be some middle thing between corporal and incorporeal And I much doubt whether Materia be a summum genus and whether the lowest degree of things incorporeal and the highest degree of things corporeal suppose fire or that which is the matter of the Sun do differ so much more than Graduals as that mortals can say that one of them is penetrable and indivisible and the other not There have been some Philosophers that have thought that sensibility was as fit an attribute to characterize Matter or Bodies by as any other But then they meant not by sensible that which Man can perceive by sense But that which is a fit object for senses of the same kinde as mans supposing them elevated to the greatest perfection that they are capable of in their kinde And so aire and atomes being of the same kinde as other matter may be visible to a sight of the same kinde as ours if it received but the addition of enow degrees And for ought I know this is as wise Philosophy as that which is more common I am sure it is more intelligible And for Divisibility they have Demonstrations on both sides that a Punctum is divisible and that it is not One thinketh that if three be set together it 's possible at least for God to divide just in the midst Another with Gassendus thinketh that it 's unlike to be true that every part should be as much or more than the whole and a point as much as all the Universe And that if a point may be divided into infinite parts it is infinite in magnitude and therefore bigger than the World And is it any marvell if Indivisibility then be an unfit property to know a Spirit by when they are not agreed about it as to Bodies Certain it is that there is a true Individuation of Souls and so a numeral division of them That which is your Soul is not your Neighbours And it is certain that created Spirits are not infinite as to extent And what Division God can make upon them is more than I can tell Scotus thinketh that the subject of Physicks is not Corpus naturale but substantia naturalis and so that Angels are moved motu physico Scaliger Schibler c. say that Angels have extension and figure that is extension entitativè distinct from extension quantitativè vid. Scalig. Exercit. 359. § 4. The termini essendi saith Schibler being no other than are signified per inceptionem seu dependentiam ab alio desitionem and that no Creature is immense but hath finitas adessendi according to which it is determinate to a certain space He saith that Angels are finite 1. Essentia 2. Numero 3. Potestate 4. Quantitate h. e. non esse immensos And that they are in spatio intelligibili He saith also Exerc. 307. Vnum primum est alia dependent igitur Ergo sua natura omnia praeter unum sunt corruptibilia Tametsi sunt Entia absoluta à subjecto termino non sunt absoluta à Causa Damascene saith de Orthod fid l. 2. That God only is a Spirit by nature but other things may be Spirits by indulgence and grace The doctrine of Psellus is too gross and largely delivered by himself Eugubinus Niphus and Vorstius were of the same minde that Angels were Corporeal Augustine himself saith that Anima respectu incorporei Dei corporea est de Spir. anim c. 8. Caesarius in Dialog 1. p. 573. B.P. saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And he applyeth to them the Apostles words There are Bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial Arnobius is a little too gross herein and almost all the Ancients especially the Greeks that speak of that subject take Angels for more subtile purer Bodies I know not what Athenagoras meaneth to call the Devil 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Materiae ejusque formarum Princeps alii ex iliis qui circa primum mundi fundamentum erant peccarunt c. pag. 71. And hence he and others talk of their falling in love with Virgins c. And when Faustus Rhegiensis wrote a Book to prove that Angels and Souls were but a purer subtile sort of bodies or matter Claudianus Mammertus largely and learnedly confuteth him who pretended that all the Ancients were on his side Yet doth the same Mammertus think that though Angels quoad sormam be incorporeal they had Bodies also which were Fire or of the nature of the Starrs Which Caesarius also seemeth to mean when he saith that Not only that which is here with us below is Fire but also those higher Powers seem to be Fire and kin to that which is with us as our Souls are kin to Angels Dialog 1. Q. 58 59. pag. 584. And Qu. 60. he saith That the Shepherds when they will boil flesh in the Fields where they have no Fire do use to fill a glass Vessel with water and hold it directly opposite to the Sun and then touch dryed dung with it and it will kindle Fire And having thus proved the Sun to be Fire he saith Dial. 2. Qu.
intellectus seu mens atque adeo incorporea non elicere actiones nisi intellectuales seu mentales incorporeas Et quum est sentiens vegetans praeditaque vi corporum motrice atque adeo corporea est elicere actiones corporeas c. And of Angels and Devils he saith That it is known by faith only that they are incorporeal and perhaps God gave them extraordinary bodies when he would have them move or act on bodies To this I answer 1. Who gave those atoms their ingenite mobility and how You say that captum omnem fugit ut quippiam aliud moveat si in seipso immotum maneat If so then it seemeth that either God was moved when he moved atoms or that he never moved them How then came they to be moved first But you confess that God put into them their mobility You say De Deo alia ratio est quoniam infinitae virtutis cum sit vâ—ique praesens non ullo sâ—i motu sed nutu solo agere movere quidlibet potest If you think not as you speak it is unworthy of a Philosopher if you do then it is strange that you should overthrow your own reasoning and excuse it no better than thus If the reason why incorporeal spirits cannot move bodies be that which you alledge because only a body can be applied to a body to make impression on it then God can less move a body than man's soul can because his purest essence is more distant from corporeal grossness than our souls are At least the reason would be the same And to say that God is every where and of infinite vertues maketh him nevertheless a Spirit and created spirits if that be enough may have power or vertue enough for such an effect Doubtless if God move bodies the spirituality of an agent hindereth not the motion 2. But why should it captum omnem superare that a nobler and more potent nature can do that which a more ignoble can do Because I cannot know how a spirit by contact can apply it self to matter shall I dream that therefore it is uncapable of moving bodies Clean contrary I see that matter of it self is an unactive thing and were it not that the noble active element of fire which as a lower soul to the passive matter and a thing almost middle between a spirit and a body did move things here below I could discern no motion in the world but that which spirits cause except only that of the parts to the whole the aggregative motion which tendeth to rest The difference of understandings is very strange it is much easier to me to apprehend that almost all motion should come from the purest powerful active vital natures than that they should be all unable to stir a straw or move the air or any body OBJECTION VI. THe soul is in our sleep either unactive as when we do not so much as dream or acteth irregularly and irrationally according to the fortuitous motion of the spirits Ergo it is no incorporeal immortal substance Answ 1. I suppose the soul is never totally unactive I never awaked since I had the use of memory but I found my self coming out of a dream And I suppose they that think they dream not think so because they forget their dreams 2. Many a time my reason hath acted for a time as regularly and much more forcibly than it doth when I am awake which sheweth what it can do though it be not ordinary 3. This reason is no better than that before answered where I told you that it argueth not that I am a horse or no wiser than my horse because I ride but according to his pace when he halteth or is tired Nor doth it prove that when I alight I cannot go on foot He is hard of understanding that believeth that all the glorious parts of the world above us have no nobler intellectual natures than man Suppose there be Angels and suppose one of them should be united to a body as our souls are we cannot imagine but that he would actuate it and operate in it according to its nature as I write amiss when my pen is bad The same I say of persons Lethargick Apoplectick Delirant c. OBJECTION VII REason is no proof of the soul's immateriality because sense is a clearer and more excellent way of apprehension than Reason is and the bruits have sense Answ 1. I have said enough to the case of Bruits before 2. The soul understandeth bodily things by the inlet of the bodily senses Things incorporeal as I shall shew more anon it otherwise understandeth When it understandeth by the help of sense it is not the sense that understandeth any thing If Bruits themselves had not an Imagination which is an Image of Reason their sense would be of little use to them We see when by business or other thoughts the minde is diverted and alienated how little sense it self doth for us when we can hear as if we never heard and see and not observe what we see yet it 's true that the more sense helpeth us in the apprehending of things sensible which are then objects the better and surely râ—w perceive them by the understanding As the second and third Concoction will not be well made if there be a failing in the first so the second and third perception â—n the Phantasie and Intellect will be ill made if the first deceive or fail them But this proveth not either that the first Concoction or Perception is more noble than the third or that Sensitives without Reason have any true understanding at all or that Sense Phantasie and Reason are not better than Sense alone But these things need not much disputing If Sense be nobler than Reason let the Horse ride the man and let the Woman give her milk to her Cow and let Bruits labour men and feed upon them and let Beasts be your Tutors and Kings and Judges commit to them the noblest works and give them the preeminence if you think they have the noblest faculties OBJECTION VIII SEnsation and Intellection are both but Reception The passiveness therefore of the Soul doth shew its materiality Answ A short answer may satisfie to this Objection 1. All created Powers are partly passive how active soever they be For being in esse operari dependant on and subordinate to the first Cause they must needs receive his influence as well as exercise their own powers As the second wheel in the Clock must receive the moving force of the first before it can move the third 2. It is an enormous error about the operations of the Soul to think that Intellection yea or Sensation either is meer Reception and that the sensitive and intellective power are but Passive The active Soul of Man yea of Bruits receiveth not its object as the mark or butt receiveth the arrow that is shot at it It receiveth it by a similitude of
and Retribution it is deceitful and absurd to come in with an unproved dream against it and to argue ab ignoto against so many cogent arguments 4. And we have proved supernatural revelation to second this which is evidence more than sufficient to bear down your unproved conjectures 5. If it had been doubtful whether the souls individuation cease and nothing of all the rest is doubtful yet this would not make so great a difference in the case as some imagine for it would confess the perpetuity of souls and it would not overthrow the proof of a Retribution if you consider these four things 1. That the parts are the same in union with the whole as when they are all separated Their nature is the same and as Epicurus and Democritus say of their atoms they are still distinguishable and are truly parts and may be intellectually separated the same individual water which you cast out of your bottle into the sea is somewhere in the sea still and though contiguous to other parts is discernable from them all by God The Haecceity as they say remaineth 2. That the love of individuation and the fear of the ceasing of our individuation is partly but put into the creature from God pro tempore for the preservation of individuals in this present life And partly it is inordinate and is in man the fruit of his fall which consisteth in turning to SELFISHNESS from GOD. And we know not how much of our recovery consisteth in the cure of this selfishness and how much of our perfection in the cessation of our individuate affections cares and labours Nature teacheth many men by Societies to unite as much as possible as the means of their common safety benefit and comfort and earth water air and all things would be aggregate Birds of a feather will flock together And love which is the uniting affection especially to a friend who is fit for union with us in other respects is the delight of life And if our souls were swallowed up of one common soul as water cast into the sea is still moist and cold and hath all its former properties so we should be still the same and no man can give a just reason why our sorrows or joys should be altered ever the more by this 3. And God can either keep the ungodly from this union for a punishment or let them unite with the infernal spirits which they have contracted a connaturality with or let them where ever they are retain the venom of their sin and misery 4. And he can make the Resurrection to be a return of all these souls from the Ocean of the universal nature into a more separated individuation again I only say that if it had been true that departing souls had fallen into a common element yet on all these reasons it would not have overthrown our arguments for a life of full retribution God that can say at any time This drop of water in the Ocean is the same that was once in such a bottle can say This particle of the universal soul was once in such a body and thither can again return it But the truth is no man can shew any proof of such a future aggregation And to conclude the Scripture here cleareth up all the matter to us and assureth us of a continued Individuation yet more than Nature doth though the natural evidences before produced are unanswerable And as for the similitude of Light returning to the Sun it is still an arguing à minus noto we know not well what it is we know not how it returneth and we know not how the particles are distinguishable there They that confess souls to be indivisible though the individuals are all numerically distinct must on the same ground think that two or many cannot by union be turned into one as they hold that one cannot be turned into two or into several parts of that one divided OBJECTION XVIII THe Platonists and some Platonick Divines have so many dreams and fopperies about the soul 's future state in aerial and aethereal vehicles and their durations as maketh that doctrine the more to be suspected Answ 1. Whether all souls hereafter be incorporate in some kind of bodies which they call vehicles is a point which is not without difficulty A sober Christian may possibly doubt whether there be any incorporeal simple essence in a separated existence besides God alone Those that doubt of it do it on these grounds 1. They think that absolute simplicity is a divine incommunicable perfection 2. They think that Christ is the noblest of all creatures and that seeing he shall be compound of a humane Soul and Body though glorified and spiritual to eternity therefore no Angel shall excell him in natural simplicity and perfection 3. Because it is said that we shall be equal with the Angels and yet we shall at the Resurrection be compounded of a soul and body 4. Because it is said that He made his Angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire 5. Because the ancient Fathers who first thought Angels to be subtil bodies were confuted by those as Mammertus forementioned who asserted them to be fiery bodies animated with incorporeal souls 6. Because they read of the Devils dwelling in the air as one cast down therefore they think that he hath an aery body instead of an ethereal or fiery 7. Because they see the Sun so glorious a creature in comparison of a body of flesh therefore they think that the symmetry and proportion among God's works requireth that bodies and forms or souls be suitable 8. Because they know not what else becometh of the sensitive soul of man when he dieth which they take to be but a subtil body and therefore think it goeth as a body or vehicle with the rational soul 9. Because they mistake that difficult Text 2 Cor. 5.1 2 8. think by the 7 and 8 verses that it speaketh of the instant after death and thinking by the first and second verses that as Beza and most think it speaketh of a celestial body as our cloathing and not of a meer state of glory to the soul I name their reasons that you may be charitable in your censures but the truth is they talk of unrevealed or uncertain things which do but trouble the heads of Christians to no purpose who may live better and speed better by following the naked precepts of Christianity and hoping for such a glory as Christ hath plainly described without prying into that which doth less concern them to be acquainted with 2. And Satan knoweth that over-doing is one way of undoing Thus men on all extremes do harden one another As in these times among us it is notorious that the men of one extreme in Church affairs do harden the other and the other harden them And as Fanaticism riseth from the disliking of sensuality and prophaneness incautelous and sensual and prophane men run into hell to avoid fanaticism
even so the bruitish grossness of the Somatists driveth some Philosophers into Platonick dreams and the Platonick fictions harden the Epicureans in a far worser way Lactantius de ira Dei cap. 13. thinks that Epicurus was moved to his opinion against Providence by seeing the hurt that good men and Religious endure from the woâ—ser sort here in this world But why should you run out on one side the way because other men run out on the other why do you not rather argue from the doctrine in the sober mean that it is true than from the extreams that the truth is falshood When reason will allow you to conclude no more than that those extremes are falshood But surely I had rather hold Plato's Anima mundi or Aristotle's Intellectus agens and his moving Intelligences than Epicurus his Atoms and motion only And I had rather think with Alexander Arphad that omnis actio corporis est ab incorporeo principio yea or the Stoicks doctrine of Intellectual Fire doing all than Gassendus his doctrine that no incorporeal thing can move a corporeal or that Atoms and their motion only do all that we find done in nature When I look over and about me I find it a thing quite past my power to think that the glorious parts above us are not replenished with much nobler creatures than we And therefore if the Platonists and the ancient Platonick Fathers of the Church did all think that they lived in communion with Angels and had much to do with them and that the superiour intelligences were a nobler part of their studies than meer bodies they shall have the full approbation of my reason in this though I would not run with them into any of their presumptions and uncertain or unsound conceits Saith Aeneas Gazaeus pag. 778. when he had told us that Plato Pythagoras Plotinus and Numenius were for the passing of men's souls into bruits but Porphyry and Jamblichus were against it and thought that they passed only into men Ego quidem hac ipsa de causa filium aut famulum ob id quod commiserint peccatum puniens antequam de ipsis supplicium sumam praemoneo ut meminerint ne posthac unquam in eadem mala recurrant Deus autem quando ultima supplicia decernit non edocet eos qui poenarum causas sed scelerum memoriam omnem tollet vide pag. 382. For this reason and many others we assume not their conceit of the soul's pre-existence and think all such unproved fancies to be but snares to trouble the world with We think not that God punisheth men for sin in another world while he totally obliterateth the memory of the other world and of their sin When he hath told us that In Adam all die and By one mans disobedience many are made sinners and so condemnation passed upon all Rom. 5. Nor will we with Origen thus tempt men to look for more such changes hereafter which we can give them no proof of Nor will we distribute the Angelical Hierarchy into all the degrees which the pseudo-Dionysius doth nor with the Gnosticks Basilidians Saturninians Valentinians and abundance of those antient Hereticks corrupt Christianity with the mixture of fanatick dreams about the unrevealed Powers and worlds above us either worshipping Angels or prying into those things which he hath not seen and are not revealed vainly puft up by his fleshly mind or without cause puffed up by the imagination of his own flesh as Dr. Hammond translateth it Col. 2.18 Nor will we make a Religion with Paracelsus Behmen the Rosicrucians or the rest described by Christ Beckman Exercit. of the Philosophical whimsies of an over-stretch'd imagination And yet we will not reject the saying of Athenagoras Apol. pag. 57. Magnum numerum Angelorum Ministrorum Dei esse fatemur quos opifex architectus mundi Deus Verbo suo tanquam in classes ordinavit centuriavitque ut elementa coelos mundum quae in mundo sunt vicesque ordinem omnium moderarent Though we may adde with Junilius Africanus that Whether the Angels meddle with the government of the world of stablished creatures is a difficult question OBJECTION XIX IF the soul do continue individuate yet its actings will not be such as they are now in the body because they have not spirits to act by And as Gassendus thinketh that the reason of oblivion in old men is the wearing out of the vestigia of the former spirits by the continual flux or transition of matter so we may conceive that all memory will cease to separated souls on the same account and therefore they will be unfit for Rewards or Punishments as not remembring the cause Answ 1. Iâ— Gassendus his opinion were true men should forget all things once a year if not once a month considering how many pounds of matter are spent every 24 hours And why then do we better when we are old remember the things which we did between nine or ten years old and twenty than most of the later passages of our lives as I do for my part very sensibly 2. What is mans memory for with bruits we meddle not but scientia praeteritorum Is not remembring a knowing of things past surely we may perceive that it is and that it is of the same kind of action with the knowing of things present And therefore we may make not memory a third faculty because it is the same with the understanding 3. We have little reason to think that the surviving soul will lose any of its essential powers and grow by its change not only impotent but another thing Therefore it will be still an intelligent power And though remote actions and effects such as writing fighting c. are done by instruments which being removed we cannot do them without yet essential acts are nothing so which flow immediately from the essence of the agent as light heat and motion of the fire If there be but due objects these will be performed without such instruments Nor will the Creator who continueth at an active intelligent power continue it so in vain by denying it necessaries for its operations There is like to be much difference in many respects between the soul's actings here and hereafter but the acts flowing from its essence immediately as knowledge volition complacency called Love and Displacencie c. will be the same How far the soul here doth act without any idea or instrument I have spoken before And the manner of our acting hereafter no man doth now fully understand But that which is essentially an intellectual volitive power will not be idle in its active essence for want of a body to be its instrument If we may so far ascribe to God himself such Affections or Passions as the ingenious Mr. Samuel Parker in his Teutam Phil. l. 2. c. 8. p. 333 c. hath notably opened we have no reason to think that scientia praeteritorum is not to be ascribed
as nutriment bloud and spirits to the Will before it is truly made our own It expecteth I say not greater courtship but more cordial friendship than a transient salute before it will unveil its glory and illustrate beautifie and bless the soul It is food and Physick it will nourish and heal but not by a bare look or hear-say nor by the reading of the prescript Could I procure the Reader to do his part I doubt not but this Treatise will suffice on its part to bring in that light which the Sagae the Lemures and Daemones of Atheism Infidelity and Ungodliness will not be able to endure But I am far from expecting universal success no not if I brought a Book from Heaven The far greatest part have unprepared minds and will not come up to the price of truth And nothing is more sure than that recipitur ad modum recipientis Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli These drones imagine that they are fit to judge of a Scripture-difficulty or of an argument concerning the mysteries of Religion before they know what it is to be a Man or understand the Alphabet of Nature even those points which supernatural Revelations presuppose such uncapableness in the Reader is as a great hinderance as the want of solid proof and evidence in the Writer Most men are drowned in filthy sensuality or worldly cares and their relish is vitiated by luscious vanities their reason is debased by subjection to the flesh and darkned and debilitated by long alienation from its proper work and yet they are so constituted of ignorance and pride that they can neither understand plain truth nor perceive that it is long of themselves that they understand it not And â—othfulness and sensuality have so far conquered humanity it self even the natural love of truth and of themselves that they will take up with what their play-fellows have taught them and venture their souls and their everlasting concernments â—nless they can secure them by an idle gamesome â—leshly life or grow wise by the short superficial studies of an alienated unwilling tired mind Unless the great things of God and Immortality will â—e savingly known by a few distracted thoughts of a discomposed mind or the rambling talk of their companions whose heads are as unfurnished and giddy as their own or by the cursory perusal of a few Books which cross not their carnal interest and humour in the midst of their more beloved employments and delights they will neither be solid Christians nor wise and honest men If God will be conversed with in the midst of their feasting cups and oaths in their pride and revelling and with their whores if he will be found of them that hate his holiness and all that love it and seriously obey him then God shall be their God and Christ shall be their Saviour and if this be the way they may become good Christians But if retired serious thoughts be necessary and an honest faithfulness to what they know they must be excused They that know that it is not an hours perusal of a book of Astronomy Geometry Musick Physick c. which will serve to make them skilful in these Arts do expect to attain far higher wisdom by inconsiderable industry and search and will not be wise unless they can be taught by vision in their dreams or in the crowd and noise of worldly business and of fleshly lusts I find that it is a difficult task which I have undertaken to be the instructer of such men if I be large and copious their laziness will not suffer them to read it if I be concise I cannot satisfie their expectations for they think nothing well proved if every objection be not answered which idle cavilling brains can bring Neither have they sufficient attentiveness for brevity nor will their ignorance allow them to understand it The contradicting vices of their minds do call for impossibilities for the cure Their Incapacity saith It must be a full explication or I cannot apprehend the sense or truth Their averseness and slothfulness saith It must be short or I shall be tired with it or cannot have while to read it I cannot answer both these expectations to the full but though the greatness of the matter have made the Book bigger than I intended the nauseating stomack of most Readers hath perswaded me to avoid unnecessary words and as big as the Book is I must tell the Reader that the style is so far from redundancies though some things be oft repeated that if he will not chew the particular words but swallow them whole and bestow his labour only on the Sentences I shall suppose that he hath not read the Book Ficinus very truly noteth that while children and youth are sufficiently conscious of their ignorance to keep in a learning course they may do well but when they first grow to a confidence of their own understandings and at ripeness of age imagine that their wits are ripe and think that their unfurnished minds because they have a natural quickness are competent judges of all that they read then they are most in danger of infidelity and of being undone for ever from 18 to 28 being the most perilous age But if God keep them as humble diligent learners till they have orderly gone through their course of studies and sanctifie their greener youthful knowledge they then grow up to be confirmed Christians Ficin de Verit. Rel. cap. 3. It is therefore the diligence and patience of the Reader which I still intreat and not his belief for I will beg nothing of his understanding but justice to the truth but supposing God's help do trust to the cogencie of evidence Yet I must tell you that I expect the Reader by the truths which he learneth should be able himself to answer an hundred trivial objections which are here passed by and that in particular textual difficulties he have recourse to Commentaries and Tractates on those subjects for this Book is long enough already He that will diligently consider the connection of the consequent Propositions to the Antecedent and will understand what he readeth as he goeth along will see that I give him sufficient proof of all which I desire him to assent to But I make no doubt but a hasty and half-witted Reader can find objections and words enough against the plainest truth here written and such as he thinks do need a particular answer When an understanding Reader would be offended with me if I should recite them I had more compassion on the sober Reader than for the humouring of every brainsick Sceptick to stand proving that two and two are four I write for such as are willing to be wise and happy and that at dearer rates than jesting For others I must leave them whether I will or no to be wise too late And for those capricious brains who deride our ordinary preaching as begging and supposing that which we do not prove
before disproved In point of efficiency we grant that he is as the Soul of Souls effecting more than Souls do for their Bodies but not in point of Constitution He is much more than the Soul of the world but is not formally its Soul But 2. Those men that will think so must acknowledge that as they take the Horse and the Rider to be both parts of God and the Child and the Father and the Subject and the Prince and the Malefactor and the Judge and the flagitious wretch and the best of men so it is no other membership than what consisteth with the difference of moral good and evil of wise and foolish of Governours and Subjects of Rewards and Punishments of Happiness and Misery which are the things that I am seeking after But so few lay this claim to Deity that I need no further mind them § 3. My Parents were not the first cause of my being what I am As each Individual cannot be the first Cause of it self so neither can their Parents for they do not so much as know my frame and nature nor the order and temperature of my parts nor how or when they were set together nor their use or the reason of their location And certainly he that made me knew what he did and why he did it in each particular My Parents could not choose my sex nor shape nor strength nor qualifications § 4. The world which I see and live in did not make it self As Men and Beasts and Trees and Stones did not make themselves so neither did they joyn as concauses or assistants in the making of the whole nor did any one of them make the rest nor did any of the more simple substances called Elements make themselves neither the passive Elements or the active the Earth the Water the Air or the Fire For we know past doubt that nothing hath no power or action and before they were they were not and therefore could not make themselves Nor can they be the first cause of mixt bodies because there is that exceeding wisdom most apparent in the generation production nature and operations of these Bodies which these Elements have not § 5. The visible world is not an uncaused independent Being For all the generated parts we see do oriri interire they have a beginning progress decay and end And the inanimate parts having less of natural excellency than the living cannot infinitely exceed them in the excellency of Deity as uncaused and independent And we see that they are all dependent in their operations They shew in the order of their beings and action that incomprehensible wisdom which is not in themselves the Earth the Sea the Air and Winds are all ordered exactly by a Wisdom and a Will which they themselves are void of Besides they are many and various but their order and agreement sheweth that it is some One universal Wisdom and Will which ruleth them all and if they are dependent in operation they are certainly dependent in being And had they that excellency to be uncaused and independent they would have had therewith all other perfections which we see they want and they would not have been many but one in that perfection § 6. The first universal Matter is not an uncaused independent being If such there be its inactivity and passiveness sheweth it to want the excellency of independency and the ordination of it into its several beings and the disposals of it there is done by a principle of infinite power activity and wisdom on which having this dependence in its ordination and use it must be dependent also in its being § 7. If it were doubtful whether the world were eternal and whether it were the Body of God as the informing Soul yet it would be past doubt that it is not uncaused or independent but caused by God That the world is not eternal we want not natural evidence for saith Lullius then there would be two Eternals the Cause and its Effects and then all things would be caused by natural necessity and not by free will and consequently always alike and then there hath been Evil eternally and both the caused Good and the Evil would in all other aggravations be answerable to Eternity and the Evil would be as soon as great as durable as the good The same world which is finite in good and evil and other respects would be infinite in Eternity and the evil would have an infiniteness in point of Eternity and this necessitated by the eternity of the world And seeing no individuals are eternal the supposed eternity of the world must be but of some common matter or only intentional and not real The corporeal part having quantity is finite as to extension and therefore cannot be infinite in duration In Eternity then there is no time no prius posterius but in the world there is Much more is said by many but this is not my present task I shall say more of it afterward But if it were doubtful whether the world were not eternally the Body of God yet would it be undoubted still that he caused it And that there were the difference of a cause and an effect in order of nature though not in duration As if a Tree or a mans body were supposed eternal yet the root and spirits of the Tree and the principal parts and spirits in mans body would be the causal parts on which the rest depend § 8. It remaineth therefore most certain that something is a first Cause to all things else and that he is the Creator of all things For if the world be not uncaused and independent it hath a Cause and if it have a Cause it hath a Creator For when there was nothing but himself he must make all things of Himself or of Nothing not of Himself for He is not Material and they are not parts of God who is indivisible He that thinks otherwise should not kill a Flea or a Toad nor blame any man that beateth or robbeth or wrongeth him nor eat any creature because he doth kill and blame and eat a part of God who is unblameable and can injure none and is to be more reverenced § 9. If there were any doubt whether the Sun or Fire or passive matter had a first Cause there can be no doubt at all concerning MAN which is the thing which I am enquiring into at the present For every one seeth that Man hath his beginning and confesseth that it is but as yesterday since he was not and therefore hath a Cause which must be uncaused or have a Cause it self if the latter then that Cause again is uncaused or hath a Cause it self And so we must needs come at last to some uncaused cause § 10. If any second Cause had made Man or the World yet if it did it but as a caused Cause it self would lead us up to an uncaused Cause which is the first Cause of
all which we are seeking after For what any Cause doth by a power received from a higher Cause and consequently ordered by it that is done principally by that first or highest Cause And if God had made the world by an Angel or Intelligence it would have been nevertheless his Creature nor any thing the less to his honour than if he had made it by himself alone § 11. The summ of all is that There is certainly a first uncaused independent Cause of Man and all things else besides that Cause CHAP. V. What this Cause is in it self That it is God § 1. THe first Cause is known to us imperfectly and by the effects Man is so conscious of his ignorance herein and of the perplexities and diversities of opinions which follow thereupon and of the necessity of beginning downward at the effects and rising upward in his enquiry that I need not prove this Proposition to any man § 2. Though God or the first Cause is to be searched after in all his works yet chiefly in the chiefest of them within our reach which is Man himself If any shall say that the Sun and other creatures are more excellent than Man and therefore God or the first Cause is to be searched after rather in them and his Attributes denominated from them I answer There is no doubt but secundum quid the Sun is a nobler Creature than Man But what it is simpliciter we cannot tell unless we knew it better The highest exellencies known to man in the Sun is the Potentia Motiva Illuminativa Calefactiva Motion Light and Heat with their effects do tell us what we know of it That which we are conscious of in Man is Posse Scire Velle Power Intellection and Will with their Perfections which are an higher excellency than Motion Light and Heat § 3. He that giveth Being to all else that is must needs be the first Being formally or eminently Himself Entity must needs be in the noblest sense or sort in the Primum Ens the original of Being rather than in any derived Being whatsoever For it cannot give better than it hath so that Ens or I am is his first Name § 4. He that hath made Substances more noble than Accidents is Himself a Substance either formally or eminently and a Living Substance yea Life it self Once for all by Eminently I mean somewhat more excellent or transcendent which yet Man hath no better Name for or fitter Notion of God is thus a Substance Life transcendently if not formally § 5. He that hath made Intelligences or Spirits or Minds more noble and excellent than Bodies is himself a Mind Intelligence or Spirit either formally or transcendently and eminently We find that corporeal gross and dense Beings are most dull and passive and have least of excellency The Body of it self in comparison of the Mind is a dull and dirty clod Though we have no adequate conception of a Spirit we know not onely Negatively that it containeth a freedom from the baseness and inconveniences of corporeity but also we know by its essential acts that positively it is a pure active Life Intelligence and Will and therefore a more excellent sort of Being than things meerly corporeal which have no such action So that we have found as to his Being that the first Cause is Ens Substantia Vita Spiritus § 6. There must needs be in the first Cause an Esse Posse Operari If there were no Operation there were no Causation If there were no Power there could be no Operation and if there were no Being there could be no Power Not that these are things so various as to make a composition in the first Cause but they are transcendently in it without division and imperfection by a formal or virtual distinction § 7. Seeing the noblest Creatures known to us are Minds that have a Posse Scire Velle active executive Power with an Vnderstanding to guide it and a Will to command it God hath either formally or eminently and transcendently such a Power Intellect and Will which is his Essence For nothing is more certain than that no Cause can give more than it had to give If the first Cause had not Power Understanding and Will either formally or eminently in a higher and nobler kind he could not have endowed all mankind with what he had not 1. That the first Cause is most powerful is evident by his works he that gave Man his measure of power and much more to many other creatures hath himself much more than any of them He that made this marvellous frame of all the Orbs and causeth and continueth their being and their constant rapid motion is incomprehensibly potent Whatsoever Power there is in all the Creatures visible and invisible set together there must be more or as much in their first Cause alone because nothing can give more Power than it hath 2. His works also prove that the first Cause is an Vnderstanding for the admirable composure order nature motions variety and usefulness of all his Creatures do declare it He that hath given Vnderstanding to Man hath formally or eminently more himself than all men and all his creatures have If Intellection were not an excellency above meer natural or bruitish motion Man were not better than the inanimates or bruites but if it be the Giver of it cannot want it Not that his Intellection is univocally the same thing with ours But it is something incomparably more noble which expresseth it self in humane Intellection as its Image and is seen by us in this Glass and can be expressed by us no better than by this name 3. And as it is a nobler nature which acteth by Volition or Free-will than that which hath no Will at all and so no voluntary choice and complacency so the first Cause which hath given this noble faculty to Man hath certainly himself though not a Will univocally the same with ours yet a Will of a transcendent excellency which expresseth it self in ours as its Image and must be something better and greater but cannot be lower or less And though such Indetermination as proceedeth from imperfection and consequently such Liberty belongeth not to the first Cause which hath no defects yet all that Liberty which belongeth to perfection must undoubtedly belong to Him He that did what we see hath done it willingly and freely § 8. What ever the first Cause is it must needs be in absolute Perfection It must needs have in it more than the whole world besides because it giveth all that to the whole Creation which it hath received and is An imperfect cause could never have made such a world as we behold and partly know And were the first Cause imperfect there would be no perfection in being § 9. The perfection of the first Cause in Being requireth that it be Eternal without Beginning or End of duration Nothing in the world can
be more evident to reason than that something must be Eternal without beginning nothing being more evident than that Nothing hath no power no action no effects and so can make nothing And therefore if ever there had been a time when Nothing was Nothing could ever have been imagine that there were Nothing now and it is certain there never would be any thing Obj. Something may oriri de novo without any Cause as well as God be eternally without any Cause Answ It s impossible For he that is eternally hath all perfection eternally in himself and needeth no Cause being still in being and being the Cause of Causes But Nothing hath no perfection or being and therefore needeth an Omnipotent Cause to give it a being Obj. If the world may be created of nothing materially it may be what it is without any thing efficiently Answ Impossible Pre-existent matter is not necessary to the first created matter for Matter may be caused of Nothing by an Omnipotent Efficient as well as the wonderful frame of all things be made out of Matter But without an Efficient no Being can arise de novo So that it is most evident seeing any thing now is there hath been something eternally And if something it must needs be the first Cause which is chief in excellency and first in order of production and therefore of existence § 10. The first Cause must needs be independent in being perfections and operations and so be absolutely self-sufficient For it were not the first if there were any before it and being caused by nothing else it was eternally sufficient in and for it self otherwise that which it were beholden to would have the place of a Cause to it And if it caused not all or needed the help of any other it is not absolutely the first Cause to all others nor perfect in it self That which could be eternally without a cause and it self cause all things is self-sufficient and independent § 11. The first Cause must needs be free from all imperfection of Corporeity or Materiality Composition Passibility corruptibility Mutability and Mortality and all other imperfections of defendent beings There is such a thing as a Living Principle and a pure spiritual Nature in the created world and the Maker of it must be life and Spirit in a higher purer sense than it and therefore must be free from all its imperfections and having no cause hath no defect and having no beginning can have no end All this Reason doth certainly apprehend § 12. This perfect first Cause must be Immense or Infinite in Being Not by corporeal extension as if God as a Body were in a place and being more extensive than all place were called Immense But in the perfect Essence of an eternall Life and Spirit and Mind he is every where without Locality and all things live and move and be in him The thought of space is but a Metaphorical help to our conception of his Immensity § 13. Therefore he must needs be Omnipresent Not by extension quantitative but in a sort transcendent and more excellent according to the transcendent way of his Existence For if we must have conceived of him as no better than a Body and of Magnitude as an Excellency we might well have concluded that he hath made nothing greater than himself Nemo dat quod non habet and therefore he must be more extensive than all the world and consequently absent from no part of it Much more when his Being which surpasseth corporeity directeth us to acknowledge a more noble kind of Omnipresence than Extensive § 14. Therefore is he Incomprehensible as to humane understanding or any other created intellect Of our own incomprehension experience sufficiently convinceth us here and Reason evinceth the same of all created Intellects for the less cannot comprehend the greater and between finite and infinite there is no proportion We know nothing purely-intelligible so easily and certainly as that God is But there is nothing that we are so far from comprehending As we see nothing more easily and certainly than the Sun which yet we see not with a comprehensive but a partial and defective sight § 15. This Infinite Being can be but One. For if there were many they could not be Infinite and so indeed there would be none nor would there be any one first Cause of all things For if one caused one part of the World and another another part no one were the first Cause of all And if they joyned in causing all together they would all conjunctly make but one first cause and each one several be but part of the Cause If there be no one that is sufficient to make and govern all the World there is no perfect Being nor no God but the effect sheweth the sufficiency and the unity of the World the Orbs being one frame the unity of the first cause Perfection consisteth more in the unity of one all sufficient Being than in a voluntary concurrence of many Beings The most learned Heathens who thought there were many to be named Gods did mean but subordinate particular Gods that were under the one universal God whom the Stoicks and Academicks took to be the universal Soul and the subordinate Gods the Souls of the particular Orbs and Planets § 16. The Power of this God must needs be Omnipotency He that hath given so great Power to the creatures as is exercised by them especially the Sun and fixed Stars in their several Vortices or Orbs and he that could make such a World of nothing and uphold the being and maintain the order and cause and continue the rapid motions of all the Vortices or Orbs which are to us innumerable and each of incomprehensible excellency and magnitude is certainly to be accounted no less than Omnipotent By his Omnipotency I mean that by which in it self considered in primo instanti he can do all things possible that is which belong not to Impotency but to Power And by which in secundo instanti he can do all things which his Infinite Wisdom judgeth congruous and meet to be done And in tertio instanti can do all that he will do and are pleasing to him § 17. The understanding of the first Cause must needs be Omniscient and infinite Wisdom 1. He that hath given so much wisdom to such a Worm as Man must have more than all the men in the World Whatever knowledge is in the whole Creation being given by Him doth prove that formally or eminently he hath more Were it all contracted into one Intelligence it must be less than His that caused it He hath not given more wisdom than he had to give nor so much as he had or is himself For if he should make any thing equal to Himself there would be two Infinites and there would be a perfect self-sufficient being which yet had lately no sufficiency or being and there would be a being independent in facto
esse which was dependent in fieri which are Contradictions 2. The effects in the admirable frame and nature and motions of the Creation declare that the Creator is infinitely wise The smallest insect is so curiously made and so admirably fitted and instructed to its proper end and uses The smallest Plants in wonderfull variety of shapes and colours and smells and qualities uses and operations and beautifull flowers so marvellously constituted and animated by an unseen form and propagated by unsearchable seminal vertue The smallest Birds and Beasts and creeping things so adorned in their kinds and so admirably furnished for their proper ends especially the propagation of their species in love and sagacity and diligence to their young by instinct equaling in those particulars the reasonable creature The admirable composure of all the parts of the body of Man and of the vilest Beast and Vermine The quality and operation of all the Organs humours and spirits The operations of the Minde of man and the constitution of Societies and over-ruling all the matters of the World with innumerable instances in the creature do all concurr to proclaim that man as mad as madness can possibly make him in that particular who thinketh that any lower cause than incomprehensible wisdom did principally produce all this And that by any bruitish or natural motion or confluence of Atomes or any other matter it could be thus ordered continued and maintained without the infinite wisdome and power of a first Cause superiour to meer natural matter and motion What then should we say if we had a sight into the inwards of all the Earth of the nature and cause of Minerals and of the forms of all things If we saw the reason of the motions of the Seas and all other appearances of Nature which are now beyond our reach Yea if we had a sight of all the Orbs both fixed Starrs and Planets and of their matter and form and order and relation to each other and their communications and influences on each other and the cause of all their wonderous motions If we saw not only the nature of the Elements especially the active Element Fire but also the constitution magnitude and use of all those thousand Suns and lesser Worlds which constitute the universal World And if they be inhabited if we knew the Inhabitants of each Did we know all the Intelligences blessed Angels and holy Spirits which possess the nobler parts of Nature and the unhappy degenerate Spirits that have departed from light and joy into darkness and horrour by departing from God yea if we could see all these comprehensively at one view what thoughts should we have of the wisdom of the Creator And what should we think of the Atheist that denyeth it We should think Bedlam too honourable a place for that man that could believe or durst say that any accidental motion of subtile matter or fortuitous concourse of Atomes or any thing below a Wisdom and Power infinitely transcending all that with Man is called by that name was the first Cause and is the chief continuer of such an incomprehensible frame § 18. The first Cause must needs be infinitely Good By Goodness I mean all essential Excellency which is known to us by its fruits and appearances in the Creature which as it hath a Goodness natural and moral so is it the Index of that transcendent Goodness which is the first cause of both This goodness is incomparably beyond that which consisteth in a usefulness to the creatures good or Goodness of Benignity as relative to Man And it is known better by the meer name as expressing that which Nature hath an intrinsick sense and notion of than by definitions As sensible qualities light colour sound odour sweet bitter c. are known by the name best which lead to the sensitive memory which informeth the Intellect what they are As the mention of things sensible entereth the definition of sense and the mention of sense doth enter the definition of things sensible and yet the object is in order of nature before the act And as Truth must enter the definition of Intellection and Intellection the definition of Truth and yet Truth is in order before Intellection and contemporary with the Intellect so is it between Goodness and the Will But if we speak of uncreated Good and of a created Will then Good is infinitely antecedent to that Will But the Will which is created hath a nature suited to it and so the notion of Excellency and Goodness is naturally in our estimative faculty and the relish of it or complacency in it is naturally in the Will so far as it is not corrupted and depraved As if I knew a man that had the wisdom and virtue of an Angel my estimation calleth him Excellent and Good and my Will doth complacentially cleave to him though I should never look to be the better for him my self or if I onely heard of him and never saw him or were personally beholden to him That God is thus infinitely Excellent and Good the Goodness of his Creatures proveth for all the goodness that is in Men and Angels Earth and Heaven proceedeth from him If there be any Natural Goodness in the whole Creation there must be more in the Creator If there be any Moral Goodness in Men and Angels there must be more in eminency in him For he can make nothing better than himself nor give to creatures what he hath not § 19. The Goodness of the first Being consisting in this infinite Perfection or Excellency containeth his Happiness his Holiness and his Love or Benignity § 20. The HAPPINESS of the first Being consisteth 1. In his BEING HIMSELF 2. In his KNOWING HIMSELF 3. In his LOVING and ENJOYING HIMSELF The most perfect Being must needs be the most Happy and that in Being what he is his own Perfection being his Happiness And as Knowledge in the Creature is both his Perfection and Delight so the transcendent Omniscience of the Creator must needs be both part of his Perfection as distinguished by our narrow minds and such felicity as may be called Eminently his Delight though what God's Delight is we know not formally And as Love or Complacency is the perfective operation of the Will and so of the Humane Nature in Man and is his highest final and enjoying acts of which all Goodness is the object so there must be something in the Perfection of the first Cause though not formally the same with Love in Man yet eminently so called as knowable to us by no other name And this complacency must needs be principally in Himself because He himself is the Infinite and onely Primitive Good and as there was primitively no Good but Himself to Love so now there is no Good but derived from Him and dependent on Him And as his Creature of which anon is obliged to love Him most so he must needs be most amiable to Himself Self-love and self-esteem in
To consider the innumerable number of the Orbs the multitude of the Fixed Stars which may be called so many Suns and to think of their distances magnitude powers orders influences communications effects c. and how many millions of these for ought we know there may be besides those which are within our sight even though helped by the most perfect Telescopes it striketh the Soul with unspeakable admiration at the Power that created and maintaineth all this When we think of the unconceivable rapid orderly perfect constant motions of all these Orbs or at least of the Planets and circumjacent bodies in every Vortex All these thoughts do make the Deity or first Being to be just to the mind as the Sun is to the eye the most Intelligible of Beings but so Incomprehensible that we cannot endure to gaze too much or near upon his glory § 27. Whether the whole world be animated or inanimate Whether the whole have one constitutive Soul or not Whether each Orb have its particular Soul or not are things unrevealed and beyond the Certain knowledge of the natural mind But it is certain that the first Being is not the proper constitutive Form or Soul of the world but yet that he is much more to it than such a Form or Soul even the total perfect first Cause of all that it is and hath and doth He is not the constitutive Form or Soul of the Universe as it seems Cicero with the Academicks and Stoicks thought because then the Creator and the Creature should be the same or else the Creature should be nothing but dead passive matter and then Man himself who knoweth that he hath a Soul would either be God which his experience and the conscience of his frailty forbiddeth him to imagin or else he should be a Creature more noble than the Universe of which he is so small a part which his reason forbiddeth him also to believe But yet that God is much more to the world than a constitutive Soul is undeniable because he is the creating Cause which is more than a constitutive Cause and his continued causation in its preservation is as a continued creation As in Man the Soul is a dependent cause which can give nothing to the Body but what it hath received nor act but as it is acted or impowered by the first efficient And therefore though we call not God the Soul of Man because we would not so dishonour him nor confound the Creator and the creature yet we all know that he is to us much more than the Soul of Souls for in him we live and move and have our being So also it is as to God's causation of the Being Motion and Order of all the world God is incomparably more to it than its Form as being the total first Cause of Form and Matter To be the Creator is more than to be the Soul § 28. The glory of all being action and order in the creatures is no less due to God when he worketh by means than when he worketh by none at all For when no Means is a Means nor hath being aptitude force or efficacy but from himself he onely communicateth praise to his creatures when he thus useth them but giveth not away the least degree of his own interest and honour for the creature is nothing hath nothing and can do nothing but by him It useth no strength or skill or bounty but what it first received from him therefore to use such means can be no dishonour to him unless it be a dishonour to be a communicative Good As it is no dishonour to a Watch-maker to make that Engine which sheweth his skill instead of performing all the motions without that little frame of means But yet no similitude will reach the case because all creatures themselves are but the continued productions of the Creator's will and the virtue which they put forth is nothing but what God putteth into them And he is as neer to the effect when he worketh by means as when without § 29. Those that call these three faculties or Principles in the Divine Essence by the name of three Hypostases or Persons do seem to me to speak less unaptly than the Schools who call Deum seipsum intelligentem the Father and Deum ut a se intellectum the Son and Deum a se amatum the Holy Ghost For that in God which is to be conceived of us by Analogy to our essential faculties is with less impropriety called an Hypostasis or Person than that which is to be conceived by us in Analogy to our actus secundi or receptions § 30. And those that say the first faculty Omnipotency as eminently appearing in the frame of Nature may therefore be said to be specially therein personated or denominated the Creating Person speak nothing which derogateth from the honour of the Deity § 31. Though we cannot trace the vestigia the adumbration or appearances of this Trinity in Vnity through the whole Body of Nature and Morality because of the great debility and narrowness of our Minds Yet is it so apparent on the first and most notable parts of both as may make it exceeding probable that it runneth in perfect method through them all if our understandings were but able to follow and comprehend that wonderfull method in the numerous minute and less discernable particulars I shall now give no other instance than in two of the most noble Creatures The Soul of Man which is made after Gods Image from whence we fetch our first knowledge of him hath in the unity of a living Spirit the three foresaid faculties of vital and executive Power Vnderstanding and Will which are neither three species nor three parts nor three accidents of the Soul But three faculties certainly so far distinct as that the Acts from whence they are denominated really differ and therefore the faculties differ at least in their Virtual Relation to those acts and so in a well-grounded denomination To understand is not to will for I understand that which I have no will to even against my will for the Intellect may be forced Therefore the same Soul hath in it the virtue or power both of understanding and willing and so of executing which are denominated from the different acts which they relate to There is some Reason in the powers virtues or faculties of the real difference in the acts So in the Sun and all the superior Luminaries there is in the unity of their Essence a Trinity of Faculties or Powers 1. Motiva 2 Illuminativa 3. Calefactiva causing motion light and heat The doctrine of Motion is much improved by our late Philosophers when the doctrine of Light and Heat are so also and vindicated from the rank of common accidents and qualities the nature of the Luminaries and of Fire will be also better cleared The Sun is not to these Powers or Acts either a Genus a Totum or a Subjectum
in a light and speaking to him from Heaven and is sent to preach the Gospel which he doth with zeal and power and patient labours to the death Act. 9. Ananias is commanded by God to instruct him and baptize him after his first call Act. 9 Peter at Lydda cureth Aeneas by a word who had kept his bed eight years of a Palsie Act. 8. At Joppa he raiseth Tabitha from the dead Act. 9. Cornelius by an Angel is directed to send for Peter to preach the Gospel to him The Holy Ghost fell on all that heard his words Act. 10. Agabus prophesied of the Dearth Act. 11. Peter imprisoned by Herod is delivered by an Angel who opened the doors and loosed his bonds and brought him out Act. 12. Herod is eaten to death with worms Act. 12. At Paphos Elymas the Sorcerer is strucken blinde by Pauls word for resisting the Gospel and Sergius the Roman Deputy is thereby made a Believer Act. 13. At Lystra Paul by a word cureth a Creeple that was so born insomuch as the People would have done sacrifice to him and Barnaâ—as as to Mercury and Jupiter Act. 14. Paul casteth out a divining Devil Act. 16. And being imprisoned and scourged with Silas and their feet in the Stocks at midnight as they sang Praises to God an Earthquake shook the foundations of the Prison the doors were all opened and all their bonds loosed and the Jailor converted Act. 16. The Holy Ghost came upon twelve Disciples upon the imposition of Paul's hands Act. 19. And God wrought so many miracles by his hands at Ephesus that from his body were brought to the sick handkerchiefs and aprons and the diseases departed from them Act. 19. At Troas he raised Eutychus to life Act. 20. His sufferings at Jerusalem are foretold by Agabus Act. 21. At Melita the people took him for a God because the Viper hurt him not that fastened on his hand And there he cured the Father of Publius the chief man of the Island of a Flux and Feaver by Prayer and Imposition of hands In a word in all places where the Apostles came these miracles were wrought and in all the Churches the gifts of the Holy Ghost were usual either of Prophesie or of healing or of speaking strange languages or interpreting them some had one and some another and some had most or all And by such miracles were the Christian Churches planted And all this power Christ had foretold them of at his departure from them Mark 16.17 These signs shall follow them that believe in my Name shall they cast out Devils they shall speak with new tongues they shall take up Serpents and if they drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them they shall lay their hands on the sick and they shall recover Yea in his Life-time on Earth he sent forth his Apostles and seventy Disciples with the same power which they exercised openly Luk. 9.1 c. 10.16 17. Thus was the Gospel confirmed by multitudes of open miracles And Christs own Resurrection and Ascension was the greatest of all And here it must be noted that these Miracles were 1. Not one or two but multitudes 2. Not obscure and doubtfull but evident and unquestionable 3. Not controlled or checked by any greater contrary Miracles as the wonders of the Egyptian Sorcerers were by Moses but altogether uncontrolled 4. Not in one place only but in all Countreys where they came 5. Not by one or two persons only but by very many who were scattered up and down in the World And that miracles and such miracles as these are a certain proof of the truth of Christ and Christianity is most evident in that they are the attestation of God himself 1. It is undenyable that they are the effects of Gods own Power If any question whether God do them immediately or whether an Angel or Spirit may not do them that makes no difference in the case considerable for all creatures are absolutely dependant upon God and can use no power but what he giveth them and continueth in them and exerciseth by them the power of the creatures is all of it the power of God without him they are nothing and can do nothing and God is as near to the effect himself when he useth an instrument as when he useth none So that undoubtedly it is God's work 2. And God having no voice but created revealeth his mind to man by his operations and as he cannot lie so his infinite wisdom and goodness will not give up the world to such unavoidable deceit as such a multitude of miracles would lead them into if they were used to attest a lie If I cannot know him to be sent of God who raiseth the dead and sheweth me such a Seal of Omnipotency to his Commission I have no possibility of knowing who speaketh from God at all nor of escaping deceit in the greatest matters of which God by his Omnipotent Arm would be the cause But none of this can stand with the Nature and righteous Government of God This therefore is an infallible proof of the Veracity of Christ and his Apostles and the truth of the History of these Miracles shall be further opened anon § 10. IV. The fourth part of the Spirit 's Testimony to Christ is subsequent in the work of Regeneration or Sanctification in which he effectually illuminateth the mind and reneweth the soul and life to a true resignation obedience and love of God and to a heavenly mind and conversation and so proveth Christ to be really and effectively the SAVIOVR This evidence is commonly much over-look'd and made little account of by the ungodly who have no such Renovation on themselves because though it may be discerned in others by the fruits yet they that have it not in themselves are much hindred from discerning it partly because it is at a distance from them and because it is in it self seated in the heart where it is neither felt nor seen by others but in the effects And partly because the effects are imperfect and clouded with a mixture of remaining faults but especially because that ungodly men have a secret enmity to holy things and thence to holy persons and therefore are falsely prejudic'd against them which is encreased by cross interests and courses in their converse But yet indeed the Spirit of Regeneration is a plenary evidence of the truth of Christ and Christianity To manifest which I shall 1. consider What it is and doth 2. How and by what means 3. On whom 4. Against what opposition 5. That it is Christ indeed that doth it I. The change which is made by the Spirit of Christ doth consist in these particulars following 1. It taketh down pride and maketh men humble and low in their own eyes to which end it acquainteth them with their sin and their desert and misery 2. It teacheth men self-denial and causeth them to resign themselves to God and use
themselves as being wholly his own 3. It absolutely subjecteth the Soul to God and sitteth up his Authority as absolute over our thoughts and words and all our actions And maketh the Christians life a course of careful obedience to his Laws so far as they understand them 4. It taketh up a Christians mind with the thankful sense of his Redemption so that the pardon of his sins and his deliverance from hell and his hopes of everlasting glory do form his soul to a holy gratitude and make the expressions of it to be his work 5. It giveth man a sense of the love of God as his gracious Redeemer and so of the goodness and mercifulness of his Nature It causeth them to think of God as their greatest Benefactor and as one that loveth them and as LOVE it self and so it reconcileth their estranged alienated minds to him and maketh the love of God to be the very constitution and life of the Soul 6. It causeth men to believe that there is an everlasting Glory to be enjoyed by holy Souls where we shall see the glory of God and be filled with his love and exercised in perfect love and praise and be with Christ his Angels and Saints for evermore It causeth them to take this felicity for their portion and to set their hearts upon it and to make it the chief care and business of all their lives to seek it 1. It causeth them to live in the joyful hopes and foresight of this blessedness and to do all that they do as means thereunto and thus it sweetneth all their lives and maketh Religion their chief delight 8. It accordingly employeth their thoughts and tongues so that the praises of God and the mention of their everlasting blessedness and of the way thereto is their most delightful conference as it beseemeth travellers to the City of God and so their political converse is in heaven 9. And thus it abateth the fears of death as being but their passage to everlasting life And those that are confirmed Christians indeed do joyfully entertain it and long to see their glorified Lord and the blessed Majesty of their great Creator 10. It causeth men to love all sanctified persons with a special love of complacency and all mankind with a love of benevolence even to love our neighbours as our selves and to abhor that selfishness which would engage us against our neighbours good 11. It causeth men to love their enemies and to forgive and forbear and to avoid all unjust and unmerciful revenge It maketh men meek long-suffering and patient though not impassionate insensible or void of that anger which is the necessary opposer of sin and folly 12. It employeth men in doing all the good they can it maketh them long for the holiness and happiness of one another's souls and desirous to do good to those that are in need according to our power 13. This true Regeneration by the Spirit of Christ doth make those Superiours that hath it even Princes Magistrates Parents and Masters to Rule those under them in holiness love and justice with self-denial seeking more the pleasing of God and the happiness of their Subjects for soul and body than any carnal selfish interest of their own and therefore it must needs be the blessing of that happy Kingdom Society or Family which hath such a holy Governour O that they were not so few 14. It maketh subjects and children and servants submissive and conscionable in all the duties of their Relations and to honour their Superiours as the Officers of God and to obey them in all just subordination to him 15. It causeth men to love Justice and to do as they would be done by and to desire the welfare of the souls bodies estates and honour of their neighbours as their own 16. It causeth men to subdue their adpetites and lusts and fleshly desires and to set up the government of God and sanctified Reason over them and to take their flesh for that greatest enemy in our corrupted state which we must chiefly watch against and master as being a Rebel against God and Reason It alloweth a man so much sensitive pleasure as God forbiddeth not and as tendeth to the holiness of the soul and furthereth us in God's service and all the rest it rebuketh and resisteth 17. It causeth men to estimate all the wealth and honour and dignities of the world as they have respect to God and a better world and as they either help or hinder us in the pleasing of God and seeking immortality and as they are against God and our spiritual work and happiness it causeth us to account them but as meer vanity loss and dung 18. It keepeth men in a life of watchfulness against all those temptations which would draw them from this holy course and in a continual warfare against Satan and his Kingdom under conduct of Jesus Christ 19. It causeth men to prepare for sufferings in this world and to look for no great matters here to expect persecutions crosses losses wants defamations injuries and painful sicknesses and death and to spend their time in preparing all that furniture of mind which is necessary to their support and comfort in such a day of trial that they may be patient and joyful in tribulation and bodily distress as having a comfortable relation to God and Heaven which will incomparably weigh down all 20. It causeth men to acknowledge that all this grace and mercy is from the love of God alone and to depend on him for it by faith in Christ and to devote and refer all to himself again and make it our ultimate end to please him and thus to subserve him as the first Efficient the chief Dirigent and the ultimate final Cause of all of whom and through whom and to whom are all things to whom be Glory for ever Amen This is the true description of that Regenerate Sanctified state which the Spirit of Christ doth work on all whom he will save and that are Christians indeed and not in Name only And certainly this is the Image of God's Holiness and the just constitution and use of a reasonable Soul And therefore he that bringeth men to this is a Real Saviour of whom more anon II. And it is very considerable by what means and in what manner all this is done It is done by the preaching of the Gospel of Christ and that in plainness and simplicity The curiosity of artificial oratory doth usually but hinder the success as painting doth the light of windows It was a few plain men that came with spiritual power and not with the entising words of humane wisdom or curiosities of vain Philosophy who did more in this work than any of their successors have done since As in Naturals every thing is apt to communicate its own nature and not anothers heat causeth heat and cold causeth cold so wit by communication causeth wit and common learning causeth common
learning and so it is holiness and love which are fittest to communicate and cause holiness and love which common qualifications are too low for though they may be helpful in their several places and degrees what contemned instruments hath God used in the world to do that for the regenerating of souls which the greatest Emperors by their Laws nor the subtilest Philosophers by their Precepts did not The Athenian Philosophers despised Paul and Gallio counted his doctrine but a supertitious talk about names and words but Satan himself despised not those whom he tempted men to despise but perceived they were like to be the ruine of his Kingdom and therefore every where stirred up the most vehement furious resistance of them It is evident therefore that there is an inward effectual operation of the holy Ghost which giveth success to these means which are naturally in themselves so weak And it is to be observed that this great change is very often wrought on a sudden in a prevalent though not a perfect degree One Sermon hath done that for a many thousand sinners which twenty years teaching of the greatest Philosophers never did One Sermon hath turned them from the sins which they had lived in all their days and hath turned them to a life which they were strangers to before or else abhorred One Sermon hath taken down the world which had their hearts and hath put it under their feet and hath turned their hearts to another world which sheweth that there is an internal Agent more powerful than the speaker And it is remarkable that in the main the change is wrought in one and the same method first humbling men for sin and misery and then leading them to Jesus Christ as the remedy and to God by him and so kindling the love of God in them by the bellows of faith and then leading them towards perfection in the exercises of that holy love III. And it will further lead us to the original of this Change to consider on whom it is thus wrought 1. For their place and time 2. Their quality in themselves 3. And as compared to each other 4. And as to their numbers 1. For time and place it is in all ages since Christ to say nothing of the former ages now and in all Nations and Countries which have received him and his Gospel that Souls have been thus regenerated to God If it had been only a fanatick rapture of brain-sick men it would have been like the effects of the Heresies of the Valentinians Basilidians Gnosticks Montanists c. or of the Swenckfeldians Weigelians Behmenists Quakers and other such Enthusiasts who make a stir for one Age in some one corner of the world and then go out with a perpetual stink In all Ages and Countries these effects of Christian Doctrine are the very same as they were in the first Age and the first Country where it was preached Just such effects as it hath in one Kingdom or Family it hath in all others who equally receive it and just such persons as Christians were in the first Ages at Jerusalem Rome Antioch Philippi c. such are they now in England according to their several degrees of grace though not in miracles and things extraordinary to the Church The children of no one father are so like as all God's sanctified children are throughout the world 2. As to their civil quality it is men of all degrees that are thus sanctified though fewest of the Princes and great ones of the world And as to their moral qualification it sometime falleth on men prepared by a considering sober temper and by natural plainness and honesty of heart and sometimes it befalleth such as are most prophane and drown'd in sin and never dreamt of such a change nay purposely set their minds against it These God doth often suddenly surprize by an over-powering light and suitable-constraining-overcoming attraction and maketh them new men 3. And as to their capacities compared there is plainly a distinguishing hand that disposeth of the work Sometimes a persecuting Saul is converted by a voice from Heaven when Pharisees that were less Persecutors are left in their unregeneracy Sometimes under the same Sermon one that was more prophane and less prepared is converted when another that was more sober and better disposed remaineth as he was before The husband and the wife the Parents and the Children Brothers and Sisters Companions and Friends are divided by this work and one converted and the other not Though none is deprived of this Mercy but upon the guilt of their forfeiture resistance or contempt yet is there plainly the effect of some special choice of the Holy Spirit in taking out some of these that abused and forfeited grace and changing them by an insuperable work 4. And as to the number it is many thousands that are thus renewed enow to shew the Love and Power of him that calleth them But yet the far smaller part of mankinde to shew his Dominion and distinguishing will who knoweth the reason of all his works of which more anon IV. Consider what Opposition this work of Grace doth overcome 1. Within us 2. Without us 1. Within men it findeth 1. A dungeon of Ignorance which it dispelleth by it's heavenly light 2. Abundance of error and prejudice which it unteacheth men 3. A stupid hardened heart which it softeneth and a senseless sleepiness of Soul which it overcometh by awakening quickening power 4. A love to sin which it turneth into hatred 5. An idolizing self-esteem and self-conceitedness and self-love and self-willedness which it turneth into self-loathing and self-denyall not making us loath our selves as Natural or as Renewed but as corrupt with sin and abusers of Mercy and such as by wilfull folly have wronged God and undone themselves So that Repentance maketh men fall out with themselves and become as loathsome in their own eyes 6. It findeth in us an over-valuing love of this present World and a foolish inordinate desire to its profits dignities and honours which it destroyeth and turneth into a rational contempt 7. It findeth in us a prevailing sensuality and an unreasonable appetite and lust and a Flesh that would bear down both Reason and the Authority of God And this it subdueth and mortifieth it 's inordinate desires and bringeth it under the Laws of God 8. It findeth all this radicated and confirmed by Custome And overcometh those sins which a sinner hath turned as into his Nature and hath lived in the love and practice of all his dayes All this and more opposition within us grace doth overcome in all the sanctified And there is not one of all these if well considered of but will appear to be of no small strength and difficulty to be truly conquered 2. And without us the holy Spirit overcometh 1. Worldly allurements 2. Worldly men 3. All other assaults of Satan 1. While the Soul is in flesh and worketh by the means of the outward
and blessedness of the Life to come that they say nothing of it that is ever likely to make any considerable number set their hearts on Heaven and to live a heavenly Life 9. They were so unacquainted with the nature and will of God that they taught and used such a manner of Worship as tended rather to delude and corrupt men than to sanctifie them 10. They medled so little with the inward sins and duties of the heart especially about the holy Love of God and their goodness was so much in outward acts and in meer respect to men that they were not like to sanctifie the Soul or make the Man good that his actions might be good but only to polish men for Civil Societies with the addition of a little Varnish of Superstition and Hypocrisie 11. Their very style is either suitable to dead speculation as a Lecture of Metaphysicks or sleight and dull and unlike to be effectual to convert and sanctifie mens Souls 12. Almost all is done in such a disputing sophistical way and clogg'd with so many obscurities uncertainties and self-contradictions and mixt in heaps of Physical and Logical Subtilties that they were unfit for the common peoples benefit and could tend but to the benefit of a few 13. Experience taught and still teacheth the World that Holy Souls and Lives that were sincerely set upon God and Heaven were strangers amongst the Disciples of the Philosophers and other Heathens Or if it be thought that there were some such among them certainly they were very few in comparison of true Christians and those few very dark and diseased and defective with us a Childe at ten years old will know more of God and shew more true piety than did any of their Philosophers with us poor women and labouring persons do live in that holiness and heavenliness of minde and conversation which the wisest of the Philosophers never did attain I spake of this before but here also thought meet to shew you the difference between the effect of Christs doctrine and the Philosophers 2. And that all this is justly to be imputed to Christ himself I shall now prove 1. He gave them a perfect pattern for his holy obedient heavenly Life in his own person and his conversation here on Earth 2. His Doctrine and Law requireth all this holiness which I described to you You finde the Prescript in his Word of which the holy Souls and Lives of men are but a transcript 3. All his Institutions and Ordinances are but means and helps to this 4. He hath made it the condition of mans Salvation to be thus holy in sincerity and to desire and seek after perfection in it He taketh no other for true Christians indeed nor will save any other at the last 5. All his comforting Promises of mercy and defence are made only to such 6. He hath made it the Office of his Ministers through the World to perswade and draw men to this Holiness And if you hear the Sermons and read the Books which any faithfull Minister of Christ doth preach or write you will soon see that this is the business of them all And you may soon perceive that these Ministers have another kinde of preaching and writing than the Philosophers had more clear more congruous more spiritual more powerfull and likely to win men to Holiness and Heavenliness When our Divines and their Philosophers are compared as to their promoting of true Holiness verily the latter seem to be but as Glow-worms and the former to be the Candles for the Family of God And yet I truly value the wisdom and virtue which I finde in a Plato a Seneca a Cicero an Antonine or any of them If you say our advantage is because coming after all we have the helps of all even of those Philosophers I answer mark in our Books and Sermons whether it be any thing but Christianity which we preach It is from Christ and Scripture that we fetch our Doctrine and not from the Philosophers we use their helps in Logick Physicks c. But that 's nothing to our Doctrine He that taught me to speak English did not teach me the Doctrine which I preach in English And he that teacheth me to use the Instruments of Logick doth not teach me the doctrine about which I use them And why did not those Philosophers by all their art attain to that skill in this Sacred work as the Ministers of Christ do when they had as much or more of the Arts than we I read indeed of many good Orations then used even in those of the Emperour Julian there is much good and in Antonine Arrian Epictetus Plutarch more And I read of much taking-Oratory of the Bonzii in Japan c. But compared to the endeavours of Christian Divines they are poor pedantick barren things and little sparks and the success of them is but answerable 7. Christ did before hand promise to send his Spirit into mens Souls to do all this work upon all his Chosen And as he promised just so he doth 8. And we finde by experience that it is the preaching of Christs doctrine by which the work is done It is by the reading of the sacred Scripture or hearing the Doctrine of it opened and applyed to us that Souls are thus changed as is before described And if it be by the medicines which he sendeth us himself by the hands of his own Servants that we are healed we need not doubt whether it be he that healed us His Doctrine doth it as the instrumental Cause for we finde it adapted thereunto and we finde nothing done upon us but by that Doctrine nor any remaining effect but what is the impression of it But his Spirit inwardly reneweth us as the Principal cause and worketh with and by the Word For we finde that the Word doth not work upon all nor upon all alike that are alike prepared But we easily perceive a voluntary distinguishing choice in the operation And we finde a power more than can be in the words alone in the effect upon our selves The heart is like the Wax and the Word like the Seal and the Spirit like the hand that strongly applyeth it We feel upon our hearts that though nothing is done without the Seal yet a greater force doth make the impression than the weight of the Seal alone could cause By this time it is evident that this work of Sanctification is the attestation of God by which he publickly owneth the Gospel and declareth to the World that Christ is the Saviour and his Word is true For 1. It is certain that this work of Renovation is the work of God For 1. It is his Image on the Soul It is the life of the Soul as flowing from his Holy Life wherein are contained the Trinity of Perfections It is the Power of the Soul by which it can overcome the Flesh the World and the Devil which without it none is able to do It is the
Wisdom of the Soul produced by his Light and Wisdom by which we know the difference between Good and Evil and our Reason is restored to its dominion over fleshly sense It is the Goodness of the Soul by which it is made suitable to the Eternal Good and fit to know him love him praise him serve him and enjoy him And therefore nothing lower than his Goodness can be its principal Cause 2. It subserveth the Interest of God in the World And recovereth the apostate Soul to himself It disposeth it to honour him love him and obey him It delivereth up the whole man to him as his own It casteth down all that rebelleth against him It casteth out all which was preferred before him It rejecteth all which standeth up against him and would seduce and tempt us from him And therefore it is certainly his work 3. Whose else should it be Would Satan or any evil cause produce so excellent an effect would the worst of beings do the best of works It is the best that is done in this lower world Would any enemy of God so much honour him and promote his interest and restore him his own would any enemy of mankind thus advance us and bring us up to a life of the highest honour and delights that we are capable of on earth and give us the hopes of life eternal And if any good Angel or other Cause should do it all reason will confess that they do it but as the Messengers or Instruments of God and as second causes and not as the first Cause for otherwise we should make them gods For my own part my Soul perceiveth that it is God himself that hath imprinted this his Image on me and hath hereby as it were written upon me his Name and Mark even HOLINESS TO THE LORD and I bear about me continually a Witness of Himself his Son and holy Spirit a Witness within me which is the Seal of God and the pledge of his love and the earnest of my heavenly inheritance And if our Sanctification be thus of GOD it is certainly his attestation to the truth of Christ and to his Gospel for 1. No man that knoweth the perfections of God will ever believe that he would bless a deceiver and a lie to be the means of the most holy and excellent work that ever was done in the world If Christ were a Deceiver his crime would be so execrable as would engage the Justice of God against him as he is the righteous Governour of the world And therefore he would not so highly honour him to be his chiefest instrument for the worlds Renovation He is not impotent to need such instruments he is not ignorant that he should so mistake in the choice of instruments he is not bad that he should love and use such Instruments and comply with their deceits These things are all so clear and sure that I cannot doubt of them 2. No man that knoweth the mercifulness of God and the Justice of his Government can believe that he would give up Mankind so remedilesly to seduction yea and be the principal causer of it himself For if besides Prophecie and a holy Doctrine and a multitude of famous Miracles a Deceiver might also be the great Renewer and Sanctifier of the world to bring man back to the obedience of God and to repair his Image on Mankind what possibility were there of our discovery of that deceit Or rather should we not say he were a blessed Deceiver that had deceived us from our sin and misery and brought back our straying souls to God 3. Nay when Christ fore-told men that he would send his Spirit to do all this work and would renew men for eternal life and thus be with us to the end of the world and when I see all this done I must needs believe that he that can send down a Sanctifying Spirit a Spirit of Life a Spirit of Power Light and Love to make his Doctrine in the mouths of his Ministers effectual to mens Regeneration and Sanctification is no less himself than God or certainly no less than his certain Administrator 4. What need I more to prove the Cause than the adequate effect When I find that Christ doth actually save me shall I question whether he be my Saviour When I find that he saveth thousands about me and offereth the same to others shall I doubt whether he be the Saviour of the world Sure he that healeth us all and that so wonderfully and so cheaply may well be called our Physician If he had promised only to save us I might have doubted whether he would perform it and consequently whether he be indeed the Saviour But when he performeth it on my self and performeth it on thousands round about me to doubt yet whether he be the Saviour when he actually saveth us is to be ignorant in despite of Reason and Experience I conclude therefore that the Spirit of Sanctification is the infallible Witness of the Verity of the Gospel and the Veracity of Jesus Christ 5. And I entreat all that read this further to observe the great use and advantage of this testimony above others in that it is continued from Generation to Generation and not as the gift and testimony of Miracles which continued plentifully but one Age and with diminution somewhat after this is Christ's witness to the end of the world in every Country and to every Soul yea and continually dwelling in them For if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his Rom. 8.9 He that is not able to examine the History which reporteth the Miracles to him may be able to find upon his Soul the Image of God imprinted by the Gospel and to know that the Gospel hath that Image in it self which it imprinteth upon others and that it cometh from God which leadeth men so directly unto God and that it is certainly his own means which he blesseth to so great and excellent ends 6. Note also that part of the work of the Spirit of God in succeeding the Doctrine of Jesus Christ doth consist in the effectual production of Faith it self for though the work be wrought by the Reasons of the Gospel and the Evidences of Truth yet is it also wrought by the Spirit of God concurring with that evidence and as the internal Efficient exciting the sluggish faculties to do their office and illustrating the understanding and fitting the will to entertain the truth for the difficulties are so great and the temptations to unbelief so subtil and violent and our own indisposedness through corruption the greatest impediment of all that the bare Word alone would not produce a belief of that lively vigorous nature as is necessary to its noble effects and ends without the internal co-operation of the Spirit So that Christ doth not only teach us the Christian Faith and Religion but doth give it us and work it in us by his Spirit And he that can do
The world is crucified to them and they to the world Gal. 5.24 6.14 They are chosen to be holy and unblameable in love Eph. 1.4 They walk as renewed in the spirit of their mindes with all lowliness and meekness and long-suffering forbearing one another endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace Eph. 4.23.2.3 As being created unto good works in Christ Eph. 2.10 Without corrupt communication bitterness wrath clamor evil-speaking fornication uncleanness covetousness filthiness foolish talking and jeasting Eph. 4.29 5.3.4 Denying ungodlyness and worldly lusts living soberly righteously and godly in this present world as redeemed from all iniquity and purified as a peculiar people to Christ zealous of good works Tit. 2.12 14. Having their conversation in Heaven from whence they expect their Redeemer to translate them into Glory Phil. 3.20 21. These were the fruits of the Ministry of the Apostles And God was pleased to bless their labours more than any others since and make better holyer heavenlyer Christians by the means of their endeavours that so he might give a fuller proof of the truth of their testimony of Christ § 39. It is the great advantage of our Faith that these second attestations to the Disciples testimony of the Miracles of Christ are much more open evident and convincing to us at this distance than the Miracles of Christ himself that so there might be no place for rational doubting The sorts of their miracles were as numerous as his They were wrought by hundreds and thousands and not by Christ alone They were wrought for an age and not for three years and a half alone They were wrought in a great part of the World and not in Judaea and Galilee alone They were done in the face of abundance of Congregations and not before the Jews only And they succeeded to the conversion and sanctification of many thousands more than did the preaching of Christ himself So that if any thing that is said before of the confirmation of Christs own miracles had wanted evidence it is abundantly made up in the evidence of their miracles who were the reporters and witnesses of his § 40. I have hitherto been shewing you how the miracles of Christ were proved attested and made certainly known to the first Churches planted by the Apostles themselves viz. by the testimony of the Spirit 1. In their doctrine and lives 2. In their miracles and 3. In their success in the sanctification of mens souls I am next to shew you how these matters of fact or actions of the Apostles are certainly proved or brought down to us § 41. And this is by the same three wayes of proof as the Apostles proved to the first Churches their testimony though with much difference in the point of miracles viz. I. We have it by the most credible humane testimony II. By such testimony as hath a natural certainty III. And by some of that testimony of God which is also a supernatural evidence Of all which I must speak in order supposing what is said before § 42. I. The only natural way of transmitting those things down to us is by Historical Conveyance And the authors of this History are both the Churches of Christ and their enemies The credibility of which Testimonies will be fullyer opened under the second degree of proofs which comprehendeth this § 43. II. That there is a natural Impossibility that our History of the Apostles gifts and miracles should be false will appear by reviewing all the particulars by which the same was proved of the Apostles testimony of the miracles of Christ And in many respects with much more advantage § 44. 1. It is naturally impossible that all Reporters could be themselves deceived For 1. They were many thousands in several Countreys through the World And therefore could not be all either mad or sensless 2. They were men that took their salvation to be most neerly concerned in the thing and were to forsake the pleasures of the World and suffer from men for their Religion and therefore could not be utterly careless in examining the thing 3. They were present upon the place and eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses of all 4. The Languages were said to be spoken in their assemblies and the miracles done among them for many years even an age together And it is impossible all Countreys could be cheated by juggling in matters which their eyes and ears were such competent witnesses of for so many years together 5. They were said to be the objects of many of these miracles themselves viz. That the cures were wrought on many of them that the same Spirit was given to them all 6. And they were said to be the Agents themselves in the several works of that Spirit according to their several gifts So that their common deceit must be impossible If any man should now among us take on him to speak with divers Languages or tell the Churches that divers Languages are spoke among them in their hearing by unlearned men and that Prophesyings Interpretations miraculous cures c. are wrought among them and name the persons time and place and should tell them that they had all some sort or other of the same gifts themselves were it possible for the people to believe all this if it were a Lie Would they not say when did we ever hear your Languages or when did we ever see your Cures and other Miracles when did we see an Ananias and Saphira die When did we do any such works our selves Do we not know what we doe Men could not believe such palpable untruths in matter of publick fact so neer them among them upon them and much less could so many thousands believe this in so many Nations if it were false Because the understanding is not free in it self but per modum naturae is necessitated by cogent evidence Absurd doctrines may easily deceive many thousands and so may false History do by men at a sufficient distance But he that thinks the ears and eyes and other senses of so many thousand sound persons were all deceived thus in presence will sure never trust his own ears or eyes or sense in any thing nor expect that any man eise should ever believe him who so little believeth his own sense and understanding § 45. 2. That the reporters were not purposely the Deceivers of the World by wilfull falshood is also certain by these following evidences § 46. It was not possible that so many thousands in all Countreys should have wit and cunning enough for such a contrivance and could keep it secret among themselves that it should never be detected They that think they were all so stupid as to be themselves deceived cannot also think that they were all so cunning as to conspire the deceiving of all the World so successfully and undiscovered But it is past doubt that for their Naturals they were ordinary persons neither such mad people as all to think they saw and
apprehend or is apprehended by another § 47. 12. Most men think it the wisest way because it is the easiest to be at a venture of the Religion of the King and the Countrey where they live and to do as the most about them do which is seldom best § 48. 13. Men are grown strangers to themselves and know not what man is nor what is a reasonable Soul but have so abused their higher faculties that they are grown ignorant of their dignity and use and know not that in themselves which should help their Faith § 49. 14. Men are grown so bad and false and prone to lying themselves that it maketh them the more incredulous of God and man as judging of others by themselves § 50. 15. The cares of the Body and World do so take up the mindes of men that they cannot afford the matters of God and their salvation such retired serious thoughts as they do necessarily require § 51. 16. Too few have the happiness of judicious Guides who rightly discern the Methods and Evidences of the Gospel and tempt not men to unbelief by their mistaken grounds and unsound reasonings These are the Impediments and difficulties of Faith in the Persons themselves who should believe CHAP. X. The Intrinsecal Difficulties in the Christian Faith resolved Object I. THe Doctrine of the Trinity is not intelligible or credible Answ 1. Nothing at all in God can be comprehended or fully known by any creatures God were not God that is Perfect and Infinite if he were comprehensible by such Worms as we Nothing is so certainly known as God and yet nothing so imperfectly 2. The doctrine of the Trinity in Unity is so intelligible and credible and is so admirably apparent in its products in the methods of Nature and Morality that to a wise Observer it maketh Christianity much the more credible because it openeth more fully these excellent mysteries and methods It is intelligible and certain that MAN is made in the Image of God And that the noblest Creatures bear most of the impress of their Makers excellency And that the invisible Deity is here to be known by us as in the Glass of his visible works Of which the Rational or Intellectual Nature is the highest with which we are acquainted And it is most certain that in the Unity of mans Minde or Soul there is a Trinity of Essentialities or Primalities as Campanella calleth them that is such faculties as are so little distinct from the Essence of the Soul as such that Philosophers are not yet agreed whether they shall say it is realiter formaliter relativè vel denominatione extrinseca To pass by the three faculties of Vegetation sensation and intellection In the Soul as Intellectual there are the Essential faculties of Power executive or communicative ad extra Intellect and Will Posse Scire Velle And accordingly in morality or virtue there is in one New-creature or holy Nature wisdom goodness and ability or fortitude and promptitude to act according to them And in our Relation to things below us in the unity of our Dominion or superiority there is a Trinity of Relations viz. we are their Owners their Rulers according to their capacity and their End and Benefactors so that in the Unity of Gods Image upon man there is this natural moral and dominative Image and in the Natural the Trinity of Essential faculties and in the Moral the Trinity of holy Virtues and in the Dominative a Trinity of superiour Relations And though the further we go from the root the more darkness and dissimilitude appeareth to us yet it is strange to see even in the Body what Analogies there are to the Faculties of the Soul In the superior middle and inferior Regions And in them the natural vital and animal parts with the three sorts of Humours three sorts of Concoctions and three sorts of Spirits answerable thereto and admirably united with much more which a just Scheme would open to you And therefore seeing God is known to us by this his Image and in this Glass though we must not think that any thing in God is formally the same as it is in Man yet certainly we must judge that all this is eminently in God and that we have no fitter notions and names concerning his incomprehensible Perfections than what are borrowed from the Minde of man Therefore it is thus undenyable that GOD is in the Unity of his Eternal Infinite Essence a Trinity of Essentialities or Active Principles viz. POWER INTELLECT and WILL And in their HOLY Perfections they are Omnipotency Omniscience or Wisdom and Goodness And in his Relative Supremacy is contained this Trinity of Relations He is our OWNER our RECTOR and our CHIEF GOOD that is Our Benefactor and our end And as in Mans Soul the Posse Scire Velle are not three parts of the Soul it being the whole Soul quae potest quae intelligit quae vult and yet these three are not formaliter or how you will otherwise call the distinction the same Even so in GOD it is not one Part of God that hath POWER and another that hath UNDERSTANDING and another that hath WILL but the whole Deity is POWER the whole is UNDERSTANDING and the whole is WILL The whole is Omnipotency the whole is Wisdom and the whole is Goodness the Fountain of that which in man is called Holiness or Moral Goodness And yet formally to understand is not to will and to will is not to be able to execute If you say what is all this to the Trinity of Hypostases or persons I answer Either the three Subsistences in the Trinity are the same with the Potentia Intellectus and Voluntas in the Divine Essence or not If they are the same there is nothing at all intelligible incredible or uncertain in it For natural Reason knoweth that there is all these eminently in God And whoever will think that any humane language can speak of him must confess that his Omnipotence Wisdom and Goodness his Power Intellect and Will must be thus to mans apprehension distinguished Otherwise we must say nothing at all of God or say that his power is his willing and his willing is his knowing and that he willeth all the sin which he knoweth and all that he can do which language will at best signifie nothing to any man And it is to be noted that our Saviour in his Eternal subsistence is called in Scripture The WISDOM of God or his internal Word and in his Operations in the Creation he is called The Word of God as operative or efficient and in his Incarnation he is called The Son of God Though these terms be not alwayes and only thus used yet usually they are The Words of an ancient godly Writer before cited are considerable Potho Prumensis de statu domus Dei lib. 1. p. 567. in Biblioth Patr. T. 9. Tria sunt invisibilia Dei h. e. Potentia Sapientia
all this is at all incredible But it is indeed incredible till conscience have humbled him that the Thief or Murderer should like this penalty or think well of the Judge or that a sinner who judgeth of good and evil in others as Dogs do by the interest of his throat or flesh and thinks them good only that love him and bad that hurt him and are against him should ever believe that it is the amiable goodness of God which causeth him in justice to condemn the wicked 2. But yet let not misunderstanding make this seem harder to you than indeed it is Do not think that souls in hell are hanged up in flames as beasts are hanged in a butchers shambles or that souls have any pain but what is suitable to souls and that 's more than bodies bear It is an affliction in rational ways which falls on rational spirits Devils are now in torment and yet have a malignant kingdom and order and rule in the children of disobedience and go up and down seeking whom they may devour We know not the particular manner of their sufferings but that they are forsaken of God and deprived of his complacential love and mercy and have the rational misery before described and such also as shall be suitable to such kind of bodies as they shall have And while they are immortal no wonder if their misery be so Object VII Who can believe that the damned shall be far more than the saved and the devil have more than God How will this stand with the infinite goodness of God Answ I have fully answered this before in Part 1. chap. 11. and should now adde but this 1. In our enquiries we must begin with the primum cognita or notissima as aforesaid that God is most good and also just and punisheth sinners is before proved to be among the notissima or primum cognita and therefore it is most certain that these are no way contradictory to each other 2. And if it be no contradiction to God's goodness to punish and cast off for ever the lesser part of the world then it is none to punish or cast off the greater part The inequality of number will not alter the case 3. It is no way against the goodness of humane Governours in some cases to punish even the greater number according to their deserts 4. Can any man that openeth his eyes deny it in matter of fact that the far greater part of the world is actually ungodly worldly sensual and disobedient Or that such are meet for punishment and unmeet for the love and holy fruition of God When I see that most men are ungodly and uncapable of Heaven is it not harder to reason to believe that these shall have that joy and employment of which they are uncapable than that they shall have the punishment which agreeth with their capacity desert and choice Must I believe that God's enemies shall love him for ever meerly because they are the greater number If one man that dieth unrenewed be capable of heaven another is so and all are so Therefore I must either believe that no impenitent ungodly person is saved or that all be saved The number therefore is nothing to the deciding of the case 5. Can any man in his wits deny that it is as sure that God permitteth sin in the world as that the Sun shineth on us yea that he permitteth that universal enormous deluge of wickedness which the world groaneth under at this day And that this sin is the souls calamity and to a right judgment is much worse than punishment what ever beastly sensuality may gainsay If then the visible wickedness of the world be permitted by God without any impeachment of his goodness then certainly his goodness may consist with punishment which as such is good when sin is evil And much of this punishment also is but materially permitted by God and executed by sinners upon themselves 6. The wisdom and goodness of God saw it meet for the right government of this world to put the threatnings of an everlasting punishment in his Law and how can that man have the face to say it was needless or too much in the Law with whom it proved not enough to weigh down the trifling interests of the flesh And if it was meet to put that penalty in the Law it is just and meet to put that Law into execution how many soever fall under the penalty of it as hath been proved 7. The goodness of God consisteth not in a Will to make all his creatures as great or good and happy as he can but it is essentially in his infinite perfections and expressively in the communication of so much to his creatures as he seeth meet and in the accomplishment of his own pleasure by such ways of Benignity and Justice as are most suitable to his Wisdom and Holiness Man's personal interest is an unfit rule and measure of God's goodness 8. To recite what I said and speak it plainlier I confess it greatly quieteth my mind against this great objection of the numbers that are damned and cast off for ever to consider how small a part this earth is of God's creation as well as how sinful and impenitent Ask any Astronomer that hath considered the innumerable number of the fixed Stars and Planets with their distances and magnitude and glory and the uncertainty that we have whether there be not as many more or an hundred or thousand times as many unseen to man as all those which we see considering the defectiveness of man's sight and the Planets about Jupiter with the innumerable Stars in the Milky way which the Tube hath lately discovered which man's eyes without it could not see I say ask any man who knoweth these things whether all this earth be any more in comparison of the whole creation than one Prison is to a Kingdom or Empire or the paring of one nail or a little mole or wart or a hair in comparison of the whole body And if God should cast off all this earth and use all the sinners in it as they deserve it is no more sign of a want of benignity or mercy in him than it is for a King to cast one subject of a million into a Jail and to hang him for his murder or treason or rebellion or for a man to kill one louse which is but a molestation to the body which beareth it or than it is to pare a mans nails or cut off a wart or a hair or to pull out a rotten aking tooth I know it is a thing uncertain and unrevealed to us whether all these Globes be inhabited or not but he that considereth that there is scarce any uninhabitable place on earth or in the water or air but men or beasts or birds or fishes or flies or worms and moles do take up almost all will think it a probability so near a certainty as not to be
same thing as many others do that call them forms when they speak of vegetatives And what if by substances Telesius mean the same that Pemble doth by accidents Is not the world then troubled with ambiguitie of words He that will consider them well may suspect that they mean as I conjecture An active power or principle being the chief cause of operations alterations and discrimination is the thing that they all mean by all these names And the followers of Democritus especially Gassendus and Cartesius do not improbably argue that it is some substantial being which maketh that change or effect upon our senses which as there received is a quality So that unless Mr. Pemble can better tell us what lux calor are than by calling them Qualities he hath given the understanding no satisfaction at all Much less when he nakedly asserteth without any proof that sensation doth not superare naturam primarum qualitatum that are none of them sensible themselves And when he hath no other answer to this argument but that non minus miranda sunt in inanimatis which he giveth not one instance or word to prove When Aristotle c. Scaliger Sennertus and abundance more have said much to the contrary I conclude that for all that is here said and whether you call them our forms or not as you may or may not in several senses humane souls are those parts of man which are simple pure invisible active powerful substances and therefore being not annihilated must needs subsist in their separated state OBJECTION IV. THe Soul is material and consequently mortal because it dependeth upon matter in its operations and consequently in its essence Answ 1. I have proved already that if you did prove the soul material you had not thereby at all proved it mortal unless you mean only that it hath a posse mori vel annihilari which may be said of every creature for simple matter which hath no repugnant parts or principles hath not only a posse nen mori but an aptitude in its nature ad non moriendum Remember your friends that make the world or matter at least to be eternal They thought not that materiality was a proof of either annihilation or corruption Object If it be material it must be compounded of matter and form and therefore is corruptible Answ True if that matter and form were two several substances and were one repugnant to the other The soul and body are different substances but the metaphysical matter and form of the soul being but the genus differentia are not two substances much less repugnant and therefore have never the more a tendency to corruption 2. The soul useth matter and dependeth no otherwise on it than its instrument It doth not follow that a man is a horse because he dependeth on his horse in the manner of his riding and his pace nor that I am inanimate because in writing I depend on my pen which is inanimate If you put spirits of wine into water or whey as its vehicle to temper it for a medicine it doth not follow that the spirits are meer water because they operate not without the water but conjunct and as tempered by it If the fire in your Lamp do not shine or burn without the oil but in manner and duration dependeth on it it doth not follow that fire is annihilated when the candle is out or that it was but oil before no nor that it ceaseth to be fire afterwards as Gassendus must needs confess who holdeth that the Elements are not turned into one another § 1. l. 3. c. 2. Fire ceaseth not to be fire when it goeth out of our observation The noblest natures use and rule the inferiour God himself moveth and useth things material and yet is not therefore material himself Yea if motus be in patiente recipitur ad modum recipientis you may conjecture how far God's own operations upon the creatures may be called dependent as to the effect as being ad captum modum creaturae And the Sun doth move and quicken all passive matter here below ad modum recipientis with great variety through the variety of the matter and yet it followeth not that the Sun is it self such passive matter 3. The soul hath operations which are not upon matter at all though matter may possibly be an antecedent occasion or prerequisite Such is the apprehension of its own intellection and volitions and all that it thence gathereth of God and other intellectual natures and operations of which I must say more anon OBJECTION V. NO immaterial substance moveth that which is material as a principle of its operations but the soul moveth the body as the principle of its operations Ergo. Answ 1. I have already said that if you proved the soul material it would not prove it mortal 2. As the body hath various operations so it is moved by various principles or powers As to locomotion and perhaps vegetation the materia subtilii or finest atoms as you will call it or the fiery matter in the spirits as I would call it is an active being which hath a natural power to move it self and the rest But whether that motion do suffice to sensation is undecided But certainly there is another inward principle of motion which guideth much of the locomotive and over-ruleth some of the natural motion by a peculiar action of its own which is called Intellection and Volition as I have proved before When I go to the Church when I write or talk the spirits are the nearest sufficient principle of the motion as motion but as it is done in this manner to this end at this time with these reasons it is from the intellectual principle 3 And thus I deny the major Proposition And I prove the contrary 1. God is the first principle of all motion in the world and the first cause of material motion and yet is not material 2. What the lower and baser nature can do that the higher and nobler hath power to do suppositis supponendis therefore if a body can move a body a soul can do it much more But saith Gassendus Causis secundis primum agendi principium est Atomorum varia mobilitas ingenita non incorporea aliqua substantia Answ Angels are causae secundae souls are causae secundae animated bodies of men are causae secundae prove it now of any of these in your exclusion if you can But he saith Capere non licet quomodo si incorporeum sit ita applicari corpori valeat ut illi impulsum imprimat quando noque ipsum contingere carens ipsa tactu seu mole quae tangat non potest Physicae actiones corporeae cum sint nisi à principio physico corporeoque elici non possiut Quod anima autem humana incorporea cum sit in ipsum tamen corpus suum agat motumque ipsi imprimat dicimus animam humanam qua est
second Cause 2. That the Somatists themselves say that in the Generation of Plants and Animals which they suppose to be totally Corporeal there is not the least degree of substance produced de novo and therefore there is none but what was totally of God and the Parents do but cause instrumentally the uniting of matter prae-existent Therefore if in the Generating of Man the Parents do but instrumentally cause the uniting of substance which is totally from God though not prae-existent it little differenceth the Case as to the consequents 3. Especially considering that what God doth he doth by an establisht Law of Nature As in his making of the World he made the Sun a Causa Vniversalis constantly to send forth the emanation of Light Heat and moving force upon passive matter and thereby to produce effects diversifyed by the preparations and reception of that matter as to soften Wax to harden Clay to make a Dunghill stink and a Rose smell sweet to produce a poysonous and a wholsom Plant a Nightingale and a Toad c. and this without any dishonour to the Sun So if God the Father of Spirits the Central efficient of Souls have made it the original Law of Nature that he will accordingly afford his communicative Influx and that in Humane Generations such and such Preparations of matter shall be as Receptive of his emanations for such and such Forms or spiritual substances and that he will be herein but an Vniversal Cause of Souls as Souls and not of Souls as clean or unclean and that this shall depend upon the preparation of the Recipient whether it be the Body or a sensitive foregoing Principle still keeping at his pleasure as a Voluntary Agent the suspension or dispose of the effect this would make no great alteration neither as to the point of original sin nor any other weighty consequent OBJECTION XIII OMne quod oritur interit That which is not eternal as to past duration is not eternal as to future duration But the Soul is not eternal as to past duration Ergo. Answ I confess this argument will prove that the Soul is not mortal ex necessitate suae naturae without dependance on a Voluntary preserver And therefore Cicero after most other Philosophers who useth the Major for a contrary Conclusion mistook in this that he thought the Soul was as natural an Emanation from God as the beams or light is from the Sun and therefore that it was naturally eternall both à parte ante à parte post which made Arnobius and other Ancients argue as much against the Platonists Immortality of the Soul as against the Epicureans Mortality so that as I said before one would think that they were heretical in this point that doth not make them well But it is only this natural Eternity which they confute And when the Philosophers say that Omne quod oritur interit they can mean or at least prove no more but this that it is not Everlasting ex necessitate naturae But yet 1. It may be in its nature fitted to be perpetual 2. And by the will of the Creator made perpetual Every Creature did oriri de novo and yet every one doth not interire OBJECTION XIV AMong all your Arguments for the Souls Immortality there are none but Morall ones Answ Morality is grown so contemptible a thing with some debauched persons that a very argument is invalidated by them or contemned if they can but call it Moral But what is Morality but the modality of Naturals And the same argument may be Natural and Moral Indeed we call that a Causa Moralis oft-times which doth not necessitate the effect And yet sometimes even moral Causes do infalibly and certainly produce the effect But causation and argumentation are different things and so is an effect and a Logical consequence Will you call the consequents of Gods own Wisdom Justice Veracity Goodness c. uncertain as coming from a Morali Cause The Soul is an Intellectual free agent and adapted to Moral operations And this is its excellency and perfection and no disparagement to it at all And if you will better read them over you will finde that my Arguments are both Physical and Moral For I argue from the Acts or operations of the Soul to its Powers and Nature And from its Acts and Nature to its ends with many such like which are as truly Physical media as if I argued from the nature of Fire and Earth that one if not hindered will ascend and the other descend And other men have given you other Arguments in their Physicks and Metaphysicks OBJECTION XV. YOu seem to confess that you cannot prove the endless duration of the Soul by any Argument from Nature alone But only that it shall live another Life which you call a Life of Retribution Answ I told you that a great probability of it I thus prove God hath made the Soul of a Nature not corruptible but apt to perpetual duration Ergo he thereby declareth his will that he intendeth it for perpetual duration because he maketh nothing in vain either for substance or quality It may be some other will think that this argument will inferre not only a probability but a certainty And if you go back to your objection of Materiality I now only adde that Aristotle and his followers who think that the Heavens are corporeal yet think that they are a quinta essentia and simple and incorruptible and therefore that they shall certainly be everlasting And he taketh the the souls of Bruits to be analogous to the matter of the Starrs and so to be of that everlasting quintessence And can you in reason say less of Rational Souls 2. It is sufficient that I prove by natural evidence a Life of Retribution after this which shall fully make the miserable ungodly ones repent tormentingly of their sin and fill the righteous with such Joyes as shall fully recompense all their labour and suffering in a holy life And that I moreover prove that duration of this life and all the rest by supernatural evidence OBJECTION XVI BOth Soul and Body are like a Candle in fluxu continuo and we have not the same substance this Week or Year as we had the last there being a continual consumption or transition and accretion Ergo being not the same we are uncapable of a Life of future Retribution Will you reward and punish the man that is or the man that was Answ It is a foolish thing to carry great and certain Truths into the dark and to argue against them à minus notis from meer uncertainties As to your simile I confess that the Oyl of your Candle is still wasting so is the wick but not that new is added to make it another thing unless it be a Lamp I confess that the lucid fume which we call the flame is still passing away But whether the fiery Principle in its essence not visible but only in its
to a soul when it is separated from the corporeal spirits Or if the soul out of the body were as liable as it is by diseases of the body while it is in it to the loss of memory yet all those arguments which prove the Life of Retribution hereafter do fully prove that God will provide it a way of exercise and prevent all those hinderances of memory which may make his Judgment and Retribution void Again therefore I say To argue ab ignotis against clear evidence in matters that our own everlasting joy or sorrow is concerned in so deeply is a folly that no tongue can express with its due aggravations OBJECTION XX. THe belief of the immortality of souls doth fill men with fears and draw them to superstition and trouble the peace of Kingdoms by unavoidable sects in the prosecution of those things which are of such transcendent weight when otherwise men might live in quietness to themselves and others and in promoting of the publick good Answ This is the maddest objection of all the rest but in our days there are men found that are no wiser than to make it I have answered it fully in divers popular Treatises as that called A Saint or a Bruit c. 1. The greatest and best things are liable to the worst abuses Thus you may argue against Reason that it doth but fill mens brains with knavish craft and enable them to do mischief and to trouble the world and to live themselves in cares and fears c. Upon many such reasons Cotta in Cic. de Nat. Deor. doth chide God for making man a rational creature and saith he had been happier without it And were it not for this wit and reason we should have none of these evils which you have here now mentioned Why then is not reason as well as Religion on that account to be rejected On the same reason Philosophy and Learning may be accused as it is with the Turks and Moscovites What abundance of sects and voluminous contentions and tired consuming studies have they caused witness all the volumes of Philosophers and School-men On the same account you may cry down Kings and Civil Government and Riches and all that is valued in the world for what wars and bloudshed hath there been in the world for Crowns and Kingdoms what hatred and contention for honour and wealth If you could make all men swine they would not stir for gold or pearls or if they were dogs they would not fight for Kingdoms and if they be blind and impious worldlings they will not be zealous about Religion unless to dis-spirit it and to reduce it to the service of their fleshly interest which is the hypocrites zeal No man will contend for that which he valueth not But 2. Consider that though dogs will not fight for Crowns they will fight for bones and some times need men of reason to stave them off And though swine fight not for gold they will fight for draff and burst their bellies if they be not governed And though unbelievers and Atheists trouble not the world to promote Religion they set Families Towns and Countries and Kingdoms together by the ears for their worldly pelf and fleshly interest Enquire whether the wars of the world be not most for carnal interest even where Religion hath been pretended and hearken in Westminster-hall and at the Assizes whether most of the contendings there are such as are caused by Religion or by the love of the world and of the flesh And where Religion seemeth to be a part of the cause it is the Atheists and ungodly that are commonly the chief contenders who think it not enough to hope for no life to come themselves but they cannot endure other men that do it because they seem wiser and better and happier than they and by their holiness gall their consciences and condemn them 3. The extremity of this objections impudency appeareth in this above all that it is most notorious that there is no effectual cure for all the villanies of the world but true Religion and shall the cure be made the cause of that disease 1. Read and judge in Nature and Scripture whether the whole matter of Religion be not perfectly contrary to the vices of the world Will it trouble Kingdoms or disquiet souls to love God above all and to honour and obey him and be thankful for his mercies and to trust his promises and to rejoice in hope of endless glory and to love our neighbours as our selves and to do no injustice or wrong to any to forbear wrath and malice lust adultery theft and lying and all the rest expressed in this treatise 2. Is it not for want of Religion that all the vices and contentions of the world are Would not men be better subjects and better servants and better neighbours if they had more Religion Would not they lie and deceive and steal and wrong others less Do you think he that believeth a life to come or he that believeth it not is liker to cut your purse or rob you by the high way or bear false witness against you or be perjured or take that which is not his own or any such unrighteous thing Is he liker to live as a good subject or servant who looketh for a reward in heaven for it or he that looketh to die as a beast doth Is he liker to do well and avoid evil who is moved by the effectual hopes and fears of another life or he that hath no such hopes and fears but thinketh that if he can escape the Gallows there is no further danger Had you rather your servant that is trusted with your estate did believe that there is a life to come or that there is none Nay why doth not your objection militate as strongly against the thief's believing that there will be an Assize For if the belief of an Assize did not trouble him he might quietly take that which he hath a mind to and do what he list but this fills his heart with fears and troubles 3. Compare those parts of the world Brasil and Soldania c. which believe not a life to come if any such there be with those that do and see which belief hath the better effects 4. What is there of any effectual power to restrain that man from any villany which he hath power to carry out or policy to cover who doth not believe a life to come 5. And if you believe it not what will you do with Reason or any of your faculties or your time How will you live in the world to any better purpose than if you had slept out all your life What talk you of the publick good when the denying of our final true felicity denyeth all that is truely Good both publick and private But so sottish and malignant an objection deserveth pity more than confutation Whatever Religious persons did ever offend these men with any reall Crimes I can assure