him If any man be in Christ saith St. Paul he is a new Creation old things are passed away 2 Cor. 5. It is a known story recited by Plutarch That of a great Cry with dreadful shrieks and groans to Thamus a Pilot as he passed by a desolate Island in the Reign of Tiberius under whom Christ was put to death Great Pan is dead this great All is dead The Heathen figured the whole Creation in the Person of their God Pan the Angelical Coelestial and Elementary parts of it 2. The Death of Christ is an universal Resolution or Return of all things as they stand in Christ into their first and Divine Principles The Light the Life the Forms the Essences of all things return into their Ideal Forms their incorruptible Originals and Patterns their pure eternal Springs in the Mediatory Form and Divine Nature of Christ. The shadowyness returns into that blessed shade that fell immediately from the Person of Christ in Glory that Primitive and Divine Darkness which was before the first Day the Womb of the first Light and of the whole Creation which composed those Nights of Beauty Peace and Pleasure the Nights of the six Days the Night of the seventh Day and all the Nights of Paradise Thus was Jesus with the good Thief and all things with him in him in Paradise at his Death The Jewish Rabbins distinguish Paradise from Heaven thus Heaven is a state of Divine Glory and Pleasure above in the open Light of â—…e Godhead Paradise is a state of Divine incorruptible Glory and Pleasure below beneath the shades of the Earth This is that pure primitive Divine Darkness of which I speak which was the shade out of which the pure Earth with all the unstained Forms of things at first arose and into which they now return again in Christ. This is the Divine sleep of all things in the Death of Christ their retirement into their Divine Patterns their sweet and entire rest in them their contemplation and fruition of all the immortal Joys and Glories of their Patterns and of themselves in those Joys and Glories as a Divine dream in this sleep within this sweet this amiable this more than Angelical shade which over-spreads them Here they desirously and delightfully wait for the Day of the Resurrection from the Face of God which they see by degrees dawning and rising upon them when the sweet Peace of this lovely shade shall break up into the more full and glorious sweetness of the supream Light and that eternal Day St. Paul expresseth all this to us when he teacheth us That Christ hath gathered up all things into one in himself Col. 2. The Greek word properly signifies there the Resolution or Return of things back into their first Principle their Original Spring and Pattern 3. The third and last part of the Mediation of Christ in our Redemption as it was accomplished in his own Person is his Resurrection and Ascension These two agree are the same in nature and kind differing only in degree The Resurrection of Christ is the breaking up of that primitive shade which over-spread him into a clear Light of Glory Now he springs up and flourisheth throughout his whole Person and all things together with him in his Person in the Beauty and Immortality of his Mediatory Form He is now become an entire Spirit in his Humane Nature both Soul and Body This two Scriptures make clear to us Jesus Christ saith to Nicodemus Joh. 3. 6. That that which is begotten of the Spirit is Spirit The word there is a Substantive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spiritual substance or substantial Spirit Now it is manifest in the Scriptures that the Resurrection of Christ in the Body was an immediate Generation by the eternal Spirit So Divines interpret and apply those words Heb. 1. 5. cited from the second Psalm Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee Suitable to this is that Scripture Rom. 1. 4. Declared the Son of God with power according to the holy spirit by the Resurrection from the dead Two things are manifest from this Scripture 1. That Jesus Christ was raised from the Dead by the immediate Power and Operation of the holy Spirit 2. That this Resurrection was a Divine Generation by the Spirit through which he was brought forth into the proper Form of the Son of God That which we read declared 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth properly defined or determinately formed This receives further Light from St. Peter 1 Pet. 3. 18. Being put to death truly in the flesh but quickned in the spirit We read it by the Spirit but in Grâ—… the Flesh and Spirit do so exactly answer one another in the construction and manner of expression that one would think nothing to be plainer than the intention of the Holy Ghost to signifie that the Flesh and the Spirit had both the same relation to the Person of Christ in those different states of his dying and rising again that by this change the Spirit came in the place of the Flesh and that the Flesh was changed into a Spirit as by a natural Generation that that was Water or Air is made Fire The words are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In the same sense in which he died in Flesh or to the Flesh So he rose again in the Spirit or to Spirit That same Body which died a fleshly compounded mortal substance rose again a simple pure immortal Spirit As the Humanity of Christ rose again a Spirit so it rose in an immediate inseparable Union with the eternal Spirit upon the same Root into the same Life and Image St. Paul instructeth us in this mystery 1 Cor. 15. 45. The first Adam was made a living Soul the last Adam a quickning Spirit vers 45. The subject of St. Paul's Discourse there and in many verses before is the Resurrection of the Body He said immediately before It is sown a natural Body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Body proper for a Soul It is raised a spiritual Body a Body proper for a Spirit vers 44. He illustrates this afterwards The first man is of the Earth earthly the second man is the Lord from Heaven vers 47. Then he distinguisheth them by the names of the earthly and the heavenly man or the Super-Coelestial vers 48. He likewise distinguisheth their two Images the Image of the earthly and the Image of the heavenly or super-coelestial vers 49. Then he concludes with a a positive and emphatical Declaration But this I say brethren that flesh and blood cannot enter into the Kingdom of God vers 50. From these Scriptures laid together these particulars seem evidently to arise 1. Jesus Christ by the Resurrection in his whole Humane Nature both Soul and Body is a supernatural super-coelestial Spirit far above the nature of Souls or Angels in the first Creation 2. The humanity of Christ hath now its Root in Heaven in that Heaven out of which it comes forth
Glory the eternal Spirit St. Austin in his Discourses of the Trinity interprets the mission or sending Christ by the Father to be his coming forth out of the invisible Glory of the Father into a visible state and form The invisible Glory being immutable undivided and unconfined comprehendeth constantly in it self after its own manner that visible Form which it sendeth forth from it self Object How do we say that the Manhood of Christ was a Spirit in its Resurrection when he saith in one place to his Disciples A Spirit hath not flesh and bone as ye see me to have In another place he shewed his hands and his side to the Apostles Joh. 20. 20. Again he calleth to Thomas Bring thy finger hither and see mine hands and bring thine hand and put it into my side and be not unbelieving but believing In a visible form he ascended before the eyes of the Apostles and a Cloud took him up out of their sight Act. 1. 9. To this I give three Answers Answ. 1. Jesus Christ intended not that these outward appearances of a natural Form to their outward and natural senses should be in themselves alone any demonstration of his Resurrection and Glory Did not he know that all their senses were equally capable of being deluded by a Fantom or an Apparition of the Devil If Satan can change himself into an Angel of Light to the deluding of our most noble and Divine Faculty our Understanding can he not as easily by the same skill and power change himself into any known or agreeable Object to abuse any of our senses might not he either by false Species or Images impressed upon the outward Organs of sense the natural Spirit the Imagination or by thickning and forming a Body of Air counterfeit the softness the warmth the solidity of Christs Flesh and his Wounds to the touch and to the hands of St. Thomas as well as to his sight and to his eyes Histories of those affairs which write them with greatest Authority and best Reputation tell us of dissolute Persons who have seemed to themselves in the warm embraces of a delightful Person on a soft and rich bed who yet in the end have found themselves with a filthy sow in the mire Answ. 2. We read in Daniel that the Bodies of the Saints in the Resurrection shine as the Sun in the Firmament When Jesus Christ was transfigured his Face did shine as the Sun in its strength If then the Body of our Lord Jesus risen from the dead did remain flesh still yet certainly it was rarified and heightned to such a degree of Spirituality and Glory that it could bear no resemblance to the natural Body the Flesh of Christ in its Humiliation upon the Cross stained and broken with Wounds with Blood with Agonies with the forms of Death invading it Can we think a glorified Body could bear any proportion to our natural senses when our own reason according to the Rules of Philosophy teacheth us That a sensible Object if it excel destroys the sense Our experience makes this plain to us in the Sun which shining clearly forth is uncapable of being lookt upon by us chastizing us with a blindness even to inferior Objects if we dare to cast our eyes upon him yet is he in his brightest Glory but a shadowy Figure of the glorified Body of Christ and of his Saints For when Christ shall appear in his glorified Body and the Saints in their glorified Bodies shall appear and shine in their full splendor with him the Sun shall have no glory before this excelling Glory but be turned into Sack-cloath as the Stars lose their light when the Sun riseth upon them Can we think then our eyes our natural senses or those of the Apostles capable of discerning or taking in the Glory of Christs spiritual Body in its proper and true Form when he was risen from the dead Answ. 3. The holy Spirit saith expresly of these appearances of Christ to the natural senses of the Apostles immediately upon that History of St. Thomus Many truly therefore and other signs Jesus wrought before his Disciples Joh. 20. 30. We read also concerning these appearances of Christ to the Apostles that Jesus Christ presented himself to them alive by many signs or wonders for the space of forty days appearing to them and seen by them These then were Signs or Miracles wrought by Christ which had no force in the outward Form any farther than the eternal Spirit with a Divine Power and Glory wrought in them and shined through them Such Signs and Wonders were the Images of things presented of old to the eyes or imaginations of the Prophets which were of no use any farther than the eternal Word the Glory of God opened it self to the Spirits of the Prophets through them at once discovering them in it self and it self in them So now the Lord Jesus by these Signs to the outward senses at once opened fortified heightned enlarged the Understanding and the spiritual senses of the Apostles and presented himself to them with his whole Man-hood Soul and Body risen into the Glory of his Mediatory Form and of his Divine Nature Here he set before them all those fleshly Forms of his Humiliation of his Incarnation Life and Death through which he had passed in their proper Forms of their several seasons not as shadowy Images to shadowy senses but as the essential eternal Truth the Spirit and Life of them as Mysteries and Glories unvailed and sealing themselves upon the spiritual senses of those whose eyes were thus anointed to behold them This was the sight which Christ presented to Thomas when he said to him with words which carried a new Creation along with them be not unbeliving but believing This was the sight which Thomas saw when he cryed My Lord and my God The Ascention of our Lord Jesus is his passage out of his Mediatory Form and Glory carrying that also up together with himself into the Glory of the Father Jesus Christ distinguisheth between his own Glory and the Glory of his Father Luke 9. 26. When the Son of Man cometh in his own Glory and the Glory of his Father and the Glory of his holy Angels The Glory of the holy Angels is that of this Creation which is subjected to them in which they are according to the Language of the Scripture Principalities Powers and Thrones His own Glory the proper Glory of Christ which he calls his own Glory is that of his Mediatory Form The Glory of his Father transcendeth that shining forth in the supream Unity and purest simplicity of the Godhead This three-fold Glory Jesus Christ united in his own Person Through this three-fold Glory he ascended taking up all with him into the highest Glory He cometh again in the Spirit of Glory and of God as the Root of this three-fold Glory putting forth himself gradually in it through the Saints till by springing and forming himself in them he bring them also
Give me leave to strengthen this twofold Request by presenting to thee thine own Interest after the highest manner contained in it after a two-fold form 1. This Divine Love at this heighth in this Latitude is all that is true in Religion all that is good in Man all that is acceptable with God all the hope of future Glory and of blessed immortality If I give all my Goods to the Poor and my Body to be burnt and have not Charity I am nothing Is there any Charity or Love to Man greater than this to give all my Goods to the Poor Is there any Charity or Love to God more Divine than this to give my Body to be burnt for him Yes there is a Charity a Love which transcends all this which if I want I may yet have all this and be nothing This is that Divine Love of which I speak which lifteth not it self up above any of the works of God but keepeth the Unity of the eternal Workman of his Divine Design and VVork in the golden band of an universal Peace and Divine Amity This is that Divine Love which behaveth not it self uncomely seeketh not its own things breaketh not the Harmony of the whole dividing it self from the whole by a particular self-love In the universal Beauty and Melody of the Divine Wisdom and Work it respecteth it self as a part and all parts as it self having one Beauty and Joy together in the Beauty Joy and harmonious Perfection of the Divine Figure in the whole piece This Love beareth all things believeth all things hopeth all things suffereth all things This we read of the Divine Love 1 Cor. 13. 7. The first expression in that verse is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we render beareth all things I have three Reasons against this translation of it 1. It makes the last Clause of this verse a tautology a vain repetition It suffereth all things which is the same with the first 2. It is the remotest sense of the Greek word two senses being nearer 1. To cover 2. To contain or comprehend 3. These two nearer senses are more agreeable more full and Divine 1. The Divine Love covereth all things with the Divine loveliness and beauty of the universal Harmony which is the Righteousness of God in Christ the first the fairest Image of the invisible God in which every other Image of God standeth as in the Original the all-comprehending Glory This is that which Solomon saith Love covereth all sin And St. Paul of the Divine Workman of the Divine Love He putteth the highest comeliness that is the universal Comeliness of the Divine Image in its entireness and perfection upon every part even upon the most uncomely parts That there may be no schism or division in the Body that there may be one glory of all 2. The Divine Love in every Person or Spirit lives not in it self as a part but in the life of the whole in the Divine the Universal Spirit the Spirit of Love the Spirit of the whole I live not saith St. Paul but Christ liveth in me Again If you live in the Spirit walk in the Spirit Thus the Divine Love having its life in each person in the life of the whole the Universal Spirit being one Spirit with that Spirit which is the Unity of the whole comprehendeth all things with strictest tenderest imbraces in it self as one self with it self So faith the holy Apostle All things are yours you are Christs and Christ is Gods All things are yours as you are Christs as Christ is Gods that is in the Unity of the eternal Spirit which is Love it self Now from this covering Beauty and comprehensive Virtue in Divine Love these effects naturally flow To believe all things to hope all things We easily believe and hope that which we desire The Divine Love hath a complacency in all things as it comprehendeth them in their Divine Root It hath a good will to all things as they stand in the same Divine Root with it self From this Complacency this Desire this Divine Root it believeth it hopeth all things It believeth all things to be Divine Tabernacles like that in the Wilderness which though moving through Desâ—…ts through a Land of Graves through a Land of fiery Serpents yet answer to their Pattern on the top of the Mount though covered with a course Tent exposed to the fury of the Sun and tempests in the midst of Clouds of dust yet are all-glorious within composed of rich materials bearing a Divine Figure filled with the Divine Presence and Glory It hopeth all things light in the midst of darkness a flourishing Garden of Lillies and Roses in a ground covered and bound up with all the darknesses and rigours of the hardest Winter a treasure of Honey-Combs in the body of a Lion The Master of the Sentences hath such an high esteem of this Charity or Divine Love which is the subject of St. Pauls Discourse in this Chapter That he affirmeth it to be the holy Spirit himself the third Person in the Trinity which is the Love in the Divine Nature and so the Virtue the Power As the second Person the Lord Jesus is the Beauty the Wisdom St. James reasoneth after this manner Can the same Fountain bring forth sweet and bitter waters with the same mouth you bless God and curse man made after the Image of God If from the same heart thou bringest forth that Love to some men by which thou givest all thy Goods to them to supply their wants and ragest with wrath or hatred against others who as they have any making are made after the same Divine Image with the rest of Mankind Who as they have any Being have the same Divine Root are sealed with the same Divine Impression thou hast not Charity thou hast not Divine Love thou hast not the Spirit the universal the eternal Spirit thou art nothing If thou hast the gist of Prophesie if thou understandest all divine Mysteries if thou hast a divine Faith if with the same heart thou lovest God to so high a degree that thou givest thy Body to be burnt for him and yet burnest in rage against any man made after the Image of God All these Divine Gifts or Graces in which thou gloriest are nothing thou art nothing thou hast not Charity Thou hast not the Divine Love thou hast not the Spirit of Christ and of God which is the universal Spirit the Spring the Seal the Band of the Divine Unity Dear Reader follow after this Divine Love without which all that which thou hast is nothing which if thou hast it is the band of perfection never faileth never falleth short of the Glory of God but by the incorruptibleness of a meek spirit preserveth in it self a Divine Beauty and Sweetness which is ever perfect which never passeth away in the midst of all changes of Life in Death to Eternity This is thy first Interest in preserving the Divine Love entire in thy
although I be not alwayes so happy as to find my Understanding tuned to a consort and harmony with his seemeth to me like a Prophet as well as a Poet to sing this mystery drawn forth from the sacred retreats of the divinest Philosophy in his Poems There he painteth out with liveliest colours the whole Universe as a great Soul and Spirit as a Contexture as a Quire or as a Dance of many Souls or Spirits where materiality and corporeity are seen not as distinct substances from the Soul but as figures wrought by the Soul her self in the lowest part of that Vestment with which spun forth from her self she is cloathed and comes forth upon this lower Stage As the lowest point of that beam whose head is in the bosome of the Sun So with him matter and body seem to be the lowest shade into which the Soul descends within her self and the various forms which she puts on in this shade That seemeth to be most pleasantly harmonious to this which the same Author hath in that pleasant piece of his Cabbala upon the beginning of Genesis There he figures out to us the Soul and the Body which he calls her Vehicle or Chariot that is the Image into which she descends and rides forth here below by the Male and Female or the Bridegroom and the Bride which are also Father and Daughter The Body thus appears as a beautiful Image of the Soul springing forth from the Soul abiding by a mystical marriage in the eye and bosome of the Soul In it as in a clear and chrystalline Glass the Soul with ravishing delights seeth her self in all her own beauties and sweetnesses Of it she saith This is life of my life beauty of my beauty my self springing forth from my self in a beautiful Image and so represented to my self Thus is the Soul tyed by irresistible Charms to its Body This way the Soul falls from her purity and the joys of her immortality while she sinks into and looseth her self in this shadowy Image as if this were her only true her only beautiful form She hath now drowned in a deep oblivion her Angelical her Divine Beauty and Being unto which she should have risen as to the Original Glory by those inferior and fading figures of her self in this shade On these Original Glories as her golden full-spread wings she should have descended into this shadowy Image and upon the same wings have carried up in her embraces this shadow into the eternal Light This divinely pleasant figure of Dr. More brings to my mind some thing of Plotâ—…nus in his Discourses upon the Soul not unsuitable to him and to our present purpose He teacheth us as from a sacred Oracle That every Soul cometh down into this World as a Caelestial Venus or an heavenly Beauty the beautiful Daughter and Image of the supream God attended with a Caelestial Cupid or an heavenly Love her own Birth ever with her ever before her her dear delight and glory By this Love the seed of the Divine and eternal Beauty in the Soul sprung up into a Child into a pleasant youthful growing Image upon his wings she springeth up and takes her flight abroad into all forms of things as so many scattred figures and births of the first Beauty until with her Love she return into the bosome of that Dr. Cudworth who by giving us a short relish of that rich treasure of Knowledge and Learning remote from the Vulgar causeth also a regret in us that he entertaineth us with no fuller a Feast when that Feast might be a Divine Feast Sacrifice and Marriage all in one enformeth us from the Jewish Doctors That all Souls come down from above in a married or Conjugal state This seemeth to make one entire piece with Plotinus and Dr. More The ever blessed Trinity is the first Marriage and glorious Prototype of all Marriages Here the Father is the Lover and Bridegroome the eternal Word or Wisdome is the Daughter and Bride his essential Image in which his own glories and sweetnesses offer themselves to his Divine View and embraces The Holy Spirit is the Love which springeth forth from these two which is the Fountain of the Divine Birth and Generation between these two which uniteth them in eternal embraces in a Divine fruitfulness by which they Spring up within this Marriage-bed into innumerable Births and Images of themselves in this their Love-Union Souls as they are the Birth so do they bear the Image of this Trinity and Marriage The Soul bringeth forth within her self this sensitive Image which is her Daughter and her Bride The love which unites these two in a Conjugal state which springs mutually from both as they are living Images each of other as they are one self or substance in two distinct forms which is the same in both is the Spirit of life and motion This makes the sweetness of life and of all vital motions That Love is their Spring and their Spirit From this Love as from the Marriage-bed doth the Soul by her own proper Bride which is its Body bring forth it self into all sensitive and corporeal forms which furnish and fill this visible World Thus Souls come down in a Conjugal state while each Soul brings down its Bride and Body in its bosome out of which it springs as Eve sprung forth out of the side of Adam his fair and flourishing Image while he flourished in his pure and Primitive Beauties I confine not that sentence of the Jewish Rabbies to this sense which yet seemeth to me although perhaps not the only sense as proper in it self as it is pertinent to our Discourse If these grounds be good and firm clear will it be That there is nothing vile or mean in the nature of things rightly seen when as all things are Spirits or Souls in their married state that is heavenly Beauties and heavenly Loves in various forms and postures where all their motions are the loves of these Souls in their lovely flights Some one may think this to be understood and confirmed by that of the Psalmist cited in the Epistle to the Hebrews He hath made his Ministers Spirits or Winds his Angels a flame of fire The Fire the Air all the Elements in their various composition the Coelestial Bodies are Spirits in their proper Vestments Vehicles or Chariots with their proper Brides These heavenly Beauties and Loves may be cast into a deep sleep here yet are they still sleeping Beauties and sleeping Loves beautiful and lovely in their sleep Although like Abraham they may have disorderly deformed distracting Dreams in their sleep In these Dreams an horrible darkness may fall upon them strange Visions may be presented to them They may see dreadful fires in the midst of this darkness themselves their dear Bride the sensitive Image like Doves lying dead and divided one from another like innocent Beasts of Sacrifice slain and cut into several pieces with the brands of fire or burning Lamps passing
essential Form I design and hope so to open and establish these Propositions that the true Liberty of the Soul in its Operations may all along shine clearly forth from the Divine ground and form of its proper nature 1. Proposition The Intellectual Soul in Man is an indivisible Unity comprehending Variety Diversity Contrariety of Forms This is the first Proposition There is a three-fold Unity 1. There is an Unity in the Division of Parts This is the most imperfect Unity or rather a shadow of Unity the Unity of shadows of Corporeal substances or bodies 2. There is an Unity in Diversity of Forms or Essences above all divisibility of parts This also is an imperfect Unity This is the Unity of Essences of Intellectual Substances of all created Spirits The Unities of this sort are the Essences of things in their created state which are said to be indivisible 3. Above all Divisibility or Diversity is the first the supream the perfect Unity having in it self the first the fullest Variety and distinction This is the Unity of the Divine Nature or the Divine World This for its infinite heighth above all expression or comprehension by any created Image or Understanding for the equal concurrence of the first the most entire Unity and the first the most full Variety both alike boundless and infinite is well termed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Above an Unity The Humane Soul is an Unity of the second Rank whether you ascend or descend in the number of Intellectual Substances like the Angels above all Division but subject to Diversity This is an Unity in a Diversity Diversity which is Variety contracted and obscured by a mixture of the Contrariety with the Unity overshadows the Unity of the Soul and rendreth it a shadowy Unity The Divine Unity and Variety lie hid and vailed beneath the Diversity in the shadowy Unity of the Souls natural Form This Diversity as it over-shadows so it also bounds the Unity and renders it finite infinitely beneath the first and supream Unity in the Divine Nature This is the Unity of the Intellectual Soul an Unity free from raised above all Division or divisibility of parts lying one without another as they appear in Bodies or Corporeal Substances The explication of this Unity in the Intellectual Operations of the Soul as I humbly conceive will be a full demonstration of it There seemeth according to common sense and language to be manifest in us a Life a Power which compareth and judgeth things which discerneth the differences of things relations proportions agreements disagreements which is delighted with Harmony Beauty Musick which taketh in entertaineth it self with the Essences of things the whole Universals as its most native and most suitable Companions which adorneth it self with Sciences The Sciences are an Angel-like building which this Life or Power hath framed by single notions or forms of things regularly composed into Propositions by Propositions in a most beautiful order laid one upon another and by fit joynts like Jewels knit together into one Body of Divine Light which setteth its Feet on the Earth and raiseth its Head into the unseen Glories of the highest Heavens This Power and Life within us which makes good all this or a similitude of this with more or less degrees of Perfection is that which we call the Intellectual Soul in Man If the Object or its Image be extended and so composed of parts which lie all one without another if the Subject which receives into it self the Object or the Image be of the same nature Now the one part of the Object is taken into and seated in one part of the Subject Another part in another Thus all lie diffused differently in different parts not only divisible but actually divided from each other Now they no where meet together in one they are no where compared and judged the Discord the Harmony the Whole is no where understood Yea These are no more in the nature of things There is no such thing as Picture Prospect or Person Life Love or Joy Death or Suffering All is an unimaginable heap of unconceivable Atomes which have no Relation to no Commerce with each other if there be no indivisible Unity in which things meet in which they are compared judged and proportioned How an Atome it self or any thing of whole or part can be without Unity which constitutes it which connects it into which it Ultimately resolves it self from which it first ariseth is of all things to me most hard to comprehend But this is a digression and more than is necessary to my present design Let us return The two essential Operations of the Intellectual Soul are to understand and to will The Objects of these are Truth and Goodness real or apparent 1. Truth is a representative conformity of the Image to its Original 2. Goodness is a mutual perfcctive Conformity or suitableness of the Original and Image or of the Object to the Faculty Power or Spirit to which it relates These two are the Divine Meat and Drink of the Soul like the Ambrosia and Nectar of the Gods or separated Spirits with the Poets But where there is any impression any sense or relish of these two Truth or Goodness in the lowest forms of things These three must meet undividedly in one The two terms or bounds of conformity or suitableness the relation between these two their suitableness and conformity to each other The Intellectual Soul riseth an higher pitch according to the Doctrine of all the Schools and its own innate testimony of it self in all its Motions in all its Virtues and Vices It is carried up upon these two soaring wings as the wings of an Angel quite out of the sight of sense above all the tumult of Individuals and particulars to the invisible Glories and Harmonies of universal Forms The universal Truth and Good are its only mark and rest where its motions terminate The heavenly Beauty of the universal Truth can be no where seen the heavenly sweetness of the universal Good can be tasted by no Spirit but that alone where all Truths all kinds and degrees of good all things in their friendships and enmities are met and concentred with a full with an exact Harmony in one indivisible Point or in a perfect Unity It is indeed a Divine Unity running like the Spirit of Musick through all these terminating them all by it self recollecting them all entirely with their several Divisions after the most undivided manner into it self which makes this Harmony the Joy the Glory the Divine Life of Angels of God and God-like men This Divine Unity can be no where received but into an Unity like it self This Unity in the Intellectual Soul makes it a Divine â—…ye Ear and Spirit capable of taking in the Beauty enjoying the Musick being entertained at the heavenly Feast of the universal Truth and Goodness in the Society of all blessed and immortal Spirits Keep the Unity of the Spirit saith St. Paul in the
bond of peace Peace in Hebrew is the same with Persection The word signifieth the Harmony of things mutually answering each other in fit and full proportions In Greek peace signifieth the harmonious Union of things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 peace from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to knit or joyn together Without Union without Order and Harmony in the Union Many things can never become One there can be no Beauty to the Eye no Musick to the Ear no Life no Light of Sense or Understanding no Form of things no Peace no Perfection no Power no Pleasantness no Person Without an undivided Unity where all meet in one which is One the same undivided in All there can be no Union no Order no Harmony The eternal Spirit is the first and supream Unity Intellectual Spirits next to this Spirit are Similitudes and Births of it Substantial undivided Unities the Springs the Seats of the universal the supream the incorporeal Beauties Musicks Perfection Order Harmony through the Creation the only Persons the bonds of all Union Order Harmony Peace Perfection Beauty Life Loveliness Virtue Joy Power Personality in all Bodies in all Corporeal Forms By one Spirit saith that Spirit we are all baptized into one Body In spirituality by meeting together undividedly in the Unity of the eternal Spirit which is undividedly one and the same in all by which all are one and the same in every one All the Saints become one heavenly Body This Unity of the Spirit springing up into every one as a Divine and compleat Image of it self having thus the Whole the Image the Life the Spirit of the whole in it self is the bond of their fellow-membership This is the ground and spring of their Sympathy of all their Motions by which in a Divine Love and Harmony they exactly accord with each other We have the shadowy figure of this mystery in natural things How inexplicable is motion in Bodies without the understanding of this Unity What shall excite Motion in any Corporeal Subject Accidents Virtues Qualities pass not from one Corporeal Substance to another They are essentially inseparable from their Individual Subjects Corporeal Substances are impenetrable each to other and so cannot operate immediately one upon another In what order shall Motion be advanced if it be excited Shall the part immediately touched move first How can it until that part next before it give place to it Upon what account shall this before move until that behind it on which the impression is first made thrust it forward How Beautiful how Harmonious how Easie is all If an Intellectual Spirit containing the whole Body the whole Corporeal frame in an undivided Unity being undividedly entirely one and the same through the whole Body and in each part immediately at once by it self Act all the parts in a mutual exact Correspondency to each other like persons in a figure-Dance All is now it self in so many shadowy figures of more substantial and sublimer Variety in the Unity and Harmony of its own Essence This is a clear reason for that Sympathy by which all the parts most remote of the same Body have a present sense of are acted and moved together with all the essential acts and motions of each other They are all by one Spirit baptized into one Body They all are comprehended together in the undivided Unity of the same Spirit So they mutually penetrate possess each other in One as One in the Fountain of their Being Life and Motion the same Spirit This Spirit is each Intellectual Soul to its own Body Let us sum up this whole Argument into a brief and clear conclusion The Intellectual Soul in the perfection of its natural form understands compares judges not only particular Beauties and Harmonies but the Beauty and Harmony of the whole Universe the Universal Truth and Goodness All particular Beauties and Harmonies all Agreements and Disagreements Strifes Friendships all forms and parts as they make up the Beauty of the Universe Then all forms of things in all their Similitudes and Differences Conformities and Contrarieties in all their Essences and Accidents in all their several distinct Proportions and order in their Beauties and Harmonies with all the Parts and Elements which compose these as they make up the universal Harmony and Beauty meet together clearly compleatly in the undivided Unity of the Souls Essence Thus also this Soul contains within it self its own Body its Image and Organ in all the forms parts and proportions of it Neither doth it so comprehend this alone but the universal Body as it relates to its own particular Body as it stands in the senses of this Body like Images in a Glass Here in this Unity is the Corporeal Image as in a Divine Mould formed in all its parts and proportions to answer to their Original in the Soul and to each other for here only are they seen together to be compared and judged from hence they come forth by this Unity they consist in their Union are acted every moment unto motions corresponding with each other and to a Sympathy for one Spirit springs up through the whole Body as it self descended into a shadowy figure of it self and abiding ever with it self within the Unity of its own Essence The most eminent Character of the eternal Spirit is its Unity Hear O Israel the Lord thy God is one God How glorious an Image of God in this Character of the Divine Glory is man in the perfection of his natural form What is the amplitude the majesty of this Divine Unity in which the whole Creation with all its beauties and fulness appear together at once in One as upon its Throne Thus I hope I have from common sense and principles universally received made plain in some imperfect degree this indivisible Unity of the Intellectual Soul in man 2. Propos. The Humane Soul is an indivisible Unity containing in it self all Variety of forms The Argument before taken from the Operations of the Soul in knowing and judging things to explain its Unity declares also this Variety in its Unity The Soul hath naturally a desire and power or potentiality of knowing all things especially the Harmony of things which is the Intellectual Beauty The Harmony in no part can be understood without the knowledge of the whole If the Soul then in the primitive and pure state of the Creation did actually enjoy it self in the perfection of its natural form and faculties it contained within it self in the Unity of its Essence all Variety of things in all their Distinctions Differences and Divisions Originals and Copies Causes and Effects Substances and Circumstances or Accidents Essenceâ—… and Operations The power or potentiality in the Soul of Man is not Passive but Active It is a pure Act free from the passiveness which is the consequent of corporeal or bodily matter The Intellectual Spirit having alwayes in it self the judgment of all things in the potentiality or power of it which either is its
Essence or inseparable from it hath also all forms of things in the same Capacity or Power and so in its Original Act. Indeed as it subsisteth in the Body this plenitude in the Original Act or power of the Soul is very much vailed by matter or corporeity at least under the fall But I pass from this Argument to another drawn from the Unity of the Soul established in the former Proposition The Soul being in its Essence by Virtue of its essential Unity altogether undivided and so above all place or time which consist of divided parts is thus uncapable of Absence Distance or Division from any thing All things then are ever present with it There is only a two-fold presence imaginable Corporeal and Spiritual 1. The Corporeal or bodily presence is after the manner of Corporeal Substances or Bodies with Division a divided presence This is the presence of two Bodies one containing the other as its proper place or of two Bodies contained in one Body as their common place one common space of Air one Field one Chamber one Bed 2. The spiritual presence is a meeting in one Incorporeal Form or in one Spirit which is an Indivisible Unity This the Schools express by the penetration of Spirits which penetration where there are no extensions or dimensions as in Bodies seemeth to me uncapable of any other sense in the strict examination of it than their subsisting together in the same undivided Unity and their mutual subsistencies in the undivided and essential Unities of each other Harmonious with this are those two well-grounded and unshaken Axioms in Philosophy 1. The Essences of things are Indivisible 2. The understanding alone reacheth to and comprehendeth the Essences and Substances of things whiles sense feeds only upon empty shadows Aiery accidental Forms Proclus thus teacheth us That all things are in the Soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to the peculiar property and character of the Soul In like manner the Lord Jesus saith to the unbelieving Jews which look for signs of the Divinity for a Pomp and Glory without in their senses The Kingdome of Heaven is within you The Heathen Philosophers stiled the Unities of things Gods This Unity to which all things were present was with them the Character of a God The Scriptures upon the same ground stile all Intellectual Spirits both Angels and Men Gods He calleth saith Christ them Gods to whom the word of God came That living Word which is the Image of the invisible God and so containeth all Forms the whole nature of things in it self cometh by Nature and by Grace although after a divers manner to all Intellectual Spirits That Scripture which our Lord Jesus relates to seemeth peculiarly to regard Humane Souls I have said ye are Gods but ye shall die like men Ye Intellectual Spirits which in your abstracted forms are immortal impassible undivided comprehensive Unities To which all forms of things in their immutable Essences are ever present by my presence with you who am the eternal Word of the Divine Mind the Divine and Universal Image of things Ye being humbled beneath the Angels into a Body of Dust a Corporeal Form in this by your sympathy with this are subject to the Government of the Elements and Coelestial Bodies of the Powers ruling in them as Tutors over you and so to their Laws of Time Place Division and Death until you grow up to the full Age of the Intellectual Life by returning into the Bosome of your first Divine Ideal Unity in me All diversity of Forms are in this manner present with the Intellectual Soul meeting together and being contained in the Unity of its Essence as in an invisible Palace or City like the City of God described by the Psalmist which is compact in it self Object Is God then are all the Angels is this visible World so present with the Soul so contained in its essential Unity as to be one Essence one Spirit with it Answ. I shall give three distinct Answers to the three parts of this Objection In relation 1. To God 2. To Angels 3. To the visible World 1. Answ. This comprehensive Unity which is the proper Character of Intellectual Spirits is called by Philosophers the Apex or supream Point the Head of the Soul hid in a Divine Glory the Divine part of the Soul in which it symbolizeth with is capable of Commerce with the Divinity it self and of enjoying in it self the Divine presence as in its most proper and beloved Temple I shall humbly present to the Readers Candor four Distinctions for the unvailing of this Divine presence in the Soul 1. Distinction God is not present in the Soul as in a place Divisible but as in an undivided Unity for he were otherwise no more a pure an infinite Spirit the first supream simple Spirit of Being Beauty of all Excellency and Virtue a Life of Sweetness a Light of Glory without allay shade or limit He were now Corporeal and finite Of this Local Circumscription which hath no place here is that Rule rightly understood The container is greater than the contained 2. Distinction God by his Omnipresence and undivided Unity is every where in every Creature in every part and point of the Creation with the fulness of his Glories and Godhead after a two-fold manner 1. God is present to himself in every Creature Secundum modum Dei after the manner of a God 2. God is present in each Creature to that Creature Secundum modum Creaturae according to the manner of the Creature 1. God is present to himself in every Creature after the manner of a God Where-ever he is present He is entirely present with all the Joys and Glories of eternity ever undivided His own Heaven to himself in the Depths of Hell beneath as in the Heighth of Heaven above in the dust of the Grave in a wave of the Sea as in the most shining Cherubim or flaming Seraphim God is not thus present to any natural Spirit no not in the purity ofits Creation with his unvailed Beauties shining forth in the brightness of his Glory in the fulness of his Godhead Then should he transfigure that Spirit into the same Image of one Divine Form and Glory with himself Then would there be no difference between Adam in Paradise the Angels in Heaven and Jesus Christ in his Paradise and Heaven above all Heavens the Bosome of the Father No after this manner God dwells in Jesus Christ alone as he is risen from the Dead in the eternal Spirit in the Glory of the Father 2. God is in every Creature present with that Creature according to the manner of that Creature By the divers manners of his Appearance as by the ingraving upon the Seal setting divers impressions upon the Creature and giving divers forms of Being to it like the Seal in the impression upon the Wax He thus becometh the fulness of every Creature filling all in all parts of it and so Omnipresent to it
proper shadow Some think this following sense to be intended by St. Paul in these words Christ is the Image of the invisible God the first-born of the whole Creation or of every Creature Col. 1. God in that same second Person which is the Godhead in its essential Image which in the fulness of time took flesh of the Virgin Mary in the beginning of Time came forth from the secret and unaccessible Light of Eternity in a shadowy Image This Image was the full figure of his Person with all its Divine Glories according to the capacity of a shadow This was the whole Creation compleat in its first Draught All the Glories of the Divine Nature which are imitable were here first distinctly figured in the primitive and pure forms of all the Creatures Thus was he the Image of the Invisible God the first-born of the whole Creation in general and of each Creature in particular Thus was He in the Language of the Jews the great Adam who brought forth the little Adam in his own likeness Thus was Jesus Christ in Adam at once the life of all in his essential Glories the Original Copy or first Draught of the Creature in the whole compass of it of each Creature in particular All this in the Humane Soul in Adam as the only perfect and proper Figure of this Original I understand nothing in this interpretation of St. Pauls words contrary to the Analogy of Faith or the Scriptures There seemeth to be in it a compleat Harmony and order in the nature of things according to this sense 1. All things stand first in an Uncreated Subsistence and Essence Then in an Uncreated Subsistence or Person they come forth into Created Essences or Natures Lastly By this medium uniting all they pass in Created Subsistencies and Essences into created Persons and Natures 2. Jesus Christ gradually descends from his essential Glories into an Universal Original Figure of himself of the whole Creation of each Creature Through this He passeth into the particular form of faln man in the Womb of the Virgin So he descends to the nethermost parts of the Earth ascends again through all forms of things with all united in his own Person above all Heavens and fills All. After this manner the Lord Jesus is the Mediatour of the Creation as well as of the Reconciliation and Regeneration All things are made by him and nothing that is made or brought forth from the beginning of things to the end comes forth without him As according to his appearances in Grace or Glory the Saints appear together with him so according to his Appearances in Nature all things appear together with him He lives and subsists in the form of every Creature Every Creature subsists by its transcendental Union with him in Nature Thus it is most true That we are in this World as he is in this World We are Sojourners together with him in his Land He suffers in all our Sufferings is straitned in all our straitnings He is in all things made like unto us Sin only excepted He carries along in every particular form the Universal Harmony the Divine Glory even in all the sufferings and straitnings of every Creature The Universal Harmony and Divine Glory is to him the liberty the joy of Paradise Heaven Eternity in each straitning and suffering Sin only is the breach of this Harmony the violation of this Glory not by a privation only but a Contradiction and Enmity founded in the privation This can bear no part in the Divine Harmony save as it is reduced into Order and the Harmony carried on through the Wrath and Righteousness of God in the Death and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus But I desire to leave my self and my Reader free in this Point I have now finished in four Distinctions my Answer to the first part of the Objection made against the Variety of forms in the Unity of the Soul In this part of my Answer I have endeavoured to state the presence of God with and in the Soul of man as perspicuously as my dark and narrow mind is capable of taking in and expressing a Divine Mystery of so great an amplitude and such an heigth of Glory I pass now to the second part of my Answer which concerns the Angels 2. Answer Angels with the whole Company of invisible substances or separated Forms and immortal Spirits are contained in the Unity of the Soul these two wayes 1. They are Superior and Universal Causes subordinate to the first Cause Thus they are most intimately and inseparably present in the Constitution of the Soul As Entity or Being and substantiality in their Superiour and Universal Nature descend into incorporeal Spirits and through these into Corporeal Shapes and Bodies so do all the Angels greater in Might and Glory cloath themselves with the Incorporeal Form of the immortal Soul communicating all their divers Virtues Powers and Glories to this Form in which themselves subsist and live together with it being an head of Glory to it 2. All Angelical Immortal Spirits are another way in the Soul as making up the full diversity of all Forms in it and so composing its Essence Thus all Angels all Essences all Forms of things in their immortal Substances as Intellectual Spirits meet in the proper Unity under the peculiar Character and Diversity of each Intellectual Soul as in some obscure resemblance Variety of colours in a particular colour or as all the Elements in each Element in each mixt Form under the proper Character of the predominant Element or Form 3. Answer The Intellectual Soul containeth all Corporeal Forms or Bodies in it self two wayes 1. Virtually 2. Formally 1. The Soul hath in it self all Bodies virtually from the Angels above it as the shining Bosome where the eternal Spring through Jesus Christ powres forth its living streams Here the Soul drinketh in the Essences and essential forms of things in their Angelick Truth and Goodness These feast and fill the Understanding and the Will In the Understanding or Angelick Light of the Soul they shine as the Exemplars or Patterns of all below in the visible World In the Will as in the Angelick Love of the Soul they lie as in the Womb or in the seminal Virtue or executive Power which brings them forth 2. This Soul comprehends the Corporeal World in it self formally The Essences of all Bodies as they are Objects only of the Understanding and not of Sense so are they according to the Nature and Law of all Essences Intellectual Unities and Forms in the Unity or essential Form of this Intellectual Spirit The Soul in these distinct Essences floweth forth into these shadowy forms with which our Senses the shadows of the Intellectual Light are entertained The Intellectual Unity diffuseth it self into the continued parts of these divisible Forms This Unity formeth the Proportions of the parts in their mutual Correspondencies knitteth them together unto a mutual sympathy in each natural Body For as I have
harmonious Motions and most regular diversity of Forms appear together by virtue of the Unity every where indivisible 3. Within the Unity of the Soul lie both the other Natures in a way proper to the nature of the Soul The Angelical the Divine Natures above are there with contracted and dimmer Glories appearing through Images of less brightness and less Majesty All Corporeal Natures are there exalted into Spirits in their Intellectual Patterns and Powers in their rational Forms and Virtues in their Imaginative figures and force in their seminal Reasons and plastical or formative Power That mystical Picture which the Prophet Esay draws of the Seraphim from the Life it self when he saw them will serve in its proportion for the figure of the Intellectual Soul They had each six wings with two they covered their Face with two their Feet with two they flew Spirits are described by Wings The Images of things springing up within them are their Wings not by change of place without them but by these inward Images are they present with things and in each place By these they work after the way of a Natural or rather Angelical Magick By raising and converting themselves to Images in their minds they bring forth new forms without as the Off-spring or Emanations from those Images like shadows from Bodies Upon this account Angels are said to work Cognoscendo by the force of figures in their minds Each Soul hath like a Seraphim six wings The face of the Soul is his Divine his Angelical Idea in which the face of God and the face of the Angel in their proper forms are seen The two uppermost wings with which the Soul covers her Angelical Face and within that her Divine Face is the Divine Image shining in the Angelical Image These wings are full of eyes within and without As by the eyes without they see the Images of Angelical and Divine Glories So by the eyes within they see the Faces of Angels and of God and in them their own faces vailed beneath these Images full of eyes These Eyes are the living Light the reflection of the Angelical and Divine Glory of which these Images are composed and by virtue of which they according to their pure Natures stand in a mutual inseparable Union with the Angels and in the Angels with the Divine Glory By vertue of this Union they at once look inward to their Ideal Beauties and outward to the Images of these Beauties The two lowest wings are the Images of all Corporeal Natures of all Bodies which cover these as the feet of the Soul Nymphs which are Souls according to Porphyrius are described in Poets with silver feet Bodily Natures in their extended and divisible parts are the feet of the Soul its lowest descent the lowest and shadowest forms figured upon it These in the Soul it self which is an Unity appear only in their seminal Unities and Beauties as Spirits in the Harmony of this Universal Spirit For this cause are they represented by silver feet shining and incorruptible for the same reason are they said to be covered with wings which are those Spirits the lowermost forms of things in the Soul the seminal Unity and Harmonies out of which Bodies immediately flow and in which they are seen as in a mystical Glass The middle-wings of the Soul are the proper Image of the Soul it self by which it performs its own proper Motions and Operations flying between those Angelical those Divine Images above and the shady forms of Bodies below The Images or Natures of Spirits are exprest by pairs of wings not only for congruity and the decency of the Parable but from the Truth of the mystery for in Spirits each Image distinguisheth it self by a most substantial Variety into its own Original and Image by that self-reflection or spiritual Generation which is the essential Act of each Understanding of each Intellectual Nature of each Spirit Thus much of this first passage the three-fold Nature united in the Soul 2. Passage Then it by thee unloosened spread doth lye Through Limbs well suited to a sympathy Per Consona membra resoluis Note How elegantly doth this Divine Philosopher and Poet at once paint out to us the Soul extended into Corporeal Forms in divisible parts languishing obscure with a faint and fading light weak with a feeble and dying force as also present in its Divine Unity the spring of Light of Life through the whole extent of these Bodies and binding them up into an indivisible Unity This Unity every where present with all the parts of the wholy Body This Unity comprehending them all in one making them all one by a mutual comprehension of each other in it self is the only ground of the Consonancy the Harmony and Sympathy The Unity of the same Spirit answering to it self every where presenting all the parts in an Unity in it self is every where in all Corporeal Forms the Beauty the Musick the Harmony 3. Passage Of motion and divinest Melody Diffus'd through things below or those on high This is the Spring and Circle Cuncta moventem 1. Note The difficulties in Motion are inexplicable if Motion have not for its Spring and Seat an essential substantial Unity which contains at once in it self the terms of the Motion its Beginning and End the Way the Forms or Parts of that which is moved Without this how shall the Motion be directed How shall the Forms or parts of that which is moved give place to or pass into the place of each other How shall the Impression or force of Motion be communicated But now all things move by a divinely natural Magick that is by the force of Harmony in the Unity of the same Soul or Spirit inhabiting and acting all presenting it self in every form part and motion Now all motions present themselves to our eyes as exact and Divine Dances of persons to a Divine Musick from unseen Musicians sounding entirely and distinctly in the ear of each person to which they all at once in their order move most agreeably 2. Note Immutablity Mutation or Change Motion differ after the same manner with Eternity Aeviternity Time This is best explained by the three-fold Unity the Divine the Angelical Unity the Unity of the Soul 1. The Divine Unity is alone a true and perfect Unity substantial supream unbounded This hath a perfect boundless Variety in it with an Uniformity All forms of things here as they are most perfectly distinct by the perfection of the Variety so are they most perfectly one by the perfection of the Unity This is the Divine World containing innumerable Divine Worlds within it self of which every one is infinitely new and various from all the rest yet entirely one with all the Rest including at once innumerable Divine Worlds all new and all the same As the Variety there comprehends all distinctions below it and infinitely transcends them So each the minutest the least distinction here being a Variety there is a new
Thus the Soul rides forth in her three-fold Chariot Heavenly Airy Earthly upon the Circuit of the Heavens the purest Air and the Earth the true Venus the true Queen of Love and Beauty by which all things spring shine live and love through her Marriage-Union with her Lord and King the true Adonis or Adonai the Lord Jesus who died and lives again with his beloved Bride in the secret of Paradise in the midst of the Field of the Coelestial Light the pure Air in the bosome and nethermost parts of the Earth This is the Soul in its first make and proper state Plotinus teacheth That the first Soul which is the immediate Workman of this World in the order of its procession from the separate Intelligences or Angels and from God the only supream Father of all hath its face ever turned to the face of God and unmoveably fixed upon it from his Face it continually takes in as the Nectar of the Gods the Divine Light the Divine Life and Love it continually takes in as at an heavenly Feast as the heavenly Ambrosia the Ideal Beauty the first the Archetypal Forms in their most immediate sweetest freshest fullest Effulgency or Images This God-like Soul thus bred thus divinely formed thus nourished thus impregnated sends forth from it self this whole visible World in the figures of those first Glories in the similitude of their Unity Variety and Order without thought care or trouble without ever turning a look to this World As a Person with his Face to the Sun casts his shadow upon the ground behind him There is only this difference as this great Soul casts the shadow of this Corporeal World from it self there is no ground for it to fall upon besides the Soul it self All these Heavens this Earth and Sea with all their roulings springings fadings and floatings are then the soul it self in her lowest Form bearing the figures of all her superior Glories most curiously and delightfully wrought in deeper shades The Soul in this her lower form is her own living Looking-Glass of shadowy shaded Light in which she sees with a grateful Variety with a pleasing Reflection of her own Divine force and fruitfulness her own Beauties in a weaker fainter fading Image maintained only by continual beams from her self All Souls as they flow in their Order and successions from this first Soul by virtue of the first production bring forth to themselves and bear within themselves the whole World in its fairest and fullest measures Object If any ask these Philosophers what sign or appearance there is of this sublime state this amplitude this majesty in the soul of Man they will give you such answers as these Answ. 1. The Soul hath now lost her wings by which she flyes through the whole Heavens and Earth She now lies languishing contracted clouded divided wounded sick dying upon the ground of this earthly Body You can take no more any measure of the true nature of the Soul of the Soul in her own proper Divine Form and Image by her present state then you can of the humane Form Spirit and Life by a worm grown out of the putrified body of a man dead Answ. 2. As the Soul of a man sleeping is to the Light of this World so is the Soul in this Body to the Light of its own Intellectual Invisible Divine Form and Beauty As a Prince sleeps in some private Room with the Curtains drawn about him within his own Palace in the midst of all the splendors and splendid Persons of his Court seeming to himself in his dreams as he sleeps to be a naked forlorn Prisoner at the bottome of a dark and deep Dungeon In such a dream doth the Soul appear to her self sleeping in this Body in the midst of all her own Immortal Beauties in the Palace and Court of her own Divine Unity and Essence But I have now done with Humame Authority and Philosophy in its Testimony But as I part I will leave Philosophy with this Honourable Testimony The only and true Philosophy is the Light of Nature in its primitive purity as the scattered Beams and dispersed remainders of it in the midst of the ruines of Nature are collected strengthened and reflected from the most excellent of natural or Divine Spirits like Sun-beams centered in a burning-glass The second Authority I pass now to the Divine Authority which is the testimony of the Holy Scriptures I shall cite only two Scriptures one from the first of Genesis the other from the first of the Romans I being with the last which seems clearest and fullest 1. Scripture The first Testimony from the Scriptures is Rom. 1. 19 20. From this Text to the end of the third Chapter you have the Soul with a profound Depth Like a River rouling along with all her various serpentine windings from the Sea of Love the Divine Bosome till she return thither This Divine Philosopher after a Divine manner sets the humane Soul before us in the whole compass of her Essence in all her circlings through all forms of things as he saw her by a Light of Revelation in the eternal Design in her Idea in the heart of the Father the Fountain in the Bosom of the Lord Jesus the first seat of all Divine Designs and Ideas This Design is divided into three parts 1. The Soul in its primitive and pure state of Nature presented to us Chap. 1. vers 19. 20. 2. The Soul in her fall as she passeth through the shades beneath of Sin Suffering Death and Wrath from the 21. verse of the first Chapter to the 20. verse of the third Chapter 3. The Soul in its return and re-ascent to a greater Glory from the 22. verse of the third Chapter to the end of that Chapter I shall very briefly with all the perspicuity that I can point out the Heads of things in these three parts of the Souls course and design in the Divine Mind 1. The Soul in its primitive and pure state of Nature is presented to us Rom. 1. 19 20. That which may be known of God is manifest in them for God hath manifested it to them For the unseen things of him from the Creation of the world are seen being understood by the things that are made both his eternal Power and Godhead I shall make two Notes upon the Grammar of the words 1. That which may be known of God is manifest in them This relates to the pure state of Nature not to the Corrupt For of that it is said vers 21. Their foolish heart was darkned Things are manifest only in the Light The expression runs in the present time after the manner of the Divine and Prophetick stile which sets before our eyes all forms of things as they appear in the Divine Light where all things are ever present and appear at once in one Besides this as Paradise so the pure Image of God in the Soul seems to some not to be lost or destroyed but
motions of things spring and flourish as Divine Plants in a Divine Order to open it to the view of the Sanctified Beholder and at the same time to defend it from prophane Spirits by the flaming Sword by the sparkling penetrating consuming or refining beams of a Cherubim We will therefore penetrate so far as we may into this bright Deep which so delightfully swalloweth up the most Angelical Understanding may our dependance be upon that Spirit alone which moveth upon the shining Face of this Deep and is a Baptism of heavenly fire purifying the beloved Soul illuminating with an heavenly Light the purified Eye enflaming with heavenly Love the purified Heart and so initiating him into these holy mysteries But keeping off every profane Eye and Heart by darkning dazeling affrighting and burning upon them Divine Truth is as a Rose-Tree which as it hath its beautiful and perfumed Roses so it hath prickels to guard those Roses from rash and rude hands My Answer then to the fore-mentioned Objection shall be divided into these gradual steps First No Sinner in a sinful state no Soul in any act of sin can see the Divine Order in the Work of God which Order is Jesus Christ the Image the Wisdom the Glory of the invisible God figuring himself upon the whole Work from the beginning to the end as one entire lively living Picture of himself himself being the Life of it and shining in the face of it Sin is the Souls falling short of the Glory of God into the darknesses below being unable to raise its Understanding to the Beauty of this Light Sin is the violation or breach of this sacred Harmony by which the Soul cuts off and separates it self from it by which it over-casts the Glory with a deep stain and a black Cloud which take it altogether out of its sight all defilement is an undue mixture Every sin confounds the Soul it wraps it up in an universal confusion sin is an enmity to this Harmony of things It is a dark confusion from below rising up as a poysonous vapour to over-spread the pure Light of this heavenly Order The Divine Order then and all things as they lie in the Divine Order fight against sin and the sinner their common and only Enemy As the Stars in their courses fought against Sisera St. John the beloved Disciple having first declared God to be Light without the mixture of any Darkness at all Then testifieth That if we say that we have fellow ship with him and walk in darkness we lye and do not the truth Sinners universally in the Scriptures are stiled Children of Darkness and not of the Light The Light of the Divine Order and Glory the acting of a part in this Divine Order in the light and truth of it are inconsistent in any Spirit with the darkness of sin 2. If any Spirit by the highest improvement of its Intellectual Powers by Angelical assistances and heightnings by the more sublime and supernatural though common illuminations of the Spirit of Grace himself form to it self an heavenlâ—… Image of this Divine Order and that anointed by the same Operations of the same Spirit with an heavenly Beauty Sweetness and Virtue This Spirit thus far will be sanctified by this sacred Light being taken up out of the tempestuous Seas of its sins into the sweet and pure the calm and clear stream of this Harmony as into a River of Milk and Honey But if this Spirit do take from hence arguments to sin encouragements to sin now it no more seeth a right Image of this heavenly Glory no not in the notion of it As St. Paul speaketh of the Gospel that which shines in this Spirit now this Image perverteth and so the Order is changed into a disorder and confusion That Divine figure sprung from the holy Spirit is withdrawn together with that Spirit a Spirit from below is sprung up as by an hellish Magick or Inchantment into a counterfeit but perverted representation of that heavenly Beauty Thus sin deceives this Spirit then defiles it and so slays it by extinguishing the sweet of sight of its true Light Let such Spirits tremble lest they be found in the number of those unhappy Spirits who having tasted the good Word of God and the Powers of the World to come tread under their feet the Son of God that good Word of God that Wisdom of God that golden Chain of heavenly Harmony in Divine Providence and offer injury and dispight to the Spirit of Grace by which the Son of God sweetly lives and shines in the sacred order of things and by which they were once sanctified having been washt in this Spirit of Grace the Fountain of this lovely Order from the Pollutions of the World Are not these the Spirits upon whom wrath is to come so long as Christ shall Reign 3. My two first steps have been as the preparatory to my Answer like the Porch to the main Building my third step will bring you into the House it self which I shall endeavour to present to you as perfectly and perspicuously as I can In this will consist the strength the beauty of the Answer If I be able to set it forth in its proper strength and beauty I am sensible how far I am below this I therefore intreat those that read or hear this Discourse for their own sakes and the Truths sake to assist my weakness with the utmost strength of their candor attention and understanding Dionysius the Areopagite saith in one place That God reduceth into order those things which are out of order and so establisheth all in good and beauty There are two Rules and Maxims concerning Harmony and Order 1. The Order and Harmony is there perfect where the Variety is full Contrariety is an eminent part of the Variety which enlargeth the Variety and heightens the Harmony Contraria juxt à se posita magis elucescunt Contraries illustrate and heighten one another 2. The Order or Harmony is there most compleat where the Unity is preserved most entire and conspicuous in the fullest Variety To this it is necessary that there be no where any leap or gap This makes the Beauty this makes the Musick to which all Spirits sensual and Intellectual on Earth or in Heaven spring and dance with sweetest and liveliest motions of delight and wonder when the Unity unfolds it self into its amplest Variety by just degrees even numbers and exact proportions When one extream passeth not to another but through all the middle terms that stand between these extreams When one passeth not to three but by two Now the Unity is preserved the middle term being as the band or the connexion of the two extreams which joyneth them in one Now the Variety lies in the explication of the Unity as it lies complicated in the Unity when as the Ternary by being first gathered up into a duality lieth folded up in the bosom of the Unity so the Unity from the bosom of the
come now to the third Reason I am to answer Reason 3 The Language of the Scripture in the whole current of it seemeth generally to run along upon this ground of an undetermined freedom of the Will of Man The Divine Will is cleared from the evils of Sin and Suffering The Will of Man is charged with them Agreeable to this are the Divine Precepts Prohibitions Promises Threatnings Admonitions Reproofs Complaints Expostulations which compose a great part of the sacred Writings Answ. I answer by a distinction This manner of Language As I live I desire not the death of a Sinner Why will ye die O house of Israel with all expressions like to these are either 1. Proper and plain 2. Figurative and mysterious 1. If they be proper and plain two great Difficulties arise 1. The true and living God thus represented appears like Homers Gods and the Gods of the Poets Weak querulous passible ever in contentions and combates 2. While the Divine Will in that on which it fixeth it self with so great truth and intention is capable of being opposed and defeated it appears destitute of Wisdom Power and Blessedness 2. If they be figurative and mysterious The figures first are to be determined and the mystery vailed beneath the figure to be discovered before we can establish any certain or clear sense upon them 1. The figure made use of in this manner of Language is by the consent of Divines complicated of an Anthropopathy and a Metonymy 2. The Anthropopathy is then when passions proper to man are attributed to God 2. The Metonymy is of the cause set for the effect and the things signified in the place of the sign So those changeable passions in created Spirits which bring forth and express themselves by changes of good or evil the effects and signs of those passions are applied to the unchangeable God when he bringeth forth the like changes in his Work So the Jews say That the holy Scriptures speak with the Tongue and in the Language of a Man But all such figurative expressions concerning God are to be understood with this Caution Every thing indeed in the Creature is a figure which hath its Original pattern answering to it in the Divine Nature But all imperfections attending the figure are to be removed All perfections in their utmost heights and most absolute fulness are to be attributed to the Original pattern when by the shadowy figure in the Creature you look to the exemplar and primitive truth in God So by these changeable and diverse passions in man you are to represent to your selves in God a Goodness a Power an unsearchable Riches of Variety and manifoldly various Wisdom and all these apart and together with the most absolute simplicity and highest Unity in the Divine Essence producing all diversities of accidents all changes of good and evil in the Divine Design which cometh forth at once as one piece divinely Rich in all Varieties from him and as one entire Image filled with the riches of all distinct Beauties of him who is unchangeable and most perfectly one 2. Having thus determined of the Figure Let us try to lift up the Vail and discover the Divine Mystery beneath this Figure I shall endeavour to take a Prospect of this Divine Secret and hidden Glory by several steps or degrees 1. The letter of the Scripture in the general â—…ream and current of it is the Ministry of the Law So St. Paul in divers places distinguisheth the Law and the Gospel or the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace 2 Cor. 3. 6. Who hath made us able speaking of God Ministers of the New Testament or the New Covenant not of the Letter but of the Spirit for the Letter killeth but the Spirit giveth life In the following verse the engraving of the Law in Tables of Stone and Moses are mentioned Again in prosecution of the same Discourse Moses with his Vail is brought in To this are opposed in the 17. and 18. verses The Spirit of the Lord the liberty of the Spirit the sight of the Glory of the Lord with an unvailed Face the tranfiguration of the Soul into the same Image from glory to glory and all this by the Lord the Spirit These things laid together seem to make it clear that in the sense of the holy Apostle the letter the proposal and pressing of any truth or goodness upon us in a literal and moral way only whether outward or inward amounteth to no more then the old Covenant the Ministery of the Law on the other side the new Covenant the Gospel is the Spirit himself ministring himself through the letter to us taking off the Vail which lies upon the letter and upon our hearts bringing us forth into the Liberty the open Light and the Divine Life of the Spirit giving us a naked view of the Face of Christ in his spiritual and heavenly Glory and by this view transforming us into living Images of the same Glory springing up and encreasing in us unto the perfect day of eternity Suitable to this is that of St. Paul Rom. 10. 5. Moses describeth the Righteousness which is of the Law That the man which doth these things shall live by them Whatever imposeth upon us any thing to be done by us as an antecedent condition to any consequent good is the Law opposed to the Gospel The Law maketh Precepts the ground of Promises He that doth these things shall live by them But the Gospel maketh Promises the sure the sweet the precious pleasant ground of Precepts So St. Peter 2 Pet. 1. teacheth us That by the Glory and Virtue of the Godhead calling us to it self most great and precious Promises are given us that by these we may be made partakers of the Divine Nature So St. Paul engrafts Evangelical Precepts upon Evangelical Communications of the Divine Nature through Evangelical Promises Work out saith he your salvation with fear and trembling for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do Phil. 2. 2. The proper end of the Law in the design or effect is not Love Righteousness Life and Blessedness but Condemnation Death and Wrath 2 Cor. 3. 7. It is called the ministry of Death At the ninth verse The ministry of Condemnation St. Paul in another place speaketh plainly That if there had been a Law which could have given Life Righteousness should have been by the Law St. Paul instructeth us in two eminent essential differences between the Law and the Gospel First The Law by Descriptions Commands Allurements Terrors setteth Righteousness before us but infuseth not a new Nature a new Life into us which may of its own accord bring forth Righteousness as Plants spâ—…ing up out of the ground and out of their proper root Secondly the Law not giving Christ himself to us to be a quickning Spirit in us to be our Life to be one Life with us cannot give us Righteousness either to the acceptation of our
and appears as Lord of all the Heaven of the Fathers Bosom the Heaven of the eternal Spirit and of the Godhead where it hath the Root of its Personality and its Life hidden with God from the natural eye of every Creature 3. The whole Manhood of Christ is cloathed with an heavenly or super-coelestial Image an Image suitable and proper to that Heaven out which he springs 4. The Manhood of Christ is so immediately entirely mutually united to the eternal Spirit the Godhead it self that Christ as he is man is said to be a quickning spirit The Humane Nature and the Divine in the Lord Jesus are so far now become one Spirit as in a mystical Marriage where at the height of their Unity they keep the distinction as high and clear 5. â—…us Christ in his Humane Nature in his Body as well as his Soul is thus become a Spirit in opposition to the earthly and fleshly substance of the natural Body of the first man which is declared incapable of entring into the Kingdom of God 6. This spiritual and super-coelestial state above the natural Body and above the natural Soul of the first man in his primitive state and so above the Creation in its visible or invisible part when it was most pure is properly the Kingdom of God to which that of St. Paul agreeth when he placeth the Kingdom of God in the eternal Spirit Thus the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus is his Return with his Humane Nature with his shadowy Image with the whole Creation in himself into the Immortality and Glory of his Mediatory Form to be there as he was at first This is the Object of his Hope the subject of his Prayer Now O Father glorifie me with thy self with that Glory which I had with thee before the World was Joh. 17. 5. What time that now relates unto you may understand by the fore-going verse I have glorified thee on Earth I have finished the Work which thou gavest me to do Jesus Christ speaketh this by a Prolepsis or Anticipation having his Eye upon the finishing his Work upon the Face of the Earth by dying and finishing his Work in the Heart or nethermost parts of the Earth by lying the appointed time in the Grave Jesus Christ points out to us three eminent Circumstances in his Resurrection 1. The first is a Glory with his Father an Union and Fellowship with the Godhead and with the Person of the Father in his own proper and Divine personal Glory He expresseth this twice over as the chiefest sweetness of his Hopes and the principal Glory in the Glory Glorifie me with thy self with the Glory which I had with thee 2. This Glory transcends that of the whole Creation in its greatest Perfection as it also antecedes it as it also is a Glory which was before the World was 3. Here are three states distinctly represented to us 1. Jesus Christ in Glory before he came into this World before this World was 2. Jesus Christ coming forth from that Glory into this World and being without that Glory all that interval of his Life here 3. The return of Christ at his Death and Resurrection into the same Glory These three states must necessarily respect Jesus Christ in the same form under the same relation to accommodate this sense and make that proper The Person of Christ in his shadowy Image in which he was the Head of the whole Creation and comprehended this all in himself as he took flesh of the Virgin Mary and set himself in the place of all in their fallen estate So He was without the Glory Before all this in his Mediatory Form he stood together with God and his Father in his shadowy Image in Flesh and Blood with all the changes accompanying him after a spiritual manner filled and cloathed with a super-coelestial and eternal Glory Two Scriptures laid together give more light and strength to this place and this sense Jesus Christ having spoken to the Jews of eating his Flesh and drinking his Blood Joh. 6. 56. Of his being the Bread coming down out of Heaven vers 58. Understanding the Jews to murmur and be offended at the hardness of this saying vers 60 61. makes this Reply to their murmurs What if ye shall see the Son of man ascending thither where he was at first or before It is the Spirit quickneth the Flesh profiteth nothing The words which I speak they are Spirit and Life The other Scripture is that Rom. 1. 4. Christ was raised from the dead by the Glory of God From these two Scriptures compared the Truth of this mystery shines forth in these parts 1. The flesh and blood of Jesus Christ in the proper sense of Christ's words are Spirit and Life 2. They were Spirit and Life in the Glory of God before the coming down of Christ upon the Earth 3. From that state they came forth into their shadowy appearance here in this shadowy Image 4. They returned again together with this shadowy Image into that first state where casting off the Vail or rather converting the Vail into the same Nature and Form they were again all Spirit and Life by the Glory of God in the Resurrection springing up in them coming down upon them and taking them into it self Lastly The flesh and blood of Christ even when they are come forth from this spiritual and immortal Glory while they are in this shadowy state upon the Earth abide unchangeably in this Glory and are there still all Spirit all Life without any Vail or Cloud Thus are they the food of a Saint The Lord Jesus expresseth this sense No one hath ascended into Heaven but he who comes down out of Heaven the Son of Man who is in Heaven Two things are remarkable here 1. The being in Heaven is expressed by the Participle of the present Tense a present and constant Act. 2. The Title of the Son of Man is particulary added to that clause of the being in Heaven constantly without interruption while he comes down out of Heaven while he ascends into Heaven in the interval or space of his being on Earth between both these Jesus Christ as he is the Son of Man comes down at first out of that Heaven into which at last he returns and re-ascends In the same Heaven also hath he his present and constant abode while he is on Earth As the Heaven of Christ's Mediatory Glory and of the Fathers Glory which are far above all created Heavens the Heavens of this Creation come down together with him upon the Earth obscured beneath the Vail of Flesh and in this Flesh act all the parts of his living and dying here So do these Heavens also at once comprehend this Earth in the Person of Christ his flesh their obscurity before it All the parts of his Life and Death in the flesh as parts of Glory in these Heavens As Spirit and Life as spiritual and immortal Glories in the Fountain of Life and
quà ens est objectum intellectus Being it self in all its fulnesses and forms under the formality of truth that is in its own most proper formal and essential Image which is beauty it self the beauty of truth the truth of beauty in all its riches and varieties is the proper object of the understanding adaequately suited to it its entertainment its food and feast its light and life which actuates it its perfection which determines it and compleats it in its proper form and essence It is an acknowledged Maxim That good is the object of the will All things desire good Good is the object of every appetite natural and sensitive also But these are particular goods proper to those particular Orders of Being the mark to which the rational appetite directs it self the Firmament in the face of which this Dove with its wide-spread-wings flyes is the Heaven of the first and universal Good as it comprehends within its embraces all inferiour goods Thus the Will hath the freedome of all good before it a freedome for all good in its self an essential suitableness inclination and capacity to good absolutely as good The soul of man hath a three-fold liberty the liberty of its Essence Understanding and Will 1. The liberty of its Essence is the fulness of Being All Being in the highest amplest and most substantial Image next to the Original it self the Divine Essence For it is the immediate birth of the Supream Original its darling and best beloved Child although it be the younger Brother to those Sons of God the Angels yet is it as Isaac to Ismael and Jacob to Esau their Lord the Heir of all the Nursling of the Angels while it is in its minority for whom they are made to be ministring Spirits to it So hath the soul of man as an intellectual Spirit all things in its own essence within it self the supream and eternal Being in its fairest and fullest Image beneath it self all inferior Beings fairer and fuller then they are in themselves as the Face in the Glasse excels a Picture or as a Statue exactly framed in Gold or Marble excels the shadow cast from that Statue 2. The Soul or intellectual Spirit hath a liberty of understanding Here it is a clear and spacious light the immediate lustre and out-shining of the Supream Light unconfined like to that as the clearest and compleatest Copy of it next to it self In this Light it freely contemplateth all forms of things above it beneath it of the same order with it all are present before it it comprehends them all within its own circle In the same Image of it self in which it contemplateth it self it freely and unconfinedly rangeth in the midst of them taking in their various beauties distinctly and all their beauties with their most delightful proportions and harmonies united in one at its pleasure freely doth it put on all these beautiful forms the truths and essences of all things being made all things in their truest and conpleatest beauties both distinctly and unitedly So it appears to it self in the sweetness beauty reality truth of each form each figure of the Divine truth and beauty apart So it appears to it self in the unconfined sweetness beauty majesty of the forms the truths of all things united in one This with unexpressible delights it looketh upon as its own proper and compleat Image 5 in this it beholdeth all scenes of things at once within it self it seeth it self in all persons and shapes with the beautiful dresses of Divine truths acting all parts in the most beautiful harmony with the Divine truth it self in its eternal Original In all it enjoyeth within it self the truth of reality of distinction of unity as in the highest Copy and the life-picture of the supream life it self far above all other Copies This Aristotle expresseth to us when he teacheth us this Lesson 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The understanding is made all things This also we learn from him and his Followers That the understanding alone doth touch take in embrace the essences of things while all that presents it self below the understanding to the senses is only a various combination of accidents and shadows So also we learn from Plato's School That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Understanding is the Son of God the Word of God the first and most substantial expression of the Divine Unity with all its incomprehensible fulness next to the Divine Unity it self This is in that School the only Seat of the Essences and the essential truths of all things Beneath it in the discourses of reason are the forms of these Essences as lively Pictures without in the senses the shadows only Agreeable to this also doth the sense of the sacred Scriptures seem to be which maketh man that similitude and Image in which God with all his holy Angels in all created forms of things unite center and terminate as the end and perfection of all Upon this ground is the second Person of the Trinity the Godhead in its essential Image as the most adaequate Image of it self most answering and most suited to it self and so fittest for the most perfect Union with it self as of the proper and most immediate Image with its own proper Idea 3. The liberty of the Will is equal to and ariseth from this liberty of the Understanding The Understanding as the eye of the Soul first feasteth upon the beauties presented to it in the truths of things and so inviteth the will as the mouth of the Spirit to tast the sweetness and goodness of them The good of all these forms and essential truths is that which St. Peter calls the sincere milk of the living Word It is peculiarly the Divinity that of the Original and Supream Unity which is in them The nature of good is defined by a sutableness or agreeableness This hath its root in an unity All things that agree agree in aliquo tertio The agreement of things is their meeting in an unity The Soul in its essence is the most complete and immediate Image of the Divine Unity in which all varieties of things lie virtually and eminently as in their first spring The understanding and all forms or truths of things in the understanding are the effulgency of this Divine Unity with all its varieties contained in it as they shine forth in the essence of the Soul and so become the reflexions of it self upon it self and as the highest figure of the eternal Son of God the brightness of its own glory to it self Thus the essence of the Soul and the essential Images of all truths of things according to their Divine beauties in the Soul have an essential sutableness and agreeableness to each other from that two-fold unity their unity in their Original their unity in their own proper form as it is the Image of that Original The essential inclination of the Soul to these forms of Being and Images of the Divinity and to the Divinity
it self in these Images presented to the Soul by their essential truths in their understanding is that power which we call the Will The sutableness and agreeableness of these forms of things to the Will The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so more principally the Divine Unity in them the root and life of this agreeableness is the good which is the Object of this inclination the Will of the intellectual Spirit Love is defined the union of the Lover and the Beloved The will as it is an essential inclination to its Object the good shining forth in its proper Image and beautiful forms of truth in the understanding is love it self the essential love of the Soul The Soul in this essential power which we call the Will is the Lover This is that which Plotinus seemeth to mean when discoursing of the Soul he saith That every Soul comes forth with a Cupid or love proper to it and inseparable from it It is commonly known that the Soul is represented by Venus the Queen of Beauty and the Mother of Love the Daughter of Jupiter of Jehovah As the intellectual Soul is the â—…enus so is this essential inclination of the Soul to good which is its will the Cupid or Love born of it and born with it inseparable from it As is the intellectual Spirit so is its Will or Love the highest and loveliest Image of the first Spirit and the first Love so hath it in it next to the Divine Love the highest the most potent the most universal force of inclination and love to the highest and most universal good The Beloved or the Object of this Love and this Lover the intellectual Soul and the Intellectual Will is the highest and most universal good as it presenteth it self in its highest lustre in its richest amplest most unlimited variety of beauties in the Understanding This good being an agreeableness to the Will and so meeting with a mutual and answerable agreeableness in the Will to it self presenteth it self thus by the Understanding in these forms of truth which is the Divinest beauty as a lover and a beloved both to the Will that they may be equally and mutually happy by equal by mutual embraces and fruition This is the liberty of the Will consisting in two parts mutually answering each other The first is the vigour and amplitude of the principle the inclination or love carrying the Soul to rendring it capable of good in its absolute and universal form The second is the vigor and amplitude of its Object which is the highest good the Divinity of good it self presenting it self in its absolute universal or intire truth beauty and essential form presenting it self in all varieties of distinct truths beauties and forms as they are represented in their highest completest Image next to the Original it self in the Understanding Here is the Will like a Bee in a Garden or flourishing Field or rather in an heavenly Paradise flying at liberty over all forms of truth and beauty as the Flowers and Plants in this Paradise resting at pleasure upon every one of them sucking 〈◊〉 sweetness the virtue the good the unexpressibleness of the Divinity and the Divine Unity from them as the Honey which is its Divine Feast Nourishment Life and Treasure This is the liberty of the Soul of the Understanding of the Will in its proper Nature and primitive State This is the liberty which it still enjoys inseparable from its essence under the fall it self so far as by the promised Seed putting forth it self in the moment of the Fall the essence of the intellectual Spirit is renewed and maintained universally by common Grace in the midst of the ruines of the Fall I have this one thing only to add under this fourth Head the Liberty of intellectual Spirits that as God is the Original Spirit as Angels and intellectual Souls are Image-Spirits so is the liberty of the Divine Essence the Original liberty and the liberty of all other intellectual Spirits Humane or Angelical is the Birth and so the Image of that liberty Having thus passed through the several degrees of liberty in the several Orders of Being we come now more particularly and distinctly to state the question concerning the Liberty of the Will which is the subject of our present Discourse There is a two-fold liberty of the Will 1. One by all acknowledged inseparable from the Will in all States and acts 2. The other hath been through all Ages Religions and Philosophyes the ground of many learned eloquent deep Discourses and Disputes between persons eminent in all kind 1. The first uncontroverted liberty of the Will is that which is built upon the grounds already laid It consisteth in two glorious preheminencies 1. The liberty of acting from an internal essential universal Principle of inclination or love which is confined or restrained in its nature and power by no particular differences which is by nothing determined in its actings except only as it determines it self by the Laws of its own universal nature in which it bears the immediate and most express figure of the Divine Nature and so of the Divine freedome or liberty 2. This Principle hath for the sphere and compass of its activity the absolute and universal good in the entire freedome of his unconfined form or Essence in all the varieties of its descents and ascents its divisions and compositions The Will of the Intellectual Spirit is free here in the chase and pursuit of all good unconfined to any particular form of good determined by it self alone and its own internal essential motions to the choice and embraces of every good 2. The second liberty of the Will which hath so different aspects to the differing understanding of excellent persons for the most part in all places and times is generally known by these terms of Libertas contradictionis libertas contrarietatis Liberty of contradiction and of contraricty Suppose an intellectual Spirit in the moment immediately preceding its Action positis omnibus requisitis ad agendum now ready for action in the constitution and concurrence of all circumstances essential accidental from above from below from the first universal cause from all second and particular causes from within from without in respect to any Essence Power and Operation in respect to any thing in any potentiality or act The Will of this intellectual Spirit without any change in any circumstance in any degree may act or not act which is the liberty of contradiction may act either in this way or in the way directly contrary to it which is the liberty of contrariety This is also expressed by a liberty or power in the Will to determine it self in the moment of acting by its act without any predetermination in the Will it self in the power of acting in its proper Essence and the laws of its own Nature in the connexion of causes or in the first and universal Cause The method of my treating upon this Question
them all by their names none of them is wanting every one shineth as a fixed Star in that supream Orb of Glory God hath made all things in number weight and measure Number is here interpreted to be the Character of the species or kinds of things according to their distinct essences The first and supream link in this Chain of essential forms is the Idea or the eternal Pattern or Spring of each Essence in the Mind of God The Pythagorean Philosophy foundeth its heighest mysteries of Divinity upon the nature of numbers as the most agreeable figures of it The Ideas or eternal Images of things in God so seem to shine forth most clearly with the sweetest and fullest beauties in abstracted numbers Our Lord saith That little Children have their Angels which alwayes behold the face of their Father in Heaven Behold here each single hair of our heads which is an excrement only how much more each part of our Bodies each motion of our Spirits each moment of our Lives or circumstance in our affairs hath its Idea its first Image and Truth its Original first true Being and Beauty eternal in the heart of God These at once are the Eyes of God which by day and by night circle round watch over and guide them the invisible Chambers and Treasures of God where they are laid up and kept safe as his Jewels Number hath been reputed the first seat and measure of proportion Harmony Musick and Beauty in every kind Number and Beauty or Harmony are both by Philosophers and Divines appropriated to Intellectual Spirits who alone are capable of them as their proper operations and objects Both agree in this definition which seemeth to comprehend not only the proper objects and operations but the Essence also of immortal Minds an Unity diffusing it self into Variety keeping it self undivided and entire through the whole Variety bounding the Variety with its self and binding it up within it self A great and learned Divine teacheth us That there is a vast difference as between the natures so between the numbers of the Humane the Angelical the Divine Understanding The numbers which men apply to corporeal and material Subjects divide break and lessen the subject In these numbers that holdeth true that the whole is greater than any single part The numbers with which the Angels number things retain through all the indivisibility of the Unity with diversity of forms Here each form or essence comprehendeth under its own undivided Unity all forms of things according to their proper and compleat amplitude agreeable to the Angelical State but under the Character of its own peculiar and distinct property But the Divine number transcending all divisibility and diversity joyneth in one the simplest Unity with the amplest and most distinct Variety Thus after a Divine manner by this Divine Art of Numeration are all the haiâ—… of our head numbred in the mind of God Thus every single hair there maketh up a Divine Harmony composed of a rich Variety of Divine Proportions according to the number of all the other hairs as in the whole so in the several parts and single unities Euery single hair is a center and a seat to the various proportions between it self and all the rest in particular as well as also to the Harmony of the whole I shall now give a brief answer to the Objections alledged against the Universality of the Divine Knowledge 1. No Object however low however base embaseth the Divine Understanding The figures of Mice and Emraulds formed in Gold lessen'd not the lustre or preciousness of the Gold neither did they detract any thing from the sacred Worth Majesty or Divinity of the Ark by being put into it This Ark was tâ—…e Figure of our Jesus the essential Image the Divine Mind Understanding and Wisdome of the Father Lazarus with his Rags his running Sores and the Dogs licking them represented to the life in an excellent Picture done by the hand of Vandike of Titian or some great Master is a worthy and most agreeable entertainment for the eye and fancy of any Princess a rich Ornament and rare Jewel for the Chamber or Cabinet of a Prince The Plague with all its loathsome and horrid attendance conceived in the mind formed to a most exact Image in Virgil's fancy from thence transferred into his inimitable Poems becomes worthy of the Ear the Fancy the Mind of that great and most polite Prince Augustus Caesar yea cloathed thus with this Image the mind and fancy of the Poet transfuse and present themselves to the spirit of that Prince as of all learned and judicious Readers with a heightned Beauty and kind of Divinity That is a certain Rule That every thing received is received according to the nature and manner of the Recipient The Divine Understanding cloathing it self with the Images and Forms of all Objects desormeth not it self but maketh them Divine To the Pure all things are pure but to the Unclean nothing is pure but even their minds the Angelical part their Consciences the Divine part of their Souls is desiled 2. Individuals and particulars together with Universals appear distinctly to the Eye of God at once in one view The Philosopher of old affirmed all things to be in all The shady blueness in the clear Heavens above us which seemeth to terminate our sight is said to be the deficiency of our sight which is uncapable either of extending it self to so remote an Object or of having any Commerce with a Body so pure so glorious and so near to the nature of a Spirit Thus the contraction the obscurity the materiality which seemeth to be the bound of our eye and sense when we look to individual things here below are in truth the weaknesses of our senses falling short of the glory shining in the nature of things The light of God which is alone the true Light having no darkness in it and so the measure of all Truth is stiled by St. Peter A marvailous Light This is one of the wonders in the Divine Light All things here are transparent each particular each part is seen distinctly in the whole and the whole compleatly in â—…h part The Psalmist singeth of this holy and high mystery That with God the Darkness and the Light are both alike Materiality and corporeity as they appear before him are spiritual and Divine forms In the face of each material individual object shineth the whole nature of things This is manifest upon a three-fold ground 1. All things in Heaven above and Earth beneath meet in the constitution of each individual In Jacob's Vision Angels were seen descending and ascending upon each step of the Ladder from the Throne of God Himself above down to the Earth below Thus by the Scale of Praedicaments in Logick and in Metaphysicks we are taught That universal and superior Beings even Being it self in its absolute and unlimited fulness descend into the essential constitution of each inferior Being In them also the
divinely beautiful the only beloved Person and form of his only eternal Birth his own Son there hath the view of the Will of Man in every distinct motion act and determination as in its first exemplar cause in eternity 3. The will of man then in every motion act and determination of it is from eternity predetermined in the Divine Understanding as in its first cause and Original form Upon these grounds the Knowledge of God is at once a fore-knowledge of future things and a knowledge of things present 1. It is a fore-knowledge as it sees things in their first cause in a state far above and transcendent to the state of their proper existency as they stand forth out of their causes 2. It is a knowledge of things present as eternity and the Divine duration containeth in it self the measures the exemplars and so the most exact forms of time and every successive duration in its several aspects of past present and to come Besides that as the Sun looking forth makes the Day and the Light with all the visible Images with which it beholds the Heavens and the Earth so the Divine Eye is at once a Glass to it self and a Fountain to all things by beholding things every moment in it self it doth formally every moment send them forth from it self so at once it seeth them in their formal cause and present existence 6. Argument The sixth Argument drawn from this Head is the infiniteness of God This is a Negative expression representing to us a Positive Perfection which surmounts all Assimilations all Similitudes or Images which the highest understanding of men or Angels is capable of taking in or the whole Creation united in its most abstracted and heightned Excellencies of bringing forth We figure it to our selves only by a Negation or removal of all figures of all terms or bounds We seem to touch it with the Top point and simplest Unity of Spirits by a silence and cessation of all created powers or faculties in us We seem to apprehend it only by being comprehended of it and lost in it If we knew and tasted the unexpressible Sweetnesses the high Raptures with the Divinest Pleasures in the contemplation of the Divine Infiniteness how far should we be from streightning or darkening its Glories by limiting and in limiting dividing them If God be God that is before all things and above them he is absolutely unchangeable As He is unchangeable He is every where every way the same equal and entirely perfect equally and endlesly removed from all bound and limit If God be God that is the first of all things He hath the Fountain of Life in himself Thus he is ever fresh and new ever springing into fresh and new Glories ever equally endlesly removed from any conclusion or confinement in his Births and Beauties The Divinity and Poetry of the Heathen from their most ancient most sacred mysteries teach us that Love is the Eldest and Youngest of all the gods Our God the God and Father of our Lord Jesus is the God of Love in the truest the sweetest and the best sense He alone is Love it self in an abstracted eternal Divine Essence and Substance pure Love altogether unmixt having nothing in it self different or divers from it self thus is an infinite Love a sweet and clear Sea which swalloweth up all bounds all shores and bottoms into it self This Love as it is every way the same is the ancient of Dayes the eldest of all the Gods This Love as it ever flourisheth with a perpetual Spring and Youth of all Beauties of all beautiful Delights is the youngest of all the Gods Thus is this most high and holy Love the God of Gods the First and the Last containing all things within its own blissful bosome as the bound of all but being it self every way beyond all bounds without all bounds infinite How infinite are the joys and blessedness of this Infiniteness How is this infinite God our God the only true God a Paradise of Love infinitely heightned in all the beauties and sweetnesses of Love infinitely diffused through all things beyond all things How is He at once the Paradise of Love with its infinite heightnings with its infinite amplitudes in every part in every point of things entirely perfect How is it every where the same every where new to the satisfaction to the swallowing up of all the most fixt most various most vast desires into an Aybss or Ocean of Delights equally unconfined and undivided Shall we then limit the holy One of Israel If we do not we must ascribe this greatness to Him that He contains all things in Himself In Him all things live move and have their Being We must attribute this immenseness or immensurableness to Him to fill all in all as the only distinct exact measure of all things himself still transcending all and being measured by nothing It is said of Christ That the Church is the fulness of him who filleth all in all The Humane Soul or Intellectual Spirit is a rude imperfect shadow of the Divine Infiniteness Our thoughts are living Images in various postures and motions They are in a manner the Creation the Creatures of our Souls They live move and have their being in our Souls Our Souls alone fill all in them all How far greater is the distance between God and his Creatures than between the Soul and its Creation How much more less even less than nothing are all the Creatures to God How much more truly more entirely are they all that they are in Him how much more absolutely is he their fulness silling them all in all All things then all Essences all Lives all Vital Powers and Faculties in each Essence all Motions of life all Acts or Operations of every power and faculty are in God He alone filleth all in every Essence Life Power Faculty Motion Act. All are in Him have all their distinct forms degrees modes of being in Him to the least degree or shadow of Being Thus Angels and Men the Understanding and Will of each Man of each Angel every act motion determination of each Understanding of each Will are comprehended in God God entirely filleth all every Person or Spirit every Understanding and Will every Determination and Motion Where we exclude him out of any Spirit Essence Power or Operation there we set a bound to the eternal Spirit there we limit the holy One that pure Essence and Act there we say to Him Thus far shalt thou go no farther If God be acknowledged for Being it self in its purest simplicity it is Being alone which can bound him All without him where he ceaseth and terminateth is not Being But who understands not this that that which hath no Being can be no bounds 7. Argument The seventh Argument is the causality of God The celebrated Argument of the Philosopher by which he asserts the Divine Being is the necessity of one first mover For if the causes of motion did
one breath one beam one stream from the eternal Spirit succeeds new in the place of the other sprung forth from it in the point of time immediately preceding The whole Creation each particular Creature is no more the same hath no continuance hath no Unity with it self save only as it is in Jesus Christ in its first and eternal Form its truest Form its truest Self in Him who alone is the true the substantial the universal Image of God the express Image of his Substance Unity and Eternity All created forms are so far only the same and one in a figure or similitude as they are sealed with the impression of their Ideal and Original form in Christ as they subsist in this Root as they are Garments with which this their eternal Truth and Substance cloathes it self In the my stical Fables of the Heathens the Goddess of Wisdome contending with the God of the Seas for the tutelage of Athens made suddainly at once to spring up out of the Earth an Olive-tree in its perfection with its branches and leaves all green laden with ripe Olives When an Olive-tree or an Apple-tree riseth up by degrees from its Kernel to a perfect Plant when it successively putteth forth it self thorow the Spring and Summer in buds in leaves in blosomes in fruit unto a fulness in Autumn then in that state of maturity with its leaves and fruit in full growth and beauty upon it it standeth up immediately and entirely out of its Ideal or first Cause out of the Divine Omnipotency or Almightiness as if it had never before existed as if no Summer no Spring had ever gone before Yea the whole Creation round about that Olive-tree in its present posture with all Plants on Earth with the present face of Heaven with the present configuration of all Bodies of all Humane or Angelical Spirits comes forth from God as immediately entirely absolutely as when on the third day all Herbs Flowers and Trees first appeared and rose up in a moment at once perfect out of the Earth or as if this present Autumn had been the first and the beginning of the World as some suppose that season to have been All things in the Creature upon this ground have their order and connexion not by virtue of any dependance upon each other but by the force of the eternal Order the inviolable Harmony in the first Cause the Ideal or exemplary World in the Divine Mind If the Being of the Creature be an emanation or beaming forth from the first Being then as the emanation or flowing forth is distinct new and fresh every moment so is there every moment a new fresh distinct World or Creation If man thus with his Soul his Powers his Operations with all the modifications of his whole Person Body and Spirit in each moment spring forth fresh and full that moment from his first and universal Cause as Philosophers say the Sun and his beams were concreated at the beginning of the World What then is the liberty of the Will in determining it self Is it any other than this the truest the happiest the only desirable freedome of coming forth as it is sent forth from God the first and the best of all things in a conformity to its eternal Truth its Original Form in the highest Beauty the highest Bliss the Divine Wisdome and Will Reader if any difficulties arise in thy mind about the reconciling of the appearances of things in the World so mixt with Good and Evil the evil of Deformity the evil of Sin the deformity of Intellectual Spirits the most hateful Fountain of all Deformity the evil of Sufferings consequent to this Deformity with this proceding of the Creature distinct and new every moment from God the pure Fountain of Good I entreat thee to carry this along in thy thoughts that the second part of this Discourse is designed for a clear stating and full examination of all Objections I am unwilling therefore to disturb my method to prevent my self or make Repetitions by bringing in these things here which are there to be treated of I entreat thee here only to mark with a skilful and curious eye whether the foundation of Truth be firmly laid and whether the building arise regularly out of it In the second Book it will be thy part to see whether this building stand fast against the assaults of all contrary appearances which like the Rivers the Wind the Rain from above from below on every side beat upon it This is enough upon this Head the universal Nature of the Creature 4. My fourth Head from which I draw my Reasonings upon this Subject of Free-will is The Nature of the Soul From the Nature of the Soul we thus reason the Essence of the Soul and its Faculties the Understanding and the Will differ not really but formally alone All three are one and the same Every one is all three in one They are distinguished according to the distinct forms in which they appear ever appearing with all their forms in each form 1. The Essence of the Soul is immaterial a substantial Act an undivided Unity and essential Form which comprehends the forms of all Essences essentially in it self We speak all this while of the Intellectual Soul This Soul then essentially comprehends it self reflects upon it self and all forms of things in it self Thus it springs up into an essential Image of it self and of all Essences to it self within it self Thus is the Essence of the Soul it s own Understanding by virtue of its immaterial Substance and its substantial Unity 2. The Understanding of the Soul differs from the senses in two things 1. The Senses touch and take in their Objects only by material accidents as shadowy figures The Understanding toucheth taketh hold of and embraceth the Substances themselves incorruptible immutable in their eternal Truths 2. The senses take in the Images of their Objects from without but the Understanding brings forth its Object in an essential Image from within which is therefore called Verbum mentis The Senses being material are thus passive but the Understanding as an immaterial power altogether active If the Understanding bring forth from it self and comprehend within it self the essential and substantial forms of things it can be no less than a substance it self and one substance with the Soul in the essence of it For nothing unsubstantial can receive into it self that which is substantial We have also said before that the Soul in its essence or substance essentially comprehends all things in their essential and substantial forms Let me add this upon the same ground that if the Soul understand it self the understanding is every way adequate and equal to the Soul in as much as it adequately comprehends it The Will is described by Thomas Aquinas to be the Inclination of the Soul It is also a Rule That every Power or Faculty is distinguished and defined by its Object The Object of the Will is Good Good is
the perfection of every thing The suitableness and convenience makes the Goodness Every thing hath essentially in its nature an inclination to its Good to its Perfection to every thing suitable and agreeable to it Suitableness is from Similitude Similitude is from Unity For it is an agreement in the same form Every thing then hath in its essence an inclination to a suitable Object to its Perfection to its Good as to it self presented distinctly to it self and to the compleating of it self in the embraces of it self Thus it appears that the Soul essentially is its own Will in as much as its essence taken most abstractedly being a substantial Act is in that Act an essential inclination to its own Good and Perfection Thus also it appears that the Understanding of the Soul is the Will of the Soul in as much as in its distinct formality it is an inclination to Truth as to its proper Perfection and Good Again the most proper and most perfective Act of the Will in its most perfect state is Love Love is an Union The Object of the Will is Good in its full Latitude the essential substantial universal Good The Act of the Will in Love is then a mutual intimate Union with the Object by which it adequately comprehends it and is adequately comprehended by it The Will then which is necessarily equal to that which it comprehends can be no other than the essence or substance of the Soul it self of which we have before said that it hath all Essences of things essentially within it self and so the whole compass of Being compleat within it self As it represents it self in this whole compass of Being to it self in a distinct Image and so reflects upon it self it is its own Understanding As it doth by this distinct Image with mutual embraces mutually comprehend and enjoy it self in Love and Joy it is its own Will it s own Love and Joy So we seem to have proved that the Will as it is a distinct faculty is really and formally the same with the essence and substance of the Soul We will endeavour also to prove that the Will comprehends the Understanding in its own proper and distinct formality 1. When the Soul Loves it self and understands it self both these Acts fall under the same definition of comprehending it self in a distinct and compleat Image of it self This Act cannot but be mutual if the Image of the Soul be adequate to the Soul and so are Love and Understanding both in one 2. The Acts and Motions of the Will do imply sense in their essential Formalities Sense in the Intellectual Soul is Understanding 3. The Object attracts and acts the Faculty by impressions of it self The impression of Good upon an Intellectual Subject is an Intellectual tast or relish of the Good The impression of an Intellectual Good which is the proper Object of the VVill is an Intellectual impression 4. The VVill as it is essentially distinguished from the natural Appetite which inanimate things are naturally moved by and from the sensitive Appetite proper to bruit Creatures is defined to be a rational Appetite Thus it comprehends Reason or Understanding in its essential Form So we have attempted to make it plain that Those three the Essence the Understanding the VVill of the Intellectual Soul mutually comprehend one another in their essential Formality and are perfectly adequate one to another so far as the Soul is in a state of Perfection perfectly understanding and loving it self By the way In this Glass you may have a pleasant glimps of the Trinity 1. The Soul in its essence is an Unity comprehending it self and all created forms of things intirely in one substantial and indivisible Act as the Fountain of all This is a shadow of the Father in the Trinity 2. The Understanding of the Soul is the essential and adequate Image of this Unity in which it bringeth forth and contemplates it self within it self This is the Son the Word 3. The VVill is the essential the intellectual and adequate Union of these two with the most full communion and highest complacency by which they propagate and multiply themselves within themselves into an endless Race of innumerable Forms in each of which they are still themselves intire and compleat This is the figure of the Holy Spirit Thus he that knows God knows the Soul as the Picture by the Life and he that knows the Soul knows God as the Life by the Picture Each of these is all to it self within it self God as the Original Life-World the Soul as the shadowy VVorld the World of shadows But to conclude this Argument If the Essence of the Soul the Understanding and the VVill be really one and formally distinct so that every one comprehends all Three in its proper Formality where is that freedome of the VVill by which it may act independent on the Understanding VVe will seal up this Argument with that confirmation of it which seems to have great strength and clearness Powers and faculties are distinguished according to their Objects The Essence of the Soul the Understanding and the VVill differ as Being Truth and Goodness not really but formally only formally comprehending the formality of each other The Reader is desired to take notice That how ever the Author in one of his Copies intended only this short accompt of this Argument taken from the Nature of the Soul yet a larger Discourse upon this Head being found amongst his Papers it is judg'd most fitting in this place to publish it The chief Praise of this Age is that it runs along in a stream directly contrary to the Romish Church having little veneration for an implicite Faith Tradition Antiquity Universality in the persuit of Truth It s labour and glory is with its hands eyes and spirit to penetrate and view the first grounds of Truth I desire it may be as happy in distinguishing between the upper part of the beam of Light where it unites it self to its Sun and Fountain where it is firmest fullest brightest warming enlivening as well as shining and the lower part of the beam which touches the Earth and the Senses where it is weak wavering obscure mixt with and vanishing into the darkest shade I shall therefore endeavour taking my rise somewhat high from the Fountain of things to open the Nature of the Soul with as much clearness and plainness as I am able and the nature of the Subject will bear in these three Propositions 1. Prop. The Intellectual Soul in Man is an Unity altogether indivisible comprehending Variety Diversity Contrariety of Forms Powers and Parts without and above all Division 2. Prop. This indivisible Unity containeth in it self the full Variety of all forms created uncreated after its own manner according to its own proper Character 3. Prop. The most perfect and full Image of God in the midst of the Creation resulting from the Harmonious Union of the Unity and Variety is the Soul's Essence and
Seraphim and Cherubim In its sensitive powers and parts it stretcheth forth it self through those lower Worlds the Coelestial and Elementary In its rational and discoursive faculty it makes a distinct World of its own at once dividing and uniting the invisible and visible Worlds filling up the internal or middle space between them The Soul from its Divine Unity in its most immediate Union with its eternal Idea where all Unities of things in their God-like forms do meet together in one descendeth into its Angelick Image or Intellectual Form Here all things in Angels shapes dwell together as in a Palace of Angels Here the Soul in her own face as in a Glass beholdeth all things in their universal Forms rouling through them all so that in each form she is Omniform comprehending in open view all things in their universal Forms under the Property or Character of that universal Form in which she at present appears From thence she passeth into her rational Form in which she is a contexture of universal and particular Images mutually infolding each other mutually springing up and shining forth in a beautiful Harmony from the Christalline Bosomes of each other So this Spirit slides by degrees into the most divided shapes in sense and on Earth through these into the lowest and obscurest shades beneath the Earth Again by answerable Revolutions and in the same proportions she gathereth her self up again into her first and supream Unity Three things make the Soul in these Circlings a most beautiful and delightful Prospect which three Beauties and Pleasures all flow by á sweetly-natural necessity from her Divine Unity 1. The Changes of the Soul through all these Diversities of forms are all most orderly and harmonious all together make up one most ravishing Harmony of Divine Beauty and Musick For the Unity spreadeth it self through all this diversity of Forms and Changes The Unity preserveth it self entire in the whole composure of these Changes and in each part in each turn of the whole Upon this account hath the Soul been defined to be Harmony and a self-moving Number or a numerous Motion a numerous spring of Motion Harmony consisteth in is measured and expressed by Numbers Inasmuch as Number is Unity diffusing it self Unity going forth from it self in a just order by Multiplication or Division of it self returning again into it self and all this within it self 2. The Soul through the whole Circle of its Descent and Return carrieth along with it all diversity of Forms into every Change For the Unity of the Soul is her self every where inseparable from the Soul and indivisible in it self This is clearly signified in that Maxim concerning the Soul universally taught in the Schools That the Soul is divisible and mutable in her Operation that is in respect to her Change into diversity of forms but through all this mutability of Operations and Changes indivisible and immutable in her Essence Thus is the Essence of the Soul as a Christalline Heaven or as a Palace composed all of purest and firmest Looking-Glass after such a manner that all the parts of the wonderful structure all the persons in all the Apartments all the Changes and Motions are seen at once in every point of the Divine Building All the Glories all the Inhabitants of this Heaven in all shapes in all postures of Light and Life meet the Eye every where not only by a most clear transparency but by the Spring or Fountain of Light and Life which in winding streams floweth through the whole openeth it self with all its various streams and all their curious windings in its Bosome every where 3. The Soul rouleth through all these Changes circling from the highest Lights above to the most shady depths below and through those shades into the brightnesses above within her self Her own Essence is within it self the Spring the Center the Seat the Circle of all those mysterious and harmonious Revolutions For this is the Essence of the Soul An Unity containing in it self all diversity of Forms This is the Soul in its Essence in the perfection of its natural form the Universe within it self like God comprehending conversing with all things within its self alone All this indeed was in a shadowy figure yet such as the Life it self brought forth supported filled illustrated and acted But alas now by the Fall this great and glorious Spirit contracted obscured in death wandreth within it self as a Ghost or shade of it self among the Dead It looketh up it beholdeth it self all things round about it and wondreth at their strange shapes as the shades of the Dead It understandeth knoweth nothing of it self or them not so much as that it is dead It calleth this state of Death Life This the World which is it self become its own Tomb. Perhaps this Picture which I have drawn of the Soul in her proper Essence or Nature in her true and essential form may seem rather a fancy than any thing taken from the Life I shall therefore attempt to touch it over again that I may give more lustre and life to it that I may at once make it more clear and confirm it I shall to this end make use of two Authorities The one Humane the other Divine I shall begin with Humane Authority that I may prepare the way to and close all with the Divine Authority as the seal of Truth The Humane Authority is taken from a Person eminent as a Philosopher and Divine for a profound Knowledge in all manner of Learning for a heighth of Beauty in his Life the suitable Birth and Image of that Divine Light in his Mind for a Death which was an ascent to the eternal Mansions in a flame of Martyrdome and Divine Love agreeable to both the Light of his Knowledge and the Beauty of his Life His Writings are universally esteemed His Testimony universally received and often cited as Authentick by the greatest Persons through many Ages He hath the stamp of Antiquity upon him Boetius that great Roman is the Person of whom I speak The Authority I cite from him is the Meeter in the Book of the Consolation of Philosophy It is a part of this Meeter which describes the nature of the Soul But the whole seems to me so pertinent to the general Subject of my Discourse so excellent in it self drawn forth from the inmost Treasuries of the Platonical Pythagorean Mosaical Christian Philosophy and Divinity that I thought I should oblige the Reader to set it down entire I have therefore first transcribed it in Latin for the sake of the learned Reader and then rendred it into English for the benefit of all that shall take any pleasure in those sacred Mysteries of Truth presented in her richest Robes at the whitest heighth of her never fading Beauty and Majesty The Latin O qui perpetua mundum ratione gubernas Terrarum Caelique sator qui tempus ab aevo Ire jubes stabilisque manens das Cunct a moveri Quem non
externae pepulerunt singere Causae Materiae fluitantis opus verum insita summi Forma boni livore carens Tu cunct a superno Ducis ab exemplo pulchrum pulcherrimus ipse Mundum mente gerens similique in imagine formans Perfect asque jubens perfectum absolvere partes Tu numeris Elementa ligas ut frigora flammis Arida conveniant liquidis ne purior ignis Evolet aut mersas deducant pondera terras Tu triplicis mediam naturae cuncta moventem Connectens animam per Consona membra resoluis Quae cum sect a duos motum glomeravit in orbeis In semet reditura meat mentemque profundam Circuit simili convertit imagine Caelum Tu causis animas paribus vitasque minores Provehis levibus sublimeis curribus aptans In Caelum terramque seris quas lege benigna Ad te conversas reduci facis igne reverti Da pater Augustam menti conscendere sedem Da fontem lustrare boni Da luce reperta In te conspicuos animi Desigere visus Deiice terrenae nebulas pondera molis Atque tuo splendore mica tu namque serenum Tu requies tranquilla piis te cernere finis Principium Vector Dux semita terminus idem The English O thou who by the golden linked Chain Of reason's Musick with an even strain Conductest all from thy bright Throne on high Father of shady Earth and shining Skie By undiscovered Tracts Time's stream and spring Thou from Eternity's vast Sea doest bring Motion and change ever unknown to thee From thee deriv'd and by thee guided be This work of floating matter which we see By inbred form of good from envy free By sweetest force of Native Loves rich seeds Without external cause from thee proceeds In Loves eternal Garden as its flowers Flourish in their first forms and fullest powers All Beauties These are the life the living Law From which thou dost all forms of Being draw As light to dazled eyes all things below From these pure Suns in fading circles flow A World all fair from thee supreamly fair Shines in thy mind above controul or care In an harmonious Image thou the same By perfect parts dost to perfection frame By potent Charms of sacred numbers bound The waving Elements keep their set round Fire Aire Earth Water in mysterious Dances Move to thy Musick through all times and chances Mixt into various figures with sweet grace In each form undivided they embrace Earth sinks not nor doth fire to Heav'n fly Frosts Flames Droughts Floods meet in an Unity The three-fold Natures golden Knot mid-band The Soul thou tyest in one by Love's bright hand Then it by thee unloosned spread doth lie In Limbs well suited to a sympathy Of motion and distinct melody Diffus'd through things below or those on high This is the Spring and Circle ampler far And purer than the Christal Heavens are The universal Beauties charming face Where sweetly spring and dance each lovely grace Within it self divided this great Soul Into a double Globe it self doth roul One hidden from us by excess of light One with shades sweetly temper'd to our sight As thorough these it moves it still returns Into it self still with Love's fire it burns By force of this it still doth circle round Th' eternal minds great deep Heav'n thus doth found And in like figure of those unseen Lights Doth turn about these Glories in our sights Brought forth from causes like Souls and less lives Thy will aloft in airy Chariots drives And sows in Heaven in Earth which by Love's Law Turn'd back to thee thou to thy self dost draw By the innate returning flame Grant Father to our minds thy glorious Mount To climb to view of good the sacred Fount In thine own Light which doth within us shine To fix the clear eyes of our Souls on thine Cast down the mists and weight of earthly mold The joyous splendors of thy face unfold Thou art to holy minds the golden Calm The sweet repose the grief appeasing Balm To see Thee our Beginning is our End Guide Chariot Way our Home to which we tend I mean to take no notice of any thing in this Poem besides that alone which immediately concerns the Soul In that part I shall after the manner of a brief Commentary present the Reader with some few Notes upon the several Passages for the illustration and confirmation of my fore-going Discourse upon the Nature of the Humane or Intellectual Soul 1. Passage The three-fold Natures golden knot Mid-band The Soul Thou tiest in one Triplicis Naturae mediam Connectens Animam  1. Note The three Natures here are manifestly The Invisible Incorporeal Nature Immortal Spirits The Visible Corporeal Nature Bodies Mortal or Immortal The Soul the middle between both these 2. Note The Soul is a middle-nature between both these not by Abnegation or Separation but by Participation and Connection So that word imports Connectens the Golden Knot lying all in one The Soul is a middle-nature three wayes 1. The Soul extendeth her self through both Natures to their utmost Heighths above and Depths beneath by her Idea which is her Golden Head by her Angel which is her Arms and Breast of her Silver her immediate Image and Birth as she springs forth from her Idea her incorruptible Essence above all motion the first seat of her Life Understanding Virtue Power as they flow from her Ideal Spring Thus Plotinus believed the Soul her self in her Essence in her Intellectual Form at its first abstracted heighth and purity to be her own good Angel But the Soul dissuseth her self also by her Coelestial Garment or Body through the wide-spread Heavens These are her Belly and Thighs of Brass the Springs of Generation the first seat of Motion Division and successive Forms By her Elemental Body she swims in this uncertain Sea of Generation and Corruption The Elements in their Orbs compose her Legs and Feet of Iron Here is the lowest Region of Division Motion and Change Here is the scene of Corruption here is the Soul most obscured In the lowest parts of this Earth is she resolved into a shade 2. The Soul is a Nature distinct from the other two Angelical Spirits are Omniforme or Universal Bodies are extended into divisible parts The Intellectual is composed of both universal and particular Forms all which it contains in an indivisible Unity The Soul circles through all forms of things universal and particular as they subsist apart or united appearing mutually infolding each other within the undivided Unity of its own Essence whilst in the Unity and Majesty of its undivided Essence it rouls through all forms and parts of it self as the Sun through the whole compass of the Heavens In this is a more glorious Sun and Heaven that it is in each point of it self at once as a distinct Sun in its full glory and every Sun a spacious transparent Glass in which the whole Heaven of its Essence with all its
Divine World having all the other Varieties compleat in it self as so many Divine Worlds all new This is Eternity above all change 2. The Angelical Unity follows Here the Divine Unity descends into a shadow beneath which it shades it self This is a shadowy Unity the first and most perfect of all shadowy Unities The shade here bounds and diversifieth the Unity But the Light and the Unity in the shadow predominate over the Darkness and Diversity The Divine Variety is here contracted and obscured in a diversity of Forms But in this diversity of Forms is an Omniformity Each Form is Universal and Omniform Each Form hath this Angelical Unity in it where all diversity of Forms meet to compose it and shine together in it according to the diversity and property of that Form Thus every Form of things here is an Angel every Angel is the whole World in himself the whole World and a new World of Angels In this World is motion not properly or simply but with a predominancy of station over the motion for as the Unity is continually rouling through diversity of Forms so it is Omniform Universal cloathed with possessing and enjoying in it self all diversity of Forms and so the full compass of the whole Angelical Harmony in each Form This is Aeviternity where mutability or change begins 3. The Unity of the Soul is the last this is mixt of Eviternity and Time Of Change where station predominates over motion and motion single in its own kingdom The Soul in its superior part is in the form of an Angel In its Angelical Unity it comprehends and rouls through all diversity of Forms in their Universality and Omniformity carrying the whole pomp and full splendor of all universal Forms of all Angelical Beauties along with it in the face of it into each diverse Form Thus it is all Forms in every Form In its inferior part the Soul descends into all particular Forms where the Unity in its Angelick majesty and lustre in its universal Form and Glory is gradually contracted and obscured by the encreasing shade The Soul now becomes each particular Form Here in this inferior part of the Soul Motion and Time have their first birth and seat Time is defined to be the number of Motion in an orderly Priority and Posteriority Accordingly the Soul in respect to its inferior part most properly is described to be a self-moving number As numbers by a just order spring up one out of the other the succeeding numbers being ever less universal removed further from the Unity and multiplied more into particular Unities then the fore-going numbers So doth the Soul after the manner of number which is the measure of all proportion and order from its supream and universal Unity descend and re-ascend through all particular Forms in the most just order and most exact proportions The Soul being the first seat of Motion and Time is also the first seat of Musick which is a motion measured by Time and by the order of Ascents or Descents It is therefore defined by an Harmony There is a three-fold Harmony in the motions of the Soul 1. All the motions of the Soul through all particular Forms lie together after a most agreeable and harmonious manner in the supream Unity of the Soul in its universal Form which is its Essence By the Harmony here are measured all the motions of the Soul in its passage through inferior Forms and so all Time 2. The Soul in its Unity diffuseth it self through all its particular Forms and Motions dwelleth as an hidden seed of Harmony in each of them figureth it self upon each particular and upon the whole uniteth and bindeth up all by it self in it self into one entire piece into one universal Harmony which includes all particular Harmonies all sorts of Musick in it self 3. The Soul by virtue of its Unity and universal ' Form within the embraces and incompassings of that descends most regularly to the lowest Forms Then ascends again ending in that Point that Unity where it first begun So it finisheth in it self the Divine Circle of Musick or Harmony within which lies all Harmony and Musick in all its most delightful diversity of Modes or Figures Thus the Soul in it self as it spreads it self through time and motion the first the universal Musick the measure the Spirit of all Musick all time and motion here make up the universal Musick Again as all universal and particular Forms all motion and time appear at once in one view in the Unity of the Souls Essence and universal Form so is the Soul the first the universal Beauty the Measure the Spirit of all Beauty Forms and Harmony This is spoken of the Soul in comparison with the Corporeal Beauties Musick and Harmony Coelestial or Terrestrial But the Harmony of the Angelick Nature transcends this of the Soul That also is infinitely surmoâ—…nted by those unexpressible incomprehensible Harmonies of the Divine Effence which it is not possible for any created sense to take in 4. Passage It still returns Into it self It still doth circle round The eternal minds great deep Heav'n thus doth found And in like figure of those unseen Lights Doth turn about these Glories in our sights In semel reditura meat mentemque profundam Circuit simili convertit imagine Caelum 1. Note How the Soul in all her motions returns into her self you see in the Harmony of the Soul described in the last Note upon the fore-going Passage I will here only add this The Soul is an indivisible Unity yet spacious enriched with a Variety of Powers and Forms far beyond the compass or glory of this visible World with all its Starry Christalline or Empyrean Heavens This Soul from it self within it self circles through vast and various Forms of richest Lights deepest Shades with all their mixtures in a most exact and ravishing order making all one Piece one Structure one Palace one Person one Face of Beauty most divinely beautiful where all forms of Beauty meet in one As it is thus from it self within it self circles through all forms so in each form it springs up and brings forth it self entire in the Unity of its Essence Thus in every Point the beginning and the end meet the circle of the Souls Essence and of all Beauties the Divine Piece the Divine Palace with all its bright Inhabitants and shining Furniture the Divine Person the Face of Beauty is all finisht and compleat with all the sweet and beautiful Varieties in every part in every point Thus the Soul in all its motions by virtue of the most charming Harmony and transporting Unity every where entire and undivided is ever returning into it self 2. Note The Souls Original the manner of its Divine Procession from its eternal King is with an admirable brevity perspicuity and depth represented to us in the Souls circling round the Minds great deep The Platonists distinguish all invisible Being into three ranks The Unity which is God the Mind
the Soul The Mind they call the Son the World of God the first seat of all Ideas But with us Christians this Mind is the Angelical Nature the chief of those ministring Spirits to which we in the Language of the Scripture give the Name of Angels The Son of God the World of God in the first and most proper sense is the Uncreated Mind and Wisdome the Lord Jesus who as he is the second person in the Trinity is the supream Unity the one only true God The Godhead in its essential Image where first are seated and shine all forms of things in their Original Glories in their eternal Patterns as they are the Variety in the Divine Unity every one God entirely in it self in all the full Glories of the Godhead and all one God ever undivided indivisible Plutarch calleth Life a Depth This Mind is exprest by a Deep inasmuch as it is Life it self the first unbounded Life which hath no ground no limit the fountain of Life where endlesly spring up in an unconfined Circle in a bottomless Depth forms of Glory innumerable one within another Thus St. Paul speaketh That the Spirit of God in the Spirit of a Saint is a Spirit of Revelation which takes the covering off from this Deep of Light and Glories in the Soul searching out the Depth of God The Soul circleth round this Deep of the Divine Mind not after a Corporeal or Local manner but as one Spirit encompasseth another without Circumscription extension or distance 1. The Soul without consinement or adaequation contains in its Unity and Center this glorious Deep of the Divine Mind through the Angelical Mind as the Unity of its Unity the Center in its Center 2. The Soul springs forth by a continual emanation a continual irradiation or process from this Divine Mind into an entire Image of it As it â—…ees the various Glories in the circle of this Deep So doth it spring up within it self into the similitude and forms of the same Glories in the same Order and Harmony to the filling up and compleating of the same circle within it self The Lord Jesus in the Gospel at his Transfiguration appeared as the Sun in its strength and his Garments as the Light Thus the same Jesus the Divine Mind is here a Circle a Depth of substantial Light and Glories filling the Light with all Variety of forms The Soul springs forth from him all round about him as a Garment of Light a Circle of Beams all wrought with the beautiful Figures of those Glories Plato saith That there are three Kings round whose Thrones all things dance God the Mind the Soul this continual procession of the Soul from the Divine Mind through the Angelical Mind in the entire Image of it with all its Divine Forms and their Order their Harmony their Unity in the whole compass of their Variety is the mystical Dance of the Soul round the Throne of her King her Bridegroom by which at once she contemplates enjoys springs up into his Divine Form in all its Beauties and is filled with him He in like manner hath her ever before him as the Looking-Glass of his own Beauty lying and playing in himself as the Image of a Flower or Tree in the water every way circled in by him as she is centered in him As the Divine Mind through the Angelical is in the Soul so are the Divine the Angelical Mind through the Soul in this visible World centring it in themselves riding forth upon the Circuit of the Heaven and the Earth as the lowest figure of themselves at once standing up out of them and standing in them The Soul as the Exemplar Form as the Unity the inmost center the outmost Circle sendeth forth this Corporeal Image as a figure of it self formeth moveth acteth it throughout sustaineth it in it self filleth it with it self every way boundeth and containeth it within it self The vast all-containing Unity of the Soul figureth it self the circular globous round form of the Heavens and the Earth in the Union and Harmony of all the parts suffering no where any discontinuity or vacuity nor any deformity or discord in the whole From the variety of invisible Forms within it self the Soul springeth up into all the innumerable Army of heavenly Bodies in the Coelestial Orbs into all the diversity of Elementary shapes and figures in the Regions below The Harmony and Order of the Soul in all its forms and motions through them floweth forth figureth it self as a Light of Beauty shineth as a Divine Musick soundeth through all the parts and changes of the Coelestial the Elementary Sphears charming those Souls that have awakened and purified senses to take them in As the Soul within it self springeth up into each form in its proper Order bringing forth it self at once with the entire Unity of its whole undivided Essence anew in that distinct form so doth the Soul from that Original in the likeness of the same Image each new moment spring forth anew according to the innate Law of the universal Order and Harmony into the whole Heavens and Earth in a new posture and figure Thus after the similitude of its own circlings through all forms within it self the Soul incessantly turneth round the Heavens and the Elementary Orbs which by their perpetual circling through each other turn about by day and by night the restless wheel of Generation and Corruption as of all change Thus as the Soul danceth round the Throne of the Divine and the Angelick King these Heavens and the Elements dance round the Throne of their King the Soul Before I pass from the Authority and Testimony of this great Philosopher concerning the nature of the Soul give me leave to direct this Arrow to the white and mark which I aim at through this whole Discourse According to this Doctrine the Divine the Angelick Mind the Soul the Coelestial and Elementary Orbs through all their powers parts forms and motions meet in make up one Universal and Divine Harmony one Beauty one Musick All exactly in the lowest the least the weakest stroak touch or shade in most exact measure and proportion answer one another As the Face in the water answers the living Face So doth every lower Orb or Circle of things answer the superior As the reflection of it self in its own water or lustre shining forth from it and abiding in it like the water of a precious stone Each Orb or Circle of things is filled with knit together by bounded in its own Unity which floweth through all as the Spirit the Life of Order and Harmony disposing all the parts and motions in a most just measure to preserve it self and its figure entire in the whole The supream the Divine Unity sits upon every one of these subordinate Unities rideth forth in them uniteth filleth bindeth up boundeth in it self all the Orbs and Circles all in them all This shines through them runs with its beams playing over every form as one
universal Beauty one sparkling Image of the supream universal Good in the whole face of things This is a Musick sounding through all where each various form the obscurest the most minute is a string upon the golden Lute of the whole Image of things Each motion a touch of the chief the invisible Musitian The Spirit of the whole the Spirit of Unity and Harmony each touch a part of the Musick exactly answering in all Musical proportions to every other part and to the whole making perfect the Divine Consort in which all the Angels all the Ideal the first Glories in the Divine Mind bear a part with every Worm and Dust on the Earth every Wave and Drop in the Sea every Dragon and Owl in the Desert every flake of Snow in the Air. How beautiful now is the Work of God in all how worthy of a God! As his Glory is above all Heavens the highest and purest forms of Light so is his Name which is that Glory in the full expression and fair Images of it excellent through all the Earth to the lowest shades Plato saith That there is that which is the least of all things which cometh between the lowest Divisions the least parts of things which uniteth all one to another Ficinus in his Comment teacheth us That this in the sense of Plato is God who by the absoluteness and simplicity of his Unity is at once the Greatest and the Least the Highest and the Lowest the Outmost and the Inmost of all things the Band of all that can no where be excluded If this be true where now through the whole Universe of things is there found a place for that Liberty which breaketh the Band of the Divine Unity and Harmony which discontinueth the Links in this Golden Chain by uncertain arbitrary independant motions and forms arising from those motions What jarring Motion or Division springeth up without its Divine Ground without its orderly Connexion without its Patterns and Spring above to which it answers without its fellow Notes round about it to which it is tuned Where is this motion which thus jarreth with disturbeth and spoileth the universal Musick Certainly it lies without the supream the all-comprehending Unity It excludes from it self that Divine Unity which filleth all which bindeth all up into one Aristotle expresseth the Soul by a word which seems to have a full and deep sense to this present purpose Those that followed him have with great labour and pains digged in it with their sharpest wits as in a Mine from which they expected much fine Gold of Divine Wisdome and Truth It is reported of one That he raised a Spirit to intepret this word to him It is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which seemeth most properly and clearly to express that Divine Unity of the Soul replenished with all Variety Forms in the most beautiful Order as we have described the nature of it It is that which hath its perfection its end and so its beginning and so its whole way in it self This Perfection of the Intellectual Soul is the comprehension of all Truth in its Understanding the fruition of all good in the Will The universal Truth and Good are then the beginning of the Soul its Original all forms of things in the Beauties of their clearest and fullest Truth which is the eternal Light of their Ideal Glories smiling in the face of them all forms of things in the sweetness delightfulness joy in the unexpressibleness of Good the true Good all Good which is the eternal Life The eternal Love of those Original Beauties in their sacred Spring rising up fresh in the bosome of each Form this is the end this is the perfection of the Soul Thus all things were made for Christ in him by him who is the universal Truth and Good How St. Paul explains it All things are yours and you are Christs All forms of things meet and unite in the Humane Soul as their Perfection their Beginning their End Jesus Christ as he is the first the fairest the fullest Image of all Forms in one in their most exact Order and Harmony is the Father the Brother the Bridegroom of the Soul her beginning her exemplar Form or Perfection her End That Definition of the Soul the Act of an Organical Body contains the same Doctrine of the Soul in it An Organical Body is a Corporeal or visible Image composed of various members various parts and forms to be instruments and expressions of the various Beauties Powers and Virtues of the Soul by which they propagate themselves in an inferior Birth and figure themselves in a new but narrower Orb in a new but obscurer light of sense Thus the whole visible World is one Organical Body of which all particular Bodies are so many Organical parts Beauty is described to be the predominancy of the form over the matter A substantial or essential Act is all form a pure form separated from every thing of Corporeal matter The Soul then as it is an Act is all Beauty Beauty abstracted from matter a pure Light of Beauty the Essence the substance of Beauty and so of Harmony of Order It is a Maxim in Nature That the last the lowest the least in a superior Order or rank of things every way excels the first the highest the greatest in a lower rank and order According to this Rule every Soul in the excellency beauty virtue compass of its Being transcends this whole Corporeal World in the widest Circuit of its Form and largest extent of its Duration Thus the Intellectual Soul is the Act of this Universe of Sense the whole Corporeal World The Intellectual Soul is all this World with all Forms of things contained in it with all their courses and changes according to their Connexion and Order from the beginning to the end in one essential substantial undivided Act One pure Act of transparent Beauty and Order which is the Souls Unity and Essence By this the whole Coelestial and Elementary World in the emanation and springing up of all forms of things in all their motions and orders are uncessantly acted In this they subsist as shadows which have no ground of substance in themselves In this they actually are that which they are As Mathematical figures in the mind the Soul it self alone filling those figures being all the Essence Substance Power Virtue and Form in them Like shadows they vanish as they go forth from this Bosome where alone their Essences which are so many distinct substantial Acts and Unities shine and move together in a most beautiful Harmony as fixed incorporeal Stars in their proper Heaven Thus is each man a compleat world in himself Thus doth each Soul cloath it self with an Aethereal Aerial Robe on which it puts on this earthy Garment Like the Tabernacle of white Linnen wrought with all fine and rich Colours with the figures of Cherubims which had three Coverings one over another upon it of Goats-hair of Ram-skins died red of Badgers-skins
the substance of the Soul into the inward the common sense the phansy or imagination Now it is as a full Moon in the night of this visible and Corporeal World It is replenished with all the shady Forms of this night which shine in the face of it as in a Glass where they all meet and make one pleasant Night-piece Last of all The eternal Spirit the inward former and workman of the Soul contracts it and divides it into the outward senses into innumerable particular Forms These are as so many living Stars or Star-like eyes sparkling and dancing round about the Queen of this Night the Moon the common sense or imagination Through these Stars and this Moon in the Night-piece of these shady and Corporeal Forms is seen as in a Perspective as at a great distance the Intellectual and the Ideal Land of Angelical of Divine Glory which seem to cast forth these less and contracted Lights as faint-glimpses of themselves or like small sparks the seeds of the great flames As the Soul accompanied with her Original Pattern and Principle by its force thus descends so doth it by the same force in like manner ascend All the particular Forms of the outward senses the Beauties of the Eye the Musick of the Ear all Perfumes and delightful Odours the various Delicacies of the Tast the softnesses firmnesses the agreeable rests motions aequalities inaequalities in the Touch. All meet more pure and heightned in the common sense in the inward senses as in that Moon which is described to be an heavenly Earth or an earthly Heaven From thence they raise themselves resining themselves as they rise to the Intellectual Region As some believe the Sun to be the Habitation of the Blessed and to have the Blessed Fields Paradise in it So here in this Intellectual Sun all shady forms break up out of the mists of matter and corporeity into clear Suns into Angelical Essences and Spirits From hence the Soul as a bright Skie set with innumerable Suns of sweetest Light and most temperate pleasant vital warmth or as an Heaven replenished with Angels entertaining each other in a Divine Consort with Dances and Songs returns into its first Nest and its final Rest the Bosome of its Idea the Bosome of Christ in God In this Bosome of a truth hath it ever abode hath it circled round descending and ascending without going forth from it Thus hath God manifested himself in all possible Forms to the Soul according to the first part of the Apostles sense 2. God as the Souls proper Idea or exemplar Form every where present with it in every Form sets himself as a seal upon each form and upon the Soúl in that form So he is to the Soul the Impression the Evidence of the truth of each appearance by himself and of himself in each appearance Thus it is said of the Lord Jesus as he is the eternal word the Idea of all Ideas the proper Idea of man In him was life and that life was the light of men Joh. 1. The first life as it is in its Ideal Spring in the Person of the Lord Jesus the first the essential Image of God and so the Fountain of all Images shines forth into a Light of which is framed the Substance and Essence of the Soul Then it figureth this Light with its own Glories in their Divine Harmony and Order This Light these Figures are in themselves empty without force or efficacy All fullness dwells in Christ the Ideal Life in him forms and fills them This is the face of Beauty that looks forth through these Lattices This is the never-fading Flower in the heavenly Paradise which springs and puts forth it self through these Windows This rides forth upon every form into the bosome of the Soul and gives it self reception in the Soul As this first life in Christ is the Divine Seal upon every Form upon the Soul through every Form so is it the Divine ground in the Soul which receives and sustains this Seal which dissuseth in its Divine force and impression through the Soul by virtue of its Ideal Unity and Omnipresence The Original and Exemplar Life in Christ is the light of man objectively and formally It is the light in the Object which sheds it self on the Humane Spirit It is the light in man the form of his form the eye in his eye the power in his powers which taketh it in All sense is founded in a suitableness between the Object and the Faculty all suitableness in an Unity 3. Proposition God cloaths every created form in the eye of the Soul with an Intellectual or Angelical Image of himself By the things that are made are seen being understood the invisible things of God his eternal Power and Godhead saith our Evangelical Philosopher that word understood is carefully chosen and emphatically brought in The word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the peculiar and proper word by which the most Divine among the Philosophers in St. Pauls time expressed the Angels or Angelical Minds These Spirits were the chief Springs Powers Glories of the whole World in the number of the Creatures They were the Gods of this Creation and had the name of Gods given to them in the Holy Scriptures The Presence the Power the Authority the Glory of the Godhead next to Jesus Christ resided in them Jesus Christ the Lord and King of all reigned acted and appeared in these Angels of Might and Glory as the highest Representation of himself in his Divine Form and Majesty All this was not for their own sakes but for man as they were Guardians and Tutors to this Heir the Lord of all Each Angel was a diverse Figure of a distinct Variety in the eternal Glory in that diversity the full Glory in its Universal Image rested upon every Angel as a ministring Spirit to minister to man the full Glory He was the Heir of God the perfect Harmony the Unity in the which the whole Variety was most perfectly one married together with the Unity into the most perfect Beauty and Melody of the Universal Image of the whole Creation most exactly with the most charming agreeableness answering the Beauty the Melody of the Divine Nature as the Face in the Glass the living Face the liveliest Eccho the living Voice Each Creature hath as it s Ideal Glory in the Divine World so its Angel in the World of Angels In the pure state of things every inferior Creature had its Angel visibly sensibly present with it It s Angel formed it a Figure of it self in the diversity of its own proper Essence It s Angel cloathed it with an Intellectual Angelical Image of the Supream the Universal the Divine Beauty It s Angel dwelt constantly within this Image and shined through it After the same manner the Ideal Life and Glory in Christ made the Angel its Tabernacle in the Heavens and through the Angel each Creature below on Earth Every
the Fall springs from the Harmony of the eternal Design in the Divine Mind being comprehended in it as a part of it I shall proceed by a few short steps 1. The Intellectual soul in the first Man is manifestly eminently comprehended in this Scripture by a Reason from the stronger This not only is a principal part of the Creation but contains in it self according to its primitive state the whole nature of things together with the compleat Image of God in Nature This is the Essence of the Intellectual Soul 2. This Soul in this Image and so in its own Essence as in a Glass beholdeth the Harmony of the Divine Work as it hath the Harmony of the Divine Nature figured upon it in its Perfection from the beginning to the end Through this Image as a finely-shadowed Vail it hath a view of God himself in the invisibility of his Power and Godhead In the same view it taketh in the Universal Harmony of the Divine Work and Design as it lieth in its first ground in his invisible Power and Godhead Invisible to the purest eye of Nature in their own naked Glories but visible through the Divine Cloud or Sky of the Natural the Angelical Image of God in Man 3. In this Image light and view of the Godhead The Soul now seeth the Fall in the Divine Harmony in the Harmony of the Divine Image and its own Essence it seeth this as the next Scene ready to open it self as the next state into which it is immediately to pass by the force of the Divine Harmony The Soul seeth this state in this Glass apart by it self as a state of highest Contrariety to the Purity the Light the Peace the Calm the Incorruption the Virtues the Joys the Harmony the Life the Love the Divinity of its present state It hath a Prospect of it as a Scene of monstrous Defilements Shames Confusions Troubles Darknesses Tempests Horrors Enmities Deaths where there is no Light no Rest. Thus the Soul hath the highest aversion to this state But at the same time the Soul hath a view of this Scene as it stands in the Universal Harmony so it sees shadowed out to it through the natural Image in this shady light of Nature a Glory of the Godhead springing up through it by the Power of the Divine Harmony incomprehensible to the Soul in its purest Light infinitely transcending all those Divine Glories which have hitherto appeared to it in the Godhead and all those which it is by any means capable of figuring to it self It became him saith the Author to the Hebrews being to bring many Sons to Glory to make the Captain of their Salvation perfect through Sufferings Thus the Soul in Paradise beholding in the Glass of its own Essence this state of Sufferings to rise up out of the unsearchable depths of the incomprehensibly ravishing and transcendently perfect Harmony in the Divine Essence understanding also the Harmony to be made perfect and the Glory of the Godhead raised to its utmost its purest heighth and beyond the reach of every Intellectual or Angelical Eye by this Variety in its proper place Now for God is subject to this bondage of Vanity and Corruption This Soul in like manner sees in that same Glass an Hope that cannot fail set before it The Seed of a Divine Hope Jesus the Hope of Glory the force and power of the Universal Harmony sown in it A sure Hope that shall accompany it through this Wilderness of Wastness Tempests and Horrours where no water is no Light 〈◊〉 Life no Truth of any good but empty and black shades in a dark and dreadful Night In this Hope it sees the assurance of a passage out of this Wilderness into a good Land a Land flowing with Milk and Honey a Land flowing with Rivers of Waters and full of Springs A Land of Rest and Bliss 4. The Soul thus by this prospect in Paradise is submitted and subjected to its change and fall with an unwilling willingness God now according to the Law of the Divine Harmony in his own Image and in the Essence of the Soul withdraws the Light of his Presence within a dark Cloud from this Cloud falls a deep sleep the sleep of Death a death to the only true the Divine Life upon Man The Soul now like Abraham falls into a terrible dream a blackness of darkness full of horrour passeth over It seeth it self the whole nature of things visible invisible within it self dead divided dissolved all broken and scattered into pieces A burning Lamp the burning Torches of Lust Rage Divine Wrath pass between these mangled pieces Thus the Soul lies in this sleep and dream with hope only as a gleame of heavenly Light now and then breaking upon it through these melancholy shades until Christ the Seed of Hope revive in it When he awakens himself in the Soul he awakens the Soul by his Voice sounding through it Awake thou that sleepest stand up from the dead and Christ shall give thee Light At the awakening of the Soul the dream flies away as if it never had been The Soul now sees her lost Paradise her lost Purity her lost Peace her lost Love and Joy her lost self with the whole nature of things in its Virgin-Image present with her as if they had never departed from her All past seems as the dream of a moment while she slept upon a Bed of Spices in Paradise in the Bosome of her Beloved But her Beauties and Paradise are not now as before They are no more shadowy Images shady Lights and Mediums or means through which her God appears to her which his Glories dim'd and refracted by the Vails through which they pass No being now awakened into the Resurrection of Christ God himself in his naked Beauties in the purest and sweetest Light of his Divine Essence appears to her as to himself He in the Light of his unvailed Glories is both her beloved Object and the blissful Medium or means through which she sees him The Soul now is in the Light as He is in the Light his Face shining like the Sun of Eternity in the strength of all its Glories the Glories of his supream loveliness and Loves is the Glass in which she sees her self her lost Purity and Paradise the whole nature of things within her self as they all lie in the Harmony of the Divine Nature In this Glass she sees and enjoys her Fall it self as a part and the perfecting of this heavenly Harmony All the storms and darknesses in that Scene have now their Vizors taken off and appear to be living Glories glorious Spirits glorious Varieties in the Unity of the eternal Spirit Thus the Soul enjoys her self with all past present or to come as eternally present with Christ in God Now this Bride repents not of her subjection to the Fall by which she hath passed into this last state more excellent then the first which indeed is the first Now she seeth that
Love in the shadowy Image having lost it self in the enmity at the Fall The Divine Love it self in its eternal Image disguiseth it self in a form of wrath flaming forth with unquenchable burnings until it have devoured the Enmity and the shadowy Image it self in the Enmity unto the discovery of the eternal Love vailed beneath its shadow and buried in the Enmity All thus consumed meet again in the triumphant and pure flame in which the Divine Love meets with and embraceth it self But thus much of the second Revolution 3. Now the Soul with the whole nature of things in the shadowy Image the shadowy Harmony the shadowy Righteousness of its first Creation is lost by the dissolution of the Unity in discord and Deformity Sin Death and the Divine Wrath. Now Gâ—… in the essential Image the essential Harmony the essential Rightâ—…usness which is Love it self loveliness it self Power Wisdome the Essence of God declares himself our Jesus our Saviour He declares himself without the Law or the Prophets not from any Merit or Power in the Creature but of meer Grace from the sweet innate force of the Divine Harmony in himself by the beauties of which he is powerfully attracted and acted to the Musick of which he moves in all his actings with highest pleasure This essential Image and Harmony from the beginning lies hid beneath the shadowy Image at the bottom of it as the substance to the shadow which hath no possibility of subsisting in any point or degree of Being without it St. Paul calls this The mystery hid in God from the foundation of the World that is hid beneath the foundation of the World which was a Vail cast over the eternal Glories while they figured themselves in Divine shadows upon this Vail But now our Jesus the second Person in the Trinity the essential Image the essential Harmony the Righteousness of God becomes a Creature springs up from beneath the foundations of the Creation into an Humane Soul and Body in the midst of it ruines This Jesus is the Original Image of the Creation of Man of every Creature the Root the Rule the Actor of all who virtually eminently comprehends all in their distinct Ideal Forms within himself as so many eternal Beauties in his own eternal Beauty who bringeth them forth from himself beareth them in himself as Flowers in their Garden-beds who figureth himself in the riches of his glorious Varieties upon them to make of the whole one beautiful Figure of his own Beauties a Daughter Sister and Bride to himself He therefore now the Seed of Hope of Promise sown in the Soul dying together with the Soul in the Fall now comes up through this death in the form of a man faln man the Image of the whole which contains the whole in it self Thus he reduceth the Contrariety to the Unity He restores the Harmony he atones and reconciles all all manner of wayes 1. He bringeth all the Contrariety into the Harmony by bearing the Fall Guilt Shame all Deformities all Deaths the Divine Wrath the ruines of the Fall in himself who is the eternal universal Harmony and Righteousness Thus eternal Life dies without Death giving an eternal Life and Glory to Death in his Person Thus the Righteousness of God is made Sin for us without Sin He is altogether lovely every thing of him is not only lovely but loveliness it self Yea more loveliness a knot a spring of loveliness So sings the spiritual Bride of her Beloved in that Song of Loves The bushes of his Hair black as a Raven the Bird of Death in their order and place springing forth from his head of finest Gold the purest light of Glory encompassing it with their deep shade and setting it off are Divine Beauties 2. This Person the eternal the universal Image and Harmony of the Godhead of all Glories of all things gives himsâ—… in the extremities of all Sufferings unto Death to be a Sacrifice to the Holiness Justice Wrath and Glory of God He is a Sacrifice of infinite value and force a Sin-Offering expiating all Sin with a transcendency of Merit A Peace-Offering which charms the most offended spirits which changeth into a Golden Calm of Divine Love and Joy the most raging tempests of wrath raised through the whole nature of things from the breast of the eternal Spirit 3. He bears in his own Person the whole Contrariety the Contrariety of evil in the enmity of Sin to the Divine Good in its Love and Glory The Contrariety of the Divine Good in its Love and Glory to the evil in the deformity and enmity of Sin All the fiery darts of both these Contrarieties in their utmost force and fury meet in his Bosome the Bosome of Divâ—…e Beauty and Love exposed nakedly to them both Thus he fills up the design of his Father to make known the power of his Wrath. Thus he draws forth to its largest compass and heightens to its utmost point this Scene of wrath to make the Variety full and the Harmony absolute 4. Jesus the supream Harmony the everlasting Righteousness by dying carries the descent of things to the lowest point He makes an end of Sin Sufferings Death and Wrath for ever by the dissolution and end of the seat the subject of all these the shadowy Image the Creation of Nature in his own person The death of Jesus Christ is as the midnight of things The Sun of the eternal Image and Glory having by its course in the shadowy Image touched the utmost bound of distance from it self now begins its return to it self again 5. This Jesus by his Resurrection carries up with him in his own Person all things the whole Creation the shadowy Image with its Primitive Purity and Paradise the shadowy Image with its fall ruines and deaths into the Glory of the eternal Image unto an Union with it immediate naked entire eternal in one Light in one Spirit Where there is now no more any vail or shadow Now all appear Beauties and Glories divinely-harmonious being seen in their proper place and order in the Divine the Eternal the Universal Harmony 6. Lastly The Lord Jesus now in an humane Soul and Body being risen from the Dead and ascended up on high comprehends reconciles fills all things shining through all assimilating all to himself in the spiritual Glory of his own essential eternal Image in his own Person the most glorious unbounded Head of all Now according to the fulness the fruitfulness the Divine Order of the Ideas the Original Images of all things in the most ample and blissful Harmony in his Person He comes up he springs forth in his Spirit in the Spirit of this Divine Image this Harmony and Glory with the fulness of his Person of this Divine Image Harmony and Glory in the Soul of Man As he springs up he rends the Vail behind which he ever resided he reveals himself to the Soul in the Universal Harmony of his Person and his whole work
from the beginning to the end He presents himself to the Soul as its Idea its Original Image its beginning its way and itsend in whose bosome the Soul hath alwayes lien there meeting with every change every scene of things springing up within it in that bosome while the same Jesus hath lien in its bosome as the seed of its Being and of every Change This is the Souls Father Brother Bridegroom and Perfection As Jesus Christ thus appears and unvails himself within the Soul he at once gathers up the Soul into the most intimate the most entire Union with it self He transforms it into the likeness of the same Image with himself in the full Glory of the Divine the Universal the eternal Harmony in the Unity of the same Spirit the Spirit of this Harmony and Glory The Lord Jesus as he is the universal the eternal Image and Harmony of the Divine Nature of all Variety in the Divine Nature as he is the Idea of Ideas thus is he the Original Image the Idea of the Intellectual Soul or of Man As then he forms himself in this Soul he also formeth all things in it that man comes forth from the bosome of his Idea replenished with the Ideas of all things He is now the whole Creation the universal Nature within himself This Jesus then being risen springs up into Man in the virtue of his Resurrection and together becomes the Resurrection of all things in man to man In like manner through man as the head of all he riseth again in all the particular Forms of things as they stand without man in themselves in their own proper Existencies In the Lord Jesus God through Christ the universal Image inhabiteth in the proper Ideas of each Creature with the fulness of his Divine Glories in the Unity of the blessed Spirit According to this Original Jesus Christ the Universal Harmony through the humane Nature his immediate his full Image his compleat Birth and Bride rests entirely and distinctly upon each form of things as the Divine Race of this heavenly Marriage-Bed in the Resurrection As all together make up the Universal Harmony in the Soul in Christ the end of them all So each one enjoyeth the whole Harmony in it self being upon its own proper Form cloathed with the Universal Form the Form of the heavenly Man and of Christ in Glory So all dwell together in the Unity of the same Divine Spirit the Spirit of a Saint and of Christ. In the Unity of this Spirit all mutually are Divine Palaces each to other clearly compleatly comprehending and comprehended by each other eternally feasting upon the heavenly Beauties and Virtues drinking in the Sweetnesses the Lives the Spirits of each other And of Jesus Christ of God the Unity and the Variety in all This is the Kingdom of God which is Righteousness Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost Jesus Christ the essential Image of God the Divine and eternal Harmony is the Righteousness the mutual Peace and Joy of this Kingdom In this Kingdom Jesus Christ cometh with his own Glory the Glory of his Father and of all his holy Angels united in one in each form of things The lowest form of things here is an Angel an Angel made new in the Resurrection of Christ where each Angel being only a distinct part of the Harmony yet hath the Universal Harmony resting upon that part This is that new Jerusalem where the street the lowest form of things is as Gold and Glass The pure Glory of the eternal Spirit as the finest Gold shineth in each Creature like the Cherubim or the Angels standing up out of the Mercy-Seat made of the same piece of massy Gold together with it The lowest Creature here is an Angel of Glory the street that sustains us is composed of Angels Angelical Glories In every Angel as a particular Glory all the Angels with their several Varieties of Glory the Glory of Christ and all the Saints which is the full the Universal Glories of the Divine and Humane Nature the Original and its best beloved Image in Union The Glory of God as the Father in its simplicity in its paternity and transcendency over all meet all in one This Unity of the Spirit in each Creature renders it divinely transparent like the finest glass In the beauty of every Face we have the prospect of Eternity We see in each single Face fresh Beauties all Beauties with an endless Variety opening themselves one within another one beyond another all equally clear present and pleasant in every one Thus Jesus Christ becomes according to St. Paul the first-born from the dead and the first-born among his Brethren the Saints The Saints in the Language of St. James are the first-fruits of the Creation which is brought forth in its proper time and order into the liberty of the Glory of the Sons of God Thus is our Jesus the great Jubilee where all Debts are remitted all Servants go free all persons return to their Inheritances to the free Possession the full fruition of themselves and them In the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus from him as the Root springing up into the Body of the Saints through them into the rest of the Creatures as Branches of the same Tree All Sins are pardoned the whole Creation is set free from its bondage to Vanity and Corruption All things return to a free fruition of themselves of all Beauties and Joys in their native Inheritance their Original Images their proper Ideas in Christ first Christ then the Saints through them Heaven and Earth and the Seas with all things in them are made new by being married anew by being newly reinvested with the Glories of their Original The Reader is again desired to take Notice That neither the remainder of this Fourth Argument nor any thing upon his Fifth could be found amongst the Authors Papers A DISCOURSE OF THE Freedome of the Will The SECOND PART Wherein the Arguments for it are considered and answered HAving finished those Arguments ranked under their several Heads in opposition to that Liberty of the Will which is placed in the determining of its power received from the first cause unto a Contrariety or Contradiction in its actings with an independency upon the first cause the order and connexion of Causes and the Understanding We pass now to a consideration of the Reasons upon which that Opinion of this Freedome is established These Reasons are taken 1. From the Will it self 2. From the nature of Sin and the Divine Justice 3. The Language of the Scripture 4. From the end of Laws 5. From the order and nature of things 1. Reason The Prerogative and Excellency of the Will consisteth in this Liberty 1. How otherwise doth man excel bruit Creatures and natural Agents 2. How otherwise is man free and not necessitated in all his Actions To that I shall give two several Answers 1. Answ. This Freedome of the Will of which we speak and which is opposed to necessity
Head its inward Principle 3. The Soul of man in its Restitution by Christ hath Jesus Christ as a quickning Spirit in him as the principle of its Life as its life it self I saith Christ am the Resurrection and the Life I saith St. Paul by the Law am dead to the Law I am crucified with Christ and now I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me He saith St. Paul that is joyned to the Lord is one Spirit Man is now become the heavenly Image of God and one Spirit with Jesus Christ in Glory As he hath now the Understanding of Christ according to St. Paul so hath he also the Will of Christ. This heavenly Bridegroom and heavenly Bride are one Divine Spirit bear one Divine Image have one Life one Righteousness one Glory one Understanding one Will and dwell together in one Light as God is Light in one Love as God is Love in one immortal Joy unspeakable and glorious The Soul now is a chast and spotless Bride which bringeth forth all the rich and heavenly fruits of her Spirit her Understanding her Will her whole Life inward and outward by her own heavenly Husband alone by the sweet force of her Union with him and the Divine Virtue of his embraces that they may be fruits to God that is Divine Fruits having the life virtue and sweetness of the Divine Nature in them the form and beauty of the Divine Nature upon them for a feast of Joys and Glory to God himself to feast both his Eyes and his Heart If then the Soul restored be one Spirit with Christ as in the Spirit of Christ so in the Spirit of a Saint the most pleasant liberty and most potent necessity meet in one The Divine Harmony of the supream and universal good is at once the spacious and blissful Field of this Paradisical freedom and the golden Chain of this most grateful and most glorious necessity The Spirit of Christ is eternity it self which as it spreads it self beyond and above all consinements to a Variety endlesly fresh and flourishing is the sweetest Liberty As it comprehends all things in a most entire undivided Unity the supream Crown and Circle of all true Life and Glory is the highest necessity Eternity hath nothing past or to come in respect to it self being far above all Changes all Beginnings and Ends of things It is the supream Power which rules them all and the supream Wisdom which measures them The Soul then now become one Spirit with Christ is in that Spirit together with Christ seated upon the Throne of Eternity by its Union with this Spirit it reigns upon this Throne over all things by having this Spirit in it self by being one Spirit with this Spirit it hath in it self that soveraign Power and supream Wisdom it is one with that soveraign Power and supream Wisdom which rules and measures all things Thus the glorious Bride of Eternity having her heavenly Bridegroom in her embraces cloathed and crowned with the same heavenly Image being now in the true state of her own proper person in her sirst and last state in her own proper unvailed Substance and Original here with her Bridegroom is her own rule and measure in this heavenly Image which is her true substantial self her Eternity She is also a rule and measure to her self in the earthly and shadowy Image and in all her Pilgrimage through the Regions of time below whether they be the sweeter shadows of the Light above or the melancholy shades of a deeper Darkness This is the true Liberty of Man and the freedom of his Will which is as the liberty and freedom of the true eternal good diffusing it self into all the unsearchable riches of its manifoldly various Varieties varying setting off sweetning and heightning it self by all the ravishing excesses of Harmony of Light of Love by all the extreams of Darkness Discord Contrariety and hate reducing and binding up these also into a most ravishing Harmony by the excesses by the victories and triumphs of the Divine Light and Love So keeping together with this sportful Liberty the golden the firm Adamantine necessity of being it self still through all that is good the true and eternal good This Divine Liberty of the spiritual Bride which is her Kingdom in her self over all is divinely expressed by the blessed Bridegroom himself in that most mysterious Song of himself and his Love composed by himself in the Person of Solomon He there in one place chargeth the Daughters of Jerusalem that is all the holy Angels and spotless Spirits by which the affairs of the whole Creation are administred By the Roes and Hindes of the field that is by all those Pleasures Loves and Lovelinesses with which he sports himself in the midst of them in the Paradise above who alone is the lovely Roe and the lovely Hind That they awake not nor stir up his Love until he please Cant. 2. 7. Thus it is manifestly in the Hebrew although our Translators have changed the Feminine into the Masculine and set the Bridegroom in the place of the Bride But the sense which the words grammatically import is this That as the heavenly Bride is one Spirit with her Bridegroom she sits above together with him upon his Throne in eternity from thence together w th him gives to all the heavenly Ministers their Commissions that nothing moves in her own person or round about her here below as she is in her shadowy disguise and pilgrimage but as it is ordered by her self above in the bosome of her Bridegroom And according to that order executed by the heavenly attendance which wait continually round about the Throne of her Bridegroom 2. Reason If the Will of Man be not free and do not freely determine it self in all moral Actions being undetermined in its own Principles or by any superior Causes what entrance doth sin find How doth any thing of a stain or guilt lie upon the Soul How is God just in the effects of his Wrath upon those that sin if they sin by an inevitable necessity of Nature and a predetermination by the connexion of Causes or by the immediate and intimate operation of the first and universal Cause I shall give my Answer by several steps 1. Sin hath no positive being if it hath God who is the first and universal Being the Fountain of Being is directly by himself and not by accident only the Author of Sin in its formality as Sin Otherwise we must with Manes set two Gods upon two distinct Thrones one of Light or Good the other of Darkness or Evil. Or we shall be forced with some Heathen Philosophers to establish two first Beings equally Uncreated and eternal One God the Agent The other Matter the Patient So where the Agent subdues the matter to it self all Forms of Goodness Beauty Life and Joy spring forth where the matter invincibly resisteth the power of the Agent there are the Regions of all Evil Darkness Death
and Hell But this Heathenism and Manicheism are exploded as by the universal consent of all sober Christians so by the voice of reason it self For if there be two first Beings these agree in Being they differ in being two Being it self as it is One making both these one in its self as it is pure is before and above that state in which it is allayed and abased by being mixt and compounded with those differences which make it two This then alone is the first and supream Being the eternal One the only true God 2. If God then be not properly and directly the Author of Sin Sin is no positive Being but a privation only So the Scriptures express it which call it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an irregularity a falling short of the Glory of God a missing of the mark 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Divines generally teach us That the Sin consisteth not in any Act but in the Deordination in the privation a want of the due order appertaining to the Act. Sin then being nothing positive but a meer privation can have no efficient but a deficient Cause only This deficient Cause is that defectibility which is inseparable from every created Nature Darkness is the privation or absence of Light which naturally and necessarily accompanieth obscure and opact Bodies as the Air the Water and the Earth While the Sun shines upon them this deficiency or want of Light discovereth not it self All things are illuminated and the natural obscurity of these Bodies illustrated by the Sun-beams when these beams are withdrawn or intercepted then the defect of Light natural to these substances appeareth and so the darkness is predominant Thus every Creature hath in it self a tendency to annihilation being of it self like the Earth before the beautiful work of the first day which was light void and without form Thus the Soul of Man in its Understanding and in its Will hath naturally of it self a tendency to unreasonableness which is a degree of Annihilation the privation of that two-sold Beauty Truth in the Understanding and goodness in the Will While the Face of God shines upon the face of the Soul by a continued irradiation as in the first moment of the Creation these Intellectual Forms of Divine Beauty Truth and Goodness flourish in the Soul binding up the natural defectibility both of the Understanding and the Will in the golden Chains of an heavenly Light and heavenly Love but in that moment in which God turns away his Face with-draws his beams in the same moment the Soul of Man is left naked its natural defectibility prevails the privation or absence of Truth is now the darkness the deformity of folly and falshood The privation or absence of Goodness is now the evil and the disorder into which as a bottomless pit the Understanding and the Will and the whole Soul with these miserably endlesly sinks This is that horrible pit out of which sin ariseth the defectibility or nothingness of the Creature in it self This is the way by which it ariseth upon the Soul over-spreading it and carrying it back into that pit of horrour the deflectibility or nothingness of the Creature prevailing in the absence of the Divine beams The Royal Prophet divinely sings the penury of the Creature and the Praises of the great Creator in this Mystery Psal. 104. 29. Thou hidest thy Face they are troubled thou takest away their Breath or Spirit they die and return to their dust Thou sendest forth thy spirit they are created and thou renewest the face of the Earth It is a truth asserted by all Philosophers and Divines That the Understanding acteth necessarily being infallibly and irresistably reduced into act by its Object duly presented The Scripture manifestly teacheth us that sin entreth into the Soul by the Understanding Those two places which I have cited above are clear The woman being deceived was first in the Transgression Sin deceived me and so slew me St. Paul speaketh in both these places of the first entrance of sin into the World in the person of the first Woman and in his own person set as a figure of all Mankind as it was collectively and representatively in the first Adam Musaeus joyns these together 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Light going out and Leander perishing Man is deceived and so slain by sin As the Light of Truth goes out in the Understanding the Life of Goodness dies in the Will As the sight and light of the eye from the natural composition of the eye faileth as the irradiations from the Sun which it enjoyeth either mediately or immediately from the body of the Sun it self or from other luminous bodies depending upon the Sun are obscured So is the Souls eye the Understanding obscured according to the proportion in which the Divine illuminations in the way of Grace or Nature cease In these two first steps I have endeavoured to make clear the nature of Sin and the way of its entrance into the World in which we see a most genuine conformity to the dependance of the Will and of the whole Soul in all its changes and motions upon the first Cause as a link in the mystical Chain of the order of Causes The beauty and goodness of the Soul in its Understanding and its Will flow in the golden Pipe of the order of Causes as golden Oyl from the first cause as the Olive-Tree flourishing upon the Mount of Eternity As this golden stream from its Well-head fails beauty and goodness are no more in the Soul The deficiency or privation of these is the evil of Darkness Deformity Sin and Death to this intellectual and immortal Spirit But the knot seems to be tyed stronger by this discourse man sins inevitably by the necessity of his nature The first and free withdrawings of the Divine influence give way for the deflectibility of the Creature to spring up into those defects which are properly and formally the evils of Sin the first and greatest evils the fountains of all evils How then doth shame or guilt lie upon the Creature Why is God yet angry How is he just in punishing Is not the evil of sin from these grounds clearly cast upon God as the Author of it I shall endeavour to answer these Objections and to remove these Difficulties in the three following steps 3. I shall endeavour here to bring in some clear light into the obscure shades of this doubt how shame and guilt lie upon the Soul when it falls inevitably from the necessity of its nature Shame is a fear of Infamy from a sense of Deformity Deformity is the absence of the Divine Form originally present and so proper to the subject The subject of the form or beauty while it is present is also in its absence the subject of the privation and deformity To the deformity is annexed the reproach or disesteem Esteem or disesteem is a right judgment and so a value of each thing according to its proper state
or nature Where the sense of deformity is there will also be the fear of infamy and so the shame When Venus and Mars were discovered in Vulcan's Net an immortal laughter arose among all the Gods who were Spectators as we read in Homer When the Soul once in its first Creation cloathed with a Divine Beauty and so placed in the Paradise of a Divine Light and Joy seeth it self despoiled of this heavenly Robe in the nakedness of those deformities of the darkness into which as hidden in the depth of its own nature it sinks when the Divine beams that raised it out of that dark Deep and enriched it with its heavenly Ornaments are retired can it be without a sense of this deformed nakedness without shame without impressions made upon it by the apprehension of that state in which the innumerable company of heavenly Spectators now behold it with a disesteem and aversion suitable to that state Neither is the justness of the aversion and disesteem in all the heavenly Spirits or of the shame in this faln Spirit lessened but rather encreased and heightned by this that the deformity springeth up with an inevitable necessity from its own proper nature for the discovery of that which this faln Soul is in it self together with every Creature and the distinction now manifested between that which is of God as the Fountain in Eden whence alone all Paradisical Beauties and Joys flow in the Creature and that which is of the Creature it self which is in it self a dark horrid and bottomless pit where all wastness woe disorder deformity confusion desolation Deaths and Hells dwell together and whence in swarms they break forth as from a cursed womb like the smoke and the locusts from the bottomless pit in the Revelation the discovery of this in the faln Spirits makes their shame and abhorrency of themselves more just and high as also the Songs of Praise which the heavenly Spirits day and night sing to their Creator and Preserver as more highly just so more highly sweet and glorious Thus much for the shame let us now pass to the guilt Guilt is the obligation of the Sinner to the Justice of God Justice and so most eminently the Divine Justice which is the measure of all Justice is that which giveth to every thing its due that which is proper to it it s own That is due to every thing which is proper and suitable to it according to its place in the whole for the preservation restrauration or perfection of the Order in the whole When a Spirit by the abstraction of the Divine Beauty and Virtue is now sunk into its natural weakness and deformity nothing now is any longer its own nothing now is suitable to it but that power of darkness that principle of waste emptiness of even dreaded and hateful nothings Now the path in which the supream Justice presiding over the Universal Order and Harmony of things acts most pertinently towards it is to abandon it to those powers of darkness which rise up from its own proper Root to display themselves more fully upon it in their ugly and hateful shapes in their tormenting horrors in their horrid torments the dissolutions of the blissful Unity in distracting divisions and confusions the extinguishing of the sweet and beautiful Light in affrightful shades of amazing darkness The chief skill in Pictures consisteth in the evenness and justness of placing the shades that according to the degrees of the declining Light the shades may gradually increase until they sink into the deepest obscurity or be bounded by a new light springing up out of these shades Such is the Law of the Divine Justice which is the great and wise Spirit of the Universal Harmony in this Divine Poem or Picture the work of the Creation as the heavenly form of goodness or beauty in the best and most beautiful season which draws it self from any part of this work Privation the principle and form of all evil spreads its black-wings over it encreasing its hellish shades and darknesses upon it in the bosome of which it hatcheth all the ugly Births of deformity woe and horror with an amazing interminating infiniteness until the sacred Light of the Divine goodness and beauty arising upon it bound those unformed shades reducing all to and binding up all with the Adamantine Chains of a triumphant Harmony in the Glory of God In this third step we have endeavoured to fix the shame and guilt of sin upon the Sinner but glory upon the Divine Justice in the sufferings which come by sin 4. Step. We are in our next step to give an answer for God to those who in their Expostulations ask why he is yet angry The solution of this doubt is obvious and common Anger resteth in the bosome of Fools Fury is not in him who worketh all things according to the counsel of his Will His Wisdom and his Will are both one His Justice and his Power are both one and one with the other two his Wisdom and his Will As he is one pure Act of Omnipotency of Beauty of Love of Joy of all Excellencies at their greatest heighth and in one so is he Wisdom Will Justice Power all in one He is Power as he is a pure Act of Almightiness He is Wisdom as he is a pure Act of highest and most Universal Harmony He is Justice as he is a pure Act of entire and most perfect Order He is Will as he is a pure Act of highest and most diffusive goodness of the richest sweetest and fullest loveliness which are the proper Objects and so perfections of the Will He is Will as he is a pure Act of most heightned and comprehensive Love Joy Complacency which are the most proper and perfect Operations of the Will Fury then is not in him who thus worketh all things according to the counsel of his Will where Justice Power Wisdom and Will meet in one at their purest heights in their greatest freedoms in their most proper and perfect Operations Anger is then attributed to God per Anthropopathiam while by the suiting of the Language to the capacity of the Hearers God is represented to us in the form and in the fashion of a man It is also a metonymical way of speaking which expresseth the effect by the cause So the Scripture speaking with the Tongue of a Man as the Jews express it representeth those effects of the Divine Providence by the names of the anger of God the wrath of God which answer to those effects that commonly proceed from anger and wrath in men Job faith in one place When the scourge falleth alike upon the innocent and the wicked God laugheth at it When wicked men suffer for their sins when innocent persons are refined by their sufferings the Eye of God is fixed upon his own Divine Loveliness and Glory alike in both The purest and most perfect Love acteth him toward this most pure and perfect Loveliness and Glory alike
duality unfoldeth it self into the Ternary number As in the blessed Trinity the Father shines forth in the Person of the Son his Beauty and beautiful Object Both these breathe forth themselves into the Spirit the mutual Love the Marriage-Bed of these two When thus the Varieties and Distinctions of things proceed by even and just degrees springing up naturally and immediately out of the bosom of each other as they lie naturally and nakedly in the bosom of each other according to their Divine Love-sport and play in the Palace of their Father the supream Unity now the Unity shines and triumphs with a full Joy and Glory in the Face of the whole and of each part Now it flies singing and sporting it self upon the golden wings of a most ravishing Harmony over all According to these two Rules I shall proceed in my Answer upon which it rests as upon its two Pillars Jakin and Boaz Establishment and Strength God is the God of Order saith St. Paul Order is the sacred Harmony of the Divine Nature the Divine Nature the Divine Beauty the Divine Musick all in one first in their Architype then figuring themselves upon the whole Work of God sweetly flowing through it all shining smiling and playing every where upon the face of it This Order with a Divine skill by just degrees and harmonious proportions slides into its contrary which is disorder by which it sets off and heightens it self making the Variety more full The first the highest disorder the fountain of all disorder is Sin This is the disorder of Intellectual Spirits the chief of all the Works of God the Head the Guide the measure of all the rest All the other Creatures are to these as light cast forth from the body of the Sun which is the Sun's shadow or as shadows in this life the shadows of this shadow St. Jude expresseth the Sin of Angels by their disorder The Angels which kept not their first state but left their own Habitation State is in Greek Principle they kept not their first Principle the supream Unity They held not the Head as St. Paul expresseth it They left their proper Habitation the Divine Image the Divine Order and Harmony their proper place in that Harmony where they were divinely-beautiful and made an heavenly melody in the heavenly Consort and Quire The Psalmist saith of man and his sin Man being in honour continued not but became like the Beast that perisheth Honour is the delicate gloss or sparkling lustre of a true Beauty especially the beauty of Spirits delightfully shining forth and reflecting it self upon all Spirits round about it The Divine Order and Harmony alone is the true beauty every where This is immortal Thus man by sin breaks himself off from and so becomes like the Beast without any sense of or sensible subordination to the Order and Harmony of the whole While he cuts himself off from this he dies his disorder is his death the true life of man vanishing together with the Universal and Divine Harmony Every contrary supposeth or constituteth its Correlate contrary the contrary to disorder is order That then which the Scripture speaking with the tongue of a man gives the name of Displeasure Anger Wrath in God is no other than love it self in its naked and golden smiles the Divine Beauty in the purity and simplicity of its most native and unchangeable sweetness the Harmony of the Divine Nature as a Glory eternal calm and Sun-shine opposing themselves to the discord deformity enmity of Sin As they say ill natures are tormented by Musick as the evil Spirit in Saul was cast out by David's Harp So is anger in God the most delicious the most transporting melody sounding through the whole nature of things from Jesus Christ the Universal Image of the Divine Nature and the golden Harp of God which either charms the Spirit of disorder or torments it Contrariorum remedium est contrarium One contrariety is the cure and remedy of another Disorder is reduced into order by the Divine Harmony setting it self in an opposition and contrariety to it While the opposition between these contraries remains they heighten one another This state of opposition is in the Divine Poem or Work as the scene of storms and tempests of Blood Confusion of the blackness of Darkness of Death and Hell This scene coming in as a part of the Variety sets off with a greater heightning even to an extasy of wonder and delight the Sweetnesses the Beauties the Glories of the Divine Harmony surrounding it springing up shining forth with a golden calm and lustre in the midst of it St. Paul divinely represents this to us Rom. 5. ult The Law came in that Sin might abound that where Sin abounded Grace did superabound That as Sin had reigned unto Death so Grace might reign through Righteousness unto eternal Life by Jesus Christ our Lord. The Law which is the contrariety or opposition between the Harmony of Divine Love and the disorder the confusion of Lust 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 came in by the by or by the way in the course or stream of the heavenly Harmony of the general and grand contrivance of Divine Love to set it off and heighten it to raise and transcend all expectations to extend and surprise all Understandings to make the melody of the whole more full by the Variety and more gloriously triumphant by the Discords The evils of Sufferings according to the Law of the Divine Harmony which is the Image of the Divine Wisdom the first Beauty of Truth the Image of the Divine Will the first love and goodness in the Creature have their entrance three ways 1. Every Principle unfolds it self into all the powers and forms contained in it so the evil of Sin which is the root of Disorder springeth up into all manner of disorders through Spirit Soul and Body into all manner of evils of blame shame pain sorrow torment Lust when it conceiveth bringeth forth Sin Sin when it is perfect bringeth forth death All Disorders all Evils all Sufferings are steps and forms of death 2. The disorder of Sin as it is the contrariety in the Harmony is reduced into order and made harmonious in the whole by the opposition and contrariety of the Harmony as in Musick the setting the Concord by the Discord makes the Melody Now as the Harmony is all good of Grace Joy and Glory every good in every kind being a particular Harmony in the universal Harmony so where the Universal Order the Spirit of Order which is the Spirit of Christ and God setteth it self in a Contrariety to any disorderly Spirit there all good of every kind is withdrawn all evil as of loss so of pain ariseth God saith in Deuteronomy If you walk contrary unto me I also will walk contrary unto you Then all Plagues are reckoned up the natural consequencies of this Contrariety Then saith he several times over If you go on to walk contrary to me
Apostle scattered throughout this place fall into a most beautiful Harmony St. Paul here setteth himself in the place of all Mankind in Paradise He describeth to us as in a figure the nativity of sin its esssential form or life if we may have leave so to speak of a privation the occasion and manner of its first appearance and taking life I have now finished my Discourse upon the ends of the Law which are of the first sort proper and immediate which are called by Logicians the ends of the work I pass now to the remote and Ultimate ends which are stiled the ends of the Workman I shall make my transition by this consideration A Poetical History or work framed by an excellent Spirit for a pattern of Wisdom and Worth and Happiness hath this as a chief rule for the contrivance of it upon which all its Graces and Beauties depend That persons and things be carried to the utmost extremity into a state where they seem altogether uncapable of any return to Beauty or Bliss That then by just degrees of harmonious proportions they be raised again to a state of highest loy and Glory You have examples of this in the Divine pieces of those Divine Spirits as they are esteemed and stiled Homer Virgil Tassâ—… our English Spencer with some few others like to these The Works of these persons are called Poems So is the Work of God in Creation and contrivance from the beginning to the end named 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God's Poem It is an elegant and judicious Observation of a learned and holy Divine That the Works of Poets in the excellencies of their imaginations and contrivances were imitations drawn from those Original Poems the Divine works and contrivances of the eternal Spirit We may by the fairest Lights of Reason and Religion thus judge That excellent Poets in the heighths of their fancies and spirits were touched and warmed with a Divine Ray through which the supream Wisdom formed upon them and so upon their work some weak impression and obscure Image of it self Thus it seemeth to be altogether Divine That that work shineth in our eyes with the greatest Beauties infuseth into our Spirits the sweetest delights transporteth us most out of our selves unto the kindest and most ravishing touches and senses of the Divinity which diffusing it self through the amplest Variety and so to the remotest Distances and most opposed Contrarieties bindeth up all with an harmonious Order into an exact Unity which conveyeth things down by a gradual descent to the lowest Depths and deepest Darknesses then bringeth them up again to the highest point of all most flourishing Felicities opening the beginning in the end espousing the end to the beginning This is that which Aristotle in his Discourse of Poetry commendeth to us as the most artful and surprising untying of the knot 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or by a discovery This is that which Jesus Christ pointeth at in himself who is the Wisdom of God The manifold Wisdom of God in whom all the Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge lie hid in whom all the Divine contrivances are formed and perfected What will you say when you shall see the Son of Man return there where he was at first In this God himself seemeth to place the highest Beauties the sweetest Graces the richest Glories of his whole contrivance and work in bringing things down by the Ministry of the Law to the last point to the lowest state to the most lost condition to the nethermost part of the Earth to the nethermost Hell And in ways unexpected by uncomprehensible to Men Angels to raise things again by the Gospel to that first supreamGlory which was their Original Patern in eternity The Law was brought in that sin might abound That where sin had abounded grace might superabound So the Wisdom of the Heathen and of the Scripture both instructeth us That God entertaineth himself universally and divinely with this great and pleasant Work of making high things low great things little of making little things great and low things high He sendeth the rich empty away and filleth the hungry with good things He grindeth man through pain to dâ—…st and then he saith return again ye Sons of Men. But I have made a long transition I come now from these proper ends of the Law which were the deepest descents which comprehended the reign of sin by the Law unto Death an Universal Death the most killing death a spiritual never-dying death of immortal Spirits as well the natural death of Bodies separate from their Spirits to the Ultimate ends of the Law in which some glimmering lights begin to dawn of the most desired and delightful day shining from this black and hellish night All these Ultimate ends of the Law are generally comprehended in Christ the Ultimate end of the Law The end of the Artificer and of the Agent of the eternal Spirit in the Law is Christ. So saith the Spirit in the Scriptures The end of the Law is Christ Rom. 10. 4. He may well be the end of the Law who is the end of all things for whom all things are made The Law was given by Moses but Grace and Truth were by Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came full of Grace and Truth saith St. John in the same Chapter Joh. 1. 14 17. Grace is the Divine Love opposed to the ministry of wrath by the Law Truth is the naked Face and Beauty of the Godhead the Light the brightness of the Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ as he is opposed to the Vails and shadows of the Law Thus Christ that is God in the nakedness and simplicity of the Divine Essence as he is Love as he is Light the Light of Immortality and Glory in which there is no darkness is the end of all the darknings dividings and destructions of all the shadows and severities of the Law But this general end is to be subdivided into its several steps or degrees 1. The end of the Law is to be a prison for faln man till Christ comes This is the language of St. Paul Gal. 3. 28. But before the Faith came we were kept in custody under the Law being shut up unto the Faith to be revealed Faith is the evidence of things not seen and the substance of things hoped for The Divine Faith is a Divine evidence of Divine things divinely invisible from an excess of Divine Light and Glory too great for every natural eye or understanding The Divine Faith is the Divine substance of Divine things the objects of a Divine hope Christ is said by St. Paul to be the hope of Glory and the end of the Faith of all the Saints He also is the Light and the Life This then is the Faith and the Revelation of the Faith of the Gospel in the Saints Christ the Light of the Glory of God eternal Life the quickning Spirit the fountain of Life the heavenly eternal truth and substance of all Good
our Hope our End comprehending all the Objects of our Hope all our blessedness in himself This Christ thus coming to us forming a Divine Nature a Divine Light a Divine Eye a Divine Understanding in us shining forth in the midst of us setting all things good and desirable in an invisible and eternal Glory in their heavenly truth and substance before us open and manifest in the midst of us with their naked shining flowing Beauties and Sweetnesses to be possessed to be enjoyed by us to become one Spirit with us to form themselves upon us to transform and to translate us into one Spirit and Image with themselves in the fore-tasts and first-fruits as the earnest and pledge of our hopes springing up to a full fruition This is our most holy and most precious Faith the Faith of the Gospel opposed to the Works of the Law This coming of the Faith in this verse is expressed before verse 9. by the coming of the seed why then was the Law It was added because of Transgressions until the Seed came The Law then is a Prison In this Pâ—…ison all men are kept bound in Chains shut up with Locks and Bolts and Bars which no force can break until the Seed which is Christ come This heavenly Seed alone springing up into a new Nature a new Creature a new Person into an heavenly Image and a Son of God in him alone brings him forth into the Liberty of the Glory of the Sons of God Now before this Jesus thus springing up and shining forth in him the Prison of the Law is dissolved and vanisheth like an enchantment The place in which it stood is known no more for all is covered and filled with the Light Liberty and Love of the eternal Spirit over-flowing and encompassing this Son and Heir of God this fellow-heir with Christ. So saith St. Paul to Timothy 2 Tim. 1. The appearance of Christ in the Gospel abolisheth death and bringeth life and immortality to light 2. The end of the Law is to be a shadow of Christ and a Vail upon Christ. In the Epistle to the Hebrews we read That the Law had a shadow only of good things to come not the very Image Chap. 10. vers 1. Jesus Christ the Image of the invisible God is the very Image of all good things to come in the Spirit and in eternity The Law had a shadow of this Jesus with these good things contained in him The Law was also a Vail upon this Jesus who with all these invisible eternal beauties and blessednesses lay hid and lived after an hidden manner in these shadows and figures of the Law as beneath a Vail You may see this 2 Cor. 3. 15 16. St. Paul saith of the Jews While Moses is read the Vail lieth upon their hearts But when there is a turning to the Lord the Vail is taken away He goeth on But the Lord is that Spirit where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty that is freedom from the Vail There is a beholding with open face the Glory of the Lord Jesus a transforming of the Soul into the same Image with an encreasing Glory by the Lord this Spirit Thus Jesus with all his Glories was vailed in the Law By the removal of the Vail the Law becometh Gospel The naked Glories of our Jesus flow forth upon us and form us into one Glory with themselves St. Paul teacheth us 1 Cor. 1. 10. That the Fathers were all baptized into Moses in the same Cloud and in the same Sea eat of the same spiritual Bread drank of the same spiritual Rock that followed them and that Rock was Christ. Upon the same account that Bread that Sea that Cloud was Christ. Christ was shadowed upon all these and vailed beneath all these The Clouds Thunders Fires Tremblings and Earth-quakes at Mount Sinai were shadows of Christ and vails upon Christ in his most glorious Person suffering and dying The top of Mount Sinai where God and Moses conversed familiarly with Faces shining mutually one upon another being mutual Feasts one to another was a shadow of Christ and a Vail upon him in his Resurrection and Ascension Divines teach us That the Law is the Gospel vailed and the Gospel the Law unvailed The Jews say That the Ten Commandments are founded upon the Name of God The Name is the Image of the thing Christ who is the very Image is the true Name of God and of all true things comprehended in God The Moral Law with all the Precepts and Duties of it is Christ in his heavenly and Divine Nature in us but vailed with the Letter with the darkness of the Letter yet in that darkness doth the heavenly Image figure it self making the darkness it self a shadow of its Glory How rich and how sweet is our Jesus and the mystery of God in him through all his works The Law it self hath no Darkness no Death no Fire so full of Dread Horror and Destruction which looked upon with a right eye is not unexpressibly beautified and sweetned by this that Jesus Christ with all the treasures of eternal Love Beauty and Joy is shadowed upon it and vailed beneath it The Fathers under the Law acquainted with this mystery conversed with Christ saw his day grew up into him through this shadow beneath this Vail seeing and embracing him shadowed also in their own persons and lying hid as under a Vail in their Hearts and Loins in their Flesh and Spirit 3. The Law prepared the way of Christ. John the Baptist who came to restore all things to their Primitive purity in the Ministry of the Law is represented as an Angel sent before the Face of the Lord to prepare his way The Law is a three-fold preparation for Christ. 1. By Conviction Condemnation and Death which all discover a necessity of Christ make him precious make him the desire of all Nations make all wait for him as the only blessed One and their only Blessedness Crying Blessed is he blessed is the Messias the Christ blessed is Jesus who alone comes in the Name of the Lord in the Form Power and Glory of the Godhead 2. The Law is a preparation for Christ by the Righteousness of Morality and of the Letter 3. By setting Christ before us in a shadow and under a Vail So the Law fills up the Vallies and makes the Mountains plain It humbleth and bringeth down every high thing it raiseth up every dejected and dispairing spirit It turneth all reliance or glory in our own Righteousness or Strength in our own Reason or Will into shame It takes away our distrust and despair turning that into hope and a joyous expectation It first burieth all the beauty strength excellency and life of the Creature in a grave of Sin Death and Wrath as deep as the nethermost parts of the Earth as the nethermost Hell Then it shadoweth Christ upon this Grave and sheweth him hidden beneath it as under a Vail and as a Seed of
Contexture of Beams living in and springing immediately freshly every moment from this entire Person which is all one most clear and lively Face of the most compleat and Original Beauty The Divine Person is not hid but shown by this Garment Mi Jesu pelluces Our Jesus shines all clearly thorow it far more clearly than a beautiful Person swimming all naked in a clear stream or the richest Diamond in a Case of purest Christal The Person here the Divine Sun is at once the eminent Head of all the Beams shining above them the vigorous Root of all the Beams springing up in them the pleasant and glorious flower flourishing forth from the end of every Beam the full Glory filling with it self each part of the Beam and every where in every Beam presenting it self entirely to every eye All the Beams in One are one entire Image of this Sun Every distinct Beam a distinct Birth and Figure of a distinct Ideal Light and Glory in this Sun Yet is the Sun in that full compass of all its Glories seen by every eye in every Beam For so is this Divine Sun the essential Idea of the Godhead the same one undivided entire full in all the Ideas in all the Original Forms and Patterns of each Creature The Beams here are Daughters Sisters and Brides to the Sun They flow forth immediately from it They stand upon the same root of the Divine Nature and Personality God is the only Person in this Jesus Both are cloathed with the same Image Both by mutual embraces lie in the bosoms of each other wrapt up together in the same Joys and Glories Yet are the Beams and created Beauties in this Mediatory Image not only distinct as the Ideas in the Godhead where the most perfect Distinction is married to the most absolute Unity with a most exact equality But all the Forms of created Glory here have besides a distinction from their Sun the Divine Glory and from each other a diversity also an inequality a subordination in an hypostatical or personal Unity But I now anticipate my self This will have a more proper place in the following Character of our Jesus in his Mediatory Kingdom 4. Christ here in his created Nature is a Spirit a great and universal Spirit comprehending the whole Creation eminently in himself before it have a subsistence in it self The whole Creation is here in greater majesty in greater clearness and glory than in it self when it is freshest and fairest It is the very Iustre and effulgency of the Godhead it self all transparent the Divine Essence at once shining thorow it filling it cloathing and comprehending it as a Temple founded upon it self framed by it self of its own most immediate Light and clearest brightness The King's Daughter is said to be all glorious within and her Garments of wrought Gold Psal. 45. The first Marriage is that of the most High and holy Trinity to which eternity it self is the Marriage-day celebrated with Joys and Glories transcending all measures or bounds The Father and the Son are here mutually the Bridegroom and the Bride while both are in both the Father in the Son the Son in the Father the Love-Spring in its lovely and beautiful Image the Lovely-Image the first and highest Beauty in its Love-spring the first the sweetest the fruitfullest Love and Fountain of Loves The Holy Spirit the conspiration of both these in One is their Marriage-band and Marriage-bed where they preserve entire their Unity and their Distinction in a most blissful Union to make their Loves and Joys more full From this Marriage-bed doth flow the God-like Race of Divine Ideas surmounting all numbers and natures of things The second Marriage is in this Middle-Glory between the Uncreated and created Beauty joyned together in one Divine eternal Person and Spirit The Divine Nature is here the King and the Bridegroom this created Spirit is the Kings Daughter his Queen and his Bride This Queen is described to be all glorious within and to have her Garment of wrought Gold The Hebrew word within signifieth properly in her Person in her naked Face which are within all her Garments and Vails Her God her Bridegroom Jesus in his essential Image her eternal Idea is her Person her Face her internal Form Thus is she all glorious within For the Lamb himself her Bridegroom is her Glory The Glory of the Lord himself in his eternal Splendors enlightneth all within This Queens Garment is all of wrought Gold The word Wrought signifieth properly a work of Eyes set all over the Garment So Dr. Hammond expoundeth it Her Garment was all over set with round Oes like so many Eyes or Suns wrought in Gold The created form of this Spirit being the pure lustre of the eternal Sun the Divine Essence is the Queen's Garment The numberless Ideas of the Divine Nature in each of which the Godhead it self is entire in its Sacred Unity comprehending all its Ideas or Variety in a Variety entirely thorowout infinitely fresh and new form in this Garment secondary Ideas their own most immediate fairest and fullest Effulgencies or Life-Pictures In every one of these is this Queen also according to the Original Patterns in her Father King and Bridegroom compleat with all the full Glories of her Person and equally distinct in a new Variety of all her Glories as a new Queen a new Person a distinct Spirit These are the Divine Suns and Eyes in the Garment of this Queen in which the eternal Eyes and Suns shining in the Divine Essence look forth as thorow Casements of pure living and immortal Christal Each Form each distinction of every kind in the Creation here below is such an eye such a Sun wrought in Gold such a Spirit of incorruptible Glory such a Bride and Queen to the eternal King Every one in particular is a spiritual and heavenly Member all together make up the spiritual and heavenly Body of our Jesus in this Personal Kingdom of his where he in his own Person is a Kingdom to himself containing the Creator with the Creation in all their Amplitudes and Varieties married together into one Person Spirit and Glory which is to it self Bride-groom Bride Ofspring and All. See if this be not that heavenly Hierusalem the Hierusalem above which is indeed free in the spacious embraces and unlimited Amplitudes of the Godhead which at the same time is by the inviolable sweetness of a sweetly-invincible necessity the eternal Law of supream Love confined to these embraces in which she becometh the glorious Virgin-Mother of us all Is not this the Hierusalem whose heavenly transparencies whose Divine lustre whose unstain'd incorruptible Beauties and Virtues are figured by Gold Pearls precious Stones and Glass Glass of Christal Is not this that Bride of the Lamb which cometh down from God out of the Heaven of the essential Image of the Godhead as out of the Bosom of her Father and Bridegroom with this Character in which the perfection of Beauty and
Creature as the Creature cometh forth from God into its single and proper state through him 3. Jesus Christ as he is the Mediator between God and the Creature as he is One with God so also is he One with the Creature that he may bring forth the Creature from God bring back and home again the Creature to God to make both one in himself I shall endeavour to make plain this part of Christ's Mediatorship the immediate coming forth of the Creature through Christ by several steps 1. Jesus Christ having descended with his Original and essential Image into an Image of Light all clear and transparent in every point of which his essential Glories shine brightly forth Next to this he comes down into a shadowy Image There all the Glories of the two former Images are altogether obscured and hidden beneath this Vail They appear only by a shadowy Figure of themselves formed upon the darkness of this third Image In this shadow of himself the Lord Jesus retaineth entirely the Unity of his Divine and eternal Person All the three Images the Lights of Glory and their shadow dwell together in the Unity of the same Person So do they mutually enfold one another So do they mutually subsist appear and act in each other according to the proper Form of each Image and state The shadow shines and is a substantial Glory in the Glory of the Images above The Images above with all their substantial Glories are shadows in this shadow As St. John saith The Word was made flesh so is God here become a shadow of himself God is the Person in this shadow This shadow subsists in the Person of God The superior Images spread forth the darkness of this Image from themselves over-spreading themselves with it They themselves with all their Glories are as a Divine Seed in it They are the seminal Virtue the seminal Reason or Form springing up through this darkness and filling it throughout with Divine Figures of themselves As the Plants Flowers and Fruits which God made to spring up out of the ground of the Garden in Eden Thus is this shadowy Image divinely-beautiful and rich all an earthly Paradise bearing the Figure of the heavenly Paradise which it hath for its proper Seed and Root hidden within it Jesus Christ in his essential Image is as the substantial and Divine Body of all Glories In his Mediatory Image as a Garment of Light with which that Body cloaths it self all composed of its own richest Beams In this third Image as a shadow cast from both these 2. Jesus Christ in this shadowy Image is the first and universal Creature a created Spirit the immediate Head and Pattern of the whole Creation in general of all Creatures in particular Men and Angels He is the first Draught or Life-Picture of the whole Creation from whence all the Creatures are taken as so many Copies of this Original The superior Images are the Life it self by which this Original and Life-Picture is drawn Thus is Jesus Christ in a third sense the Image of the invisile God and the first-born of every Creature St. Paul seemeth in that place Coloss. 1. 15. to have intended this as the principal sense For he immediately adds That all things were made by him whether visible or invisible and that he is before all things and in him all things did consist or stand together Then when in the consequence of this he had said that Christ is the Head of the Church the first-born from the dead he gives this as a reason relating to both states of Nature and Grace of the Creation and the new Creature in the Resurrection that he in all things might have the preheminence The word is there 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he might be the first in all things the first in Order Dignity and Power The first Creature in Nature and in the Creation the Head of Nature and the whole Creation The first new Creature in the Resurrection from the dead when Nature and the whole Creation was fallen under the power of death and the Head of the Resurrection The Jews seem to represent Jesus Christ to us in this station of the Creation as the first and universal Creature by two mysteries of theirs For they teach us That the Soul of the Messias was one of those things which were before the World was They say also That the Light of the first Day was a pure and clear Light in which the whole Creation in its whole compass with all Forms of things contained in it through its whole duration from the beginning to the end with all Revolutions and Changes universal or particular were all clearly seen at once in one View and Prospect as one entire most beautiful Divine Image or Picture They say also That at the Fall of Man this Light was withdrawn and hidden beneath the Throne of God until the days of the Messias The Arians of old acknowledged Jesus Christ in this state as a created Spirit the first and universal Creature above and before all things the Head of Angels and of the whole Creation Thus they acknowledged him to be God by representation deputation denomination and generation as being immediately begotten and brought forth from God as the first created Image of the Uncreated Glory comprehending all other created Images originally in himself They ascended right thus high if they had not rested here but by this shadowy Image had been pointed to the Mediatory Image in Life and by the beams of that guided to the essential Image in the Godhead Our natural senses teach us That there is no shadowy reflected and refracted Light where there is not first a pure Light and Sun-shine that the purest Light of the sweetest Sun-shine hath above it the Original Light the essential Light in the Body of the Sun which is indeed the Body of the Sun the Sun it self in its essential Form and Image But let us pass to our third step 3. The Lord Jesus in this shadowy Image is immediately the efficient the exemplar the final Cause of the whole Creation As Light and all the beams flow from the Sun their formal Cause as immediate Figures and Images of him So doth the whole Creation in general and each Creature in particular flow forth from him by continued emanations He is the ground out of which they rise in which they grow and flourish on which he figures and forms himself according to his various Excellencies as the proper fruit of them all into which they sink down and return with all their Life and Sweetness when they disappear Thus are all things made by him and for him that he may live and shine forth in all In him saith St. John was Light and that Light was the life of man where he speaks of the Creation of things by Jesus Christ. 4. I am now come to my last step Jesus Christ in this shadowy Image is in the whole Creation and in every
that Tabernacle and particularly often Heb. 9. Jesus Christ saith to the Jews Destroy this Temple and in three days I will build it up The Spirit addeth there expresly That he spake of his Body in St. John The Humane Nature of Christ in the Flesh was a moveable Tabernacle to be taken down and so figured by the Tabernacle in the Wilderness The Humanity of Christ in the Resurrection in the Spirit was the true Temple immoveable immutable eternal in the Heavens answering to Solomon's Temple on Mount Sion or Mount Moriah In the Tabernacle under the Law there was a three-fold Perfection 1. All things there were exact Figures of the Pattern upon the Mount 2. These Figures were taken immediately from the Pattern it self formed wrought and ordered by the same Spirit in Bezaleel Aholiab Moses Aron the Priests and the Levites 3. The Pattern it self in its Glory dwelt in the Tabernacle The Scriptures laid together seem to demonstrate Jesus Christ to be this Pattern upon the Mount The Law is said to have the shadow of good things to come 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not the very Image of the thing Heb. 1. 1. This very Image can be no other than the first the principal the substantial Image the Pattern it self upon the Mount This word is applied to Jesus Christ Col. 1. 15. He is said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Image of the invisible God And that the very Image the Original Image is understood appears by that which is added The first-born of every Creature The Jewish Rabbins teach us That the Tabernacle was a model of the whole Creation of the Divine World as it is the Head of the Creation and at the Head of the Creation appears in a created Figure of the Angelical and of the visible World These were represented by the Holy of Holies the holy place and the outward Court Thus far they were right but in this they fell short that they looked not to the beginning and end of these The Messias in in his own Mediatory Glory and in his Fathers Glory as he was the Pattern of these upon the Mount and as these stood originally in him But according to this Type in the Tabernacle in his Flesh and in his Life on Earth he fulfilled all Righteousness the Righteousness of the Creature the Law and the Letter the Righteousness of God and of the Gospel Jesus Christ saith of himself What I see my Father do that do I The words that I speak are not mine but my Fathers he doth the Works The Humane Nature of Christ in Flesh his Motions his Rest all his Words and his Works answered to the Pattern upon the Mount his own heavenly Image in the Glory of God and were formed from that Pattern by the same Spirit forming his Humane Nature subsisting in it and acting it The Father saith he hath sent me and I live by the Father The mission of the Father and his living by the Father were his springing forth from the Father according to the eternal Image of things in the Father by the Spirit of the Father in his Birth Life and Death Thus he fulfilleth all Righteousness according to the Law as it was at first engraven on the heart of man as it was afterwards renewed on Tables of Stone in the Moral Ceremonial and Judiciary parts of it The Pattern it self also the heavenly and Divine Image with the Original Righteousness and Glory dwelt in this Flesh of Christ in all his Motions and Rests filling the figures with the substance Thus it is said of him The Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us full of Grace and Truth Joh. 1. 14. It is said again vers 17. The Law was given by Moses but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ. Grace is eternal Love the naked Face of God as it shines and smiles with all pleasantness in it opposed to the Law as it is a Ministry of Wrath and a Vail upon the Divine Nature Truth is the very Image the Pattern the everlasting Righteousness the Original and eternal Glory of God opposed to the shadows the fading Righteousness the vanishing Glory of the Law Thus this Tabernacle of Flesh in the Unity of Christ's Person was full of Grace and Truth The everlasting Love and everlasting Righteousness with their Sweetnesses Strengths and Glories which never fade nor pass away at once formed filled and rested upon their own perfect and spotless figures in the flesh of Christ. So he fulfilled the first part of his Mediation and our Redemption while as an universal Person comprehending all Mankind and the whole Creation in himself He presents himself in his Birth in his Life unto God in the place of all and all in himself as a perfect Figure of the Divine Righteousness and Glory as in an exact Harmony so in an inseparable immediate Union with its Pattern 2. The second Part of Christ's Mediatory Work in our Redemption comprehendeth the Sufferings and Death of the Lord Jesus The Sufferings of Christ are to be considered in the manner and the merit of them The manner of the Sufferings of Christs are set forth in diverse Scriptures Isa. 53. 6. God laid the Iniquity of us all upon him And vers 10. He made his Soul an offering for Sin St. Paul seems to relate to these Prophesies when he saith 2 Cor. 5. ult Him who knew no sin hath God made sin for us It is frequent in the Hebrew Language and Idiom to express Sin and metanomically the Sacrifice for sin the panishment of sin by the same word Gal. 3. 13. Christ hath purchased us from the Curse of the Law being made a Curse for us A cursed Person is a Person charged with all guilt and filth and universal abomination and detestation to God to Angels and Men. A Person devoted to Divine Vengeance and Wrath excluded from all things holy and good exposed to the opposition and enmity of all things holy and good set apart to be cut off and quite taken away in the shamefulest dreadfulest and direfulest manner Thus God personally in our flesh suffered Our Jesus takes away our Sins the Sins of the whole World Joh. 1. by taking them upon himself He stands in the place and person of all Sinners He beareth the Sins of the whole World upon himself Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the World Joh. 1. The Greek word comprehendeth both senses to take up and to take away He is set as the abominable execrable detestable thing in the Eyes of God and of all the Creatures He is devoted by the most solemn most sacred Curses to bear the weight of all Guilt to satisfie the Divine Justice to sustain the Divine Wrath to the utmost As the Sin-Offering was all consumed by fire and was burnt without the Camp so went Jesus out of the City separated from the Society of all in Heaven and on Earth bearing his shame and to endure the pain The
hid beneath the ruines of the fall Thus Knowledge springing in the Soul seems to be a remembrance the Life of all good an awakening by reason of the primitive Image of pure Nature raising it self by degrees and sparkling through the Rubbish the confusions of the present state Thus also hath the Souâ—…n her self the measure of all Truth and Good in this pure â—…age which hidden in the Center of the Soul containeth all Forms of Truth and Good in it self 2. That Clause in the 20. vers From the Creation of the World relates not to the sight but to the invisibility of God as appears by the place the point the sense For otherwise there were a Tautology in the Creation of the World and the things that are made There is a Scripture like to this Ephes. 3. The mystery of Christ is there mentioned which is the unvailing of God that he may be seen in the Light of his own essential and eternal Glories in his own proper naked and sweet form of Love unmixt unlimited Thus he appears in the Face and Person of Christ who as he is the Godhead in its essential and eternal Image comes in the Spirit of the Gospel full of Grace or Love and Truth the Light the Life of the Godhead in its unvailed Sweetnesses and Glories This mystery is said to be hid in God from the foundation of the World The Creation of the World was a Vail cast upon the Face of God with a figure of the Godhead wrought upon this Vail and God himself seen through it by a dim transparency as the Sun in a morning or Mist is seen by a refracted Light through the thick medium of earthly Vapours But I shall now attempt from the Life in this Scripture to draw the Picture of the Humane Soul in its natural Perfections and paradisical Beauties In order to this I shall present to you three Propositions into which this Text seems naturally to resolve it self 1. 1. Proposition God is present and shines forth in the Soul of Man in the highest and fullest appearance in which any created Understanding is capable of receiving him in which he is capable of being manifested or communicated by any Image beneath or without himself This is the plain sense of those words That which may be known of God is manifested in them Every Being in every kind and degree is a Beam or Emanation and manifestation of the first the supream Being which is God The whole Creation then all the Creatures in it with all their Essences Substances Accidents in all their Orders Places Postures Motions with every Circumstance of Being are as real in their full proportion as much according to the life in the Humane Soul as in themselves They all as so many lines and features drawn from the Face of God form the Essence of the Soul by forming it into a living Image of God God himself as he is the Author of Nature is as a Sun with all the Creatures as a Ring of Beams round about him which at once hide him and discover him So the Sun the Figure with a Vail of Beams hides from every eye the too bright Glories of that naked Body of Light But by the same Beams is himself seen in a most beautiful though shadowy Image Thus this eternal Sun surrounded with this Ring of Beams forms a Pareâ—…s tâ—… similitude of himself by himself in the Soul of Man In the mean time God himself as he is before this similitude of himself shining upon it is also within it the vital Centre in the midst of it the Root the Truth the Life of it Thus are these two Suns two Eyes full set each with other as they look forth through this Image this Vail of Beams The Soul by its senses takes in only the accidental forms of each Creature the shadow of the shadow The Understanding takes hold of takes the essential Form the Substance The whole visible World is the World of sense the Object of sense The Invisible the Angelical World is the Intellectual World the proper Object of the Understanding If that which may be known of God be manifested in the Soul if every distinct degree of Being be a distinct manifestation of God a distinct mode or form of the Divine appearance then doth the Humane Soul contain the whole World visible invisible with it self in its full greatness and glory in all its most exact Distinctions and Varieties It penetrates it it fills it all within and without with its Intellectual Light In its Unity as the Divine Centre it sits and unites all In its Variety as in the full majesty of its Divine Essence it spreads it self into all Forms and so many Divine Figures in a most beautiful and Divine Order All Being in its whole compass is Intelligible the adoequate Object of the Understanding The Understanding is all in potentiality in its natural capacity tendency and desire These are the Doctrines of the Schools The Understanding then in Act in the perfection of its primitive state is actually perfectly all It is married by an Angelical marriage as in the Marriage of Spirits into a most intimate Union of Essences into a most essential Unity with the whole Creation as it is one Divine Figure of the Divine Beauty and so through this figure with Jesus Christ with God who lives and appears in it 2. Proposition All these forms of things spring up to the Soul from within it self from its own Fountain from God the Fountain of the Soul in the Centre of it the Fountain of all in the Soul to the Soul That which may be known of God is manifest in them for God hath manifested it to them vers 19. The last Clause well observed in the force of the words and the Connexion will appear to every judicious eye as I humbly conceive to have no common or vulgar sense They seem to contain in them this two-fold mystery 1. God the proper Idea of the Humane Soul that is it s most inward inseparable Principle which hath in it self the Pattern the exemplar form of the Soul sends it forth from it self forms it furnisheth filleth it with all forms of things He also comprehends and conserves it in himself as its own proper place and habitation as a Light sprung from him and abiding in him the Father of Lights He fashioneth it into an Understanding as an Intellectual Angelical Divine Sun This is the greatest Light in the Soul its utmost Centre and outmost Circle encompassing the whole Essence of the Soul the whole nature of things in all their Forms Operations and Motions This shines in the day of the invisible World This as the Region of Angels contains the Essences and Intellectual Forms of all things in it self as so many Angels or Angelical Spirits each of which is a distinct Sun a distinct world of Angels of all Angelical Spirits and Intellectual Forms In the next place God figures this Light which is
which is the universal and supream good there cleaving to and becoming one with that blessed and triumphant Will it hath no more any sense of opposition or force all things now round about it make a pleasant Musick to it in the Harmony of the Divine Will and shine upon it with a most ravishing and heavenly lustre as they lie together in the Divinely-beautiful Form of the first and universal good This is that true Liberty of the Will of Man in which he transcends all other Creatures here below by which he triumphs over all Chances and Changes over all Confinements and Comâ—…lsions over all the extremities of Force and Fury while it keeps these wings unlimed uncloged unclipt by the filth or guilt of fleshly lusts while it preserves it self from the Chains of Vice 3. I come now to the third Circumstance of the Liberty of the Will Man is to be considered in three states 1. Of pure Nature 2. Of the Fall 3. Of the restitution by Christ. 1. Man in the state of pure Nature is an Image of God an earthly Image Gen. 1. God said let us make man in our own likeness after our own Image let us make him Some interpret this of God in the three Persons others of God Cum indumentis suis as the Jews speak of God in his holy Angels Both together make a proper and full sense God in the holy Trinity God in all the various Virtues of the Divine Nature spread first through the innumerable company of Angels and by them through the whole Creation sets himself as a seal upon man in whom as the Consummation and Crown of his whole Work by this impression he unites all into one Nature and Essence which is a compleat Image of himself and a comprehension of the whole Creation Thus now the Essence the Faculties the Operations of Man are a shadowy similitude and figure of the Divine Essence the Divine Virtues and the Operations of the Divine Nature Thus the Will of Man is a shadowy figure of the Divine Will and its freedom a shadowy resemblance of the Divine Liberty like the colours of a Rainbow in the Cloud which are so many reflections of the light of the Sun That which we say in natural Philosophy Exiisdem nutrimur ex quibus gignimur We are bred and nourished composed and continued by the same things is most true in its application to the first or universal cause with its effects As the Sun is the formal efficient cause of its beams which are its shadowy Image in the air and as the living face is the formal efficient cause of the face in the Glass so is God to man his Image and shadow The continued out-shinings and Operations of the Sun make maintain and act anew its beams every moment The continued stream of Species or beams from the living Face every moment form anew the Face in the Glass with all its meen and motions So doth the Divine Essence the Diviue Understanding and Will every moment by the continual influences of each moment compose and conduct their Image the Essence the Understanding the Will of Man as the Face in the Glass in their whole make manner and motions This is not a diminution but the perfection of Liberty in the Will of Man For God in his holy Angels as superior and universal Causes works upon the Will of Man or rather in it after the manner of an internal Principle So that well known Maxim of the first Philosophy assures us That the first and universal Cause is of all Causes most intimate with every effect As in logical Definitions the summum genus or the highest nature enters into the Definition and so into the Essence of the lowest Species or kind of things inasmuch as it enters into and constitutes the next genus or nature together with all the intermediate natures For examples sake Substance and so Being it self in its highest and most absolute form is comprehended in and constitutes the nature of man descending into it by the intermediate steps of Corporiety and Animality that is becoming first a Corporeal Substance then a living Corporeal Substance lastly a rational and so a man In like manner so is the first and universal Cause the most internal and essential Principle of every effect of all humane Operations of all the acts of the Will For it is the Essence of every Essence the Being of every Being the Act of every Act the first the formal Cause the most immediate the most intimate Cause of every Effect Let me add to this for a Conclusion as the Crown upon the liberty of man in pure nature that his conformity to God as an Image to his Original is his Perfection in this doth his Will become a most beautiful figure of the ever-glorious life the Divine Will that its Liberty is the free-springing flourishing and fruitfulness of it in all good through the whole Latitude and Amplitude of the most spacious and blissful sphere of good and so that a most pleasing and agreeable necessity of being good is inseparable from this sweet and ample freedom while it continues in the state of a Divine Image and Figure 2. In the Fall of Man we read according to the Language of the Scripture of his being deceived being brought into servitude being a Captive in bondage to Vanity and Corruption and of being dead While they boast of Liberty saith St. Peter they themselves are servants to sin For to that of which a man is overcome he is a servant It is the Observation of Plato That the names importing any thing of good natively signifie a freedom of motion as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 good from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to run swiftly On the otherside the names of evil express a restraint from motion as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 malice from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to lie down upon the ground In like manner the Hebrew word for Darkness signifieth restraint and confinement by force All Liberty being an enlargement of Being is comprehended in the nature of good alone Neither is there any thing so inconsistent with Liberty as evil which is a privation of Being Plato therefore rightly expresseth the Soul in her faln state by the loss of both her wings which are an Intellectual Light and an Intellectual Love or the Light of Reason in the Mind spreading it self with a clear brightness as one of the golden wings and the force or freedom of the rational Appetite to good in the Will extending it self in a pure flame as the other of the golden wings To this I might add the testimony which the Scripture gives of another seed that of the Serpents springing up in the Soul unto its fall in its fall and through its fall of the Soul being now the Child of the Devil being implanted into the Powers of Darkness of being acted by the Prince of the Power of the Air the Spirit which is now become its Root its