worn out of Fashion That Pride which grows out of pregnant faculties and ample improvements of Time and Parts is so far from falling under our censure here that we may rather applaud and promote it that it may retain its indignation and just contempt of these insignificant Poppets and Mormoes whose souls bodies and cloaths seem to be but one Composition and as if they were all taken up at the same shop and artificially bombasted and compacted to sustain a burthen of wealth and fairly turn it self to all the Arrests of brutish sensuality Of this nobler and more substantial basis of Pride let this though be here said and considered with all the weight of seriousnesse That their brave spirits will bear an higher flight and there is yet above them a pleasure as satisfactory and durable as this of their high-born Pride is certainly most jejune and no less low and transient But the Epicure must be serv'd in the next place to Pride and INTEMPERANCE Is usually willing to yield unto her precedence but on good provision to be made for its Appetite immediately to succeed For it well relisheth the Genius of the Marcese in their reception of Messire and this Honorific Titles return in discovering to them the rate preparation of the leaf of a Swine So low a rate has been set upon the Man since the fairest part of his Character is that he eats and drinks well and knows good food nothing better As if the soul of the Glutton were bestowed upon him only to be a Cateresse to his carcasse and see the larder of the stomach be not unfurnisht Nay it often has no higher office than of a Cook and feasts it self with the skill to provoke as well as allay Hunger and Thirst What Adepti are those admired to be who can discourse learnedly on a studied dish can anotomize it dextrously shew you what contrary qualities meet in its temperament give you all the criticisms and analize the various Gustoes of meats and liquors To have the presence of such a Vertuoso is the best countenance you can give your Treat and your Friend you may be sure in his company you supp'd in Apollo Such a mans palat and Face for there you may tast his assay are as cautiously observ'd by the whole Table as if they were under his prescriptions for diet and as necessary as the previous infusion of the Unicorns horn to the patient Herd His frown is as fatal to the Cook as the Judges on the Bench and scorcheth all he sends up worse than at the rack This man needs not Philoxenus his wish for whatsoever is born down the swallow of any at the board I may say he has the pleasure of its gust for it becomes Manna to all the Guests by yielding the tast he put upon it and he may easily be understood to have the volupe of his Palat extended in all theirs Seems not this to be the instinct of a gallant and acute soul is not this a Gusto raised and fitted alone for Ambrosia and Nepenthe Yes certainly And you may believe such choice Viands will yield a concoction of Spirits that cannot but colonize the brain with most defaecate and noble Conceptions For they farse themselves with the most exquisite delicacies as if neither their bodies were cast in the mould of Earth nor their regalioes but the various-form'd figures of the dust they raise nor the spirits from them other than the brood which other Animals generate out of the grass we trample on But in truth do they not by their excess and high feeding oppress the brain and suffocate its operations with fuliginous steams from the kitchin obstructing the fine chanels and pipes which should transmit the finer and nimble spirits to all their stages and for all their admirable dispatches and functions while the redundancy of dull pituitous moisture unstrings and intercepts their vigorous tension and sensation No they are phlegmatic souls who think a load of dainties enrich this soil with any other product than what we cast out and spread upon the common The mind is that dry and clear light maintain'd in its Vigils by an even constant and moderate confluence of pure and innocent Spirits You drown it by powring in too much though never so rich Liquor if you impregnate its oyl with too fat and drossy a Sulphur it sends forth as noysom stenches as Vulcan's Cave and is orecast with an encircling shadow if you fret it with acid and saline particles how disturbed is its flame and offensive with continual crackling explosions of those busie bodies While the poor soul starves for want of its mean and kindly repast The pamper'd body too surcharg'd with crudities or an overgrown stock of flesh becomes its own unweildy impediment needing some Engine like the Chariot the Indians annex to their sheep to bear up theiâ— monstrous train of Tail not seldome is it an Hospital of diseases and its own House of correction too Into an unshapen bulk have we seen many extended whose parts are as useless to them as if growing in another Countrey like the unvisited rooms of some great Houses so little the care and concern of the family that Vermin have come to nestle and burrough in the wide tenements of their Flesh And truly they must of necessity devize some proportionable accretion and enlargement of their Soul if they would have all their apartiments and needless superstructures well tenanted and kept in constant repair But the direct contrary is their ruine for they appear with so little of the presence of a Spirit animating them that what they have of life is like that to be seen on the bodies of Witches in their extasies where the soul is withdrawn into the most close and silent recess the state of the voluptuous Egyptian Calyphs of old while they dawb up the pores and outward chinks to make the retiring room more dark and warm and guard the passes against foreign invasions The soul is in so little case in these additional out-jettings and looser edifices that immuring a larger compass of ground it is but more labyrinthally and securely imprisoned So some number of the world are buried under the curse of their much building and not a few masters famish'd to keep their beasts lusty by the inverted divine admonition to fortifie the inward man upon the ruines of the outward But our Apitii scorn to have their enjoyments streightned though more safely ensconced they must every day rove abroad to fetch in sacrifices to their Oesophagus and lowdly solennize the festivals of Comus crown'd with fresh chaplets of Ivy and Myrtles offering up the most delicious morsels the world has in store in their Latitudinarian Targets of Minerva as if she were here to be again born out of the variety of far-fetch'd brains and Tongues with no less libations of the Falernian grape in their lofty surveying Tricongio Goblets By the full draughts they quaff off in the noblest
this the heat and agility of another is temper'd by the Phlegm and industry of their Enemy to their innate ambition is oppos'd the inexpungnable zeal others have to their native soil Thus we see the Empires of the world have their periods declination and expiration as well as a Rise augmentation and flourishing That the conceptions and designs of every individual admit so many transmutations with their years and that all of them sooner or later retire and clear the stage to another Generation to which must be committed the whole concerns of Mankind and yet all this while among so different traverses the world has faln into no decay no Encroachments have been made on Nature nor such inundations on its Inhabitants as to drown any of their specific temperaments or so oreflow any one part of them as not to be recovered in some revolutions does lowdly proclaim and justifie the most wise decretals ef Heaven managing so many dissenting heads and new hands to the carrying on the wonderful business of Providence There is no novelty under the Sun all will still proceed with the measures of a man if we do not put off our own natures and principles For 't is Atheism alone can unhinge all and invert the whole order of things by destroying all opinion of the wisedom and integrity of former ages the happy security of the present and all concerns and hopes for the future But had we a considerative view into the causes actings and terminations of those grand occurrences which first startle then leave us as much careless as unsatisfied we should admire the deep agencies of Providence Did every one but seriously regard the wonders that have signaliz'd a great part of his own private concerns and contingencies the notices arising thence would shew how he had been acted and guided by another hand and intention beside and beyond his own Round about how many notable instances daily break forth to instruct us that Blind Nature alone could not so happily Time and finish her wise mistakes As Embryos we cannot conceive much of the Order and Power of the Intellectual World But I am perswaded much more is done among us by the concurrence of good and Evil Spirits in common converse and Accidents than we imagine or observe Had we an history of those unaccountable remedies which are no small nor unwarranted part of Medicine some from animals other from Vegetables taken inwardly or used as Amulets we should acknowledge a great deal to their benignity or some permitted delusions in their discoveries The Temple of Aesculapius famous for its cures prescribed in dreams and registred into a Dispensatory on the walls therof beside many later remarkables of this nature justifies this my conceit Withal I suppose them very prone if not by rule disposed to concern themselves in all sorts of Offices wherein they may employ their powerful activities and have the pleasure unseen to guide assist and patronize many of our undertakings Many sudden and uncouth friendships antipathies strange deliverances advices in extraordinary distances solutions of intricacies presages and powerful influences upon other Creatures I may favourably refer to their presence and ministery not denying but there are some persons by nature and temper without recourse to an Asterism fitted to wonderful intimations and performances beyond the Vulgar Yet I cannot but admire to see some suddenly grown up into an opinion and repute with the World wonderfully made the darlings of Fortune from one lucky article of an occasion instantly outstripping all others and their own thoughts thrive and prosper to the amazement of all where every one before was defeated and wasted in every enterprize and but petty hazard successful and victorious and all this without anxious solicitudes laborious insudations or more than Common stock of comprehension or contrivance At the same time a person wherein nothing is wanting to the Ornament as well as strength and vigor of Reason and Prudence no defect in industry and Art sinking unfortunate every way oppressed and quite broken in all his designments When I presently reflect on the admonition given Mark Antonie in his competitions with Augustus and that there is more truth and mystery in it than we are aware of and advized by On a due collection you will conclude even where all seems to lay open to the sports and frolikes of Time and Chance a most sure Hand from above beyond our determinations and reaches disposes all events how casual soever in appearance and by many Instruments perhap of some nearer degree of Intellectual Agents From the promiscuous successes and conditions Virtue and Vice are here equally involved in with industry and Imprudence you may as necessarily infer the consequence of a state of life after this where one shall account for the impious abuses of long provoked and most attractive goodness the other meet a remuneration suitable to the exercise of a suffering throughly tryed and perfected integrity To which I may joyn the insatiable thirst the soul of man pants under toward a state of immortality It beholds it self made to distinguish and comprehend the truth and worth of all about it beyond the power it sees any other Creature born unto But there remaining so great a part of it undiscovered upon the Continent as well as wide Ocean of knowledge All the principles hereof also being but precariously and dubiously admitted How does the Soul lay down and bewail it's sad condition finding it's clearest resolves and conclusions subject to cavillation and torture when raising up an appetite large enough to take in the coveted delicacies appearing only as if but to tantalize it But now that doctrine which meets us heated tyred dejected in despair of ever reaching what our greediness has transported us out after how wellcome pleasant satisfactory will it be to us reviving and raising us up again on our feet so as to forget all our past toil and weariness Especially when to the possession of this Terrestrial knowledge It bids us look up to Heaven above and reckon upon the innumerable Lights and worlds of wisdom and understanding there which we are created capable to look and pass into and shall eternally reside under their illuminations We shall suddenly then make up the arrears of the longest lives and an hundred years are brought into as small a point as twenty to the review of a dying person The Philosophy we grope after all the short night of our duration here will I conceive by the first approaches of the light of our never setting day be plain and illustrate to us The First and Wisest of Men had not larger notices of the Creation than the uncaptiv'd Spirit instantly enters upon for that as Adam at first is born and springs forth from it's clay arrayed with the same connate beams of knowledge as of life And the wisdom of Solomon was that Celestial Charisma which in it's very illapses enlarged his Soul to it's reception Thus ennobled the Spirit
which would summon the utmost skill and consort of Music to play his Dormouse asleep or would to Oriental Bezoar and Ambar dissolve Gold and Pearl to maintain a Mole To no higher archievements serve the fair Titles Revenues and Complexions of a great part of Mankind beside these nothing is intelligible about them nor can more be said of them so near to nothing do they shrink whose souls languish under the irreparable decays of tabific inactivity or are broken with pitiful low and sordid lubencies of idle entertainments wholly superseding those brave actions sublime and profitable speculations which would infuse the life of men into them and render them off Men immortal Thus their Heroic Progenitors traced Virtue and Honour through all its intricate and dangerous mazes and this was the ascent they made to that high serenenes where every Pearl of their Coronets was stellified And this only high-way to Happiness is still as open and more delightful than you imagine the common descent to Avernus And indeed it can be no other than the very dregs of Idleness that can sink the spirit or may I not rather say the Sediment of a soul below all handsome action in such an age as we live which pretends to such extraordinary Knowledge and Politeness however must be most famous for those Grand Actions to be enroll'd in it wherein Posterity will imagine none could be born but to some laborious part Had we the generosity which did alway breath with English spirits it would be so far from being extinguish'd in ignoble silence and limited to the narrow stage of our own Iland that it would break forth and display its valour through all parts of the habitable Earth Have we no Messieurs de Villa Fevillade or St. Mont-brun kindled with the sparks of honor that will flie to the succors of that Chistian Garrison before whose walls more blood has been shed than would serve for Cement to a far greater City rather than expire at home as unknown as their Tombs will be to the Candiots Certainly That place is now the fairest Field of Honor which has so long been the Christians strongest shield under their great Captain and Prince against Infidels and it will be worthy learning with how vast expense of Treasure and prodigality of Lives they study to defend their dearer Country And in the long story of that single Siege you will read all the old admired Roman Courage Conduct and Felicity which will be so signaliz'd to after times that our latest Nephews will take a Voyage only to visit its venerable ruines wherein are now inclosed those gallant Souls that have shaken off the softness and stupifying pleasures of Ease with the grim terrors of Death to sacrifice all in so glorious a Quarrel and for the common security Can we lie immersed in wanton Idleness when Christianity is concerned for her battered Bulwarks that suffer again the Siege of Rhodes more nearly and that in such sanguinary Scenes and Tragedies as the very naming them will fright the young Gallants out of the Pit Where being brought by my discourse I do not much admire to see the Theatres crowded with our Idle Spectators the hours here spent are a tolerable exemption from lewder diversions and with some obtain the credit of a School discipline periodic Lectures and Academic exercitations which teach as much gravity and experience as they think can amount to necessary aphorisms to regulate their own lives by and be diagnostic of all others I may not envy the Dramatic Ingeniosos the Empire they here sway over Wit nor the Models they give of the world and the delectable variety in which they serve up the humors that are abroad May the Stage never want a florid Laureat to Chastize predominant Vices and troublesome Follies but so prudently and industriously that they may no longer be fear'd to teach them But I could wish our Nobless would here alway admit the but necessary ceremony of a Taster that they may have its salubriousness approv'd before it take possession of their Stomach and it prove too late for an Antidote But supposing the Stage less dangerous and nauseous than some Pulpits and that every day brought forth a work as consummat as Father Ben's Yet I would advize them against their common frequenting Plays if I took it not as an eviction that they knew no more congruous advancement of their Noble faculties and were burthened with too long and empty parentheses of Time For I conceive whoever transmits his affections to be wrought on by every fiction the Poet engages them in shall in a little time cease to be Master over them and they will be at the command of every passionate Romantique Or they will be so broken or extirpated wholly by such continued and violent efforts that they will altogether be unserviceable if he lose not all the due sentiments of Nature Either of which extreme is so palpable an imbecillity of mind as need not be pointed at for it too easily betrays it self in dayly converse Greater inconveniences you may hear continually nurs'd up at the Stage and fear worse unless it be judiciously purg'd and refin'd But indeed what place time and occasion is not poison'd in a dead Sea of Idleness though they be never so free and innocent in their own disposition Virtue and Generosity it self coming but neer it though but in a volatile thought or Action is suddenly suffocated with the noysome exhalations of this almost Stygian lake I have heard in a very serene Oratory affirmed that two parts of three that are now sentenc'd under unquenchable flames had those first kindled here on earth in the fire of their burning and impure lust However it is scarce dubitable that all those miserable Souls now filling up the regions of darkness did first fit and adopt themselves to that state by contracting a supine torpor and negligence of Spirit For without controversie idleness lets in upon the Soul all the inundation of Vice and is that unhappy plot oregrown with every weed and noxious burthen of the Earth so that as some Gardens are a collection of the choycest and most usesul Plants this becomes a seminary of all the horrid excrescencies can grow out of a Dunghill We indeed see some of active lives and full of businesse fall into exorbitancies of as dismal effects as can be the off-spring of the dullest brain and hours But you may not surmise this the genuine birth of any honorable or necessary employ Those publick spirits were to be commiserated more than they who offered their lives as their Countries Victims of old if there were any fatal connexion of Vice with their Offices which are consecrated as the very Rewards and Asylums of Virtue and are so many Thrones on which she may display and dispense her Soveraign dignity and influences No I must believe any vices nourisht under their protection to be the scrofulae and luxuriant impetigos of fowl humors They will
prove the disease of the person not the office and entrench so much upon the borders of Idleness that you will entertain the greater indignation against that evill which can prevail upon the strongest and noblest constitutions For I grant that person to be fal'n beside his businesse and to have quitted his own Station that is at leisure to contrive and persue his private stratagems of ambition avarice and malice This is a degeneracy and corruption growing upon the Soul by a vacation from his proper intendments of Time and Labor while instead of his attendance on the steerage of the common Vessel the man is so idle as to row forth his own Cock-boat for shells and pebbles But whatever smaller and justifiable gratifications are here to be glean'd up their Country would add their blessing to the heap might it encourage every one nobly endowed to adapt himself and fortunes for the honor and service of the Publick But let this Idlenesse never bear the impudence to steal upon an honorable presence it being as indecorous as to see a rude clown cover'd near the Chair of State And what distance that was to observe at Court the very proud and barbarous Turkish Sultans in their profession and skill of some mechanic art still teach us and we may better learn from our late Glorious Soveraigns Royal mouth that He thought He could earn a Livelyhood were he so low reduc'd by any Trade he knew of but making of Hangings his Clemency will allow you the allusion to any fair fence of the word and his constant instructions to the Nobless craving his permission to travail had this alway inserted to keep the best Company and never be idle May it therefore by so canonized an example be banisht all Societies as that which wherever it comes is sure to shut the man out of doors For 't is the man of businesse gives denomination and life to the world And many an Age will be buried in oblivion as silently as if it had lost an entire succession of mankind and all that was worthy recording Idleness may it once be expell'd I dare promise we shall obviate two calamities which become our mortal afflictions and almost immortal complaints Our unreasonable dissatisfactions and decay of Trade Idle people and such as have none of their own create businesse for all about them and their proper concerns being trivial or discarded those of others to their unexercised apprehensions appear strange and difficult Hence Curiosity the idle mans Mephostophllus posts through the air to catch intelligence and adviso's upon the several emergencies being sure to meet some loose dispatches out of what quarter soever the wind does but breath These still conjure up new perplexities fresh and fantastique conjectures which first creep forth in whispers and night discoveries then more boldly come abroad and stand the censures of their full Burnt-to-water Conventions or higher Club-Assemblies if in private affairs they are insolent and disgustful if on publick their interpolate Jealousies and wildly wise Apothegms every where bring in growing discontents and murmurings not without a miracle indeed can it be expected any thing should please and satisfie them abroad who never knew the Art to make content within and at home But if this ubiquitary medling seem to absolve these kind of persons from Idleness and they will hence be thought as active in the Intelligencies of the spheres and the only they that keep all in motion Those that know what harmony is requir'd to a motion regular and how sure a stop the least dust and check will cause in a fine contrived piece of work will wish them quiet and uninterrupted rest may but the businesse of the sober and industrious part of mankind be removed out of their troublesome Orb. And as to our increase in Riches when every hand and brain promote and incourage a prosperous diligence None are found so idle as to question it though so d sobliging and unworthy of their native Country as to stigmatize and empoverish it with their sloth For sensible will be the decays of that body from which you substract nourishment and exercise the latter whereof mends all the defaults of the former stirrs up a kindly warmth facilitates digestion discusses excrementitious humors purifies and exhilirates the depressed spirits But no more need be added on this tenacious subject than that if your years and quality could get above the dross and dregs of idlenesse so as to lay out your selves vigilantly in the service your Generation calls you unto and may expect of you if Idlenesse be exploded We shall have lesse news and more money stirring Having beheld the Soul under this close and obscure incubation Let us view the brood hatched by ignorance and Folly and the earliest we meet up is PRIDE Breaking thorough the thick shel which hasting to be the first displaying its gay Plumes abroad forgets how much of its nakednesse is exposed and that it ows all its pomp to a borrowed Gawdiness Man enters the world bare and unarm'd all other creatures growing into their furrs shels barks down-quilts and scaly Coats of Mail each of which has as much of defense as ornament Yet none of these but willingly bequeath their spoyls to rob man of his poor Pride who cannot so much as shrowd himself from the injuries of the air but in some of their liveries Yet who but computes the Drapery which curious invention has spun us out of all the parts of the inferiour creation some from its very bowels as fine drawn as the web of Arachne the loom-work of the Brain and the very net of love it self and considers withall how many operose preparations various interweavings and mistures of diff'ring elements meet in the meanest shreds of our Wardrobe must necessarily inser that the whole studies of man were to beguile the Creatures of their designe as if he scorn'd to be indebted to them for what they can never distinguish again to have been their old cast cloaths Or as if he intended in his very attire not contented with the covering of any single Animal to stitch together another Epitome of the Creation for his outside also and in the far distant growth of his gorgeous apparel would array himself daily with a new map of Geography But all this pageantry covers not the miserable inside but like the ragged embroidery of a Beggars patches confessâ—s the wretched poverty within the poor mind neither knowing it self nor any thing beside it self from either of which it would learn humility But Pride is the spawn of Idlenesse and the foam of Ignorance Where ever you meet her give her rather your hat than your tongue for it is unreasonable you should reverence her in any other dialect than that she wears and you will otherwise run the hazard of being understood Is it not a splenetic divertisement to behold two Gallants as formally rigged forth as London Amsterdam or Venice can equip them attaquing each other with
auxiliaries as infernal Spirits are willing to answer hard and terrible words your defiances arm them against you to powr down greater fury to compleat and triumph in your extremest misery But our Gallants plead not so much the ventilation of Passion the explosion only of some fired discontented Spirits by their cursed Oaths where I cannot conceive the Devil for their Example They use them as the Elegancies and figures of speech as necessary as the Ornaments of their dress They are their supplements unto all parts of discourse and Rhetoric Oaths and imprecations file off all rudeness and barbarisms act the full force of perswasion and the very acuteness of a declamation and Satyr They can be as ill layd down by our Nobless as their Muffs in winter so frigid and shrivel'd would their converse be without them They have a way to comprize much of their great minds in this kind of Laconic brevity Their Pages Coachmen and Watermen with but one round mouth'd Ejaculation and a hand toward their sword straight know what they mean and as Spaniels are taught readily execute their pleasure The same again breath'd with a melting accent smooth face and bending body serves in the quintessences of complements and protests of most oblieging friendship and service O depraved times and more degenerate Humanity Is there no way left us to be ingenious and facetious but by obscenities or monstrous abuse of all that is sacred Does Profaneness and contempt of Divinity encircle our Wits with that Laurel which will both dare the Thunderer and evade the blow Then let us yield them immortality and dread the stroaks of their incensed Wit as the vulgar doe the tails of Comets and the multiplication of Suns But if we reflect on the genuine evaporations of these Ingenioso's how like are they to Meteors and Hurricanes of wit rather than fixed stars or the Heaven born placid and fructifying Dew rather lowd foaming forced and angry Torrents than the smooth and Chrystalline stream flowing easily from a pure Fountain of happy invention That which can run with an even uninterrupted vein of fertile ingeny and knowledge thorough all the windings of Art and Nature Sometime emptying it self in the profound speculations of abstruse Philosophy to try the most reaching fathom Anon playing with and turning up the looser sands resting on the sides of the courted shoars crisping its light dividing waves into limpid curls with whispred purling murmurs as if weaving into bracelets and with its studied musick obliging its Muses stay and delight 'T is the facility and fertility of Wit alone can impregnate the most barren Subject make a Garden of a Common contrive an oregrown Forrest into a Grove or innocent Labyrinth cut a rocky Precipice into a delightful Grott and Waterworks and is at no knotty emergency so stopt and plung'd that it needs to call a Deity down upon the stage to make its way open and disembogued Since then the essentials of true wit are of a different Origination and progressions from the Spurious attempts of those who laying their titles so boldly from Heaven are but the monstrous race of Centaurs and far from Demi-Gods Let the Nobles confess their mistake when they find this cloud break in noise and smoak and include no other Juno And may they the more easily quit this superfluity of Vice as what sounds with no other effect than the vanity of Childrens Potguns and Crackers 'T is a wickedness yields so little present satisfaction and may so easily be shut out of all discourse that it is the huge amazement of sober men that any will venture paying dear for so fond a Lubency That converse which would be not only innocent but delightful is often thus orespiced and made too poynant with sprinkling those hot and high Oaths and Curses that our spirits are in danger of the air they breath like needles and launcets piercing a tender and sedate Soul at the same time making the wounds deeper with regrett to be so unhappily bound and sow'd up in a bag with nettles and Wasps This Vice may more decently now also be relinquished as being the Familiar of their very Lacquays the Blazonry of the dregs of the Populace In births cloaths diet diversions and the heightning your pleasures in the melioration of your minds by education and converse in your hopes designs and noble employments you far outstrip all their enjoyments and attempts But here they can Rival I doe not say outvie you in number volubility and as lowd volleys of Oaths and execrations Now it concerns your Honour to retire leave them the sport and quarry which is not worth your Time and does but dishonest your truly noble Entertainments You may here make a most profitable experiment upon the world most docible by Examples that descend You have convey'd this cursed sound through the whole Iland in an instant as in the whispring pipes the Roman wall is said to have carry'd in so long a Traverse Would you might be entreated to change these harsh and terrible sounds into soft and peaceable that the affrighments and Furies those have alarm'd may be appeas'd and we may appear to be seriously busie not tumultuously startled and hurryed together as to an uproar and Riot You may hence inform us whether signal Virtue can be as exemplary as Vice has been by imitation destructive So may you recover the reputation your births have given you above the commonalty and your Faith remain inviolable That your but necessary asseverations upon your Generosity and Honour may be reverenced in your selves and sacred in the esteem of your Inferiours We should now at last be grosly deluded if we expect to find Religion in those Persons we struck at in the series of our discourse For none of those Vices can be the Rule of that Profession we have espoused No softer a word and power than ATHEISM Regulates these mens lives and emboldens their impieties With this Generalissimo of the Powers of darkness this skirmish shall be concluded as that which some glosse the race of man shall at last set and conclude in And now indeed when we see the notion of a Deity usurp'd but as the occult qualities to be derided only and exploded We cannot but find the shadows growing and stealing apace upon us But certainly 't is an affectation of obscurity envelopes us in night and shuts out those raies which cannot but in every point clear up to us the being of a Creator 'T is grosse Ignorance Inconsideration malitious wickedness of the world that dares not will not admit a God into their thoughts to become the Supreme Arbiter of their hearts and lives Therefore they perplex their brains to dispute it off the stage and with far greater anxieties labor to entangle the conception of a Deity than they can so much as suppose in acknowledging their makers infinite perfections For shall fond man whom we every day see crumbling into Earth that knows not his own beginning nor
rises to the dignity of an Empyreal Guest presently as it feels it self unmanacled from dust and above it's distresses and fears finding eternal joys set wide open to him Otherwise it would be a surprize of such amazing happiness enough to make it fall into such a Syncope it left the body in were it not instantly transform'd and adapted with generous instincts of it's Glorious inheritance To demonstrate the quick dispatch of so great a transaction it's means and methods you shall respite me Till you find any one determine the instant and manner of the Souls connexion to the body and the affections it brought with it Or let another tell me how long time he is learning to see and by what degrees he apprehends the benefit and use of light Or a Third when he first knew he had Reason and what was to be done by it Or another shew how an Antipathy or Sympathy immediately break forth and act all their violences without calling the Soul down to Counsel 'T is enough that these and more inconceivable Truths are not only the subject of our rational examinations but shall once be the convictions and experiences of our apprehensions which affords me a wide field of wonder that the unhappy curiosity of our Nature which has I believe drawn many to converse with any order of Spirits Either that they might be satisfied in the being of such Creatures or from them gain some intelligence and notices above ordinary disquisitions do's not produce in us all an extraordinary satisfaction and delight in the knowing that Truth which is our Light and Way to arrive at a blessed Communion and Union with the Father and Fountain of all Spiritual beings I cannot to the highest Speculators urge a greater cogency of their duty to their Creator The very addresses to the Father of our Spirits intimate no less than our return to and quiet in that bosome which delighted to give us a being And to be brought to the knowledge and favor of the most pure Origine of all Spirits as strongly imports our arrival at that Center of Truth and happiness which is the Summe of All that created beings can possibly know or enjoy Neither will your capacities be contracted but as infinite Perfection is the object of your Fruitions so will your Souls emptyed of the burthens and coarctation of incumbring matter be dilated and stretched out into your proportionable entertainments of overflowing Beatitude And what more can any desire than he can enjoy The Soul it self can go no farther because it cannot need not to desire any thing more And those that are in such eager quest of the Cheifest Good and present happiness will find the Soul possessed of uninterrupted Joy and Serenity only as enjoying the favor of the Moderator of all things The quiet content and fixation flowing from this assurance no distractions incertitudes or impediments abroad can intercept or diminish And hence you will have an Argument as full as it's brevity will bear to invite your Soul to trample on all the dross and defilements which steal away your hearts and obstruct your early engrossing of happiness and ascent to Heaven As ignorance is the Parent of Superstition so is Atheism the unhappy birth of Inconsideration That is willing to rest on any thing this repudiates and carelesly rejects all that requires sobriety and attention and this because the inconsiderate will not be at leisure thoroughly to be acquainted with any thing much less themselves Would they be so kind to their own Souls to hear what they can say for their own Original how they derive their Genealogy by Authentic Patents from Heaven above they would not so easily relinquish their Title to it pass away their primogeniture for every ready mess of Vanity Nor do they understand more of the rest of the World and regard all they know as little as if wholly Ignorant of it They live as on a wide open Ocean where every wave and wind commands them from Anchor whither they cannot nor care to learn How 't is with them they cannot inform you nor how they would have it nor what they shall be next day or year much less all their life time While He that own 's a Providence and depends upon it has one certain scope to which he directs all his designs and moderates all his hopes and fears in a certain perswasion of the Divine Wisdom Supremely disposing him and all Events for the best purposes So that among the greatest elegancies and utmost beauty of the Creation nothing is more fair and lovely than the uniform obedience and constant acquiescence of the Good Soul with his Makers Commands and Pleafure to be without the rule and support whereof would be his very Hell as tormenting as it would be destructive to him For 't is that extirpates his doubts and dark ratiocinations to a most satisfactory submission Hence is he that Cube which way soever turn'd still resting on the same equal Square So that he can be as infallible in the conjectures of himself through the many hidden changes of Futurity and whatsoever shall on any juncture occur as he can safely and contentedly judge of his present state of life and injoyment The rest of the world have their minds still under suspense as so many Crows met and hovering over some Carrion Or as a loose flight of Atoms broken and wafting away from them and they left an empty lodging for the next kind gale of a new life and intention For here they live without any determinate and proper designment of life to bind them together they never account with themselves for what purpose they live not what they aim at or where they would rest but from this hast to another delight and so to the next Still upon the wing and still frighted or tyred off from their enjoyments Thus they like meer sensitive beings neither know nor have any other business of life but still to live on as far as they can go in the meer determinations of Matter and Motion Like those Creatures altogether who are but the plainer and ruder pieces of Workmanship to the nobler and most exquisite frame of the body of man they being as it were made but with one single and easie motion but we with the wonderful movements of finer complications of wheels within one another The observation of that Great Luminary of Philosophy and Physic from whose unwearied abilities and penetrations Anatomical I beg leave to borrow one of Singular consideration distinguishing the enginry which our Spirits employ of more special and curious contrivances than are to be found in other animals In his accurate discovery of the use of the Intercostal nerves in the fair branches thereof Communicated to the Region of the Heart He maintains that by these are kept up a continued commerce between the Brain and Heart so that hence are derived advices of each others affections and all the diversity of their phancies and