by that excellent passage Prov. 20. 27 where it is said that the understanding of man is the candle of the Lord. Our soul is God's Image and none can draw that Image but Himself we are the stamp of His divine nature and so can only be formed by Himself who is the glorious Seal From this divine principle that man's soul is made after God's Image I am almost induced to believe that prophesie is no miraculous gift bestowed upon the soul at extraordinary occasions only but is a natural though the highest perfection of our humane nature For if it be natural for the stamp to have impress'd upon it all the traits that dwell upon the face of the Seal then it must be natural to the soul which is God's impressa to have a faculty of foreseeing since that is one of God's excellencies Albeit I confess that that Stamp is here infinitly be-dimm'd and worn off as also we know by experience that men upon death bed when the soul begins being detached by sickness from the bodies slavery to act like it self do foresee and foretell many remote and improbable events and for the same reason do I think predictions by dreams not to be extraordinary revelations but rather the products natural of a rational soul. And if sagacious men can be so sharp-sighted in this state of glimmering as to foresee many events which fall out why may we not say that man if he were rehabilitat in the former state of pure nature might without any extraordinary assistance foresee and prophesie For there is not such a distance betwixt that foresight and prophesie as is betwixt the two states of innocency and corruption according to the received notion which men have settled to themselves of that primitive state of innocency From the same principle may it likewayes be deduced that natural reason cannot but be an excellent mean for knowing as far as is possiible the glorious nature of God Almighty He hath doubtless lighted this candle that we might by it see Himself and how can we better know the Seal then by looking upon it's impression And if Religion and it's mysteries cannot be comprehended by reason I confess it is a pretty jest to hear such frequent reasonings amongst Church-men in matters of Religion And albeit faith and reason be look'd upon as Iacob and Esau whereof the younger only hath the blessings and are by Divines placed at the two opposit points of the Diameter yet upon an unbyassed inquiry it will appear that faith is but sublimated reason calcin'd by that divine chymical fire of Baptisme and that the soul of man hath lurking in it all these vertues and faculties which we call Theological such as faith hope and repentance for else David would not have prayed Enlighten Lord my eyes that I may see the wonders of thy Law but rather Lord bestow new eyes upon me Neither could the opening of Lidea's heart have been sufficient for her conversion if these pre-existing qualities had not been treasur'd up there formerly So that it would appear that these holy flames lurk under the ashes of corruption untill God by the breath of His Spirit and that wind which bloweth where it listeth sweep them off And that God having once made man perfect in the first Creation doth not in His regeneration super-add any new faculty for else the soul had not at first been perfect but only removes all obstructing impediments I am alwayes ashamed when I hear reason call'd the step-mother of faith and proclaimed rebel against God Almighty and such declared traitors as dare harbour it or appear in it's defence These are such fools as they who break their Prospects because they bring not home to their sight the remotest objects and are as injust as Iacob had been if he had divorc'd from Leah because she was tender-eyed whereas we should not put out the eyes of our understanding but should beg from God the eye-salve of His Spirit for their illumination Nor should we dash the Prospect of our reason against the rockie walls of dispair but should rather wash it's glasses with the tears of unfeigned repentance Ever since faith and reason have been by Divines set by the ears the brutish multitude conclude these who are most reasonable to be least religious and the greatest spirits to be least spiritual a conceit most inconsistent with that divine parable wherein these who received the many talents improved them to the best advantage whilst he who had but one laid it up in a napkin And it is most improbable that God would choose low shrubs and not tall Cedars for the building of His glorious Temple And it is remarkable that God in the old Law refused to accept the first born of an asse in sacrifice but not of any other creature And some who were content to be call'd Atheists providing they were thought Wits did take advantage in this of the Rables ignorance and authorized by their devilish invention what was at first but a mistake and this unridles to us that mystery why the greatest Wits are most frequently the greatest Atheists When I consider how the Angels who have no bodies sinn'd before man and that brutes who are all body sin not at all but follow the pure dictates of nature I am induced to believe that the body is rather injustly bamed for being then that really it is the occasion of sin and probably the witty soul hath in this cunningly laid over upon it's fellow that where with it self is only to be charged What influence can flesh or blood have upon that which is immaterial no more sure then the case hath upon the Watch or the heavens upon it's burgessing Angels And see we not that when the soul hath bid the body adieu it remains a carcasse fit nor able for nothing I believe that the body being a clog to it mâ—y slow it's pursute after spiritual obiects and that it may occasion indirectly some sins of omission For we see palpably that eating and drinking dulls our devotions but I can never understand how such dumb Orators as flesh and blood can perswade the soul to commit the least sin And thus albeit our Saviour sayes that flesh and blood did not teach Peter to give him his true Epithets neither indeed could it Yet our Saviour imputes not any actual sin to these pithless causes And seing our first sin hath occasioned all our after sinning certainly that which occasioned our first sin was the main source of sinning and this was doubtless the soul for our first sin being an immoderat desire of knowledge was the effect and product of our spirit because it was a spiritual sin whereas if it had been gluttony lust or such like which seems corporeal the body had been more to have been blamed for it And in this contest I am of opinion that the soul wins the cause because it is the best Orator What was the occasion of the first ill
he carry it upon one shoulder As to my own private judgment which I submitt to my spiritual tutors I think that seing the conscience of man is the same faculty with the judgment when conversant about spiritual imployments as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which imports a knowledge reflexive upon a man 's own self doth abundantly evidence that therefore as there are judgments of different tempers So there are likewise consciences of different frames and which vary as much amongst themselves as natural constitutions do And therefore as the same Dose would prove noxious to one constitution wherein another would find his health So in one and the same act that resolution may be saving to one conscience which may condemn another for seing God hath kindled a torch in each mans breast by whose flame he may see what path he should beat In which sense it is said Prov. 20. 27. That the understanding of man is the candle of the Lord and can that light mislead And seing man must be answerable according to what it prescrives to him doubtless it is fitter that he should hearken to the reiterated dictates of his conscience than to the resolution of any School-casuist and that for the same reason that it is more rational to obey the Law it self than the wisest Lawier who may either be deceived himself or have a design to deceive others For if God hath endued man with every thing necessary for working out the work of his own Salvation with fear and trembling He hath doubtless bestowed upon him an internal touch-stone by whose test he may discern betwixt good and evil seing to command man to walk uprightly and not to bestow on him eyes to see the road were to command a blind man to walk and to punish him if he went astray And as the composure of man's body would be imperfect and manck if he wanted a palate to discern bewixt the tast of what is wholsome or what is putrid So if the soul of man were not able to know its own duty and by the palate of a natural conscience to difference betwixt lawfull and unlawfull certainly the soul might be thought to be but ill appointed Thus beasts are by an intrinsick principle taught their duty and do accordingly shun or follow what is convenient for them without consulting any thing from without And shall man be less perspicacious or more defective then these As also seing man is oftimes by thousands of occasions removed far from the assistance of Chair or Pulpit-informers and in that his retiredness hath most of these cases to be resolved it were absurd to think that he then wants sufficiency of help for their resolution And it is most observable in Scripture that men are oft check'd for quenching the Spirit but never for not consulting Casuists I know it may be thought that when the soul of man rages at sometime in a feaver of lust revenge or some such sin that then the conscience may rave Yet I dare say that albeit the soul out of an inordinat desire to enjoy its own pleasures may set its invention a work to palliat the sinfulness of what it desires yet by some secret knell the conscience sounds still its reproof And I dare say that never man erred without a check from his conscience nor that ever any sinned after an approbation obtained from his conscience of what he was about and when we assent to these Doctors is it not because our consciences or our judgments which are the same assent to what they inform which evidences that our consciences are more to be believed then they by that rule Propter quod unumquodque est tale c. but to convince us of the folly of our addresses to these Doctors It may and often doth fall out that that may be a sin in me which a Casuist pronounces to be none as if my breast did suggest to me that it were a sin to buy Church-lands if thereafter I did buy them it were doubtless a sin albeit my Doctors following the Canons of their particular Church assured me that the sale of Church-lands were no sin in it self I am confident then that this Casuist divinity hath taken its rise from the desire Church-men had to know the mysterie of each man's breast and to the end nothing of import might be undertaken without consulting their Cell perswading men that in ordine ad spiritualia their consciences and consequently their Salvation may be interested in every civil affair And to confirm this it is most observable that this trade is most used by Iesuits and Innovators who desire to know all intrigues and subvert all States whereas the primitive Church knew no such Divinity neither hath its Doctors left any such Volumns It may be urged that seing the conscience is but a reflex act of the judgment that as the judgment is an unsure guid the conscience cannot pretend to be infallible and that the one as well as the other is tutor'd by the fallacious principles of sense and custom And I my self have seen my Lands-lady in France as much troubled in conscience for giving us flesh to eat in Lent as if she had cast out the flesh of a christian to be devoured by dogs and so Atheisme may attribute to custom these inclinations whereby we are acted-on to believe a Deity and may tell us that the Mahumetans find themselves as much prickt in conscience for transgressing their Prophets canons as we for offending against the moral Law And thus the adoring of a Deity might have at first been brooded in the councilchamber of a States-mans head and yet might have been at that time by the vulgar and thereafter by the wisest pates worshipped with profound respects Yet if we pry narrowly into this conceit we shall find in it something of instinct previous to all forgeries possible For what was it I pray you which encouraged or suggested to these Politicians that such a thing as the Deity might be dissembled to their people for their imposing that cheat presupposed some pre-existing notion of it Or how entred that fancie first in their wild heads Or how could so many contemporary and yet far distant Legislators fall upon the same thoughts especialy it being so remote from sense and for framing of which idea their experience could never furnish a pattern Conscience then must be something else then the fumes of melancholy or capricio's of fancie for else roaring Gallants who are little troubled or can easily conquer all other fancies would not be so haunted by these pricking pangs which if they were not infallibly divine behooved to be meerly ridiculous and to want all support from reason or experience There is another fyle of cases of conscience which is a Cadet of that same family and these are such cases as were the brood of these late times which like Infects and unclean creatures may be said generari ex putri materiâ an instance whereof was
RELIGIO STOICI Acts 1. 11. Ye men of Gallile why stand ye gazing up into heaven EDINBURGH Printed for R. Broun 1663. THE STOICK To his CENSURERS I Am by Religion a Protestant and such confide little in merit and by Humour a Stoick and such are most inconcerned in censures Wherefore as I intend to rival none of these who court fame I hope none of these will asperse me and if I obtain truce from them I know none else will attaque me The multitude which albeit it be said to have many heads yet was ever known to have few brains will doubtless condemn me for enveighing against vanity whilst I my self am so vain as to write Books and will pronounce me as ridiculous in this as these Philosophers were of old who denyed motion whilst their tongues mov'd in their cheek to whom my return shall be that finding many even of such as I know will censure me be-myred in the puddle of error I have in this Essay proffer'd them my assistance with an intention not to shew my strength but my compassion I am no such fool as to shew these Philistines the Sampsons-lock wherein my strength lyes which doubtless their cruelty would never spare Others who by their gravity or serious dulness have sublimated themselves above the rabble will possibly accuse my Studies of adultery for hugging contemplations so excentrick to my employment But these may know that thir Papers are but the pairings of my other Studies and because they were such I have flung them out into the streets Neither can I understand how it proves a Lawyer to be remisse in his imployment that he takes leisure to reach a little helebor which lyes by him to such poor persons as because of their phanatick melancholy stand much in need thereof This discourse is intended to be a medicine and such never relâ—sh well nor receive commendation from their pleasantesse but from their profit and are not to be censured by their taste but by their operation There are many things in this small Peece which may seem heterodoxe to such as defie custom and worship the Dagon of authorized tradition Yet who knows but my Watch goes right albeit it differ from the publick Clock of the City especially where the sun of Righteousness hath not by pointing clearly the dyal of Faith declared which of the two is in the right I acknowledge the Church to be my Mother neither will I offer to scratch out my Mothers eyes when they perceive my errors yet I believe that a childe may differ from his mothers judgement in things wherein her honour is not concerned But I will wed no opinion without her consent who is my Parent or if I have wedded any it is in the power of the Church and it's Officials to grant me a divorce I submit my self and this Tractat to her and their censures and desires none to believe me or it but in these things only wherein I believe her and them As for others since I have taken the liberty to write I were unmannerly if I refused them the liberty to censure and really it pleases my humour 〈…〉 see curres bark and snarle at wha 〈…〉 hold out to them G. Mk. THE STOICKS Friendly ADDRESSE To the PHANATICKS Of all SECTS and SORTS THe mad-cap Zealots of this bigot Age intending to mount heaven Elias-like in Zeals fiery Chariot do like foolish Phaeton not only fall themselves from their flaming seat but by their furious over-driving invelop the â—â—rld in unquenchable combustions 〈◊〉 when they have thus set the whole Globe on a blaze this they tearm a new light It is remarkable in Scripture that Jehu who drove furiously and called up the Prophet to see what zeal he had for the house of God was even at that instant doing it more wrong then ever was done to it by unconcerned Gallio who flantingly cared for none of those things And that none of all the apostolick Conclave desired ever fire might rain from above upon mis-believers except the Sons of Zebedee who immediatly thereafter arrived at that pitch of vanity as to desire to sit in heaven upon Christs right and left hand And that Peter who was the first who did draw a sword in his Masters quarrel was likewayes the first who denyed him Firy Zeal blows soon up such combustible mater as the Sons of Zebedee and that flash being spent and evaporat a fall follows as befell Peter As that body is hardly cureable which entertains such ill-suited neighbours as a cold Stomach and a hote Liver So the body of the visible Church may be now concluded to be in a very distempered conditon when it 's Charity waxeth cold and it's Zeal hot beyond what is due to either and these feaverish fits of unnatural Zeal wherewith the Church is troubled in it's old and cold age betokens too much that it draws near it's last period The inconsiderableness likewayes of our differences and inconsideratness wherewith they are persued induces me to believe that the Zeal now a-la-mode is not that holy Fire which is kindled by a coal from the Altar but is that ign's fatuus or wild-fire which is but a Meteor peec'd up of malignant Vapours and is observed to frequent Church-yards ofter then other places I am none of those who acknowledge no temples besides these of their own heads And I am of opinion that such as think that they have a Church within their own breasts should likewayes believe that their heads are steeples and so should provide them with bells I believe that there is a Church-militant which like the Ark must lodge in it's bowels all such as are to be saved from the flood of condemnation but to chalk out it's bordering lines is beyond the geography of my Religion He was infallible who compared Gods Spirit to the wind which bloweth where it listeth we hear the sound of it but knows not whence it comes or whether it goeth And the name graven upon the whit-stone none knows but he who hath it Eli concluded Hannah to be drunk when she was pouring out her soul before her Maker and Elias believed that the Church in his dayes was stinted to his own person and yet God told him that there were seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed their knees to Baal why then should any private Christian determine magigisterially that wherein the greatest of Prophets erred The reed wherewith the Temple was to be measured Rev. 11. 2. was only entrusted to an Angel and yet he had not in commission to measure the Court that was without because it was given to the Gentiles And albeit Rev. 7. the number of the Iews who were saved is determined yet the number of Gentiles is left indefinit and said to be numberless There is nothing more ordinar then for each Nation to confine the Church within themselves And in that Nation again one corner will have themselves the Sanctum Sanctorum of that only Temple
had never refuised our Saviour's yoke because he was commanded to sell all and to give it to the poor Thus likewayes if the rich glutton had dyeted himself according to the scant prescript of their allowance his scoarched tongue had not stood in need of a drop of watter to allay it's thirst Neither had Nicodemus needed to have mantled himself in the darkness of the night when he came to our Saviour out of fear lest he should have been discovered seing their doctrine might have taught him that fear was a passion unworthy to be lodged in the soul of man And that there is nothing here which a man either should or needeth to fear But albeit neither instinct nor faith were able to convince us infallibly of this truth Yet is it both more satisfying and more safe to embrace this opinion then its contrary More satisfying because man's summum bonum here being lodged in the tranquillity of his spirit That which can best plaine and smooth the rugged and uneven face of his frequent and inevitable misfortunes must be doubtless the most carressable of opinions wherefore seing nothing can strengthen so much man's frailty nothing check so soon his dispair nothing feed so much his hope nor animate so much his courage as to believe that there is a God who beareth the heaviest end of all our crosses upon the shoulders of His love who is able to turn or arrest the giddie wheel of fortune by the strong hand of His Omnipotency and who twisteth Lawrels of inimaginable joyes for the heads of these who fight under his banners If a man leaned not his weary soul upon this divine Rest he were not only an enemy to nature but even to his own happiness What rocks of danger could men escape if blind-fortune did sit at the helme and if vertuous persons complain as affairs are presently stated that their merites are not weighed with indifferency enough in the Scales of justice What might be expected if hazard got the ballance to mannage And these who leave their native countries when they perceive that the Law beginneth to render its Oracles in an unconstant Stile and with a trembling voice behooved to leave the world if this Anarchy were by Atheisme established For as a wise Stoick well observed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It were impossible to live in a world void of God and void of providence It is likewayes most safe for if there be a Deity doubtless these obdured Atheists whose obstinacy hath conjured their consciences to a constrain'd silence and brybed these infallible Witnesses to depone what suited best with their wild resolutions or rather neglected resolutly their sincere depositions then certainly the just flames of that God's indignation whom they have disclaimed will heat for them a furnace in hell beyond what the other damned spirits shall meet with in their torture Whereas albeit there be no tribunall from which such a thunder-bolt sentence may be darted nor no supreme Judge by whom our actions shall be canvass'd Then these who have paid their adorations at His altars shall be in no danger Wherefore seing it should be the task of a Virtuoso to turn out all such thoughts as may raise a mutiny in his breast it were a foolish toy in him to entertain Atheisme which is a Nurcery of disquietness for whose breast could enjoy a calme whilst a concernment of so much weight as his externall portion did hing from the weak threed of a mere may be and of such a may be as marches so near with a will not be But if ye would know what disquieting vapours Atheisme sends up to the brain when it is once drunk in go to the horrour creating beds of a dying Atheist whose roaring voice might awake the most lethargick conscience that ever the devil Iull'd a sleep There ye shall know by the Urinal of his eyes and the water standing therein what convulsion-fits his soul suffers and shall learn from his own mouth how grievously his diseased soul is streatched upon the rack of despair then it is that the voluminous Registers of his conscience which did ly formerly clasp'd in some unsearcht corner of his memory are laid open before him and the devil who hitherto gave him the lessening end of the Prospect to survey his sins in turns now its magnifying end to his fearfull eye It should be then the grand design of a Philosopher to order his own breast aright before he go abroad to view the Works of the Creation least if he leave its door unbolted the devil steal from him his richest Jewel whilest he sweats to enrich his contemplation with what is of far less consequence It is no wild fancy to think that Atheisme hath been the product of Superstition for certainly many who were by humour Gallio's finding that Religion exacted from men such inhumane homage to its recognizance as was the sacrificing children amongst the Heathens wearying Pilgrimages and hectick Lents amongst Christians did resolve rather to deny than to adore such Deities Thus Lucretius revolted upon Agamemnon's sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia for the grecian safety crying out Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum And thus Petronius Arbiter a monck of the same Cell says that Primus in orbe deos timor fecit fulmina coelo Cum caderent And to prevent this our Saviour doth oft inculcat that His yoke is easie and His burden is light And doubtless as the straightest line is alwayes the shortest So the most rational designes are alwayes easilyest effectuated and as Seneca hath excellently observed Licet Deus non esset tamen non peccarem ob peccati vilitatem There is something of meanness in the gallantest and most alluring sin And this is most energetically exprest in Scripture whilst it is said that the wicked weary themseles by their sins A principle which not only the magisterial Authority of God's Spirit but our experience likewayes places above the reach of all scruples for are not the inquietuds the cheats and palliated parricids and sacriledges brooded by ambition the churlishness and close-handedness parented by avarice effects unworthy to be father'd upon any rational soul And at which we should scarlet our cheeks with blushes as well as â—npale them through fear and should stand as much in awe of our consciences as most do of a Deity Yet it may be we are in a mistake whilst we place Superstition in the excess of such adorations as are either commanded or indifferent for seing the object of our adorations God Almighty is in Himself infinit we can never exceed either in our respects to Him or in the expression of them Excess being only admissible where the object is finit and where we attribute mor then is due which can never be here Thus if Kneeling be lawfull at any occasion I hardly see why it is not lawfull to kneel at all occasions And if these exteriour rites and ceremonies some whereof are allow'd in all Churches
souldiers who by abandoning him would fetch his prosperity away with them they had reason therefore to terme his fortune Frail and exposed to hazard Thus the advancement of the restless Courtier is uncertain because it hings from the humor of his Prince whose spirit hath some allay of unconstancy as well as hath that of the fearfull subject who trembls under his Scepter And thus the oyl-consuming Student can promise himself no applause because the paralytick hand of the multitudes fancies holds the scales wherein his abilities are weighed In fine fortune was nothing to these Ancients but the unbodyed freedom of man's will considered abstractly from all particular persons and the innate qualities of all other creatures which because they are mortal must therefore be changable then which nothing is more inconstant nothing more blind The other branch of divine Providence which consists in the supreme Authority whereby God makes all humane inclinations run sometime against the byasse of their specifick nature was by them termed fate And this in their mythologie they fabled to be an Adamant chain which they fastned to the foot of Iupiter's chair meaning by its adamantine nature that it was hard to be brok like the Adamant and by fastning it to Iupiter's chair that it was the product of the Almighty's power Thus fortune and fate were to them but the right and left hands of christian providence These embodyed angels the Stoicks finding that fortunes megrim could not be cured nor fates decrees rescinded and yet resolving in spight of all external accidents to secure to themselves a calmness of spirit did place their happiness in the contempt of all these follies whose blossomes fortune could not blast and sought for happiness in an acquiescence to all which providence did unalterably decree So that neither fortune nor fate could stand in the way of their happiness because they slighted the one and submitted to the other And in this sense each man in their schools was admitted to be Master-of-work to his own fortune and that without disparaging the omnipotent power of the great Fortune-maker in submission to whom their happiness was plac'd Albeit the knowledge and acknowledgment of a God be the basis of true Stoicisme and a firmer one then any the Heathens could pretend to Yet that knowledge of Him which by the curiosity of School-men and the bigotrie of Tub-preachers as now formed in a Body of Divinity is of all others the least necessary and the most dangerous And whereas we did see God but in a Glass formerly that Glass is now so misted and soyl'd by each Pedant's flegmatick breath that it is hard to see Him at all but impossible to see Him there And to extend a little that mysterious analogy we are said to behold God here as in a Glass and as objects are best percieved in the smoothest mirrors So the plainest descriptions of Him are still the truest for when He is seen by Atheists in the globe-glass of their infidelity He appears less then really He is when beheld by the Pagans in the multiplying Glass of Paganisme He appears many and when He is look't upon in the magnifying Glass of Superstition though He appear but one Yet He is misrepresented because He is represented as more terrible then He desires to appear and ordinarily the better cut Glasses are and the more artificiall the worse the face is by them represented That first Curse which did sowe all the world with briers and thorns did of all other things fall most heavily upon the soul of man Which because it was chief in the transgression ought in reason to have been most tortured in the punishment And now his disquieted spirit is daily pierc'd with the prickles of thornie disputes and debates which as like briers they produce no fruit fit for alimenting that noble half of man which is his rational soul So do they like thorns pierce his tender conscience and to screw his torments to their highest pinn the thoughts of God and of settlment in Him which like balme should cure these sores is become that hemlock which occasions his distractions and poysons his meditations For albeit the Heroes of the primitive Church did give milk in abundance to Infant-christians Yet many of their successors have mixt it so with the tart vinegar of contention that that milk beginns now to crudle and so is become loathsome to the appetite of tender believers For most of Church-men being idle and concieving that if they taught only the holy Scriptures their vocation might by Laicks be undervalued as easy and that they would be denyed that applause which was due to quaintnesse of wit especially in a setled Church wherein Church-men could not draw reverence from the people by Oracles as did the heathen Priests nor by prophecies and miracles as did the Servants of the most High under the old and new Testaments Did therefore according to their private inclinations frame each to himself a new kind of Divinity The more pragmatick sort and these whose humour was edged with choler invented polemick or controverted divinity And so by an intestine and civil war of opinions raised within the bowels of Religion did waste and pillage that holy Canaan which formerly slowed with the milk of sincere Doctrine and the honey of divine Consolations And then that precious blood which formerly purpled only pagan-scaffolds dyed now the swords of fellow-believers who to propagate their private judgment buried Churches under their rubbish fed the birds of heaven with the carcases of pious and reverend Church-men and by the mad hands of bigott opiniastrity brok to pieces all the sacred bonds of natural and civil duties and thus they raised the devil of contention whom they could not lay again and made this Itch of disputing turn the Scab of the Church Others again in whose brains sullen melancholy form'd phantomes and ideas invented scolastick Theology and these in abstract cells erected a Mint-house for coyning the dross of their own contemplations into wonderfull bombast notions and to make them go current in the suffering Church gave them the impressa of Theology A third sort not able to soare their pitch in the sky of Invention resolved to set up a correspondence with heaven and this they called enthusiastick or inspired Theology And their Cabbins were Post-houses where one might know what was resolved lately in the conclave of heaven whether the King or Parliament was to wear the Lawrels and what should be the issue of our pious rebellions These could likewise cast the horoscop of your salvation and invented a species of Physiognomy whereby they could tell if the marks of Grace dwelt upon a face and if one had the traicts of an elect child of God After this fashion did they prophesie their own fancies and call that Providence only which made for them There wants not some likewayes who out of a well meaning desire to make the lamp of truth darte its rayes with
not willing to bring him home till by the preceeding Creations He had plenished his house abundantly for him And albeit in the creation of all other creatures it is only said that God spoke and it was Yet when man was to be framed the cabinet Council of heaven was call'd and it is said let us as if more art had been to be shewed here then in all the remanent Fabrick of the terraqueous Glob and glorious Circles of heaven It is likewise very observable that albeit all the fishes of the sea were formed by one word all the beasts of the field by one act c. Yet God was pleased to bestow two upon the creation of man by the first his body was created out of the dust and thereafter was breathed in his soul. And albeit transient mention is only made of all other Creations yet the history of mans Creation is twice repeated once Gen 1. 27. and again 2. 7. And least that foreseen deformity wherewith he was to be besmear'd after his fall should make it be questioned that at his first creation he had received the impressa of God's Image this is oft repeated For in the 26. ver Gen. 1. it is said Let us make man in our image and then again and after our likeness And in the 27. verse So God created man in his own image and again immediately thereafter in the image of God created he him Yet I am confident that this image is so bedabled in the mire of sin and so chattred by it's first fall and this divine impressa and print so worn out by our old and vicious habits that if this genealogy had not been so oft inculcat we could not but have called it in question albeit our vanity be ready enough to believe a descent so royal and sublime Wherefore I must again admire the folly of Atheists who by denying a Deity cloud their own noble birth-right But albeit man be made after God's image yet that can be no argument to conclude that therefore God may be made after man's image or represented under his figure as the Anthropomorphits foolishly contend no more then if we should conclude that because a Copy may be taken off an Original therefore an Original may be taken off a Copy Neither is this representation salv'd from being idolatry by alleaging that the image is not worshiped but God who is represented by it For it hath been well observed by an ancient Father that idolatry in Scripture is called adultery And it is no good excuse for an adulteress that she did ly with another because he represented her husband to her and resembled him as a Copy doth it's Original Yet seing nothing is room'd in our judgment and apprehension but what first entred by the wicket of sense it is almost impossible for man to conceive the idea of any thing but vested with some shape as each man's private reflections will abundantly convince him As the boundless Ocean keeps and shews it 's well drawn images whilst it stands quiet with a face polisht like a christal cake but losses them immediately how soon it 's proud waves begin to swell and in rage to spit it's froathy foam in the face of the angry heavens so whilst a stoical indolency and christian repose smooths our restless spirits it is only then that the soul of man can be said to retain that glorious image of God Almighty with which it was impress'd at it's created nativity But when the waves of choler begin to roar or the winds of vanity to blow then that glorious image is no more to be discerned in him then the shadows and representations of in-looking objects are to be seen and discerned in the disquieted bosom of the troubled waters The stings of a natural conscience which according to each mans actings creats to him either agues of fear or paradises of joy do by these ominating presages convince us of the immortality of the soul and seing we see its predictions both in dreams in damps of melancholy and such like enthusiastick fits followed by suteable events why may we not like wayes believe its predictions as to its own immortality it being the prudence of a Virtuoso to lay hold of every mean which may allay the rage of his hereditary misfortunes And to what end would the soul of man receive such impressions of fear and hope if by its mortality it were not to be stated in a condition wherein its fears and hopes were to have suteable rewards or punishments Moreover seing God is just He will punish and reward and therefore seing He punishes and rewards not men according to their merits or demerits here there must be doubtless a future state wherein that is to be expected But that which convinces my private judgment most of this truth is that the noblest Souls and the sharpest sighted do of all others most desire the state of separation and have the weakest attaches to this life which must doubtless proceed from an assurance of immortality and that it hath from the Pisgah of its contemplation got a view of the spiritual Canoan For seing the brutishest of creatures abhors annihilation as the most aversable ill in nature doubtless the soul of man which is the most divine of all creatures would never appete this separation if by it it were to be extinct and to be no more And how absurd were it to believe that man's soul should be made after God's image and yet conclude it mortal a quality repugnant to any thing that is divine As also how can the soul be thought to perish with the body seing these accidents which destroy the body cannot reach it how can the heat of a feaver burn or rheums drown that which is not corporeal and cannot be touched And seing man's least peccadilio against God Almighty is against one who is infinit were it not absurd to think that it could be proportionally punished in the swift glass of man's short life then which nothing is more finit or sooner finished As the soul is God's Image So it's products are the images of His admirable operations Do not Mathematicians creat eagles doves and such like automata's And spring not flowers from the Chimists glasses And thus art which is man's offspring doth ape nature which is the workmanship of the Almighty and therefore seing the soul can with one thought grasp both the Poles can dart out it's conceits as far as the furdest borders of the imaginary spaces creat worlds and order and disorder all that is in this which is already created it 's strange to think it to be either corporeal or mortal For if it were corporeal and a mass of blood it's actings would be lent and dull neither could it's motions be so nimble and winged as are these of our agile spirits It were impossible for our narrow heads to inn all these innumerable idea's which are now in them if these were all corporeal and if these