herein This then is the Eternity of God his always alike Being infinitely Happy infinitely Blessed This is the Eternity of Jesus Christ the Son of God the Son of God eternally begotten that though he proceeded and came forth from God the Father yet he made no new Date no Beginning Eternally begotten without the least shadow of turning to denominate Time as the Creatures do by Beginning but as a Beam from the Sun as soon as it is making no new thing in the Sun or as Apprehension from the Mind as soon as the Mind is or as the immediate Image and Likeness of the Face as early as the Face is thus and infinitely more even incomprehensibly is Christ the Son of the Father coeternal with him This is the Eternity of the Son of God but what is the Fathers Name or what is his Sons Name in Eternity none Pro. 30. 4. can tell for who can declare his generation but Before all things that were made and by being made made a Beginning before all things that beginning to be cast the shadow of Time even before all things is the Col. 1. 17. Saviour of the World that is he is Eternal Indeed as he is the Son of Man he gave great and the greatest Characters to Time it hath the richest Aera and Epochs it hath His Incarnation in dating it self from which Latter Time glories and triumphs His Death and Passion his Resurrection and Ascension His Appearance the second time from Heaven to give a Period to Time Thus as the Son of Man he hath enrich'd and ennobled Time But as the Son of God he onely governs Time that is the Things of Time and changes Times and Seasons by setting up and pulling down what he pleases whence Time is variously imboss'd but by any Change in himself he doth not give the least Shade of Time The Eternity of Angels is much below this perfect this absolute Eternity for they had a Beginning they came out of the State of Not Being into Being but this of Eternity they have that their Being given them continues for ever lasts for ever Indeed even this Duration is not by any necessity of Nature as in the Son of God the onely begotten of the Father for he can neither have begun to be begotten nor cease to be begotten but it must make a Change in God a substantial Change Thus also incomprehensibly stands the Eternity of the Divine Spirit proceeding Eternally from the Father and the Son But the Everlastingness of Angels hath its certainty from the Purpose of God unchangeable concerning it Further Their Eternity is not like to the Eternity of the Divine Being the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit in that as they receiv'd a Beginning so there was a Space wherein their Condition was alterable as appears by the Fall of some and the generally receiv'd Confirmation of others And that it is alterable in Degrees may be argued by their daily increase in Knowledge Additions to which Good Angels receive from the Church while they stoop down to look into the things of the Gospel daily Experience in both sorts Increases of Glory to the Holy ministring Spirits as a Reward of their Ministry Aggravations of Punishment to the Fallen Angels for their many and great Hostilities to God his Son and Servants The Complement therefore of either State is not till the Day of Judgment be past These things already spoken lead to the Description of the Eternity of the Souls of Men consisting in three things 1. That they shall continue for ever in Being the unchangeable Decree of God upholding them in a never-ending Existence 2. That the Substance of their Condition shall never be alter'd upon which account the Scripture often speaks of a For Ever as a Happiness incorruptible and that fadeth 1 Pet. 1. 4. not away on the other side of Eternal Punishment of a Worm that never Mat. 25. 46. Marc. 9. 44. dies a Fire that is never quenched All which speak as much as Words can convey to us such an unchangeable State 3. There is no Interruption or Alteration in the Degrees of their State there are no Marks of Distinction that these Souls should say Now more happy now less happy Now more miserable now less miserable But as highest Delight takes away all sense of the Motion of Time in this Life as sense of extreme Pain makes an Hour like an Age how much more in Eternity does the Perfection of Happiness and the Extremity of Misery the substantialness and absoluteness of either State swallow up all Notes of Distinction God is no more Happy by any addition of Moments we suppose in the Duration of his Happiness I say we suppose for indeed he is his own Happiness and his own Duration So in proportion this State is its own Duration Heaven one intire united Moment of endless Delight Hell of Misery 1. Now this State of the Souls of Men in Eternity arises first from the fitness such a Nature as Mans Soul is of that is a Spiritual Nature as I have already discours'd to be Everlasting A Nature which God hath with Infinite Wisdom and Power contriv'd to be a resemblance of himself Thus the Heavens as they are more durable are also of choicer Matter and less corruptible than other Parts of the Creation And those things that by God are design'd for For Ever are made so perfectly agreeable to their State that they need not be altered as if a Vessel of purest Metal were made so substantial that it could suffer no change in the Quantity Weight Figure Oriency of it either by Fire Hammer or the several Accidents that fall out in length of Time nor that there could be so much as a possible Reason to desire the change of it 2. From the Will of God and his unchangeable Decree that it should be so which he makes good and effectual by continually feeding these Beings with Eternity that is from himself he sends them all the Powers of Life and Motion So that to ask When shall these Souls and the several States of them in Happiness or Misery have end is to ask When will a Stream be dry that is fed by a Fountain that can never be exhausted nor the Supply of it be possibly cut off from that Stream His Favour is an Eternal Principle of Life and Blessedness His Presence of Wrath and the Glory of his Power set against us is as great a Source of Misery and Torment While therefore he will uphold our Beings and Faculties and keep up their Motion so long they must be and while he pleases either to shine out graciously upon us or to dart against us the Lightning of his Displeasure so long we must be either happy or miserable And when either of these is done to the height and perfection of either as they are in the World to come then according to the Revelation of his Will guided with that Wisdom by
and more especially as they are Divine and relate to God Because the knowledge of the Things themselves is most lost and the Understanding so cramp'd concerning them To be able therefore in such Treaties to speak so as to compare Spiritual things with Spiritual that is to observe the Decorum Spiritual Things require to be spoken with there is necessary the Divine Revelation of Scripture and the assistance of the Holy Spirit For so to speak is that Divine Vtterance or Elocution which the Apostle joins with Knowledge and magnifies as an Act of Grace to Fallen man in order to his Recovery derived from Jesus Christ the restorer of Humane Nature and is in various degrees distributed to the professors of Christianity and conveyed to them in the diligent Exercise of themselves in Sacred Writings 2. The Dulness and Inattentiveness of Hearers makes things hard to be interpreted especially things of great Retreat from ordinary Apprehension We cannot speak them plainly enough to make people conceive of them so as to be affected with them Yet notwithstanding we having so often occasion to converse with these great Sounds A Soul An Immortal Spirit and its Eternal State there is as great an obligation to search the Things as far as we can lest they appear to us no more than great sounds without as great a Substance whereas indeed their Substance and Reality exceeds their Sound how great soever And to encourage us in this most industrious search we are first to oppose to the Difficulty this Consideration That it is not so much the Unintelligibleness of the things themselves as the want of a due Intention of Mind in our inquiries as also an humble application of our selves to the Divine Assistance that makes it so hard to speak and hear of these Spiritual Subjects as Wise men and Christians For Discourses of them made up of such words as the spirit of God teaches jointed and put together by the same Wisdom and then aright received how significant and potent would they be how clearly representative to the Understanding how perswasive upon the whole Soul And seeing in these things we have a kind of natural Knowledge and Experience like Natural Arithmetique and Mathematiques which yet being adorn'd and cultivated by Art are much improved but especially because we have the Word of God so great a light to our feet and lamp to our paths in our Discourse concerning them and the promise of the Blessed Spirit to assist our Inquiries into Truth There is great reason of Confidence the closer our Researches and the more industrious our Explanations of the things are the brighter our apprehensions and the more prevailing our Knowledge of them will grow so as to enlighten and perswade others also Committing then this Undertaking to Divine Assistance I have chosen this great assumption of Elihu concerning Man to rest this Discourse upon There is a Spirit in Man and the Inspiration of the Almighty giveth him Vnderstanding Not that the Soul of Man and its excellent Nature deriving it self in Creation from God inspiring it is precisely and in the first place here intended or the original proceeding of the Finite Vnderstanding from the Infinite But the mighty Vigor and Force of this Spirit stirred up by God and the Understanding acted to the Height by a more gracious inspiration enlivening assisting and setting it on work in some peculiar persons and to some peculiar ends and employment is that which this Eloquent Reasoner immediately means and hath a particular respect to himself in it as notably assisted by God in his following Discourses Yet it plainly appears he alludes to that History of the First Creation the Tradition of which all Wise and Good men had conveyed and assured to them by undoubted Monuments for it very much agrees with and resembles that relation There is a Spirit in man says Elihu a mighty and Gen. 1. 26. excellent Spirit In the Image and Likeness of God as Moses describes it And the Breath of the Almighty giveth him understanding as Elihu speaks Which in the words of Moses is thus expressed God breath'd into his Face Gen. 2. 7. the Breath of Life and Man became a living Soul That Inspiration gave that Soul of Life whose Nature is Vnderstanding or Intellect and its Life Rational and Intellectual And herein rest fundamentally those extraordinary Vigors of which Elihu here speaks when God by a secondary Donation and Grace enables this Spirit and Vnderstanding to act like it self and to appear as it is For all excellent motions of Soul inspired by God into eminent personages are but Fairer Exemplifications of Creation and the Vniversal Nature of mans Soul So that while Elihu intends something further he assures the main position That Man in general hath a Great Spirit or Soul in him and an Vnderstanding or Intellect given him by immediate inspiration from God in Creation To give then a description of this Great Soul of man as a foundation of the whole Treaty concerning it I shall do it under these three following Heads 1. As it is considered in its substantial and Essential Nature and so I describe it An Invisible Spirit and Immortal made in the Image and Likeness of God and nearly allyed to Angels the very Nobleness and Excellency of mans Being above Brutes and Common matter 2. As it is to be understood in its immediate Emanations and Motions of it self and so it is An Intellectual Light indued with all the powers of Rational and Moral Action It is that by which a man breaths in the free and open Air of Reason and Intelligence It is the principle of such Action as is far above sense for if rightly ordered it bears the lofty Characters of Good Holy Virtuous and because it cannot sink upon a Common level if disorderly and irregular it carries the black indeed but Tremendous names of Sin Wickedness Vice 3. As it is to be known in its Resentments and so It is that which tastes and enjoys all Good or feels and endures discerns and perceives Evil and Misery If that be well the whole is well If that be wounded and in Torment there can be no Ease or Remedy And it is prepared to be a Great and Ample Receipt of and a most vehement Agent in its own Everlasting Happiness or Misery This Soul is that which is Eternally Happy or Miserable And though this Spirit be hid in the Body and the Body seems to be All yet it can indeed do nothing nor feel any thing but as the Soul does by it and this Body because as it is now it is an Instrument unfit is laid aside in Death without any prejudice to the Souls Action or Resentment but to the unspeakable Exaltation of it and at last a Body more fit for its use is given to it and which is every way proportion'd to its state whether of Happiness or Misery Now whosoever shall well weigh and consider this Soul will stand
to be always conformed to that exemplar shine forth together the created in subordination to the increated Of all which Body is altogether insensible and utterly incapable In the original therefore of man there is according to Scripture a clear distinction betwixt Spirit and Body 2. That the Scripture doth plainly own the distinction of the Soul from the Body in a state of conjunction with it I argue especially from the powers of mind and the actions of those powers wherein are laid and to which are directed continually all the Discourses and those pressing Reasonings Exhortations Admonitions and Reproofs we find in sacred Writings These powers according to the universal speech of mankind it calls Vnderstanding Faculty of Reason Conscience Judgment and the actions proceeding from these it names Thought Apprehension or Perceiving Consideration Reasoning Accusation and Apologie or Defence of Conscience Judging of Things and all these powers working out into these acts it comprehends in this word the Spirit of man and unites these acts with it speaking of these powers as the Essence of a man and of the acts as most connatural to that Essence to which also every mans knowledge and feeling within himself give as clear testimony and as full as the parts of Body give of themselves to Sense For the Spirit of a man knows the things of a man within him Now it is plain All these things are most improper to Body or so much as a brutal Spirit especially when they lift up themselves to the sense of a God and extend themselves to religious concernments when they receive those high proposals of the Gospel and Mysteries that lye out of the whole region of Sense so that though the organs and instruments of the body are sometimes spoken of and to in these cases yet it is only upon this account because they are such as by which the mind acts or are symbols and representations of this rational sense and motion These things being then so well known and every where met with in inspired Writings they are as great a demonstration of their consciousness to another greater and more excellent Being in man than Body as can be required seeing Body hath no fitness nor possible sublimation to these things that Scripture so wholly insists upon in relation to man There must be therefore another man a more excellent man within or else all thus spoken must have been in vain such powers and actions cannot be ascribed originally to the most excellent temper of Body or Tune of motions but must have a proper and peculiar substance to reside in and that whatever any one else will call it is that Scripture and common speaking calls Spirit And this being so plain and clear and of so general consent the Scripture without any industry as in a case presumed speaks of Spirit as one thing and Body as another distributes 1 Thess 5. 23. man into Body Soul and Spirit Body is well enough known Soul is either Spirit as it contains within it self the faculties of sensitive nature and takes the Government of them upon it self and the care and feeling of things that concern Body and the life of it or as it moves in the most excellent parts of Body that mediate betwixt body and mind and are fittest for the more immediate motions of Spirit in Body and so called Spirits Spirit is pure mind exalted to its own objects and the highest of those objects Divine Things This Spirit is that Inward Man holy 2 Cor. 4. 16. Writing speaks of renewed and repaired every day not in its substantial nature but in gracious and heavenly qualities of which it is the only residence and receipt and which are its true health and strength Lastly In this distinction of Soul and Body is founded that excellent discourse of the Apostle Rom. 8. 5 6 7 8 9 10 11. of Being in the flesh and in the Spirit of being carnally minded or of the carnal mind and of being spiritually minded or of the spiritual mind By which on one side he describes this mind allured and drawn down to Body and Flesh which comes to pass first through nearness to Body and closest sympathy with all those natural and sensitive motions which it self inspires Body with but chiefly by degeneracy the Soul comes to feel it self and places its enjoyments wholly in flesh and makes that the Center of its reigning passions and affections and so it self becomes carnal and sensual and cannot please God On the other side is described Mind lifted up above Body and out of Flesh by Grace and the Divine Spirit to an inseparable adherence to God and Christ and eternal things to which it advances its own motions in Body also presenting them a living and acceptable Sacrifice which is the rational service of a man consisting of Soul and Body Thus the Flesh and the Heart together cry out for the living God In the mean time this Spirit of the mind subdues and restrains its own motions arising from unholy Bodily inclination and affection Now to be carnally minded is death The mind unpurged and glued to Body dyes in that sense a Spirit can dye that is a death of separation from God and deprivation of Divine Beauty and Happiness and the Body whose ministery it uses and makes it the seat of its carnal pleasures and sensualities perishes also leaving no possible satisfaction any longer from them and yet that Body because it was the Body of that unpurged Soul and retains its order to it remains guilty and foul dust and rises again so that the Soul may suffer and its misery may be seen in a Body even as it sinned in Body which is the second death But to be spiritually minded is life and peace For Mind renewed and made the habitation of the Holy Spirit and its righteousness cannot it self dye no not as Spirits dye because of that blessed and immortal allyance for it lives in the enjoyment of God likeness to him lively motions of it self in all goodness and blessedness And though the Body is dead that is is under the sentence of death to be unavoidably fulfilled in the separation of the Soul from the Body upon which the Body becomes a dead lump and further it must dye that the Soul may obtain a perfect purification from sin which it cannot have while cemented with Body sin being so lodged in that Cement that there can be no perfect purification till that Cement be dissolved Then when that Cement is dissolved the separated Soul becomes perfect Spirit and Divine through the almighty efficacy of the Divine Spirit resiant in it and bearing it up to the perfection of the Divine life for ever Thus the Spirit is life because of righteousness And if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you he that raised up Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you That is The Body that
turns them for Creation Conservation or the Change of Things as he pleases What is his Favour or Displeasure but the highest Efficacies of Kindness or Severity of Joy unspeakable and full of Glory or of weeping and wailing without all ease or remedy How do all Spirits Good and Holy cast their Crowns before him and laud him with eternal Acknowledgments of both their Being and Happiness to his Grace and Goodness and Acclamations to his Praise And that Stream from himself that feeds with Being and Spirituality those so unhappy and wretched Spirits deposed from their Glory and Perfection necessitates them to survive the Instances of his Justice and Holiness to the admiration and everlasting wonderment of the Blessed yet with profoundest Reverence of unstain'd Holiness and their own astonishment and horror without end 2. If the Soul is a Being so excellent how foul is Sin that defiles it like a Poyson that presently darkens a Diamond or infects the very Beams of the Sun or soils the Light We should ever resist Temptations to sin with the sad consideration of defiling so excellent and immortal a Spirit 3. It shews how excellent the Price must be that redeems such a Spirit Great is the Redemption of the Soul by Christ the Renovation of the Soul by the Holy Spirit 4. We should consider this Spirit that though now it is enclos'd in the Body yet seeing it is prepar'd to much higher and more excellent motion it must burst out it cannot be always held it must have a freedom that it may expatiate it self Else so great Powers having so little Action now must have been prepar'd in vain 5. We should meditate much upon this great Character of a Spirit It cannot die It is so it-self that it cannot die It s very Being is Intellect Life and Motion so that it cannot cease to live except it cease to be God who alone hath power over it hath design'd it to be for ever and fram'd it for perpetuity and so that it can have no Adversary of its Life or Being It is so separate from all things else that nothing of Body can come near its Essence or Life What Sword or Fire can cut off or consume Thought much less the Soul the Original or Spring of it What most subtle thing in Nature can destroy the Affection of Love or Fear much less so attaque the Judgment or Reason as forcibly to suppress them They can kill the Body but they have no more that they can do No created Spirit how principal soever can come near the Being of the lowest orbed Soul thus to touch it Sathan the great Enemy of Spirits knows this so hopeless an attempt as never once to plot it All his intendments against Humane Spirits are onely to sway them to Evil and so precipitate them into Misery but yet they cannot be master'd by the highest Archangel so much as in the Government of themselves except they surrender and betray their own Absoluteness One Spirit may imprint Thought upon another offer Argument endeavour to induce Affection but the Soul is at its own choice for acceptation and whether it accept or not its Being is still the same its Power of Self-reservation the same so double-guarded is the Soul in this great Privilege of being It self Guarded in its Essence or Life guarded in its Liberty and Freedom which argues it a Being of greatest account Now in that it must always live Holiness and Happiness the enjoyment pleasure and perfection of its Life are with greatest earnestness and upon greatest necessity to be sought Sin and Misery such a degradation of its Life that the Scripture calls them Death are by all means to be avoided and escaped from And seeing it hath a Secret of its own Freedom that no Spiritual Principality or Power can enter into or invade it can onely charge its Ruine upon it self But in the Supreme Spirit God himself is all its strength who perpetuates his first Inspiration maintains its Immunities guides its Motions aright when it had lost it self redeems it from that great Enemy-Spirit by his Son the Lover and great Friend of Souls governs it by his own Holy and Good Spirit and is the Happiness and Glory of it for ever Oh the care that is due to such a Soul as this A care due from it self to it self yet miserably neglected by it self in its true self for it self as engag'd in a Body out of which it is yet always hasting and leaves it in death it self being in greatest danger of a death exceedingly worse though of another nature in the bringing about of which the malice of Hell is always busie and employ'd chusing that as a much higher effect of its spite and cruelty than Annihilation if it had been within the Power of Devils to turn a Soul into nothing 6. Lastly What unspeakable Sentiments of Happiness or Misery doth a self-moving a self-communicating Spirit enter into when it enters into its own place For there it meets those immense Objects God his Favour or Displeasure the true appearances of Sin and Holiness the General Assembly of Spirits happy and miserable with their universal and endless Condition It self appearing to it self in its full extent of Nature Duration and Relation to all these Now its self-motion and self-communication which are its very Being and therefore perfect in its own native Element are active to the highest Self-motion turns it every way with unutterable swiftness upon these Objects and Self-communication makes all its own converts unintermittingly all its Observations upon them into most beatifying or afflictive Resentments according to the Order it stands in to those Objects of Happiness or Misery Two principal Accounts of the Soul of Man are now dispatch'd the first of Invisible Beings the second of the Nature of a Spirit in which I laid down for a Ground That the Right apprehension of the Divine Nature and Being is the Key of the Knowledge of Mans Soul As therefore I endeavour'd to explain those two Points by it so I come now more fully to pursue the Resemblance the Soul of Man hath with God and in this next place to speak of it in the Potency Force and Excellency of its Being and Faculties first taking occasion to make this industrious Reflexion upon the Souls likeness to God It is an usual Observation That every Creature resembles God in that very regard that it hath a Being however obscure it be and the more any Creature advances in Being the clearer the Representation of God till the Scale of Creatures leads us up to those that God hath exalted into the nearest likeness to himself that Created Natures are capable of and these are Rational Spirits Angels and Souls of Men of which Angels are a higher Order and at greater Freedom being out of Bodies and the Souls of Men a lower Order being under the disadvantage of Bodies yet in themselves like to God and like to Angels Now it is the Privilege
the Soul quick of apprehension that presently enlarges much further upon it and many Instances there are of those who have cut their own way to Knowledge and such a one as hath been altogether untrodden before them Notwithstanding this the advantage of Instruction is evident and most evident in that part of Knowledge which concerns us towards God the Knowledge of his gracious Intentions towards us and our Duty to him wherein Divine Revelation hath been always the first and is ever the most sure and undoubted Guide Yet even in this the Spirit of Man is the Candle of the Lord For God doth not that he may make known himself create any new Understanding but applies himself in Grace to his first Creation the Soul of Man of which there is no abolition by Divine Illumination but as the Scripture speaks of the Sun the Light of it grows seven-fold The Candle that burnt dim and was even choak'd up is trimm'd and becomes Light on all sides and sends out its Beams from every part The Sum then is this The Soul of Man is the same Candle of the Lord whose Natural Power of Understanding is rais'd and made more clear by the Irradiation of Instruction whether the Power be an innate Force of Trying and Judging of Things by it self as it is a Faculty able to try and judge by the Nature of its Being or by some implanted Sentiments given to it with its Being or by Maxims to be collected by it self through the ministery and mediation of Sense However these things be it is always of the Nature of Understanding that there be a Resentment and Feeling of the agreeableness of Truth to it self There must be a Knowing in its own Spirit by every Intelligence the Reasonableness and Verity of the Things propos'd or there can be no Understanding Even Faith it self is an Intellectual that is an Explicite not an Implicite Act else it would be but a meer childish Memory of what hath been receiv'd as Catechism But all true Acts of Understanding have a Taste and Relish and what is propos'd to Mind must have a Gustfulness to it Knowledge and Faith not at all differing in this but onely that in things of Knowledge the Understanding arrives at that Knowledge or at least acquiesces in it upon Grounds more its own in things of Faith by Assurances more out of it self yet having Instruments of its own for the acceptation of such when so offer'd Characters and Tests within it self of what is offer'd whether it be worthy to be believ'd Resentments within it self of Pleasure or Trouble according to the Quality of what it hath receiv'd when so offer'd To draw all this that hath been spoken to what is mainly to be intended that is That the Understanding is the Candle of the Lord especially lighting us to himself Let us therefore inquire after some Principles that are Standards in the great Concernments we have with God which whether they are settled in the Soul by the Hand that created it or do immediately result from the Observation of Things without improved by the Mind running through its own Circuits and Trains of Reason concerning them or whether it is led into them by the Instructions God is still giving into the World or whether all these concur to their establishment in the heart of Man yet they are such as are universally consented in and are the Foundation of Religious Practice and also such a Receptacle for supernatural Revelation that there it may be tasted acknowledged and savoured as Divine with these as with a Helm the great Governour of Spirits turns them whither soever he listeth either for Conviction or Conversion Repentance and Reformation or as he pleases to Self-condemnation And all the boisterousness of their contrary affections are overrul'd and controll'd hereby Such Principles I esteem these Four Princip 1 That there is a God The Soul cannot move but it acknowledges God a Soul cannot look up but it sees God and this Principle in the Soul is a great Light God hath so carved himself into Understanding that there cannot be an Understanding in Motion and Activity but there must be a sight a conception an apprehension of such a Being as God as the Eye cannot open but it sees the Light or if it seems to lye hid yet upon the least collision as between the Flint and Steel upon any conflict of Thought with it self or with the Propose of this Truth from without this Light breaks forth It is manifest in men because God hath shewed it to them Rom. 1. 19. that is In the very making them Souls he hath set it in them In the first solemn action of the Understanding the acknowledgment of a Supreme Being rebounds and leaps up to them the Soul no sooner sees any thing by inward sense but it sees God the Author as a Man that sees the impression in the Wax presently thinks of the Seal Many Men endeavour to reject and disannul this Principle but they cannot deface it much less wear out the apprehension And when the Soul hath considered further and more vehemently the more it reasons the more it confirms and settles it self in the assurance of the Divine Being even when it endeavours to Reason out this Belief of it it prevails the more And besides what it hath within concerning God The invisible Things V. 20. of him from the Creation of the World are clearly seen being understood by the Things that are made and done even his eternal Power and Godhead So that the Soul can neither consider without nor within but it sees God Princip 2 That we have a Soul Many have violently oppressed this Sense thus far as to deny a Soul a Spirit distinct in its Essence yet they cannot but acknowledge a vehemency of Motion an Activity that teaches us more than the Beasts of the Field Every man must say There is a Spirit in Man above any other Creature a force and excellency of Motion the Motion of Reason and Understanding No Man can stir but he finds There is a Breath of the Almighty that gives him Vnderstanding Now these two Principles as they do mutually enlighten one another so they give great and illustrious light to all holy Practice they enlighten themselves for he that apprehends a God whose very Being is absolute Perfection retires out of all things bodily and weak to conceive aright of him and find him out and when he is thus understood the Notion of an inferiour and subordinate Spirit that yet hath a likeness to him is easie And whoever finds out in himself a diviner part than Body hath an easie ascent to God in whom all the lesser Perfections of his own Being are transcended and at the height And how do they both shine upon holy Practice seeing God is the great both Exemplar and Argument of all Goodness And no Man can suppose himself to have received such great powers of Understanding for mean much
represented to our sense and however the display of these things may pass into the Body and be all seen there yet we know the most excessive pleasures of Body interrupt the proper motions of Soul in which true Happiness or Misery lye for neither is a man drenched in an irrational pleasure nor tormented and he knows not why but there is an orderly motion a sense of sin and guilt of the supreme Justice of God in his righteous Executions of Judgment in Happiness an adoring of Infinite Grace and Mercy a Rational Taste of Holy and Divine Pleasures I shall now as a Conclusion draw up all this Discourse into these practical Conclusions flowing from the whole 1. Hereby I understand I have an immortal and everlasting Soul to take care of we look upon our selves as Flesh and Blood but we do not consider these Immortal Spirits and their great Powers Understanding Imagination Will Conscience Affections and the motion of these to be Everlasting We do not examine whether our Souls have a true Health Peace and Safety and a good Provision made for them Whether our Consciences are quiet and upon good grounds Whether our Affections are purified and holy For a man to consider his Soul thus is indeed to consider a mans self What shall it Luc. 9. 2â— profit a man if he gain the whole World and lose himself The Soul is a true Self and how dreadful will the mistake appear to men who have counted the Body and the Interests of that the only Self and this other true the greatest Self starts out A Self that now lyes under as many Covers as a Body under a multitude of Garments and so is concealed But then it breaking out and not being provided for that great principle of self preservation finding now its greatest Object will force a man to cry out with a most dreadful Ejulation and Complaint Oh this false Self that I have laboured for how hath it deceived me My very Self I never thought of and so have lost it What shall I give now in exchange for this my true Self 2. I hereby understand I am made for Holiness as the true Peace and Greatness of my Spirit for a converse with God for an attendance upon him for an observation of his Favour and Countenance towards me and that herein is the Life of my Spirit and on the other side I am very apt to be tempted to sin and drawn away from God to live at a distance from him to lose him and herein at last will be found the Torment and Hell of Souls and therefore I have greatest reason to be awakened about these things and earnestly to pray to God that he would put me into a high and vigorous action concerning them and to be extremely unsatisfied when I find my self insensible concerning them and therefore to labour earnestly to be in a good state and condition in relation to them 3. I hereby understand I am made and designed and shall certainly be unexpressibly Happy or Miserable to extremity and who can say this to himself without highest concern upon his own Soul If any one should tell us we were ordained to be one of these extraordinarily happy and prosperous or deplorably unhappy and were about to read our Fate or Doom to us and that we had considerable Reasons to believe such a one who would not with a most trembling suspense of mind wait what it should be When any one is to receive the Issue of his Cause from a Judge or Jury how high and impatient is his expectation But how much more should our Thoughts wait for this Issue of Things and God hath placed it in the motions of these our own Thoughts for when they move enlightened with his Countenance cleansed and annointed with his Grace ennobled with his Spirit delighted with his Consolations this is Heaven begun this is Happiness growing up When they are base for want of his Spirit impure with Lust and dishonourable Affections full of rancour and bitterness and all spotted and stained with guilt this is Hell in the Foundations of it laid And however my Soul lye still now yet when I see how many things draw out mens Souls even in this Life Education better Converse Solitude some great danger or loss in the world higher Condition Sickness some notable Discourse as in Foelix how much more must I needs think the change into Eternity will do it and therefore no silence of my Soul now can encourage me upon serious consideration to be careless of it 4. I hereby understand my unspeakable dependence upon the Grace of God and his Free Favour and hence learn to humble my self before him to nothing seeing my Happiness consists in those free Beams of his Favour in the light of his Countenance in his setting my Soul into a gracious Motion by his Spirit and raising the Motions of my Spirit to a high communion with him in Bliss for seeing I can so little yield my self the accounts of Happiness and receive them all from him and can so little move my self upon them when they are offered by him I am inconceivably bound and beholden to him both to open the Fountain of Life that is himself to me and to move me by his Spirit that I may move On the other side If he leaves me to my self what Evils shall I run into and treasure up torment and sharpen stings against my self by it and how can he inflame my Soul with his Indignation and to what degrees he pleases both now and for ever For if he hide the face of his Mercy who can behold him What Reason have I therefore to reverence him with Godly Fear and to acknowledge him with greatest dependency I humbly therefore say as the Apostle not only by the Grace of God I am what I am but by the Grace of God alone I hope what I hope to be 5. I hereby understand what a great necessity I have of Jesus Christ my Lord the Son of the Wisdom Glory Power and Holiness of God the Son of his Love for he is the Attonement His Blood offered by the Eternal Spirit is the most excellent Thing in Heaven or Earth and that only which can purge the Conscience the most excellent and divine Instrument of Pacification with God and within the Conscience it self Through him the Holy Spirit is given by him is there an entrance into that Holy of Holies that Heaven within the Veil for as the value of Souls for which our Lord gave himself exalts his Redemption the greatness of the Misery from which they are rescued the greatness of the Happiness to which they are exalted all glorifie the Saviour of Souls so do these Souls of a Nature so supreme require so great a Ransom and Mediator no lower no lesser a Price can countervail them and it argues them to be a Nature so supreme that so great a Mediator undertook so infinitely for them 6. Hereby I understand
to highest and truest Beings is inconsiderable though it seem great to us especially those gross and dull ones we converse in or are to converse with and it is in greatest indulgence to us that they stoop down into them as wise men sometimes comply a little while with the fansies and humours of children 4. Their superiority to visible Beings in that they form their appearances with some extraordinaries or do things so great in them as convince them to be of a higher order Now for the assurance of these appearances I especially rest upon the Histories hereof in the Scripture those sensible evidences of the Divine Presence the appearances of the good Angels recorded in it which are so many and so plain as to make up a full proof of invisible Beings and not so much as with any likelihood of truth to be eluded by those who profess to believe those sacred Records The sallies of evil Angels upon the world and the possessions they took of the bodies of men doing things in them beyond the general Laws of Body related also to us in Scripture may be reduced hereunto As additional proof hereof we may entertain those memories of such appearances in common story that are writ with greatest judgment sobriety and arguments of veracity Now all this is applicable to the Souls of men thus far first as it gives a common proof there are Invisible Beings of which order we affirm the Soul to be and secondly seeing the Soul was made in the Image of God and in an allyance with Angels it hath a substantial greatness like them lastly it must as they be independent it self upon matter and have a force much above it though it be for a time subjugated to the laws of a Body and so cannot shew it self in its own nature till it be in a separated state or joined to a Body more suited to its operations If any should say why are not these appearances more frequent and usual The answer is That were altogether unsuitable to the state and majesty of these invisible Beings which like that of the Eastern Princes stands much in retirement and as they were rarely seen and not but upon great occasions when they had weighty designs to manage or when it had been called into question whether they were alive or not because not seen for some space of time Thus invisible Beings good and holy have in visible shapes though rarely visited the sublunary world and for great ends of service to God and also that they might thereby refute atheistick and unbelieving conceipts and give assurance of themselves Unholy spirits chained up by Divine Power appear but at command so often and no oftner than God pleases for it may be supposed the Devil would not thus appear but upon necessity and constraint laid upon him by Divine Providence because his Kingdom suffers so much by the knowledge of Beings removed from sense yet when he must appear it is most agreeable to so insolent a Spirit to do it to excess and with greatest troublesomness if not restrained by God But God for the general in this riper Age of the world and under the settled light of the Gospel teaches mankind by rational and intellectual evidences that are so easily to be drawn into observation by us and by those clear and spiritual documents given us in his Word especially since such a testimony as hath been granted to men of heavenly and invisible powers in a humane body acting with a virtue so divine and miraculous and so apparent to sense For what could be greater than the whole History of the Life and Death the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ our Lord to all that are indeed Christians an invisible power transacting so lively before sense all those so high demonstrations of it self and then framing and propagating a Doctrine every way agreeable to it self and spreading it through the whole world If notwithstanding all this the man of Sense will not apprehend nor accept any proof of such Beings except our Senses were daily Spectators of them he very ridiculously exacts the tryal of those things by Sense which are plainly affirmed to be out of the compass of Sense and all its reach he demands to see and touch that which cannot be seen or felt Now it is certain that which is out of the sphere of any faculty whatsoever cannot be tryed and judged by that faculty any more than the eye can judge of sounds or the ear of colours or light be heard or an excellent noise of musick be seen Sense ought not to be called to sit in judgment upon things that are above it as finite knowledge cannot measure the possibilities of omnipotency Ants may as well be consulted with whether a Palace may be built over their heap or Beasts decide whether there be any reflexes of Reason as Sense be put to judge those things that are only to be discerned by Reason or to measure by an unequal Reason what Faith which is Reason advanced by Revelation can alone give us an account of How liberal an allowance is it to Sense that there is in so many particulars as we have already taken notice of a foundation laid in it for Reason and Faith to ground their further search and assurances upon And as for the great perverseness of such men that would make Sense usurp higher and their presumptions against invisible Beings in the confidence of that the sager consents of wise learned and pious men and the general inclination the universality of mankind have discovered to a belief of such Beings make those presumptions appear no other than a diffidence or distrust in every thing but Sense and is no more considerable than a Scepticks suspicion of other things most assured to other men by sense it self or an ignorant mans difficulty to believe the Sun and Stars any bigger than they seem to be From this Discourse of Invisible Beings Inference very justly arises an expostulation with our selves for our irreligious brutishness and sensuality that we do not more mind these invisible natures and consider God our Souls the eternal state our neglect chiefly arising because they are not seen although we have other great assurances of them As Beasts we are only affected with what strikes our Sense But let us observe every thing the more invisible it is that indeed of the greater force and efficacy it is The Spirits of things lye hid and concealed from the eye till they issue out into operation There are some very few things quick upon the Sense that are also full of power as light fire a flash of lightning and we use by these to express spiritual Beings because they are of greatest separation from dull Body and ordinary gross matter and too mighty for Sense to be too free with But let us consider how worthy these Invisible things are of our thoughts by this plain instance If any of those Beings should make an appearance
of the coursness and thickness of matter as Breath Wind Air. This way of expressing these Beings hath been common to Language in general and particularly to Scripture which attributes to God that he is a Spirit and to Angels and the Souls of men under him And yet it may without injury to the cause be granted that this name may not have been original to these natures but derived from those things that have been more removed from Sense than others and from thence transferred to the most excellent part of the Temperament or whatever is most vigorous in any Being and yet least under the cognisance of Sense and so at last ascribed to Beings supposed to be wholly removed from Sense and all this doth but still enlighten the main notion of a Spirit for hereby it was intended to represent them in their native purity and separation from Body by those things that had least of the dregginess of matter and yet were well known so comprehending at once both their spirituality and reality their spirituality expressing them by things most refined their reality in that those things how fine soever were yet sufficiently known to be and to be of greatest reality and effect Hereunto may be reduced the mention Scripture makes of the Spirit of a Eccl. 3. 21. Beast Touching which leaving to Philosophical Disputes the abstrusity of its nature whether it be the highest of material or lowest of spiritual natures I only observe It deserves not the name of a Spirit in compare with the Soul of man in that it is most evident the Scripture speaks nothing of its likeness to God power of Reason moral action or immortality but degrades it from these when it says while the Spirit of a man goes upward the Spirit of a Beast goes downward that is as it is prepared for lowest uses so its state motion and last rest are altogether here below and therefore it cannot correspond in what is now to be spoken of a Spirit yet because it extends it self to actions beyond the measure of other material Beings unaccountably to Sense it is called a Spirit and yields light also to the general notion of a Spirit and shews the infinite Wisdom and Architecture of the Author of all created Beings who formed these Spirits so as to excel the possibilities of matter supposing they do excel them so little as to be disputed with some appearance of Reason whether they are any more than matter mechanized with highest and most curious skill that is to say the handy-work of God in matter But to return Whatever can be spoken in relation only to the word Spirit is of smaller moment the greatest concern is what is intended by it Whether it be no more than a meer mode notion or manner of speaking used to express the lively Temperament vigour or force of a Body only Or whether it mean a substance of an excellent nature distinct and separate from a Body In answer to which That the generality of those that have or do use this word Spirit concerning the Soul of man have and do understand it in this latter Sense is of very little dispute and that the Scriptures do as much as words or expressions can do to assure us they mean so also I shall endeavour to make good by observing what the Scriptures say concerning 1. The original of mans Soul and its first entrance into the Body 2. What expressions it makes use of to shew the distinction of the Soul from the Body while in it 3. How it expresses its distinction from Body and separation from it in death For the first The original of mans Soul we must have recourse to the History of mans Creation and we shall Gen. 1. 24 26. Gen. 2. 7. find that the wisdom of Scripture puts a great difference between the Creation of man and the other Creatures of life in that God consults and resolves to make him in his own Image and likeness and by an immediate hand first builds a Body as a receptacle for the life he intended him and when his Body was framed raised and contrived with all its organs offices and ministeries so that there wanted nothing that should complete and sum up the perfection of a Body he breathed into his nostrils the Breath of Life and from that breathing of God he became a living Soul A Soul living that life that proceeded from himself a life that proceeded from God and entered into that prepared Body and quickened it whereas God only commanded the Earth and it brought forth every other living Thing That and its life together The Command of God impregnated the Earth and then as at once it brought forth the living Creature and its life so that in the creation of this lower life and the subjects of it there appears nothing of that method and solemn order observed in mans creation nor did the Breath of God pass into them as it did into man when it filled all the several organs and instruments of the Humane Body with the motions proper to a Body and such a Body and which is far beyond all this The same Breath of God gives man Reason and understanding as we have already expounded this Breath out of Elihu's words and as he speaks in another place The Spirit of God made him and the Breath of the Almighty gave him life This inspiration of the Almighty comprehends this lower life in man that sensitive Beings live and that yet higher life of Religion and obedience to the Creator with which Body hath least to do For in the very Creation God put Wisdom into the inward parts and gave understanding to the heart and by the word of Creation he said to man The fear of the Lord that is wisdom and to depart from evil that is understanding That is As God created all things by saying Let it Be and pronouncing it good in confirmation of his Creation so he said to man by implanting it in his heart and approving it for very good The fear of the Job 28. 28 Lord that is wisdom and to depart from evil that is understanding As in the universal Creation he saw and declared he prepared and searched out wisdom that is he found out v. 27. within his own understanding fit natures for all things This was his preparing and searching out wisdom and then he gave the proper natures he had designed that was his declaring wisdom thus at the same time he both made up the beauty of the Universe and proclaimed his own infinite understanding And so particularly in the frame of man he was infinitely wise forming man into the propriety of such a nature as man should be that is a Soul whose perfection it should be to fear God and to depart from evil that was made with a power to do so upon Reason and Counsel in which at once the wisdom of God the original wisdom and the wisdom of man the derivative wisdom
was the habitation of the Spirit or Soul renewed and purged from sin that Spirit or Soul being it self the habitation of the Divine Spirit this Body because it hath still a relation to such a Soul loses its sinful taint while it moulders into dust and is raised a Body incorruptible and spiritual that is a habitation fit for the Spirit now made perfect and is filled thereby with the glory of life and immortality which is eternal life and all by virtue of that Divine Spirit that dwelt in that Soul while it was lodged and dwelt in that Body And herein lying the true substantial sense of this most weighty Paragraph of the Apostle how plainly doth it express the distinction of the Soul from the Body and that the Soul is a substance of it self independent upon Body and Body altogether dependent upon it even while it is most immers'd into Body For first The Soul it self gives all the life to its own impure pleasures and sinful reposes in bodily delights to which else Body is able to contribute no more than Oyl to the Flame which of it self we know always lyes still and dark 2. Spirit it self assisted by Grace retires into spiritual enjoyments and quenches and dryes up its own sensual affections to Body and blasts the satisfactions received from thence even before that Oyl be wasted by the decays of Body or dryed up by death Lastly It self carries its own fate if I may so call it and the fate of the Body along with it into eternity for according to what the Soul it self is so is its own happiness or misery and the Body of necessity follows its condition so that it self is plainly All and the Body only a Cypher attending the state of this principal Figure 3. The distinction of Spirit and Body in death is conveyed to us in very plain and easie terms and such as carry their meaning very open if not disturbed and prevented by ill interpretation Let us take a view of the clearness of Scripture herein First Solomon in his Ecclesiastes having considered with some passion and vehemency the little or no apparent preheminence of men above Beasts in their death that as one dies so dies the other they send out one common vital breath and go all to one place he then casts the account of this into the common heap of vanity and comes to a very warm enquiry Who knoweth Eccl. 3. 21. the Spirit of a man that goes upward and the Spirit of a Beast that goes downward Yet thereby resolving the main case enough viz. that these outward appearances laid so much to disadvantage are but only in the Body and outside the difference between the Spirit of a man and the Spirit of a Beast is still very great as great as between Heaven and Earth and the motion as contrary when they dye as upward and downward but still he complains that this is not possible to be seen by Sense and there are very few that reach it to any purpose by Reason and Religion and this saith he is one of the great points of the vanity of all worldly condition that both so great a principle of Truth and so great a dignity of Humane Nature should lye so far off be so indiscernable Here is then an equality in the outside or Bodies of men a dying and Beasts but a great inequality or excellency of men above Beasts which comes home to what we are asserting And thus Solomon understood of the Spirit of a man as is now explained he makes us more certain when after his travel over all things he comes to describe man in his end and does it thus The Dust returning to the Earth Eccl. 12. 7. as it was and the Spirit returns to God that gave it he allots to the several parts into which he distributes man a several motion and a several rest according to the several originals of each The Dust or Body returns to the Earth from whence it was taken the Spirit survives and hastens back to God that gave it Agreeably the care of holy men at death or in any great apprehensions of danger that presented death to them was to commend their Spirit to God as David Into thy hand I commend Psal 31. 5. my Spirit which words were prophetick of the dying words of our Saviour Father into thy hand I commend Luc. 23. 46. my Spirit and thus Stephen breathed out his Soul Lord Jesus receive Acts 7. 59. my Spirit Now in that Solomon affirms of the Spirit of man in general that it returns to God the Judge of all whether it be the spirit of a good man or a bad man or whether it be for happiness or misery and that thereupon holy persons recommended their Souls into the hands of God as a faithful Creator I know not how any thing can be more determinative of the distinction of Body and Soul in death For such words are not words of meer resignation of life back again to the Fountain of Life but an entrustment and dependent recommendation and not of a life to be secured only for the Resurrection but of a Spirit immediately going to God for else they might with as much care have committed Body to him who weighs the dust of the Earth in a Ballance much more that of the Bodies of men whom he will raise again most of all that of his Saints which he will raise to glory If there were not such an immediate return of good mens Spirits to God why doth the Apostle chuse to be Phil. 1. 23. dissolved or set at liberty that he might be with Christ Or why doth he profess in the name of Christians in general we desire rather to be absent 2 Cor. 5. 6. from than at home in the body that we might be present with the Lord What tolerable account can be given of such speeches for what composition is it that suffers dissolution that some part and what part is that might have immediate being with Christ Or who is it that would be set at liberty Or that is absent from the body or at home in it if not this supreme man the Soul Or why should death be preferred for the sake of a nearer and more immediate presence with Christ if all the man dye with the body Or what man is it that the Apostle speaks of caught up into the third Heaven and makes a doubt whether in the body or out of it Or how could there be such a being in the body or out of the Body if the body were all if there were nothing but body Or lastly why doth our Saviour amplifie the dread of the vengeance of God upon man above theirs that kill the body and have no more that they can do whereas the hand of God destroys Luc. 12. 4 5. both body and soul in Hell For let it be expounded to the greatest advantage of the opinion that encounters the Souls immortality
viz. That our Saviour intends no more than that mans killing the body is infinitely less than Gods destroying that Body and its whole life in Hell though after many Ages Yet it is observable in the first place our Saviour to imprint the fear of Divine Revenges places them not only upon the Body but upon the Soul as a distinct and greater part of man than body 2. And beyond this our Saviour plainly aims at the great odds there is betwixt a hand that can execute no further than dying once and in the body only and that almighty hand that sends down the Soul to Hell immediately and the Body at the Day of Judgment For he implies a man easily slips from mans severity by death for he may yet live and be happy in his Soul presently and in his Body at the Resurrection but death can give no escape from the stroke of God either to the Soul which incontinently falls under it nor to the Body awakened hereafter to endure it Now I know it is possible for Serpentine wits to glide off from these and many the like proofs of Scripture that might be produced for their way of elusion is very wonderful like that of Solomons Serpent upon a Rock that winding every way yet leaves no track of solid Reason behind it but yet I affirm that such concurrent Testimonies of Scripture are so conclusive that no sober consideration can escape from them unto which revealed Truth is also to be annexed Reason it self teaching us as I have already urged the effects of a Soul are too great to be ascribed to any power of Body and therefore seeing every Effect must have an equal Cause it is a high justification of the assertion of a Spirit to which those effects may be duly and worthily ascribed And therefore I shall further adventure to avouch from Scripture that the Soul is so much the Man that it hath the compleat substantial essence of a man so far in it self that in comparison of it the body is but prepared for a sensible mode or representation in which the Soul is to act and shew and illustrate it self visibly and sensibly and that man might thereby become of the order of the sensible and visible world beholding and judging by the ministery of sensitive organs of the beauty excellent array and variety of bodies in this Creation and himself appear the principal of them but retaining still a higher and nearer relation to the Invisible world to God to the state and life of Angels so that without any prejudice to his main being he may be removed out of the body thither and yet still be himself as to all the chief intents and purposes of his Creation and continue so till in the restitution of all things and the manifestation either of the goodness or severity of God after the manner of the sensible and visible Creation that is in such a plain way as seeing and knowing things by sense men be again set out by God in a bodily scheme or fashion at the Resurrection so that the Body it shall then have shall more compliably wait upon all the state and motions of the Souls happiness or misery The Soul then only visibly shews it self now in a body and is submitted to be in it but when it goes out of the body it wants nothing through the whole time of its separation that it had here but only the apparence of its motions in a body nor hath any thing added to it when it is cloathed with a body at the Resurrection but an opportunity for its glory or misery to be seen sensibly Even as God was excellent and perfect in himself from eternity when there was no Creation or any beside himself nor received he any thing or found any addition to himself by the Creation for all things that he made received their All from him but only he hath illustrated and manifested himself in the Creation and the Creatures do no more than shew the power wisdom and goodness of God in creating preserving and governing them After the same manner so far as we may with reverence compare any of the Creatures with the infinitely excelling Creator the Soul receives nothing from the Body or any of the parts of it but only such organs and instruments which it is to inspire govern and rule and thereby to shew its efficacy vigour and great endowments of understanding and virtue for all motions from the highest to the lowest derive from the Soul But as to the present case That the Soul falls in love with its self as dwelling in body and with its lower motions in it and forgets its own proper and higher motions of immediate converses with holiness and true wisdom and that rule of body committed to it according to these Laws this is only its sin weakness degeneracy and fall as of a created and mutable Being placed in a body All motions and appetites that we call in ordinary speaking motions of body and fleshly appetites are not any thing that body can first proffer to the Soul but those that the Soul communicates first by that universal life and motion it gives to body and then derives from its own communications the pleasure that it self finds from it self in body Yet is not the Souls good or ill management of Body all its holiness or sin there are many acts so retired that body shares not in their praise or guilt The Soul in such acts of goodness is like God and good Angels as if it had no body and as unconcerned in this world as God in his own immanent perfections and actions On the other side wicked men are in some wicked actions alone as it were from the body like Devils and damned Spirits those spiritual wickednesses the Apostle speaks of exercised in spiritual Impurities But to return The Souls acting and taking care of the body is but an inferiour and under-part of its administration and is for that higher end that there might be an image and likeness of God imprinted upon a body and sensibly seen in it by virtue of the Souls acting holily in and upon it This is the highest and most excellent part of its Government the pleasure it takes in the lower should be but an imitation of the Lord taking pleasure in his lower works who is never the less spiritual heavenly and divine for running through and governing the whole world of matter and rejoicing in his doings therein but is always in the perfect purity of his own Attributes and guides all things according to them But contrary-wise if the Soul makes its lower and less noble functions its principal and supreme and instead of moving the body rationally and religiously by it self continuing spiritual and intellectual it chiefly attends to and interests it self in its lower sensitive motions and so becomes carnal and sensual this is its great fall into sin and misery yet still it retains its prerogative of nature it is
still the source and life of all motion though sinful for body alone cannot sin nor any way can it be guilty but as the Souls body The Soul then is All Thus it is now in the Resurrection it will be much more so when the body is so drawn up into the state of the mind that the mind hath no opportunity to be carnal in it and with it because it hath no longer such a low body as this for even the bodies of miserable Spirits are in this part so refined that the Soul can have none of its carnal delights in them which it had in these In that space of time then between death and the Resurrection the Soul must needs be no less compleat in it self for though it hath a fitness in it to animate a body yet that is as unnecessary to its absolute perfection as Gods actual Creation and Government of the world was to his power and wisdom whereby he created and governs and although at the Resurrection it appears in a body again yet this is from the ordination of God to set a beauty upon the visible Creation in which he will then fully display that part of his glory in the glorious body of his Son and Saints conformed to him and set out his justice and wrath visibly also in the dusky bodies of those that rise to everlasting shame and contempt That the Soul thus separated from the body is thus perfect I argue from that expression of our Saviour that they which are accounted worthy to obtain Luc. 20. 35. that world and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like and equal to the Angels so that though the Soul hath a power to act order and guide the motions of such a body as it is joined to now yet they are no way necessary to its true perfection for its highest state of perfection even in body is without the exercise of such acts viz. in the Resurrection And further they that are equal to the Angels have no more need of a body than the Angels have that is not as to themselves or their own perfection but only to serve the order of Divine Wisdom in the various disposition of the Creation a body and a body suited to this free and exalted state of the Soul is given to them Further The perfection of the separated Soul may be argued from the Apostles discourse of the state of immortality immediately entred into as soon as ever the weak and cumbersome Tabernacle of Earth is dissolved Through the gracious provision of God the Soul is invested with life and immortality and all the blessedness and entertainment of Heaven as the most natural receptacle and becoming robes of good Spirits without which they would be naked and Souls not so received but left naked of that blessedness are immediately shrowded in blackness and darkness hellish blackness and darkness For though Souls are indeed determined by the righteous judiciary appointment of God each sort to their own place yet the natures of these things themselves are so wisely contrived as fairly to comply therewith so that holy Souls uncloathed become Spirits Divine heavenly and blessed but Souls unpurged as soon become dark hellish and miserable Now that happy Souls immediately upon leaving the body enter into such a state is very plain in that they desire earnestly this state but if for want of bodies they lay asleep or if being nothing but body the whole man should lye so long in the earth as till the Resurrection it were a much worse state than the present for the time might be much better improved in the World than in the Grave and there would be no reason to groan for so long and dark an interval instead of a life of Grace converse with God and doing good in the world which is the life of holy men It may indeed be said It is safer every way to be laid up in the Grave and more quiet and this interval is not felt nor perceived in the dust but a thousand years seem as short as an hour now this is so far from an answer that it tends to subvert the great principle of a future life for ten thousand Ages and an everlasting duration beyond could as little be perceived There can be no complaint that so many Ages of duration were run out before men which lay out of life came into it nor can there be any sense of the want of life where it was never had and in like manner there can be none by them that are quite gone out of life But if this way of reasoning were good it might be as well for good men if there were no Resurrection at all for they that are thus muffled up cannot make any appeals to God for nor so much as know there is reason to desire a Resurrection nor resent the want of it and so would have no loss But if good men suffer loss in this total suppression of life they must suffer proportionably in those huge spaces of death the Saints of God dying in the beginning of the world have already and are still to lye under till the end of the world Further This silence and interval of life is equal as to the case we are now speaking of to Not Being and seems so to obliterate all the former state and the good or evil done in it as to acquit and discharge it as if it had never been to those whose actions are so quite broken off and so perfectly forgotten by themselves It is therefore certainly most agreeable to Reason as well as Scripture there should be at least a continuation of that sense and understanding we had of our actions in this world when we are passed out of it whether in relation to happiness or misery that all should not begin anew in our acknowledgment of them and evil men that have been some thousands of years out of Being as men should yet be forced to own those things they did so long ago having also been so many other things since in the various shapes the matter of their Bodies may easily have been supposed to pass into and in which they may have deserved better or at least been more innocent and harmless and if there be nothing higher than that matter tuned to rational motion as men of this opinion suppose we may easily allow an expiation may have been made by that same matter for the offences committed while it made up such a man in the innocency or better demeanour of it self in some other state into which it removed afterward and so on the other side the matter that hath been virtuous while it was such a man may afterwards come to be debauched in its future disguises and so a demerit of its former worthy performances ensue and thus body not be found by either sort of men such as they left it So unreasonable are these Hypotheses that are set up
then of the Souls coming to an end must be by Annihilation or being crush'd to Nothing by Infinite Power Concerning which let us further consider It is true the Essence and Existence of the Soul are several things that is There is the Nature of the Soul in general and this is one thing and is call'd its Essence and this considered in a possibility of Actual Being or not Being as it may be or may not be When it is we call it Existence or Actual Being and this is another thing from its Essence Therefore it might either not have come into Being at all or after it is come into Being it may be turn'd out of Being by the immediate Power of God who gave it Being who onely can annihilate or bring to nothing that which is In all these things the Soul is beyond all expression excell'd by God who onely as the Apostle speaks hath immortality For he it is alone that in the truest sense is what he is so inconceivably and perfectly Himself that he is onely of and from himself and Himself so infinitely that he comprehends and embraces in himself the whole Divine Nature and there is not a second God He is alone and besides him there is no God he knows not any other with him there is no variation nor shadow of turning neither in his Being nor in any of the Attributes of his Being Most Great and Good Most Happy and for ever Best For he hath all within himself and there is nothing without him of any compare with him not any thing but what receives Being from him so that neither from within nor from without can there be any occasion of change in him He it is whose Essence and Existence are one and the same Thing His Essence in the very true Notion of it rises up into immediate and absolute Existence For there is no other Notion of his Essence but in his Existence It is his very Essence or Nature to Be. He is never so little as in a possibility to Be but always so great that it is impossible he should not Be. He is without the allay of a possibility to Be which also includes a possibility not to Be. He is the highest and most perpetual Act of Being Eternal in the very Life of Being To grant the Nature of God no incompossible Notion is to wrap up a Mans self in the conclusion he is and that unchangeably For he is a necessary Being a Being that cannot but Be. And it is of much consideration concerning his Being that there should be such a Lock upon the Mind of Man that it can no sooner grant There may be a God but it is surpriz'd with this There must be a God for the very Nature of Deity concludes a necessity of Being Absolute Being God is Paramount in these Prerogatives of Being and the Soul cannot be likened to him from whom it hath its All. But yet a much truer and nobler Immortality have the Spirits and Souls of Men than Matter and Motion before spoken of seeing Spirit is design'd prepar'd for and in its own Nature and immediately in it self of much higher Excellency Purity Self-motion fit for Intelligency and all Rational Enjoyment as much above any Notion of Matter or appearance of it in any Form or acted by any Motion or into any Nature whatever as Heaven is above Earth And beyond this It is the Nature of Spirits having their Substance Nature Motion all within themselves to be always distinct and to have Subsistence in themselves proper and peculiar to themselves and divided from all others whereas the others as they are made up in such and such Natures and out of which they are not found are continually altering and changing and passing out of one Form into another and have no other actual Subsistence in themselves but what they have in these so continually variated Appearances For the whole Stock of Matter and Motion that is in the World is made use of by God in common and these two are always running every way into all the successive Compositions the Creator hath design'd them for and as they are govern'd by him But all the whole Nature of Spirit that hath ever been in the Creation from the very Beginning hath without any confusion or running one Spirit into another been preserv'd in strictest distinction and separation one from another so many proper Subsistences always known to God understood and taken notice of by him in this their distinctness and so are and shall be known to themselves for ever and as such they shall be manifested and exposed to the universal Assembly of themselves Angels and Men and judg'd according to their Works because they have been their own and not anothers with them So then though the Spirits and Souls of Men even as Matter and Motion are dependent upon the Pleasure of the Creator whether they shall continue in Being or not if we speak of the thing absolutely yet it is very evident from the consideration of the whole state of the matter that Spirits are the most proper and natural Inhabitants of Immortality and howsoever it may please the Creator to determine upon the other Parts of the Creation yet there is as great assurance as Reason can rise unto and higher yet from Divine Revelation that he intends that our Souls should be for ever seeing he hath made them with Faculties and Powers of Action Intellectual Moral and immediately respecting himself which are so connatural to the true state of Immortality and so plain an approach to and resemblance of him who only hath Immortality that it is almost impossible to a serious Considerer to think that there could be any other designation of them by God but for an immortal duration seeing he hath so prepared them for such a Condition who does nothing in vain nor does so debase his own Image as to draw the Lineaments of it in Dust It remains then That the Soul in the Nature given it by Creation and in the designation of the Almighty who gave it that Nature is an Immortal Spirit 3. From the Character of a Spirits self-communication it follows The Soul is an Vnderstanding For the highest degree of Self-communication is Understanding Even in things artificial when any thing seems to communicate with another and to receive Intelligence from another and imparts it again to it there is a semblance of understanding as in the Sympathetique answer of one Lute to another When the Heaven hears the Earth in the Prophets phrase it seems to understand it The mutual Returns of one Creature to another are a kind of Understanding in them or rather that Great Understanding of God runs through them all and is an Understanding in their behalf Life within the compass and sphere of that Being that hath it is self-communicated Motion for all the Parts are in a confederacy one with another and at an agreement among themselves for the motion of the whole
of Spirits to behold in the whole Creation especially in their own Natures the great Perfections of God surmounting themselves and much more the rest of the Creatures as Infinite doth Finite that so God may be understood and accordingly ador'd by them seeing Spirits in his own Image of Understanding and Likeness can alone so far know him as in a true and proper sense to adore him and the Glory of God in such an Adoration being the end of Creation it argues the necessity of such Creatures and so accomplish'd thus to give him his Glory As therefore by reviews of the Creatures in general and particularly of our own Minds and by Observations of what excells amongst all it is possible without Scripture though more darkly to find out the Perfections that are to be ascrib'd infinitely to God and when we come to Scripture and find that agreeing with though exceeding Natural Knowledge in its Attributions to God we have by this combination of Scripture and Reason Revealed and Natural Knowledge the praeeminence being easily yielded to Revealed the most satisfying Assurances of God we can have On the other side by considering the Excellencies and Perfections attributed to God in his Word and finding the same Lines drawn upon our own Minds observable both in the Discourses of Scripture concerning them and in our own experience though but according to the degree and model of Creatures we understand our own Souls more fully so that as the consideration of our selves the Creatures leads us without Revelation to understand God though not so clearly so these Oracles revealing God and all his Attributes more certainly and evidently to us reveal also our selves more plainly because they tell us we are made in his Image and Likeness and so by knowing God with greatest clearness we know our selves also most clearly for the Knowledge of our selves as to what concerns the clearness of it depends upon our Knowledge of God by the Scriptures more than our Knowledge of God depends upon the Knowledge of our selves by Natural Knowledge without Scripture Yet still the Knowledge of our own Souls where Men have no Revelation leads them best to the Knowledge of God as the Knowledge of God by Revelation leads us best to the Knowledge of our own Souls because God and the Soul do mutually represent one another God the Original Prototype and Infinite Exemplar Man's Soul the humble Representation and Copy Upon which Reason the Apostle having said We are his off-spring Acts 17. 28 29. immediately argues Forasmuch as we are the off-spring of God we ought not to think the Godhead like to silver and gold Our own Nature deriving from God instructs us better concerning him for seeing we our selves far excel all those things however heightned by Art he that gave us those Excellencies must needs have them in himself and in a transcendency As he that built the house hath more honour than the house and the Life excels the Picture So on the other side the Excellencies and Perfections of the Divine Being are every where given us in Scripture as the Rule of Composure for Man's Soul which could not be reasonable were not the being of it first given in the Image and Likeness of God and susceptive of the Divine Nature that is of the Virtues of it Touching the Souls Likeness to Angels we need not labour much but rather in comparing them with God the Original of both and occasionally onely illustrate the Doctrine of the Soul by observation of what we are taught in inspir'd Leaves concerning them though Philosophy hath not been altogether ignorant herein In general they are of a middle state between God and us nearer to God in that they are a higher Rank of Spirits disengag'd from Body much nearer to us in that they are Finite Spirits and God infinitely above them In speaking then of the Likeness of Man's Soul to God we must again have recourse to his Creation and when God had said Let us make Man in our own Likeness and Image and form'd the Body as a curious Statuary doth a most exact Statue he then breath'd into it the Breath of Life Now this Breathing of God argues he gave a great semblance of himself and that God deriv'd something from himself to Man's Soul that should more immediately express himself and was taken from himself as the Life Thus our Saviour breath'd upon his Apostles and made them Partakers of a Spirit that had a great Likeness to his own in the Infallibility and Heavenliness of his Doctrine the Power of working Miracles the Holiness of their Ministry and whole Apostolick Function God breathing Mans Soul it became so like him that some have call'd it A Particle of the Divinity a Kiss of God an Imprint of himself Now this Likeness of Man's Soul to God I believe not to be first in those moral Resemblances of the Truth Holiness and Goodness of God which speak God the best and in which to be like God is Mans Rectitude and Integrity and the Foundation of his Happiness as a Rational Agent nor onely in the Intellectual Faculties but also in those Attributes which speak God the Greatest though these be in this present state of Man much obscured even as the other Of the Soul of Man an Invisible Spirit hath been already discours'd Of other the Greatnesses of God giving a glance an eye of themselves upon Mans Soul we may also apprehend There is a Resemblance of his Infiniteness and Ubiquity of Presence in that swift and sudden Motion of Mans Soul from East to West summoning things of farthest distance into its presence by Thought and Intellectual Consideration the Intelligence he endeavours to hold with all the Action and Business of the World both Natural Civil and Moral the Correspondency he hath with Things Divine and Heavenly The Freedom and Liberty of the Increated Will is reflected in some degree in the Liberty of Mans Will that can be no way forc'd or compell'd in the vastness of his Appetite and Desire which though now irregular yet speaks the Original Greatness of his Soul and that Joy unspeakable he was intended for The Dominion of God in Mans Dominion over the Creatures and the vast and restless Ambition and Desire of Power and Empire so natural to him The Eternity of God in the Immortality and at last Unchangeableness given to Mans Soul The Divine Blessedness in the Lustre and Glory Man affects the Well-being he so inseparably from his Nature desires the Happiness he is capable of to which he was design'd and to which he is exalted by the Salvation of Christ From hence there is something like Creation in the great Works that have been done by Men and something in Humane Contrivances and Administrations like Providence And that there is a Force and Potency of Mans Spirit in a proportion resembling that Power of God that brings Things to pass in Matter or like the force of Angels that have wrought
are here in the World in this State of our Souls lies our true Greatness and Worth Some that seem so inconsiderable that no Man looks after them yet being greatly Holy greatly favoured of God Great Spirits all Heavenly the world Hebr. 11. 37 38. is not worthy of them though they wander up and down on montains in sheep-skins and goat-skins and be hid in dens and caves of the earth Others Great in the World and being also truly Good the Back-parts of their Greatness are onely seen Yea even in Bad Men how small or great soever they are in the World yet that they pertain to an Everlasting Condition that they have Immortal Souls this makes them of greatest consideration To convert them to God is therefore a great and excellent Work To save a Soul from death how great is the Service and how great is the Reward They that do it shall shine as the Stars in the Firmament How great a Regard to the meanest or worst of Men should it draw that they pertain to an Eternal Judgment The Consideration of the Soul as a Being Invisible and a Spirit having invited an often mention of its Eternal or Unchangeable Condition to which this present State is subordinate and disembogues it self into it as the Rivers do into the Ocean I come in the next place to make a modest Research into the Nature of Eternity and the Souls Relation to it But in speaking of Eternity I know he alone is able to declare it who inhabits Isa 57. 15. it God himself or the Angels those Blessed Spirits who were early assum'd into larger Participations of it Yet seeing we also are design'd to the same Participations it concerns us as far as we can to understand the Wonder of it Eternity then in its first and highest Sense is not any thing distinct from God but his stable unchangeable Being from everlasting to everlasting There is no other Eternity than this properly and strictly taken from which is cast upon the Mind that contemplates a Being so surrounded with it self and its own invariable Perfection a Notion of Everlasting Duration and that which is comprehended by it because by reason of the narrowness of our Understanding it is conceiv'd in a distinction from the Divine Being it self we in a secondary Sense call Eternity But even as what we term Vbiquity is that which results to us from the Notion or Apprehension of God the Immense Being filling all so much as even Imaginary Space while he himself is the onely true Vbiquity even so Eternity is the Infiniteness of God's Being filling all Imaginary Duration and so filling it that the Divine Being it self is that very Eternity of which Everlasting Duration is but the Shadow that falls from it as Unbounded Space does from his Omnipresence God then the Supreme Eternal or rather Eternity is a Being that must always have been and ever must be It is most impossible to conceive he should ever not have been or ever not be And he is a Being that never could and can never be otherwise than he is So that there are no Marks of Distinction that could ever be taken from his Being or from the State and Condition of his Being He is He was He is to come are all Rev. 1. 8. united into one Eternal Point or Period in him and thus express'd I Exo. 3. 14. A M A Being without any variation Jam. 1. 17. or shadow of turning A thousand years to him are but 2 Pet. 3. 8. as yesterday when it is past and one day as a thousand years And if it had been said Ten thousand millions of Years are but as a Minute when it is past it had been all one in this Case for there is no New Thing to him or in him but all is a Just now For his Being is the most solid substantial Being that cannot possibly submit to any Alteration What is Infinitely Perfect can admit no Change This is the One Just Even Smooth Eternity And understanding God thus we understand Eternity And though it be no where but in himself and where he communicates the Likeness of it yet Eternity in a secondary Sense becomes a distinct Notion or Sense of a Mode of Being in our Minds and it is a changeless Duration of any Being in the self-same State for if there be not Duration there must be Change and if there be Change it is not a Duration on all sides for then there could be no Change Now this Notion of Eternity could never have come into our Minds if it had not been planted there by his Hand who dwells in it on purpose that we might know himself by it nor had there been a substantial Rest for such a Conception if his Being had not given it All else is but Imaginary Duration Eternity then in this our apprehension of it is one great smooth Sea without any Curl of Change or as a vast unmeasurable Plain wherein the Eye hath no bound nor so much as Note of Distinction no Rise no Fall like a great Mountain that all Generations have pass'd and repass'd one hath gone another come and that hath slidden away too but the Mountain hath stood firm It is like a Rock that hath stood innumerable Ages without so much as scaling about which the huge Waters have continually wav'd and roll'd themselves and dash'd asunder by which smaller Vessels have pass'd to and again gallant Ships and Potent Armadaes have sail'd by and sunk or moulder'd away this in the mean time without any variation It is like an Hour spent in highest Pleasure no Moment no Minute of which is so much as felt It is like a deep Contemplation in which the Mind is so lost so retir'd from Body that it reckons not any Motion it keeps no account of Time for it nor observes whether any Time pass'd It is like an undefinable Point of Just now In the next place to give the greater Light to Eternity let us state the Nature of Time And Time to speak substantially of it is nothing but the Coming of a Thing or a World of Things into Being that were not in Being before For this makes a new Note in what we conceive as Duration And therefore when the World was made the Scripture says In the Beginning There was then a new Date because there was something then that had not been before In Whole Eternity there was nothing New All was alike One Now these things coming in by the way of Change viz. the exchange of the State of Nothing for the State of Existency are also every Moment subject to change and in a continual hover up and down and while all these things are performing their Motion in their Changes and Vicissitudes the Mind of Man considering them under such a Mode or Circumstance of their Being there arises a Notion or Representation of that whole Space which putting all together we call Time in the largest sense
is the Favour of God in Christ his Frown Wrath and Rebukes are the most fundamental reason of Misery His Favour and reconciled Face on one side his Wrath for sin on the other We are not able yet to understand the absolute dependence of the Soul hereupon because the present course of Providence allows men in their seeming subsistencies upon the Comfort they receive from the Creatures of this World God himself in the mean time retiring from their Observation But this is certain the smiles of God unexpressibly enliven encourage and bear up the Soul his Rebukes daunt deject and amaze it However these are now for the most part closely conveyed under the appearances of the Creatures for us or against us yet God is indeed under them but it is much more plain and manifest in the more immediate angry or gracious touches of God upon the Conscience and will be far more evident in the state of the World to come His loving kindness is better than life and when he with rebukes corrects Man for iniquity he maketh his beauty to consume away like a moth whatsoever seems most flourishing being so blasted withers immediately All the horrours we have heard or read of have received their sting from this Wrath and all Consolations from his Favour for in his Favour is life the Eyes of all Creatures are upon God Every created Thing in its proper way turns its Eye upon the Creator much more the Soul the Spirit immortal turns upon God the Father of Spirits that it may live It is not consistent with the Glory of God that he should allow any Thing to be Happiness but Himself and his Favour Even all the inward Rectitude of Mind cannot be this Happiness immediately For as if there were a Goodness of which Gods Nature were not the Rule and Measure and that Will which always stands just with that Nature that would be above God and so God would not be the Supreme Righteousness that is Not God So if there were any implanted Happiness in any Creature and that it needed not God as to the Essence of its Happiness God would not be God to it or if its happiness were in any Thing out of it self and not in God that would be a God to it This Consideration presses to this That Happiness is in the Light of Gods Countenance shining out upon the Rational Soul There is nothing necessary as the Fountain of Happiness but God nothing can supply his place In thy presence is fulness of Joy at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore with thee is the Fountain of Life In thy Light shall we see Light but if thou hidest thy Face we are troubled if banished and driven from thy everlasting presence we are for ever miserable for whom can we have in Heaven but thee and there is none upon Earth besides thee 2. Subordinately to this there can be no peace but in the Heart made truly and inwardly Good besides all storms from without there is an estuation a tide from corruption within full of trouble and vexation Every sin loved and delighted in is a secret hollow where an Earthquake is bred it is a wound that secretly disquiets it All impure Affections Passions of Dishonour in the Soul make it like the troubled Sea that cannot rest Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost make their repose in Righteousness The effect of Righteousness is quietness and assurance Isa 32. 17. for Ever Even as the Favour of God never embraces any but a holy Soul so hath he ordained that the Evil and corrupt Heart should be in it self unpeaceful and full of turmoil within both in regard of the foulness and deformity very horrible to the Thoughts whenever understood as also in regard of the great distraction and horrible convulsion the mind is forced into when it comes to any thing of true Sense 3. The actuation or gracious motion of the Favour of God towards the Soul and the actuation of his Holy Spirit upon the Soul made inwardly Holy and Good are highly necessary for the making the Spirit of a Man truly sound and vigorous in encountring Evil happy and comfortable in it self for else the Soul may be becalmed if these Motions of Grace from God lye still and not able to bear up it self And therefore Men sincerely good are often in great discomposures when God withdraws himself from them In the cloudings of his Face they are troubled in retreats of his Grace not exciting them they languish and cannot stir up themselves to take hold of him and then their sinful Calm ends in trouble On the other side the reasons of horrour and amazement are not seen by senseless and secure Men till Conscience enlightened discovers them and the flamings of Divine Displeasure make them boil up These then are the true substantial solid and natural Reasons of Happiness or Misery rejoycing or tribulation to the Soul and the Soul is plainly the Sense of them And as for the lesser and smaller interests of this present World and the life of it the observation of these two following Principles will determine and state the case of the soul in relation to them and so that it will further appear that all the touches of Good and Evil upon Man are originally and principally in his Soul 1. The first is That if God is pleased to let out his Favour in any of these outward Things and to moderate the desires and motions of the Soul so that there is a proportion between those motions and desires and the condition in which a Man is there is nothing further of necessity to him he is well enough But whenever the desires run out beyond the measures and proportions of his Condition it is with great disquiet and incredible restlesness of Mind though the thing beyond what he has be but small in it self and nothing compared with what is enjoyed When Haman had that abundance of Esth 5. 13. Glory yet his desires running out to a very little thing beyond what he had a very nothing to it the obeisance of poor Mordecai yet it made a nothing of all he had for it all availed him nothing 2. When the goodness of God is pleased to restrain outward Evils in fit degrees and to preserve the mind from ingaging it self by too close reflexions upon any disadvantage or to bend it so close upon better considerations to lessen and make tolerable that disadvantage the Spirit of a Man thus guarded will bear any infirmity but when the Spirit is let out to a continual pondering and aggravating to it self a very small Counter-accident and the Reasons that should abate it are hidden and carryed off from it a very little thing becomes unappeasably vexatious and the Spirit so wounded is it self its own insupportable burden Who can when God gives a sting to such a Cross bear it And when the Spirit of a Man runs forcibly upon it that Man may turn back and
as half measures of our selves and provisions accordingly 3. We have need to pray That God would draw out our whole Minds upon himself and Christ our Lord in a way of Desire and Affection of Joy and satisfaction and that we may be replenished with such assurances of the love of the Father in his Son that we may have no occasion to be cruel to our selves For as extremity of want and hunger turns men as Tygers upon their own Flesh so the Horrours arising from the Wrath of God and the unappeasable want of him enrage the Soul against it self but the enjoyment of him infinitely blesses and satiates it with pleasure sweetens it into greatest love and kindness to its own self And the Spirit thus supported will bear any other infirmity as David having God for his Light and Salvation feared nothing Habakkuk deprived of all favourable appearances neither the Fig-tree blossoming nor any Fruit on the Vines the labour of the Olive failing the Flock cut off from the Fold and no Herd in the Stalls yet he rejoyced in the Lord and gloried in the God of his Salvation In the second place We may upon this Head of Discourse make these doctrinal Recollections 1. There is a high pitch of Happiness or a very low degree of Misery to which every Man is prepared For the further description of which let us consider the two great Orders of Spirits Happy and Miserable Spirits to one of which we shall ever have a likeness The Head the Supreme the Prince of the first Order is Jehovah himself who in the highest and most perfect Act of his own Infinite Understanding and Will and the highest Satisfaction in Himself and enjoyment of Himself lives from Eternity to Eternity the most Happy and only Potentate with his Eternal Son and Spirit without any Dissatisfaction Discomposure Weariness or Tediousness to Himself or the least Shadow of impression upon him from Without This is infinitely clear concerning God In his Presence is fulness of Joy at his Right Hand are Pleasures For Evermore If we could imagine as indeed we cannot because Experience so mightily contradicts it that any Prince should live in all those Delights and Pleasures the most splendid Court affords without any tediousness or satiety ten thousand years what a dark representation were this of God though he could do and enjoy all he would Let us then imagine higher That a Prince of wisest most refined and delightful Speculation could live in the Height and perfect Rest of a most pleasurable Contemplation without the least disquiet how lowly an Emblem would this be of the infinite Blessedness of God Now God made Man in his own Image and likeness so that the Soul of Man is capable of a communication of this Blessedness in the perfection of his Understanding and Will enjoying God with unexpressible Joy and Peace and yet in the highest Life of Action Under God are the Blessed Angels of whom the Scripture speaks both of their Knowledge Perfection and Power joined with Holiness and Obedience to God who have been Participants of the Glory and Blessedness of God from the first Dawn of Creation and in all this time have not had least tiredness or satiation but highest Bliss and Joy Next to these are the Spirits of Just Men made perfect who are by succession as they go out of the World taken into this Happiness Now in all these Instances it plainly appears to what a height of Happiness Holy Men are designed being made like God equal to Angels in the assurance of which good Mens Souls enjoy the Consolations of that better state in this and are daily removed into it when they dye For the Order of Spirits Miserable and Unhappy Spirits of which the Devil is the Prince although indeed there cannot be such a Misery as should stand a counterpoise to Gods Happiness for Misery is but a retreat from God and his Happiness from his Favour and Grace as Darkness is from Light and being under the Executions of his Wrath yet all this is within the inclosure of a Finite Being and were there not an unchangeable Will of God and a Decree of his Justice that he will not reverse all Misery might be removed off from the most Unhappy of Beings and taken quite away But as things are The Misery of Spirits may be thus understood in the great Exemplar of it the Misery of Fallen Angels and the Prince of them the Devil 1. There is a Height and utmost stretch of Action The Devil is represented as always in Motion from the first beginning of Misery he hath no Rest even while he is in Chains as fierce Mastives he moves as far as he can and rages at the shortness of his Chain he hath had no sleepy moments of Non-action since the day of his fall no Breathing Time no Truce Thus the Soul in Misery is extended as we now speak day and night that is perpetually without intermission with an endless Action and Motion Consider what is Rest and Sleep to a Man of a tormented Mind and wearied Thoughts a Sleep wherein he is not scared with Dreams and terrified with Visions how unhappy doth he think himself in the want of it how unwilling is he to be awakened out of it And from thence understand the Misery of being perpetually awake in Misery 2. There is an ignobleness a baseness in all his Motions he goes upon his Belly and eats Dust he hath no Motion that can give him comfort from any glimmering of worthiness or generosity in it in all the multitude of his Motions he has none that can in the least cool the Furnace of his tormented Thoughts Any Degree of Worthiness in his Action would abate his Unhappiness All is full of Cruelty Envy Black and Malicious Design breathing the Fire and Smoak of Hell He goes up and down Angry Fierce Malecontent Cruel to himself and full of Rage against others as a Ravening roaring Lion seeking whom he may devour This is the state of miserable Souls There is a continual gnawing and scorching of wickedness without any thing to cool the tip of the Tongue any the least intention and motion of Goodness that might cool one flaming hellish Thought There is a Rage against God an Envy at the Blessedness of Heaven returning with unexpressible Misery upon those unhappiest of Beings a Hatred an Execration of themselves 3. There is a Horrour Amazement and trembling Sense of the Supreme Justice Holiness and Power of God over him with the Conscience of his own Guilt The Devils believe Jam 2. 19. and tremble The Fountain of Life Beauty and Happiness is Hell from Heaven to them because they find nothing in themselves but distance and contrariety horrid enmity and hatred They are convinc'd of that High Justice and Righteousness in the midst of so great Wrath and Vengeance upon them and this without leisure or intermission and therefore perpetually shake with Fear and Horrour while