himself or how the Grace of God which came by Christ did abound and was made more efficacious then sin For if the sin of Adam destroyed and slew more than the Death and Passion of the Lord Christ made alive then were Sin of a larger extent and more potent than Grace 〈◊〉 v. and the Apostle could not truly affirm That where Sin abounded Grace did much more abound CHAP. IV. A fourth Argument against the Doctrine of Inconditionate Reprobation taken from the Evangelical Dispensation wherein is shown the purport and design of the Gospel which is to reinstate all men into the Participation of the Divine Nature and that that Rigid Doctrine is destructive of so high and glorious an end THere is no Man that knows himself and discerns the true frame of his own Being what sublime and noble perfections the soul is capable of and withal reflects upon the weak and imperfect state of the Sons of men how uncertain and fluctuating their judgments are at the best and how frequently obscured with prejudice how impotently stubborn their wills to the election of substantial good and how broken and disordered the faculties of their whole man but will assuredly conclude that all Mankind however it comes to pass are extremely alienated and apostatiz'd from that innate purity and excellent state in which they were created for no Man that believes himself made by an Alwise and infinitely perfect Author can imagine that he came thus lame and maimed out of his hands and sunk as low as the capacities of their Nature will permit being only vivacious and active to trifling low and bodily interests and concernments carrying on such poor and momentary designs as are unworthy the native generosity of their minds in a word so devoid of that life in the possession of which consists their true felicity that they are past hopes of recovering by their own solitary endeavours their pristine and ancient glory But although Man by that venturous and bold revolt from the blessed Kingdom of Light dispossessed himself of Gods favour and forfeited all right and title to his ordinary care and Providence yet that ever-to-be-magnified Goodness which made him at first Lapsable beheld him as a calamitous object of compassion and designed the erecting and reedifying that glorious Temple which sin and unrighteousness had miserably defaced and ruined and the repossessing his own life of it's rightful Government and Dominion in the Souls of Men which however they come into the World the subjects of bruitish lusts and passions are yet capable of Angelical accomplishments and a Vital Union with the Creator of all things God therefore being the highest and most perfect life and feeling and knowing his Nature to be the most pretious thing in all the World and the utmost perfection of every Rational Being could not but intend graciously to his lapsed Creatures and seek the extension and dispreading of his goodly Attributes over all capable subjects of the World of life For he that shall look upon the diligence and activity of the dark Powers in enlarging the bounds of their usurped Kingdom and consider the contagious and disseminating Nature of every pitiful and degenerate lust how every crazie and sickly vice attempts and offers at a further explication of it self and every small Exarchat of that Hellish Principality endeavours dayly to make new additions and take in fresh supplies to maintain the general cause of unrighteousness and augment their petty Royalties can never think that God will sit as a disinteressed spectator but promote and advance his own good life to the command of the whole Creation and brake down the power of that great Arimanus who captivates the sons of Men in the fetters and shackles of Mortality and Death The life of God is a strong and powerful principle and hath alwayes the arme of Heaven to aid and assist it but all sin and unrighteousness is a meer poverty and deficiency not able to exist in the World did not the self-wills of men uphold it and can never stand against the potent assaults of the Heavenly Nature Which holy life that God might reestablish in the World he hath delivered the Gospel the last and most perfect dispensation that ever was or shall be communicated to Men which consists not in an external and dead form of words nor is it a meer systeme and compendium of such precepts that like the Mosaical Law sanctifie only to the purifying of the flesh but cannot 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Perfect him that doth the service as pertaining to the Conscience that is Purge and cleanse his mind from dead Works and make way for the consummation of the life of God within him whereby he shall no longer be in bondage and servility to every caitive lust but act spontaneously under a free and generous principle and become a law to himself but such a Method of perfect Righteousness and Virtue as shall purifie refine and exalt the spirits of Men from all feculent concretions and subdue every irregular motion and unruly desire that would tempt and sollicit their choice of corporeal joyes and beget in them so true a relish of unblameable Goodness and Holiness as should at the end of their mortal life instal them in the full possession of everlasting Tranquility and Peace Of which glorious contrivance though we have a Scheme and Model drawn out in the Holy Gospels yet there is a life and spirit in Christianity that cannot be blotted on paper but lives and acts in such hearts as are framed and squared according to those Rules contained in the Sacred Writings And this he who is the Author of our Faith and Blessedness testified when he said that his Words were Spirit and Life such as were able and designed to revive the dead and sensless minds of Men and propagate a vital heat and motion through the torpid and benummed World and accordingly the Apostle St. Paul tels us that Christianity is indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Law of the Spirit of life Rom. viii 2. 2 Cor. 3. and in another place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The ministration of the Spirit and the ministration of Righteousness in opposition to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The dispensation of Death and Condemnation intimating that under the Gospel men shall not have a Mechanical and Artificial Religion but such as frames the life and spirit of God in their hearts and becomes a Vital forme tuning their souls into an Universal consent with Gods own Will whereby they send forth most harmonious and Divine accents not only when they are stricken and beaten upon by an external hand like Memnon's statue whose Musical notes ceased so soon as the Sun-beams were withdrawn from it but from an internal Power incorporated and made one with their own spirits It is true when God at first made Man and sent him into this lower World he left him to be governed by those innate prescriptions and rules of Righteousness
descendeth from the Father of Lights exert it self in pure peaceable gentle merciful and impartial actions But we finding all things go contrary and Autaesthesie the Grand principle of our deviation from God so mischievously powerful leading men to a life of self-seeking and inamouring them with the fading beauties of this inferior World making Intellect and Reason drudge in unjust policy and subtlety for the promoting self-interest and carrying on little and private designs for the treasuring up Riches though by the greatest Extortion and Rapine and consuming and overrunning the poor and innocent like a sweeping Torrent that leaves nothing behind it but the miserable tokens of ruine and desolation This being the state of men and farr worse then I have here represented it under the brutish life and law of sin what signs can they shew that they are arrived to any considerable measure of liberty For it is not some one particular lust but the whole unrighteous and Diabolical Nature which mingles and insinuates it self with the whole frame of the soul and enthrals it to it 's imperious dictates But yet there is some freedome left still and men are not destitute of a light though languid and glimmering to lead them to greater degrees of Vertue if they would suffer themselves to be guided by it There is yet in every man in his greatest Apostacy and lapse from the Divine life a Principle of Conscience accusing and condemning him for the perpetration of evil and that regret and shame a man finds in himself after the commission of impiety is a manifest evidence that he had Power to avoid it 2. Again there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the law of the mind or conscience ver 23. Another law warring against the law of my mind And this is the second state and condition of mankind For as while they were under the Law of sin they were wholly alive unto themselves and disjoyned from the Universal Spirit of life and true freedome they became at last strangers to their own Beings and ignorant of their high and noble extraction so under this Dispensation of the mind or conscience there is a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or double-livedness within them being partly alive unto themselves and partly unto God sometimes lending a patient ear to the soft whispers of Divine wisdom and at other times carryed away with the loud murmurs and noises of that worser Principle as Medea in Euripides complains 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 My Conscience tells me that I act amiss But fury stronger than my Reason is And now they begin to awake out of their lethargick drowziness and sleep and open the windows of their souls and receive in some beams of the Sun of Righteousness that hath long circled about them and by his light they see themselves in a broken and unhappy plight and fain would come out of it but dare not put themselves to any trouble or pain so they lay themselves down again to slumber But conscience being once forcibly rouz'd up is not so easily lulled asleep but alarms them with fatal cryes and shews them the guiltiness that lies upon them and the mortiferous and dangerous state they are in by reason of the certain punishment all sin draws along with it thus being affrighted they become Religious out of fear and account Christianity as a task and burdensome service imposed upon them only to deprive them of their liberty and abridge them of that freedom they before possessed and still they bear a love and liking to their lusts and often visit them with dear embraces And while they are here they carry a perpetual warr within them between the Law of sin and the Law of the mind sometime the one and sometime the other prevailing the life of the body strugling against the mind or reason and the light endeavouring to chase away the darkness and night And of this state are to be understood these and such like places of Scripture For that which I do I allow not for what I would that do I not Rom. vii but what I hate that do I. So then with the mind I my self serve the law of God but with the flesh the law of sin For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh Gal. v. 17. and these are contrary one to the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that ye cannot do or that ye do not the things that that ye would Now the liberty of Mans will begins to spread and enlarge it self under this Oeconomy for though mens strength be but small yet God whose Goodness both Earth and Sea and the whole community of life partake of cannot behold his own dear life contending with the Powers of darkness and never countenance nor abet it but will lead it victoriously through the midst of hell and secure it from all the Magical spels and enchantments of the inferior World and as this Divine life grows more potent in the soul so the liberty and freedom of the will arises to a greater latitude and perfection But if we prove false to the Divine light and notwithstanding the great helps and means vouchsafed us pretend still our disability and infirmity we may easily lapse again into the brutish life and lie under the Power of the law of sin out of which we began to be delivered and the freedom of our will which was in some measure enlarged will be again contracted into narrowness and exility and our last state will be worse then the first 3. But he that makes good use of Gods gifts and behaves himself as a good Souldier of the Lord Christ and conquers and subdues his rebellious lusts by the power of his Spirit descendihg into the grave with the holy Jesus by a profound humility and mortification and becoming perfectly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dead to all the self-feeling and the luscious relishes of the corporeal life he is arrived to the highest dispensation of Christianity which is to be under the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. viii 2. Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus Such a man is wholly alive unto God and though he be encumbred with many hardships afflictions and outward calamities which threaten approaching ruine to his body of earth yet his life is holy harmless and innocent like the life of Christ upon Earth and his soul is so affected as his was having but one only will in the World which is to annihilate himself that God may be all in him And whoever is arrived to this high pitch of Divine perfection hath attained an enlarged and boundless freedom his life being melted into the Divine life and his will fitted and adapted to the comprehension of the Divine Will For the true liberty of our wills consists not in an uncertain indifferency and dubious fluctuation between two different objects presented to our choice For this arises out of the darkness and imperfection of our
Imprimatur Tho. Tomkyns R. R mo in Christo Patri ac Domino D no. GILBERTO Divinâ Providentiâ Archi-Episcopo Cantuariensi à Sacris Domesticis Ex Aed Lamb. Festo S ti Andreae 1667. DEUS JUSTIFICATUS OR The Divine Goodness Vindicated and Cleared against the Assertors of Absolute and Inconditionate REPROBATION TOGETHER WITH Some Reflections on a late Discourse of Mr. Parkers concerning the Divine Dominion and Goodness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato WISD xi 23. For thou lovest all the things that are and abhorrest nothing which thou hast made for never wouldest thou have made any thing if thou hadst hated it LONDON Printed by E. Cotes for Walter Kettilby at the Bishops-head in Duck-lane 1668. THE PREFACE TO THE READER IT cannot be unknown to any man who hath either carefully observed the manners of Mankind or perufed the Writings of those of this present Age who have made many sad Declarations against the general Corruption of the World that either men are stupidly and blockishly Ignorant even in these dayes wherein Knowledge so much abounds or their Leaders have caused them to Err by instilling into them such Principles as may fairly consist with the practice of Vice and Immorality which easing them of that tedious burden of severe Mortification and sharpe Conflicts with the irregular and inordinate motions of sense and the bodily life soon captivated them to the embracing of them and made a speedy conquest of their unwary Judgments and so infinitely prejudiced their minds against the reception of better Sentiments and Notions that they cannot believe either the sense of the most pious and venerable Antiquity or of our own present Church to be Orthodox And I wish I could say that this latter hath not been the greater cause of those monstrous Impieties which in these late times so much prevailed amongst us For certainly mens natural Faculties and Capacities are no whit worse for the entertaining of Truth if it were rightly and duely propounded to them than former ages but might be much better if every Preacher of the Gospel and Steward of the Mysteries of God had faithfully discharged the trust committed to him But when those that took upon them the title of Evangelical Shepherds came not in at the right door but impudently challenged and usurped that Sacred Office and Dignity of being Co-workers with Christ the chief Shepherd in that great work of implanting his own life and lovely Nature in the lapsed and degenerate souls of men it is no wonder if the Flock went astray and became faint and weak through the unwholesomeness or undue order and proportion of their food And doubtless the blessed Jesus who came into the World to heal and cement the broken ruins and decayes of our Natures did not intend to bring this Heroick undertaking to perfection by perpetual Miracles but by a natural and orderly Method and therefore as he himself before he left the World breathed on his Apostles and gave them Commission both to Teach and Govern his Church So did they having received Authority from the Prince and Head of the Catholick Church the Lord Christ Ordain and Constitute fit persons to succeed them in that Function by which we are sufficiently instructed that it is not for every man to take upon him the Office of a Minister of the Gospel lest God take as little delight in him as he did in those Prophets of old who run before they were sent which too many did in the late times upon the pretence of some inspired Excellency and Perfection above their Brethren but only for those that come into their Office by a regular and due manner and according to the Fundamental Laws and Apostolick Constitutions of the Church wherein they live I may therefore refer the Miscarriages observed amongst us to these two General Heads 1. The great Pride and Self-conceitedness which reigns in vulgar spirits whereby they make their vainglorious Minds the estimate of their Perfections and by puffie conceits of themselves crumble into infinite Sects and Divisions and he that can best act the part of an inspired person and cant most fluently in Scripture expressions becomes the Ring leader of the Sect. And what gives greater occasion to this then that pleasant Doctrin to carnal minds which teaches them that when they can but collect themselves to be heirs of heaven and fancy their names enrolled among the Stars they are then safe enough They shall tread upon the young Lyon and the Dragon and the enemy shall never be able to move or disturbe their rest And all this shall be conferr'd upon them without any attempts or endeavours of their own toward the attainment of it This cannot but fill their sailes and blow up their light heads when they consider how easily they have obtained heaven and how God himself by a peculiar and discriminating love hath separated them from the rest of the polluted rabble of mankinde and dignified them with the title of his Beloved Ones And as the Nature of every Heresie is to diffuse and spread it self and by a contagious affriction savour all capable Subjects round about it no sooner is this Doctrine propounded but it findes good entertainment by the unstable and injudicious because it complies with and patronizes their darling Vices and renders it self very grateful to the Animal Life and withal requires no great pains or labour to be fully instructed in it nothing that shall rouze them up from their deadly slumber or molest their desired security the whole business is nothing but an inactive and easie belief of certain propositions and a delight some application of them to themselves and then Heaven cannot fail of being their portion and reward Thus while they soar aloft and fly in their vain dreams and imaginations they are really suckt into a living Hell of woe and misery and the unrighteous nature whose counsels are the very inspirations of that bottomless-pit takes greater hold upon them and having no substantial foundation to bottom themselves upon they perish in a storm and the windes of adverse fortune sink them even when they think themselves in the haven of Felicity True goodness and righteousness cannot consist with a proud and haughty spirit and is neuer found but in that humble Temper which the Blessed Jesus recommended to all his followers when he said Learn of me for I am meek and lowly of heart And certainly 't is the greatest Obex and impediment to real and solid wisdom that possibly can be imagined when we are impatient of instruction and refuse such wholesome precepts and counsels as tend to the building of us up in our most holy Faith and by high-flown imaginations climb to the highest boughs of the tree of knowledge when we are yet unacquainted with the Rudiments of Christianity The way to life and blessedness lies not in the self-chosen tracts of opinions nor in sequestring our selves from the rest of the world by an impertinent contention about words
the case Is it at all consentaneous to that communicative Goodness wherein God takes most delight to glorifie himself to make those souls the desolate Victims of enraged Vengeance who never had any more then a capability of Existence when their first Parent sinned against heaven and could no more prevent their defilement by that diffusive contagion then hinder themselves from being first made Arrian makes a very near cognation and affinity of the souls of Men with God Cap. 14. lib. 1. in Epictet as if they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 particles and avulsions from him and when Moses made intercession for the Israelites upon the Rebellion of Korah he uses this Title or Appellation Numb xvi 22. The God of the spirits of all flesh as the most prevalent Argument to induce him not to be wrath with the whole Congregation for one mans sin forasmuch as he was their Creator and therefore could not but pity the works of his own hands And the Author to the Hebrews styles this everblessed Being Chap. xii 9. The Father of Spirits who for that very reason can never cast of that Relation and become unpitiful to his own lovely Off-spring who in their lowest state and greatest degeneracy were vouchsafed to be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Sons of God Joh. xi 52. And now what other can these things signifie but that there is a very near alliance and consanguinity between God and the souls of Men and that it is only the corrupt imaginations of men which introduced those horrid Decrees and represented God as a hater of Mankind and desirous of the death of his Creation But to carry on this a little further That God should hang the everlasting interest of millions of souls upon the frail and mutable Will of a single Person whom he foresaw would lapse and by it ruin and undo the greater part of his yet uncreated Posterity is an Oeconomy too harsh and rigid ever to be put in execution by the God of Love and unworthy the Nature of him who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ and in him the Father of Mercies and Compassions Let us be wise unto sobriety and act like men who care not for Words and Names but Things Suppose an hundred Persons condemned to die equally culpable equally criminal and it be in the Power of some Good Man to save ten twenty or all if he please will he not rather deliver all than only redeem twenty or a less number especially when he may do it with the same expence and cost and shall we imagine God to be less Good than a charitable and kind-hearted Man Do God and his holy Angels take an infinite complacency and delight and rejoyce at the Conversion of one sinner and can we think they take pleasure in the destruction of Myriads even before they ever actually offended This made Mr. Calvin betake himself to the defence of the Supralapsarian cause because he knew not how the Personal sin of Adam should be derived upon his Posterity and make them formally guilty so as God might Salvâ bonitate justitiâ Reprobate them as sinners and cast them into the lowest hell Wherefore he ascribes all to the Divine Preordination and doubts not to say In Resp ad Calumn Nebul. ad Art 1. Nihil ad nos unius hominis culpa nisi nos coelestis judex aeterno exitio addiceret But let us hear him speak out his mind more fully to this purpose Instit lib. 3. cap. 23. § 7. Disertis verbis hoc extare negant decretum fuisse à Deo ut sua defectione periret Adam Quasi verò idem ille Deus quem Scriptura praedicat facere quaecunque vult ambiguo fine condideret nobilissimum ex suis Creaturis Liberi arbitrii fuisse Dicunt ut fortunam ipse sibi fingeret Deum verò nihil destinasse nisi ut pro merito eum tractaret Tam frigidum commentum si recipitur ubi erit illa Dei Omnipotentia quâ secundum arcanum consilium quod aliunde non pendet omnia moderatur Atqui Praedestinatio velint nolint in posteris se profert Neque enim factum est naturaliter ut à salute exciderent omnes unius parentis culpâ Quid eos prohibet fateri de uno homine quod inviti de toto humano genere concedunt Quid enim tergiversando luderent operam Cunctos mortales in unius hominis personâ morti aeternae mancipatos fuisse Scriptura clamat Hoc cùm naturae ascribi nequeat ab admirabili Dei consilio profectum esse minime obscurum est Bonos istos justitiae Dei Patronos perplexos haerere in festu â altas verò trabes superare nimis absurdum est Iterum quaero Unde factum est ut tot gentes unà cum liberis eorum infantibus aeternae morti involveret lapsus Adae absque remedio nisi quia Deo ita visum est Hic obmutescere oportet alicqui tam dicaces linguas Decretum quidem horrible fateor inficiari tamen nemo poterit quin praesciverit Deus quem exitum esset habiturus homo antequam ipsum conderet ideo praesciverit quia decreto suo sic ordinarat It cannot be denyed then but that the Scripture abundantly testifies and our dayly experience asserts the Lapse and Apostacy of Men from God and that they are really guilty of an Original contagion but that it came by any Ordination and Decree of God neither Scripture not Reason will assent unto And for this Degeneracy God might justly have punished all the World since that every man had made himself obnoxious by departing from him and violating his Sacred Law But God whose Goodness never fails was so far from taking advantage of the deplorable state of Mankind that he had a design of Good towards them and sent the Lord Christ into the World who taking upon him to become a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or expiatory Sacrifice for the sins of men took of all that displeasure which was conceived against them according as the Apostle tells us 2 Cor. v. 19. Col. i. 19 20. God was in Christ reconciling the World unto himself And again It pleased the Father that in Christ should all fulness dwell and having made peace through the bloud of his Cross by him to reconcile all things unto himself whether they be things in Earth or things in Heaven By which Reconciliation is meant Gods taking into grace and favour lapsed Man and forgiving their foul degeneracy from him and assuring them that their past obliquities shall never ruine them if now they will endeavour to become New-creatures and that now he hath entred upon a Covenant of Peace wherein he promises to them all the assistance that possibly can be given Rational Beings so that now no man is damned for his Original but Actual Transgressions otherwise it cannot be understood how God through Christ should reconcile the World unto
endeavours to unite and become one with that ever-blessed Being subtracting his affections from all earthly vanities as finding something more noble and worthy to bestow them upon Lib. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thus as Porphyry speaks of the Egyptian Priests 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He hath given up his whole life to Divine Contemplation and search after the Deity Such Power have Evangelical Truths over the minds of men that they transform them into their own native image and similitude and the more they are looked into the more they enravish them with their heavenly beauty and pulchritude And because afflicted and persecuted Vertue could not be thought eligible meerly for it self nor be a sufficient argument to induce us to the love and practice of it who were so fatally addicted to the concerns of sense therefore God who knew our frame and how far and to what degrees we had apostatiz'd from his holy Nature did not only propound good things to our choice but solicit our wills to the embracing of them by the strongest evidences and most attractive motives that our Natures were capable of receiving The life of sense being more powerful and laying a greater though not a juster claim to our minds as we are born into this World God was pleased to deal with us after a sensible manner and in a way of condescending Wisdom proportioning the Truths he delivered to us to our capacity of reception And this was that the Apostle called the Foolishness of Preaching wherein God stoops down and puts on the garb and frailties of humanity and suits the results of his will with our mean and shallow apprehensions Great is the Mysterie of Godliness God was manifested in the flesh and cradled in the circle of a Virgins arms which clearly demonstrates even to outward sense the exceeding Goodness and Wisdom of Almighty God that he hath not cast off the care of Mankind but is at peace with the World and hath put on the bright robes of Loving-kindness and Mercy which he hath given a large Specimen and full proof of in the Mission of the Lord Christ from heaven God would have all men lay aside their hard thoughts and causless-jealousies and suspicions of his Nature as if he did not from his heart intend them good but only suspended his anger for a time which might again break out upon them in prodigious floods of vengeance and fury For this is the most certain sign that God wills and desires our happiness and welfare in that he hath united himself to our Nature and sent down his only begotten Son for no other purpose but to seek and to save that which was lost And if he spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all how shall he not with him also freely give us all things What is there now can lay a greater tie upon ingenuous spirits then the discovery of so much undeserved kindness and love What heart is there so obdurate and rocky that this will not dissolve into the tears of love and joy to behold the blessed Jesus hanging between heaven and earth upon the Cross that he might reconcile all things that are in heaven and earth and become a propitiatory Sacrifice for all mens sins in the World It is said of Socrates that he was so inamour'd with this Divine passion of Love that he styled himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A servant of Love Let therefore Love which is the Proxenet of Nature the great instrument of conciliating hearts beget in thee a return and retribution of Love and never think of those streams of blood which so copiously flowed from the wounded body of thy dying Lord without a passive and melting spirit but be likewise a servant of Love and act under that generous principle for Love is of God And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God And that we may not think we are set to remove mountains or perform impossibilities when we are exhorted by the Gospel to the participation of Gods holy life we shall never be left alone to sink under our load and die but shall have the assistance of that Almighty and Demiurgical spirit of Love who hovered over the dark Chaos and brought into Being the goodly frame of heaven and earth and replenished all the immense tracts of space with sutable inhabitants Wisd ch vii This is that Wisdom which is the brightness of the Everlasting the unspotted mirrour of the power of God and the Image of his Goodness which remaining in her self makes all things new and in all ages entring into holy souls makes them friends of God and Prophets She will not lodge in a sinful body nor abide when unrighteousness cometh in For she is more beautiful then the Sun and above all the order of stars being compared with the light she is found before it This kind and loving spirit will God bestow upon every one that asks it of him to repair his broken and decayed Nature to raise up the Divine Image to joynt and confirm every perverse dislocation in the frame of his soul and to perfect and compleat the living efformation of Christ within him Let no man then despair of attaining to a state of Blessedness under the Gospel for this Benign Spirit whose delights are with the Sons of Men pervades the whole World and touches and overshadows every man with out-stretched wings who is willing to have the Divine Image and Pourtraiture formed in him and doth not by impurity and uncleanness chase it away Though our enemies are mighty and our souls weak yet let none despair of Victory for through the assistance and conduct of that Almighty we shall be able to overcome them He is ever cherishing and fostring the life of God wherever it 's born into any soul and sweetly insinuates into our minds and hallows and sanctifies all our powers and excites us to a serious and hearty pursuit after the indispensable laws of Truth Righteousness and Goodness We are not fallen and degenerated beyond the power of God but his Spirit is able to raise and bring up our souls from the lowest Hell and to renew and reform our debased and wretched Natures For what cannot he do who at first made us faultless and happy till we ruined and defaced his blessed Image and rendred our selves the miserable objects of his compassions What is there in our frame so stubborn and insequacious that he cannot rectifie and redress who at first created all things and brought into Being all the Beauty and Harmony of Heaven and Earth He will never leave us destitute and forlorn but will take hold of every fitness and capacity till he have perfected in us the Divine life and brought us unto Glory But because Examples are more prevalent with mankind then Precepts and Instructions that God might not leave any thing undone which would in any kind conduce to our Interest he hath recommended to us the Example