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A60608
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A future world in which mankind shall survive their mortal durations, demonstrated by rational evidence from natural and moral arguments against the atheists pretentions by William Smyth.
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Smith, William, b. 1615 or 16.
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1688
(1688)
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Wing S4278; ESTC R25769
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182,911
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496
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as reasonably inform his Mind that where there is such a redundancy of Troubles the man that is afflicted with them may and ought also to his mighty comfort believe that as God's waies are alwaies designedly Good and Equal so that He might send them upon a design and on purpose to allow him a greater degree of Happiness in a better state and a recompence proportionable to his greater afflictions in another World. And for which he may as assuredly hope as that he that hath improved his Talent in acting greater measures of Good than others may on that account believe himself to be answerably then rewarded For as no one drop of cold Water in a cup of Charity shall not be unrewarded in the one case so shall not one Tear that is shed in sorrow for greater afflictions be unrecompensed in the other And if all men were sensible how valuable any advance of happiness were in a State of Glory they could not but think that whereinsoever they have hindred themselves from doing all the good they can possibly do they have acted very imprudently for their own interest so if the men that meet more than ordinary afflictions in this world did but consider the abundancy of their recompence in another they would be so far from murmuring at their greater misfortunes that they would as our Saviour in one instant case represented it on the contrary rejoice and be exceeding glad for their greater reward in Heaven Now as to the whole that I have said in this Case as it will easily appear upon the belief of a Future State that is was GOD's Gracious Design to make the enjoyment of a happiness in it the Great End of Mans Creation so also that those mention'd Evils to which his nature hath subjected him may be improved into many instrumental advantages to prepare and adapt him for it And therefore Mankind ought to be so far from making any unkind reflections upon the Justice and Equity of GOD for their natural subjections to all those Evils and present Infelicities that they must justify and applaud his Wisdom and Goodness that he order'd them for such excellent Ends and Purposes And now I shall once more call for the Observer of the formention'd Rooms of the calamitous of all sorts but it is upon a new Errand that is not that he should stand still as a witnessing spectatour only of their Miseries but that upon the Reasons which I have given he may pass another judgment upon the place That is that now he may not think those Rooms to be nothing else but so many Apartments of Misery but to be either so many Divine Laboratories in which God design'd to refine the Souls of men and to prepare them for the purer Regions of a Future Bliss or he may judge them to be so many Sacred Oratories in which all the oppressed may according to GOD's Ordinative love to them be more strongly oblig'd to be daily adoring Him and performing their constant Offices to implore His Blessing upon their several afflicted States or lastly he may look upon them as so many Military Theatres in which the Afflicted may with religious courage be contending for the lofty Prize that God hath set in their prospect by Faith and Hope And thus I hope I have so fully solv'd the First intolerable Consequence that they that shall hereafter complain of God for their subjection to their present Evils must arraign his Love for doing them good and reproach his Care in carrying on a design for the better securing their Future Happiness And thus ends the solution of what might reflect upon the Creatours Honour Section II. THis Second Section contains the solution of the other mention'd Intolerable Consequences which the Afflicted may suggest to their own minds from the Miseries and Calamities to which their Nature hath subjected and exposed them upon the belief of the Real Existence of a Future State and of an establish'd Happiness there enjoyable I say all such other consequences will be easily naturally answered controuled upon the same Reason that the Great CREATOURS Glorious Attributes have been already vindicated First what was alledged concerning Parents cruelty in propagating Beings to be subject to the possibility and danger of so much wretchedness and calamity is presently solv'd by a belief of such a Future State For Parents can then on that Ground most reasonably propound to their own thoughts and hopes that they shall bring forth so many Candidates for an everlasting happiness and so many Rightful Heirs of a most Glorious Inheritance that as so securely setled upon every one of them that no Power Malice or Contrivance whatsoever can disseize them of it unless they shall willfully resign up their own Right and Title to it So that if they should certainly foreknow that those their Children shall infallibly meet the hardest circumstances of humane life yet considering that Parents have so much reason to believe that the most afflictive Evils of Mortality are possibly improveable for the better securing a Happy State in another World it will be sufficient to remove the discouragement which the mention'd consequence suggested to them For upon a supposed tender of election a good Parent would in no sence have his Children Great and Prosperous if it stood in competition with his choice of having them Good and Vertuous though they were assured that their Children were to be incumber'd with the greatest misfortunes to which their natures have subjected them Then Secondly As to what hath been discours'd to justify mens putting a present period to their own uneasy lives when they are heavily oppressed with any of those severest Evils of their Mortality though that practice would be reasonable enough if there were no Future World as I have shewn Reasons Authorities and Examples of it yet that State being once acknowledg'd and believed and the men that do believe it actually ingage in the practice of those Vertuous Actions that necessarily conduce to the happiness of it they would then not only hold their hands from such destructive attempts but rather might find sufficient Reasons to own the continuance of their lives as a Blessing in any condition They would then be patiently and wisely accounting with themselves That Almighty GOD may be mercifully pleas'd to continue them still in their uneasy Lives because perhaps some part of the necessary work of their great salvation is yet unfinish'd that is that possibly they may have some portions of their lost time to redeem some Remains of their Passions still to subdue some further Additions to be made to their Heavenly Stock some Defects in their daily Offices to be amended or some further Degrees of Love and Zeal for GOD and Goodness to attain to before they die Or they may be satisfying themselves by telling their own minds That GOD in Mercy to the World may let them still live to be further Instrumental to some Common Good. Perhaps
the one and the other sort of men ought to be inform'd that all that while they are most ungratefully arraigning and undervaluing one of the choicest instances of God's Infinitely Wise Love to and Care of Mankind 2. But then Secondly another Reason why God Almighty was pleas'd to permit those Incumbrances and Difficulties to be so great as they are to be measur'd by those five mention'd Instances was upon a further design of his Love and Goodness to Mankind in order to promote a greater advance of their happiness in another World That is that the will of man might by those discouragements be the more duly and equally balanc'd in his choice of being Vertuous so as to be capable of those vast Rewards and Blessings which God design'd for and promis'd to him And the Reason is because upon God's proposal of those extraordinary returns of Reward and Blessing in another World the very sence and expectation of them would otherwise have over-balanc'd the freedom of his choice of being Vertuous too much on the one hand towards a determination of his will and a necessity of chusing had not the greatness of those difficulties and discouragements so counterbalanc'd his mind and pois'd his will for a more equal freedom in his election of Vertue so that had GOD Almighty been pleas'd that the way of Vertue and Religion should have been more easy that is less incumber'd with those difficulties discouragements it ought to be reasonably presum'd That God would have communicated to the mind of Man lower Apprehensions of that Future Happiness and so the freedom of His Will would have been balanc'd for a lesser stress of choice and consequently with lesser hazard But then it must be also as reasonably presum'd That the Happiness attainable as such a Reward in the end would have been proportion'd to such an easy and less hazardous Choice Waters are observ'd to rise to no higher pitch than according to the advance they have from the original Spring Therefore I say it was a mighty instance of GOD's Wisdom that he permitted those difficulties and incumbrances to be so great and numerous that thereby he might make the hoped for Happiness proportionable for Man 's equally balanc'd Choice of so much Vertue as was necessary for such an attainment But then His Goodness is infinitely to be admir'd that all this should be done on design to advance him to so much the higher and nobler degrees of Happiness in another World. Thirdly It 's very reasonable to believe That GOD was pleas'd to permit those difficulties and discouragements and to allow the possibility of being Vertuous upon those hard Terms that he himself might act his Divine Favour to the vertuous part of Mankind as near as possible to the measures of Justice and Equity as well as of Grace and Goodness That is that thereby he might make the free Donations of such extraordinary rewarding Blessings to the Vertuous the more accountable and as it were the more justifiable to His own infinite Reason and Wisdom which St. Paul calls the Righteous Judgment of GOD that so all His Divine Attributes might be the better balanc'd in making His Creature Man compleatly happy And who knows not That it is ordinary for many wise and good Men more especially Commanders in Armies to offer such Employments to their Friends and Favourites whom they design to advance in Repute and Preferment as have the greater trouble and hazard in them for no other end but to justify to their own minds Discretion in being nobly kind to such adventurers and in which they may have more satisfaction to their generous minds than for any manner of advantage that they may receive to themselves by such their Friends and Favourites hazardous Engagements And then Why may not we as reasonably have the same Thoughts of a Wise and Merciful GOD as to the case in hand This the Third Reason Fourthly GOD was so far pleas'd to permit I could say to order that every Person might encounter with such oppositions difficulties and discouragements not only that His own mighty Favours to them might appear the more reasonable to Himself but that also to the greater Glory and Justification of His Justice and Goodness they might approveably appear so to all His created rational Beings When he shall come to be admired in all them that believe in that Day as St. Paul expresseth it And first as to those Beings that had already struggled through those difficulties and conquered those incumbrances and are arriv'd at their Reward in another World How much will it advance the Glory of an infinite Benefactor when they shall recount as it 's reasonably imagin'd they will what every one of their Fellow Saints had done and suffered for Vertue and what hard Adventures they had made in the time of their Probation in the former World to keep up their Vertuous and Religious Integrities I say How can it but advance the Glory of GOD that all the glorify'd Saints and Angels can be able to say That such a man is not in the blessed Place altogether by a partial kindness with particular respects of his Person only and so to have nothing to applaud but such a meer and irrespective Love but that in the free donation of his Happiness they can observe that all other the Divine Attributes did concenter with His Love and so they may have Reason as to magnify his Wisdom Justice and Equity for the extraordinary measures he took to bring him to that blessed State in such a manner so also His transcendent Love in bestowing that blessing at all so graciously upon him And then on the other side those unhappy beings who by their Cowardice had refus'd to conflict with those difficulties and discouragementr of living Vertuous Lives and had thereby cheated themselves out of all those future Blessings upon the temptations of a few vanishing Pleasures and a little transient sensual Satisfaction I say why may it not be thought a wise ordination in God to permit those incumbrances in being Vertuous that when those unhappy Souls shall observe that God had bestowed those mighty Blessings upon those that adher'd to their Vertuous Living so incumbred they might for ever justify his equity that it was not for nothing or for what was very inconsiderable or for what was not in their own power to have done as well as in theirs that he was pleas'd in his free love to bestow those mighty blessings upon the Vertuous in that happy apartment so that in both respects both to the Good and Evil God's design was to have his Justice magnify'd as well as his Mercy Therefore St. Paul calls both those events a Just and Righteous thing or Act with God c. 5. Fifthly and Lastly God was pleas'd that man might not go through with a Vertuous state without those difficulties and incumbrances that the Vertuous might not only enjoy the hopes and expectations of those