Creation but from common Grace supernaturally communicated by virtue of the heavenly Seed all along sown and springing up in the nature of man Now to this conviction as to their proper end are directed The precepts the vehemency of exhortation expostulations comminations and allurements which God maketh use of to man through the whole Scriptures That man may be sensible if he be capable of any sense that he is dead in sin that there is no principle no power of good at all in him which may be a ground to receive this good seed cast from without upon him that it may take root in it and bring forth fruit by it 2. The Law is a ministry of condemnation so St. Paul expresly stiles it This conviction and condemnation both the holy Apostle presenteth clearly to us when he saith That the end of this whole ministry is That every mouth might be stopped and the whole world become guilty before God 3. The last end of the Law is Death Death upon all Mankind upon the whole person of man a spiritual and natural death Death here where man is truly dead while he seem to live Death in the departure out of this life death after this life in Hell in torments This death is without any Ransom or Redemption within the compass or power of the whole Creation These are the proper and next ends of the Law Before I come to the remote and Ultimate ends I shall make my way clearer by answering an Objection which may here set it self in our way Object Is it not the proper and next end of the Law to be a rule of Holiness and a guide to it Answ. Indeed not rarely the form of each thing being its perfection is called the end of it But if we distinguish the formal and the final cause this is not the end but the essential form of the Law The true form and essence of the Law is a proposal of good and evil to man as the object of his choice In the Law we have before us the good of Holiness with its Divine Nature and Beauties with its attendant joys and blessedness The evil of sin with its hateful form and the monstrous disorders in the nature of which an Angel becomes a Devil and which is the proper constitutive form of a Devil together with the consequent horrors and torments extending themselves to the nethermost Hell Thus is the Law as now we speak in its essential form a convenant of works presenting to man holiness and sin with life and death accompanying them that he may make his choice by embracing holiness taking life in it and together with it Or by entertaining sin receiving death into his whole person and all his solaces round about him From this essential form of the Law see how the Law is directed to the fore-mentioned ends Man is composed of the light of God and his own proper darkness These two the Schools call the Act and the potentiality the form and the matter being and not being which constitute every Creature The darkness or nothingness which is the Creatures own is the proper ground of sin which is its own form and is a privation or deficiency a falling to nothing While the Divine Glory shines upon man tempering forming and confining this darkness by its own light to an harmonious Union with it it becomes the Daughter and Image and Spouse of this Light Now sin lies dead in us but the man lives This Divine Life shining in the darkness and through the darkness is to him a Divine shadow of the Divine Light While these two stand undivided and undistinguished to man in the Unity of the Divine Image and in the simplicity of this Divine Unity sin finds no way can take no occasion to bring forth it self into life The Law comes this distinguisheth between the Light of God and the darkness of the Creature in man This is the temptation and the state of tryal Abide saith the Lord to man with thy darkness in the Divine Light as a shadow of the Divine Glory in the simplicity of the Divine Unity so shall this Unity this Glory be a Tree of Life to thee thou shalt eat of it and live for ever Thou thy self shall be as the fruit upon this Tree which shall never fail nor fall But if thou choose to thy self thine own darkness if in this darkness thou distinguish and divide thy self from the Divine Light seeking to captivate this Light in thy darkness and to turn it to a glory to thy self as if thou hadst in thy self and in thine own darkness the root upon which this Divine Light with all its beauty force and sweetness grew This division in thy self will prove to thee the forbidden and that cursed Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil in eating of it thou shalt immediately die God thus in the Law presenteth this trial to man That he may discover man in the earthly Image of the first Creation with all his Strengths and Beauties to be altogether shadowy That he may make way for the dissolution of this shadowy Image in order to the springing up of the heavenly Image as its proper seed through it into its ripe fruit and perfect form God with-holds his Divine presence appearances and influences from man during this trial Now the darkness which alone is mans own discovereth it self in its own proper deformities and confusions it predominateth in man captivateth man entirely to it self becomes his choice and his Lord. Thus now sin springs up thus it takes life to it self bringing forth death together with it which is the perfection of sin and of the Original Darkness dividing it self from the Divine Light heightning it self to an enmity against the Divine Light making it self by this means as a Mark and a Butt of opposition to the Divine Light against which it shooteth all the fiery Arrows of the Divine Displeasure and Wrath. This seemeth to be the proper meaning of St. Paul's words before cited I had not known concupiscence if the Law had not said Thou shalt not covet I was alive once without the Law and sin in me was dead But when the Law came sin lived and I died Sin taking an occasion by the Law deceived me and so slew me That of mans own the darkness was the Womb out of which sin the delusion of sin and death by sin spring forth into life There is one note upon this Scripture which is very necessary for the enlightning of the whole sense Some Copies read in the 9. vers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sin revived this supposeth a former life of sin this seemeth uncapable of any sense agreeable to the Text the Context the Design of the Apostle in this place But other Copies as that interlineary Greek Testament of Arias Montanus readeth it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 sin lived now first took life This reading alone furnisheth us with a sense in which all the expressions of the holy
the Glory The darkness now in the place of these formed it self into false deformed monstrous Images in man in every Creature which had indeed some resemblance of the true and primitive Images which were in Paradise As a Monkey hath the similitude of man but in proportion height beauty life greatness power majesty differed from them as a lye from the truth The expressions of the Holy Ghost seem skilfully chosen to declare this change to us verse 23. He saith They turned the Glory of God not into the Image but the similitude of the Image of Man verse 25. They turned the truth not into the Image or shadow but into a lye These false Images of the Night and the blackness of Darkness were inhabited and acted by so many Devils so many dark Spirits the first Springs and Seats of this Darkness As an Angel filled each Form in Paradise figuring it self upon it so were all forms in the Fall filled ahd figured by Devils Thus they became Idols of which St. Paul saith They that worship Idols worship Devils Angels in Paradise were pure and sweet Lights springing freshly forth from the Divine Glory rendring every Creature pure and transparent with a Light of Glory shining in it as clear Christal all over replenished enriched and heightned with the Sun-beams This Light every where transmitted the eye and the glory through each Creature to each other married them one to another in each Creature This was a Paradise indeed of Divine Plants full of Divine Beauties Fragrances Virtues and Fruits The Devils as Clouds of Night and Darkness resting on each Creature suffer not the Light from above nor the sight from below to pass through them They at once exclude the brightness of the Divine Glory and draw the eye to themselves in each Form to rest in themselves This is the Head the Well-spring the Mystery of all Idolatry whether it be of the grosser or finer sort But I pass now from the first to the second Proposition 2. Proposition The immediate cause of the first change made in the Understanding at the Fall was the Divine Glory with-drawing or with-holding it self The immediate the proper cause of the deformity and disorder in the change was the defectibility the nothingness of the Creature of it self sinking down to nothing as the Glory removes it self from it or the Variety of the Divine fulness the Order in the Divine Wisdome the Harmony of the Divine Beauties by the power of which the Unity descending to its lowest state to a shadow of it self in Paradise and having there acted all the parts proper to that shadowy scene or state having carried it to the utmost now passeth from that shadowy Unity into a new Scene or state properly arising out of the darkness of the shadow and the lowest degree of Unity which is that of Contrariety As the Unity is the scene of Light Life Love Harmony Beauty Joy all Good So is this of Darkness Enmit Death Deformity Disorder all Evil. But I touch this transiently here and return The Perfection of the Understanding is Light or Truth The Corruption of the Understanding is darkness or falshood That which makes manifest is Light saith St. Paul Every Image then so far as it is an Image is Light Each Image is a composure of Beams sent forth from every part of the Object represented by the Image The first Light is the first Image the Image of God the brightness of the Glory of God As colours which are shaded Lights are constituted by this Light and actuated in their appearance to the eye so is every other Light Light only by and in this Light as a shadow of it Darknese is the absence or privation of Light Privations have no proper but accidental causes only Thus the Divine Glory retiring from the Understanding or ceasing to shine in it is by accident the cause of the Darkness there As the setting or departing of the Sun is the cause of Night which is not a blemish to the Sun but its Glory that in its presence are all the Beauties and Joys of Light in its abscence all the Disagreeablenesses and Melancholies of night and darkness But if at the ebbing of the Tyde when the Sea sucks into it self again the streams of water which at the Floud it powred forth from it self in the River Tagus or Pactolus a beautiful Form of golden sand present it self to our eyes in other Rivers a black ill-sented Mud offend our senses The emptiness of the Chanel the absence from the Waters is indeed from the Sea But the pleasing or displeasing Forms appearing in the absence of the waters are from the Rivers themselves In like manner all Defects have deficient Causes The change in the Fall is from the Divine Glory drawing into it self that stream and tyde of Beauties which it powred forth upon the understanding of man The Darkness Deformity Disorder in this change proceeds from the nature of the Creature from its natural tendency to that nothingness which alone is its own and its native Element as it is in it self This nothingness hath the same relation to the beautiful Essences the essential Beauties of all Forms of things of all Creatures while they stand in the Divine Image as the Contrariety hath to the Divine Unity A Cloud looseth all its lustre in a blackness and darkness a cold of Earth hath no more any sweet light to entertain the eye when the Sun takes his golden beams off from them But the Stars and Diamonds sparkle and shine in the absence of the Sun in the depth of night The reason of the difference is the opacity or shadiness in the nature of the Cloud and clod of Earth the native light in the Diamond and the Stars Thus the Creature being nothing in it self tends to nothing as the eternal Sun goeth down upon it This tendency to nothing is the proper the formal cause of all Deformities and Disorders as the springing of the Light in the Morning is of all those lovely colours which then adorn the Sky But thus much for this second Proposition 3. Proposition The change in the Will and Affections followeth the change in the Understanding as its immediate and proper Cause This lies plain in the Text verse 22. They turned the Glory of God to the similitude of a man c. verse 24. Wherefore also God gave them up to their hearts lusts to all uncleanness c. verse 25. Which turned the truth of God unto a lye verse 26. For this cause God gave them up to vile affections But you have this most fully asserted and amplified verse 28 29 30 31. As they liked not to retain God in their knowledge God also gave them up to a Reprobate mind to do things not convenient being filled with all Unrighteousness Fornication Wickedness So he goes on enumerating in the three following verses all the Evils of Sin in the Will of Man from thence breaking forth in his life
the Fall springs from the Harmony of the eternal Design in the Divine Mind being comprehended in it as a part of it I shall proceed by a few short steps 1. The Intellectual soul in the first Man is manifestly eminently comprehended in this Scripture by a Reason from the stronger This not only is a principal part of the Creation but contains in it self according to its primitive state the whole nature of things together with the compleat Image of God in Nature This is the Essence of the Intellectual Soul 2. This Soul in this Image and so in its own Essence as in a Glass beholdeth the Harmony of the Divine Work as it hath the Harmony of the Divine Nature figured upon it in its Perfection from the beginning to the end Through this Image as a finely-shadowed Vail it hath a view of God himself in the invisibility of his Power and Godhead In the same view it taketh in the Universal Harmony of the Divine Work and Design as it lieth in its first ground in his invisible Power and Godhead Invisible to the purest eye of Nature in their own naked Glories but visible through the Divine Cloud or Sky of the Natural the Angelical Image of God in Man 3. In this Image light and view of the Godhead The Soul now seeth the Fall in the Divine Harmony in the Harmony of the Divine Image and its own Essence it seeth this as the next Scene ready to open it self as the next state into which it is immediately to pass by the force of the Divine Harmony The Soul seeth this state in this Glass apart by it self as a state of highest Contrariety to the Purity the Light the Peace the Calm the Incorruption the Virtues the Joys the Harmony the Life the Love the Divinity of its present state It hath a Prospect of it as a Scene of monstrous Defilements Shames Confusions Troubles Darknesses Tempests Horrors Enmities Deaths where there is no Light no Rest. Thus the Soul hath the highest aversion to this state But at the same time the Soul hath a view of this Scene as it stands in the Universal Harmony so it sees shadowed out to it through the natural Image in this shady light of Nature a Glory of the Godhead springing up through it by the Power of the Divine Harmony incomprehensible to the Soul in its purest Light infinitely transcending all those Divine Glories which have hitherto appeared to it in the Godhead and all those which it is by any means capable of figuring to it self It became him saith the Author to the Hebrews being to bring many Sons to Glory to make the Captain of their Salvation perfect through Sufferings Thus the Soul in Paradise beholding in the Glass of its own Essence this state of Sufferings to rise up out of the unsearchable depths of the incomprehensibly ravishing and transcendently perfect Harmony in the Divine Essence understanding also the Harmony to be made perfect and the Glory of the Godhead raised to its utmost its purest heighth and beyond the reach of every Intellectual or Angelical Eye by this Variety in its proper place Now for God is subject to this bondage of Vanity and Corruption This Soul in like manner sees in that same Glass an Hope that cannot fail set before it The Seed of a Divine Hope Jesus the Hope of Glory the force and power of the Universal Harmony sown in it A sure Hope that shall accompany it through this Wilderness of Wastness Tempests and Horrours where no water is no Light 〈◊〉 Life no Truth of any good but empty and black shades in a dark and dreadful Night In this Hope it sees the assurance of a passage out of this Wilderness into a good Land a Land flowing with Milk and Honey a Land flowing with Rivers of Waters and full of Springs A Land of Rest and Bliss 4. The Soul thus by this prospect in Paradise is submitted and subjected to its change and fall with an unwilling willingness God now according to the Law of the Divine Harmony in his own Image and in the Essence of the Soul withdraws the Light of his Presence within a dark Cloud from this Cloud falls a deep sleep the sleep of Death a death to the only true the Divine Life upon Man The Soul now like Abraham falls into a terrible dream a blackness of darkness full of horrour passeth over It seeth it self the whole nature of things visible invisible within it self dead divided dissolved all broken and scattered into pieces A burning Lamp the burning Torches of Lust Rage Divine Wrath pass between these mangled pieces Thus the Soul lies in this sleep and dream with hope only as a gleame of heavenly Light now and then breaking upon it through these melancholy shades until Christ the Seed of Hope revive in it When he awakens himself in the Soul he awakens the Soul by his Voice sounding through it Awake thou that sleepest stand up from the dead and Christ shall give thee Light At the awakening of the Soul the dream flies away as if it never had been The Soul now sees her lost Paradise her lost Purity her lost Peace her lost Love and Joy her lost self with the whole nature of things in its Virgin-Image present with her as if they had never departed from her All past seems as the dream of a moment while she slept upon a Bed of Spices in Paradise in the Bosome of her Beloved But her Beauties and Paradise are not now as before They are no more shadowy Images shady Lights and Mediums or means through which her God appears to her which his Glories dim'd and refracted by the Vails through which they pass No being now awakened into the Resurrection of Christ God himself in his naked Beauties in the purest and sweetest Light of his Divine Essence appears to her as to himself He in the Light of his unvailed Glories is both her beloved Object and the blissful Medium or means through which she sees him The Soul now is in the Light as He is in the Light his Face shining like the Sun of Eternity in the strength of all its Glories the Glories of his supream loveliness and Loves is the Glass in which she sees her self her lost Purity and Paradise the whole nature of things within her self as they all lie in the Harmony of the Divine Nature In this Glass she sees and enjoys her Fall it self as a part and the perfecting of this heavenly Harmony All the storms and darknesses in that Scene have now their Vizors taken off and appear to be living Glories glorious Spirits glorious Varieties in the Unity of the eternal Spirit Thus the Soul enjoys her self with all past present or to come as eternally present with Christ in God Now this Bride repents not of her subjection to the Fall by which she hath passed into this last state more excellent then the first which indeed is the first Now she seeth that
Persons or to the Sanctification of our Natures 3. The Law which is the Ministry of Wrath is not the first or chief design of God that in which he begins or with which he ends The Divine Love the Beauties of Holiness and the Divine Nature Immortality the Glory of God founded and wrapt up in that one Seed which is Christ from whom together with whom for whose Joy and Glory sake they spring freely fruitfully irresistably subduing all things to themselves These are the first and chief design of God the good pleasure of his Will So St. Paul teaches us Gal. 3. That the promise in the Seed was first and the Law came after that which cannot therefore frustrate the design of the Promise and of the Seed There is a beautiful and rich Scripture opening the Glory of the Divine Design of the Lord to us Rom. 5. 20 21. But the Law came in by the by that Sin might abound but where Sin abounded Grace hath abounded much more That as sin reigned unto death so Grace might reign by Righteousness unto eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. Two things are remarkable here 1. The way of the coming in of the Law 2. The end of bringing in of the Law 1. The way of bringing in of the Law is most elegantly and amply expressed in that one word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Law was not brought in first from the beginning nor for its own sake that it should be the end Grace the Divine Love the everlasting Righteousness eternal Life in the Seed the eternal Son of God the Image and fulness of the Godhead the brightness of his Glory Jesus Christ was the great design for which all things are constituted to which all things serve In which God beginneth and endeth all his Works all his Counsels and in which he eternally resteth In the stream and current of this Design the Law it self is brought in as subservient to it In Dramatick Poems which have the design laid in some one entire great and glorious action the continuance is set off heightned by two eminent parts in it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a knot tyed fast in the course of the action then the uniting of this knot which makes the action more full of Variety more glorious more delightful Thus in this great action of time and eternity the bringing of the Sons of God to Glory by their glorious Captain Jesus Christ the Law is brought in in the course ofit as a knot tyed fast which no created Power is able to unty or to understand how it should be loosed This is the way of bringing in the Law 2. The ends of the Law are of two sorts 1. The proper and next ends 2. The extrinsecal and Ultimate ends 1. The proper and next ends of the Law are Sin Condemnation Death and the Divine Wrath. So that St. Paul saith in this Scripture That the Law came in that Sin might abound 1. The Law let in Sin so St. Paul teacheth us expresly Rom. 7. 8. Sin taking occasion by the Commandment wrought in me all concupiscence Again as the 11. verse Sin taking occasion by the Commandment drceived me and slew me 2. The Law heightens Sin so that expression testifieth The Law came in that Sin might abound 3. The Law by bringing in Sin bringeth in upon us a spiritual Death in Sin St. Paul speaking as by a figure of all Mankind in his own person Rom. 7. 9 10. I was alive once without the Law that is in Paradise but the Law coming sin revived or sprung up into life but I died These three ends of the Law flow from it not by it self nor from the nature of the Law but by accident from the weakness of the Flesh and of the Creature So you read verse 10. The Commandment which was unto life in its own nature was found to me unto death in the effects of it verse 13. The holy Spirit opens the design in these effects of the Law Is then that which is good namely the Law made death to me But sin that sin might be made manifest wrought death to me by the good that sin might become excessively sinful by the Law God having a design which he intended to enrich with the fullest the highest Glories of his Godhead brings forth in the course of this design a dark scene of all evils Sin Death Wrath The evil in this scene is carried on to its utmost extent and heighth Thus the Variety becomes more full in the whole design and the chief design is heightned in its sweetest Glory God through his infinite Wisdom so bringeth in this scene of sin and evil that himself is perfectly pure and good in the contrivance and conduct of it He setteth up a Law good holy and spiritual but such that sin inevitably may take occasion from it through the frailty of Flesh and of the Creature to spring up by it unto an overflowing Flood to display it self over all things in its fullest foulest Forms and Births 4. The Law hath for its proper end the conviction condemnation and death of all men 1. The conviction of the Law is two-fold 1. Man is convinced of his frailty and consequent mutability in his Primitive state before the Fall So saith the Psalmist Man in his best state is altogether Vanity He is the shadow not the very Image the true Glory He hath a shadow of Righteousness of Wisdom of Power a shadow only of Life a shadow of Being Christ only in his heavenly Image and eternal State is the Life it self the truth of all these Man in Paradise had no Being Life or Motion of himself or in himself As a meer shadow is no more than it is in its proper substance on which it depends If it be any thing in it self it is no more a shadow but the substance The Spirit saith of the Heavens and the Earth That God turneth them as the Wax to or by the Seal The Divine presence and appearance in man newly created was the Seal to this Virgin Wax which as it changed changeth the impressions upon it together with its whole form 2. The Law convinceth man of his faln state of the evil of this state that there is no good or power of good at all in him That the whole person and nature of man is only evil and altogether evil Thus St. Paul chargeth Mankind universally Jews and Gentiles There is none that doth good no not one The poyson of Asps is under their Tongue they are altogether corrupt They have not known the way of peace He presseth this charge universally by these words Now we know That that which the Law saith it saith to those that are under the Law Now we know that all Mankind according to the state of nature and in the first Creation is under the Law if there be any difference found among men it ariseth not from nature or the principles of
flow from his unvailed Person his naked presence and appearance As the Sun carrieth along with him in his Circuit a sweet flourishing Spring and Summer When God withdraws himself behind clouds of darkness and of night when he withholds the sweet beams and pleasant influences of his own face and person behind thick coverings strange forms and disguises Now man withers and dyes away in all the beauties and sweetnesses of the Divine Image in the place of these Deformity and Death spring up from that deficiency which is inseparable to the natural principles of the Creature which then discovers it self and overspreads the whole man with the shadow of Death and Hell when those principles are no more fed and supplyed from their eternal springs in the bosom of Christ. In this sense these words are most properly true Thy destruction is of thy self but thy Salvation is of me O Israel saith the Lord. 3. God in himself and in the person of the Lord Jesus as he is the essential Image of God is a most simple Unity comprehending all Varieties within himself In this Unity he is Love it self the first the supream the most pure the most potent unconfined love All pleasantnesses are in his Face and Presence he is the Bridegroom entirely fair and pleasant altogether delightful the Object of all Loves Desires the Seat of all Delights and Glories the Spring of Immortality and Eternity As himself is such in the highest affinity and resemblance is his work as it springs immediately from him his principal design and contrivance with which he begins in which he ends and rests eternally which he carrieth along as his first and Ultimate design throughout all things This then is one entire universal piece comprehending all Variety in it self this is one entire piece of sweetest Loves of riches Lights of purest Glories All scenes all forms of darkness and death are subordinate and subservient to this are parts of this are comprehended in this drawn forth from it terminated in it by a Divine and delightful skill set with a shining amiableness in their proper places overspread with a sweetness and lustre in the Unity of the grand design and finally in a manner most pure most harmonious most ravishing swallowed up into the eternal Lights in which the whole piece terminateth Of him and through him and to him are all things who is blessed for ever How true is it how exceeding large now is this truth in all senses in all languages Humane or Divine That God willeth not the death of a Sinner That Destruction is not of him As the Understanding of God is Truth it self the highest and most universal Truth the measure of all Truth so is the Will of God which is himself the first the highest the most comprehensive the unconsined Good the only reason and measure of all good We have passed through those Reasons which seem of greatest moment and to have greatest difficulty in them We hope that we draw near to our Haven and that with easie and gentle stroaks we shall now soon arrive at it The Reasons on this part which now remain seem to be rather mistakes arising from vulgar or general conceptions unexamined undistinguished than from the exercised judgments of wise and learned Spirits They are derived from the nature of things Moral Physical or Metaphysical I shall continue them in the same order with the precedent Reasons 4. Reason If the Will of Man be not free all Laws seem useless Answ. The force of this Reason seemeth to be entire and powerful on the contrary part If the Will of Man be free undeterminated by the dictates of the Understanding Laws have no more any signification or efficacy For the intent of these is clearly to work upon the Understanding Precepts and Prohibitions are Rules propounded Lights set up to the Understanding to inform what road or course is to be followed what to be carefully avoided in our Navigation through the Sea of this World that we may pass safely free from the danger of Rocks and Shelves to our desired Port. Rewards and Penalties are to be weighed and judged by the Understanding according to whose standard and estimate they have all their value Vexatio dat intellectum The proper end of Punishments and Rewards is to excite the Understanding The proper end of Precepts and Prohibitions is to enlighten the Understanding The excellency and efficacy of every Law is to impress upon us the sense of Good and Evil. So Moses the Law-Giver among the Jews saith to them I have set before you this day Good and Evil Life and Death What effect hath the sense of Good and Evil seated in the Understanding if the Will be guided by an absolute ungoverned arbitrariness within it self without Order without Harmony without Connexion without respect to the dictates of the Understanding How useless how fruitless are all impressions of Good or Evil if the Will be not by the Law of its own Essence by its own essential Principles determined to good sub ratione boni under the formal appearance of good 5. Reason Who meeteth not with this frequent experiment in himself which the Poet expresseth in the person of Medea as I remember Video meliora proboque deterior a sequor Better things I see approve The evil yet I choose and love Answ. This thin mist is easily scattered and cleared into a pure Air by the beam of one distinction between good propounded in the Thesis in its abstracted and general nature or in the Hypothesis cloathed with all its practical and individuating circumstances In the first it is the subject of the Dictamen practicum intellectus of the Understanding in its proposal of general Rules of practice to the Will In the other the good is the subject of the Dictamen practice practicum of the Understanding in its dictates and directions to the Will in arenâ upon the place in the singular and individual action now this moment lying before it with all its circumstances The Schools well distinguish between Act us signatus and Act us exercitus An Act marked out and described by the Understanding or an Act now immediately presenting it self unto a real existency out of all its Causes Whoever vieweth and distinguisheth exactly the sentiments of his Understanding the commerce between those and the motions of his Will maketh this clear discovery if I be not very much deceived That in the general conception and rule in the practical dictate and direction in the exactest contemplation and description of a moral Act one thing seemeth good to us when after this when we come upon the place to exercise the Act it self our sense is altogether changed The practically practical dictate of the Understanding its sentiments now in the moment of action in the presence and immediate impressions of all Circumstances differeth from the precedent Rules and passeth quite to a contrary Point to present that as the present good the good of the
darkest disguise upon the eternal Love the eternal Meekness and Gentleness the Lamb our Jesus In this state of Contrariety Sin and Death have their entrance Our Jesus the Lamb eternal Love is here slain and crucified by the Sin of the Creature In this death of his the whole Creation dies Here this Lamb the Divine Love in the region of Death in the midst of the Powers of Darkness and Death becomes a Sacrifice for every Creature By dying for sin as he dies by sin he makes an end of sin and death he takes away the subject the ground of Sin and Death the mutability of the Creature the shadowyness of the shadowy Image in its dissolution and restauration He at once scattereth the fearful dream and awakens it out of its sleep that it may dream no more but see the light of Life Divine Poets which with most inspired and acquired skill raise refine and delight the best Minds by awakning in them the richest the liveliest Images of the Divine Work and the Divine Mind place the greatest the sweetest life and heightning of their Figures in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the knot and the untying of the knot This part in the Divine Design and Work is both these the knot and the untying of the knot The Law lets in Sin Sin brings in Death the shadowy Image is the Root and Seat of all these The death of Jesus Christ makes an end of Sin swallows up Death into Victory dissolves the shadowy Image sows it again by its dissolution in the Bosom of the Divine Love as they lie down together in its grave Here it springs up again immediately into a Child of Light in the Image of Light the heavenly Image In this Light it springs up an Immortal Bride in the Arms of its Bridegroom the eternal Love Thus the Grave of Love is changed into a Bridal Bed O that I had the anointing of Bezaleel and Aholiab upon me to draw the Divine Model of the Tabernacle of God in this part of the heavenly Image the Contrariety the Scene of Wraht We should see without Badgers skins sullied parched with dust sand and Sun We should see it in the midst of a desolate Wilderness round about it a Land of Graves and fiery Serpents But all this while within shine flourish and flow all the precious the pleasant things of the whole Creation and in the Bosom of these as Divine Figures unfold themselves all the blissful and glorious mysteries of the eternal Beauties and Sweetnesses of the Divinity unvailed Within are the richest materials colours works In the midst of all as the Center the Spring of all is God himself upon the golden Mercy Seat the Thrones of Grace and Love within the golden Wings which the Cherubims of Glory spread round about it to make a Pavilion for it Thus true is it that the Law is the Gospel eternal Love vailed the Gospel eternal Love and Beauty shine forth with naked Faces in the Law it self when the Vail is taken off But let us trace more exactly the steps of Divine Love which all drop Myrrh incorruptible Sweetnesses as he passeth thorow the Divine Mazes the curious Windings of this Divine Labyrinth To this end we will consider this state of Contrariety or of Wrath in its several Causes efficient material formal final St. Paul lays a clear and rich ground for us when he treats of this Subject His words are these What if God willing to declare the Power of his wrath Having such an Idea of the Divine Goodness of God that he is the supream Love the supream Unity the supream Good which are all divers words expressing one thing Where I meet with the darkest the dreadfulest appearance in his Births his Works I find my Spirit excited to seek the sweetest and delicatest Roses among these Thorns a Face filled with the richest smiles beneath these Vails the Divinest Wealth Skill and Figures in the Vails themselves as in that before the Holy of Holies Those Scriptures on such occasions sound with an heavenly Melody in mine Ears awakning and calling forth my Spirit to the expectation of some divinely-beautiful transporting and transforming sight He putteth the greatest comeliness upon the most uncomely parts It is the Glory of God to hide the Matter the Word the eternal Word or Wisdom the Divine Beauty and Love But it is the Glory of a King of the Royal Priesthood the Kingly and Priestly Mind to find it out to enter within the Vail to draw aside the Vail and discover the Glory These words What if God willing to declare the Power of his Wrath present to us this whole state of Wrath as it comprehends the Law Sin and Death in its three-fold Cause Efficient Exemplar Final The Idea of Wrath in the Divine Mind is a Variety in the gloriouslyample and delightfully-vast Variety of the supream Unity the eternal Love This Ideal Wrath in the Idea of the Godhead the Person of Christ as he is the essential Image of the Father in the Bosom of the Father is a beautiful and blissful Variety in the Beauty and most high blisses of the Godhead It is a Love-part in the triumphantly-joyous and glorious Variety of the eternal Love This Sun-like Idea in the supream and eternal Sun of the Divine Essence is the efficient the exemplar and final Cause of this Contrariety this wrathful state This is its first it s most universal most intimate efficient This its Original exactest Pattern This its Principal its Ultimate End Eternal Love it self in this Idea is the Divine Framer the Divine Actor the Divine Close of the whole Scene of this Wrath-part in the Love-play Here it begins here is its way here it ends in its Divine Ideâ—… in the Bosom in the Face in the midst of the Varieties the Beauties the Blisses of eternal Love Without this part in the Variety they were all imperfect Love it self without this Lovespot this beautiful and delightful Wound would have an eternal Cloud and Wound upon it A great Philosopher teacheth us That Power is an Unity containing manifold Forms in it self which it shoots up and sends forth from it self according to the Law of its own proper Harmony Every Idea in the eternal Mind is a Divine Unity The Ideal Wrath there is an Unity comprehending in Divine Images all the Forms all the Varieties of this Love-part the Divine Wrath in it self This is the eternal Reason of the whole Ministery of the Law and of Wrath in the Creation the displaying of this part of the Divine Variety by Divine Figures in its proper place in the Divine Work Thus God shows the Power of his Wrath. He seals the Creature with this Idea with the impression of the Divine and eternal Glory in this Divine Idea also According to the Language of St. Paul Now Grace Divine Love overflows us in all Wisdom and Prudence Jesus that essential compleat Idea of the Godhead
Creature as its proper Seed He is the seminal Virtue which puts forth it self through the whole Creation from the beginning to the end in every Essence of each Creature in all the powers of every Essence in all the operations of each Power He is the seminal Reason the seminal Form and Proportion which springs up equally in like degrees in each Creature together with it in all the states and modifications of it forming it and figuring it in all Thus saith St. John when he treats of him under this term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ratio the Reason of all things and that in order to the Creation that without him or apart from him nothing was made or came to pass that was made or came to pass He lives he dies he flourisheth he falls he triumphs he suffers in all with all In him was Light saith St. John and that light was the life of man The Life of Christ as it was in Christ the Seed of every Creature was the Life of the Humane Form the Light of all Forms as they meet together harmoniously in the Humane Form or as they appear distinctly in their proper places to man to serve and entertain him This was the Light of every Form as it sparkleth forth in all its Qualities and Acts as it appeareth in all states and changes This Light of Life in Christ was the Life and the Light of every Beauty every Sweetness every Form of things in every Creature Together they did spring together they did fade being ever inseparable So was the Creature continually figured and framed in all states by the immediate inseparable presence of the Lord Jesus with it When the Creature falls and dies by sin then also is Jesus Christ slain in it and by it If the Life in Christ be the light of man and so of all things then is the retiring of this Life like the setting of the Sun the darkning of all the over-casting of all with the shadow of Death But then this eternal Love the Lamb our Jesus dies by our death together with us that he may become in death a Sacrifice to expiate the guilt of his blood lying upon us So he becomes also the Seed of immortality and the Resurrection from the Dead that as he riseth we also may rise in him together with him Yet is the difference great between his manner of dying and ours He knows what he doth in both these Deaths We know not at present what he doth nor what we our selves do in either of them He sins not falling short in nothing of the Glory of God which ever fills his Heart his Eye and his Hand through all darknesses and deaths he carries on the Ideal Glories of both the Archetypes his two superior Images and so the universal Design and Beauty of the whole Work in the Creation which is to be a compleat figure of these having its beginning and ending in them By virtue of the Personal Union he at once carrieth down with him the Light of all the Glories the Musick of the universal Harmony in both these superior Images into these Deaths and also comprehendeth these Deaths in the Light of these Glories in the Musick of this Harmony as part of the Glory and the Harmony This he doth as the Head the Seed the First-fruits of the whole Creation Thus he lives and dies in every Creature Thus they that are new born into him most beautifully most blessedly live and die together with him 2. I pass now from the first part of the Mediation of Christ that in the first Creation the descent of things the coming forth of the Creatures from God I come to the second Part the Mediation of Christ in the new Creation the Redemption the return of the Creature to God I shall endeavour to set before you this Mediatory Work of our Jesus of our God and Saviour First In the parts of it as they lie in the Person of the Lord Jesus the Head and Pattern of the new Creature Secondly In the progress and propagation of it through the whole Body belonging to this Head 1. The parts of it most commodiously for my purpose are contained in this three-fold Division 1. The Incarnation of Christ and his Life in the Flesh. 2. The Sufferings and Death 3. The Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord Jesus 1. The first part of the Mediation of Christ in the Redemption is his Incarnation and Life in the Flesh. We have seen the eternal Light and Love our Jesus our God gradually descending in a three-fold form 1. We have seen him in his essential Form and Godhead comprehending all Varieties of things in their Original and eternal Glories 2. We have seen him in his Mediatory and spiritual Form the Marriage of God with the Creature in one Spirit and Glory where all the Uncreated Glories and all the Creatures according to their distinct Essences in spiritual and incorruptible forms as two are one 3. We have had a delightful view of the same Jesus in both these Divine Forms set with innumerable and distinct Glories descending into a shadowy Image of himself where he becomes the proper and immediate Head of the first Creation in whom all the Creatures consist and flourish together according to their shadowy Originals in the first-born strength and beauty of this created state 4. Our Lord Jesus with these universal Beauties subsisting together and mutually enfolding each other in the Unity of the same Divine Person goeth down one step lower from the beautiful face of the Earth into the dark places and nethermost parts of it This last step of his descent is at once also the first step of his Ascent and Return Together with man and the whole Creation falling by sin he also falls but altogether without sin He subsists in the whole Creation and in each particular Creature beneath the universal Ruine being the weight of all Here he is the Seed maintaining the Remainders of the Divine Image in nature obscured deformed wounded broken and slain Obscured deformed wounded broken and slain in it together with it He maintaineth the Relicks of the Life of this natural Image in the midst of death This he doth by a new spring of Grace opening it self in fallen Nature by the virtue of his Mediatory and essential form now putting forth themselves through his shadowy form in the Creature thus lapsed Thus is he both in one the old Seed of the first Creation and the new Seed of the new Creature which thus in the heavenly Image of the Mediatory Form of Christ makes its way and breaks forth through the ruines of the earthly Image This is the promised Seed the Seed of the Woman the Seed of the Divine Image both in Nature and in Grace which gives a new Birth to Nature This Seed propagating it self through all Generations in the fulness of time when the season is now for Eternity to shine out through the extended shadow of Time and to
one another into the Glory of God is the Rule of St. Paul Divines distinguish between the person together with the nature of the Deâ—…il and the evil The person the nature springs forth from God and so is good hath a Divinity and Glory in it a Divine Root a Divine Image It stands in the Glory of God as a Flower in the Garden a Bâ—…am in the Sun it is maintained by a continual emanation from the bosom of the supream Glory Thus thou art to receive every person clouded with the greatest evils as he is the work of Nature and of God into the Glory of God Thus every other person is to be thy Neighbour thy â—…rother in the Glory of God and the Object of a Divine Love No evil as evil is the nature or choice of any person but the mishap and the disease Truth is the only Object of every Understanding the only white at which it aims Like the Mary-gold it opens it self only to this Sun or that which shines upon it in the glorious form of this Sun and so descends in seeming beams of this Divine Beauty into its bosom Good is the only Object of the VVill. As the Needle toucht by the Load-stone is governed in its motion and rest by the North-pole so is the VVill moved and attracted by that alone which toucheth it with a sense of good It resteth in no bosom but that which courteth and wooeth it undâ—…r the Divine Form of good with the seeming Charms of this its only Beloved and Bridegroom St. Paul saith Sin deceived me and slew me No person is willingly dâ—…ceived in his belief of Truth on disappointed in his expectation of good Every evil is a degree of death a diseafe in the end death When it appeareth like it self all things fly from it as from death But as Cupid in the form of the young and flourishing Prince Ascanius by treacherous embraces and kisses breath'd a fatal poyson into the veins of the Carthaginean Queen So doth sin and evil by the hellish enchantments of the Prince of Darkness form it self into the most alluring resemblance of the heavenly Image composed of Truth and Goodness meeting in one immortal form It adorneth it self all over with the most curious and sparkling Counterfeits of all its most amiable most Divine Sweetnesses and Beauties Thus it insinuates it self into the eyes and hearts of the Sons of God and fills them with its false sweetnesses enflames them with a false Love as the poyson and fire from Hell Yet still in the midst of these enchantments and deaths as the Athenians in the midst of their Atheism and Idolatry had an Altar inscribed To the unknown God The Understanding and the Will according to their own proper natures stand in every natural Spirit as Altars in a Temple shining and burning with continual fires by night and by day aspiring to the highest and clearest Heavens through all opposed Clouds of Darkness while this inscription in clear Characters appeareth engraven round these Altars To the Unknown Good the Unknown God to the unknown Truth the unknown Jesus If any person then be faln into any evil Let those that are spiritual restore him with a spiritual skill with a spirit of Meekness and Divine Love Apply Reproofs Chastisements to evil persons in their seasons as a Brother gives an Antidote to a beloved Brother that by a mistake hath been surprized and drunk in poyson or as one hand applies a Medicine to the other hand or to the eye when it suffers by any wound or distemper If thou art an Angel and hast to do with a Devil use no reviling Language for so the Angel himself is by the Spirit of God markt with a Character of Honour for this that he used no reviling Speeches to the Devil Preserve thy self from that bitter zeal which St. James mentioneth upon which he setteth so evil a mark branding it deeply with the fire of Hell as a Devil transfiguring himself into the form of an Angel If there be saith he amongst you bitter envying this wisdom is not from above but earthly sensual and devillish We read it bitter envying In Greek it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 bitter zeal Take heed of suffering thy zeal against the evil to be mingled and tempered with a bitternâ—…ss against the person As Lightning from Heaven melts the Sword but doth no harm to the Scabbard Discover thou in all thy Reproofs and Chastisements an equal love to the person and hatred to the evil an equal desire to destroy the evil and save the person Or rather let thy zeal against the evil be love to the person flaming forth and burning with a great but with a sweet and Divine force that it may consume the Dross for the Golds-sake to which the dross cleaves that of the Gold thus refined it may make a Jewel for the Bosom or a Crown for the Head of Jesus Christ. Suffer not thy zeal against evil to be like the Locusts from the bottomless-pit which have faces like men hair soft and delicate like women Crowns of Glory upon their heads like Angels but venemous and killing stings in their tails Let it not be like Culinary fire or the fire of Hell black sooty and devouring but like the fire from the golden Altar mingled with sweet Incense filling all round about and carrying up that upon which it feeds as a Sacrifice to Heaven with the rich Odours and Perfumes of a Divine Love If I be lifted up to Heaven by manifold excellencies together with Corazin and Bethsaida from whence I look down upon another far beneath me lying like Sodom and Gomorrah in a loathed and hated deep of darknesses defilements disgraces Let me then think That this Sodom may have a better Spirit a better ground of good at the bottom of its Spirit than my self That if the seed of Love and Light which hath been sown in me had been sown with the like advantage there it would have far excelled me in its fruits Yea let me think that it may not only have a better ground but a Divine seed hid deep in that ground beneath all this soil and dung beneath all this darkness deformity and deadness of its Winter-season which may rise up in its proper Spring into pleasant Flowers and Fruits as the Garden of God Thus let me think and let these thoughts instruct me to love every other person removed to the greatest distance from me cast down to the greatest depth beneath me as my Neighbour my Brother my self This is my double Request to thee gentle Reader 1. That thou love every other person as thy Neighbour thy Friend thy self with that Divine Love in whose flame thou sacrificest thy self and all things to receive thy self again and all things together with thy self in a more excellent and durable form 2. That thou suffer nothing to stain the Candour of this Love whose Reasons being altogether Divine subject all other reason to themselves
unlimited Sweetness and Liberty with the Divine Love the Divine will above Yea now the will and love enjoy a two-fold full and glorious Liberty while Goodness and Beauty are their Essence as well as their Election 1. They freely and unconfinedly rove through all the fields of Goodness and Beauty in their greatest amplitude in their richest and most unbounded Varieties as freely as through their own proper Essence and Being 2. Their Liberty in this unconfined amplitude of all Goodness and Beauty becomes most ample and triumphant while it is free from all fear danger suspicion possibility of change to any degree of confinement or constraint by this essential Connexion between it self and the highest necessity O good O beautiful O blessed Will which sits upon the Throne of Eternity which governest us and all things While in being good beautiful blessed with a perfect Liberty thou art such also with the highest necessity Thou art now as delightfully and complacentially so unchangeably absolutely universally supreamly soveraignly essentially Good beautiful and blessed in thine whole Nature Person and Duration in all â—…hy works and ways O Good Beautiful Blessed is that will also in whom Liberty and Necessity are after the same manner united by its Union with the Divine will 2. Nothing seems to present the Divine Face of Truth and the whole nature of things with such harmonious and charming Beauties to the eye of the mind as the determination of the will by its essential and universal Causes seen in one view with the Divine Love A single light seen by Mariners resting upon their Ship which as I remember was of old called by the name of Helena Threatneth a dreadful storm But two Twin-Lights known by the name of the two Brothers Castor and Pollux infuse a new life into the hearts of the Sea-men by the sweet hope of a sudden and gentle Calm After the same manner these two the divine Love and the determination of the will shining together as twin-lights entertain us with a most beautiful composure a golden Calm and Sun-shine a Divine Amity spread through the work of God in all the parts of it But either of these alone exposeth all to stormy gusts slawes and wracks We read of the Spouse in the Canticles That the Joynts of her thighs are Jewels the work of a curious workman The indeterminate motions of the Will render the work of God a dis-joynted piece exposing it in its most principal parts and motions to an ungoverned contingency without joynts or bands which may knit them together one to another and to the whole as one piece If the will with its motions by a necessary connexion in the Order of Causes be joynted into the whole and compose with the rests of the parts one entire work answering to one entire design framed in the heart and brought forth by the hand of that supream and eternal Spirit which is love it self the pure unmixt entire Spirit of love How sweet how beautiful how full of all Divine Charms and Perfections through all the parts of it What a Princely Daughter and Spouse worthy of the great and eternal King must we think this work to be which is the compleat and full contrivance of so rich and so high a Love formed in its own Bosom In the midst of all its most amiable and delightful treasures which is the outward work of a most pure and Almighty Love wrought entirely from end to end by its own hand with fingers dropping its own pure incorruptible Myrrh upon every part of it as it wrought it forming it for a compleat Image of it self and a continual delight to it self What Jewels now must we think all the Joynts of the Thighs of this Divine Image and Birth How harmonious the motions by these Joynts when the joynts and motions are all the work of so skillful so curious so faithful a Workman as Love it self the supream and eternal Love I humbly acknowledge that to my weak Understanding a created Will absolute and arbitrary determined in its course by no light of Truth no light or life of good seemeth to lead my Spirit into a Wilderness where there is no way or guide or to thrust me forth without Ballast or Rudder without a Pole-star or Needle toucht with the loadstone upon the face of an unknown and stormy Sea What a golden-thread of Harmony guides us through the nature of things and leads us into all Truth Harmony being the very Essence of all Natures and all Truths when we understand the whole nature of things from the greatest to the least parts and motions of it to be determined and that determination to be the work of the Divine Love the firmest band of sweetest Union the sweetest Life of all beautiful proportion being only Wise only Powerful inasmuch as it is the highest Unity containing all Variety Originally in it self sending it forth from it self and diffusing it self through all We are taught in Metaphysicks That Being Truth and Goodness are really one How sweet a rest now doth the Spirit with its Understanding and its Will find to itself in every Being in every Truth in every State or Motion of Being in every form of Truth When it hath a sense of the highest Love which is the same with the highest Goodness designing disposing working all in all even all Conceptions in all Understandings all Motions in every VVill Humane Angelical Divine With what a joy and complacency unexpressible doth the Will the Understanding the whole Spirit now lie down to rest every where as upon a bed of Love as in the bosom of goodness it self Let not any question the close and Divine Contexture of the whole Work in all the parts and conduct of it by a firm connexion of Causes and Effects like links in a Chain from its first beginning to its last end because he meeteth with an Hell as well as an Heaven in this work of God Divine Love which transcendently excels in all Wisdom and Prudence beyond all the highest wits of men the richest Contrivances of Poets knoweth how to joynt an Hell into its work with such Divine Artifice incomprehensible to Men or Angels that this also shall be beautiful with delights in its place and shall give a sweetness a lustre to the whole piece St. Paul saith to the Saints All things this World Life Death things present things to come are yours you are Christs and Christ is Gods and God is Love See a golden Chain see the Order of the precious Links see how in a beautiful circle the beginning is fastned to the end All Philosophy agreeth in this that the last end is the first mover In God then who is Love the first and the last links of this Chain meet All things this wicked World Death it self even the second Death and Hell deaths to come as well as deaths present are shining links in this golden Chain fastened to that superior Link the Saint the spiritual man He
between them In the horrour of these Dreams and in this sleep they may lie till â—…hey be awakened by that joyful sound of a Trumpet from Heaven or of an Arch-angel Arise and shine for thy light is come the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee Which St. Paul expresseth thus Awake thou that sleepest and stand up from the dead for Christ shall give thee light Then shall these Bridegroom-Souls with their beloved Brides their Bodies appear after this dark and tempestuous night of their sleep and dreams in the fresh and pleasant morning of a new day as new Heavens and a new Earth with their Beauties all new married anew to each other Some have imagined that these Souls together with their Bodies lying yet in their bosomes above before their descent and fall had a prospect of this terrible dream in that Image of the Divine Wisdom which did then shine clearly in their Natures and Essences It seemed to them an horrible Pit without any bottom a vast and howling Wilderness full of deformed and dreadful Monsters to which their sweet Beauties and Chastities dearer than their Lives would be exposed to be deflowred and defiled by them full of Dearths and Droughts full of fiery Serpents which with stings fixed in them with their infused Poyson would fill them all over with pains and horrors would subject them to that most deformed and most dreadful Monster the King of Terrors death it self Thus were they for their own sakes most averse to this descent and exile from their native home from themselves from their own true sweetest Purities Beauties and Beings But in that Divine Glass in which they saw this Prospect they saw also that this terrible Dream had a Divine mystery of wisdome and love in it that out of it was to arise from every part and circumstance in it a far more transcendent Glory to the supream Love their Father and Bridegroom They saw that this Love it self would go along with them through all though hidden and vailed reserving his own Purities and Sweetnesses in the midst of all They saw that he in the midst of those hidden Purities and Sweetnesses would preserve that Love which he had to them in eternity when he beheld them in that first-born Image of all loves and lovelinesses and that in these loves and lovelinesses he would conduct them and direct their way through this Wilderness They understood that he would be a seed of hope to them by the virtue of which they should certainly in the set time in their proper season ascend out of this Pit return home from this Exile then should they be received with an universal shout of Joys and Glories resounding from all things without them and within them when they should see all these sufferings break up into the most heightned Glories of the supream God the supream eternal Love and themselves with Raptures of highest pleasures transcending all Humane or Angel-like thoughts taken up into the fellowship of these Glories This imagination seemeth to some to be well-grounded upon and naturally to arise from that Scripture The earnest expectation of the Creature or the Creation was made subject to vanity not willingly but by reason of him or for his sake who subjected the same in hope because the Creature or the Creation it self also shall be delivered from the bondage of Corruption into the glorious liberty of the Children of God For we know that the whole Creation groaneth and travelleth in pain till now Reader I hope it will not be unacceptable to you that I have endeavoured to divert thee and my self by these Speculations which seem to be very pleasant representing to us the Soul as a Coelestial Bridegroom with its Bride and Bridal Chariot both in one its Body descending and returning as in a Caelestial Dance measured by the Musick of the Divine Harmony Let these things have with thee that weight of probability or truth which thou thy self shalt give to them in thine own judgment However I have thought them proper to my present end the illustration of that truth the harmony of things in the whole and of the several parts as they lie in the whole which seemeth to me to be clearly character'd in all the beautiful and bright lineaments of Reason it self which its essential form is an universal Harmony and to be expressed through the whole Scriptures as their proper design which are a Divine Draught or Description of the Divine Harmony in its eternal Original and in its Figure St. Paul saith That all things work together for good for those that love God The only true love of God is the immediate and proper Birth of the Divine Love its clearest and fullest effulgency and its most perfect reflection upon it self This is the essential Character of a Saint as he is the Spiritual man To this person St. Paul saith All things are yours this world lise and death things present and things to come you are Christ's and Christ is Gods God is the Head the beginning the end the measure of Christ. Christ is the Head the beginning the end the measure of a Saint A Saint is the head the beginning the end the measure of all things All things through the whole World through the whole compass of time in both those bright and black Regions of Life and of Death are exactly tuned each to other and struck with a Divine Hand of Power and Skill with all manner of sweetness to make the most agreeable and charming Musick to God to Christ and to a Saint as they dwell together in one heavenly Image and in one eternal Spirit All things even the most distant and most contrary meet together by a most admirable and ravishing consent in one most beautiful Harmony of a perfect universal eternal good to a Saint as he is in Christ as Christ is in God as all three lie together in the pure the soft the spacious bosome of Divine and eternal Love But I shall speak more fully of this universal Harmony in the Second Part when I shall have occasion to shew what place Sin hath in this Harmony how Disorder it self is reduced into Order by its powerful Charms how the Harmony is made perfect by a full Variety The Variety cannot be full without a Contrariety how in the contrariety the Law ariseth as a ministry of wrath out of which Sin takes its birth as a Contrary which is the proper correlate or mark or object of the Divine Contrariety and Wrath how this Divine Contrariety heightning it self to the utmost upon Sin and Sinners to declare to the utmost their irresistible contrariety to the Divine Nature and prevailing over them in the Person of Christ consuming them consumes it self together with them as a flame with its fewel like a flame it vanisheth into the pure Air Light and Heaven where all things now spring again and are seen new in the beautious Glories and ever-flourishing sweetnesses of an Universal
power the pattern the meritorious the efficient the formal cause of all this in his Humiliation and Exaltation If Jesus Christ be a created form living immortal glorious containing in himself the whole Creation with all its Vicissitudes of Lives and Deaths in one entire Beauty more fresh more fair more full then ever it can be in it self if it be seen at one view at the uttermost heighth of all sweetness softness amiableness lustre that it is capable of although that be true which some say that the World in the whole is the most beautiful of all things or which others say that it is an Angel This created form then hath a Prototype its Original Image its exemplar Cause in eternity in God on which it depends and from which it flows otherwise it is not a created form but uncreated absolute and eternal This Original Image is one with the first the supream Image of eternity and of God For all things are there as in the fullest Variety so in the most entire Unity This then is the Godhead of Christ that essential Image of the Divine Nature in which Jesus Christ with all his created Glories pre-exists in eternity from whence he descends into a created state and hath there an existency antecedent to every other Creature If this Jesus be the first and universal Creature the whole world in one Spirit and Person who takes flesh of the Virgin Mary then doth the whole world live die and rise again in him Now is his Death the Death of the whole world his Resurrection is the universal Resurrection of the whole world in its Divine Head and in its immortal Root Now is Jesus Christ a Sacrifice for our Redemption Sanctification Salvation not by an imaginary notional arbitrary Imputation but a judgment founded upon the Divine Nature of things and a real immediate Union between Christ and the World as a Divine Seed and a Divine Plant which with a Divine eminency is comprehended in that Seed and virtually produced out of it receiving every moment its alterations from it according to the seminal and Divine proportions treasured up in it Thus Christ takes away the Sin of the World thus he makes all things new These are only glances by the way 2. The second Consideration which moved me to touch this string is the perfection and the heightning which it seems to give to the whole mystery of Divine Truth in the Scripture and in the Gospel A sweet and beautiful line would probably arise from this Point to illustrate many and principal Scriptures many and principal Mysteries of the Gospel if it were found consonant to the letter of the Scripture to the Analogy of Faith and so generally received I will now therefore offer in few words a reason or two in this case leaving the judgment of it and the full prosecution to those who have either Humane or Divine Learning in these things above my self 1. The first or rather cluster of Reasons lieth in that Scripture Col. 1. 15 16 17. 1. Christ is here described in the proper Character of his Divine Person as the general ground of his Mediatorship by these words Who is the Image of the invisible God He is the Image of God by way of eminence the first the supream the most perfect Image representing the Essence the Substance the Unity of God to himself within himself essentially substantially in his own proper Unity He is the Image of the invisible God as he is invisible in that Glory of his own eternal form in which he is visible by no Light to no Light to no Eye in no Spirit besides his own He is the only Image of God in every Image the Image of God in its first state upon the Throne in its descent through all states in the Grave unto the nethermost parts of the Earth until it return and re-ascend above all Heavens thither where it was at first 2. Jesus Christ is here described in the two parts of his Mediatorship one relating to the state of Nature the other to the state of Grace At the 25. verse he is stiled the first-born of every Creature at the 18. verse the first-born from the dead These two being contra-distinguished from each other seem to point at and paint forth Jesus Christ in two different forms agreeing both in this that they have their ground in his eternal form and are subordinate to it These two being contra-distinguished and answering each other seem to be interpreted one by the other Jesus is the first-born of the Resurrection in a two-fold sense He is the first of those that rise from beneath the shades of this Creation into the true Heavens the Holy of Holies the unvailed Glory of God He is the fulness of the Resurrection He as a Divine Head comprehendeth clearly compleatly eminently in himself all these who are to rise as Divine Members of himself inseparably joyned in the Unity of the same Divine Spirit They all rise together with him at his Resurrection He is the Fountain of the Resurrection Every one in his own proper person and season riseth up out of him by his Power in the Virtue of his Resurrection After the same manner is Jesus the first-born of every Creature He is the first the fulness the fountain of the Creation He is the first Creature So in the 17. verse in the illustration of this state as he is the first of every Creature it is said He is before all things He pre-existed in a created form when there was yet no other Creature formed All things were made in him whether visible or invisible Principalities Powers or Thrones things in Heaven or on Earth and all things stood together in him saith St. Paul verse 17. So the Greek words in both verses are most properly rendred Great men in the mystery of Philosophy and Divinty affirm That which is below to be the same with that which is above Every Flower on Earth is a Star in the Firmament Each Star an Angel in the Heavens above If this be St. Paul's sense which we have represented from these words the Elements with all of them the visible Heavens with all in them the innumerable Company of Angels in their invisible Heavens have all met and subsisted together in one created Form in one Divine Spirit and Person which is our Jesus In this Person they are not Flowers of Beauty not Stars of Light not Angels of Glory but Divine Forms antecedent and transcendent to the brightest Cherubims the highest the most flaming Seraphims Thus they exist in Christ. Thus with the unsearchable Riches of all agreeable Varieties they make up the Body of Christ as he is the created Head of all Thus as he is the first of all Creatures so is he the fulness of the whole Creation He is also the Fountain St. Paul addeth also this All things were made by him verse 16. All Creatures flow from him as second Lights are cast from the first
their Being their Life their Motions or Operations in him as their proper Element their Root their Exemplar Form their terminating Object and End As he is the term from which all their motions flow So is he both the medium or way and the term the bound to which they tend in which they end By him their radical principle in the power and virtue of which Act the exemplar form of their Essence and Actions are they suited and proportioned to him as the Object End Fruit and Perfection of their Operations God in every Form is like Adam in Paradise the Father the Brother and the Bridegroom Each Creature is like Eve the Daughter Sister and Bride from her Bridegroom This Bride flows to him she turns in all her motions in him alone she terminates in her production progress end all along this Bridegroom and Bride are joyned by an inseparable Marriage-Union their Faces ever turned to each other As God by his absolute Unity and Infiniteness comprehends all forms of things within himself in a most simple and undivided Unity So by the same transcendent Unity and Infiniteness doth he in this undivided Unity accompany all forms of things in their procession from himself turning them to himself essentially vitally intellectually or super-intellectually in a manner more then Intellectual This Unity fills all is all in all the Eye the Light the Glass the Object or Image the Union the Light This Unity is the power of sight in the eye of shining of uniting the Eye and the Object in the light of receiving and transmitting Images in the Glass of being and appearing in the Object The Union of all these and the Act in the Act of vision or sight This Unity is the first principle of seeing and the last the terminating bound of sight This is the general Answer Now follow the two particular Answers which are more distinct applications and explanations of this general one Answ. 2. The Humane Soul according to Philosophers they say rouleth it self into a four-fold Orb or Globe The Sensitive Rational Intellectual or Angelical its Divine Unity 1. The first the lowest Orb of the Soul is the Sensitive The Soul in this part is all set and adorned with the sensitive and shadowy forms of things as a Meadow with the Trees and Flowers by a Riverside are seen by their shadowy Figures playing in the water So this visible World with all its Parts and Ornaments in their Order as the shâ—…dows of invisible and immortal Forms inhabit this obscurest and most shady Region of the Intellectual Spirit 2. The rational Orb is the second a more ample and more Lucid. Yet here the Angelical Forms and Essences of things are seen through the grosser and cloudy medium through the material and corporeal shades of sensitive Images This is as the Face of Heaven or the Trees and Flowers of the Neighbouring fields seen from beneath the water of an adjoyning River 3. The Intellectual part of the Soul is the Orb or Sphere of Angels This is the Souls Angelical part Here the Soul 's abstract and separate from the Body which is called the Divine Death of the Soul beholds the Intellectual Forms of things the immortal Essences and Substances the Angels in their own bright and universal Glories in their own Intellectual Air and Light which is the Air and Light of Paradise As a man sees the pleasant Plants of a flourishing Land walking upon the Land in the midst of them At the same time while the Soul thus walks in this paradisical Land she enjoyeth the pleasure of seeing the River as a shady lustre or water cast from her self within her self the shadowy figures of this Paradise with her own reflection playing in these waters and her self from beneath them with the same Land of Gardens and of Angels answering exactly looking to her self above them Give me leave to interpose one word in this place for the sake of the more learned Reader This is the Intellectus Agens or the Actual and Active Understanding of the Schools The Soul in its Intellectual part above the River This is the Passive Understanding The Soul in its Intellectual part beneath the River As that above like the living Face before the Glass appears at the brink of the waters upon the shore with all its Angelical Glories round about it in their Paradisical Region which lies within the Soul it self So the Soul beneath appears looking up from its pearly Cave at the bottom of the River like the God of the River answering and meeting it self above 4. The last and Divine Orb the highest Point and amplest Circuit of the Soul is its Unity In this it hath the most immediate resemblance to and Conjunction with the supream Unity the Divine Nature The Soul according to this its Divinest part its Unity in birth in similitude in place if I may so speak in order of approximation is nearest most immediately joyned to the Divine Essence in the absoluteness the incomprehensibleness of its most secret most sacred Unity Here the Soul as by a Divine Contract or Touch takes hold of God takes in the sense of him in his Divine Form after a Divine manner far transcending all Sense Understanding or Expression Here the Soul in its Divine Unity seeth feeleth enjoyeth God in his Unity which is his proper Essence in which he is most himself transcending all similitudes all commerce all bounds by a Divine sympathy the sweetness the reality the divinity of which no Humane no Angelical Understanding can form to it self any Image of or raise it self to any sense of This Unity of the Soul is the most immediate reflection of the Divine Unity without it self and so at once a Divine Looking-Glass in which it most immediately contemplates it self and a Divine Eye which it feasts with it self setting it self fully in it All this while this still is to be understood that there is a three-fold Immediateness 1. Of Persons 2. Of Power or Virtue 3. Of Form or Appearance St. Paul teacheth us That the invisible things of God are seen being understood by the things that are made God and the Soul in their Unities which are their Essences at their utmost heighth in their highest Glories meet immediately in a sight of each other above all sight or understanding This immediateness in the Perfection of Nature is an immediateness not of virtue only and power but of person yet is it mediate in respect to the Form or Appearance These Unities which penetrate and fill all in all their several Orbs with their immediate virtue person and essential presence see not each other in the Air and light of their own naked eternal Beauties But through that Garment of Light the Intellectual Angelical Image which they put on as they come forth into this Creation Some imperfect figure of this you have in two Swimmers seeing and embracing each other beneath the waters or in the Beams of the Sun passing through a
Love in the shadowy Image having lost it self in the enmity at the Fall The Divine Love it self in its eternal Image disguiseth it self in a form of wrath flaming forth with unquenchable burnings until it have devoured the Enmity and the shadowy Image it self in the Enmity unto the discovery of the eternal Love vailed beneath its shadow and buried in the Enmity All thus consumed meet again in the triumphant and pure flame in which the Divine Love meets with and embraceth it self But thus much of the second Revolution 3. Now the Soul with the whole nature of things in the shadowy Image the shadowy Harmony the shadowy Righteousness of its first Creation is lost by the dissolution of the Unity in discord and Deformity Sin Death and the Divine Wrath. Now Gâ—… in the essential Image the essential Harmony the essential Rightâ—…usness which is Love it self loveliness it self Power Wisdome the Essence of God declares himself our Jesus our Saviour He declares himself without the Law or the Prophets not from any Merit or Power in the Creature but of meer Grace from the sweet innate force of the Divine Harmony in himself by the beauties of which he is powerfully attracted and acted to the Musick of which he moves in all his actings with highest pleasure This essential Image and Harmony from the beginning lies hid beneath the shadowy Image at the bottom of it as the substance to the shadow which hath no possibility of subsisting in any point or degree of Being without it St. Paul calls this The mystery hid in God from the foundation of the World that is hid beneath the foundation of the World which was a Vail cast over the eternal Glories while they figured themselves in Divine shadows upon this Vail But now our Jesus the second Person in the Trinity the essential Image the essential Harmony the Righteousness of God becomes a Creature springs up from beneath the foundations of the Creation into an Humane Soul and Body in the midst of it ruines This Jesus is the Original Image of the Creation of Man of every Creature the Root the Rule the Actor of all who virtually eminently comprehends all in their distinct Ideal Forms within himself as so many eternal Beauties in his own eternal Beauty who bringeth them forth from himself beareth them in himself as Flowers in their Garden-beds who figureth himself in the riches of his glorious Varieties upon them to make of the whole one beautiful Figure of his own Beauties a Daughter Sister and Bride to himself He therefore now the Seed of Hope of Promise sown in the Soul dying together with the Soul in the Fall now comes up through this death in the form of a man faln man the Image of the whole which contains the whole in it self Thus he reduceth the Contrariety to the Unity He restores the Harmony he atones and reconciles all all manner of wayes 1. He bringeth all the Contrariety into the Harmony by bearing the Fall Guilt Shame all Deformities all Deaths the Divine Wrath the ruines of the Fall in himself who is the eternal universal Harmony and Righteousness Thus eternal Life dies without Death giving an eternal Life and Glory to Death in his Person Thus the Righteousness of God is made Sin for us without Sin He is altogether lovely every thing of him is not only lovely but loveliness it self Yea more loveliness a knot a spring of loveliness So sings the spiritual Bride of her Beloved in that Song of Loves The bushes of his Hair black as a Raven the Bird of Death in their order and place springing forth from his head of finest Gold the purest light of Glory encompassing it with their deep shade and setting it off are Divine Beauties 2. This Person the eternal the universal Image and Harmony of the Godhead of all Glories of all things gives himsâ—… in the extremities of all Sufferings unto Death to be a Sacrifice to the Holiness Justice Wrath and Glory of God He is a Sacrifice of infinite value and force a Sin-Offering expiating all Sin with a transcendency of Merit A Peace-Offering which charms the most offended spirits which changeth into a Golden Calm of Divine Love and Joy the most raging tempests of wrath raised through the whole nature of things from the breast of the eternal Spirit 3. He bears in his own Person the whole Contrariety the Contrariety of evil in the enmity of Sin to the Divine Good in its Love and Glory The Contrariety of the Divine Good in its Love and Glory to the evil in the deformity and enmity of Sin All the fiery darts of both these Contrarieties in their utmost force and fury meet in his Bosome the Bosome of Divâ—…e Beauty and Love exposed nakedly to them both Thus he fills up the design of his Father to make known the power of his Wrath. Thus he draws forth to its largest compass and heightens to its utmost point this Scene of wrath to make the Variety full and the Harmony absolute 4. Jesus the supream Harmony the everlasting Righteousness by dying carries the descent of things to the lowest point He makes an end of Sin Sufferings Death and Wrath for ever by the dissolution and end of the seat the subject of all these the shadowy Image the Creation of Nature in his own person The death of Jesus Christ is as the midnight of things The Sun of the eternal Image and Glory having by its course in the shadowy Image touched the utmost bound of distance from it self now begins its return to it self again 5. This Jesus by his Resurrection carries up with him in his own Person all things the whole Creation the shadowy Image with its Primitive Purity and Paradise the shadowy Image with its fall ruines and deaths into the Glory of the eternal Image unto an Union with it immediate naked entire eternal in one Light in one Spirit Where there is now no more any vail or shadow Now all appear Beauties and Glories divinely-harmonious being seen in their proper place and order in the Divine the Eternal the Universal Harmony 6. Lastly The Lord Jesus now in an humane Soul and Body being risen from the Dead and ascended up on high comprehends reconciles fills all things shining through all assimilating all to himself in the spiritual Glory of his own essential eternal Image in his own Person the most glorious unbounded Head of all Now according to the fulness the fruitfulness the Divine Order of the Ideas the Original Images of all things in the most ample and blissful Harmony in his Person He comes up he springs forth in his Spirit in the Spirit of this Divine Image this Harmony and Glory with the fulness of his Person of this Divine Image Harmony and Glory in the Soul of Man As he springs up he rends the Vail behind which he ever resided he reveals himself to the Soul in the Universal Harmony of his Person and his whole work
of Free-will casts upon the Glories of God in these other Attributes it doth not at all excel the other Opinion in clearing the Glory and Justice of the Divine Goodness But while as with triumphant flourishes by Rhetorical Reproaches it insulteth upon the other Opinion as equalling God in savage cruelness to the most arbitrary Tyrants to the most inhumane and ferine Man-eaters It leaveth God equally exposed to the same Reproaches and it self to the imputations of the same Blasphemies I have now finished the first thing which I had to propound in answer to that Argument against the predetermination of the Will which is taken from the goodness and justice of God 2. The second thing which I have to propound is this the holy Scripture in many places seems plainly to assert the Divine Conduct with a potent and irresistable efficacy in this dark part of things the evil as also the Glory of the Divine Justice and Goodness in this conduct equal with that in the good I will instance in three Scriptures only 1. My first instance is that of Solomon Eccles. 3. There is a season for every thing and a time for every purpose A time to be born and a time to die A time to kill and a time to heal A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embraces A time to destroy and a time to preserve A time to love and a time to hate from the first to the ninth verse He that is God hath made every thing good in his time verse 11 I know that all which God hath done this shall be for ever I shall draw forth this Scripture into a few brief Maxims which seem to arise naturally and clearly out of it 1. There is all Variety in the Unity of the Divine work a Variety extending it self to the remotest the highest Contrarieties Affirmative or Negative to the most distant perfections and privations So the holy Spirit speaketh expresly in the general every thing every purpose all that can fall within the conception or comprehension of the vastest and most incomprehensible Spirit hath its season and time So the holy Spirit speaketh in particular love and hatred war and peace embracing and abstaining from embracing life and death destruction and salvation have their time and season Do not these particular instances expresly define the highest Contrariety Affirmative or Negative of good and evil in their greatest Latitude and most universal Nature 2. God makes all this Variety and Contrariety and that in the lowest Region also even under the Sun where it appears in a dark tempestuous scene of the greatest disorder and confusion There is a time saith Solomon for all and a season for every purpose The word Season signifieth a set measured time like the times in Musick the time or season of each thing is its duration Duration is the mode or measure of the Essence and so really the same with the Essence the Essence measured and bounded As Essences and Habits so also have privations their measure and bounds as Rests and Stops have time in Musick Every Essence is the Birth of an Understanding of which it beareth the impression and Seal It is the work of an Understanding alone to give measure and bounds to things That then which setteth the time for all Varieties and Contrarieties Perfections and Privations which consequently maketh and formeth them can be no other than the Divine Understanding God in his essential and eternal Word which alone is above and before all things So we read here concerning all these Contrarieties That God hath made them beautiful 〈◊〉 their time God then hath made them God maketh all Contrarieties Affirmative and Negative Perfections and Privations but after a contrary manner He maketh Perfections as the Sun maketh light in the Air after an Affirmative manner by a positive presence power and influence He maketh privations as the Sun maketh darkness and night after a Negative manner by his absence by a drawing in his power and binding up his sweet influence But this negation also and so the privations which flow from it are called here by Solomon the Master of all Wisdom Humane and Divine Purposes There is a season saith he for every purpose then he instances in the Contrarieties following Privations then are Divine purposes that is Designs Contrivances Divine Forms designed contrived and measured in the Divine Mind Upon this ground some Philosophers teach us That God is a transcendent Good above all Beings who comprehends Originally in himself not only all Beings but all privation of Being which themselves also as darkness night absence and death in their place and time are Forms of good although not Forms of Being and Divine Forms Forms in Divinity although not natural Forms nor Forms in natural Philosophy But now I am passing to my third Conclusion Thirdly God maketh all things the Varieties and Contrarieties beautiful in their time They are the express words of Solomon from the heighth of all created Wisdom in its single state They are the words of the Uncreated Wisdom it self speaking by Solomon God hath made all beautiful in his time verse 11. This is manifestly spoken with respect to the general All in the first verse and the particular All 's of the highest Contrarieties of the most distant privations enumerated in the following verses the time of each Being respecteth its relation to the whole Beauty is an Harmony and consisteth in the suitableness or conveniency of the several parts with each other and with the whole Suitableness is a similitude similitude is an Unity in Variety an Unity of Form in distinct Subjects as the same sweetness and colour in several Flowers The same beautiful light of knowledge the same pure and lovely sweetness of Spirit which makes a Divine Friendship the highest suitableness and similitude Philosophy teaches us That the first Good and the first Unity are the most proper Names of the most high God having both the same sense and force It teaches us also That the first Beauty is an effulgency from the first Good the first Good or the first Unity shining out into a distinct Image of it self which is the first Distinction or Variety and so the supream the most ample Variety All Beauty then in its kind and degree is an Unity diffusing it self and shining forth into a Variety where from the whole and from each part it reflecteth it self upon it self with all its united Vertues Proportions and Sweetnesses meeting every where in each point Upon this ground we are taught That the first Understanding is the first Beauty and that every Beauty is the Birth and Object of that Understanding alone at least in some impressions or foot-steps of it For Beauty being the meeting of many parts or proportions in one undivided Point or an Unity in Variety can neither be nor be discerned where there is not a spiritual Form or Substance which is it self an undivided Unity Then doth the Beauty spring with
embraces the fountain of Life the center and circle of all Delights O bitter Peace disordering Melody broken and unpleasant Harmony where Love suffers all evil and is slain on both sides to make perfect the Harmony But oh full Compensation O full and sweet Harmony arising out of the Discords swallowing up the Discords themselves into the most pure the most perfect most pleasant melody whereas Love first suffered and was slain by the disorder and enmity of Sin so now Love again suffereth and is slain for the enmity for sin by the wrath of God against sin that is by the Love in its contrary to the enmity Thus Love it self in the place of us all most lovingly and beauty it self most beautifully is become a Sacrifice for it self to it self 3. Abolition The last step in the way of reducing disorder into order is the Abolition or Renovation this is the finishing of all in the Person of the Lord Jesus The Lord Jesus is the compleat Image of the invisible God Thus he comprehendeth the whole Creation in himself for all the Creatures are so many expressive or manifestative figures of the Divine Glory We read in Scripture That the things which are seen that is all the created Objects of Sense or Reason Humane or Angelical stand up out of the things which are not seen Jesus Christ then being the first highest Image of the invisible God as he is in his own unaccessible Light is the Root out of which and in which the Creation stands the Lord Jesus as this universal Person goes down into the Grave and carries thither into those lowest shades at once with himself all Images of things the Original and the Copy the Substance and the Shadow the Uncreated Glory and the created Figure So Christ dies and the whole Creation dieth with him so he makes an end of Sin and Transgression Here he sings that triumphant Song O Death I am thy death Here all the evil of Sin and Suffering of Disorder and Contrariety which as a grave had swallowed up the whole Creation is swallowed up into Victory in the grave of Christ. In this Divine Death the whole Creation is dissolved and comes to its last end in its last end it meets with its beginning falling quite out of it self falling down out of its own empty obscure shade and nothingness it falls into the bosom of its heavenly and eternal Mother the Original Glory The Original Glory in the Person of Christ hath descended thus low together with its Birth and shadow Here it finisheth its descent in its shadow here diffusing it self and its eternal Light through these shades of death and through the whole Creation in these shades it maketh it self perfectly one by an entire and mutual communion in death with all the Creatures whose life was a continual War with it The Light of the heavenly Image poured forth in these shades of death flowing through the created Image overflowing and taking it into it self is that precious and Divine Blood which by its mysterious washings maketh the crimson and scarlet sins or stains upon this Image whiter than the whitest wooll or snow In this Divine Death the shadowy Image with all its evils of disorder and enmity are now past away for ever in respect to any reality substantiality or subsistence in themselves they remain only as figures in the Divine shade of this death in which shade the heavenly Image bears all in its pure although obscured bosom It is now the Root of eternal Love and eternal Life in Death receiving into it self all the Creatures with all their disorders and enmities They all now do here put off their Realities and become only mysterious shadows through which the supream Beauty and Sweetness springeth and sporteth it self But the Original Glory in the Person of Christ having now finished the mystery of its descent in the Creature and in this final dissolution taken the Creature again into it self as its first and proper Root beginneth now its return and ascent As the Lord Jesus died so he riseth again an universal Person with both Images created and uncreated united in himself The eternal Glory once in the first Creation vailed it self beneath a shadowy Image to die in that Image accordingly he died with it and for it But now he riseth again in the brightness of his heavenly Image he raiseth the whole Creation together with himself as his proper and immediate Birth as its purest and loveliest Bride in the most intimate entire and mutual Union with it self in all its glories thus to live for ever in the richest and closest embraces of each other Here now ye have a three-fold Resurrection in one 1. The Divine Image which is eternal Love and life it self as it had been vailed as it had suffered and died in the Creature riseth sweetly and gloriously from beneath all those shades into its own freshest and fullest Beauties Thus it riseth in the midst of the created Image 2. The created Image was once a fair entire Picture of the eternal Beauty living a Divine Life breathing a Divine Sweetness being a Divine Paradise in it self to it self while it stood as a pure resemblance of its Divine Original But by its fall into the infâ—…rnal Deep of Sin it stained it self it broke it self all to pieces it buried its Life Beauty and Sweetness in a dreadful and hateful death Now having put off that death in the death of Christ it riseth again in the bosom of the Original Glory not only in its fullest Beauty and Sweetness but a Beauty and Sweetness far more excelling It was before its fall a sweet shade an earthly Paradise The shade vanished into darkness the Paradise faded and disappeared But now it riseth as the â—…un-shine of the Godhead as the sweetest Light at once lying in the Bosom of the highest Glory embraced by it and surrounding that Glory with its embraces by a mutual immediate and eternal Union 3. The fall the disorders the wounds and death of this shadowy Image so dreadful and hateful as they stood in time now also have their Resurrection and put on a new appearance in eternity Having now passed through the Death and Sufferings of Christ where they put off all their evil by putting off all their own proper reality they stand in his Resurrection as figures of eternal Glories which are themselves also Glories in the Bosom of their Glorious Original They are seen now as they eternally spring up and flourish in the Garden of the Divine Mind as they bear their part and shine in the universal Beauty of the Divine Image and Work As the eternal Original with its Paradisical shadow lay hid in them like a Flower in its Seed in the Earth as both these Glories now are sprung forth through them and bring forth them again as eternal Lights in the light and circle of their own Beauties So is Christ in the circle of the Throne of God as the
all Spirits all Forms in their separated state Here are the Essences of all things in their abstracted Beauties Jesus Christ in his Mediatory Kingdom and World is the Head of the Angelical Image The Head of this is the Divine World the Divine Essence Plato saith All the Members were made for the Head The Head in that spiritual sense in which we have spoken of it is the inmost Center the utmost Circle diffusing it self thorow all incompassing infolding and comprehending all It is the beginning the end the strength the truth the glory of all with a transcendency of excellency in every kind surmounting all Thus is God thus is Jesus Christ as he is the essential Image of God the Divine World in eternity the glorious Head of his Mediatory Kingdom shining with infinitely rich and delightful splendors above all over all in all Thus is God the Person the Unity which brings forth this Divine Image which spreads himself thorow it lives and subsists in it gives it its life and subsistency in himself joyns it altogether in one Divine piece by the Unity of one Life one Spirit one Person 2. God is here in a Created Form appearing with a middle-glory between the shade of the Creature and the unapproachable shinings of the Godhead uniting both by a Marriage which all things in Heaven in Earth in the Seas beneath both celebrate with Divine Feasts and Triumphs God in the Creature is seen by a shadowy Image alone which lie as a Vail upon the pure Glories of his Divine Face and Person He now shines forth like the Sun in a cloudy day by that obscure Image of his Coelestial Form a reflected refracted Light God in the Kingdom of the Father the Father of Lights in the simplicity of the Divine Nature is the eternal Sun at its heighth at its Noon-sted in its Meridional Glories God in the Mediatory Kingdom which is properly the Kingdom of Christ in his personal Reign resembles the lovely Morning the golden Hour of the Day when there is no more shades or pure Light but both are mixt and sweetly married into the pleasant Flowers of Saffron or Roses breathing their sweetnesses thorow the whole Air and Universe God in Jesus Christ is now the Sun ascending shining forth in its strength but not at its full heighth God and the Creature are like two Lillies or Roses joyned upon one stalk in a fair Morning or a bright Forenoon or like two Friends in this sweet season in a Garden of Roses embracing These mutually possess enjoy the full Beauties the full sweetness each of other but not fully clearly but not compleatly until the Sun come to its full heighth In the Schools the knowledge of things is divided into three kinds 1. Meridianam the Meridional or Moon-Light of Knowledge 2. Matutinam The Morning-Light 3. Vespertinam The Evening-shade 1. The Noon-Light of Knowledge is the sight of things in their eternal Ideas in the eternal essential Idea or Image of the Godhead which is the eternal Word our Jesus 2. The evening shade is the Creature appearing in its self by its own obscure and fading Light 3. The Morning-Light of Knowledge is applied by some to the second quire in the first Order of Angels the Cherubims These are the Lights flowing from the Second Person in the Trinity the Light of eternity and of the Divine Essence as the Seraphims the first quire are Love the Love-Unity the Angelical Figure of the Father the Unity in the Trinity the Fountain of all Divine Births of all Divine Loves and Lights the Love-Spring and so the Life-Spring in the Godhead In these Angelical Loves the Seraphims are all forms of things as in their first their sweetest created Love-Springs and Love-Unions In these Angelical Lights the Cherubims are all forms of things as in their first their richest created Beauties and Ideas But these Cherubimical Beauties these Angelical Ideas are too faint and fading to be the Morning-Light All created Glories the most heavenly are no more than Evening-Glories which the setting Sun hath left behind him They all by degrees sink into the darkness of the night and disappear for ever Our Jesus alone is the Day-spring from on high the Rosie Morning and the rising Sun In him alone all created Loves and Beauties Cherubim and Seraphim rising again from the depths of night unto a new Sweetness and Glory have their eternal day Thus the Spirit speaketh to the Lord Jesus in the Psalmist and the first of the Hebrews The Heavens wax old as a Garment thou changest them and they are changed But thy throne O Lord endureth for ever and ever See in the Heavens in the powers sweetnesses and beauties of Heaven a night of old Age and of Death See in this Death a Day-Spring of new and immortal Glories in the rising of the Lord Jesus upon them and their rising in the Circuit of his Throne He alone sits upon that Throne of ever-new ever-springing eternal Light But thus much of this second Character of Jesus Christ in his Mediatorship or Middle-state 3. God in his essential Image replenished with the eternal Ideas and Patterns the Original Forms of things is in this second Image thorow the whole universal Form in all the particular and distinct Forms the Root and Seed of all This is the Vis plastica the Ratio seminalis the formative Power by which the formal reason or proportion according to which all things in their created Image spring up are framed are acted in their essential accidental Forms Powers Operations and Motions The Father hath sent me forth and I live by the Father All mine are thine and all thine are mine Thine they were and thou gavest them me This is the Language of Christ concerning his Father and to his Father The eternal Idea of the Godhead which is our Jesus in the heighths of his Divinity the distinct Ideas in the Bosom of this Idea of the Divine Essence are respectively the proper Places the Parents the Patterns the Husbands of Jesus Christ in this Middle-Image and in all the particular Images which shine here as Stars in their native Heaven as Flowers in their Garden-beds to which in the Song of holy Loves the Cheeks of this Jesus are compared Thus is our Jesus in the Gospel divinely drawn in an admirable Picture representing him after his descent out of this state rising again in it He is presented to us in his transfiguration on the Mount with his Face shining like the Sun in its strength and his Garment as the Light O most admirable and Divine Figure of our Jesus in his Mediatory Kingdom and Glory The Face the Person of our Jesus is the Sun it self the eternal Sun the Divine Nature shining forth in the strength of its light and heat its Beauties and Loves The created Image is as the Raiment upon this Person but a Raiment of Light of the Flower of Light Sun-shine of the Godhead a Garment made of a
Godhead it self with open Face with all its unclouded Sweetnesses all its unvailed Glories fills all springs shines forth with golden smiles in every part cloaths the whole Image is the Unity of all the Person in all This is the first Unity the Unity of the whole 2. The second is the Divine the Personal Unity in each part Such is the Virtue such is the undivided simplicity of the Spiritual the Divine Unity in this Person that the Unity the Person the Variety of the whole is equally perfectly entire and distinct in each part in every point of the whole Thus as there is one Body and many members so is Christ in this his spiritual and heavenly Body But such is the spirituality the heavenliness of this Divine Body this Divine Person that in every distinct Member the Unity of the Person and of the heavenly Body the Person in its full Amplitude in the greatness of its Majesty the whole Body in all its glorious Variety is most compleatly the same and distinct in every member Thus we read that in the Throne of God and the Vision of his Glory represented by Ezckiel and St. John The Lamb was in the midst of the Throne as the Center dissusing it self through the whole Circle There appeared also in the midst of the Throne four living Creatures which are interpreted by learned Divines to be four principal Ideas the four-fold Spring and Head of all Ideal Lives and Glories into which the supream and universal Idea the Lamb immediately distinguisheth it self like the Fountain of Eden in its four great streams These four living Creatures are so described that every one hath its own distinct Form that yet all are said to have one and the same Form Every one is said to have the form of a man which is the entire and universal Harmony of all forms the form of that man which rides in the Firmament above the heads of them all the Lamb himself This is the second Unity 3. The third is the Unity of all parts with each other and with the whole Every part equally subsisteth and shineth in all the other parts and in the entire Face of the whole as in it self being every where most perfectly distinct and the same So we read concerning those four living Creatures Whithersoever the Spirit of the living Creatures was to go they still went forward and never turned This is the force of the Unity of each part and with the whole Without change at once every part stands distimctly in every form of Beauty Pleasantness Glory In all the richness of their Divine Motions and Activities ever full ever new The beautiful and Divine Face of each part of the whole in each part standeth and looketh at once every way in every part of the whole and in the whole Now have I finished the three-fold Excellency of our Jesus in this Divine Image and Mediatory Glory Before I pass from it let me entreat you to cast your eye for a little space upon two Divine and delightful sights here 1. There is no particular Form so little or so low there is no privation so empty or so dark which hath not its two-fold Idea or Archetype here We read That Death and Hell are open and manifest before the eyes of the Lord. Where are the Forms of things so divided and broken as in the dust of Death What privations so shady and black so empty and desolate so deformed horrid and dreadful as those of Death and Hell Yet are Death and Hell manifest before the eyes of the Lord. Is not this Jesus the Divine Glass and Light in which alone all things appear to himself and to his Father Are not these Archetypes or Ideal Patterns in Christ both the Divine Eyes with which the eternal Spirit looketh upon all things and the Divine Objects which alone he beholdeth with these Eyes the Divine Images in these Eyes Then Death and Hell all particulars all privations are evidently and eminently here in the beautiful Form and Person of our blessed Mediator Here they are in their proper Ideas in their distinct and heavenly Patterns their eternal Truths But here they are no more particulars or privations inasmuch as every part every point of this Divine Image where these Ideas are seated is both the Center diffusing it self through the whole Image and a Circle comprehending the whole with its full Majesty and Glory in its own distinct propriety and form Thus the Psalmist sings divinely of this heavenly Mystery to Jesus Christ. The Darkness hideth not from thee but the Night shineth as the Day the Darkness and the Light both alike This is the first of those heavenly sights to which I invited thee 2. See if our Jesus in this Mediatory Image be not the Jerusalem above ever new altogether heavenly our Mother which bringeth us forth under the Apple-Tree the Tree of Love in the heavenly Paradise which beareth us upon her sides and dandles us upon her knees through our whole course in all our motions and changes of our Birth Life and Death which milketh forth from her Breasts abundance of Glory upon us See if this be not that City of the living God having the Godhead it self for a Foundation where all things dwell together in their heavenly Patterns and eternal Spirits See if this be not Jerusalaiim two Cities in one compacted together by one eternal Love into one eternal Spirit and Person the created and the Uncreated Image where the First-bron the whole Creation in general all Creatures in particular in their first-born Original Images and Truths dwell together See if this be not that Kingdom of God universal over all the last of all without end eternal which is Righteousness Peace and Joy The Righteousness of all Divine incorruptible Harmony and Beauty the Beauties of Holiness the Beauties of the Divine Nature in its most unstained unmixt highest Purity that Peace and Joy which is the most ravishing Harmony of all things as they spring shine and sing together in the Unity of the Divine Light Life and Love in the ever dear and delightful Person of our blessed Mediator I have proceeded thus far in our Discourse of the Lord Jesus as he is the Mediator of the Creation the way by which God descendeth into the Creature and the Creature cometh forth from God To this end he necessarily toucheth both the extremes is immediately united to both and unites both in himself in a middle state between both I have spoken of the Lord Jesus as he toucheth the extreme above and is God with God the essential Image of God the Original Seat and Image of all Forms of things in their first state We have treated of him in his middle state where he is the Union of God and the Creature of all Forms of things uncreated created joyned together in one Light and Spirit of Glory I now pass to the third Consideration of our Mediator as he toucheth the lower extream of the
him If any man be in Christ saith St. Paul he is a new Creation old things are passed away 2 Cor. 5. It is a known story recited by Plutarch That of a great Cry with dreadful shrieks and groans to Thamus a Pilot as he passed by a desolate Island in the Reign of Tiberius under whom Christ was put to death Great Pan is dead this great All is dead The Heathen figured the whole Creation in the Person of their God Pan the Angelical Coelestial and Elementary parts of it 2. The Death of Christ is an universal Resolution or Return of all things as they stand in Christ into their first and Divine Principles The Light the Life the Forms the Essences of all things return into their Ideal Forms their incorruptible Originals and Patterns their pure eternal Springs in the Mediatory Form and Divine Nature of Christ. The shadowyness returns into that blessed shade that fell immediately from the Person of Christ in Glory that Primitive and Divine Darkness which was before the first Day the Womb of the first Light and of the whole Creation which composed those Nights of Beauty Peace and Pleasure the Nights of the six Days the Night of the seventh Day and all the Nights of Paradise Thus was Jesus with the good Thief and all things with him in him in Paradise at his Death The Jewish Rabbins distinguish Paradise from Heaven thus Heaven is a state of Divine Glory and Pleasure above in the open Light of â—…e Godhead Paradise is a state of Divine incorruptible Glory and Pleasure below beneath the shades of the Earth This is that pure primitive Divine Darkness of which I speak which was the shade out of which the pure Earth with all the unstained Forms of things at first arose and into which they now return again in Christ. This is the Divine sleep of all things in the Death of Christ their retirement into their Divine Patterns their sweet and entire rest in them their contemplation and fruition of all the immortal Joys and Glories of their Patterns and of themselves in those Joys and Glories as a Divine dream in this sleep within this sweet this amiable this more than Angelical shade which over-spreads them Here they desirously and delightfully wait for the Day of the Resurrection from the Face of God which they see by degrees dawning and rising upon them when the sweet Peace of this lovely shade shall break up into the more full and glorious sweetness of the supream Light and that eternal Day St. Paul expresseth all this to us when he teacheth us That Christ hath gathered up all things into one in himself Col. 2. The Greek word properly signifies there the Resolution or Return of things back into their first Principle their Original Spring and Pattern 3. The third and last part of the Mediation of Christ in our Redemption as it was accomplished in his own Person is his Resurrection and Ascension These two agree are the same in nature and kind differing only in degree The Resurrection of Christ is the breaking up of that primitive shade which over-spread him into a clear Light of Glory Now he springs up and flourisheth throughout his whole Person and all things together with him in his Person in the Beauty and Immortality of his Mediatory Form He is now become an entire Spirit in his Humane Nature both Soul and Body This two Scriptures make clear to us Jesus Christ saith to Nicodemus Joh. 3. 6. That that which is begotten of the Spirit is Spirit The word there is a Substantive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spiritual substance or substantial Spirit Now it is manifest in the Scriptures that the Resurrection of Christ in the Body was an immediate Generation by the eternal Spirit So Divines interpret and apply those words Heb. 1. 5. cited from the second Psalm Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee Suitable to this is that Scripture Rom. 1. 4. Declared the Son of God with power according to the holy spirit by the Resurrection from the dead Two things are manifest from this Scripture 1. That Jesus Christ was raised from the Dead by the immediate Power and Operation of the holy Spirit 2. That this Resurrection was a Divine Generation by the Spirit through which he was brought forth into the proper Form of the Son of God That which we read declared 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth properly defined or determinately formed This receives further Light from St. Peter 1 Pet. 3. 18. Being put to death truly in the flesh but quickned in the spirit We read it by the Spirit but in Grâ—… the Flesh and Spirit do so exactly answer one another in the construction and manner of expression that one would think nothing to be plainer than the intention of the Holy Ghost to signifie that the Flesh and the Spirit had both the same relation to the Person of Christ in those different states of his dying and rising again that by this change the Spirit came in the place of the Flesh and that the Flesh was changed into a Spirit as by a natural Generation that that was Water or Air is made Fire The words are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In the same sense in which he died in Flesh or to the Flesh So he rose again in the Spirit or to Spirit That same Body which died a fleshly compounded mortal substance rose again a simple pure immortal Spirit As the Humanity of Christ rose again a Spirit so it rose in an immediate inseparable Union with the eternal Spirit upon the same Root into the same Life and Image St. Paul instructeth us in this mystery 1 Cor. 15. 45. The first Adam was made a living Soul the last Adam a quickning Spirit vers 45. The subject of St. Paul's Discourse there and in many verses before is the Resurrection of the Body He said immediately before It is sown a natural Body 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Body proper for a Soul It is raised a spiritual Body a Body proper for a Spirit vers 44. He illustrates this afterwards The first man is of the Earth earthly the second man is the Lord from Heaven vers 47. Then he distinguisheth them by the names of the earthly and the heavenly man or the Super-Coelestial vers 48. He likewise distinguisheth their two Images the Image of the earthly and the Image of the heavenly or super-coelestial vers 49. Then he concludes with a a positive and emphatical Declaration But this I say brethren that flesh and blood cannot enter into the Kingdom of God vers 50. From these Scriptures laid together these particulars seem evidently to arise 1. Jesus Christ by the Resurrection in his whole Humane Nature both Soul and Body is a supernatural super-coelestial Spirit far above the nature of Souls or Angels in the first Creation 2. The humanity of Christ hath now its Root in Heaven in that Heaven out of which it comes forth