in his hands the â—rint of the nails now our Saviour condeseending so far as to satisfie the incredulity of Thomas hath made it thereby evident that the body which our Saviour rose from the grave with was the same individual body which before was crucified and buried in the Sepulchre And we sind all the Apostles together upon our Saviours appearance to them after his resurrection so far from being credulous in embracing a phantasm instead of Christ that they suspâ—cted that it was either a meer phantasm or an evil spirit which appeared among them upon which it is said they were terrified and affrighted and supposed they had seen a spirit Which our Saviour could not beat them off from but by appealing to the judgement of their senses Handle me and see for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have and afterwards more fully to convince them he did eat in the midst of them Now the more suspitious and incâ—edulous the Apostles themselves at first were the greater evidence is it how far they were from any design of abusing the world in what they after preached unto it and what strong conviction there was in the thing its self which was able to satisfie such scrupulous and suspicious persons 2. When many witnesses concurr in the same Testimony Nothing can disparage more the truth of a testimony then the counter witness of such who were present at the same actions but when all the witnesses fully agree not only in the substance but in all material circumstances of the story what ground or reason can there be to suspect a forgery or design in it especially when the persons cannot by any fears or threatnings be brought to vary from each other in it Thus it is in our present case we find no real dissent at all mentioned either as to the birth miracles life death or resurrection of Iesus Christ all the witnesses attest the same things though writing in different places and upon different occasions no alteration in any circumstance of the story out of any design of pleasing or gratifying any persons by it Most of our Saviours miracles not only his Apostles but the people and his very enemies were witnesses of whose posterity to this day dare not deny the truth of such strange works which were wrought by him And for his resurrection it would be very strange that five hundred persons should all agree in the same thing and that no torments or death could bring any of them to deny the truth of it had there not been the greatest certainty in it There can be no reason to suspect such a testimony which is given by eye-witnesses but either from questiâ—ning their knowledge of the things they speak of or their fiâ—elity in reporting them Now there is not the least ground to doubt either of these in reference to those persons who gave testimony to the world concerning the person and actions of our blessed Saviour For first They were such as were intimately conversant both with the person and actions of Iesus Christ whom he had chosen and trained up for that very end that they might be sufficiently qualified to acquaint the world with the truth of things concerning himself after his resurrection from the dead And accordingly they followed him up and down wheresoever he went they were with him in his solitudes and retirements and had thereby occasion to observe all his actions and to take notice of the unspotted innocency of his life Some of his Disciples were with him in his transfiguration others in his agony and bloody sweat they heard the expressions which came from his mouth in all which he discovered a wonderful submission to the will of God and a great readiness of mind to suffer for the good of the world Now therefore the first thing cannot at all be questioned their means of knowing the truth of what they spake Neither secondly is there any reasâ—n to suspect their fidelity in reporting what they knew For 1. The truth of this doctrine wrought so far upon them that they parted with all their worldly subsistence for the sake of it Although their riches were not great yet their way of subsistence in the world was necessary they left their houses their wives and children and all for Christ and that not to gain any higher preferments in this world which had they done it would have rendred their design suspicious to the curious and inquisitive world but they let go at least a quiet and easie life for one most troublesom and dangerous So that it is not how much they parted withall but how freely they did it and with what chearfulness they underwent disgraces persecutions nay death its self for the sake of the Gospel Now can it be imagined that ever men were so prodigal of their ease and lives as to throw both of them away upon a thing which themselves were not fully assured of the truth of It had been the highest folly imaginable to have deceived themselves in a thing of so great moment to them as the truth of the doctrine which they preached was because all their hopes and happiness depended upon the truth of that doctrine which they preached And as Tertullian observes non fas est ulli de suâ religione mentiri for saith he he that sayes he worships any thing be sides what he doth he denyes what he doth worship and transfers his worship upon another and thereby doth not worship that which he thus denyes Besides what probability is there men should lye for the sake of that Religion which tells them that those which do so shall not receive the reward which is promised to those who cordially adhere unto it Nay they declared themselves to be the most miserable of all persons if their hopes were only in this present life Can we now think that any who had the common reason of men would part with all the contentments of this world and expose themselves to continual hazards and at last undergo death its self for the sake of something which was meerly the fiction of their own brains What should make them so sedulous and industrious in preaching such things that they could say necessity was laid upon them yea wo was unto them if they preached not the Gospel when yet they saw so many woes attending them in the preaching of it had there not been some more powerful attractive in the beauty and excellency of the doctrine which they preached then any could be in the ease and tranquillity of this present world Thus we see the fidâ—lity of the Apostles manifested in such a way as no other witnesses were ever yet willing to hazard theirs And therefore Origen deservedly condemns Celsus of a ridiculous impertinency when he would parallel the relations of Herodotus and Pindarus concerning Aristeus Proconnesius with those of the Apostles concerning Christ For faith he did either of those two
a Crocodile for impudence and all to express this venerable Apothegm O ye that come into the world and that go out of it God hates impudence And therefore certainly this kind of Learning deserves the highest form among the difficiles Nugae and all these Hieroglyphicks put together will make but one good one and that should be for Labour lost There is yet one part of Learning more among them which the Aegyptians are esteemed for which is the Political and civil part of it which may better be called wisdom then most of the fore-going two things speak much the wisdom of a Nation good Laws and a prudent management of them their Laws are highly commended by Strabo and Diodorus and it is none of the least commendations of them that Solon and Lycurgus borrowed so many of their constitutions from them and for the prudent management of their government as the continuance of their state so long in peace and quietness is an invincible demonstration of it so the report given of them in Scripture adds a further testimony to it for therein the King of Aegypt is called the Son of the wise as well as the son of ancient Kings and his counsellors are called wise counsellors of Pharaoh and the wise men whereby a more then ordinary prudence and policy must be understood Can we now imagine such a person as Moses was bred up in all the ingenucus literature of Aegypt conversant among their wisest persons in Pharaohs Court having thereby all advantages to improve himself and to understand the utmost of all that they knew should not be able to pass a judgement between a meer prâ—tence and imposture and real and important Tâ—uths Can we think that one who had interest in so great a Court all advantages of raising himself therein should willingly forsake all the pleasures and delights at present all his hopes and advantages for the future were he not fully perswaded of the certain and undoubted truth of all those things which are recorded in his books Is it possible a man of ordinary wisdom should venture himself upon so hazardous unlikely and dangerous employment â—s that was Moses undertook which could have no probability of success but only upon the belief that that God who appeared unto him was greater then all the Gods of Aegypt and could carry on his own design by his own power maugre all the opposition which the Princes of the world could make against it And what possible ground can we have to think that such a person who did verily believe the truth of what God revealed unto him should dare to write any otherwise then as it was revealed unto him If there had been any thing repugnant to common reason in the history of the Creation the fall of man the universal deluge the propagation of the world by the sons of Noah the history of the Patriarchs had not Moses rational faculties as well as we nay had he them not far better improved then any of ours are and was not he then able to judge what was suitable to reason and what not and can we think he would then deliver any thing inconsistent with reason or undoubted tradition then when the Aegyptian Priests might so readily and plainly have triumphed over him by discovering the falshood of what he wrote Thus we see that Moses was as highly qualified as any of the acutest Heathen Philosophers could be for discerning truth from falshood nay in all probability he far excelled the most renowned of the Graecian Philosophers in that very kind of learning wherewith they made so great noise in the world which was originally Aegyptian as is evident in the whole series of the Graecian Philosphers who went age after age to Aegypt to get some scraps of that learning there which Moses could not have but full meals of because of his high place great interest and power in Aegypt And must those hungry Philosophers then become the only Masters of our reason and their dictates be received as the sâ—nse and voice of nature which they either received from uncertain tradition or else delivered in opposition to it that they might be more taken notice of in the world Must an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be confronted with Thus saith the Lord and a few pitiful symbols vye authority with divine commands and Ex nihilo nihil fit be sooner believed then In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth What irrefragable evidence of reason is that so confident a presumption built upon when it can signifie nothing without this hypothesis that there is nothing but matter in the world and let this first be proved and we will never stick to grant the other I may confidently say the great gullery of the world hath been taking philosophical dictates for the standard of reason and unproved hypotheses for certain foundations for our discourse to rely upon And the seeking to reconcile the mysteries of our faith to these hath been that whith hath almost destroyed it and turned our Religion into a meer philosophical speculation But of this elsewhere We see then that insisting meerly on the accomplishments and rational perfections of the persons who speak we have more reason to yield credit to Moses in his history then to any Philosophers in their speculations And that which in the next place speaks Moses to be a person of wisdom and judgement and ability to finde out truth was his age and experience when he delivered these things to the world He vented no crude and indigested conceptions no sudden and temerarious fancies the usual issues of teeming and juvenile wits he lived long enough to have experience to try and judgement to distinguish a meer outside and varnish from what was solid and substantial We cannot then have the least ground of suspition that Moses was any wayes unfit to discern truth from falshood and therefore was capable of judging the one from the other But though persons be never so highly accomplisht for parts learning and experience yet if they want due information of the certainty of the things they deliver they may be still decâ—iving themselves and if they preserve it for posterity be guilty of deceiving others Let us now therefore see whether Moses had not as great advantages for understanding the truth of his History as he had judgement to discern it And concerning all those things contained in the four last books of his to his own death it was impossible any should have greater then himself writing nothing but what he was pars magna himself of what he saw and heard and did and can any testimony be desired greater then his whose actions they were or who was present at the doing of them and that not in any private way but in the most publick capacity For although private persons may be present at great actions yet they may be guilty of misrepresenting them for want of understanding all circumstances precedent and
from the true God or from Idols and false Gods So that the meer pretence to Divine revelation was that which God would have punished with so great severity The Iews tell us of three sorts of Prophets who were to be punished with death by men and three other sorts who were reserved to divine punishment Of the first rank were these 1. He that prophecyed that which he had not heard and for this they instance in Zedekiah the son of Chenaanah who made him horns of iron and said Thus saith the Lord this was the lying Prophet 2. He that speaks that which was revealed not to him but to another and for this they instance in Hananiah the son of Azur but how truly I shall not determine this was the Plagiary Prophet 3. He that prophesied in the name of an Idol as the Prophets of Baal did this was the Idol Prophet These three when once fully convicted were to be put to death The other rank of those which were left to Gods hand consisted of these 1. He that stisles and smothers his own prophecy as Jonas did by which it may seem that when the Divine Spirit did overshadow the understanding of the Prophets yet it offered no violence to their faculties but left them to the free determination of their own wills in the execution of their office but this must be understood of a lower degree of prophecy for at sometimes their prophecyes were as fire in their bones that they were never at any rest till they had discharged their office But withall by the example of Ionas we see that though the Spirit of prophecy like the fire on the Altar could only be kindled from heaven yet it might be destroyed when it was not maintained with something to feed upon or when it met not with suitable entertainment from the spirits of those it fell upon it might retreat back again to heaven or at least lie hid in the embers till a new blast from the Spirit of God doth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 retrieve it into its former heat and activity Thus it was with Ionas 2. The other was he that despised the words of a true Prophet of such God saith Deut. 18. 19. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall not hearken to my words which he shall speak in my name I will require it of him Which Maimonides explains by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 death by the hands of God which he thus distinguisheth from the Cereth that he makes the death per manus coeli to be less then the Cereth because this latter continued in the soul after death but the other was expiated by death but generally they interpret it of a sudden death which falls upon the person 3. The last is he who hearkens not to the words of his own Prophecy of which we have a most remarkable instance in Scripture concerning the Prophet whom God sent to Bethel whom Tertullian calls Sameas the Iews Hedua whom God destroyed in an unusual manner for not observing the command which God had given him not to eat bread nor drink water at Bethel nor turn again by the way he came Neither was it any excuse to this Prophet that the old Prophet at Bethel told him that an Angel spake unto him by the word of the Lord that he should turn back For 1. Those whom God reveals his will unto he gives them full assurance of it in that they have a clear and distinct perception of God upon their own minds and so they have no doubt but it is the word of the Lord which comes unto them but this Prophet could have no such certainty of the Divine revelation which was made to another especially when it came immediately to contradict that which was so specially enjoyned him 2. Where God commands a Prophet to do any thing in the pursuit of his message there he can have no ground to question whether God should countermand it or no by another Prophet because that was in effect to thwart the whole design of his message So it was in this action of the Prophets for God intended his not eating and drinking in Bethel to testifie how much he loathed and abominated that place since its being polluted with Idolatry 3. He might have just cause to question the integrity of the old Prophet both because of his living in Bethel and not openly according to his office reproving their Idolatry and that God should send him out of Iudea upon that very errand which would not have seemed so probable if there had been true Prophets resident upon the place 4. The thing he desired him to do was not an act of that weight and importance on which God useth to send his Word to any Prophets much less by one Prophet to contradict what he had said by another and therefore Tertullian saith of him poenam deserti jejunii luit God punished him for breaking his fast at Bethel and therefore that message of this Prophet seemed to gratifie more mans carnal appetite then usually the actions of Prophets did which were most times matters of hardship and uneasiness to the flesh 5. However all these were yet he yeilded too soon especially having so much reason on his side as he had being well assured that God had commanded him he had reason to see some clear evidence of a countermand before he altered his mind if he had seen any thing upon tryal which might have staggerd his faith he ought to have made his immediate recourse to God by prayer for the settlement of his mind and removal of this great temptation But so easily to hearken to the words of a lying Prophet which contradicted his own message argued either great unbelief as to his own commission or too great easiness and inadvertency in being drawn aside by the old Prophet And therefore God made that old Prophet himself in the midst of his entertainment as with a hand writing against the wall to tell him he was weighed in the ballance and found too light and therefore his life should be taken from him Thus we see how dangerous a thing it was either to counterfeit a Spirit of Prophecy or to hearken to those who did It is the generally received opinion among the Iewish Doctors that the cognizance and tryal of false Prophets did peculiarly belong to the great Sanhedrin And that this was one end of its institution So Maimonides after he hath largely discoursed of the punishment of a seducer and speaking of that of a false Prophet he layes this down as a standing rule among them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 No false Prophet was to be judged but in the Court of seventy one which was the number of the great Sanhedrin And there is some thing looks very like this in the proceedings of the people of Israel against the Prophet Ieremiah for the people the Priests and the Prophets they laid hold on him and immediately
of reason to tell us that the soul cannot subsist after death without the boay from what Philosophy was this derived certainly from that which was very loth to acknowledge the immortality of the soul of man And any one who strictly observes the close coherence of the principles of the Peripatetick Philosophy will find very little room left for an eternal being to interpose its self in the world and therefore some have shrewdly observed that Aristotle speaks more favourably of the being of God in his Exotericks then in his Acroamaticks which all that know the reason of the names will guess at the reason of I demand then must the received principles of Philosophy and those short imperfect Theories which were formed more from tradition then experience by the ancient Greeks be taken for the standard of reason or no If they must we may soon forsake not only the sublimer mysteries of the Trinity Divinity of Christ Resurrection c. but we shall soon shake hands with Creation Providence if not immortality of souls and the Being of God himself If these things be disowned as the standard of reason let us know what will be substituted in the room of them and what Laws our faith must be tryed by Are they only Mathematical demonstrations or the undoubted common notions of humane nature which whosoever understands assents to them let any of the forementioned mysteries be made appear to contradict these and we will readily yield up our selves captives to reason But in the mean time let no jejune unproved hypotheses in Philosophy be set as Iudges over matters of faith whose only warrant for that office must be Stat pro ratione voluntas Let the principles we proceed by be first manifested to be collected from a most certain and universal inspection into the nature of all beings let the manner of process be shewed how they were collected lest they labour with the common fault of the Chymists of establishing hypostatical principles from the experiments of some particular bodies which others do as evidently refute and lastly let it be made appear that these principles thus collected will serve indifferently for all beings spiritual as well as material infinite as well as finite and when this Task is exactly performed we will make room for Reason to sit upon the Bench and bring the Scriptures as the Prisoner to its Bar. Fourthly According to this principle what certainty can we have at all of anything we are to believe who hath fixed the bounds of that which men call reason how shall we know that thus far it will come and no further If no banks be raised against it to keep it in its due channel we may have cause to fear it may in time overthrow not only the Trinity Incarnation Resurrection of the dead but all other articles of the creed too What prescription can be pleaded by one sort of men for reason more then for another One will not believe this article of his faith because against his reason and why not another reject another article on the same pretence for whatever the ground of unbelief be if it be but baptized by the name of reason it must by this principle pass uncontrouled if a sullen Philosopher shall tell us that the notion of an immaterial substance contradicts his reason as much as the Trinity doth theirs and that the Universe is nothing else but a Systeme of bodies by what Artifice will our Masters of reason purge away all that black choler that so clouds his mind that he cannot see the notion of a spirit through it And such one will make a hard shift but he will reconcile his opinion with Scripture too and therefore why should he be bound up to mens explications of Scripture when there is no necessity that he can see of understanding it in any other way then his own If another should come and tell us that we must be all Anthropomorphites and that otherwise the Scripture were not intelligible shall not this man put in for reason too Nay lastly if another shall come and speak out and tell us Religion is but a device of subtle men that all things come to pass through chance that the world was made by a fortuitous concourse of Atoms and that all are fools which are not Atheists and that it is impossible to apprehend the Being of a God and therefore by the same reason that they reject some mysteries of Religion he rejects the foundation of all because an infinite being is incomprehensible whither now hath our Reason carried us while we pâ—etend to reject any thing as divinely revealed meerly on that account that it is above our reason But it may be replied On what account then do we reject the Doctrine of Transubstantiation and the ubiquity of the body of Christ as repugnant to reason if we do not make reason judge in matters of faith I answer 1. We reject these opinions not only as repugnant to reason but as insufficiently proved from Scripture whereas we here suppose it not being our present business to prove it that the several doctrines of the Trinity Incarnation Resurrection of bodies c. are only rejected on that account that though Scripture seems to speak fair for them yet it is otherwise to be interpreted because supposed to be repugnant to reason 2. Those doctrines before mentioned are eminently serviceable to promote the great end of the Gospel and are inlaid in the very foundation oâ— it as that of the Trinity and Divinity of Christ but these we now mention are no ways conduceable to that end but seem to thwart and overthrow it and transubstantiation establisheth a way of worship contrary to the Gospel 3. All the foundation of transubstantiation is laid upon ambiguous places of Scripture which must of necessity have some Tropes and Figures in them but the doctrine of the Trinity is not only contained in plain Scripture but is â—videnced by visible appearance as particularly at the baptism of our Saviour 4. There is far greater ground why we should reject Transubstantiation and ubiquity as inconsistent with reason then that they should the Trinity on this account because the grounds of reason on which we reject those opinions are fetâ—hed from those essential and inseparable properties of bodies which are inconsistent with those opinions now these are things within the reach of our understandings in which case God himself sometimes appeals to reason but it is quite another case when we search into the incomprehensible nature of God and pronounce with confidence that such things cannot be in God because we cannot comprehend them which gives a sufficient answer to this objection The substance then of this discourse is that whatever dâ—ctrine is sufficiently manifested to be of divine revelation is to be embraced and believed as undoubtedly true though our reason cannot reach to the full apprehension of all the Modes and circumstances of it So that as to these sublime
an heroickfreedom of spirit appears in these words what magnanimity and courage was there now in that person who durst in the face of this Court tell them of their murder and that there was no salvation but by him whom they had crucified Well might they wonder at the boldness of the men who feared not the same death which they had so lately brought their Lord and Master to Neither was this singly the case of Peter and Iohn but all the rest of the Apostles undertook their work with the same resolution and preparation of Spirit to under go the greatest hardship in the world sor the sake of the truths they Preached And accordingly as far as Ecclesiastical history can ascertain us of it they did all but Iohn and that to make good the prediction of Christ suffer violent deaths by the hands of those who persecuted them meerly for their doctrine And which is most observable when Christ designed them first of all for this work he told them before hand of reproaches persecutions all manner of hardships nay of death its self which they must undergo for his sake All that he gave them by way of encouragement was that they could only kill the body and not the soul and therefore that they should fear him only who could destroy both body and soul in hell all the support they had was an expectation in another world and that animated them to go through all the hardships of this Where do we ever read of any such boldness and courage in the most knowing Philosâ—phers of the Heathens with what saintness and misgiving of mind doth Socrates speak in his famous discourse suppoâ—ed to be made by him before his death how uncertainly doth he speak of a state of immortality and yet in all probability Plato set it forth with all advantages imaginable Where do we finde that ever any of the great friends of Socrates who were present at his death as Phaedo Cebes Crito and Simmias durst enter the Areopagus and condemn them there for the murther of Socrates though this would be far short of what the Apostles did why were they not so charitable as to inform the world better of those grand truths of the being of God and immortality of souls if at least they were fully convinced of them themselves Why did not Plato at least speak out and tell the world the truth and not disguise his â—iscourses under feigned names the better to avoid accusation and the fate of Socrates how doth he mince his excellent matter and playes as it were at Bo-peep with his readers sometimes appearing and then pulling in his horns again It may not be an improbable conjecture that the death of Socrates was the foundation of the Academy I mean of that cautelous doctrine of withholding assent and being both pro and con sometimes of this side and sometimes of that for Socrates his death had made all his friends very fearful of being too dogmatical And Plato himself had too much riches and withall too much of a Courtier in him to hazard the dear prison of his soul viz. his body meerly for an aethereall vehicle He had rather let his soul flutter up and down in a terrestrial matter or the cage it was pâ—nt up in then hazard too violent an opening of it by the hands of the Areopagus And the great Roman Orator among the rest of Plato's sentiments had learnt this too for although in his discourses he hath many times sufficiently laid open the folly of the Heathen worship and Theology yet he knows how to bring himself off safe enough with the people and will be sure to be dogmatical only in this that nothing is to be innovated in the religion of a Common-wealth and that the customs of our Ancestors are inviolably to be observed Which principles had they been true as they were safe for the persons who spake them the Christian religion had never gained any entertainment in the world for where ever it came it met with this potent prejudice that it was looked on as an innovation and therefore was shrewdly suspected by the Governours of Common-wealths and the Preachers of it punished as factious and seditious persons which was all the pretext the wise Politicians of the world had for their cruel and inhumane persecutions of such multitudes of peaceable and innocent Christians Now when these things were foretold by the Apostles themselves before their going abroad so plainly that with the same saith they did believe the doctrine they Preached to be true they must believe that all these things should come to pass what courage and magnanimity of spirit was it in them thus to encounter dangers and as it were court the slames Nay and before the time was come that they must dye to seal the truth of their doctrine their whole life was a continual peregrination wherein they were as so many Iobs in pilgrimage encounterd with perills and dangers on every side of which one of the most painful and succesful S. Paul hath given in such a large inventory of his perils that the very reading of them were enough to undo a poor Epicurean Philosopher and at once to spoil him of the two pillars of his happiness the quietness of his mind and ease of his body Thus we see what a hazardous imployment that was which the Apostles went upon and that it was such as they very well understood the diâ—â—iculty of before they set upon it Secondly We cannot find out any rational motive which could carry them through so hazardous an employment but the full convictions of their minds of the undoubted truth and certainty of the doctrine which they delivered We find before that no vulgar motives in the world could carry them upon that design which they went upon Could they be led by ambition and vain glory who met with such reproaches where ever they went and not only persecutions of the tongue but the sharper ones of the hands too we never read of any but the Primitive Christians who were ambitious of being Martyrs and thought long till they were in the flames which made Arrius Antoninus being Proconsul of Asia when Christians in multitudes beset his tribunal and thronged in to be condemned say to them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O miserable people had not ye wayes enough to end your lives at hâ—me but ye must croud for an execution This was a higher ambition by far then any of those mancipia gloriae those Chamaeleons that lived on the breath of applause the Heathen Philosophers ever reached to who were as Tertullian expresseth it homines gloriae eloquentiae solius libidinosi unsatiable thirsters after the honour and eloquence of the world but the Spirit of a Christian did soare too high to quarry on so mean a prâ—y When the more sober heathens had taken a stricter notice of the carriages and lives of the Preachers of the Gospel and all
impossible it is to go no further then our selves to give any tolerable account of things without an infinite power and Being which produced all these things and hath left so plain an inscription of himself upon the works of nature that none but those who shut their eyes can abstain from seeing it I come now to the third evidence of a Deity which is that there are some beings in the world which cannot depend upon matter or motion i. e. that there are some spiritual and immaterial substances or Beings for if the thing be acknowledged it is unbecoming a man to contend about words the consequence of this for the proving a Deity neither hath been nor I suppose will be denyed by such who question an infinite Being the same principles leading to the denying and the proof of both and immaterial Beings being the strongest proof that there is something above matter in the world If there be then such things in the world which matter and motion cannot be the causes of then there are certainly spiritual and immaterial Beings and that I shall make appear both as to the minds of men and to some extraordinary effects which are produced in the world 1. I begin with the nature of the soul of man And herein I must confine my self to those arguments which directly prove my present purpose and on that account must quit all those common arguments to prove the souls immortality from the attributes of God for all these do suppose the existence of a Deity as already evident neither can I rely with safety on the way which some have taken to prove the immortality of the soul meerly from the phoenomena of sensation which they endeavour to prove cannot be performed by meer matter and motion for granting all this yet the utmost that can be proved by it is no greater immortâ—lity in our souls then in the souls of Brutes and in the sense in which that is admitted I suppose an Epicurean will not deny the soul of man to be immortal as Demonax in Lucian said when he was asked whether the soul were immortal or no it is said he but as all things else are for those who make the soul to be nothing but some more subtile and active particles of matter do not think that upon death they are annihilated but that only they are dispersed and dissipated or in the Platonists phrase may return to the soul of the world These wayes I cannot think to be sufficient probations of such a spiritual and immaterial Being in man which we now enquire for much less can I make use of so precarious and infirm an hypothesis as praeexistence which makes men apt to suspect the cogency of such reasons which tend to prove the immortality of the soul which are linked with a supposition not only inevident either to sense or reason but likewise needless and impertinent For I know no one argument which doth directly prove the immateriality of the soul that doth in the least infer any necessity of praeexistence but on the same accounts it will prove the souls eternity Being therefore thus at liberty to enquire into the nature of the soul considered in her self our only way must be to finde out such peculiar properties in the soul of man which cannot be salved on supposition there were nothing else but matter and motion in the world Supposing then that all sensation in man doth arise from corporeal motion which is so strongly asserted by the modern Philosophers and that the highest conceptions which depend on sense can amount no higher then imagination which is evident if it can then be proved that there is a principle of action in man which proceeds in a different way of operation then sensation does and that there are such operations of the soul which are not imaginations it will be then clear that there is a principle in man higher then matter and motion Now although it be a task sufficiently difficult to explain the manner of sensation its self in a meer mechanical way supposing no higher principle then meer matter yet it will appear far more difficult nay impossible without a spiritual or immaterial Being to salve such appearances in man which transcend the power of imagination which will appear by these following operations of the mind which every one who hath it may finde within himself 1. Correcting the errors of imagination For if all our perceptions were nothing else but the images of corporeal things left in the brain the judgement of the mind must of necessity be according to the impressions which are made upon the organs of sense But now if our minds can and do form apprehensions of things quite different from those which are conveyed by sense there must be a higher principle of knowledge in man then imagination is For which the common instance of the just magnitude of the Sun is very plain If we judge according to the image which is conveyed to the brain by our eyes we can never imagine the Sun to be bigger then he seems to us to be nay though the sight be advantaged by the help of Telescopes it cannot receive such an image or Idea of the Sun which answers to its just magnitude viz that it is 160. times bigger then the earth From whence now comes this apprehension of the bigness of the Sun above that proportion which can possibly come in at our senses If it be said that by the observation of the lessening of objects according to the proportion of distance the mind may come to understand how much bigger the Sun may be then he seems I grant it but withall enquire how the imagination comes to have proportions and distances which are meâ—r respects and can have no corporeal phantasmes whereby to be represented to it so that by this very way of ratiocination it is evident that there is some principle in man beyond imagination Again when the mind by ratiocination hath proceeded thus far and sindes the Sun to be so great what Idea is there of this magnitude in the mind the mind cannot six its self on any thing but it must have an Idea of it from whence comes this Idea not from corporeal phantasmes for none of them could ever convey the cue magnitude of the Sun to the mind and therefore the forming of this Idea must be a pure act of Intellection which corrects the errors of imagination and is a principle above it So in the sight of a stick when under water the representation of it by the sense to imagination is as crooked for corporeal motion carries things to the eye without any judgement upon them the eye conveyes the image to the brain and according to the rules of corporeal perception must presently take every thing for true which is conveyed thither now from what principle is it that this error of our senses is correcteà So in many other things wherein our imaginations are quite puzled
their souls compounded of who first fancied themselves to be immaterial What strange agitations of matter were those which first made men think of an eternal state which thoughts have ever since so stuck upon these little sphaerical bodyes that they could never yet disburden themselves of them Whence come such amazing fears such dreadful apprehensions such sinking thoughts of their future condition in minds that would fain ease themselves by believing that death would put a period both to soul and body whence on the other side come such encouraging hopes such confident expectations such comfortable prepossessions of their future state in the souls of good men when their bodyes are nearest to the grave Seneca who was somewhat dubious sometimes as to the future condition of the soul yet could tell his dear Lucilius with what pleasure he could think of it and could elsewhere say of the soul Eâ— hoc habet argumentum divinitatis suae quod illum divina delectant nec ut alienis interest sed ut suis the soul had that mark of Divinity in it that it was most pleased with Divine speculations and conversed with them as with matters which nearly concerned it And when it hath once viewed the dimensions of the heavens contemnit domicilii prioris angustias it was ashamed of the cottage it dwelt in nay were it not for these speculations non fuerat operae prâ—tium nasci it had not been worth while for the soul to have been in the body and as he goes on detrahe hoc inaestimabile bonum non est vita tanti ut sudem ut aestuem Could there be now so great an Epicurisme in contemplation were the soul of man of Epicurus his mould a meer complexion of Atoms would dull and heavy matter ever have delighted to have searched so much into the causes of things to have gone over the world in its speculations and found more sweetness in knowledge then the little Epicure the Bee tasts in his choicest flowers Epicurus his own Philosophy is a demonstration against himself if his soul had not been of a purer nature then he fancied he would never have made his study of Philosophy a part of his Epicurisme Had his soul been such Atoms as he fancied when his brain had been well heated at his study those more vivid and spirituous particles like the spirits of wine had been in danger of evaporation and leaving the more lumpish matter to compleat his work Of all persons I most admire that Philosophers who make so much use of their understandings should so ungratefully requite them and serve them like old horses when they have made them do all the service they could turn them into the high-wayes and let them dye in a ditch But yet all Philosophers have not been so unthankful some have understood the worth of their souls and asserted it if they have not used too high i. e. Platonical expressions of it making it a particle not of matter but of the Divine nature its self a little Deity in a Cottage that stayes here a while and returns to that upper region from whence it came As Manilius speaks An dubium est habitare Deum sub pectore nostro In coelum que redire animas caelóque venire And while the soul is here in its cage it is continually fluttering up and down and delighting to look out now at this part and then at another to take a view by degrees of the whole Universe as the same Poet goes on Quid mirum noscere mundum Si possunt homines quibus est mundus in ip sis Exemplumque Dei quisque est in imagine parvâ The soul hath nothing more delightful to it then knowledge and no knowledge so pleasing and satisfactory as of him whose image and superscription it bears who makes himself most known to such as enquire after him Seque ipsum inculcat offert Ut bene cognosci possit I conclude this with that of Seneca in that excellent Preface to his natural questions O quam contempta res est homo nisi supra humana se erexerit What a pittiful thing is man were it not that his soul was apt to soar above these earthly things And by this aptness to soar so high above these terrene objects and to converse with so much freedome with spiritual Beings as well as abstracted notions we may certainly infer that our rational souls are of a far more noble and refined nature then that more feculent principle of imagination which alwayes converses in faece Romuli and can go no further then our senses carry it And thus I have made good the first proof that there is something above matter and motion in the world which is from that immaterial Being which is in man The next evidence which we have of a Being above matter and motion is from the extraordinary effâ—cts which have been in nature I speak not now meerly of such things which by their natures and effects are manifested to proceed from some Beings which bear ill-will to mankind multitudes of which are related by men Philosophical and inquisitive with such enumerations of circumstances and particular evidences that they are not meer impostures that one may on the same grounds question any matter of fact which himself did not see as such relations which are delivered by persons without interest or design and such as were able to judge of the truth of circumstances such are both ancient and modern Philosophers Physitians Statesmen and others Neither shall I insist on such prodigies which ofttimes presage revolutions in states if we believe Machiavel himself who in a whole chapter designedly proves it and professeth himself utterly to seek for the causes of them unless they may be attributed to some spiâ—its and Intelligences in the air which give the world notice of such things to come But those things which I suppose have the most clear and undoubted evidence of true and undoubted miracles the matters of fact being affirmed by eye-witnesses who sealed the truth of them with their lives are those recorded in the Holy Scriptures which there are only two wayes to evade either by questioning the truth of the things which I suppose in the precedent book we have proved with as much rational evidence as any thing of that nature is capable of or else that the things therein recorded might be salved without a Deity For which only two wayes have been excogitated by Atheistical spirits either attributing them to the power and influence of the Stars the foundations of which fond and absurd opinion have been taken away by those many writers who have rationally consuted the whole art of judicial Astrology or else that they are done by the meer power of imagination which is the way of Avicenna and some other Arabick writers which is so wilde an effect of the power of imagination that nothing doth so much demonstrate the irregular motions of it as such
should discover further then Gods general goodness to such as please him but no foundation can be gatherd thence of his readiness to pardon offenders which being an act of grace must alone be discoverd by his Will I cannot think the Sun Moon and Stars are such itinerant Preachers as to unfold unto us the whole Counsel and Will of God in reference to mans acceptance with God upon repentance It is not every Star in the Firmament can do that which the Star once did to the wise men lead them unto Christ. The Sun in the Heavens is no Parhelius to the Son of righteousness The best Astronomer will never finde the day-star from on high in the rest of his number What St. Austin said oâ— Tullies works is true of the whole Volume of the Creation There are admirable things to be found in them but the name of Christ is not legible there The work of Redemption is not engraven on the works of providence if it had a particular divine revelation had been unnecessary and the Apostles were sent on a needless errand which the world had understood without their Preaching viz That God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself not imputing to men their trespasses and hath committed to them the Ministry of Reconciliation How was the word of reconciliation committed to them if it were common to them with the whole frame of the world and the Apostles Quaere elsewhere might have been easily answered How can men hear without a Preacher For then they might have known the way of salvation without any special messengers sent to deliver it to them I grant that Gods long suffering and patience is intended to lead men to repentance and that some general collections might be made from providence of the placability of Gods nature and that God never left himself without a witness of his goodness in the world being king to the unthankful and doing good in giving rain and fruitful seasons But though these things might sufficiently discover to such who were apprehensive of the guilt of sin that God did not act according to his greatest severity and thereby did give men encouragement to hearken out enquire after the true way of being reconciled to God yet all this amounts not to a firm foundation for faith as to the remission of sin which doth suppose God himself publishing an act of grace and indempnity to the world wherein he assures the pardon of sin to such as truly repent and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel Now is not this an inestimable advantage we enjoy by the Scriptures that therein we understand what God himself hath discoverd of his own nature and perfections and of his readiness to pardon sin upon those gracious terms of Faith and Repentance and that which necessarily follows from these two hearty and sincere obedience 2. The Scriptures give the most faithful representation of the state and condition of the soul of man The world was almost lost in Disputes concerning the nature condition and immortality of the soul before divine revelation was made known to mankind by the Gospel of Christ but life and immortality was brrught to light by the Gospel and the future state of the soul of man not discoverd in an uncertain Platonical way but with the greatest light and evidence from that God who hath the supreme disposal of souls and therefore best knows and understands them The Scriptures plainly and fully reveal a judgement to come in which God will judge the secrets of all hearts when every one must give an account of himself unto God and God will call men to give an account of their stewardship here of all the receits they have had from him and the expences they have been at and the improvements they have made of the talents he put into their hands So that the Gospel of Christ is the fullest instrument of discovery of the certainty of the future state of the soul and the conditions which abide it upon its being dislodged from the body But this is not all which the Scripture discovers as to the state of the soul for it is not only a prospective-glass reaching to its future state but it is the most faithful looking-glass to discover all the spots and deformities of the soul And not only shews where they are but whence they came what their nature is and whether they tend The true Original of all that disorder and discomposure which is in the soul of man is only fully and satisfactorily given us in the Word of God as hath been already proved The nature and working of this corruption in man had never been so clearly manifested had not the Law and Will of God been discovered to the world that is the glass whereby we see the secret workings of those Bees in our hearts the corruptions of our natures that sets forth the folly of our imaginations the unruliness of our passions the distempers of our wills and the abundant deceitfulness of our hearts And it is hard for the most Elephantine sinner one of the greatest magnitude so to trouble these waters as not therein to discover the greatness of his own deformities But that which tends most to awaken the drowsie sensless spirits of men the Scripture doth most fully describe the tendency of corruption that the wages of sin is death and the issue of continuance in sin will be the everlasting misery of the soul in a perpetual separation from the presence of God and undergoing the lashes and severities of conscience to all eternity What a great discovery is this of the faithfulness of God to the world that he suffers not men to undo themselves without letting them know of it before-hand that they might avoid it God seeks not to entrap mens souls nor doth he rejoyce in the misery and ruine of his creatures but fully declares to them what the consequence and issue of their sinful practices will be assures them of a judgement to come declares his own future sâ—verity against contumacious sinners that they might not think themselves surprized and that if they had known there had been so great danger in sin they would never have been such fools as for the sake of it to run into eternal misery Now God to prevent this with the greatest plainness and faithfulness hath shewed men the nature and danger of all their sins and asks them before hand what they will do in the end thereof whether they are able to bear his wrath and wrestle with everlasting burnings if not he bids them bethink themselves of what they have done already and repent amend their lives lest iniquity prove their ruine destruction overtake them and that without remedy Now if men have cause to prize and value a faithful Monitor one that tenders their good and would prevent their ruine we have cause exceedingly to prize and value the Scriptures which give us the truest representation of the state and