and he may be sure that it is no sin because he hath done it for if God forbid it not it is no sin nay he may make it an effect of God's government But this consequence is so false and horrid that no Nation on earth receiveth it and Cannibals themselves abhor it who eat not their friends but strangers and enemies § 11. VIII If God be not the Governour of the world by Laws then no man need to fear or avoid any thing forbidden by the Laws of Man who can either keep it secret by Wit or keep himself from humane revenge by Power But the consequent is false therefore so is the Antecedent The reason of the consequence is evident because where no humane revenge is to be feared there no punishment at all is to be feared if God be no Governour of the world but those that can hide their actions by craft or make them good by power need not fear any humane revenge therefore they need to fear none at all upon the Atheists grounds And if that be so 1. How easie is it for cunning malice to burn a Town to kill a King to poison wife or children and to defraud a neighbour and never be discovered If this be so then Thieves Adulterers Traitors when they are detected have failed only in point of wit that they concealed it not and not in point of honesty and duty 2. And then any Rebel that can get enow to follow him hath as good a cause as the King that he rebelleth against and if he conquer he need not accuse himself of doing any wrong And then there will be nothing for conscience to blame any man for nor for one man to accuse another of but witlesness or impotency And then the Thief must suffer only for want of strength or cunning and not because he did any wrong § 12. IX If there be no Government by God there can be no true Propriety but Strength and he that is strongest hath right to all that he can lay hold on But the Consequent is false therefore so is the Antecedent The consequence is undeniable for if there be no Divine Government there is no Law but Humane and no man can have any Right besides Strength to make Laws for any other whomsoever For if God have no Government and Law he constituteth no Debitum vel Jus no Dueness or Right And man can have no Right to govern others if he have no Governour to give any If God do give Right to Govern he thereby maketh obedience to that Governour a duty and he that constituteth or instituteth Right and Duty governeth And if God give men No Right to Govern they can have none And then if Strength be all their Title any man that can get as much Strength doth get as good a Title and may seize upon the Lives the Lands and Estates of Prince or People and give Laws to the weaker as others before gave Laws to him And so there will utter confusion and misery be let in upon the world As in the Poet's description of the degenerate Age Vivitur ex raptu non hospes ab hospite tutus c. Reason would have nothing to say against strength the great Dog would have the best title to the bone Melior mihi dextera lingua est Dummodo pugnando superem tu vince loquendo Ovid. Met. The honest poor and peaceable would have such a peace with thieves and strong ones Cum pecore infirmo quae solet esse lupis Ovid. § 13. If God govern not the world then meer Communities are uncapable of Right or Wrong and no man is bound in duty to spare his brother's life or state But the Consequent is false therefore so is the Antecedent By a Community I mean a company of men that have yet set up no Government among them If God be not their Governour such have none at all and so are under no moral obligation for Covenants themselves cannot bind if there be no superiour obligation requiring man to stand to his Covenants Obj. Then God's Covenants to man do not bind him Answ Not at all by proper obligation as if it were his Duty to keep them and his Sin to break them for God is not capable of duty or sin But yet improperly they may be called Obligations because they are the demonstrations of his Will which the perfection of his Nature will not let him violate It would be an imperfection if God should break promise though not a sin or crime And therefore it is impossible for God to lie Obj. But suppose we say that Man is under no other obligations than a Beast and that among men there is no proper right or wrong duty or fault yet men by confederacies without any other Government would settle Rules for the safety of cohabitation and converse and for love of themselves would forbear wronging others And this is all the Law of Nature that Man hath above Bruits Answ Those Confederacies would no further oblige them than their Interest required them to observe them Still by this rule a man is left free to kill wife and children if he be weary of them which no neighbour being wronged by none will seem obliged to revenge still he that is the stronger is left to do his worst without fault to seize upon other mens estates and to depose Kings and destroy them and all the world would be in a state of war Or if self-interest keep some quiet for a time it would be but till they had strength and opportunity to do otherwise He is not fit for humane society who would tell all about him I take my self free to defraud and murder any of you as soon as my own safety and interest will allow it me And no man that thus taketh a man for a beast can expect any better usage than a beast himself any further than self-love shall restrain others from abusing him nor can he plead any better title to his estate nor exemption from the violence of the stronger And it will also follow that honesty is nothing but self-preserving policy and that blasphemy and impiety against God need not be feared or avoided nor any thing as a fault but only as a folly exposing the person himself to danger Incest Perjury Lying might be impudencies but not any crimes Obj. If you supposed them in God they would be but imperfections and not crimes and why should you judge othewise of them in Man Answ Because the absolute perfection of his Nature is instead of a Law to God who hath no Superiour But man hath a Superiour and hath an imperfect nature which is therefore to be regulated by the wisdom and will of that perfect Superiour And moreover if Man have reason and wisdom above a Beast which maketh him capable of knowing Right and Wrong and of being moved by the things that are evident to reason though not to sense and if he
From the specifick nature of Man as a Rational free sociaile Creature he is by immediate Resultancy Gubernandus and being such his Creator remotely for his Infinite Perfections and sole aptitude and proximately because he is Mans absolute Owner is by Resultancy his rightfull Governour And that he neglecteth not this his Right but actually Governeth him appeareth in the very making man such and continuing him such as is made to be Governed as also in his actual Laws and Judgements This is the true and plain resolution of the Question of the Title of God to his Kingdom or fundamentum of the Relation of Universal King § 19. Humane Government is an Ordinance of God and Humane Governours are his Officers as he is supream And he hath not left it free to the World whether they will live in governed Societies or not That Humane Government is appointed by God appeareth thus 1. In that the light of Nature teacheth it all the World 2. In that God hath put into mans Nature a necessity of it and therefore signified his will concerning it It is needfull to the very lives of men and to their highest perfections order and attainments If Parents did not govern Children and Teachers their Scholars and Masters their Servants and Princes their Subjects the World would be as a Wilderness of wilde beasts and men would not live like men according to their natural capacities I deny not but some one or few by necessity or some extraordinary circumstances may be exempted from this obligation by being uncapable of the benefit being cast into a Wilderness or such like place where the benefit of Government is not to be had But that 's nothing to the commoner case of Mankinde As Marriage is indifferent to those individuals that need not the benefits of it but it is not lawfull for the World of Mankinde to forbear procreation to the extinction of it self § 20. Therefore as all Rulers receive their Power from him and hold it in dependance on him so must they finally use it for him even for his will and interest which they must principally intend He that is the Original of Power must needs be the End He that giveth it to man doth give it for the accomplishment of his own Will It is held in pure subordination to him and so it must be used or it is abused § 21. Therefore no man can have any Power against God or his Laws or Interest For he giveth not Power against Himself That is he giveth no man Right authority or commission to displease him by the breaking of his Laws for that is a contradiction or chargeth his Laws with contradiction Yet must not any Subjects make this a pretence to deny any just obedience to their Rulers or to rebell against them on supposition that their Government is against God For as private men are not made Publick Judges of the interest of God but only private discerners in order to their own obedience to him so may that Government be for God in the main which is against him in some few particulars § 22. The Highest Duty of Man is to Him who is the Highest And the greatest Crime is that which is committed against the greatest Authority This is suâ luce so evident that it needs no proof formally the chief obedience is due to the chief Governour To a King rather than to a Justice of Peace or Constable And consequently the greatest sin is against him If God be above man so is duty to God and sin against God the greatest in both kinds § 23. Therefore there is Good and Evil which respecteth God and are called Holiness and Sin which are incomparably greater than Good and Evil so called from respect to any Creatures whether Individuals or Societies Therefore they that know no Good but that which is so called from its respect to mans commodity or benefit nor no Evil but that which is so called from its respect to the hurt of Creatures do not know God nor his Relation to his works but make Gods of themselves and accordingly judge of Good and Evil. § 24. The Consciences of men do secretly accuse them or excuse them according to this sort of Good or Evil. When men have wrangled against Religion never so long there are very few so blinde and bad in whom God hath not a resident witness called Conscience which secretly telleth a man that he doth well or ill as he keepeth or breaketh the Laws of Nature and that with respect to the Soveraign Law-giver and not only to the good or hurt of man As Conscience doth not accuse a man for being poor or sick or wronged by another though about these we may have also inward trouble so it doth not justifie him for his Prosperity in the World though it may be laid asleep and quieted by such means But it is for Morall Good or Evil that Conscience doth accuse or justifie If I make my self poor wilfully my Conscience will trouble me for the wilful fault and breed in me repentance and remorse And so it will if I hurt or impoverish my neighbour But if I hurt my self or neighbour unavoidably without any fault of mine I am sorry for it but my Conscience will not accuse or condemn me for it § 25. This power of Conscience causeth all the World to praise or dispraise men according to this Moral Good or Evil. Mark but the Infidels themselves or any whom Vice hath turned into Monsters and they will commend men upon the account of that inward sincerity and honesty which God only can make Laws for and dispraise men for the contrary If you say that they do this only because such virtues make men fit for humane converse and profitable or not hurtfull to one another I answer we are not enquiring of the final cause but the formal Though they praise sincere and honest men and those that are loving compassionate kinde and dispraise dissemblers malicious and men of hurtfull dispositions yet you may observe that they speak not of these only as usefull or hurtfull qualities but as morall good or evil as things that men ought or ought not to do which they are bound to do or not do by some obligation And what Obligation can make it any mans duty if there be no Law of God in Nature for it when it is out of the reach of the Laws of men Mark Heathens and Infidels and Atheists in their talk and you shall hear them praise or dispraise men for some things which intimate a Divine Obligation which sheweth that the Conscience of the World beareth witness to the supream universal Government of God No man who believeth that there is a God can believe that the actions of his rational creatures have no relation to him or that the good or evil of them which is the result of their relation to God can be of less or lower consideration than their relation to themselves or one
Every man that had strength and opportunity would make a prey of the life or welfare of his brother Mens own necessity forceth them every where to set up Governments that they may not live as in a continual war in danger and fear of one another nay a war that is managed by Armies is also ordered by Government because many must agree for mutual defence but else every man would be against another and they would be as so many fighting Cocks or Dogs every one would fight or flie for himself for fighting or flying injuring and being injured would be all their lives He that denieth Man to be a Creature made for Government and consequently denieth God's Government of the world by Moral proper Government doth own all these absurdities which else-where I have heretofore enumerated 1. He denieth that there is a God for to be GOD includeeth to be Governour of the Rational world 2. He denieth that Man Oweth any Duty to God or Man for where there is no Government there is no proper Duty 3. He denieth the Justice of God for Justice is the attribute of a Governour that is distributive Justice which we speak of for commutative Justice God cannot exercise towards Man because of our great inferiority to him 4. He denieth all the Laws of Nature for where there is no Government there are no Laws 5. He denieth the Virtue of Obedience and all other Virtues concatenated with it for where there is no Government there is no Obedience 6. He denieth that there is any such a thing as sin or any fault against God or Man for where there is no Government there is no transgression Both the vicious Habits and the Acts will have no more crime than the poison of a Toad 7. And then no man should forbear any act as sinful or criminal 8. Nor should any persons reprove sin in others nor exhort them from it 9. Nor should any one confess any sin or repent of it because it is not 10. Nor should any man ask forgiveness of any crime of God or Man 11. Nor should any man thank God for the pardon of his sin 12. It will follow that there is no moral difference between men or actions as Good and bad but all are alike what ever they be or do 13. He denieth all God's Judgments and all his Rewards and Punishments for these are all of them acts of Government 14. It will follow that every man should do what his list 15. And that all Parents may forbear the government of their Children and all Masters of their Servants and Governours of their Families 16. It treasonably subverteth all Kingdoms and Common-wealths and denieth that there should be any Kings or Subjects 17. It denieth all humane Justice because it denieth humane Government 18. It maketh Man a Beast who is uncapable of Moral Government 19. It maketh him far worse than a Beast as corruptio optimi est pessima for a Beast hath an analogical improper government by Man but Man must have such as moveth him rationally according to his nature or he must have none at all And it would banish all Order Duty and Virtue out of the world and make Earth somewhat worse than Hell which is not wholly destitute of Government 20. But the best of it is while it nullifieth Right and Wrong it inferreth that whosoever shall beat or hang the owners of this Doctrine do them no wrong nor offend any Laws of God or Man For if there be no Government there is no Transgression and if they are Bruits they may be used as Bruits who are incapable of Titles Rights Inheritances or of any plea as against an injury § 2. Man being made a Creature to be governed it thence followeth that his Creator must needs be his Soveraign Governour as being only fit and having in his Propriety the only Right 1. A Governour he must have for there is no Government nor governed without a Governour 2. If there be never so many Inferiour Governours there must be some Supream Or else each one would be absolutely Supream and none Inferiour But I will first prove that God is Mans Soveraign and then shew the foundation of his right and of this Relation The only objection made against it consisteth of these two parts 1. That God moveth man effectually per modum naturae as an Engineer and that this is more excellent than Moral Government 2. And that Moral Government being a less effectual way is committed to Angels and to Men viz. Kings and States and Magistrates who are sufficient to perform it This Objection confesseth the Government of one man over others but denyeth the Government of God over Man and instead of it substituteth his meer Physical motion or natural Government such as a Pilot useth to his Ship I shall therefore against it prove that not only Man but God doth exercise this proper Moral Government by Laws and Executions and not a Physical motion only § 3. I GOD hath de facto made Laws for Mankinde Therefore he is their Governour by Laws The consequence is undenyable The antecedent I further prove § 4. He that doth by authoritative constitution of Duty oblige Man to obedience doth make Laws for him and Govern him by Laws But God doth by authoritative Constitution of duty oblige man to obedience Therefore he maketh Laws for him and ruleth him thereby The Major is not to be denyed for it only asserteth the Name from the Definition The authoritative appointment of the Debitum Officii obliging to obedience is the definition of Legislation as to its first and principal act which the appointment of the debitum praemii vel poenae followeth And I think that the interest of Mankinde will not suffer him to be so erroneous as to deny the Minor I think few will believe that there is no such thing as a Law of Nature made by the God of Nature or that there is no such thing as Duty incumbent on Man from God and so no such thing as an accusing or excusing Conscience Few persons will believe that it is no duty of Parents to nourish their Children or no crime to murder them Or that it is no duty for Children to be thankfull to their Parents and to love them or no sin to hate or scorn or kill them Few Kings will believe that it is no duty towards God for their Subjects to obey them and no crime to rebell or murder them and that Conscience hath nothing to say against him for such things that can but scape the judgement and revenge of man And few Subjects will believe that it is no crime for a Prince to oppress them in their liberties estates and lives And few neighbours will think that he is innocent before God who beateth them or setteth fire on their Houses or murdereth their children or other Relations If man be under no duty to God and if nothing that he can do
is a sin against God what a thing will Man be and what a Hell will Earth be Deny the Law of Nature and you turn men loose to every villany and engage the World to destroy it self and set all as on fire about their ears For if God only move us Physically there is neither virtue nor vice good nor evil in a moral sense But what God moveth a man to that he will do and what he doth not move him to he will not do and so there being only motion and no motion action and no action there will be no Duty and no obligation and so no Moral good or evil § 5. II. If God should Rule us only by Physical motion and not by Laws he should not rule man as man according to his Nature But God doth rule man according to his Nature Therefore not only by Physical motion Otherwise Man should not differ from Inanimates and Bruits A stone is to be moved Physically and a Bruit by the necessitating objects of sense But Man hath Reason which they have not and he is a free Agent And therefore though God concurr to his Physical motion as such yet he must move him as Rational by such objects and such proposals and arguments and means as are suited to Reason By presenting things absent to his understanding to prevail against the sense of things present and by teaching him to preferre greater things before lesser and by shewing him the commodity and discommodity which should move him God would not have made him Rational if he would not have Governed him accordingly § 6. III. If the way of physical motion alone is not so excellent and suitable as the way of Moral Government by Laws also then God doth not only move man physically and leave it to Magistrates to Rule as Morally But the antecedent is true Therefore so is the Consequent God doth not omit the more excellent and choose a lower way of Government and leave the more excellent way to man And that the Minor is true appeareth thus The way which is most suitable to the object or subject of Government is the most excellent way But such is the Moral way by Laws The other Beasts are as capable subjects of as men and Trees as either Wisdom and Justice are eminently glorified in the Moral way And Omnipotency it self also appeareth in Gods making of so noble a Creature as is governable by Reason without Force § 7. IV. If God were not the Soveraign Ruler of the World there could be no Government of mens hearts But there is a government of hearts Therefore God is the Ruler of the World Man knoweth not the Hearts of those whom he governeth And therefore he can take no cognisance of heart-sins or duties unless as they appear in words or deeds And therefore he maketh no Law for the government of hearts But the Heart is the Man and a bad heart is the fountain of bad words or acts and is it self polluted before it endeavoureth the injury of others He that thinks all indifferent that is within him is himself so bad that it is the less wonder if being so indifferent yea so vitiated within he think nothing evil which he hath a minde to do He that thinketh that the heart is as good and innocent which hateth his God his King his Friend his Parents as that which loveth them and that it is no duty to have any good thought or affection but only for the outward actions sake nor any sin to be malicious covetous proud deceitfull lustfull impious and unjust in his cogitations contrivances and desires unless as they appear in the acts doth shew that he hath himself a heart which is too suitable to such a Doctrine But Nature hath taught all the World to judge of men by their Hearts as far as they can know them and not to take the Will which is the first seat of Moral Good or Evil to be capable of neither Good nor Evil. Therefore seeing Hearts must be under Government it must not be man but the heart-searching God that must be their Governour § 8. V. If God were not the Governour of the World all earthly Soveraigns would be themselves ungoverned But they are not ungoverned Therefore God is their Governour and so the Governour of the World The Kings and States that have Soveraign power through all the World are under no humane Government at all Though some of them are limited by Contracts with their people But none have so much need to have the benefit of Heart-government none have so strong Temptations as they And no mens actions are of so great importance to the welfare or misery of the World If the Monarchs of the Earth do take themselves to be left free by God to do what they list what work will be made among the people If they think it no duty to be just or mercifull or chaste or temperate what wonder if they be unjust and cruel and filthy and luxurious and use the People for their own ends and lusts and esteem them as men do their Dogs or Horses that are to be used for their own pleasure or commodity What is the present calamity of the World but that the Heathen and Infidel Rulers of the World are so ignorant and sensual and have cast off the fear of God and the sense of his Government in a great degree when yet most of them have some conviction that there is a God who Ruleth all and to whom they must be accountable What then would they be if they once believed that they are under no Government of God at all If they should oppress their Subjects and murder the innocent it would be no fault For where there is no Government and Law there is no transgression No one forbiddeth it to them and none commandeth them the contrary if God do not For the people are not the Rulers of their Rulers nor give them Laws And Neighbour Princes and States are but Neighbours Therefore if they should sacrifice peace and honesty liberties lives and Kingdoms to their lusts no man could say They do amiss or violate any sort of Law Obj. But the fear of Rebellions and the peoples vindicating their liberties would restrain them Answ Only so far as they feel themselves unable to do hurt As a man is restrained from killing Adders lest they sting him And the advantage of their place doth usually empower them to make desolations if they have a minde to it And great mindes will not easily bear a popular restraint And indeed the honester and better any people are the more undisposed are they to rebell And therefore Tyrants may with smallest danger and fear destroy them Obj. But their own interest lieth in the peoples welfare and therefore there is no danger of such miseries Ans Did Nero think so that wished Rome had but one neck that set the City on fire that he might sing over it Homers Poem of
as his creatures giveth him so full a Title to govern us that our consent is not at all necessary to our obligation and subjection-relative but only to our actual obedience which cannot be performed by one that consenteth not Therefore God's right and our natural condition are the foundation of our subjection to him as to Obligation and Duty and he that consenteth not sinneth by high Treason against his Soveraign As God did not ask our consent whether he should make us men so neither whether he should be our Governour and we his Subjects as to obligation nor yet whether he shall punish the rebellious and disobedient But he asketh our consent to obey him and to be rewarded by him for we shall neither be holy nor happy but by our own consent Those therefore whom I have confuted in my Treatise of Policy who say God is not our King till we make him King nor his Laws obligatory to us till we consent to them speaking de Debito do not reason but rave and are unworthy of a confutation § 3. All men therefore are obliged to subject their Understandings to the revealed Wisdom of God and their Wills to his revealed Will and to employ all the powers of Soul and Body and all their possessions in his most exact obedience Subjection is an obligation to obedience Where the Authority and Subjection are absolute and unlimited there the obedience must be absolute and most exact The understanding of our absolute Ruler is the absolute rule of our understandings No man must set up his conceits against him nor quarrel with his Government or Laws If any thing of His revelation or prescription seem questionable unjust or unnecessary to us it is through our want of due subjection through the arrogancy and enmity of our carnal minds His Will de Debito must be the absolute Rule of all our Wills so much secret exceptions and reserves as we have in our resignation and subjection so much hypocrisie and secret rebellion we have Our subjective obligation is so full and absolute and our Ruler so infallible just and perfect that it is not possible for any mans obedience to God to be too absolute exact or full Nothing can be more certain than that a Creature subject to the government of his Creator of infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness doth owe him the most perfect and exact obedience according to the utmost of his Powers without any dissent exception resistance unwillingness or neglect § 4. All obedience which Rulers require of their Subjects or Subjects give to any Governours must be in full subordination to the government and will of God For all Powers under the absolute Sovereign of the world are derivative and dependent and are no more than he hath given they are from him under him and for him and can no more have any authority against him than a Worm against a King or than they could have Being and Authority without him He that contradicteth this Proposition must take down God and Deifie Man and so defie and conquer Heaven or else he will never make it good As for the difficulties that seem to rise by allowing Subjects to prefer God's Authority before their Parents or Princes it belongeth no more to the clearing of the present subject that I resolve them than that I resolve such as arise from our allowing Subjects to disobey a Justice or Constable when he is against the King § 5. They that are obliged to such absolute and exact obedience are obliged to use their utmost diligence to understand God's Laws which they must obey For no man can obey a Law which he doth not know of and understand Subjection includeth an obligation to study our Maker's Laws so far as we must do them Indeed those that concern others we are not so much bound to know as a Subject to know God's Laws for Kings and Pastors of the Church but for our own duty we cannot do it before we know it Those that are ignorant of their Maker's Will through unwillingness contempt or negligence are so far disobedient to his Government § 6. There are many and great temptations to draw us to disobey our Maker which every one is bound with greatest vigilancy and constancy to resist He that is bound to obey is certainly bound to resist all temptations to disobedience For that is far from absolute or true obedience which will fail if a man be but tempted to disobey Kings and Parents will not accept of such obedience as this they will not say Be true to me and honour me and obey me till you are tempted to betray me and to reproach me and rebel He that will be false to God when he is tempted to it was never true to him No temptation can bring so much for sin as God giveth us against it nor can offer us so much gain or honour or pleasure by it as he offereth us on condition we obey him And that the world is full of such temptations experience putteth past dispute of which more anon § 7. No price can be offered by any Creature which to a Subject of God should seem sufficient to hire him to the smallest sin Sin hath such aggravations which shall be opened anon that no gain or pleasure that cometh by it can counter-ballance There being no proportion between the Creature and the Infinite Creator there can nothing by or of the Creature be proportionable or considerable to be put into the ballance against the Creator's Authority and Will The command of Kings the winning of Kingdoms the pleasure of the flesh the applause of all the world if they are offered as a price or bait to hire or tempt a man to sin should weigh no more against the command of God than a feather in the ballance against a Mountain All this common reason will attest however sense and appetite reclaim § 8. No man can reasonably fear lest his true obedience to such a Governour should prove his final detriment or hurt but if it did it were nevertheless our duty to obey 1. No man can reasonably think that God is less able to reward protect and encourage his subjects in their duty than any Tempter whatsoever in their disobedience And no man can think that he is less wise to know how to perform it nor can any think that Infinite Goodness is less disposed to do good to the good than any Tempter whosoever can be to do good to the evil These things being all as clear as light it self to the considerate it must needs follow that no reason can allow a man to hope to be finally a gainer or saver by his disobedience to his Maker or to fear to be a loser by him 2. But if it were so obedience would be our duty still for the authority of God as his propriety is absolute and he that giveth us power to require the analogical obedience of our Horse or Ox though it
be to our benefit only and his hurt yea though it be in going to the slaughter if he did so by us could do us no wrong nor give us any just excuse for our disobedience For as sweet as life is to us it is not so much Ours in right as His and therefore should be at his disposal § 9. The breaking of Gods Laws must needs deserve a greater penalty than the breaking of any Man's Laws as such The difference of the Rulers and their Authority puts this past all controversie of which yet I shall say more anon § 10. What is said of the subjection of Individuals to God is true of all just Societies as such the Kingdoms of the world being all under God the universal King as small parcels of his Kingdom as particular Corporations are under a humane King Therefore Kings and Kingdoms owe their absolute obedience to God and may not intend any ultimate end but the pleasing of their universal Soveraign nor set up any interest against him or above him or in coordination with him nor manage any way of Government but in dependance on him as the Principle and the End of it nor make any Laws but such as stand in due subordination to his Laws nor command any duty but what hath in its order a true subserviency and conducibility to his pleasure CHAP. X. Of GOD's particular Laws as known in Nature THe true nature of a Law I have opened before It is not necessary that it be written nor spoken but that it be in general any apt signification of the Will of the Rector to his subjects instituting what shall be due from them and to them for the ends of Government Therefore whatsoever is a signification of Gods will to man appointing us our duty and telling us what benefit shall be ours upon the performance and what loss or hurt shall befall us if we sin is a Law of God § 1. A Law being the Rectors Instrument of Governing there can be no Law where there is no Government And therefore that which some call The eternal Law is indeed no Law at all But it is the Principle of all just Laws The Eternal Wisdom and Goodness of God that is the Perfection of his Nature and Will as related to a Possible or future Kingdom is denominated Justice And this Justice some call the Eternal Law But it is truly no Law because it is the will of God in himself and not as Rector nor is it any signification of that Will nor doth it suppose any governed subjects in being from Eternity nor doth it make any duty to any from Eternity But all the Laws which God maketh in time and consequently which men make which are just and good are but the Products of this Eternal Will and Justice And whereas some say that there is an eternall truth in such Axiomes as these Thou shalt love God above all and do as thou would'st be done by and the good should be incouraged and the bad punished c. I answer God formeth not Propositions And therefore there were no such Propositions from Eternity Nor was there any Creature to love God or to do Good or Evil and be the subject of such Propositions That Proposition therefore which was not from Eternity was neither true nor false from Eternity for non entis non sunt accidentia vel modi But this is true that from Eternity there were the grounds of the verity of such Propositions when they should after be And that if there had been subjects from Eternity for such Propositions and Intellects to frame them they would have been of Eternal truth § 2. At the same time of his Creation that God made Man his subject he also made him some Laws to govern him For subjection being a general obligation to obedience would signifie nothing if there were no particular duties to be the matter of that obedience Else Man should owe God no obedience from the beginning but be Lawless for where there is no Law there is no Obedience Taking a Law in the true comprehensive sense as I here do § 3. All the objective significations in natura rerum within us or without us of the Will of God concerning our Duty reward or punishment are the True Law of Nature in the primary proper sense § 4. Therefore it is falsly defined by all Writers who make it consist in certain axioms as some say born in us or written on our hearts from our birth as others say dispositively there It is true that there is in the nature of Mans Soul a certain aptitude to understand certain Truths as soon as they are revealed that is as soon as the very Natura rerum is observed And it is true that this disposition is brought to actual knowledge as soon as the minde comes to actual consideration of the things But it is not true that there is any actual knowledge of any Principles born in Man Nor is it true that the said Disposition to know is truly a Law nor yet that the actual knowledge following it is a Law But the disposition may be called a Law Metonymically as being the aptitude of the faculties to receive and obey a Law as the Light of the Eye which is the potentia dispositio videndi may be called the Light of the Sun but unhansomly And the subsequent actual knowledge of Principles may be called the Law of Nature metonymically as being the perception of it and an effect of it as actual sight may be called the Light of the Sun and as actual knowledge of the Kings Laws may be called His Laws within us that is the effect of them or the Reception of them But this is far from propriety of speech That the inward axiomes as known are not Laws is evident 1. Because a Law is in genere objectivo and this is in genere actionum A Law is in genere signorum but this is the discerning of the sign A Law is the will of the Rector signified this is his will known A Law is Obligatory this is the perception of an Obligation A Law maketh duty but this is the knowledge of a duty made 2. The Law is not in our power to change or abrogate But a mans inward dispositions and perceptions are much in his power to encrease or diminish or obliterate Every man that is wilfully sensual and wicked may do much to blot out the Law of Nature which is said to be written on his heart But wickedness cannot alter or obliterare the Law of God If this were Gods Law which is upon the heart when a sinner hath blotted it out he is disobliged from duty and punishment For where there is no Law there is no duty or transgression But no sinner can so disoblige himself by altering his Makers Laws 3. Else there would be as many Laws of Nature not only as there are men but as there are diversity of perceptions But Gods Law is
not so uncertain and multiform a thing 4. And if Mans disposition or actual knowledge be Gods Law it may be also called Mans Law And so the Kings Law should be the Subjects perception of it It is therefore most evident that the true Law of Nature is another thing And is it not then a matter of admiration that so many sagacious accurate Schoolmen Philosophers Lawyers and Divines should for so long time go on in such false definitions of it The whole World belongeth to the Law of Nature so far as it signifieth to us the will of God about our duty and reward and punishment The World is as Gods Statute Book The foresaid natural aptitude maketh us fit to read and practise it The Law of Nature is as the external Light of the Sun and the said natural disposition is as the visive faculty to make use of it Yet much of the Law of Nature is within us too But it is there only in genere objectivo signi Man 's own Nature his Reason Free will and Executive power are the most notable signs of his duty to God To which all Mercies Judgements and other signifying means belong § 5. The way that God doth by Nature oblige us is by laying such fundamenta from which our duty shall naturally result as from the signification of his Will § 6. These fundamenta are some of them unalterable while we have a being and some of them alterable And therefore some Laws of Nature are alterable and some unalterable accordingly As for instance Man is made a Rational free Agent and God is unchangeably his Rightfull Governour of infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness Therefore the nature of God and Man in via thus compared are the fundamentum from whence constantly resulteth our indispensable duty to love him trust him fear him and obey him But if our being or reason or free-will which are our essential Capacities cease our obligations cease cessante fundamento God hath made Man a sociable Creature and while he is in society the Law of Nature obligeth him to many things which he hath no obligation to when the society is dissolved As when a Parent Childe Wife or Neighbour dieth all our duties to them cease Nature by the position of many circumstances hath made Incest ordinarily a thing producing manifold evils and a sin against God And yet Nature so placed the children of Adam in other circumstances that the said Nature made that their duty to marry one another which in others would have been an unnatural thing Nature forbiddeth Parents to murder their children But when God the absolute Lord of life would that way try Abrahams obedience when he was sure that he had a supernatural command even Nature obliged him to obey it Nature forbiddeth men to rob each other of their proper goods But when the Owner of all things had given the Israelites the Egyptians goods and changed the propriety the fundamentum of their former natural obligation ceased Changes in natura rerum which are the foundation of our obligation may make changes in the obligations which before were natural But so far as Nature that Nature which foundeth duty is the same the duty remaineth still the same The contrary would be a plain contradiction § 7. The Authoritas Imperantis is the formall object of all obedience and so all our duty is formally duty to God as our Supream or to Men as his Officers But as to the Material object our Natural duties are either I. Towards God II. To our selves III. To others § 8. I. The prime duties of the Law of Nature are towards God and are our full consent to the three Relations of which two are mentioned before To be Gods Rational Creatures and not obliged to take him heartily for our Absolute Owner and Ruler is a Contradiction in Nature § 9. Mans Nature being what it is and Related thus to God and Gods Nature and Relations being as afore described Man is naturally obliged to take God to be what he is in all his Attributes forementioned cap. 5. and to suit his will and affections to God accordingly that is to take him to be omnipotent omniscient and most good most faithfull and most just c. and to believe him seek him trust him love him fear him obey him meditate on him to honour him and preferre him before all the World and this with all our Heart and might and to take our chiefest pleasure in it All this so evidently resulteth from the Nature of God and Man compared that I cannot perceive that it needeth proof or illustration § 10. It is a contradiction to Nature that any of this duty proper to God may be given to any other and that any Creature or Idol of our Imagination should be esteemed loved trusted obeyed or honoured as God For that were falshood in us injury to God and abuse of the Creature § 11. Nature requireth that Man having the gift of speech from God should imploy his Tongue in the Praise and service of his Maker This plainly resulteth from our own Nature and the use of the Tongue compared with or related to Gods Nature and perfections with his propriety in us and all that 's ours and his Government of us § 12. Seeing Man liveth in totall dependance upon God and in continual receivings from him Nature obligeth him to use his heart and tongue in holy desires express'd and exercised in Prayer and in returning thanks to his great Benefactor of which more anon For though God know all our sins and wants already yet the Tongue is fitted to confess our sins and to express our desires And by confessing and expressing a twofold capacity for mercy accreweth to us That is 1. Our own Humiliation is excited and increased by the said Confessions and our Desires and Love and Hope excited and increased by our own Petitions the tongue having a power to reflect back on the heart and the exercise of all good affections being the means of their increase 2. And a person that is found in the actual exercise of Repentance and holy Desire and Love is morally and in point of Justice a much fitter recipient for pardon and acceptance and other blessings than another is And it being proved by Nature that Prayer Confession and Thanksgiving hath so much usefulness to our good and to our further duty Nature will tell us that the tongue and heart should be thus imployed And therefore Nature teacheth all men in the World that believe there is a God to confess their sins to him and call upon him in their distress and to give him thanks for their receivings § 13. Seeing Societies as such are totally dependent upon God and mens gifts are communicative and Solemnities are operative Nature teacheth us that God ought to be solemnly acknowledged worshipped and honoured both in Families and in more solemn appointed assemblies It greatly affecteth our own hearts to praise
so one halfe of mankind made calamitous and unfitted to educate their own children and ruine and depravation of nature could not be avoided They that think their choicest Plants and Flowers fit for the inclosure of a Garden and carefullest culture weeding and defence should not think their children should be educated or planted in the Wilderness It is not unobservable that all flying Fowls do know their Mates and live by couples and use copulation with no other and that the Beasts and more terrestrial Fowl do copulate but only so oft as is necessary to generation And shall Man be worse than Beasts § 31. Nature bindeth us not to violate the propriety of our neighbour in any thing that is his by fraud theft or robbery or any other means but to preserve and promote his just commodity as our own § 32. Government and Justice being so necessary to the order and welfare of the world Nature teacheth us that bribery fraud false-witness and all means that pervert Justice must be avoided and equity promoted among all § 33. The Tongue of Man being made to be the Index of his mind and humane converse being maintained by humane credibility and confidence Nature telleth us that Lying is a crime which is contrary to the nature and societies of Mankind § 34. And Nature telleth us that it is unjust and criminal to slander or injuriously defame our neighbour by railing reviling or malicious reports and that we ought to be regardful of his honour as of our own § 35. Nature telleth us that both in obedience to God the just disposer of all and for our own quietness and our neighbours peace we should all be contented with our proper place and due condition and estate and not to envy the prosperity of our neighbour nor covetously draw from him to enrich ourselves Because God's will and interest is above our own and the publick welfare to be preferred before any private persons and therefore all are to live quietly and contentedly in their proper places contributing to the common good § 36. Nature teacheth us that it is our duty to love humane Nature in our enemies and pity others in their infirmities and miseries and to forgive all pardonable failings and not to seek revenge and right our selves by our brothers ruine but to be charitable to the poor and miserable and do our best to succour them and help them out of their distress All these are our undeniable duties to GOD and our Neighbours § 37. Nature also telleth us that every man as a rational lover of himself should have a special care of his own felicity and know wherein it doth consist and use all prudent diligence to attain it and make it sure § 38. Nature telleth us that it is the duty of all men to keep Reason clear and their Wills conformable to its right apprehensions and to keep up a constant Government over their Thoughts Affections Passions Senses Appetite Words and Actions conforming them to our Makers Laws § 39. Nature telleth us that all our Time should be spent to the Ends of our Creation and all our Mercies improved to those Ends and all things in the world be estimated by them and used as Means conducing to them § 40. Nature commandeth us to keep our Bodies in sobriety temperance and chastity and not be inordinate or irregular in eating drinking lust sleep idleness apparel recreation or any lower things § 41. It commandeth us also watchfully and resolutely to avoid or resist all temptations which would draw us to any of these sins § 42. And it teacheth us patiently to bear our crosses and improve our trials to our benefit and see that they breed not any sinful distempers in our Minds or Lives § 43. And Nature telleth us that this obedient pleasing of our Maker and holy righteous charitable and sober living should be our greatest pleasure and delight and that we should thus spend our lives even to the last waiting patiently in peaceful joyful hopes for the blessed end which our righteous Governour hath allotted for our reward All this is evidently legible in nature to any man that hath not lost his reason or refuseth not considerately to use it And he that will read but Antonine Epictetus and Plutarch who are full of such precepts that I refer you to the whole Books instead of particular citations may see that he who will deny a life of Piety Justice and Temperance to be the duty and rectitude of Man must renounce his reason and natural light as well as supernatural revelation § 44. Reason also teacheth us that when the corruptions sluggishness or appetite of the flesh resisteth or draweth back from any of this duty or tempteth us to any sin Reason must rebuke it and hold the reins and keep its government and not suffer the flesh to bear it down and to prevail CHAP. XI III. Of GOD's Relation to Man as his BENEFACTOR and his END Or as his CHIEF GOOD THE Three Essential Principles in God do eminently give out themselves to Man in his Three Divine Relations to us His Power Intellect and Will His Omnipotency Omniscience and Goodness in his being our Owner our Ruler and our Chief Good The two first I have considered already our Omnipotent Lord or Owner and our most wise Governour and our Counter-relations with the duties thereof I now come to the third For the right understanding whereof let us a little consider of the Image of God in Man in which we must here see him It is Man's WILL which is his ultimate perfective imperant faculty it is the proper subject of Moral habits and principal agent of Moral acts And therefore in all Laws and Converse the WILL is taken for the Man and nothing is further morally Good or Evil Virtuous or culpably Vicious than it is Voluntary The INTELLECT is but the Director of the WILL Its actions are not the perfect actions of the Man If it apprehend bare Truth without respect to Goodness its Object is not the highest or felicitating or attractive Object and therefore the act can be no higher if it apprehend any Being or Truth as good it apprehendeth it but as a servant or guide to the WILL to bring it thither to be received by LOVE The perfect excellency of the object of humane acts is Goodness and not meer Entity or Verity Therefore the excellentest faculty is the Will It is Good that is the final-Cause in the object of all humane acts Therefore it is the fruition of Good which is the perfective final Act and that fruition of Good as Good is though introductorily by Vision yet finally and proximately by Complacencies which is nothing else but Love in its most essential act delighting in its attained object And for the executive Power though in the order of its natural being it be before the Will yet in its operation ad extra it is after it and commanded by
that the object of those hopes and fears are certain truths which are so necessary to the government of the world and this needeth no other proof but this If God can govern the world without a course of deceit and lying then the objects of these necessary hopes and fears are true But God can govern the world without a course of deceit and lying Ergo. The Major is evident because to govern by the hopes and fears of falshoods or things that are not when those hopes and fears are not only of God but made necessary to Government is to govern by deceit and lying or if it had not been by falshood uttered but falshood permitted the Minor is certain For if God cannot govern without such a course of deceit it is either for want of Power or of Wisdom or of Goodness that is Holiness and Benignity of Will But the Omnipotent wanteth not Power and the Omniscient wanteth not Wisdom to find out true and suitable means and he that is Optimus wanteth neither Holiness to love truth and hate falshood nor Benignity to love his Creature and therefore needeth no such means And he that believeth that God himself doth govern the world by a cheat even by the hopes and fears of fictions will sure think it best to imitate his God and to govern and trade and live accordingly This argument was à necessitate ad ordinem the next shall be only from God's actual government § 6. VI. If God do de facto govern the world by the hopes and fears of Good and Evil in another Life then the object of those hopes and fears is certain But God doth de facto so govern Ergo. The Major is proved as before for that which proved that God can govern without falshood proved also that he doth govern without it It belongeth only to the Impotent the Ignorant or the Bad to use such means Obj. May not a Parent or Physician honestly deceive a Child or Patient for his recovery to health why then may not God do so Answ 1. They do it through insufficiency to attain their end by a better means but the Omnipotent and Omniscient hath no such insufficiency 2. They may not lie or utter any untruth to do it though they may hide some truth by words which he is apt to mistake But if the world be governed by such hopes and fears of futurity it is hard to think whence they should fetch the object but from some divine revelation in nature 3. A whole course of Government of all the rational world by so sorry an instrument as deceit and falshood is more inconsistent with the nature and perfections of God than a particular act of deceit in a work of necessity and charity is with the nature of imperfect man The Minor is proved in the answer to the last objections and by the common experience of the world Obj. How little doth the hopes and fears of another world do with the most Do you not see that fleshly interest ruleth them and therefore they are what the Great ones would have them be who can help or hurt them Answ 1. I have proved how much worse it would be ◠that restraint which these hopes and fears make were taken off 2. That this restraint is general in all Nations almost of the earth though the prevalency of sin do much enfeeble it 3. That Rulers themselves are under some of these restraints in their Law-making and Judgement Though fleshly interest much prevail against it there are some remnants of secret hopes or fears in the consciences of sinners which keep up so much good as is yet left and keep men from those villanies in which they might hope to escape all sufferings from men § 7. VII If God himself kindle in the best of men desires to know him love him and enjoy him perfectly hereafter then such desires shall attain their end But God himself doth kindle such desires in the best of men Ergo And consequently there is such a Life to come Here 1. I must prove that the best men have such desires 2. That God kindleth them 3. That therefore he will satisfie them 1. And for the first the Consciences of all Good men are my witnesses whose desires to know God better to love him and please him more and to enjoy his Love is as the very pulse and breath of their souls For this they groan and pray and seek for this they labour wait and suffer If you could help them to more of the Knowledge and Love of God you would satisfie them more than to give them all the wealth and honours of the World Their Religious lives their labours prayers contemplations and sufferings prove all this and shew for what they long and live Obj. But this is caused by the power of a deluded fantasie which seeketh after that which is not to be had What if you fall in Love with the Sun Will it prove that you must be loved by it see it and enjoy it in the life to come Answ 1. To the similitude Either the Sun is a rational free Agent or not If it be it is either the chief Agent or a dependent Instrument If it were the first as it is not I should owe my self totally to it in the exercise of all the powers given me as is aforesaid And if it gave me such Desires I might suppose it was not in vain But if it give me nothing but as an Instrument or dependent Cause I owe it nothing but in subserviency to the first Cause But in such subserviency if God had commanded me to love and honour it as a Lover of Mankinde and a Rational Benefactor and had placed any of my duty or felicity in seeking perfection in that love and honour I should obey him and expect an answerable benefit But if it be no intelligent Agent or I cannot know that it is so then I can owe it no other respect but what is due to a natural Instrument of God 2. To the matter That these desires are not from a deluded fantasie but the work of God I prove 1. In that I have fully proved them already to be our Duty by the Law of Nature To love God with all the heart and might and consequently to desire to love him and please him and enjoy him in perfection that is in the utmost of our capacity is a proved duty 2. In that the Best men are the possessors of it And the more all other Virtues and Obedience do abound the more this aboundeth And the more any are vicious impious sensual worldly the less they have of these desires after God 3. They encrease in the use of holy means appointed by God and they decay by evil means All sin is against it and all obedience doth promote it 4. It is found most suitable to the tendency of our faculties as their only perfection The only true advancement of Reason
and rectitude and felicity of the Will If it be not by God that the Love and Desires of God are kindled in us then no good is to be ascribed unto God For we have here no greater good Now that God will satisfie these desires is proved In that he maketh nothing in vain nor kindleth any such desires as shall deceive them and make all their lives a meer delusion Yea and do this by the very best of men None of this is consistent with the perfections of God § 8. VIII If there were no life of Retribution after this Obedience to God would be finally mens loss and ruine But Obedience to God shall not be finally mens loss and ruine Ergo there is another Life The Major is proved before However it would be best in point of Honesty it would be worst to thousands in point of personal Vtility Even to all those that forsaking all the sinfull pleasures of this World do conflict with their flesh and keep it under and suffer the loss of all outward comforts by the cruelty of Persecutors and it may be through melancholy or weak fears have little comfort from God instead of them and at last perhaps be tormented and put to death by cruelty Few will think this desirable for it self And that our Obedience to God shall not be mens final loss and ruine needeth no proof but this that he hath made our self-love a Principle inseparable from our nature and maketh use of it in the Government of the World and commandeth nothing but what is finally for our good and so conjoyneth the pleasing of him and our own felicity inseparably in our end His Regiment is paternal His Glory which he seeketh by us is the Glory of his Goodness communicated and accumulated on us This taken in with the Wisdom and Goodness of his Nature will tell any man that to be a loser finally by our Obedience to God is a thing that no man need to fear He doth not serve himself upon us to our hurt nor command us that which will undo us He neither wanteth Power Wisdom nor Goodness to make us gainers by our duty It is the desire of natural Justice in all ut bonis bene sit malis male If I finde but any duty commanded me by God my Conscience and my sense of the Divine perfections will not give me leave to think that I shall ever prove finally a loser by performing it though he had never made me any promise of reward so far the Law of Nature hath a kinde of Promise in it that if he do but say Do this I will not doubt but the doing of it is for my good And if he bid me but use any means to my own happiness I should blaspheme if I suspected it would tend to my loss and misery and was made my snare § 9. IX The highest Love and Obedience to God is never a work of imprudence or folly nor ever to be Repented of But such they would be to many if there were no life to come Ergo By imprudence and folly I mean that course which tendeth to our own undoing as aforesaid No man shall ever have cause to repent of his fidelity to God and say I did foolishly in ruining my self by it This argument being but a meer consectary of the former I pass over § 10. X. If no man living be certain that there is no future life of Retribution then it is certain that there is such a life But no man living is certain that there is no such life Ergo its certain that there is The Major is proved thus If all men be in Reason obliged to seek the happiness and escape the punishments of another life before all the treasures and pleasures of this World then it is certain that such a Life of happiness and punishments there is But if no man be certain that there is no such life the bare probability or possibility that there is such doth in reason oblige all men to seek it above all the World Ergo it is certain that such a life there is My argument is from our Obligation to seek it before all to the certain being of it 1. That no man is certain that there is no life to come I need not prove as long as no man ever proved such an opinion and the boldest Atheists or Infidels say no more than that they think there is no other life but all confess that they have no assurance of it 2. If so then that the possibility or probability obligeth us to regard it in our hopes fears and endeavours before all this World is evident from the incomparableness of them or great disparity of the things When most of the World think there is another life and there is so much for it as we here lay down and a few Atheists say only we do not believe it or it is not likely though it be not a thing that we are certain of now Reason commandeth every man that loveth himself to preferr it before all earthly things Because we are fully certain beyond all doubt that all earthly things are of short duration and will quickly leave us and when they are gone they are to us as if they had never been They are a shadow a dream a something which is next to nothing To say It will shortly have an end doth blot out the praise and embitter the pleasures of all below What the better are all generations past for all the wealth and fleshly pleasures which they ever received in the World There is no wise man but would preferre the least probability of attaining full felicity and escaping death and torments before the certainty of possessing a pin or a penny for an hour The disparity is much greater between things temporal and everlasting than any such similitude can reach All the Christians and all the Mahometans and most of the Heathens of the World do hold the Immortality of the Soul and the perpetuity of the Happiness or misery hereafter The Atheist is not sure of the contrary and he is sure that a few years or hours will put an end to all his temporal pleasures and equal those that lived here in pleasure and in pain And therefore that at the worst his loss or hazard of the pleasures of sin for the hopes of eternal pleasure is not a thing considerable If those that dissent from him prove in the right the sensualist is utterly undone for ever He must live in endless pain and misery and must lose an endless unspeakable joy and glory which he might have possest as well as others But if he himself prove in the right he gets nothing by it but the pleasing of inordinate concupiscence for a few years and will die with as much emptiness of content as if he had lived in continual pain Now this being the true case no sober reason can deny but that wisdom obligeth
that no temporal punishment or reward can be too great for some crimes and for some atchievments Read but the Statute-books and this will be soon found And that the offences which are against the Infinite Majesty deserve incomparably sorer punishments than any against men as such is past all question As also that love and fidelity and duty to God is incomparably more laudable § 16. XVI If there were no life of retribution after this it would follow that man is more to be feared and obeyed than God and so hath the far greater and higher hand in the Moral Government of the world But the consequent is absurd and blasphemous Ergo so is the Antecedent The argument is clear and past all contradiction The reason of the Major or consequence is Because though God can destroy any wicked man at his pleasure yet all the world's experience sheweth us that ordinarily in this life he doth no such things If a strange judgment overtake some wicked man it is an unusual thing and next to a miracle And usually all things come alike to all the good and the bad die of the same disease the deceitful and the wicked prosper in the world as much as others if either suffer more usually it is the best Videtis quam prospera navigatio à Diis datur sacrilegis saith Dionysius Thunder-bolts strike so few that it is scarce rational much to fear them If one fall under some extraordinary judgement many hundred scape But on the other side Kings and States do ordinarily do execution on those that displease them and break their Laws The case of a Daniel is so rare that it would be no rule to direct a rational course by If the King should forbid me praying as he did Daniel or command me to worship his Image as he did the other three witnesses reason and self-preservation would require me to obey him for its ten to one but he would execute his wrath on me and its an hundred to one God would not deliver me here God suffered thirty or forty thousand to be murdered at once by the French Massacre under Charls 9. He suffered two hundred thousand to be murdered by the Irish Papists He suffered many to be burned in Queen Mary's days He suffered yet greater Havock to be made of the poor Waldenses and Alligenses He suffered most cruel inhumane torments and death upon thousands of innocent persons to change the new-planted Religion in Japan He therefore that careth for his life and peace will think it far safer to venture on the present executions of God than of his King or Enemy or any one that is strong enough to ruine him If I lived under the Turkish Empire and were commanded to deny Christ and to renounce my Baptism and to subscribe that my Baptismal Vow doth not oblige me or any way to lie or be perjur'd or sin against God self-preservation would bid me Venture on the sin for it is an hundred to one but God will spare thee and it is an hundred to one but that the Prince will punish and destroy thee if thou obey him not How few that knew there were no life to come would not rather venture to please a Tyrant or a Robber than God and more fear to displease them and would not by perjury or any commanded villany save himself from their fury and cruelty and would not study more to flatter and humour them than to obey their God And so Man should have the chief government of the world while Man's rewards and punishments were so much more notable than God's Man would be feared and obeyed before God that is Man would be taken for our God These things are clear undeniable truths If there were no life to come self-love and reason would make man more obedient to Man than God and so make Gods of flesh and bloud But whether this be the tendency of the Government of God let Reason judge § 17. XVII A very probable argument may be fetched from the number and quality of intellectual spirits He that looketh to the vast and numerous and glorious Orbs which are above him and thinks of the glorious receptacles of a more glorious sort of creatures and then considereth that we are intellectual agents made to love and honour God as well as they and considers further both the Benignity of God and the communion which those other Orbs have with us will think it probable that we are in progress towards perfection and that we that are so like them may be capable of their happiness § 18. XVIII If in this life God have little of the praise and glory of his works from those whom he created for it but contrarily be much dishonoured by them then there is another life in which he will be more honoured by them But the antecedent is true Ergo so is the consequent What a glorious fabrick hath God set man to contemplate and how little of it is here known so that Philosophy is found to be but a searching and wrangling about things which no man reacheth and yet an inquisitive desire we have And therefore sure there is a state in which these works of God shall be better known of us and God shall have the honour of them more than now His Laws also prescribe us excellent duties and his Servants are very excellent persons according to his own description But our infirmities our errors or divisions our miscarriages and scandals do so dishonour him and his ways that the glory of them is much obscured and blasphemers reproach him to his face and Godliness which the Law of Nature teacheth is derided as a foolish thing and as the meer effect of superstitious fear Now though all this doth no hurt to God yet he is capable of wrong who is uncapable of hurt And it is not to be believed that he will finally put up all this at his creatures hands and never vindicate his honour not never more shew the glory of his Grace his Image his Justice and Judgments than he now doth § 19. XIX The constant testimony of conscience in all men that have not mastered Reason by Sensuality and the common consent of all that are worthy to be called Men in all Ages and Countries upon earth doth shew that the life to come is a truth which is naturally revealed and most sure § 20. XX. The enemy of Souls doth against his will give man a four-fold reason to judge that there is a life of Reward and Punishment hereafter viz. 1. By Compacts with Witches 2. By Apparitions 3. By Satanical Possessions 4. By all kind of subtil importunate temptations which evidence themselves 1. Though some are very incredulous about Witches yet to a full enquiry the evidence is past question that multitudes of such there be Though many are wronged and some may be thought so foolish or melancholy as not to know what they say against themselves yet against such numerous
is a Principle in Politicks that Poena debetur reipublicae it is the Common-wealth to which the punishment of offendors is due that is it is a means which the Ruler oweth them for their security And Cato was wont to say Se malle pro collato beneficio nullam reportare gratiam quà m pro maleficio perpetrato non dare poenam Plutar. Apoth Rom. He had rather miss of thanks for his kindnesses and gifts than of punishment for his faults And was wont to say that Magistratus qui maleficos prohibere possent tamen impunitate donarent lapidibus ol ruendos esse ut Reipub. perniciosissimos A hundred such sayings are in Cicero Offic. 3. Quotusquisque reperietur qui impunitate propositâ abstinere possit injuriâ Impunitas peccandi maxima est illecebra De Natur. Deor. 3. Nec domus nec Respubl stare potest si in ea nec recte factis praemia extent vlla nec supplicia peccatis In Verrem 5. est utilius unius improbi supplicio multorum improbitatem coercere quà m propter multos improbos uni parcere Offic. 1. Non satis est eum qui lacesserit injuriae suae penitere ut ipse nequid tale posthac committat caeteri sint ad injuriam tardiores This is the common sense of all that know what it is to govern Obj. But God is so good that all his Punishments tend at last to the sinners good and are meerly castigatory Answ God is so wise that he knoweth better than we what is good and fittest to be done And God is so good that for the honour of his Government and Holiness and Goodness he expresseth his hatred of sin to the final ruine of the sinners And he is so wise and good that he will not spare the offendor when the penalty is necessary to the good of the innocent to prevent their falls The Objection is a surmise not only groundless but notoriously false § 10. He that would know how far punishment is necessary to the ends of Government must first know how far the Penal Law it self is necessary for the first and chiefest benefit to the Common-wealth is from the Law and the next from the Execution The first benefit is to constrain men to duty and to restrain them from doing ill This is done immediately by the fear of punishment with the expectation of the benefit This fear of punishment is to be caused by the rational expectation of it if they do offend This expectation is to be caused by the commination of the Law When the Law saith He that sinneth shall suffer the Subject avoideth sin for fear of suffering Therefore the Subject must believe that the Law-giver meaneth as he speaketh even to govern and judge in Justice according to that Law and he that can but make the Subject believe that the Governour doth but affright men with a lie and meaneth not to execute his penalties shall easily make his Laws of none effect and turn loose offendors to presumptuous disobedience Therefore the fore-belief of execution is necessary to the efficacy of the Law which else is but as a Mawkin to affright away birds and fit to work on none but fools And if it be so necessary a duty to the Subject to believe that the Law shall be the Norma judicii and shall be executed then in our present case it is certainly true For God cannot lie nor make it the duty of the world to believe a lie nor need so vile a means to keep the world in order So that it is most evident that if the Law be necessary the execution of it is ordinarily necessary and either the execution or some means as effectual to the ends of Government is ever necessary § 11. Therefore he that would know what degree of punishment it is meet and just for God to execute must first know what degree it is meet for him to threaten or make Due by Law or rather how much he hath made due Because what God should do is best known by what he actually doth If a temporal short or small measure of Penalty be sufficient to be threatned in the Law for the present attaining of the ends of Government then such a punishment is sufficient in the execution But if the threatning of an endless punishment in another world be little enough in suo genere to prevail now with Subjects for order and obedience then the execution will be therefore necessary by consequence § 12. It followeth not therefore that Punishment or Rewards must cease if the ends be past in natural existence because Moral means may in time be after their end to which they were appointed to operate in esse cognito and that penalty which is perpetuated may be a means to the ends already attained that is the threatnings and the expectation of them and then the honour of the Ruler's veracity and justice bindeth him to the execution § 13. What ever reward or punishment is annexed to sin by the Law is offered with the duty and sin to the subjects choosing or refusing and no man is in danger of any punishment but he that chooseth it in its self or in its annexed cause And he that will have it or will have that which he is told by God is annexed to it especially if it be deliberately and obstinately to the last hath none to blame of cruelty towards him but himself nor nothing to complain of but his wilful choice Obj. But it were easie with God to confirm man's will so that the threatning of a temporal punishment might have ruled him Answ It is easie with God to make every man an Angel and every beast or worm a man but if his wisdom think meet below men to make such inferiour things as Beasts and below Angels or confirmed Souls to make so low a rank of creatures as Men that have Reason and undetermined and unconfirmed Free-wills what are we that we should expostulate with him for making them no better nor ruling them in our way § 14. Sin doth unquestionably deserve a natural death and annihilation This all men grant that believe that God is our Governour and that there is any such thing as His Laws and Man's sins If treason against a King deserve death much more rebellion and sin against God Life and being is God's free gift if he take it away from the innocent he taketh but his own therefore there can be no doubt but he may take it away from the guilty who abuse it § 15. If such a penalty were inflicted God is not bound to restore that sinner to being again whom he hath annihilated if it be not a contradiction And then this penal Privation would be everlasting Therefore an endless Privation of Being and all mercies is the sinners due All this I know of no man that doth deny § 16. God is not bound thus to annihilate the sinner but may continue all his natural Being and
have mercy upon your selves and do not refuse and obstinately refuse the mercy of God and then call him unmercifull Have pity on your own Souls Be not so cruel against your selves as to run into endless misery for nothing and then think to lay the blame on God! God calleth now to you in your sin and wilfulness and intreateth you to have mercy on your selves and then he will have mercy on you in the day of your distress But if you will not hear him but will have none of his mercy now wonder not if in vain you cry to him for it then Obj. But I would not so use an Enemy of my own Answ 1. He doth not deserve it for you are not Gods 2. You are not Governours of the World and so his fault respecteth not any such Law and Judgement of yours by which the World must be governed 3. Nor have you the Wisdom and Justice of God to do that which is right to all Yet are you not bound your selves to take complacency in the evil of your Enemies but to use just means to bring him to a better minde and state § 37. The summ of all here proved is that all sin deserveth endless misery and naturally induceth to it and that all ungodly impenitent souls shall certainly undergoe it and that none can be saved from this misery but by turning to God and being saved from their sins CHAP. XVI Of the present sinfull and miserable state of this World § 1. THough all men may know all this before said to be their duty and sin to be so evil and to deserve such punishment yet none do live perfectly without sin according to the Law of Nature I have heard but of few that pretend to such perfection and those few have confuted their own pretenses and been the furthest from it of many others And therefore this I have no need to prove § 2. The greatest part of the World do bend their mindes and lives to the satisfying of their flesh and live in ungodliness intemperance and unrighteousness neglecting God and future happiness and that Holy life which is the way thereto This being a matter of publick or common fact doth need no other proof than acquaintance with the people of the World § 3. Yea there is an aversness and enmity in them to the life which God in Nature doth prescribe them and a strong inclination to a fleshly Life There needeth no other proof of this than the wonderfull difficulty which we find in perswading men to change their Lives to live to God and to forsake their sensuality and worldliness and the abundance of Reason and labour that is lost upon them when we cannot so much as make them willing § 4. It is evident in the effect that much of this cometh with us into the World 1. How else should it be so universal as it is How should it be found in all sorts of Constitutions and Complexions and in every Countrey and Age till now 2. How should it work so early in Children as commonly it doth 3. How cometh it to prevail against the best Education Helps and Means Certainly all of us feel from our childhood too much of the truth of this § 5. This natural pravity is quickly encreased by the advantage of sensuality which is active before Reason cometh to any power of resistance and so getteth stronger possession by Custom and groweth to a confirmed habit § 6. And if vicious Education by vicious Parents be added and bad company second that and the vulgar course or Rulers countenance concurr the corrupt inclination is quickly more radicated and next to a Nature § 7. Many so farr prevail against the light and law of Nature as to grow strange to God and to themselves to their end and their work Even to doubt whether there be a God or whether they have any other life to live and whether Holiness be good and necessary and sin be bad and deserve any punishment § 8. There is a great deal of sottish unteachableness on the minds and wills of men which hindereth their conviction and reformation § 9. There is a great deal of senseless stupidity and hard-heartedness on men which maketh them sleepily neglect the greatest things which they are convinced of § 10. There is in most a marvellous Inconsiderateness as if they had not their Reason awake to use so that they will not soberly and seriously think of the things which deeplyest concern them § 11. Most men are so taken up with the concernments of their Bodies that their Minds are pre-occupyed and made unfit for higher things All this is proved if we walk but in the World with open eyes § 12. The Love of the World and fleshly pleasure is so powerfull in the most that they love not the Holy Law of God which forbiddeth them that sensuality and commandeth them a holy and temperate life They are like Children that cry for what they love and will not be restrained by telling them that its unwholsom Reason signifieth nothing with them as long as Sense and Appetite gainsay it They are angry with all that crosseth their Appetites though it be to save their Lives The Sense is become the predominant power in them and Reason is dethroned and hath left its power Therefore Gods Law is unacceptable and hatefull to these bruitish people because it is quite against their inclination and that which the Flesh doth call their Interest and Good § 13. Therefore they love not those who press them to the Obedience of this Law which is so ungratefull to them and who condemn their sin by the holiness of their lives and that awaken their guilty Consciences by the serious mention of the Retributions of the life to come All this is bitter to the taste and the Reasonableness necessity and future benefits are things that they are much insensible of § 14. Therefore they love not God himself as he is Holy and Governeth them by a Holy Law which is so much against their inclinations as he forbiddeth them all their sinfull pleasure and threatneth damnation to them if they rebell Especially as his Justice will execute this Indeed their aversation from God in these respects is no less than a Hating Him as God § 15. These Vices working continually in mens hearts do fill them with deceiving thoughts and distracting passions and unquietness and engage them in self-troubling wayes and deprive them of the Comforts of the Love of God and of a Holy life and of the well-grounded hope of future blessedness Though they have such a present pleasure as prevaileth with them it bringeth speedy smart and trouble Just like the pleasure of scratching to a man that hath the Itch which is quickly recompensed with smart if he go deep Or like the pleasure of drinking cold water to a man in a Feaver or a Dropsie which increaseth the disease
nor they could not come to be acquainted with Physical impossibilities are not the matter of crimes or of condemnation § 19. If any persons are brought by these means alone to repent unfeignedly of an ungodly uncharitable and intemperate life and to love God unfeignedly as their God above all and to live a holy obedient life God will not condemn such persons though they wanted supernatural Revelation of his will As I shewed before § 6. § 20. When sinners stand at many degrees distant from God and a holy life and mercy would draw them nearer him by degrees they that have help and mercy sufficient in suo genere to have drawn them nearer God and refused to obey it do forfeit the further helps of mercy and may justly perish and be forsaken by him though their help was not immediately sufficient to all the further degrees of duty which they were to do These things as clear in their proper light I stand not to prove because I would not be unnecessarily tedious to the Reader And so much of GODLINESS or Religion as revealed by Natural Light Obj. But all Heathens and Infidels find not all this in the Book of Nature which you say is there Answ I speak not of what men do see but what they may see if they will improve their Reason All this is undeniably legible in the Book of Nature but the infant the ideot the illiterate the scholar the smatterer the Doctor the considerate the inconsiderate the sensual the blinded and the willing diligent enquirer do not equally see and read that which is written in the same characters to all PART II. Of CHRISTIANITY and Supernatural Revelation CHAP. I. Of the great need of a clearer Light or fuller Revelation of the Will of God than all that hath been opened before WHILST I resolved upon a deep and faithful search into the grounds of all Religion and a review and trial of all that I had my self believed I thought meet first to pass by Persons and shut up my Books and with retired Reason to read the Book of Nature only and what I have there found I have justly told you in the former Part purposely omitting all that might be controverted by any considerable sober reason that I might neither stop my self nor my Reader in the way and that I might not deceive my self with plausible consequences of unsound or questionable antecedents nor discourage my Reader by the casting of some doubtful passages in his way which might tempt him to question all the rest For I know what a deal of handsome structure may fall through the falsness of some one of the supports which seemed to stand a great way out of sight And I have been wearied my self with subtil discourses of learned men who in a long series of Ergo's have thought that they have left all sure behind them when a few false suppositions were the life of all And I know that he who interposeth any doubtful things doth raise a diffidence in the Reader 's mind which maketh him suspect that the ground he standeth on is not firm and whether all that he readeth be not meer uncertain things Therefore leaving things controvertable for a fitter place and time I have thus far taken up so much as is plain and sure which I find of more importance and usefulness to my own information and confirmation than any of those controvertible points would be if I could never so certainly determine them And now having perused the Book of Nature I shall cast up the account and try what is yet wanting and look abroad into the opinions of others in the world and search whence that which is yet wanting may be most fully and safely and certainly supplied § 1. And first when I look throughout the world I find that though all the evidence aforesaid for the necessity of a holy virtuous life be unquestionable in naturâ rerum yet most of the world observe it not or discern but little of it nor much regard the light without or the secret witness of their consciences within Natural light or evidence is so unsuccessful in the world that it loudly telleth us something is yet wanting what ever it is We can discern what it is which is necessary to man's happiness but we can hardly discern whether de facto any considerable number at best do by the teaching of nature alone attain it When we enquire into the Writings of the best of the Philosophers we find so little evidence of real holiness that is of the foresaid Resignation Subjection and Love to God as God that it leaveth us much in doubt whether indeed they were holy themselves or not and whether they made the Knowledge Love Obedience and Praise of God the end and business of their lives However there is too great evidence that the world lieth in darkness and wickedness where there is no more than natural light § 2. I find therefore that the discovery of the will of God concerning our duty and our end called The Law of Nature is a matter of very great difficulty to them that have no supernatural light to help them Though all this is legible in Nature which I have thence transcribed yet if I had not had another Teacher I know not whether ever I should have found it there Nature is now a very hard book when I have learnt it by my Teachers help I can tell partly what is there but at the first perusal I could not understand it It requireth a great deal of time and study and help to understand that which when we do understand it is as plain to us as the high-way § 3. Thence it must needs follow that it will be but few that will attain to understand the necessary parts of the Law of Nature aright by that means alone and the multitude will be lest in darkness still The common people have not leisure for so deep and long a search into nature as a few Philosophers made nor are they disposed to it And though reason obligeth them in so necessary a case to break through all difficulties they have not so full use of their reason as to do it Obj. But as Christian Teachers do instruct the people in that which they cannot have leisure to search out themselves so why may not Philosophers who have leisure for the search in s truct the people quickly who have not leisure to find out the truth without instruction Answ Much might be done if all men did their best But 1. The difficulty is such that the learned themselves are lamentably imperfect and unsatisfi'd as I shall further shew 2. Though the vulgar cannot search out the truth without help yet is it necessary that by help they come to see with their own eyes and rest not in a humane belief alone especially when their Teachers are of so many minds that they know not which of them to believe To learn the truth
us for Loyalty to our King because there are secret Traytors that call themselves his Subjects What are you to Christians that we should be reproached for your Villanies O you Turks and Heathens rather reproach us because there are wicked persons of your selves for you are not so cruel Enemies to Christians as many of these Hypocrites are Nullus enim Christianus malus est nisi hanc professionem simulaverit Athenagor Leg. pro Christ pag. 3. Nemo illic in Carcere Christianus nisi planè tantùm Christianus aut si aliud jam non Christianus Tertull. Apol. c. 43. sed dicet aliquis etiam de nostris excedere quosdam à regulâ disciplinae Desunt tum Christiani haberi apud nos Id. ib. c. 46. Leg. Twiss Vind. Grat. l. 3 E. 8. § 6. p. 75. and my 5th Disp of Sacraments If any man have not the Spirit of Christ the same is none of his Rom. 8.9 Luk. 14.26 33. They are Spies in his Army They are Absaloms Chams and Judas's in his Family Try them by the Character that Christ hath given of his true Disciples and if they be such then tell us of their Lives and spare not They are not of us while they are among us 1 John 2.19 They are more of your party than of ours If the Minde Heart and Life be more of the Man than the tongue and knee What if a Celsus or Porphiry or Epicurus had called himself a Christian Must Christ be answerable for him Is it not enough that they abuse him by their hypocrisie and living contrary to his Laws but he must be accused for their Crimes which he so strictly forbiddeth and for which he will cast them into Hell for ever would you have him do more than this is to disclaim them Were they indeed Christian Princes Barons Priests and People of whom Abbas Urspergensis speaketh Chron. pag. 32. Ut omnis homo jam sit perjurus praedictis facinoribus implicatus ut vix excusari possit quin sit in his sicut populus sic Sacerdos Et p. 321. Principes terrarum Barones arte Diabolicâ edocti nec curabant Juramenta infringere nec Fidem violare jus omne confundere were they Christian Knights that Erasmus speaketh of Colloqui Pap. 485. Ni sis bonus aleator probus Chartarius Scortator improbus potator strenuus profusor audax decoctor conflator aeris alieni deinde scabie ornatus Gallicâ vix quisquam te credet equitem It was Cotta's proof that there are Atheists in Cicer. de natur Deor. li. 1. What shall we say of the Sacrilegious Perjured and Ungodly If Carbo c. had thought that there are Gods he had not been so PERJVRED and VNGODLY What more necessary to ungodly men whatever they call themselves than to convince them that there is a God and Life to come Christ will not care for their Image of Religion or deceitfull Promises and Professions All wise men are of Solon's minde Probitatem jurejurando certiorem habe Laert. in Sol. Believe it Hypocrites your fornications gluttony drunkennesse idlenesse covetousnesse selfishnesse or pride will finde no Cloak in the day of Judgement from the Christian name You might better cheap have been sensual and wicked at a further distance than in the Family or Church of God Nihil prodest aestimari quod non sis Et duplicis peccati reus es non habere quod crederis quod non habueris simulare Hieron Ep. ad fil Maur. Or suppose your Lives are more civilly and smoothly carnall To do no harm is too little to prove you Christians Much more to do evil with some bounds Nullum est aliud latronum beneficium nisi ut commemorare possint iis se vitam dedisse quibus non ademerint Cicer. Phil. 2. Non est bonitas pessimis esse meliorem Senec. My reasonable demand is that you will be what you call your selves or call your selves as you are I am not inviting you to a new Religion nor to a Sect but to be really and seriously what you are nominally and what you have vowed and professe to be Jest not with God and Heaven and Hell You may mock your selves but God will not be mocked At last turn back and study what that Religion is which you professe Review your Baptismal Covenant and be true to that and I have done And cast out of your way the common block of hating those whom you should imitate Ita comparatum est ut virtutem non suspiciamus neque ejus imitandae studio corripimur nisi eum in quo ea conspicitur summo honore amore prosequamur Plutar in Cat. Vtic. It was one of the Roman Lawes of the 12 Tables Impius ne audeto placare donis iram Deorum Repent and pray was Peters Counsel to one of your Predecessors Act. 8.22 Judas hath a Kiss for Christ but it is hearty love and a sober righteous godly life which must be your evidence I have faithfully warned you The Lord have mercy on you and convert you R.B. Octob. 31. 1666. Cujus aures clausae Veritati sunt ut ab amico verum audire nequeat hujus salus desperanda est Cic. Rhet. 1. Prov. 28.9 He that turneth away his ear from hearing the Law even his Prayer shall be abominaton Antisthenes civitates tunc interire aiebat cum bonos discernere nequeunt à malis Laert. in Antisth 1 John 3.8 He that committeth sin is of the Devil For the Devil sinneth from the beginning For this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the Devil THE CONTENTS PART I. Of Natural Religion or GODLINESS CHAP I. OF the neerest Truths and 1. Of Humane Nature or the Knowledge of our selves Where note that the Question about the Souls Immaterial Substance is reserved to the Appendix or Conclusion Page 1 CHAP. II. Of Man as Related to the things below him 4 CHAP. III. Of Men as mutually Related to each other 6 CHAP. IV. Of MAN and other things as produced by the FIRST CAVSE 9 CHAP. V. What this CAVSE is in it self That it is GOD 16 CHAP VI. Of GOD as RELATED to his Creatures especially to Man and I. as his OWNER 32 CHAP. VII Of Mans Relation to God his OWNER 36 CHAP. VIII II. Of GOD's Relation to Man as his RVLER where it is proved that God ruleth Man morally by Laws and Judgement 38 CHAP. IX Of Mans SVBJECTION to God or Relation to him as our RVLER 65 CHAP. X. Of GOD's particular LAWS as known in NATVRE What the Law of Nature is 69 CHAP. XI III. Of GOD's Relation to Man as his BENEFACTOR and his END Or as his CHIEF GOOD Proved that God is Mans END 80 CHAP. XII Of MAN's Relation to God as he is our FATHER BENEFACTOR and END or CHIEF GOOD and the Duties of that Relation 101 CHAP. XIII Experiments of the Difficulty of all this Duty-before-proved from Nature And what it must cost
the flames of Troy that ript up his own Mother that he might see the place where once he lay Did Caligula think so Did Commodus Caracalla Heliogabalus think so Did the Spaniards think so by the Indians who are said by their own Writers to have murdered in forty two years space no less than fifty millions of them Did King Philip think so who put his own Son and Heir to death by the Inquisition besides so many thousands more in Spain and the Low Countreys by that and other wayes How full of such bloody instances is the World If it were a Tyrants interest that kept him under some moderation to the people of his own Dominions it might yet possibly leave him a bloody destroyer of other Nations in his Conquests The World hath not wanted men that think the lives of many thousands a little sacrifice to a proud design or furious passion and are no more troubled at it than a Pythagorean would be to kill a Bird. It hath had such as Sylla Messala Catiline and the Conquerours of Jerusalem who as Josephus saith crucified so many thousands till they wanted Crosses for men and place for Crosses besides the greater numbers famished Obj. But if Chief Governours be under no Law they are under Covenants by which they are obliged Answ What shall make their Covenants obligatory to their consciences if they be under no government of God The reason why mens Covenants bind them is because they are under the government of God who requireth all men to keep their Covenants and condemneth Covenant-breakers But if God had never commanded Covenant-keeping nor forbad Covenant-breaking they could never be matter of duty or sin So that this Doctrin that God hath made no Laws for man and is not his Governour doth leave all Soveraigns from under the least conscientious restraint from any acts of cruelty or injustice and tendeth to deliver up the world to be a sacrifice to their lusts when it is the government of the universal Soveraign that is their restraint § 9. VI. If God have not the Soveraignty over all the world then no man on earth can have any Governing Power But Princes and Rulers have a Governing Power Therefore the Soveraignty is in God The reason of the major is because Kings can have no power but what they receive from some or other there is no effect without a cause And if they receive it it is either from God or Man as the Original Not from Man for the people themselves have no governing power to use or give as to the government of Commonwealths for their personal power over themselves is of another species and cometh short of this in many respects as else-where I have proved And if it were otherwise yet they have nothing themselves but derivatively from God as is proved before and therefore they themselves must have their power from him from whom they are and have all that they possess But God cannot give that which he hath not himself either formally or eminently Therefore he hath governing power formally or eminently or else no Prince or Man or Angel can have any no more than they can have being or reason without him And though his power be transcendent his exercise of it must be according to the capacity of the subject and therefore morally by Laws and Executions So that as all things else in the creature are derived so is power And as in beings aut Deus aut nihil is an undeniable truth so as to governing power or Soveraignty either it is Primitively Supremely and Transcendently in God or there is none in any Prince or Parents for if they have it not from Him they can have none at all Obj. Governing by Laws is caused by humane impotency because man is not every where present nor of power to effect himself in and by others all the things which he commandeth But were man Omnipresent and Omnipotent as God is he would make all men do well and not command them to do it Therefore it is so in the Government of God Answ It is granted that man is impotent and God Omnipotent and Omnipresent and therefore that God could indeed do as is here intimated even make all men do well and not command it But 1. it is apparent that de facto he doth not so 2. And his wisdom being more eminently to be manifested in the work of Government than his Omnipotency doth shew us partly why he doth not so even because the sapiential way is more suitable to his ends and to the subject Creation did most eminently glorifie or manifest Omnipotency Government doth most eminently glorifie God's Omniscience or Wisdom as our Perfection or Glorification will most eminently manifest and glorifie his Love and Goodness Each Attribute shineth most eminently in its proper work and mans conceits must not confound this perfect order Yet let it be here noted that all this while I meddle not with the controversie of the Liberty of man's will and so whether God's sapiential government by Laws do operate also by necessitation and Physical causation as the natural motions of the Orbs or the artificial motions of an Engine I only argue that whether God thus operate by his Government by secret necessitation or not yet it is most certain that he governeth Morally and useth the Means of Doctrin Laws and Judgments which might consist with Physical necessitating efficacy in all that do obey indeed if God's wisdom and man's freedom of will did inferr nothing to the contrary But if it had been granted that all God's government is by Physical efficacy it would stand good nevertheless that Laws and Judgment are part of the means which he maketh so effectual But yet I shall go further in the next Argument § 10. VII Experience satisfieth all the rational world that there is de facto a course of Duty appointed by God for men which they do not eventually fulfil Therefore there is not only a Moral Government which is effectual but also which is separated from necessitating efficacy They that deny this and plead for Physical Government only must affirm that nothing is any man's Duty but what he actually performeth and that nothing is any man's sin which he doth or omitteth to do that is that there is no sin or moral evil in the world For all that God Physically effecteth is good and they suppose him to have no Law which commandeth any thing but what he Physically effecteth and he will not Physically effect that which he forbiddeth And if there be no such thing as moral evil or sin in the world then no man should fear any or avoid any Let but a man leave any thing undone if it be nourishing his children defending his King loving God or man and he may thence conclude that it never was his duty Let him but do any thing that he hath a mind to if it be killing Father or Mother or his Prince or Friend
God in great and solemn Assemblies Many Hearts are like many pieces of Wood or Coals which flame up greatly when set together which none of them alone would do And it is a fuller signification of Honour to God when his Creatures do purposely assemble for his solemn and most reverent Praise and Worship And therefore Nature shewing us the reasons of it doth make it to be our duty § 14. Nature telleth us that it is evil to cherish false opinions of God or to propagate such to others to slander or blaspheme him to forget him despise him or neglect him to contemn his Judgements or abuse his Mercies to resist his instructions precepts or sanctifying motions And that we should alwayes live as in his sight and to bend all our powers entirely to please him and to think and speak no otherwise of him nor otherwise behave our selves before him than as beseemeth us to the infinite most blessed and holy God § 15. Nature telleth us that in Controversies between Man and Man it is a rational means for ending strife to appeal to God the Judge of all by solemn Oaths where proof is wanting And that it is a hainous crime to do this falsly making him the Patron of a lie or to use his name rashly unreverently prophanely or in vain All this being both against the Nature of God and of our speech and of humane society is past all doubt unnatural evil § 16. Nature telleth us that God should be worshipped heartily sincerely spiritually and also decently and reverently both with soul and body as being the Lord of both § 17. It telleth us also that he must not be worshipped with sin or cruelty or by toyish childish ludicrous manner of Worship which signifie a minde that is not serious or which tend to breed a low esteem of him or which are any way contrary to his Nature or his will § 18. Nature telleth us that such as are endued with an eminent degree of holy wisdom should be Teachers of others for obedience to God and their salvation As the Soul is more worth than the Body and its welfare more regardable so charity to the Soul is as Natural a duty as to the body which cannot better be exercised than in communicating holy wisdom and instructing men in the matters of highest everlasting consequence § 19. Yea Nature teacheth that so great a work should not be done slightly and occasionally only as on the by but that it should be a work of stated office which tried men should be regularly called to for the more sure and universal edification of Mankind Nature telleth us that the greatest works of greatest consequence should be done with the greatest skill and care and that it is likest to be so done when it is made a set Office intrusted in the hands of tried men for it is not many that have such extraordinary endowments and if unfit persons manage so great a work they will marr it and miss the end and that which a man taketh for his Office he is liker to take care of than that which he thinks belongeth no more to him than others and how necessary Order is in all matters of weight the experience of all Governments Societies and Persons may soon convince us § 20. Nature telleth us also that it is the duty of such Teachers to be very diligent serious and plain and of Learners to be thankful willing studious respectful and rationally-obedient as remembring the great importance of the work For in vain is the labour of the Teachers if the Learners will not do their part the Receiver hath the chief benefit and therefore the greatest part of the duty which must do most to the success § 21. Nature telleth men that they should not live loosely and ungoverned but in the order of governed Societies for the better attainment of the ends of their Creation as is proved before § 22. Nature telleth us that Governours should be the most wise and pious and just and merciful and diligent and exemplary laying out themselves for the publick good and the pleasing of the universal Sovereign § 23. It teacheth us also that Subjects must be faithful to their Governours and must honour and obey them in subordination to God § 24. Nature telleth us that it is the Parents duty with special love and diligence to educate their children in the knowledge fear and obedience of God providing for their bodies but preferring their souls § 25. And that children must love honour and obey their Parents willingly and thankfully receiving their instructions and commands § 26. Nature also telleth us that thus the Relations of Husband and Wife should be sanctified to the highest ends of life and also the Relation of Master and Servant and that our callings and labours in the world should be managed in pure obedience to God and to our ultimate end § 27. Nature teacheth all men to love one another as servants of the same God and members of the same universal Kingdom and creatures of the same specifick nature There is somewhat amiable in every man for there is something of God in every man and therefore something that it is our duty to love And that according to the excellency of man's nature which sheweth more of God than other inferiour creatures do and also according to their additional virtues Loveliness commandeth love and love maketh lovely This with all the rest afore-mentioned are so plain that to prove them is but to be tedious § 28. Nature telleth us that we should deal justly with all giving to every one his due and doing to them as we would be done by § 29. Particularly it telleth us that we must do nothing injuriously against the life or health or liberty of our neighbour but do our best for their preservation and comfort § 30. Man being so noble a creature and his education so necessary to his welfare and promiscuous unregulated generation tending so manifestly to confusion ill education divisions and corruption of mankind and unbridled exercise of lust tending to the abasement of reason and corruption of body and mind Nature telleth us that carnal copulation should be very strictly regulated and kept within the bounds of lawful marriage and that the contract of marriage must be faithfully kept and no one defile his neighbours bed nor wrong another's chastity or their own in thought word or deed This proposition though Boars understand it not is proved in the annexed reasons Nothing would tend more to houshold divisions and ill education and the utter degenerating and undoing of mankind than ungoverned copulation No one would know his own children if lust were not bounded by strict and certain Laws and then none would love them nor provide for them nor would they have any certain ingenuous education Women would become most contemptible and miserable as soon as beauty faded and lust was satisfied and
himself our Benefactor nor nevertheless near us What nearness to us they have we are much uncertain but that he himself is our total Benefactor and always with us as near to us as we are to our selves is past all question and proved before 2. There neither is nor can be any object so suitable for our LOVE as God he hath all Goodness in him and all in the creature is derived from him and dependeth on him and he hath given us all that ever we our selves received and must give us all that ever we shall receive hereafter He is all-sufficient for the supply of all our wants and granting all our just desires and making us perfect all that he doth for us he doth in Love as an intellectual free Agent and he is still present with us upholding us and giving us the very Love which he demandeth and he created us for Himself to be his Own and gave us these faculties to know and love him And can any then be a more suitable object of our love 3. Do you not find that your understandings have a suitableness or inclination to Truth and Knowledge and would you not know the best and greatest things and know the cause of all the wonderful effects which you see and what is this but to know God And do you not find that your Wills have a suitableness to good as such in the general and to your own felicity And do you not know that it should not be unnatural to any man to love the best which is best and especially which is best for him and to love him best who is his greatest Benefactor and most worthy of his love in all respects And can you doubt whether God be most worthy of your love All this is plain and sure And will mens averseness to the love of God then disprove it It is natural for man to desire knowledge as that which perfecteth his understanding and yet Boys are averse to learn their Books because they are slothful and are diverted by the love of play What if your servants be averse and slothful to your service doth it follow that it is not their duty or that you hired them not for it What if your wife and children be averse to love you is it therefore none of their duty so to do Rebels are averse to obey their Governours and yet it is their duty to obey them If your child or any one that is most beholden to you should be averse to love and gratitude to you as thousands are to their Parents and Benefactors will it follow that Nature obliged them not to it 4. What can you think is suitable to your love if God be not is it lust or play or meat and drink and ease A Swine hath a nature as suitable to these as you Is it only to deal ingenuously and honourably in providing for the flesh and maintaining the fuel of these sensualities by Buildings Trading Manufactures Ornaments and Arts All this is but to have a reason to serve your sense and so the swinish part still shall be the chief for that which is the chief and ruling object with you doth shew which is the chief and regnant faculty If sensual objects be the chief than Sense is the chief faculty with you And if you had the greatest wit in the world and used it only to serve your guts and throats and lusts in a more effectual and ingenious way than any other men could do this were but to be an ingenuous beast or to have an Intellect bound in service to your bellies And can you think that things so little satisfying and so quickly perishing are more suitable objects for your love than God 5. What say you to all them that are otherwise minded and that take the Love of God for their work and happiness They find a suitableness in God to their highest esteem and love and are they not as fit Judges for the affirmative as you for the negative Obj. They do but force themselves to some acts of fancy Answ You see that they are such acts as are the more serious and prevalent in their lives and can make them lay by other pleasures and spend their days in seeking God and lay down their lives in the exercise and hopes of Love And that it is you that follow fancy and they that follow solid reason is evident in the reason of your several ways That world which you set above God is at last called Vanity by all that try it Reason will not finally justifie your choice but I have here shewed you undeniable reason for their choice and love and therefore it is they that know what they do and obey the Law of Nature which you obliterate and contradict Obj. But we see the Creature but God we see not and we find it not natural to us to love that which we do not see Answ Is not Reason a nobler faculty than sight if it be why should it not more rule you and dispose of you Shall no Subjects honour and obey their King but those that see him You can love your mony and land and friends when they are out of sight Obj. But these are things visible in their nature Answ They are so much the more vile and less amiable Your own Souls are invisible will you not therefore love them You never saw the life or form of any Plant or living Wight you see the beauty of your Roses and many other flowers but you see not the life and form within which causeth all that beauty and variety which yet must be more excellent than the effect Can you doubt whether all things which appear here to your sight have an invisible Cause and Maker or can you think him less amiable because he is invisible that is more excellent 6. In a word it is most evident that all this averseness of mens hearts to the Love of God is their sin and pravity and the unsuitableness of their nature is because they are vitiated with sensuality and deceived by sensible things a disease to be cured and not defended Their sin will not prove the contrary no duty 7. And yet while we are in flesh though God be not visible to us his works are and it is in them the frame of the world that he hath revealed and exposed Himself to our love It is in this visible Glass that we must see his Image and in that Image must love him and if we will love any Goodness we must love his for all is his and as his should be loved by us CHAP. XIII Experiments of the difficulty of all this Duty and what it will cost a man that will live this holy life HItherto I have proved that there is a GOD of Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness the Creator and consequently the Owner the Ruler and the Father or Chief Good of Man and that Man as his creature is absolutely his own and
unjust that the fullest evidence for their Justification doth but seem to aggravate their faults and nothing is so great a Crime as their highest Virtues Or if their Justification be undenyable they rage the more because they are hindered from making them suffer as deeply in their Names as in their Bodies These things are no more questionable than the Warrs of Alexander or Caesar the World having longer proof and fuller evidence of them § 15. And ordinarily God himself so ordereth it that his faithfullest Subjects shall be the deepest sufferers in this life § 16. Therefore self-denyal mortification contempt of the World and patience under manifold sufferings from God and Man are necessary to all who will be faithfull to God in the unquestionable duties before described It is tryed Friendship and Obedience which is most valuable And unwholsom pleasures though preferred by the foolish Patient are forbidden by our wise Physician that they hinder not our health and greater Pleasures § 17. Therefore if Worldly fleshly pleasures were our end and chief Good the best men would have the smallest measure of them Obj. But you restrain man further than God restraineth him and binde him to more than God bindeth him to and make superstition to seem his duty and then raise these consequences from such Premises Answ What I mean by sin and duty I have so fully opened before and proved to be such by the light of Reason that this Objection hath no place Even the sober Heathens the Greek Philosophers and Romane Worthies found and confessed all this to be true If there be any thing in the Life before described which all sound Reason doth not justifie and command let him that is able manifest so much If not it is no superstition to live as a man that is governed by God and led by Reason and to do that which all our faculties were made for And for austerities I have pleaded for none which are not become needfull to our own preservation and felicity As a Patient will endure a strict dyet and exercise and blood-letting and bitter Physick for his health It is not any affected unprofitable austerities that I plead for but those which are for our good and fit us for our duty and keep the flesh from rebelling against Reason and keep Man from living like a Beast Even less than many of the Philosophers plead for and he that useth but thus much which is needfull will finde it both opposed as unsufferable by the World and murmured against by his suffering and displeased Flesh and that the Soul cannot do its duty but at a considerable cost and trouble to the Body Though there may be an evil masked and cunningly moderated which men call Goodness which may be had at a cheaper rate But saith Seneca truly Non est Bonitas pessimis esse meliorem CHAP. XIV That there is a Life of Retribution after this TO know whether there be a Life after this for men to receive Rewards or Punishments in is a matter of greatest importance to Mankinde to be fully resolved in upon which depend our Comforts and our Religion and without which we know not what to expect to hope for or to fear nor what to intend and seek after through our lives nor how to order our hearts or actions This therefore I shall inquire into by the help of Reason and Natural evidence as one that would not be deceived nor deceive in so great a matter And I shall pass by those arguments which are commonly fetcht from the Souls immateriality and independence upon matter and other such like which are commonly to be found in Physicks and Metaphysicks as being not such as my present method leadeth me to and shall make use of such as are the necessary consectaries of the certain Truths already proved Object But whatever Rationalities may be drawn from the Divine Attributes to prove a future state yet it depending wholly on the Divine Will and the Divine Will being absolutely free we can have no rational inducements to bring us to any sufficient knowledge of it but by a clear Revelation of the Divine Will Answ Is the Law of Nature no clear Revelation of Gods will or is it a Law without any Rewards or Penalties It depended on Gods will whether man should be his Subject or no obliged to obey him But doth it follow therefore that it cannot be proved By making him a Rational free Agent and sociable placed among occasions of good and evil God did reveal that it was his will that Man should be his Subject and obey him One action of God doth oft reveal his will concerning another Those Attributes of God which signifie his Relation to us do reveal much of his will concerning what he will do with us in those Relations And though his will be free his perfections consist not with falshood and mutability If in freedom you include indetermination then when we prove the determination of it ad unum you will plead no longer that it is free no more than it is yet free whether he will make the World § 1. I. He that is the most Righteous Governour of the World making a just difference by Rewards and Punishments between the obedient and the wicked which yet he maketh not in this life will certainly make it after this life But God is the most Righteous Governour of the World making a just difference by Rewards and Punishments between the obedient and the wicked which yet he maketh not in this life Therefore he will make it after this life That God is the Governour of the World in a proper sense by Laws and Moral Government is proved And that he is Righteous is contained in the Perfections of his Nature To deny either of these is to deny him to be God That his Laws of Nature have not only Precepts of Duty but sanctions of Reward and Punishment is also proved And further may be thus 1. If there be no Rewards or Punishments there is no Judgement or Execution But there is Judgement and Execution for they are parts of Government Ergo 2. Without Rewards and Punishments Precepts would be vain to such as us and uneffectual as to their ends But God hath not made his Laws in vain Ergo. Obj. Governours use not to give men Rewards for their Obedience subjects must obey without Reward Answ It is not the Name but the Thing that we enquire of Call it a Benefit if you had rather All Government is upheld by Rewards and Punishment Reward is either that which is common to all obedient Subjects or such as is specially proper to some All subjects that are faithfull have title to protection and approbation and justification against all false accusations and to their share in that peace and felicity of the Common-wealth which is the end of the Government And some Commonwealths having far greater felicities than others accordingly the Subjects of
what he exerciseth by men though extraordinarily he sometime otherwise interpose And how easie and ordinary it is for subtil men to do much wickedness and never be discovered needs no proof The like we may say in some measure of those secret duties of heart and life which have neither reward nor notice in this life and if observed are usually turned into matter of reproach The Minor needeth no more proof when we have proved already that God is our Governour It is certain that the secret acts of heart and life are as much under his government as the open and therefore shall have equal retribution § 3. III. If there were no life of retribution after this the sins of the Great ones and Rulers of the world and all others that by strength could make their part good would be under no sufficient Justice But the sins even of the greatest and strongest are under sufficient justice Therefore there is a life of retribution after this The Major is clear by experience The sins of all the Sovereigns of the earth are rarely under sufficient justice in this life If there were no punishment hereafter what justice would be done upon a Tamerlane a Bajazet a Mahumed a Dionysius an Alexander a Caesar a Marius a Sylla a Sertorius and many hundred such for all the innocent bloud which they have shed for their pride and self-exalting What justice would be done on Kings and Emperours and States that have none above them for all their lusts and filthiness their intemperance and sensuality their oppression and cruelty I know that God doth sometimes punish them by Rebels or by other Princes or by sickness in this life but that is no ordinary course of justice and therefore not sufficient to its ends Ordinarily all things here come alike to all And what justice would be done upon any Rebels or Robbers that are but strong enough to bear it out Or upon any that raise unrighteous Wars and burn and murder and destroy Countries and Cities and are worse than plagues to all places where they come and worse than mad dogs and bears to others If they do but conquer instead of punishment for all this villany they go away here with wealth and glory The Minor is past question Therefore certainly there is another life where conquering rewarded prospering domineering sin shall have its proper punishment § 4. IV. If God rule not man by the hopes and fears of certain Good and Evil hereafter he ruleth him not according to his Nature But God doth rule man according to his Nature Ergo. The Minor needeth no proof The Major is proved by experience The nature of man is to be most moved with the hopes and fears of Good and Evil after death Otherwise death it self would comparatively seem nothing to us No other creature hath such hopes and fears If you ask how I can tell that I answer as I can tell that a Tree doth not hear and a Stone doth not feel or see because there is no appearance of such a sense whose nature is to make it self manifest by its evidences where it is Bruits shew a fear of death and love of life but of nothing further of which there is evidence enough to quiet a mind that seeketh after truth though not to silence a prating caviller This will be further improved under that which followeth § 5. V. If the world cannot be governed according to its nature and God's Laws without the hopes and fears of Good and Evil after death then the objects of such hopes and fears is certain truth But the Antecedent is true Therefore so is the Consequent That the nature of man requireth a Moral Government and not only a Physical motion is already proved Physical motion only determineth the agent to act and produceth the act it self quoad eventum Moral Government doth institute for the subject a debitum agendi habendi and judgeth him accordingly If there were no Government but Physical motion there were no debitum in the world neither officii praemii vel poenae vel jus possidendi vel injuria no right or wrong For Physical motion doth equally produce the act in perjury murder treason adultery as in good deeds and it never produceth an act which eventually never is Therefore there should be nothing a Duty but what cometh to pass if Physical motion were all the Government Government then there must be and what God requireth of all by nature I have shewed before Now that there is a moral impossibility of the performance of this in any sincerity so as to intimate any laudible Government of the world I shall further prove 1. If according to the present temper of man there be no motives which would ever prove sufficient to resist all the temptations of this life to keep us in true obedience and love to God unto the end without the hopes and fears of Good and Evil after death then cannot the world be governed according to God's Laws without such hopes and fears of futurity But the Antecedent is true Ergo so is the consequent If God had prescribed man a course of duty in his Laws as to obey and love him upon terms of fleshly suffering and had not given man such motives as might rationally prevail for the performance his Laws had been all in vain He that hath made Holiness our indispensible duty hath certainly left us motives and rational helps to perform it But so many and great are the temptations of this life and so strong is our sense and so great are the sufferings of the obedient that in this our imperfection we could never go through them without the motives which are fetch'd from another life 1. It would weaken the hands of the best as to their duty it would embolden them to sin it would give victory to all strong temptations Let every Reader but consult with his own soul and though it be granted that virtue should be chosen for its own sake how dear soever it may cost yet let him without lying say what he thinketh he should be and do in case of temptations if he knew that he had no life to live but this I am not sure but I will freely confess what I think most that now are honest would be and do First They would observe how little difference God maketh between the obedient and disobedient in his providence and how ordinarily his present judgements are not much to be feared And hence they would think that he maketh no great matter of it what they either are or do and so their very love of Virtue would be much debilitated Nay the sufferings of the virtuous would tempt them to think that it is no very desirable way and though still they would have something within them which would tell them that honesty and temperance and piety are good yet the natural love of themselves is so deeply planted in them and so
every man to labour for an uncertain endless Glory with Angels more than for the certain pleasures of the World which are of so short continuance and to do more to scape uncertain everlasting misery than a certain trouble to the flesh for so short a time And thus a life of Godliness spent in seeking future Happiness and in escaping future Punishment is naturally made the duty of all men in the World Obj. But you seem here to forget that you had before made Godliness to be a Mans loss and undoing if so be there were no life to come when now you make the loss and hurt to be as nothing Answ 1. I spake before especially of those that suffer persecution for their fidelity I speak here especially of all the multitude of the World who get nothing but the pleasures of sin by their sensuality 2. When I speak of all the pleasures profits and honours of this World and life it self as next to nothing I do not say that they are simply nothing They are nothing compared to everlasting Joy or Misery But they are something to him that shall have no more The ease and life of a poor Bird or Beast is naturally desirable to it One of the best of Christians said that If in this life only we had hope in Christ we were of all men most miserable and yet that The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the Glory which shall be revealed in us There is no contradiction between these two that these short-lived pleasures are not worth one thought in comparison of the life to come and yet that they would be considerable if there were no other to be had and hoped for 3. And now the consequence is proved in what is said before If it should by common Reason and Nature be made all mens duty in the World to seek to attain a happiness which is not to be attained and to scape a misery which never was or will be unto any and this with the chiefest care and labour of their lives then the whole life of Man should be vanity and a lie Nature should have formed him for meer delusion to tire him out in following that which is not The World should not only be totally governed by deceit but formed principally for such a life And whereas indeed it is the Worldling that pursueth vanity and spendeth his life in a dream or shew this opinion would make mens wisdom and honesty and piety to be the vanity dream and shew But none of this can be imputed to the most wise and gracious God He need not set up a false deceitfull hope or fear before his Creatures to keep them in obedience nor hath he appointed their lives for so vain a work § 11. XI If the perfection of mans faculties to which Nature formed him be not attained in this life then is there another life where it is to be attained But the Antecedent is true Ergo so is the Consequent The reason of the consequence is because God who maketh nothing in vain made not man in vain nor his natural inclination to his own perfection His will is signified by his works As a man that makes a knife or sword or gun or ship doth tell you what he maketh it for by the usefulness and form of it so when God made man with faculties fitted to know him and love him he shewed you that he made him for that use and that therein he would employ him Obj. It would perfect the wit of a Bruit if it were raised as high as a Mans and yet it followeth not that so it shall be Answ I deny the antecedent It would not perfect him in his kinde but make him another thing of another kinde Man is more than a perfect Bruit and a Bruit is not an imperfect man But I speak of perfecting man in his own kinde according to his Nature Obj. A Chicken hath a desire to live to full maturity and yet you kill it before And Grass and Plants may be cut down before they come to perfection Answ I speak in my argument of the species of man and the objection speaketh only of some individuals If there be no higher stature for any Chicken or Plant to grow up to then that is the state of its perfection It s natural inclination to a perfecter state doth shew that nature formed it for a perfecter state and that such a state there is to be attained however by accident it may be killed or cut down before it do attain it which never befalleth all the kind but some individuals So I confess that by ill accidents by sin men may fall short of their natural perfection But natures inclination sheweth that there is such a state And the Antecedent is manifest 1. In our nature 2. In all mens experience 1. We feel in our natures a capacity of knowing all that of God which I have before laid down and that it is improvable by further light to know much more We feel that our hearts are capable of loving him and of delighting in the contemplation of the glory of his perfections And we find all other things so far below the tendancy of our faculties and the contentment of our minds that we know that this is it that we were made for and this is the proper use that our Vnderstandings and Wills were given us for 2. And we find that we attain not any such perfection in this life as we are capable of and do desire but that our encrease of virtue and holiness is an encrease of our desires after more and the better any man is the more he still desireth to be better and the more he knoweth and loveth and delighteth in God the more he desireth it in a far higher degree And even of our knowledge of nature we find that the more we know the more we would know and that he that knoweth the effect would naturally fain know the cause and that when he knoweth the nearer cause he would know the cause of that and so know the first cause God himself And the little that we here attain to of Knowledge Love and Delight is far short of the perfection in the same kind which our faculties encline unto § 12. XII Another illustration or confirming argument may be gathered from the great disparity which God hath made between Men and Beasts If God had intended us for no more knowledge and fruition of himself hereafter than the Beasts have then he would have given us no more Capacity Desire or Obligation to seek it than the Beasts have But he hath given us more Capacity Desire and Obligation to seek it Ergo. A Beast hath no knowledge that there is a God no thoughts of a Life to come no desire to know God or love him or enjoy him no obligation to take care for another life nor to provide for it nor once to consider
would not have been a full exemplification of his Doctrine nor a perfect Revelation of it to the World Example bringeth Doctrine neer our Senses and thereby maketh it more clear and powerfull § 20. It is the undertaken Office of Jesus Christ to send the Holy Spirit into Believers mindes and to write out the substance of this Law upon their hearts and give them such holy and heavenly inclinations that it may become as it were a Natural Law unto them and they obey it with love facility and delight though not in perfection till they arrive at the state of Perfection So much to shew WHAT the Christian Religion is CHAP. IV. Of the Nature and Properties of the Christian Religion HAving understood the matter and words of the Christian Religion before I proceeded any further I thought it meet to pass a judgment upon the nature temperament constitution and properties of it And therein I found that which must needs be a great preparative to belief § 1. And first I found that it is a most holy and spiritual Religion resolved into the most excellent Principles and Ends glorifying God and humbling man and teaching us the most divine and heavenly life in the love and patient service of our Creator 1. It is most Holy for it calleth us up entirely unto God and consisteth in our absolute dedication and devotedness to him 2. It is most Spiritual leading us from things carnal and terrene and being principally about the government of the Soul and placing all our felicity in things spiritual and not in fleshly pleasures with the Epicureans and Mahometans It teacheth us to worship God in a spiritual manner and not either irrationally toyishly or irreverently And it directeth our lives to a daily converse with God in holiness 3. The Principles of it are the three Essentialities of God in Unity viz. the Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness and the three grand Relations of God to Man as founded in his three most famous works viz as our Creator our Redeemer and our Regenerater or Sanctifier and the three great Relations arising from Creation and also from Redemption viz. as he is our Owner our Ruler and our Benefactor or chiefest Good and End 4. The Ends of the Christian Religion I find are proximately the saving of man from Satan and the Justice of God the sanctifying them to God and purifying them from sin the pardon of their sins and the everlasting happiness of their Souls in the pleasing and fruition of God for ever In a word it is but the redeeming us from our carnal self the world and the devil to the love and service of our Creator 5. Nothing can be spoken more honourably of God in all his perfections in the language of poor mortals than what the Christian Religion speaketh of him 6. And no Religion so much humbleth man by opening the malignity both of his original and actual sin and declaring the displeasure of God against it 7. It teacheth us who once lived as without God in the world to live wholly unto God and to make nothing of all the world in comparison of him 8. And it teacheth us to live upon the hopes of heaven and fetch our motives and our comforts from it § 2. I find that the Christian Religion is the most pure and clean and utterly opposite to all that is evil There is no vertue which it commendeth not nor duty which it commandeth not nor vice which it condemneth not nor sin which it forbiddeth not The chief thing in it which occasioneth the rebellion and displeasure of the world against it is the purity and goodness of it which is contrary to their sensual nature and as Physick to their licentious lives would it indulge their vices and give them leave to sin they could endure it § 3. Particularly it most vehemently condemneth the grand vices of Pride Worldliness and Sensuality and all their polluting and pernicious fruits 1. No Religion doth so much to teach men Humility and make Pride appear an odious thing It openeth the malignity of it as it lifteth up the mind against God or Man it condemneth it as Satans image it giveth us a multitude of humbling precepts and motives and secondeth them all with the strangest example of condescension and lowliness in Christ that was ever presented to the view of man Whereas I find even in the famousest of the Roman Heathens that a great deal of pride was taken for a virtue and men were instructed and exhorted to be proud under pretence of maintaining and vindicating their honour and true Humility was taken for disgraceful baseness and men were driven from it by the scorn not only of the vulgar but of Philosophers themselves 2. And there is no Religion that is fitted so much to the destruction of Worldliness or of the love of Riches as Christianity is for it teacheth men most effectually the vanity of the world it appointeth them a holy life so hateful to worldly men as will occasion them to feel the vexation of the world it openeth to them the hopes of a life so much better as may teach them to take all the wealth and glory of this world for a shadow a feather or a dream It condemneth worldly love as the sin inconsistent with the love of God and the certain mark of a drossy unsanctified miserable soul It setteth before us such an example of Christ as must needs shame worldliness with all true believers 3. And for Sensuality it openeth the shame of its beastiality and maketh the carnal mind and life to be enmity to God and the contrary to that spiritual mind and life which is the property of all that shall be saved It strictly and vehemently condemneth all gluttony and excess of drink all ryotting and time-wasting needless sports all fornication and ribald talk and wanton carriage words or thoughts Whereas I find among Heathens and Mahometans that inordinate sensuality was much indulged excess of eating and drinking was made a matter of no great blame time-wasting Plays were as little accused as if men had no greater matter to do in the world than to pass away time in some sensual or fantastical delight either by fornication or many wives at once their lust was gratified and so their minds were debased polluted and called down and made unfit for spiritual contemplation and a holy life From whence no doubt it came to pass that they were so dark about things spiritual and divine and so overspread with errors about many plain and necessary things § 4. There is no Religion which so notably detecteth and disgraceth the sin of SELFISHNESS nor so effectually teacheth SELF-DENIAL as the Christian Religion doth It maketh man understand the nature of his corrupt depraved state that it is a falling from GOD to SELF and that his recovery lieth in returning from SELF to GOD. It sheweth him how selfishness is the principle of divisions enmity
errour it is a way that reason teacheth all men in the trying of any questioned point to reduce it to those that are unquestionable and see whether or no they accord with those And to mark the unquestionable Ends of Religion and try how it suiteth its means thereunto And therefore men of all sober professions have their determinate principles and ends by which they try such particular opinions as Christians do by their analogy of faith And in this trial of Christianity I shall tell you what I find it § 1. I find in general that there is an admirable concord between Natural Verity and the Gospel of Christ and that Grace is medicinal to Nature and that where Natural light endeth Supernatural beginneth and that the superstructure which Christ hath built upon Nature is wonderfully adapted to its foundation This is made manifest in all the first part of this Treatise Reason which is our Nature is not destroyed but repaired illuminated elevated and improved by the Christian faith Free-will which is our Nature is made more excellently free by Christianity Self-love which is our Nature is not destroyed but improved by right conduct and help to our attainment of its ends The Natural part of Religion is so far from being abrogated by Christianity that the latter doth but subserve the former Christ is the way to God the Father The duty which we owe by Nature to our Creator we owe him still and Christ came to enable and teach us to perform it the love of God our Creator with all our hearts is still our duty and faith in Christ is but the means to the love of God and the bellows to kindle that holy fire The Redeemer came to recover us to our Creator He taketh not the Book of the Creatures or Nature out of our hands but teacheth us better to read and use it And so it is through all the rest § 2. I find also that the state of this present world is exceeding suitable to the Scripture-character of it that it is exceeding evil and a deluge of sin and misery doth declare its great necessity of a Saviour and sheweth it still to be a place unmeet to be the home and happiness of Saints Of all the parts of God's Creation this earth doth seem to be next to Hell certainly it is greatly defiled with sin and overwhelmed with manifold calamities and though God hath not totally forsaken it nor turned away his mercy as he hath done from Hell yet is he much estranged from it so that those who are not recovered by grace are next to devils And alas how numerous and considerable are they to denominate it an evil world Those that Christ calleth out of it he sanctifieth and maketh them unlike the world and his grace doth not give them a worldly felicity nor settle them in a Rest or Kingdom here but it saveth them from this world as from a place of snares and a company of cheaters robbers and murderers and from a tempestuous Sea whose waves seem ready still to drown us I. I find it is a world of Sin II. And of Temptation III. And of Calamity I. For Sin it is become as it were its nature it liveth with men from the birth to the grave It is an ignorant world that wandereth in darkness and yet a proud self-conceited world that will not be convinced of its ignorance and is never more furiously confident than when it is most deceived and most blind Even natural wisdom is so rare and folly hath the major vote and strength that wise men are wearied with resisting folly and ready in discouragements to leave the foolish world unto it self as an incurable Bedlam so fierce are fools against instruction and so hard is it to make them know that they are ignorant or to convince men of their mistakes and errours The Learner thinks his Teacher doteth and he that hath but wit enough to distinguish him from a bruit is as confident as if he were a Doctor The Learned themselves are for the most part but half-witted men who either take up with lazie studies or else have the disadvantage of uncapable temperatures and wits or of unhappy Teachers and false principles received by ill education which keep out truth so that they are but fitted to trouble the world with their contentions or deceive men by their errors and yet have they not the acquaintance with their ignorance which might make them learn of such as can instruct them but if there be among many but one that is wiser than the rest he is thought to be unfit to live among them if he will not deny his knowledge and own their errours and confess that modesty and order require that either the highest or the major vote are the masters of truth and all is false that is against their opinions It is an Atheistical ungodly world that knoweth not its Maker or forgetteth contemneth and wilfully disobeyeth him while in words it doth confess him and yet an hypocritical world that will speak honourably of God and of vertue and piety of justice and charity while they are neglecting and rejecting them and cannot endure the practice of that which their tongues commend almost all sorts will prefer the life to come in words when indeed they utterly neglect it and prefer the fleshly pleasures of this life They cry out of the vanity and vexation of the world and yet they set their hearts upon it and love it better than God and the world to come they will have some Religion to mock God and deceive themselves which shall go no deeper than the knee and tongue in forms or ceremonies or a dissembled affection and profession But to be devoted absolutely to God in self-resignation obedience and love how rare is it even in them who cannot deny but the Law of Nature it self doth primarily and undeniably oblige them to it Their Religion is but self-condemnation while their tongues condemn their hearts and lives It is a sensual bruitish world and seemeth to have hired out their reason to the service of their appetites and lusts gluttony and excess of drink and sports and plays and gaming with pride and wantonness and fornication and uncleanness and worldly pomp and the covetous gathering of provision for the flesh to satisfie these lusts is the business and pleasure of their lives and if you tell them of Reason or the Law of God to take them off you may almost as well think to reason a hungry Dog from his carrion or a lustful Boar to forbear his lust And it is a Selfish world where every man is as an idol to himself and affected to himself and his own interest as if he were all the world drawing all that he can from others to fill his own insatiable desires loving all men and honouring and esteeming and praising them according to the measure of their esteem of him or their
with the strong because he hath poured out his soul unto death and he was numbred with the transgressors and he bare the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors Isa 9.6 For unto us a Child is born unto us a Son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulders and his Name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor The mighty God The Everlasting Father the Prince of Peace of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end upon the Throne of David and upon his Kingdom to order it and to stablish it with judgement and with justice from henceforth even for ever The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this Isa 7.14 Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and shall call his name Immanuel Dan. 9.24 c. Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy City to finish the transgression and to make an end of sins and to make reconciliation for iniquity and to bring in everlasting righteousness and to seal up the Vision and Prophecy and to annoint the most Holy Know therefore and understand that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks the street shall be built and the wall even in troublous times And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off but not for himself And the people of the Prince that shall come shall destroy the City and the Sanctuary and the end thereof shall be with a floud and unto the end of the war desolations are determined And he shall confirm the Covenant with many for one week and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease and for the over-spreading of abomination he shall make it desolate even until the consummation and that determined be poured upon the desolate Mal. 3.1 2 3. Behold I will send my messenger and he shall prepare the way before me and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his Temple even the Messenger of the Covenant whom ye delight in behold he shall come saith the Lord of hosts But who may abide the day of his coming and who shall stand when he appeareth For he is like a Refiners fire and like Fullers sope and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver c. I omit the rest to avoid prolixity There is scarce any passage of the Birth Life Sufferings Death Resurrection Ascension or Glory of our Saviour which are not particularly prophesied of in the Old Testament but nothing so copiously as his Righteousness and his Kingdom The Prophesie of Isaiah is full of such and is but a Prophetical Gospel To these must be adjoyned the Prophetical Types even the typical Persons and the typical Ordinances and Actions It would be too long to open how his sufferings from the malignant world was typified in the Death of Abel and the attempted oblation of Isaac and the selling of Joseph And his work of Salvation in Noah and his preserved Ark and Family And his Paternity as to Believers in Abraham And his Kingly conduct and deliverance of the Church by Moses and his deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt and conduct of them in the Wilderness and by Joshua's victorious bringing them into the Land of Promise His Reign and Kingdom by David and his building of the Church by Solomon and his Priesthood by Aaron and his Successors c. And it would take up a just volume to open all the typical Ordinances and Actions which prefigured Christ from the institution of Circumcision and the Passover or Paschal Lamb to the end of all the Mosaical Ceremonies Christ is the signification and the end of all I will only crave your consideration of the custom of Sacrificing in the general it came into the world immediately upon mans sin we find Cain and Abel the two first persons born into the world employed in it From thence to this day it hath continued in doctrin though the practice be restrained with the Jews it was no peculiar Ceremony of their Law but hath been commonly exercised by almost all Nations through the world both Greeks Romans and Barbarians And it yet continueth in most countries of the Heathens where the Doctrin of Christ hath not abolished it as it hath done both with the Christians and Mahometans For the Mahometans borrow the confession of one God and the rejection of Idols and Sacrifices originally from the Christians Now I must confess that I am not able to satisfie my self of the original and universality of the custom of Sacrificing upon any reasons but those of the Christians either it was a prophetical promissory institution of God himself to lapsed Adam to point him to a Saviour the second Adam or else it must be from the Law of Nature or else it is from some other positive Institution or else it must be an universal Errour There can no fifth way that is probable be imagined And 1. I am not able to see that the meer Light or Law of Nature should be the original cause for then it would be all mens duty still and what reason can Nature give us to judge that God is delighted in the bloud and pain of the innocent bruits or that the killing and offering of them should be any satisfaction to his justice for our sins or any rational means to avert his judgments or procure our forgiveness If it be said that It was but a ceremonial confession that we our selves deserve death as that creature suffered it I answer Confession is indeed due from us by the Law of Nature but the question is of the killing of the poor beasts and offering them in sacrifice If the exercise of our own penitence by confession were all that might be done as well without the creatures bloud and death What is it that this addeth to a penitent confession and why was the oblation to God contained in the Sacrifice If you say that the life of bruits is not so regardable but that we take it away for our daily food I answer It s true that it is allowed us for the maintenance of our lives but yet it is not to be cast away in vain nor is God to be represented as one that doth delight in bloud And the common sense of all the world in their sacrificing hath been that besides the confession of their own desert there is somewhat in it to appease God's displeasure and none that I ever read of did take it for a meer confessing sign or action If it be said that they did it to signifie their homage to God I answer Why then did they not offer him only the living creature rather than the dead all took it to be a propitiatory action And if there had been an aptitude in this sign to betoken our penitent confession only yet when God knoweth
were sufficient in their kind before though more full and excellent since his coming If you would not be deluded into Infidelity by this objection which indeed is one of the greatest difficulties of Faith you must not further one error by another 1. Think not that God is hired or perswaded by Christ as against his will to forgive mens sins and save their souls or to do them any good Understand that no good cometh to man or any Creature but totally from Gods will and Love who is the Original and Eternal Goodness All the question is but of the modus conferendi the way of his Conveyance And then it will not seem incredible that he should give out his mercy by degrees and with some diversity 2. Think not that Christianity doth teach men that all those who were not of the Jewish Nation or Church then or that are not now of the Christian Church were so cast off and forsaken by God as the Devils are to be left as utterly hopeless or remediless nor that they were upon no other terms for salvation than man in innocency was under which was Obey perfectly and live or if thou sin thou shalt die For this had been to leave them as hopeless as the Devils when once they had sinned 3. And think not that Christ can shew no mercy nor do any thing towards the salvation of a sinner before he is known himself to the sinner especially before he is known as an incarnate Mediator or one that is to be incarnate He struck down Paul and spake to him from Heaven before Paul knew him He sent Philip to the Eunuch before he knew him and Peter to Cornelius and sendeth the Gospel to Heathen Nations before they know him If the Apostles themselves even after that they had lived long with Christ and heard his preaching and seen his Miracles yea and preached and wrought Miracles themselves did not yet understand that he must suffer and die and rise again and send down the Spirit c. you may conjecture by this what the common Faith of those before Christs coming was who were saved 4. Think not therefore that Christ hath no way or degree of effectual Teaching but by the express doctrine of his Incarnation Death and Resurrection which is now THE GOSPEL 5. And think not that all the mercies which Pagan Nations have from God are no acts of Grace nor have any tendency to their conversion and salvation Doubtless it is the same Redeemer even the eternal Wisdom and Word of God who before his Incarnation gave greater mercy to the Jews and lesser to the Gentiles He doth by these mercies oblige or lead men to Repentance and Gratitude and reveal God as mercifull and ready to forgive all capable sinners As even under the Law Exod 34. he revealed himself fullyer to Moses The Lord the Lord God mercifull and gracious long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity transgression and sin c. though he will by no means no not by Christ clear the guilty that is either say to the wicked thou art just or pardon any uncapable subject Doubtless mercy bindeth Heathens to know God as mercifull and to love him and to improve that mercy to their attainment of more and to seek after further knowledge and to be better than they are and they are set under a certain course of Means and appointed Duty in order to their recovery and salvation Else it might be said that they have nothing to do for their own recovery and consequently sin not by omitting it By all this you may perceive that Christ did much by Mercies and Teaching before his Incarnation and since for all the World which hath a tendency to their conversion recovery and salvation Obj. XI The conception of a Virgin without man is improbable and must all depend upon the credit of her own word And the meanness of his Parentage breeding and condition doth more increase the difficulty Answ 1. It was meet that the birth of Christ should begin in a Miracle when his life was to be spent and finished in Miracles 2. It is no more than was promised before by the Prophet Isa 7.14 A Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son c. And why should the fulfilling of a Prophesie by miracle be incredible 3. It is neither above nor against the Power Wisdom or Love of God and therefore it should not seem incredible There is no contradiction or impossibility in it nor any thing contrary to Sense or Reason Reason saith indeed that it is above the power of man and above the common course of Nature but not that it is above the Power of the God of Nature Is it any harder for God to cause a Virgin to conceive by the Holy Ghost than to make the first of Humane kinde or any other kinde of nothing 4. It was meet that he who was to be a Sacrifice for sin and a Teacher and pattern of perfect righteousness and a Mediator between God and Man should not be an ordinary Childe of Adam nor be himself defiled with Original or actual sin and therefore that he should be in a peculiar sense the Son of God 5. And this doth not depend only on the Credit of the Virgin-mothers word but on the multitude of Miracles whereby God himself confirmed the truth of it And as for the Meanness of his Person and Condition 1. It was a needfull part of the humiliation which he was for our sins to undergo that he should take upon him the form of a Servant and make himself of no reputation Phil. 2.7 8 9. 2. It was a suitable testimony against the pride carnality and worldly-mindedness of deluded men who over-value the honour and pleasure and riches of the World And a suitable means to teach men to judge of things aright and value every thing truely as it is The contrary whereof is the cause of all the sin and misery of the World He that was to cure men of the Love of the World and all its riches dignities and pleasure he that was to save them from this by the Office of a Saviour could not have taken a more effectual way than to teach them by his own example and to go before them in the setled contempt of all these vanities and preferring the true and durable felicity 3. Look inwardly to his God-head and spiritual perfections Look upward to his present state of Glory who hath now all power given into his hands and is made Head over all things to the Church Eph. 1.22 Look forward to the day of his glorious appearing when he shall come with all his Celestial Retinue to judge the World And then you will see the Dignity and excellency of Christ If you preferre not spiritual and heavenly dignities your selves you are uncapable of them and cannot be saved But if you do you may see the excellencies of Christ He that knoweth how
to the cause in all the entities and motions in the world is undeniable Whatsoever any Being hath and hath not originally from it self or independently in it self it must needs have from another and that other cannot act beyond its power nor give that which it hath not either formally or eminently Therefore he that findeth in the world about him so much entity and motion so much Intellection Volition and Operation and so much Wisdom Goodness and Power must needs know that all these have some cause which formally or eminently or in a way of transcendency hath more it self than it giveth to others I measured my endeavours about this subject according as the occasions of my own soul had led me among all the temptations which have at any time assaulted me I have found those so contemptible and inconsiderable as to their strength which would have made me doubt of the being of a God that I am apt to think that it is so with others And therefore in the review of this discourse I find no reason to stand to answer any mans objections against the Being or essential Attributes or Properties of God And for the second point that we all owe to this God our absolute Resignation Obedience and Love and so that Holiness is naturally our duty it doth so naturally result from the Nature of God and Man compared that I can scarce think of any thing worthy of a confutation which can be said against it but that which denieth the Nature of God or Man and therefore is either confuted under the first head or is to be confuted under the third As for the fourth particular contained in the second Tome the truth of the Gospel I find not any reason to defend it more particularly nor to answer any more objections than I have done for in proving the truth I have proved all the contradictory assertions to be false and I have answered already the greatest objections and after this to answer every ignorant exception of unsatisfied persons against the several passages of the Scripture would be tedious and not necessary to the end of my design And indeed I perceive not that any considerable number are troubled with doubtings of the truth of the Christian faith in a prevalent degree who are well convinced of those antecedent verities of the Deity and of the natural obligation and necessity of Holiness and of the Immortality of the soul or of a future life of reward and punishment and that live in any reasonable conformity to these natural principles which they profess For when natural evidence hath sufficiently convinced a man that he is obliged to be holy in absolute obedience and love to his Creator through the hopes and fears of another life he is very much prepared to close with the design and doctrine of the Gospel which is so far from contradicting this that it doth but confirm it and shew us the way by which it may most certainly be brought to pass And therefore my observation and experiences constrain me to think that there is no point which I have insisted on which so much calleth for my vindication as the third about the Life to come I know there is a sort of over-wise and over-doing Divines who will tell their followers in private where there is none to contradict them that the method of this Treatise is perverse as appealing too much to natural light and over-valuing humane reason and that I should have done no more but shortly tell men that All that which God speaketh in his word is true and that propria luce it is evident that the Scripture is the Word of God and that to all God's Elect he will give his Spirit to cause them to discern it and that this much alone had been better than all these disputes and reasons but these over-wise men who need themselves no reason for their Religion and judge accordingly of others and think that those men who rest not in the authority of Jesus Christ should rest in theirs are many of them so well acquainted with me as not to expect that I should trouble them in their way or reason against them who speak against reason even in the greatest matters which our reason is given us for As much as I am addicted to scribling I can quietly dismiss this sort of men and love their zeal without the labour of opening their ignorance My task therefore in this conclusion shall be only to defend the doctrine delivered in this fore-going Treatise of the Life to come or the Soul's Immortality against some who call themselves Philosophers For of men so called it is but a small part who at all gainsay this weighty truth The followers of Plato the Divine Philosopher with the Pythagoreans the Stoicks the Cynicks and divers other Sects are so much for it that indeed the most of them go too far and make the soul to be eternal both à parte arte and à parte post and Cicero doth conclude from its self-moving power that it is certainly eternal and divine Insomuch that not only Arnobius but many other ancient Christians write so much against Plato for holding the soul to be naturally immortal and assert themselves that it is of a middle nature between that which is naturally immortal and that which is meerly mortal that he that doth not well understand them may be scandalized at their expressions and think that he readeth the Philosopher defending the souls immortality and the Christian opposing it And though Aristotle's opinion be questioned by many yet Cicero who lived in time and places wherein he had better advantage than we to know his meaning doth frequently affirm that he was in the main of Plato's mind and that the Academicks Peripateticks and Stoicks differed more in words than sense chiding the Stoicks for their schism or separation in setting up a School or Sect as new which had almost nothing new but words Not only Fernelius de abditis rerum causis but many others have vindicated Aristotle however his obscurity hath given men occasion to keep up that controversie And if the book de Mundo be undoubtedly his I see no reason to make any more question of his meaning much less if that book be his which is entitled Mystica Aegypt Chald. Philos which Aben Ama Arabs translated out of Greek into Arabick which Franc. Roseus brought from Damascus and Moses Rovas Medicus Haebr translated into Italian and Pet. Nicol. Castelinus into Latine and Patricius thinketh Aristotle took from Plato's mouth It is only then the Epicureans and some novel Somatists that I have now to answer who think they have much to say against the separated subsistence and immortality of mans soul which I may reduce to these objections following I. Matter and Motion without any more may do all that which you ascribe to incorporeal substances or souls therefore you assert them without ground II. To confirm this
Drake We agree with you in Religion against the Portugals that we must not worship flocks and stones Fuller's Holy State in the Life of Sir Francis Drake out of a M.S. of one of his company What a scandal is such Worship against the Christian cause Act. 9.31 As for the grand controversie of per se aut per alium read Grotius de Imper. pag. 290 291. Nam illud quod quis per alium facit per se facere videtur ad eas duntaxat pertinet actiones quarum causa efficiens proxima à jure indefinita est Dr. Jer. Taylor of Repent â—ref I am sure we cannot give account of Souls of which we have no notice Leg. Athanas Patri Constantine de necessaria Episcop residentia Si vis Deorum speciem apprehendere proprietates Animae rationalis ultimae cogita oppositas in perfectione Diis attribue Jamblit de Myster per Ficiâ— * When Machumet had taken Constantinople and demanded of the Patriarch an account of the Christian saith Georg. Scholarius alias Gennadius then Patriarch wrote that brief summary which you may find in Mart. Crusius his Turco Graec. l. 2. Hist Eccles p. 10 c. which very well openeth the mystery of the Trinity and of Christianity with seven reasons of it Trâ— Platâ— and Aristotle were of one opinion abode the Soul Mirandula and Mars Ficinus upon Priscians â—heophrastus de Anima have largely laboured to evince Galen is known to speak many objections against Plato and the Soul's immortality but in other places he speaketh doubtfully And if really Neâ—esius had those words out of such a book of Galen as he citeth de Ani. c. 2. p. 481. he would then seem to have thought better of the Rational Soul Plotinus his last words were as Porphyry saith in his life I am now returning that which is Divine in us to that which is Divine in the Universe The Platonists opinion that the Soul is all the Man and that Animus cujusque is est quisque is incomparably more probable and of honester tendency than theirs that think the Body is all the Man Qui putant hominem esse ex Anima corporeque compositum consequenter utile à justo sejungunt Qui vero hominem esse animam conjungunt Proclus de Anim. doem per Ficin What then will they hold and do that think man is tantum corpus For as Proclus there saith and Cicero oft most Philosophers agree that vivere secundum suam naturam is man's great duty and felicity Therefore as men differ about man's Nature they will differ about his Duty and felicity They that think he is all Body will describe his work and his happiness accordingly a truth of sad and desperate consequence The truth is as Fire is per essentiam a moving enlightning heating substance so the soul is per essentiam a Life or Vital Principle and therefore as Porphyry argueth for the soul to die is for life it self to die or that which is per essentiam life to cease to be what it is Quibusdam qui ne ignem calere putant nisi cum manu contrectarint nihil credendum esse placet quod supra progredientem naturam videatur Multorum quoque studia tardantur quod id credere noluit quod minus sub â—orum cognitionem cadit quae errorum pravitas ex ingeniorum imbecilitate defluxit siquidem cum sensuum angustiae ex quibus hominem agnitio eruitur in externorum sensilium genere versentur satis notum esse debet his tanquam compedibus intelligentiae cursum retardari divinaque capessere nequire Paul Cartesâ—n 1 Sent. dis 9. p. 22. Read the Mystic Aegypt Chald. Philos to prove that souls are not corporeal and Nemesius and Mammertus If the soul be nothing but Matter and Motion then no man is the same this year as he was the last For Matter is in fluxu continuo as they object themselves anon We have not the same slesh and bloud to day which we lately had and the motion of this instant is not the same with the motion which succeedeth in the next So that no man's soul and consequently no man is long the same and so as I have said after Kings will lose their titles to their Crowns and all men to their lands as being not the same who were born heirs to them And there must be no rewards or punishments unless you will reward and punish one for another's faults And they need no more to fear the pain or death which will befall them than that which befall their neighbour because it is not the man that now is who must undergo it Nor should any man have a wife or child of his own one year together If they like not these consequents let them either prove that Identifying Matter and Motion are permanent or grant that some other permanent thing doth identifie the person See this as the argument of Ammonius and Numenias prest by Nemesius de Anim. c. 2. p. 477. Vid. Clean this argumenta pro animae corporeitate à Nemesio profligata ibid. p. 479 c. If the doctrine of Matter and Motion only were true there would never be any true miracles in the world but all things go on from motion to motion as the first touch did put them into a necessity whereas however the world hath been deluded by many fictions yet many certain miracles there have been Whether the removing of the mountain by saith mentioned by M. Paulus Venetus J. 1. cap. 18. be true or not and the non-dissolution of excommunicate bodies in Constantinople mentioned in Mart. Crusius his Hist Eccles Turco graec l. 2. with multitudes of the likes which most Historians have c. Yet certainly that there have been some such hath been fully proved unto many Those that fly to this ingenita dispositio vel pondus will in other words grant that Nature form or quality which they deny And those that grant nothing to move but former motion must needs make some degrees of motion daily to diminish in the World one thing or other still ceasing its motion and all motion within our knowledge having such constant impedition that before this time we may think all things would have stood still if their opinion were true If they say that the Sun or some superior Movers renew the motion of things inferior I grant it But that is because it hath a moving nature For if they say that the Sun it self hath not the least impedition to diminish the degrees of its motion they speak not only without any proof but contrary to our observation of all things known and to their own opinion who make the Air impeditive to other motions and the effluvia of other Globes to be impeditive to the Sun Sane ignis aër aqua terra suapte natura carent anima cuicunque horum adest anima hoc vita utitur peregrina Alia vero praeter haec nulla sunt corpora Plotin Ennead