it is God's own attestation I have shewed before § 66. I have opened the validity of the Apostles testimony of the Resurrection and miracles of Christ and the first Churches certain testimony of the miracles of the Apostles both of them having a three-fold certainty Moral Natural and Supernatural In all which I have supposed that such a testimony the Churches have indeed given down to their posterity which is the thing that remaineth lastly to be here proved § 67. The doctrine and miracles of Christ and his Apostles have been delivered us down from the first Churches by all these following ways of history 1. By delivering to us the same writings of the Apostles and Evangelists which they received from their hands themselves as certain truth and delivered down as such to us even the holy Scriptures of the New Testament They that believed their words believed their writings and have told us their belief by preserving them for posterity as Sacred Verities In the holy Scriptures the life and death and doctrine of Christ is contained with the doctrine of the Apostles and so much of the history of their Preaching and Miracles as Luke was an eye-witness of or had certain knowledge of who was commonly Pauls companion by which we may partly judge of the Acts of the rest of the Apostles And if the Churches had not believed all these they would not have delivered them as the infallible Writings of the inspired Apostles to their Posterity § 68 2. The very successive Being of Christians and Churches is the fullest history that they believed those things which made them Christians and Churches which was the doctrine and miracles of Christ A Christian is nothing else but one that receiveth the Doctrine Resurrection and Miracles of Christ as certain truth by the preaching and Miracles of his great Witnesses the Apostles so many Christians as there ever were so many believers of these things there have been It was this Doctrine and Miracles that made them Christians and planted these Churches And if any man think it questionable whether there have been Christians ever since Christs time in the World All history will satisfie him Roman Mahometan Jewish and Christian without any one dissenting voice Pliny Suetonius Tacitus Marcellinus Eunapius Lucian and Porphyry and Julian and all such enemies may convince him He shall read the history of their sufferings which will tell him that certainly such a sort of persons there was then in the World § 69. 3. The succession of Pastors and Preachers in all generations is another proof For it was their office to read publickly and preach this same Scripture to the Church and World as the truth of God I speak not of a succession of Pastors in this one City or that or by this or that particular way of ordination having nothing here to do with that But that a certain succession there hath been since the dayes of the Apostles is past question For 1. Else there had been no particular Churches 2. Nor no baptism 3. Nor no publick Worship of God 4. Nor no Synods or Discipline But this is not denyed § 70. 4. The continuance of Baptism which is the kernel or sum of all Christianity proveth the continuance of the Christian Faith For all Christians in Baptism were baptized into the vowed belief and obedience of the Son and Holy Ghost as well as of the Father § 71. 5. The delivering down of the three breviate Symbols of Faith Desire and Duty the Creed Lords Prayer and Decalogue is the Churches delivery of the Christian Religion as that which all Christians have believed § 72. 6. The constant communion of the Church in solemn Assemblies and setting apart the Lords Day to that use was a delivery of the Christian Faith which those assemblies all professed to believe § 73. 7. The constant preaching and reading of these same Scriptures in those Assemblies and celebrating there the Sacrament of Christs death and the custom of open professing their Belief and the Prayers and praises of God for the Resurrection and Miracles of Christ are all open undenyable testimonies that these things were believed by those Churches § 74. 8. The frequent disputes which Christians in all ages have held with the adversaries of the Scripture and Christianity do shew that they believed all these Scriptures and the Doctrines and Miracles therein contained § 75. 9. The Writings of the Christians in all ages their Apologies Commentaries Histories Devotional treatises all bear the same testimony that we have these things by their tradition § 76. 10. The Confessions Sufferings and Martyrdom of many in most ages do bear the same testimony that they believed this for which they suffered and that posterity received it from them § 77. 11. The Decrees and Canons of the Synods or Councils of the Bishops of the Churches are another part of the history of the same belief § 78. 12. Lastly the decrees and laws of Princes concerning them are another part of the history shewing that they did believe these things § 79. And if any question whether our Scriptures which contain these histories and doctrines be indeed the same which these Churches received and delivered from the Apostles he may easily be convinced as followeth § 80. 1. Various Copies of it in the Hebrew and Greek text were very quickly scattered about the World and are yet found in all Nations agreeing in all material passages § 81. 2. These Scriptures were translated into many Languages of which there are yet extant the Syriack Arabick Ethiopick Persian c. which agree in all material things § 82. 3. It was the stated Office of the Ministers in all the Churches in the World to read these Scriptures openly to the People and preach on them in all their solemn Assemblies And a thing so publickly maintained and used could not possibly be altered materially § 83. 4. All private Christians were exhorted to read and use the same Scriptures also in their Families and in secret § 84. 5. This being through so many Nations of the World it was not possible that they could all agree upon a corruption of the Scriptures nor is there mention in any history of any attempt of any such agreement § 85. 6. If they would have met together for that end they could not possibly have all consented Because they were of so many mindes and parties and inclinations § 86. 7. Especially when all Christians by their Religion take it to be matter of damnation to adde to or diminish from these sacred Writings as being the inspired Word of God § 87. 8. And every Christian took it for the rule of his Faith and the Charter for his heavenly Inheritance and therefore would certainly have had his action against the Corrupters of it As the Laws of this Land being recorded and having Lawyers and Judges whose calling is continually to use them and men holding their Estates and safety by them if any would alter them all
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
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
the less do forfeit his mercies by their inhumane and irrational ingratitude and abuse Which is the sin of all proud covetous voluptuous persons the ambitious fornicators gluttons drunkards and lovers of sports recreations idleness or any pleasure as it turneth them from God § 34. Above all other sin we should most take heed of the inordinate love of any creature for it self or for our carnal self alone because it is most contrary to our love to God which is our highest work and duty § 35. Those mercies of God are most to be valued desired and sought which shew us most of God himself or most help up our love to him § 36. We must love both our natural selves and neighbours the bad as well as the good with a love of benevolence desiring our own good and theirs But at the same time we must hate our selves and them so far as wicked with the hatred of Displicency and with the love of Complacency must only so far love our selves or others as the Image of Divine Goodness is in us or them I speak not of the meer natural passion of the parent to the child which is common to man and beast nor of the exercises of love in outward acts for those may be directed by God's commands to go more to one as a wicked child that hath less true amiableness in him But all holy love must be suited to the measures of the truest object § 37. The love of God should be with all our soul and with all our might not limited suppressed or neglected but be the most serious predominant action of our souls How easie a matter is it to prove Holiness to be naturally mans greatest duty when love to God which is the summ of it is so easily proved to be so All the reason in the world that is not corrupted but is reason indeed must confess without any tergiversation that it is the most great and unquestionable duty of man to love God above all yea with all our heart and soul and might And he that doth so shall never be numbred by him with the ungodly for those are inconsistent § 38. The exercises of love to God in complacency desire seeking c. should be the chief employment of our thoughts For the thoughts are the exercise of a commanded faculty which must be under the power of our will and the ultimate end and the exercises of love to it should daily govern them And what a man loveth most usually he will think of with his most practical powerful thoughts if not with the most frequent § 39. The love of God should employ our tongues in the proclaiming of his praise and benefits and expressing our own admiration and affection to kindle the like in the souls of others For the same God who is so amiable hath given us our speech with the rest of his benefits and given it us purposely to declare his praise Reason telleth us that we have no higher worthier or better employment for our tongues and that we should use them to the best The tongues of men are adorned with language for charitable and pious communication that they may be fit to affect the hearts of others and to kindle in them that sacred fire which is kindled in themselves Therefore that tongue which is silent to its Makers praise and declareth not the Goodness and Wisdom and power of the Lord and doth not divulge the notice of his benefits condemneth it self and the heart that should employ it as neglecting the greatest duty it was made for § 40. The lives of Gods Beneficiaries should be employed to his praise and pleasure and should be the streaming effects of inward love And all his mercies should be improved to his service from a thankful heart All this hath the fullest testimony of reason according to the rules of proportion and common right To whom should we live but to him from whom and by whom we live What but our ultimate end should be principally intended and sought through our whole lives A creature that hath all from God should in love and gratitude bring back all to him and thus we make it more our own § 41. This Life of Love should be the chiefest Delight and Pleasure of our Souls which all other pleasure should subserve and all be abhorred which contradicteth it Nothing is easilier confessed by all than the desirableness of Delight and Pleasure and the most excellent object which most be most beloved must be our chief delight for Love it self is a delighting act unless some stop do turn it aside into fears and sorrows Nothing can it self be so delectable as God the chiefest Good and no employment so delectable as loving him This therefore should be our work and our recreation our labour and our pleasure our food and feast Other delights are lawful and good so far as they further these delights of holy love by carrying up our hearts to the original and end of all our mercies and delights But nothing is so injurious to God and us as that which corrupteth our minds with sensuality and becometh our Pleasure instead of God § 42. The sense of the present imperfection of our Love should make us long to know God more and to love him and delight in him and praise him in perfection to the utmost extent of our capacities If it be so good to love God then must the highest degree of it be best and reason teacheth us when we feel how weak our Knowledge and Love is to long for more yea for perfection § 43. Thus hath Reason shewed us the end and highest felicity of man in his highest duty To Know God to Love him and Delight in him in the fullest Perfection and to be Loved by him and be fully pleasing to him as herein bearing his Image is the felicity and the ultimate end of man LOVE is mans final act excited by the fullest Knowledge and God so beheld and enjoyed in his Love to us is the final Object And here the Soul must seek its Rest Obj. But quae supra nos nihil ad nos God indeed is near to Angels but he hath made them our Benefactors and they have committed it to inferiour Causes there must be suitableness as well as excellency to win love we find no suitableness between our hearts and God And therefore we believe not that we were made for any such employment And we see that the far greatest part of mankind are as averse to this life of Holiness as our selves and therefore we cannot think but that it is quite above the nature of man and not the work and end which he was made for Answ 1. Whether God have made Angels or Rulers or Benefactors or what love or honour we owe them as his Instruments is nothing to our present business For if it be granted that he thus useth them it is most certain that he is nevertheless
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
therefore should resign himself as his own to his disposal and that he is absolutely his subject and therefore should most exactly and diligently obey him and I have shew'd particularly wherein also that Man is his Total Beneficiary and made to love him as his chief Good and End and therefore should totally devote himself to him in gratitude and love and desire him seek him and delight in him above all the world and live in his praises and continual service All this is fully proved to be Man's duty And now let us see on what terms he standeth in the world for the performance of it § 1. There is in the present disposition of Man a great averseness to such a life of Resignation Obedience and Love to God as is before described even when he cannot deny it to be his duty and to be the best most honourable and most felicitating life Too sad experience confirmeth this The bad are so averse that they will not be perswaded to it the godly have such a mixture of averseness as findeth them matter of continual conflict It is this aversness which serveth instead of arguments against it or which is a pondus to the very judgment and maketh it so hard to believe any arguments which go against so strong a contrary inclination § 2. We find that the senses of men are grown masterly and inordinate and are too eagerly set upon their objects and hold down the mind from rising higher and cause it to adhere to things terrene So that man's life now is like that of the bruits it is things of the same nature that he valueth and adhereth to and most men live to no higher ends but to enjoy their sensual pleasure while they may § 3. We find that Reason in most men is so debilitated that it cannot potently reduce it self into action nor see that practically which speculatively it confesseth nor clearly and powerfully observe those Perfections of God in his works nor those Duties of man which we are convinced to be true but by inconsiderateness and dull apprehensions is almost as no reason to them and falleth down before their sensuality § 4. Hereupon men grow strangers unto God and have no thoughts of him but dark and dull and ineffectual § 5. The world is full of allurements to the flesh and those Mercies which should raise the mind to God are made the food of this sensuality and the greatest means to keep it from him Sense is irrational and fastneth on its object and when Reason faileth in its office there we are left like Dogs gnawing upon a Carrion and in greediness fighting for it with each other when we have separated the creature from God in our minds and so deprived it of its life and beauty which fitted it for another use And when every place and state of life hath such baits as these which hourly are allureing a mind so weakly fortifi'd against them no wonder if they do prevail § 6. Education custom and ill example confirm these vicious habits with the most and much encrease them § 7. The best have some of this inordinate sensuality and weakness of Reason and are imperfect in virtue and are tempted by the world as well as others § 8. Therefore no man can live to God according to his certain duty who will not deny the desires of his flesh and bring it into subjection and live in vigilancy and daily conflict against its lusts Obj. But the appetite of meat and drink and sleep and ease and venery and sport and pleasure and gain and honour is natural to us and that which is natural is no vice nor to be denied or destroyed Answ It is natural to have the appetite but it is the disease of nature that this appetite is inordinate and no otherwise natural than the Leprosie is to those to whom it is propagated by their Parents But is it natural to you to have lust and appetite and is it not natural to you to have Reason to moderate and rule them If not it is natural to you to be Bruits and not natural to you to be men What is more natural to Man than to be Rational is it not his essential form And whether is Reason or Appetite think you naturally made to be the predominant faculty Should the Horse rule the Rider or the Rider the Horse The Soul and Body are much like the Rider and the Horse bethink you which should naturally rule § 9. The inordinacy of the fleshly appetite and phantasie maketh it a continual pain to the flesh to be restrained and denied As it is to a head-strong wilful Horse to be governed the more inordinate the appetite is the more it is pained by denial and restraint § 10. The far greatest part of the world do live an ungodly sensual life and the interest of the flesh is predominant in them Sad Experience puts this quite out of controversie § 11. Vsually the more Riches and Fullness of all Provisions for the flesh men possess the more sensual and vicious they are It is not alwayes so but that its usually so we need no proof but the knowledge of the World nor need we take it from Christ only as a point of Faith That its hard for a Rich man to enter into Heaven And Reason telleth us that when the love of the World above God is the mortal sin those are most in danger of it to whom the World appeareth most lovely And they that have most temptations are in the greatest danger to miscarry § 12. The Rich are commonly the Rulers of the World who have the liberties estates and lives of others much in their power I never yet knew or heard of that place where the poor long ruled § 13. Commonly the more averse men are to Godliness and the more prone to sensuality the less can they endure those that would perswade them to Godliness from their sensual Lives or that give them the Example of a holy self-denying life For as it seemeth intolerable to them to leave their sensuality and to betake themselves to a contrary life which they are so averse to so they take him as an enemy to them that would draw them to it and are furious against him as a hungry Dog against him that would take away his Carrion Experience puts this past all doubt of which more anon § 14. Hence it cometh to pass that in all parts of the World the fore-described life of Godlyness is the matter of the common hatred scorn and cruel persecution of the sensual and ungodly The more exactly any man shall set himself to obey God the more he crosseth the lusts and carnal Interest of the wicked and the more he commonly suffereth in the World So full of malice and prejudice is the World against such faithfull Subjects of God that they slander them and make them seem the most odious sort of men And so unreasonable are they 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
them have their right and part And this is the common reward or benefit of obedience and fidelity Besides which some great exploits are usually rewarded with some special praemium In humane Kingdoms as such the End is no higher than the Beginning Temporal Governours give but temporal Rewards The felicities of the Kingdom which are the ends of Government as they are from Man are but temporal and our share in them is all our Reward from men But the original and end of the Kingdom of God are higher and of further prospect The benefits of fidelity are greater as shall be further proved But let it be noted that this Objection saith nothing against a life of Punishment Governours never leave their Precepts without this sanction And he that believeth future Punishment will easily believe a future Reward Let it also be noted that Paternal Government hath evermore Rewards in the strictest sense that is a special favour and kindness shewed to the Childe that is specially obedient and so the rest according to their measures But the Kingdom of God is A PATERNALL KINGDOM as is proved That God will make in his Retributions a just difference between the good and bad is proved from his Justice in Government If his Laws make no difference then men are left at liberty to keep or break them nor can it rationally be expected that they should be kept Nor could he be said so much as to love or approve or justifie the obedient more than the rebellious But so unholy a Nature and so indifferent between sin and duty and so unwise and unjust in governing is not to be called God Either he justly differenceth or he doth not Govern That God maketh not a sufficient differencing Retribution in this life is the complaint of some and the confession of almost all the World The bad are commonly the greatest and the Lords and Oppressors of the Just The Turks the Tartarians the Moscovites the Persians the Mogull and more such brutish Monarchs who use the people as the slaves of their pride and lust do take up the far greatest part of the Earth Few places are so good where Goodness exposeth not men to sufferings from the rabble of the vulgar if not from the Governours slanders and abuses are the common lot of those that will differ from the carnal wilde rebellious Rout. And poverty pain sickness and death do come alike to all The sensual that have wit enough so far to bridle their lusts as to preserve their health do usually live longer than more obedient men And they deny themselves none of those fleshly pleasures which the obedient do continually abstain from Obj. But do you not ordinarily say that Vice bringeth its punishment with it in its natural effects and Obedience its Reward Is not the life of a Glutton and Drunkard punished by poverty and shame and sickness And is not Godliness a pleasure in it self If it be our highest end and Happiness to love God and please him then sure the beginnings of it here must have more good than all the pleasures of sin and so God maketh a sufficient difference here Answ Some Vices that are sottishly managed do bring poverty shame and sickness but that may easily be avoided by a vicious wit Gluttony and drunkenness may fall short of sicknesses Fornication and adultery and incest may be managed with greater craft Pride and ambition may attain dominion and wealth Theft may be hid and cheating and fraud may make men rich and free them from the pinching wants and cares and the temptations to discontent and contention of the poor Malice may delight it self in secret revenges in poysonings murderings and such like without any worldly hurt to the transgressour A Tiberius a Nero a Caligula a Domitian a Commodus a Heliogabalus a Sardanapalus may be on the Throne when a Socrates a Seneca a Cicero a Cato a Demosthenes is put to death yea when a Paul or Peter an Ignatius a Cyprian are sacrificed to their bloody rage Yet it is true that all this while they want the dignity and comfort of the Just But while they value it not and feel not the want of it they take it not for a punishment but choose it as a felicity And as for the present Rewards of Virtue to speak impartially I verily think that if there were no life to come Virtue and Holiness were rationally more eligible But that is much because God is an End above our selves And for our own content in many Holiness would give the minde more pleasure than all fleshly pleasure and worldly greatness could counterpoise But with many others whose afflictions are very heavy and pains and poverty very great and who are grievously tormented by cruel persecutors and perhaps a Melancholy constitution may forbid them much delight it is hard to say that if they durst let loose themselves to all sin which maketh for their fleshly interest their Pleasure would not be much greater While the Soul is in flesh it unavoidably partaketh of the pain or pleasure of the flesh Therefore the torment of the Stone or Strangury or of a Rack or Strappado will reach the Soul And the operations of the Soul being in and by the body a tormented body will hinder those Contemplations which should feed our Joy and also hinder the Joy of those Contemplations Most Christians enjoy little comfort in Holiness through the very cares of this life and the weakness of Grace and power of Corruptions and doubts and fears which do attend them Much less would they have much comfort if they were here tormented and miserable in body and had no hope of another life In some sense we may say that Heaven is begun on Earth because Holiness is begun But the Heaven on Earth is the hope and reflection of the Heaven indeed and is soon gone if that be gone as the light here ceaseth when the Sun is set God seen and loved in a glass doth more differ as to us from God as seen and loved in the intuition of his Glory than the heart of man is now able to conceive The difference may be well called specifical as to our actions yea transcendently such Let any man in torment without any hope of Heaven be Judge And though Honesty without the Pleasure and Comforts of it be still better and more eligible yet while mans Reason and Virtue is so weak and his sense and appetite so strong and his body hath so much power upon his minde it is very few that the meer Love of Virtue would prevail with if that Virtue were never to come to a higher degree than this It is undoubtedly true that the Delights of Holiness are incomparably more desireable as we have them in this life than Kingdoms and all the pleasures of the flesh But that is principally because that this life is the passage to a better and hath relation to so glorious a reward The least fore-thought of
future Blessedness may weigh down all the riches and pleasures of the World But take away the respect to the life to come and weak man would meet with no such comforts It is true also that Virtue and Piety is most desirable even for it self But that is especially as it will be it self indeed in a life of fuller perfection than this For here it is so weak and clogged with so many corruptions and infirmities that the comfort of it is little perceived But as a Childe in infancy hath less pleasure than a Bruite for all his Reason and as young Scholars for a time do meet with more trouble than pleasure in their Learning and half-witted Artists are oft more incommodious than none and no one would much seek after Arts or Learning for all its excellency if they had not hopes to ascend above that troublesome smattering degree Even so in the present Case though the least Virtue be in it self more valuable than all sensual pleasure yet considered as Good to us we should never be able to preferre it if we had not hopes of a higher measure than most of the truly virtuous and obedient do here attain Either it is fleshly worldly pleasure or it is the pleasing and enjoying of God in Holiness and Love which is Mans ultimate end If it be the former then certainly the sensual and wicked are in a better condition than the obedient For they have much more of that kinde of delight while the best are oft tormented and persecuted by their cruelty But if it be the latter then it is sure to be enjoyed hereafter seeing we have here so small a measure and also finde that all the Virtue and Holiness of this life consisteth much more in desire and seeking than in delightfull enjoying And our Delights are for the most part the effects of Hope of what we shall possess hereafter more than of the sense of our present happiness There is no righteous Governour on Earth that will suffer if he can help it his disobedient Subjects to persecute those that most carefully obey him and to make them a common scorn and to imprison them torment them burn them at Stakes or banish them and then say That their obedience is in its own nature so much better than disobedience that it is Reward enough of it self It is not the work of a Ruler only to see that no man be a loser by him or his service in point of commutative Justice but to see that by distributive Justice such a difference be made between the obedient and disobedient as the difference of their actions do require in order to the ends of Government Justice giveth every one his due Mercy it self when it remitteth a penalty doth it for the same ends and upon such reasonable considerations of repentance confession satisfaction reparation according to power that it may be called a Just Mercy God is such a Lover of Holiness that he will in his Government manifest that Love and such a hater of sin that he will signifie his hatred of it to the sinner Moreover the Body it self is part of the Man and that part which hath no small interest in the sin It seemeth therefore unjust that the Bodies and sensitive powers of the disobedient should have all kinde of pleasures and the Bodies and sense of the obedient have the pain of Fasting self-denyal persecutions cruelties and no further Judgement to make a more equal Retribution In a word I think there are few that compare the life of an Emperour of Turkie or Tartary or any wicked sensual Worldling with the life of many a thousand persecuted and tormented Saints but will confess that no Distributive Justice doth make in this life so sufficient a difference as may make men know the Justice of the Governour the desirableness of a holy state or the danger of the contrary it was the observation of this that made most of the Atheists of the world think that there was no God or that he exercised no moral Government over men and that made even the innocent often to stagger and tempted them to think their labours and sufferings were all in vain till they look'd before them to the end And if God's Justice make not a sufficient difference here it is certain that there is another life where he will do it because else he should not be just his Laws would be delusory and his Government would be defective and successful only by deceit Obj. God is not obliged to do Justice to men any more than to any other creatures he suffereth the Dog to kill the Hare the Deer and innocent Sheep the Kite to kill the harmless Doves and Chickens the ravenous Birds and Beasts and Fishes to devour and live upon the rest and Man upon all and he is not bound to do them Justice Answ The Bruits are no subjects capable of moral Government and consequently of Propriety of Right or of Wrong God that made them uncapable of Government thereby declared that he intended them not for it Let no man here play with ambiguities and say that God governeth all the creatures The word Government is taken equivocally when it is applied to a dead or bruitish subject a Ship a Coach a Horse a Dog and meaneth not the same thing which we discourse of It is Moral Government by Laws and Judgment which we treat of When God had made Man a Governable Creature he thereby declared his will to be himself his Governour which is all the obligation that God is capable of as to actions ad extra He therefore that made the rational world his Kingdom did thereby engage himself to govern them in Justice there is therefore no comparison between the case of men and bruits who never were subjects but utensils in his Kingdom § 2. II. If there were no retribution in the life to come the secret sins and duties of the heart and life would be under no sufficient Government But the secret sins and duties of the heart and life are under a sufficient Government Therefore there is a Retribution in the life to come This Argument is a particular instance to clear the former general Argument The Major is proved by experience the Heart is the Fountain of Good and Evil man cannot see it and therefore pretendeth not to govern it or make Laws for it if they did it would be all in vain The heart may be guilty of Atheism Blasphemy Idolatry Malice Contrivements and desires of Treason Murder Incest Adultery Fraud Oppression and all the Villany in the world and no man can know or punish it and God doth not do it ordinarily in this life with any sufficient act of Justice So also all those sins which men are but able to hide as secret Murders Treasons Revenge Slanders Fraud c. do escape all punishment from man And God hath no observable ordinary course of outward Justice in this world but
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
powerful that in most great temptations it would prevail They would venture upon lying and perjury rather than lose their liberty or livelihood or reputation They would do any thing which the Rulers bid them or any one that is stronger than they rather than suffer much for their innocency I think they would not scramble much for riches or high places because a quiet life best pleaseth them but if they had a fancy to any delightful seat or pleasant accommodation they would stretch their consciences hard to get it And to escape poverty and suffering and death they would do I know not what And if their interest required them to do another mischief in order to the publick good for revenge I suppose them not much enclined to they would be as Brutus's and would be confident of the success of subtil and concealed enterprises they would no further resist any great temptation to please their appetites in meats and drinks or their flesh in lust or ease and sports and gaming and such vain pastimes than some other carnal interest contradicting did forbid them And though naturally some men prefer Knowledge before all worldly pleasures yet considering how short a time they should be the better for it and how many toilsome hours they must lay out for it they would rather let it go and take up with the ease and pleasure of the flesh This I fear would be their life for when all the comforts of this life of flesh are laid in the one end of the ballance what should weigh them down but something greater So that if some little restraint of villany might be made by lower motives I appeal to the conscience of the Reader whether he thinks that the fore-proved duties of Resignation Obedience and Love to God above all would ever be performed by any considerable number at least if they knew that they had no life to live but this 2. Yea no tolerable Government at all could be kept up I speak not of God's Physical motion by Omnipotency For 1. The Rulers of the world that have none above them would have little or no restraint and their examples would form the people to all abomination If they feared insurrections they would oppress them the more to disable them And what a world must it be when Lust is the Law to all the Governours And the people would have nothing but the hopes and fears of temporal good or evil to restrain them from any Treason or Rebellion or villany And all those that Princes cannot please would plot revenge or play their game another way and subtil men would think it easie to poison or murder secretly Princes and Nobles and any enemy that stood in the way of their own designs if once they were out of fear of a life to come 3. And all secret villany would be committed without fear secret adulteries theft lying perjury and common honesty could not be maintained for every man's self-interest would be his Law and prevail against all the principles of honesty And all that men would strive for would be either to strengthen themselves in their wickedness that they might be out of fear of humane Justice or else to hide it from the cognisance of man Thus would the world be turned into a resemblance of Hell and men be as much worse than wild beast as their natures were better which are corrupted and all would be in wickedness and confusion without the hopes and fears of another life Obj. But in all this you argue against experience Hath there not been Government and order kept up among Heathens and is there not a Government at this day in all the Kingdoms and Common-wealths throughout the world Answ In all this I speak according to experience For 1. Almost all the world believe a life to come all the Christians all the Mahometans and all the Jews and almost all or most of the known Idolaters and Heathens their very Idolatry intimateth this when they number their deceased Heroes with their gods And though the power of this belief is debilitated with the most and therefore piety and virtue proportionably perisheth yet that common dull belief of it which they have being in a business of unspeakable consequence doth restrain them so far as they are restrained 2. Those that believe it not are yet in an uncertainty and the possibility of rewards and punishments hereafter keepeth up much of the order that is left 3. Those few Countries which believe that there is no life to come or rather those persons in some Countries do proportionably increase or excel in wickedness they give up themselves to sensuality and lusts to pride and covetousness and revenge and cruelty and are usually worse than others as their belief is worse what maketh Cannibals more savage than other people What made a Nero a Heliogabalus c. such swine what made Rome it self at that pass that Seneca saith more died by poison of servants hands and secret murders than by Kings even in days of such great and common cruelty All was because mens consciences were from under the hopes and fears of another life and if all were so then all would live accordingly But it is another kind of life which the Law of God in Nature doth enjoyn us it is another kind of life which I before proved to be all mens duty and whether the world have sufficient means and motives to such a life and could be governed but like men without the hopes and fears of futurity let sober and considerate reason judge Obj. Can it be any worse then it is already what vice or villany doth not every where abound for all the belief of a life to come Answ If it be so bad for all that belief what would it be without if the enervating of it by the lusts of the flesh do loose the reins and leave the world in so much wickedness what would it be if their hopes and fears of another life were gone Now men have a secret witness in their breasts which checketh and restraineth them Now they have Kings and Rulers who having some belief of a life to come do form their Laws accordingly and govern the common people with some respect to that belief Now there are many through the mercy of God who are serious in that belief and live accordingly who are instructors restraints and examples to the rest And from these is that order which is kept up in the world But if all were as those few that have overcome this belief the world would be a Wilderness of savage Beasts and would be so full of impiety villany persidiousness bloodiness and all confusion that we should think it a greater sign of goodness in God to destroy it than to continue it and should think of his Government according to the effects or should hardly believe he govern'd it at all I come now to prove the consequence of the Major Proposition
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
whether there be any such or not Because he is not made for any life but this And if God had made Man for no more he would have disposed and obliged him no further We have an understanding to know it and thoughts and hopes and fears and cares about it which are not all in vain and we are plainly in reason obliged to this and more than we do and that Obligation is not vain § 13. XIII If there were no Life of Retribution hereafter Man were more vain and miserable than the Bruits by far and his Reason would but more delude him and torment him But the Consequent is absurd Ergo so is the Antecedent The Major is easily proved by our great experience for the world consisteth partly of men that believe another life and partly of them that do not and Reason maketh them both the more miserable For the former sort which is the most of the world their Reason telleth them that it is their duty to labour for a happiness hereafter and to fear and prevent a future misery and so their expectation would be their meer delusion and their lives would be all spent and ordered in delusion Like a company of men that should run up and down to prepare for a transplantation into the Moon and should cut down timber to build there and provide a stock of cattle to store the grounds there and buy and sell Lands there such would be the life of man in preparing for another world and he would be under a double calamity One by all this fruitless labour and another by his fear of future misery if his labour by temptations should be frustrate and he should miscarry To have Reason to lead a man in such a delusory life and to torment him with the fears of what may befall him after death is sure to be by reason more unhappy than the beasts that have none of this And for the Atheists they are more unhappy too so far as they are rational and considerate For they have no more happiness than the beasts to comfort them while they look for none hereafter and they have in all the way the foresight of their end they fore-know their great probability of sickness and painful tormenting diseases they fore-know the certainty of their death they know how all their sport and pleasure will end and leave them in dolour and how their corps must be rotting and turn to dust they fore-see abundance of crosses in their way they are troubled with cares for the time to come A beast hath none of this fore-knowledge and none of the fore-thoughts of pain or dying but only fearfully flieth from a present danger Moreover the poor Atheist having no certainty of the truth of his own opinion that there is no other life is oft haunted with fears of it and especially when approaching death doth awake both his reason and his fears he then thinks O what if there should be another world where I must live in misery for my sin In despight of him some such fears will haunt him Judge then whether the use of reason be not to make man a more deluded and tormented creature than the bruits if so be there were no life after this But this cannot stand with the methods of our Creator To give us so great an excellency of nature to make us more vain and unhappy than the beasts When he maketh a creature capable and fit for higher things he declareth that he intendeth him for higher things Obj. But even here we have a higher kind of work and pleasure than the Bruits we rule them and they serve us we dwell in Cities and Societies and make provision for the time to come Answ Those Bruits that dwell in Woods and Desarts serve us not and our ruling them is a small addition to our felicity Pride it self can take little pleasure in being the Master of Dogs and Cats Rule doth but adde to care and trouble caeteris paribus it is an easier life to be ruled than to rule And if we take away their lives it is no more than we must undergo our selves and the violent death which we put them too hath usually less pain than our languishing age and sickness and natural death And it is as pleasant to a Bird to dwell in her nest as to us to dwell in Cities and Palaces and they sing as merrily in their way of converse as we in our troublesome Kingdoms and Societies If present pleasure be the highest of our hopes they seem to have as much as we or if there be any difference it is counter-ballanced by the twenty-fold more cares and fears and labours and mental troubles which we are more liable to And our knowledge doth but encrease our sorrow of which next § 14. XIV If there were no life of Retribution the wiser any man were the more miserable would he be and knowledge would be their plague and ignorance the way to their greatest pleasure But the consequence is absurd Ergo so is the antecedent The reason of the consequence is manifest in what is said the Ignorant have nothing to disturb them in their sensual delights The liker to beasts they can be to eat and drink and play and satisfie every lust and never think of a reckoning or of death it self the more uninterrupted would be their delights the fore-thoughts of death or any change would not disturb them their folly which maketh them over-value all the matters of the flesh would encrease their pleasure and felicity for things delight men as they are esteemed rather than as indeed they are But the more wise and knowing men would always see vanity and vexation written upon all the treasures and pleasures of the world and in the midst of their delights would fore-see death coming to cut them off and bring them to a dolorous end So that undoubtedly the most knowing would be the most miserable and though Nature delight in knowing much it would but let in an inundation of vexatious passions on the mind But Knowledge is so great a gift of God and Ignorance so great a blemish unto Nature that it is not by sober reason to be believed that so noble a gift should be given us as a plague and so great a plague and shame of nature as ignorance is should be a blessing or felicity § 15. XV. If the Kings and temporal Governours of the world do extend their Rewards and Punishments as far as to temporal prosperity and adversity life and death in respect to the present ends of Government and this justly then is it meet and just that the Universal King extend his benefits and punishments much further for good or evil as they have respect unto his own Laws and Honour But the antecedent is true Ergo so is the consequent Kings justly take away mens lives for Treason They that look but to the present temporal good or hurt of the Common-wealth do think
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
and various instances these exceptions do but confirm the general truth that such there are I have said so much of them in two other Writings that I shall now say no more but this That those Judges ordinarily condemn them to die who themselves have been most incredulous of such things that so great numbers were condemned in Suffolk Norfolk and Essex about twenty years ago that left the business past all doubt to the Judges Auditors and Reverend Ministers yet living who were purposely sent with them for the fuller inquisition That the testimonies are so numerous and beyond exception recorded in the many Volumes written on this subject by the Malleus Maleficorum Bodin Remigius and other Judges who condemned them that I owe no man any further proof than to desire him to read the foresaid Writings wherein he shall find Men and Women Gentlemen Scholars Doctors of Divinity of several qualities and tempers all confessedly guilty and put to death for this odious sin And he shall find what compacts they made with the Devil promising him their Souls or their service and renouncing their Covenant with God All which doth more than intimate that men have Souls to save or lose and that there is an Enemy of Souls who is most sollicitous to destroy them or else to what end would all this be When people are in wrath and malice desirous of revenge or in great discontents or too eagerly desirous after overhasty knowledge in any needless speculation the Devil hath the advantage to appear to them and offer them his help and draw them into some contract with him implicit at least if not explicit I have my self been too incredulous of these things till cogent evidence constrained my belief Though it belong not to us to give account why Satan doth it or why upon no more or why God permitteth it yet that so it is in point of fact it cannot be rationally denyed And therefore we have so much sensible evidence that there is a happiness and misery after this life which the Devil believeth though Atheists do not 2. And though some are as incredulous of Apparitions yet evidence hath confuted all incredulity I could make mention of many but for the notoriety I will name but two which it is easie to be satisfied about The one is the Apparition in the shape of Collonel Bowen in Glamorganshire to his Wife and Family speaking walking before them laying hold on them hurting them in time of Prayer the man himself then living from his Wife in Ireland being one that from Sect to Sect had proceeded to Infidelity if not to Atheism and upon the hearing of it came over but durst not goe to the place The thing I have by me described largely and attested by learned godly Ministers that were at the place and is famous past contradiction 2. But to name no more he that will read a small Book called The Devil of Mascon written by Mr. Perreand and published by Dr. Peter Moulin will see an instance past all question The Devil did there for many months together at certain hours of the day hold discourse with the inhabitants and publikely disputed with a Papist that challenged him and when he had done turn'd him and cast him down so violently that he went home distracted He would sing and jest and talk familiarly with them as they do with one another He would answer them questions about things done at a distance and would carry things up and down before them and yet never seen in any shape All this was done in the house of the said Mr. Perreand a Reverend faithfull Minister of the Protestant Church in the hearing of persons of both Professions Papists and Protestants that ordinarily came in for above three months at Mascon a City of France And at last upon earnest Prayer it ceased Mr. Perreands piety and honesty was well known and attested to me by the Right Honourable the Earl of Orrery now Lord President of Munster in Ireland and attested to the World by his most learned worthy honourable Brother Mr. Robert Boyl in an Epistle before the Book neither of them persons apt to be over-credulous of such unusual things yet both fully satisfied of the truth of this story by Mr. Perreands own Narratives with whom they were very familiar See the other Testimonies cited in my Saints Rest Part 2. Q. But how doth this signifie that there is any future state for man Answ 1. Commonly these Apparitions do expresly referr to some sin or duty which are regardable in order to a further Life Sometimes they come to terrifie Murderers or other great Offenders and sometimes the Devil hath killed men outright which yet were no more painfull than another death if it fetcht not their souls into a greater misery sometimes they are used to tempt people to sin to witchcraft to revenge to idolatry and superstition to which use they are common among many of the Indians And all this intimateth some further hurt which sin doth men after this present life which they take not here for their pain but their pleasure 2. Many of these Apparitions say that they are the souls of such and such persons that have lived here If it be so then the question is granted And whether it be so I suppose is to us uncertain For why a condemned Soul may not appear as well as Satan notwithstanding that both of them are in that state of misery which is called Hell I yet could never hear any sure proof But because this is uncertain 3. At least it sheweth us that these evil Spirits are neer us and able to molest us and therefore are ordinarily restrained and that their natures are not as to any elevation so distant from ours but that a converse there may be and therefore that it is very probable that when the souls of the Wicked are separated from their bodies they shall be such as they or have more converse with them and that the good Spirits shall be the companions of the souls of men that here were not far unlike themselves When we perceive that we live among such invisible Spirits it is the easier to believe that we shall live with such of them hereafter as we are most like 3. I may adde to these the instance of satanical Possessions For though many diseases may have of themselves very terrible and strange effects yet that the Devil I mean some evil Spirit doth operate in many is past all contradiction some will speak Languages which they never learnt some will tell things done far off some will have force and actions which are beyond their proper natural ability Most great Physicians how incredulous soever have been forced to confess these things and abundance of them have written particular instances And the manner of their transportations their horrid blasphemies against God with other carriages do commonly intimate a life to come and a desire that Satan hath to
Covenant of Grace confirming his Doctrine by abundant uncontrolled Miracles contemning the World he exposed himself to the malice and fury and contempt of sinners and gave up himself a Sacrifice for our sins and a Ransom for us in suffering death on a Cross to reconcile us to God He was buryed and went in Soul to the Souls departed And the third day he rose again having conquered death And after forty dayes having instructed and authorized his Apostles in their Office he ascended up into Heaven in their sight where he remaineth Glorified and is Lord of all the chief Priest and Prophet and King of his Church interceding for us teaching and governing us by his Spirit Ministers and Word 5. The New Law and Covenant which Christ hath procured made and sealed by his Blood his Sacraments and his Spirit is this That to all them who by true Repentance and Faith do forsake the Flesh the World and the Devil and give up themselves to God the Father Son and Holy Spirit their Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier he will give Himself in these Relations and take them as his reconciled Children pardoning their sins and giving them his grace and title to Everlasting Happiness and will glorifie all that thus persevere But will condemn the unbelievers impenitent and ungodly to everlasting punishment This Covenant he hath commanded his Ministers to proclaim and offer to all the World and to baptize all that consent thereunto to invest them Sacramentally in all these benefits and enter them into his holy Catholick Church 6. The Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son did first inspire and guide the Prophets Apostles and Evangelists that they might truly and fully reveal the Doctrine of Christ and deliver it in Scripture to the Church as the Rule of our Faith and Life and by abundance of evident uncontrolled Miracles and gifts to be the great witness of Christ and of the truth of his holy Word 7. Where the Gospel is made known the HOLY SPIRIT doth by it illuminate the minds of such as shall be saved and opening and softening their hearts doth draw them to believe in Christ and turneth them from the power of Satan unto God Whereupon they are joyned to Christ the Head and into the Holy Catholick Church which is his Body consisting of all true Believers and are freely justified and made the Sons of God and a sanctified peculiar people unto him and do Love him above all and serve him sincerely in holiness and righteousness loving and desiring the Communion of Saints overcoming the Flesh the World and the Devil and living in Hope of the coming of Christ and of Everlasting life 8. At death the Souls of the Justified go to Happiness with Christ and the Souls of the wicked to misery And at the end of this World the Lord Jesus Christ will come again and will raise the Bodies of all men from the dead and will judge all the World according to the good or evil which they have done And the righteous shall go into Everlasting Life where they shall see Gods Glory and being perfected in Holiness shall love and praise and please him perfectly and be loved by him for evermore and the Wicked shall go into Everlasting punishment with the Devil II. According to this Belief we do deliberately and seriously by unfeigned consent of Will take this One God the infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness the Father Son and Holy Spirit for our only God our reconciled Father our Saviour and our Sanctifyer and resolvedly give up our selves to him accordingly entering into his Church under the hands of his Ministers by the solemnization of this Covenant in the Sacrament of Baptism And in prosecution of this Covenant we proceed to stirre up our DESIRES by daily PRAYER to God in the Name of Christ by the help of the Holy Spirit in the order following 1. We desire the glorifying and hallowing of the Name of God that he may be known and loved and honoured by the World and may be well-pleased in us and we may delight in Him which is our ultimate end 2. That his Kingdom of Grace may be enlarged and his Kingdom of Glory as to the Perfected Church of the sanctified may come That Mankinde may more universally subject themselves to God their Creator and Redeemer and be saved by him 3. That this Earth which is grown too like to Hell may be made liker to the Holy ones in Heaven by a holy conformity to Gods Will and Obedience to all his Laws denying and mortifying their own fleshly desires wills and minds 4. That our Natures may have necessary support protection and provision in our daily service of God and passage through this World with which we ought to be content 5. That all our sins may be forgiven us through our Redeemer as we our selves are ready to pardon wrongs 6. That we may be kept from Temptations and delivered from sin and misery from Satan from wicked men and from our selves Concluding our Prayers with the joyfull Praises of God our Heavenly Father acknowledging his Kingdom Power and Glory for ever III. The Laws of Christian PRACTICE are these 1. That our Souls do firmly adhere to God our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifyer by Faith Love Confidence and Delight that we seek him by desire obedience and hope meditating on himself his word and works of Creation Redemption and Sanctification of Death Judgement Heaven and Hell exercising Repentance and mortifying sin especially atheism unbelief and unholiness hardness of heart disobedience and unthankfulness pride worldliness and flesh-pleasing Examining our hearts about our Graces our Duties and our sins Watchfully governing our thoughts affections passions senses appetites words and outward actions Resisting temptations and serving God with all our faculties and glorifying him in our Hearts our Speeches and our Lives 2. That we worship God according to his Holiness and his Word in Spirit and Truth and not with Fopperies and Imagery according to our own devices which may dishonour him and lead us to Idolatry 3. That we ever use his Name with special Reverence especially in appealing to him by an Oath abhorring prophaneness perjury and breach of Vows and Covenants to God 4. That we meet in Holy Assemblies for his more solemn Worship where the Pastors teach his Word to their Flocks and lead them in Prayer and Praise to God administer the Sacrament of Communion and are the Guides of the Church in Holy things whom the people must hear obey and honour especially the Lords Day must be thus spent in Holiness 5. That Parents educate their Children in the Knowledge and Fear of God and in obedience of his Laws and that Princes Masters and all Superiours govern in Holiness and Justice for the glory of God and the common good according to his Laws And that Children love honour and obey their Parents and all Subjects their Rulers in due subordination unto God 6. That
we do nothing against our Neighbours Life or Bodily welfare but carefully preserve it as our own 7. That no man defile his Neighbours wife nor commit Fornication but preserve our own and others Chastity in thought word and deed 8. That we wrong not another in his Estate by stealing fraud or any other means but preserve our Neighbours Estate as our own 9. That we pervert not Justice by false witness or otherwise nor wrong our neighbour in his Name by slanders backbiting or reproach That we lie not but speak the truth in love and preserve our neighbours right and honour as our own 10. That we be not selfish setting up our selves and our own against our Neighbour and his good desiring to draw from him unto our selves But that we love our Neighbour as our selves desiring his welfare as our own doing to others as regularly we would have them do to us forbearing and forgiving one another loving even our enemies and doing good to all according to our power both for their Bodies and their Souls This is the Substance of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION § 15. II. The summ or Abstract of the Christian Religion is contained in three short Forms The first called The Creed containing the matter of the Christian Belief The second called The Lords Prayer containing the matter of Christian Desires and hope The third called The Law or Decalogue containing the summ of Morall Duties which are as followeth The BELIEF 1. I believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth 2. And in Iesus Christ his only Son our Lord who was conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buried descended to Hell the third day he rose again from the dead he ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty from thence he shall come again to judge the quick and the dead 3. I believe in the Holy Ghost the Holy Catholick Church the Communion of Saints the Forgiveness of sins the Resurrection of the body and the Life Everlasting The LORDS PRAYER Our FATHER which art in Heaven hallowed be thy Name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil For thine is the Kingdom the Power and the Glory for ever Amen The Ten COMMANDEMENTS God spake all these words saying I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the Land of Egypt out of the house of bondage 1. Thou shalt have no other Gods before me 2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven Image or any likeness of any thing in Heaven above or that is in the Earth beneath or that is in the water under the Earth Thou shalt not vow down thy self to them nor serve them For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquities of the Fathers upon the Children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my Commandements 3. Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his Name in vain 4. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy six dayes shalt thou labour and do all thy work but the Seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God in it thou shalt not do any work thou nor thy Son nor thy Daughter thy Man-servant nor thy Maid-servant nor thy Cattel nor the Stranger that is within thy gates For in six dayes the Lord made Heaven and Earth the Sea and all that in them is and rested the Seventh day wherefore the Lord blessed the Seventh day and hallowed it 5. Honour thy Father and thy Mother that thy dayes may be long upon the Land which the Lord thy God giveth thee 6. Thou shalt not kill 7. Thou shalt not commit Adultery 8. Thou shalt not Steal 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy Neighbour 10. Thou shalt not covet thy Neighbours House thou shalt not covet thy Neighbours Wife nor his Man-servant nor his Maid-servant nor his Oxe nor his Ass nor any thing that is thy Neighbours § 16. The ten Commandements are summed up by Christ into these two Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and might and Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self § 17. These Commandements being first delivered to the Jews are continued by Christ as the summ of the Law of Nature only instead of Deliverance of the Jews from Egypt he hath made our Redemption from sin and Satan which was thereby typified to be the fundamental motive And he hath removed the memorial of the Creation-Rest from the seventh day-Sabbath to be kept on the Lords day which is the first with the Commemoration of his Resurrection and our Redemption in the solemn Worship of his holy Assemblies § 18. III. The briefest Summary of the Christian Religion containing the Essentials only is in the Sacramental Covenant of Grace Wherein the Penitent Believer renouncing the Flesh the World and the Devil doth solemnly give up himself to God the Father Son and Holy Spirit as his only God his Father his Saviour and his Sanctifier engaging himself hereby to a Holy life of Resignation Obedience and Love and receiving the pardon of all his sins and title to the further helps of grace to the favour of God and everlasting life This Covenant is first entered by the Sacrament of Baptisme and after renewed in our communion with the Church in the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ So that the Christian Religion is but Faith in God our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifyer producing the hope of Life Everlasting and possessing us with the love of God and Man And all this expressed in the genuine fruits of Patience Obedience and Praise to God and works of Charity and Justice unto Man § 19. That all this Religion might be the better understood received and practised by us the Word of God came down into Flesh and gave us a perfect Example of it in his most perfect Life in perfect holiness and innocency conquering all temptations contemning the honours riches and pleasures of the World in perfect patience and meekness and condescension and in the perfect Love of God and Man When perfect Doctrine is seconded by Perfect Exemplariness of Life there can be no greater Light set before us to lead us out of our state of darkness into the everlasting Light And had it not been a pattern of holy Power Wisdom and Goodness of Self-denyall Obedience and Love of Patience and of Truth and Prudence and of contempt of all inferiour things even of Life it self for the Love of God and for Life eternal it
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
perfidious as cruel and contentious insomuch as among the Turkish Mahometans and the Indian Banians the wickedness of Christians is the grand cause that they abhor Christianity and it keepeth out your Religion from most Nations of the earth so that it is a proverb among them when any is suspected of treachery What do you think I am a Christian And Acosta witnesseth the like of the West-Indies Answ 1. Every man knoweth that the vulgar rabble who indeed are of no Religion will seem to be of the Religion which is most for their worldly advantage or else which their Ancestors and Custom have delivered to them And who can expect that such should live as Christians who are no Christians You may as well blame men because Images do not labour and are not learned wise and virtuous We never took all for Christians indeed who for carnal interest or custom or tradition take up the bare name and desire to be called Christians rebels may affect the name of loyal subjects and thieves and robbers the name of true and honest men Shall loyalty truth and honesty therefore be judged of by such as them Nothing can be more unrighteous than to judge of Christianity by those hypocrites whom Christ hath told us shall be condemned to the sorest punishment and whom he hateth above all sorts of sinners What if Julian Celsus Porphyry or any of these objectors should call themselves Christians and live in drunkenness cruelty perjury or deceit is it any reason that Christ should be reproached for their crimes Christianity is not a dead opinion or name but an active heavenly principle renewing and governing heart and life I have before shewed what Christianity is 2. In the Dominions of the Turks and other Infidel Princes the Christians by oppression are kept without the means of knowledge and so their ignorance hath caused them to degenerate for the greater part into a sensual sottish sort of people unlike to Christians And in the Dominions of the Moscovite tyranny hath set up a jealousie of the Gospel and suppressed Preaching for fear lest Preachers should injure the Emperour And in the West the usurpation and tyranny of the Papacy hath lock'd up the Scriptures from that people in an unknown tongue that they know no more what Christ saith than the Priest thinks meet to tell them lest they should be loosened from their dependance on the Roman Oracle And thus Ignorance with the most destroyeth Christianity and leaveth men but the shadow image and name For belief is an intellectual act and a sort of knowing and no man can believe really he knoweth not what If any Disciples in the School of Christ have met with such Teachers as think it their vertue and proficiency to be ignorant call not such Christians as know not what Christianity is and judge not of Christ's doctrine by them that never read or heard it or are not able to give you any good account of it But blessed be the Lord there are many thousand better Christians Object XIII But it is not the ignorant rabble only but many of your most zealous Professors of Christianity who have been as false as proud and turbulent and seditious as any others Answ 1. That the true genuine Christian is not so you may see past doubt by the doctrine and life of Christ and his Apostles And that there are thousands and millions of humble holy faithful Christians in the world is a truth which nothing but ignorance or malice can deny 2. Hypocrites are no true Christians what zeal soever they pretend There is a zeal for self and interest which is oft masked with the name of zeal for Christ It is not the seeming but the real Christian which we have to justifie 3. It is commonly a few young unexperienc'd novices which are tempted into disorders But Christ will bring them to repentance for all before he will forgive and save them Look into the Scripture and see whether it do not disown and contradict every fault both great and small which ever you knew any Christian commit If it do as visibly it doth why must Christ be blamed for our faults when he is condemning them and reproving us and curing us of them Object XIV The greater part of the world is against Christianity Heathens and Infidels are the far greater part of the earth and the greatest Princes and learnedst Philosophers have been and are on the other side Answ 1. The greater number of the world are not Kings nor Philosophers nor wise nor good men and yet that is no disparagement to Kings or learned or good men 2. The most of the world do not know what Christianity is nor ever heard the reasons of it and therefore no wonder if they are not Christians And if the most of the world be ignorant and carnal and such as have subjected their reason to their lusts no wonder if they are not wise 3. There is no where in the world so much learning as among the Christians experience puts that past dispute with those that have any true knowledge of the world Mahomitanism cannot endure the light of learning and therefore doth suppress or sleight it The old Greeks and Romans had much learning which did but prepare for the reception of Christianity at whose service it hath continued ever since But barbarous ignorance hath over spread almost all the rest of the world even the learning of the Chinenses and the Pythagoreans of the East is but childishness and dotage in comparison of the learning of the present Christians Object XV. For all that you say when we hear subtil arguings against Christianity it staggereth us and we are not able to confute them Answ That is indeed the common case of tempted men their own weakness and ignorance is their enemies strength But your ignorance should be lamented and not the Christian cause accused it is a dishonour to your selves but it is none to Christ Do your duty and you may be more capable of discerning the evidence of truth Object XVI But the sufferings which attend Christianity are so great that we cannot bear them in most places it is persecuted by Princes and Magistrates and it restraineth us from our pleasures and putteth us upon an ungrateful troublesome life and we are not souls that have no bodies and therefore cannot sleight these things Answ But you have souls that were made to rule your bodies and are more worthy and durable than they and were your souls such as reason telleth you they should be no life on earth would be so delectable to you as that which you account so troublesome And if you will chuse things perishing for your portion be content with the momentary pleasures of a dream you must patiently undergo the fruits of such a foolish choice And if eternal glory will not compensate what ever you can lose by the wrath of man or by the crossing of your fleshly minds you
me who I know canst neither be deceived or by any falshood or seduction deceive On thee therefore O my dear Redeemer do I cast and trust this sinful soul with Thee and with thy holy Spirit I renew my Covenant I know no other I have no other I can have no other Saviour but thy self To thee I deliver up this soul which thou hast redeemed not to be advanced to the wealth and honours and pleasures of this world but to be delivered from them and to be healed of sin and brought to God and to be saved from this present evil world which is the portion of the ungodly and unbelievers to be washed in thy Bloud and illuminated quickned and confirmed by thy SPIRIT and conducted in the ways of holiness and love and at last to be presented justified and spotless to the Father of spirits and possessed of the glory which thou hast promised O thou that hast prepared so dear a medicine for the clensing of polluted guilty souls leave not this unworthy soul in its guilt or in its pollution O thou that knowest the Father and his Will and art nearest to him and most beloved of him cause me in my degree to know the Father acquaint me with so much of his will as concerneth my duty or my just encouragement leave not my soul to groap in darkness seeing thou art the Sun and Lord of Light O heal my estranged thoughts of God! is he my light and life and all my hope and must I dwell with him for ever and yet shall I know him no better than thus shall I learn no more that have such a Teacher and shall I get no nearer him while I have a Saviour and a Head so near O give my faith a clearer prospect into that better world and let me not be so much unacquainted with the place in which I must abide for ever And as thou hast prepared a Heaven for holy souls prepare this too-unprepared soul for Heaven which hath not long to stay on earth And when at death I resign it into thy hands receive it as thine own and finish the work which thou hast begun in placing it among the blessed Spirits who are filled with the sight and love of God I trust thee living let me trust thee dying and never be ashamed of my trust And unto Thee the Eternal Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son the Communicative LOVE who condescendest to make Perfect the Elect of God do I deliver up this dark imperfect soul to be further renewed confirmed and perfected according to the holy Covenant Refuse not to bless it with thine indwelling and operations quicken it with thy life irradiate it by thy light sanctifie it by thy love actuate it purely powerfully and constantly by thy holy motions And though the way of this thy sacred influx be beyond the reach of humane apprehension yet let me know the reality and saving power of it by the happy effects Thou art more to fouls than souls to bodies than light to eyes O leave not my soul as a carrion destitute of thy life nor its eyes as useless destitute of thy light nor leave it as a senseless block without thy motion The remembrance of what I was without thee doth make me fear lest thou shouldest with-hold thy grace Alass I feel I daily feel that I am dead to all good and all that 's good is dead to me if thou be not the life of all Teachings and reproofs mercies and corrections yea the Gospel it self and all the liveliest Books and Sermons are dead to me because I am dead to them yea God is as no God to me and Heaven as no Heaven and Christ as no Christ and the clearest evidences of Scripture verity are as no proofs at all if thou represent them not with light and power to my soul Even as all the glory of the world is as nothing to me without the light by which it 's seen O thou that hast begun and given me those heavenly intimations and desires which flesh and bloud could never give me suffer not my folly to quench these sparks nor this bruitish flesh to prevail against thee nor the powers of hell to stifle and kill such a heavenly seed O pardon that folly and wilfulness which hath too often too obdurately and too unthankfully striven against thy grace and depart not from an unkind and sinful soul I remember with grief and shame how I wilfully bore down thy motions punish it not with desertion and give me not over to my self Art thou not in Covenant with me as my Sanctifier and Confirmer and Comforter I never undertook to do these things for my self but I consent that thou shouldest work them on me As thou art the Agent and Advocate of Jesus my Lord O plead his cause effectually in my soul against the suggestions of Satan and my unbelief and finish his healing saving work and let not the flesh or world prevail Be in me the resident witness of my Lord the Author of my Prayers the Spirit of Adoption the Seal of God and the earnest of mine inheritance Let not my nights be so long and my days so short nor sin eclipse those beams which have often illuminated my soul Without thee Books are senseless scrawls studies are dreams learning is a glow-worm and wit is but wantonness impertinency and folly Transcribe those sacred precepts on my heart which by thy dictates and inspirations are recorded in thy holy word I refuse not thy help for tears and groans but O shed abroad that love upon my heart which may keep it in a continual life of love And teach me the work which I must do in Heaven refresh my soul with the delights of holiness and the joys which arise from the believing hopes of the everlasting Joys Exercise my heart and tongue in the holy praises of my Lord. Strengthen me in sufferings and conquer the terrors of death and hell Make me the more heavenly by how much the faster I am hastening to heaven and let my last thoughts words and works on earth be likest to those which shall be my first in the state of glorious immortality where the Kingdom is delivered up to the Father and GOD will for ever be All and In all of whom and through whom and to whom are all things To whom be glory for ever Amen CHAP. XIII Consectaries 1. What Party of Christians should we joyn with or be of seeing they are divided into so many Sects I Shall briefly dispatch the Answer of this Question in these following Propositions § 1. GODLYNESS and CHRISTIANITY is our only Religion and if any party have any other we must renounce it § 2. The Church of Christ being his Body is but One and hath many Parts but should have no Parties but Vnity and Concord without Division § 3. Therefore no Christian must be of a Party or Sect as such that is as
and desire the Reader who thinketh that his Reply doth need any confutation but to peruse Ortelius or any true Map of the Roman Empire and Myraeus or any Notitia Episcopatuum and withal the names of the Bishops in each Council and then let him ask his conscience whether those Councils were true or equal Representatives of all the Christian world or only of the Subjects or Churches of one Empire with a few inconsiderable accidental auxiliaries and if he smile not at Mr. Johnson's instances of the Bishops of Thrace and other such Countries as if they had been out of the verge of the Roman Empire at least he shall excuse me from confuting such Replies And since then Christ hath enlarged his Church to many more Nations and remote parts of the world and we are not hopeless that the Gospel may yet be preached to the remotest parts of the earth and an equal just Representative may become more impossible than it now is Yet now such proper universal Councils are so far from being the constitutive visible Head of the Church or the Pope as there presiding or any necessary means of its Vnity and Peace that rebus sic stantibus they are morally impossible For 1. Their distance is so great from Abassia Egypt Armenia Syria Mexico New-England and other parts to those of Muscovy Sweden Norway c. that it will be unlawful and impossible to undertake such journeys and deprive the Church of the labours of the Pastors so long on this account 2. It cannot be expected that many live to perform the journey and return 3. The Princes in whose countreys they live or through whose dominions they must pass are many of them Infidels and will not suffer it and many still in wars and most of them full of State-jealousies 4. When they come together the number of just Representatives which may be proportioned to the several parts of the Church and may be more than a mockery or faction will be so great that they will not be capable of just debates such as the great matters of Religion do require or if they be it will be so long as will frustrate the work and waste their age before they can return when usually the cause which required their congregating will bear no such delays 5. They cannot all speak to the understanding of the Council in one and the same language for all the commoness of Greek and Latine God hath neither promised that all Bishops shall be able to converse in one tongue nor actually performed it 6. Such a council never was in any Christian Emperours time for they neither could nor did summon all the just Representatives of the Churches in other Princes dominions but only those in their own § 31. The predominancy of Selfishness and Self-interest in all hypocrites that are but Christians in name and not by true Regeneration and the great numbers of such Hypocrites in the visible Church are the summary of all the great causes of Divisions and the Prognosticks of their continuance § 32. Unity and harmony will be imperfect whilest true Holiness is so rare and imperfect And to expect the contrary and so to drive on an ill-grounded unholy unity is a great cause of the Division and distraction of the Churches § 33. When differing opinions cause discord betwixt several Churches the means of Christian concord is not an agreement in every opinion but to send to each other a Profession of the true Christian Faith subscribed with a Renunciation of all that is contrary thereto and to require Christian Love and Communion on these terms with a mutual patience and pardon of each others infirmities § 34. No Christian must pretend Holiness against Unity and Peace nor Unity and Peace against Holiness but take them as inseparable in point of Duty And every tender Conscience should be as tender of Church-division and real Schisme as of drunkenness whoredom or such other enormous sins Jam. 3.14 15 16 17. § 35. III. The extensive interest of the Church consisting in the multiplication of Christians is 1. Principally in the multiplication of the Regenerate-members of the Church-mystical 2. And subordinately in the multiplication of Professed Christians in the Church Visible § 36. It is not another but the very same Christianity which in sincerity constituteth a mystical member and in Profession a Visible member of the Church which is not two Churches but one so that all are Hypocrites who are not sincere § 37. The instituted door or entrance into the Church visible is by Baptisme § 38. The Pastors of the Church by the power of the Keyes are Judges who are to be admitted by Baptisme and to Baptise them And the people are to take the baptized for Church-members and in point of publick communion to see as with their Pastors eyes ordinarily though as to Private converse they are Judges themselves § 39. Those that are baptized in Infancy should at age have a solemn transition into the rank of adult members upon a solemn serious owning and renewing of their Baptismal Covenant § 40. God doth not require a false profession of Christianity but a true But yet he appointeth his Ministers to take a Profession not proved false as credibly true Because we are no heart-searchers and every one should be best acquainted with himself and God will have every man the chooser or refuser of his own felicity that the comfort or sorrow may be most his own And a humane belief of them that have not forfeited their credit especially about their own hearts is necessary to humane converse § 41. And God taketh occasion of Hypocrites intrusion 1. To do good to the Church by the excellent gifts of many Hypocrites 2. To do good to themselves by the means or helps of Grace which they meet with in the Church § 42. But the proper appointed place which all that are not at age perswaded to the profession of true Christianity should continue in is the state of Catechumens or Audientes meer Learners in order to be made Christians § 43. The Visible Church is much larger than the Mystical though but one Church that is the Church hath more Professing than Regenerate Members and will have to the end of the World and none must expect that they be commensurate § 44. As a Corn Field hath 1. Corn 2. Straw and Chaffe and 3. Weeds and stricken ears and is denominated from the Corn which is the chief preserved part but the straw must not be cast out because it is necessary for the Corn but the weeds must be pull'd up except when doing it may hurt the Wheat Even so the Church hath 1. Sincere Christians from whom it is denominated 2. Close Hypocrites whose gifts are for the good of the sincere and must not be cast out by the Pastors 3. Hereticks and notorious wicked men who are impenitent after due admonition and these must
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
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
him who will live such a Holy Life 114 CHAP. XIV That there is a Life of Retribution after this proved 119 CHAP. XV. Of the Intrinsecal Evils of SIN and of the PERPETVAL PVNISHMENT due to the Sinner by the undoubted Law of Nature 156 CHAP. XVI Of the present sinfull and miserable state of the World 176 CHAP. XVII What Naturall Light declareth of the Mercy of God to Sinners and of the Hopes and Means of Mans Recovery 182 PART II. Of CHRISTIANITY and Supernatural Revelation CHAP. I. OF the need of a clearer Light or fuller Revelation of the Will of God than all that hath been opened before p. 191 CHAP. II. Of the several RELIGIONS which are in the World 198 CHAP. III. Of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION and 1. What it is 204 CHAP. IV. Of the Nature and PROPERTIES of the Christian Religion 229 CHAP. V. Of the CONGRVITIES in the Christian Religion which make it the more easily credible and are great Preparatives to Faith 241 CHAP. VI. Of the WITNESS of JESVS CHRIST or the great demonstrative Evidence of his Verity and Authority viz. The SPIRIT In 4. parts 1. Antecedently by PROPHECY 2. Constitutively and Inherently the Image of God on his Person Life and Doctrine 3. Concomitantly by the Miraculous Power and Works of Christ and his Disciples 4. Subsequently in the actual Salvation of men by Renovation Opened Notes added 258 CHAP. VII Of the subservient Proofs and Means by which the forementioned Evidences are brought to our certain knowledge 302 How we know the antecedent Prophetical Testimony and the Constitutive Inherent Evidence How we know the Concomitant Testimony of Miracles 1. By Humane Testimony 2. By Evidence of Natural Certainty 3. By Divine attestation in the Testifyers Miracles The Proofs of that Divine attestation with the Witnesses 1. In the holy Constitution of their Souls and Doctrine 2. In their Miracles and Gifts 3. In the success of their Doctrine to mens sanctification How the Churches testimony of the Disciples Miracles and Doctrine is proved 1. By most credible Humane Testimony 2. By such as hath Natural Evidence of Certainty 3. By some further Divine attestation The way or Means of the Churches attestation and Tradition The Scriptures proved the same which the Apostles delivered and the Churches received How we may know the 4th part of the Spirits Testimony viz. The Successes of Christian Doctrine to mens sanctification What Sanctification is and the acts or parts of it Consectaries from p. 302. to 350 CHAP. VIII Of some other subservient and Collateral Arguments for the Christian Verity 350 CHAP. IX Yet Faith hath many Difficulties to overcome What they are and what their Causes 365 CHAP. X. The Intrinsecal Difficulties in the Christian Faith resolved or 24 Objections against Christianity answered 371 to 424 CHAP. XI The Extrinsecal Difficulties or 16 more Objections resolved 424 CHAP. XII The reasonable Conditions required of them who will overcome the Difficulties of Believing and will not undoe themselves by wilfull Infidelity 444 The summ of all in an Addresse to God 453 457 CHAP. XIII Consectaries I. What Party of Christians should we joyn with or be of seeing they are divided into so many Sects 464 CHAP. XIV II. Of the true Interest of Christ and his Church and the Souls of Men of the means to promote it and its Enemies and Impediments in the World Which being only named in brief Propositions should be the more heedfully perused by those that dare pretend the Interest of Religion and the Church for the proudest or the most dividing practices and those which most directly hinder the successefull preaching of the Gospel the pure Worshipping of God and the saving of Mens Souls 466. The Conclusion or an Appendix defending the Souls Immortality against the Somatists or Epicureans and other Pseudo-philosophers OBJECTION I. MAtter and Motion only may do all that which you ascribe to Souls p. 495 OBJECT II. By Sense Imagination Cogitation Reason you cannot prove the Soul to be incorporeal and immortal because the Bruits partake of all these 523 OBJECT III. Humane Souls are but Forms and Forms are but the qualities or modes of Substances and therefore perish when seperated from Bodies 535 OBJECT IV. The Soul is material and consequently mortal because it dependeth upon matter in its Operations and therefore in its Essence 539 OBJECT V. No immaterial Substance moveth that which is material as a principle of its Operations but the Soul so moveth the Body Ergo 540 OBJECT VI. The Soul in our sleep acteth irrationally according to the fortuitous motion of the spirits Ergo 543 OBJECT VII Reason is no proof of the Souls Immateriality because Sense which the Bruits have is the more perfect apprehension 543 OBJECT VIII Sensation and Intellection are both but Reception The Passivity therefore of the Soul doth shew its Materiality 544 OBJECT IX There is nothing in the Intellect which was not first in the Sense c. Ergo the Soul that can reach but things corporeal is such it self 547 OBJECT X. That which things Corporeal work on is Corporeal but c. 551 OBJECT XI That is not incorporeal which knoweth not it self to be so nor hath any notion but Negative and Metaphorical of Incorporeal Beings 551 OBJECT XII The Soul is generated Ergo corruptible 555 OBJECT XIII Omne quod oritur interit That which is not eternal as to past duration is not eternal as to future duration But c. 567 OBJECT XIV You have none but Moral Arguments for the Souls Immortality 568 OBJECT XV. You seem to confess that it is not the endless duration of the Soul but only a future state of Retribution which you can prove from Nature alone 568 OBJECT XVI Both Soul and Body are like a Candle in fluxu continuo Ergo being not long the same are uncapable of a Life of Retribution 569 OBJECT XVII The Soul returneth to the Anima Mundi or Element of Souls and so loseth its Individuation and is uncapable of Retribution 571 OBJECT XVIII The Fictions of the Platonists about their several Vehicles and such like do make their Doctrine the more to be suspected 574 OBJECT XIX The Souls actings will not be such as they are now by Corporeal Spirits and Idea's Ergo it will be uncapable of Retribution 578 OBJECT XX. The belief of the Souls Immortality doth fill men with fears and draw them to superstition and trouble the Peace of Kingdoms c. 579 In Objection about the Worlds Eternity What Christianity saith about it 582 The Testimony of Socrates and Zenocrates of the Souls Immortality 589 â—icero's Doctrine and his redargution of the Somatists at large 590 The Stoicks neerness to the Doctrine of Christianity with their particular Moral Tenets and their Praises by the Learned and Pious Mr. T. Gataker 595 The Stoicks Platonists and other Philosophers opinion of the sufficiency of Virtue to be Mans Felicity against the Epicurean Doctrine of Pleasure Vindicated It importeth a