from sinfull mankind Wo is me what odious sents arise to you perpetually from those bloody murders beastly uncleannesses cruell oppressions noisome disgorgings of surfeits and drunkennesses abominable Idolatries and all manner of detestable wickednesses presumptuously committed every where enough to make you abhorre the presence and protection of debauched and deplored mortality But for us that are better principled and know what it is to be over-lookt by holy and glorious spirits we desire and care to be more tender of your offence then of a world of visible spectatours And if the Apostle found it requisite to give such charge for but the observation of an outward decencie not much beyond the lists of indifferencie because of the Angels what should our care be in relation to those blessed spirits of our deportment in matter of morality and religion Surely O ye invisible Guardians it is not my sense that shall make the difference it shall be my desire to be no lesse carefull of displeasing you then if I saw you present by me cloathed in flesh Neither shall I rest lesse assured of your gracious presence and tuition and the expectation of all spirituall offices from you which may tend towards my blessednesse then I am now sensible of the â—nimation of my own soul THE INVISIBLE WORLD The Second BOOK SECT. I. Of the Souls of Men Of their separation and Immortality NExt to these Angelicall Essences the souls of men whether in the body or severed â—rom it are those spirits which people the invisible world â—exâ— to them I say not the sâ—me with them not bettâ—r Those of the ancient which have thought that the ruine of Angels is to be supplyed by â—lessed souls spake doubtless without the book for he that is the truth it self hath said they be {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} like not the same And justly are those â—xploded whether Pythagoâ—eans or Stoicks or Gnostâ—cks or Manichees or Almaâ—icus or if Lactantius himself were in that errour as Ludovicus Vives construes him who falsly dreamed that the souls of â—en were of the substance of that God which inspired them These errours are more â—it for Ellebore then for Theologicall conviction spirituall substances doubtlesse they â—re and such as have no lesse distant originall from the body then heaven is from earth Galen was not a better Physiâ—â—an then an ill Divine whiles â—e determines the soul to be the complexion and temperament of the prime qualities no other then that harmony which the elder Naturalists dreamed of an opinion no lesse brutish then such a soul For how can temperamet be the cause of any progressive motion much lesse of a rationall discourse Here is no materiality no physicall composition in this inmate of ours nothing but a substantiall act an active spirit a spirituall form of the king of all visible creatures But as for the Essence originall derivation powers faculties operations of this humane soul as it is lodged in this clay I leave them to the disquisition of the great Secretaries of Nature my way lyes higher leading me from the common consideration of this spirit as it is clogged with flesh unto the meditation of it as it is devested of this earthly case and clothed with an eternity whether of joy or torment We will begin with happinesse our fruition whereof I hope shall never end if first we shall have spent some thoughts upon the generall condition of this separation That the soul after separation from the body hath an independent life of its owne is so clear a truth that the very heathen Philosophers by the dimme light of nature have determined it for irrefragable In so much as Aristotle himself who is wont to hear ill for his opinion of the soules mortality is confidently reported to have written a book of the Soul Separate which Thomas Aquinas in his so late age professes to have seen Sure I am that his Master Plato and that heathen Martyr Socrates related by him are full of divine discourses of this kind In so much as this latter when Crito was asking him how he would be buried I perceive said he I have lost much labour for I have not yet perswaded my Crito that I shall flye clear away and leave nothing behind me meaning that the soul is the man and would be ever it self when his body should have no being And in Xenophon as Cicero cites him Cyprus is brought in saying thus Nolite arbitrari c. Think not my dear sons that when I shall depart from you I shall then cease to have any being for even whiles I was with you ye saw not that soul which I had but yet ye well saw by those things which I did that there was a soul within this body Beleeve ye therefore that though ye shall see no soul of mine yet that it still shall have a being Shortly all but an hatefull Epicurus have astipulated to this truth And if some have faâ—cied a transmigration of souls into other bodies others a passage to the stars which formerly governed them others to I know not what Elysian fields all have pitched upon a separate condition And indeed not Divinity only but true natural reason will necessarily evince it For the intellective soul being a more spirituall substance and therefore having in it no composition at all and by consequence nothing that may tend towards a not-being can be no other supposing the will and concurrence of the infinite Creator then immortall Besides as our best way of judgging ought is wont to be by the effects certainly all operations are from the forms of things and all things do so work as they are Now the body can do nothing at all without the help of the soul but the soul hath actions of its own as the acts of understanding thinking judging remembring ratiocination wherof if whiles it is within us it receives the first occasions by our senses and phantasms yet it doth perfect and accomplish the said operations by the inward powers of its own faculties much more and also more exactly can it do all these things when it is meerly it self since the clog that the body brings with it cannot but pregravate and trouble the soul in all her performances in the mean time they do justly passe for mentall actions neither do so much as receive a denomination from the body we walk move speak see feel and do other humane acts the power that doth them is from the soul the means or instrument whereby they are done is the body no man will say the soul walks or sees but the body by it but we can no more say that the soul understands or thinks by the aid of the body then we can say the body thinks or understands by means of the soule These therefore being distinct and proper actions do necessarily evince an independing and self-subsisting agent O my soul thou couldst not be thy self unless thou knew'st thine originall heavenly
thine essence separable thy continuance eviternall But what do we call in reason and nature to this parle where faith by which Christianity teacheth us to be regulated finds so full and pregnant demonstrations No lesse then halfe our Creed sounds this way either by expression or inference where in whiles we professe to believe that Christ our Saviour rose from the dead and ascended we implie that his body was â—ot more dead then his soul living and active That was whereof he said Father into thy hands I commend my spirit now we cannot imagine one life of the head and another of the body his state therefore is ours every way are we conform to him as our bodies then shall be once like to his glorious so our souls cannot be but as his severed by death crowned with immortality and if he shall come to judge both the quick and the dead those dead whom he shall judge must be living for as our Saviour said in the like case God is not the Judge of the dead as dead but the Judge of the living that were dead and therefore living in death and after death And whereof doth the Church Catholick consist but of some members warfaring on earth others triumphant in heaven and what doth that triumph suppose but both a beeing and a beeing glorious What communion were there of Saints if the departed souls were not and the soul when it begins to be perfect should cease to be to what purpose were the resurrection of the body but to meet with his old partner the soul and that meeting only implies both a separation and existence Lastly what life can there be properly but of the soul and how can that life be everlasting which is not continued or that continued that is not If then he may be a man certainly a Christian he cannot be who is more assured that he hath a soul in his body then that his soul shall once have a being without his body Death may tyrannize over our earthly parts the worst he can do to the spirituall is to free it from a friendly bondage Chear up thy self therefore O my soul against all the fears of thy dissolution thy departure is not more certain then thy advantage thy being shall not be lesse sure but more free and absolute Is it such a trouble to thee to be rid of a clog or art thou so loath to take leave of a miserable companion for a while on condition that he shall ere long meet thee happy SECT. II. Of the instant vision of God upon the egression of the soul and the present condition till then BUt if in the mean while we shall let fall our eyes upon the present condition of the soul it will appear how apt we are to misknow our selves and that which gives us the being of men The most men how ever they conceive they have a soul within them by which they receive their animation yet they entertain but dull and gloomy thoughts concerning it as if it were no lesse void of light and activity then it is of materiality and shape not apprehending the spirituall agility and clearly-lightsome nature of that whereby they are enlived wherein it will not a little availe us to have our judgements thoroughly rectified and to know that as God is light so the soul of man which comes immediately from him and bears his image is justly even here dignified with that glorious title I speâ—k not only of the regenerate soul illuminated by divine inspirations and supernaturall knowledge but also even of that rationall soul which every man bears in his bosome The spirit of man saith wise Solomon is the candle of the Lord Prov. 20.27 searching all the inward parts of the belly And the dear Apostle In him was life and the life was the light of men Joh. 1.4 and more fully soon after That light was the true light that lightneth every man that cometh into the world v. 9. No man can be so fondly charitable as to think every man that comes into the world illightned by the spirit of regeneration It is then that intellectuall light of common nature which the great illuminator of the world beams forth into every soul in such proportion as he finds agreeable to the capacity of every subject Know thy self therefore O man and know thy maker God hath not put into thee a dark soul or shut up thy inward powers in a dungeon of comfortlesse obscuritie but he hath set up a bright shining Lamp in thy breast whereby thou maiest sufficiently discern naturall and morall truths the principles and conclusions whether of nature or art herein advancing thee above all other visible Creatures whom he hath confined at the best to a mere opacity of outward and common sense But if our naturall light shall through the blessing of God be so happily improved as freely to give place to the spirituall reason to faith so that the soul can now attain to see him that is invisible and in his light to see light now even whiles it is over-shaded with the interposition of this earth it is already entered within the verge of glorie But so soon as this vaâ—â— oâ— wretched mortality is done away now it enjoyes a clear heaven for ever and sees as it is seen Amongst many heavenly thoughts wherewith my everdear and most honoured and now blessed friend the late Edward Earl of Norwich had wont to animate himself against the encounter with our last enemy Death this was one not of the meanest that in the very instant of his souls departing out of his body it should immediately enjoy the vâ—sion of God And certainly so it is The spirits of just men need not stand upon dâ—stances of place or space of time for this beatificall sight but so soon as ever they are out of their clay lodging they are in their spirituâ—ll heaven even whiles they are happily conveying to the locall for since nothing hindred them from that happy sight but the interposition of this earth which we carry about us the spirit being once free from that impediment sees as it is seen being instantly passed into a condition like unto the Angels wel therefore are these coupled together by the blessed Apostle who in his divine rapture had seen them both Ye are come saith he unto Mount Sion and unto the City of the living God the heavenly Jerusalem and to an innumerable company of Angels and to the spirits of just men made perfect As then the Angels of God wheresoever they are though imployed about the affairs of this lower world yet do still see and enjoy the vision of God so do the souls of the righteous when they are once eased of this earthly load Doubtlesse as they passed through degrees of Grace whiles they took up with these homely lodgings of clay so they may passe through degrees of blisse when they are once severed And if as some great
and some Judaizing Chiliasts who have placed happinesse in the full feed of their sensual appetite inverting the words of the Epicurean in the Gospell He could say Let us eat and drink for to morrow we shall dye they Let us dye for we shall eat and drinke men whose belly is their God their kitchen their heaven The soul that hath had the least smack how sweet the Lord is in the weak apprehension of Grace here below easily contemns these dunghil-felicities cannot but long after those true and satisfying delights above in comparison whereof all the pleasures of the paunch and palate are but either savorless or noisome Feast thou thy self onwards O my soul with the joyful hope of this blessed vision adhesion fruition Alas here thy dim eyes see thy God through clouds and vapours and not without manifold diversions here thou cleavest imperfectly to that absolute goodnesse but with many frail interceptions every prevalent temptation looseth thy hold and makes thy God and thee strangers here thou enjoyest him sometimes in his favours seldome in himselfe and when thou doest so how easily art thou robb'd of him by the interpositions of a crafty and bewitching world There thou shalt so see him as that thou shalt never look off so adhere to him as never to be severed so enjoy him that he shall ever be all in all to thee even the soul of thy soul thy happiness is then essentiall thy joy as inseparable as thy being SECT. VII In what terms the departed Saints stand to us and what respects they bear to us Such is the felicity wherein the separate soules of Gods elect ones are feoffed for ever But in the mean time what terms do they stand in to their once-partners these humane bodies to these the forlorn companions of their pilgrimage and warfare Do they despise these houses of clay wherein they once dwelt or have they with Pharaohs Courtier forgotten their fellow-prisoner Far be it from us to entertain so injurious thoughts of those spirits whose charity is no less exalted then their knowledge Some graces they do necessarily leave behinde them There is no room for faith where there is present vision no room for hope where is full fruition no room for patience where is no possibility of suffering but charity can never be out of date charity both to God and man As the head and body mystical are undivided so is our love to both we cannot love the head and not the body we cannot love some limbs of the body and not others The triumphant part of the Church then which is above doth not more truly love each other glorified then they love the warfaring part beneath neither can their love be idle and fruitlesse they cannot but wish well therefore to those they love That the glorified Saints then above in a generality wish for the good estate and happy consummation of their conflicting brethren here on earth is a truth not more void of scruple then full of comfort It was not so much revenge which the souls under the Alter pray for upon their murderers as the accomplishment of that happy resurrection in which that revenge shall be perfectly acted The prayer in Zachary and Saints are herein parallel is O Lord of hosts how long wilt thou not have mercy on Jerusalem and on the Cities of Judah against which thou hast had indignation we do not use to joy but in that which we wish for There is joy in heaven in the presence of the Angels for sinners repenting In the presence of the Angels therefore on the part of the Saints none but they dwell together Oh ye blessed Saints we praise God for you for your happy departure for your crown of immortalitie Ye do in common sue to God for us as your poore fellow-members for our happy eluctation out of those miseries and tentations wherewith we are continually conflicted here below and for our Societie with you in your blessedness Other terms of communion we know none As for any local presence or particular correspondence that ye may have with any of us as we cannot come to know it so if we would we should have no reason to disclaim it Johannes á Jesu-Maria a modern Carmelite writing the life of Theresia Sainted lately by Gregory 15. tels us that as she was a vigilant overseer of her votaries in her life so in and after death she would not be drawn away from her care and attendance For saith he if any of her sisters did but talk in the set hours of their silence she was wont by three knocks at the doore of the Cell to put them in mind of their enjoyned taciturnity and on a time appearing as she did often in a lightsome brightnesse to a certain Carmelite is said thus to bespeak him Nos coeâ—estes c. We Citizens of heaven and ye exiled pilgrims on earth ought to be linked in a league of love and purity c. Me thinks the reporter should fear this to be too much good fellowship for a Saint I am sure neither Divine nor ancient Story had wont to afford such familiarity And many have mis-doubted the agency of worse where have appeared lesse causes of suspition That this was if any thing an ill spirit under that face I am justly confident neither can any man doubt that looking further into the relation finds him to come with a lye in his mouâ—h For thus he goes on We celestiall ones behold the Deity ye banished ones worship the Eucharist which ye ought to worship with the same affection wherewith we adore the Deity such perfume doth this holy Devill leave behind him The like might be instanced in a thousand apparitions of this kind al worthy of the same entertainment As for the state of the souls of Lazarus of the Widows son of Jairus his daughter and of Tabitha whether there were by divine appointment a suspension of their finall condition for a time their souls awaiting not farre off from their bodies for a further disposition or whether they were for the manifestation of the miraculous power of the Son of God called off from their setled rest some great Divines may dispute none can determine where God is silent let us be willingly ignorant wiâ—h more safety and assurance may we inquire into those respects wherein the separated soul stands to that body which it left behind it for a prey to the worms a captive to death and corruption For certainly though the parts be severed the relations cannot be so God made it intrinsecally naturall to that spirituall part to be the form of man and therefore to animate the body It was in the very infusion of it created and in the creating infused into this coessentiall receptacle wherein it holds it self so interessed as that it knows there can be no full consummation of its glory without the other half It was not therefore more loath to leave this old
their God see how they now bathe themselves in that celestiall blisse as being so fully sated with joy and happiness that they cannot so much as desire more see them in a mutuall interknowledge enjoying each others blessednesse see the happy communion which they hold with their warfaring brother-hood here upon earth whose victory and consummation they do in a generality sue for to the throne of Grace Foresee them lastly after a longing desire of meeting with their old and never forgotten partner joyfully reunited to their now-glorified bodies and imploying their eternity of life in continuall Hallelujahs to him that sits upon the throne Take up thy rest here O my soul for ever but do not as yet thus end thy prospect it is good for thee to know worse things If in Paradise the Tree of the knowledge of good and evill were forbidden to our first parents the act of the knowledge of both is not forbidden to us Even to know evill in speculation may avoid the knowledge of it in a wofull experience See then O my soul the best creature falling from good into evill in choosing it see him by misinclining his own will apostatizing from his infinite Creatour and hurled down headlong from the height of heavenly glory to the bottome of the nethermost hell see the irrecoverable condition and dreadfull numbers of those precipitated Angels see their formidable power their implacable malice their marvailous knowledge craft skill to do mâ—schief their perpetuall machinations of our destruction especially in their last assaults see their counterfaisance in their glorious and seemingly-holy apparitions for a spirituall advantage and when thou hast recollected thy self to a resolution of defiance and unweariable resistance câ—st thine eye upon the deplorable condition of those damned souls whom they have either betrayed by their fraud or by their violence mastered and whiles thou doest blesse and magnifie the divine Justice in their deserved torment spend thy tears upon those who would needs spend their eternity of beeing in weeping wailing and gnashing And lastly rouz up thy self in this moment of thy remaining life unto all carefull and fervent indeavours to save thy self and to rescue others from this fearfull damnation SECT. XII The Comparison of both worlds how our thoughts and affections should be taken up with the Invisible World NOw then having taken a view of both worlds of the materiall world by the eys of sense and reason of the Invisible by the eyes of reason and faith I cannot but admire God in both and both of them in God but the Invisible so much more as it is infinitely beyond the other For God himself is the world of this world whom whiles in the materiall world we admire in his creatures in this immaterial we admire in himself Now himself must needs be infinitely more wonderfull then many worlds if such there were of those Creations that should proceed from him As for the parts of the created but Invisible world it must neods be said that the lightsome part of it hath more glory then any piece of the materiall world can be capable of on the contrary the dark and privative region of the Invisible world hath infinitely more horror then the other for what is the worst and most disconsolate darknesse of this visible world but a privation of the light of the Sun which yet can never be so absolute as to exclude all imperfect diffusion of those in sensible glimmerings whereas the darknesse of this spirituall world is an utter privation of the sight of God joined with an unconceiveable anguish Even in nature spirituall essences must needs be more excellent then bodily and earthly and of onely spirits it is that the Invisible world consisteth Besides what vanity and inconstancy do we find every where in this materiall and elementary world what creature is there which doth not exchange life for death being for dissolution sanity for corruption what uproars do we find in the air what â—ommotions and turbulencies upon earth the best state of things is an uncertain vicissitude the worst certain desolation and destruction whereas the Invisible world is setlted in a firm and steady immutability the blessed Angels and souls of the Saints being so fixed in their glory that they are now no more capable of alteration Shortly he that saw both worlds shuts up all in one word The things that are seen are temporal the things that are not seen eternal As then I can never open my bodily eyes but I shall see the material world and I hope I shall never see it but I shall praise the power and wisdome and goodnesse of the infinite Creatour of it so shall it be one of the main cares of my life to blesse the eyes of my soul with the perpetuall view of the spirituall and Invisible world Every action every occurrent shall mind me of those hidden and better things and I shall so admit of all materiall objects as if they were so altogether transparent that through them I might see the wonderful prospects of another world And certainly if we shall be able so to withdraw our selves from our senses that we shall see not what we see but what we thinke as it uses to be in the strong intentions of the mind and shall make earthly things not as Lunets to shut up our sight but Spectacles to transmit it to spirituall objects we shall lead a life as far remâ—ved from those beasts which we see as near approaching to those Angels whom we converse with and see not Neither shall it be enough for us to know an Invisible world as to consider that all we see is the least part of what we see not unlesse we bee so affected to the unseen world as we ought It is our knowledg that must shew us how to be Christians but it is our affection that must make us so In the acknowledgment therefore of an Invisible glory and infinitenesse our hearts must be ever taken up with a continuall awe and reverence If some great Prince shall vouchsafe to let me be seen of him although he please to keep himself unseen of me and shall only according to the state of some great Eastern Monarchs speak to me behind a Vail or Traverse or as the great Prete of the South had wont to grace Ambassadours shew me only some part of his leg so as that I may understand him to be present I should thinke it concerned me to carry my self in no lesse seemly fashion towards him then if I saw his face for his sight of me cals for a due regard from me not my sight of him Since therefore we have so certain demonstrations of the undoubted presence of God and his holy Angels ever with us though not discernible by our bodily eyes with what fear and trembling with what reverence and devotion should wee alwayes stand or walk before them making it our main care to be approved of them to whom we lye no