only known unto it self I will adhere to him and relinquish that opinion I at present hold of Providence EPIST. X. Of Credulity and Incredulity the rise of both and that Credulity of the two is of more pernitious consequence And of the Evil of imposing on others or creating or raising a belief on false or uncertain Principles SInce I have elsewhere as well disowned my abilities as disclaimed any call or Authority to treat of that incomparable divine gift Faith in a strict and saving Sense And withall made some kind of confession of my own I hope if in declaring here my opinion of the dangers attending Credulity and evil consequence of imposing on mens belief I do by way of introduction and making some inquiry into the ordinary acceptation as well as proper signification of the word Faith a little touch upon it in that gracious Sense it may be without scandal and offence The word Faith is often taken for that which should be ever the ground of it Truth As when we commonly say there is no Faith in man we mean thereby there is no truth in man or just ground for a belief and so that saying Nulla fides pietasve viris c. is to be understood So the word faithful is often meant or intended for true as that of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we render in one place This is a faithful saying and in another place render the same words This is a true saying and such indeed as may obtain an assent and raise a Faith in us Thus we also conjoyn the words in the oath of fealty or de fidelitate and render it in the administration to be true and faithful And most certainly whenever Faith or faithfulness is spoken of God it must necessarily be intended of his truth as where 't is said Shall their unbelief make the Faith of God without effect God forbid yea let God be true c. So God is faithful by whom c. Faithful is he that calleth you who also will do it There are they say who have reckoned up above twenty several significations of the word Faith in Scripture but I 'le not meddle therewith or yet trouble you if I can avoid it by confounding it with the bare cogitative faculty but distinguish the one from the other as near as I can Faith or Belief in the strict genuine Sense and proper meaning thereof I take to be a conviction or perswasion of the Intellective Faculty to accept a thing for true which it cannot digest into any kind of knowledge or receive under the colourable notion of knowledge Or more generally thus An assent or perswasion of the whole mind Because the Will and the Affections if any powerful effect be wrought upon the Understanding concur for a time therein This the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies which is derived from the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 persuadeo and therefore the Apostle rehearsing the saying of St. Iohn Baptist as we translate it He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life by way of opposition one to another makes use of the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 together And the like may be found in other places Now as to Faith in the most gracious Sense as well as conscience of which I have already treated I do in all humility think it to have its rise and first work I will not say from but with Reason Nay I think that both Faith and Conscience are Effects in and through Reason in the one case as Reason is passive in the other case as it is active Conscience being a result from Reason's whispers in an advised active deliberation and Faith being a result through God's grace from Reason's silence in an advised yielding upon a kind of passive deliberation For truly as Conscience in my opinion is no other than an effect in the Soul wrought from the bare seeming stroak of Reason so I do believe that in the birth of Faith such I mean as we talk of in a justifying notion there is some stroak upon Reason too but withal I acknowledge there is somewhat more viz. an insensible though Hearing may be the instrumental means of its coming stroak from the Divine Power and Goodness A lightning from above purifying the heart melting the Affections and new molding them according to the working of his mighty power And this is that precious Heavenly Balm by which we lenify and heal those wounds made by the stroak of Reason in some case of Conscience and such wounds there will be now and then occasioned by the Will 's disobedience to Reason's dictates and serving the Affections Now of this strange work in the Soul Faith no man can certainly point to any peculiar instant in which it is wrought as he may to the stroaks of Reason in point of Conscience neither can we discern any thing of the reality or truth thereof further than by a general propension to good and a general aversion from evil And which we cannot by any other way shew to others if we would shew it than by our works Indeed the very same may be said of Conscience We cannot so much as shew that to others either whether there be such a thing in us or no or whether it be good or whether it be evil if there be such a thing moving in us unless by the Affections embracing that which is good and rejecting that which is evil For from thence it may be collected other men having the like Reason with us whether the Affections are obedient to Reason or run by Sense They are both blows or influences likewise upon the Affections and there is a kind of concurrence or meeting together of all the faculties of the Soul as I humbly conceive in both cases We are told with what other part than the Brain man believeth unto Salvation and therefore I do here in the case of a good and perfect Faith think the word Confidence to be most proper For though it be a word which some by misuse have rendred of no good sound yet St. Paul makes use of it in this very case Therefore are we always confident c. for we walk by Faith not by Sight we are confident I say and willing c. repeating it again For when a compleat victory is obtained as well over the Affections and by consequence the Will as over Reason there is a confidence in the Soul a reliance on foreign aid a trust But yet certainly since there is no disputing argumentative faculty in the Soul but Reason neither can there be properly a perswasion of ought else the thing is chiefly effected in and through Reason though not by Reason and if Reason at any time be quite left out in either case I much doubt whether there will be a good Confidence or a good
2. By his merciful Providence or restraining Grace 3. By his bountiful Providence or common renewing grace 4. By his Spirit or special renewing Grace How God according to all these may be invocated The danger of applying the operation of the Spirit to every work in man And how fit it is to clear the mind of such Errour Of the use of solitude in some particular Seasons as the most ready and likely way to discover Truth page 13 EPIST. III. Wherein he sets down some further grounds and Reasons of his opinion of the Mortality or utter annihilation of the Souls of Brutes upon their death No durable Spirit in any visible Creature but man of Sympathies and Antipathies in Plants and Animals The soul of Beasts essential with the Body and so subject to the same fate The Intellect in them in its height at the first whereas that in man is gradual Acts peculiar to reasonable Creatures as desire of dissolution and voluntary abstinence The Spirit of Brutes determined by Sense No Creature besides man lays up more than is sufficient to maintain it self We attribute greater gifts and Sagacity to mere Animals than they have as in Ants. That there may be as much Intellect in Creatures we converse not with as those we do The opinion of the utter annihilation of the spirit of Brutes hath no tendency to Atheism page 39 EPIST. IV. Wherein the Author Treats of man's ignorance in his search into the most ordinary work of Nature and concludes how much more dim-sighted we are when we look into the frame and structure of man's Soul Solomon's knowledge of Nature not universal much in Nature found out accidentally No one work of it fully to be understood How Nature doth change in its operations Of change in Colours and that the variety in them is unaccountable That there is a transcendent Wisdom ruling and appearing in all far above our reach And so there is great Reason for caution in our enquiries or affirmations page 60 EPIST. V. Wherein he further illustrates the inherent or native Power and Predominancy of the Affections above the other faculties of the Soul but more particularly treats of the Imagination its deception in us our miseries thereby and the remedies against its delusion Imagination in Brutes ariseth only from Sense That in them receives its objects in their proper Nature they are seldom mistaken in the face of the Heavens c. they cannot revolve in their mind or recall Imagination Imagination in them changeth according to its objects Imagination in us sometimes supplies the place of Reason as in the case of Transubstantiation c. deceives the Affections Imagination and in Conjunction with them is the cause of Error as in malice c. The good man the only rational man The difference 'twixt Reason and ratiocination Reason deceives not and is the chief principle of governing the Thoughts The advantage of sorrow in curbing the Imagination The Imagination subject to infection from the humours of the Body When we are answerable for its transgressions Thoughts cannot arise from Sense page 68 EPIST. VI. Wherein he treats of the various impress of the Divine Power upon each particular created substance much more upon the Souls of men wherein there is great dissimilitude And further shews how prone we are from thence to mistake in judging of the temper of others and our own Thence he proceeds to discourse of the Nature grounds measure and ends of Friendship page 128 EPIST. VII Of the different pursuits of the Souls of men wherein we are ready to accuse each other of folly though not our selves and yet in a degree are all weak and foolish That no pursuit of the Soul here is praise-worthy or commendable further than it intentionally advanceth God's glory which is the mark set before us and which if we do not behold in all our travails our labour in the issue will prove of as little profit as comfort page 156 EPIST. VIII Compleat Happiness here is merely in speculation That natural endowments in the Soul do conduce to the ease peace and quiet of it and are therefore desirable though we attain not happiness thereby Learning and Knowledge Wisdom Prudence and subtilty considered That even Prudence the most likely conduct to Happiness was never yet the constant concomitant of the clearest human Soul No satisfaction without the belief of a Providence page 166 EPIST. IX Wherein the Author maintains a divine Wisdom and Providence ruling in and over the Soul of man more especially and more apparently if considered than any work of Creation And that the Affections in the heart of man seem that part of the Soul whereon God more especially exerciseth his Prerogative moulding and changing them on the sudden to his secret purposes beyond and even contrary to any foresight conjecture or Imagination of the Soul it self page 185 EPIST. X. Of Credulity and Incredulity the rise of both and that Credulity of the two is of more pernicious consequence And of the evil of imposing on others or creating or raising a Belief on false or uncertain Principles Of the word notion and grace of Faith Of the strange variety of Beliefs in the World Of Liberty of Conscience page 195 ERRATA PAge 21. l. 10. for Esau's vine r. Isaiah's vine p. 44. l. ult for Hawk r. Hare p. 45. l. 39. for Have r. Cave p. 46. l. ult for substance r. subsistence p. 47. l. 2. for submit r. subsist ibid. l. 14. for gifts r. Fits p. 52. l. 9. for life r. Fly p. 53. l. 15. for their r. the 54. l. 25. dele since p. 56. l. 11. for that r. they ibid. l. 30. for piece r. Pease CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST Immoderate care for a Man 's own Posterity and sorrow for the loss of Children SECT I. Of Afflictions in general their Usefulness and Necessity and in particular the loss of Children considered with the use and end of it THE first thoughts which presented themselves to me and what I ever before firmly believed were these That first as there is one Eternal wise God Creator of Heaven and Earth and all things therein So secondly the same God has a care over all the works of his Creation and continually rules and disposes all things according to his infinite wisdom which act of his we call Providence To doubt of this were not only to deny all Scripture and relinquish my profession of Christianity but even to abandon my very Reason For from this first part of my belief I think there are few dissenters and although this Age affords a number of David's jolly sanguine Fools who at some time think otherwise in their hearts yet those same hearts from afflictions will think the same with mine unless they have hardned them on purpose to shut out all Deity and since at first they would have none to serve now they are resolved to let in none so long as they can oppose it to punish As to the second part
is Oratory defined to be nothing else but a dextrous application to the affections and passions of men which received Tenet is sufficient to demonstrate what faculty we generally give the precedency to and esteem for most powerful in the Soul I am not about to correct the definition though methinks since there are faculties in the Soul capable of instruction which the Affections properly are not as well as agitation or rowsing up every application should principally tend and aim thither and he be esteemed the best Orator who rather indeavours to inform truly than delight and please yet since most certain it is and indubitable that there is no approach or entrance of one human Soul or Spirit unto another but through the Organs of sense by the Imagination into the Affections So as to hit and wound or heal them men necessarily glance upon the Imagination by the way and t is that which certainly gives them an edge or dulls them Men should be careful that faculty be not first deluded to the deception of the other nor that we suffer men to delude our affections through our Imagination barely Reason not at all or not well consulted That the Imagination is a deceitful faculty we need not Scripture to declare to us as it does of the heart daily experience sufficiently informs us as much But above all its leiger demain in supplying the place of Reason to the Affections is the greatest and most considerable fallacy thereof and most carefully to be avoided We commonly affirm it supplies the place of reason in Beasts but if we look narrowly into our selves and them As we find them void of Reason and incapable to argue within themselves so we should find that faculty in them most exactly and curiously exquisitely and admirably framing and contriving in obedience to the strokes it receives through sense and in us only to supply the place of Reason And how happens it or comes it to pass that it supplies the place of Reason that more than ordinary divine gift in us Why thus Reason which is the ground Work of Faith although it accept of things invisible as true to create a belief and indeed a belief properly is not without it yet never directly opposes sense whereby there is a more apparent contradiction in the Soul for then it were not Reason a thing of it self not deceivable nor the Spiritual gift of that God who gives us leave to make use of our Senses thereby the Devil or man cannot hurt us through that faculty alone or chiefly But the Imagination in man though of divine extraction and given as subservient to Reason is capable of a kind of exaltation in direct opposition to sense and that through the inflammation of human affection equally divine and not satisfiable through sense So as if once the Affections become grievously wounded through sense or otherwise they do as it were enforce the Imagination to satisfy them for the present with a bare imaginary belief and therefore are the affections always chiefly aimed at and this is that which the World applauds as a dextrous application when they are thus hit to the exaltation of the Imagination and depression or clouding of Reason or if you please in short when an imaginary or fictitious belief is created in the Soul This has been found out as the surest and most ready way by all pretenders to Religion in all ages to set up fancy for predominant by blowing through it upon some affection which of it self is apt to recoil and inflame the Imagination to the dazling of Reason in conjunction with it Passions of all kinds shall be assaulted Pride and vain-glory as well as love and if a belief can be effected no otherwise fear must be raised and that that fear may stand its ground and inflame the Imagination to some height God whom we ought to serve in fear must be brought in as a party either constantly ruling in his so called infallible Church or else new inspiring some amongst us by his gracious Spirit which we ought to hearken to and obey The fallibility of either which position or assertion is plain enough and common Reason would soon espy the delusion if she were free and at liberty not confounded through fear of I know not what that 't is absolutely necessary for men to believe as the Church do's or as new gifted or inspired men shall teach them and thereby the Imagination is hurried to supply the place thereof I dare appeal to the soberest and greatest rational Doctors of the Romish Church Passion already raised against us somewhat cooled the Imagination a little quieted and Reason a little free whether the general universal belief yet I do not think they all believe what they affirm maintain or Preach of their Transubstantiation Miracles Fables and Legends were not first raised and be not yet supported by the strength of Imagination only or chiefly And whether they do not think their Religion or rather their Romish Church would soon fall to the ground if mens Affections were left quiet to themselves that working faculty the Imagination a little rectified and freedom allowed men to exercise their Reason without imaginary danger I would neither offend God or them or any one else willingly and advisedly by questions and doubts But in that grand point of Transubstantiation or the real Presence wherein or whereabout we so much differ I beseech them to declare not only how it comes to pass but how any real belief thereof can at any time be effected in the Soul since Reason it self more prone to accept and allow of things as they are represented through our own sense that otherwise at first rejects it and cannot be easily convinced of the contrary till it be convinced of the very fallacy of that glass of sense in us As to the thing it self I know they will readily alledge that there is a miraculous and wonderful suddain change through Gods omnipotent power of the Bread into Flesh upon the words of the Priest And this I readily grant if there be any such change at all and so far I agree with in belief But belief it self or to believe it so or so done seems to me to be an human act a voluntary consent of the mind And surely they will never affirm their own belief thereof miraculously effected nor that ours must so be by the free grace or necessary impulse of the same eternal Power If they do I will answer them it is then vain and idle for them once to think to convince any man of the truth and reality thereof by human argument and that it is cruelty as well as folly to indeavour or imagin to do it by fire and Fagot their Prayers then to that Power were the better surer and safer way If they say it may be effected through the assent of Reason ever submitting and bound to submit to Gods express word whatever sense introduce in the Soul to the
make such a choice of a new one as that he may prove an old one and this requires circumspection and prudence in the doing The mutual view of Truth in two men as it is a most delectable prospect to each other and may be termed an happy interview between two Souls so it is in my opinion the most likely thing to engender between them a real and lasting Friendship I do not mean here by the sight of Truth Truth in the theory that thing of which we have sometimes a glimmering light only and no more and for which we proverbially reject Plato and Socrates's Friendship to admit her in our company and yet know not when we have her but naked Truth practick Truth Fidelity if you please so to call it or plain and upright dealing when a man upon no occasion will lie to deceive his Nieghbour nor be drawn or inticed to commit a falshood for the gain of the whole World and besides upon just occasion will open his mind plainly I know it is not prudent or requisite we should always speak what we think but if we do speak to speak as we think is ever best and most acceptable to a good man I do think that person whoever he was who first delivered it to us and set it down as an observable Maxim Obsequium amicos veritas odium parit to have been not only a Sycophant but ignorant of the ground of true Friendship and I would not advise any man to chuse his Friend from any Obsequiousness Fawning or Flattery If you can behold Truth naked in any man and can adjudge him to be of a setled mind and resolution not double-minded and so unstable in all his ways as St. Iames describes him we will render you the man if you please in Horace his words justum tenacem propositi virum and withall moderately wise such a man you ought to love and imbrace and with such an one you may safely contract Amity or Friendship But when you have so done you must trust in God to continue him such for I think you 'l love him no longer than he is such neither do I think it fit you should For I do think men are mutable and I do not look upon any League of Friendship how fast soever made like the Laws of the Medes and Persians but that the same is alterable and may be dissolved and abrogated without any just blame For though it be an human tye in the reciprocal aspect and mutual promise of each other yet having ever a respect to God as I said if we shall find our dearest Friend to sully the brightness of that Image which first invited us to love him and notwithstanding our admonition to cast off that and to assume and bear about him the image of Belial we may reject him Thus much I remember yet in Tully who would necessarily have all Leagues of Friendship inviolable and perpetual that he utterly condemns that Saying of Bias Ita amare oportere ut aliquando esset osurus and truly as a Christian I cannot commend it for that I believe we should hate no man upon any accompt much less that future hatred should possess our thoughts at the time we make a League of Friendship or begin to love in that sence But this I think may be a good rule herein and I will adventure to give it you in Latin Ita amare oportere ut cessante vel deficiente causâ originali amoris possis tuta fide non amare For Friendship should not be entred into by a vow and in such words as Marriage for better for worse Yet since it is an human and sacred League we should be careful not to be mutable herein though we are in other things the most mutable of any Creature but then only cease to love our Friend as our own Soul when 't is apparent to all the World as well as our selves that he bears no Love to his Soul himself nor will be prevailed with by any perswasion to regard it more It is a rare thing to find the heart of man to answer to man as in water face answereth face according to Solomon so much as for any short space much less to be of any continuance A man shall sometimes meet with St. Pauls case The more he loves the less he is loved But if men do now and then happen To take sweet counsel together and walk into the house of God as Friends according to David's expression Either of them may find the consequence thereof as he did there and elsewhere that the children of men are deceitful upon the weights And therefore there is little trust to be placed in this human tye or obligation but that is to be lodged chiefly or only in him who raises us up Friends beyond expectation and when even Our Father and Mother forsake us taketh us up This notwithstanding it may not be amiss for us though we never expect to tye that sure knot of Friendship so much talked of with any to see of what thred the Materials are or ought to be spun of which it is made to search out and view what kind of Love there is in man peculiar to man see the ground or inition of Friendship in what we call or most properly call Friendly Love and learn to reject no man who offers us this bond of Amity for want of that Authentickness we only imagine it requires viz. the Seal of Election and Grace which no man ever yet saw or could see I doubt in others unless in Imagination I have formerly thought and set down my thoughts in my Treatise de Anima which I exposed to your view Love to be the substantial part of an human Soul flowing from that immense Ocean of Love the great and wise Creator of the Universe and I do yet think it so and confined to or inclosed in an impure Earthly Body for some space of time where it does for the present necessarily work burns inward and sometimes flames outward and according to its motion or inflammation here either by Sense Reason or Grace we give it its denomination and attribute to it several names and sometimes call it Love sometimes Lust sometimes Charity and sometimes Friendship The Latines have the same names besides others viz. amor libido Charitas amicitia though they distinguish them not always according to that notion or in that sence I intend or mean to do in this place I say Love is the principal or sole proper active Ingredient if I may use that word of a Soul For as for Fear Envy Anger Hatred Malice or the like they are but induments or Apparel or Armour which Love puts on or bears about it as I said in its march or travel here It is that thing in man which has often possessed and taken up or imployed my thoughts how strangely diversly and variously it works in several men and no less diversly in
not apt to doubt will scarce believe any thing with assurance or as he ought to do That blessed fruitful Plant in Nature Charity on which I have thought and cannot but think every good and perfect secondary gift is and must be ingrafted seems very apt and ready as well as powerful to win Reason's assent to accept things delivered for true and so as St. Paul says as of it self It believeth all things c. But surely there is no more meant by that than concerns the Fidelity of the Messenger or Relator that is we are thereby inclined to think that that man verily believes the truth of those things which he would perswade my Reason to accept for true And truly he who hath but the least grain of perfect Charity in him can ordinarily do little less for the most fantastick Dissenter or even a modest sober Turk than thus to judge favourably of his well-meaning although 't were to be wished the Intellect did not now and then find just ground to rebuke that good Affection in the case But now should I or any man be so charitable as readily to believe the truth of the thing it self or that there is a firm indubitable ground for any human opinion or exposition obtruded upon me when I yet continue conscious of my own Errors and daily defects in point of judgment in like cases as surely every man is I should have no Charity left which men say begins at home for my self And in admitting an infallibility in any other person without consulting my own Reason that very infallible person however he pleased himself with my belief would judge me a fit Subject for Anticyra 'T is good for every man to consult his own Reason throughly by it self before he admit any other to take place in his Soul and to be possessed or prepossessed as we say with any another Spirit than his own I am verily perswaded there is no man living let his Affections be up in Arms and as furious as they will or can be against me for instance but his own native Reason if he have any consulted and advised barely and simply of it self will admonish him that he ought not to destroy me Which thing is a blessed curb in Nature for the preservation of us Mortals against the destruction of one another and so I have that little security in Nature besides God's daily preventing and restraining hand But if once Reason in man become so facile and pliable as to have that original engravement wiped out and defaced and admit the impression of another And another man shall become in God's name shall I say No master of his Reason I have nothing left to trust to for my preservation but Gods extraordinary wonderful providence If man can be so far perswaded as to think he do's God service by any unjust or bloody act or helping to promote or further the same which no man's own Reason of it self ever drove him to his passion might and the gratifying another's passion might induce the perswasion certainly he is credulous and credulity in that case is very dangerous which we need not go so far as Greece for a sad consequence of and talk of Agamemnon only when every place affords one though not the like This kind of perswasion which some would have to be termed Faith is chiefly wrought through an inclination in mankind to what we call Religion wherein St. Paul tells us he once lived after the strictest sect a Pharisee and then persecuted and verily thought with himself what our Saviour foretold That is he was perswaded or belived for I do not take the word thought in either place to be meant of the bare cogitative faculty as sometimes it is especially when Reason is lost after which manner some barely think themselves Princes and cannot be said properly to believe they are so St. Paul had his Reason about him and that Reason yielding or consenting is properly a belief I hear of no such thoughts or belief in him afterwards And here I must confess a little further of my own belief or perswasion that that man whoever verily believed it lawful to persecute another to the death by Reason of his dissenting from him in point of belief only never yet believed aright or imbraced a true Faith as he should Man in contemplation cannot certainly fall into any consideration so abstruse and full of distraction as that of the strange variety of beliefs in the World in point of Religion as we term it How it happeneth or cometh to pass that the Soul of man of one original extract and of no great native difference should in this one Principle which is the adoration of some Deity as its Creator and Preserver run such various ways and courses and imbrace such contrary tenets and each believe they hit on the right in point of judgment Surely if man were generally left unto himself and some men had not been possessed with other Spirit than their own the very Spirit of delusion to assist them A number of men of profound judgement and subtile in the maximes of Government and not subject to have cheats put upon them had never believed of old the uncouth dreams of their Poets the idle tales of an old woman nor the wandring fancies of melancholy Hermits There has been of ancient invention some soporiforous Art over mans Reason first by laying it to sleep and then exhaling it into a belief For no such victory as we read of in old times could ever be obtained by plain force over mans Reason And Reason yet continues sure under a kind of fascinating power or else we in these our days and in this corner of the World who have one infallible foundation laid us and seem to agree therein could never raise such various superstructures such towers of different Model and Form and believe none truly and exactly built but what is done by our master Builders in select numbers and companies and then for want of looking down upon that Foundation aforesaid of which Justice was the level and Charity the cement and whereof our superstructures I am afraid do not generally partake batter each other from our several aspiring Turrets to the admiration and laughter of any sober Heathen There is no cause of these our distractions and seeming contending about our God so readily at all times offers it self to my thoughts and is so approved of my judgment as that of Credulity a thing though most common in the vulgar and men of low degree yet very incident to human nature in general Something men would deify and believe above Reason and in a lazy prosecution thereof believe even contrary to Reason that is they lay aside their own Reason to rest and accept anothers perhaps the first comers and so the next and the next especially if he bring them any new and strange matter for a belief Yet in this compliance though their Reason presently submit they usually