the Love of ancient Friends and Hearers I must say What mean you to weep and break my Heart I am ready to leave the dearest Friends on Earth and life and all the pleasures of life for the presence of far better Friends with Christ and the sweeter pleasures of a better life That little amiableness which is in things below is in godly men as life in the Heart which dieth last When that 's all gone when we are dead to the Love of the godly themselves and to Learning Books and mediate Ordinances so far as they serve a selfish interest and tempt down our Hearts from heavenly aspirings the World then is Crucified to us indeed and we to it I rejoice to tread in the Footsteps of my Lord who had some indeed weeping about his cross but was forsaken by all his Disciples while in the Hour of Temptation they all fled But my desertion is far less for it is less that I am fit to bear If God will justifie who shall condemn If he be for me who shall be against me O may I not be put to that dreadfull case to cry out My God my God why hast thou forsaken me And may nothing separate me from his Love And then were I forsaken of the sober and peaceable as I am in part of some quarrelsom Dividers how tolerable a tryal would it be Man is as dust in the Ballance that addeth little to it and signifieth nothing when God is in the other end But I suspect still that I make too much account of Man when this case hath taken up too much of my observation 1. And of all things surely a departing Soul hath least cause to fear the losing of its notice of the Affairs of the World Of Peace or Wars or Church or Kingdoms For 1. If the Sun can send forth its material Beams and operate by motion light and heat at such a distance as this Earth why should I think that blessed Spirits are such local confined and impotent substances as not to have notice of the things of Earth Had I but bodily Eyes I could see more from the top of a Tower or Hill than any one that is below can do And shall I know less of Earth from Heaven than I do now It 's unlike that my Capacity will be so little And if it were it is unlike that Christs and all the Angels will be so strange to me as to give me no notice of things that so much concern my God and my Redeemer to whom I am united and the Holy Society of which I am a part and my self as a Member of Christ and that Society I do not think that the Communion of the Celestial Inhabitants is so narrow and slow as it is of walking Clods of Earth and of Souls that are confined to such dark Lanthorns as this Body is Stars can shine one to another And we on Earth can see them so far off in their Heaven And sure then if they have a seeing faculty each of them can see many of us even the Kingdoms of the World Spirits are most active and of powerful and quick communication They need not send Letters or write Books to one another nor lift up a voice to make each other hear Nor is there any unkindness division or unsociable selfishness among them which may cause them to conceal their notices or their joys But as Activity so Unity is Greatest where there is most Perfection They will so be Many as yet to be One and their Knowledge will be One Knowledge and their Love One Love and their Joy One Joy Not by so perfect a Unity as in God himself who is One and but One but such as is suitable to created imperfection which participate of the Perfection of the Creator as the Effect doth of the virtue of the Cause and therefore hath some participation of his Unity O foolish Soul if I shall fear this Unity with God Christ and all the Holy Spirits lest I should lose my present separate Individuation when Perfection and Union are so near akin In a word I have no cause to think that my Celestial advancement will be a diminution of any desirable Knowledge even of things on Earth but contrarily that it will be unconceivably increased 2. But if indeed I shall know less of things below it will be because that the knowledge of them is a part of Vanity and Vexation which hath no place in Heaven So much knowledge of good and evil in lower matters as came to us by sin is unworthy of our fond tenaciousness and fear of losing it Surely the sad tidings which we have Weekly in our News Books our lamentable notices of Heathen and Infidel Kingdoms of the overspreading prevalency of Barbarousness Idolatry Ignorance and Infidelity of the rage and success of cruel Tyrants of the bloody Wars of proud unquiet worldly men of the misery of the oppressed desolate Countreys the dissipated Churches the persecuted innocent Christians are no such pleasing things as that we should be afraid to hear of such no more To know or hear of the poor in Famine the rich in Folly the Church distracted the Kingdom discontented the godly scandalous by the effects of their Errours imperfections and divisions the wicked outrageous and waxing worse the falseness or miscarriages or sufferings of Friends the fury or success of Enemies is this an intelligence which I cannot spare What is the daily tidings that I hear but of bloody Wars the undone Countreys the persecuted Churches the silenced banished or imprisoned Preachers of the best removed in judgment from an unworthy World by Death and worse succeeding in their rooms of the renewed designs and endeavours of the Churches Enemies the implacable rage of the worldly and unquiet Clergy and the new divisions of self-conceited Sectaries and the obloquy and backbitings of each Party against the other How oft hear I the sad tidings of this Friends sickness or Death and that Friends discontent and of anothers fall and of many very many's Sufferings My Ears are daily filled with the cryes of the poor whom I cannot relieve with the endless complaints of fearful Melancholy despairing Persons with the wranglings of the ignorant and proud Professors and contentious Divines who censure most boldly where they are most Erroneous or dark Or with the troublesom discontents of those that I converse with And should I be afraid of the ending of so sad a Tragedy or of awaking out of such an unpleasant dream Have I not many times thought of the Priviledge of the deaf that hear not these troublesom and provoking things and of the Blind that see not the Vanities and Temptations of this World It is one part of the benefit of solitude or a private life and habitation to free me from many of these unpleasing Objects and a great part of the benefit of sleep that with my Cloaths I may lay by these troubleous Thoughts § 11. But other men
misery make them intollerable to themselves But it is not because they have seen a glimpse of Heaven on Earth or tasted the sweetness of Holy society and work but because their Bodies are in Health their Purses full their Appetites pleased and their inferiours do their wills and honour them This is all the Heaven that they love and to leave all this is the Death which they abhor and fear And they will not hear God and the experience of all Mankind befooling them till near the Night that their Souls shall be required and then Whose will all their Treasure be § 28. But yet it was a greater part of Peter's dotage to think of Tabernacles for Christ Moses and Elias and of detaining of heavenly Inhabitants upon Earth If you should offer the lowest Saint in Heaven an earthly Kingdom in exchange for his Condition with what disdain would he despise the offer Christ's Kingdom was not of this World nor would Moses and Elias change their lot with Alexander or Caesar Poor trifles allure us and seem somwhat to us as toys to Children while we are dreaming in the Flesh but if once we be delivered and see what the Celestial Glory is what a change will it make upon our judgments We fear now in the dark to go unto that World of Light and are loth to put off the rags of Flesh and to depart from a known though a dirty falling habitation But if we get to Heaven we shall be loth to return to Earth again and to be so coursly cloathed When once we are there a World would not hire us to come back into this corruptible Body till God will make it Spiritual and Incorruptible Our Friends whose Death we passionately lamented would be loth now to change their company for such as we are or their abode for such a wicked World as this or their work for the best of ours on Earth No wonder that departed blessed Souls appear not to their friends on Earth Most Apparitions are of Devils or miserable Souls to whom it is no loss or condescension Were I once in Heaven could I possibly be willing to be turned again into a Bedlam World and laid under the Feet of blinded pride and raging madness and live among Sodomites called Christians whose God is their Belly and who glory in their filthiness and shame and mind nothing with love but earthly things and are bitter Enemies not only to the Cross but to the Government of Christ Would I be again among Dogs and Swine Yea Devils in Flesh who hate and persecute the Regenerate Seed and all that will not receive their mark and be as mad bad as they would I again be groaning here in pain or tired with a weary Body and more with a feeble sinful Soul weak in Faiâ—h Cold in Love of doubtful Hope and imperfect Duty Would I be here again in the prospect of a Grave with fear of dying as strange as now to the heavenly Felicity Lazarus will not come from Abraham's bosom for the rich Man's Wealth and Belly-pleasure no not to warn his sensual Brethren Had Peter seen Heaven as he saw the Glory on the Mount he would never have made so blind a motion for Christ Moses and Elias to continue there who have so much better a habitation § 29. But this glorious Apparition was but short As the Glory of God's back parts to Moses which did but pass by Presently a cloud cometh and separateth the company and ends the pleasant sight When Christians receive some extraordinary sense of the Love of God some sweet foretasts of promised happiness they must not look that this should be ordinary or always so When some fervent Prayer is extraordinarily answered and a Sacrament sweetned with unusual drops of heavenly sweetness or a holy Discourse or Meditation hath raised us higher than ever before we must not expect that this should be our constant diet and God should thus feast us all the Year The times of fasting also have their turn Moses did not dwell on Mount Horeb nor Mount Nebo or Pisgah from whence he saw the Land of Promise God's Children do not always laugh and sing while they have their sinning times they will have their suffering and crying times How suddenly doth the Lark come down to the Earth who before was soaring out of sight and singing pleasantly in the higher Air as if it had been aspiring towards the Sun A luscious diet is not best for such as we that have so many corruptions to be cured by cleansing means Cordials must not be all our Physick unwarrantable expectations of greater or more continued Joys then we are meet for is injurious both to God and to our selves Desires of more we may and must have But those desires must look up to Heaven where indeed they may be satisfied 30. The joy of these Spectators was turned into Fear saith the Text when they entered into the Cloud No wonder The change was sudden and great from a sight of the Kingdom of God in Power unto a dark Cloud Just now they seemed almost in Heaven and presently they knew not where they were From glorious Light to a kind of Prison of obscurity Such changes here we are liable to The same Soul that lately tasted of transporting joy may lie in terrour hardly resisting temptations to despair The same Person that was confident of the Love of God may be quickly not only doubting of it but sinfully denying it The same that had assuring evidence of sincerity may shortly conclude that all was but Hypocrisie The same that was triumphing in the sense of Love may cry out O miserable Man that I am And the same that magnified the Grace of Christ may say The day of Grace is pastâ— Especially if either the Tempter get the advantage of a Melancholy Body or of casting the Soul in to renewed guilt of some wounding sin or into impatient discontents with the things that befal it in the World There is a stability in the Essentials of Holiness It 's Life eternal that is here begun But alas the degrees of Grace the exercise of it the evenness and integrity of our obedience and accordingly our Comforts are lamentably liable to change Even as all worldly things are mutable to the ungodly though their harden'd Hearts are too little changeable Expecting nothing but joy from God or expecting more than we are meet for maketh our dejections the greater and more grievous None are cast lower with terrour trouble and almost despair than some that have been most transported with joy When some other Christians of an even conversation have an evenness and constancy of Holy Peace though no such joys § 31. The Cloud separated the Company Moses and Elias are seen no more no nor the Glory of Christ But yet Christ is not separated from them His ordinary presence still abideth with them Christ doth not leave the Soul when extraordinary joys do leave it It loseth not
But God letteth us see that though the World be One yet he delighteth in a wonderful diversity and multiplicity of Individuals How various and numerous are they in the Sea and on the Land and in the Air And are there none in the other World How come the Stars therein to be so numerous which are of the same Element And though perhaps Saturn or some other Planets or many Stars may send forth their radiant Effluvia or parts into the same Air which the Sun Beams seem totally to fill and illuminate yet the Rays of the Sun and of other Stars are not the same how near soever in the same Air. § 48. Were there now no more Contraction by Egoity or Propriety among men nor Mine and Thine did signify no more nor the distance were greater than that of the several drops of Water in the Sea or particles of of Light in the illuminated Air but I had all my part in such a perfect unity and Communion with all others and knew that all were as happy as I so that there were no divisions by cross interests or minds but all were One certainly it would make my own comforts greater by far than they are now Are not an hundred Candles set together and united as splendid a flame as if they wâ—re all set asunder To one Soul one Love one Joy would be § 49. Object But it is only the fomes that individuateth Lights As when the same Sun by a burning Glass lighteth a thousand Candles they are individuate only by the matter contracting being still all united parts of the same Sun Beams And when they are extinct they are nothing or all one again Ans They were before they were extinct both One and many none but fools think that extinction annihilateth them or any part of them They are after as much Substance and as much solar Fire though diffused and as much and no more one than before but not indeed Many as before but Parts of one Nature hath made the equal diffused Sun Beams to be to the Air and surface of the Earth as the blood equally moving in the Body And our Candles and Fires seem to be like the same blood contracted in a bile or Inflammation which indeed is more felt than the equally diffused blood but it is as the pain of a disease And so when our Fires go out they are but like a healed Scattered Inflammation the same substance is more naturally and equally diffused And if the Individuation of Souls were only by Corporeal matter and the Union thus as great at their departure it would not diminish if it did not too much increase their perfection and felicity For there would be no diminution of any Substance or Power or Activity or Perfection whatsoever § 50. And this would confute their fond Opinion who think that separated Souls sleep in nudâ potentiâ for want of an organized body to operate in For no doubt but if all holy Souls were One this World either in Heaven or Earth hath a common Body enough for such a Soul to operate in Even those Stoicks that think departed Souls are One do think that that One Soul hath a nobler operation than ours in our narrow Bodies and that when our Souls cease animating this Body they have the nobler and sweeter work in part of animating the whole World And those that thought several Orbs had their several Souls of which the particular wights participated said the like of separated Souls as animating the bodies of their Globes or Orbs. And though all these men trouble their heads with their own vain imaginations yet this much the Nature of the Matter tells us which is considerable that whereas the utmost fear of the Infidel is that Souls departed lose their Individuation or Activity and are resolved into one common Soul or continue in a sleepy Potentiality for want of a Body to operate in they do but contradict themselves seeing it is a notorious Truth 1. That if all holy Souls were One no one would be a Loser by the Union but it would be a greater Gain than we must hope for For a part of One is as much and as noble and as active a Substance as if it were a separated Person And Annihilation or loss of specifique Powers is not to be rationally feared 2. And that one Soul is now either self-subsisting without a Body or animateth a suitable Body as some Ancients thought the Angels Stars If that One Soul can act without a Body so may Ours whether as parts of it or not If that One Soul animate a suitable Body ours were they united parts of it would have part of that Employment so that hereby they confute themselves § 51. Obj. But this would equalize the Good and Bad or at least those that were good in several degrees And where then were the Reward and Punishment Ans It would not equal them at all any more than distinct Personality would do For 1. The Souls of all holy Persons may be so united as that the Souls of the wicked shall have no part in that Union Whether the Souls of the wicked shall be united in one sinful miserable Soul or rather but in one sinful Society or be greatlier separate disunited contrary to each other and militant as part of their sin and misery is nothing to this case 2. Yet Natural and Moral Union must be differenced God is the Root of Nature to the worst and however in one sense it is said that There is nothing in God but God yet it is true that In Him all Live and Move and have their Being But yet the wickeds Inbeing in God doth afford them no Sanctifying and Beatifying communion with him as experience sheweth us in this life which yet holy Souls have as being made capable Recipients of it As I said different Plants Bryars and Cedars the stinking and the sweet are implanted parts or Accidents of the same World or Earth 3. And the godly themselves may have as different a share of happiness in one common Soul as they have now of Holiness and so as different Rewards even as Roses and Rosemary and other Herbs differ in the same Garden and several Fruits in the same Orchard or on the same Tree For if Souls are Unible and so Partible Substances they have neither more nor less of Substance or Holiness for their Union and so will each have his proper measure As a Tun of Water cast into the Sea will there still be the same and more than a spoonful cast into it § 52. Obj. But Spirits are not as Bodies extensive and quantitative and so not partible or divisible and therefore your supposition is vain Ans 1. My supposition is but the objectors For if they confess that Spirits are Substances as cannot with reason be denyed For they that Specify their operations by Motion only yet suppose a pure proper substance to be the subject or thing Moved then when they
that the Word of God is not a humane Dream or lifeless thing that by Regeneration hath been here preparing thee for the Light of Glory as by Generation he prepared thee to see this Light and converse with men And wilt thou yet doubt and fear against all this Evidence Experience and Foretast § 13. I think it not needless labour to confirm my Soul in the full persuasion of the truth of its own Immortal Nature and of a future Life of Joy or Misery to Mankind and of the certain Truth of the Christian Faith The Being of God and his Perfection hath so great Evidence that I find no great Temptation to doubt of it any more than whether there be an Earth or a Sun and the Atheist seemeth to me to be in that no better than Mad the Christian Verity is known only by Supernatural Revelation but by such Revelation it is so attested externally to the World and internally to Holy Souls as maketh Faith the Ruling victorious consolatory Principle by which we must live and not by sight But the Souls Immortality and Reward hereafter is of a middle Nature viz. Of Natural Revelation but incomparably less clear than the Being of a God and therefore by the addition of Evangelical Supernatural Revelation is made to us much more clear and sure And I find among the Infidels of this Age that most who deny the Christian Verity do almost as much deny or question the Retribution of a future Life And they that are fully satisfied of this do find Christianity so excellently Congruous to it as greatly facilitateth the work of Faith Therefore I think that there is scarce any verity more needful to be throughly digested into a full assurance than this of the Souls Immortality and hope of future happiness § 14. And when I consider the great unlikeness of mens Hearts and Lives to such a Belief as we all profess I cannot but fear that not only the ungodly but most that truly hope for Glory have a far weaker belief in habit and act of the Souls Immortality and the Truth of the Gospel than they seem to take notice of in themselves Can I be certain or fully persuaded in habit and act of the future Rewards and Punishments of Souls and that we shall be all shortly judged as we have lived here and yet not despise all the Vanities of this World and set my heart with resolution and diligence to the preparation which must be made by a holy heavenly fruitful Life as one whose Soul is taken up with the hopes and fears of things of such unspeakable importance Who could stand dallying as most men do at the Door of Eternity that did verily believe his Immortal Soul must be shortly there Though such a one had no certainty of his own particular Title to Salvation the certainty of such a grand concernment that Joy or misery is at hand would surely awaken him to try to cry to search to beg to strive to watch to spare no care or cost or labour to make all sure in a matter of such weight It could not be but he would do it with speed and do it with a full resolved Soul and do it with earnest zeal and diligence What Man that once saw the things which we hear of even Heaven and Hell would not afterwards at least in deep regard and seriousness exceed the most resolved Believer that you know One would think in Reason it should be so thought I confess a wicked Heart is very sensless § 15. I do confess that there is much weakness of the Belief of things unseen where yet there is sincerity But surely there will be some proportion between our Belief and its Effects And where there is little Regard or Fear or Hopes or Sorrow or Joy or resolved Diligence for the World to come I must think that there is in act at least but little belief of it and that such Persons little know themselves how much they secretly doubt whether it be true I know that most complain almost altogether of the uncertainty of their Title to Salvation and little of their uncertainty of a Heaven and Hell But were they more certain of this and truly persuaded of it at the Heart it would do more to bring them to that serious resolved faithfulness in Religion which would help them more easily to be sure of their Sincerity than long examinations many marks talked of without this will do § 16. And I confess that the great Wisdom of God hath not thought meet that in the Body we should have as clear and sensible and lively apprehensions of Heaven and Hell as sight would cause For that would be to have too much of Heaven or Hell on Earth for the gust would follow the perception and so full a sense would be some sort of a possession which we are not fit for in this World And therefore it must be a darker Revelation than sight would be that it may be a lower Perception lest this World and the next should be confounded and Faith and Reason should be put out of Office and not duly tryed exercised and fitted for reward But yet Faith is Faith and Knowledg is Knowledg and he that verily believeth such great transcendent things though he see them not will have some proportionable affections and endeavours § 17. I confess also that Man's Soul in Flesh is not fit to bear so deep a sense of Heaven and Hell as sight would cause because it here operateth on and with the Body and according to its capacity which cannot bear so deep a sense without distraction by screwing up the Organs too high till they break and so over doing would undo all But yet there is an over-ruling Seriousness which a certain belief of future things must needs bring the Soul to that truly hath it And he that is careful and serious for this World and looketh after a better but with a slight unwilling half-regard and in the second place must give me leave to think that he believeth but as he liveth and that his doubting or unbelief of the reality of a Heaven Hell is greater than his Belief § 18. O then for what should my Soul more pray than for a clearer and a stronger Faith I believe Lord help my unbelief I have many a Thousand times groaned to thee under the burden of this remnant of darkness and unbelief I have many Thousand times thought of the Evidences of the Christian verity and of the great necessity of a lively powerful active Faith I have begged it I have cryed to thee Night and Day Lord increase my Faith I have written and spoken that to others which might be most useful to my self to raise the apprehensions of Faith yet higher and make them liker those of sense But yet yet Lord how dark is this World What a Dungeon is this Flesh How little clearer is my sight and little quicker are my perceptions of unseen things
intuitively and as Face to Face That which is essentially Life as a Living Principle will Live And that which is essentially an Active Intellective Volitive principle force and Virtue will still be such while it is itself and is not annihilated or changed into another thing which is not to be feared And that which is such can never want an Object till all things be annihilated § 8. Reason assureth me that were my will now what it should be and fully obsequious herein to my understanding to fulfil Gods will would be the fulfilling my own will for my will should perfectly comply with His and to please him perfectly would be my perfect pleasure And it is the unreasonable adhesion to this Body and sinful selfishness which maketh any one think otherwise now I am sure that my Soul shall Live for it is Life itself and I am sure that I shall live to God and that I shall fulfil and please his blessed will and this is as such incomparably better than my Felicity as such And yet so far as I am pleased in so doing it will be my Felicity § 9. I begin now to think that the strange Love which the Soul hath to this Body so far as it is not inordinate is put into us of God partly to signifie to us the great Love which Christ hath to his Mystical Political Body and to every member of it even the least He will gather all his Elect out of the World and none that come to him shall be shut out and none that are given him shall be lost As his Flesh is to them Meat indeed and his Blood is to them Drink indeed and he nourisheth them for Life eternal His Spirit in them turning the Sacrament the Word and Christ himself in esse objectivo as Believed in into Spirit and Life to us as the Soul and our Natural Spirits turn our food into Flesh and Blood and Spirits which in a dead Body or any lifeless repository it would never be so as we delight in the ease and prosperity of our Body and each Member and have pleasure in the pleasant food that nourisheth it and other pleasant Objects which accommodate it Christ also delighteth in the welfare of his Church and of all the Faithful and is pleased when they are fed with good and pleasant Food and when hereby they prosper Christ Loveth the Church not only as a Man must love his Wife but as we Love our Bodies And no Man ever hated his own Flesh Eph. 5. 27 c. And herein I must allow my Saviour the preeminence to overgo me in powerful faithful Love He will save me better from pain and death than I can save my Body and will more inseparably hold me to himself If it please my Soul to dwell in such a House of Clay and to operate on so mean a thing as Flesh how greatly will it please my glorified Lord to dwell with his glorified Body the triumphant Church and to cherish and bless each Member of it It would be a kind of death to Christ to be separated from his Body and to have it die Whether Augustine and the rest of the Fathers were in the right or no who thought that as our Bodies do not only shed their Hairs but by sicknesses and wast lose much of their very Flesh so Christ's Militant Body doth not only lose Hypocrites but also some living justified Members yet certain it is that confirmed Members and more certain that glorified Members shall not be lost Heaven is not a place for Christ or us to suffer such loss in And will Christ love me better than I love my Body Will he be lother to lose me than I am to lose a Member or to die Will he not take incomparably greater pleasure in animating and actuating me for ever than my Soul doth in animating and actuating this Body O then let me long to be with him And though I am naturally loth to be absent from the Body let me be by his Spirit more unwilling to be absent from the Lord And though I would not be unclothed had not sin made it necessary let me groan to be clothed upon with my heavenly Habitation and to become the delight of my Redeemer and to be perfectly loved by Love itself § 10. And even this blessed Receptivity of my Soul in terminating the Love and Delight of my glorified Head must needs be a felicity to me The insensible Creatures are but Beautified by the Suns communication of its Light and Heat but the sensitives have also the Pleasure of it Shall my Soul be sensless will it be a Clod or Stone Shall that which is now the form of be then more Lifeless Sensless or uncapable than the form of Bruits is now Doubtless it will be a living perceiving sensible Recipient of the felicitating Love of God and my Redeemer I shall be loved as a living Spirit and not as a dead and senseless thing that doth not comfortably perceive it § 11. And if I must rejoice with my fellow Servants that rejoice shall I not be glad to think that my blessed Lord will rejoice in me and in all his glorified Ones Union will make his pleasure to be much mine And it will be aptly said by him to the faithful Soul Enter thou into the Joy of thy Lord Mat. 25. 21. His own active Joy will objectively be Ours as Ours will be Efficiently His or from Him Can that be an ill condition to me in which my Lord will most rejoice It is Best to Him and therefore Best to me § 12. And the heavenly Society will joyfully welcome a Holy Soul If there be now Joy in Heaven among the Angels for one Sinner that Repenteth who hath yet so little Holiness and so much Sin What joy will there be over a perfected glorified Soul Surely if Our Angels there behold our Fathers Face they will be glad in Season of our Company The Angels that carried Lazarus to Abraham's Bosom no doubt rejoiced in their work and their success And is the Joy of Angels and the heavenly Host as nothing to me Will not Love and Union make their Joy to be my own if Love here must make all my Friends and Neighbours comforts to become my own And as their Joy according to their Perfection is greater than any that I am now capable of so the participation of so great a Joy of theirs will be far better than to have my little separated apartment Surely that will be my best condition which Angels and blessed Spirits will be best pleased in and I shall rejoice most in that which they most rejoice in III. The Constitutive Reasons from the Intellective state III. § 1. Though the Tempter would persuade men because of the case of Infants in the Womb Apoplectick's c. that the understanding will be but an unactive Power when separated from these corporeal Organs I have seen before sufficient Reasons to repel this
study it without Love What sounding Brass and tinkling Cymbals a lifeless Voice are they that preach of God and Christ and heavenly Glory without Love But gazing upon the face of Love in Christ and tasting of its gifts and looking up to its glorious reign is the way to kindle the Sacred Fire in thee Look upwards if thou wouldst see the Light that must lead thee upwards It is not for nothing that Christ hath taught us to begin our Prayers with Our Father which art in Heaven It is Fatherly Love that must win our Hearts and that must comfort them And it is in Heaven where this is gloriously manifested As I said before as the Soul is in all the Body but yet understandeth not in the Hand as it doth in the Head nor rejoiceth not in the Foot as it doth in the Heart so God that is every where doth not every where glorifie his Love as he doth it in Heaven Thither therefore the Mind and Eye are even by Nature taught to look up as to God as we look a Man in the Face when we speak to him rather than to his Feet though his Soul be also there My sinful Heart hath needed sorrow My careless rash presumptuous Soul hath needed fears and I have had some part of these Mercy saw it good for me as necessary to prevent my more dangerous deceits and lapses And O that in the hour of sensual temptations I had feared more and departed from evil But it is HOLY LOVE that must be my life Or else I am dead notwithstanding fear O come then and study the life of Love It is more of a Holy Nature than of Art but yet study must do much to prepare thee to receive it This is the great use of a heavenly Conversation It is the contemplation belief and hope of the glorious state of Love hereafter that must make us like it and kindle it in us here The burning Glass must be turned directly to the Sun if you will have it set any thing on fire There is a carnal or common love to God which is kindled in men by carnal pleasures But a Holy love like that in Heaven must be studiously fetcht from Heaven and kindled by the fore sight of what is there what we shall be there for ever Faith must ascend and look within the vail thou must not live as a stranger to thy home to thy God and Saviour and thy hopes The fire that must warm thee is in Heaven and thou must come near it or open thy self to its influence if thou wilt feel its powerful efficacy It is night and winter with carnal minds when it is day and summer with those that set their Faces Heavenward § 21. II. But though all my Receivings will be from God they will not be from him alone We must live in perfect Union also with one another and with all the heavenly Society and therefore as we must love them all so shall we be beloved by them all And this will be a subordinate part of our blessedness God there will make use of second causes even in communicating his Love and Glory § 22. 1. The Lord Jesus Christ will not only be the Object of our delightful love but will also love us with an effectual operative love for ever His love will be as the Vital Heat and Motion of the Heart to all the Members the Root of our Life and Joy The Love of our Redeemer will flow out into us all as the Vital Spirits and his Face of Glory will be the Sun of the heavenly Jerusalem and will shine upon us and shew us God And in his light we shall have light Did his tears for a dead Lazarus make men say Behold how he loved him O then what will the reviving Beams of heavenly life make us say of that love which filleth us with the pleasures of his presence and turneth our Souls into JOY it self He comforteth us now by the teaching of his Word but surely the fruition of Salvation will be more gladding then the tidings of it When he that told us of Glory in his Gospel shall give it us we shall not only believe but feel that he loveth us § 23. Believe O my Soul thy Saviours Love that thou maist foretast it and be fit to feel it We were uncapable in sinful Flesh of seeing him otherwise than as cloathed with Flesh and his consolations were administred by a word of Promise suitable to his appearance But when he withdrew his bodily presence the Comforter was sent with a fuller Consolation But all that was but the earnest and the first fruits of what he will be to us for ever Be not seldom not unbelieving nor slight in the thoughts of thy Saviours love for it is he that is the way to the Infinite love Let thy believing be so much of thy daily work that thou maist say that he dwelleth in thy Heart by Faith Eph. 3. 17. and that while thou livest here it is Christ that liveth in thee and that thy life in the Flesh is not a fleshly life but by the Faith of the Son of God that hath loved thee and given himself for thee Gal. 2. 20. And that though thou see him not yet believing thou lovest him also with unspeakable Joy as believing the unspeakable perfect Joy which his Love-will communicate to thee for ever Look upon the Sun and think thus with thy self How wonderful is the Emanation of this Sun Its motion light and heat communicated to so many Millions of Câ—eatures all over the Earth and in the Seas What if all these beams of light and heat were proportionable beams of perfect Knowledge Love and Joy and that all Creatures that are under the Sun had from its influx as much Wisdom Love and Joy as they have Light Heat and Motion Would not then this Earth be as a World of Angels and a Heaven O what a blessed World would it be And what a benefactor would the Sun be to the World Why even such will Jesus Christ be to the Celestial World He is the Sun of Glory His Influence will send forth LIFE and LIGHT and JOYFUL LOVE upon all the blessed from the Face of the God as the Sun sends forth from God its Motion Light and Heat upon this World Now therefore begin and live upon him live upon the influence of his Grace his Teaching Love-kindling and Quickning Grace that thou maist have his Name and Mark and he may find in thee something of himself or of his own when thou comest to his Righteous ryal His Grace is not in my power not at my command It is not meet it should be so But he hath not bid me seek and beg in vain If he had never told me that he will give it me it is equal to a promise if he do but bid me seek and ask But I have more He teacheth me to pray He maketh my Prayers He writeth me
entrance of the Inheritance of Saints And yet alas Darkness Darkness is still my misery There is Light round about me in thy word and works but darkness is within me And if my Eye be dark the Sun will be no Sun to me Alas my Lord it is noâ— all the Learning in the World no not of Theology that consisteth in the knowledge of Words and Methods which I can take for the satisfactory heavenly Light To know what thou hast written in the Sacred Book is nor enough to make me know my glorified Saviour my Father and my home It must be a Light from Heaven that must shew me Heaven and a Light accompanied with Vital heat that must turn to Love and Joy within me O Let me not have only dreaming knowledge of Words and Signs but quickning Light to shew the Things which these words do signifie to my Mâ—nd and Heart Surely the Faith By which we must live must be a lâ—ving Faith And must reach further than to Words how true soever Can Faith live in the Dark What is it but an effect of thine Illumination What is my Unbelief but the Darkness of my Soul Lord Iesus scatter all these mists Make thy way O thou Son of Righteousness into this benighred mind O send thine Advocate to silence every temptation that is against thy truth and thee and thine Agent to prosecute thy cause against thine Enemies and mine and to be the resident Witness of thy Verity and my Sonship and Salvation Hearing of thee is not satisfactory to me It must be the Presence and Operation of thy Light and Love shed abroad by thy Spirit on my Heart that must quiet and content my Soul I confess with shame that I have sinned against Heaven and before thee and am unworthy to have any glimpse or taste of Heaven But so did many that are now entertained and feasted by thy Love in Glory My Lord I know that Heaven is not far from me It is not I believe one Days or Hours journey to a separated Soul How quick is the communion of my Eyes with the Sun that seems far off And couldst thou not shew it me in a moment Is not Faith a seeing Grace It can see the invisible God and the unseen World the new Jerusalem the innumerable Angels and the Spirits of the perfected Just if it be animated by thine influx Without which it can do nothing and is nothing Thou that oft healedst the Blind here in the Flesh didst tell us that it is much more thy work to illuminate Souls It is but forgiving all my sins and removing this film that sin hath gathered and my illuminated Soul will see thy Glory I know that the vail of Flesh must be also rent before I shall see thee with open Face and know my fellow Citizens above as I am known It is not Heaven on Earth that I am begging for But that I may see it from Mount Nebo and have the bunch of Grapes the Pledge and the first Fruits that Faith and Hope which may kindle Love and Desire and make me run my Race in Patience and live and die in the Joy which beseemeth an Heir of Heaven But if my part on Earth must be no greater than yet it is let it make me the wearier of this Dungeon and groan more fervently to be with thee and long for the day when all my longing shall be satisfied and my Soul be filled with thy light and love § 24. And doubtless as I shall love the Angels and Saints in Heaven so I shall some way in subordination to Christ be a Receiver from them Our love will be mutual And which way soever I owe duty I shall expect some answerable return of benefit The Sun shineth upon the Stars as well as on the Earth and the Stars on one another If Angels are greatly useful to me here it 's like they will be much more there where I shall be a more capable receiver It will be no diminution to Christ's honour that he there maketh use of my fellow Creatures to my joy no more than it is here The whole Creation will be still one compaginated frame and the heavenly Society will for ever retain their Relation to each other and their aptitude and disposition to the duties and benefits of those Relations And as we shall be far sitter for them than here we are so shall we have far more comfort in them How gloriously will God shine in the glory of the Blessed How delightful will it be to see their Perfection in Wisdom Holiness Love and Concord What Voices they use or what Communication instead of Voices we shall shortly know But surely there is a blessed harmony of Minds and Wills and Practice All are not equal but all accord to love and praise their glorious God and readily to obey him and perfectly to love each other There is no jarring or discordant Spirit that is out of tune no separation or opposition to each other As God's love in Christ is our full and final happiness so Nature which hath made us sociable teacheth us to desire to be loved of each other but especially by wise and worthy Persons Saints and Angels in Heaven will love incomparably better than our dearest Friends on Earth can do and better than they did themselves when we were on Earth For they will love that best which is best and where there is most of God appearing Else it were not intellectual love And therefore they will love us as much better when we come to Heaven as we shall be better If we go from loving friends on Earth we shall go to them that love us far more The love of these here doth but pitty us in our pains and go weeping with our Carkasses to the Grave But the love of those above will joyfully convoy or welcome out Souls to their triumphing Society All the holy Friends that we thought we had lost that went before us we shall find rejoicing there with Christ And O what a glorious state will be that common uniting and united love If two or three Candles joined together make a greater flame and light what would Ten thousand Stars united do When all the LOVE of Angels and Saints in full Perfection shall be so united as to make ONE LOVE to God that is One and to one another who are there all one in Christ O what a glorious LOVE will that be That LOVE and JOY will be the same thing And that One universal LOVE will be One universal JOY Little know we how great a Mercy it is to be here commanded to love our Neighbours as our selves and much more to be effectually taught of God so to love one another And did we all here live in such unfeigned Love we should be like to Heaven as bearing the Image of the God of Love But alas our Societies here are small our Goodness which is our Amiableness wofully imperfect and mixt with loathsom
is here but as in the Seed the perfect union and communion is hereafter Earth and Heaven must be distinguished We must not extend our hopes or pretensions here beyond the Capacity of our Natures As perfect Holiness and Knowledge so perfect Unity and Concord is proper to Heaven and is not here to be expected The Papal pretensions of an impossible Union in one Governour of all the Earth is the means to hinder that Union which is possible But the state of Perfection is the state of perfect union communion Hasten then upwards O my Soul with the ferventest desires and breath after that state with the strongest Hopes where thou shalt not be rich and see thy Neighbours poor about thee nor be poor while they are rich nor be well while they are sick or sick while they are well But their Riches their Health their Joy will be all thine and thine will be all theirs as the common Light and none will have the less for the participation of the rest Yea Communion will be part of every ones felicity It constitueth the very being of the City of God This Celestial Communion of Saints in one holy Church above what is here to be attained is now an Article of our Belief But believing will soon end in seeing and enjoying V. The Constitutive Reasons from the heavenly Life or Practice § 1. Seeing and Loving will be the heavenly Life But yet it seemeth that besides these there will be EXECUTIVE Powers and therefore some answerable PRACTICE There are GOOD WORKS in Heaven and far more and better than on Earth For 1. There will be more Vital Activity and therefore more exercise of it For the Power is for Action 2. There will be more Love to God and one another And Love is active 3. There will be more likeness to God and our Redeemer who is communicative and doth good as he is good 4. Our Union with Christ who will be everlastingly beneficent as well as benevolent will make us in our places also beneficent 5. Our Communion in the City of God will prove that we shall all bear our part as the Members of the Body in contributing to the welfare of the whole and in the common returns to God § 2. But What are the heavenly Works we must perfectly know when we come thither In general we know 1. That they will be the works of love to God and to his Creatures that is such as Love inclineth us to exercise 2. And they will be works of Obedience to God that is such as we shall do to please his will and because he willeth them to be our duty 3. They will be useful works to others 4. They will be pleasant to our selves and part of our felicity 5. And they will carry all to God our End § 3. And somwhat of them is particularly described in the holy Scriptures As 1. We shall in Concord with the whole Society or Chore give Thanks and Praise to God and our Redeemer Rev. 19. 5. 1 Pet. 4. 11. Rev. 7. 4. 4. 7 11. 5. 13. 7. 12. 19. 1. Phil. 4 20. Whether there be any Voice or only such Spiritual activity and exultation as to Man in Flesh is not to be clearly understood is not fit for us here to presume to determine It will be somwhat more high and excellent than our vocal Praise and Singing is and of which this beareth some analogical resemblance or signification As all Passions earnestly desire vent and exercise so specially do our holy affections of Love Joy and Admiration of God Almighty And there is in us a desire of communion with many in such affections and expressions Methinks when we are singing or speaking God's praise in the great Assemblies with joyful and fervent Souls I have the liveliest foretast of Heaven on Earth And I could almost wish that our Voices were loud enough to reach through all the World and unto Heaven itself Nor could I ever be offended as many are at the Organs and other convenient Musick soberly and seasonably used which excite and help to tune my Soul in so holy a work in which no true assistance is to be despised No work more comforteth me in my greatest sufferings none seemeth more congruous and pleasant to me while I wait for Death than Psalms and words of Praise to God nor is there any exercise in which I had rather end my life And should I not then willingly go to the heavenly Chore where God is praised with perfect Love and Joy and harmony Had I more of a Praising frame of Soul it would make me long more for that Life of Praise For I never find my self more willing to be there than when I most joyfully speak or sing God's praise Though the Dead praise not God in the grave and dust doth not give him thanks yet living Souls in Heaven do it joyfully while their fleshly cloathing turns to dust Lord â—une my Soul to thy Praises now that sweet experience may make me long to be where I shall do it better I see where any excellent Musick is Nature maketh men flock to it and they that are but Hearers yet join by a concurrent phantasie and delight Surely if I had once heard the heavenly Chore I should Eccho to their holy Songs though I could not imitaâ— them and I should think it the truest Blessedness to be there and bear my part My God the voice of thy comforting Spirit speaking thy Love effectually to my Soul would make such holy Musick in me that would incline me to the Celestial consort and without it all these thoughts and words will be in vain It is the inward Mâ—lody of thy Spirit and my Conscience that must tune me to desire the hâ—avenly Melody O speak thy love first to my Heart and then I shall joyfully speak it to my Brethren and shall ambitiously seek that communion of them that praise thee better than sinful groaning Mortals can And though my sins here make a loathed jar and discord in my Songs I hope my groans for these sins and their effects will make no discord Sighs and Tears have had the honour to be accepted by thee who despisest not a contrite Soul But if thy Spirit will sing and speak within me and help me against the discordant murmurs of my unbelieving Heart and pained Flesh I shall offer thee that which is more suitable to thy Love and Grace I confess Lord that daily Tears and Sighs are not unsuitable to the Eyes and Voice of so great a Sinner who is under thy correcting Roâ— What better could I expect when I grieved thy Spirit than that it should prove my grief Yea this is far better than the genuine effects of sin But this is not it that is meeâ—est to be offered to the God of Love He that offereth Praise doth glorifie thee And is not this the Spiritual Sacrifice acceptable through Christ for which we were made Priests to God
with his own And had my resignation and devotedness to him been more absolute my trust in him would have been more easy But Lord thou knowest that I would fain be thine and wholly thine and it is to thee that I desire to live Therefore let me quietly Die to Thee and wholly Trust Thee with my Soul § 5. II. And why should my want of formal Conceptions of the future state of separated Souls and my strangeness to the manner of their subsistence and operations induce me to doubt of those generals which are evident and beyond all rational doubting That Souls are substances and not annihilated and essentially the same when they forsake the Body as before I doubt not Otherwise neither the Christians Resurrection nor the Pythagoreans transmigration were a possible thing For if the Soul cease to be it cannot pass into another Body nor can it re-enter into this If God raise this Body then it must be by another Soul For the same Soul to be Annihilated and yet to begin again to be is a contradiction For the second beginning would be by Creation which maketh a new Soul and not the same that was before It is the Invisible things that are excellent active operative and permanent The Visible excepting Light which maketh all things else visible are of themselves but lifeless dross It is the unseen part of Plants and Flowers which causeth all their growth and beauty their fruit and sweetness Passive Matter is but moved up and down by the invisible active Powers as Chess-men are moved from place to place by the Gamesters hands What a loathsom Corps were the World without the invisible Spirits and Natures that animate actuate or move it To doubt of the being or continuation of the most excellent Spiritual parts of the Creation when we live in a World that is actuated by them and where every thing demonstrates them as their effects is more foolish than to doubt of the being of these gross materials which we see § 6. How oft have I been convinced that there are good Spirits with whom our Souls have as certain communion though not so sensible as our Life hath with the Sun and as we have with one another And that there are evil and envious Spirits that fight against our Holiness and Peace as certain Narratives of Apparitions and Witches and too sad experience of Temptations do evince And the marvellous diversity of Creatures on Earth for kind and number yea the diversity of Stars in Heaven as well as the diversities of Angels and Devils do partly tell me that though All be of One and through One and to One yet absolute Unity is the divine Prerogative and we must not presume to expect such Perfection as to lose our specifique or numerical diversity by any Union which shall befall our Souls Nor can I reasonably doubt that so noble and active a Nature as Souls dwelling above in the lucid Regions in communion with their like and with their betters shall be without the activity the pleasure and felicity which is suitable to their Nature their Region and their Company And my Saviour hath entered into the Holiest and hath assured me that there are many Mansions in his Fathers House and that when we are absent from the Body we shall be present with the Lord. § 7. Organical sight is given me for my use here in the Body And a Serpent or a Hawk hath as much or more of this than I have Mental knowledge reacheth further than sight and is the act of a nobler Faculty and for a higher use Though it be the Soul itself embodied in the igneous Spirits that seeth yet it is by a higher and more useful Faculty that it understandeth And Faith is an understanding act It knoweth things unseen because they are revealed Who can think that all believing holy Souls that have passed hence from the beginning of the World have been deceived in their Faith and Hope And that all the wâ—cked worldly Infidels whose hope was only in this life have been the wisest men and have been in the right If Virtue and Piety are faults or foâ—lies and bruitish Sensualâ—ty be best then why are not Laws made to command Sensualâ—ty and forbâ—d Piety and Virtue To say this is to deny humanity and the Wisdom of our Creator and to feign the World to be governed by a Lie and to take the Perfection of our Nature for its disease and our greatest disease for our Perfection But if Piety and Virtue be better than Impiety and Vice the Principles and necessary Motives of them are certainly true and the exercise of them is not in vain What abominable folly and wickedness were it to say the wicked only attain their ends and that they all lose their labour and live and die in miserable deceit who seek to please God in hope of a better life to come believing that God is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him Wouâ—d not this justifie the foolish Manichees that thought a bad God made this World yea and would infer that he not only made us for a mischief but Ruleth uâ— to our deceit and hurt and giveth us both Natural and Supernatural Laws in ill will to us to mâ—slead us to our misery and to fill our lives with needless troubles Shall I not abhor every suggestion that containeth such inhumane absurdities as these Wonderful that Satan can keep up so much Unbelief in the World while he must make men such fools that he may make them unbelievers and ungodly § 8. III. That my Soul is no more heavenly and my foretast of future Blessedness is so small is partly the fruit of those many wilful sins by which I have quenched the Spirit that should be my Comforter And it is partly from our common state of darkness and strangeness while the Soul is in Flesh and operateth as the Bodies form according to its Interest and Capacity Affections are more easily stirred up to things seen than to things that are both unseen and known only very defectively by general and not by clear distinct apprehensions And yet this O this is the misery and burden of my Soul Though I can say that I love God's Truth and Graces his Work and his Servants and whatever of God I see in the World and that this is a love of God in his Creatures Word and Works yet that I have no more desiring and delightful Love of Heaven where his Loveliness will be more fully opened to my Soul and that the thoughts of my speedy appearing there are no more joyful to me than they are is my sin and my calamity and my shame And if I did not see that it is so with other of the Servants of Christ as well as with me I should doubt whether affections so unproportionable to my Profession did not signifie unsoundness in my belief It is strange and shameful that one that expecteth quickly to see the glorious World
hath also used them to do abundance of good against Idolatry in the Heathen World Where-ever they come Idolatry is destroyed Yea the corrupt Christians Greeks and specially Papists that worship Images Angels and Bread are rebuked and condemned justly by Mahometans But O that they who have Conquered so far by the Sword were Conquered by the Sacred Word of Truth and truly understood the Mystery of Redemption and the Doctrin of the Gospel of Jesus Christ Obj. But they think us Idolaters for saying that Christ is God and believing the Trinity I. As to the Trinity it is no contradiction that one Fire or Sun should have Essentially a Virtue or Power to Move Light and Heat Nor that one Soul should have a power of Vegetation Sense and Reason Nor as Rational to have a peculiar power of Vitality Intellection and Free-will Why then should the Trinity seem incredidible II. We do not believe that the Godhead hath any change or is made Flesh or the Manhood made God but that the Godhead is incomprehensibly united to the humane Nature by assumption so as he is united to no other Creature by and for those peculiar Operations on the humanity of Christ which make him our Redeemer They that well think that God is All in All things more than a Soul to all the World and as near to us as our Souls to our Bodies in whom we live and move and have our being will find that it is more difficult to apprehend how God is further from any Soul than that he is so much One with Christ Save that different Operations of God on his Creatures are apparent to us By all this we see that every sanctified Christian hath the certain Witness in himself that Christ is true He is truly a Physician that healeth and a Saviour that saveth all that seriously believe and obey him The Spirit of God in a New and Holy and Heavenly Nature of Spiritual Life and Light and Love is the Witness VI. The Sixth Article in my Text is Received up into Glory That Christ after Forty Days continuance on Earth was taken up into Heaven in the sight of his Disciples is a Matter of Fact of which we have all the forementioned infallible proof which I must not here again repeat And 1. If Christ were not glorified now in Heaven he could not send down his Spirit with his Word on Earth nor have enabled the first Witnesses to speak with all Tongues and heal the Sick and raise the Dead and do all the Miracles which they did A dead Man cannot send down the Holy Spirit in likeness of Firy cloven Tongues nor enable Thousands to do such VVorks nor could he do what is done on the Souls of serious Believers in all Ages and Nations to this Day He is sure alive that makes men live and in Heaven that draws up Hearts to Heaven 2. And this is our Hope and Joy Heaven and Earth are in his Power The Suffering and VVork which he performed for us on Earth was short but his heavenly Intercession and Reign is Everlasting Guilty Souls can have no immediate access to God All is by a Mediator All our receivings from God are by him And all our services are returned by him and accepted for his sake And as he is the Mediator between his Father and us his Spirit interceedeth between him and us By his Spirit he giveth us Holy desires and every Grace and by his Spirit we exercise them in returns to him And our glorified Saviour hath Satan and all our Enemies in his Power Life and Death are at his command All Judgment is committed to him He that hath redeemed us is preparing us for Heaven and it for us and receiveth our departing Souls to his own Joy and Glory He hath promised us that we shall be with him where he is and shall see his Glory He that is our Saviour will be our Judge He will come with Thousands of his Angels to the confusion of wicked Unbelievers and to be glorified in his Saints He will make a New Heaven and a New Earth in which Righteousness shall dwell Angels and Glorified Saints shall with Christ our Head make one City of God or holy Society and Chore in perfect Love and Joy to praise the blessed God for ever I. The differences between this World and that which I am going to I. THis World is God's Footstool That is his Throne II. Here are his Works of Inferiour Nature and of Grace There he shineth forth in Perfect Glory III. Here is gross Receptive Matter moved by Invisible Powers There are the noblest efficient communicative Powers moving all IV. This is the Inferiour subject Governed World That is the Superiour Regent World V. This is a World of Trial where the Soul is his that can win its consent That is a World where the Will is perfectly determined and fixed VI. Satan winning mens Consent hath here a large Dominion of Fools There he is cast out and hath no Possession VII Here he is a 〈◊〉 and Troubler of the Best There he hath neither Power to Tempt or Trouble VIII This World is as the dark Womb where we are regenerated That is the World of Glorious Light into which we are born IX Here we dwell on a World of sordid Earth There we shall dwell in a World of Celestial Light and Glory X. Here we dwell in a troublesom tempting perishing Body There we are delivered from this burden and prison into glorious liberty XI Here we are under a troublesom Cure of our Maladies There we are perfectly healed rejoicing in our Physicians praise XII Here we are using the Means in weariness and hope There we obtain the end in full fruition XIII Here sin maketh us loathsom to our selves and our own annoiance There we shall love God in our selves and our Perfected selves in God XIV Here all our Duties are defiled with sinful imperfection There perfect Souls will perfectly love and praise their God XV. Here Satans temptations are a continual danger and molestation There perfect Victory hath ended our temptations XVI Here still there is a remnant of the Curse and Punishment of sin Pardon and Deliverance are perfected there XVII Repenting Shame Sorrow and Fear are here part of my necessary work There all the troublesom part is past and utterly excluded XVIII Here we see darkly as in a Glass the Invisible World of Spirits There we shall see them as Face to Face XIX Here Faith alas too weak must serve instead of sight There presence and sight suspend the use of such believing XX. Desire and Hope are here our very Life VVork But there it will be full felicity in fruition XXI Our Hopes are here oft mixt with grievous doubts and fears But there full possession ends them all XXII Our holy Affections are here corrupted with Carnal mixtures But there all are purely Holy and Divine XXIII The coldness of our Divine Love is here our sin and
more impossible for Moses to assume such a Body as he appeared in on the Mount for that occasion than for Angels to appear in humane shapes and departed Souls too as many Apparitions have told men And if bad Souls can do it why not good ones when God will have it The Tradition seemeth but a Jewish Dream that God kept the Body of Moses uncorrupted in the Grave and that this was it that the Devil is said to strive for against Michael that the Body might be corrupted And say others that at this Transfiguration it rose again There need no such conceits to our satisfaction The Soul of Moses could assume a Body § 8. But still the dissimilitude of Henoch and Elias from all the Saints in Heaven is an unresolved difficulty If we knew that God would have it so it might satisfie us But there is a symmetry in the Body of Christ And it 's like that the same Region hath Inhabitants of the same Nature What shall we think then That Henoch and Elias at their entrance into those Regions laid by their Bodies and became such as Abraham and other holy Souls Why are they taken up to be so laid by The corruptibility no doubt they did lay by God knoweth but it s much unknown to us Or shall we think as all those Fathers cited by Faustus Regiensis and as Dr. More and some of late that all Spirits are Souls and animate some Bodies and so that all in Heaven have some Bodies If so what Bodies are they And how differ they from the Resurrection state As the Soul here operateth in and by the Igneous Spirits in our Bodies it may be so lodged in these as to take some of them with it at Death as the life of a dying Plant yet dieth not in the Seed And a Man may be said to go unclothed to Bed though he put not off his shift or nearest Garment and to be clothed again when he puts on the rest And at the Resurrection as there will be a New Heaven and Earth so Spirits now in Heaven may have much more delightful business on the New and Righteous Earth than now they have and therefore may have use for an additional Body as much differing from what they have now in Heaven as the New Earth and their employment there require and as the Seed doth differ from the Plant. And Spirits being communicative will be more happy by more communication As God delighteth to do good to all his works so the Souls now confined to Heaven will delight to be employed in doing good to the New Earth and to animate the Bodies suited to such work Though now they have use for no other than such Spiritual lucid Receptacles as are fit for the Regions where they dwell And it will be no debasement or dejection for a Spirit now in Heaven to animate a Body at the Resurrection fit for the New Earth no more than it was to Angels to speak to Adam and to Moses to Abraham Jacob Manoah and others or then it is to the Sun to enlighten and enliven things on Earth It is a foolish thing to think as some do that departed Souls will be as dormant and unactive as in Apopletick or Sleeping Persons for want of Organized Bodies to act in Spirits are Essentially Active Intellective and Volitive And will God continue such Essential Powers in vain Moses and Elias wanted not Bodies And those in Heaven can praise Jehovah and the Lamb with holy concordant Love and Joy whether in any sort of ethereal Bodies or without we shall shortly know § 8. It is said that Moses and Elias talked with Christ This sheweth that Christ hath familiar communion with the Blessed He that would come into Flesh on Earth and live with Man in an humbled state and refused not familiar converse with poor men and women and would eat and drink with Publicans and Sinners will not refuse everlasting near familiarity with the glorified If the Church be his dearly beloved Spouse and as it were one with him as his Body surely he will be no stranger to the least and lowest Member of it § 9. But what was it that they talkt about Luk. 9. 31. saith They appeared in Glory and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem This was not to make it known to Christ who came into the World to die for sin What then was it for Did Christ tell them of it as not knowing it before That is not likely neither Did he need their comfort as Angels in his trials ministred to him and strengthned him The particular uses of this speech we know not But in general we know it was somwhat preparatory to his great Sufferings and Death And must Christ's Sufferings and Death have such preparation and must not mine have much premeditation and do I not need the consolatory messages of God Carnal men would rather have chosen pleasanter discourse than the talk of Sufferings and Death But that which must be undergone and requireth greatest strength must be forethought of and requireth the most preparing Thoughts It 's worse than madness to be surprized with Sufferings and Death before it 's seriously forethought of So sharp a trial and so great a change require the greatest preparation He that can refuse to suffer and die may refuse to talk or think of it If Christ must have men from Heaven to talk with him of his Cross what cause have we to study the Cross Even all our lives to foresee it and by obedient consent to submit unto it and take it up to follow Christ and even to determine with Paul to know nothing in the World but Christ and him Crucified that is to take this for the only needful and excellent Learning But alas how senslesly is Death and Suffering talkt of till it comes We are to learn how to suffer when suffering is upon us and to learn how to die till Nature or the Physician pass the sentence of Death on us at hand And it is God's Mercy to some of us to make our sufferings long that we may have a competent time of learning As we learn to write by writing and to discourse by discoursing and every Art and Trade by practice even so by suffering we learn to suffer And the Lesson is very hard Malefactors suffer without Learning whether they will or not but to suffer Obediently with Child-like affections is the Lesson to be learnt O little too little do many honest Christians think how much of their most excellent Obedience consisteth in Child-like holy Suffering Therefore they little expect it and provide for it And then they are overwhelmed with the unexpected surprizal when it comes Even in the sufferings which men bring on the Faithful for Righteousness sake how many shrink and shift off their duty or venture on forbidden things for safety because they were not prepared for it The loss of goods or imprisonment and want seem
and ease a Man's Faith is not tried to the uttermost by actual forsaking all And yet an easy Death alone doth not fully try a Man For they that know that all must die may submit to this who cannot bear long pains before it But great and long pains and the Sentence of Death together are the trial And if God will so try me why should I repine Flesh will groan but the Mind may obediently submit It is but Flesh that Flesh that hath tempted and imprisoned my Soul I have too much loved it and am too loth to leave it And is it not Mercy from God to make me weary of it God is engaged against Idols that is all that is loved and pleased before him and if any thing that 's likest to be this Flesh It 's corruptibility tells us that both its pleasure and its pain will be but short Long pain is usually tolerable And intolerable pain will conquer Nature and not be long The Grace of Christ is sufficient for us and his strength is manifested in our weakness when he will not take the Thorn out of our Flesh though as Christ and Paul did we pray thrice or oftner And to be impatient with Death is to repine that we are born Mortal men and to fly from Heaven and all true Hopes and all the Felicity purchased by Christ And is this renouncing the World and trusting Christ for Life everlasting And why fear we that which endeth all our pains and fears A true Believer never suffereth so much but his Mercies are far more and greater than his sufferings His Soul is united to Christ His hopes of Heaven have a sure Foundation He is sealed up to Glory Rest and Joy are near at hand And former Mercies should not be forgotten And should not such men patiently endure O what a shameful contradiction is it to choose Heaven as our only Portion to believe in Christ for it and to seek it as the business of all our lives and yet to be loth to die that we may obtain it and to fly with fear from that which we so seek and hope for What a contradiction is it to call God our God and Father the God of Love and to call Christ our Gracious glorified Redeemer and yet to Fly from his presence with distrustful fear Almighty love may correct us may kill us but it cannot finally hurt true Believers So much of Moses and Elias discourse of the Sufferings and Death of Christ § 13. Sure it is not true that the Souls of the Fathers before Christ's coming did not enter into Heaven but lay in some inferiour Limbus For Moses and Elias came from Heaven their shining glory shewed that and their discourse with Christ and the Voice and glory that went with them And it is not to be thought that they were separated from the rest of the Souls of the Faithful and with Henoch were in Heaven by themselves alone and the rest elsewhere Though it 's said that God's House hath many Mansions and there are various degrees of Glory yet the blessed are all Fellow-Citizens of one Society and Children in one Family of God And they that came from East and West shall sit down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God and Lazarus is in Abraham's bosom and the believing Thief with Christ in Paradise § 14. It seems that Moses and Elias appeared thus to fore shew the Resurrection of Christ and of the Faithful and to make it easier to the three Disciples to believe it Why should they doubt whether Christ should rise when they saw Moses that was risen before him And why should they doubt of the Resurrection of the Faithful and the Glory following when they saw these glorified Saints Some think that this Apparition was for the strengthening of Christ himself whose humane Nature had use for such Ministry also of Angels But it 's more certain that it was for the strengthening of the Disciples Faith and of ours by their Testimony As it 's said Joh. 12. 30. This Voice came not because of me but for your sakes § 15. It is much worth our noting in what a Communion this Specimen of the Kingdom of Heaven was represented in the holy Mount Here was a Voice of God and a glimpse of his Glory Here was our Redeemer in a glimpse of his Glory Here was a Moses and Elias in a glimpse of their Glory And here were three beloved Disciples yet in the Flesh and in weakness of Faith which needed such confirmation God our Father and our Saviour the Saints of Heaven and those on Earth are all of one Society or Kingdom there is a near relation and a near communion among them all When the Eternal Word disdained not so wonderful condescension as to come to us in the form of a Servant even of a poor despised Crucified Man it 's less wonder that Moses and Elias should come down as his Witnesses and Servants Heb. 12. 23 c. The heavenly Jerusalem and City of the Living God of which we are Enrolled Burgesses or Heirs hath many parts There is the Assembly of the first Born and innumerable Angels and the Spirits of the Just made perfect and Jesus the Mediator of the New Covâ—nant and God the Judge of all O what holy glorious joyful Company shall we have above Christ and his Angels will not despise the least of Saints § 16. But what was the Introduction to this Apparition and Transfiguration It was Christ's praying Luk. 9. 28 29. He went up into a Mountain to pray and as he prayed he was transfigured Surely this is written to invite and encourage us to pray We are in greater need than Christ It 's folly in Unbelievers to think Prayer vain because God is unchangeable We are not unchangeable And the exercise of Faith dependance on God and true desires being the Conditions required in a due Receiver maketh those Blessings become ourâ—s which else we had been uncapable of God who commandeth fervent Prayer hath promised to answer it Though we must not think to be the Rulers of the World nor have whatever our Flesh or solly doth desire because we ask it earnestly yet true Prayer is the appointed way for obtaining what we need and is best for us and we are fitted to receive And as Christ had this wonderful return to his Prayers his Servants have experience that their choicest Mercies for Soul and Body have come this way § 17. Though the three Disciples were admitted to this glorious Society how different was their case from that of Christ and Moses and Elias In the beginning of the heavenly concourse they were asleep with heaviness Even while this glorious Company stood near them Alas such is our infirmity in Flesh and such a Clog are these earthly Bodies to us that when God is present and Heaven is before us and we have the greatest cause to watch and pray a heavy weary sluggish Body even
fettereth an active Spirit and we sleep or turn away in wandering Thoughts when we should seriously converse with Christ and Heaven Alas what unworthy Servants hath our Lord Are such as these meet for his work his Love his Acceptance or his Kingdom But O how merciful a Saviour have we who taketh not his poor Servants at the worst but when they after served him thus in his Agony he gently rebuketh them Could you not watch with me one Hour and that with an excuse The Spirit is willing but the Flesh is weak § 18. It is a matter of great Moment to understand in what cases this excuse will hold and our weakness will not make the willingness of the Spirit unacceptable to God If a Drunkard Fornicator or other Sensualist should say My Spirit is willing to leave my sin but my Flesh is weak and in temptation doth prevail Video meliora proboque c. This excuse would not prove God's forgiveness If a Man live in known sin which he could forbear were he truly willing and say To will is present with me but to do I am unable it is not I but sin that dwelleth in me this would be but a frivolous excuse And yet to the sleepy Disciples it was a good excuse and I think to Paul Rom 7. where then is the dâ—fference There are some acts of Man which the will hath not power to rule and some that it can rule The will hath not power always to keep a sleepy Man awake This sleep might be of the Flesh without any will at all And this excuseth from all guilt There are some acts of Man which the will cannot rule but by a great degree of power and endeavour As perhaps with much ado by preventing and resisting diligence the Disciples might have kept awake In this case their sleep is a fault but a pardoned fault of weakness Some Persons are liable to inordinate Fear and Grief which so surprizeth them by the Constitution of their Bodies that the greatest unwillingness would not hinder them And some could do more to resist these passions than they do but very hardly with the greatest diligence These are accordingly excusable in degree Paul would have perfectly obeyed God's Law and never have sinned But there is no Perfection in this Life Meer Imperfection of true Grace which is predominant in the will doth not damn men But there are acts which are so subject to the will that a sincere will though imperfect can command them He that doth these or doth the contrary it is not because he sincerely would and cannot but because he hath but uneffectual wishes and is not sincerely willing if he know them to be what they are Especially if they be materially great sins which he yieldeth to which true Grace more strongly resisteth than it doth an idle word or thought or action In short all omissions or commissions in which the will is positively or privatively guilty are sinful in some degree but only these do damn the Sinner which are inconsistent with the predominant Love of God and Heaven and Holiness in the Soul § 19. When the Disciples awaked they saw these glorious ones in converse Did they hear what they said or did Christ after tell them The later is most probable Doubtless as Moses tells us how God made the World which none could tell him but by God's telling them first so the Apostles have written many things of Christ which they neither saw nor heard but from Christ that told it them by Word or Inspiration How else knew they what Satan said and did to him in his Temptations in the Wilderness and on the Pinacle of the Temple How knew they what his Prayer was in his Agony And so in this instance also But Christ's own testimony was enough to put them out of Doubt to them that daily saw his confirming Miracles § 20. How great a difference was there between Mount Sinai and this Mount When God delivered the Law to Moses that Mount was terrible in Flame and Smoak and Thunder so that the People trembled and fled But now here is nothing but Life and Light and Love from Heaven A merciful Redeemer whose Face shined as the Sun with heavenly Company appearing nearly to the Disciples pittying and bearing with their heaviness and infirmity strengthning their Faith and Hope and proving to them a Resurrection and a heavenly Kingdom by a visible Apparition of some of its Possessors This was not a frightful but a confirming delectable sight The Law in terrour was by Moses but Grace and Truth Peace and Pleasure are by Christ This was an inviting and delighting and not an affrighting Apparition Was it not a shameful infirmity and a sin that Peter should deny Christ after such a sight as this and the rest of the Disciples forsake him and fly What! after they had seen the Kingdom of God come in Power and Christ's Face shine as the Sun in its brightness Could they forget all this Or could they doubt whether he or his Persecutors were the stronger and liker to prevail at last O how frail how uncertain how bad a thing is depraved Man But though Christ found them asleep and though he foreknew that they would forsake him he forsook not them nor used them as they deserved but comforted them with a glimpse of Heaven For he died for his Enemies § 21. But this was but once in all the time of his abode among them It was an extraordinary Feast and not their daily Bread They had Christ still with them but not transfigured in Glory nor Moses and Elias in their sight We are too apt to think that if God give us a joyful extraordinary glimpse of Heaven we must have it always or that he forsaketh us and castus off when he denieth it us O that we were as desirous of Holiness and Duty as we are of the Joy which is the reward But our Father and not we must be the chooser both of our Food and Feast Moses did not dwell on Mount Nebo that he might still see the Land of Promise It was enough to have one sight of it before his death As Flesh and Blood cannot enter into Heaven so it 's little of Heaven that entereth into it § 22. When the Disciples awake they see his Glory and the two men that stood with him It must not be a sleeeping but an awakened Christian that will have a sight of heavenly Glory As we must love God with all the Heart and Soul and Might all must be awakened in seeking him and in attending him before we can have a joyful foretast of his Love Carnal security supine neglect and dull contempt are dispositions which render us uncapable of such delights Heavenly joys suppose a heavenly disposition and desires Angels sleep not nor are clogged with Bodies of Clay Earth hath no Wings It must be holy vivacity that must carry up a Soul to God notwithstanding the fetters of Flesh
It is with each others Souls in the Body that we converse together on Earth And it is not sluggish but lively Faith and fervent desire that must converse in Heaven with Moses and Elias and our living Head § 23. But how did Peter know Moses and Elias whom he had never seen before Perhaps glorified Saints do bear each one his notifying Signature and need not names and sound of words to make them known Perhaps Christ told the Disciples who they were that talked with him Perhaps he made them know it by Inspiration as Prophets have their knowledge Any of these ways God could notifie them It 〈◊〉 not needful that we know which of them it was But that they were known is certain We shall be no Strangers to any Saints in Heaven and therefore not to our old acquaintance Whether we shall have any greater love to them or delight in them for old acquaintance sake or because they were instruments of our good on Earth I know not But I know that our love to them with whom we had Holy comfort on Earth may well render Heaven more familiar to us now and more suitable to our desires O how great a number of my godly Friends are there They are so many that I cannot make a Catalogue of their Names but the Memory of abundance of them doth delight me And when we meet there we shall be far better known to each other then we were to the most intimate on Earth O let Christians now so converse together as remembring that they must meet in Heaven where all that was secret will be brought to light If we now put on any Vizor and seem better than we are if we hide any sin or base corruption if we by fraud or falshood deceive our Friends all this will be opened when we meet in Heaven It is a daily grief and shame to my Soul to think of the sins that I have committed against some that are now in Heaven which I either excused extenuated or hid And to think how much evil they will know of me there which on Earth they knew not by me But God who pardoneth them will cause his Servants there to forgive each other but the detected sin for all that will be an odious shameful thing Lying and Hypocrisie are there no cloak but an aggravation of the shame If we cannot confess and take shame to our selves by repentance upon Earth how shall we appear in the open light and see the Faces of those whom we wronged What diminution it will make of our joy I know not but it must needs be a dishonour to have been false to God or Man And especially when we meet where sin is perfectly hated to think how we either sinned together or that we tempted and ensnared one another in any sin how it will affect us then I do not fully know but it is now to me a far greater grief to think of any in Heaven whom I tempted or wronged than it was while they lived with me on Earth And I think there is somwhat of this Nature common to good and bad Even the Consciences of wicked men do haunt them for notable injuries to others especially concealed ones and especially for persecuting the Servants of God when they are dead more than while they lived In so much that though I doubt not of real Apparitions I am ready to think that some that say they are haunted by the sight and the voice of such as seem to them to be deceased Persons are rather haunted by their own Consciences which strongly represent those Persons to their imaginations But on the other side it is a great delight to me to think of the good which I received from many that are now in Heaven Of the profitable Sermons which I heard from some and the profitable conversation which I had with others How oft we sweetly consulted together of the things which concern everlasting life How many days in publick and private we spent in preparation and in some prospect of the Blessedness which now they enjoy And it is not a small Mercy to me that I can think of Multitudes now in Heaven of whose Conversion and Salvation God hath made my weak endeavours a prosperous means O what a Mercy is it to think on that while I am yet compassed with temptations and languishing in weakness and groaning in pain and worst of all burdened with a dark and sinful Soul so many are past all this with Christ by means of any help which he sent them by my labours It hath oft humbled me greatly to read in the lives of such men as John Janeway and Joseph Allen how much of their proficiency they ascribed to my Writings and how far they over-went me and left me quite behind them in Holy delights and praises of God! But how much more am I below a Multitude now in Heaven who called me Father here on Earth And if here I must rejoice with them that rejoice as well as mourn with them that mourn why should I not much more rejoice with all the blessed Society above And more familiarly with my old Acquaintance Pupils and dear Friends My Love should be most to the best and therefore more to them than to any other of my Friends And therefore my Union with them being closer and their Felicity far greater I should think with more Joy of them than of any left behind They are safe in the Harbour past all our dangerous storms and waves And though they know or will know more of my sins than they did on Earth and hate them more yet they that feel the comfort of the Pardon of their own will imitate God in pardoning me and rejoice in God's forgiveness of me Though their vile Bodies lie like common dust how much better do they now know the love of God the Mysteries of Grace the heavenly Glory the state of Spirits in the City of God than I do who was wont to preach it to them God that sent down Moses and Elias to shew that Saints in Heaven and on Earth have communnion will bring me and my Friends now in Heaven together again into a far sweeter Communion than ever we had here § 24. It is no great wonder that Peter should be transported with this glorious sight and greatly delighted with this heavenly Communion and say Master it is good for us to be here Would not a sight a glimpse of Heaven have transported any Holy Soul Yea even those that now lie in tears and fears and are overwhelmed with doubts and troubles When they are groping after God and groaning on their Knees because they feel more of his frowns than of his love if then they had such a sight as this what a change would it make upon them Perhaps you 'll say that the doubt of their own sincerity might still deprive them of the Joy No This sight would banish doubts and troubles It is a communication of Love
and full of Glory in believing Oh how unexcusable am I for every weary Prayer or Meditation of such a Glory and for yielding to Satan and a backward Heart which have oft made me shorten these sweet employments when I had time and leave and need to lengthen them What! aweary of communion with Christ Aweary of speaking to my heavenly Father for endless Blessedness upon such joyful terms of Hope as he hath given me Aweary of the Thoughts of the City of God the heavenly Society and Work Aweary of exciting Divine Love and exercising it in Divine Praise which are the works of Angels and all the heavenly Host O how justly might God be as it were aweary of me and of my weary Services yea of the best that I can offer him which hath in it so much to give him cause § 26. Peter did not fly from this glorious Prospect but would fain have had more of it and have dwelt upon the Holy Mount And when God will call me to a more glorious Vision and Fruition in Heaven shall I draw back and be unwilling to go Was that Mount a better place than Heaven Is not Christ now to be there seen in greater Glory Is the Jerusalem above the Glorious Company of Saints and Angels no better and more desirable a sight than Moses and Elias were on the Mount Alas when we have read and heard and thought and talkt so much of Heaven and done and suffered so much for it that yet we should draw back with fear and unwillingness to go to it O what lamentable weakness of Faith and power of Flesh doth this discover when I read Peter's words It 's good to be here I am grieved that I who dwell in a World so near like Hell among the implacable haters of Holiness and Holy Peace and in a painful tired Body and who have thought said and written so much of Heaven do yet say with no stronger desire and joy It is good to be there When I see all natural Appetites desire earnestly their proper food and even the Bruits desire their beloved company shall my holy Appetite be so dull and indifferent Lord quicken it by the fuller communications of thy Spirit and save me from this hated dangerous disease § 27. But Peter spake he knew not what when he talkt of building Tabernacles on Earth for the fruition of that which is proper to Heaven Alas this is our common malady and folly We would have Christ in the Splendour of his Glory but we would have him here We would see Moses and Elias if they will come down to us We would have that in the Flesh which Flesh and Blood cannot possess O if we knew in what Land what City what Countrey what private House we might live in the least glimpse of the heavenly Glory how joyfully should we run to such an Habitation Merchants make towards the most gainful place for trade Poor men enquire after the most fertile and delectable Countries for Plantation Gentlemen delight themselves with a sweet and pleasantly seated Mansion But if Saints on Earth could find a place where they could see what Stephen or Paul or these Apostles saw and have a little of Heaven without dying and putting off this Body what a desirable dwelling would that seem to them And yet alas how cold are our desires to the time and place where we shall have much more We have Christ on Earth in the manner and measure that we are capable We have here some communion with Heaven as verily though not so sensibly as our Eye hath with the Sun God will not deny Believers their Title their Earnest and some first Fruits But when we would have our All or our Best on Earth or that on Earth which is proper to Heaven we know not what we desire or say Are we vile dirty Sinners in Flesh now fit for heavenly sights or joys Or is this World a place for building Tabernacles where we may see the Lord and take up our rest What! in a world of Temptations of wickedness of sufferings where we are daily wrestling for our lives and fighting not meerly against Flesh and Blood but against Principalities and Powers and the Rulers of the Darkness of this World even Spiritual Wickedness or wicked Spirits in high Places above the greatest men that are their Servants Eph. 6. 12. But that which is of the Earth is earthly Our earthly part would have an earthly Felicity But when we know that it is corruptible and a dying thing and that we have here no continuing City both Faith and Reason bid us seek for one to come The unfaithful Steward had so much Wit as to make sure of another Habitation when he knew that he must be no longer Steward God hath so constantly confuted and befooled me by his marvellous Providence when ever I have said Soul take thy ease and have thought of building Tabernacles on Earth as hath convinced me that such folly is not the least part of the danger of a Soul from which his Mercy did so watchfully save me If a little Health and Ease or a pleasant Habitation or beloved Company and Friends have but flattered me into earthly delight and hopes and made me say It 's good to be here I never was long without some pains and dangerous sickness or some loss or cross in Friends or some removal by personal or publick changes to tell me that I knew not what I said and that rest and happiness are not here As the laborious Ants and Bees are long gathering a heap of Treasure and furnishing a Hive with Winter Provision and a contemptuous foot soon spurneth about the one and the chief owner of the Hive destroyeth the other so while I neglected Wealth and Honour when I have but treasured up the choicest Books and taken pleasure in my Work and Friends God saw that such pleasure needed an allay and hath taken away Books and Friends together or driven me oft from them and my Habitation to tell me sensibly that I have higher to look and further to go and that Moses and Elias appeared not to turn Earth into Heaven and make me think that now I am well but to invite my Soul to their Celestial Habitation When Christ hath comforted me by hearing Prayers by great deliverances by wonderful success of my defective labours by comfortable Friends by publick Mercies it was not by making my condition pleasant to keep down my desires from Heaven but to draw them thither by such foretasts Contentment with our Condition as without more of the World is a great duty But to be content with the World or any thing on Earth without more holiness and communion with God and without a part in the heavenly Perfection is a heynous and pernicious sin But alas it is a far worse mistake than Peter's which deceiveth the greatest part of men They say indeed as he It 's good to be here till melancholy or
folly But to distrust our selves we have great cause So that if we will make sure of Heaven it must be by giving all diligence to make firm our Title our Calling and our Election here on Earth If we fear Hell we must fear being prepared for it And it is great and difficult work that must be here done It 's here that we must be cured of all damning sin That we must be Regenerate and new Born that we must be pardoned and justified by Faith It 's here that we must be united to Christ made wise to Salvation renewed by his Spirit and conformed to his likeness It 's here that we must overcome all the temptations of the Devil the World and the Flesh and perform all the duties toward God and Man that must be rewarded It 's here that Christ must be believed in with the Heart to Righteousness and with the Mouth confessed to Salvation It 's here that we must suffer with him that we may reign with him and be faithful to the Death that we may receive the Crown of Life Here we must so run that we may obtain III. Yea we have greater work here to do than meer securing our own Salvation We are 〈◊〉 of the World and Church and we must labour to do good to many We are trusted with our Masters Talents for his Service in our places to do our best to propagaâ—e his Truth and Grace and Church and to bring home Souls and Honour his cause and edifie his Flock and further the Salvation of as many as we can All this is to be done on Earth if we will secure the end of all in Heaven Use I. It is then an errour though it is but few I think that are guilty of it to think that all Religion lieth in minding only the Life to come and disregarding all things in this present life All true Christians must seriously mind both the End and the Means or way If they mind not believingly the End they will never be faithful in the use of means If they mind not and use not diligently the Means they will never obtain the End None can use Earth well that prefer not Heaven And none come to Heaven at Age that are not prepared by well using Earth Heaven must have the deepest esteem and habituated love and desire and joy But Earth must have more of our daily thoughts for present practice A Man that travelleth to the most desirable home hath a habit of desire to it all the way But his present business is his travel And Horse and Company and Inns and Waies and Weariness c. may take up more of his sensible Thoughts and of his Talk and Action than his Home Use II. I have oft marvelled to find David in the Psalms and other Saints before Christ's coming to have expressed so great a sense of the things of this present life and to have said so little of another To have made so great a matter of Prosperity Dominions and Victories on one Hand and of Enemies Success and Persecution on the other But I consider that it was not for meer Personal Carnal interest but for the Church of God and for his Honour Word and Worship And they knew that if things go well with us on Earth they will be sure to go well in Heaven If the militant Church prosper in Holiness there is no doubt but it will triumph in Glory God will be sure to do his part in receiving Souls if they be here prepared for his receipt And Satan doth much of his damning work by men If we escape their temptations we escape much of our danger If Idolaters prospered Israel was tempted to Idolatry The Greek Church is almost swallowed up by Turkish Prosperity and Dominion Most follow the powerful and Prosperous side And therefore for God's cause and for heavenly everlasting interest our own state but much more the Churches must be greatly regarded here on Earth Indeed if earth be desired only for Earth and Prospirity loved but for the present welfare of the Flesh it is the certain Mark of damning carnality and an earthly mind But to desire Peace and Prosperity and Power to be in the hands of wise and faithful men for the sake of Souls and the increase of the Church and the Honour of God that his Name may be hallowed his Kingdom come and his Will done on Earth as it is in Heaven this is to be the chief of our Prayers to God Use III. Be not unthankful then O my Soul for the Mercies of this present life for those to thy Body to thy Friends to the Land of thy Nativity and specially to the Church of God I. This Body is so nearly united to thee that it must needs be a great help or hinderance Had it been more afflicted it might have been a discouraging clog like a tired Horse in a Journey or an ill Tool to a Workman or an untuned Instrument in Musick A sick or bad Servant in an House is a great trouble And a bad Wife much more But thy Body is nearer thee than either and will be more of thy concern And yet if it had been more Strong and Healthful Sense and Appetite would have been strong and Lust would have been strong and therefore danger would have been greater and Victory and Salvation much more difficult Even weak Senses and Temptations have too oft prevailed How knowest thou then what stronger might have done When I see a thirsty Man in a Feaver or Dropsie and specially when I see strong and healthful youths bred up in fulness and among temptations how mad they are in sin and how violently they are carried to it bearing down God's rebukes and Conscience and Parents and Friends and all regard to their Salvation it tells me how great a Mercy I had even in a Body not liable to their case And many a bodily deliverance hath been of great use to my Soul renewing my time and opportunity and strength for Service and bringing frequent and fresh reports of the Love of God If bodily Mercies were not of great use to the Soul Christ would not so much have shewed his saving love by healing all manner of diseases as he did Nor would God promise us a Resurrection of the Body if a congruous Body did not further the welfare of the Soul 2. And I am obliged to great thankfulness to God for the Mercies of this life which he hath shewed to my Friends that which furthers their joy should increase mine I ought to rejoice with them that rejoice Nature and Grace teach us to be glad when our Friends are well and prosper Though all in order to better things than bodily welfare 3. And such Mercies of this life to the Land of our Habitation must not be undervalued The want of them are parts of God's threatned Curse and godliness hath the Promise of this life and of that which is to come and so is profitable to
Effective Teaching of God doth ordinarily suppose a Rational Objective Organical Teaching and Knowledge And the foresaid unlearned Christians are convinced by good evidence that God's Word is true and his Rewards are sure though they have but a confused conception of this evidence and cannot word it nor reduce it to fit notions And to drive these that have fundamental evidence unseasonably and hastily to dispute their Faith and so to puzzle them by words and artificial Objections is but to hurt them by setting the Artificial Organical lower part which is the body of Knowledge against the real Light and Perception of the Thing which is as the Soul even as carnal men set the Creatures against God that should lead us to God so do they by Logical Artificial Knowledge § 15. But they that are prepared for such Disputes and furnished with all artificial helps may make good use of them for defending and clearing up the Truth to themselves and others so be it they use them as a means to the due end and in a right manner and set them not up against or instead of the real and effective Light § 16. But the Revealed and Necessary part must here be distinguished from the unrevealed and unnecessary To study till we as clearly as may be understand the certainty of a future happiness and wherein it consisteth in the sight of God's Glory and in perfect holy mutual Love in Union with Christ and all the blessed this is of great use to our Holiness and Peace But when we will know more than God would have us it doth but tend as gazing on the Sun to make us blind and to doubt of certainties because we cannot be resolved of uncertainties To trouble our heads too much in thinking how Souls out of the body do subsâ—sâ— and act sensitively or not by Organs or without how far they are one and how far still individuate in what place they shall remain and where is their Paradise or Heaven how they shall be again united to the body whether by their own emission as the Sun beams touch their Objects here and whether the body shall be restored as the consumed flesh of restored sick men aliunde or only from the old materials A hundred of these Questions are better left to the knowledge of Christ lest we do but foolishly make snares for our selves Had all these been needful to us they had been revealed In respect to all such curiosities and needless knowledge it is a Believer's wisdom implicitly to Trust his Soul to Christ and to be satisfied that he knoweth what we know not and to fear that vain vexatious knowledge or inquisitiveness into good and evil which is selfish and savoureth of a distrust of God and is that sin and fruit of sin which the Learned world too little feareth § 17. III. That God is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him and that holy Souls shall be in blessedness with Christ these following Evidences conjoyned do evince on which my Soul doth raise its Hopes § 18. I. The Soul which is an Immortal Spirit must be immortally in a Good or Bad condition But Man's Soul is an Immortal Spirit and the good are not in a bad condition Its Immortality is proved thus A spiritual or most pure invisible substance naturally endowed with the Power Virtue or Faculty of Vital-Action Intellection and Volition which is not annihilated nor destroyed by separation of Parts nor ceaseth or loseth either its Power Species Individuation or Action is an Immortal Spirit But such is the Soul of Man as shall be manifest by parts § 19. I. The Soul is a substance For that which is Nothing can do Nothing but it doth move understand and will No man will deny that this is done by something in us and by some substance and that substance is it which we call the Soul It is not Nothing and it is within us § 20. As to them that say It is the Temperament of several parts conjunct I have elsewhere fully confuted them and proved 1. That it is some one part that is the Agent on the rest which all they confess that think it to be the material spirits or fiery part It is not bones and flesh that understand but a purer substance as all acknowledge 2. What part soever it be it can do no more than it is Able to do And a conjunction of many parts of which no one hath the power of Vitality Intellection or Volition formally or eminently somewhat as excellent can never by contemperation do those acts For there can be no more in the effect than is in the cause otherwise it were no effect The vanity of their Objections that tell us a Lute a Watch a Book perform that by cooperation which no one part can do I have elsewhere manifested 1. Many strings indeed have many motions and so have many effects on the Ear and Phantasie which in us are sound and harmony But all is but a percussion of the Air by the strings and were not that motion received by a sensitive Soul it would be no Musick or Melody so that there is nothing done but what each part had power to do But Intellection and Volition are not the conjunct motions of all parts of the body receiving their form in a nobler Intellective nature as the sound of the strings maketh melody in man If it were so that Receptive Nature still would be as excellent as the Effect importeth 2. And the Watch or Clock doth but move according to the action of the spring or poise but that it moveth in such an order as becometh to man a sign and measure of Time this is from Man who ordereth it to that use But there is nothing in the motion but what the parts have their power to cause And that it signifieth the hour of the daies to us is no Action but an object used by a rational Soul as it can use the shadow of a Tree or House that yet doth nothing 3. And so a Book doth nothing at all but is a meer objective ordination of passive signs by which Man 's active Intellect can understand what the Writer or Orderer did intend so that here is nothing done beyond the power of the Agent nor any thing in the effect which was not in the cause either formally or eminently But for a company of Atoms of which no one hath sense or reason to become sensitive and rational by meer conjunct motion is an â—ffect beyond the power of the supposed cause § 21. But as some think so basely of our noblest Acts as to think that contempered agitated Atoms can perform them that have no natural intellective or sensitive virtue or power in themselves so others think so highly of them as to take them to be the Acts only of God or some universal Soul in the body of Man and so that there is no Life Sense or Reason in the World but God himself or such
an universal Soul And so that either every man is God as to his Soul or that it is the Body only that is to be called Man as distinct from God But this is the Self-ensnaring and self-perplexing temerity of busie bold and arrogant heads that know not their own capacity and measure And on the like reasons they must at last come with others to say that all passive matter also is God and that God is the Universe consisting of an Active Soul and Passive Body As if God were no cause and could make nothing or nothing with Life or Sense or Reason § 22. But why depart we from things certain by such presumptions as these Is it not certain that there are baser creatures in the World than Men or Angels Is it not certain that one Man is not another Is it not certain that some men are in torment of body and mind And will it be a comfort to a man in such torment to tell him that he is God or that he is part of an universal Soul Would not a man on the Rack or in the Stone or other misery say Call me by what name you please that caseth not my pain If I be part of God or an universal Soul I am sure I am a tormented miserable part And if you could not make me believe that God hath some parts which are Serpents Toads Devils or wicked or tormented men you must give me other senses and perceptive powers before it will comfort me to hear that I am such a part And if God had wicked and tormented parts on Earth why may he not have such and I be one of them hereafter And if I be a holy and happy part of God or of an universal Soul on Earth why may not I hope to be such hereafter § 23. We deny not but that God is the continued first cause of all Being whatsoever and that the branches and fruit depend not as effects so much on the causality of the Stock and Roots as the creature doth on God and that it is an impious conceit to think that the World or any part of it is a Being independent and separated totally from God or subsisting without his continued causation But cannot God cause as a Creator by making that which is not himself This yieldeth the self-deceiver no other honour nor happiness but what equally belongeth to a Devil to a Fly or Worm to a Dunghill or to the worst miserablest man § 24. II. As Man's Soul is a SUBSTANCE so is it a Substance differenced formally from all inferiour Substances by an Innate indeed Essential Power Virtue or Faculty of Vital-Action Intellection and Free-will For we find all these Acts performed by it as Motion Light and Heat are by the Fire or Sun And if any should think that these Actions are like those of a Musician compounded of the Agents principal and organical several parts could he prove it no more would follow but that the lower powers the Sensitive or Spirits are to the higher as a Passive Organ receiving its operations and that the Intellectual Soul hath the power of causing Intellection and Volition by its Action on the inferiour parts as a man can cause such motions of his Lute as shall be melody not to it but to himself And consequently that as Musick is but a lower operation of man whose proper acts of Intellection and Volition are above it so Intellection and Volition in the Body are not the noblest Acts of the Soul but it performeth them by an Eminent Power which can do greater things And if this could be proved what would it tend to the unbelievers ends or to the disadvantage of our hopes and comforts § 25. III. That man's Soul at death is not annibilated even the Atomists and Epicurians will grant who think that no Atom in the Universe is annihilated And we that see not only the Sun and Heavens continued but every grain of matter and that compounds are changed by dissolution of parts and rarefaction or migration c. and not by Annihilation have no reason to dream that God will annihilate one Soul though he can do it if he please yea and annihilate all the World It is a thing beyond a rational expectation § 26. IV. And a destruction by the dissolution of the parts of the Soul we need not fear For 1. Either an Intellectual Spirit is divisible and partible or not if not we need not fear it if it be either it is a thing that Nature tendeth to or not But that Nature doth not tend to it is evident For 1. There is naturally so strange and strong an inclination to unity and averseness to separation in all things that even Earth and Stones that have no other known natural motion have yet an aggregative motion in their gravitation But if you will separate the parts from the rest it must be by force And Water is yet more averse from partition without force and more inclined to union than Earth and Air than Water and Fire than Air so that he that will cut a Sun-beam into pieces and make many of one must be an extraordinary Agent And surely Spirits even Intellectual Spirits will be no less averse from partition and inclined to keep their Unity than Fire or a Sun-beam is so that naturally it is not a thing to be feared that it should fall into pieces 2. And he that will say that the God of Nature will change and overcome the Nature that he hath made must give us good proofs of it or it is not to be feared And if he should do it as a punishment we must find such a punishment somewhere threatened either in his Natural or Supernatural Law which we do not and therefore need not fear it § 27. 3. But if it were to be feared that Souls were partible and would be broken into parts this would be no destruction of them either as to their substance powers form or action but only a breaking of one Soul into many For being not compounded of Heterogeneal parts but as simple Elements of Homogeneal only as every Atom of Earth is Earth and every drop of Water in the Sea is Water and every particle of Air and Fire is Air and Fire and have all the properties of Earth Water Air and Fire so would it be with every particle of an Intellectual Spirit But who can see cause to dream of such a partition never threatened by God § 28. V. And that Souls lose not their formal Powers or Virtues we have great reason to conceive because they are their Natural Essence not as mixt but simple substances And though some imagine that the Passive Elements may be attenuation or incrassation be transmuted one into another yet we see that Earth is still Earth and Water is Water and Air is Air and their conceit hath no proof And were it proved it would but prove that none of these are a first or proper Element
the wicked to prosecure his Servants to the Death and make duty costly and give no after recompence 6. If he let the most wicked on the Earth pass unpunished or to scape as well hereafter as the best and to live in greater pleasure here The Objections fetcht from the intrinsecal good of Duty I have elsewhere answered § 1. VI. But God hath not left us to the Light of meer Nature as being too dark for men so blind as we The Gospel Revelation is the clear Foundation of our Faith and Hopes Christ hath brought Life and Immortality to Light One from Heaven that is greater than an Angel was sent to tell us what is there and which is the way and to secure our hopes He hath risen and conquered death and entered before us as our Captain and Forerunner into the Everlasting habitations And he hath all power in Heaven and Earth and all Judgment is committed to him that he might give Eternal life to his Elect he hath frequently and expresly promised it them that they shall live because he liveth and shall not perish but have Everlasting life And how fully he hath proved and sealed the Truth of his Word and Office to us I have so largely opened in my Reasons of the Christian Religion and unreasonableness of Infidelity and in my Life of Faith c. and since in my Houshold Catechizing that I will not here repeat it § 2. And as all his Word is full of promises of our future Glory at the Resurrection so we are not without assurance that at Death the departing Soul doth enter upon a State of Joy and Blessedness For 1. He expresly promised the penitent crucified Thief This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise Luk. 23. 2. He gave us the Narrative or Parable of the damned sensualist and of Lazarus Luk. 16. to instruct us and not to deceive us 3. He tells the Sadduces that God is not the God of the Dead as his Subjects and Beneficiaries but of the Living Mat. 22. 32. 4. Henoch and Elias were taken up to Heaven and Moses that died appeared with Elias on the Mount Mat. 17. 5. He telleth us Luk. 12. 4. that they that kill the Body are not able to kill the Soul 6. And Christ's own Soul was commended into his Father's hands Luk. 23. 46. and was in Paradise when his Body was in the Grave to shew us what shall become of ours 7. And he hath promised that Where he is there shall his Servant be also Joh. 12. 26. And that the life here begun in us is Eternal life and that he that believeth in him shall not die but shall live by him as he liveth by the Father for he dwelleth in God and God in him and in Christ and Christ in him Joh. 17. 3. 6. 54. 3. 16 36. 6. 47 56 57 50. 1 Joh. 4. 5. 13. Luk. 17. 21. Rom. 14. 17. 8. And accordingly Stephen that saw Heaven opened prayed the Lord Jesus to receive his Spirit Act. 7. 5. 59. 9. And we are come to Mount Sion c. to an innumerable Company of Angels and to the Spirits of the Just made perfect Heb. 12. 22 23. 10. And Paul here desireth to depart and be with Christ as far better And to be absent from the Body and be present with the Lord 2 Cor. 5. 8. 11. And the dead that die in the Lord are blessed from henceforth that they may rest from their labours and their works follow them 12. And if the disobedient Spirits be in Prison and the Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah suffer the vengeance of eternal Fire 1 Pet. 3. 19. Jude 7. then the Just have eternal Life And if the Jews had not thought the Soul immortal Saul had not desired the Witch to call up Samuel to speak with him The rest I now pass by We have many great and precious promises on which a departed Soul may trust 13. And Luk. 16. 9. Christ expresly saith that when we fail that is must leave this World we shall be received into the Everlasting habitations § 1. VII And it is not nothing to encourage us to hope in him that hath made all these Promises when we find how he heareth Prayers in this life and thereby assureth his Servants that he is their true and faithful Saviour We are apt in our distress to cry loud for Mercy and deliverances and when humane help faileth to promise God that if he now will save us we will thankfully acknowledg it his work and yet when we are delivered to return not only to security but to ingratitude and think that our deliverance came but in the course of common Providence and not indeed as an answer to our Prayers And therefore God in Mercy reneweth both our distresses and our deliverances that what once or twice will not convince us of many and great deliverances may This is my own case O how oft have I cryed to him when men and means were nothing and when no help in second Causes did appear and how oft and suddenly and mercifully hath he delivered me What sudden ease what removal of long afflictions have I had such extraordinary changes and beyond my own and others expectations when many plain-hearted upright Christians have by Fasting and Prayer sought God on my behalf as have over and over convinced me of Special Providence and that God is indeed a hearer of Prayers And wonders I have seen done for others also upon such Prayer more than for my self Yea and wonders for the Church and publick Societies Though I and others are too like those Israelites Psal 78. who cried to God in their troubles and he oft delivered them out of their distress but they quickly for got this Mercies and their Convictions Purposes and Promises when they should have praised the Lord for his Goodness and declared his works with thanksgiving to the Sons of Men. And what were all these Answers and Mercies but the fruits of Christ's Power Fidelity and Love the fulfilling of his Promises and the earnest of the greater blessings of Immortality which the same Promises give me Title to I know that no Promise of hearing Prayer setteth up our wills in absoluteness or above God's as if every will of our must be fulfilled if we do but put it into a fervent or confident Prayer But if we ask any thing through Christ according to his will expressed in his Promise he will hear us If a sinful love of this present life or of Ease or Wealth or Honour should cause me to pray to God against Death or against all sickness want reproach or other Trials as if I must live here in Prosperity for ever if I ask it this sinful desire and expectation is not the work of Faith but of Presumption What if God will not abate me my last or daily pains What if he will continue my life no longer who ever pray for
than long ago Am I at the highest 〈◊〉 Man on Earth can reach and that when I am so dark and low Is there no growth of these apprehensions more to be expected Doth the Soul cease its increase in vigorous Perception when the Body ceaseth its increase or vigor of sensation Must I sit down in so low a measure while I am drawing nearer to the things believed and am almost there where belief must pass into sight and love or must I take up with the passive silence and inactivity which some Fryars persuade us is nearer to Perfection and under pretence of Annihilation and Receptivity let my fluggish Heart alone and say that in this neglect I wait for thy Operations O let not a Soul that is driven from this World and weary of Vanity and can think of little else but immortality that seeks and crys both Night and Day for the heavenly Light and fain would have some foretast of Glory and some more of the first Fruits of the promised joys let not such a Soul either long or cry or strive in vain Punish not my former grieving of thy Spirit by deserting a Soul that cryeth for thy Grace so near its great and unconceivable change Let me not languish in vain desires at the Door of Hope nor pass with doubtful Thoughts and Fears from this Vale of Misery Which should be the Season of Triumphant Faith and Hope and Joy if not when I am entering on the World of Joy O thou that hast left us so many consolatory words of Promise that our joy may be full send O send the promised Comforter without whose approaches and heavenly Beams when all is said and a thousand Thoughts and strivings have been assayed it will still be Night and Winter with the Soul § 19. But have I not expected more particular and more sensitive Conceptions of Heaven and the State of blessed Souls than I should have done and â—emained less satisfied because I expected such distinct Perceptions to my satisfaction which God doth not ordinarily give to Souls in Flesh I fear it hath been too much so A distrust of God and a distrustful desire to know much Good and Evil for our selves as necessary to our quiet and satisfaction was that sin which hath deeply corrupted Man's Nature and is more of our common pravity than is commonly observed I find that this Distrust of God and my Redeemer hath had too great a hand in my desires of a distincter and more sensible Knowledg I know that I should implicitely and absolutely and quietly trust my Soul into my Redeemers Hands of which I must speak more anon And it is not only for the Body but also for the Soul that a distrustful care is our great sin and Misery But yet we must desire that our Knowledge and Belief may be as distinct and particular as God's Revelations are and we can Love no further than we know and the more we know of God and Glory the more we shall love desire and trust him It is a known and not meerly an unknown God and happiness that the Soul doth joyfully desire And if I may not be ambitious of too sensible and distinct Perceptions here of the things unseen yet must I desire and beg the most fervent and sensible Love to them that I am capable of I am willing in part to take up with that unavoidable ignorance and that low degree of such Knowledge which God confineth us to in the Flesh so be it he will give me but such Consolatory foretasts in Love and Joy which such a General imperfect Knowledge may consist with that my Soul may not pass with distrust and terrour but with suitable triumphant Hopes to the Everlasting pleasures O Father of Lights who givest Wisdom to them that ask it of thee shut not up this sinful Soul in darkness Leave me not to grope in unsatisfied doubts at the Door of the Celestial Light Or if my Knowledg must be General let it be clear and powerful and deny me not now the lively exercise of FAITH HOPE and LOVE which are the stirrings of the New Creature and the dawnings of the everlasting Light and the Earnest of the promised Inheritance § 20. But we are oft ready to say with Cicero when he had been reading such as Plato that while the Book is in our Hands we seem confident of our Immortality and when we lay it by our doubts return so our Arguments seem clear and cogent and yet when we think not of them with the best advantage we are oft surprized with Fear lest we should be mistaken and our Hopes be vain and hereupon and from the common fear of Death that even good men too often manifest the Infidels gather that we do but force our Selves into such a Hope as we desire to be true against the tendency of mans Nature and that we were not made for a better World § 21. But this fallacy ariseth from mens not distinguishing 1. sensitive fears from Rational uncertainty or doubts 2. And the mind that is in the darkness of unbelief from that which hath the Light of Faith I find in my self too much of fear when I look into Eternity interrupting and weakening my Desires and Joy But I find that it is very much an irrational sensitive Fear which the Darkness of Man's mind the Greatness of the Change the dreadful Majesty of God and Man's Natural aversness to die do in some degree necessitate even when Reason is fully satisfied that such fears are consistent with certain safety If I were bound with the strongest Chains or stood on the surest Battlements on the top of a Castle or Steeple I could not possibly look down without fear and such as would go near to overcome me and yet I should be rationally sure that I am there fast and safe and cannot fall So is it with our Prospect into the Life to come Fear is oft a necessitated Passion When a Man is certain of his safe Foundation it will violently rob him of the comfort of that Certainty Yea it is a passion that irrationally doth much to corrupt our Reason it self and would make us doubt because we fear though we know not why And a fearful Man doth hardly trust his own apprehensions of his safety but among other Fears is still ready to fear lest he be deceived Like timorous Melancholy Persons about their Bodies who are ready still to think that every little Distemper is a mortal Symptom and that worse is still near them than they feel and they hardly believe any words of hope § 22. And Satan knowing the power of these passions and having easier access to the Sensitive than to the Intellective Faculties doth labour to get in at this back Door and to frighten poor Souls into doubts and unbelief and in timorous Natures he doth it with too great success as to the Consolatory acts of Faith Though yet God's Mercy is wonderfully seen in preserving many
honest tender Souls from the damning part of unbelief and by their fears preserveth them from being bold with sin When many bold and impudent Sinners turn Infidels or Atheists by forfeiting the helps of Grace § 23. And indeed Irrational fears have so much power to raise Doubts that they are seldom separated insomuch that many scarce know or observe the difference between Doubts and Fears And many say they not only fear but doubt when they can scarce tell why as if it were no intellectual act which they meant but an irrational Passion § 24. If therefore my Soul see undeniable Evidence of Immortality and if it be able by irrefragable Argument to prove the future blessedness expected and if it be convinced that God's promises are true and sufficiently sealed and attested by him to warrant the most confident belief and if I trust my Soul and all my hopes upon this word and evidences of Truth it is not then our aversness to die nor the sensible fears of a Soul that looketh into Eternity that invalidate any of the Reasons of my Hope nor prove the unsoundness of my Faith § 25. But yet these Fears do prove its weakness and were they prevalent against the Choice Obedience Resolutions and Endeavours of Faith they would be prevalent against the Truth of Faith or prove its nullity for Faith is Trust and Trust is a securing quieting thing Why are ye fearful O ye of little Faith was a just reproof of Christ to his Disciples when sensible dangers raised up their fears For the established will hath a political or imperfect though not a despotical and absolute Power over our Passions And therefore our fears do shew us our unbelief and stronger Faith is the best means of conquering even irrational fears Why art thou cast down O my Soul and why art thou so disquieted in me Trust in God c. Psal 42. is a needful way of chiding a timorous Heart § 26. And though many say that Faith hath not evidence and think that it is an Assent of the Mind meerly commanded by the Empire of the Will without a knowledg of the Verity of the Testimony yet certainly the same Assent is ordinarily in the Scriptures called indifferently Knowing and Believing And as a bare Command will not cause Love unless we perceive an Amiableness in the Object so a bare Command of the Law or of the Will cannot alone cause Belief unless we perceive a truth in the Testimony believed For it is a Contradiction or an act without its Object And Truth is perceived only so far as it is some way Evident For Evidence is nothing but the objective perceptibility of Truth or that which is Metaphorically called Light So that we must say that Faith hath not sensible Evidence of the invisible things believed but Faith is nothing else but the willing Perception of the Evidence of Truth in the word of the Assertor and a Trust therein We have and must have Evidence that Scripture is God's Word and that his Word is true before by any Command of the Word or Will we can believe it § 27. I do therefore neither despise Evidence as unnecessary nor trust to it alone as the sufficient total cause of my belief For if God's Grace do not open mine Eyes and come down in power upon my Will and insinuate into it a sweet acquaintance with the things unseen and a tast of their Goodness to delight my Soul no Reasons will serve to stablish and comfort me how undeniable soever Reason is fain first to make use of notions words or signs and to know Terms Propositions and Arguments which are but Means to the knowledg of Things is its first employment and that alas which Multitudes of Learned men do take up with But it 's the Illumination of God that must give us an effectual acquaintance with the Things Spiritual and Invisible which these Notions signifie and to which our Organical Knowledg is but a Means § 28. To sum up all That our Hopes of Heaven have a certain ground appeareth I. From Nature II. From Grace III. From other works of Gracious Providence 1. From the Nature of Man 1. Made capable of it 2. Obliged even by the Law of Nature to seek it before all 3. Naturally desiring Perfection 1. Habitual 2. Active 3. And Objective 2. And from the Nature of God 1. As Good and Communicative 2. As Holy and Righteous 3. As Wise making none of his works in vain § 29. II. From Grace 1. Purchasing it 2. Declaring it by a Messenger from Heaven both by Word and by Christ's own and others Resurrection 3. Promising it 4. Sealing that Promise by Miracles there 5. And by the work of Sanctification to the end of the World § 30. III. By subordinate Providence 1. God's actual Governing the World by the hopes and fears of another Life 2. The many helps which he giveth us for a heavenly Life and for attaining it which are not vain 3. Specially the Ministration of Angels and their Love to us and Communion with us 4. And by accident Devils themselves convince us 1. By the Nature of their Temptations 2. By Apparitions and haunting Houses 3. By Witches 4. By Possessions Which though it be but a Satanical Operation on the Body yet is so Extraordinary an Operation that it differeth from the more usual as if I may so compare them God's Spirit so operateth on the Saints that it is called his dwelling in them or possessing them as different from his lower Operations on others § 1. II. Having proved that Faith and Hope have a certain future Happiness to expect the Text directeth me next to consider why it is described by being with Christ viz. I. What is included in our being with Christ II. That we shall be with him III. Why we shall be with him § 2. To be with Christ includeth 1. Presence 2. Union 3. Communion or participation of Felicity with him § 3. 1. Quest Is it Christ's Godhead or his Humane Soul or his Humane Body that we shall be Present with and united to or All Answ It is all but variously § 4. 1. We shall be Present with the Divine Nature of Christ Quest But are we not always so And are not all Creatures so Answ Yes as his Essence comprehendeth all Place and Beings But not as it is Operative and Manifested in and by his Glory Christ directeth our Hearts and Tongues to pray Our Father which art in Heaven And yet he knew that all Place is in and with God Because it is in Heaven that he Gloriously operateth and shineth forth to holy Souls Even as Man's Soul is eminently said to be in the Head because it understandeth and reasoneth in the Head and not in the Foot or Hand though it be also there And as we look a Man in the Face when we talk to him so we look up to Heaven when we pray to God God who is and operateth as the Root of
Nature in all the works of Creation for in Him we Live and Move and Are and by the way of Grace in all the Gracious doth Operate and Is by the works and splendour of his Glory eminently in Heaven By which Glory therefore we must mean some Created Glory For his Essence hath no inequality § 5. 2. We shall be present with the Humane Nature of Christ both Soul and Body But here our present narrow Thoughts must not too boldly presume to resolve the difficulties which to a distinct understanding of this should be overcome For we must not here expect any more than a dark and general Knowledge of them As 1. What is the formal difference between Christs glorified Body and his Flesh on Earth 2. Where Christ's glorified Body is and how far it extendeth 3. VVherein the Soul and the Glorified Body differ seeing it is called A Spiritual Body These things are beyond our present reach § 6. 1. For what conceptions can we have of a Spiritual Body save that it is Pure incorruptible invisible to mortal Eyes and fitted to the most perfect state of the Soul How near the Nature of it is to a Spirit and so to the Soul and how far they agree or differ in substance extensiveness divisibility or activity little do we know § 7. 2. Nor do we know where and how far Christ's Body is present by extent The Sun is commonly taken for a Body and its Motive Illuminative and Calefactive Beams are by the most probable Philosophy taken to be a real emanant part of its substance and so that it is Essentially as extensive as those Beams that is It at once filleth all our Air and toucheth the surface of the Earth and how much further it extendeth we cannot tell And what difference there is between Christ's glorified Body and the Sun in Purity Splendour Extent or Excellency of Nature little do poor Mortals know And so of the rest § 8. Let no Man therefore cavil and say How can a whole World of glorified Bodies be all present with the One Body of Christ when each must possess its proper room For as the Body of the solar Beams and the extensive Air are so compresent as that none can discern the difference of the places which they possess and a World of Bodies are present with them both so may all our Bodies be with Christ's Body and that without any true confusion § 9. 2. Besides Presence with Christ there will be such an Union as we cannot now distinctly know A political Relative Union is past doubt such as Subjects have in one Kingdom with their King But little know we how much more We see that there is a wonderful Corporeal continuity or contact among the material works of God And the more Spiritual pure and noble the more inclination each Nature hath to Union Every Plant on Earth hath a Union with the whole Earth in which it liveth they are real parts of it And what Natural Conjunction our Bodies shall have to Christ's and what influence from it is past our Knowledge Though his similitudes in Joh. â—5 Joh. 6. Eph. 5. 1 Cor. 12. seem to extend far yet being but similitudes we cannot fully know how far § 10. The same variatis variandis we may say of our Union with Christ's humane Soul Seeing Souls are more inclinable to union than Bodies when we see all Vegetables to be united parts of one Earth and yet to have each one its proper individuating form and matter we cannot though Animals seem to walk more disjunct imagine that there is no kind of Union or Conjunction of invisible Souls though they retain their several substances and forms Nor yet that our Bodies shall have a nearer Union with Christ's Body than our Souls with his Soul But the nature manner and measure of it we know not § 11. Far be it from us to think that Christ's glorified Spiritual Body is such in form parts and dimensions as his earthly Body was That it hath Hands Feet Brains Heart Stomach Liver Intestines as on Earth Or that it is such a Compound of Earth Water and Air as here it was and of such confined extent for then as his Disciples and a few Jews only were present with him and all the World besides were absent and had none of his Company so it would be in Heaven But it is not such only as Paul but all true Believers in the World from the Creation to the end shall be with Christ and see his Glory And though inequality of Fitness or Degrees of Holiness will make an inequality of Glory no Man can prove an inequality by local distance from Christ Or if such there be for it 's beyond our reach yet none in Heaven are at such a distance from him as not to enjoy the Felicity of his Presence § 12. Therefore when we dispute against them that hold Transubstantiation and the ubiquity of Christ's Body we do assuredly conclude that Sense is Judge whether there be real Bread and Wine present or not But it is no Judge whether Christ's Spiritual Body be present or not no more than whether an Angel be present And we conclude that Christ's Body is not Infinite or Immense as is his Godhead but what are its dimensions Limits or extent and where it is absent far be it from us to determine when we cannot tell how far the Sun extendeth its secondary substance or emanant Beams nor well what Locality is as to Christ's Soul or any Spirit if to a Spiritual Body § 13. Their fear is vain and carnal who are afraid lest their Union with Christ or one another will be too near even lest thereby they lose their individuation as Rivers that fall into the Sea or extinguished Candles whose Fire is after but a Sun-beam or part of the common Element of Fire in the Air or as the Vegetative Spirits which in Autumn retire from the Leaves into the Branches and Trunk of the Tree I have proved before that our Individuation or numerical Existence ceaseth not And that no Union is to be feared were it never so sure which destroyeth not the Being or formal Powers or Action of the Soul and that it is the great radical disease of SELFISHNESS and want of Holy LOVE to God and our Saviour and one another which causeth these unreasonable Fears Even that Selfishness which now maketh men so partially desirous of their own wills and pleasure in comparison of God's and their own Felicity in comparison of other and which maketh them so easily bear God's injuries and the Sufferings of a Thousand others in comparison of their own But he that put a great desire of the Bodies preservation into the Soul while it is its form will abate that desire when the time of separation is come because there is then no use for it till the Resurrection Else it would be a torment to the Soul § 14. 3. And as we shall
I know that it is the sinful Soul that is in all this the chief cause and agent But what is it but Bodily Interest that is its temptation bait and end What but the Body and its Life and Pleasure is the chief Objective alluring cause of all this sin and misery And shall I take such a Body to be better than Heaven or be loth to be loosed from so troublesom a Yoak-fellow on to be separated from so burdensom and dangerous a Companion § 3. Obj. But I know this Habitation but the next I know not I have long been acquainted with this Body and this World but the next I am unacquainted with Ans 1. If you know it you know all that of it which I have mentioned before you know it to be a burden and snare I am sure I know by long experience that this Flesh hath been a painful lodging to my Soul and this World as a tumultuous Ocean or like the uncertain and stormy Region of the Air. And well he deserveth bondage pain and enmity who will love them because he is acquainted with them and is loth to leave them because he hath had them long and is afraid of being well because he hath been long sick 2. And do you not know the next and better Habitation Is Faith no knowledge If you believe God's Promise you know that such a state there is And you know in general that it is Better than this World And you know that we shall be in Holiness and Glorious happiness with Christ And is this no knowledge 3. And what we know not Christ that prepareth and promiseth it doth know And is that nothing to us if really we Trust our Souls to him He that knoweth not more Good by Heaven than by Earth is yet so earthly and unbelieving that it is no wonder if he be afraid and unwilling to depart § 4. II. In Departing from this Body and Life I must depart from all its ancient Pleasures I must taste no more sweetness in meat or drink or rest or sport or any such thing that now delighteth me House and Lands and Goods and Wealth must all be left and the place where I live must know me no more All my possessions must be no more to me nor all that I laboured for or took delight in than if they had never been at all And what though it must be so Consider O my Soul 1. Thy ancient Pleasures are all past already Thou losest none of them by Death for they are all lost before if immortal Grace have not by sanctifying them made the benefits of them to become immortal All the sweet draughts and morsels and sports and laughters all the sweet Thoughts of thy worldly Possessions or thy Hopes that ever thou hadst till this present Hour are past by dead and gone already All that Death doth to such as these is to prevent such that on Earth thou shalt have no more 2. And is not that the Case of every Bruit that hath no comfort from the prospect of another Life to repair his loss And yet as our dominion diminisheth their pleasure while they live by our keeping them under fear and labour so at our will their lives must end To please a Gentleman's Appetite for half an hour or less Birds Beasts and Fishes must lose life itself and all the pleasure which life might have afforded them for many Years yea perhaps many of these Birds and Fishes at least must die to become but one Feast to a rich Man if not one ordinary Meal And is not their sensual pleasure of the same Nature as ours Meat is as sweet to them and ease as welcome and lust as strong in season And the pleasure that Death depriveth our Flesh of is such as is common to Man with Bruits Why then should it seem hard to us to lose that in the Course of Nature which our Wills deprive them of at our Pleasure When if we are Believers we can say that we do but exchange these delights of Life for the greater delights of a Life with Christ which is a comfort which our fellow Creatures the Bruits have not 3. And indeed the Pleasures of Life are usually embittered with so much pain that to a great part of the World doth seem to exceed them The Vanity and Vexation is so great and grievous as the pleasure seldom countervaileth It 's true that Nature desireth Life even under Sufferings that are but tolerable rather than to die But that is not so much from the sensible Pleasure of life as from meer Natural Inclination which God hath laid so deep that free will hath not full power against it As before I said that the Body of Man is such a thing that could we see through the Skin as men may look through a Glass Hive upon the Bees and see all the parts and motion the filth and excrements that are in it the Soul would hardly be willing to actuate love and cherish such a mass of unclean matter and to dwell in such a loathsom place unless God had necessitated it by Nature deeper than Reason or sense to such a Love and such a labour by the Pondus or Spring of Inclination Even as the Cow would not else lick the unclean Calf nor Women themselves be at so much labour and trouble with their Children while there is little of them to be pleasant but uncleanness and crying and helpless impatiency to make them wearisom had not necessitating Inclination done more hereto than any other sense or reason Even so I now say of the pleasure of Living that the sorrows are so much greater to Multitudes than the sensible delight that life would not be so commonly chosen and endured under so much trouble were not men determined thereto by Natural necessitating Inclination or deterred from Death by the fears of misery to the separated Soul And yet all this kept not some counted the best and wisest of the Heathens from taking it for the Valour and Wisdom of a Man to make away his life in time of extremity and from making this the great answer to them that grudge at God for making their lives so miserable If the misery be greater than the good of life Why dost thou not end it Thou maist do that when thou wilt Our Meat and Drink is pleasant to the healthful but it costeth poor men so much toil and labour and care trouble to procure a poor Diet for themselves and their families that I think could they live without eating and drinking they would thankfully exchange the pleasure of it all to be eased of their care and toil in getting it And when sickness cometh even the pleasantest Food is loathsom 4. And do we not willingly interrupt and lay by these Pleasures every Night when we betake our selves to sleep It 's possible indeed a Man may then have pleasant Dreams But I think few go to sleep for the pleasure of Dreaming
Doctrines and Examples and for which I have been called to hear and read and meditate and pray and Watch so long Was it the interest of the Flesh on Earth or a longer life of worldly Prosperity which the Gospel Covenant secured to me which the Sacraments and Spirit Sealed to me Which the Bible was written to direct me to which Ministers preached to me Which my Books were written for Which I prayed for and for which I served God Or was it not for his Grace on Earth and Glory in Heaven And is it not better for me to have the End of all these means than lose them all and lose my hopes Why have I used them if I would not attain their End § 13. 5. That is my Best state which all the Course of God's Fatherly Providences tend to All his sweeter Mercies and all his sharper corrections are to make me partaker of his Holiness and to Lead me to glory in the way that my Saviour and all his Saints have gone before me All things work together for the best to me by preparing me for that which is best indeed Both calms and storms are to bring me to this Harbour If I take them but for themselves and this present life I mistake them and understand them not but unthankfully vilifie them and lose their End and life and sweetness Every word and work of God every Days mercies and changes and Usages do look at Heaven and intend Eternity God leadeth me no other way If I follow him not I forsake my hope in forsaking him If I follow him shall I be unwilling to be at home and come to the End of all this way § 14. 6. Surely that is Best for me which God hath required me principally to value love and seek and that as the business of all my life referring all things else thereto That this is my Duty I am fully certain as is proved elsewhere and before Is my business in the World only for the things of this World How vain a Creature then were Man and how little were the difference between waking and sleeping Life and Death No wonder if he that believeth that there is no Life but this to seek or hope for do live in uncomfortable despair and only seek to palliate his misery with the brutish pleasures of a wicked life and if he stick at no villany which hisfleshly Lusts incline him to Especially Tyrants and Multitudes who have none but God to fear And it is my certain duty to seek Heaven with all the fervour of my Soul and diligence of my life And is it not Best to find it § 15. 7. That must needs be Best for me which all other things must be forsaken for It is folly to forsake the Better for the worse But Scripture Reason and Conscience tell me that all this World when it stands in competition or opposition should be forsaken for Heaven yea for the least hopes of it A possible everlasting Glory should be preferred before a certainly perishing Vanity I am sure this life will shortly be nothing to me and therefore it is next to nothing now And must I forsake all for my everlasting Hopes and yet be unwilling to pass unto the possession of them § 16. 8. That is like to be our Best which is our Maturest state Nature carrieth all things towards their perfection Our Apples Pears Grapes and every Fruit is best when it is ripe And though they then hasten to corruption that is through the incapacity of the corporeal materials any longer to retain the Vegetative Spirit which is not annihilated at its separation and being not made for its own felicity but for Mans its ripeness is the state in which Man useth it before it doth corrupt of itself that its corruption may be for his nutriment and the Spirits and best matter of his said food doth become his very substance And doth God cause Saints to grow up unto ripeness only to perish and drop down unto useless rottenness It is not credible Though our Bodies become but like our filthiest excrements our Souls return to God that gave them And though he need them not he useth them in their separated state and that to such heavenly uses as their heavenly Maturity and Mellowness hath disposed them to Seeing then Love hath ripened me for itself shall I not willingly drop into its hand § 17. 9. That is like to be the Best which the Wisest and Holiest in all Ages of the World have preferred before all and have most desired And which also almost all Mankind do acknowledge to be best at last It is not like that all the Best men in the World should be most deceived and be put upon fruitless labour and sufferings by this deceit and be undone by their duty and that God should by such deceits rule all or almost all Mankin And also that the common notices of humane Nature and Consciences last and closest documents should be all in vain But it is past all doubt that no men usually are worse than those that have no Belief or Hopes of any Life but this And that none are so Holy Just and Sober so charitable to others and so useful to Mankind as those that firmliest believe and hope for the state of immortality And shall I fear that state which all that were wise and holy in All Ages have preferred and desired § 18. 10. And it is not unlike that my Best state is that which my greatest Enemies are mâ—st against And how much Satan doth to keep me and other men from Heaven and how much worldly Honour and Pleasure and Wealth he could afford us to accomplish it I need not here again be copious in reciting having said so much of it elsewhere And shall I be towards my self so much of Satans mind He would not have me come to Heaven And shall I also be unwilling All these things tell me that It is Best to be with Christ II. The Final Reasons § 1. II 1. Is it not far better to dwell with GOD in Glory than with sinful men in such a World as this Though he be every where his Glory which we must behold to our Felicity and the perfecting Operations and Communications of his Love are in the glorious World and not on Earth As the Eye is made to see the Light and then to see other things by the Light so is mans mind made to see God and to Love him and other things as in by and for him He that is our beginning is our end And our End is the first Motive of all Moralaction and for It it is that all means are used And the End attained is the Rest of Souls How oft hath my Soul groaned under the sense of Distance and Darkness and Estrangeness from God! How oft hath it looked up and gasped after him and said O when shall I be nearer and better acquianted with my God As the Heart panteth after the
water Brooks so panteth my Soul after thee O God My Soul thirsteth for God for the living God When shall I come and appear before God Psa 40. 12. And would I not have my Prayers heard and my desires granted What else is the summ of lawful Prayers but God himself If I desire any thing more than God what sinfulness is in those desires and how sad is their signification How oft have I said Whom have I in Heaven but Thee and there is none on Earth I desire besides Thee It is good for me to draw near to God Psal 73. 25 28. Woe to me if I did dissemble If not Why should my Soul draw back Is it because that Death stands in the way Do not my fellow Creatures die for my daily Food And is not my passage secured by the Love of my Father and the Resurrection and Intercession of my Lord Can I see the Light of heavenly Glory in this darksome shell and womb of Flesh § 2. All Creatures are more or less excellent and glorious as God is more or less Operative and refulgent in them and by that Operation communicateth most of himself unto them Though he be immense and indivisible his Operations and Communications are not equal And that is said to be Nearest to Him which hath most of those Operations on it and that without the intervenient causality of any second created Cause and so all those are in their Order Near unto him as they have Noblest Natures and fewest intervenient Causes far am I from presuming to think that I am or shall be the Best and Noblest of God's Creatures and so that I shall be so near him as to be under the influx of no second or created Causes of which more anon But to be as Near as my Nature was ordained to approach is but to attain the End and Perfection of my Nature § 3. And as I must not look to be the Nearest to Him as he is the first Efficient no more must I as he is the first Dirigent or governing Cause As now I am under the government of his Officers on Earth I look for ever to be under subgovernours in Heaven My glorified Saviour must be my Lord and Ruler and Who else under him I know not If Angels are not equal in Perfection nor as is commonly supposed equal in Power nor without some regimental order among themselves I must not conclude that no created Angel or Spirit shall have any government over me But it will be so Pure and Divine as that the blessed Effects of God's own Government will besweetly powerful therein If the Law was given by Angles and the Angel of God was in the burning Bush and the Angel conducted the People through the Wilderness and yet all these things are ascribed to God much more near and glorious will the Divine Regiment there be whoever are the Administrators § 4. And as I must expect to be under some created Efficient and Dirigent Causes there so must I expect to have some subordinate Ends Else there would not be a proportion and harmony in causalities whatever nobler Creatures are above me and have their Causalities upon me I must look to be finally for those nobler Creatures When I look up and think what a world of glorious Beings are now over me I dare not presume to think that I shall finally any more than Receptively be the Nearest unto God and that I am made for None but Him I find here that I am made and ruled and sanctified for the Publick or Common Good of many as above my own of which I am past doubt And I am sure that I must be finally for my glorified Redeemer and for what other Spiritual Beings or Intelligences that are above me little do I know And God hath so ordered all his creatures as that they are mutually Ends and Means for and to one another though not in an Equality nor in the same respects But whatever nearer Ends there will be I am sure that he who is the first Efficient and Dirigent will be the ultimate final Cause And I shall be in this respect as near him as is due to he rank and order of my Nature I shall be useful to he Ends which are answerable to my Perfection § 5. And if it be the honour of a Servant to have an honourable Master and to be appointed to the most honourable work If it be some honour to a Horse above a Swine or a Worm or Fly that he serveth more nearly for the use of Man yea for a Prince will it not be also my advancement to be ultimately for God and subordinately for the highest created Natures and this in such Services as are suitable to my Spiritual and Heavenly State § 6. For I am far from thinking that I shall be above Service and have none to do For Activity will be my Perfection and my Rest And all such Activity must be Regular in harmony and order of Causes and for its proper use And what though I know not now fully what service it is that I must do I know it will be good and suitable to the blessed state which I shall be in And it is enough that God and my Redeemer know it and that I shall know it in due time when I come to practice it of which more afterward § 7. The inordinate Love of this Body and present composition seduceth Souls to think that all their use and work is for its maintenance and prosperity and when the Soul hath done that and is separated from Flesh it hath nothing to do but must lie idle or be as nothing or have no considerable work or pleasure As if there were nothing in the whole World but this little fluid mass of matter for a Soul to work upon As if itself and all the Creatures and God were nothing or no fit Objects for a Soul And why not hereafter as well as now Or as if that which in our compounded state doth Operate on and by its Organs had no other way of Operation without them As if the Musician lost all his power or were dead when his Instrument is out of tune or broken and could do nothing else but play on that As if the fiery part of the Candle were annihilated or transmutate as some following-Philosphers imagine when the Candle goeth out and were not fire and in action still Or as if that Sun beam which I shut out or which passeth from our Horizon were annihilated or did nothing when it shineth not with us Had it no other individual to illuminate or to terminate its beams or action were it nothing to illuminate the common Air Though I shall not always have a Body to Operate in and upon I shall always have God and a Saviour and a world of fellow-Creatures and when I shine not in this Lanthorn and see not by these Spectacles nor imaginarily in a Glass I shall yet see things suitable
And 1. as to the Kind of Knowledge how excellent and more satisfactory a way will that of Intuition or Intellective-Sense be than is our present way of abstraction Similitudes and Signs What abundance of Time Thoughts and Labour doth it cost us now to learn our Grammar our Rhetorick and our Logick Our Artes loquendi dicendi disserendi To learn our Wordy Rules and Axioms in Metaphysicks Physicks c. And when we have learnt them all if all can be learned how little the nearer are many to the knowing of the signified Realities We oft get but a Set of Words to play with to take up our time and divert us from the Matter Even as Carnal men use the Creatures which signifie God and are made to lead them up to him to intangle them and be the greatest and most pernicious diversion of their Souls from God so do too many Learned men do by their Organical signal Knowledge They use it as men do Cards and Romances and Plays to delight their Phantasies but they know less of the Things that are worth their knowing than many unlearned Persons do as I said before Had not much of the Athenian Learning been then a meer Game for men to play away their precious time at and to grow proud of while they were ignorant of saving Realities Christ and his Apostles had not so much neglected it as they did nor Paul so much warned men to take heed of being deceived by that vain kind of Philosophy in which he seemeth to me to have greater respect to the universally esteemed Athenian Arts than as Dr. Hammond Thought to the meer Gnostick pretensions This poor dreaming signal Artificial Knowledge is 1. Costly 2. Uncertain 3. Contentious 4. Unsatisfactory in comparison of Intuitive Knowledge 1. It is costly as to the hard labour and precious time which must be laid out for it as aforesaid we grow old in getting us Horses and Boots and Spurs for our Journey and it 's well if we begin it at the last Like a Man that would study the new found Planets and the shape of Saturn and Jupiter's Satellites and the Viam Lacteam c and he spends his whole life in getting him the best Tubes or Telescopes never useth them to his ends Or like one that instead of learning to write doth spend his life in getting the best Ink Paper Pens Or rather like one that learneth to Write and Print exactly and not to understand what any of his words do signifie Men take their Spectacles in stead of Eyes 2. And when this Learning is got how uncertain are we whether the words have no ambiguity Whether they give us the true notice of the Speakers 〈◊〉 and of the Matter spoken of As I said before what a penury and yet redundancy of words have we Of how various and uncertain signification Changed by Custom or Arbitrary design Sometime by the Vulgar use and sometime by Learned men that being conscious of the defectiveness of the speaking-Art are still tampering and attempting to amend it And some men speak obscurely on purpose to raise in their Readers a conceit of their subtile and sublime conceptions And he that understandeth Things most clearly and speaketh them most plainly which are the parts of true Learning shall have much a do to get the Matter out of dark and bewildring uncertainties and to make others understand both it and him 3. And hence come the greatest part of the Contentions of the World which are hottest among men that most pretend to wordy knowledge As in Traffick and converse the more men and business we have to do with usually the more quarrels and differences we have so the more of this wordy Learning instead of Realities meâ—â—pretend to the more Disputes and Controversies they make and the Instruments of Knowledge prove the Instruments of Errour and Contention And alas how many applauded Volumes are the snares and troublers of the World And how great a part of our Libraries are vain janglings and strife of words and traps for the more ingenuous sort that will not be taken with Cards and Dice robbing us of our time destroying our Love depressing our minds that should ascend to God and diverting them from the great and holy Things which should be the matter of our Thoughts and Joys and filling the Church with Sects and Strife while every one striveth for the preeminence of his Wit and Notioâ—s and few strive for holy Love and Unity and good works 4. And all this while alas too many Learned men do but lick the outside of the Glass and leave the Wine within untasted To know God and Christ and Heaven and Holiness do give the Soul a nourishing and strengthning kind of pleasure like that of the Appetite in its food But this game at Words is but a knowing of Images Signs and Shadows and so is but an image and shadow of true Knowledge It is not that Grace which Austine's definition saith Nemo male utitur but it is that which the Sanctified use well and the Unsanctified are puffed up by and use to the opposition of Truth the Ostentation of a Foolish Wit and the deceit of their own Souls And if it be sanctified knowledge it is but Mediate in order to our knowledge of the Things thus signified And it is the real Good which contenteth and beatifieth though the Notions may be a subordinate recreation And Intuition feasteth on these Realities § 9. II. And as to the Objects of this Intuition their excellency will be the excellency of our Knowledge I. I shall know God better II. I shall know the Universe better III. I shall know Christ better IV. I shall know the Church his Body better with the holy Angels V. I shall better know the Methods and Perfection of the Scripture and all God's Dirigent Word and Will VI. I shall know the Methods and Sense of Disposing Providence better VII I shall know the Divine Benefits which are the Fruits of Love better VIII I shall know my Self better IX I shall better know every fellow Creature which I am concerned to know X. And I shall better know all that Evil Sin Satan and Misery from which I am delivered § 10. I. Aquinas and many others took it for the chief Natural proof of the Souls Immortality that Man by Nature desireth not only to know Effects and second Causes but to rise up to the Knowledge of the first Cause and therefore was made for such Knowledge in the state of his Perfection But Grace hath much more of this desire than Nature Not that we must not be content to be without a great deal of Knowledge which would be unmeet for us useless troublesome or dangerous to us nor must we aspire to that which is above our capacity and to know the unsearchable things of God But not to know God is to know nothing and to have an understanding worse than none I presume not to pry into the
more desire it V. I shall better understand all the World of God! The Matter and the Method of it Though I shall shall not have that use for it as I have now in this Life of Faith yet I shall see more of God's Wisdom and his Goodness his Love Mercy and Justice appearing in it than ever Man on Earth could do As the Creatures so the Scriptures are perfectly known only by perfect Spirits I shall then know how to solve all doubts and reconcile all seeming contradictions and to expound the hardest Prophesies That light will shew me the admirable Methods of those Sacred words where dark minds now suspect confusion How evident and clear then will every thing appear to me Like a small print when the light comes in which I could not read in the glimmering twilight How easily shall I then confute the cavils of all our present Unbelievers And how joyfully shall I praise that God and Saviour that gave his Church so clear a light to guide them through this darksom World and so sure a promise to support them till they came to life Eternal How joyfully shall I bless him that by that immortal Seed did regenerate me to the hopes of Glory And that ruled me by so Holy and Just a Law VI. In that World of Light I shall better understand God's present and past works of Providence by which he ordereth the matters of this World The Wisdom and Goodness of them is little understood in little parcels It is the union and harmony of all the parts which sheweth the beauty of them when the single Parcels seem deformed or are not understood And no one can see the whole together but God and they that see it in the light of his Celestial Glory It is a prospect of that End by which we have here any true understanding of such Parcels as we see Then I shall know clearly why or to what use God prospered the wicked and tryed the Righteous by so many afflictions I shall know why he set up the ungodly and put the humble under their Feet Why he permitted so much ignorance ungodliness pride lust oppression persecution falshood deceit and other sins in the World I shall know why the faithful are so few And why so many Kingdoms of the World are left in Heathenism Mahometanism and Infidelity The strange permissions which now so puzzle me and are the matter of my astonishment shall all be then as clear as day I shall know why God disposed of me as he did through all my life and why I suffered what I did and how many great deliverances I had which I understood not here and how they were accomplished All our mis-interpretations of God's works and permissions will be then rectified And all our Controversies about them which Satan hath made so great advantage of by a pretended zeal for some Truths of God will then be reconciled and at an end And all the works of Divine Providence from the beginning of the World will then appear a most delectable beauteous frame VII And among all these works I shall specially know more the nature and excellency of Gods mercies and gifts of Love which here we too unthankfully undervalued and made light of The special works of Love should be the matter of our most constant sweet and serious Thoughts and the fuel of our constant Love and Gratitude The lively sense of Love and Mercy maketh lively Christians abounding in Love to God and Mercy to others But the Enemy of God and Man most laboureth to obscure diminish and disgrace God's Love and Mercys to us or to put us out of relish to them that they be unfruitful as to their excellent ends and uses Little do most Christians know how much they wrong God and themselves and how much they lose by the diminutive poor Thoughts which they have of God's Mercies Ingratitude is a grievous misery to the Sinner as gratitude is a very pleasant work Many a Thousand Mercies we now receive which we greatly undervalue But when I come to the state and work of perfect gratitude I shall have a more perfect knowledge of all the Mercies which ever I received in my Life and which my Neighbours and Friends and God's Church and the World did ever receive For though the thing be past the use of it is not past Mercies remembred must be the matter of our everlasting thanks And we cannot be perfectly thankful for them without a perfect knowledge of them The worth of a Christ and all his grace the work of the Gospel the worth of our Church-priviledges and all God's Ordinances the worth of our Books and Friends and Helps of our Life and Health and all conveniences will be better understood in Heaven than the most holy and thankful Christian here understandeth them VIII And it will be some addition to my future happiness that I shall then be much better acquainted with my self Both with my Nature and with my Sin and Grace I shall then better know the Nature of a Soul and its formal Faculties Three in One I shall know the nature and way of its Operations and how far its acts are simple or compound or organical I shall know how far Memory Phantasie and Sense internal and external belong to the rational Soul and whether the sensitive and rational are two or one and what Senses will perish and what not I shall know how the Soul doth act upon it self and what acts it hath that are not felt in sleep in Apoplexies and in the Womb I shall know whether the vegetative nature be any thing else than Fire and whether it be of the same Essence with the Soul sensitive or rational and whether Fire eminenter be a common fundamental substance of all Spirits diversly specified by the Forms mental sensitive and vegetative or whether it be as a Body or Vehicle to Spirits or rather a nature made for the Copulation of Spirits and Bodies and the Operation of the former on the latter as between both And whether Fire and of what sort be the active forma telluris and of other Globes I shall know how far Souls are One and yet Many and how they are Individuate And whether their Quantitas discreta in being numerically many do prove that they have any Quantitatem continuam and whether they are a purer sort of Bodies as the Greek Fathers Tertullian and others Thought and what Immateriality signifieth and what substantiality of Spirits and how substantia materia differ and how far they are penetrable and indivisible and whether a Soul be properly pars and whether individual Souls are parts of any common Soul and how far the individuation doth continue And whether separated from the Body they operate in and by any other Vehicle or without and how and whether they take with them any of the fiery Nature as a Vehicle or as a constitutive part I shall know how God produceth Souls And how
and continually and from thence shall overflow to God and Receiving and Returning are now and will be the circular endless motion and our true perpetual Life and Happiness § 19. I. All my Receivings shall be from God His LOVE is not a meer Immanent Will nor a Wish which toucheth not the Object But it is what Heat is in or from the Sun or Fire It is an efflux of Goodness It is the most powerful sweet communicating Principle or Work All Love is communicative but none in comparison of Gods As there is none primitive and simply good but God How much doth Love in the affairs of men All that is pleasant in the World is it or its effects Were it not for sensual Love there would be no Generation of Man or Bruits God hath made it a generating Principle Hatred causeth not congress but fighting with or flying from one another Were it not for Natural Love Mothers would never endure the pain and trouble and care which is necessary to humane Birth and Education Were it not for Love Parents would never labour all their lives to leave their Children well instructed and well provided for when they are gone My Food would not please me did I not love it and I should neglect it to the neglect of my life Did I not love my Books and Learning itself I should never have bestowed so much of Threescore Years in poring on them and searching for Knowledge as I have done Did I not love my House my Conveniences and necessaries I should neglect them and they would be to me of small use Did I not love my Friends I should be less profitable to them and they to me Did not I love my Life I should neglect it and never have endured the labour and cost about it as I have done If a Man love not his Courtrey Posterity and the common good he will be as a burdensom Drone in the Hive or as pernicious Vermine What is done in the World that is good but by LOVE And if created Love be so necessary so active so communicative how much more will the infinite Love of the Creator be His Love is now the Life of the World His Love is the Life of Nature in the Living the life of Holiness in Saints and the life of glory in the Blessed In this infinite Love it is that I and all the Saints shall dwell for ever more And if I dwell in LOVE and LOVE in me surely I shall have its sweet and plenteous communication and shall ever drink of the Rivers of Pleasure It is pleasant to Nature to be Beloved of others Especially of the great and wise and good much more to have all the communications of Love in converse and gifts in plenty and continuance which may be still expressing it to our greatest benefit Had I a Friend now that did for me but the hundredth part of what God doth how dearly should I love him Think then think believingly seriously constantly O my Soul what a life thou shalt live for ever in the Presence the Face the Bosom of infinite Eternal Love He now shineth on me by the Sun and on my Soul by the Sun of Righteousness but it is as through a Lanthorn or the crevises of my darksom Habitation But then he will shine on me and in me openly and with the fullest streams and beams of Love § 20. God is the same God in Heaven and Earth but I shall not be the same Man Here I receive comparatively little but live in darkness doubtful and frequent sorrows because my Receptivity is less The windows of my Soul are not open to his light Sin hath raised clouds and consequently storms against my comforts The enterances to my Soul by the streights of Flesh and Sense are narrow and they are made narrower by sin than they were by Nature Alas how oft would Love have spoken comfortably to me and I was not at home to be spoken with but was abroad among a world of Vanities or was not at leisure or was asleep and not willing to be awaked How oft would LOVE have come in and dwelt with me and I have unkindly shut my doors against him How oft would he have been with me in secret where he freely would embrace me but I had some pleasing company or business which I was loth to leave How oft would he have feasted me and had made all ready but I was taken up and could not come â—ay when his Table hath been spred before me Christ Grace and Glory have been offered to me my Appetite hath been gone or dull and all hath been almost neglected by me and hath scarce seemed pleasant enough to be accepted or to call off my mind from luscious Poyson How oft would he have shined upon me and I have shut my windows or mine eyes He was jealous indeed and liked not a Partner He would have been All to me if I would have been All for him But I divided my Heart my Thoughts my Love my Desires and my Kindnesses and alas how much did go besides him yea against him to his Enemies even when I knew that all was lost and worse than lost which was not his What wonder then if so foolish and unkind a sinner had little pleasure in his Love and if so great ingratitude and neglect of Soveraign goodness were punished with such strangeness and fears and faintings as I have long with groans lamented Recipitur ad modum recipientis But in Heaven I shall have none of these obstructions All old unkindness and ingratitude will be forgiven The great reconciler in whom I am beloved will then have perfected his work I shall then be wholly separated from the vanity which here deceived me My open Soul will be prepared to receive the heavenly influx With open Face I shall behold the open Face of glorifying Love I shall joyfully attend his Voice and delightfully relish the Celestial Provisions No disease will corrupt my Appetite No sluggishness will make me guilty again of my old neglects The Love of the Father by the Grace of the Son and the Communion of the Holy Spirit will have got the victory over all my deadness folly and disaffection and my God-displeasing and self-undoâ—ng averseness and enmity will be gone for ever The perfect LOVE which God doâ—h first effect in me will be my everlasting Receptivity of the fullest Love of God Benevolent love will make me good that is a Holy lover of God and then pleased love will make me his delight and benevolence will still maintain me in my capacity Study this heavenly work of Love O my Soul these are not dead or barren studies These are not sad unpleasant studies It is only love that can relish love and understand it The will here hath its gust so like to an understanding as maketh some Philosophers say that voluntas percipit is a proper Phrase What can poor carnal Worldlings know of glorious Love who
out a Prayer Book on my Heart He giveth me desires and he loveth to be importuned by them His Spirit is first a Spirit of supplication and after of Consolation and in both a Spirit of Adoption so far is he from being loth to be troubled with my importunity that he seeketh to me to seek his grace and is displeased with me that I will ask and have no more All this is true But how then cometh my Soul to be yet so low so dark so fond of this wretched Flesh and World and so backward to go home and dwell with Christ Alas a taste of Heaven on Earth is a Mercy too pretious to be cast away upon such as have long grieved and quencht the Spirit and are not by diligent and patient seeking prepared to receive it He that proclaimeth a general Peace will give Peace only to the Sons of Peace If after such unkind neglects such wilful sins as I have been guilty of I should expect to be suddenly in my Saviours Armâ— and to be feasted presently with the first Fruits of Heaven I should look that the Most Holy should too little manifest his hatred of my sin My Conscience remembreth the follies of my Youth and many a later odious sin and telleth me that if Heaven were quite hid from my sight and I should never have a glimpse of the Face of glorious eternal Love it were but just I look upward from Day to Day I groan to see his pleased Face and better to know my God and my home I cry to him daily My God this little is better than all the pleasures of sin My Hopes are better than all the Possessions of this World Thy gracious looks have oft revived me and thy mercies have been unmeasurable to my Soul and Body But O how far short am I of what even Fourty Years ago I hoped sooner to have attained Where is the Peace that passeth Understanding that should keep my Heart and Mind in Christ O where is the seeing the longing the rejoicing and triumphing Faith Where is that pleasant familiarity above that should make a Thought of Christ and Heaven to be sweeter to me than the Thoughts of Friends or Health or all the Prosperity and Pleasure of this World Do those that dwell in God and God in them and have their Hearts and Conversations in Heaven attain to no more clear and satisfying perceptions of that blessed state than I have yet attained Is there no more acquaintance above to be here expected No livelier sense of future joyes No sweeter foretast Nor fuller silencing of doubts and fears I am not so loth to go to a Friend nor to the Bed where I oft spend the Night in restless pains and rolling as I have too often been to come to thee Alas how many of thy Servants are less afraid to go to a Prison than to their God! and had rather be banished to a Land of Strangers than sent to Heaven Lord must I that am called Thy Child and an Heir of Heaven and a Co-heir with Christ have no more acquaintance with my glorified Lord and no more love to Thee that art my portion before I go hence and come before thee Shall I have no more of the heavenly Life and Light and Love Alas I have scarce enough in my Meditations to denominate them truly heavenly Meditations I have scarce enough in a Prayer to make it indeed a heavenly Prayer or in a Sermon to make it a heavenly Sermon And shall I have no more when I come to die Must I go hence so like a stranger to my home Wilt thou take Strangâ—â—â— into Heaven know them as thine that do no better know thee here O my God vouchsafe a Sinner yet more of his Spirit that came down on Earth to call up earthly minds to God and to open Heaven to all Believers O what do I beg for so frequently so earnestly for the sake of my Redeemer as the Spirit of Life and Consolation which may shew me the pleased Face of God and unite all my affections to my glorified Head and draw up this dark and drowsie Soul to love and long to be with thee But alas though these are my daily groans how little yet do I ascend I dare not blame the God of Love He is full and willing I dare not blame my blessed Saviour He hath shewed that he is not backward to do good I dare not accuse the holy Spirit It is his work to sanctifie and comfort Souls If I knew no reason of this my low and dark Estate I must needs conclude that it is somewhat in my self But alas my Conscience wants not matter to satisfie me of the cause Sinful resistance of the Spirit and unthankful neglects of Grace and Glory are undoubtedly the cause But are they not a cause that Mercy can forgive That grace can overcome and may I not yet hope for such a Victory before I die Lord I will lie at thy doors and groan I will pour out my moans before thee I will beg and whatever thou wilt do with me Thou describest the kindness of the Dogs to a Lazarus that lay at a rich Man's Doors in Sores Thou commendest the neighbourly pitty of a Samaritan that took care of a wounded Man Thou condemnest those that will not shew mercy to the poor and needy Thou biddest us Be merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful If we see our Brother have need and shut up the Bowels of our compassion from him it is because thy love dwelleth not in us And shall I wait then at thy Doors in vain and go empty away from such a God when I beg but for that which thou hast commanded me to ask and without which I cannot serve thee or come to thee live or die in a habit beseeming a Member of Christ a Child of God and an Hâ—ir of Heaven O give me the wedding Garment without which I shall but dishonour thy bounteous Feast Let me wear a Livery which becometh thy Family even a Child of God! How oft hast thou commanded 〈◊〉 to Rejoice Yea to rejoice with exceeding and unspeakable joy And how fain would I in this obey thee O that I had more faithfully obeyed thee in other preparatory duties in ruling my Senses my Phantasie my Tongue and in diligent using all thy Talents Then I might more easily have obeyed thee in this Thou knowest Lord that Love and Joy are duties that must have more than a Command O bid me do them with an effecting word How can I Rejoice in Death and Darkness When the Bridegroom is absent I must fast and mourn While I look towards Heaven but through the crevises of this dungeon Flesh my Love and Joy will be but answerable to my Light How long is it since I hoped that I had been translated from the Kingdom of Darkness and delivered from the power of the Prince of Darkness and brought into that Light which is the
sin and discord But there a whole Heaven fulâ— of blessed Spirits will flame for ever in perfect Love to God to Christ and one another Go then go willingly O my Soul Love joineth with LIGHT to draw up thy desires Nature inclineth all things unto Union Even the lifeless Elements have an Aggregative motion by which the parts when violently separated do hastily return to their Natural adhesion Art thou a Lover of Wisdom and wouldst thou not be united to the Wise Art thou a Lover of Holiness and of Love itself and wouldst thou not be united to the Holy who are made of Love Art thou a hater of enmity discord and divisions and a Lover of Unity here on Earth and wouldst thou not be where all the just are One It is not an unnatural Union to thy loss Nothing shall be taken from thee by it Thou shalt receive by it more than thou canst contribute It shall not be forced against thy will It is but a Union of Minds and Wills a perfect Union of Loves Let not natural or sinful selfishness cause thee to think suspiciously or hardly of it For it is thy happiness and end What got the Angels that fell to selfishness from Unity And what got Adam that followed them herein The further any man goeth from UNITY by SELFISHNESS the deeper he falleth into sin and misery from God! And what doth Grace but call us back from sin and selfishness to Gods Unity again Doâ—e not then on this dark divided World Is not thy Body while the parts by a uniting Soul are kept together and make One in a better state than when it is crumbled into lifeless dust And doth not death creep on thee by a gradual dissolution Away then from this sandy incoherent state The further from the Center the further from Unity A Unity indeed there is of all things but it is One heavenly LIFE and LIGHT and LOVE which is the true felicitating Union We dispute here whether the Aggregative Motion of separated parts as in descensu gravium be from a Motive Principle in the part or by the Attraction of the whole or by any external impulse It is like that there is somewhat of all these But sure the greatest cause is like to do most to the effect The body of the Earth hath more power to attract a Cload or Stone than the intrinsick Principle to move it downwards But intrinsick Gravity is also necessary The superior attractive Love and Loveliness must do more to draw up this mind to God than my intrinsick Holiness to move it upward But without this Holiness the Soul would not be capable of feeling that attractive influx Every Grace cometh from God to fit and lead up my Soul to God Faith therefore believeth the heavenly state and Love doth with some Delight desire it and Hope gapeth after it that I may at last attain it They that have pleaâ—ed against Propriety and would have all things common in this World have forgotten that there is a Propriety in our present Egoity and Natural Constitution which rendereth some accidental Propriety necessary to us Every Man hath his own bodily parts and inherent accidents and every Man must have his own Food his own Place Cloathing and Acquisitions his own Children and therefore his own Wife c. But that the greatest Perfection is most for Community as far as Nature is capable of it God would shew us in making the first Receivers of the extraordinary pourings out of his Spirit to sell all and voluntarily make all common none saying This or that is my own which was not done by any constraining Law but by the Law or Power of uniting Love They were first all as of one Heart and Soul Act. 4. 32. Take not then thy inordinate desire of Propriety for thy Health but for thy Sickness Cherish it not and be not afraid to lose it and measure not the heavenly felicity by it Spirits are penetrable They claim not so much as a Propriety of place as Bodies do It is thy weakness and state of Imperfection now which maketh it so desirable to thee that thy House should be Thine and nones but thine thy Land be Thine and nones but Thine thy Cloaths thy Books yea thy knowledge and grace be Thine and Nones but Thine How much more excellent a state were it if we were here capable of it if we could say that all these are as the common Light of the Sun which is mine and every ones as well as mine Why are we so desirous to speak all Languages but that we might understand all men and 〈◊〉 understood of all and so might make our sentiments as common as is possible Whence is it that men are so addicted to talkativeness but that Nature would make all our Thoughts and passions as common aâ— it can And why else are Learned men so desirous to propagate their Learning and Godly men so desirous to make all others wise and godly It seemeth one of the greatest calamities of this life that when a Man hath with the longest and hardest study attained to much knowledge he cannot bequeath it or any part of it to his Heir or any Person when he dieth but every Man must acquire it for himself And when God hath sanctified the Parents they cannot communicate their Holiness to their Children though God promise to bless them on their account Much less can any Man make his Grace or Knowledge common Nature and Grace incline us to desire it but we cannot do it For this end we Talk and Preach and Write for this end we study to be as plain and convincing and moving as we can that we may make our Knowledge and Affections as common to our Hearers and Readers as we can And O what a blessed work should we take Preaching and Writing for if we could make them all know but what we know and love what we are persuading them to love There would then be no need of Schools and Universities A few Hours would do more than they do in an Age. But alas how rare is it for a Father of excellent Learning and Piety to have one Son like himself after all his industry Is not the heavenly communion then desirable where every Man shall have his Own and yet his Own be common to all others My knowledge shall be mine own and other mens as well as mine My goodness shall be my own and theirs My glory and felicity shall be mine and theirs And theirs also shall be mine as well as theirs The Knowledge the Goodness the Glory of all the heavenly Society shall be Mine according to my Capacity Grace is the Seed of such a state which maketh us all one in Christ neither Barbarian nor Scythian Circumcision nor Uncircumcision Bond nor Free by giving us to love our Neighbours as our selves and to love both our Neighbours and our selves for Christ and Christ in all Well might Paul say All things yours But it
1 Pet. 2. 5. I refuse not Lord to lie in Tears and Groans when thou requirest it and do not thou refuse those Tears and Groans but O give me better that I may have better of thine own to offer thee And by this prepare me for the far better which I shall find with Christ And that which is Best to us thy Creatures will be accepted as Best by Thee who art glorified and pleased in the Perfection of thy works § 4. II It is at least very probable that God maketh glorified Spirits his Agents and Ministers of much of his beneficence to the Creatures that are below them For 1. We see that where he endueth any Creature with the noblest endowments he maketh most use of that Creature to the benefit of others We shall in Heaven be most furnished to do good and that furniture will not be unused 2. And Christ tells us that we shall be like or equal to the Angels which though it mean not simply and in all things yet it meaneth more than to be above carnal Generation for it speaketh of a similitude of Nature and State as the Reason of the otheâ— And that the Angels are God's Ministers for the good of his chosen in this World and Administrators of much of the Affairs on Faith 〈◊〉 past all doubt 3. The Apostle telleth us 〈◊〉 the Saintâ— shall Judg the World and Angels And Judging in Scripture is oft put for Ruling It is therefore probable at least that the Devils and the Damned shall be put under the Saints and that with the Angels they shall be employed in some Ministerial Oversight of the Inhabitants and Affairs of the promised New-Earth 4. And when even the more noble Superiour Bodies even the Stars are of so great use and influx to inferiour Bodies it is like that accordingly Superiour Spirits will be of use to the Inhabitants of the World below them § 5. But I think it not meet to venture here upon uncertain conjectures beyond the revelation of God's Word and therefore shall add no more but conclude that God knoweth what use to make of us hereafter as well as here and that if there were no more for us to do in Heaven but with perfect Knowledg Love and Joy to hold communion with God and all the heavenly Society it were enough to attract a sensible and considerate Soul to fervent desires to be at home with God § 6. And here I must not overpass my rejection of the injurious opinion of too many Philosophers and Divines who exclude all Sense and Affection from Heaven and acknowledge nothing there but Intellect and Will And this is because they find Sense and Affection in the Bruits and they think that the souls of Bruits are but some quality or perishing temperament of Matter and therefore that Sense and Affection is in us no better § 7. But 1. What felicity can we conceive of without any affection of delight or joy Certainly bare Volition now without these doth seem to be no felicity to us Nor knowledg neither if there were no delight in knowing § 8. 2. Yea I leave it to mens experience to judge whether there be now any such thing in us as proper willing which is not also some internal sense of and affection to the good which we will If it be Complacency or the Pleasedness of the Will this signifies some Pleasure and Love in the first act is nothing else but such an Appetite If it be Desire it hath in it a Pleasedness in the thing desired as in esse cognito as it is thought on by us and what Love is without all sense and affection § 9. 3. Why doth the Scripture ascribe Love and Joy to God and Angels if there were not some reason for it Doubtless there is great difference between the heavenly Love and Joy and ours here in the Body And so there is also between their knowledge and ours and their Will and ours But it is not that theirs is less or lower than ours but somwhat more excellent which ours giveth us some analogical or imperfect formal notice of § 10. 4. And what though Bruits have Sense and Affection doth it follow therefore that we have none now Or that we shall have none hereafter Bruits have Life And must we therefore have no Life hereafter because it is a thing that 's common â—oBruits Rather as now we have all that the Bruits have and more so shall we then have Life and Sense and Affection of a nobler sort than Bruits and more Is not God the Living God Shall we say that he liveth not because Bruits live Or rather that they live a sensitive life and Man a Sensitive and Intellectual because God is Essential Transcendent Infinite Life that makes them live § 11. 5. But if they say that there is no Sensation or Affection but by bodily Organs I answered before to that the Body feeleth nothing at all but the Soul in the Body The Soul uniteth itself most nearly to the Igneous-aereal parts called the Spirits and in them it feeleth seeth tasteth smelleth c. And that Soul that feeleth and seeth doth also inwardly love desire and rejoice And that Soul which doth this in the Body hath the same power and faculty out of the Body And if they judge by the cessation of sensation when the Organs are undisposed or dead so they might as well conclude against our future Intellection and Will whose operation in an Apoplexy we no more perceive than that of Sense But I have before shewed that the Soul will not want exercise for its Essential faculties for want of Objects or bodily Organs and that men conclude basely of the souls of Bruits as if they were not an enduring substance without any proof or probability And tell us idle dreams that they are but vanishing temperaments c. which are founded on another Dream that FIRE or the Motive-Illuminative-Calefactive Cause is no substance neither and so our unnatural Somatists know none of the most excellent substances which actuate all the rest but only the more base and gross which are actuated by them and they think they have well acquit themselves by telling us of subtâ—le actâ—d Matter and Motion without understanding what any Living Active-Motive Faculty or Virtue is And because no Man knoweth what God doth with the souls of Bruits whether they are only one common sensitive soul of a more common Body or whether Individuate still and Transmigrant from Body to Body or what else Therefore they make Ignorance a plea for Errour and feign them to be no substances or to be Annihilate § 12. I doubt not but Sensation as is aforesaid is an excellent Operation of the Essential faculties of real substances called Spirits and that the highest and noblest Creatures have it in the highest excellency and though God that fitteth every thing to its use hath given e. g. a Dog a more perfect Sense of Smelling than a Man
others groping for it in the dark wandring and lost in the clearest Light where the illuminated can but pitty the Blind but cannot make them willing to be delivered What is Heaven to me but GOD GOD who is LIFE and LIGHT and LOVE communicating himself to blessed Spirits perfecting them in the Reception Possession and Exercise of LIFE and LIGHT and LOVE FOR EVER These are not the Accidents but the Essence of that God who is Heaven and All to me should I fear that Death which passeth me to Infinite Essential Life Should I fear a darksom passage into a World of perfect LIGHT Should I fear to go to LOVE itself Think O my Soul what the Suns quickening Light and Heat is to this lower corporeal World Much more is GOD even Infinite LIFE and LIGHT and LOVE to the blessed World above Doth it not draw out thy desires to think of going into a World of LOVE When LOVE will be our Region our Company our Life More to us than the Air is for our Breath than the Light is for our sight than our Food is for our Life than our Friends are for our Solace And more to us than we are to our selves and we more for it as our ultimate end than for our selves O excellent Grace of Faith which doth foresee and blessed Word of Faith that doth foreshew this World of LOVE Shall I fear to enter where there is no WRATH no fear no strangeness nor suspicion nor selfish separation but LOVE will make every holy Spirit as dear and lovely to me as my self and me to them as lovely as themselves and God to us all more amiable than our selves and all Where LOVE will have no defects or distances no damps or discouragements no discontinuance or mixed disaffection but as LIFE will be without Death and LIGHT without Darkness a perfect everlasting Day of Glory so will LOVE be without any hatred unkindness or allay As many Coals make one Fire and many Candles conjoined make one Light so will many living Spirits make one Life and many illuminated Glorious Spirits one Light and Glory and many Spirits innaturalized into LOVE will make one Perfect LOVE of GOD and be LOVED as One by God for ever For all the Body of Christ is One even here it is One in initial Union of the Spirit and Relation to One God and Head and Life 1 Cor. 12. throughout Eph. 4. 1. to 17. and shall be presented as beloved and spotless to God when the great Marriage Day of the Lamb shall come Eph. 5. 24 25 c. Rev. 21. 22. Had thou not given me O Lord the LIFE of Nature I should have had no conceptions of a Glorious everlasting Life But if thou give me not the Life of Grace I shall have no sufficient delightful inclination and desire after it Hadst thou not given me Sight and Reason the Light of Nature I should not have thought how desirable it is to live in the Glorious Light and Vision but if thou give me not the Spiritual Illumination of a seeing Faith I shall not yet long for the Glorious Light and beatifical Vision Hadst thou not given me a Will and Love which is part of my very Nature itself I could not have tasted how desirable it is to live in a World of Universal perfect endless LOVE But unless thou also shed abroad thy LOVE upon my Heart by the Spirit of Jesus the Great Medium of LOVE and turn my very Nature or Inclination into Divine and Holy LOVE I shall not long for the World of LOVE Appetite followeth Nature O give me not only the Image and the Art of Godliness the approaches towards it nor only some forced or unconstant acts but give me the Divine Nature which is Holy Love and then my Soul will hasten towards thee and cry How long O Lord How long O come come quickly make no delay Surely the fear of dying intimateth some contrary Love that inclineth the Soul another way and some shameful unbelief and great unapprehensiveness of the Attractive Glory of the World of LOVE Otherwise no frozen Person so longeth for the Fire none in a Dungeon so desireth Light as we should long for the heavenly Light and Love God's Infinite Essential SELF-LOVE in which he is Eternally delighted in himself is the most Amiable Object and Heaven itself to Saints and Angels And next to that His Love to all his Works to the World and to the Church in Heaven speaketh much more of his Loveliness than his Love to me But yet due Self-love in me is his work and part of his natural Image and when this by sin is grown up to excess through the withdrawing of a contracted narrow Soul from the Union and due Love to my fellow Creatures and to God I must also I cannot but enquire after God's Love to me and by this my desires must much be moved For I am not so capable of ascending above Self-interest and Self-love as in the state of Glorious Union I shall be I am glad to perceive that others do love God and I love those most that I find most love him But it is not other mens love to God that will be accepted by him instead of mine Nor is it God's Love to others which yet rejoiceth me that will satisfie me without his love to me But when all these are still before me God's Essential Self-love and Delight his Love to his Creatures especially the Glorified and his Love to me also even to me a vile unworthy Sinner what then should stay my ascending Love or discourage my desires to be with God And dost thou doubt canst thou doubt O my Soul whether thou art going to a God that loveth thee If the Jews discerned the great love of Christ to Lazarus by his Tears canst not thou discern his Love to thee in his Blood It is never the less but the more obliging and amiable that it was not shed for thee alone but for many May I not say as Paul Gal. 2 20. I live by the Faith of the Son of God that hath loved Me and given himself for me Yea it is not so much I that live as Christ Liveth in me And will he forsake the Habitation which his love hath chosen And which he hath so dearly bought O read often that triumphing Chapter Rom. 8. and conclude What shall separate us from the Love of God If Life have not done it Death shall not do it If leaning on his Breast at Meat was a token of Christ's special love to John is not his dwelling in me by my Faith and his living in me by his Spirit a sure token of his love to me And if a dark saying If he tarry till I come what is that to thee raised a report that the beloved Disciple should not die why should not plain Promises assure me that I shall live with him that loveth me for ever Be not so unthankful O my Soul as to question
a Nature to us Else they would not cease at Death But holy LOVE is our New Nature and therefore ceaseth not with this bodily life And shall accidental love make me desire the company of a frail and mutable Friend And shall not this ingrafted inseparable love make me long to be with Christ Though the love of God to all his Creatures will not prove that they are all Immortal nor oblige them to expect another life that never had Capacity or Faculties to expect it yet his love to such as in Nature and Grace are made capable of it doth warrant and oblige them to believe and hope for the full Perfection of the work of love Some comfort themselves in the love of St. Peter as having the Keys of Heaven And how many could I name that are now with Christ who loved me so faithfully on Earth that were I sure they had the Keys and Power of Heaven and were not changed in their Love I could put my departing Soul into their Hands and die with joy And is it not better in the Hand of my Redeemer and of the God of Love and Father of Spirits Is any love comparable to his Or any Friend so boldly to be trusted I should take it for ungrateful unkindness in my Friend to doubt of my love and trustiness if I had given him all that he hath and maintained him constantly by my kindness But O how odious a thing is sin Which by destroying our love to God doth make us unmeer to believe and sweetly perceive his Love And by making us doubt of the Love of God and lose the pleasant relish of it doth more increase our difficulty of loving him The Title that the Angel gave to Daniel A Man greatly beloved of God methinks should be enough to make one joyfully love and trust God both in life and death Will Almighty LOVE ever hurt me or forsake me And have not all Saints that Title in their degrees What else signifieth their Mark and Name HOLINESS TO THE LORD What is it but our separation to God as his peculiar beloved People And how are they separated but by mutual love and our forsaking all that alienateth or is contrary Let Scorners deride us as self flatterers that believe they are God's Darlings and wo to the Hypocrites that believe it on their false Presumption without such belief or grounded hopes I see not how any Man can die in true Peace He that is no otherwise beloved than Hypocrites and Unbelievers must have his portion with them And he that is no otherwise beloved than as the ungodly unholy and unregenerate shall not stand in judgment nor see God nor enter into his Kingdom Most upright Souls are to blame for groundless doubting of God's Love but not for acknowledging it rejoicing in it and in their doubts being most solicitous to make it sure Love brought me into the World and furnished me with a Thousand Mercies Love hath provided for me delivered me and preserved me till now And will it not entertain my separated Soul Is God like false or insufficient Friends that forsake us in adversity I confess that I have wronged LOVE by sin by many and great unexcusable sins But all save Christ himself were sinners which love did purifie and receive to Glory God who is rich in Mercy for the great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sins hath quickned us together with Christ by Grace we are saved and hath raised us up together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus Eph. 2. 4 5 6. O that I could love much that have so much forgiven The glorified praised him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own Blood and made us Kings and Priests to God Rev. 1. 5 6. Our Father that hath loved us giveth us consolation and good hope through Grace 2 Thess 2. 16. I know no sin which I repent not of with self-loathing And I earnestly beg and labour that none of my sins may be to me unknown I dare not justifie even what is any way uncertain though I dare not call all that my sin which siding men of differing judgments on each side passionately call so While both sides do it on contrary accounts and not to go contrary ways is a Crime O that God would bless my accusations to my illumination that I may not be unknown to my self Though some think me much better than I am and others much worse it most concerneth me to know the Truth my self flattery would be more dangerous to me than false accusations I may safelier be ignorant of other mens sins than of my own Who can understand his errours Cleanse me Lord from secret sins and let not ignorance or errour keep me in impenitence and keep thou me back from presumptuous sins Psal 19. 12 13. I have an Advocate with the Father and thy Promise that he that confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall have Mercy Those are by some men taken for my greatest sins which my most serious Thoughts did judge to be the greatest of my outward duties and which I performed through the greatest difficulties and which cost me dearest to the Flesh and the greatest self-denial and patience in my reluctant Mind Where-ever I have erred Lord make it known to me that my confession may prevent the sin of others and where I have not erred confirm and accept me in the right And seeing an unworthy Worm hath had so many Testimonies of thy tender love let me not be like them Mal. 1. 1 2. that when thou saidst I have loved you unthankfully asked Wherein hast thou loved us Heaven is not more spangled with Stars than thy Word and Works with the refulgent Signatures of Love Thy well beloved Son the Son of thy Love undertaking the Office Message and Work of the greatest Love was full of that Spirit which is Love which he sheds abroad in the Hearts of thine Elect that the Love of the Father the Grace of the Son and the communion of the Spirit may be their hope and life His Works his Sufferings his Gifts as well as his comfortable Word did say to his Disciples Joh. 15. 9. As the Father loved me so have I loved you continue ye in my love And how Lord shall we continue in it but by the thankful belief of thy love and loveliness desiring still to love thee more and in all things to know and please thy Will Which thou knowest is my Souls desire Behold then O my Soul with what Love the Father Son and Holy Spirit have loved thee that thou should be made and called a Son of God redeemed regenerate adopted into that Covenant-state of Grace in which thou standest Rejoice therefore in hope of the Gâ—ory of God Rom. 5. 1 2. being justified by Faith having Peace with God and access by Faith and Hope that maketh not ashamed that being reconciled when an Enemy by the Death of Christ I shall be saved
by his life Having loved his own to the end he loveth them and without end His Gifts and Calling are without Repentance When Satan and thy Flesh would hide God's love look to Christ and read the golden words of Love in the Sacred Gospel and peruse thy many recorded experiences and remember the convictions which secret and open Mercies have many a time afforded thee But especially draw nearer to the Lord of Love and be not seldom and slight in thy contemplations of his Love and Loveliness Dwell in the Sun-shine and thou wâ—lt know that it is light and warm and comfortable Distance and strangeness cherish thy doubts Acquaint thy self with him and be at peace Yet look up and oft and earnestly look up after thy ascended glorified Head who said Tell my Brethren I ascend to my Father and your Father to my God and your God! Think where and what he is and what he is now doing for all his own and how humbled abased suffering Love is now Triumphant regnant glorified Love and therefore no less than in all its tender expressions upon Earth As Love is no where perfectly revealed but in Heaven so I can no where so fully discern it as by looking up by Faith to my Father and Saviour which is in Heaven and conversing more believingly with the heavenly Society Had I done this more and better and as I have persuaded others to do it I had lived in more convincing delights of God's Love which would have turned the fears of Death into joyfuller hopes and more earnest desires to be with Christ in the Arms in the World in the life of Love as far better than to be here in a dark a doubting fearing World But O my Father Infinite LOVE though my Arguments be many and strong my Heart is bad and my strength is weakness and I am insufficient to plead the cause of thy Love and Loveliness to my self or others O plead thy own cause and what Heart can resist Let it not be my word only but Thine that thou lovest me even me a Sinner speak it as Christ said to Lazarus Arise If not as thou tellest me that the Sun is warm yet as thou hast told me that my Parents and my dearest Friends did love me and much more powerfully than so Tell it me as thou tellest me that thou hast given me life by the consciousness and works of life That while I can say Thou that knowest all things Knowest that I love Thee it may include therefore I know that I am beloved of thee and therefore come to thee in the confidence of thy Love and long to be nearer in the clearer sight the fuller sense and joyfuller exercise of Love for ever Father into thy Hand I commend my Spirit Lord Jesus receive my Spirit Amen AN APPENDIX A Breviate of the Helps of Faith Hope and Love A Breviate of the proof of Supernatural Revelation and the Truth of Christianity 1 TIM 3. 16. Without Controversie great is the Mystery of Godliness God was manifested in the Flesh justified in the Spirit seen of Angels preached to the Gentiles believed on in the World received up into Glory THese are the Creed or Six Articles of the Gospel which the Apostles preached § 1. I. God manifested in the Flesh of Jesus is the first and great Article Believe this and believe all No wonder that believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God is so often made in Scripture the description of saving Faith the Title to Baptism and Pardon and Salvation the Evidence of the Spirit c. He that truly and practically believeth that God came in Flesh to Man and that Christ is the Fathers Messenger from Heaven must needs believe that God hath a great value for the Souls of men and for his Church that he despiseth not even our Flesh that his Word is true and fully to be trusted that he who so wonderfully came to Man will certainly take up Man to him Who can doubt of the Immortality of Souls or that Christ will receive the departing Souls of the Faithful to himself who believeth that he took Man's Nature and hath glorified it now in Heaven in union with the Divine Who can ever have low Thoughts of God's love and Mercy who believeth this And who can prostitute his Soul and Flesh to wickedness who firmly believeth that he took the Soul and Flesh of Man to sanctifie and glorifie it § 2. II. The holy Spirit is the Justification of the Truth of Jesus Christ He is Christ's Advocate and Witness to the World He proveth the Gospel by these five ways of Evidence I. By all the Prophesies Types and Promises of Christ in the Old Testament before Christs coming II. By the Inherent impress of God's Image on the Person and Doctrine of Christ VVhich Propria luce sheweth itself to be Divine III. By the concomitant Miracles of Christ Read the History of the Gospel for this use and observe each History IV. By the subsequent gift of the Spirit to the Apostles and other Christians by Languages wonders and multitudes of Miracles to convince the VVorld V. By the undeniable and excellent work of Sanctification on all true Believers through all the VVorld in all generations to this day These five are the Spirits VVitness which fully justifieth the certain Truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God § 3. Quest But how are we sure who our selves never saw the Person Miracles Resurrection Ascension of Christ that the History of them is true Answ 1. We may be sure that the Spectators were not deceived II. And that they did not deceive them to whom they reported it III. And that we are not deceived by any miscarriage in the historical Tradition to us § 4. I. It was not possible that men that were not mad that had Eyes and Ears could for three Years and a half believe that they saw the Lame the Blind the Deaf and all Diseases healed the Dead raised Thousands miraculously fed c. and this among crouds of People that still followed Christ if the things had not been true One Man's Senses may be deceived at some one instance by some deceitful accident But that the Eyes and Ears of Multitudes should be so oft deceived many years in the open Light is as much as to say No Man knoweth any thing that he seeth and heareth § 5. II. That the Disciples who received the Apostles and Evangelists report of Christ were not deceived by the Reporters is most evident For 1. They received it not by hearsay at the second hand but from the Eye and Ear Witnesses themselves who must needs know what they said 2. They heard this report from Men of the same Time and Age and Countrey where it was easy to examine the case and confute it had it been false 3. The Apostles appealed to crouds and Thousands of Witnesses as to many of Christ's Miracles who would have made it odious had it not been
King and Countrey and therefore maketh for men's worldly advantage and they hear little said againft it This is the case of most in the World Christians Mahometans and Heathens And it 's another to be a serious Believer who upon trial and consideration chooseth Christianity And it is notorious that such serious Christians are all Holy Sober and Just and so greatly differing from the corrupted World as fully proveth that God owneth that Gospel which he maketh so effectual to so great a change Here consider 1. What that change is 2. How hard and great a work it is 3. That it is certainly a work of God 4. That the Gospel is the means by which God doth it 1. The nature of this Holy work on all serious sincere Christians is It sets all their Hopes and Hearts on the promised Glory of the Life to come and turns the very nature of their Wills into the predominant Love of God and Man and of Heaven and Holiness It mortifieth all fleshly Lusts and Subjects Sense to Reason and Faith the Body to the Soul and all to God It sets a Mans Heart on the sincere study of doing all the good he can in the World to Friends Neighbours and Enemies especially and most publick good to live soberly righteously and godly is his delight Sin is his chief hatred and nothing more grievous to him than that he cannot reach to greater Perfection in Faith Hope Obedience Patience and in heavenly Love and Joy It causeth a Man to contemn Wealth Honour and fleshly Pleasure and Life in comparison of God's Love and Life everlasting this change God's Spirit worketh on all true Believers Those that are ungodly have but the Name of Christians they never well understood what Christianity is nor ever received it by a true belief But all that understandingly and seriously believe in Jesus Christ are sanctified by his Spirit II. And this is a greater work than Miracles in excellency and difficulty 1. It is the very Health of the Souls It is Salvation itself it maketh Man in his measure like to God and is his Image It is a heavenly nature and is the earnest and preparation for Heaven It delivereth Man from the greatest evil on Earth and giveth him the firmest peace and joy in his peace with God the pardon of his Sins and the hope of everlasting Glory 2. It 's easy to discern how great a work this is by the deep roots of all the contrary Vices in the corrupted Nature of Man Experience assureth us that Man by vitiated Nature is proud and ignorant and savoureth little but the things of the Flesh and worldly Interest and is a Slave to his Appetite and Lust His bodily Prosperity is all that really hath his Heart Yea if God restrain them not all wicked men are bitter Enemies to all that are truly wise and holy even among Heathens and Insidels if any be but better than the rest the wicked are their deadly Enemies There is so visible an Enmity between Godliness and Wickedness the Seed of Christ and of the Serpent in the World as is a great confirmation of the Scripture which describeth it And it is not the Name of Christians that altereth mens Nature We here that have Peace from all the World are under such implacable hatred of wicked men that call themselves Christians that so many Bears or Wolves would be less hurtful to us 3. And the universal spreading of this wickedness over all the Earth in all Ages and Nations doth tell us how great a work it is to cure it 4. And so doth the frustration of all other means till the Spirit of God do it by setting home the Gospel upon the Heart Children will grow up in VVickedness against all the Counsel Love Correction of their Parents no VVords no Reason will prevail with them more than with drunken men or beasts 5. VVe find it a very hard thing to cure a Man of some one rooted sin much more of all 6. The common misery of the VVorld proclaimeth Man's Vice and the difficulty of the cure How else comes the VVorld to live in self-seeking falshood fraud malice and in bloody VVars worsâ— than VVolves and Serpents against each other 7. Lastly VVhere God cureth this by true believing it 's done with the pangs of sharp repentance and a great conflict before God's Spirit overcometh III. It is evident then that this Sanctification of Souls is an eminent work of God himself 1. In that it is yet done on so many of his chosen ones in all Ages and Places 2. In that as hard as it is he usually turneth the Hearts of Sinners to himself in a very little time Somtimes by one Sermon 3. It is a work that none can do but God who hath the power of Souls 4. It is a work so good that it beareth God's own Image It is but the writing of his Law and Gospel on mens Hearts None is so much for it as God Satan apparently fighteth against it with all the power he can raise in the VVorld Mark it and you will find that most of the stir that there is in the VVorld by false Teachers and Tyrants and private Malice is but Satans VVars against Faith and Holiness and Love Certainly it is not he that promoteth them IV. And it is evident in Experience that it is the Gospel of Christ which God useth and blesseth to do this great sanctifying work on Souls Among Christians none are converted by any other means And God would not bless a word of falshood and deceit to such great and excellent effects All that are made holy and heavenly and truly conscionable among us are made so by Christ's Gospel And all the wicked are Enemies to the serious practice of it or Rebels that despise it The effects daily prove that God himself owneth it as his Word If you say There are as good men among the Heathens and Mahometans as holy heavenly and just I answer It is none of my business to depretiate other men But I can say 1. That I have lived above Sixty seven years and I never knew one serious holy Person in England that was made such by the Writings of Heathens or Mahometans 2. Many excellent things are in the Writings of some Heathens Plato Cicero Hierocles Plutarch Antonine Epictetus and many others But I miss in them the expressions of that holy and heavenly frame of mind and life and that Victory over the Flesh and World which Christianity containeth 3. Christ is like the Sun whose Beams give some light before it is seen its self at its rising and after it is set The Light of Jews and Heathens was as the dawning of the Day before Sun rising And the light among the Mahometans is like the Light of the Sun which it leaveth when it is set Doubtless the same God who hath used Mahometans to be his dreadful Scourge to wicked Christians who abused the Gospel by a false Profession
misery The Perfection of it will be there our perfect Holiness and Joy XXIV Here though the VVill itself be imperfect we cannot be and do what we would There VVill and Deed and Attainment will all be fully perfect XXV Here by Ignorance and Self-Love I have Desires which God denieth There perfect Desires shall be perfectly fulfilled XXVI Here pinching VVants of somthing or other and troublesom Cares are daily burdens Nothing is there wanting and God hath ended all their Cares XXVII Sense here rebelleth against Faith and Reason and oft overcometh Sense there shall be only Holy and no Discord be in our Faculties or acts XXVIII Pleasures and Contents here are short narrow and twisted with their contraries There they are objectively pure and boundless and subjectively total and absolute XXIX Vanity and Vexation are here the Titles of transitory things Reality Perfection and Glory are the Title of the things above XXX This VVorld is a point of God's Creation a narrow place for a few Passengers Above are the vast capacious Regions sufficient for all Saints and Angels XXXI This VVorld is as Newgate and Hell as Tyburn some are hence saved and some condemned The other VVorld is the Glorious Kingdom of Jehovah with the Blessed XXXII It was here that Christ was tempted scorned and crucified It is there where he Reigneth in Glory over all XXXIII The Spiritual life is here as a Spark or Seed It is there a glorious flame of Love and Joy and the perfect Fruit and Flower XXXIV VVe have here but the first Fruits Earnest and Pledge There is the full and glorious Harvest and Perfection XXXV VVe are here Children in Minority little differing from Servants There we shall have full possession of the Inheritance XXXVI The prospect of Pain Death Grave and Rottenness blasteth all the Pleasures here There is no Death nor any fear of the ending of felicity XXXVII Here even God's VVord is imperfectly understood and Errours swarm even in the Best All Mysteries of Nature and Grace are there unveiled in the World of Light XXXVIII Many of God's Promises are here unfulfilled and our Prayers unanswered There Truth shineth in the full performance of them all XXXIX Our Grace is here so weak and Hearts so dark that our sincerity is oft doubted of There the flames of Love and Joy leave no place for such a doubt XL. By our unconstancy here one Day is joyful and another sad But there our Joys have no interruption XLI We dwell here with sinful Companions like our selves in Flesh There holy Angels and Souls with Christ are all our Company XLII Our best friends and helpers are here in parst our hinderers by sin There all concur in the harmony of active Love XLIII Our Errours and Corruptions make us also hurtful and troublesome to our Friends But there both Christ and they forgive us and we shall trouble them no more XLIV Selfishness and cross interests here jar and mar our conversation There perfect Love will make the Joy of every Saint and Angel mine XLV A militant Church imperfectly sanctified here liveth in scandal and sad divisions The glorious Church united in God in perfect Love hath no contention XLVI Sin and Errour here turn our very publick Worship into jars The Celestial harmony of joyful Love and Praise is to Mortals unconceivable XLVII VVeak blind and wicked Teachers here keep most in delusion and division There glorious Light hath banished all Lies deceit and darkness XLVIII The wills of blind Tyrants is the Law of most on Earth The Wisdom and Will of the most holy God is the Law of the heavenly Society XLIX Lies here cloud the Innocency of the Just and render Truth and Goodness odious All false Judgments are there reversed and Slander is silenced and the Righteous justified L. Government is here exercised by terrour and violence But there God ruleth by Light Love and absolute Delight LI. Enemies Reproach and Persecution here annoy and tempt us All storms are there past and the Conquerors crowned in joyful Rest LII The Glory of Divine Love and Holiness is clouded here by the abounding of Sin and the greatness of Satan's Kingdom upon Earth But the vast glorious heavenly Kingdom to which this Earth is but a Point and Prison will banish all such erring Thoughts and Glorifie God's Love and Goodness for ever LIII This is the World which as corrupted is called an Enemy to God and us and which as such we renounced in Baptism and must be saved from That is the World which we seek pray and wait for all our lives and for which all the tempting Vanities of this must be forsaken LIV. This Body an World is like our riding Clothes our Horse our Way and Inn and travelling Company All but for our Journey homeward The other is our City of Blessedness and Everlasting Rest to which all Grace inclineth Souls and all preserâ— Means and Mercies tend LV. The very ignorance of Nature and Sensible things makes this life a very Labyrinth and our Studies Sciences and Learned Conversation to be much like a Dream or Popet Play and a Childish stir about meer Words But in Heaven an Universal knowledge of God's wonderful Works will not be the least of the Glory in which he will shine to Saints LVI Distance and Darkness of Souls here in Flesh who would Fain know more of God and the heavenly World and cannot doth make our lives a burden by these unsatisfied desires There Glorious Presence and Intuition giveth full satisfaction LVII Our sin and imperfection here render us uncapable of being the Objects of God's full complacential Love though we have his benevolence which will bring us to it But there we shall in our several measures perfectly please God and be perfectly pleased in God for ever LVIII All things here are short and transitory from their beginning posting towards their end which is near and sure and still in our Eye so short is time that Beings here are next to nothing the Bubble of worldly Prosperity Pomp and fleshly Pleasure doth swell up and break in so short a Moment as that it Is and and Is not almost at once But the heavenly substances and their work and Joys are crowned by Duration being assuredly EVERLASTING Such O my Soul is the blessed Change which God will make The Reasons and Helps of my Belief and Hope of this Perfection 1. NAtural Reason assureth me that God made all Creatures fitted to their intended use Even Bruits are more fit for their several Offices than Man is He giveth no Creature its faculties in vain Whatever a wise Man maketh he fits it to the use which he made it for But Man's Faculties are Enabled to think of a God of our relation and our duty to him of our hopes from him and our fears of him Of the state of our Souls related to his judgment of what will befall us after Death reward or punishment and how to prepare for it
that I understand and by willing that I will c. 2. I am sure by these Acts that I have the power or faculties to do them For none doth that which it cannot do 3. And I know that it is a substance that hath these powers For nothing can do nothing My Soul then being certainly an intellective Volitive Vital substance 1. I have no reason to think that God who annihilateth not the least Sand will annihilate so noble a substance 2. Nor that he will destroy those Powers which are its Essential form and turn it into some other thing 3. Nor that such Essential powers shall lie as dead unactive and so be continued in vain 4. There remaining therefore nothing uncertain to natural Reason but the continuance of Individuation to separate Souls 1. Apparitions and Wirches cases have put that out of doubt notwithstanding many Fables and Delusions 2. Christ hath put it more out of doubt 3. While substance faculties and acts continue it is the errour of our selfish state in Flesh which maketh any fear too near a Union which shall end our individuation The greatest Union will be the greatest Perfection and no loss to Souls XVII God's wonderful Providences for the Church and single Saints on Earth are such as tell us of that love and care which will bring them afterwards to him XVIII The Nature of God taketh off the terrour of my departure much I am sure I shall die at the will and into the Hand of Infinite Essential Love and Goodness whose love should draw up my longing Soul XIX I am going to a God whose Mercies have â—ong told me that he loveth me better than my dearest Friend doth and better than I love my self and is a far better chooser of my lot XX. As he hath absolute right to dispose of his own so indeed the fulfilling of his Will is the ultimate end of all things and therefore most desirable in itself And his will shall be fulfilled on me XXI I go to a glorified Saviour who came down to fetch me up and hath conquered and sanctified Death and made it my Birth-day for Glory and taketh me for his dear bought own and interest and is in Glory ready to receive his own XXII I go to that Saviour who on the Cross commended his Spirit into his Fathers Hand and taught me with dying Stephen to say Lord Jesus receive my Spirit XXIII I go no solitary untrodden way but follow all the Faithful since the death of Abel to this day save Henoch and Elias who all went by Death into that glorious World where I shall find them XXIV I have so long groaned under a languid Body and in a blind distracted and by Man uncurable World where Satan by Lies Malice and Murder reigneth in alas how many and specially am so weary of my own darkness and sinful imperfection that I have great reason to be willing of deliverance XXV I have had so large a share of Mercies in this World already in time and manifold comforts from God that reason commandeth me to rest in God's time for my removal XXVI I shall leave some fruits not useless to serve the Church when I am gone and if good be done I have my end XXVII When I am gone God will raise up and use others to do his appointed work on Earth And a Church shall be continued to his praise And the Spirits in Heaven will rejoice therein XXVIII When I am gone I shall not wish to be again on Earth XXIX Satan by his temptations and all his instruments would never have done so much as he doth in the World to keep us from Heaven if there were not a Heaven which Conquerors obtain XXX When darkness and uncertainty of the manner of the action and fruition of separated Souls would daunt me it is enough to know explicitely so much as is explicitely revealed and implicitely to trust Christ with all the rest Our Eyes are in our Head who knoweth for us Knowledg of Glory is part of fruition And therefore we must expect here no more than is suited to a life of Faith XXXI All my part is to do my own duty and then trust God obeying his commanding will and fully and joyfully resting in his disposing and rewarding will There is no rest for Souls but in the Will of God and there with full Trust to repose our Souls in Life and at Death is the only way of a safe and comfortable departure XXXII The glorious Marriage day of the Lamb cannot now be far off when the number of the Elect shall be compleat and Christ will come with his glorious Angels and will be glorified in his Saints and admired in all Believers and there shall be a New Heaven and a New Earth wherein dwelleth Righteousness and that Kingdom shall come where that which God hath prepared for them that love him Eye hath not seen Ear hath not heard nor hath it entred into the Heart of Man to have a formal full conception of it Come Lord Jesus come quickly Amen Fear not then O my Soul to lay down this Flesh Mercy hath kept it up for my preparing work but O what a burdensom and chargeable a Companion hath it been Is it better than the dwelling place of perfect Spirits O what are my groans and all my cold and faint Petitions and my dull Thanksgiving to their harmonious joyful Praise If a Day in God's Courts be better than a Thousand what is a Day yea what is Everlastingness in the heavenly Society and Work O how hateful a thing is darkness and unbelief when the remnants of them thus stop poor Souls in their ascent And make us half unwilling to go home What! unwilling to be with my glorified Lord Unwilling to be with Saints and Angels who are all Life Light and Love Unwilling to see the Glory of Jehovah O foolish sinful Soul Hath Christ done so much to purchase the heavenly Glory for thee and now art thou unwilling to go into the possession of it Hast thou been seeking and praying and labouring and suffering so many Years for that which now thou seemest scarce willing to obtain Dost thou not judge thy self unworthy of Eternal Life when thou no more desirest to enjoy it All this is long of thy too much adherence unto SELF and SENSE Thou art still desiring sensitive satisfaction and not content to know thy part wouldst know that for thy self which Christ knoweth for thee As if thou couldst better trust thy self than him Fear not weak Soul it is our Fathers good pleasure to give thee the Kingdom Trust infinite Power Wisdom and Love Trust that faithful gracious Saviour who hath so wonderfully merited to be trusted Trust that promise which never deceived any one and which is confirmed by so many Miracles and by the Oath and by the Spirit of God Whenever thou departest from this house of Flesh the Arms of Mercy are open to embrace thee yea
reasoning deduction from that poor Degree which we here in the Kingdom of Grace possess Can I perceive substantiality in the dark terrene appearances which are but mutable lifeless matter agitated and used by invisible Powers and shall I think of those unseen powerful substances as if they were less substantial for being Spiritual or were not Objects for a knowing Thought Are the Stars which I see less substantial than a Carkass in a darksom Grave The Lord that appeared in shining Glory hath Members in their measure like himself and hath promised that we shall shine as Stars in the Kingdom of his Father If some degree of this be here performed in them who are called the Children of Light and the Lights of the World how much more will they shine in the World of Light They that call Light a quality or an Act must confess it hath a substance whose quality or act it is Alas what a deceived thing is a sensual Unbeliever who spendeth his Life in the pursuit of fugitive shaddows and walketh in a vain shew and thinks of Spiritual glorious substances as if they were the nothings or delusions of a Dream § 6. Christ Moses and Elias here visibly appeared as three distinct individual Persons This tells us that it is a false conceit that Death ceaseth Individuation and turneth all Souls into one of which before Perfect indivisible infinite Unity is proper to God From this One is multiplicity Reason forbids us when we see the numberless individuals in this World and see also the numerous Stars above to imagine that all the Worlds above us have so much of Divine Perfection as to be but one undivided substance and to have no multiplicity of Inhabitants Yea some of those Sadduces hold that the Stars are Worlds inhabited as the Earth is And why then should they think whither soever Souls go that they cease their individuation When they go among individuals But Christ hath confuted them even to Sense Moses is Moses still and Elias is Elias still And all our Friends that are gone to Christ are the same still that they were and may be called by the same Names Abraham Isaac and Jacob are the same in Heaven and Lazarus was Lazarus in Abraham's bosom When we lay by Flesh and are uncloathed we put not off our personality Every one shall receive his own reward according to what he hath done in the Body when every one must give account of his own works and talents Why then may I not with distinct conceptions and joyful desires look after the Souls of my departed Friends that are now in the Celestial Kingdom Though malignity hath scorned me for naming some few in my Saints Rest being such as the Despisers hated yet I forbear not on such accounts to Solace my self by naming more but because they are more than it 's fit to number In all places where I have lived how many excellent Souls though here they were not perfect are gone to Christ How sweet is the remembrance of the communion which I had with many of them in Shrewsbury and other parts of Shropshire Of many at Dudley and the adjoining parts Of Multitudes at Kiderminster Bewdley and other parts of Worcestershire Of abundance at Coventry and other parts of Warwickshire And of many where I have sojourned in other parts of the Land And above all in London and the adjoining parts As Mr. How hath elegantly exprest it in his excellent Character of my excellent and dear Friend Mr. Richard Fairclough What a Multitude of Blessed Saints will arise at the last Day out of London and this Earth is as it were hallowed with the Dust and Relicts of so many blessed Souls But it 's Heaven that is spangled with these Spiritual Stars The place honoured with them and they with it and all by Christ We are like Infants or Lambs or other young ones that cry for their Dams if they be but out of sight though they are never so near if they see them not they cry as if they were not or had forsaken them As Christ told his Disciples that it was needful for them that he departed from them and yet their Hearts for this were sorrowful till the Holy Ghost came upon them as better than Christ's fleshly presence to prepare them joyfully to follow him so we think of our Friends as almost lost to us by separation till the heavenly Spirit tell us where they are and prepare us to desire to be with them § 6. Elias hath a Body now in Heaven and so hath Henoch But can we think that only two or three that are there with Christ do so much differ from all the rest as to have Bodies when the rest have none Is there such a dissimilitude of Saints in Heaven What are two or three in such a Society Doubtless their Bodies are not corruptible Flesh and Blood but such Spiritual Bodies as all Saints shall have at the Resurrection But are they in Heaven such visible and shaped Bodies as they appeared on the Mount The same difficulty poseth us about the risen Body of Christ He would not have Mary touch him because he had not yet ascended to his Father He could appear and vanish from their sight at his pleasure And yet Thomas handled him and felt that he had Flesh and Bones That Body of Flesh ascended visibly up toward Heaven And yet it is not Flesh and Blood in Heaven but a Spiritual Body For it is not worse than he will make his Members What shall we say to these things We must say That we are not capable of knowing them but have Reason to be thankful that we may know so much more necessary for us But yet it seemeth probable that the Bodies of Christ and Henoch and Elias were changeable according to the Region in which they were to be Christ could take up a Body of Flesh and Blood and immediately change that state of it into a pure incorruptible Spiritual Body as it entered into the incorruptible Spiritual Region And so God did by Henoch and Elias As Paul saith that we shall not all die those that live till Christ's appearing but we shall all be changed And yet if Elias have business on the Mount he can put on the cloathing of a grosser Body to be so seen of men and can lay it by or return to his more invisible Spiritual state when he returneth to the place from whence he came And no wonder when Angels and the Ancients say Christ before his Incarnation assumed Bodies suitable to their several businesses on Earth yea such as could eat and drink with men when yet they dwelt not in Heaven so coursly cloathed § 7. But how came Moses to have a Body on the Mount who is said to have been buried and therefore took none with him into Heaven We must still remember that we enquire of things above our certain knowledge But in humble conjecture we may say That it 's no
his saving Grace nor the presence of his Spirit as oft as it loseth heavenly delight Desire sheweth Love to him and to his Holiness And he never forsaketh those that love him As long as the Soul breatheth after Christ and after more communion with God and conscious of its imperfection would fain be perfect and resolveth to continue waiting for increase of Faith and Holiness in the use of the means which Christ hath appointed it is not forsaken Christ by his Spirit dwelleth and worketh in that Soul It may enter into a Cloud and Christ may be unseen and seem quite lost but the Cloud will vanish and he will appear and he will first find us that we may seek and find him If he appear to us but as in his humiliation and as crucified and thereby humble us and crucifie to us the World and the Flesh with the Affections and Lusts thereof and cause us but to seek first his Kingdom and Righteousness he will raise us higher and shew us his Glory when Grace and Conquest and Perseverance have prepared us We are in a cloudy World and Body and our sins are yet a thicker Cloud between God's glorious Face and us But as God is God and Heaven is Heaven so Christ is Christ and Grace is Grace when we see it not but fear that we are undone and entring into outer darkness And at Sun rising all our darkness all our doubts fears will vanish § 32. Luke 9. 15. There came a Voice out of the Cloud This is my beloved Son hear him Had I heard such a Testimony from Heaven would it not have set my Faith above all doubts and unbelief For the Voice that thus owned Christ and his Word might embolden me fully to trust all his Promises as it bindeth me to obey his Precepts God's Love is effective and communicative and as his Life and Light cause Life and Light so his Love causeth Love and Christ that is called his Beloved Son is likest him in Love None loveth us so much as God our Father and his Beloved Son who is also as God Essential Love And shall I think with cold or little Love of such a God and such a Saviour It is as unreasonable to fly from God or Christ as fearing that he wanteth Love to a capable Soul as to fly from the Sun as wanting heat or light O what an unruly froward thing is the corrupted Soul of Man When we think of God's judgment and how we are in his hands as to all our hopes for Soul Body we fear and are uncomfortable lest he have not so much Love and Mercy as should cause us confidently to trust him We could trust some Friends with Life and Soul were we in their power but infinite love itself and a loving Saviour we can hardly trust so far as to quiet us in Pain or Death And yet when Christ to cure this distrust hath manifested his Love by the greatest Miracles that ever God shewed to mortal men even by Christ's Incarnation his Life his Works his Death Resurrection Intercession and the advancement of humane Nature in him above Angels the greatness of this Incomprehensible Love occasioneth the difficulty of our believing it as if it were too great and wonderful to be credible Thus dark and guilty Sinners hardly believe our Fathers Love whether it be exprest by ordinary or by the most wonderful effects § 33. As Christ is called the Son of God so also are all his Members We have so far the same title that we might partake of the same comforts He is God's only Son by Eternal Generation and the hypostatical union upon his miraculous conception But through him we are Sons by Regeneration and Adoption And shall not the love of such a Father be trusted and the presence and pleasing of such a Father be desired If Manoah's Wife could say If he would have killed us Re would not have accepted a Sacrifice of us I may say If he would have damned me or forsaken my departing Soul he would not have Adopted me nor made and called me his Son Christ was made his Incarnate Son that we might be made his Adopted Sons And we are made his Adopted Sons for the sake and by the Grace of Christ his Natural Son § 34. The Command Hear him is Relative as to Moses and Elias 1. Hear him whom the Law and the Prophets typified and foretold and were his Servants and Preparatory Instructors to lead us to him 2. Hear him before Moses and the Prophets where his Coming and Covenant abrogateth the Law of Moses and as a greater Light he obscureth the less He hath revealed more than they revealed and the same more clearly Life and Immortality is more fully brought to light by him His Gospel is as the Heart of the Holy Bible We use the Old Testament Books especially as the Witnesses of Christ § 35. And whom should we hear so willingly so obediently as Christ Abraham sent not Dives's Brethren to the King or to the High-priest to know what Religion he should choose or what he should do to escape Hell torments But it was Moses and the Prophets that they must hear But God from Heaven hath sent us yet a better Teacher and commanded us to hear Him Moses was faithful in God's House as a Servant but Christ as a Son His Authority is above Kings and High-priests and they have no Power now but from him and therefore none against him or his Laws All commands are null to Conscience which contradict him The examples in Da. 3. 6. and of the Apostles tell us whether God or Man should be first obeyed Therefore it is that the Bible is more necâ—ssary to be searcht and learned than the Statute Book or Canons Were Man to be heard before Christ or against him or as necessarily as he why have we not Law Preachers every Lord's day to expound the Statutes and Canons to all the People And why are they not Catechized out of the Book of Canons or Law as well as out of the Bible And sure if we must hear Christ and his Gospel before Priests or Princes or before our dearest friends much more before our fleshly Lusts and Appetites and before a profane and foolish Scorner and before the temptations of the Devil O had we heard Christ warning us when we hearkned to the Tempter and to the Flesh how safely had we lived and how comfortably might we have died § 36. But this word Hear him is as comfortable as obligatory Hear him Sinner when he calls thee to repent and turn to God Hear him when he calleth thee to himself to take him for thy Lord and Saviour to believe and trust him for Pardon and Salvation Hear him he when calleth Come to me all ye that are weaty and heavy laden Ho every every one that thirsteth come whoever will let him drink of the Water of Life freely Hear him when he commandeth and hear
itself contained the evidence of its Divinity and of their Truth And Christ then and to this Day hath owned it by the sanctifying Efficacy of the same Spirit upon Millions of Souls How Holy a Doctrin doth Peter himself deliver as confirmed by this Apparition 2 Pet. 1. 16 17 18. We have not followed cunningly devised Fables when we made known to you the Power and Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ but were Eye Witnesses of his Majesty For he received from God the Father Honour and Glory when there came such a Voice to him from the excellent Glory This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased And this Voice which came from Heaven we heard when we were with him in the Holy Mount The words In whom I am well pleased are only here and in Matthew Mark and Luke omitting them tell us that the Evangelists undertook not to recite all that was said and done but each one so much as seemed necessary for him to say § 42. And now what remaineth O my Soul but that thou take in the due Impression of this Apparition of the Glory of Jesus and his Saints and that thou joyfully obey this heavenly Voice and Hear the Beloved Son of God in whom the Father is well pleased I. As we that are Born in another Age and Land must know what Christ said by the transmission and certain testimony of them that heard him infallible Tradition by Act Word and Record being our way of notice as immediate sensation was theirs so even the glorious Apparition itself may be the mediation of their infallible Record be partly transmitted to our Imagination An Incorporate Soul is so used to a mixed way of knowing by imagined Idea's received by sense that it would fain have such a sort of knowledge of separated Souls and other Spirits and of their glorious state and place and work and is hardly fully satisfied without it Seeing Christ hath partly condescended to this our culpable weakness lose not the help of his condescension Let this clear description of the heavenly sight make it to thee partly as if thou had been one of the three Spectators till thou canst say Methinks I almost see the Face of Christ shine as the Sun and his raiment whiter than the Snow and Moses and Elias no doubt in some degree of glory standing with him Methinks I almost hear them discoursing of Christ's Death and Man's Redemption And by this sight I partly conceive of the unseen heavenly Company and State Methinks I see the Cloud receive them when Peter had been transported with the sight and I almost feel his pleasant raptures and am ready to say as if I had been with him It is good for us to be hear Methinks I almost hear the heavenly Voice This is my beloved Son Hear him And shall I yet doubt of the Celestial Society and Glory Had I once seen that what a sense would it have left upon my Heart of the difference between Earth and Heaven Man and God Flesh and Spirit Sin and Duty how thankfully should I have thought of the work of Redemption and Sanctification And why may I not accordingly put my self as into the case of them who saw all Christ's Miracles and saw him risen and ascend towards Heaven Or at least of all those ordinary Christians who saw all the wonders done by the Reporters of these things I can easily receive a pleasing Idea of some forreign happy Countrey which a Traveller describeth to me though I never saw it and my Reason can partly gather what great things are if I see but lesser of the same kind or somewhat like them A Candle sheweth somewhat by which we may conceive of the greatest flame Even Grace and Gracious actions do somewhat notifie to us the state of Glory But the sight on the Mount did more sensibly notifie it Think not then that heavenly contemplation is an impossible thing or a meer dream as if it had no conceivable subject matter to work upon the visible things of Earth are the Shaddows the Cobwebs the Bubbles the Shews Mummerries and Masques and it is loving them and rejoicing and trusting in them that is the dream and dotage Our heavenly Thoughts and Hopes and Business are more in comparison of these than the Sun is to a glow-Worm or the World to a Mole-hill or Governing an Empire to the motions of a Fly And can I make somwhat yea too much of these almost nothings and yet shall I make almost nothing of the active glorious unseen World and doubt and grope in my Meditations of it as if I had no substance to apprehend If invisibility to Mortals were a cause of doubting or of unaffecting unsatisfying Thoughts God himself who is All to Men and Angels would be as no God to us and Heaven as no Heaven and Christ as no Christ and our Souls which are our selves would seem as nothing to themselves and all men would be as no men to us and we should converse only with Carkasses and Cloaths Lord shine into this Soul with such an heavenly potent quickening Light as may give me more lively and powerful conceptions of that which is all my hope and life Leave me not to the exercise of Art alone in barren notions but make it as Natural to me to love Thee and breath after Thee Thou teachest the young ones both of men and bruits to seek to the Dam for food and shelter And though Grace be not a brutish Principle but work by Reason it hath its Nature and Inclining force and tendeth towards its Original as its End Let not my Soul be destitute of that holy Sense and Appetite which the Divine and Heavenly Nature doth contain Let me not lay more stress and trust upon my own Sight and Sense than on the Sight and Fidelity of my God and my Redeemer I am not so foolish as to live as if this Earth were no bigger than the little of it which I see Let me not be so much more foolish as to think of the vast and glorious Regions and the Blessed Inhabitants thereof and the Receptacles of justified Souls as if they wanted either substantiality or certainty to exercise a heavenly conversation here and to feast believing Souls with joy and draw forth well grounded and earnest desire to depart and be with Christ § 43. II. Hear then and Hear with Trust and Joy the tydings and promises of him whom the Voice from Heaven commanded Man to hear He is the glorified Lord of Heaven and Earth All is in his power He hath told us nothing but what he knew and promised nothing but what he is able and willing to give Two sorts of things he hath required us to Trust him for Things notified by express particular Promises and things only generally promised and known to us 1. We may know particularly that he will receive our departing Souls and justifie them in judgment and raise the Dead and
all the rest particularly promised And we know in general that we have a heavenly City and Inheritance and shall see God and be with Christ in everlasting Happiness Loving and Praising God with Joy in the perfected glorious Church of Christ All this therefore we must explicitely believe But it 's little that we know distinctly of the consistence and operations of Spirits and separated Souls as to a formal or modal conception a great deal about the place state and mode their acting and fruition is dark to us but none of it is dark to Christ Here therefore an implicite Trust should not only bound and stop our selfish and over bold enquiries but also quiet and comfort the Soul as well as if our selves knew all O my Soul abhor and mortifie thy selfish Trust and unbelieving thirst to have that knowledge of Good and Evil thy self which is the Prerogative of thy Lord and Saviour This was the sin that first defiled humane Nature and brought calamity on the World God hath set thee enough to learn know that and thou knowest enough If more were possible it would be a perplexity and a snare and he that encreaseth such knowledge would encrease sorrow But when it is both unprofitable and impossible what a sin and folly is it to wast our time and tire and deceive our Minds in long and troublesom searches after it and then disquietly to murmur at God and the Holy Scripture and die with sad distrustful fears because we attain it not When all this while we should have understood that this part of knowledg belongs to Christ and the heavenly Society and not to sinful Mortals here and that we have without it as much as may cause us to live and die in Holiness Safety Peace and Joy if we can but Trust him who knoweth for us Christ perfectly knoweth what Spirits are and how they act and whether they have any corporeal Organ or Vehicle or none and what 's the difference between Henoch and Elias and those that left their Bodies here and what a Resurrection will add to Souls and how it will be wrought and when and what is meant by the Thousand year previous Reign and who they be that shall dwell in the New Earth and how it will be renewed All the dark passages of Scripture and Providence he can perfectly resolve He knoweth why God leaveth the far greatest part of the World in Satan's slavery darkness and wickedness and chooseth so few to real Holiness And why he maketh not men such as he commandeth them to be and why he leaveth serious Christians to so much weakness error scandal and division These and all other difficulties are fully known to Christ And it is not the Child but the Father that must know what food and cloathing he should have and the Physician that must know what are the ingredients of his Medicines and why Lord open my Eyes then to see what thou hast revealed and help me willingly to shut them to the rest and to believe and trust in Thee for both Not to stagger at thy sealed Promises nor selfishly to desire particular knowledge which belongs not to me as if I could trust my self and my own knowledge and not Thine Lord teach me to follow Thee even in the dark as quietly and confidently as in the Light having the general Light of thy Promise of Felicity I knew not the Mystery of thy Conception Incarnation or the way of the workings of thy Spirit on Souls No wonder if much of the Resurrection and unseen World be above my reach much more that thy Infinite Majesty is Incomprehensible to me How little do the Bruits that see me know of my thoughts or me I have no adequate knowledge of any one thing in the World but somewhat of it is unknown O blessed be that Love and Grace that hath given me a glorified Head in Heaven to know all for me which I know not Hear and Trust Him living and departing O my Soul who hath told thee that we shall be with him where he is and shall behold his Glory and that a Crown of Salvation is laid up for us and we shall Reign with him when we have conquered and suffered with him and hath bid us live in joyful Hope of our exceeding eternal heavenly Reward and at our Death to commend our Spirits into his hand Receive us Lord according to thy Promises Amen SHORT MEDITATIONS ON ROM 5. 1 2 3 4 5. Of the shedding abroad God's Love on the Heart by the Holy Ghost EXperience of the want of this Effusion of God's Love and some small tast of its Sweetness make me think the thoughts of this very suitable to one expecting Death The words contain a golden Chain of highest Blessings on all true Christians I. They are supposed to have Faith that is both a general Trust to God's Revelations and Grace and a special Trust in Jesus Christ as given by the Father's Love to be the Redeemer to Justifie Sanctifie and Glorifie his People I have oft proved this justifying Faith to be no less then our unfeigned taking Christ for our Saviour and becoming true Christians according to the Tenor of the Baptismal Covenant As to the Acts it is formally Trust One in three The Understandings Assenting Trust the Wills consenting Trust and the executive Powers Practical Venturing Obeying Trust II. All true Believers are justified Even all that consent to the Baptismal Covenant and choose God to be their God and Christ to be their Saviour and the Holy Ghost to be their Sanctifier and give up themselves to him by true resolution as their only Ruler Hope and Happiness though this be done with so great weakness as endeth not all doubts nor quieteth the Mind To be justified is not to be accounted such as have no sin but 1. To be made such by Pardon through Christ's Merits and by true Faith as God will take by special love and favour unto life 2. To be accounted such by God 3. To be virtually Sentenced such by the Law of Grace and Faith and to be just in Lawseâ—ce 4. At last we shall be judged such by publick Sentence 5. And be used as such Not justified by the Law of Innocency or of Moses but by Christ's Law of Grace Not justified perfectly till the time of Perfection Much punishment on Soul and Body is yet to be taken off And more sins daily to be pardoned and we before the World to be sentenced as just to life everlasting III. The justified have Peace with God They are reconciled and in a state of love and friendship It signifieth mutual Peace but with great inequality God's Love and favour to us is the stable constant part Our consent also and acceptance of his terms of Peace is constant in its truth But our sense of God's Love which is the Peace possessed by the Soul is weak and unconstant and too oft quite lost or obscured by ignorance mistake and
so much under suffering and so little study and exercise Patience and no more rejoice in the exercise thereof IX And Patience Experience It is manifold and profitable Experience which patient suffering brings It giveth us experience as of Natures weakness and the great need of Faith So of the Truth of God's Promises the love and tenderness of Christ the acceptance of our Prayers and the power of the Spirits aid and grace O what abundance of experiences of God and our selves and the vanity of Creatures had we wanted if we had not waited in a suffering state Alas how many Experiences have I forgotten X. And Experience Hope A bare Promise should give us Hope But we are still distrustful of our selves and of all the clearest Evidences till experience help us and set all Home O what an advantage hath a Christian of great and long experience for his hope and joy And yet when notable experiences of God's Providence are past and gone an unbelieving Heart is ready to question whether the things came not by meer natural course and like the Israelites in the Wilderness dangers and fears bear down even long and great experiences This is my sin XI And Hope maketh not ashamed That is true Hope of what God hath promised shall never be disappointed They that trust on deceitful Creatures are deceived and ashamed of their Hope For all men are Lyars that is untrusty but God is true and ever faithful O what a comfort is it that God commandeth me to trust him Sure such a command is a virtual Promise from him that cannot fail that trust which he commandeth Lord help me to trust thee in greatest dangers and there to rest XII Because the Love of God is shed abroad upon our Hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us It is the Love of God shed abroad on our Hearts by the Holy Ghost which must make us rejoice in hope of the Glory of God even in Tribulation Here I must consider I. What is meant by the Love of God II. Why and how it is shed abroad on the Heart by the Holy Ghost I. By the Love of God is meant the Effects of his Love 1. His special Grace 2. The pleasant gust or sense of it II. God's Love thus shed on the Heart pre-supposeth it exprest in the Gospel and Providence and contains all these particulars 1. The sanctifying of the Soul by renewing Grace This is the giving of the Spirit as he is given all true Christians 2. Herein the Holy Ghost makes us perceive the exceeding desirableness of the Love of God and maketh us most desire it 3. He giveth the Soul some easing Hope of the Love of God 4. He quieteth the doubts and fears and troubles of the Soul 5. He raiseth our Hopes by degrees to confident assurance 6. Then the thoughts of God's love are pleasant to the Soul and give it such delight as we feel in the love and fruition of our most valued and beloved friends 7. The Soul in this state is as unapt to be jealous of God or to question his Love as a good Child or Wife to question the Love of a Parent or Husband or to hear any that speak evil of them 8. This then becomes the habitual state of the Soul in all changes to live in the delightful sense of the love of God as we do live in pleasure with our dearest Friends O blessed state and first fruits of Heaven and happy are they that do attain it And though lower degrees have their degree of happiness yet how far short are such in goodness amiableness and comfort of those that are thus rich in grace This presupposeth 1. Knowledge of God and the Gospel 2. True belief and hope 3. A sincere and fruitful life 4. Mortification as to Idol worldly vanities 5. A conviction of our sincerity in all this 6. A conclusion that God doth love us But yet it is somewhat above all this A Man may have all this in his Mind and Mouth and yet want this gust of effused Love upon his Heart These are the way to it but not itself This is the greatest good on this side Heaven to which all Wealth and Honour all fleshly Pleasure and long Life all Learning and Knowledge are unworthy to be once compared Briefly 1. It is the flower and highest part of God's Image on Man 2. It is the Souls true communion with God and fruition of him which carnal men deride Even as our Eye hath communion with the Sun and the flourishing Earth enjoys its reviving heats 3. It is that which all lower grace doth tend to as Childhood doth to Manhood And what is a world of Infants comparatively good for 4. It is that which most properly answereth the design of Redemption and the wonders of God's love therein And all the tenor of the Gospel 5. It is that which is most fully called The Spirit of God or Christ in us He hath lower works but this is his great work by which he possesseth us as God's most pleasant Habitation For we have not received the Spirit of Bondage again to fear but the Spirit of Power and Love and a sound mind 2 Tim. 1. 7. 6. It is only that which all men in general desire I mean the only satisfying content and pleasure that Man is capable of on Earth All men would have quieting and constant Pleasure and it is to be found in nothing else but the effused love of God 7. It is that which will make every burden light and all affliction easy When the sense of God's love is still upon the Soul all pain and crosses will be but as Blood-letting by the kindest Physician to save the Patients life God will not be suspected or grudged at in suffering his love will sweeten all 8. It will overcome abundance of Temptations which no mens Wit or Learning or knowledge of the words of Scripture will overcome No Arguments will draw a loving Child or Wife from the Parents or Husband that they know doth love them Love is the most powerful Disputant 9. It puts a mellow pleasant sweetness into all our duties When we hear the Word or receive the Sacrament it is to such a Soul as pleasant Food to the most healthful Man When we pray or praise God it comes from a comforted Heart and excites and increaseth the comfort it comes from O who can be backward to draw near to God in Prayer or Meditation who tasteth the sweetness of his Love This is Religion indeed and tells us what its life and use and glory is This is the true walking with God in the best degree When the Soul liveth in the taste of his Love the Heart will be still with him and that will be its Pleasure And God most delights in such a Soul 10. This is it that putteth the sweetest relish on all our Mercies Deny God's love and you deny them all If you tast not his love in them you
taste little more than a Beast may taste Poor Food and Rayment is sweet with the sense of the Love of God Had I more of this I should lie down and rise and walk in Pleasure and content I could bear the loss of other things And though Nature will feel pains I should have Pleasure and Peace in the midst of all my pains and groans This is the white Stone the New Name No Man well knoweth it who never felt it in himself 1. There is no dying comfortably without this experienced taste of the Love of God This will draw up the desires of the Soul Love tasted casteth out fear though God be Holy and Just and Judgment terrible and Hell intollerable and the Soul hath no distinct Idea of its future state out of the Body and though we see not whither it is that we must go the taste of God's love will make it go joyfully as trusting him as a Child will go any whither in his Father's power and hand But all the knowledge in the World without this quiets not a departing Soul A Man may write as many Books and Preach as many Sermons of Heaven as I have done and speak of it and think of almost nothing else and yet till the Soul be sweetned and comforted with the Love of God shed abroad on it by the Holy Ghost death and the next life will be rather a Man's fear than his desire And the common fear of death which we see in the far greatest part even of godly Persons doth tell us that though they may have saving desires and hopes yet this sense of God's love on the Heart is rare What wonder then if our Language our Converse our Prayers have too little savour of it and in comparison of joyful Believers duties be but like green Apples to the mellow ones My God I feel what it is that I want and I perceive what it is that is most desirable O let not guilt be so far unpardoned as to deprive my Soul of this greatest good which thou hast commended to me and commanded and which in my languishing and pains I so much need Did I beg for Wealth or Honour I might have it to the loss of others But thy Love will make me more useful to all and none will have the less for my enjoyment For thou Lord art enough for all Even as none hath the less of the Sun-light for my enjoying it The least well grounded hope of thy Love is better than all the pleasures of the Flesh But without some pleasant sense of it alas what a withered languishing thing is a Soul thy loving kindness is better than life but if I taste it not how shall I here rejoice in God or bear my heavy burdens O let me not be a dishonour to thy Family where all have so great cause to honour thy bounty by their joy and hopes Nor by a sad and fearful Heart tempt men to think that thy love is not real and satisfactory I can easily believe and admire thy Greatness and thy Knowledge Let it not be so hard to me to believe and taste thy Goodness and thy Love Which is as necessary to me If there be any thing as surely there is in which the Divine Nature and Spirit of Adoption consisteth as above all the Art and Notions of Religion which are but like to other acquired Knowledge sure it must be this holy Appetite and Habitual Inclination of the Soul to God by way of Love which is bred by an internal sense of his Loveliness and Loving inclination to Man which differenceth a Christian from other men as a Child differs towards his Father from Strangers or from common Neigbours Till the love of God be the very state or nature of the Soul working here towards his Honour Interests Word and Servants no Man can say that he is God's habitation by the Spirit And how the Heart will ever be thus habited without believing God's Love to us it 's hard to conceive Experience tells the World how strongly it constraineth Persons to love one another if they do but think that they are strongly beloved by one another In the love that tends to marriage if one that is inferior do but know that a Person of far greater worth doth fervently love them it almost puts a necessity and constraint on them for returns of Love Nature can scarce choose but love in such a case Love is the Loadstone of Love A real taste of the Love of God in saving Souls by Christ and grace is it that constraineth them to be holy that is to be devoted to that God in Love III. But this must as necessarily be the work of the Holy Ghost and can be no more done without him than the Earth can be illuminated and the Vegetables live without the Sun But all the approaches of the Holy Spirit suffice not to produce this great effect and give us the Divine holy Nature The same Sun shine hath three different effects on its Objects 1. On most things as Houses Stones Earth it causeth nothing but the Accidents of Heat Colour and Motion 2. On some things it causeth a seminal Disposition to Vegetable life but not Life itself 3. In this disposed matter it causeth Vegetable life itself So doth the Spirit of God 1. Operate on Millions but lifeless Accidents as the Sun on a stone Wall 2. On others Dispose and prepare them to Divine Life 3. On others so disposed it effecteth the Divine life itself When holy Love is turned into a habit like to Nature That none but the Holy Ghost doth make this holy change is evident For the effect cannot transcend the causes 1. Nature alone is dark and knoweth not the attractive amiableness of God till illuminated nor can give us a satisfactory notice of God's special Love to us 2. Nature is Guilty and Guilt breedeth fears of Justice and fear makes us wild and fly from God lest he will hurt us 3. Nature is under penal sufferings already and feeleth pain fear and many hurts and foreseeth Death And under this is undisposed of itself to feel the pleasure of God's Love 4. Nature is corrupted and diverted to Creature vanity and its Appetite goeth another way and cannot cure itself and make itself suitable to the amiableness of God 5. God hateth wickedness and wicked men and meer Nature cannot secure us that we are saved from that enmity Diligence may do much to get religious Knowledge and Words and all that which I call the Art of Religion And God may bless this as a preparation to holy Life and Love But till the Souls Appetite incline with desire to God and Holiness Divine things will not sweetly relish And this is a great comfort to the Thoughts of the Sanctified that certainly their holy Appetite Desire and Complacency is the work of the Holy Ghost For 1. This secureth them of the Love of God of which it is the proper token 2. And
not how erroneously they think The sensible souls of Bruits are substance And therefore are not annihilated at death But God put them under us and made them for us and us more nearly for himself Bruits have not Faculties to know and love God to meditate on him or praise him or by moral agency to obey his Precepts They desire not any higher felicity than they have God will have us use their service yea their lives and Flesh to tell us they were made for us He tells us not what he doth with them after death But whatever it is it is not annihilation and it 's like they are in a state still of service unto Man Whether united or how individuate we know not Nor yet whether those Philosophers are in the right that think that this Earth is but a small Image of the vast superiour Regions where there are Kingdoms answerable to these here where the Spirits of Bruits are in the like subjection in aerial Bodies to those low rational Spirits that inhabite the Aerial Regions as in Flesh they were to Man in Flesh But it 's enough for us that God hath given us Faculties to know love praise and obey him and trust him for Glory which he never gave to them because they were not made for things so high Every Creatures Faculties are suited to their use and ends And Love tells me that the blessed God who giveth to Bruits that life health and pleasure which they are made and fitted for will give his Servants that heavenly delight in the fulness of his Love and Praise and and mutual joyful Love to one another which Nature fundamentally and Grace more immediately hath made them fit for Blessed Jehovah for what tasts of this effused Love thou hast given me my Soul doth bless thee with some degree of gratitude and joy And for those further measures which I want and long for and which my pained languid state much needs and would raise my joyful hopes of Glory I wait I beg from day to day O give me now at the Door of Heaven some fuller taste of the heavenly Felicity Shed more abroad upon my Heart by the Holy Ghost that Love of thine which will draw up my longing Soul to thee rejoicing in hope of the Glory of God FINIS This is the true mean between George Keith the Quakers Doctrine of Continued Inspiration Intuition and that on the other extream Matth. 28. 18. Joh. 5. 22. Joh. 17. 2. Joh. 12. 26. Joh. 3. 16. Rom. 8. 35 36 37 30. * 1 Pet. 4. 6. They that died to or in the Flesh according to Men do live in the Spirit according to God * Indeed if the Soul were not Immortal the Resurrection were impossible It might be a new Creation of another Soul but not a Resurrection of the same if the same be annihilated It 's certain that the Jews believed the Immortality of the Soul in that they believed the Resurrection and future life of the same Man * Psal 34. 7. 91. 11 12. Luk. 15. 10. 1 Cor. 11. 10. Heb. 1. 14. 12. 22. 13. 2. Mat. 18. 10. 25. 31. 13. 39 49. Act. 5. 19. 8. 26. 12. 7. 23. * Of this see the Second Edition by Dr. More of Mr. Glanvile's Book of Apparitions called Atheismus Triumphatus †For the truth of this read Mr. Fairclough's Life * See what I have said of particular Testimonies in my Saints Rest and unreasonableness of Infidelity * 1 Joh. 5. 9 10 11. Gal. 5. 17. Rom. 7. Phil. 3. 7. to the 15. * Eph. 1. 14. 2 Cor. 1. 22. 5. 5. Rom. 8. 23. 2 Tim. 2. 19. Eph. 1. 13. 4. 30. 1 Joh. 5. 9 10. Heb. 10. 15. * This one Truth will give great Light into the Controversies about God's gracious Operations on the Soul For when he useth second Causes we see he Operateth according to their limited aptitude And Christ's humane Nature and all other second Causes are limited and operate variously and resistibly according to the Recipients capacity * Treat of Infidelity Luke 15. 10. And Mr. Beverly in his Great Soul of Man ☞