a Consequence of the clear and sensible Conviction of the Disorder of our foolish and Idolatrous love of our Body which we believe to be so lawful and so innocent We shall draw from the Principle of our Immortal Condition the Consequence of an evident Conviction of the Disorder of our bewitching love of the present Life whereof we have so little Remorse We shall draw from the Principle of the Divine Quality of our Souls which is the Honor of the Divine Resemblance which Nature begins in them by Conscience and by the Seeds of Vertue and which Grace and Glory do finish the Consequence of the Condemnation of that little care which we have to cooperate to the Honor of the Divine Resemblance We shall draw from the Principle of the Alternativeness of the immutable State of Felicity and Misery which must succeed the present Fortune and which we have presently to decide by the good usage of Time and of this Life the Conviction of the outragious Folly of our violent Transports and of our fury of Ambition for the present Fortunes which we regard as the only Prudence and the only Wisdom of this Life The Condemnation of our Forgetfulness and of our Wandring from God First of all How condemnable are we for forgetting God since it is true That our Souls do not only come from God but they live Essentially in him and that after this short Interruption of their Immediate Union with him which makes the present Life they ought to return and eternally remain in him How great is the Disorder in your Opinion of this Forgetfulness The Scripture saith That the Stars being incapable of Sentiments and of Knowledge have a perpetual Acknowledgment for him who gave them Light and for that Reason to testifie it to him they send him back perpetually their Light and are continually turn'd towards him as if it were to tell him that for Him only they desire to shine that it is for Him only that they do shine Lucent ei qui fecit illas Here is an Idea and a Lesson which they give us of the continual Application and perpetual Return which we ought to have towards God for perceiving and acknowledging his Presence his Divine Illumination and his Influence in us But we are far enough from following this Lesson our Heart and our Spirit do turn themselves equally from him they equally lose themselves in useless Thoughts and plunging themselves and advancing farther and farther into this Land of Forgetfulness and this Region of Darkness they do not so much as once a Day no not perhaps once a Week once a Month once a Year call to mind their Divine Origine and their Celestial Dependence Obstupescite Coeli super hoc here would the Prophet Esay say All Nature saith the same thing with the Prophet and would rise and Arm her self against this so monstrous Ingratitude and this so monstrous Insolence There is not betwixt Man and Man the like Example of Injustice of Brutality and of Rashness It would be very much that the Heart only should forget God and should wander from him in searching as she doth her Happiness and her Pleasure out of him which is the greatest Wandring that can be But it is not the Heart alone that for gets God and wanders from him the Spirit it self the Spirit who could have quitted it self at so easie a rate of the Duty of its Dependence and its Acknowledgment the Spirit forgets him the Spirit effaces his Idea the Spirit turns it self wholly from him it revolts entirely And tho' the Spirit receives continually a Light and Thought from God it is by him that she Perceives all that she perceives it is by him that she Thinks all that she Thinks and it is by him that she Knows all that she Knows and yet so far is she from acknowledging and perceiving it that she believes that she is a Light to her self and she doth not at all believe that she oweth any thing to God for it If the the Sun did never Set or were never under a Cloud we should not at all believe that it was by it we had the Light we should believe that the Light by the help of which we see all things were in our Eyes and because God doth continually Enlighten us because that this Sun never Sets because that this Sun is always ready to Enlighten us every instant we believe that we have in our selves the Light and the Idea's where with He Enlightens us The Dog lifts up his Head to him who gives Bread to him the Spirit of Man doth not at all lift up his Thoughts towards him who continually gives him all his Light and all his Life O Ingratitude O Revolt What Judgment do you think doth God make of those Men who live in Courts in Palaces and in great Offices of all sort of Profession who pass their Days their Weeks their Months their Years all their whole Life without any true Remembrance or any true Sentiment of him and of the continual Dependence which we have of the perpetual Irradiation of his Eternal Essence With what Eyes do you think doth he look upon them What Violence do you think doth he offer himself in not hastning the end of their Lives and the beginning of his Vengeance Yet He never spoke with more Resentment than Laboravi sustinens He never thunder'd or demanded Justice from Heaven or Earth with more vehemence He never demanded it with a greater Indignation Let us see if there be any thing like this amongst Men from a Subject to a King from Children to their Parents from Husbands to their Wives from Servants to their Masters or amongst the most savage Beasts towards those who take care to feed them But if you conceive thereby how Criminal our forgetfulness of and our wandring from God is you will apprehend how unhappy it is by the Anger with which God will receive those ungrateful Souls who forget him when they shall return to him The Rivers which flow from the Sea return to the Sea The Bodies which came from the Earth return to the Earth And our Souls which came from God return also necessarily to God They are as it were Portions of himself which he recalls and would have reunited to the Whole if we may be permitted to say so after the Ancient Fathers Exivi à Patre veni in mundum saith Jesus Christ iterum relinquo mundum vado ad Patrem I am come out from my Father and I am come into the World and I must again leave the World and go to my Father He said it for himself and for us equally He being come from God ought to return to God being sent from God to the Earth ought to return to God And our Souls which in the same manner are sent into the Body and into the Visible World to be there try'd ought to return to God they came from God and they return to God and
to neglect the Business and the Duties of Life and of the Republic but even to hasten on their own Deaths It is not to be questioned here whether this Prudence were not a little too Precautious it is not our business our business is to Remark the Effect which the Notion of a Knowing Nature hath produced to make Men believe That their Souls subsist and live after their Death The Conviction hereof is effectively Lively and Sensible by that alone independently of all the Regards of Religion and it is incredible how much Force and Evidence it receives from all the Foundations and Circumstances of Religion of which this New Life which our Souls ought to have out of our Bodies is as it were the Point in View and the only and perpetual Object All the Old and all the New Testament All the Law and all the Gospel Moses and Jesus Christ The Prophets and the Apostles All the Miracles and all the Mysteries have no other Essential Termination and End than this New and Immortal Life of our Souls after our Death Both the Old and the New Testament under the Names of the New World the Future World the Age to come the Life Everlasting the Heavenly Jerusalem do not speak almost of any thing else And these cannot be Fables and Fictions for if they were nothing else but Fables then this Sovereign Power which hath been manifested to the World with a thousand Characters of Wisdom of Holiness of Truth and of Goodness by that Miraculous Train of Prodigious Events which make what we call the Holy History and the Body of Religion must have laboured for above these Six thousand Years to deceive the Word and to laugh at Mankind which is the most impossible thing in the World The Conviction then which is lively and penetrating independently of Religion is yet much more so by Religion The Faithful knows much better than the Philosopher That when this House of Clay which he Inhabits at present shall fall and crumble into Dust He shall pass out of this Melancholy and obscure Habitation into a New and an Heavenly Habitation not made with Mens hands into the proper Habitation and the Eternal Palace where God himself dwells The Philosopher knows it because he knows That the Souls of Men departing from the Body do pass into a New Life full of Darkness or of Light of Happiness or of Misery according as they have rendred themselves worthy in their Bodies either of the Love or the Anger of Him who is essentially the Life and by consequence the Punishment or the Reward of all Intelligent Natures according as they have deserved that He should Act in them and Reward or Punish them Socrates having already the Mortal and Deadly Draught in his Hand spake after this manner Says the Roman Orator and Philosopher That it did not seem to him that they led him to Death but that he was going to mount up to Heaven Cato was Transported with Joy at the sight and at the presence of Death The Wise Man saith Plutarch goes with Pleasure out of the Darkness of the Earth to enjoy in Heaven an Immortal Light with the Gods Have Courage saith this Other Let not Death affright Us since after Death we shall either be Gods or like Gods Let us not fear that our Bodies will bury our Souls under their Ruins When the Heavens shall fall and Corporeal Nature shall entirely perish and disappear There is a necessity that the Spirit which Animates Us and which is the Foundation of our Being must subsist and remain under those Ruins without being hurt or endamaged by them Such is the Conviction and Certainty of the Philosopher But the Faithful is much more enflamed and Transported with this so animated and so lively Certainty and Persuasion He sees with St. Stephen the Heavens open over his Head and he is taken and wrapt up thither like St. Paul with unspeakable Joys and Extasies He hath this Certainty and this Persuasion so lively and so animated by two divers Principles He hath it by the Impression of Faith and of Grace which makes him See and Feel if I may say so this New Life without Reasoning by way of Supernatural Inspiration and Illumination and He hath it when he will Reflect and Reason by an evident Conviction which the Reflection upon the Mysteries and Miracles of Christianity and upon all Religion give him of it for tho' there were none but that Historical single Fact of the Mystery of the Incarnation of God the truth of which is incontestably Established by so many Miracles and so many sensible Convictions it would be impossible to call into doubt that New and Immortal Life of this New State we are speaking of into which our Souls must enter when they go out of our Bodies because it is not possible to conceive That if there was no other for Men but this present Life that God would have become Man upon the Earth to undergo all that Train of humbling and dolorous Mysteries which he hath undergon Since it is certain That if there was no other Life for Men there would be no advantage neither for God nor for Men in those Mysteries which do no wise Regard the present Life but only the Life to come God can do nothing in Vain and in vain would He have bin Born as he was Born in vain would He have Lived as he did Live in vain would He have Died as he did Dye if He had not been Born if He had not Lived and if He had not Dyed to Redeem Men from Eternal Death and to give them that Happy and Immortal Life which the First Man had lost them God Incarnate came not to make this Present Life neither more agreeable nor more fortunate or more happy to Us He came not to spread abroad Treasures and Riches to give Honors and great Employments to Distribute Dignities to give Pleasures to the Senses and to the Cupidinous Desires of this Present Life St. Paul calls him the High Priest of Goods to come and the Prophets who Prophecied of Him called Him the Father of the Ages to come and King of the Future World but I must not enlarge here any more upon this on the contrary I must shut it up and return to the Point we proposed to Illustrate in this Third Part which is The manner how our Souls Are to be out of our Bodies CHAP. II. What is to be Illustrated in this Third Part concerning the Future State of our Souls out of our Bodies and first whether our Souls when they go out of our Bodies do pass into a true Corporeal Place THAT which we already said Teaches Us That our Souls Are and Subsist out of our Body That they Live and have Essential Acts and Proprieties inseparable from their Knowing Nature but we do not learn from thence How our Souls Are out of the Body which is however what we have proposed to Illustrate To satisfie our Curiosity
saith Thomas Aquinas Because by reason of much loving the Present Life we come saith he to hate the Future and to wish that there were none at all and when we are gone as far as to hate it we shall easily come not to believe it at all and when the Future Life is once become a Fable Divinity soon after will be but a Chimera only This excessive Love then of the Present Life is a great Disorder and Irregularity and this Irregularity is mounted in us even to the last Period and to the highest Degree I call it a Love enchanted of the Present Life for it is a Love of Charm and of Enchantment It is a Fury and a Rage a Madness and a Frenzy of Love The Future Life allures us to it by a thousand Charms it glitters before us I will not say like a Sun but like an Immensity of Light which ought to carry as much Ardor into our Hearts as Conviction into our Spirits it opens her Bosom to us and lends us an assisting Hand Instinct and Religion Grace and Nature the Law and the Gospel Heaven and Earth all of them shew our Future Life in a happy Immortality all sparkling with Joys with Felicities and with Glories The sweet and ineffable Impression of Grace and the Holy Spirit The lively sparkles of Heavenly Regeneration which operate in us by a thousand secret Incitements The Example of the truly Faithful who groan without ceasing with St. Paul in Expectation of their Deliverance from their Bodies and of the manifestation of the Future Life and of the Glories of the Children of God do sollicite and impel us and do call upon us The World it self by its Contradictions and the Present Life by its Pains and its Disgusts do render the Love and the desire of the Future Life necessary to us to comfort us under our present Pains and Miseries And yet notwithstanding we have the deadly weight upon our heart which inclines us and fixes us to the Earth and to this miserable Life we are not able to raise our selves up to desire Celestial Beauties and the Eternal Delights we are more ready to say Let God take care of Heaven for himself and let him leave the Earth for us We see here what sort of Creatures we are it is impossible to make the least Ray or Spark of the Love of the Future Life to enter into our hearts St. Paul notwithstanding teaches us That the Present World is but a Shadow of the World to come and the Present Life upon that account cannot be but the Shadow of the Future that is to say there is the same difference between the Present Life and the Future Life as there is between a Body that is all real and all effective and between the Shadow which is only a void and an empty Figure All the Shadows here below that is to say all the Joys and all the Felicities of this Life which are only Shadows here are in the Future Things real All that is here a Figure is there Reality The Honors the Pomps and the Glories the Abundance the Pleasures are There true Pomps true Honors true Glory true Abundance true Pleasures Conceive the Difference saith St. Chrysostom between the Shadow and the Sun conceive how great are the Beauties of that Planet which animates all the Beauty of the World above that drowsie Obscurity which hath only a pure Nothingness of Privation for the Body and the Foundation of its Being and when you have comprehended that do not believe that you have comprehended the advantage of the Future Life above the Present Life St. Paul said very well That to die is gain Mori lucrum We gain without doubt because that instead of a World of Shadows of Figures of Illusions of Vanities of Dreams of pure Nothings cloath'd with the Painted Superficies of Being or rather with the simple and false Appearance we enter into the Possession of a World where all is Real all Solid all Effective and all Immortal The Condemnation of our violent Desires for the Establishment of our Present Fortunes and of our deadly Indifference for the sort of Event of our Eternal Predestination which is decided in this Present Life We have acknowledged by the State of Trial in which we have seen our Souls are at present their uncertain and doubtful State of Alternativeness of the formidable coming of Eternity in which they ought to enter in going out of Time and out of the Present Life We have acknowledged that we are here as it were suspended and ballanced betwixt two Extreams of two different Eternities of which we have the Lot to decide by our Vigilance and by our Application to Sanctifie our selves and to prepare our selves for that Impression of Glory and Sovereign Felicity which God will really give to all those whom he shall find prepared and disposed for it by a faithful and constant Co-operation with his Grace and there follows from thence a Condemnation equally just and formidable of our violent Desires for our present Fortunes and of our brutal Indifference for that of Eternity which we are to make for our selves and for which we cannot rely and repose our selves upon any one else If our Lot of Eternity was cast upon us after the manner as some conceive it if it was a Destiny which ought to be effected without us and if we were only to expect the Event and the infallible and inevitable Execution of it there would not be any Thing to reproach us thereupon we might in the mean time wholly employ our selves about our present Fortunes But besides That even then when God hath a particular Cause in the Predestination of some few and that he Charges himself with the success of their Salvation which I believe he do's for a certain number he do's not at all save even these Priviledged Persons without their Co-operation It is certain That in regard to the generality of Men he do's not concur to their Predestination and their Salvation but as Universal Cause and that the Success of it is left to the Vigilance of every one Thus our Souls do themselves before-hand decide by the good or ill usage of Time of the Present Life and of Grace the Alternativeness of the Immutable State of Happiness or Unhappiness in which they are to be fixed and established when they depart hence Thus It is certain That all the Occupations all the Designs and all the Enterprizes of Men which have not for their End the great Object of that building of our House of Eternity which the Scripture frequently mentions which we ought to be building every moment of this Present Life as it were by so many Stones that we are to raise one upon another to the end that our Souls may find their Habitations ready prepared It is certain once again That all our Occupations all our Cares all our violent Desires all our Designs and all our Enterprizes are things not only vain and
sweet and gay which dilate the Heart the Spleen the Brain and make the Blood and Spirits flow easily through every part and thereby occasion agreeable and joyful Thoughts do determin the Disposition of the Brain and the rest of the Body to be the occasion of the Reflections and Motions of Joy and Sadness Spiritual Joys and Sadnesses We have on the contrary Spiritual Joys and Sadnesses which are the true Passions or true Resentments of the Rational or Spiritual Appetite for altho' they are formed with much more Deliberation and Reflection than Corporeal Joy and Sadness they are truly Spiritual Passions because the Resentment that forms them is not an Act of the active or determinative Faculty of the Soul but of that kind of Power and passive Faculy from whence spring up all the Resentments of the Appetite Natural and Supernatural Joy and Sadness Spiritual Joy is sometimes a Joy purely Rational and which comes from the Knowledge of the sweetness of Repose of the good Order of Affairs and of the Society and Fidelity of Friends and sometimes it is a Celestial and Divine Joy as is that Joy which the Conscience and the Sentiments of Grace gives and of Eternal Hopes which St. Paul calls the Peace of God and the Joy of the Holy Ghost or in the Holy Ghost Penitence We must say the same thing of Sadness for there is also a Spiritual Sadness which doth not at all reach up to God but which regards nothing but the Natural State and there is a Holy and Supernatural Sadness which is caused by Penitence that lively Sentiment and that lively and penetrating Resentment of the unworthiness of Sin from whence flow those Sacred Tears which render the Soul so pure and so fair before God for they are like a vehement Fire which consumes in us all the Matter and all the Impurity of Sin But let Us generally remark the difference of our Natural and of our Supernatural Operations CHAP. XX. Acts Natural or Natural Operations and Acts Supernatural or Operations of Grace THERE is in the eleventh place a most essential and most important Division and Difference to be observed of which the Experience is constant and indubitable from our Operations and Acts which ought not here to be forgotten to wit the Distinction and the Difference of our Natural Acts or our Natural Operations and of our Supernatural Acts or our Supernatural Operations For there is incontestably in Us in all our Faculties besides their Natural Acts Operations Supernatural which make an Impression there of that almighty Vertue and of that invisible Force from above which we commonly call Grace This Eternal and Soveraign Power which Rules over us and which Acts continually in us enlightning us by all the Idea's and all the Images which we have of things penetrating us with a thousand divers Sentiments sometimes of Pleasure and sometimes of Pain is called Nature when by reason of the communication of Motions of the Corporeal Impressions which arrive as far as the Brain it Acts in us by the general Wills and the immutable Laws of its Natural Providence which have no other end but the beauty and the conservation of the visible World But when by other views and for other respects when for the final Building of its Eternal Temple when for the formation of its Eternal Court if we may be permitted to say so when for the accomplishment of the favourable Decrees of its Predestination freely made for the Consummation of its Elect which is the Object of a Providence entailed and combined in a thousand manners upon the former when in this View it Operates in Us for to correct the Corruption or to aid the weakness and insufficiency of Nature for our Sanctification it changes its Name and is called Grace Thus there is in us Nature and Grace or the Operations of Nature and the Operations of Grace and Grace is almost no less visible than Nature The Libertines those Foolish and Rash and at the same time Gross and Carnal Spirits who judge of every thing by their Senses under pretence that Grace is neither to be seen nor to be felt though it is felt inwardly as sensibly as the most Corporeal Objects and tho' it hath by the inward Sentiment an indubitable Evidence I say the Gross and Carnal Libertines will affirm That all that we say of Grace is nothing but a Dream and a Chimera because they pretend that Grace is a Fancy which hath no other Reality than that which the Fanatical Imagination of some superstitious and sick Spirits hath given it But the Judgment and Decision of such People ought not at all to put us to a stand but on the contrary it rather makes for the Truth and effective Reality of Grace that it should be called in Question by these Fanatic Enemies of all Truth Grace makes it self appear at all times in the World and especially since the accomplishment of the Mystery of God in the Flesh encompassed with a Light and a Brightness so evident that we may as well doubt whether there be a World as to doubt there hath been brought in by Christianity a New Light of the Mysteries and Precepts of Morality and Divine Truths We may also as soon doubt of that which is called Nature as of that which is called Grace or of a Supernatural Principle which contrary to the impure and corrupt Inclinations of Nature always inclined towards the Earth doth turn and elevate our Hearts and our Spirits towards God towards Eternity and towards Heaven and makes us find ineffable Tastes and unspeakable Delights in Humiliation and Sufferings and in the greatest Abnegation and the greatest Crucifixion of the Senses Christianity is Established in the World by a Force and a Vertue indubitably Heavenly and Divine which Operates more Miracles in the Spirit and in the Hearts of Men than in the Corporeal Nature whereof she appears so highly and so indubitably a Mistriss since she hath changed the Laws of it in all its Parts as she pleased with an Empire the most Absolute that ever was This Force and this Verture so unquestionably Heavenly and Divine which hath raised the Dead and imprinted the Marks of its Soveraign Power and Omnipotent Empire upon all Visible and Corporeal Nature hath Acted and Operated with the same Power and the same Empire upon the Hearts and upon the Spirits and it continues to Act and to Operate after the same manner And as its Operation is called a Miracle when it Acts and Operates extraordinarily upon Corporeal Nature so it is called Grace when it Acts and Operates upon our Souls for our Sanctification and our Salvation Grace then is incontestably something that is as Real as Nature and there are in us by consequence most real Operations of Grace which is of Importance to observe and to distinguish well and to keep unmixt by the inward and indubitable Sentiment which we have of it Grace Operates in Us in
in God as in a Rageing Sea which dashes against them and tosses them and threatens them perpetually with its Storms and Tempests And this is All in my Opinion that we can desire to know upon the Principal Head of that which Regards the State of our Souls out of our Bodies Let us conceive with all my heart That there is above those Heavens which we know a Heaven wholly Enlightned and abounding with Joy and overwhelmed with Pleasures wherein the Holy Souls are involved And let us conceive on the other side a Place replenished with Flames and Darknesses with Horror and all manner of Despair which the Criminal Souls do fall into All this is most True and these Places are most Real and Effective but it is in God in whom the Holy Souls do find this Enlightned Heaven and in whom the Criminal Souls do find these Flames and these Darknesses these Despairs and these Horrors It is God who by an Immediate Union of his Almighty Activity causeth in Them this Light and these Darknesses these Sadnesses and these Joys these Pleasures and these Pains all the Paradice and all the Hell Erit Deus Omnia in Omnibus it is by an Immediate Union of God with Them and They with God that they are in Heaven and in Hell Since it is by this Union that they have this Lively Idea thereof which renders these Places present to them CHAP. VII That which makes the Difference between the Present and Future State of the Soul IT follows from what hath been said That that which makes the Essential Difference of the manner how our Souls are in our Bodies and of the manner how they are out of our Bodies is That when they are in the Body then they have but Successively the Idea's and the Knowledges of Things from the Occasion of different Impressions which come and arrive to the Brain by the Action of other Bodies which are round about Us and that they have not also the Sentiments and the several Movements of the Appetite but from the Occasion of divers Dispositions of Bodies and when they are parted from the Body they receive immediately from God these Idea's and these Sentiments which is requisite for the Disposition of Vice or Vertue which we otherwise call Merit of Demerit in which they find themselves when they are parted from the Body Now the Body by the divers Impressions which it receives from other Bodies or by the divers Dispositions which are raised formed in it by the Ebullition of the Blood by the Course of the Spirits and by the divers Excesses or Fermentations of Humors is the Occasional Cause of all these Idea's and of all the Sentiments of the Soul because that the Supream Being by which it Lives it Perceives Thinks and Wills for to conserve the Dignity and good Order of its Greatness in acting as Universal Cause was pleased to tye the Determination of these Idea's and Sentiments to those Dispositions of the Body which result from the Laws of Motion by which He moves all the Corporeal Nature and by which he composes and conserves the Visible World with an infinite Wisdom which alone was able to produce so many Prodigious Effects with so much Order and so much Harmony from two or three Immutable Laws by which He moves the Matter of the Universe That in this New State of the Soul out of the Body God is not determined to Act in Them but by a necessary and immutable Love of Order and by their Vertuous or Criminal Disposition God doth not Act but as an Universal Cause with our Souls so long as they are in the Body He doth but follow the Law of Motion of the common Matter of the Visible World which diversly affecting our Bodies necessarily determines him by Vertue of his Immutable Decree to give to the Souls those Idea's and those Sentiments which answer the different Impressions wherewith the Body is affected but when the Soul is out of the Body God doth lay aside the Character of Universal Cause as to this purpose He no longer follows in respect of them the Laws of the Motion of the Universe Souls part with the World in parting with the Body They have no longer any Relation with the Body nor by consequence with the Visible World from that very instant that they have no more to do with their particular Bodies So long as they are in the Body they are united to all the Visible World because that their Thoughts and their Sentiments do depend upon the Laws of the Motion which moves all the Matter of the World it being that which gives them an Essential Relation to all the Parts of it because there is not any one of them which may not be an Occasion of the Determination of these Idea's and Sentiments but after Death all that ceases there is a new Order of things there are no more the same Laws God afterwards follows none but the Law of his Eternal and Inflexible Justice to Punish or to Reward the Souls according as they have made themselves deserving It is no more the Motion of the Universe and the particular Disposition of every ones Temperament which results from it which determins the diversity of our Idea's and Sentiments It is only the Pure and Holy Disposition or the Impute and Criminal Disposition of our Souls which determins the Sovereign and Eternal Justice and Equity to give us the Idea's and Sentiments proper to Reward or Punish our Irregular or our Vertuous Disposition God hath no longer Reason to be willing to mannage and conserve the Dignity and Character of Universal Cause He hath no longer Reason to mannage and conserve the Liberty of our Souls The time of our Trial is ended The time of Merit is past There is no more question to see whether they will make themselves worthy that is over They are fixed in an Immutable State That is Eternity There is no more Vicissitudes or Diversifications no more Instability or Changes no more an Alternativeness or a Passage from Evil to Good and from Good to Evil from Vice to Vertue and from Vertue to Vice The Tree lies where it falls And as the State of the Soul is fixed by this State of Immutability which is properly That which we call Eternity so God fixeth himself to Love or to Hate to Punish or to Reward He Acts thenceforwards as a particular Cause because that He immediately takes in the Ground of His Eternal Love of Order the determination of all these Idea's and Sentiments which he gives to our Souls That is all the Light which we can give to our First Curiosity concerning the State of our Souls out of our Body by which we see that they are not properly but in God and that it is He only who is the Cause and Occasion of all their Idea's and Sentiments We must now proceed and endeavour to Know all that belongs to this State by clear and infallible Lights CHAP. VIII How