not confined to the Religion of the old World nor to expect the success of the latter days by the second coming of Christ but are at liberty every moment to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven as fast as we can bring our Faith up to it That he delays his second coming is not that he hath any more to do in order to Man's Salvation For as to that he declared it finished before ever he yielded to Death But the World is not ready to receive him and till then the Heavens must contain him Whence this is called the Day of his Patience But this doth not prohibit them that are ready to come to him where he is Come for all things are now ready He then was and still is ready for the Resurrection of the Dead The hour is coming and now is when the Dead shall hear the Voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live Where we see the Emphasis of the Resurrection is not placed in any point of Time but in the hearing of that Voice be it when it will And 't is observable that in all the Miracles wrought by him upon the Bodies of the Dead he used different words of command according to the different Circumstances which the Persons to be raised were then under The Son of the Widow of Nain and the Daughter of Jairus being both dead and neither buried when he first came to them he only said to them Arise But Lazarus being in the Grave he said to him Come forth And he did not only give different words of Command but prefixed to each Command a particular description of the very Person he call'd for He touched the Bier of the Widow's Son and said Young Man arise And took the Ruler's Daughter by the hand and said Maid arise And Lazarus he called by his Name Which were Injunctions to the rest of the Dead to lie still till he call'd ' em For as he himself observed in two other Instances That there were many Widows in the days of the Famine but unto none of them was the Prophet sent save unto the Woman of Sarepta And many Lepers in the days of Elisha the Prophet but none of them were cleansed save Naaman the Syrian So many young Men and Maids were dead and buried in those days of the Son of Man but none of them were raised save those he call'd for Nor did these arise together nor any one of them by virtue of the Word of Command given to the other of them but every one in his own order as they were named and called Nor shall there a Man or Woman arise from the Dead for ever till the Son of God calls them by their Name And whoever after that dares stay for his Fellows shall never be call'd again They that were first bidden to the Feast and refused to come were not again admitted with them that accepted the Invitation but stand barr'd for ever by that dreadful Sentence They shall never taste of my Supper And yet they did not refuse it by a flat denial but with the usual Complement That they were otherways ingaged But if he would not admit the Son of a dead Man to go back and bury his Father Dare we ask him leave after he hath call'd us to Eternal Life to go and lie with our dead Fathers and our dead Mothers till the Resurrection at the last Day Let the Dead bury the Dead And the Dead lie with the Dead And the rest of the Living go and lie with them I 'll follow him that was dead and is alive and lives for ever Nor can I think who I should stay for Will any one pursuing after Wealth wait for a Beggar Or he that 's flying for his Life keep pace with a Cripple Why then should a Man aspiring after Heaven stay for Petty-Canons and Vestry-men I remember the best bred Man that ever was in the World commended Publicans and Harlots for entring into the Kingdom of God before them that thought themselves their betters And therefore he that stands complementing with the Door of Eternal Life in his hand offering the Ceremony to others to go before him shews himself no Courtier of Heaven And tho now I am single yet I believe that this Translation of Faith without Death will be general before the general Change Paul speaks of shall come And that then and not before shall be the Resurrection of the Just which is called the first Resurrection And after that the Dead so arisen with the Living then alive shall have learnt this Faith which shall qualify them to be caught up together in the Air then shall the general Resurrection of the Dead be After which Time shall be no more But I expect that the beginning of this Faith like all other Parts of the Kingdom of Heaven will be like a grain of Mustard-seed spreading it self by degrees till it overshadow the whole Earth And since the things concerning him must have an end in order to that they must have a beginning But whoever leads the Van will make the World start And must expect for himself to walk up and down like Cain with a Mark in his Forehead and run the Gauntlet for an Ishmaelite having every Man's Hand against him because his Hand is against every Man Than which nothing is more averse to my Temper And this makes me think of publishing with as much regret as he that ran away from his Errand when sent to Niniveh But being just going to cross the Water I dare not leave this behind me undone lest a Tempest send me back again to do it And to shelter my self a little tho I know my Speech would betray me I left the Title Page Anonymous Nor do I think that any thing would now extort my Name from me but the dread of the Sentence He that is ashamed of me and of my words before men of him will I be ashamed before my Father and his Angels For fear of which I dare not but subscribe my Argument tho with a trembling hand Having felt two Powers within me all the while I have been about it one bids me write and the other bobs my Elbow But since I have wrote this as Pilate did his Inscription without consulting any one thing else about it I 'll be as absolute in mine as he was in his What I have written I have written And after this I 'll never write again but spend the residue of my days in Action contrary to the regular profession of Religion And having pursued that Command seek first the Kingdom of God I yet expect the performance of that promise To receive in this Life an hundred fold and in the World to come Life Everlasting I have a great deal of Business yet in this World without doing of which Heaven it self would be uneasy to me And therefore do depend that I shall not be taken hence in the midst of my days before I have done all
of every Man within any Country doth subject him to the Laws of that Country is the Law of all Nations And without these Concessions there could be no Laws because else every Man must have a particular Law delivered him for himself which being a publick Inconvenience cannot be admitted in the nature of Laws And thus this Law of Death fell upon Christ himself as a Descendant from the same common Ancestors Christ had two descents in his Birth One was his natural descent from the Virgin Mary his real Mother The other his legal descent from Joseph his supposed Father But in his Genealogy set down by two Evangelists this legal descent by Joseph is only counted upon without taking any notice of his descent by his Mother's side Because this descent by Joseph was his legitimate descent according to that Law which makes all the Issue of the Woman born during the Coverture to be the Issue of the Husband although it be notoriously known that in Fact it were begotten by another And this is our Law at this day altho the Issue be born but one day after the Espousals And the Canon Law is much stronger for that makes the Issue born of the Woman before Marriage let them be begotten by whom she will unless by a former Husband in Wedlock to be the Issue of the Husband to whom she is afterward married And therefore Christ having such a Father-in-Law as this his descent must be accounted from his Father-in-Law and not from his Mother because all legal descents are accounted from the Father and not from the Mother When the eleven Tribes were polled in the Wilderness of Sinai they gave account of their Pedigrees after their Families by the House of their Fathers without taking any notice of their descent by their Mothers side And so did they of the Tribe of Levi who were numbered after them Wherefore I say the business of the Evangelists being to shew such a descent in Christ by which the Curse of the Law might fall upon him in his Birth they must shew a descent upon which the Law might operate For as this is a Law all Proceedings thereupon are according to Law And hence it is observable that his being born of a Virgin espoused and not of a single Virgin was not accidental but designed For as it was necessary that he should be born of a pure Virgin to preserve his Nature from the defilements of the Humanity so it was necessary that he should be born of a Virgin espoused to derive upon himself the Curse of the Law by a legal Father For which purpose it was necessary that the Birth of Christ should in the terms of the Evangelist be on this wise and no otherwise And as this peculiar Genealogy of Christ was not accidental but designed the quality of his descent was so too There are mutual courtesies and civilities used amongst Equals but he that accepteth Riches or Honour from another doth thereby acknowledg him to be his Superior for the lesser is blessed of the greater Wherefore when Abraham had rescued the Plunder taken from the Sodomites he permitted the young Men that fought with him to eat and drink of the Provisions and his three Confederates that assisted him to take their Portion of the Goods but for his own part taking himself to be as good a Man as the then King of Sodom he scorned to accept from him the value of a Shoe Latchet lest it should be said he made Abraham rich So tho Christ in the days of his flesh behaved himself with all the freedom of Conversation The Son of Man came eating and drinking and when little Zacheus climb'd up a Tree to see him he frankly invited himself to dine with him Yet knowing himself to be the Son of God he neither could nor would receive any Dignity from Man I receive not Honour from Man And thus knowing his real descent to be from Above I am from Above it was equal to him to be reputed the Son of a King or a Carpenter But he rather chose the latter because being himself a King I am a King he would not accept his immediate descent from another King lest it should be said that that made him King David often vaunted of him as his descendant to come twice fourteen Generations before he was born And Abraham rejoiced to see his day But he was so far from valuing himself upon these great Ancestors one a King and the other a King's Fellow that he rather seemed to disown them Before Abraham was I am If David called me Lord how am I his Son He made no other use of his Royal Pedigree but to convey by them a corrupted descent from Adam who standing attainted of Treason against Heaven Christ himself under this Attainder was baptized in his own Blood to restore the rest of Mankind into the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God For Christ himself thus falling under the Law became as guilty of the breach of it as any common Man notwithstanding his personal Holiness For we are none of us guilty of this Sin in Fact but only by construction of Law in the Article of our Birth which falls upon us before we know Good or Evil and so it did upon the Humanity of Christ And this Law thus falling upon him was as just a cause of his Death as it is of ours Nor can his Death be assigned to any other cause but this This Death of Christ was the most unlikely thing that ever happen'd in the World His Disciples could not believe it till they saw it He did not die of Age being about thirty three at his Death He did not die of natural Infirmity having the power of Health by which he preserved his own and restored others He did not die in Battel For his Kingdom was not of this World else would his Servants have fought that he should not have been delivered unto the Jews He did not die by any sudden Accident the Angels having charge over him lest he should dash his foot against a stone He did not murder himself but made all his Efforts to escape the greatest of which was his asking his Life of God Nor was he murdered by others because there was a form of Law in doing it And yet he was not executed by Law because there was no Law then in being by which he could be executed for the Crime of which he stood accused The time that Christ lived in the World was after the destruction of the Jewish Monarchy and during the continuance of the Roman Conquest under which the Jewish Nation being then Subjects were permitted the exercise of their Religion and Priesthood but not of the Civil Power which they had while their Monarchy was in being So that if a Jew had committed any Offence against the Jewish Law which was not an Offence against the Roman Law he was liable to no other Punishment than the Censure of the Jewish Church
Characters of them which remain with him God is able out of these Stones to raise up Children unto Abraham And in this he resembles himself to a Potter who takes no care to preserve his broken Pots for any other use of them because having the Moulds by him he can make several Vessels of the same Figure out of one Earth as well as another And tho all the Vessels of the same Mould are not the same in identity of Matter yet being the same in Form they are the same to all uses intents and purposes And hence tho the Dead shall not arise with the same identity of Matter with which they died yet being in the same Form they will not know themselves from themselves being the same to all uses intents and purposes But in this God is so curious an Artist that he keeps a several Character in Heaven for every Figure of Man on Earth by which as the Apostle saith every Seed shall receive its own Body Whereas we like Fac-simile Mechanicks make one Mould serve for a thousand Figures But then as God in the Resurrection is not bound up to use the same Matter neither is he obliged to use a different Matter Whenever the Body to be raised doth remain so intire from Corruption that the form of it is not spoiled God uses that form again as it is without composing any other Matter Thus he did with the Body of Christ according to that Promise Thou wilt not leave my Soul in Grave nor suffer thy holy One to see Corruption And thus Christ did with the Bodies he raised in the days of his Flesh All which I instance still to shew the Insignificancy of Death one way or other in order to Eternal Life and that the Death of Man works no change in him To make this still more plain consider when and where the Predestination of God is executed upon Man Christ said Rejoice in this that your Names are written in the Book of Life Which he would not have commanded Man upon Earth if the knowledg of it which seems to be the top of Man's Ambition were not attainable here Now this being part of the secret Will of God as his own Memorandums of what he intends to do it can't be shewn to Man by Inspection But when God comes to execute this secret Will then it becomes part of his revealed Will which belongs to Man Secret things belong to God but things revealed to us and to our Children And the time of the Execution of this Decree being the instance of our Faith in Christ As many as were ordained to Eternal Life believed We may by this be as sure that our Names are written in the Book of Life as if we had wrote it with our own hands And that this instant of Faith is the time of the execution of this Decree appears by what Christ said to the Thief on the Cross This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise From whence some think themselves obliged to believe a separate Existence of the Soul from the Body by Death For say they something of this Man did immediately go into Paradise and we see his Body remains here Ergo his Soul went Whereas Christ did not speak this of the Person but the State of the Man Christ and he were both under the same State before they were executed which was the Law of Death And that very day they both exchanged this State into the State of Life Christ by his own Death and the Man by Faith in him tho the Person of Christ went one way and his another So from the words of David Thou wilt not leave my Soul in Grave there was a Conception raised of the separate Existence of the Soul For think we the Body of David is in the Grave Ergo his Soul is gone to Heaven by it self But Peter evinced this Doctrine as erroneous by shewing that David spoke prophetically of the Resurrection of Christ in which the word Soul comprehends his whole human Life which did die and rise together And that it is translated Soul is an Anglicism not understood in other Languages which have no other word for Soul but the same which is for Life As 't is usual for some peculiar Countries to have an odd Name for a common thing which is not vulgarly known in any other parts of the same Kingdom See how Man's Life came to him at first God first formed the Figure of Man's Body in common Earth from whence Men also form Figures of one another Then to this Figure God added Life by breathing it into him from himself whereby this inanimate Body became a living one But in this Composition the Spirit is so perfectly mixed with and diffused through the whole Body that we can't now say which is Spirit nor which is Earth but the whole is one intire living Creature As in levened Dough we can't say which is the Leven nor which is the Dough. But God who first infused this Life can extract it out again and leave the Body as it was before this Life was thus put into it And this form of Death God chose for Man Dust thou art and unto Dust shalt thou return God unmakes Man just as he made him He takes him to pieces like a jointed Tool he draws in his Breath to himself and leaves the Lump to the Elements of which it was at first composed which by degrees loses its very Form and takes its place again in common with other Matter And thus the Spirit returns to God that gave it for the remainder of the Spirit is with him But in this return the Spirit of Man maintains no self-existence having surrender'd it self into the Ocean of Life from whence it first flowed When Rivers return into the Sea they are no more Rivers but lose their Name and Property being merged in the Ocean of their original Fountain And yet God doth retain in his Memory the particular Characters or Ideas of every instance of Life which he doth so extract from whence in the day of the restitution of all things every Body shall have its own Spirit and every Spirit it s own Body But to return to my Argument whence I have a little digressed to descant upon this Opinion of the self-existence of the Soul If this Man that was crucified with Christ did immediately become in the same state with him how comes it that he lies still in the Grave while Christ is ascended into the Heavens To this I say that tho this Man's first Faith did thus qualify him for a change of State yet he had not proceeded far enough in this Faith to qualify himself for an immediate Tanslation of his Person but this he must expect with the rest of them who have died in the same Faith with him and who will not now attain that Perfection till after the Resurrection for there 's no Work in the Grave Man is as safe upon his first Faith in
Christ as if he were in Heaven but he don't know it And God will not deliver out Eternal Life to Man faster than he makes him understand it for the knowledg of Eternal Life is the Essence of it This is Eternal Life to know God and Jesus Christ Every Man possesses as much of Eternal Life as he knows and he knows as much as he possesseth and no more And what the residue of Eternal Life is beyond our present knowledg it hath not enter'd into the Heart of Man to conceive For no Man can know till he doth know And hence the different Gifts of Faith by God bestowed upon Man are incommunicable to one another Abraham was singled out by God as the Father of the Faithful and yet he never attained the Faith of Translation which his Progenitor Enoch had done before him Elisha was an Eye-witness of Elijah's Translation and had a double portion of his Spirit given him by which he wrought Miracles on others and yet after all he died the common Death of Man having not attained to the Faith of his Master in that Point And thus the Apostles themselves who raised others from the dead through Faith in Christ did not yet attain this Faith to prevent themselves from Death Whence I say that God in the distribution of Eternal Life doth not give any part of it to Man contrary to his own Opinion and Apprehension of it And this is sutable to the dealings of Men with one another If an illiterate Man be to seal a Deed which he can't read and another takes upon him to read it to him and reads it in other words than what are written the Law will adjudg the Execution of it to be in the sense read and not in the words written because he that sealed it did so understand it So when the common Preachers of the Christian Religion do administer the Blood of Christ to their Communicants in the Sacrament as significant only to save them from Hell after Death but as ineffectual against Death it self How should the People who perhaps think themselves obliged to swear in verba Magistri have any higher Conceptions of it And thus like Priests like People As it is delivered them so they understand it And as they understand it so they receive it And as they receive it so it hath effect upon them According to thy Faith be it unto thee Which Faith I say is Knowledg not by sight but by evidence of things not seen of which we may have stronger Notions than by our Eye-sight The Face of a Man gives us but a superficial knowledg of him but his Works and Writings tell us his Principles and Capacities And thus Man knows God by his Word and his Works Nor doth God offer himself to Man in any way aukward to human understanding The reason why I believe that this Doctrine I am asserting is true is because God hath said it But yet I could not thus assert it by Argument if I did not conceive it with more self-conviction than I have from any Maxims or Positions in human Science Whenever Christ speaks of Life and Resurrection he means his own I am the Resurrection and the Life And if we would thus understand him this Doctrine would be plain to us whether we would or no. But our Heads are so full of our own business that we can't think of any Death or Resurrection but that of our own Persons And thus we are at cross purposes with him as Men are with one another when one talks of Chalk and another of Cheese Christ saith they that attain that Life and the Resurrection from the Dead can die no more being the Children of the Resurrection Now here we fancy presently that when the Persons of Men have been once dead and risen again they can die no more But this is false for Lazarus and the others raised by Miracles did not thereby become the Children of the Resurrection but remain'd still the Children of this World and as such died again But Christ by his Resurrection did thereby become a Child of the Resurrection and did not nor could then after die any more And therefore whoever can attain this Resurrection can die no more neither And this is attainable by knowledg acquired in study like Attainments in other Sciences The perfection of any Science is a Mystery to the first beginners in it and hence 't is in vain to speak Wisdom to any but the perfect Now the Covenant of Eternal Life is a Law of it self and a Science of it self which can never be known by the study of any other Science but it self It is a Science out of Man's way being a pure Invention of God Man knows no more how to save himself than he did to create himself But to raise Man's ambition to learn this God graduats him upon his degrees of Knowledg in it and gives him Badges of Honour as belonging to that Degree as Men do to one another in other Sciences And thus the knowledg of the Virtue of the Death and the Power of the Resurrection of Christ makes a Degree in this Science Upon the attainment whereof a Man gains the Title of a Child of the Resurrection To which Title doth belong this Badg of Honour To die no more but to make our Exit by way of Translation as Christ himself who was the first of this Order did before us And this World being the Academy to educate Man for Heaven none shall ever enter there till they have taken this Degree here But when once they have passed this they can never after be degraded again to be turned down amongst the Dead as the fallen Angels were from Heaven because they hold by the Title of the Captain of their Salvation which is absolute and indefeazible Take one Thought more which seems plainer than all the rest It is said We that are alive at his coming shall be caught up together in the Air with him and we are commanded to be always ready for the second coming of Christ Then if Death be necessary to qualify us for this second coming of Christ the next thing we all have to do is to kill our selves that we may be so far in our way Unless we do expect that he should stay for us when he comes while we die and rise again which he hath declared he will not do For the least stay for the greater This long interval of time between his first and second coming is allowed for the preaching of the Gospel The Gospel must first be preached through the whole World as a Witness to all Nations and then shall the End be But every Man as fast as he hears of it is in the mean time at liberty to imbrace it without staying for them that are to come after him The Law and the Prophets were until John but since the days of John the Baptist the Kingdom of Heaven is preached and every Man presseth into it We are