be to our benefit only and his hurt yea though it be in going to the slaughter if he did so by us could do us no wrong nor give us any just excuse for our disobedience For as sweet as life is to us it is not so much Ours in right as His and therefore should be at his disposal § 9. The breaking of Gods Laws must needs deserve a greater penalty than the breaking of any Man's Laws as such The difference of the Rulers and their Authority puts this past all controversie of which yet I shall say more anon § 10. What is said of the subjection of Individuals to God is true of all just Societies as such the Kingdoms of the world being all under God the universal King as small parcels of his Kingdom as particular Corporations are under a humane King Therefore Kings and Kingdoms owe their absolute obedience to God and may not intend any ultimate end but the pleasing of their universal Soveraign nor set up any interest against him or above him or in coordination with him nor manage any way of Government but in dependance on him as the Principle and the End of it nor make any Laws but such as stand in due subordination to his Laws nor command any duty but what hath in its order a true subserviency and conducibility to his pleasure CHAP. X. Of GOD's particular Laws as known in Nature THe true nature of a Law I have opened before It is not necessary that it be written nor spoken but that it be in general any apt signification of the Will of the Rector to his subjects instituting what shall be due from them and to them for the ends of Government Therefore whatsoever is a signification of Gods will to man appointing us our duty and telling us what benefit shall be ours upon the performance and what loss or hurt shall befall us if we sin is a Law of God § 1. A Law being the Rectors Instrument of Governing there can be no Law where there is no Government And therefore that which some call The eternal Law is indeed no Law at all But it is the Principle of all just Laws The Eternal Wisdom and Goodness of God that is the Perfection of his Nature and Will as related to a Possible or future Kingdom is denominated Justice And this Justice some call the Eternal Law But it is truly no Law because it is the will of God in himself and not as Rector nor is it any signification of that Will nor doth it suppose any governed subjects in being from Eternity nor doth it make any duty to any from Eternity But all the Laws which God maketh in time and consequently which men make which are just and good are but the Products of this Eternal Will and Justice And whereas some say that there is an eternall truth in such Axiomes as these Thou shalt love God above all and do as thou would'st be done by and the good should be incouraged and the bad punished c. I answer God formeth not Propositions And therefore there were no such Propositions from Eternity Nor was there any Creature to love God or to do Good or Evil and be the subject of such Propositions That Proposition therefore which was not from Eternity was neither true nor false from Eternity for non entis non sunt accidentia vel modi But this is true that from Eternity there were the grounds of the verity of such Propositions when they should after be And that if there had been subjects from Eternity for such Propositions and Intellects to frame them they would have been of Eternal truth § 2. At the same time of his Creation that God made Man his subject he also made him some Laws to govern him For subjection being a general obligation to obedience would signifie nothing if there were no particular duties to be the matter of that obedience Else Man should owe God no obedience from the beginning but be Lawless for where there is no Law there is no Obedience Taking a Law in the true comprehensive sense as I here do § 3. All the objective significations in natura rerum within us or without us of the Will of God concerning our Duty reward or punishment are the True Law of Nature in the primary proper sense § 4. Therefore it is falsly defined by all Writers who make it consist in certain axioms as some say born in us or written on our hearts from our birth as others say dispositively there It is true that there is in the nature of Mans Soul a certain aptitude to understand certain Truths as soon as they are revealed that is as soon as the very Natura rerum is observed And it is true that this disposition is brought to actual knowledge as soon as the minde comes to actual consideration of the things But it is not true that there is any actual knowledge of any Principles born in Man Nor is it true that the said Disposition to know is truly a Law nor yet that the actual knowledge following it is a Law But the disposition may be called a Law Metonymically as being the aptitude of the faculties to receive and obey a Law as the Light of the Eye which is the potentia dispositio videndi may be called the Light of the Sun but unhansomly And the subsequent actual knowledge of Principles may be called the Law of Nature metonymically as being the perception of it and an effect of it as actual sight may be called the Light of the Sun and as actual knowledge of the Kings Laws may be called His Laws within us that is the effect of them or the Reception of them But this is far from propriety of speech That the inward axiomes as known are not Laws is evident 1. Because a Law is in genere objectivo and this is in genere actionum A Law is in genere signorum but this is the discerning of the sign A Law is the will of the Rector signified this is his will known A Law is Obligatory this is the perception of an Obligation A Law maketh duty but this is the knowledge of a duty made 2. The Law is not in our power to change or abrogate But a mans inward dispositions and perceptions are much in his power to encrease or diminish or obliterate Every man that is wilfully sensual and wicked may do much to blot out the Law of Nature which is said to be written on his heart But wickedness cannot alter or obliterare the Law of God If this were Gods Law which is upon the heart when a sinner hath blotted it out he is disobliged from duty and punishment For where there is no Law there is no duty or transgression But no sinner can so disoblige himself by altering his Makers Laws 3. Else there would be as many Laws of Nature not only as there are men but as there are diversity of perceptions But Gods Law is
and peace If you say that the contrary appeareth in the practice of Christians I shall answer that with the rest of the objections by themselves I shall only say now That if this that I have laid down be certainly the doctrin of Christ then it is as certain that the contrary is contrary to Christianity and that so far such persons are no Christians It is hypocrites that take up the name of Christians for worldly advantage and are no Christians indeed who live thus contrary to the nature and precepts of Christianity which they profess § 10. The Christian Religion is most exactly just in its Rules and Precepts and vehemently condemneth all injustice fraud persecution and oppression What juster Rule can there be than to suit all our actions to the perfect Law of Primitive Justice and to do as we would be done by What more effectual principle of Justice can there be than Charity and Self-denial to love all men for God and to account our neighbours welfare as our own Bring all men but to love their neighbours as themselves and they will have little inclination to cruelty oppression fraud or any other injuries And when Heaven is made the reward of Justice and Mercy and Hell the reward of Injustice and Cruelty we have the greatest Motives that humane nature is capable of § 11. The Christian Religion is the most excellent Rule for order and government in the world and for the peace of Kingdoms and their stability in that it prescribeth the only method of true Government and condemneth both impiety and tyranny in the Governours and all sedition and rebellion in the subjects 1. It setteth Government on the only foundation the Authority which men receive from God and teacheth men to rule as the Officers of the Universal King in due subordination to him for his glory and according to his Laws and letteth them know that they have no power but from God and therefore none against him and that they must be judged by him themselves for all their Government and that all oppression tyranny and persecution will be to their own confusion in the end 2. It teacheth Subjects to honour their Superiours and to obey them in all things in which they disobey not God and to be patient under all oppressions and to avoid all murmurings tumults and rebellions and this for fear of God's condemnation And certainly these are the most powerful means for peace and for the happy order and government of Societies § 12. The Christian Religion greatly condemneth all fierceness and impatience and discontentedness and requireth a meek and patient frame of minde and therefore must needs conduce to the forementioned Vnity and Peace § 13. It is wholly for sincerity and uprightness of heart and greatly condemneth all hypocrisie It giveth Laws for the very disposition of the minde and for the government of the secretest thoughts affections and actions and condemeth every sin which the World observeth not or condemneth not § 14. I finde that the Christian Religion is not fitted to any Worldly designs but only to the sanctifying of mens hearts and lives and the saving of their Souls Christ did not contrive by dominion or riches to win the ungodly multitude to be his admirers but by holy Precepts and Discipline to make his Disciples good and happy Mahomet took the way of violence and fleshly baits and blinde obedience to bring in the multitude and to advance a Worldly Kingdom But Christ goeth the clean contrary way He calleth men to a life of Self-denyal and patient suffering in the World he calleth them to contemn the riches honours and pleasures of the World and to forsake all even life it self for him and telleth them that they can on no lower terms than these be Disciples He hath set up a Discipline in his Church to cast out all Drunkards Fornicators Covetous-persons Railers and other such scandalous sinners who are impenitent and will have none in his true mystical Church but such as are truly holy nor none in his visible Church but such as are professed to be so He turneth away all that come not up to his spiritual and holy terms and he casteth out all that notoriously violate them if they do not repent § 15. The Christian Religion containeth all things Necessary to mans happiness and taketh men off unprofitable speculations and doth not overwhelme the mindes of men with multitudes of needless things It is for the most things unnecessary as well as uncertain with which the Philosophers have troubled the World They have lost true wisdom in a Wilderness of fruitless controversies But Christianity is a Religion to make men holy and happy and therefore it containeth these necessary substantial Precepts which conduce hereunto And it taketh men off unnecessary things which else would take up their mindes and talk and time from things necessary And so it s suited to the generality of men and not only to a few that have nothing else to do but wander in a Wilderness of vain Speculations and it is fitted to Mans best and ultimate end and not to a phantastical delight § 16. It tendeth to exalt the minde of man to the most high and heavenly elevation that it is capable of in this life For it teacheth men as is aforesaid to live in the Spirit upon the things above in the continual Love of God and desires and endeavours for everlasting glory Than which mans minde hath nothing more high and honourable and excellent to be employed about § 17. It leadeth men to the joyfullest Life that humane Nature is capable of on Earth For it leadeth us to the assurance of the Love of God and of the pardon of all our sins and of endless glory when we die It assureth us that we shall live for ever in the sight of the glory of God with Jesus Christ and be like the Angels and be perfected in holiness and happiness and be employed in the Love and Praises of God for evermore It commandeth us to live in the foresight of these everlasting Pleasures and to keep the taste of them alwayes upon our mindes and in daily meditation on the Love of God to live in the daily Returns of Love and to make this our continual Feast and Pleasure And can the minde of man on Earth have higher and greater delights than these § 18. The Christian Religion forbiddeth men no Bodily pleasure but that which hindereth their greater pleasure and tendeth to their pain or sorrow nor doth it deny them any earthly thing which is truly for their good Indeed it taketh the bruitish appetite and flesh to be an unfit Judge of what is truly good and desireable for us And it forbiddeth much which the Flesh doth crave Because either it tendeth to the wrong of others or the breach of order in the World or to the corrupting of mans minde and diverting it from things sublime and
be made to be governed by Laws as was proved before then he is certainly governed accordingly or else his nature and reason were given him in vain which could not be by the most wise Creator Obj. God governeth the world as the Soul governeth the Body which is rationally ex parte animae but not by giving reason or laws to the Body but despotically by the natural power of the Will Answ The flesh is not capable of Laws as having no Reason and therefore no proper Laws can be given to it in it self by the Soul But the Soul is capable of Reason and made to be moved by proposed Reasons in a Law and not only by natural force as the flesh The Government must be agreeable to the capacity of the Subject Though the Rider rule the Horse by a bridle and spur and not by a Law it followeth not that the King must not rule the Rider so The Soul and Body constitute one Suppositum or Man and therefore the Body is governed by a Law because the Soul is so which despotically moveth it Laws are for distinct individuals and not for one part of an individual to give to another part Obj. If God be the constitutive Soul of the world then he need not give it Laws Answ Because it is most certain de facto that he doth give us Laws therefore it is certain that he is not the constitutive Soul of the world as is also further proved before though he be much more to it than a Soul § 14. XI If man act per media propter finem and loth discerned by reason then he must be ruled by a Law But the Antecedent is sure Ergo c. For the End is ever something apprehended sub ratione boni and the ultimate end sub ratione optimi possibilis and the Means are chosen and used sub ratione conducibilis as apt to attain the End This Means and End are not to be discerned onely by sense and imagination as in bruits every object is apprehended but by reason this Reason is defectible and liable to error and therefore the rational evidences must be proposed to it and that conveniently For he that knoweth not Reason why he should chuse refuse or act cannot do it Rationally And the Will being as apt to be seduced by the sense hath need of due motives to determine it Therefore there is need of the Regulation of a Law containing the direction of a superiour wisdom with authority and motives of consequential Good or Evil proposed by one that can accomplish it But the whole world doth so universally consent that there is a difference between Right and Wrong Duty and Crimes Good and Evil and so a necessity of some Government humane at least and that man is not like the beasts where strength is the only title and good and evil is but natural called jucundum utile with their contraries that I need not plead that part of the cause any further universal consent not only making it unnecessary but also being a valid argument against it as proving that it is against the common reason of Mankind and light of Nature § 15. XII If God be not the universal Governour of the world then error malice and tyranny and selfishness will make injustice finally prosperous and oppressed innocency remediless But that cannot be as shall hereafter be fullier made appear There must be some infallible Judge to pass the final sentence and hear all Causes as it were over again and some perfect righteous Judge to set straight all that mens unrighteousness made crooked or else unrighteousness will finally prevail And this must be God who being the fountain of all Government is also the end of all § 16. XIII If God be not the Supreme Vniversal Governour there can be no unity and harmony in the moral Order and Government of the World As all the Corporations in the Kingdom would be in continual discord with one another if they were not all united in one King so would all the Kingdoms of the World much worse than they are if they were not under the Government of one God § 17. XIV The last argument shall be à Jure aptitudine If Man be made a Creature to be morally Governed and the undoubted Right and Aptitude for supream Government be in God alone then God is actually the supream Governour of the the World But the antecedent is true therefore the consequent 1. That God only is Able is undenyable Men can govern but their particular Provinces or Empires and none of them is capable of Governing all the World for want of Omnipresence Omnipotency and Omniscience And therefore the Pope that claimeth the Government of all the World if all turn Christians doth thereby pretend to a kinde of Deity And if Angels were proved able to govern the Earth it can be but as Officers and not in absolute supremacy For who then shall be the Governour of them Their being is meerly derivative and dependent and therefore so must be their power God only is all sufficient omnipresent omnipotent omniscient and most good Sufficient to give perfect Laws to all to execute righteous Judgement upon all and to protect the World as his Dominion when Princes cannot protect one Kingdom nor themselves And Gods title and right is as undoubted as his Power For he is Absolute Owner of the World And who should claim Soveraignty over him or without him where he is sole Proprietor He hath undoubted right to rule his own Obj. Propriety among men is no title to Government Answ Absolute Propriety in a Governable creature is a plenary title But no man hath absolute Propriety in another Yet Parents and the Masters of Slaves who come neerest it have an answerable Power of Governing them But mans fullest Propriety is in Bruits and Inanimates which are not Creatures capable of Government § 18. The Relation then of Soveraign King or Rector in God to man is founded in the forenamed Relation of a Proprietor supposing the Aptitude of the Subject and the Owner Having proved that God is the Vniversal King I come to shew his title to his Kingdom â—itulus est fundamentum juris Soveraignty or summa potestas is Jus supremi Regiminis Where this Right is founded great ignorance hath made a great controversie the thing to men that are of competent understandings in such subjects being most easie and past controversie God having made man is immediately his Owner because his maker Having made him a Rational free Agent and so to be Governed he hath the Jus Regendi by Immediate Resultancy from his Absolute Propriety supposing the Nature of the Creature and the Perfection of the Creator alone which so qualifie one to be a Subject and the other to be the Governour that they are as it were the remoter fundamentum Relationis From the being of Man Hoc aliquid à Deo creatum resulteth the propriety of God
as his creatures giveth him so full a Title to govern us that our consent is not at all necessary to our obligation and subjection-relative but only to our actual obedience which cannot be performed by one that consenteth not Therefore God's right and our natural condition are the foundation of our subjection to him as to Obligation and Duty and he that consenteth not sinneth by high Treason against his Soveraign As God did not ask our consent whether he should make us men so neither whether he should be our Governour and we his Subjects as to obligation nor yet whether he shall punish the rebellious and disobedient But he asketh our consent to obey him and to be rewarded by him for we shall neither be holy nor happy but by our own consent Those therefore whom I have confuted in my Treatise of Policy who say God is not our King till we make him King nor his Laws obligatory to us till we consent to them speaking de Debito do not reason but rave and are unworthy of a confutation § 3. All men therefore are obliged to subject their Understandings to the revealed Wisdom of God and their Wills to his revealed Will and to employ all the powers of Soul and Body and all their possessions in his most exact obedience Subjection is an obligation to obedience Where the Authority and Subjection are absolute and unlimited there the obedience must be absolute and most exact The understanding of our absolute Ruler is the absolute rule of our understandings No man must set up his conceits against him nor quarrel with his Government or Laws If any thing of His revelation or prescription seem questionable unjust or unnecessary to us it is through our want of due subjection through the arrogancy and enmity of our carnal minds His Will de Debito must be the absolute Rule of all our Wills so much secret exceptions and reserves as we have in our resignation and subjection so much hypocrisie and secret rebellion we have Our subjective obligation is so full and absolute and our Ruler so infallible just and perfect that it is not possible for any mans obedience to God to be too absolute exact or full Nothing can be more certain than that a Creature subject to the government of his Creator of infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness doth owe him the most perfect and exact obedience according to the utmost of his Powers without any dissent exception resistance unwillingness or neglect § 4. All obedience which Rulers require of their Subjects or Subjects give to any Governours must be in full subordination to the government and will of God For all Powers under the absolute Sovereign of the world are derivative and dependent and are no more than he hath given they are from him under him and for him and can no more have any authority against him than a Worm against a King or than they could have Being and Authority without him He that contradicteth this Proposition must take down God and Deifie Man and so defie and conquer Heaven or else he will never make it good As for the difficulties that seem to rise by allowing Subjects to prefer God's Authority before their Parents or Princes it belongeth no more to the clearing of the present subject that I resolve them than that I resolve such as arise from our allowing Subjects to disobey a Justice or Constable when he is against the King § 5. They that are obliged to such absolute and exact obedience are obliged to use their utmost diligence to understand God's Laws which they must obey For no man can obey a Law which he doth not know of and understand Subjection includeth an obligation to study our Maker's Laws so far as we must do them Indeed those that concern others we are not so much bound to know as a Subject to know God's Laws for Kings and Pastors of the Church but for our own duty we cannot do it before we know it Those that are ignorant of their Maker's Will through unwillingness contempt or negligence are so far disobedient to his Government § 6. There are many and great temptations to draw us to disobey our Maker which every one is bound with greatest vigilancy and constancy to resist He that is bound to obey is certainly bound to resist all temptations to disobedience For that is far from absolute or true obedience which will fail if a man be but tempted to disobey Kings and Parents will not accept of such obedience as this they will not say Be true to me and honour me and obey me till you are tempted to betray me and to reproach me and rebel He that will be false to God when he is tempted to it was never true to him No temptation can bring so much for sin as God giveth us against it nor can offer us so much gain or honour or pleasure by it as he offereth us on condition we obey him And that the world is full of such temptations experience putteth past dispute of which more anon § 7. No price can be offered by any Creature which to a Subject of God should seem sufficient to hire him to the smallest sin Sin hath such aggravations which shall be opened anon that no gain or pleasure that cometh by it can counter-ballance There being no proportion between the Creature and the Infinite Creator there can nothing by or of the Creature be proportionable or considerable to be put into the ballance against the Creator's Authority and Will The command of Kings the winning of Kingdoms the pleasure of the flesh the applause of all the world if they are offered as a price or bait to hire or tempt a man to sin should weigh no more against the command of God than a feather in the ballance against a Mountain All this common reason will attest however sense and appetite reclaim § 8. No man can reasonably fear lest his true obedience to such a Governour should prove his final detriment or hurt but if it did it were nevertheless our duty to obey 1. No man can reasonably think that God is less able to reward protect and encourage his subjects in their duty than any Tempter whatsoever in their disobedience And no man can think that he is less wise to know how to perform it nor can any think that Infinite Goodness is less disposed to do good to the good than any Tempter whosoever can be to do good to the evil These things being all as clear as light it self to the considerate it must needs follow that no reason can allow a man to hope to be finally a gainer or saver by his disobedience to his Maker or to fear to be a loser by him 2. But if it were so obedience would be our duty still for the authority of God as his propriety is absolute and he that giveth us power to require the analogical obedience of our Horse or Ox though it
not so uncertain and multiform a thing 4. And if Mans disposition or actual knowledge be Gods Law it may be also called Mans Law And so the Kings Law should be the Subjects perception of it It is therefore most evident that the true Law of Nature is another thing And is it not then a matter of admiration that so many sagacious accurate Schoolmen Philosophers Lawyers and Divines should for so long time go on in such false definitions of it The whole World belongeth to the Law of Nature so far as it signifieth to us the will of God about our duty and reward and punishment The World is as Gods Statute Book The foresaid natural aptitude maketh us fit to read and practise it The Law of Nature is as the external Light of the Sun and the said natural disposition is as the visive faculty to make use of it Yet much of the Law of Nature is within us too But it is there only in genere objectivo signi Man 's own Nature his Reason Free will and Executive power are the most notable signs of his duty to God To which all Mercies Judgements and other signifying means belong § 5. The way that God doth by Nature oblige us is by laying such fundamenta from which our duty shall naturally result as from the signification of his Will § 6. These fundamenta are some of them unalterable while we have a being and some of them alterable And therefore some Laws of Nature are alterable and some unalterable accordingly As for instance Man is made a Rational free Agent and God is unchangeably his Rightfull Governour of infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness Therefore the nature of God and Man in via thus compared are the fundamentum from whence constantly resulteth our indispensable duty to love him trust him fear him and obey him But if our being or reason or free-will which are our essential Capacities cease our obligations cease cessante fundamento God hath made Man a sociable Creature and while he is in society the Law of Nature obligeth him to many things which he hath no obligation to when the society is dissolved As when a Parent Childe Wife or Neighbour dieth all our duties to them cease Nature by the position of many circumstances hath made Incest ordinarily a thing producing manifold evils and a sin against God And yet Nature so placed the children of Adam in other circumstances that the said Nature made that their duty to marry one another which in others would have been an unnatural thing Nature forbiddeth Parents to murder their children But when God the absolute Lord of life would that way try Abrahams obedience when he was sure that he had a supernatural command even Nature obliged him to obey it Nature forbiddeth men to rob each other of their proper goods But when the Owner of all things had given the Israelites the Egyptians goods and changed the propriety the fundamentum of their former natural obligation ceased Changes in natura rerum which are the foundation of our obligation may make changes in the obligations which before were natural But so far as Nature that Nature which foundeth duty is the same the duty remaineth still the same The contrary would be a plain contradiction § 7. The Authoritas Imperantis is the formall object of all obedience and so all our duty is formally duty to God as our Supream or to Men as his Officers But as to the Material object our Natural duties are either I. Towards God II. To our selves III. To others § 8. I. The prime duties of the Law of Nature are towards God and are our full consent to the three Relations of which two are mentioned before To be Gods Rational Creatures and not obliged to take him heartily for our Absolute Owner and Ruler is a Contradiction in Nature § 9. Mans Nature being what it is and Related thus to God and Gods Nature and Relations being as afore described Man is naturally obliged to take God to be what he is in all his Attributes forementioned cap. 5. and to suit his will and affections to God accordingly that is to take him to be omnipotent omniscient and most good most faithfull and most just c. and to believe him seek him trust him love him fear him obey him meditate on him to honour him and preferre him before all the World and this with all our Heart and might and to take our chiefest pleasure in it All this so evidently resulteth from the Nature of God and Man compared that I cannot perceive that it needeth proof or illustration § 10. It is a contradiction to Nature that any of this duty proper to God may be given to any other and that any Creature or Idol of our Imagination should be esteemed loved trusted obeyed or honoured as God For that were falshood in us injury to God and abuse of the Creature § 11. Nature requireth that Man having the gift of speech from God should imploy his Tongue in the Praise and service of his Maker This plainly resulteth from our own Nature and the use of the Tongue compared with or related to Gods Nature and perfections with his propriety in us and all that 's ours and his Government of us § 12. Seeing Man liveth in totall dependance upon God and in continual receivings from him Nature obligeth him to use his heart and tongue in holy desires express'd and exercised in Prayer and in returning thanks to his great Benefactor of which more anon For though God know all our sins and wants already yet the Tongue is fitted to confess our sins and to express our desires And by confessing and expressing a twofold capacity for mercy accreweth to us That is 1. Our own Humiliation is excited and increased by the said Confessions and our Desires and Love and Hope excited and increased by our own Petitions the tongue having a power to reflect back on the heart and the exercise of all good affections being the means of their increase 2. And a person that is found in the actual exercise of Repentance and holy Desire and Love is morally and in point of Justice a much fitter recipient for pardon and acceptance and other blessings than another is And it being proved by Nature that Prayer Confession and Thanksgiving hath so much usefulness to our good and to our further duty Nature will tell us that the tongue and heart should be thus imployed And therefore Nature teacheth all men in the World that believe there is a God to confess their sins to him and call upon him in their distress and to give him thanks for their receivings § 13. Seeing Societies as such are totally dependent upon God and mens gifts are communicative and Solemnities are operative Nature teacheth us that God ought to be solemnly acknowledged worshipped and honoured both in Families and in more solemn appointed assemblies It greatly affecteth our own hearts to praise
it that in effect it denieth that there is a God or pulleth him down as much as in the sinner lieth and it setteth up the Devil in his stead and calleth him God or maketh God to be such a one as the Devil is and also maketh an Idol of the sinner himself For it denieth God's Power Wisdom Goodness Propriety Sovereignty and Love his Truth and Holiness and Justice and maketh him on the contrary impotent unwise bad envious unholy false unjust and one that hath no authority to rule us with much more the like But a life of enmity rebellion and final impenitency which is the case of all that perish much more deserveth what ever humane nature can undergo § 30. He that consenteth not to God's Government is a Rebel and deserveth accordingly and he that consenteth to it consenteth to his Laws and consequently to the Penalty threatned and therefore if he break them he suffereth by his own consent and therefore cannot complain of wrong All that understand God's Government and Laws and consent to them are not only under the obligation of governing-governing-power but also of their own consent and it is justly supposed that they consented on good and rational grounds not knowing where they could be better on hopes of the benefits of the Government and the Reward they necessarily consented to the Penalties § 31. He that never consenteth to the Law and yet is under the obligation of it hath Life and Death the Blessing and the Curse Felicity and Misery set before him in the Law Felicity is annexed to obedience and misery to disobedience and the Law-giver telleth us that accordingly he will judge and execute and he offereth every man his choice He therefore that after this doth choose the sin which misery is annexed to doth choose the misery and refuse the happiness and therefore it is no wrong to cast him into misery though everlasting as long as he hath nothing but what he chose and loseth nothing but what he rejected and that with wilful obstinacy to the very last A sinner in this case hath nothing but blasphemy to say against the Justice of his Maker for what can he say He cannot say that his Maker had not Authority to make this Law for his authority was absolute He cannot say that it was too cruel hard and unjust a Law for it was made but to deter him and such as he from such sin to which he had no greater temptations than the toyish vanities of a fleshly life And he himself hath declared by the event that the Law was not terrible enough to deter him if it would not seem against so small and poor a bait he himself doth justifie the terribleness of it by his contempt God saith I threaten Hell to thee to keep thee from sin The sinner saith by his life and practice The threatning of Hell is not enough to keep me from sin And shall the same man say when execution cometh it is too great No sinner shall suffer any thing but what he chose himself in the causes of it If he say I did not believe that God was in good earnest and would do ath◠said this is but to blaspheme and say I took God for a liar and deceiver and a bad and unwise and impotent Governour If he say I did not know that sin even final impenitency in an ungodly life deserved so ill common reason and all the world will rise up against him and the light of nature will shew him to his face that all the forty points of malignity were in sin which I mentioned before and therefore that the Law of nature had a sufficient promulgation Having thus shew'd what punishment God may inflict without the least imputation of injustice let us next enquire of Reason what he will inflict § 32. When it is at God's choice whether he will annihilate a sinner or let him live in misery Reason telleth us that the latter is more suitable to the ends of Government because the living offendor will not only be still a spectacle in the eyes of others as a man hang'd up in chains but will also confess his folly and sin and his conscience will justifie his Judge and so God's Justice will be more glorious and useful to its ends That which is not is not seen nor heard the annihilated are out of sight And the mind of man is apt to think of a state of annihilation as that which is as a state of rest or ease and feeleth no harm and so is not terrible enough as shall be farther said anon The living sufferer therefore is rationally the fittest monument of God's Justice § 33. It must reasonably be expected that a Soul which is made apt to perpetual duration should perpetually endure and that the Soul enduring the misery also should endure seeing it was due by the Law of Nature as is proved Perpetual duration is necessary to no creature their Beings being but contingent and dependent on the will of God But perpetual duration of a dependent being is certain when the first Being doth declare his will that it shall be so and the natural way by which God declareth his will concerning the use of any thing is by the nature and usefulness of it because he maketh all things wisely and nothing in vain Therefore when he maketh the nature of an Angel or spiritual being apt to perpetual duration as being not mixt of separable Principles nor corruptible he thereby declareth his will for its duration because he gave it not that durable nature in vain Two Arguments therefore I now offer to prove that man's Soul is of perpetual duration 1. Because it is such in its operations and therefore in its essence as the superiour Spirits are which are so durable for they are but Intelligences and Free-agents fitted to love God and delight in him and praise him and so is man 2. Because as is fully proved before it is made to be happy in another life and that proveth that it dieth not with the Body and that proveth that its nature is incorruptible and that proveth that it shall be perpetual unless any sin should forfeit its being by way of penal deprivation and that is improbable both because God hath fitter ways of punishment and intimateth in its corruptible nature that this is not his intent and because the state of future reward is like to be a confirmed state § 34. Experience telleth the world that so great is the folly and obdurateness of man and the force of present sensual allurements that nothing less than a perpetual misery worse than annihilation is rationally sufficient to be the Penalty of that Law which is the instrument of governing the world and therefore it is certain that so much is in the Law and so much shall be executed Those thieves and murderers that have confirmed their infidelity and overcome all the expectations of another world will as boldly venture
was once as improbable as the Calling of the Jews is and yet it was done 3. And many of those Prophecies are hereby fulfilled it being not a worldly Kingdom as the carnal Jews imagined which the Prophets foretold of the Messiah but the spiritual Kingdom of a Saviour When the power and glory of the Roman Empire in its greatest height did submit and resign it self to Christ with many other Kingdoms of the world there was more of those Prophecies then fulfilled than selfishness will suffer the Jews to understand And the rest shall all be fulfilled in their season But as in all Sciences it is but a few of the extraordinarily wise who reach the most subtile and difficult points so it will be but a very few Christians who will understand the most difficult prophecies till the accomplishment interpret them Obj. XXIII But the difficulties are as great in the Doctrines as in the Prophecies Who is able to reconcile Gods Decrees foreknowledge and efficacious special Grace with mans Free-will and the righteousness of Gods Judgement and the reasonableness of his Precepts Promises and Threats How Gods Decrees are all fulfilled and in him we live and move and be and are not sufficient for a good thought of our selves but to believe to will and to do is given us and he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy and whom he will he hardeneth and it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth but of God that sheweth mercy And yet that he would not the death of a sinner but rather that he repent and live and that he would have all men saved and come to the knowledge of the truth and layeth all the blame of their misery on themselves Ans First consider these things apart and in themselves and then comparatively as they respect each other 1. Is it an incredible thing that all Being should be from the First Being and all Goodness from the Infinite Eternal Good and that nothing should be unknown to the infinite omniscient Wisdom and that nothing can overcome the Power of the Omnipotent or that he is certainly able to procure the accomplishment of all his own Will and that none shall disappoint his Purposes nor make him fall short of any of his Councils or Decrees Go no further now and do not by false or uncertain Doctrine make difficulties to your selves which God never made and then tell me whether any of this be doubtfull 2. On the other side is it incredible that Man is a rational free Agent and that he is a Creature governable by Laws and that God is his Ruler Law-giver and Judge and that his Laws must command and prohibit and the sanction contain rewards and punishments and that men should be judged righteously according to their works or that the Messengers of Christ should intreat and perswade men to obey and that they should be moved as men by motives of good or evil to themselves Is there any thing in this that is incredible or uncertain I think there is not And these difficulties will concern you nevertheless whether you are Christians or not They are harder points to Philosophers than to us and they have been their controversies before Christ came into the World They are points that belong to the natural part of Theology and not that which resteth only on supernatural Revelation and therefore this is nothing against Christ 2. But yet I will answer your question Who can reconcile these things 1. They can do much to the reconciling of them who can distinguish a meer Volition or Purpose or Decree from an efficacious pre-determining influx 2. And can distinguish between those effects which need a positive cause and purpose or decree and those nullities which having no cause but defective do need no positive purpose or decree 3. And can distinguish between the need we have of Medicinal Grace for holy actions and the need we have of common help for every action natural and free 4. And can distinguish between an absolute Volition and a limited Volition in tantum ad hoc and no further 5. They that can distinguish between mans Natural liberty of self-determination and his Civil liberty from restraint of Law and his moral liberty from vicious habits 6. They that can well difference mans Natural power or faculties from his moral power of good and holy disposition 7. They that know what a free Power is and how far the causer of that Power is or is not the cause of the act or its omission 8. They that can distinguish between those acts which God doth as our Owner or as our free Benefactor and those which he doth as Rector 9. And between those which he doth as Rector by his Legislative will antecedent to mens keeping or breaking of his Laws and by his Judicial and executive will as consequent to these acts of man 10. He that can distinguish between Gods method in giving both the first Call of the Gospel and the first internal Grace to receive it and of his giving the Grace of further sanctification justification and glory 11. And between the manner of his procuring our first faith and the procuring our following sanctification 12. And he that knoweth how easie it is with God to attain what he willeth without destroying the Liberty of our wills As a Miller can make the stream of water turn his Mill and grinde his Corn without altering any thing in the inclination of the water 13. And withall how incomprehensible the nature and manner of Gods operation is to Man and how transcendently it is above all Physical agency by corporeal contact or motion I say he that understandeth and can apply these distinctions can reconcile the Decrees and concourse of God with his Government and mans Free-will as farre as is necessary to the quieting of our understandings Obj. XXIV But the Christian Faith doth seem to be but Humane and not Divine in that it is to be resolved into the Credit of Men Even of those men who tell us that they saw Christs miracles and saw him risen and ascend and of those who saw the miracles of the Apostles and of those who tell us that the first Churches witness that they saw such things The certainty cannot exceed the weakest of the Premises And this is the argument The Doctrine which was attested by Miracles is of God But the Christian Doctrine was attested by Miracles Proved The spectators averred it to others who have transmitted the Testimony down to us So that you are no surer of the Doctrine than of the Miracles and no surer of the Miracles than of the Humane Testimony which hath delivered it to you Ans If you will be at the labour to read over what I have written before you shall finde a threefold testimony to Christ besides this of Miracles And you shall finde the Apostles testimony of Christs Miracles and Resurrection attested by more than a
lusts And nature it self doth abhor the notion when it is brought into the light and will hear him with some horrour who shall speak out and say God is not to be chiefly loved for himself nor as he is best in himself nor as my ultimate objective end but only to be loved next my self as a means to my felicity or pleasure as meat drink ease and sport and lust are And virtue or holiness is not to be loved chiefly for it self that is as it is the Image of God and pleasing to him but as it conduceth to my pleasure As Cicero excellently noteth there is a great deal of difference between these two To love vertue as vertue and so to take pleasure in it because it is virtue and To love virtue for pleasures sake more than for its own For he that doth so must say as Cicero chargeth Epicurus plainly to say that Luxury is not to be discommended if it be not unpleasant for the end is the measure and rule to judge of all the means If pleasure as pleasure be best then to him that so continues it to live more pleasedly in whoredom and drunkenness and theft and murder than in godliness and honesty it will be better so to do And virtue and lust or wickedness will stand in competition only in the point of pleasure And then which think you will have the greater party and what a case would mankind be in I am perswaded that the well studying the excellent discourse of Cicero on this point and the reasons which the Stoicks and the rest of the Philosophers give against the Plebeian Philosophers as Cicero calleth them may much conduce to help many Divines themselves to a righter understanding of the same controversie as in Theology they have otherwise worded it Whether God or our own felicity be most to be loved And yet without running into the fanatick extreme of separating the love of God and our selves and calling men to try whether for his glory they can be willing to be damned Only when you read the Philosopher saying that virtue in and for it self is to be loved as our felicity elucidate it by remembring that this is because that vertue in it self is the Image of God and by our felicity they mean the perfection of our natures in respect of the end for which we were made And that as the excellency of my knife or pen yea or my horse is not to be measured by their own pleasure but their usefulness to me because I am their end so is it as to man's perfection as he is made for God and related to him for all that he hath no need of us seeing he can be pleased in us Thus this Philosophical controversie is coincident with one of the greatest in Theologie Though I have displeased many Readers by making this Treatise swell so big by answering so many objections as I have done yet I know that many will expect that I should have made it much greater by answering 1. Abundance of particular objections from Scripture-difficulties 2. And many discourses of several sorts of persons who contradict some things which I have said But I supersede any further labour of that kind for these following reasons 1. It would fill many volumes to do it as the number and quality of the Objections do require 2. Those that require it are yet so lazie that they will not read this much which I have already written as esteeming it too long 3. They may find it done already by Commentators if they will have but the patience to peruse them 4. I have laid down that evidence for the main cause of GODLINESS and CHRISTIANITY by which he that well digesteth it will be enabled himself to defend it against abundance of cavils which I cannot have time to enumerate and answer 5. The scribles of self-conceited men are so tedious and every one so confident that his reasons are considerable and yet every one so impatient to be contradicted and confuted that it is endless to write against them and it is unprofitable to sober Readers as well as tedious to me and ungrateful to themselves To instance but in the last that came to my hands an Inquisitio in fidem Christianoram hujus seculi the name prefixed I so much honour that I will not mention it Page 3. he calleth confidence in errour by the name of certainty as if every man were certain that hath but ignorance enough to over-look all cause of doubting Page 13. He will not contend if you say that it is by divine faith that we believe the words to be true which are Gods and by humane faith by which we believe them to be the words of God He saith that Faith hath no degrees but is alway equal to it self to believe is to assent and to doubt is to suspend assent Ergo where there is the least doubt there is no faith and where there is no doubt there is the highest faith Ergo Faith is always in the highest and is never more or less And yet it may be called small when it is quasi nulla that quasi is to make up a gap in respect of the subject or at least hardly yielded and in regard of the object when few things are believed Page 26. He maketh the Calvinists to be Enthusiasts that is Fanaticks because they say that they know the Scripture by the Spirit as if subjectively we had no need of the Spirit to teach us the things of God and objectively the spirit of miracles and sanctification were not the notifying evidence or testimony of the truth of Christ The same name he vouchsafeth them that hold That the Scripture is known by universal tradition to be God's word and every mans own reason must tell him or discern the meaning of it And he concludeth that if every one may expound the Scripture even in fundamentals then every man may plead against all Magistrates in defence of murder or any other crime as a rational plea and say Why should you punish me for that which God hath bid me do As if God would have no reasonable creature but bruits only to be his subjects As if a man could knowingly obey a Law which he neither knoweth nor must know the meaning of and is bound to do he knoweth not what And as if the Kings subjects must not understand the meaning of the fifth Commandment nor of Rom. 13. Honour thy father and mother and Let every soul be subject to the higher powers and not resist Or as if Kings must govern only dogs and swine or might make murder adultery idolatry and perjury the duty of all their subjects when they pleased because none must judge of the meaning of God's Law by which they are forbidden or as if it were the only way to make men obedient to Kings and Parents to have no understanding that God commandeth any man to obey them nor to know any Law of God that doth
dearest friend before the will and interest of God § 13. Nor should the publick interest of States or Kingdoms be pleaded against his will and interest But yet we must take heed how we oppose or neglect this last especially because the will of God doth take most pleasure in the publick or common benefit of his creatures and therefore these two are very seldom separated nor ever at all as to their real good though as to carnal lower good it may so fall out All these are so plain that to stand to prove or illustrate them were but to be unnecessarily and unprofitably tedious § 14. It being a God of infinite Wisdom and Goodness as well as power who is our Owner his Title to us is a great consolation to the upright For as he hath taught men and bruits too to love their Own it intimateth that he will not despise his Own and therefore his interest in us is our comfort § 15. No man is capable of giving any thing properly to God but onely by obediential reddition of his own no nor to man but as God's Steward and according to our propriety secundum quid in respect to other Claimers CHAP. VIII II. Of GOD's Relation to Man as his Governour sect 1. GOD having made Man a rational free Agent and sociable among sensible Objects and out of sight of his invisible Creator and so infirm and defectible it followeth necessarily that he is a creature which must be governed by moral means and not only moved by natural necessitation as inanimates and bruits The thing that I am first to prove is That Man's Creator hath made him such a creature whose nature requireth a Government that he hath a necessity of Government and an aptitude to it By Government I mean the exercise of the moral means of Laws and Execution by a Ruler for the right ordering of the Subjects actions to the good of the Society and the honour of the Governour I distinguish Laws from all meer natural motions and necessitation for though analogically the Shepherd is said to rule his Sheep and the Rider his Horse yea and the Pilot his Ship and the Plow-man his Plow and the Archer his Arrow yet this is but equivocally called Government and is not that which we here mean which is the proposal of duty seconded with rewards or punishment for the neglects by those in authority for the right governing of those that are committed to their care and trust So that it is not all moral means neither which is called Government for the instruction or perswasion of an Equal is not such Laws and Judgment and Execution are the constitutive parts of Government But by Laws I mean the whole kind and not only written Laws nor those only which are made by Sovereign Rulers of Common-wealths which by excellency are called Laws but I mean The signification of the will of a Governour making the subjects duty and determining of Rewards to the obedient and punishments to the disobedient Or An authoritative constitution de debito officii praemii poenae for the ends of Government So that as Parents and Tutors and Masters do truly govern as well as Kings so they have truly Laws though not in such eminency as the Laws of Republicks The will of a Parent a Tutor or Master manifested concerning duty is truly a Law to a Child a Scholar or a Servant If any dislike the use of the word Law in so large a sense it sufficeth now for me to tell them in what sense I use it and so it will serve to the understanding of my mind I take it for such an Instrument of Government The parts of it are 1. The constituting of the debitum officii or what shall be due from the Subject 2. The constituting the debitum praemii vel poenae or what shall be due to the Subject which is in order to the promoting of obedience though as to the performances obedience may be in order to the reward Now that man is a creature made to be governed by such a proper moral Government I prove 1. The several parts of Government are necessary therefore Government is necessary From all the parts of Government to the whole is an unquestionable consequence It is necessary that man have Duty prescribed and imposed else man shall have nothing which he ought to do Take away Duty and we are good for nothing nor have any employment fit for reason And take away all Reward and Punishment and you take away Duty in effect experience teacheth us that it will not be done for a rational agent will have ends and motives for what he doth 2. From the imbecility of our younger state so weak is our infant understanding and so strong our sensitive inclination that if Parents should leave all their Children ungoverned abused Reason would make man worse than beasts 3. From the common infirmity and badness of all the world The wise are so few and the ignorant so many that if all the ignorant were left ungoverned to do what they list they would be like an Army of blind men in a fight or like a world of men bewildred in the dark What a confused loathsome spectacle would the world be and the rather because men are bad as well as foolish Would all the sensual vitious persons in the world be ordered like men without any Government by such as are wiser than themselves 4. From the power of sensitive objects The baits of sense are so numerous so near and so powerful that they would bear down reason in the most without the help of Laws nay Laws themselves even of God and Man do so little with the most as tell us what they would be without them 5. The variety of mens minds and interests and dispositions is such as that the world ungoverned would be utterly in confusion as many minds and ways as men No two men are in all things of the same apprehensions 6. From the nature of mans powers He is a noble creature and therefore hath answerable ends to be attain'd and therefore must have the conduct of answerable means He is a rational free Agent and therefore must have his End and Means proposed to his Reason and is not to be moved by Sense alone his chiefest End as well as his chief Governour being out of his sight 7. The experience of all mankind constraineth them to consent to this that Man is a creature made for Government Therefore even among Cannibals Parents govern their Children and Husbands govern their Wives and in all the rational world there are Rulers and Subjects Masters and Servants Tutors and Scholars which all are Governours or Governed Few men are to be found alive on earth who would have all men or any men save themselves ungoverned Otherwise Men would be worse to Men I say not than Serpents and Toads and Tygers are to one another but than any of them are to men
the flames of Troy that ript up his own Mother that he might see the place where once he lay Did Caligula think so Did Commodus Caracalla Heliogabalus think so Did the Spaniards think so by the Indians who are said by their own Writers to have murdered in forty two years space no less than fifty millions of them Did King Philip think so who put his own Son and Heir to death by the Inquisition besides so many thousands more in Spain and the Low Countreys by that and other wayes How full of such bloody instances is the World If it were a Tyrants interest that kept him under some moderation to the people of his own Dominions it might yet possibly leave him a bloody destroyer of other Nations in his Conquests The World hath not wanted men that think the lives of many thousands a little sacrifice to a proud design or furious passion and are no more troubled at it than a Pythagorean would be to kill a Bird. It hath had such as Sylla Messala Catiline and the Conquerours of Jerusalem who as Josephus saith crucified so many thousands till they wanted Crosses for men and place for Crosses besides the greater numbers famished Obj. But if Chief Governours be under no Law they are under Covenants by which they are obliged Answ What shall make their Covenants obligatory to their consciences if they be under no government of God The reason why mens Covenants bind them is because they are under the government of God who requireth all men to keep their Covenants and condemneth Covenant-breakers But if God had never commanded Covenant-keeping nor forbad Covenant-breaking they could never be matter of duty or sin So that this Doctrin that God hath made no Laws for man and is not his Governour doth leave all Soveraigns from under the least conscientious restraint from any acts of cruelty or injustice and tendeth to deliver up the world to be a sacrifice to their lusts when it is the government of the universal Soveraign that is their restraint § 9. VI. If God have not the Soveraignty over all the world then no man on earth can have any Governing Power But Princes and Rulers have a Governing Power Therefore the Soveraignty is in God The reason of the major is because Kings can have no power but what they receive from some or other there is no effect without a cause And if they receive it it is either from God or Man as the Original Not from Man for the people themselves have no governing power to use or give as to the government of Commonwealths for their personal power over themselves is of another species and cometh short of this in many respects as else-where I have proved And if it were otherwise yet they have nothing themselves but derivatively from God as is proved before and therefore they themselves must have their power from him from whom they are and have all that they possess But God cannot give that which he hath not himself either formally or eminently Therefore he hath governing power formally or eminently or else no Prince or Man or Angel can have any no more than they can have being or reason without him And though his power be transcendent his exercise of it must be according to the capacity of the subject and therefore morally by Laws and Executions So that as all things else in the creature are derived so is power And as in beings aut Deus aut nihil is an undeniable truth so as to governing power or Soveraignty either it is Primitively Supremely and Transcendently in God or there is none in any Prince or Parents for if they have it not from Him they can have none at all Obj. Governing by Laws is caused by humane impotency because man is not every where present nor of power to effect himself in and by others all the things which he commandeth But were man Omnipresent and Omnipotent as God is he would make all men do well and not command them to do it Therefore it is so in the Government of God Answ It is granted that man is impotent and God Omnipotent and Omnipresent and therefore that God could indeed do as is here intimated even make all men do well and not command it But 1. it is apparent that de facto he doth not so 2. And his wisdom being more eminently to be manifested in the work of Government than his Omnipotency doth shew us partly why he doth not so even because the sapiential way is more suitable to his ends and to the subject Creation did most eminently glorifie or manifest Omnipotency Government doth most eminently glorifie God's Omniscience or Wisdom as our Perfection or Glorification will most eminently manifest and glorifie his Love and Goodness Each Attribute shineth most eminently in its proper work and mans conceits must not confound this perfect order Yet let it be here noted that all this while I meddle not with the controversie of the Liberty of man's will and so whether God's sapiential government by Laws do operate also by necessitation and Physical causation as the natural motions of the Orbs or the artificial motions of an Engine I only argue that whether God thus operate by his Government by secret necessitation or not yet it is most certain that he governeth Morally and useth the Means of Doctrin Laws and Judgments which might consist with Physical necessitating efficacy in all that do obey indeed if God's wisdom and man's freedom of will did inferr nothing to the contrary But if it had been granted that all God's government is by Physical efficacy it would stand good nevertheless that Laws and Judgment are part of the means which he maketh so effectual But yet I shall go further in the next Argument § 10. VII Experience satisfieth all the rational world that there is de facto a course of Duty appointed by God for men which they do not eventually fulfil Therefore there is not only a Moral Government which is effectual but also which is separated from necessitating efficacy They that deny this and plead for Physical Government only must affirm that nothing is any man's Duty but what he actually performeth and that nothing is any man's sin which he doth or omitteth to do that is that there is no sin or moral evil in the world For all that God Physically effecteth is good and they suppose him to have no Law which commandeth any thing but what he Physically effecteth and he will not Physically effect that which he forbiddeth And if there be no such thing as moral evil or sin in the world then no man should fear any or avoid any Let but a man leave any thing undone if it be nourishing his children defending his King loving God or man and he may thence conclude that it never was his duty Let him but do any thing that he hath a mind to if it be killing Father or Mother or his Prince or Friend
and he may be sure that it is no sin because he hath done it for if God forbid it not it is no sin nay he may make it an effect of God's government But this consequence is so false and horrid that no Nation on earth receiveth it and Cannibals themselves abhor it who eat not their friends but strangers and enemies § 11. VIII If God be not the Governour of the world by Laws then no man need to fear or avoid any thing forbidden by the Laws of Man who can either keep it secret by Wit or keep himself from humane revenge by Power But the consequent is false therefore so is the Antecedent The reason of the consequence is evident because where no humane revenge is to be feared there no punishment at all is to be feared if God be no Governour of the world but those that can hide their actions by craft or make them good by power need not fear any humane revenge therefore they need to fear none at all upon the Atheists grounds And if that be so 1. How easie is it for cunning malice to burn a Town to kill a King to poison wife or children and to defraud a neighbour and never be discovered If this be so then Thieves Adulterers Traitors when they are detected have failed only in point of wit that they concealed it not and not in point of honesty and duty 2. And then any Rebel that can get enow to follow him hath as good a cause as the King that he rebelleth against and if he conquer he need not accuse himself of doing any wrong And then there will be nothing for conscience to blame any man for nor for one man to accuse another of but witlesness or impotency And then the Thief must suffer only for want of strength or cunning and not because he did any wrong § 12. IX If there be no Government by God there can be no true Propriety but Strength and he that is strongest hath right to all that he can lay hold on But the Consequent is false therefore so is the Antecedent The consequence is undeniable for if there be no Divine Government there is no Law but Humane and no man can have any Right besides Strength to make Laws for any other whomsoever For if God have no Government and Law he constituteth no Debitum vel Jus no Dueness or Right And man can have no Right to govern others if he have no Governour to give any If God do give Right to Govern he thereby maketh obedience to that Governour a duty and he that constituteth or instituteth Right and Duty governeth And if God give men No Right to Govern they can have none And then if Strength be all their Title any man that can get as much Strength doth get as good a Title and may seize upon the Lives the Lands and Estates of Prince or People and give Laws to the weaker as others before gave Laws to him And so there will utter confusion and misery be let in upon the world As in the Poet's description of the degenerate Age Vivitur ex raptu non hospes ab hospite tutus c. Reason would have nothing to say against strength the great Dog would have the best title to the bone Melior mihi dextera lingua est Dummodo pugnando superem tu vince loquendo Ovid. Met. The honest poor and peaceable would have such a peace with thieves and strong ones Cum pecore infirmo quae solet esse lupis Ovid. § 13. If God govern not the world then meer Communities are uncapable of Right or Wrong and no man is bound in duty to spare his brother's life or state But the Consequent is false therefore so is the Antecedent By a Community I mean a company of men that have yet set up no Government among them If God be not their Governour such have none at all and so are under no moral obligation for Covenants themselves cannot bind if there be no superiour obligation requiring man to stand to his Covenants Obj. Then God's Covenants to man do not bind him Answ Not at all by proper obligation as if it were his Duty to keep them and his Sin to break them for God is not capable of duty or sin But yet improperly they may be called Obligations because they are the demonstrations of his Will which the perfection of his Nature will not let him violate It would be an imperfection if God should break promise though not a sin or crime And therefore it is impossible for God to lie Obj. But suppose we say that Man is under no other obligations than a Beast and that among men there is no proper right or wrong duty or fault yet men by confederacies without any other Government would settle Rules for the safety of cohabitation and converse and for love of themselves would forbear wronging others And this is all the Law of Nature that Man hath above Bruits Answ Those Confederacies would no further oblige them than their Interest required them to observe them Still by this rule a man is left free to kill wife and children if he be weary of them which no neighbour being wronged by none will seem obliged to revenge still he that is the stronger is left to do his worst without fault to seize upon other mens estates and to depose Kings and destroy them and all the world would be in a state of war Or if self-interest keep some quiet for a time it would be but till they had strength and opportunity to do otherwise He is not fit for humane society who would tell all about him I take my self free to defraud and murder any of you as soon as my own safety and interest will allow it me And no man that thus taketh a man for a beast can expect any better usage than a beast himself any further than self-love shall restrain others from abusing him nor can he plead any better title to his estate nor exemption from the violence of the stronger And it will also follow that honesty is nothing but self-preserving policy and that blasphemy and impiety against God need not be feared or avoided nor any thing as a fault but only as a folly exposing the person himself to danger Incest Perjury Lying might be impudencies but not any crimes Obj. If you supposed them in God they would be but imperfections and not crimes and why should you judge othewise of them in Man Answ Because the absolute perfection of his Nature is instead of a Law to God who hath no Superiour But man hath a Superiour and hath an imperfect nature which is therefore to be regulated by the wisdom and will of that perfect Superiour And moreover if Man have reason and wisdom above a Beast which maketh him capable of knowing Right and Wrong and of being moved by the things that are evident to reason though not to sense and if he
From the specifick nature of Man as a Rational free sociaile Creature he is by immediate Resultancy Gubernandus and being such his Creator remotely for his Infinite Perfections and sole aptitude and proximately because he is Mans absolute Owner is by Resultancy his rightfull Governour And that he neglecteth not this his Right but actually Governeth him appeareth in the very making man such and continuing him such as is made to be Governed as also in his actual Laws and Judgements This is the true and plain resolution of the Question of the Title of God to his Kingdom or fundamentum of the Relation of Universal King § 19. Humane Government is an Ordinance of God and Humane Governours are his Officers as he is supream And he hath not left it free to the World whether they will live in governed Societies or not That Humane Government is appointed by God appeareth thus 1. In that the light of Nature teacheth it all the World 2. In that God hath put into mans Nature a necessity of it and therefore signified his will concerning it It is needfull to the very lives of men and to their highest perfections order and attainments If Parents did not govern Children and Teachers their Scholars and Masters their Servants and Princes their Subjects the World would be as a Wilderness of wilde beasts and men would not live like men according to their natural capacities I deny not but some one or few by necessity or some extraordinary circumstances may be exempted from this obligation by being uncapable of the benefit being cast into a Wilderness or such like place where the benefit of Government is not to be had But that 's nothing to the commoner case of Mankinde As Marriage is indifferent to those individuals that need not the benefits of it but it is not lawfull for the World of Mankinde to forbear procreation to the extinction of it self § 20. Therefore as all Rulers receive their Power from him and hold it in dependance on him so must they finally use it for him even for his will and interest which they must principally intend He that is the Original of Power must needs be the End He that giveth it to man doth give it for the accomplishment of his own Will It is held in pure subordination to him and so it must be used or it is abused § 21. Therefore no man can have any Power against God or his Laws or Interest For he giveth not Power against Himself That is he giveth no man Right authority or commission to displease him by the breaking of his Laws for that is a contradiction or chargeth his Laws with contradiction Yet must not any Subjects make this a pretence to deny any just obedience to their Rulers or to rebell against them on supposition that their Government is against God For as private men are not made Publick Judges of the interest of God but only private discerners in order to their own obedience to him so may that Government be for God in the main which is against him in some few particulars § 22. The Highest Duty of Man is to Him who is the Highest And the greatest Crime is that which is committed against the greatest Authority This is suâ luce so evident that it needs no proof formally the chief obedience is due to the chief Governour To a King rather than to a Justice of Peace or Constable And consequently the greatest sin is against him If God be above man so is duty to God and sin against God the greatest in both kinds § 23. Therefore there is Good and Evil which respecteth God and are called Holiness and Sin which are incomparably greater than Good and Evil so called from respect to any Creatures whether Individuals or Societies Therefore they that know no Good but that which is so called from its respect to mans commodity or benefit nor no Evil but that which is so called from its respect to the hurt of Creatures do not know God nor his Relation to his works but make Gods of themselves and accordingly judge of Good and Evil. § 24. The Consciences of men do secretly accuse them or excuse them according to this sort of Good or Evil. When men have wrangled against Religion never so long there are very few so blinde and bad in whom God hath not a resident witness called Conscience which secretly telleth a man that he doth well or ill as he keepeth or breaketh the Laws of Nature and that with respect to the Soveraign Law-giver and not only to the good or hurt of man As Conscience doth not accuse a man for being poor or sick or wronged by another though about these we may have also inward trouble so it doth not justifie him for his Prosperity in the World though it may be laid asleep and quieted by such means But it is for Morall Good or Evil that Conscience doth accuse or justifie If I make my self poor wilfully my Conscience will trouble me for the wilful fault and breed in me repentance and remorse And so it will if I hurt or impoverish my neighbour But if I hurt my self or neighbour unavoidably without any fault of mine I am sorry for it but my Conscience will not accuse or condemn me for it § 25. This power of Conscience causeth all the World to praise or dispraise men according to this Moral Good or Evil. Mark but the Infidels themselves or any whom Vice hath turned into Monsters and they will commend men upon the account of that inward sincerity and honesty which God only can make Laws for and dispraise men for the contrary If you say that they do this only because such virtues make men fit for humane converse and profitable or not hurtfull to one another I answer we are not enquiring of the final cause but the formal Though they praise sincere and honest men and those that are loving compassionate kinde and dispraise dissemblers malicious and men of hurtfull dispositions yet you may observe that they speak not of these only as usefull or hurtfull qualities but as morall good or evil as things that men ought or ought not to do which they are bound to do or not do by some obligation And what Obligation can make it any mans duty if there be no Law of God in Nature for it when it is out of the reach of the Laws of men Mark Heathens and Infidels and Atheists in their talk and you shall hear them praise or dispraise men for some things which intimate a Divine Obligation which sheweth that the Conscience of the World beareth witness to the supream universal Government of God No man who believeth that there is a God can believe that the actions of his rational creatures have no relation to him or that the good or evil of them which is the result of their relation to God can be of less or lower consideration than their relation to themselves or one
knoweth and regardeth all things For can he be either ignorant forgetful or mindless of that which he made and still doth so conserve as to continue a kind of Creation of it His Omnipotent Will which gave it a being doth still continue it should he withdraw his active sustentation it would turn all not only to confusion but to nothing And doth he not know and regard what is continually as in his hand or by continual volition produced or maintained by him He is the universal Cause of all the agency and motion in the world in him we Live Move and Be and can he be ignorant or regardless of what he doth Why will he make maintain and move that which he doth not regard 5. His Relation of Owner proveth his regard all things are his Own 6. And his Relation of a Governour proveth his regard and his actual government of Man and all his actions For he taketh not on him a vain Relation and he that maketh Laws for every person and action doth regard and govern every person and action But so doth God Ergo. § 30. Those who think God doth nothing to all the rest of the world but by those noblest creatures which are next him and that he hath committed the government of all the rest of the world to the Intelligences of the first Order cannot without blindness and contradiction deny that he is still Himself no less the actual Mover and Governour of all than if he used no Officer or Instrument at all For 1. God ceased not himself to be Omnipresent Omniscient Omnipotent or most Benign when he gave that supposed Power to those Instruments 2. He made them and ordered them under Him through plenitude of Goodness delighting to communicate Power and Dignity as well as Being to his Creatures and not through impotency or insufficiency to supply any defect in his own Government and to help him He useth them to honour them and not to dishonour himself He gave away from himself no degree of Perfection nor deprived himself of the smallest part of Honour which he communicateth to them but honoureth himself in the appearance of his Perfections by the said Communications As God can do that by himself without the Creature which he causeth the Creature to do as to move illuminate and beat the lower parts without the Sun as well as with it or any thing which importeth not impotency or contradiction for he ceased not to be omnipotent so that which he doth by any Creature is as truly and fully done by Himself as if there were no created instrument or cause in it For that Creature which is nothing of it self and hath not any Being but in full dependance on its Maker can have no action of it self but in full dependance upon him what ever it doth it doth by him though as to the specifying comparison why this rather than that God hath given men a power with liberty yet the Action as an Action being from the Power which was totally from him is so it self There can be no less of God's agency in any action because he doth it by a Creature than if he did it without though there be more of the Creatures there is no less of his His communication of Power is not by discerption or division and diminution of his own He that knoweth what a Creator and total first Cause is needs no other proof of this Men indeed communicate power to their Officers through their own insufficiency to be their helpers and supply the want of their presence or action but so doth not God Therefore if Angels or Intelligences govern and move all inferiour things they are all governed and moved no less certainly proximately honourably by God himself than if he had never used such a subordinate Agent and that immediatione essentiae virtutis immediately though not so immediately as to use no honourary second cause § 31. Justice is an Attribute of God as GOVERNOVR by which he maketh equal Laws and giveth all their due according to them or judgeth them righteously according to his Laws for the ends of Government As Justice is conceived of in God according to the image in Man which we call the Virtue or Habit of Justice so it is his eternal Nature being nothing else but the perfection of his infinite Wisdom and his Will or Goodness as respecting a Kingdom of Subjects as possible and future For he may so be called JUST that hath no Kingdom because he hath that Virtue which would do Justice if he had a Kingdom But as JUSTICE is taken either for the exercise of righteous Government or for the honourable Relation and Title of one that doth so exercise it that is of an actually Just Governour so formally and denominatively it is an Attribute of God which is not Eternal but subsequent to his Relation of a King or Governour He that is not a Governour is not a just Governour A negatione est secundi adjecti ad negationem est tertii valet argumentum The Law is Norma Officii Judicii He that maketh a Law thereby telleth his Subjects that according to this they must live and according to this they must be judged Indeed the immediate sense of the words of a Law as such is not to be taken as de Eventu but de Debito He that saith Thou shalt not murder saith not Eventually it shall not come to pass that thou shalt not murder but It shall be thy Duty not to do it And he that saith If thou murder thou shalt be put to death doth primarily in the sense of the words themselves mean no more but Death shall be thy due But in that he declareth that he will justly govern according to this Law therefore he meaneth secondarily and consequently that ordinarily he will give to all their due In what cases the Letter and nearest sense of a Law may be dispensed with or the Law-giver reserveth a liberty of dispensation to himself belongeth not to this place to be disputed CHAP. IX II. Of Man's Subjection to God or Relation to him as our Governour § 1. MAn being made thus a Rational free Agent and sociable to be governed and God being his Rightful Governour is immediately related to God as his Subject as to Right and Obligation There is no Soveraign without a Subject Subjection is our Relation to our Governour or else our consent to that Relation In the former sense we take it here A Subject is one that is bound to obey another as his Ruler He that is a Subject by Right and Obligation and yet doth not consent and actually subject himself to his rightful Governour is a Rebel There cannot be greater obligations to subjection imagined by a created understanding than the Rational Creature hath to God § 2. All men are obliged to consent to this subjection and to give up themselves absolutely to the government of God God's absolute propriety in us
it Accordingly while we see God but in this Glass we must conceive that his Principle of Vnderstanding and Power stand in the foresaid order as to his WILL and his Omnipotence and Omniscience to that eminently-moral Goodness which is the perfection of his will The natural goodness of his Essence filling all Therefore here note that this Attribute of God his GOODNESS doth make Him our Chief Good in a two-fold respect both EFFICIENTLY and FINALLY In some sort it is so with the other Attributes His Power is Efficiently the spring of our being and actions and finally and objectively it terminateth our submission and our trust His Wisdom is the principle of his Laws and also the object and end of our enquiries and understandings But his Goodness is the EFFICIENT of all our good in its perfection of causality and that END of our Souls which is commonly called ULTIMATE ULTIMUS So that to submit to his Power and to be ruled by his Wisdom is as I may say initially our end But to be pleasing to his good-will and to be pleased in his good-will that is to Love Him and to be beloved by Him is the absolute perfection and end of man Therefore under this his Attribute of Goodness God is to be spoken of both as our BENEFACTOR and our END which is to be indeed our summum bonum § 1. Man hath his Being and all the good which he possesseth from God as the sole first Efficient by Creation § 2. Therefore God alone is the Vniversal Grand BENEFACTOR of the world besides whom they have no other but meerly subordinate to him No creature can give us any thing which is originally its own having nothing but what it hath received from God Therefore it is no more to us but either a gift of God or a Messenger to bring us his gift they have nothing themselves but what they have received nor have we any sort of Good either Natural Moral of Mind or Body or Fortune or Friends but what is totally from the Bounty of our Creator and as totally from him as if no creature had ever been his instrument § 3. As God's Goodness is that by which he communicateth Being and all Good to all his Creatures and is his most completive Attribute in point of Efficiency so is it that Attribute which is in genere causae finalis the finis ultimate ultimus of all his works God can himself have no ultimate end but Himself and his rational creatures can have no other lawful ultimate End And in Himself it is his Goodness which is completely and ultimately that End Here I am to shew I. That God himself can have no ultimate end but Himself II. That Man should have no other III. That God as in his Goodness is ultimate ultimus the End of Man I. 1. That which is most Beloved of God is his ultimate End but God Himself is most beloved of Himself Therefore he is his own ultimate End The reason of the major Proposition is Because to be the ultimate end and to be maxime amatum is all one Finis quaerentis hath respect to the Means of attainment and is that cujus amore media eliguntur applicantur This God is not capable of speaking in propriety because he never wanteth his End Finis fruitionis is that which amando fruimur which we love complacentially in full attainment And so God doth still enjoy his end and to have it in Love is to enjoy it The Minor is past controversie Obj. But if God have not finem quaerentis then in every instant he enjoyeth his end and if so then he useth no means at all for what need any means be used for that end which is not sought but still enjoyed And consequently where there is no means there is no end Answ As finis signifieth nothing but effectum viz. perfectionem operis which is but finis terminativus so it is not always at present attained and God may be said to use means that is subordinate efficients or instruments to accomplish it But as it signifieth causam finalem scil cujus amore res fit so far as it may without all imperfection be ascribed to him he must be said continually to enjoy it And yet to use means for it but not as wanting it but in the same instant using and enjoying that is He constantly communicateth himself to his creatures and constantly loveth himself so communicated He is the first efficient and ultimate end without any interposing instant of Time were Eternity divisible but in order of Nature he is the Efficient before he is the End enjoyed but not before the End intended He still sendeth forth the beams of his own Glory and still taketh pleasure in them so sent forth His works may be increased and attain perfection called finem operis by some but his Complacency is not increased or perfected in his works but is always perfect As if the Sun took constant pleasure in its own emitted light and heat though the effects of both on things below were most various God is still pleased in that which still is in all his own works though his works may grow up to more perfection Or if any think fit to say that God doth quaerere finem and that he may enjoy more of it at one time than another yet must he confess that nothing below the complacency of his own will in his own emitted beams of Glory shining in his works is this his ultimate end 2. That which is the Begining must be the End But God is the Beginning of all his works therefore he is the End of all He himself hath no Beginning or Efficient and consequently no final cause of himself but his works have himself for the Efficient and for their End that is He that made them intended in the making of them that they should be illustrious with his communicated beams of Glory and thereby amiable to his will and should all serve to his complacency If the End were lower than the Beginning there would be no proportion and the Agent would sink down below himself 3. If any thing besides God were his ultimate End it must thereby be in part Deifi'd or his actions debased by the lowness of the End but these are impossibilities The Actions are no nobler than their End and the End is more noble than the Means as such 4. The ultimate End is the most amiable and delectable The Creature is not to God the most amiable and delectable Therefore the Creature is not his ultimate end The first Argument was from the Act this from the Object 5. The ultimate end is that in which the Agent doth finally acquiesce God doth not finally acquiesce in any creature Therefore no creature is his ultimate end 6. That which is God's ultimate End is loved simply for it self and not as a means to any higher end The Creature is not loved by him simply for it self
what each part should be according to the office and order of its place And 3. doth not your own experience reprehend your own complaint as guilty of contradiction You would have all things fitted to your particular interest or else you think God is not good enough to you and may not every other creature say the same as justly as you And then how would you have a Horse to carry you an Ox to plow for you a Dog to hunt for you a Hare or Partridge to be hunted yea a bit of flesh to nourish you yea or the fruit of trees and plants yea or the earth to bear you or the air to breath in or the water to refresh you For every one of these might expect to be advanced to be as high in sensual pleasure as you He that compareth as aforesaid the Elements and Orbs which have no sense with a Worm that hath it will think that sense hath blinded reason when it is so overvalued as to be thought the most excellent thing or a meet measure of the goodness of the Creator 4. Most of the calamities of the Rational creature which you mention are sin and the fruits of sin and when Man bringeth in sin it is good that God should bring in punishment It is an act of Justice and declareth his Holiness and warneth others Therefore all your complaints against these penal evils should be turned only against the sinner and all should be turned to the praise of the righteous Governour of the world 5. And as for the sin it self which hath depraved the world as fouly as you describe it it is none of the work of God at all If you say that he might have prevented it if he had pleased I answer He hath declared his detestation of it as our Ruler he hath forbidden it he deterreth men from it by his sorest threatnings he allureth them from it by his richest promises of reward he appointeth Kings and Magistrates to suppress it by corporal penalties This and much more he doth against it and more he could do which should prove effectual but his wisdom saw it not meet nor conducible to the glory of the Universe to make all Moral Agents of one size any more than all Natural Agents and therefore he made not man indefectible Do you think that a Rational creature with free-will being the Lord of its own acts and a self-determining Principle to act without force is not a thing which God may make and take delight in as well as a Watch-maker taketh delight to make a Clock that shall go of it self without his continued motion and the longer he can make it go without him and so the liker to himself the more excellent he thinks his work If God may make such a free-agent then is it no impeachment to his goodness if it abuse its freedom unto sin especially when he will over-rule even that sin so far as to bring good out of it by accident And lastly as for all the objections from sin and misery against God's goodness I answer you with those Questions Do you know what number the holy and glorious Angels are in comparison both of wicked men and Devils Whether they may not be ten thousand to one Do you know how many thousand fixed Stars there are besides Planets Do you know whether they are all Suns and how much bigger they are than the Earth and how much more glorious Do you know whether they are all inhabited or not when you see almost no place on Earth uninhabited not so much as Water and Air Do you know whether those thousands of more glorious Orbs have not inhabitants answerable to their greatness and glory beyond the inhabitants of this darker Orb Do you know whether sin and sorrow be not kept out there and confined to this and some few such obscurer receptacles Do you know the degrees of holiness and Glory which those superiour Inhabitants possess And do you know that all these things set together the demonstration of Gods goodness by the way of Beneficence is not ten thousand times beyond the demonstrations of it in the way of Justice and all the other sorrows that you complain of Till you know all these do not think your selves meet from your sensible troubles to argue against that Infinite goodness which demonstrateth it self so unquestionably to all by all the Goodness of the whole Creation I may boldly then conclude that GOD is OUR FATHER our CHIEF GOOD our CHIEF BENEFACTOR and ULTIMATE END And so that in sensu plenissimo THERE IS A GOD that word comprehending both the foresaid Trinity of Principles in the Unity of his Essence and the Trinity of Relations in the Unity of the Relation of our CREATOR CHAP. XII III. Of Man's Relation to GOD as he is our FATHER or our Chief Good and of our Duty in that Relation § 1. GOD being to Man Efficiently and finally his Chief yea his Total Good as is declared it must needs follow that Man is by immediate resultancy related to Him as his Total Beneficiary and Recipient of his benefits and oweth him all that which Goodness conjunct with Soveraignty and Dominion can oblige him to Whether all Obligation which is truly Moral to a Duty do arise from Soveraignty and Rule and belong to us as Subjects only in the neerest formal sense Or whether Benefits simply without any respect to Government and Subjection may be said to oblige to Moral Duty as such is a Question that I am not concerned to determine as long as God is both Governour and Benefactor and his Government may give the formal moral obligation as his Benefits provide the greatest Materials of the Duty Though this much I may say to it that I cannot see but the Duty of a Beneficiary as such may be called moral as well as the Duty of a Subject as such And if it were supposed that two men were absolutely equals as to any subjection and that one of them should by kindness exceedingly oblige the other all will acknowledge ingratitude to be an unnatural thing and why that vice may not be called properly morall in a rational free agent I am not yet convinced You will say It 's true but that is because that both those men are Subjects to God whose Law obligeth them both to Gratitude and therefore Ingratitude is a sin only as against the Law of God in Nature To which I reply that I grant Gods Law of Nature maketh Ingratitude a sin and I grant that a Law is properly the instrument of a Governour as such and so as Ingratitude is the violation of a Law it is only a sin against Government as such But I question whether as Love is somewhat different from Wisdom and Power and as a Benefactor and an attractive good hath the highest and a peculiar kinde of obligation so there be not something put by God into our Nature which though it be not formally a Law
powerful that in most great temptations it would prevail They would venture upon lying and perjury rather than lose their liberty or livelihood or reputation They would do any thing which the Rulers bid them or any one that is stronger than they rather than suffer much for their innocency I think they would not scramble much for riches or high places because a quiet life best pleaseth them but if they had a fancy to any delightful seat or pleasant accommodation they would stretch their consciences hard to get it And to escape poverty and suffering and death they would do I know not what And if their interest required them to do another mischief in order to the publick good for revenge I suppose them not much enclined to they would be as Brutus's and would be confident of the success of subtil and concealed enterprises they would no further resist any great temptation to please their appetites in meats and drinks or their flesh in lust or ease and sports and gaming and such vain pastimes than some other carnal interest contradicting did forbid them And though naturally some men prefer Knowledge before all worldly pleasures yet considering how short a time they should be the better for it and how many toilsome hours they must lay out for it they would rather let it go and take up with the ease and pleasure of the flesh This I fear would be their life for when all the comforts of this life of flesh are laid in the one end of the ballance what should weigh them down but something greater So that if some little restraint of villany might be made by lower motives I appeal to the conscience of the Reader whether he thinks that the fore-proved duties of Resignation Obedience and Love to God above all would ever be performed by any considerable number at least if they knew that they had no life to live but this 2. Yea no tolerable Government at all could be kept up I speak not of God's Physical motion by Omnipotency For 1. The Rulers of the world that have none above them would have little or no restraint and their examples would form the people to all abomination If they feared insurrections they would oppress them the more to disable them And what a world must it be when Lust is the Law to all the Governours And the people would have nothing but the hopes and fears of temporal good or evil to restrain them from any Treason or Rebellion or villany And all those that Princes cannot please would plot revenge or play their game another way and subtil men would think it easie to poison or murder secretly Princes and Nobles and any enemy that stood in the way of their own designs if once they were out of fear of a life to come 3. And all secret villany would be committed without fear secret adulteries theft lying perjury and common honesty could not be maintained for every man's self-interest would be his Law and prevail against all the principles of honesty And all that men would strive for would be either to strengthen themselves in their wickedness that they might be out of fear of humane Justice or else to hide it from the cognisance of man Thus would the world be turned into a resemblance of Hell and men be as much worse than wild beast as their natures were better which are corrupted and all would be in wickedness and confusion without the hopes and fears of another life Obj. But in all this you argue against experience Hath there not been Government and order kept up among Heathens and is there not a Government at this day in all the Kingdoms and Common-wealths throughout the world Answ In all this I speak according to experience For 1. Almost all the world believe a life to come all the Christians all the Mahometans and all the Jews and almost all or most of the known Idolaters and Heathens their very Idolatry intimateth this when they number their deceased Heroes with their gods And though the power of this belief is debilitated with the most and therefore piety and virtue proportionably perisheth yet that common dull belief of it which they have being in a business of unspeakable consequence doth restrain them so far as they are restrained 2. Those that believe it not are yet in an uncertainty and the possibility of rewards and punishments hereafter keepeth up much of the order that is left 3. Those few Countries which believe that there is no life to come or rather those persons in some Countries do proportionably increase or excel in wickedness they give up themselves to sensuality and lusts to pride and covetousness and revenge and cruelty and are usually worse than others as their belief is worse what maketh Cannibals more savage than other people What made a Nero a Heliogabalus c. such swine what made Rome it self at that pass that Seneca saith more died by poison of servants hands and secret murders than by Kings even in days of such great and common cruelty All was because mens consciences were from under the hopes and fears of another life and if all were so then all would live accordingly But it is another kind of life which the Law of God in Nature doth enjoyn us it is another kind of life which I before proved to be all mens duty and whether the world have sufficient means and motives to such a life and could be governed but like men without the hopes and fears of futurity let sober and considerate reason judge Obj. Can it be any worse then it is already what vice or villany doth not every where abound for all the belief of a life to come Answ If it be so bad for all that belief what would it be without if the enervating of it by the lusts of the flesh do loose the reins and leave the world in so much wickedness what would it be if their hopes and fears of another life were gone Now men have a secret witness in their breasts which checketh and restraineth them Now they have Kings and Rulers who having some belief of a life to come do form their Laws accordingly and govern the common people with some respect to that belief Now there are many through the mercy of God who are serious in that belief and live accordingly who are instructors restraints and examples to the rest And from these is that order which is kept up in the world But if all were as those few that have overcome this belief the world would be a Wilderness of savage Beasts and would be so full of impiety villany persidiousness bloodiness and all confusion that we should think it a greater sign of goodness in God to destroy it than to continue it and should think of his Government according to the effects or should hardly believe he govern'd it at all I come now to prove the consequence of the Major Proposition
whether there be any such or not Because he is not made for any life but this And if God had made Man for no more he would have disposed and obliged him no further We have an understanding to know it and thoughts and hopes and fears and cares about it which are not all in vain and we are plainly in reason obliged to this and more than we do and that Obligation is not vain § 13. XIII If there were no Life of Retribution hereafter Man were more vain and miserable than the Bruits by far and his Reason would but more delude him and torment him But the Consequent is absurd Ergo so is the Antecedent The Major is easily proved by our great experience for the world consisteth partly of men that believe another life and partly of them that do not and Reason maketh them both the more miserable For the former sort which is the most of the world their Reason telleth them that it is their duty to labour for a happiness hereafter and to fear and prevent a future misery and so their expectation would be their meer delusion and their lives would be all spent and ordered in delusion Like a company of men that should run up and down to prepare for a transplantation into the Moon and should cut down timber to build there and provide a stock of cattle to store the grounds there and buy and sell Lands there such would be the life of man in preparing for another world and he would be under a double calamity One by all this fruitless labour and another by his fear of future misery if his labour by temptations should be frustrate and he should miscarry To have Reason to lead a man in such a delusory life and to torment him with the fears of what may befall him after death is sure to be by reason more unhappy than the beasts that have none of this And for the Atheists they are more unhappy too so far as they are rational and considerate For they have no more happiness than the beasts to comfort them while they look for none hereafter and they have in all the way the foresight of their end they fore-know their great probability of sickness and painful tormenting diseases they fore-know the certainty of their death they know how all their sport and pleasure will end and leave them in dolour and how their corps must be rotting and turn to dust they fore-see abundance of crosses in their way they are troubled with cares for the time to come A beast hath none of this fore-knowledge and none of the fore-thoughts of pain or dying but only fearfully flieth from a present danger Moreover the poor Atheist having no certainty of the truth of his own opinion that there is no other life is oft haunted with fears of it and especially when approaching death doth awake both his reason and his fears he then thinks O what if there should be another world where I must live in misery for my sin In despight of him some such fears will haunt him Judge then whether the use of reason be not to make man a more deluded and tormented creature than the bruits if so be there were no life after this But this cannot stand with the methods of our Creator To give us so great an excellency of nature to make us more vain and unhappy than the beasts When he maketh a creature capable and fit for higher things he declareth that he intendeth him for higher things Obj. But even here we have a higher kind of work and pleasure than the Bruits we rule them and they serve us we dwell in Cities and Societies and make provision for the time to come Answ Those Bruits that dwell in Woods and Desarts serve us not and our ruling them is a small addition to our felicity Pride it self can take little pleasure in being the Master of Dogs and Cats Rule doth but adde to care and trouble caeteris paribus it is an easier life to be ruled than to rule And if we take away their lives it is no more than we must undergo our selves and the violent death which we put them too hath usually less pain than our languishing age and sickness and natural death And it is as pleasant to a Bird to dwell in her nest as to us to dwell in Cities and Palaces and they sing as merrily in their way of converse as we in our troublesome Kingdoms and Societies If present pleasure be the highest of our hopes they seem to have as much as we or if there be any difference it is counter-ballanced by the twenty-fold more cares and fears and labours and mental troubles which we are more liable to And our knowledge doth but encrease our sorrow of which next § 14. XIV If there were no life of Retribution the wiser any man were the more miserable would he be and knowledge would be their plague and ignorance the way to their greatest pleasure But the consequence is absurd Ergo so is the antecedent The reason of the consequence is manifest in what is said the Ignorant have nothing to disturb them in their sensual delights The liker to beasts they can be to eat and drink and play and satisfie every lust and never think of a reckoning or of death it self the more uninterrupted would be their delights the fore-thoughts of death or any change would not disturb them their folly which maketh them over-value all the matters of the flesh would encrease their pleasure and felicity for things delight men as they are esteemed rather than as indeed they are But the more wise and knowing men would always see vanity and vexation written upon all the treasures and pleasures of the world and in the midst of their delights would fore-see death coming to cut them off and bring them to a dolorous end So that undoubtedly the most knowing would be the most miserable and though Nature delight in knowing much it would but let in an inundation of vexatious passions on the mind But Knowledge is so great a gift of God and Ignorance so great a blemish unto Nature that it is not by sober reason to be believed that so noble a gift should be given us as a plague and so great a plague and shame of nature as ignorance is should be a blessing or felicity § 15. XV. If the Kings and temporal Governours of the world do extend their Rewards and Punishments as far as to temporal prosperity and adversity life and death in respect to the present ends of Government and this justly then is it meet and just that the Universal King extend his benefits and punishments much further for good or evil as they have respect unto his own Laws and Honour But the antecedent is true Ergo so is the consequent Kings justly take away mens lives for Treason They that look but to the present temporal good or hurt of the Common-wealth do think
that no temporal punishment or reward can be too great for some crimes and for some atchievments Read but the Statute-books and this will be soon found And that the offences which are against the Infinite Majesty deserve incomparably sorer punishments than any against men as such is past all question As also that love and fidelity and duty to God is incomparably more laudable § 16. XVI If there were no life of retribution after this it would follow that man is more to be feared and obeyed than God and so hath the far greater and higher hand in the Moral Government of the world But the consequent is absurd and blasphemous Ergo so is the Antecedent The argument is clear and past all contradiction The reason of the Major or consequence is Because though God can destroy any wicked man at his pleasure yet all the world's experience sheweth us that ordinarily in this life he doth no such things If a strange judgment overtake some wicked man it is an unusual thing and next to a miracle And usually all things come alike to all the good and the bad die of the same disease the deceitful and the wicked prosper in the world as much as others if either suffer more usually it is the best Videtis quam prospera navigatio à Diis datur sacrilegis saith Dionysius Thunder-bolts strike so few that it is scarce rational much to fear them If one fall under some extraordinary judgement many hundred scape But on the other side Kings and States do ordinarily do execution on those that displease them and break their Laws The case of a Daniel is so rare that it would be no rule to direct a rational course by If the King should forbid me praying as he did Daniel or command me to worship his Image as he did the other three witnesses reason and self-preservation would require me to obey him for its ten to one but he would execute his wrath on me and its an hundred to one God would not deliver me here God suffered thirty or forty thousand to be murdered at once by the French Massacre under Charls 9. He suffered two hundred thousand to be murdered by the Irish Papists He suffered many to be burned in Queen Mary's days He suffered yet greater Havock to be made of the poor Waldenses and Alligenses He suffered most cruel inhumane torments and death upon thousands of innocent persons to change the new-planted Religion in Japan He therefore that careth for his life and peace will think it far safer to venture on the present executions of God than of his King or Enemy or any one that is strong enough to ruine him If I lived under the Turkish Empire and were commanded to deny Christ and to renounce my Baptism and to subscribe that my Baptismal Vow doth not oblige me or any way to lie or be perjur'd or sin against God self-preservation would bid me Venture on the sin for it is an hundred to one but God will spare thee and it is an hundred to one but that the Prince will punish and destroy thee if thou obey him not How few that knew there were no life to come would not rather venture to please a Tyrant or a Robber than God and more fear to displease them and would not by perjury or any commanded villany save himself from their fury and cruelty and would not study more to flatter and humour them than to obey their God And so Man should have the chief government of the world while Man's rewards and punishments were so much more notable than God's Man would be feared and obeyed before God that is Man would be taken for our God These things are clear undeniable truths If there were no life to come self-love and reason would make man more obedient to Man than God and so make Gods of flesh and bloud But whether this be the tendency of the Government of God let Reason judge § 17. XVII A very probable argument may be fetched from the number and quality of intellectual spirits He that looketh to the vast and numerous and glorious Orbs which are above him and thinks of the glorious receptacles of a more glorious sort of creatures and then considereth that we are intellectual agents made to love and honour God as well as they and considers further both the Benignity of God and the communion which those other Orbs have with us will think it probable that we are in progress towards perfection and that we that are so like them may be capable of their happiness § 18. XVIII If in this life God have little of the praise and glory of his works from those whom he created for it but contrarily be much dishonoured by them then there is another life in which he will be more honoured by them But the antecedent is true Ergo so is the consequent What a glorious fabrick hath God set man to contemplate and how little of it is here known so that Philosophy is found to be but a searching and wrangling about things which no man reacheth and yet an inquisitive desire we have And therefore sure there is a state in which these works of God shall be better known of us and God shall have the honour of them more than now His Laws also prescribe us excellent duties and his Servants are very excellent persons according to his own description But our infirmities our errors or divisions our miscarriages and scandals do so dishonour him and his ways that the glory of them is much obscured and blasphemers reproach him to his face and Godliness which the Law of Nature teacheth is derided as a foolish thing and as the meer effect of superstitious fear Now though all this doth no hurt to God yet he is capable of wrong who is uncapable of hurt And it is not to be believed that he will finally put up all this at his creatures hands and never vindicate his honour not never more shew the glory of his Grace his Image his Justice and Judgments than he now doth § 19. XIX The constant testimony of conscience in all men that have not mastered Reason by Sensuality and the common consent of all that are worthy to be called Men in all Ages and Countries upon earth doth shew that the life to come is a truth which is naturally revealed and most sure § 20. XX. The enemy of Souls doth against his will give man a four-fold reason to judge that there is a life of Reward and Punishment hereafter viz. 1. By Compacts with Witches 2. By Apparitions 3. By Satanical Possessions 4. By all kind of subtil importunate temptations which evidence themselves 1. Though some are very incredulous about Witches yet to a full enquiry the evidence is past question that multitudes of such there be Though many are wronged and some may be thought so foolish or melancholy as not to know what they say against themselves yet against such numerous
consideration The Eternity of the future state I have not here gone about to prove because I reserve it for a fitter place and need the help of more than natural light for such a task But that it shall be of so much weight and duration as shall suffice to the full execution of Justice and to set all streight that seemed crooked in Gods present Government this Nature it self doth fully testifie Three sorts of men will read what I have written 1. Some few and but very few of those whose Consciences are so bloody in the guilt of their debauchery that they take it for their interest to hope that there is no life but this 2. Those whose Faith and Holiness hath made the World to come to be their interest happiness hope desire and only joy 3. Those that only understand in generall that it is the highest interest of humane Nature that there be a full felicity hereafter and see it a most desireable thing though they know not whether it be to be expected or not The first sort I may fear are under such a Curse of God as that he may leave their Wills to master their Belief as their Lusts have mastered their Wills and lest they be forsaken of God to think that true which their wicked hearts desire were true and that the Haters of God and a holy Life should be left to dream that there is no God nor future Happy Life The second sort have both Light Experience and Desire and therefore will easily believe The third sort are they whose Necessities are great and yet conjunct with hope of some success Though bare interest should command no mans understanding because a thing may be desireable which is neither certain nor possible yet I must needs say that Reason and self-love should make any man that is not resolved in wickedness exceeding glad to hear of any hopes much more of certainty of a life of Angelical Happiness and Joy to be possess'd when this is ended And therefore the enquiry should be exceeding willingly and studiously endeavoured I shall conclude this point with a few serious Questions to those that deny a future Life of Retribution Qu. 1. Whether he that taketh a man to be but an ingenuous kinde of Beast can take it ill to be esteemed as a Beast May I not expect that he should live like a Beast who thinketh that he shall die like a Beast Is such a man fit to be trusted any further in humane converse than his present fleshly interest obligeth him May I not justly suppose that he liveth in the practice of fornication adultery lying perjury hypocrisie murder treachery theft deceit or any other villany as oft as his interest tells him he should do it What is a sufficient or likely motive to restrain that man or make him just who believes not any life after this It seemeth to me a wrong to him in his own Profession to call him an Honest man 2. If you think your selves but ingenuous Beasts why should you not be content to be used as Beasts A Beast is not capable of true Propriety Right or Wrong He that can master him doth him no wrong if he work him or fleece him or take away his life Why may not they that can master you use you like Pack-horses or Slaves and beat you and take away your lives 3. Would you be only your selves of this mind or would you have all others of it If your selves only why envy you the Truth as you suppose to others If all others what security shall Kings have of their lives or Subjects of their lives of liberties What trust can you put in Wife or Child or Servant or any man that you converse with Will you not quickly feel the effect of their opinions Had you not rather that the enemy who would murder you the thief who would rob you the lyar that would deceive you did believe a Judgement and life of Retribution than not 4. If there be no Life after this what business have you for your Reason and all your noble faculties and time that is worthy of a man or that is not like Childrens games or Poppet-playes What have you to do in the World that hath any weight in the tryal any content or comfort in the review or will give solid comfort to a dying man Were it not better lie down and sleep out our days than waste them all in dreaming waking O what a silly Worm were Man what should he find to do with his understanding Take off the poise of his ultimate End and all his Rational Motions must stand still and only the bruitish motion must go on and Reason must drudge in the Captivity of its service But these Questions and more such I put more home in my Book called A Saint or a Bruit If conscience tell you that you can put no trust in your friend your wife your servant or your neighbour if they believe that there is no life but this surely the same conscience may tell you that then the thing is true and that the God of infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness hath better means enough than deceits and lies to rule the world by Hear what the conscience of the Epicure saith in Cicero Academ Quaest l. 4. p. mihi 44. Quis enim potest cum existimet à Deo se curari non dies noctes divinum numen horrere c. it s true of the guilty But what greater joy to the upright godly faithful Soul CHAP. XV. Of the intrinsick Evil of Sin and of the perpetual Punishment due to the Sinner by the undoubted Law of Nature § 1. IT seemed good to the most wise Creator to give Man with Reason a Liberty of Will by which he is a kind of first cause of its own determination in comparative moral acts though he hold the power in full dependance upon God and perform each act as an act in genere by the influx of his Maker and do all under his perfect government And these great Principles in his Nature his Power his Reason and his free self-determining Will are the Image of God in which as Man he was created which advanced by the perfections of Fortitude Wisdom and Moral Goodness are also in Holiness the Image of God's Perfections When a man deliberateth whether he shall do this sin or not as lie or murder he cannot act in general without God but that he chooseth this act rather than another may be without any more of God than his giving and maintaining his free-choosing power and his universal influx before mentioned and his setting him among such objects as he acteth upon Neither do those objects nor any Physical efficient motion of God or any creature besides himself determine his will effectually to choose the evil and refuse the good It is not true that nothing undetermined can determine it self to act this is but to deny God's
they were before notwithstanding their long converse with Christ in person it being his pleasure to illuminate them by supernatural infusion that it might appear to be no contrived design to deceive the world And they were enabled to preach the word with power and by this Spirit were infallibly guided in the performance of the work of their Commissions to settle Christ's Church in a holy order and to leave on record the doctrine which he had commanded them to teach Also they themselves did heal the sick and cast out devils and prophesie and by the laying on of their hands the same holy Spirit was ordinarily given to others that believed so that Christians had all one gift or other of that Spirit by which they convinced and converted a great part of the world in a short time and all that were sincere had the gift of sanctification and were regenerate by the Spirit as well as by Baptismal water and had the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the holy Ghost which was given them A holy and heavenly mind and life with mortification contempt of the world self-denial patience and love to one another and to all men was the constant badge of all Christ's followers The first Sermon that Peter preached did convert three thousand of those sinful Jews that had crucified Christ And after that many thousands of them more were converted One of their bloody persecutors Saul a Pharisee that had been one of the murderers of the first Martyr Stephen and had haled many of them to prisons as he was going on this business was struck down by the high-way a light from Heaven shining round about him and a voice saying to him Saul Saul why persecutest thou me And he said Who art thou Lord And the Lord said I am Jesus whom thou persecutest it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks And he trembling and astonished said Lord what wilt thou have me to do And the Lord said Arise and go into the City and it shall be told thee what thou must do And the men that journeyed with him stood speechless hearing a voice but seeing no man And so Saul was led blind to Damascus where one Ananias had a vision commanding him to Baptize him and his eyes were opened This Convert called Paul did hence-forward preach the Gospel of Christ from Country to Country in Syria in Asia at Rome and a great part of the world in marvellous unwearied labours and sufferings abuses and imprisonments converting multitudes and planting Churches in many great Cities and Countries and working abundance of miracles where he went His History is laid down in part of the New Testament There are also many of his Epistles to Rome to Corinth Galatia Ephesus Philippi Coloss Thessalonica to Timothy to Titus and to Philemon and the Hebrews as is supposed There are also the Epistles of Peter James John and Jude with the Revelation of John containing many mysterious Prophesies An Eunuch who was of great power under the Queen of Ethiopia was converted by Philip and carried the Gospel into his Country The rest of the Apostles and other Disciples carried it abroad a great part of the world especially in the Roman Empire and though every where they met with opposition and persecution yet by the power of the holy Ghost appearing in their Holiness Languages and Miracles they prevailed and planted abundance of Churches of which the most populous were at Jerusalem Antioch Rome and Alexandria And though they were all dispersed abroad the world and out of the reach of mutual converse yet did they never disagree in their Doctrine in the smallest point but proceeded through sufferings in Unity and Holiness in the work of saving Souls till most of them were put to death for the sake of Christ having left the Churches under the Government of their several Pastors according to the will of Christ This is the abstract of the History of the holy Scriptures § 14. The summ of the Doctrine of Christianity is contained in these Articles following consisting of three general Heads I. Things to be known and believed II. Things to be willed and desired and hoped III. Things to be done I. 1. There is one only GOD in Essence in Three Essential Principles POWER UNDERSTANDING and WILL or OMNIPOTENCY OMNISCIENCE and GOODNESS in Three Subsistences or Persons the FATHER the SON and the HOLY SPIRIT who is a Mind or Spirit and therefore is most Simple Incorruptible Immortal Impassionate Invisible Intactible c. and is Indivisible Eternal Immense Necessary Independent Self-sufficient Immutable Absolute and Infinite in all Perfections The Principal Efficient Dirigent and Final Cause of all the world The CREATOR of all and therefore our Absolute OWNER or Supreme RULER and our Total BENEFACTOR and CHIEF GOOD and END 2. GOD made Man for himself not to supply any want of his own but for the pleasing of his own Will and Love in the Glory of his Perfections shining forth in his works In his own Image that is with Vital Power Understanding and Free-will Able Wise and Good with Dominion over the Inferiour Creatures as being in subordination to God their OWNER their GOVERNOUR and their BENEFACTOR and END And he bound him by the Law of his Nature to adhere to GOD his MAKER by Resignation Devotion and Submission to him as his OWNER by Believing Honouring and Obeying him as his RULER and by Loving him Trusting and Seeking him Delighting in him Thanksgiving to him and Praising him as his Grand BENEFACTOR chief Good and ultimate end to exercise Charity and Justice to each other and to Govern all his inferiour faculties by Reason according to his Makers will that he so might please him and be Happy in his Love And to try him he particularly forbad him to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil upon pain of death 3. Man being tempted by Satan to break this Law of God did believe the Tempter who promised him impunity and advancement in Knowledge and who accused God as false in his threatning and as envying Man this great advancement And so by wilfull sinning against him he fell from God and his uprightness and happiness under the displeasure of God the penalty of his Law and the power of Satan And hence we are all conceived in sin averse to good and prone to evil and condemnation is passed upon all and no meer Creature is able to deliver us 4. God so loved the World that he gave his only SON to be their REDEEMER who being the Eternal WISDOM and WORD of God and so truly GOD and one in Essence with the FATHER did assume our Nature and became Man being conceived by the HOLY SPIRIT in the Virgin Mary and born of her and called JESVS CHRIST who being Holy and without all sin did conquer the Tempter and the World fulfilling all righteousness He enacted and preached the Law or
Covenant of Grace confirming his Doctrine by abundant uncontrolled Miracles contemning the World he exposed himself to the malice and fury and contempt of sinners and gave up himself a Sacrifice for our sins and a Ransom for us in suffering death on a Cross to reconcile us to God He was buryed and went in Soul to the Souls departed And the third day he rose again having conquered death And after forty dayes having instructed and authorized his Apostles in their Office he ascended up into Heaven in their sight where he remaineth Glorified and is Lord of all the chief Priest and Prophet and King of his Church interceding for us teaching and governing us by his Spirit Ministers and Word 5. The New Law and Covenant which Christ hath procured made and sealed by his Blood his Sacraments and his Spirit is this That to all them who by true Repentance and Faith do forsake the Flesh the World and the Devil and give up themselves to God the Father Son and Holy Spirit their Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier he will give Himself in these Relations and take them as his reconciled Children pardoning their sins and giving them his grace and title to Everlasting Happiness and will glorifie all that thus persevere But will condemn the unbelievers impenitent and ungodly to everlasting punishment This Covenant he hath commanded his Ministers to proclaim and offer to all the World and to baptize all that consent thereunto to invest them Sacramentally in all these benefits and enter them into his holy Catholick Church 6. The Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son did first inspire and guide the Prophets Apostles and Evangelists that they might truly and fully reveal the Doctrine of Christ and deliver it in Scripture to the Church as the Rule of our Faith and Life and by abundance of evident uncontrolled Miracles and gifts to be the great witness of Christ and of the truth of his holy Word 7. Where the Gospel is made known the HOLY SPIRIT doth by it illuminate the minds of such as shall be saved and opening and softening their hearts doth draw them to believe in Christ and turneth them from the power of Satan unto God Whereupon they are joyned to Christ the Head and into the Holy Catholick Church which is his Body consisting of all true Believers and are freely justified and made the Sons of God and a sanctified peculiar people unto him and do Love him above all and serve him sincerely in holiness and righteousness loving and desiring the Communion of Saints overcoming the Flesh the World and the Devil and living in Hope of the coming of Christ and of Everlasting life 8. At death the Souls of the Justified go to Happiness with Christ and the Souls of the wicked to misery And at the end of this World the Lord Jesus Christ will come again and will raise the Bodies of all men from the dead and will judge all the World according to the good or evil which they have done And the righteous shall go into Everlasting Life where they shall see Gods Glory and being perfected in Holiness shall love and praise and please him perfectly and be loved by him for evermore and the Wicked shall go into Everlasting punishment with the Devil II. According to this Belief we do deliberately and seriously by unfeigned consent of Will take this One God the infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness the Father Son and Holy Spirit for our only God our reconciled Father our Saviour and our Sanctifyer and resolvedly give up our selves to him accordingly entering into his Church under the hands of his Ministers by the solemnization of this Covenant in the Sacrament of Baptism And in prosecution of this Covenant we proceed to stirre up our DESIRES by daily PRAYER to God in the Name of Christ by the help of the Holy Spirit in the order following 1. We desire the glorifying and hallowing of the Name of God that he may be known and loved and honoured by the World and may be well-pleased in us and we may delight in Him which is our ultimate end 2. That his Kingdom of Grace may be enlarged and his Kingdom of Glory as to the Perfected Church of the sanctified may come That Mankinde may more universally subject themselves to God their Creator and Redeemer and be saved by him 3. That this Earth which is grown too like to Hell may be made liker to the Holy ones in Heaven by a holy conformity to Gods Will and Obedience to all his Laws denying and mortifying their own fleshly desires wills and minds 4. That our Natures may have necessary support protection and provision in our daily service of God and passage through this World with which we ought to be content 5. That all our sins may be forgiven us through our Redeemer as we our selves are ready to pardon wrongs 6. That we may be kept from Temptations and delivered from sin and misery from Satan from wicked men and from our selves Concluding our Prayers with the joyfull Praises of God our Heavenly Father acknowledging his Kingdom Power and Glory for ever III. The Laws of Christian PRACTICE are these 1. That our Souls do firmly adhere to God our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifyer by Faith Love Confidence and Delight that we seek him by desire obedience and hope meditating on himself his word and works of Creation Redemption and Sanctification of Death Judgement Heaven and Hell exercising Repentance and mortifying sin especially atheism unbelief and unholiness hardness of heart disobedience and unthankfulness pride worldliness and flesh-pleasing Examining our hearts about our Graces our Duties and our sins Watchfully governing our thoughts affections passions senses appetites words and outward actions Resisting temptations and serving God with all our faculties and glorifying him in our Hearts our Speeches and our Lives 2. That we worship God according to his Holiness and his Word in Spirit and Truth and not with Fopperies and Imagery according to our own devices which may dishonour him and lead us to Idolatry 3. That we ever use his Name with special Reverence especially in appealing to him by an Oath abhorring prophaneness perjury and breach of Vows and Covenants to God 4. That we meet in Holy Assemblies for his more solemn Worship where the Pastors teach his Word to their Flocks and lead them in Prayer and Praise to God administer the Sacrament of Communion and are the Guides of the Church in Holy things whom the people must hear obey and honour especially the Lords Day must be thus spent in Holiness 5. That Parents educate their Children in the Knowledge and Fear of God and in obedience of his Laws and that Princes Masters and all Superiours govern in Holiness and Justice for the glory of God and the common good according to his Laws And that Children love honour and obey their Parents and all Subjects their Rulers in due subordination unto God 6. That
All that the World can possibly afford you will not make Death the more welcom nor less terrible to you nor abate a jot of the pains of Hell It is as comfortable to die poor as rich and a life of pain and weakness and persecution will end as pleasantly as a life of Pomp and wealth and pleasures If it be no unreasonable motion of a Physician to tell you of blood-letting vomiting parging and strict dyet to save your lives nor any hard dealing in your Parents to set you many years to School to endure both the labour of learning and the Rod and after that to set you to a seven years Apprentice-ship and all this for things of a transitory nature since God deserveth not to be accused as too severe if he train you up for Heaven more strictly and in a more suffering way than the flesh desireth Either you believe that there is a future Life of Retribution or you do not If not the foregoing Evidences must first convince you before you will be fit to debate the case whether sufferings are for your hurt or benefit But if you do believe a life to come you must needs believe that its concernments weigh down all the matters of fleshly interest in this World as much as a mountain would weigh down a feather And then do but further bethink your selves impartially whether a life of Prosperity or of Adversity be the liker to tempt you into the Love of this World and to wean away your thoughts and desires from the heavenly felicity Judge but rightly first of your own interest and you will be fitter to judge of the Doctrine of Christ Obj. XXI Christ seemeth to calculate all his Precepts to the poorer sort of peoples state as if he had never hoped that Kings and Nobles would be Christians If men think as hardly of the Rich as he doth and take them to be so bad and their salvation so difficult how will they ever honour their Kings and Governours And if all men must suffer such as abuse and injure them and must turn the other cheek to him that striketh them and give him their Coat who taketh away their Cloak what use will there be for Magistrates and Judicatures Ans 1. Christ fitteth his Precepts to the benefit of all men But in so doing he must needs tell them of the danger of over-loving this World as being the most mortal sin which he came to cure And he must needs tell them what a dangerous temptation a flesh-pleasing prosperous state is to the most to entice them to this pernicious sin Had he silenced such necessary truths as these he could not have been their Saviour For how should he save them from sin if he conceal the evil and the danger of it If the corruption of mans Nature be so great that Riches and Honours and Pleasures are ordinarily made the occasions of mens perdition must Christ be Christ and never tell them of it And is he to be blamed for telling them the truth or they rather who create these difficulties and dangers to themselves Christ teacheth men to honour a Sacred Office such as Magistracy is without honouring Vice or betraying sinners by concealing their temptations And to holy faithfull Rulers he teacheth us to give a double honour They that will prove that most of the great and wealthy shall be saved must prove first that most of them are godly and mortified heavenly persons And the fit proof of that must be by shewing us the men that are so 2. The Laws of Christ require every Soul to be subject to the higher Powers and not resist and this not only for fear of their wrath but for Conscience sake and to pay honour and custom to all whom it is due to And what more can be desired for the support of Government 3. Yea nothing more tendeth to the comfort and quietness of Governours than the obedience of those Precepts of patience and peace which the Objection quarrelleth with If Subjects would love each other as themselves and forgive injuries and love their enemies what could be more joyfull to a faithfull Governour And to the Question What use would there be then of Judicatures I answer They would be usefull to good men for their protection against the injuries of the bad where we are but Defendants And also in Cases where it is not want of Love but of Knowledge which causeth the Controversie and when no fit arbitration can decide it And they will be usefull among contentious persons For all men are not true Believers The most will be ordinarily the worst As we will not be Fornicators Thieves Perjured c. lest you should say To what purpose is the Law against such offenders so we will not be revengefull and contentious lest you should say To what end are Judicatures The Law is to prevent offences by threatned penalties And that is the happyest Common-wealth where the Law doth most without the Judge and where Judicatures have least employment For there is none to be expected on Earth so happy where meer LOVE of Virtue and of one another will prevent the use both of Penal Laws and Judicatures 4. And it is but selfishness and contentiousness and private revenge which Christ forbiddeth and not the necessary defence or vindication of any Talent which God hath committed to our trust so it be with the preservation of brotherly Love and Peace 5. And that Christ foreknew what Princes and States would be converted to the Faith is manifest 1. In all his Prophets who have foretold it that Kings shall be our Nursing Fathers c. 2. In that Christ prophesied himself that when he was lifted up he would draw all men to him 3. By the Prophecies of John who saith that the Kingdoms of the World should become the Kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ Obj. XXII But it is the obscurity of all those Phophecies which is one of the difficulties of our Faith and that they are never like to be fulfilled Almost all your Expositors differ about the sense of Johns Revelations And the Calling of the Jews and bringing in all the Gentiles to their subjection seem to be plainly prophesyed of which are never like to come to passe Answ 1. Prophecies are seldom a Rule of Life but an Encouragement to hope and a Confirmation to Faith when they are fulfilled And therefore if the particularities be dark and understood by few so the general scope be understood it should be no matter of offence or wonder It is doctrine and precept and promises of salvation which are the daily food of Faith 2. If no man can hitherto truly say that any one Promise or Prophecie hath failed why should we think that hereafter they will fail what though the things seem improbable to us They are never the unliker to be accomplished by God The Conversion of the Gentiles of the Roman Empire and so many other Nations of the World
active and must receive the influx of the highest cause before it can act or communicate any thing Therefore as soon as the first mover should cease the rest would be soon stop'd though some active power was communicated to them As we see in a Clock when the poise is down and in a Watch when the spring is down the motion ceaseth first where it first began 4. Can you constrain your reason to imagine that God is the sole principal active cause for the first touch and as it were for one minute or instant while he causeth the first motus and is an unactive being or no cause ever after save only reputativè because he caused the first This is to say that God was God till he made the world and ever since he hath done nothing but left every atom or creature to be God Is God so mutable to do all for one instant and to do nothing ever after 5. The infiniteness and perfection of God fully proveth that all continued motion is by the continuance of his efficiency For it is undeniable that he who made all things is every where or present to all his creatures in the most intimate proximity And it is certain that he cannot but know them all and also that his Benignity maintaineth all their beings and well-beings and therefore that he is not an unactive being but that his power as well as his wisdom and Goodness is continually in act How strangely do these Epicureans differ from Aristotle who durst not deny the Eternity of the World lest he should make God an unactive Being ad extra from Eternity till the Creation When-as these men feign him to have given but one instantaneous push and to have been coetera otiosus or unactive from Eternity Seeing then it cannot by sober reason be denyed that God himself is by a continued Causation the Preserver and intimate first mover of all things it must needs thence follow that matter and motion are still insufficient of themselves and that this is to be none of the Controversie between us but only whether it be any created Nature Power or other Cause by which God causeth motion in any thing or all things or whether he do it by his own immediate Causation alone without the use of any second Cause save meer motion it self so that the insufficiency of Matter and Motion to continual alterations and productions must be confessed by all that confess there is a God 4. It is also manifest in the effect that it is not a meer motion of the first Cause which appeareth in the being and motions of the Creature There is apparently a tendency in the Creatures motion to a certain end which is an attractive Good and there is a certain Order in all motions to that end and certain Laws or Guidances and overrulings to keep them in that Order so that Wisdom and Goodness do eminently appear in them all in their beings natures differences excellencies order and ends as well as Motion the effect of Power 1. It is certain that God who is unmoved himself is the first mover of all 2. And if God were not unmoved but by self-motion caused motion yet he exerteth Wisdom and Goodness in his Creation and Providence as well as Motion 1. He that is Infinite and therefore not properly in any place or space or at least is limited in none can himself by Locomotion move himself in none which methinks none should question And they that make the World infinite or at least indefinite as they call it methinks should not deny the Infinitenesse of God And they acknowledge no motion themselves but Locomotion or migratio a loco in locum But saith Gassendus Vol. 1. pag. 337. Et certè captum omnem fugit ut quippiam quantumvis sit alteri praesens conjunctumque ipsum moveat si in seipso immotum maneat c. Itaque necesse omnino videtur ut cum in serie moventium quorum moventur alia ab aliis procedi in infinitum non possit perveniatur ad unum primum non quod immotum moveat sed quod ipsum per se moveatur Answ You gather from hence that it is the contexture of the most subtile Atomes which is the form and first mover in physical beings But you granted before that God moved those Atomes and also put a moving inclination into them And atomes are far from being unum or primum You said before sufficiat Deum quidem esse incorporeum ac pervadere fovereq universam mundi machinam And if so then movere etiam as well as fovere Either you mean as you speak in confessing a God or not If not it is unworthy a Philosopher to dissemble for any worldly respects whatsoever If you do then Is it beyond your capacity to conceive that God being unmoved moveth all things or not If not why should it be beyond your capacity to conceive the same in a second Order of a second spiritual being The reason as to motion is of the same kinde If yea then either you believe God is the first Mover or not If not withdraw your former Confession If yea what Locomotion for you deny all other can you ascribe to God who is unbounded and infinite what place is he moved from and what place is he moved into And is his motion rectus vel circularis is it one or multifarious or rather will you not renounce all these 2. And as God moveth being unmoved so he doth more than move He moveth Orderly and giveth Rules and Guidances to motion and moveth graciously to the felicity of the Creature and to a desireable end A Horse can move more than a man for he hath more strength or moving power But he moveth not so regularly nor to such intended ends because he hath not wisdom and benignity or goodness as Man hath He that buildeth a House or Ship or writeth such Volumes as Gassendus did doth somewhat more than barely move which a Swallow or a Hare could have done as swiftly And he that looketh on the works of God even to the Heavens and Earth as Gassendus hath himself described them and seeth not the effects of Wisdom and Goodness in the Order and tendency and ends of motion as well as Power in motion it self did take his survey but in his dream saith Balbus in Cicero de Nat. Deor. l. 2. p. 62. Hoc qui existimat fieri potuisse that is for the World to be made by meer fortuitous motion of atomes c. non intelligo cur non idem putet si innumerabiles unius viginti formae literarum aliquo coniciantur posse ex his in terram excussis Annales Ennii ut diâ—inceps legi possint effici quod nescio an in uno quidem versu possit tantum valere fortuna Quod si mundum efficere potest concursus atomorum cur porticum cur templum cur domum cur navem non potest quae sunt minus
require it or as if all our Pastors and Teachers were not to be so useful to us as a sign-post nor we were not to learn of them or of our Parents any thing that God either by nature or Scripture ever taught us or as if a child or subject who is required to learn the meaning of his Ruler's Laws to judge of them judicio privatae discretionis were thereby allowed to mis-understand them and to say that they command us that which they forbid us and because the King forbiddeth us to murder he alloweth us to say You proposed it to my understanding and I understand it that you bid me murder and therefore you may not punish me As if he that is bound to judge by a bare discerning what is commanded him and what forbidden were allowed to judge in partem utramlibet that it is or it is not as please himself As if when the King hath printed his Statutes he had forfeited all his authority by so doing and his subjects might say Why do you punish us for disobeying your Laws when you promulgated them to us as rational creatures to discern their sense Will it profit the world to write confutations of such stuff as this or must a man that is not condemned to Stage-playing or Ballad-making thus waste his time Do the people need to be saved from such stuff as this If so what remedy but to pity them and say Quos perdere vult Jupiter hos dementat si populus vult decipi decipiatur And yet to do no more wrong to the Scriptures than to Councils and Bulls and Statutes and Testaments and Deeds and Bonds he concludeth Of all writings whatsoever that by the meer words of the writer you cannot be certain of his sense though they be common words and you take them in the common sense So that if any doubt arise about my words if I resolve it by writing I cannot be understood but if I spake the same syllables by word of mouth it would serve the turn As if no man could be sure of the sense of any Law or Testament or Bond or Covenant which is committed to writing nor of any exposition of them if once it fall under Pen or Press As if God's writing the Ten Commandments had left them unintelligible in comparison of his speaking them Then farewell all Historical certainty Hath every single Priest himself any assurance of the sense of the Council the Canons the Popes Decreetals and Bulls but by the way of writing And so the poor people must instead of the Church believe only that Priest that orally speaketh to them though he have no certainty of the matter himself If this doctrine be made good once it will spoil the Printers trade and the Clarks and Courts of Record and the Post-Office too But page 51. he maketh the consent of the universal Church to be the only sure communication of Christian Doctrine in the Articles of Faith yea the consent of the present age concerning the former But how the consent of the whole Church shall be certainly known to every man and woman when no writing can certainly make known any mans mind is hard to tell a man that expecteth reason And that you may see how much the subject of this Treatise is concerned in such discourses he addeth that If the Church had at any time been small its testimony had been doubtful but saith he it testifieth of it self that Christians were never few and therefore it is to be believed But we will have no such prevaricating defences of Christianity The major is the Infidels erroneous cavil the minor is a false defence of the faith The Church never said that Christians were never few it hath ever confessed the contrary that once they were few and yet it hath proved against the Infidel that its testimony was not doubtful having better evidence of their veracity than numbers You may perceive by these strictures upon this one discourse what an endless task it would be to write confutations of every man that hath leisure to publish to the world his opinions which are injurious to the Christian verity And therefore no sober Reader will expect that I or he must be so tired before he can be satisfied and setled in the Truth FINIS Non tam authoritatis in disputando quà m Rationis momenta quaerenda sunt Cicer. de Nat. Deor. 1. p. 6. Animo ipso animus videtur nimirum hanc habet vim praeceptum Apollinis quo monet UT SE quisque NOSCAT Non enim credo id praecipit ut membra nostra aut staturam figurámve noscamus Neque nos corpora sumus 〈◊〉 neque ego tibi dicens hoc CORPORI tuo dico Cum igitur NOSCE TE dicit hoc dicit NOSCE ANIMUM TUUM Nam corpus quidem quasi vas est aut aliquod animi receptaculum ab ANIMO tuo quicquid agitur id agitur à te Hunc igitur nosce nisi Divinum esset non esset hoc acrioris cujusdam animi praeceptum sic ut tributum Deo sit hoc est SEIPSUM posse cognoscere sed fi qualis sit animus ipse animus nesciat dic quaeso ne esse quidem se sciet Cicero Tuscul Quast l. 1. pag. mihi 226 227. Patet aeternum id esse quod seipsum movet quis est qui hanc naturam animis tributam neget Inanimum est enim omne quod pulsu agitatur externo Sentit igitur animus se moveri Quod cum sentit illud una sentit se vi suâ non aliena moveri nec accidere posse ut ipse unquam à se deseratur ex quo efficitur aeternitas Id. ibid. Obj. Age ostende mihi Deum tuum Resp Age ostende mihi hominem tuum fac te hominem esse cognoscam quis meus sit Deus demonstrare non morabor Theophil Antioch ad Autolycum lib. 1. initio Cum despicere coeperimus sentire quid simus quid ab animantibus caeteris differamus tum ea insequi incipiemus ad quae nati sumus Cicer. 5. de fin Qui seipsum cognoverit cognoscet in se omnia Deum ad cujus imaginem factus est Mundum cujus simulachrum gerit Creaturas omnes cum quibus symbolum habet Paulus Dom. de Scala Thess pag. 722. Ut Deum noris si ignores locum faciem sic animum tibi tuum notum esse oportet etiamsi ignores locum formam Cicer. 1. Tuscul Non ii sumus quibus nihil verum esse videatur sed ii qui omnibus veris falsa quaedam adjuncta esse dicamus tanta similitudine ut c. Cicer. de Nat. Deor. 1. p. 7. Lege Pisonis dicta de mente corpore in Cicer. de finib l. 5. p. 189. Omnes ad id quod Bonum videtur omnes suas actiones referunt Aristot de Republ. 1. c. 1. In homine optimum quidem Ratio Haec antecedit