esse which was dependent in fieri which are Contradictions 2. The effects in the admirable frame and nature and motions of the Creation declare that the Creator is infinitely wise The smallest insect is so curiously made and so admirably fitted and instructed to its proper end and uses The smallest Plants in wonderfull variety of shapes and colours and smells and qualities uses and operations and beautifull flowers so marvellously constituted and animated by an unseen form and propagated by unsearchable seminal vertue The smallest Birds and Beasts and creeping things so adorned in their kinds and so admirably furnished for their proper ends especially the propagation of their species in love and sagacity and diligence to their young by instinct equaling in those particulars the reasonable creature The admirable composure of all the parts of the body of Man and of the vilest Beast and Vermine The quality and operation of all the Organs humours and spirits The operations of the Minde of man and the constitution of Societies and over-ruling all the matters of the World with innumerable instances in the creature do all concurr to proclaim that man as mad as madness can possibly make him in that particular who thinketh that any lower cause than incomprehensible wisdom did principally produce all this And that by any bruitish or natural motion or confluence of Atomes or any other matter it could be thus ordered continued and maintained without the infinite wisdome and power of a first Cause superiour to meer natural matter and motion What then should we say if we had a sight into the inwards of all the Earth of the nature and cause of Minerals and of the forms of all things If we saw the reason of the motions of the Seas and all other appearances of Nature which are now beyond our reach Yea if we had a sight of all the Orbs both fixed Starrs and Planets and of their matter and form and order and relation to each other and their communications and influences on each other and the cause of all their wonderous motions If we saw not only the nature of the Elements especially the active Element Fire but also the constitution magnitude and use of all those thousand Suns and lesser Worlds which constitute the universal World And if they be inhabited if we knew the Inhabitants of each Did we know all the Intelligences blessed Angels and holy Spirits which possess the nobler parts of Nature and the unhappy degenerate Spirits that have departed from light and joy into darkness and horrour by departing from God yea if we could see all these comprehensively at one view what thoughts should we have of the wisdom of the Creator And what should we think of the Atheist that denyeth it We should think Bedlam too honourable a place for that man that could believe or durst say that any accidental motion of subtile matter or fortuitous concourse of Atomes or any thing below a Wisdom and Power infinitely transcending all that with Man is called by that name was the first Cause and is the chief continuer of such an incomprehensible frame § 18. The first Cause must needs be infinitely Good By Goodness I mean all essential Excellency which is known to us by its fruits and appearances in the Creature which as it hath a Goodness natural and moral so is it the Index of that transcendent Goodness which is the first cause of both This goodness is incomparably beyond that which consisteth in a usefulness to the creatures good or Goodness of Benignity as relative to Man And it is known better by the meer name as expressing that which Nature hath an intrinsick sense and notion of than by definitions As sensible qualities light colour sound odour sweet bitter c. are known by the name best which lead to the sensitive memory which informeth the Intellect what they are As the mention of things sensible entereth the definition of sense and the mention of sense doth enter the definition of things sensible and yet the object is in order of nature before the act And as Truth must enter the definition of Intellection and Intellection the definition of Truth and yet Truth is in order before Intellection and contemporary with the Intellect so is it between Goodness and the Will But if we speak of uncreated Good and of a created Will then Good is infinitely antecedent to that Will But the Will which is created hath a nature suited to it and so the notion of Excellency and Goodness is naturally in our estimative faculty and the relish of it or complacency in it is naturally in the Will so far as it is not corrupted and depraved As if I knew a man that had the wisdom and virtue of an Angel my estimation calleth him Excellent and Good and my Will doth complacentially cleave to him though I should never look to be the better for him my self or if I onely heard of him and never saw him or were personally beholden to him That God is thus infinitely Excellent and Good the Goodness of his Creatures proveth for all the goodness that is in Men and Angels Earth and Heaven proceedeth from him If there be any Natural Goodness in the whole Creation there must be more in the Creator If there be any Moral Goodness in Men and Angels there must be more in eminency in him For he can make nothing better than himself nor give to creatures what he hath not § 19. The Goodness of the first Being consisting in this infinite Perfection or Excellency containeth his Happiness his Holiness and his Love or Benignity § 20. The HAPPINESS of the first Being consisteth 1. In his BEING HIMSELF 2. In his KNOWING HIMSELF 3. In his LOVING and ENJOYING HIMSELF The most perfect Being must needs be the most Happy and that in Being what he is his own Perfection being his Happiness And as Knowledge in the Creature is both his Perfection and Delight so the transcendent Omniscience of the Creator must needs be both part of his Perfection as distinguished by our narrow minds and such felicity as may be called Eminently his Delight though what God's Delight is we know not formally And as Love or Complacency is the perfective operation of the Will and so of the Humane Nature in Man and is his highest final and enjoying acts of which all Goodness is the object so there must be something in the Perfection of the first Cause though not formally the same with Love in Man yet eminently so called as knowable to us by no other name And this complacency must needs be principally in Himself because He himself is the Infinite and onely Primitive Good and as there was primitively no Good but Himself to Love so now there is no Good but derived from Him and dependent on Him And as his Creature of which anon is obliged to love Him most so he must needs be most amiable to Himself self-Self-love and self-esteem in
Via and manifold mercies helps and means do generally perswade the Consciences of men that there are certain Duties required of them and certain Means to be used by them in order to procure their recovery and salvation and to scape the misery deserved He that shall deny this will turn the Earth into a Hell he will teach men to forbear all means and duties which tend to their conversion pardon and salvation and to justifie themselves in it and desperately give over all Religion and begin the horrours and language of the damned § 9. The very command of God to use his appointed means for mens recovery doth imply that it shall not be in vain and doth not only shew a possibility but so great a hopefulness of the success to the obedient as may encourage them cheerfully to undertake it and carry it through No man that is wise and merciful will appoint his subject a course of means to be used for a thing impossible to be got or will say Labour thus all thy life for it but thou shalt be never the nearer it if thou do If such an Omniscient Physician do but bid me use such means for my cure and health I may take his command for half a promise if I obey § 10. Conscience doth bear witness against impenitent sinners that the cause of their sin and the hinderance of their recovery is in themselves and that God is not unwilling to forgive and save them if they were but meet for forgiveness and salvation Even now mens consciences take God's part against themselves and tell them that the Infinite Good that communicateth all the Goodness to the creature which it hath is not so likely to be the cause of so odious a thing as sin nor of mans destruction as he himself If I see a Sheep lie torn in the high-way I will sooner suspect the Wolf than a Lamb to be the cause if I see them both stand by and if I see a Child drown'd in scalding water I will sooner suspect that he fell in by folly and heedlesness himself than that his Mother wilfully cast him in Is not silly naughty man much liker to be the cause of sin and misery than the wise and gracious God Much more hereafter will the sinners conscience justifie God § 11. God hath planted in the common nature of mankind an inseparable inclination to Truth as Truth and to Good as Good and a Love to themselves and a desire to be happy and a lothness to be miserable together with some reverence and honour of God till they have extinguished the belief of his being and a hatred and horrour of the Devil while they believe he is All which are a fit Stock to plant Reforming-truths in and Principles fit to be improved for mens conversion and the excitation and improvement of them is much of that recovering work § 12. Frequent and deep consideration being a great means of mans recovery by improving the truth which he considereth and restoring Reason to the Throne it is a great advantage to man that he is naturally a Reasoning and Thoughtful creature his Intellect being propense to activity and knowledge § 13. And it is his great advantage that his frequent and great afflictions have a great tendency to awake his Reason to consideration and to bring it to the heart and make it effectual And consequently that God casteth us into such a Sea and wilderness of troubles that we should have these quickening Monitors still at hand § 14. And it is man's great advantage for his recovery that Vanity and Vexation are so legibly written on all things here below and that frustrated expectations and unsatisfied minds and the fore-knowledge of the end of all and bodily pains which find no ease with multitudes of bitter experiences do so abundantly help him to escape the snare the love of present things For all men that perish are condemned for loving the creature above the Creator and therefore such a world which appeareth so evidently to be vain and empty and deceitful and vexatious and which all men know will turn them off at last with as little comfort as if they had never seen a day of pleasure in it I say such a world one would think should give us an antidote against its own deceit and sufficiently wean us from its inordinate love At least this is a very great advantage § 15. It is also a common and great advantage for man's recovery that his life here is so short and his death so certain as that reason must needs tell him that the pleasures of sin are also short and that he should always live as parting with this world and ready to enter into another The nearness of things maketh them to work on the mind of man the more powerfully distant things though sure and great do hardly awaken the mind to their reception and due consideration If men lived 600 or 1000 years in the world it were no wonder if covetousness and carnality and security made them like Devils and worse than wild beasts to one another But when men cannot chuse but know that they must certainly and shortly see the end of all that ever this world will do for them and are never sure of another hour this is so great a help to sober consideration and conversion that it must be monstrous stupidity and brutishness that must overcome it § 16. It is also a great advantage for man's conversion that all the world revealeth God to him and every thing telleth him of the Power and Wisdom and Goodness and Love of God and of his constant Presence and so sheweth him an object which should as easily over-power all sensual objects which would seduce his soul as a mountain will weigh down a feather Though we see not God which would sure put an end to the controversie whether we should be sensual or holy yet while we have a glass as big as all the world which doth continually represent him to us one would think that no reasonable creature should so much over-look him as to be carried from him with the trifles of this world § 17. Men that have not only the foresaid obligations to Holiness Justice and Sobriety in their natures but also all these Hopes and Helps and Means of their recovery from sin to God and yet frustrate all and continue in ungodliness unrighteousness or intemperance impenitently to the end are utterly destitute of all just excuse why God should not punish them with endless misery which is the case of all that perish § 18. All men shall be judged by the Law which was given them of God to live by For it is the same Law which is Regula Officii Judicii God will not condemn men for not believing a truth which mediately or immediately was never revealed to them and which they had no means to know nor for not obeying a Law which was never promulgated to them
wrath contentions envy malice covetousness injustice oppression wars uncharitableness and all the iniquity of the world And how self is the grand enemy of God and Man and of the Publick good and peace and contrary to the love of God and our neighbour and the Common-wealth It giveth us so many precepts for self-denial as no other Religion did ever mention and such an example against it in Jesus Christ as is the astonishment of Men and Angels And therefore all other Religions did in vain attempt the true purifying of heart and life or the pacifying of the divided minds of men while they let alone this sin of selfishness or lightly touch'd it which is the root and heart of all the rest § 5. No Religion doth so much reveal to us the Nature of God and his works for Man and Relations to him as the Christian Religion doth And doubtless that is the most excellent doctrine which maketh known God most to mans mind and that is the best Religion which bringeth man nearest to his Creator in love and purity Few of the Heathens knew God in his Unity and fewer in the Trinity of his Essential Primalities many question'd his particular Providence and Government they knew not man's relation or duty to him while they were distracted with the observance of a multitude of Gods they indeed had none Though God be incomprehensible to us all yet is there a great deal of the glory of his perfections revealed to us in the light of Christianity which we may seek in vain with any other sort of men § 6. No Religion doth so wonderfully open and magnifie and reconcile God's Justice and Mercy to Mankind as Christianity doth It sheweth how his Justice is founded in his Holiness and his governing Relation it justifieth it by opening the purity of his Nature the evil of sin and the use of punishment to the right government of the world and it magnifieth it by opening the dreadfulness and certainty of his penalties and the sufferings of our Redeemer when he made himself a Sacrifice for our sins By the revelation of justice sin and misery it revealeth the wonderful greatness of Gods mercy it openeth those operations and effects of it which Heathenism and Mahometanism are utter strangers to they speak diminutively both of Mercy and Justice and cannot tell how to make God merciful without making him vnjust nor to make him just without obscuring the glory of his mercy which is peculiarly set forth in the work of Redemption and the Covenant of Grace and promise of everlasting Blessedness § 7. The Christian Religion openeth many other parts of holy doctrine which are unknown to men that learned them not from thence Such as the doctrin of the Creation and the Fall and of original sin and of Justification Sanctification Adoption and the right worshipping of God of which mention is made before more distinctly § 8. No Religion can be more Charitable for it wholly consisteth in the love of God and one another and in the means to kindle and maintain this love The whole Law of Christ is fulfilled in love even in loving God for himself above all and our neighbours as our selves for the sake of God yea our enemies so far as there is any thing amiable in them The end of all the Commandments is love out of a pure heart and a good conscience and unfeigned faith And all Christians are obliged to love each other with a pure heart and fervently yea to shew that love which they profess to Christ himself by the loving of one another How frequently and earnestly is this great duty pressed by Christ and his Apostles how great a stress doth he lay upon it He maketh it the evidence of our love to God He promiseth salvation to it He forbiddeth selfishness that it may not hinder it He commandeth us to live in the constant expression of it and to provoke one another to love and to good works He hath made himself the most matchless and wonderful example of it He hath told us that according to mens charity he will judge them at the last day How dry and barren are all Religions and Writings that we have ever come to the knowledge of in the world in the point of love and the fruits of love in comparison of the Gospel of Jesus Christ § 9. I find that the Christian Religion is most for Vnity and Peace of any Religion in the world most vehemently commanding them and appointing the fittest means for the attaining of them 1. All Christians are commanded to be of one mind to think the same things and speak the same things and discord and division and contention is earnestly forbidden them and condemned and all occasions which may lead them thereunto 2. And they have one Head and Centre one God and Saviour who is their common Governour End and Interest in whom therefore they may all unite when most others in the world do shew a man no further end than self-preservation and so while self is each mans end and interest there are as many ends as men and how then is it possible that such should have any true unity and concord But to every true Christian the pleasing and glorifying of God and the promoting of his Kingdom for the salvation of the world is above all self-interest whatsoever and therefore in this they are all united And though they all seek their own felicity and salvation it is only in the seeking of this higher end which is finis amantis sed creaturae amantis creatorem the end of a lover which desireth unity and respecteth both the lover and the beloved but it is not the end of the love of equals but of the creature to the Creator who therefore preferreth his beloved before himself in his intentions So that it is only this holy centring in God that can ever make men all of a mind and agree the disagreeing world While Self is every mans end they will have such constant contrariety of interests that it will be impossible for them to agree but covetousness ambition and sensuality will keep them in factions contentions and wars continually Moreover it is Christianity that most urgeth and effectually giveth a hearty love to one another and teacheth them to love their neighbours as themselves and to do as they would have others to do by them and this is the true root and spring of concord And it is Christianity which most teacheth the forgiving of wrongs and loving of enemies and forbearing that revenge which Heathens were wont to account an honour And it is Christianity which teacheth men to contemn all the riches and honours of the world which is the bone that worldly dogs do fight for and the great occasion of their strife and it teacheth them to mortifie all those vices which feed mens divisions and contentions So that if any man live as a Christian he must needs be a man of unity
of pure complacencial Love in Prayer Praise or Contemplation he hath some measure of fruition even in via and a sensible foretaste of his future perfection according to the degree of this his Love There is a delight that cometh into the minde by the meer foresight and hope of what we shall be and have and do hereafter And this cometh by the Means of Promise and Evidence And there is also a Delight which cometh in upon the present exercise of Love it self on God as present when the soul in the contemplation of his infinite Goodness is wrapt up in the pleasures of his Love And this is a degree of fruition of our end before the perfect fruition of it And therefore take notice that there are these two wayes of our comfort in this life 1. Exploratio juris the tryall of our title 2. Exercitium amoris the feasting of the Soul in the exercises of Love § 21. 3. The final perfect act of Love will not be in via but when we have fully reacht our end § 22. This final act is not well expressed by the common word fruition because it intimateth that we are the finis cui our selves and that our own enjoyment of God as our felicity is the finis ultimatè ultimus which is not true § 23. Yet is fruition one ingredient into our End because our final act of Love is for our selves though not principally § 24. All the difficulties de fine hominis are best resolved by understanding that it is finis amantis and what that is The Nature of Love is an inclination or desire of Vnion or Adhaesion And therefore it includeth the felicity of the Lover together with the attractive excellency of the Object and is both gratia amantis amati simul But when the Lover is infinitely above the Object the Lover is the chief end for his own complacency though the Object have the benefit And when the Object is infinitely better than the Lover the Object must be incomparably the chief end cujus gratia potissimum though the Lover withall intend his felicity in fruition § 25. But if any soul be so far above self-love as to be drawn up in the fervours of Holy love in the meer contemplation of the infinite Object not thinking of its own felicity herein its felicity will be never the less for not intending or remembring it § 26. Therefore the final act of Love hath no fitter name than Love it self or delightfull adhaesion to God the infinite Good with full complacency in him § 27. Though God must be loved as our Benefactor yet the perfect goodness of his Will and Nature as standing above all our Interest or Benefits must be the principal reason and Object of our Love That we must love God more for Himself than for our selves is thus proved 1. That which is most Amiable must be most Loved But God is most amiable and not we our selves Therefore he must be Loved above our selves and consequently not for our selves but our selves for him The minor is soon proved That which is most Good is most Amiable But God is most good Ergo. And Goodness is the proper object of Love 2. That which the Soul most Loveth it doth most devote it self to and adhere to and rest in But we must more devote our selves to God and adhere to him and rest in him than our selves Ergo we must Love him more 3. That which is an Absolute Good and is dependent on nothing must be absolutely loved for it self But such is God Ergo. And that which is only a derivative limited dependent Good and not made ultimately for it self is not to be loved ultimately for it self But such is man Ergo. 4. That which is the Fountain of all Goodness and Love must be the end of all But that is God and not Man Ergo. 5. To love God ultimately for our selves is to deifie our selves and take down God into the order of a Means that is of a Creature § 28. Having proved that God must be loved above our selves we need no other proof that not we but God must be our ultimate end § 29. Because we here see not God intuitively but in his Works we are bound with fervent desire to study and contemplate them and therein to feast our love in beholding and tasting of his Love and Goodness As a Man will look on the Picture the Letters the works of his absent Friend and retain the Image of him in his heart so God though not absent yet unseen expresseth himself to us in all his works that we may studiously there behold admire and love him § 30. Therefore Gods Works must be more valued and studied as they are the Glass representing the Image of his perfections and shewing us his chief essential amiableness than as they are beneficial and useful to us and so shew us only his benignity to us § 31. Yet must self-love and sense it self and the sensible sweetness and experience of Mercies be improved to our easier taste of God's essential Goodness and we must rise up from the lower to the higher object and this is our chief use of sensible benefits Doubtless as the Soul while it dwelleth with flesh doth receive its objects by the mediation of sense so God hath purposely put such variety of sensible delicacies into the creatures that by every sight and smell and hearing and touch and taste our souls might receive a report of the sweetness of God whose goodness all proceed from And therefore this is the life which we should labour in continually to see God's goodness in every lovely sight and to taste God's goodness in every pleasant taste and to smell it in every pleasant Odour and to hear it in every lovely word or sound that the motion may pass on clearly without stop from the senses to the mind and will and we may never be so blockish as to gaze on the glass and not see the Image in it or to gaze on the Image and never consider whose it is or to read the Book of the Creation and mark nothing but the words and letters and never mind the sense and meaning A Philosopher and yet an Atheist or ungodly is a monster one that most readeth the Book of Nature and least understandeth or feeleth the meaning of it § 32. Therefore God daily reneweth his mercies to us that the variety and freshness of them producing renewed delight may renew our lively feelings of his love and goodness and so may carry us on in love without cessations and declinings Our natures are so apt to lose the sense of a Good that is grown ordinary and common that God by our renewed necessities and the renewed supplies and variety of mercies doth cure this defect § 33. Those therefore that turn God's mercies to the gratifying of their sensitive appetites and lusts and forget him and offend him the more and love him
himself our Benefactor nor nevertheless near us What nearness to us they have we are much uncertain but that he himself is our total Benefactor and always with us as near to us as we are to our selves is past all question and proved before 2. There neither is nor can be any object so suitable for our LOVE as God he hath all Goodness in him and all in the creature is derived from him and dependeth on him and he hath given us all that ever we our selves received and must give us all that ever we shall receive hereafter He is all-sufficient for the supply of all our wants and granting all our just desires and making us perfect all that he doth for us he doth in Love as an intellectual free Agent and he is still present with us upholding us and giving us the very Love which he demandeth and he created us for Himself to be his Own and gave us these faculties to know and love him And can any then be a more suitable object of our love 3. Do you not find that your understandings have a suitableness or inclination to Truth and Knowledge and would you not know the best and greatest things and know the cause of all the wonderful effects which you see and what is this but to know God And do you not find that your Wills have a suitableness to good as such in the general and to your own felicity And do you not know that it should not be unnatural to any man to love the best which is best and especially which is best for him and to love him best who is his greatest Benefactor and most worthy of his love in all respects And can you doubt whether God be most worthy of your love All this is plain and sure And will mens averseness to the love of God then disprove it It is natural for man to desire knowledge as that which perfecteth his understanding and yet Boys are averse to learn their Books because they are slothful and are diverted by the love of play What if your servants be averse and slothful to your service doth it follow that it is not their duty or that you hired them not for it What if your wife and children be averse to love you is it therefore none of their duty so to do Rebels are averse to obey their Governours and yet it is their duty to obey them If your child or any one that is most beholden to you should be averse to love and gratitude to you as thousands are to their Parents and Benefactors will it follow that Nature obliged them not to it 4. What can you think is suitable to your love if God be not is it lust or play or meat and drink and ease A Swine hath a nature as suitable to these as you Is it only to deal ingenuously and honourably in providing for the flesh and maintaining the fuel of these sensualities by Buildings Trading Manufactures Ornaments and Arts All this is but to have a reason to serve your sense and so the swinish part still shall be the chief for that which is the chief and ruling object with you doth shew which is the chief and regnant faculty If sensual objects be the chief than Sense is the chief faculty with you And if you had the greatest wit in the world and used it only to serve your guts and throats and lusts in a more effectual and ingenious way than any other men could do this were but to be an ingenuous beast or to have an Intellect bound in service to your bellies And can you think that things so little satisfying and so quickly perishing are more suitable objects for your love than God 5. What say you to all them that are otherwise minded and that take the Love of God for their work and happiness They find a suitableness in God to their highest esteem and love and are they not as fit Judges for the affirmative as you for the negative Obj. They do but force themselves to some acts of fancy Answ You see that they are such acts as are the more serious and prevalent in their lives and can make them lay by other pleasures and spend their days in seeking God and lay down their lives in the exercise and hopes of Love And that it is you that follow fancy and they that follow solid reason is evident in the reason of your several ways That world which you set above God is at last called Vanity by all that try it Reason will not finally justifie your choice but I have here shewed you undeniable reason for their choice and love and therefore it is they that know what they do and obey the Law of Nature which you obliterate and contradict Obj. But we see the Creature but God we see not and we find it not natural to us to love that which we do not see Answ Is not Reason a nobler faculty than sight if it be why should it not more rule you and dispose of you Shall no Subjects honour and obey their King but those that see him You can love your mony and land and friends when they are out of sight Obj. But these are things visible in their nature Answ They are so much the more vile and less amiable Your own Souls are invisible will you not therefore love them You never saw the life or form of any Plant or living Wight you see the beauty of your Roses and many other flowers but you see not the life and form within which causeth all that beauty and variety which yet must be more excellent than the effect Can you doubt whether all things which appear here to your sight have an invisible Cause and Maker or can you think him less amiable because he is invisible that is more excellent 6. In a word it is most evident that all this averseness of mens hearts to the Love of God is their sin and pravity and the unsuitableness of their nature is because they are vitiated with sensuality and deceived by sensible things a disease to be cured and not defended Their sin will not prove the contrary no duty 7. And yet while we are in flesh though God be not visible to us his works are and it is in them the frame of the world that he hath revealed and exposed Himself to our love It is in this visible Glass that we must see his Image and in that Image must love him and if we will love any Goodness we must love his for all is his and as his should be loved by us CHAP. XIII Experiments of the difficulty of all this Duty and what it will cost a man that will live this holy life HItherto I have proved that there is a GOD of Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness the Creator and consequently the Owner the Ruler and the Father or Chief Good of Man and that Man as his creature is absolutely his own and
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
we do nothing against our Neighbours Life or Bodily welfare but carefully preserve it as our own 7. That no man defile his Neighbours wife nor commit Fornication but preserve our own and others Chastity in thought word and deed 8. That we wrong not another in his Estate by stealing fraud or any other means but preserve our Neighbours Estate as our own 9. That we pervert not Justice by false witness or otherwise nor wrong our neighbour in his Name by slanders backbiting or reproach That we lie not but speak the truth in love and preserve our neighbours right and honour as our own 10. That we be not selfish setting up our selves and our own against our Neighbour and his good desiring to draw from him unto our selves But that we love our Neighbour as our selves desiring his welfare as our own doing to others as regularly we would have them do to us forbearing and forgiving one another loving even our enemies and doing good to all according to our power both for their Bodies and their Souls This is the Substance of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION § 15. II. The summ or Abstract of the Christian Religion is contained in three short Forms The first called The Creed containing the matter of the Christian Belief The second called The Lords Prayer containing the matter of Christian Desires and hope The third called The Law or Decalogue containing the summ of Morall Duties which are as followeth The BELIEF 1. I believe in God the Father Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth 2. And in Iesus Christ his only Son our Lord who was conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary suffered under Pontius Pilate was crucified dead and buried descended to Hell the third day he rose again from the dead he ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty from thence he shall come again to judge the quick and the dead 3. I believe in the Holy Ghost the Holy Catholick Church the Communion of Saints the Forgiveness of sins the Resurrection of the body and the Life Everlasting The LORDS PRAYER Our FATHER which art in Heaven hallowed be thy Name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil For thine is the Kingdom the Power and the Glory for ever Amen The Ten COMMANDEMENTS God spake all these words saying I am the Lord thy God which brought thee out of the Land of Egypt out of the house of bondage 1. Thou shalt have no other Gods before me 2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven Image or any likeness of any thing in Heaven above or that is in the Earth beneath or that is in the water under the Earth Thou shalt not vow down thy self to them nor serve them For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God visiting the iniquities of the Fathers upon the Children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my Commandements 3. Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his Name in vain 4. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy six dayes shalt thou labour and do all thy work but the Seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God in it thou shalt not do any work thou nor thy Son nor thy Daughter thy Man-servant nor thy Maid-servant nor thy Cattel nor the Stranger that is within thy gates For in six dayes the Lord made Heaven and Earth the Sea and all that in them is and rested the Seventh day wherefore the Lord blessed the Seventh day and hallowed it 5. Honour thy Father and thy Mother that thy dayes may be long upon the Land which the Lord thy God giveth thee 6. Thou shalt not kill 7. Thou shalt not commit Adultery 8. Thou shalt not Steal 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy Neighbour 10. Thou shalt not covet thy Neighbours House thou shalt not covet thy Neighbours Wife nor his Man-servant nor his Maid-servant nor his Oxe nor his Ass nor any thing that is thy Neighbours § 16. The ten Commandements are summed up by Christ into these two Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and might and Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self § 17. These Commandements being first delivered to the Jews are continued by Christ as the summ of the Law of Nature only instead of Deliverance of the Jews from Egypt he hath made our Redemption from sin and Satan which was thereby typified to be the fundamental motive And he hath removed the memorial of the Creation-Rest from the seventh day-Sabbath to be kept on the Lords day which is the first with the Commemoration of his Resurrection and our Redemption in the solemn Worship of his holy Assemblies § 18. III. The briefest Summary of the Christian Religion containing the Essentials only is in the Sacramental Covenant of Grace Wherein the Penitent Believer renouncing the Flesh the World and the Devil doth solemnly give up himself to God the Father Son and Holy Spirit as his only God his Father his Saviour and his Sanctifier engaging himself hereby to a Holy life of Resignation Obedience and Love and receiving the pardon of all his sins and title to the further helps of grace to the favour of God and everlasting life This Covenant is first entered by the Sacrament of Baptisme and after renewed in our communion with the Church in the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ So that the Christian Religion is but Faith in God our Creator Redeemer and Sanctifyer producing the hope of Life Everlasting and possessing us with the love of God and Man And all this expressed in the genuine fruits of Patience Obedience and Praise to God and works of Charity and Justice unto Man § 19. That all this Religion might be the better understood received and practised by us the Word of God came down into Flesh and gave us a perfect Example of it in his most perfect Life in perfect holiness and innocency conquering all temptations contemning the honours riches and pleasures of the World in perfect patience and meekness and condescension and in the perfect Love of God and Man When perfect Doctrine is seconded by Perfect Exemplariness of Life there can be no greater Light set before us to lead us out of our state of darkness into the everlasting Light And had it not been a pattern of holy Power Wisdom and Goodness of Self-denyall Obedience and Love of Patience and of Truth and Prudence and of contempt of all inferiour things even of Life it self for the Love of God and for Life eternal it
themselves as being wholly his own 3. It absolutely subjecteth the Soul to God and sitteth up his Authority as absolute over our thoughts and words and all our actions And maketh the Christians life a course of careful obedience to his Laws so far as they understand them 4. It taketh up a Christians mind with the thankful sense of his Redemption so that the pardon of his sins and his deliverance from hell and his hopes of everlasting glory do form his soul to a holy gratitude and make the expressions of it to be his work 5. It giveth man a sense of the love of God as his gracious Redeemer and so of the goodness and mercifulness of his Nature It causeth them to think of God as their greatest Benefactor and as one that loveth them and as LOVE it self and so it reconcileth their estranged alienated minds to him and maketh the love of God to be the very constitution and life of the Soul 6. It causeth men to believe that there is an everlasting Glory to be enjoyed by holy Souls where we shall see the glory of God and be filled with his love and exercised in perfect love and praise and be with Christ his Angels and Saints for evermore It causeth them to take this felicity for their portion and to set their hearts upon it and to make it the chief care and business of all their lives to seek it 1. It causeth them to live in the joyful hopes and foresight of this blessedness and to do all that they do as means thereunto and thus it sweetneth all their lives and maketh Religion their chief delight 8. It accordingly employeth their thoughts and tongues so that the praises of God and the mention of their everlasting blessedness and of the way thereto is their most delightful conference as it beseemeth travellers to the City of God and so their political converse is in heaven 9. And thus it abateth the fears of death as being but their passage to everlasting life And those that are confirmed Christians indeed do joyfully entertain it and long to see their glorified Lord and the blessed Majesty of their great Creator 10. It causeth men to love all sanctified persons with a special love of complacency and all mankind with a love of benevolence even to love our neighbours as our selves and to abhor that selfishness which would engage us against our neighbours good 11. It causeth men to love their enemies and to forgive and forbear and to avoid all unjust and unmerciful revenge It maketh men meek long-suffering and patient though not impassionate insensible or void of that anger which is the necessary opposer of sin and folly 12. It employeth men in doing all the good they can it maketh them long for the holiness and happiness of one another's souls and desirous to do good to those that are in need according to our power 13. This true Regeneration by the Spirit of Christ doth make those Superiours that hath it even Princes Magistrates Parents and Masters to Rule those under them in holiness love and justice with self-denial seeking more the pleasing of God and the happiness of their Subjects for soul and body than any carnal selfish interest of their own and therefore it must needs be the blessing of that happy Kingdom Society or Family which hath such a holy Governour O that they were not so few 14. It maketh subjects and children and servants submissive and conscionable in all the duties of their Relations and to honour their Superiours as the Officers of God and to obey them in all just subordination to him 15. It causeth men to love Justice and to do as they would be done by and to desire the welfare of the souls bodies estates and honour of their neighbours as their own 16. It causeth men to subdue their adpetites and lusts and fleshly desires and to set up the government of God and sanctified Reason over them and to take their flesh for that greatest enemy in our corrupted state which we must chiefly watch against and master as being a Rebel against God and Reason It alloweth a man so much sensitive pleasure as God forbiddeth not and as tendeth to the holiness of the soul and furthereth us in God's service and all the rest it rebuketh and resisteth 17. It causeth men to estimate all the wealth and honour and dignities of the world as they have respect to God and a better world and as they either help or hinder us in the pleasing of God and seeking immortality and as they are against God and our spiritual work and happiness it causeth us to account them but as meer vanity loss and dung 18. It keepeth men in a life of watchfulness against all those temptations which would draw them from this holy course and in a continual warfare against Satan and his Kingdom under conduct of Jesus Christ 19. It causeth men to prepare for sufferings in this world and to look for no great matters here to expect persecutions crosses losses wants defamations injuries and painful sicknesses and death and to spend their time in preparing all that furniture of mind which is necessary to their support and comfort in such a day of trial that they may be patient and joyful in tribulation and bodily distress as having a comfortable relation to God and Heaven which will incomparably weigh down all 20. It causeth men to acknowledge that all this grace and mercy is from the love of God alone and to depend on him for it by faith in Christ and to devote and refer all to himself again and make it our ultimate end to please him and thus to subserve him as the first Efficient the chief Dirigent and the ultimate final Cause of all of whom and through whom and to whom are all things to whom be Glory for ever Amen This is the true description of that Regenerate Sanctified state which the Spirit of Christ doth work on all whom he will save and that are Christians indeed and not in Name only And certainly this is the Image of God's Holiness and the just constitution and use of a reasonable Soul And therefore he that bringeth men to this is a Real Saviour of whom more anon II. And it is very considerable by what means and in what manner all this is done It is done by the preaching of the Gospel of Christ and that in plainness and simplicity The curiosity of artificial oratory doth usually but hinder the success as painting doth the light of windows It was a few plain men that came with spiritual power and not with the entising words of humane wisdom or curiosities of vain Philosophy who did more in this work than any of their successors have done since As in Naturals every thing is apt to communicate its own nature and not anothers heat causeth heat and cold causeth cold so wit by communication causeth wit and common learning causeth common
operosa multo quidem faciliora Certè ita temere de mundo effutiunt ut mihi quidem nunquam hunc admirabilem coeli ornatum qui locus est proximus suspexisse videantur Where he brings in this passage as from Aristotle that if we should imagine men to have lived in some Dungeon or Cavern in the Earth and never to have seen the Sun or Light or World as we do and if there should be a doubt or dispute among them whether there be a God and if you should presently bring up these men into our places where they might look above them and about them to the Sun and Stars and Heaven and Earth they would quickly by such a sight be convinced that there is a God But as he truly addeth Assiduitate quotidiana consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi neque admirantur neque requirunt rationes earum rerum quas semper vident perinde quasi novitas nos magis quam magnitude rerum debeat adexquirendas causas excitare But I suppose it will be granted me that the first mover doth more than meerly move the effects of Wisdom and Goodness being so legible on all the World but you 'l say that to do it wisely and to attain good ends by it c. is but the modus of action with the effect and therefore matter and motion rightly ordered may be nevertheless sufficient to all effects To which I answer that the Creatures motion requireth not only that the Creator move them but that he place and order them and move them rightly and that he remove and overcome impediments c. Therefore there is necessary in the first mover both Wisdom and Love as well as Power And neither his Power Wisdom or Love are Locomotion in himself And this much being proved that in every motion there is Divine Power Wisdom and Love which is more than matter and motion it self I proceed next to enquire 5. Do you think there is any thing existent in the World besides matter and motion or not As to meer site and figure and other such order or modes of matter I know you will not deny them to have now a being as well as motion But is there no different tendency to motion in the parts of matter Is there not in many Creatures a Power an Inclination or aptitude to motion besides motion it self Is there not a reason à priore to be given why one Creature is more agile and active than another and why they act in their various wayes Why is fire more active than earth and a Swallow than a Snail If you say that the different ratio motus is in some extrinsecal agent only which moveth them you will hardly shew any possibility of that when the same Sun by the same virtue or motion as you will say is it that moveth all And if it were so you must go up to the first Cause to ask for the different motions of those movers when our enquiry now is de natura moventium motorum Creatorum If you say that it is the Ratio recipiendi in the different magnitudes or positions of the parts of matter which is the cause of different motions I would know 1. Whether this difference of magnitude and figure and site being now antecedently necessary to different motions was not so heretofore as well as now If you say No you feign without proof a state of things and order of Causes contrary to that which all mens sense perceiveth to be now existent And who is the wiser Philosopher he that judgeth the course and nature of things to be and have been what he now findeth it till the contrary be proved or he that findeth it one thing and feigneth it sometime to have been another without any proof That which is now antecedently necessary to diversity of motion it 's like was so heretofore 2. And then how could one simple equal act of God setting the first matter into motion cause such an inequality in motions to this day if it be true that you hold that only that which is moved or in motion it self can move and that motion is all that is necessary to the diversity 3. Either the first matter was made solid in larger parcels or all conjunct or in Atomes If it was made first in Atomes then Motion caused not Division If it was made conjunct and solid then motion caused not conjunction and solidity And if the first division or conjunction site and figure of matter was all antecedent to motion and without it we have no reason to think that it is the sole Cause of all things now But surely quantity figure and site are not all that now is antecedent to motion Doth not a man feel in himself a certain Power to sudden and voluntary motion He that sate still can suddenly rise and go And if you say that he performeth that sudden motion by some antecedent motion I answer that I grant that but the question is whether by that alone or whether a Power distinct from motion it self be not as evidently the Cause For otherwise the antecedent motion would proceed but according to its own proportion It would not in a minute make so sudden and great an alteration I can restrain also that motion which some antecedent motion e.g. passion urgeth me to Surely this Power of doing or not doing is somewhat different from doing it self A power of not-moving is not motion And what is the Pondus which Gassendus doth adde to magnitude and figure as a third pre-requisite in Atomes I perceive he knoweth not what to make of it himself But in conclusion it must be no natural Gravity by which the parts are inclined to the whole in themselves but the meer effect of pulsion or traction or both At the first he was for both conjunct pulsion of the Air and traction of the Atomes from the Earth But of this he repented as seeing impulsionem aeris nullam esse and was for the traction of Atoms alone Than which his Friends conceit of the pulsive motion of the Sun in its Diastole or whatever other motion is the cause doth seem less absurd But that man that would have me believe that if a Rock were in the air or if Pauls Steeple should fall the descent would be only by the traction of the hamuli of invisible Atomes or by the pulsion of Air and Sun conjunct must come neerer first and tell me how the hamuli of atomes can fasten upon a marble rock and how they come to have so much strength as to move that rock which no man can move in its proper place if there be no such thing as strength or power besides actual motion and why it is that those drawing atomes do move so powerfully Earthwards when at the same time it is supposed that as many or more atomes are moving upwards by the Suns attraction and more are moved circularly with the Earth why do not these stop or
God in great and solemn Assemblies Many Hearts are like many pieces of Wood or Coals which flame up greatly when set together which none of them alone would do And it is a fuller signification of Honour to God when his Creatures do purposely assemble for his solemn and most reverent Praise and Worship And therefore Nature shewing us the reasons of it doth make it to be our duty § 14. Nature telleth us that it is evil to cherish false opinions of God or to propagate such to others to slander or blaspheme him to forget him despise him or neglect him to contemn his Judgements or abuse his Mercies to resist his instructions precepts or sanctifying motions And that we should alwayes live as in his sight and to bend all our powers entirely to please him and to think and speak no otherwise of him nor otherwise behave our selves before him than as beseemeth us to the infinite most blessed and holy God § 15. Nature telleth us that in Controversies between Man and Man it is a rational means for ending strife to appeal to God the Judge of all by solemn Oaths where proof is wanting And that it is a hainous crime to do this falsly making him the Patron of a lie or to use his name rashly unreverently prophanely or in vain All this being both against the Nature of God and of our speech and of humane society is past all doubt unnatural evil § 16. Nature telleth us that God should be worshipped heartily sincerely spiritually and also decently and reverently both with soul and body as being the Lord of both § 17. It telleth us also that he must not be worshipped with sin or cruelty or by toyish childish ludicrous manner of Worship which signifie a minde that is not serious or which tend to breed a low esteem of him or which are any way contrary to his Nature or his will § 18. Nature telleth us that such as are endued with an eminent degree of holy wisdom should be Teachers of others for obedience to God and their salvation As the Soul is more worth than the Body and its welfare more regardable so charity to the Soul is as Natural a duty as to the body which cannot better be exercised than in communicating holy wisdom and instructing men in the matters of highest everlasting consequence § 19. Yea Nature teacheth that so great a work should not be done slightly and occasionally only as on the by but that it should be a work of stated office which tried men should be regularly called to for the more sure and universal edification of Mankind Nature telleth us that the greatest works of greatest consequence should be done with the greatest skill and care and that it is likest to be so done when it is made a set Office intrusted in the hands of tried men for it is not many that have such extraordinary endowments and if unfit persons manage so great a work they will marr it and miss the end and that which a man taketh for his Office he is liker to take care of than that which he thinks belongeth no more to him than others and how necessary Order is in all matters of weight the experience of all Governments Societies and Persons may soon convince us § 20. Nature telleth us also that it is the duty of such Teachers to be very diligent serious and plain and of Learners to be thankful willing studious respectful and rationally-obedient as remembring the great importance of the work For in vain is the labour of the Teachers if the Learners will not do their part the Receiver hath the chief benefit and therefore the greatest part of the duty which must do most to the success § 21. Nature telleth men that they should not live loosely and ungoverned but in the order of governed Societies for the better attainment of the ends of their Creation as is proved before § 22. Nature telleth us that Governours should be the most wise and pious and just and merciful and diligent and exemplary laying out themselves for the publick good and the pleasing of the universal Sovereign § 23. It teacheth us also that Subjects must be faithful to their Governours and must honour and obey them in subordination to God § 24. Nature telleth us that it is the Parents duty with special love and diligence to educate their children in the knowledge fear and obedience of God providing for their bodies but preferring their souls § 25. And that children must love honour and obey their Parents willingly and thankfully receiving their instructions and commands § 26. Nature also telleth us that thus the Relations of Husband and Wife should be sanctified to the highest ends of life and also the Relation of Master and Servant and that our callings and labours in the world should be managed in pure obedience to God and to our ultimate end § 27. Nature teacheth all men to love one another as servants of the same God and members of the same universal Kingdom and creatures of the same specifick nature There is somewhat amiable in every man for there is something of God in every man and therefore something that it is our duty to love And that according to the excellency of man's nature which sheweth more of God than other inferiour creatures do and also according to their additional virtues Loveliness commandeth love and love maketh lovely This with all the rest afore-mentioned are so plain that to prove them is but to be tedious § 28. Nature telleth us that we should deal justly with all giving to every one his due and doing to them as we would be done by § 29. Particularly it telleth us that we must do nothing injuriously against the life or health or liberty of our neighbour but do our best for their preservation and comfort § 30. Man being so noble a creature and his education so necessary to his welfare and promiscuous unregulated generation tending so manifestly to confusion ill education divisions and corruption of mankind and unbridled exercise of lust tending to the abasement of reason and corruption of body and mind Nature telleth us that carnal copulation should be very strictly regulated and kept within the bounds of lawful marriage and that the contract of marriage must be faithfully kept and no one defile his neighbours bed nor wrong another's chastity or their own in thought word or deed This proposition though Boars understand it not is proved in the annexed reasons Nothing would tend more to houshold divisions and ill education and the utter degenerating and undoing of mankind than ungoverned copulation No one would know his own children if lust were not bounded by strict and certain Laws and then none would love them nor provide for them nor would they have any certain ingenuous education Women would become most contemptible and miserable as soon as beauty faded and lust was satisfied and
if God brought them forth for his own Perfection it would follow that he was before imperfect and consequently not God and that his Perfections are mutable and perishing Therefore at least some other cause of these must be found out And as for the similitudes in the objection I answer 1. That the fructifying of a Tree is an act of Generation and the ends of it are partly the use for food to superiour sensitive Creatures especially man and partly the propagation of its species because it is mortall Fructification is indeed its perfection but that is because it is not made for it self but for another Sic vos non vobis may be written upon all But God is neither mortall needing a propagation of the species nor is he subservient to any other and finally for its use And as for the Soul it made not the matter of its own body but found it made though in the formation of it it might be so efficient as domicilium sibi fabricare But God made all matter of nothing and gave the World whatsoever it is or hath And therefore was Perfect himself before For an imperfect being could never have been the cause of such a frame Therefore he needed no domicilium for himself nor as an imperfect Part a form to concurr to the constitution of a whole But he is the efficient dirigent and final cause of the World and all things but not the constituent or essential for then the Creature and Creator were all one and God debased and the Creature deified But he is to them a supra-essential cause even more than a form and soul while he is a total efficient of all 3. If all that is in the Objection had been proved it would not at all shake the main design of my present discourse which is to prove that God is our Grand Benefactor and Chief Good and that he is mans ultimate end For if the World were his Body and he both its Efficient and its Soul he would be the cause of all its Good and the Cause would be more excellent than the Effect And if our Souls that never made the matter of our Bodies are yet the noblest part of us and far more excellent than the Body much more would God that made or caused all the Matter and Order in the World be more excellent than that World which he effected And as the Soul is not for the Body as its ultimate end though it be the Life of the Body and its great Benefactor but the Body is finally more for the Soul though the Soul need not the Body so much as the Body needeth the Soul and as the Horse is finally for the Rider and not the Rider for the Horse though the Horse needeth his Master more than the Master doth the Horse for the Horses life is preserved by the Master when the Master is but accommodated in his Journey by his Horse Even so though the World need God and he needeth not the World and God giveth being and life to the World which can give nothing at all to him yet the World is finally for God and not God for the World The noblest and first Being is still the End And the generated part of the World which is not formally eternal but doth oriri interire is it that our dispute doth most concern which the Objection doth no whit invalidate § 5. The same Will of God which was the free efficient is the End of all his Works ad extra Gods Essence hath no Efficient or final Cause but is the efficient and final cause of all things else They proceeded from his Power his Wisdom and his good-will and they bear the Image of his Power Wisdom and Good-will and he loveth his own Image in them and loveth them as they bear his Image and loveth his Image for Himself So that the act of his Love to Himself is necessary though voluntary and so is the act of his Love to his Image and to all the Goodness of the Creature while it is such But he freely and not necessarily made and continueth the Creature in his Image and needeth not the Glass or Image being self-sufficient so that his Creature is the mediate Object his Image on the Creature is the ultimate created Object his own perfections to which that Image relateth is the objectum simpliciter ultimatum his complacency or love is the Actus ultimus and that very act is the object of his precedent act of Creation or volition of the Creatures But all this is spoken according to the narrow imperfect capacity of man who conceiveth of God as having a prius posterius in his acts which is but respectively and denominatively from the order of the objects In short Gods free-will is the Beginning of his works ad extra and the complacency of that will in his works as Good in relation to his own perfections is the END And therefore he is said to Rest when he saw that all his works were Good § 6. Whatsoever is the fullest expression and Glorifying demonstration of God in the Creature must needs be the chief created excellency Because he loveth Himself first and the Creature for Himself And seeing the Creature hath all from him which is good and amiable in it it must needs follow that those parts are most amiable and best which have most of the impression of the Creators excellencies on them Not that he hath greater Perfections to imprint on one Creature than another but the impression of those Perfections is much greater on one than on another § 7. The Happier therefore God will make any Creature the more will be communicate to it of the Image and demonstration of his own goodness and so will both love it the more for his own Image and cause it to love him the more which is the chief part of his Image § 8. The Goodness of God is conceived of by our narrow mindes in three notions as it were in three degrees of altitude The Highest is The infinite perfections of his Essence as such The second is The infinite perfection of his Will as such which is called His Holiness and the Fountain of Morality The third is that one part of his Wills perfection which is his Benignity to his Creatures which we call his Goodness in a lower notion as relative to our selves because he is inclined by it to Do us good This is his Goodness in condescention § 9. Though all this is but one in God yet because our mindes are fain to receive it as in several parts or notions we may therefore not only distinguish them but compare them as the Objects of our Love § 10. Man usually beginneth at the lowest and loveth God first for his Benignity and Love to us before he riseth to the higher acts And this is not an irregular motion of a lapsed Soul in its return to God so be it we make haste in our
ascent and make no stay in these lower acts otherwise it will be privatively sinfull § 11. Therefore God multiplyeth Mercies upon Man that he might facilitate this first act of Love by gratitude Not that these Mercies being good to our selves should lead us to love God ultimately for our selves But they should help us first to love him for our selves as the immediate passage to a higher act of Love with which we must love Him in and for Himself and our selves for Him § 12. Therefore God hath planted into our Natures the Principle of self-love that it might suit our Natures to the Mercies of God and make them sweet to us Not that we should arise to no higher an esteem of them but that this sweetness in them which respecteth our selves and is relished by self-love should lead us to the Fountain of perfect Goodness from which they flow Our very senses and appetites are given us to this end not that we should judge by no higher faculties but that the delights of the patible or sensible qualities in the Creatures by affecting the sense might presently represent to the higher faculties the sweetnesses of Infinite Goodness to the Soul and so we might by all ascend to God § 13. Those mercies therefore are the greatest which reveal most of God with the least impediments of our ascent unto him § 14. Therefore his Love most revealed and communicated and his perfect Goodness most manifested to the Soul is the Greatest Mercy and all corporal Mercies are to be estimated and desired but as they subserve and conduce to these and not as they are pleasing to our flesh or senses § 15. The Perfect Goodness of the Will of God though it contain Benignity and Mercy yet is not to be measured by the good which he doth to us our selves or to any Creature But its highest excellency consisteth in its Essential Perfection and the Perfect Love that God hath to himself and in the conformity of his Will to his most perfect Wisdom which knoweth what is to be willed ad extra and in his complacency in all that is good as such When self-love so far blindeth us as to make our Interest the Standard to judge of the goodness of God we do but shew that we are fallen from God unto our selves and that we are setting up our selves above him and debasing him below our selves As if we and our Happiness were that ultimate end and he and his Goodness were the Means and had no other Goodness but that of a means to us and our felicity If he made us he must needs have absolute Propriety in us and made us for himself To measure his Goodness by our own Interest is more unwise than to measure the Sea in our hand or the Sun and all the Orbs by our span And to measure it by the Interest of the Vniverse is to judge of that which is infinite by that which is finite betwixt which there is no proportion As God is infinitely Better than the World so he is infinitely more Amiable and therefore must Infinitely more Love himself than all the World and therefore so to do is Infinite excellency and Perfection in his Will But the out-going of his Will to the Creature by way of causative volition is free and conducted by that Wisdom which-knoweth what is fit and what degrees of Communication are most eligible to God God is Perfect without his Works He had wanted nothing if he had never made them He will not herein do all that he is simply Able to do but all that his Wisdom seeth fittest to be done He was as Good before he made the World as since And those that think he caused it eternally must confess him in order of Nature to be first perfect in Himself and to have more Goodness than all which he communicateth to the World He was as Good before this present generation of men on Earth had any being He is as good before he bringeth us to the Heavenly Glory as he will be after though before he did not so much good to us It is no diminution of his Goodness to say that he made millions of Toads and Flies and Spiders whom he could have made men if he had pleased or to say that he made millions of Men whom he could have made Angels nor that he made not every Clod or Stone a Starr or Sun nor that he suffereth men to be tormented by each others cruelty or by such diseases as the Stone and Strangury Convulsions Epilepsies c. nor that men at last must die and their bodies rot and turn to dust That these things are done is past dispute And that God is good is past dispute And therefore that all this is consistent with this Goodness is past dispute and consequently that his goodness is not to be measured by so low a thing as humane or any Creature Interest If you say that all this is hurtfull to the Individuals but not to the Vniverse to which it is better that there be a mixture of evil with good than that every part had a perfection in it self I answer 1. It seemeth then that the good which you measure Gods goodness by is not the Interest of any individual Creature at least that is in this lower World For you confess that the good which would make it Happy is given to it limitedly and with mixtures of permitted or inflicted evil and that God could have given them more of that goodness if he would God could have freed them from pain and misery yea and have given the ignorant more knowledge and honesty and grace So that it is not our interest that is the measure of his goodness And if so what is it that you call the Vniversal interest Surely the universality of Rational creatures hath no being but in the Individuals and if it be not the welfare of the Individuals which is the Measure then is it not any interest or welfare o the Vniverse which is of the same kind and for the insensible creatures they feel neither good nor hurt and therefore by your Measure should be none of the Universe whose interest is the Measure Therefore it must be somewhat above the sensible interest of any or all the Individuals which you call the Bonum Vniversitatis and that can be nothing else but that state and order of the Vniverse in which it is conform to the Idea of the Divine Intellect and to the Volition of the Divine Will and so is fittest for him to take complacency in as being the measure and reasons of his own volitions and operations which he fetcheth not aliunde or at least which are unknown to such as we No doubt but it is more for the happiness of the Individuals that every Dust and Stone and Fly and Beast and Man were an Angel but it is not so 2. And surely they that believe the evil of sin and that God could have
kept it out of the world and saved the Individuals from it will confess that man's interest is not the Measure of God's goodness especially considering what consequents also follow sin both here and hereafter 3. And as to this lower part of the Vniverse how many Nations of the Earth are drown'd in woful ignorance and ungodliness how few are the wise and good and peaceable When God could have sent them Learning and Teachers and Means of Reformation and have blessed all this Means to their deliverance So that the far greater part of this lower world hath not so much good as God could give them and the infirmities of the best do cause their dolorous complaints It is certain that God is infinitely good and that all his works also are good in their degree but withall it is certain that God in himself is the Simple Primitive Good and that created goodness principally consisteth in a conformity to his Will which is the standard and measure of it § 16. God as considered in the Infinite Perfections of his Nature and his Will is most Amiable and the object of our highest love § 17. But he is not known by us in those Perfections as seen in themselves immediately but as demonstrated and glorified expressively in his works in which he shineth to us in his goodness § 18. His works therefore are made for the apt revealing of himself as amiable to the intelligent part of his Creation They are the Book in which he hath appointed us to read and the Glass in which he hath appointed us with admiration to behold the Infinite power Wisdom and Goodness of the Creator and in which we may see that he is not only our Chief Benefactor but the Vltimate Object of our Love and so the End of all our Motions § 19. This third Relation of God to us as our Chief Good efficiently and finally is the highest and most perfective to us but is not separated from the former two but they are all marvelously conjunct and concur in the production of most of the subsequent effects of Gods providence As the Elements are conjuct but not confounded in mixed bodies and in themselves are easily to be distinguished where they are not divided and their effects sometimes also distinct but usually mix'd as are the causes so is it in the case of these three Great Relations though God's Propriety extend further than his Government because Inanimates and Bruites are capable of one and not of the other yet as to the Rational Creatures they are in reality of the same extent God is as to Right the Owner and the Ruler of all the world and also their real Benefactor and quoad debitum their ultimate end But as to consent on their parts none but the godly give up themselves to him in any one of these Relations In order of Nature God is first our Owner and then our Ruler and our chief Good or End His work in the first Relation is Arbitrary Disposal of us his work in the second is to Govern us and in the third Attraction and Felicitating But he so Disposeth of us as never to cross his rules of Government and so governeth us as never to cross his absolute Propriety and attracteth and felicitateth us in concent with his Premiant act of Government and all sweetly and wonderfully conspire the perfection of his works § 20. All these Relations are oft summed up in one name which principally importeth the last which is the persective Relation but truly includeth both the former and that is That GOD is Our FATHER As the Rational Soul doth ever include the Sensitive and Vegetative Faculties so doth God's Fatherly Relation to us include his Dominion and Government A Father is thus a kind of Image of God in this Relation For 1. he hath a certain Propriety in his children 2. He is by nature their rightful Governour 3. He is their Benefactor for they are beholden to him for their being and well-being Nature causeth him to love them and bindeth them again to love him And the Title OVR FATHER which art in Heaven includeth all these Divine Relations to us but specially expresseth the Love and Graciousness of God to us Obj. But I must go against the sense of most of the world if I take God to be infinitely or perfectly good for operari sequitur esse He that is perfectly good will perfectly do good But do we not see and feel what you said before The world is but as a wilderness and the life of man a misery We come into the world in weakness and in a case in which we cannot help our selves but are a pity and trouble to others we are their trouble that breed us and bring us up we are vexed with unsatisfied desires with troubling passions with tormenting pains and languishing weakness and enemies malice with poverty and care with losses and crosses and shame and grief with hard labour and studies with the injuries and spectacles of a Bedlam world and with fears of death and death at last Our enemies are our trouble our friends are our trouble our Rulers are our trouble and our inferiours children and servants are our trouble our possessions are our trouble and so are our wants And is all this the effect of perfect Goodness And the poor Bruits seem more miserable than we they labour and hunger and die at last to serve our will we beat them use them and abuse them at our pleasure And all the Inanimates have no sense of any good and which is worst of all the world is like a Dungeon of ignorance like an Hospital of mad-men for folly and distractedness like a band of Robbers for injury and violence like Tygers for cruelty like snarling Dogs for contention and in a word like Hell for wickedness What else sets the world together by the ears in wars and bloudshed in all generations what maketh peace-makers the most neglected men what maketh vertue and piety the mark of persecution and of common scorn how small a part of the world hath knowledge or piety And you tell us of a Hell for most at last Is all this the fruit of perfect Goodness These thoughts have seriously troubled some Answ He that will ever come to knowledge must begin at the first Fundamental Truths and in his enquiry proceed to lesser Superstructures and reduce uncertainties and difficulties to those points which are sure and plain and not cast away the plainest certain truths because they over-take some difficulties beyond them The true method of enquiry is that we first try whether there be a God that is perfectly Good or not If this be once proved beyond all controversie then all that followeth is certainly reconcilable to it for Truth and Truth is not contradictory Now that God is perfectly Good hath been fully proved before He that giveth to all the world both Heaven and Earth and all the Orbs all that Good whether Natural
yet is as obligatory and as much if not more than a Law which maketh it more than the Duty of a Subject to answer love and goodness with gratitude and love so that if per impossibile you suppose that we had no other obligation to God but this of love and goodness or abstract this from the rest I question whether it be not most eminently morall and whether the performance of it do not morally fit us for the highest benefits and felicity and the violation of it merit not morally the rejections of our great Benefactor and the withdrawing of all his favours to our undoing But this Controversie my Cause is not much concerned in as I have said because the same God is our Soveraign also § 2. The duty which we specially owe to God in this highest Relation is LOVE which as such is above obedience as such The difference of Understandings and Wills requireth Government and obedience that the understanding and will of the superiour may be a Rule to the subjects But LOVE is a Concord of Wills and so farr as LOVE hath caused a concord there is no use for Government by Laws and Penalties And therefore the Law is not made for a Righteous man as such that is so far as Love hath united his Soul to Virtue and separated it from sin he need not to be constrained or restrained by any Penal Laws no more than men need a Law to command them to eat and drink and preserve their lives and forbear self-destruction But so far as any man is unrighteous or ungodly that is hath a will to sin or cross or averse to Goodness so far he needeth a penal Law which therefore all need while they remain imperfect Nature hath made Love and Goodness like the Iron and the Load-stone The Vnderstanding doth not so ponderously incline to Truth as the Will doth naturally to Good For this being the perfect act of the Soul the whole inclination of Nature goeth after it Therefore Love is the highest duty or noblest act of the Soul of Man the end and perfection of all the rest § 3. The essential act of this LOVE is COMPLACENCIE or the Pleasedness of the minde in a suitable Good But it hath divers effects concomitants and accidents from whence it borroweth divers Names § 4. The LOVE of Benevolence as it worketh towards the felicity of another is the Love of God to man who needeth him but not of Man to God who is above our benefits and needeth nothing § 5. Our LOVE to God respecteth him either 1. as our Efficient 2. Dirigent 3. or final Good which hath accordingly concomitant duties § 6. I. Our LOVE to God as our Chief good efficiently containeth in it 1. A willing Receiving Love 2. A Thankfull Love 3. A Returning devoted serving Love which among men amounts to retribution § 7. 1. An absolute dependent Beneficiary ought with full dependance on his Totall Benefactor to Receive all his Benefits with Love and willingness An undervaluing of Benefits and demurring or rejecting them is a great abuse and injury to a Benefactor Thus doth the ungodly World against all the Grace and greatest mercies of God They know not the worth of them and therefore despise them and will not be intreated to accept them but take them for intollerable injuries or troubles as a sick Stomack doth its Physick and Food because they are against their fleshly Appetites An open heart to receive Gods mercies with high esteem beseemeth such Beneficiaries as we § 8. 2. Thankfulness is that Operation of Love which the light of Nature hath convinced all the World to be a duty and scarce a man is to be found so bruitish as to deny it And our Love to God should be more thankfull than to all the World because our Receivings from Him are much greater than from all § 9. 3. Though we cannot requite God true gratitude will devote the whole man to his Service Will and Honour and bring back his Mercies to him for his use so far as we are able § 10. II. Our LOVE to our DIRIGENT Benefactor is 1. A fiducial Love 2. A love well-pleased in his conduct 3. A following Love Though it belongeth to God chiefly as our sapiential Governour to be the Dirigent Cause of our Lives Yet he doth it also as our Benefactor by a commixture of the effects of his Relations § 11. 1. So infinite and sure a Friend is absolutely to be Tristed with a General Confidence in the Goodness of his Nature and a particular Confidence in the Promises or significations of his good-will Infinite Good cannot be willing to deceive or disappoint us And if we absolutely Trust him it will abundantly conduce to our holiness and peace § 12. 2. We must also love his Conduct his Precepts and his holy Examples and the very way it self in which he leadeth us All that is from him is good and must be loved both for it self and for him that it cometh from and for that which it leadeth to All his Instructions helps reproofs and all his conducting Means should be amiable to us § 13. 3. Love must make us cheerfully follow him in all the wayes which by Precept or Example he is pleased to lead us And so to follow him as to love the tokens of his presence and footsteps of his will and all the signs of his approbation And with an Heroick fortitude of Love to rejoyce in sufferings and venture upon dangers and conquer difficulties for his sake § 14. III. Our LOVE to GOD as our final Good is 1. A Desiring LOVE 2. A seeking LOVE and 3. A full complacential delighting Love which is the perfection of us and all the rest And accidentally it is sometimes a Mourning Love § 15. 1. Man being but in Via under the efficiency and conduct of Love to final Love and Goodness hath his End to intend and his means to use and therefore Love must needs work by Desire § 16. So far as a man is short of the thing desired Love will have some sense of want and so far as we are crossed in our seekings and frustrate in any of our hopes it will be sorrowfull § 17. 2. Man being appointed to a course and life of Means to his last end must needs be employed in those Means for the Love of that End And so the main work of this life is that of a Desiring seeking Love § 18. 3. The complacential delighting LOVE hath three degrees The first in Belief and Hope The second in foretaste and The third in full enflamed exercise § 19. 1. The well-grounded Hope of the foreseen Vision and fruition of the Infinite Good which is our End must needs possess the considerate minde with a delight which is somewhat answerable to that Hope § 20. 2. When the Soul doth not only Hope for its future end but also at present close with God subratione finis in the exercise
the less do forfeit his mercies by their inhumane and irrational ingratitude and abuse Which is the sin of all proud covetous voluptuous persons the ambitious fornicators gluttons drunkards and lovers of sports recreations idleness or any pleasure as it turneth them from God § 34. Above all other sin we should most take heed of the inordinate love of any creature for it self or for our carnal self alone because it is most contrary to our love to God which is our highest work and duty § 35. Those mercies of God are most to be valued desired and sought which shew us most of God himself or most help up our love to him § 36. We must love both our natural selves and neighbours the bad as well as the good with a love of benevolence desiring our own good and theirs But at the same time we must hate our selves and them so far as wicked with the hatred of Displicency and with the love of Complacency must only so far love our selves or others as the Image of Divine Goodness is in us or them I speak not of the meer natural passion of the parent to the child which is common to man and beast nor of the exercises of love in outward acts for those may be directed by God's commands to go more to one as a wicked child that hath less true amiableness in him But all holy love must be suited to the measures of the truest object § 37. The love of God should be with all our soul and with all our might not limited suppressed or neglected but be the most serious predominant action of our souls How easie a matter is it to prove Holiness to be naturally mans greatest duty when love to God which is the summ of it is so easily proved to be so All the reason in the world that is not corrupted but is reason indeed must confess without any tergiversation that it is the most great and unquestionable duty of man to love God above all yea with all our heart and soul and might And he that doth so shall never be numbred by him with the ungodly for those are inconsistent § 38. The exercises of love to God in complacency desire seeking c. should be the chief employment of our thoughts For the thoughts are the exercise of a commanded faculty which must be under the power of our will and the ultimate end and the exercises of love to it should daily govern them And what a man loveth most usually he will think of with his most practical powerful thoughts if not with the most frequent § 39. The love of God should employ our tongues in the proclaiming of his praise and benefits and expressing our own admiration and affection to kindle the like in the souls of others For the same God who is so amiable hath given us our speech with the rest of his benefits and given it us purposely to declare his praise Reason telleth us that we have no higher worthier or better employment for our tongues and that we should use them to the best The tongues of men are adorned with language for charitable and pious communication that they may be fit to affect the hearts of others and to kindle in them that sacred fire which is kindled in themselves Therefore that tongue which is silent to its Makers praise and declareth not the Goodness and Wisdom and power of the Lord and doth not divulge the notice of his benefits condemneth it self and the heart that should employ it as neglecting the greatest duty it was made for § 40. The lives of Gods Beneficiaries should be employed to his praise and pleasure and should be the streaming effects of inward love And all his mercies should be improved to his service from a thankful heart All this hath the fullest testimony of reason according to the rules of proportion and common right To whom should we live but to him from whom and by whom we live What but our ultimate end should be principally intended and sought through our whole lives A creature that hath all from God should in love and gratitude bring back all to him and thus we make it more our own § 41. This Life of Love should be the chiefest Delight and Pleasure of our Souls which all other pleasure should subserve and all be abhorred which contradicteth it Nothing is easilier confessed by all than the desirableness of Delight and Pleasure and the most excellent object which most be most beloved must be our chief delight for Love it self is a delighting act unless some stop do turn it aside into fears and sorrows Nothing can it self be so delectable as God the chiefest Good and no employment so delectable as loving him This therefore should be our work and our recreation our labour and our pleasure our food and feast Other delights are lawful and good so far as they further these delights of holy love by carrying up our hearts to the original and end of all our mercies and delights But nothing is so injurious to God and us as that which corrupteth our minds with sensuality and becometh our Pleasure instead of God § 42. The sense of the present imperfection of our Love should make us long to know God more and to love him and delight in him and praise him in perfection to the utmost extent of our capacities If it be so good to love God then must the highest degree of it be best and reason teacheth us when we feel how weak our Knowledge and Love is to long for more yea for perfection § 43. Thus hath Reason shewed us the end and highest felicity of man in his highest duty To Know God to Love him and Delight in him in the fullest Perfection and to be Loved by him and be fully pleasing to him as herein bearing his Image is the felicity and the ultimate end of man LOVE is mans final act excited by the fullest Knowledge and God so beheld and enjoyed in his Love to us is the final Object And here the Soul must seek its Rest Obj. But quae supra nos nihil ad nos God indeed is near to Angels but he hath made them our Benefactors and they have committed it to inferiour Causes there must be suitableness as well as excellency to win love we find no suitableness between our hearts and God And therefore we believe not that we were made for any such employment And we see that the far greatest part of mankind are as averse to this life of Holiness as our selves and therefore we cannot think but that it is quite above the nature of man and not the work and end which he was made for Answ 1. Whether God have made Angels or Rulers or Benefactors or what love or honour we owe them as his Instruments is nothing to our present business For if it be granted that he thus useth them it is most certain that he is nevertheless
that the object of those hopes and fears are certain truths which are so necessary to the government of the world and this needeth no other proof but this If God can govern the world without a course of deceit and lying then the objects of these necessary hopes and fears are true But God can govern the world without a course of deceit and lying Ergo. The Major is evident because to govern by the hopes and fears of falshoods or things that are not when those hopes and fears are not only of God but made necessary to Government is to govern by deceit and lying or if it had not been by falshood uttered but falshood permitted the Minor is certain For if God cannot govern without such a course of deceit it is either for want of Power or of Wisdom or of Goodness that is Holiness and Benignity of Will But the Omnipotent wanteth not Power and the Omniscient wanteth not Wisdom to find out true and suitable means and he that is Optimus wanteth neither Holiness to love truth and hate falshood nor Benignity to love his Creature and therefore needeth no such means And he that believeth that God himself doth govern the world by a cheat even by the hopes and fears of fictions will sure think it best to imitate his God and to govern and trade and live accordingly This argument was à necessitate ad ordinem the next shall be only from God's actual government § 6. VI. If God do de facto govern the world by the hopes and fears of Good and Evil in another Life then the object of those hopes and fears is certain But God doth de facto so govern Ergo. The Major is proved as before for that which proved that God can govern without falshood proved also that he doth govern without it It belongeth only to the Impotent the Ignorant or the Bad to use such means Obj. May not a Parent or Physician honestly deceive a Child or Patient for his recovery to health why then may not God do so Answ 1. They do it through insufficiency to attain their end by a better means but the Omnipotent and Omniscient hath no such insufficiency 2. They may not lie or utter any untruth to do it though they may hide some truth by words which he is apt to mistake But if the world be governed by such hopes and fears of futurity it is hard to think whence they should fetch the object but from some divine revelation in nature 3. A whole course of Government of all the rational world by so sorry an instrument as deceit and falshood is more inconsistent with the nature and perfections of God than a particular act of deceit in a work of necessity and charity is with the nature of imperfect man The Minor is proved in the answer to the last objections and by the common experience of the world Obj. How little doth the hopes and fears of another world do with the most Do you not see that fleshly interest ruleth them and therefore they are what the Great ones would have them be who can help or hurt them Answ 1. I have proved how much worse it would be ◠that restraint which these hopes and fears make were taken off 2. That this restraint is general in all Nations almost of the earth though the prevalency of sin do much enfeeble it 3. That Rulers themselves are under some of these restraints in their Law-making and Judgement Though fleshly interest much prevail against it there are some remnants of secret hopes or fears in the consciences of sinners which keep up so much good as is yet left and keep men from those villanies in which they might hope to escape all sufferings from men § 7. VII If God himself kindle in the best of men desires to know him love him and enjoy him perfectly hereafter then such desires shall attain their end But God himself doth kindle such desires in the best of men Ergo And consequently there is such a Life to come Here 1. I must prove that the best men have such desires 2. That God kindleth them 3. That therefore he will satisfie them 1. And for the first the Consciences of all Good men are my witnesses whose desires to know God better to love him and please him more and to enjoy his Love is as the very pulse and breath of their souls For this they groan and pray and seek for this they labour wait and suffer If you could help them to more of the Knowledge and Love of God you would satisfie them more than to give them all the wealth and honours of the World Their Religious lives their labours prayers contemplations and sufferings prove all this and shew for what they long and live Obj. But this is caused by the power of a deluded fantasie which seeketh after that which is not to be had What if you fall in Love with the Sun Will it prove that you must be loved by it see it and enjoy it in the life to come Answ 1. To the similitude Either the Sun is a rational free Agent or not If it be it is either the chief Agent or a dependent Instrument If it were the first as it is not I should owe my self totally to it in the exercise of all the powers given me as is aforesaid And if it gave me such Desires I might suppose it was not in vain But if it give me nothing but as an Instrument or dependent Cause I owe it nothing but in subserviency to the first Cause But in such subserviency if God had commanded me to love and honour it as a Lover of Mankinde and a Rational Benefactor and had placed any of my duty or felicity in seeking perfection in that love and honour I should obey him and expect an answerable benefit But if it be no intelligent Agent or I cannot know that it is so then I can owe it no other respect but what is due to a natural Instrument of God 2. To the matter That these desires are not from a deluded fantasie but the work of God I prove 1. In that I have fully proved them already to be our Duty by the Law of Nature To love God with all the heart and might and consequently to desire to love him and please him and enjoy him in perfection that is in the utmost of our capacity is a proved duty 2. In that the Best men are the possessors of it And the more all other Virtues and Obedience do abound the more this aboundeth And the more any are vicious impious sensual worldly the less they have of these desires after God 3. They encrease in the use of holy means appointed by God and they decay by evil means All sin is against it and all obedience doth promote it 4. It is found most suitable to the tendency of our faculties as their only perfection The only true advancement of Reason
leave him under the deserved privation of well-being depriving him of all other Mercies This is undeniable that it is in God's choice whether he will take away his Being it self or only all the Mercies which are necessary to his well-being for he that had nothing before but by free gift may be deprived of any thing which was none of his own if he forfeit it by abuse Nay we live upon such a continued emanation from God as the beams from the Sun that it is but God's stopping of his streams of bounty and we perish without any other taking away of mercies from us § 17. Nature teacheth men to choose a great deal of tollerable pain and misery rather than not be at all even so much as will not utterly weigh down the love of life and of vital operations I say not as some that the greatest torment or misery is more eligible or less odious than annihilation But it is certain that a great deal is We see abundance how ever the Roman and Greek Philosophers scorned it as baseness who are blind or lame or in grievous pains of the Gout and Stone and many that are in miserable poverty begging their bread or toiling from morning to night like horses and yet seldom taste a pleasant bit but joyn distracting cares with labours and yet they are all unwilling to die Custom hath made their misery tollerable and they had rather continue so for ever than be annihilated If then God may annihilate even the innocent supposing he had not promised the contrary then may he lay all that pain and care and labour on them which they would themselves prefer before annihilation For it s no wrong to one that hath his reason and liberty to give him his own choice § 18. It is just with God to lay more misery on a sinner than on one that never deserved ill and to lay more on him for his sin than he would choose himself before annihilation Whether God may without injustice inflict more misery on the innocent than he would himself prefer before annihilation some make a question and deny it For my part I see no great difficulty in the question But it is nothing to that which I am proving it is not God's usage of the innocent but of the guilty which we are speaking of and that he may make them more miserable who deserve it than his bounty made them before any guilt or than a just man would choose to be rather than be annihilated I see no reason at all to doubt Penalty is involuntary and no man ever said that it was unjust to lay more upon a malefactor than he himself was willing of and would choose before a condition which without his fault he might have been put into So then we have already proved 1. That God may punish a man everlastingly 2. And with a greater penalty than annihilation § 19. God may leave a sinner his being and in particular deprive him of his favour and all the joys and blessedness which he refused by his sinning § 20. And he may justly withal deny him those corporal mercies meat drink honour pleasure health ease c. which he over-valued and abused and preferred before God and greater blessings All this I think no man doth deny that acknowledgeth a God § 21. He that is continued in his natural being and is deprived of God's favour and of his future happiness for ever and understandeth what it is that he hath lost and is also deprived of all those natural benefits which he desired must needs be under continual pain of sense as well as of loss for all this want must needs be felt § 22. He that in all this misery of loss and sense doth remember how it was that he came to it and how base a thing he preferred before his God and his felicity and for how vile a price he sold his hopes of the life to come and how odiously he abused God by sin as it is before described cannot choose but have a continual torment of conscience and heart-gnawing repentance in himself § 23. He that is under utter despair of ever coming out of this condition will thereby have his torment yet more encreased All these are natural undeniable consequents § 24. A Body united to so miserable a self-tormenting forsaken Soul cannot have any peace and quietness seeing it is the Soul by which the body liveth and hath its chiefest peace or pains § 25. Thus sin doth both as a Natural and as a Moral Meritorious cause bring on dissatisfaction grief vexation desertion by God and privation of felicity and peace § 26. For as long as a sinner is impenitent and unsanctified that is loveth not God as God nor is recovered from his carnal mind and sin it is both morally and naturally impossible that he should be blessed or enjoy God For as it is only God that efficiently can make happy because nothing worketh but by him and so sin meritoriously undoeth the sinner by making him unfit for favour and making him an object of displicence and justice so it is only God that finally can make happy all things being but Means to him and unfit of themselves to give Rest to the inquisitive seeking mind And God is enjoyed only by Love and the sense of His Love and Goodness therefore the soul that loveth not God and is not suited to the delightful fruition of him can no more enjoy him than a blind man can enjoy the light or an ox can feast with a man § 27. He that is under this punishment and despair will be yet further removed from the love of God and so from all capacity of happiness for he cannot love a God who he knoweth will for ever by penal justice make him miserable He that would not love a God who aboundeth in mercy to him in the day of mercy will never love him when he seeth that he is his enemy and hath shut him for ever out of Mercy and out of Hope § 28. God is not bound to sanctifie the mind and will of such a self-destroying sinner who hath turned away himself from God and Happiness And without a renewed Mind it is morally and unnaturally impossible that he should be happy He that would not use the Mercy that would have saved him in the day of mercy cannot require another life of mercy and trial when this is lost and cast away nor can require the further helps of grace § 29. If sin as sin have all the malignity and demerit before proved much more the aggravated sins of many and most of all a life of wickedness which is spent in enmity against God and Godliness and in a course of sensuality and rebellion with the obstinate impenitent rejecting of all the counsel calls and mercies which would reclaim the sinner and this to the last breath It hath before been manifested that all wilful sin hath this malignity in
have mercy upon your selves and do not refuse and obstinately refuse the mercy of God and then call him unmercifull Have pity on your own Souls Be not so cruel against your selves as to run into endless misery for nothing and then think to lay the blame on God! God calleth now to you in your sin and wilfulness and intreateth you to have mercy on your selves and then he will have mercy on you in the day of your distress But if you will not hear him but will have none of his mercy now wonder not if in vain you cry to him for it then Obj. But I would not so use an Enemy of my own Answ 1. He doth not deserve it for you are not Gods 2. You are not Governours of the World and so his fault respecteth not any such Law and Judgement of yours by which the World must be governed 3. Nor have you the Wisdom and Justice of God to do that which is right to all Yet are you not bound your selves to take complacency in the evil of your Enemies but to use just means to bring him to a better minde and state § 37. The summ of all here proved is that all sin deserveth endless misery and naturally induceth to it and that all ungodly impenitent souls shall certainly undergoe it and that none can be saved from this misery but by turning to God and being saved from their sins CHAP. XVI Of the present sinfull and miserable state of this World § 1. THough all men may know all this before said to be their duty and sin to be so evil and to deserve such punishment yet none do live perfectly without sin according to the Law of Nature I have heard but of few that pretend to such perfection and those few have confuted their own pretenses and been the furthest from it of many others And therefore this I have no need to prove § 2. The greatest part of the World do bend their mindes and lives to the satisfying of their flesh and live in ungodliness intemperance and unrighteousness neglecting God and future happiness and that Holy life which is the way thereto This being a matter of publick or common fact doth need no other proof than acquaintance with the people of the World § 3. Yea there is an aversness and enmity in them to the life which God in Nature doth prescribe them and a strong inclination to a fleshly Life There needeth no other proof of this than the wonderfull difficulty which we find in perswading men to change their Lives to live to God and to forsake their sensuality and worldliness and the abundance of Reason and labour that is lost upon them when we cannot so much as make them willing § 4. It is evident in the effect that much of this cometh with us into the World 1. How else should it be so universal as it is How should it be found in all sorts of Constitutions and Complexions and in every Countrey and Age till now 2. How should it work so early in Children as commonly it doth 3. How cometh it to prevail against the best Education Helps and Means Certainly all of us feel from our childhood too much of the truth of this § 5. This natural pravity is quickly encreased by the advantage of sensuality which is active before Reason cometh to any power of resistance and so getteth stronger possession by Custom and groweth to a confirmed habit § 6. And if vicious Education by vicious Parents be added and bad company second that and the vulgar course or Rulers countenance concurr the corrupt inclination is quickly more radicated and next to a Nature § 7. Many so farr prevail against the light and law of Nature as to grow strange to God and to themselves to their end and their work Even to doubt whether there be a God or whether they have any other life to live and whether Holiness be good and necessary and sin be bad and deserve any punishment § 8. There is a great deal of sottish unteachableness on the minds and wills of men which hindereth their conviction and reformation § 9. There is a great deal of senseless stupidity and hard-heartedness on men which maketh them sleepily neglect the greatest things which they are convinced of § 10. There is in most a marvellous Inconsiderateness as if they had not their Reason awake to use so that they will not soberly and seriously think of the things which deeplyest concern them § 11. Most men are so taken up with the concernments of their Bodies that their Minds are pre-occupyed and made unfit for higher things All this is proved if we walk but in the World with open eyes § 12. The Love of the World and fleshly pleasure is so powerfull in the most that they love not the Holy Law of God which forbiddeth them that sensuality and commandeth them a holy and temperate life They are like Children that cry for what they love and will not be restrained by telling them that its unwholsom Reason signifieth nothing with them as long as Sense and Appetite gainsay it They are angry with all that crosseth their Appetites though it be to save their Lives The Sense is become the predominant power in them and Reason is dethroned and hath left its power Therefore Gods Law is unacceptable and hatefull to these bruitish people because it is quite against their inclination and that which the Flesh doth call their Interest and Good § 13. Therefore they love not those who press them to the Obedience of this Law which is so ungratefull to them and who condemn their sin by the holiness of their lives and that awaken their guilty Consciences by the serious mention of the Retributions of the life to come All this is bitter to the taste and the Reasonableness necessity and future benefits are things that they are much insensible of § 14. Therefore they love not God himself as he is Holy and Governeth them by a Holy Law which is so much against their inclinations as he forbiddeth them all their sinfull pleasure and threatneth damnation to them if they rebell Especially as his Justice will execute this Indeed their aversation from God in these respects is no less than a Hating Him as God § 15. These Vices working continually in mens hearts do fill them with deceiving thoughts and distracting passions and unquietness and engage them in self-troubling wayes and deprive them of the Comforts of the Love of God and of a Holy life and of the well-grounded hope of future blessedness Though they have such a present pleasure as prevaileth with them it bringeth speedy smart and trouble Just like the pleasure of scratching to a man that hath the Itch which is quickly recompensed with smart if he go deep Or like the pleasure of drinking cold water to a man in a Feaver or a Dropsie which increaseth the disease
Sin is their sickness and corrupteth their appetites and though it have its proper pleasure it depriveth them of the pleasures and benefits of health § 16. These vices also so deprave sometimes making every wicked man to be principally for HIMSELF and for his LVSTS that they are commonly distracted with envy malice contention persecutions the fruits of Pride and Covetousness and sensuality and these diseases are still troubling them till they work their ruine where they do prevail § 17. The same vices set Kingdoms and other Common-wealths together in bloody Warrs and cause men to study to destroy one another and glory in the success and fill the World with rapine and violence by Sea and Land and make it seem as necessary to their own preservation to kill one another as their enemies as to kill Toads and Serpents Wolves and Tygers and much more and with much more care and cost and industry is it done § 18. If any wise and charitable persons would heal these vices and reconcile these contentions and perswade persons and Nations to a holy sober peaceable course they are commonly hated and persecuted they seldom succeed nor can their counsel be heard through the multitude and fury of the vicious whose folly and violence beareth down all § 19. And God himself doth give the sinfull World a taste of his displeasure by painfull sicknesses consuming Plagues Famines Poverty and many the like Calamities which fall upon mankinde § 20. But his sorest Judgements are the forsaking of Mens souls and leaving them in all this folly and disorder this sin and misery to destroy themselves The principal Mercies and Punishments of this Life are found on the Souls of men themselves The greatest present Reward of Obedience is when God doth more illuminate the mind and send in more of his celestial beams and shed abroad his Love upon the heart and fill it with the Love of Goodness and delight it in himself and confirm the will against temptations And the greatest punishment is when God in displeasure for mens disobedience doth withdraw this grace and leave men to themselves that they that love not his grace should be without it and follow their foolish self-destroying lusts § 21. God cannot pardon an uncapable subject nor any but on terms consistent with the honour of his Justice Laws and Government Nor is there any that can deliver a sinner from his punishment upon any other terms whatsoever § 22. The conclusion is that the sin and misery of Mankinde in Generall is great and lamentable and their recovery a work of exceeding difficulty Obj. All this sheweth that mans Nature was not made for a Holy life nor for a World to come Else their aversness to it would not be so great and common Answ This is fully answered before It is proved that Nature and Reason do fully bear witness against his wickedness and declare his obligations to a better life and his capacity of higher things and that all this is his rebellion against Nature and Reason And it no more proveth your Conclusion than your Children or Servants aversness to obedience peace and labour proveth that these are not their duty or Subjects rebellion proveth that they are not obliged to be loyal Obj. But it is incredible that God should thus far forsake his own Creation Answ 1. There is no disputing against the light of the Sun and the experience of all the World It is a thing visible and undenyable that this case they are de facto in and therefore that thus farr they are forsaken It is no Wisdom to say that is not which all the World seeth to be so because we think it unmeet that it should be so 2. Is it incredible that God doth further than this forsake the wicked in the World of punishment If he may further forsake Hell he may thus far forsake Earth upon their great provocations We have no certainty of it but it is not at all unlikely that the innumerable fixed Starrs and Planets are inhabited Orbs who have dwellers answerable to their nature and preeminence And if God do totally forsake Hell as to his Mercy and next to Hell do much forsake a sinfull Earth that is likest and neerest unto Hell and do glorifie his more abundant Mercy upon the more holy and happy inhabitants of all or almost all the other Orbs what matter of discontent should this be to us 3. But God hath not left even this dark and wicked Earth it self without all remedy as shall be further shewed Read Cicero's third Book de Nat. Deor. and you will see in Cotta's speech that the notoriously depraved Reason of man and the prevalency and prosperity of wickedness was the great argument of the Atheists against God and Providence which they thought unanswerable because they looked no further than this life and did not foresee the time of full universal Justice And whereas Cotta saith that if there be a God he should have made most men good and prevented all the evil in the World and not only punish men when it is done I shall answer that among the objections in the Second Tome and I before shewed how little reason men have to expect that God should make every man as good as he could make him or make man indefectible or to argue from mans sin against Gods goodness The free Creator Lord and Benefactor may vary his creatures and benefits as he seeth meet and may be proved good though he make not man Angelical and though he permit his sin and punish him for sinning CHAP. XVII What Natural Light declareth of the Mercy of God to Sinners and of the Means and Hopes of Mans Recovery § 1. NOtwithstanding all this forementioned sin and guilt and misery of man and Justice of God Experience assureth all the Earth that Great Mercy is still continued to them and that they have to do with a Most Merciful God Mens Lives are continued even while they sin Patience endureth them Time is vouchsafed them Food and rayment and Friends and Habitations and health and ease and liberty is given them The Sun sendeth them its moving influence its Light and Heat The Earth supporteth them and affordeth them fruit and maintenance and pleasure The Clouds yield them rain the Air breath and the Sea it self is not unkind and incommodious to them Beasts Birds and Fishes and all inferiour Creatures serve them And yet much more mercy they receive from God § 2. It is therefore manifest that God dealeth not with the sinfull World according to the utmost rigor of Justice nor punisheth them as much as they deserve For all these Mercies they have forfeited and deserved to be deprived of them Obj. But it is no mercy which hardeneth them in sin and endeth in misery It is rather a punishment as to give cold water to a man in a Feaver Answ 1. If it hardened them of
its own nature and not meerly by their abuse and if it ended in misery by the designment of the Giver and the tendency of the gift then were it as you say no mercy but a Plague But it is Mercy which in its nature and by the Donors will hath a fitness and tendency to mens recovery and to prevent their misery and they are commanded and intreated accordingly to use it and are warned of the danger of abuse Obj. But God knoweth when he giveth it them that they will so abuse it Answ Gods fore-knowledge or Omniscience is his perfection and will you argue from thence against his Mercy His foreknowledge of mens sin and misery causeth them not What if he foreknew them not Were it any praise to him to be ignorant And yet the Mercy would be but the same If you will not be reconciled to Gods wayes till he cease to be Omniscient or till he prevent all the sin and misery which he foreknoweth you will perish in your enmity and he will easily justifie his mercy against such accusations Obj. But God could give men so much more grace as to prevent mens sin and misery if he would Answ True he is not unable And so he could make every clod a tree and every tree a beast and every beast a man and every man an Angel as I said before but must he therefore do it Here note that it is one thing to say of any Punishment This is so deserved that God may inflict it if he please without Injustice yea and thereby demonstrate his Justice and another thing to say This is so due that God must or will inflict it if he will be just unless a compensation be made to Justice It is of the first sort that I am now speaking For God may have variety of times and measures and kinds of Punishments which he may use at his own choice and yet not leave the sin unpunished finally But whether he properly dispense with any Law which is determinate as to the penalty I am not now to speak it being not pertinent to this place and subject § 3. Therefore God doth in some sort and measure pardon sin to the generality of mankinde while he remitteth some measure of the deserved punishment To remit or forgive the Punishment is so far to forgive the sin for forgiveness as to execution is but non punire proceeding from commiseration or mercy And it is certain by all the Mercy bestowed on them that God remitteth something of the punishment which in Law and Justice he might inflict Though this be not a total pardon it is not therefore none at all § 4. The Goodness of Gods Nature with this universal Experience of the World possesseth all mens minds with this apprehension of God that he is gracious mercifull long-suffering and ready to forgive a capable subject upon terms consistent with his truth and honour and the common good It s true that self-love and self-flattery doth cause men to think of the Mercy of God as indulgent to their lusts and suitable to their fleshly desires and therefore their conceits are none of the measure of his mercy But yet it may be perceived that this foresaid conception of God as Mercifull and ready to forgive a capable subject is warranted by the soberest Reason and is not bred by sin and error For the wise and better and less sinfull any is the more he is inclined to such thoughts of God as of a part of his Perfection § 5. This apprehension is increased in Mankinde by Gods obliging us to forgive one another For though it doth not follow that God must forgive all that which he bindeth us to forgive for the Reasons before expressed Yet we must believe that the Laws of God proceed from that Wisdom and Goodness which is his Perfection and that they bear the Image of them and that the obeying of them tendeth to form us more to his Image our selves and to make us Holy as he is Holy And therefore that this Command of God to Man to be mercifull and forgive doth intimate to us that mercy and forgiveness are agreeable and pleasing unto God § 6. God cannot cast away from his Love and from Felicity any soul which truly loveth Him above all and which so repenteth of his sin as to turn to God in Holiness of Heart and Life Here seemeth to arise before us a considerable difficulty That God can finde in his heart to damn one that truly loveth him and is sanctified is incredible Because 1. then Gods own Image should be in Hell and a Saint be damned 2. Because then the Creature should be readyer to love God than God to love him 3. Then a Soul in Hell should have holy desires Prayers Praises and other acts of Love 4. And a Soul capable of the glorifying mercy of God should miss of it This therefore is not to be believed For God cannot but take complacency in them that love him and bear his Image And those will be happy that God taketh complacency in And yet on the other side Do not the sins of them that love God deserve death and misery according to his Law And might he not inflict that on men which they deserve Doth not Justice require punishment on them that yet sin not away the Love of God nor a state of Holiness To this some answer that all those that consist with Love and Holiness are Venial sins which deserve only temporal chastisement and not perpetual misery I rather answer 1. That all sin considered in it self abstracted from the Cause which counterballanceth it and procureth pardoning mercy doth deserve perpetual misery and therefore so do the sins of the Best in themselves considered But that Grace which causeth their Sanctification and their Love to God doth conjunctly cause the pardon of their sins so that God will not deal with such as in rigour they deserve 2. And if the sin of any that Love God should provoke him to cast them into Hell it followeth not that one that loveth God in sensu composito should be damned For God hath an Order in his Punishments And first he would withdraw his Grace from such a one and leave him to himself and then he will no longer Love God and so it is not a Lover of God that would be damned § 7. The sinfull World is not so farr forsaken of God as to be shut up under desperation and utter impossibility of recovery and salvation For if that were so they were not in Via or under an obligation to use any means or accept of any mercy in order to their recovery nor could they rationally do it or be perswaded to it There is no means to be used where there is no end to be attained and no hope of success § 8. The light of Nature and the foresaid dealings of God with men continuing them under his Government in
in captivity yet how unlikely they are to prevail with others both Reason and Experience fully testifie § 12. And whereas God's special mercy and grace is necessary to so great a change and cure and this grace is forfeited by sin and every sin deserveth more punishment and this sin and punishment must be so far forgiven before God can give us that grace which we have forfeited Nature doth not satisfactorily teach me how God is so far reconciled to Man nor how the forgiveness of sin may be by us so far procured § 13. And where as I see at once in the world both the aâ—oâ—ing of sin which deserveth damnation and the abounding of mercy to these that are under such deserts I am not satisfi'd by the halt of Nature how God is so far reconciled and the ends of Government and Justice attained as to deal with the world so contrary to its deserts § 14. And while I am in this doubt of God's reconciliation I am ready still to fear list present forbearance and mercy â—rt aâ—iâ—val and will end at last in greater misery However I find it hard if not impossible to come to any certainty of 〈◊〉 pardon and salvation § 15. And while I am thus uncertain of pardon and the love of God it must needs make it an insuperable difficulty to me to love God above my self and all things for to love a God that I think will damn me or most probably may do it for ought I know is a thing that man can hardly do § 16. And therefore I cannot see how the guilty world can be sanctifi'd nor brought to forsake the sin and vanities which they love as long as God whom they must turn to by love doth seem so unlovely to them § 17. And every temptation from present pleasure commodity or honour will be like to prevail while the love of God and the happiness to come are so dark and doubtful to guilty misgiving ignorant Souls § 18. Nor can I see by Nature how a sinner can live comfortably in the world for want of clearer assurance of his future happiness For if he do but say as poor Seneca Cicero and others such Its most like that there is another life for us but we are not sure it will both abate their comfort in the fore-thoughts of it and tempt them to venture upon present pleasure for fear of losing all And if they were never so confident of the life to come and had no assurance of their own part in it as not knowing whether their sins be pardoned still their comfort in it would be small And the world can give them no more than is proportionable to so small and momentany a thing § 19. Nor do I see in Nature any full and suitable support against the pain and fears of sufferings and death while men doubt of that which should support them § 20. I must therefore conclude that the Light and Law of Nature which was suitable to uncorrupted reason and will and to an undepraved mind is too insufficient to the corrupted vitiated guilty world and that there is a necessity of some recovering medicinal Revelation Which forced the very Heathens to fly to Oracles Idols Sacrifices and Religious Propitiations of the gods there being scarce any Nation which had not some such thing though they used them not only uneffectually but to the increase of their sin and strengthning their presumption as too many poor ignorant Christians now do their Masses and other such formalities and superstitions But as Arnobius saith adv Gentes l. 7. Crescit enim multitudo peccantium cum redimendi peccati spes datur facile itur ad culpas ubi est venalis ignoscentium gratia He that hopeth to purchase forgiveness with mony or sacrifices or ways of cost will strive rather to be rich than to be innocent CHAP. II. Of the several Religions which are in the world HAving finished my enquiries into the state and book of Nature I found it my duty to enquire what other men thought in the world and what were the reasons of their several beliefs that if they knew more than I had discovered by what means soever I might become partaker of it § 1. And first I find that all the world except those called Heathens are conscious of the necessity of supernatural Revelation yea the Heathens themselves have some common apprehension of it § 2. Four sorts of Religions I find only considerable upon earth The meer Naturalists called commonly Heathens and Idolaters The Jews The Mahometans and the Christians The Heathens by their Oracles Augures and Aruspices confess the necessity of some supernatural light and the very Religion of all the rest consisteth in it I. § 3. As for the Heathens I find this much good among them That some of them have had a very great care of their Souls and many have used exceeding industry in seeking after knowledge especially in the mysteries of the works of God and some of them have bent their minds higher to know God and the invisible worlds That they commonly thought that there is a Life of Retribution after death and among the wisest of them the summe of that is to be found though confusedly which I have laid down in the first Part of this Book Especially in Seneca Cicero Plutarch Plato Plotinus Jamblicus Proclus Porphyry Julian the Apostate Antoninus Epectetus Arrian c. And for their Learning and Wisdom and Moral Virtues the Christian Bishops carried themselves respectfully to many of them as Basil to Libanius c. And in their days many of their Philosophers were honoured by the Christian Emperours or at least by the inferiour Magistrates and Christian people who judged that so great worth deserved honour and that the confession of so much Truth deserved answerable love especially Aedesius Julianus Cappadox Proaeresius Maximus Libanius Acacius Chrysanthus c. And the Christians ever since have made great use of their Writings in their Schools especially of Aristotle's and Plato's with their followers § 4. And I find that the Idolatry of the wisest of them was not so foolish as that of the Vulgar but they thought that the Vniverse was one animated world and that the Vniversal Soul was the only Absolute Sovereign God whom they described much like as Christians do and that the Sun and Stars and Earth and each particular Orb was an individual Animal part of the Vniversal world and besides the Vniversal had each one a subordinate particular Soul which they worshipped as a subordinate particular Deity as some Christians do the Angels And their Images they set up for such representations by which they thought these gods delighted to be remembred and instrumentally to exercise their virtues for the help of earthly mortals § 5. I find that except these Philosophers and very few more the generality of the Heathens were and are foolish Idolaters and ignorant sensual brutish men At this day through the
world they are that sort of men that are likest unto Beasts except some few at Siam China the Indian Bannians the Japonians the Ethnick Persians and a few more The greatest deformity of Nature is among them the least of sound knowledge true policy civility and piety is among them Abominable wickedness doth no where so much abound So that if the doctrin and judgment of these may be judged of by the effect it is most insufficient to heal the diseased world and reduce man to holiness sobriety and honesty § 6. I find that these few among the Heathens who attain to more knowledge in the things which concern man's duty and happiness than the rest do commonly destroy all again by the mixture of some dotâ—ges and impious conceits The Literali in China exel in many things but besides abundance of ignorance in Philosophy they destroy all by denying the immortality of the Soul and affirming rewards and punishments to be only in this life or but a little longer At least none but the Souls of the good say some of them survive and though they confess One God they give him no solemn worship Their Sect called Sciequia or Sciacca is very clear for the Vnity of the Godhead the joys of Heaven and the torments of Hall with some umbrage of the Trinity c. But they blot all with the Pythagorean fopperies affirming these Souls which were in joy or misery after a certain space to be sent again into Bodies and so to continue through frequent changes to eternity to say nothing of the wickedness of their lives Their third Sect called Lauru is not worth the naming as being composed of fopperies and sorceries and impostures All the Japonian Sects also make the world to be eternal and Souls to be perpetuated through infinite transmigrations The Siamenses who seem the best of all and nearest to Christians have many fopperies and worship the Devil for fear as they do God for love The Indian Bramenes or Bannians also have the Pythagorean errors and place their piety in redeeming Bruits because they have Souls which sometimes were humane The Persians dispersed in India who confess God and Heaven and Hell yet think that these are but of a thousand years duration And it is above a thousand years since they believed that the world should continue but a thousand years and then Souls be released from Hell and a new world made § 7. Their great darkness and uncertainties appear by the innumerable sects and differences which are among them which are incomparably more numerous than all that are found in all parties in the world besides I need not tell you of the 288 Sects or Opinions de summo bono which Varro said was in his days The difference which you may find in Laertius Hesechius and others between the Cynicks Peripateticks Academicks Stoicks Scepticks Epicureans c. with all their sub-divisions are enow In Japan the twelve Sects have their subdivisions In China the three general Sects have so many subdivisions that Varenius saith of them Singuli fontes Iabentibus paulatim seculis à fraudum magistris in tot maeandros derivati sunt ut sub triplici nomine trecentae mihi sectae inter se discrepantes numerari posse videantur sed hae quotidianis incrementis augentur in pejus ruunt Petrus Texeica saith of the Indians In Regno Gazeratensivarii sunt ritus sectae incolarum quod mirum vix familiam invenias in qua omnes congruant alii comedunt carnem alii nequaquam alii comedunt quidem sed non mactant animalia alii nonnulla tantum animalia comedunt alii tantum pisces alii tantum lac herbas c. Johan a Twist saith of the Indian Bramenes Numerantur sectae praecipui nominis octoginta tres sed praeter has minus illustrium magna est multitudo ita ut singulae familiae peculiarem fere foveant religionem It were endless to speak of all the Sects in Africa and America to say nothing of the beastly part of them in Brasil the Cape of good hope that is Soldania and the Islands of Cannibals who know no God nor Government nor Civility some of them They are not only of as many minds as countries but of a multitude of sects in one and the same country § 8. I find not my self called or enabled to judge all these people as to their final state but only to say that if any of them have a holy heart and life in the true love of God they shall be saved but without this no form of Religion will save any man be it never so right § 9. But I find it to be my duty to love them for all the good which is in them and all that is true and good in their Religion I will embrace and because it is so defective to look further and try what I can learn from others There is so much lovely in a Cato Cicero Seneca Antonine Epictetus Plutarch c. in the Religions of Siam in the dispersed Persian Ethnicks in India in the Bramans or Bannians of India in the Bonzii of Japan and divers others in China and else-where that it obligeth us not only to love them benevolently but with much complacence And as I will learn from Nature it self what I can so also from these Students of Nature I will take up nothing meerly on their trust nor reject any doctrin meerly because it is theirs but all that is true and good in their Religions as far as I can discern it shall be part of mine and because I find them so dark and bad I will betake me for further information to those that trust to supernatural Revelation which are the Jews Mahumetans and the Christians of which I shall next consider a-part § 10. II. As to the Religion of the Jews I need not say much of it by it self the Positive part of their doctrine being confessed by the Christians and Mahumetans to be of Divine Revelation and the negative part their denying of Christ is to be tryed in the tryall of Christianity The Reasons which are brought for the Christian Religion if sound will prove the Old Testament which the Jews believe it being part of the Christians Sacred Book And the same reasons will confute the Jews rejection of Jesus Christ I take that therefore to be the fittest place to treat of this subject when I come to the proofs of the Christian Faith I oppose not what they have from God I must prove that to be of God which they deny § 11. III. In the Religion of the Mahumetans I finde much good viz. A Confession of one only God and most of the Natural parts of Religion a vehement opposition to all Idolatry A testimony to the Veracity of Moses and of Christ that Christ is the Word of God and a great Prophet and the Writings of the Apostles true All this therefore where Christianity is approved
among themselves who are his disciples How to mortifie sin and to contemn the wealth and honours of the world and to deny the flesh its hurtful desires and lusts and how to suffer any thing that we shall be called to for obedience to God and the hopes of Heaven To tell us what shall be after death how all men shall be judged and what shall become both of soul and body to everlasting But his great work was by the great demonstrations of the Goodness and Love of God to lost mankind in their free pardon and offered salvation to win up mens hearts to the love of God and to raise their hopes and desires up to that blessed life where they shall see his glory and love him and be beloved by him for ever At last when he had finished the work of his ministration in the flesh he told his Disciples of his approaching Suffering and Resurrection and instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Bloud in Bread and Wine which he commandeth them to use for the renewing of their covenant with him and remembrance of him and for the maintaining and signifying their communion with him and with each other After this his time being come the Jews apprehended him and though upon a word of his mouth to shew his power they fell all to the ground yet did they rise again and lay hands on him and brought him before Pilate the Roman Governour and vehemently urged him to crucifie him contrary to his own mind and conscience They accused him of blasphemy for saying he was the Son of God and of impiety for saying Destroy this Temple and in three days I will re-build it he meant his Body and of treason against Caesar for calling himself a King though he told them that his Kingdom was not worldly but spiritual Hereupon they condemned him and clothed him in purple like a King in scorn and set a Crown of thorns on his head and put a Reed for a Scepter into his hand and led him about to be a derision They cover'd his eyes and smote him and buffeted him and bid him tell who strake him At last they nailed him upon a Cross and put him to open shame and death betwixt two Malefactors of whom one of them reviled him and the other believed on him they gave him gall and vinegar to drink The Souldiers pierced his side with a Spear when he was dead All his Disciples forsook him and fled Peter having before denied thrice that ever he knew him when he was in danger When he was dead the earth trembled the rocks and the vail of the Temple rent and darkness was upon the earth though their was no natural Eclipse which made the Captain of the Souldiers say Verily this was the Son of God When he was taken down from the Cross and laid in a stone-Sepulchre they set a guard of Souldiers to watch the grave having a stone upon it which they sealed because he had fore-told them that he would rise again On the morning of the third day being the first day of the week an Angel terrified the Souldiers and rolled away the stone and sate upon it and when his Disciples came they found that Jesus was not there And the Angel told them that he was risen and would appear to them Accordingly he oft appeared to them sometimes as they walked by the way and once as they were fishing but usually when they were assembled together Thomas who was one of them being absent at his first appearance to the rest told them he would not believe it unless he saw the print of the nails and might put his finger into his wounded side The next first day of the week when they were assembled Jesus appeared to them the doors being shut and called Thomas and bad him put his fingers into his side and view the prints of the nails in his hands and feet and not be faithless but believing After this he oft appeared to them and once to above five hundred brethren at once He earnestly prest Peter to shew the love that he bare to himself by the feeding of his flock He instructed his Apostles in the matters of their employment He gave them Commission to go into all the world and preach the Gospel and gave them the tenour of the New Covenant of Grace and made them the Rulers of his Church requiring them by Baptism solemnly to enter all into his Covenant who consent to the terms of it and to assure them of pardon by his Blood and of salvation if they persevere He required them to teach his Disciples to observe all things which he had commanded them and promised them that he would be with them by his Spirit and grace and powerful defence to the end of the world And when he had been seen of them forty days speaking of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God being assembled with them he commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem but wait till the holy Spirit came down upon them which he had promised them But they being tainted with some of the worldly expectations of the Jews and thinking that he who could rise from the dead would sure now make himself and his followers glorious in the world began to ask him whether he would at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel But he answered them It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father hath put in his own power But ye shall receive power after that the holy Ghost is come upon you and ye shall be witnesses to me both at Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth And when he had said this while they beheld he was taken up and a cloud received him out of their sight And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up two men stood by them in white apparel and said Why gaze ye up into Heaven This same Jesus which is taken up from you into Heaven shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into Heaven Upon this they returned to Jerusalem and continued together till ten days after as they were all together both the Apostles and all the rest of the Disciples suddenly there came a sound from Heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and the likeness of fiery cloven tongues sate on them all and they were filled with the holy Ghost and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them utterance By this they were enabled both to preach to people of several languages and to work other miracles to confirm their doctrine so that from this time forward the holy Spirit which Christ sent down upon Believers was his great Witness and Agent in the world and procured the belief and entertainment of the Gospel wheresoever it came For by this extraordinary reception of the Spirit the Apostles themselves were much fullier instructed in the doctrine of salvation than
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
errour it is a way that reason teacheth all men in the trying of any questioned point to reduce it to those that are unquestionable and see whether or no they accord with those And to mark the unquestionable Ends of Religion and try how it suiteth its means thereunto And therefore men of all sober professions have their determinate principles and ends by which they try such particular opinions as Christians do by their analogy of faith And in this trial of Christianity I shall tell you what I find it § 1. I find in general that there is an admirable concord between Natural Verity and the Gospel of Christ and that Grace is medicinal to Nature and that where Natural light endeth Supernatural beginneth and that the superstructure which Christ hath built upon Nature is wonderfully adapted to its foundation This is made manifest in all the first part of this Treatise Reason which is our Nature is not destroyed but repaired illuminated elevated and improved by the Christian faith Free-will which is our Nature is made more excellently free by Christianity Self-love which is our Nature is not destroyed but improved by right conduct and help to our attainment of its ends The Natural part of Religion is so far from being abrogated by Christianity that the latter doth but subserve the former Christ is the way to God the Father The duty which we owe by Nature to our Creator we owe him still and Christ came to enable and teach us to perform it the love of God our Creator with all our hearts is still our duty and faith in Christ is but the means to the love of God and the bellows to kindle that holy fire The Redeemer came to recover us to our Creator He taketh not the Book of the Creatures or Nature out of our hands but teacheth us better to read and use it And so it is through all the rest § 2. I find also that the state of this present world is exceeding suitable to the Scripture-character of it that it is exceeding evil and a deluge of sin and misery doth declare its great necessity of a Saviour and sheweth it still to be a place unmeet to be the home and happiness of Saints Of all the parts of God's Creation this earth doth seem to be next to Hell certainly it is greatly defiled with sin and overwhelmed with manifold calamities and though God hath not totally forsaken it nor turned away his mercy as he hath done from Hell yet is he much estranged from it so that those who are not recovered by grace are next to devils And alas how numerous and considerable are they to denominate it an evil world Those that Christ calleth out of it he sanctifieth and maketh them unlike the world and his grace doth not give them a worldly felicity nor settle them in a Rest or Kingdom here but it saveth them from this world as from a place of snares and a company of cheaters robbers and murderers and from a tempestuous Sea whose waves seem ready still to drown us I. I find it is a world of Sin II. And of Temptation III. And of Calamity I. For Sin it is become as it were its nature it liveth with men from the birth to the grave It is an ignorant world that wandereth in darkness and yet a proud self-conceited world that will not be convinced of its ignorance and is never more furiously confident than when it is most deceived and most blind Even natural wisdom is so rare and folly hath the major vote and strength that wise men are wearied with resisting folly and ready in discouragements to leave the foolish world unto it self as an incurable Bedlam so fierce are fools against instruction and so hard is it to make them know that they are ignorant or to convince men of their mistakes and errours The Learner thinks his Teacher doteth and he that hath but wit enough to distinguish him from a bruit is as confident as if he were a Doctor The Learned themselves are for the most part but half-witted men who either take up with lazie studies or else have the disadvantage of uncapable temperatures and wits or of unhappy Teachers and false principles received by ill education which keep out truth so that they are but fitted to trouble the world with their contentions or deceive men by their errors and yet have they not the acquaintance with their ignorance which might make them learn of such as can instruct them but if there be among many but one that is wiser than the rest he is thought to be unfit to live among them if he will not deny his knowledge and own their errours and confess that modesty and order require that either the highest or the major vote are the masters of truth and all is false that is against their opinions It is an Atheistical ungodly world that knoweth not its Maker or forgetteth contemneth and wilfully disobeyeth him while in words it doth confess him and yet an hypocritical world that will speak honourably of God and of vertue and piety of justice and charity while they are neglecting and rejecting them and cannot endure the practice of that which their tongues commend almost all sorts will prefer the life to come in words when indeed they utterly neglect it and prefer the fleshly pleasures of this life They cry out of the vanity and vexation of the world and yet they set their hearts upon it and love it better than God and the world to come they will have some Religion to mock God and deceive themselves which shall go no deeper than the knee and tongue in forms or ceremonies or a dissembled affection and profession But to be devoted absolutely to God in self-resignation obedience and love how rare is it even in them who cannot deny but the Law of Nature it self doth primarily and undeniably oblige them to it Their Religion is but self-condemnation while their tongues condemn their hearts and lives It is a sensual bruitish world and seemeth to have hired out their reason to the service of their appetites and lusts gluttony and excess of drink and sports and plays and gaming with pride and wantonness and fornication and uncleanness and worldly pomp and the covetous gathering of provision for the flesh to satisfie these lusts is the business and pleasure of their lives and if you tell them of Reason or the Law of God to take them off you may almost as well think to reason a hungry Dog from his carrion or a lustful Boar to forbear his lust And it is a Selfish world where every man is as an idol to himself and affected to himself and his own interest as if he were all the world drawing all that he can from others to fill his own insatiable desires loving all men and honouring and esteeming and praising them according to the measure of their esteem of him or their
And seeing a guilty condemned sinner can hardly love that God who in justice will damn and punish him nothing can be more congruous and effectual to man's recovery to God than that God should be represented to him as most amiable that is as one that is so willing to pardon and save him as to do it by the most astonishing expressions of love in such an Agent and Pledge and Glass of Love as Jesus Christ The whole design of Christ's Incarnation Life Death Resurrection Ascension and Intercession is but to be the most wonderful and glorious declaration of the goodness and love of God to sinners that as the great frame of the Universe demonstrateth his power so should the Redeemer be the demonstration of his love That we may see both the wise contrivances of his love and at how dear a rate he is content to save us that our lives may be employed in beholding and admiring the glory of his love in this incomprehensible representation That we may love him as men that are fetch'd up from the very gates of hell and from under the sentence of condemnation and made by grace the heirs of life § 17. Especially to have a quickning Head who will give the Spirit of grace to all his members to change their hearts and kindle this holy love within them is most congruous to accomplish mans recovery So dark are our minds and so bad our hearts so strong are our lusts and so many our temptations that bare teaching would not serve our turn without a Spirit of light and life and love to open our eyes and turn our hearts and make all outward means effectual § 18. The Commission of the Gospel-Ministry to preach this Gospel of pardon and salvation and to baptize Consenters and gather and guide the Church of Christ with Fatherly love is also very congruous to the state of the world with whom they have to do § 19. It is congruous to the state of our trembling Souls that are conscious of their former guilt and present unworthiness that in all their prayers and worship of God they should come to him in a Name that is more worthy and acceptable than their own and offer their services by a Hand or Intercessor so beloved of God Though an impious soul can never expect to be accepted with God upon the merits of another yet a penitent soul who is conscious of former wickedness and continued faults may hope for that mercy by grace through a Redeemer of which he could have less hopes without one § 20. It is congruous to their state who have Satan their accuser that they have a Patron a High priest and Justifier with God Not that God is in danger of being mistaken by false accusation or to do us any injustice but when our real guilt is before his face and the malice of Satan will seek thereupon to procure our damnation there must also be just reasons before him for our pardon which it is the office of a Saviour to plead or to present that is to be God's Instrument of our deliverance upon that account § 21. It is exceeding congruous to our condition of darkness and fear to have a Head and Saviour in the possession of Glory to whom we may commend our departing souls at the time of death and who will receive them to himself that we may not tremble at the thoughts of death and of eternity For though the infinite goodness of God be our chief encouragement yet seeing he is holy and just and we are sinners we have need of a mediate encouragement and of such condescending love as is come near unto us and hath taken up our nature already into heaven A Saviour that hath been on earth in flesh that hath died and rose and revived and is now in the possession of Blessedness is a great emboldner of our thoughts when we look towards another world which else we should think of with more doubting fearful and unwilling minds To have a friend gone before us who is so Powerful so Good and hath made us his Interest to think that he is Lord of the world that we are going to and hath undertaken to receive us to himself when we go hence is a great reviving to our amazed fearful departing souls § 22. And it is very congruous to the case of an afflicted persecuted people who are misrepresented and slandered in this world and suffer for the hopes of a better life to have a Saviour who is the judge of all the world to justifie them publickly before all and to cause their righteousness to shine as the light and to turn all their sufferings into endless joys § 23. And it seemeth exceeding congruous to reason seeing that the Divine Essence is an inaccessible Light that we should for ever have a Mediator of Fruition as well as of Acquisition by whom the Deity may shine in communicated Glory and Love to us for evermore and that God be for evermore eminently delighted and glorified in Him than in us as he excelleth us in dignity and all perfections even as in One Sun his Power and Glory is more demonstrated than in a world of Worms Whether all these things be true or not I am further to enquire but I find now that they are very congruous to our condition and to Reason and that if they be so no man can deny but that there is wonderful Wisdom and Love to man in the design and execution and that it is to man a very desirable thing that it should be so And therefore that we should be exceeding willing to find any sound proof that it is so indeed though not with a willingness which shall corrupt and pervert our judgments by self-flattery but such as will only excite them to the wise and sober examination of the case The EVIDENCES of the VERITY we shall next enquire after CHAP. VI. Of the WITNESS of JESVS CHRIST or the demonstrative Evidence of his Verity and Authority THough all that is said may be a reasonable preparative to faith it is more cogent evidence which is necessary to convince us that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of the world That a man appearing like one of us is the Eternal Word of God incarnate is a thing which no man is bound to believe without very sound evidence to prove it God hath made Reason essential to our Nature it is not our weakness but our natural excellency and his Image on our nature Therefore he never called us to renounce it and to lay it by for we have no way to know Principles but by an Intellectual discerning them in their proper Evidence and no way to know conclusions by but by a rational discerning their necessary connexion to those principles If God would have us know without reason he would not have made us reasonable creatures man hath no way of mental discerning or knowledge but by understanding things in their proper evidence to
villanies though they call it railing nor will he flatter proud rebellious dust though they call flattery a necessary civility nor will he give leave to his Messengers to leave sin in honour and to let the proud do what their list and quietly damn themselves and others without plain reproof though it be called unreverent sawciness or sedition 2. And he that considereth how little Title Caesar had to the Kingdom of the Jews and that the sword alone is a better proof of force and strength than of Authority and is a Plea which an Usurper may have on his side will rather praise the submission and peaceableness of Christ than blame him as disloyal But for the doctrin of Obedience in general who hath ever taught it more plainly and pressingly than Christ and his Apostles 2. The Gospel or doctrin of Christ it self also hath the very Image and Superscription of God I will not say imprinted on it for that is too little but intrinsecally animating and constituting it which is apparent in the Matter and the Method and the Stile 1. The Matter and Design containeth the most wonderful expression of the Wisdom of God that ever was made to man on earth All is mysterious yet admirably fit consistent and congruous as is before declared That a world which is visibly and undeniably fallen into wickedness and misery should have a Redeemer Saviour and Mediator towards God! That he should be one that is near enough to God and unto us and hath the nature of both that he should be the second Adam the Root of the Redeemed and Regenerate that God should give all mercy from himself from his own bounty and fulness and not as unwilling be perswaded to it by another and therefore that the Redeemer be not any Angel or intermediate person but God himself that thus God come nearer unto man who is revolted from him to draw up man again to Him that he lose not the world and yet do not violate his governing Justice that he be so merciful as not to be unrighteous nor permit his Laws and Government to be despised and yet so just as to save the penitent renewed souls that he give man a new Law and conditions of salvation suitable to his lapsed guilty state and leave him not under a Law and conditions which were fitted to the innocent that he revealed himself to the apostate world in that way which only is fit for their recovery that is in his admirable love and goodness that so love might win our love and attract those hearts which under guilt and the terrors of condemning justice would never have been brought to love him that guilty souls have such evidence of God's reconciliation to encourage them to expect his pardon and to come to him with joy and boldness in their addresses having a Mediator to trust in and his Sacrifice Merits and acceptable Name to plead with God that Justice and Mercy are so admirably conjoyned in these effects that Satan and the world and death should be so conquered in a suffering way and man have so perfect a pattern to imitate for self-denial humility contempt of honour wealth and life and exact obedience and resignation to the will of God with perfect love to God and man that the world should be under such an universal Administrator and the Church be all united in such a Head and have one in their nature that hath risen from the dead to be in possession of the glory which they are going to and thence to send down his Spirit to sanctifie them and fit them for Heaven and afterward to be their Judge and to receive them unto blessedness and that sinners now be not condemned meerly for want of innocency but for rejecting the grace and mercy which would have saved them that we have all this taught us by a Messenger from Heaven and a perfect rule of life delivered to us by him and all this sealed by a Divine attestation that this doctrin is suited to the capacity of the weakest and yet so mysterious as to exercise the strongest wits and is delivered to us not by an imposing force but by the exhortations and perswasions of men like our selves commissioned to open the evidences of truth and necessity in the Gospel All this is no less than the Image and wonderful effect of the Wisdom of God And his Goodness and Love is as resplendent in it all for this is the effect of the whole design to set up a Glass in the work of our Redemption in which God's Love and Goodness should be as wonderfully represented to mankind as his Power was in the works of Creation Here sinful man is saved by a means which he never thought of or desired he is fetch'd up from the gates of hell redeemed from the Sentence of the righteous violated Law of God and the execution of his Justice The Eternal Word so condescendeth to man in the assumption of our nature as that the greatness of the love and mercy incomprehensible to man becomes the greatest difficulty to our belief He revealeth to us the things of the world above and bringeth life and immortality to light He dwelleth with men He converseth with the meanest He preacheth the glad tidings of Salvation to the world He refuseth not such familiarity with the poorest or the worst as is needful to their cure He spendeth his time in doing good and healing all manner of bodily diseases He refuseth the honours and riches of the world and the pleasures of the flesh to work out our salvation He beareth the ingratitude and abuse of sinners and endureth to be scorned buffeted spit upon tormented and crucified by those to whom he had done no greater wrong than to seek their salvation He maketh himself a Sacrifice for sin to shew the world what sin deserved and to save them from the deserved punishment God had at first decreed and declared that death should be the punishment of sin and Satan had maliciously drawn man to it by contradicting this threatning of God and making man believe that God would falsifie his word and that he did envy man the felicity of his advancement to be liker God in knowledge And now Christ will first justifie the truth and righteousness of God and will demonstrate himself by dying in our stead that death is indeed the wages of sin and will shew the world that God is so far from envying their felicity that he will purchase it at the dearest rate and deliver them freely from the misery which sin and Sathan had involved them in Thus Enemies are reconciled by the sufferings of him whom they offended even by his sufferings in the flesh whose Godhead could not suffer and by his death as Man who as God was most immortal As soon as he was risen he first appear'd to a Woman who had been a sinner and sent her as his first messenger with words of love and comfort to his
senses these present things will be a strong temptation to us Prosperity and plenty wealth and honour ease and pleasure are accommodated to the desires of the flesh partly to its natural appetite and much more to it as inordinate by corruption And the flesh careth not for Reason how much soever it gainsay And then all these entising things are neer us and still present with us and before our eyes when Heavenly things are all unseen And the sweetness of honour wealth and pleasure is known by feeling and therefore known easily and by all when the goodness of things spiritual is known only by Reason and believing All which laid together with sad experience do fully shew that it must be a very great work to overcome this World and raise the heart above it to a better and so to sanctifie a soul 2. And worldly men do rise up against this Holy work as as well as worldly things Undenyable experience assureth us that through all the World ungodly sensual men have a marvellous implacable hatred to Godlyness and true mortification and will by flattery or slanders or scorns or plots or cruel violence do all that they are able to resist it So that he that will live a holy temperate life must make himself a scorn if not a prey The foolish wit of the ungodly is bent to reason men out of Faith Hope and Holiness and to cavill against our obedience to God and to disgrace all that course of life which is necessary to salvation And it is a great work to overcome all these temptations of the foolish and furious World Great I say because of the great folly and corruption of unregenerate men on whom it must be wrought though it would be smaller to a wise and considerate person To be made as an Owl and hunted as a Partridge or a beast of Prey by those that we converse with when we might have their favour and friendship and Preferments if we would say and do as they this is not easie to flesh and blood But its easie to the Spirit of God 3. The Devil is so notoriously an enemy to this sanctifying work that it is a strong discovery that Christ was sent from God to do it What a stir doth he first make to keep out the Gospel that it may not be Preached to the Nations of the World And where that will not serve what a stir doth he make to debauch Christs Ministers and corrupt them by ignorance heresie error schism domineering pride sensuality covetousness slothfulness and negligence that they may do the work of Christ deceitfully as if they did it not Yea and if it may be to win them to his service to destroy the Church by Oppression or Division under pretense of serving Christ And what cunning and industry doth this Serpent use to insinuate into great ones and Rulers of the Earth a prejudice against Christ and Godliness and to make them believe that all that are seriously Godly are their enemies and are against some interest of theirs that so he might take the sword which God hath put into their hands and turn it to his own service against him that gave it How cunning and diligent is he to seduce men that begin to set themselves to a Religious life into some false Opinions or dividing Sects or scandalous unjustifiable practice that thereby he may triumph against Christ and have something to say against Religion from the faults of men when he hath nothing to say against it justly from it self and that he may have something to say to those Rulers and People with whom he would fain make Religion odious How cunningly doth he engage ungodly men to be his Servants in seducing others and making them such as they are themselves and in standing up for sin and darkness against the light and life of Faith So that ungodly men are but the Souldiers and Preachers of the Devil in all parts employed to fight against God and draw men from holiness and justice and temperance to sin and to damnation So that it is a very discernable thing that Satan is the Head of one party in the World as the Destroying Prince of Darkness and deceit and that Christ is the Head of the other party as the Prince of light and truth and holiness And that there is a continued war or opposition between these two Kingdoms or Armies in all parts and ages of the World of which I have fullyer treated in another Book If any shall say How know you that all this is the work of Satan I shall have fitter occasion to answer that anon I shall now say but this that the nature of the work the tendency of it the irrationall erroneous or brutish tyrannical manner of doing it the internal importunity and manner of his suggestions and the effects of all and the contrariety of it to God and Man will soon shew a considerate man the author Though more shall be anon added V. All this aforegoing will shew a reasonable man that the Spirits Regenerating work is such as is a full attestation of God to that Doctrine by which it is effected And if any now say How prove you that all this is to be ascribed to Jesus Christ any more than to Socrates or to Seneca or Cicero I answer 1. So much truth of a sacred tendency as Plato or Pythagoras or Socrates or any Philosopher taught might do some good and work some reformation according to its quality and degree But as it was a lame imperfect doctrine which they taught so was it a very lame imperfect reformation which they wrought unlike the effects of the Doctrine and Spirit of Jesus Christ I need to say no more of this than to desire any man to make an impartial and judicious comparison between them And besides much more he shall quickly finde these differences following 1. That the Philosophers Disciples had a very poor dark disordered knowledge of God in comparison of the Christians and that mixt with odious fopperies either blasphemous or idolatrous 2. The Philosophers spake of God and the Life to come almost altogether notionally as they did of Logick or Physicks and very few of them Practically as a thing that mans happiness or misery was so much concerned in 3. They spake very jejunely and dryly about a holy state and course of life and the duty of Man to God in resignation devotedness obedience and love 4. They said little comparatively to the true humbling of a Soul nor in the just discovery of the evil of sin nor for self-denyall 5. They gave too great countenance to Pride and Worldliness and pleasing the senses by excess 6. The Doctrine of true Love to one another is taught by them exceeding lamely and defectively 7. Revenge is too much indulged by them and loving our Enemies and forgiving great wrongs was little known or taught or practised 8. They were so pitifully unacquainted with the certainty
so doth prove the Divine approbation of his Doctrine without which he could not have the command of mens Souls 7. Note also that the Gospel proposeth to the Soul of man both Truth and Goodness and the Truth is in order to the Good and subservient to it That Christ is indeed the Saviour and his Word infallibly true is believed that we may be made partakers of his Salvation and of the Grace and Glory promised And when the Spirit by the Gospel hath regenerated and renewed any Soul he hath given him part of that grace in possession and hath procreated in him the habitual love of God and of holiness with a love to that Saviour and holy Word which brought him to it So that this Love is now become as a new Nature to the Soul and this being done the Soul cleaveth now as fast to Christ and the Gospel by Love as by Belief not that love becometh an irrational causless love nor continueth without the continuance of Belief or Belief without the Reasons and Evidence of Verity and Credibility But Love now by concurrence greatly assisteth Faith it self and is the faster hold of the two so that the Soul that is very weak in its Reasoning faculty and may oft lose the sight of these Evidences of truth which it did once perceive may still hold fast by this holy Love As the man that by reasoning hath been convinced that hony is sweet will easilier change his mind than he that hath tasted it so Love is the Souls taste which causeth its fastest adherence to God and to the Gospel If a caviller dispute with a loving child or parent or friend to alienate their hearts from one another and would perswade them that it is but dissembled love that is professed to them by their relations and friends Love will do more here to hinder the belief of such a slander than Reason alone can do and where Reason is not strong enough to answer all that the caviller can say yet Love may be strong enough to reject it And here I must observe how oft I have noted the great mercy of God to abundance of poor people whose reasoning faculty would have failed them in temptations to Atheism and Infidelity if they had not had a stronger hold than that and their Faith had not been radicated in the Will by Love I have known a great number of women who never read a Treatise that pleaded the Cause of the Christian Religion nor were able to answer a crafty Infidel that yet in the very decaying time of Nature at fourscore years of age and upward have lived in that sense of the Love of God and in such Love to him and to their Saviour as that they have longed to die and be with Christ and lived in all humility charity and piety such blameless exemplary heavenly Lives in the joyfull expectation of their Change as hath shewed the firmness of their Faith and the Love and Experience which was in them would have rejected a temptation to Atheism and Unbelief more effectually than the strongest Reason alone could ever do Yet none have cause to reproach such and say Their Wills lead their Vnderstandings and they customarily and obstinately believe they know not why for they have known sufficient reason to believe and their understandings have been illuminated to see the truth of true Religion and it was this knowledge of Faith which bred their Love and Experience but when that is done as Love is the more noble and perfect operation of the Soul having the most excellent object so it will act more powerfully and prevailingly and hath the strongest hold Nor are all they without Light and Reason for their belief who cannot form it into arguments and answer all that is said against it Obj. But may not all this which you call Regeneration and the Image of God be the meer power of fantasie and affectation and may not all these people force themselves like melancholy persons to conceit that they have that which indeed they have not Answ 1. They are not melancholly persons that I speak of but those that are as capable as any others to know their own minds and what is upon their own hearts 2. It is not one or two but millions 3. Nature hath given man so great acquaintance with himself by a power of perceiving his own operations that his own cogitations and desires are the first thing that naturally he can know and therefore if he cannot know them he can know nothing If I cannot know what I think and what I love and hate I can know nothing at all 4. That they are really minded and affected as they seem and have in them that love to God and Heaven and Holiness which they profess they shew to all the world by the effects 1. In that it ruleth the main course of their lives and disposeth of them in the world 2. In that these apprehensions and affections over-rule all their worldly fleshly interest and cause them to deny the pleasures of the flesh and the profits and honours of the world 3. In that they are constant in it to the death and have no other mind in their distress when as Seneca saith Nothing feigned is of long continuance for all forc'd things are bending back to their natural state 4. In that they will lay down their lives and forsake all the world for the hopes which faith in Christ begetteth in them And if the objectors mean that all this is true and yet it is but upon delusion or mistake that they raise these hopes and raise these affections I answer This is the thing that I am disproving 1. The love of God and a holy mind and life is not a dream of the Soul or a deliration I have proved from Natural reason in the first Book that it is the end and use and perfection of man's faculties that if God be God and man be man we are to love him above all and to obey him as our absolute Sovereign and to live as devoted to him and to delight in his love Man were more ignoble or miserable than a beast if this were not his work And is that a dream or a delusion which causeth a man to live as a man to the ends that he was made for and according to the nature and use of his reason and all his faculties 2. While the proofs of the excellency and necessity of a holy life are so fully before laid down from natural and supernatural revelation the Objector doth but refuse to see in the open light when he satisfieth himself with a bare assertion that all this is no sufficient ground for a holy life but that it is taken up upon mistake 3. All the world is convinced at one time or other that on the contrary it is the unholy fleshly worldly life which is the dream and dotage and is caused by the grossest error and deceit Object But how
he is not a deceiver and so may be perswaded to trust and try him himself § 101. The way to know that others are thus regenerated is 1. By believing them Fide humana 2. By discerning it in the effects And though it be too frequent to have presumptuous self-conceited persons to affirm that the Spirit of Christ hath renewed them when it is no such matter yet all humane testimony of matters so neer men even within them is not therefore incredible but wise men will discern a credible person from an incredible In the forementioned instance many may tell you that they are cured by the Physician when it is not so but will you therefore believe no one that telleth you that he is cured Many may boast of that learning which they have not and tell you that they have knowledge in Mathematicks or in several Arts But is no man therefore to be believed that saith the same But yet I perswade no man here to take up with the bare belief of another mans word where he seeth not enough in the effects to second it and to perswade a reasonable man that it is true But as he that heareth a man that was sick profess that he is cured may well believe him if he see him eat and drink and sleep and labour and laugh as the healthfull use to doe so he that heareth a sober man profess with humble thanks to God that he hath changed and renewed him by his Spirit may well believe him if he see him live like a renewed man § 102. Though you cannot be infallibly certain of the sincerity of any one individual person but your self because we know not the heart yet may you be certain that all do not dissemble Because there is a natural impossibility that interests and motives and sufficient causes should concurre to lead them to it As before I said we are not certain of any individual woman that she doth not dissemble Love to her Husband and Children but we may be certain that all the women in the World do not from many natural proofs which might be given § 103. All these effects of Renovation may be discerned in others 1. You may discern that they are much grieved for their former sins 2. That they are weary of the remnant of their corruption or infirmity 3. That they long and labour to be delivered and to have their cure perfected and live in the diligent use of means to that end 4. That they live in no sin but smaller humane frailties 5. That all the riches in the world would not hire them deliberately and wilfully to sin but they will rather choose to suffer what man can lay upon them 6. That they are vile in their own eyes because of their remaining imperfections 7. That they do no wrong or injustice to any or if they do wrong any they are ready to confess it and make them satisfaction 8. That they love all good men with a love of complacency and all bad men with a love of benevolence yea even their enemies and instead of revenge are ready to forgive and to do what good they can for them and all men And that they hate bad men in opposition to complacency but as they hate themselves for their sins 9. That they love all doctrines persons and practices which are holy temperate just and charitable 10. That their passions at least are so far governed that they do not carry them to swear curse or rail or slander or fight or to do evil 11. That their tongues are used to speak with reverence of holy and righteous things and not to filthy ribbald railing lying or other wicked speech 12. That they suffer not their lusts to carry them to fornication nor their appetites to drunkenness or notable excess 13. That nothing below God himself is the principle object of their devotion but to know him to love him to serve and please him and to delight in these is the greatest care and desire and endeavour of their souls 14. That their chiefest hopes are of heaven and everlasting happiness with God in the perfection of this sight and love 15. That the ruling motives are fetch'd from God and the life to come which most command their choice their comforts and their lives 16. That in comparison of this all worldly riches honours and dignities are sordid contemptible things in their esteem 17. That for the hope of this they are much supported with patience under all sufferings in the way 18. That they value and use the things of this world in their callings and labours in subserviency to God and Heaven as a means to its proper end 19. That they vse their relations in the same subserviency ruling chiefly for God if they be superiours and obeying chiefly for God if they be inferiours and that with fidelity submission and patience so far as they can know his will 20. That their care and daily business in the world is by diligent redeeming precious time in getting and doing what good they can to make ready for death and judgment to secure their everlasting happiness and to please their God § 104. All this may be discerned in others with so great probability of their sincerity that no charitable reason shall have cause to question it And I repeat my testimony that here is not a word which I have not faithfully copied out of my own heart and experience and that I have been acquainted with multitudes who I verily believe were much better than my self and had a greater measure of all this grace § 105. If any shall say that men superstitiously appoint themselves unnecessary tasks and forbid themselves many lawful things and then call this by the name of Holiness I answer That many indeed do so but it is no such that I am speaking of Let reason judge whether in this or any of the fore-going descriptions of Holiness there be any such thing at all contained § 106. He that will be able to discern this Spirit of God in others must necessarily observe these reasonable conditions 1. Choose not those that are notoriously No-christians to judge of Christianity by a drunkard fornicator voluptuous carnal worldly proud or selfish person calling himself a Christian is certainly but an hypocrite And shall Christianity be judged of by a lying hypocrite 2. As you must choose such to try by as are truly serious in their Religion so you must be intimate and familiar with them and not strangers that see them as afar off for they make no vain ostentation of their piety And how can they discern the divine motions of their souls that only see them in common conversation 3. You must not judge of them by the revilings of ignorant ungodly men 4. Nor by the reproach of selfish men that are moved only by some interest of their own 5. Nor by the words of faction Civil or Religious which judgeth of all men according to the
interest of their sect or cause and party 6. Nor by your own partial interest which will make you judge of men not as they are indeed and towards God but as they either answer or cross your interests and desires 7. Nor must you judge of all by some that prove hypocrites who once seemed sincere 8. Nor must you judge of a man by some particular fall or failing which is contrary to the bent of his heart and life and is his greatest sorrow 9. Nor must you come with a fore-stalled and malicious mind hating that holiness your self which you enquire after for malice is blind and a constant false interpreter and a slanderer 10. You must know what Holiness and Honesty is before you can well judge of them These conditions are all so reasonable and just that he that liveth among religious honest men and will stand at a distance unacquainted with their lives and maliciously revile them upon the seduction of false reports or of interest either his own interest or the interest of a faction and will say I see no such honest and renewed persons but a company of self-conceited hypocrites this man 's confirmed infidelity and damnation is the just punishment of his wilful blindness partiality and malice which made him false to God to truth and to his own soul § 107. It is not some but All true Christians that ever were or are in the world who have within them this witness or evidence of the Spirit of Regeneration As I have before said Christ will own no others Rom. 8. 4 5 6 7 8 9. 2 Cor. 5.17 Luk. 14.26.33 If any man have not the Spirit of Christ the same is none of his If any man be in Christ he is a new creature old things are passed away behold all things are become new He that forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be my disciple Gal. 5.24 They that are Christs have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts Indeed the Church visible which is but the congregate Societies of professed Christians hath many in it that have none of this Spirit or grace but such are only Christians equivocally and not in the primary proper sense 1 Joh. 5.7 8 9 10. There are three that bear record in heaven the Father the Word and the holy Ghost and these three are one And there are three that bear witness on earth the Spirit and the Water and the Blood and these three agree in one If we receive the witness of men the witness of God is greater for this is the witness of God which he hath testified of his Son He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself He that believeth not God hath made him a liar because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son § 108. The more any one is a Christian in degree the more he hath of this witness of the sanctifying Spirit in himself and the holier he is § 109. The nearer any Philosopher or others are like to Christians the nearer they come to this renewed Image of God § 110. As this Image of God the holiness of the soul is the very end and work of a true Saviour so the true effecting of it on all true Christians is actually their begun salvation and therefore the standing infallible witness of Christ which should confound unbelief in all that are indeed his own This which I spake of the fore going Chapter is a testimony in every holy soul which the gates of hell shall not prevail against He that undertaketh to cure all of the Plague or Stone or Gout or Fever that will take his medicines and be ruled by him is certainly no deceiver if he do that which he undertaketh He that undertaketh to teach all men Arithmetick Geometry Astronomy Musick c. who will come and learn of him is certainly no deceiver if he do it What is it that Jesus Christ hath undertaken Think of that and then tell me whether he be a deceiver He never undertook to make his Disciples Kings or Lords or rich or honourable in the world nor yet to make them the best Logicians Orators Astronomers Mathematicians Physicians Musicians c. but to make them the best men to renew them to the love of God in holiness and thereby to save them from their sins and give them repentance unto life Nor hath he promised this to all that are baptized or called Christians but only to those that sincerely consent to learn of him and take his counsel and use the remedies which he prescribeth them And is it not certain that Christ doth truly perform this undertaking How then can he be a deceiver who doth perform all that he undertaketh Of this all true Christians have a just demonstration in themselves which is his witness Object But Christ undertaketh more than this even to bring us to everlasting blessedness in heaven Answ It is our comfort that he doth so but me-thinks its easie to believe him in that if he perform the rest For 1. I have proved in the first part of this Book that by the light of nature a future life of retribution must be expected and that man is made for a future happiness 2. And who then should have that happiness but the holy and renewed souls Doth not natural reason tell you that so good a God will shew his love to those that are good that is to those that love him 3. And what think you is to be done to bring any man to heaven but to pardon him and make him holy 4. And the nature of the work doth greatly help our faith For this holiness is nothing but the beginning of that happiness When we find that Christ hath by his Spirit begun to make us know God and love him and delight in him and praise him it is the easier to make us believe that he will perfect it He that promiseth to convey me safely to the Antipodes may easily be believed when he hath brought me past the greatest difficulties of the voyage He that will teach me to sing artificially hath merited credit when he hath taught me the gradual tones the Scale of Musick the Sol-fa-ing the Cliffs the Quantity the Moods the Rules of time c. He that causeth me to love God on earth may be believed if he promise me that I shall love him more in heaven And he that causeth me to desire heaven above earth before I see it may be believed when he promiseth that it shall be my great delight when I am there It is God's work to love them that love him and to reward the obedient and I must needs believe that God will do his work and will never fail the just expectations of any creature All my doubt is whether I shall do my part and whether I shall be a prepared subject for that felicity and he that resolveth this resolveth all He that will make me fit for
heaven hath overcome the greatest difficulty of my belief and I should the more easily believe that he will do the rest and that I shall surely come to heaven when I am fit for it Object But Christ doth not only undertake to regenerate and to save us but also to justifie us and this by a strange way by his Sacrifice and Merits Answ The greater is his wisdom and goodness as made known to us I am sure an unpardoned unrighteous person is uncapable of felicity in that state and I am sure I cannot pardon my self nor well know which way else to seek it And I am sure that so excellent and holy a person is fitter to be well-beloved of God I than But I pray you remember 1. That he undertaketh not to pardon or justifie any man whom he doth not renew and sanctifie 2. And that all his means which seem so strange to you are but to restore God's Image on you and fit you for his love and service And this we can testifie by experience that he hath done in some measure in us and if I find his means successful I will not quarrel with it because it seemeth strange to me A Physician may prescribe me remedies for some mortal disease which I understand not but seem unlike to do the cure but if I find that those unlikely means effect it I will not quarrel with him nor refuse them till I know my self to be wiser than he and have found out some surer means It is most evident then that he who saveth us is our Saviour and he that saveth us from sin will save us from punishment and he that maketh us fit for pardon doth procure our pardon and he that causeth us to love God above all doth fit us to enjoy his love and he that maketh us both to love him and to be beloved by him doth prepare us for heaven and is truly the MEDIATOR § III. Four or five Consectaries are evident from this which I have been proving 1. That we have left no room for their insipid cavil who say that we flie to a private spirit or conceit or Enthusiasm for the evidence of our faith There are some indeed that talk of the meer perswasion or inward active testimony of the Spirit as if it were an inward word that said to us This is the word of God But this is not it which I have been speaking of but the objective testimony or evidence of our Regeneration which could not be effected but 1. by a perfect doctrine and 2 by the concurrent work or blessing of God's Spirit which he would not give to confirm a lie The Spirit is Christ's witness in the four ways fore-mentioned and he doth moreover cause me to believe and increase that faith by blessing due means But for any Enthusiasm or unproved bare perswasion we own it not § 112. II. That Malignity is the high-way to Infidelity As the holiness of his members is Christ's last continued witness in the world so the malicious slandering and scorning at godly men or vilifying them for self-interest or the interest of a faction is the devils means to frustrate this testimony § 113. III. That the destruction of true Church-discipline tendeth to the destruction of Christianity in the world by laying Christ's Vineyard common to the Wilderness and confounding godly and the notoriorsly ungodly and representing Christianity to Pagans and Infidels as a barren notion or a common and debauching way § 114. IV. That the scandals and wickedness of nominal Christians is on the same accounts the devils way to extirpate Christianity from the earth § 115. V. That the great mercy of God hath provided a sure and standing means for the ascertaining multitudes of holy Christians of the truth of the Gospel who have neither skill nor leisure to acquaint themselves with the History of the Church and records of Antiquity nor to reason it out against a learned subtil caviler from other extrinsick arguments Abundance of honest holy souls do live in the fervent love of God and in hatred of sin and in sincere obedience in justice and charity to all men and in heavenly desires and delights who yet cannot well dispute for their Religion nor yet do they need to flie to believe as the Church believeth though they know not what or why nor what the Church is But they have that Spirit within them which is the living witness and Advocate of Christ and the seal of God and the earnest of their salvation not a meer pretense that the Spirit perswadeth them and they know not by what evidence nor yet that they count it most pious to believe strongliest without evidence when they least know why but they have the spirit of Renovation and Adoption turning the very bent of their hearts and lives from the world to God and from earth to heaven and from carnality to spirituality and from sin to holiness And this fully assureth them that Christ who hath actually saved them is their Saviour and that he who maketh good all his undertaking is no deceiver and that God would not sanctifie his people in the world by a blasphemy a deceit and lie and that Christ who hath performed his promise in this which is his earnest will perform the rest And withall the very love to God and Holiness and Heaven which is thus made their new nature by the Spirit of Christ will hold fast in the hour of temptation when reasoning otherwise is too weak O what a blessed advantage have the sanctified against all temptations to unbelief And how lamentably are ungodly Sensualists disadvantaged who have deprived themselves of this inherent testimony If two men were born blinde and one of them had been cured and had been shewed the Candle-light and twilight how easie is it for him to believe his Physician if he promise also to shew him the Sun in comparison of what it is to the other who never saw the light CHAP. VIII Of some other subservient and Collateral Arguments for the Christian Verity HAving largely opened the great Evidence of the Christian Verity viz. The SPIRIT in its four wayes of testifying Accidentally Inherently Concomitantly and Subsequently I shall more briefly recite some other subservient Arguments which I finde most satisfactory to my own understanding § 1. I. The natural evidence of the truth of the Scripture about the Creation of the World doth make it the more Credible to me in all things else For that is a thing which none but God himself could reveal to us For the Scripture telleth what was done before there was any man in being And that this World is not eternal nor of any longer continuance is exceeding probable by the state of all things in it 1. Arts and Sciences are far from that maturity which a longer continuance or an Eternity would have produced Guns and Printing are but lately found out The body of man is not yet well Anatomized
it can no otherwise act or operate Not to meddle with the controversie whether it take with it hence the material sensitive Soul as a body afterward to act by or whether it fabricate to it self an aethereal body or remain without any body of it self It is certain that it was not the Body that was the Principle of Intellection and Volition here but it was the Soul which did all in the body but according to the mode of its present coexistence seeing then that it was the Soul that did it here why may it not also do it hereafter If the Candle shine in the Lanthorn It can shine out of it though with some difference He is scarce rational that doubteth whether there be such things as incorporeal invisible intelligences minds or spirits And if they can act without bodies why may not our minds Though the Egge would die if the shell were broken or the Hen did not sit upon it it doth not follow that therefore the Chicken cannot live without a shell or sitting on Though the Embrio and Infant must have a continuity with the mother and be nourished by her nourishment it doth not follow that therefore it must be so with him when he is born and grown up to ripeness of age And when there is full proof that Souls have a future life to live it is a folly to doubt of it meerly because we cannot conceive of the manner of their acting without a body For he that is not desirous to be deceived must reduce things uncertain and dark to those that are clear and certain and not contrarily All good arguing is à notioribus and not à minùs notis The neerer any Being is in excellency unto God the more there is in it which is hard to be comprehended Spirits and Minds are excellent Beings and therefore very imperfectly known even by themselves while they are in the Lanthorn the Shell the Womb of flesh The Eye is not made to see its own sight though it may see in a Glass the Organ of its sight And as sight seeth not sight nor hearing heareth not hearing nor taste tasteth not tasting c. the act being not its own object But yet by seeing other things I am most certain that I see and by hearing tasting smelling c. I am certain that I hear taste and smell so is not the Intellect here fitted intuitively to understand its own act of understanding but by understanding other objects it understandeth that it doth understand Though I confess some learned men in this think otherwise viz. that the Intellect intuitively knoweth it self If a man have a Watch which is kept in order to tell him the hour of the day though he know not the reason of the frame the parts and motions nor how to take it into pieces and set it again together yet it serveth his turn to the use he bought it for And a Ship may carry him who is unacquainted with the workmanship that 's in it And so if a mans Soul know how to love and please its Maker and know it self morally it attaineth its end though it know not it self physically so far as to be able to anatomize its faculties and acts Argue not therefore from obscurities against the Light And that man doth not differ from a bruit only in degree but specifically he that is indeed a man doth know Considering what operations the minde of man hath above Bruits not only in all the most abstruse and wonderful Arts and Sciences Astronomy Geometry Musick Physick Navigation Legislation Logick Rhetorick c. but also his knowledge of a Creator a love and fear of him an obedience to him and a care for an Everlasting Life Whether Bruits have Analogical Ratiocination or not it is certain that these things are far above them 2. If by the Eternity of our felicity were meant only an Aevum of very long duration it would be so strong a motive to Godliness and Christianity as with any rational man as to weigh down all the counter-pleasures of this world 3. But as long as there is no want of Power in God to perpetuate our blessedness nor any proof that it is disagreeable to his Wisdom or his Will why should that seem incredible to us which is sealed and attested so fully by supernatural revelation as I have proved If once the revelation be proved to be Divine there is nothing in this which reason will not believe 4. And all they that confess the immortality and perpetuity of the soul must confess the perpetuity of its pleasure or pain 5. And why should it be hard for the Peripatetick to believe the perpetuity of the soul who will needs believe the eternity of the world it self both as à parte ante and à parte post Surely it should seem no difficulty to any of that opinion Object VI. Who can believe that God will torment his creatures in the flames of hell for ever Is this agreeable to infinite Goodness Answ 1. I have fully answered this already chap. 15. part 1. and therefore I must intreat the Objector to peruse his Answer there Only I shall now say that it is not incredible that God is the Governour of the world nor that he hath given man a Law nor that his Law hath penalties to the disobedient nor that he is just and will judge the world according to that Law and make good his threatnings nor is it incredible that those who chose sin when they were fore-told of the punishment and refused Godliness when they were fore-told of the blessed reward and fruits and this with obstinacy to the last should have no better than they chose It is not incredible that unholy enemies of God and Holiness should not live hereafter in the blessed sight and love and holy delightful fruition of God no more than that a Swine is not made a King nor that an immortal Soul who is excluded immortal happiness by his wilful refusal should know his folly and know what he hath lost by it nor that such knowledge should be his continual torment nor is it incredible that God will not continue to him the pleasures of whoredom and gluttony and drunkenness and sports and worldly wealth or tyrannical domination to quiet him in his loss of heaven nor that he will deprive him of the temporal mercies which now content him or may afford him any delight hereafter nor is it incredible if his body rise again that it shall be partaker with his soul nor that God who might deprive him of his being if he had been innocent may make him worse or bring him into a condition to which he would prefer annihilation when he is an obstinate impenitent sinner It is not incredible that a good King or Judge may hang a Felon or Traitor for a crime against man and humane society Nor is it any goodness in them to be unjust or to cherish murderers by impunity none of
I prove you foolish in your Infidelity And if you will conjecture then that there may as many of those other Regions be damned 1. You shew your selves much more harsh in your censures than the Christians are whose harshness you are now reproving Yea you conjecture this without all ground or probability And will you say then For ought I know it may be so Ergo Christianity is incredible Can a groundless conjecture allow any rational man such a Conclusion Obj. But you say your selves that many of the Angels fell and are now Devils Answ But we say not how many we never said that it is the whole number of the Glorious Inhabitants of all the superiour World who are called Angels as Messengers or Officers about man we know not how small a part of them comparatively it may be And of them we know not how few fell Augustine conjectured that it was the tenth part but we have no ground for any such conjecture Obj. But it is incredible that the World should perish for one mans sin whom they never knew nor could prevent Ans 1. To them that know what Generation is and what the Son is to the Father it is not incredible at all that the unholy Parents do not beget holy Children nor convey to them that which they have not themselves nor yet that God should hate the unholy Nor that the Parents choice should signifie much for their Childrens state who have no wills of their own fit for actual choice nor that restored imperfect holiness should not be conveyed to Children by natural propagation which came to the Parents by Regeneration nor that the Children of Traytors should be disinherited for their Fathers faults nor that the Children of Drunkards and Gluttons should be naturally diseased 2. No man in the World doth perish for Adams sin alone without his own Though we judge the case of Infants to allow you no exception yet to carry the controversie to them into the dark and to argue à minus notis is not the property of such as seek impartially for truth Christ hath procured a new Covenant upon which all those that hear the Gospel shall again be tryed for life or death And those that hear it not have divers means which have a tendency to their recovery and are under undenyable Obligations to use those means in order to their recovery which if they do not faithfully they perish for their own sin Should it not make Christianity the more easily credible when certain experience assureth us how prone even Infants are to sin and how universally the World is drown'd in wickedness and then to finde so admirable and suitable a Remedy revealed Obj. But Punishment is to warn others from sinning But after this life there will be none to warn therefore there will be no punishment because the end of punishing ceaseth Answ 1. It is a false position that punishment is only or chiefly to be a warning to others It is chiefly for the ultimate end of Government which secundum quid among men is the bonum publicum but simpliciter in Gods Government it is the Glorifying or demonstration of the Holiness and Justice of God the universal Governour to the pleasure of his holy will 2. It is the Penalty as Threatned in the Law and not the penalty as executed which is the first necessary means to deterre others from offending And then the execution is secondarily necessary because the Law must be fulfilled It is not the actual hanging of a murderer which is the first necessary instrument or means to restrain murderers But it is the Penalty in the Law which saith that Murderers shall be hanged And the commination of the Law would be no restraint if it were not that it relateth to a just execution So that it was necessary to the restraint of sinners in this world that God should threaten Hell in his Law And therefore it is necessary that he execute that Law or else it would be delusory and contemptible 3. How know we who shall survive this present World to whom God may make mans Hell a warning Are not the Devils now set out in Scripture for a warning to Man And how know we what other Creatures God hath to whom these punished sinners may be a warning Or whether the New Earth wherein Righteousness must dwell according to Gods Promise 2 Pet. 3.12 13. shall not have use of this warning to keep them in their righteousness As long as all these things are probable and the contrary utterly uncertain how foolish a thing is it to go from the light of a plain Revelation and Scripture and argue from our dark uncertainties and improbabilities against that light And all because self-love and guilt doth make sinners unwilling to believe the truth So much for the Objection against Hell Obj. VIII But it is incredible that all those shall be damned that live honestly and soberly and do no body harm if they do not also live a holy and heavenly life and forsake all for another World Answ It is but selfishness and blindness which maketh men call him an honest man and speak lightly of his wickedness who preferreth the dung and trifles of this World before his Maker and Everlasting glory What if a pack of Murderers Thieves and Rebels do live together in love and do one another no harm shall that excuse their murders or rebellions and give them the name of honest men What is the Creature to the Creator what greater wickedness can man commit than to deny despise and disobey his Maker and to preferre the most contemptible vanity before him and to choose the transitory pleasure of sinning before the endless fruition of his God what is wronging a Neighbour in comparison of this wrong shall a sinner refuse his everlasting happiness when it is offered him and then think to have it when he can possess the pleasure of sin no longer and all because he did no man wrong Doth he think to refuse Heaven and yet to have it If he refuse the Love of God and perfection of Holiness he refuseth Heaven It is so far from being incredible that the unholy should be damned and the Holy only saved that the contrary is impossible I would not believe an Angel from Heaven if he should tell me that one unholy Soul in sensu composito while such shall be saved and have the heavenly felicity because it is a meer contradiction For to be blessed in Heaven is to be happy in the perfect Love of God And to love God without Holiness signifieth to love him without loving him Are these the Objections of unbelief Obj. IX The Resurrection of these Numerical Bodies when they are devoured and turned into the substance of other bodies is a thing incredible Answ 1. If it be neither against the Power the Wisdom or the Will of God it is not incredible at all But it is not against any of
are taught to believe that sense is not deceived about the Accidents which they call the Species but about the Substance only when most of the simple people by the species do understand the Bread and Wine it self which they think is to the invisible body of Christ like as our bodies or the body of a Plant is to the soul So that although this instance be one of the greatest in the world of infatuation by humane authority and words it is nothing against the Christian verity Object V. You are not yet agreed among your selves what Christianity is as to the matter of Rule the Papists say it is all the Decrees de fide at least in all General Councils together with the Scriptures Canonical and Apocriphal The Protestants take up with the Canonical Scriptures alone and have not near so much in their Faith or Religion as the Papists have Answ What it is to be a Christian all the world may easily perceive in that solemn Sacrament Covenant or Vow in which they are solemnly entred into the Church and profession of Christianity and made Christians And the antient Creed doth tell the world what hath always been the faith which was professed And those sacred Scriptures which the Churches did receive doth tell the world what they took for the entire comprehension of their Religion But if any Sects have been since tempted to any additions enlargements or corruptions it s nothing to the disparagement of Christ who never promised that no man should ever abuse his Word and that he would keep all the world from adding or corrupting it Receive but so much as the doctrine of Christ which hath certain proof that it was indeed his delivered by himself or his inspired Apostles and we desire no more Object VI. But you are not agreed of the reasons and resolution of your faith one resolveth it into the authority of the Church and others into a private spirit and each one seemeth sufficiently to prove the groundlesness of the others faith Answ Dark minded men do suffer themselves to be fooled with a noise of words not-understood Do you know what is meant by the resolution and grounds of faith Faith is the believing of a conclusion which hath two premises to infer and prove it and there must be more argumentation for the proof of such premises and faith in its several respects and dependances may be said to be resolved into more things than one even into every one of these This general and ambiguous word Resolution is used oft'ner to puzzle than resolve And the grounds and reasons of faith are more than one and what they are I have fully opened to you in this Treatise A great many of dreaming wranglers contend about the Logical names of the Objectum quod quo ad quod the objectum formale materiale per se per accidens primarium secundarium ratio formalis quae qua sub qua objectum univocationis communitatis perfectionis originis virtutis adaequationis c. the motiva fidei resolutio and many such words which are not wholly useless but are commonly used but to make a noise to carry men from the sense and to make men believe that the controversie is de re which is meerly de nomine Every true Christian hath some solid reason for his faith but every one is not learned and accurate enough to see the true order of its causes and evidences and to analize it throughly as he ought And you will take it for no disproof of Euclid or Aristotle that all that read them do not sufficiently understand all their Demonstrations but disagree in many things among themselves Object VII You make it a ridiculous Idolatry to worship the Sun and Jupiter and Venus and other Planets and Stars which in all probability are animate and have souls as much nobler than ours as their bodies are for it 's like God's works are done in proportion and harmony and so they seem to be to us as subordinate Deities And yet at the same time you will worship your Virgin Mary and the very image of Christ yea the Image of the Cross which he was hang'd on and the salita capita and rotten bones of your Martyrs to the dishonour of Princes who put them to death as malefactors Is not the Sun more worthy of honour than these Answ 1. We ever granted to an Eunapius Julian Porphyry or Celsus that the Sun and all the Stars and Planets are to be honoured according to their proper excellency and use that is to be esteemed as the most glorious of all the visible works of God which shew to us his Omnipotency Wisdom and Goodness and are used as his instruments to convey to us his chief corporal mercies and on whom under God our bodies are dependant being incomparably less excellent than theirs But whether they are animated or no is to us utterly uncertain and if we were sure they were yet we are sure that they are the products of the Will of the Eternal Being And he that made both them and us is the Governour of them and us and therefore as long as he hath no way taught us to call them Gods nor to pray to them nor offer them any sacrifice as being uncertain whether they understand what we do or say nor hath any way revealed that this is his will nay and hath expresly forbidden us to do so Reason forbiddeth us to do any more than honourably to esteem and praise them as they are and use them to the ends which our Creator hath appointed 2. And for the Martyrs and the Virgin Mary we do no otherwise by them we honour them by estimation love and praise agreeable to all the worth which God hath bestowed on them and the holiness of humane souls which is his image is more intelligible to us and so more distinctly amiable than the form of the Sun and Planets is But we pray not to them because we know not whether they hear us or know when we are sincere or hypocritical nor have we any such precepts from our common Lord. It is but some ignorant mistaken Christians who pray to the dead or give more than due veneration to their memories And it is Christ and not every ignorant Christian or mistaken Sect that I am justifying against the cavils of unbelief Object VIII You make the holiness of Christian doctrine a great part of the evidence of your faith and yet Papists and Protestants maintain each others doctrine to be wicked and such especially against Kings and Government as Seneca or Cicero or Plutarch would have abhorred The Protestants tell the Papists of the General Council at the Lateran sub Innoc. 3. where Can. 3. it is made a very part of their Religion That temporal Lords who exterminate not Hereticks may be admonished and excommunicated and their Dominions given by the Pope to others and subjects disobliged from their allegiance
far and followed them too long O that it had been less though I must thankfully acknowledge that Mercy did early shew me their deceit and turn my enquiring thoughts to thee to thee I resign my self for I am thine own to thee I subject all the powers of my soul and body for thou art my Rightful Sovereign Governour from thee I thankfully accept of all the benefits and comforts of my life in thee I expect my true felicity and content to know thee and love thee and delight in thee must be my blessedness or I must have none The little tastes of this sweetness which my thirsty soul hath had do tell me that there is no other real joy I feel that thou hast made my mind to know thee and I feel thou hast made my heart to love thee my tongue to praise thee and all that I am and have to serve thee And even in the panting languishing desires and motions of my soul I find that thou and only thou art its resting place and though Love do now but search and pray and cry and weep and is reaching upward but cannot reach the glorious light the blessed knowledge the perfect love for which it longeth yet by its eye its aim its motions its moans its groans I know its meaning where it would be and I know its end My displaced soul will never be well till it come near to thee till it know thee better till it love thee more It loves it self and justifyeth that self love when it can love thee it loaths it self and is weary of it self as a lifeless burden when it feels no pantings after thee Wert thou to be found in the most solitary desart it would seek thee or in the uttermost parts of the earth it would make after thee thy presence makes a croud a Church thy converse maketh a closet or solitary wood or field to be kin to the Angelical Chore. The creature were dead if thou wert not its life and ugly if thou wert not its beauty and insignificant if thou wert not its sense The soul is deformed which is without thine Image and lifeless which liveth not in love to thee if love be not its pulse and prayer and praise its constant breath the Mind is unlearned which readeth not thy Name on all the world and seeth not HOLINESS TO THE LORD engraven upon the face of every creature He doteth that doubteth of thy Being or Perfections and he dreameth who doth not live to thee O let me have no other portion no reason no love no life but what is devoted to thee employed on thee and for thee here and shall be perfected in thee the only perfect final object for evermore Upon the holy Altar erected by thy Son and by his hands and his Mediation I humbly devote and offer thee THIS HEART O that I could say with greater feeling This flaming loving longing Heart But the sacred fire which must kindle on my sacrifice must come from thee it will not else ascend unto thee let it consume this dross so the nobler part may know its home All that I can say to commend it to thine acceptance is that I hope it 's wash'd in precious bloud and that there is something in it that is thine own it still looketh towards thee and groaneth to thee and followeth after thee and will be content with gold and mirth and honour and such inferiour fooleries no more it lieth at thy doors and will be entertain'd or perish Though alass it loves thee not as it would I boldly say it longs to love thee it loves to love thee it seeks it craves no greater blessedness than perfect endless mutual love it is vowed to thee even to thee alone and will never take up with shadows more but is resolved to lie down in sorrow and despair if thou wilt not be its REST and JOY It hateth it self for loving thee no more accounting no want deformity shame or pain so great and grievous a calamity For thee the Glorious Blessed GOD it is that I come to Jesus Christ If he did not reconcile my guilty soul to thee and did not teach it the heavenly art and work of Love by the sweet communications of thy love he could be no Saviour for me Thou art my only ultimate end it is only a guide and way to thee that my anxious soul hath so much studied and none can teach me rightly to know thee and to love thee and to live to thee but thy self it must be a Teacher sent from thee that must conduct me to thee I have long looked round about me in the world to see if there were a more lucid Region from whence thy will and glory might be better seen than that in which my lot is fallen But no Traveller that I can speak with no Book which I have turn'd over no Creature which I can see doth tell me more than Jesus Christ I can find no way so suitable to my soul no medicine so fitted to my misery no bellows so fit to kindle love as faith in Christ the Glass and Messenger of thy love I see no doctrine so divine and heavenly as bearing the image and superscription of God nor any so fully confirmed and delivered by the attestation of thy own Omnipotency nor any which so purely pleads thy cause and calls the soul from self and vanity and condemns its sin and purifieth it and leadeth it directly unto thee and though my former ignorance disabled me to look back to the Ages past and to see the methods of thy providence and when I look into thy Word disabled me from seeing the beauteous methods of thy Truth thou hast given me a glimpse of clearer light which hath discovered the reasons and methods of grace which I then discerned not and in the midst of my most hideous temptations and perplexed thoughts thou kepst alive the root of faith and kepst alive the love to thee and unto Holiness which it had kindled Thou hast mercifully given me the witness in my self not an unreasonable perswasion in my mind but that renewed nature those holy and heavenly desires and delights which sure can come from none but thee And O how much more have I perceived in many of thy servants than in my self thou hast cast my lot among the souls whom Christ hath healed I have daily conversed with those whom he hath raised from the dead I have seen the power of thy Gospel upon sinners All the love that ever I perceived kindled towards thee and all the true obedience that ever I saw performed to thee hath been effected by the word of Jesus Christ how oft hath his Spirit helped me to pray and how often hast thou heard those prayers what pledges hast thou given to my staggering faith in the words which prayer hath procured both for my self and many others And if Confidence in Christ be yet deceit must I not say that thou hast deceived
even so the bruitish grossness of the Somatists driveth some Philosophers into Platonick dreams and the Platonick fictions harden the Epicureans in a far worser way Lactantius de ira Dei cap. 13. thinks that Epicurus was moved to his opinion against Providence by seeing the hurt that good men and Religious endure from the woâ—ser sort here in this world But why should you run out on one side the way because other men run out on the other why do you not rather argue from the doctrine in the sober mean that it is true than from the extreams that the truth is falshood When reason will allow you to conclude no more than that those extremes are falshood But surely I had rather hold Plato's Anima mundi or Aristotle's Intellectus agens and his moving Intelligences than Epicurus his Atoms and motion only And I had rather think with Alexander Arphad that omnis actio corporis est ab incorporeo principio yea or the Stoicks doctrine of Intellectual Fire doing all than Gassendus his doctrine that no incorporeal thing can move a corporeal or that Atoms and their motion only do all that we find done in nature When I look over and about me I find it a thing quite past my power to think that the glorious parts above us are not replenished with much nobler creatures than we And therefore if the Platonists and the ancient Platonick Fathers of the Church did all think that they lived in communion with Angels and had much to do with them and that the superiour intelligences were a nobler part of their studies than meer bodies they shall have the full approbation of my reason in this though I would not run with them into any of their presumptions and uncertain or unsound conceits Saith Aeneas Gazaeus pag. 778. when he had told us that Plato Pythagoras Plotinus and Numenius were for the passing of men's souls into bruits but Porphyry and Jamblichus were against it and thought that they passed only into men Ego quidem hac ipsa de causa filium aut famulum ob id quod commiserint peccatum puniens antequam de ipsis supplicium sumam praemoneo ut meminerint ne posthac unquam in eadem mala recurrant Deus autem quando ultima supplicia decernit non edocet eos qui poenarum causas sed scelerum memoriam omnem tollet vide pag. 382. For this reason and many others we assume not their conceit of the soul's pre-existence and think all such unproved fancies to be but snares to trouble the world with We think not that God punisheth men for sin in another world while he totally obliterateth the memory of the other world and of their sin When he hath told us that In Adam all die and By one mans disobedience many are made sinners and so condemnation passed upon all Rom. 5. Nor will we with Origen thus tempt men to look for more such changes hereafter which we can give them no proof of Nor will we distribute the Angelical Hierarchy into all the degrees which the pseudo-Dionysius doth nor with the Gnosticks Basilidians Saturninians Valentinians and abundance of those antient Hereticks corrupt Christianity with the mixture of fanatick dreams about the unrevealed Powers and worlds above us either worshipping Angels or prying into those things which he hath not seen and are not revealed vainly puft up by his fleshly mind or without cause puffed up by the imagination of his own flesh as Dr. Hammond translateth it Col. 2.18 Nor will we make a Religion with Paracelsus Behmen the Rosicrucians or the rest described by Christ Beckman Exercit. of the Philosophical whimsies of an over-stretch'd imagination And yet we will not reject the saying of Athenagoras Apol. pag. 57. Magnum numerum Angelorum Ministrorum Dei esse fatemur quos opifex architectus mundi Deus Verbo suo tanquam in classes ordinavit centuriavitque ut elementa coelos mundum quae in mundo sunt vicesque ordinem omnium moderarent Though we may adde with Junilius Africanus that Whether the Angels meddle with the government of the world of stablished creatures is a difficult question OBJECTION XIX IF the soul do continue individuate yet its actings will not be such as they are now in the body because they have not spirits to act by And as Gassendus thinketh that the reason of oblivion in old men is the wearing out of the vestigia of the former spirits by the continual flux or transition of matter so we may conceive that all memory will cease to separated souls on the same account and therefore they will be unfit for Rewards or Punishments as not remembring the cause Answ 1. Iâ— Gassendus his opinion were true men should forget all things once a year if not once a month considering how many pounds of matter are spent every 24 hours And why then do we better when we are old remember the things which we did between nine or ten years old and twenty than most of the later passages of our lives as I do for my part very sensibly 2. What is mans memory for with bruits we meddle not but scientia praeteritorum Is not remembring a knowing of things past surely we may perceive that it is and that it is of the same kind of action with the knowing of things present And therefore we may make not memory a third faculty because it is the same with the understanding 3. We have little reason to think that the surviving soul will lose any of its essential powers and grow by its change not only impotent but another thing Therefore it will be still an intelligent power And though remote actions and effects such as writing fighting c. are done by instruments which being removed we cannot do them without yet essential acts are nothing so which flow immediately from the essence of the agent as light heat and motion of the fire If there be but due objects these will be performed without such instruments Nor will the Creator who continueth at an active intelligent power continue it so in vain by denying it necessaries for its operations There is like to be much difference in many respects between the soul's actings here and hereafter but the acts flowing from its essence immediately as knowledge volition complacency called Love and Displacencie c. will be the same How far the soul here doth act without any idea or instrument I have spoken before And the manner of our acting hereafter no man doth now fully understand But that which is essentially an intellectual volitive power will not be idle in its active essence for want of a body to be its instrument If we may so far ascribe to God himself such Affections or Passions as the ingenious Mr. Samuel Parker in his Teutam Phil. l. 2. c. 8. p. 333 c. hath notably opened we have no reason to think that scientia praeteritorum is not to be ascribed
to a soul when it is separated from the corporeal spirits Or if the soul out of the body were as liable as it is by diseases of the body while it is in it to the loss of memory yet all those arguments which prove the Life of Retribution hereafter do fully prove that God will provide it a way of exercise and prevent all those hinderances of memory which may make his Judgment and Retribution void Again therefore I say To argue ab ignotis against clear evidence in matters that our own everlasting joy or sorrow is concerned in so deeply is a folly that no tongue can express with its due aggravations OBJECTION XX. THe belief of the immortality of souls doth fill men with fears and draw them to superstition and trouble the peace of Kingdoms by unavoidable sects in the prosecution of those things which are of such transcendent weight when otherwise men might live in quietness to themselves and others and in promoting of the publick good Answ This is the maddest objection of all the rest but in our days there are men found that are no wiser than to make it I have answered it fully in divers popular Treatises as that called A Saint or a Bruit c. 1. The greatest and best things are liable to the worst abuses Thus you may argue against Reason that it doth but fill mens brains with knavish craft and enable them to do mischief and to trouble the world and to live themselves in cares and fears c. Upon many such reasons Cotta in Cic. de Nat. Deor. doth chide God for making man a rational creature and saith he had been happier without it And were it not for this wit and reason we should have none of these evils which you have here now mentioned Why then is not reason as well as Religion on that account to be rejected On the same reason Philosophy and Learning may be accused as it is with the Turks and Moscovites What abundance of sects and voluminous contentions and tired consuming studies have they caused witness all the volumes of Philosophers and School-men On the same account you may cry down Kings and Civil Government and Riches and all that is valued in the world for what wars and bloudshed hath there been in the world for Crowns and Kingdoms what hatred and contention for honour and wealth If you could make all men swine they would not stir for gold or pearls or if they were dogs they would not fight for Kingdoms and if they be blind and impious worldlings they will not be zealous about Religion unless to dis-spirit it and to reduce it to the service of their fleshly interest which is the hypocrites zeal No man will contend for that which he valueth not But 2. Consider that though dogs will not fight for Crowns they will fight for bones and some times need men of reason to stave them off And though swine fight not for gold they will fight for draff and burst their bellies if they be not governed And though unbelievers and Atheists trouble not the world to promote Religion they set Families Towns and Countries and Kingdoms together by the ears for their worldly pelf and fleshly interest Enquire whether the wars of the world be not most for carnal interest even where Religion hath been pretended and hearken in Westminster-hall and at the Assizes whether most of the contendings there are such as are caused by Religion or by the love of the world and of the flesh And where Religion seemeth to be a part of the cause it is the Atheists and ungodly that are commonly the chief contenders who think it not enough to hope for no life to come themselves but they cannot endure other men that do it because they seem wiser and better and happier than they and by their holiness gall their consciences and condemn them 3. The extremity of this objections impudency appeareth in this above all that it is most notorious that there is no effectual cure for all the villanies of the world but true Religion and shall the cure be made the cause of that disease 1. Read and judge in Nature and Scripture whether the whole matter of Religion be not perfectly contrary to the vices of the world Will it trouble Kingdoms or disquiet souls to love God above all and to honour and obey him and be thankful for his mercies and to trust his promises and to rejoice in hope of endless glory and to love our neighbours as our selves and to do no injustice or wrong to any to forbear wrath and malice lust adultery theft and lying and all the rest expressed in this treatise 2. Is it not for want of Religion that all the vices and contentions of the world are Would not men be better subjects and better servants and better neighbours if they had more Religion Would not they lie and deceive and steal and wrong others less Do you think he that believeth a life to come or he that believeth it not is liker to cut your purse or rob you by the high way or bear false witness against you or be perjured or take that which is not his own or any such unrighteous thing Is he liker to live as a good subject or servant who looketh for a reward in heaven for it or he that looketh to die as a beast doth Is he liker to do well and avoid evil who is moved by the effectual hopes and fears of another life or he that hath no such hopes and fears but thinketh that if he can escape the Gallows there is no further danger Had you rather your servant that is trusted with your estate did believe that there is a life to come or that there is none Nay why doth not your objection militate as strongly against the thief's believing that there will be an Assize For if the belief of an Assize did not trouble him he might quietly take that which he hath a mind to and do what he list but this fills his heart with fears and troubles 3. Compare those parts of the world Brasil and Soldania c. which believe not a life to come if any such there be with those that do and see which belief hath the better effects 4. What is there of any effectual power to restrain that man from any villany which he hath power to carry out or policy to cover who doth not believe a life to come 5. And if you believe it not what will you do with Reason or any of your faculties or your time How will you live in the world to any better purpose than if you had slept out all your life What talk you of the publick good when the denying of our final true felicity denyeth all that is truely Good both publick and private But so sottish and malignant an objection deserveth pity more than confutation Whatever Religious persons did ever offend these men with any reall Crimes I can assure
copiously proveth Numen coeleste rerum humanarum curam gerere nec universi tantummodo sed hominum etiam singulorum rerum quoque singularum rebus humanis praesto esse generique humano non ad bona vere sic dicta duntaxat sed ad vitae hujus commoda adminicula suppetitias ferre Deum itaque ante omnia colendum ad omnia invocandum per omnia cogitandum in omnilus agnoscendum comprobandum de omnibus laudandum celebrandum huic uni in omni negotio simpliciter obsequendum ab ipso quicquid obvenerit animo prompto ac lubenti excipiendum atque amplexandum nihil mellus nihil convenientius nihil conducibilius nihil opportunius aut tempestivius quà m id quicquid existat quodipse voluerit existimandum quâ—cunque ducere visum fuerit citra tergiversationem aut murmurationem sponte sequendum locum stationemque quemcunque is assignaverit strenuè tuendum enixè tenendum etiamsi mortem millies oppetere oporteret Haec de Numine Stoici erga numen affectu De homine officiis Hunc corditus diligere curare sustinere injuriaque omni ut quae impietatis etiam notam inurat abstinere beneficentia prosequi nec sibi soli genitum censere se aut vivere sed in commune bonum ac beneficium cunciis pro facultate viribusque semet exhibere re ipsa reique bene gestae conscientia nec hac etiam ipsa quadantenus reputata citra vestem aut mercedis spem commodive proprii intuitum contentum agere à beneficio uno praestito ad aliud transire nec unquam benefaciendo defatisci sed vitae telam tanquam vivendi fructus hic sit benefactis siâ—i invicem continenter annexis ita totum pertexere ut nusquam interveniat hiatus ullus vel minimus beneficii loco quod benefecerit habentem sibique profuisse existimantem si alii cuiquam usui esse poterit nec extra se proinde quicquam vel laudis humanae vel lucelli aut aucupantem aut expetentem Ad haec nihil mentis cultu antiquius nihil honesti studio petius aut pretiosius habere ab eo denique quod officii sui esse norit nulla vel vitae nedum alius rei cujuspiam cupidine abducendum nulla mortis cruciatusve illius ne dum damni aut detrimenti formidine abigendum se permittere Haec Stoicorum praecepta sunt When will the whole tribe of the Epicureans ever give the world such a Prince as Antonine who taught the world that a Prince should be a Philosopher and that self-government and a well-ordered mind and life is the first point in the government and well-ordering of the Common-wealth and that Monarchy may be so used as to consist as well with the peoples interest and liberty as the most accurate Venetian Democraty The only hurt that ever he was charged to do being this that he lived so well that he seemed somewhat to hinder the succeeding lustre of Christianity even in Constantine and Theodosius themselves And as for the Stoicks great doctrine of Virtues self-sufficiency to felicity which Plato and Aristotle also own against the Epicurean felicity of Pleasure it is undoubtedly a very great and sacred Theological verity But it implieth a higher truth which I have vindicated in this Treatise viz. That man hath an ultimate end above himself and that God for all that he is perfect and can receive no addition of felicity is both his own and our end though intendere finem is not spoken univocally of God and man and that his Goodness as essential in himself and as his own perfection is in the order of our conceptions much higher than his Benignity or Goodness as related to the good of man I have read some late self-esteeming Writers who love not to be named by way of opposition who have undertaken the defence of the Epicurean heresie that Pleasure is formally both man's felicity and his ultimate end but their reasonings for it are not half so handsome and adapted to deceive as the discourse of Torquatus in Cicero de finib is which indeed may seem very plausible till Cicero's excellent Answer is compared with it It is a fair pretence to say That a good man is pleased with nothing but that which is good and that true pleasure is to be found especially in virtue and that temperance and chastity should be more pleasant than excess and luxury and yet that the best men when they do any great and excellent work do therefore do it because it pleaseth them But the truth is that Bonum qua bonum est objectum voluntatis good and appetibile are the same it is first good because it pleaseth us but it pleaseth us because it is esteemed by us to be good And the greatest good should greathest please us because it is first the greatest good And as God in himself is infinitely better than any delight or felicity of ours so is he therefore to be more the object of our delight And as the good of the world or of Kingdoms or of thousands is better than the pleasure of one individual person so should it be better loved and more delighted in For if Good as Good be appetible and delectable then the greatest Good must have the greatest love and pleasure And nature it self telleth us that he that would not rather be annihilated than the world should be annihilated or would not lose his life and honour to save the life and honour and felicity of King and Kingdom is no good member of Civil Society but a person blinded by selfishness and sensuality Therefore man hath something above himself and his own pleasure to seek and to take pleasure in How far you can congruously say that you take pleasure in your pleasure and so make your own pleasure the object yea the only ultimate object of it self I shall not now stay to enquire But certain I am that though our love which is our complacency in the beloved object is our actus finalis yet is it not the objectum finale to it self but God himself the infinite Good is that final Object and the Publick Good is a more noble and excellent object than our own And though it be truly our felicity to love God yet we love him not chiefly because it is our felicity to love him but because he is chiefly Good and Lovely and then in the second instant we love our own love and delight even in our own delights Indeed the sensitive life as such can seek nothing higher than its own delight but the rational life is made to intend and prosecute that end which reason telleth us is best and to prefer that before our selves which is better than our selves And therefore the Epicurean opinion which maketh Pleasure our highest end doth shew that the Sect is sensual and bruitish and have brought their reason into servitude to their appetites and
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
praesentia dedit corpori ultimum ex se movendi vestigium sic ipsa propter corporeum contâ—bernium conditionis notam subtit mobilis abunde Proclus de Anim. Daemon See in Aristcas Histor de 70. p. 879. the Kings Quest 19. about Dreams with the Answer how far Dreams are in our power Read Priscians Theophrast de Anim with Ficinus Notes which sheweth how farr the Sense is Active Sensus Principium mediaque finem sentiendae rei individuae comprehendit Actio est judiciumque perfectum in praesenti momento simul totus existit etsi non absque passione aliqua instrumenti sensus efficitur non tamen est haec passio sensus Quo fit ut patiamur vigilantes dormlentes nec tamen persentiamus Theophrast de Anim. ut supr Lege Mars Ficinum de Volupt c. 1. 2. 3 c. Platonis dogma defendentem scil Voluptatem esse Actum vel Motum Priscian in Theophrast de Anim. c. 13. saith Anima quidem cum sit forma vivens sensualis agit circa illa quae sibi offeruntur Vitaliter atque sensualiter quia est in corpore usque ad certum spatium operatur †See Alcinous de doctr Plat. cap. 18. to the same purpose Vid. Paul Cartesium in Sent. 1. Dis 1. p. 7. Dis 2. p. 8. That spiritual things are better known than corporeal and of the knowledge of God Porphyr de occas inq Anima est Essentia inextensa immaterialis immortalis in vita habente à seipsa vivere atque esse simpliciter possidente * The Platonists method of progression is thus summed up in Plotinus Ennead 4. l. 3. p. 384. and out of him by Ficinus Sicut aëris summum primum omnium ignitur ab infimo ignis sic coelum summum corpus primo animatur ab anima quae est ultimum Divinorum Ipsum Bonum est quasi Centrum Mens lumen inde emicans permanens Anima Lumen de Lumine se movenâ— Corpus per se opacum illuminatur ab anima sed Animae in coelo securae illuminant sub coelo non sine curâ Est utique aliquid velut centrum Penes hoc autem circulus ab ipso micans Praeter haec alius circulus Lumen de lumine ultra haec insuper non amalius Luminis circulus sed jam Luminis indigus alieni propriae lucis inopia Inqu Plot. ibid. Nemesius de Anima which goeth under the name of Greg. Nyssen while he endeavoureth to prove the pre-existence of Souls doth thus peremptorily conclude Si animae ex ortu fiunt mutuo ratione providentiae fiunt caducae sunt ut caetera quae ex propagatione generis oriuntur si sunt ex nihilo Creatio haec est neque verum est cessavit Deus ab omnibus operibus suis Non ergo nunc animae fiunt But there is no appearance of a just proof in any thing that he saith against either of the Opinions which he opposeth Would you see Physical Arguments for the Souls Incorporeity and Immortality Among a multitude that have done it I desire you to read Plotinus En. 4. l. 7. of the Immort of the Soul whose arguments I pretermit because I would not be tedious in transcribing that which is already so well written abateing their peculiar Conceits Vid. Savonarol l. 1. c. ult †The summ of their Reasons who thinke that Bodies at the Resurrection are Identified only by the Souls identity you may see in Thom. Whites Theolog. Institut To. 2. li. 3. Lect. 4. p. 239.340 Read Plotinus in Ennead 4. pag. 374â— Ed. Basil de individuatione Animarum As also the following pages provinâ— that our Souls are no parts of the Animâ— Mundi Et sect 8â— pag. 377. Quomodâ— animae differant quomodo sint immortales in formâ— propria restantes Read the Note in the Margin of the last Leaf Plotinus his Ennâ— 4. de Anima has great deal of doe in it much wiser wholesome than the Epicurus and the tomists See Plotin Ennead 4. l. 3. p 185. shewing that in separated souls Reason is so powerful that it ex tempore conceiveth all things propounded by the Intellect and that souls in Heaven converse without voice but daemons and souls that are in the air converse by voice Vid. Porphyr de occasion de Passionibus Animae corp Plotin ubi supr p. 391. sect 26. sheweth that Memory is more pertinent to the soul than the body and oft without the body Et sect 29 c. Et c. 31 32. the difference between the sensitive and rational memory Et l. 2 he sheweth that the soul in heaven forgetteth these trifles not through ignorance but contempt Sic ille Strato Deum opere magno liberat me timore Quis enim potest cum existimet à Deo se curari non dies noctes divinum numen hoâ—rere siquid adversi acciderit quod cui non accidit extimescere ne id jure evenerit Cic. Acad. quast l. 4. p. 44. 〈…〉 Vid. Paul Cartes in a sent d. 1. p. 30 31. Some think because they read much in Plato of the making of the World that his opinion was not for its eternity but I doubt they are quite mistaken Alcinous in li. de doct Plat. saith too truely Cum vero mundum Plato genitum inquit haudquaquam sic eum sensisse credendum est ut aliquod olim tempâ—s ante mundum praecesserit Verum quia semper in generatione perdurat indicatque substantiae suae causam praestantiorem Animam praeterea mundi quae semper extitit haud officit Deus sed ornat eâque ratione eam facere nonnunquam asseritur quod excitat eam ad seipsum ejus mentem velut ex profundo quodam somno convertit c. Lumine naturae non constat quod Angeli facti sint in tempore non fuerint ab aeterno Nam imprimis per lumen naturae cognoscimus exemplo Solis luminis effectum posse coaevum esse suae causae unde nulla repugnantia est ex parte Dei vel ex parte Creaturae ut haec sit Deo coaeva Schibler Met. de Angel See also Durandus Ariminensis Aquinas Pererius Suarez c. Read in Bib. Pat. the dispute of Zachary Mitilene with Ammonius and a Physician about the Worlds Eternity How neerly the Manichees opinion agreed with the Platonists see in Nemesius de Anim. pag. 487 488 c. Nor do I here press you with the authority of a Hermes Zoroaster or Orpheus as knowing how little proof is given us that the writings were theirs which are fathered on them and giving some credit to Porphyry himself who in the life of Plotinus telleth us that there were then Ex antiqua Philosophia egressi haeretici Adelphii Acylinique sectatores qui Alexandri Lybici Philocomi Demostrati Lydi plurimos libros circumferebant revelationes quasdam Zoroastris Zostriani Nichotei Allogenis Mesi aliorumque ejusmodi palam ostendentes deceperunt multos ipsi decepti jam fuerant Ego vero Porphyrius argumentationibus multis ostendi librum Zoroastri ab illis inscriptum adulterinum novumque esse ab eis confictum qui struebant haeresin ut institutiones suae esse Zoroastris voteris crederentur And hereupon Plotinus wrote his Book against the Gnosticks ☞ Whether God or our selves Virtue or Pleasure be chiefly to be loved ☞ Even in Friendship with Men it is commonly said that we must have more respect to our friend than to our selves And therefore Cicero pleadeth that Epicurus's opinion is inconsistent with true Friendship However that stand I am sure in our Love to God we must love him more for himself than for our own ends and benefit Therefore it is that I distinguished Love before from Obedience as such as being somewhat more excellent and the final grace And Proclus de Anim. Daemone discerned this distinction when he saith Belli finis est justitia pacis autem aliud quiddam excellentius bonum Amicitia scil atque unio Finis enim universae virtutis est ut tradunt Pythagorici Aristotelesque confirmat â—t omnibus jam factis amicis justitia non ulterius egeamus quando viz. sublatum fuerit Mâ—um Non-meum And if this be true of the Love of man Much more of the Love of God Which they also may do well to consider of who most fear the cessation of that Individuation of souls which consisteth in the distance that now we are at For though doubtless there will continue an Individuation yet Union is so much of the felicity perfection and delight of souls union I say with God as we are capable and with one another that we should rather be afraid lest we shall not be near enough than lest too much â—earness should confound us
the Creature may be inordinate and therefore called Pride but it is impossible that infinite Goodness it self can be over-valued or over-loved by Himself or by any creature § 21. The HOLINESS of the first Being consisteth 1. In his separation from all creatures by that Transcendency which maketh him their end 2. In the special Perfection of his WILL which willeth and hath complacency in that alone ad extra which is agreeable to his perfect Nature and infinite Wisdom 3. And so being the Fountain and Rule of Moral Goodness to the Rational Creature The Holiness of Man consisteth 1. In his separation from common uses unto God 2. In the Rectitude of his Will as habitually thus inclined and bent to Moral Good and hating evil 3. Whereby it is conform to the governing Will of God And hence we may learn what Holiness is in God though not formally the same with that in Man § 22. The Benignity and Love of the first Being is his Essence or Nature as inclined to complacency in all created Good and to benevolence or doing good to creatures freely and agreeably to his infinite Wisdom The Love of complacency to all created Good is necessary in God supposing the continued existence of that created Good which is the object But it is not necessary that such created Good do continually exist The Love of Benevolence is also natural to God in this sense that it is his natural perfection as respecting the Creature to be used agreeably to his perfect wisdom but the exercise of it is not necessary because the being or felicity of the Creature is not necessary but it is acted freely according as the infinite wisdom seeth it fit as to those Ends to which all Creatures are but the Means § 23. The first Being must needs be the onely ultimate end to himself so far as he may be said to intend an End God doth not intendere finem in defectiveness and imperfection as the Creature doth He wanteth nothing nor is he in via as to his felicity But eminently he may be said to intend an End as he maketh one thing a means to produce or attain another and doth nothing disorderly nor in vain but ordereth all things in infinite wisdom He is not wanting but enjoying his end at all times even in the midst of his use of means To his essential Goodness and Blessedness there is no means nothing is capable of the honour of contributing to it But his Will is the Beginning of all derived Beings and his Will is the ultimate End of all He is pleased to make and order all by his power and wisdom and he is pleased in all things as so made and ordered The complacency of his Will then is the ultimate end of all his works as the Glory of his own Power Wisdom and Goodness shineth in them And though Complacency or Pleasedness or Will be not formally the same in God as in us yet something eminently there is in him which under this Notion we must conceive of and express § 24. The Posse Scire Velle the operative Power Vnderstanding and Will of God according to their Perfection called his Omnipotency Omnisciency and Goodness by which he is Maximus Sapientissimus Optimus is a wonderful yet an intelligible and certain Trinity in Vnity viz. In the Vnity of Essence there is this Trinity of Principles or Faculties as they may be called from the manner of imperfect man but deserve a higher name in God § 25. The Essence of God is not the Genus and these three the Species nor is it the Totum and these three the Parts nor is it a Substance of which these three are Accidents but they are like the Essential faculties in Man which are one with the Soul in Essence but are not one and the same Faculties but truly distinct whether it be Really Formally or Relatively and Denominatively onely Gods Power or Omnipotency is not formally the same quoad conceptum objectivum with his Understanding and Wisdom nor this the same with his Will and Goodness they are as three essential Principles and yet but one Essence and so one God Nor is it part of God that is Omnipotent and part that is Omniscient and part that is Good or quae potest intelligit vult lut the whole Godhead is Omnipotent the whole Omniscient and the whole is Good or Power Wisdom and Goodness it self Yet each of these Notions by it self alone is not a total or full expression of the whole perfection of the Deity Therefore we must neither confound the essential Principles in God nor divide the Essence The Omnipotency is as one faculty the Understanding another and the Will another but the Godhead and Essence of them all is one the Glory equal the Majesty co-eternal Such as the Power is such is the Understanding and such is the Will The Power uncreated the Vnderstanding uncreated and the Will uncreated The Power incomprehensible the Vnderstanding incomprehensible and the Will incomprehensible The Power eternal the Vnderstanding eternal and the Will eternal And yet there are not three eternal Gods or Essences but one Eternal nor three Incomprehensibles nor three Uncreated but One. The Power is God the Vnderstanding is God and the Will is God and yet there are not three Gods but one God So then there is One Power not Three Powers One Understanding not Three Understandings One Will not Three Wills And in this Trinity none is in duration before or after other none is greater or less than other but the whole three Principles be co-eternal together and co-equal So that in all things as aforesaid this Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity is to be acknowledged as undeniable in the light of Nature and to be adored and worshipped by all And because of the Unity of the Essence these Three may be predicated in the Concrete of each other but not in the Abstract because of their formal diversity And so it may be said that the Power is an Understanding or wise Power and the Understanding is an Omnipotent Understanding and the Will a most Wise and Omnipotent Will and the Power a Good and Willing Power but not that the Power is the Understanding and the Understanding the Will or the Will is the Power or Understanding So as to their Order the Power as in it self consider'd as an Active Vital Power is first in our conception and doth as it were act by the Understanding and the Vnderstanding by the Will and in execution so go forth with the Will that the effect is immediately to be ascribed to it § 26. Though all the Divine Faculties or Principles are adumbrate or made manifest in the Creation or Frame of the world yet the Omnipotency is therein to us most eminently apparent It is infinite Wisdom and infinite Goodness which shineth to us in this wonderful Frame But we first and with greatest admiration take notice of the Omnipotency
earthly things as is necessary to them that will attain it For few men will seek with their utmost labour or let go all other things to attain a happiness which they are not well perswaded of the reality of And though sound reason might well perswade them of it yet reason is now become so blind and unsound and partial and enslaved to the flesh that it is not fit for such an office according to our necessity without some heavenly Revelation § 9. And it is exceeding congruous to mans necessity who is faln under the power and fears of death as well as the doubts and estrangedness to the other world that he that will save and heal us do himself in our nature rise from the dead and ascend up into heaven to give us thereby a visible demonstration that indeed there is a Resurrection and a life to come for us to look for Though God was not obliged to do thus much for us yet Reason telleth us that if he will do it it is very suitable to our necessities For all the reasonings in the world do not satisfie in such things so much as ocular demonstration when we either see a man that is risen from the dead or have certain testimony of it it facilitateth the belief of our own resurrection and he that is gone into Heaven before us assureth us that a Heaven there is § 10. When God in mercy would forgive and save a sinful people it was very congruous to reason that there should be some fit means provided to demonstrate his holiness in his justice and to vindicate the honour of his Laws and Government and so to secure the ends of both For if God make a penal Law and execute it not but let man sin with impunity and do nothing which may deter him nor demonstrate his Justice as much as the sinners sufferings would do it would tell the world that he that gave them the Law and thereby told them that he would rule and judge them by it did but deceive them and meant not as he spake And it would bring both the Law and Governour into contempt and perswade men to sin without any fear and he that was question'd for the second crime would say I ventured because I suffered not for the first It was the devils first way of tempting men to sin to perswade mankind that God meant not as he spake in his threatning of their death but that they should not die though God had threatned it And if God himself should by his actions say the same it would tempt them more to sin than Sathan could as his credibility is greater Therefore he that is a Governour must be just as well as merciful and if God should have pardoned sinners without such a sacrifice or substitute means as might preserve the honour of his Law and Government and the future innocency of his Subjects as well as their punishment in the full sense of the Law would have done the consequents would have been such as I will leave to your own judgements § 11. And it was very congruous to reason that so odious a thing as sin should be publickly condemned and put to shame although the sinner be forgiven As it was done in the life and death of Christ For the purity of God is irreconcileable to sin though not to the sinner and therefore it was meet that the sin have all the publick shame though the sinner escape and that God be not like weak imperfect man who cannot do good without doing or encouraging evil § 12. It is congruous to our condition that seeing even the upright do renew their sins their consciences should have some remedy for the renewal of their peace and comfort that it sink them not into desperation which is most suitably provided for them in Jesus Christ For when we were pardoned once and again and oft and yet shall sin he that knoweth the desert of sin and purity of God will have need also to know of some stated certain course of remedy § 13. It was meet that the sinful world have not only a certain Teacher but also a perfect pattern before them of righteousness love self-denial meekness patience contempt of lower things c. which is given us by Jesus Christ alone And therefore the Gospel is written Historically with Doctrins intermixt that we might have both perfect Precepts and Pattern § 14. It was very congruous to a world universally lapsed that God should make with it a new Law and Covenant of Grace and that this Covenant should tender us the pardon of our sins and be a conditional act of oblivion And that sinners be not left to the meer Law of perfect Nature which was to preserve that innocency which they have already lost To say Thou shalt perfectly obey to a man that hath already disobeyed and is unfitted for perfect obedience is no sufficient direction for his pardon and recovery Perhaps you 'l say That God's gracious Nature is instead of a Law of Grace or Promise But though that be the spring of all our hopes yet that cannot justly quiet the sinner of it self alone because he is just as well as merciful and Justice hath its objects and pardon dependeth on the free-will of God which cannot be known to us without its proper signs The Devils may say that the Nature of God is good and gracious and so may any condemned malefactor say of a good and gracious Judge and King and yet that is but a slender reason to prove his impunity or pardon All will confess that absolute pardon of all men would be unbeseeming a wise and righteous Governour And if it must be conditional who but God can tell what must be the condition If you say That Nature telleth us That converting Repentance is the condition I answer 1 Nature telleth us That God cannot damn a holy loving Soul that hath his Image but yet it telleth us not That this is the only or whole condition 2. It is not such a Repentance as lieth but in a frightned wish that the sin had not been done but such a one as consisteth in the change of the mind and heart and life and containeth a hatred to the sin repented of and a love to God and Holiness and we have as much need of a Saviour to help us to this repentance as to help us to a pardon § 15. It is very congruous to our miserable state that the Condition of this Covenant of Grace should be on our part the acknowledgment of our Benefactor and the thankful acceptance of the benefit and a hearty consent for the future to follow his conduct and use his appointed means in order to our full recovery which is the condition of the Christian Covenant § 16. Seeing man's fall was from his God unto himself especially in point of love and his real recovery must be by bringing up his soul to the love of God again