truce with Heaven and all divine displeasure laid asleep yet would our own Sins if they continue unmortified first or last make an Aetna or Vesuvius within us Nay those Sun-beams of Eternal Truth that by us are detained in unrighteousness would at last in those hellish vaults of vice and darkness that are within us kindle into an unquenchable fire It would be of small benefit to us That Christ hath triumph'd over the principalities and powers of darkness without us while Hell and Death strongly immur'd in a Fort of our own Sins and Corruptions should tyrannize within us That his Blood should speak peace in heaven if in the mean while our own Lusts were perpetually warring and fighting in and against our own Souls That he hath taken off our guilt and cancell'd that hand-writing that was against us which bound us over to Eternal condemnation if for all this we continue fast sealed up in the Hellish dungeon of our own filthy Lusts. Indeed we could not expect any relief from Heaven out of that misery under which we lie were not Gods displeasure against us first pacified and our Sins remitted But should the Divine Clemency stoop no lower to us then to a mere pardon of our sins and an abstract Justification we should never rise out of that Misery under which we lie This is the Signal and Transcendent benefit of our free Justification through the Bloud of Christ that God's offence justly conceived against us for our sins which would have been an eternal bar and restraint to the Efflux of his Grace upon us being taken off the Divine grace and bounty may freely flow forth upon us The Fountain of the Divine grace and love is now unlock'd and opened which our Sins had shut up and now the Streams of holiness and true goodness from thence freely flow forth into all gasping Souls that thirst after them The warm Sun of the Divine love whenever it breaks through and scatters the thick Cloud of our iniquities that had formerly separated between God us it immediately breaks forth upon us with healing in its wings it exerciseth the mighty force of its own light and heat upon our dark and benummed Souls begetting in them a lively sense of God and kindling into sparks of Divine goodness within us This Love when once it hath chased away the thick Mist of our Sins it will be as strong as Death upon us as potent as the Grave many Waters will not quench it nor the Floods drown it If we shut not the windows of our Souls against it it will at last enlighten all those Regions of darkness that are within us and lead our Souls to the Light of Life Blessedness and Immortality God pardons mens Sins out of an Eternal designe of destroying them and whenever the sentence of death is taken off from a Sinner it is at the same time denounced against his Sins God does not bid us be warm'd and be fill'd and deny us those necessaries which our starving and hungry Souls call for Christ having made peace through the bloud of his cross the Heavens shall be no more as Iron above us but we shall receive freely the vital dew of them the former and the later Rain in their season those Influences from above which Souls truly sensible of their own Misery and Imperfection uncessantly gaspe after that Righteousness of God which drops from above from the unsealed Spring of Free goodness which makes glad the city of God This is that Free Love and Grace which the Souls of Good men so much triumph in This is that Justification which begets in them lively Hopes of an happy Immortality in the present Anticipations thereof which spring forth from it in this life And all this is that which we have called sometimes the Righteousness of Christ sometimes the Righteousness of God and here the Righteousness which is of Faith In Heaven it is a not-imputing of sin in the Souls of men it is a reconciliation of rebellious Natures to Truth and Goodness In Heaven it is the lifting up the light of God's countenance upon us which begets a gladsome entertainment in the Souls of men holy and dear reflections and reciprocations of Love Divine Love to us as it were by a natural emanation begetting a Reflex love in us towards God which like that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 spoken of by the Ancients live and thrive together CHAP. VI. How the Gospel-righteousness is conveighed to us by Faith made to appear from these two Considerations 1. The Gospel lays a strong foundation of a chearful dependance upon the Grace and Love of God affiance in it This confirmed by several Gospel-expressions containing plainly in them the most strong Motives and Encouragements to all ingenuous addresses to God to all chearfull dependance on him and confident expectation of all assistance from him 2. A true Evangelical Faith is no lazy or languid thing but an ardent breathing and thirsting after Divine grace and righteousness it looks beyond a mere pardon of sin and mainly pursues after an inward participation of the Divine nature The mighty power of a living Faith in the Love and Goddness of God discoursed of throughout the whole Chapter WE come now to the last part of our Discourse viz. To shew the Way by which this God-like and Gospel-righteousness is conveighed to us and that is by Faith This is that powerful Attractive which by a strong and divine Sympathy draws down the virtue of Heaven into the Souls of men which strongly and forcibly moves the Souls of good men into a conjunction with that Divine goodness by which it lives and grows This is that Divine Impress that invincibly draws and sucks them in by degrees into the Divinity and so unites them more and more to the Centre of Life and Love It is something in the hearts of men which feeling by an Occult and inward sensation the mighty insinuations of the Divine goodness immediately complies with it and with the greatest ardency that may be is perpetually rising up into conjunction with it and being first begotten and enlivened by the warm Beams of that Goodness it alwaies breaths and gasps after it for its constant growth and nourishment It is then fullest of life and vivacity when it partakes most freely of it and perpetually languisheth when it is in any measure deprived of that sweet and pure nourishment it derives from it But that we may the more clearly unfold this business How Gospel-righteousness comes to be communicated through Faith we shall lay it forth in 2 Particulars First The Gospel lays a strong foundation of a chearfull dependance upon the Grace and Love of God and affianee in it We have the greatest security and assurance that may be given us of God's readiness to relieve such forlorn and desolate Creatures as we are That there are no such dreadful Fates in Heaven as are continually thirsting after the bloud
and the New Covenant as it is laid down by the Apostle Paul A more General Ansiver to this enquiry together with a General observation of the Apostle's main End in opposing Faith to the Works of the Law viz. To beat down the Jewish proud conceit of Merit A more particular and Distinct answer to the Enquiry viz. That the Law or Old Covenant is considered only as an External administration a dead thing in it self a Dispensation consisting in an Outward and Written Law of Precepts but the Gospel or New Covenant is an Internal thing a Vital Form and Principle of Righteousness in the Souls of men an Inward manifestation of Divine Life and a living Impression upon the Minds and Spirits of Men. This proved from several Testimonies of Scripture pag. 308. Chap. V. Two Propositions for the better understanding of the Doctrine of Justification and Divine Acceptance 1. Prop. That the Divine judgment and estimation of every thing is according to the truth of the thing and God's acceptance or disacceptance of things is suitable to his judgment On what account S. James does attribute a kind of Justification to Good works 2. Prop. God's justifying of Sinners in pardoning their Sins carries in it a necessary reference to the sanctifying of their Natures This abundantly proved from the Nature of the thing pag. 325. Chap. VI. How the Gospel-righteousness is conveighed to us by Faith made to appear from these two Considerations 1. The Gospel lays a strong foundation of a chearfull dependance upon the Grace and Love of God and affiance in it This confirmed by several Gospel-expressions containing plainly in them the most strong Motives and Encouragements to all ingenuous addresses to God to all chearfull dependance on him and confident expectation of all assistance from him 2. A true Evangelical Faith is no lazy or languid thing but an ardent breathing and thirsting after Divine grace and righteousness it looks beyond a mere pardon of sin and mainly pursues after an inward participation of the Divine nature The mighty power of a living Faith in the Love and Goodness of God discoursed of throughout the whole Chapter pag. 332. Chap. VII An Appendix to the foregoing Discourse How the whole business and Undertaking of Christ is eminently available both to give full relief and ease to our Minds and Hearts and also to encourage us to Godliness or a God-like righteousness briefly represented in sundry Particulars pag. 343. DISCOURSE VIII OF THE SHORTNESS OF A Pharisaick Righteousness CHap. I. A General account of men's Mistakes about Religion Men are no where more lazy and sluggish and more apt to delude themselves then in matters of Religion The Religion of most men is but an Image and Resemblance of their own Fansies The Method propounded for discoursing upon those words in S. Matthew 1. To discover some of the Mistakes and False Notions about Religion 2. To discover the Reason of these Mistakes A brief Explication of the Words pag. 349. Chap. II. An Account of men's Mistakes about Religion in 4 Particulars 1. A Partial obedience to some Particular Precepts The False Spirit of Religion spends it self in some Particulars is confin'd is overswayed by some prevailing Lust. Men of this spirit may by some Book-skill and a zeal about the Externals of Religion loose the sense of their own Guiltiness and of their deficiencies in the Essentials of Godliness and fansy themselves nearly related to God Where the true Spirit of Religion is it informs and actuates the whole man it will not be confin'd but will be absolute within us and not suffer any corrupt Interest to grow by it p. 353. Chap. III. The Second Mistake about Religion viz. A meer complyance of the Outward man with the Law of God True Religion seats it self in the Centre of mens Souls and first brings the Inward man into Obedience to the Law of God the Superficiall Religion intermeddles chiefly with the Circumference and Outside of men or rests in an outward abstaining from some Sins Of Speculative and the most close and Spiritual wickedness within How apt men are to sink all Religion into Opinions and External Forms pag. 357. Chap. IV. The Third Mistake about Religion viz. A constrained and forc'd Obedience to God's Commandments The Religion of many some of whom would seem most abhorrent from Superstition is nothing else but Superstition properly so called False Religionists having no inward sense of the Divine Goodness cannot truly love God Yet their sowre and dreadfull apprehensions of God compell them to serve him A slavish spirit in Religion may be very prodigal in such kind of serving God as doth not pinch their Corruptions but in the great and weightier matters of Religion in such things as prejudice their beloved Lusts it is very needy and sparing This servile Spirit has low and mean thoughts of God but an high opinion of its Outward services as conceiting that by such cheap things God is gratified and becomes indebted to it The different Effects of Love and Slavish fear in the truly and in the falsly Religious pag. 361. Chap. V. The Fourth and last Mistake about Religion When a mere Mechanical and Artificial Religion is taken for that which is a true Impression of Heaven upon the Souls of men and which moves like a new Nature How Religion is by some made a piece of Art and how there may be specious and plausible Imitations of the Internals of Religion as well as of the Externals The Method and Power of Fansy in contriving such Artificial imitations How apt men are in these to deceive both themselves and others The Difference between those that are govern'd in their Religion by Fansy and those that are actuated by the Divine Spirit and in whom Religion is a living Form That True Religion is no Art but a new Nature Religion discovers it self best in a Serene and clear Temper of Mind in deep Humility Meekness Self-denial Universal love of God and all true Goodness p. 366. DISCOURSE IX OF THE EXCELLENCY and NOBLENESS OF RELIGION CHap. I. 1. The Nobleness of Religion in regard of its Original and Fountain it comes from Heaven and moves towards Heaven again God the First Excellency and Primitive Perfection All Perfections and Excellencies in any kind are to be measured by their approch to and Participation of the First Perfection Religion the greatest Participation of God none capable of this Divine Communication but the Highest of created Beings and consequently Religion is the greatest Excellency A twofold Fountain in God whence Religion flows viz. 1. His Nature 2. His Will Of Truth Natural and Revealed Of an Outward and Inward Revelation of God's Will pag. 380. Chap. II. 2. The Nobleness of Religion in respect of it's Nature briefly discovered in some Particulars How a man actuated by Religion 1. lives above the world 2. converses with himself and knows how to love value and reverence himself in the best sense 3. lives above himself not
Israelites became shining and clear without any defilement and their Bodies did shine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the brightness of the Firmament And then thus concludeth all When the Israelites received the Law upon Mount Sinai 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the world was then perfum'd with a most aromatick smell and Heaven and Earth were established and the Holy Blessed One was known above and below and he ascended in his glory above all things By all which Mystical and Allegorical Expressions our Author seems to aim at this main Scope viz. To set forth the Law as that which of it self was sufficient without any other Dispensation from God for the perfecting of those to whom it was dispensed and to make them Comprehensours of all Righteousness here and Glory hereafter Which they are wont to set forth in that transcendent state of Perfection which the Israelites were in at the receiving of the Law whence it hath been an ancient Maxime amongst them In Statione montis Sinai Israelitae erant sicut Angeli ministerii And thus we have endeavoured to make good that which we first propounded namely to shew That the grand Opinion of the Jews concerning the way to Life and Happiness was this viz. That the Law of God externally dispensed and only furnished out to them in Tables of Stone and a Parchment-roll conjoined with the power of their own Free-will was sufficient both to procure them acceptance with God and to acquire Merit enough to carry them with spread sails into the Harbour of Eternal rest and blessedness So that by this time we may see that those Disputes which S. Paul and other Apostles maintain against the Jews touching the Law and Faith were not merely about that one Question Whether Justification formally and precisely respects Faith alone but were of a much greater latitude CHAP. IV. The Second Enquiry Concerning the Evangelical Righteousness or the Righteousness of Faith and the true difference between the Law and the Gospel the Old and the New Covenant as it is laid down by the Apostle Paul A more General Answer to this enquiry together with a General observation of the Apostle's main End in opposing Faith to the Works of the Law viz. To beat down the Jewish proud conceit of Merit A more particular and Distinct answer to the Enquiry viz. That the Law or Old Covenant is considered only as an External administration a dead thing in it self a Dispensation consisting in an Outward and Written Law of Precepts But the Gospel or New Covenant is an Internal thing a Vital Form and Principle of Righteousness in the Souls of men an Inward manifestation of Divine life and a living Impression upon the Minds and Spirits of Men. This proved from several Testimonies of Scripture HAving done with the First Enquiry we now come to the Second which was this What the Evangelical Righteousness or the Righteousness of Faith is which the Apostle sets up against that of the Law and in what Notion the Law is considered by the Apostle Which in summe was this viz. That the Law was the Ministery of death and in it self an External and Liveless thing neither could it procure or beget that Divine life and spiritual Form of Godliness in the Souls of men which God expects from all the heirs of Glory nor that Glory which is only consequent upon a true Divine life Whereas on the other side the Gospel is set forth as a mighty Efflux and Emanation of life and spirit freely issuing forth from an Omnipotent source of Grace and Love as that true God-like vital influence whereby the Divinity derives it self into the Souls of men enlivening and transforming them into its own likeness and strongly imprinting upon them a Copy of its own Beauty and Goodness Like the Spermatical virtue of the Heavens which spreads it self freely upon this Lower world and subtily insinuating it self into this benummed feeble earthly Matter begets life and motion in it Briefly It is that whereby God comes to dwell in us and we in him But that we may the more distinctly unfold the Difference between That Righteousness which is of the Law That which is of Faith so the better shew how the Apostle undermines that fabrick of Happiness which the Jews had built up for themselves we shall observe First in general That the main thing which the Apostle endeavours to beat down was that proud and arrogant conceit which they had of Merit and to advance against it the notion of the Divine grace and bounty as the only Fountain of all Righteousness and Happiness For indeed that which all those Jewish notions which we have before taken notice of aim principally at was the advancing of the weakened Powers of Nature into such an height of Perfection as might render them capable of Meriting at Gods hands and that Perfection which they speak so much of as is clear from what hath been said was nothing else but a mere sublimation of their own Natural Powers and Principles performed by the strength of their own Fancies And therefore these Contractors with Heaven were so pleased to look upon Eternal life as a fair Purchase which they might make for themselves at their own charge as if the spring and rise of all were in themselves their eyes were so much dazled with those foolish fires of Merit and Reward kindled in their own Fancies that they could not see that light of Divine grace and bounty which shone about them And this Fastus and swelling pride of theirs if I mistake not is that which S. Paul principally endeavours to chastise in advancing Faith so much as he doth in opposition to the works of the Law For which purpose he spends the First and Second Chapters of this Epistle to the Romans in drawing up a charge of such a nature both against Gentiles and Jews but principally against the Jews who were the grand Justitiaries that might make them bethink themselves of imploring Mercy and of laying aside all plea of Law and Justice and so chap. 3. 27. he shuts up all with a severe check to such presumptuous arrogance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Where then is boasting This seems then to be the main End which S. Paul every where aims at in opposing Faith to the works of the Law namely to establish the Foundation of Righteousness and Happiness upon the Free mercy and grace of God the glorifying and magnifying of which in the real manifestations of it he holds forth upon all occasions as the designe plot of the Gospel-administration seeing it is impossible for men by any Works which they can perform to satisfie God's Justice for those Sins which they have committed against him or truly to comply with his Divine will without his Divine assistance So that the Method of reconciling men to God and reducing of straying Souls back again to him was to be attributed wholy to another Original then that which the Jews imagined But Secondly That
mangling of the Words or running out into any Critical curiosities about them I shall from these Words take occasion to set forth The Nobleness and Generous Spirit of True Religion which I suppose to be meant here by The way of life The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here rendred above may signifie that which is divine and heavenly high and excellent as the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does in the New Testament 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Phil. 3. 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Col. 3. 2. S. Austin supposeth the things of Religion to be meant by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 superna for this reason quòd merito excellentiae longè superant res terrenas And in this sense I shall consider it my purpose being from hence to discourse of the Excellent and Noble spirit of true Religion whether it be taken in abstracto as it is in it self or in concreto as it becomes an inward Form and Soul to the Minds and Spirits of Good men and this in opposition to that low and base-born spirit of Irreligion which is perpetually sinking from God till it couches to the very Centre of misery 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the lowermost Hell In discoursing upon this Argument I shall observe this Method viz. I shall consider the Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion 1. In its Rise and Original 2. In its Nature and Essence 3. In its Properties and Operations 4. In its Progress 5. In its Term and End CHAP. I. 1. The Nobleness of Religion in regard of its Original and Fountain it comes from Heaven and moves towards Heaven again God the First Excellency and Primitive Perfection All Perfections and Excellencies in any kind are to be measured by their approach to and Participation of the First Perfection Religion the greatest Participation of God none capable of this Divine Communication but the Highest of created Beings and consequently Religion is the greatest Excellency A twofold Fountain in God whence Religion flowes viz. 1. His Nature 2. His Will Of Truth Natural and Revealed Of an Outward and Inward Revelation of God's Will WE begin with the First viz. True Religion is a Noble thing in its Rise and Original and in regard of its Descent True Religion derives its pedigree from Heaven is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it comes from Heaven and constantly moves toward Heaven again it 's a Beam from God as every good and perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights with whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning as S. James speaks God is the First Truth and Primitive Goodness True Religion is a vigorous Efflux and Emanation of Both upon the Spirits of men and therefore is called a participation of the divine Nature Indeed God hath copyed out himself in all created Being having no other Pattern to frame any thing by but his own Essence so that all created Being is umbratilis similitudo entis increati and is by some stamp or other of God upon it at least remotely allied to him But True Religion is such a Communication of the Divinity as none but the Highest of created Beings are capable of On the other side Sin and Wickedness is of the basest and lowest Original as being nothing else but a perfect degeneration from God and those Eternal Rules of Goodness which are derived from him Religion is an Heaven-born thing the Seed of God in the Spirits of men whereby they are formed to a similitude likeness of himself A true Christian is every way of a most noble Extraction of an heavenly and divine pedigree being born 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from above as it is express'd Joh. 3. The line of all earthly Nobility if it were followed to the beginning would lead to Adam where all the lines of descent meet in One and the Root of all Extractions would be found planted in nothing else but Adamah red Earth But a Christian derives his line from Christ who is the Only-begotten Son of God the shining forth of his glory and the Character of his person as he is stiled Heb. 1. We may truly say of Christ and Christians as Zebah and Zalmunna said of Gideon's brethren As he is so are they according to their capacity each one resembling the children of a king Titles of Worldly honour in Heavens heraldry are but only Tituli nominales but Titles of Divine dignity signify some Real thing some Real and Divine Communications to the Spirits and Minds of men All Perfections and Excellencies in any kind are to be measured by their approach to that Primitive Perfection of all God himself and therefore Participation of the Divine nature cannot but entitle a Christian to the highest degree of dignity Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the Sons of God 1 Jo. 3. 1. Thus much for a more general discovery of the Nobleness of Religion as to its Fountain and Original We may further and more particularly take notice of this in reference to that Twofold fountain in God from whence all true Religion flows and issues forth viz. 1. His Immutable Nature 2. His Will 1. The Immutable Nature of God From thence arise all those Eternal Rules of Truth and Goodness which are the Foundation of all Religion and which God at the first Creation folded up in the Soul of man These we may call the Truths of Natural inscription understanding hereby either those Fundamental principles of Truth which Reason by a naked intuition may behold in God or those necessary Corollaries and Deductions that may be drawn from thence I cannot think it so proper to say That God ought infinitely to be loved because he commands it as because he is indeed an Infinite and Unchangeable Goodness God hath stamp'd a Copy of his own Archetypal Loveliness upon the Soul that man by reflecting into himself might behold there the glory of God intra se videre Deum see within his Soul all those Ideas of Truth which concern the Nature and Essence of God by reason of its own resemblance of God and so beget within himself the most free and generous motions of Love to God Reason in man being Lumen de Lumine a Light flowing from the Fountain and Father of Lights and being as Tully phraseth it participata similitudo Rationis aternae as the Law of Nature the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Law written in mans Heart is participatio Legis aternae in Rationali creatura it was to enable Man to work out of himself all those Notions of God which are the true Ground-work of Love and Obedience to God and conformity to him and in modling the inward man into the greatest conformity to the Nature of God was the Perfection and Efficacy of the Religion of Nature But since Mans fall from God the inward virtue and vigour of Reason is much abated the Soul having suffered a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
〈◊〉 as Plato speaks a defluvium pennarum those Principles of Divine truth which were first engraven upon mans Heart with the finger of God are now as the Characters of some ancient Monuments less clear and legible then at first And therefore besides the Truth of Natural inscription 2. God hath provided the Truth of Divine Revelation which issues forth from his own free Will and clearly discovers the way of our return to God from whom we are fallen And this Truth with the Effects and Productions of it in the Minds of men the Scripture is wont to set forth under the name of Grace as proceeding merely from the free bounty and overflowings of the Divine Love Of this Revealed Will is that of the Apostle to be understood 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 None hath known the things of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 None neither Angel nor Man could know the Mind of God could unlock the Breast of God or search out the Counsels of his Will But God out of the infinite riches of his Compassions toward mankind is pleas'd to unbosom his Secrets and most clearly to manifest the way into the Holiest of all and bring to light life and immortality and in these last ages to send his Son who lay in his bosom from all Eternity to teach us his Will and declare his Mind to us When we look unto the Earth then behold darkness and dimness of anguish that I may use those words of the Prophet Esay But when we look towards Heaven then behold light breaking forth upon us like the Eye-lids of the Morning and spreading its wings over the Horizon of mankind sitting in darkness and the shadow of death to guide our feet into the way of peace But besides this Outward revelation of God's will to men there is also an Inward impression of it on their Minds and Spirits which is in a more special manner attributed to God We cannot see divine things but in a divine light God only who is the true light and in whom there is no darkness at all can so shine out of himself upon our glassy Understandings as to beget in them a picture of himself his own Will and Pleasure and turn the Soul as the phrase is in Job 38. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 like wax or clay to the Seal of his own light and love He that made our Souls in his own image and likeness can easily find a way into them The Word that God speaks having found a way into the Soul imprints it self there as with the point of a diamond and becomes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that I may borrow Plato's expression Men may teach the Grammar and Rhetorick but God teaches the Divinity Thus it is God alone that acquaints the Soul with the Truths of Revelation and he also it is that does strengthen and raise the Soul to better apprehensions even of Natural Truth God being that in the Intellectual world which the Sun is in the Sensible 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as some of the ancient Fathers love to speak and the ancient Philosophers too who meant God by their Intellectus Agens whose proper work they supposed to be not so much to enlighten the Object as the Faculty CHAP. II. 2. The Nobleness of Religion in respect of its Nature briefly discovered in some Particulars How a man actuated by Religion 1. lives above the world 2. converses with himself and knows how to love value and reverence himself in the best sense 3. lives above himself not being content to enjoy himself except he may enjoy God too and himself in God How he denyes himself for God To deny a mans self is not to deny Right Reason for that were to deny God in stead of denying himself for God self-Self-love the only Principle that acts wicked men The happy privileges of a Soul united to God WE have done with the first Head and come now to discourse with the like brevity on another our purpose being to insist most upon the third Particular viz. The Nobleness of Religion in its Properties after we have handled the Second which is The Excellency and Nobleness of Religion in regard of its Nature whether it be taken in abstracto or in concreto which we shall treat of promiscuously without any rigid tying of our selves to exact Rules of Art and so we shall glance at it in these following Notions rising as it were step by step 1. A Good man that is actuated by Religion lives above the World and all Mundane delights and excellencies The Soul is a more vigorous and puissant thing when it is once restored to the possession of its own Being then to be bounded within the narrow Sphere of Mortality or to be streightned within the narrow prison of Sensual and Corporeal delights but it will break forth with the greatest vehemency and ascend upwards towards Immortality and when it converses more intimately with Religion it can scarce look back upon its own converses though in a lawfull way with Earthly things without a being touch'd with an holy Shame fac'dness a modest Blushing and as Porphyry speaks of Plotinus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it seems to be ashamed that it should be in the Body It is only True Religion that teaches and enables men to dye to this world and to all Earthly things and to rise above that vaporous Sphere of Sensual and Earthly pleasures which darken the Mind and hinder it from enjoying the brightness of Divine light the proper motion of Religion is still upwards to its first Original Whereas on the contrary the Souls of wicked men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Plato somewhere speaks being moistned with the Exudations of their Sensual parts become heavy and sink down into Earthly things and couch as near as may be to the Centre Wicked men bury their Souls in their Bodies all their projects and designes are bounded within the compass of this Earth which they tread upon The Fleshly mind never minds any thing but Flesh and never rises above the Outward Matter but alwaies creeps up and down like Shadows upon the Surface of the Earth and if it begins at any time to make any faint assays upwards it presently finds it self laden with a weight of Sensuality which draws it down again It was the Opinion of the Academicks that the Souls of wicked men after their death could not of a long season depart from the Graves and Sepulchers where their Mates were buried but there wandred up and down in a desolate manner as not being able to leave those Bodies which they were so much wedded to in this life 2. A Good man one that is actuated by Religion lives in converse with his own Reason he lives at the height of his own Being This a great Philosopher makes the Property of a Good man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He knows how to converse with himself and truly to love and value himself he measures not himself like
and all created things so little that we reckon upon nothing as worthy of our aims or ambitions but a serious Participation of the Divine Nature and the Exercise of divine Vertues Love Joy Peace Long-suffering Kindness Goodness and the like When the Soul beholding the Infinite beauty and loveliness of the Divinity and then looking down and beholding all created Perfection mantled over with darkness is ravish'd into love and admiration of that never-setting brightness and endeavours after the greatest resemblance of God in Justice Love and Goodness When conversing with him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by a secret feeling of the virtue sweetness and power of his Goodness we endeavour to assimilate our selves to him Then we may be said to glorifie him indeed God seeks no glory but his own and we have none of our own to give him God in all things seeks himself and his own glory as finding nothing Better then himself and when we love him above all things and endeavour to be most like him we declare plainly that we count nothing Better then He is I doubt we are too nice Logicians sometimes in distinguishing between the Glory of God and our own Salvation We cannot in a true sense seek our own Salvation more then the Glory of God which triumphs most and discovers it self most effectually in the Salvation of Souls for indeed this Salvation is nothing else but a true Participation of the Divine Nature Heaven is not a thing without us nor is Happiness any thing distinct from a true Conjunction of the Mind with God in a secret feeling of his Goodness and reciprocation of affection to him wherein the Divine Glory most unfolds it self And there is nothing that a Soul touch'd with any serious sense of God can more earnestly thirst after or seek with more strength of affection then This. Then shall we be happy when God comes to be all in all in us To love God above our selves is not indeed so properly to love him above the salvation of our Souls as if these were distinct things but it is to love him above all our own sinfull affections above our particular Beings and to conform our selves to him And as that which is Good relatively and in order to us is so much the Better by how much the more it is commensurate and conformed to us So on the other side that which is good absolutely and essentially requires that our Minds and Affections should as far as may be be commensurate and conform'd to it and herein is God most glorified and we made Happy As we cannot truly love the First and Highest Good while we serve a designe upon it and subordinate it to our selves so neither is our own Salvation consistent with any such sordid pinching and particular love We cannot be compleatly blessed till the Idea Boni or the Ipsum Bonum which is God exercise its Soveraignty over all the Faculties of our Souls rendring them as like to it self as may consist with their proper Capacity See more of this in the Discourse Of the Existence and Nature of God Chap. 4. and more largely in that Latine Discourse shortly to be printed Pietati studere ex intuitu mercedis non est illicitum CHAP. VI. The Fourth Property or Effect discovering the Excellency of Religion viz. That it begets the greatest Serenity and Composedness of Mind and brings the truest Contentment the purest and most satisfying Joy and Pleasure to every holy Soul God as being that Uniform Chief Good and the One Last End does attract and fix the Soul Wicked men distracted through a Multiplicity of Objects and Ends. How the restless appetite of our Wills after some Supreme Good leads to the knowledge as of a Deity so of the Unity of a Deity How the Joys and Delights of Good men differ from and far excell those of the Wicked The Constancy and Tranquillity of the Spirits of Good men in reference to External troubles All Perturbations of the Mind arise from an Inward rather then an Outward Cause The Stoicks Method for attaining 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and true rest examined and the Insufficiency of it discovered A further Illustration of what has been said concerning the Peacefull and Happy State of Good men from the contrary State of the Wicked THe Fourth Property Effect of True Religion wherein it expresseth its own Nobleness is this That it begets the greatest Serenity Constancy and Composedness of Mind and brings the truest Contentment the most satisfying Joy and Pleasure the purest and most divine Sweetness and Pleasure to the Spirits of Good men Every Good man in whom Religion rules is at peace and unity with himself is as a City compacted together Grace doth more and more reduce all the Faculties of the Soul into a perfect Subjection and Subordination to it self The Union and Conjunction of the Soul with God that Primitive Unity is that which is the alone Original and Fountain of all Peace and the Centre of Rest as the further any Being slides from God the more it breaks into discords within it self as not having any Centre within it self which might collect and unite all the Faculties thereof to it self and so knit them up together in a sweet confederacy amongst themselves God only is such an Almighty Goodness as can attract all the Powers in man's Soul to it self as being an Object transcendently adequate to the largest capacities of any created Being and so unite man perfectly to himself in the true enjoyment of one Uniform and Simple Good It must be one Last End and Supreme Good that can fix Man's Mind which otherwise will be tossed up and down in perpetual uncertainties and become as many several things as those poor Particularities are which it meets with A wicked man's life is so distracted by a Multiplicity of Ends and Objects that it never is nor can be consistent to it self nor continue in any composed settled frame it is the most intricate irregular and confused thing in the world no one part of it agreeing with another because the whole is not firmly knit together by the power of some One Last End running through all Whereas the life of a Good man is under the sweet command of one Supreme Goodness and Last End This alone is that living Form and Soul which running through all the Powers of the Mind and Actions of Life collects all together into one fair and beautifull System making all that Variety conspire into perfect Unity whereas else all would fall asunder like the Members of a dead Body when once the Soul is gone every little particle flitting each from other It was a good Maxim of Pythagoras quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Oportet etiam hominem unum fieri A divided Mind and a Multiform Life speaks the greatest disparagement that may be it is only the intermediation of One Last End that can reconcile a man perfectly to himself and his
contentment without it self and so it wanders up and down from one creature to another and thus becomes distracted by a multiplicity of Objects And while it cannot find some One and Onely object upon which as being perfectly adequate to its capacities it may wholly bestow it self while it is tossed with restless and vehement motions of Desire and Love through a world of painted beauties false glozing Excellencies courting all but matching nowhere violently hurried every whither but finding nowhere objectum par amori while it converseth onely with these pinching Particularities here below and is not yet acquainted with the Universal Goodness it is certainly far from true Rest and Satisfaction from a fixt composed temper of spirit but being distracted by multiplicity of Objects and Ends there can never be any firm and stable peace or friendship at home amongst all its Powers and Faculties nor can there be a firm amity and friendship abroad betwixt wicked men themselves as Aristotle in his Ethicks does conclude because all Vice is so Multiform and inconsistent a thing and so there can be no true concatenation of Affections and Ends between them Whereas in all Good men Vertue and Goodness is one Form and Soul to them all that unites them together and there is the One Simple and Uniform Good that guides and governs them all They are not as a Ship tossed in the tumultuous Ocean of this world without any Compass at all to stear by but they direct their course by the certain guidance of the One Last End as the true Pole-starr of all their motion But while the Soul lies benighted in a thick Ignorance as it is with wicked men and beholds not some Stable and Eternal Good to move toward though it may by the strength of that Principle of Activeness within it self spend it self perpetually with swift and giddy motions yet it will be always contesting with secret disturbances and cannot act but with many reluctancies as not finding an object equall to the force and strength of its vast affections to act upon By what hath been said may appear the vast difference between the ways of Sin and of Holinesse Inward distractions and disturbances tribulation and anguish upon every Soul that doth evil But to every man that worketh good glory honour and peace inward composednesse and tranquillity of spirit pure and divine joys farr excelling all sensual pleasures in a word true Contentment of spirit and full satisfaction in God whom the pious Soul loves above all things and longs still after a nearer enjoyment of him I shall conclude this Particular with what Plotinus concludes his Book That the life of holy and divine men is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a life not touch't with these vanishing delights of Time but a flight of the Soul alone to God alone CHAP. VII The Fifth Property or Effect discovering the Excellency of Religion viz. That it advanceth the Soul to an holy boldness and humble familiarity with God and to a comfortable confidence concerning the Love of God toward it and its own Salvation Fearfulness Consternation of Mind and frightfull passions are consequent upon Sin and Guilt These together with the most dismall deportments of Trembling and Amazement are agreeable to the nature of the Devil who delights to be serv'd in this manner by his worshippers Love Joy and Hope are most agreeable to the nature of God and most pleasing to him The Right apprehensions of God are such as are apt to beget Love to God Delight and Confidence in him A true Christian is more for a solid and well-grounded Peace then for high raptures and feelings of joy How a Christian should endeavour the Assurance of his Salvation That he should not importunately expect or desire some Extraordinary manifestations of God to him but rather look after the manifestation of the life of God within him the foundation or beginning of Heaven and Salvation in his own Soul That Self-resignation and the subduing of our own Wills are greatly available to obtain Assurance The vanity and absurdity of that Opinion viz. That in a perfect resignation of our Wills to God's will a man should be content with his own Damnation and to be the subject of Eternal wrath in Hell if it should so please God THe Fifth Property or Effect whereby True Religion discovers its own Nobleness and Excellency is this That it advanceth the Soul to an holy boldness and humble familiarity with God as also to a well-grounded Hope and comfortable Confidence concerning the Love of God toward it and its own Salvation The truly religious Soul maintains an humble and sweet familiarity with God and with great alacrity of spirit without any Consternation and Servility of spirit is enabled to look upon the Glory and Majesty of the most High But Sin and Wickedness is pregnant with fearfulness and horrour That Trembling and Consternation of Mind which possesses wicked men is nothing else but a brat of darkness an Empusa begotten in corrupt and irreligious Hearts While men walk in darkness and are of the night as the Apostle speaks then it is onely that they are vext with those ugly and gastly Mormos that terrify and torment them But when once the Day breaks and true Religion opens her self upon the Soul like the Eye-lids of the Morning then all those shadows and frightfull Apparitions flee away As all Light and Love and Joy descend from above from the Father of lights so all Darkness and Fearfulness Despair are from below they arise from corrupt and earthly minds are like those gross Vapors arising from this Earthly globe that not being able to get up towards heaven spread themselves about the circumference of that Body where they were first begotten infesting it with darkness and generating into Thunder and Lightning Clouds and Tempests But the higher a Christian ascends 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 above this dark dungeon of the Body the more that Religion prevails within him the more then shall he find himself as it were in a clear heaven in a Region that is calm and serene and the more will those black and dark affections of Fear and Despair vanish away and those clear and bright affections of Love and Joy and Hope break forth in their strength and lustre The Devil who is the Prince of darkness and the great Tyrant delights to be served with gastly affections and the most dismal deportments of trembling and astonishment as having nothing at all of amiableness or excellency in him to commend himself to his worshippers Slavery and servility that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Longinus truly calls it is the badge and livery of the Devil's religion hence those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Heathens perform'd with much trembling and horror But God who is the supreme Goodness and Essentiall both Love and Loveliness takes most pleasure in those sweet and delightfull affections of the Soul viz. Love Joy and Hope which are most
correspondent to his own nature The ancient superstition of the Heathens was always very nice and curious in honouring every one of their Gods with Sacrifices and Rites most agreeable to their natures I am sure there is no Incense no offering we can present God with is so sweet so acceptable to him as our Love and Delight and Confidence in him and when he comes into the Souls of men he makes these his Throne his place of rest as finding the greatest agreeableness therein to his own Essence A Good man that finds himself made partaker of the Divine nature and transform'd into the image of God infinitely takes pleasure in God as being altogether Lovely according to that in Cant. 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Totus ipse est desideria and his Meditation of God is sweet unto him Ps. 104. S. John that lay in the bosome of Christ who came from the bosome of the Father and perfectly understood his Eternal Essence hath given us the fullest description that he could make of him when he tells us that God is Love and he that dwells in God dwells in love and reposing himself in the bosome of an Almighty Goodness where he finds nothing but Love and Loveliness he now displays all the strength and beauty of those his choiest and most precious affections of Love and Joy and Confidence his Soul is now at ease and rests in peace neither is there any thing to make afraid He is got beyond all those powers of darknesse which give such continual alarms in this lower world and are always troubling the Earth He is got above all fears and despairs he is in a bright clear region above Clouds and Tempests infra se despicit nubes There is no frightful terribleness in the supreme Majesty That men apprehend God at any time in such a dismayed manner it must not at all be made an argument of his nature but of our sinfulness and weakness The Sun in the heavens always was and will be a Globe of Light and brightness howsoever a purblind Eye is rather dazled then enlightned by it There is an Inward sense in Mans Soul which were it once awaken'd and excited with an inward tast and relish of the Divinity could better define God to him then all the world else It is the sincere Christian that so tasts and sees how good and sweet the Lord is as none else does The God of hope fills him with all joy and peace in believing so that he abounds in hope as the Apostle speaks Rom. 15. He quietly reposes himself in God his heart is fixed trusting in the Lord he is more for a solid peace and setled calme of spirit then for high Raptures and feelings of Joy or Extraordinary Manifestations of God to him he does not passionately desire nor importunately expect such things he rather looks after the Manifestations of the Goodness and Power of God within him in subduing all in his Soul that is unlike and contrary to God and forming him into his image and likeness Though I think it worthy of a Christian to endeavour the Assurance of his own Salvation yet perhaps it might be the safest way to moderate his curiosity of prying into God's Book of life and to stay a while untill he sees himself within the confines of Salvation it self Should a man hear a Voice from Heaven or see a Vision from the Almighty to testify unto him the Love of God towards him yet methinks it were more desireable to find a Revelation of all from within arising up from the Bottome and Centre of a mans own Soul in the Reall and Internal impressions of a Godlike nature upon his own spirit and thus to find the Foundation and Beginning of Heaven and Happiness within himself it were more desirable to see the crucifying of our own Will the mortifying of the mere Animal life and to see a Divine life rising up in the room of it as a sure Pledge and Inchoation of Immortality and Happiness the very Essence of which consists in a perfect conformity and chearfull complyance of all the Powers of our Souls with the Will of God The best way of gaining a well-grounded assurance of the Divine love is this for a man to overcome himself and his own Will To him that overcomes shall be given that white stone and in it the new name written which no man knoweth but he that receives it He that beholds the Sun of righteousness arising upon the Horizon of his Soul with healing in its wings and chasing away all that misty darkness of his own Self-will and Passions such a one desires not now the Starr-light to know whether it be Day or not nor cares he to pry into Heaven's secrets and to search into the hidden rolles of Eternity there to see the whole plot of his Salvation for he views it transacted upon the inward stage of his own Soul and reflecting upon himself he may behold a Heaven opened from within and a Throne set up in his Soul and an Almighty Saviour sitting upon it and reigning within him he now finds the Kingdome of Heaven within him and sees that it is not a thing merely reserved for him without him being already made partaker of the sweetnesse and efficacy of it What the Jewes say of the Spirit of Prophesy may not unfitly be applyed to the Holy Ghost the true Comforter dwelling in the minds of good men as a sure Earnest of their Eternal inheritance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Spirit resides not but upon a man of Fortitude one that gives proof of this Fortitude in subduing his own Self-will and his Affections We read of Elisha that he was fain to call for a Musical instrument and one to play before him to allay the heat of his Passions before he could converse with the Prophetical Spirit The Hely Spirit is too pure and gentle a thing to dwell in a Mind muddied and disturb'd by those impure dreggs those thick fogs and mists that arise from our Self-will and Passions our prevailing over these is the best way to cherish the Holy Spirit by which we may be sealed unto the day of redemption To conclude this Particular It is a venturous and rugged guess and conceit which some men have That in a perfect resignation of our Wills to the Divine will a man should be content with his own Damnation and to be the Subject of Eternal Wrath in Hell if it should so please God Which is as impossible as it is for him that infinitely thirsts after a true Participation of the Divine Nature and most earnestly endeavours a most inward Union with God in Spirit by a denial of himself and his own will to swell up in Self-love Pride and Arrogancy against God the one whereof is the most substantial Heaven the other the most real Hell whereas indeed by conquering our selves we are translated from Death to Life and the kingdom of God and Heaven is
out of slavish Fear void of inward Life and Love and a Complacency in the Law of God of which temper our Author discourses at large For concerning such cheap and little strictnesses as these it may be enquired What doe you more then others Do not even Publicans and Pharisees the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what excellent and extraordinary thing doe you what hard or difficult thing do you perform such as may deserve to be thought a worthy Instance and real Manifestation of the Power of Godliness except such things are to be accounted hard or extraordinary which are common to the real and to the formal Christian and are performable by unregenerate and natural men and are no peculiar Characters of Regeneration No these and the like performances by which such Religionists would set off themselves are but poor and inconsiderable things if compared with the mighty acts and noble atchievements of the more excellent though less ostentatious Christians who through Faith in the Goodness and Power of God have been enabled to doe all things through Christ knowing both how to abound and how to be abased c. Phil. 4. enabled to overcome the World without them and the Love of the World within them enabled to overcome themselves and for a man to rule his own Spirit is a greater instance of power and valour then to take a City as Solomon judgeth Prov. 16. enabled to resist the powers of darkness and to quit themselves like men and good Souldiers of Jesus Christ giving many signal overthrows to those Lusts that war against their Souls and to the mightiest and strongest of them the Sons of Anak and by engaging in the hardest Services of this Spiritual warfare wherein the Pharisaick boasters dare not follow them they shew that there is a Spirit of power in them and that they can doe more then others These are some of the Exploits of strong and healthful Christians and for the encouraging of them in these Conflicts which shall end in glorious Conquests and joyous Triumphs the Author hath in the Tenth and last Discourse suggested what is worthy our Consideration But I must not forget that there remains something to be observed concerning some other Treatises and having been so large in the last Observation which was not unnecessary the world abounding ever having abounded with spiritual Pharisees I shall be shorter in the rest And now to proceed to the next which is of Atheism This Discourse being but Preparatory to the ensuing Tracts is short yet I would mind the Reader that what is more briefly handled here may be supplied and further clear'd out of the Fifth Discourse viz. Of the Existence and Nature of God of which if the former part seem more Speculative Subtile and Metaphysical yet the Latter and Greater part containing several Deductions and Inferences from the Consideration of the Divine Nature and Attributes is less obscure and more Practical as it clearly directs us to the best though not much observed way of glorifying God and being made happy and blessed by a Participation and Resemblance of him as it plainly directs a man to such Apprehensions of God as are apt and powerful to beget in him the Noblest and dearest Love to God the sweetest Delight and the most peaceful Confidence in him One thing more I would observe to the Reader concerning the Discourse Of Atheism and the same I would desire to be observed also concerning the next that large Treatise Of the Immortality of the Soul especially of the former part thereof and it is shortly this That the Author in these Treatises pursues his discourse with a particular reflexion on the Dogmata and Notions of Epicurus and his followers especially that great admirer of him Lucretius whose Principles are here particularly examined and refuted These were the men whose Opinions our Author had to combat with He lived not to see Atheism so closely and craftily insinuated nor lived he to see Sadduceism and Epicurism so boldly owned and industriously propagated as they have been of late by some who being heartily desirous That there were no God no Providence no Reward nor Punishment after this life take upon them to deride the Notion of Spirit or Incorporeal Substance the Existence of Separate Souls and the Life to come and by infusing into mens Minds Opinions contrary to these Fundamental Principles of Religion they have done that which manifestly tends to the overthrow of all Religion the destruction of Morality and Vertuous living the debauching of Mankind the consuming and eating out of any good Principle left in the Conscience which doth testifie for God and Goodness and against Sin and Wickedness and to the defacing and expunging of the Law written in mens hearts and so the holy Apostle judges of the Epicurean Notions and discourses a taste of which he gives in that passage 1 Cor. 15. Let us eat and drink for to morrow we die and then ther 's an End of all no other life or state and he expresseth his judgment concerning the evil and dangerousness of these doctrines and their teachers partly in a Verse out of Menander 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Evil communications corrupt good manners and in what he subjoins v. 34. besides many other passages in this Chapter in opposition to the doctrine of the Sadducees and Epicureans and to the same purpose he speaks in 2. Tim. 2. 16 17 18. concerning those that denied the Doctrine of the Resurrection or any Future State and the Life to come The sum and substance of the Apostles judgment concerning these Epicurean principles is plainly this That these Principles properly and powerfully tend to the corrupting of mens Minds and Lives to the advancement of Irreligion and Immorality in the world That they are no benigne Principles to Piety and a Good life 'T is true that some of the more wary and considerate modern Epicureans may express some care to live inoffensively and to keep out of danger and to maintain a reputation in the world as to their converse with others and herein they mind their worldly interests and the advantages of this present life the only life which they have in their eye they may also express a care in avoiding what is prejudicial to health and a long life in this world But all this is short of a true and noble Love of Goodness and if in these men there be any appearance of what is Good and praise-worthy they would have been really better if they had been of other Principles and had believed in their Hearts That there is a Providence a Future state and Life to come and had lived agreeably to the Truths of the Christian Philosophy which do more ennoble and accomplish and every way better a man then the Principles of the Epicurean Sect. But to return We have before observed That our Author in these Two Treatises pursued his design in opposition to the Master-Notions and chief Principles of Epicurus
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL CHap. I. The First and main Principles of Religion viz. 1. That God is 2. That God is a rewarder of them that seek him Wherein is included the Great Article of the Immortality of the Soul These two Principles acknowledged by religious and serious persons in all Ages 3. That God communicates himself to mankind by Christ. The Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul discoursed of in the first place and why pag. 59. Chap. II. Some Considerations preparatory to the proof of the Souls Immortality pag. 63. Chap. III. The First Argument for the Immortality of the Soul That the Soul of man is not Corporeal The gross absurdities upon the Supposition that the Soul is a Complex of fluid Atomes or that it is made up by a fortuitous Concourse of Atomes which is Epicurus his Notion concerning Body The Principles and Dogmata of the Epicurean Philosophy in opposition to the Immateriall and Incorporeall nature of the Soul asserted by Lucretius but discovered to be false and insufficient That Motion cannot arise from Body or Matter Nor can the power of Sensation arise from Matter Much less can Reason That all Humane knowledge hath not its rise from Sense The proper function of Sense and that it is never deceived An Addition of Three Considerations for the enforcing of this first Argument and further clearing the Immateriality of the Soul That there is in man a Faculty which 1. controlls Sense and 2. collects and unites all the Perceptions of our several Senses 3. That Memory and Prevision are not explicable upon the supposition of Matter and Motion pag. 68. Chap. IV. The Second Argument for the Immortality of the Soul Actions either Automatical or Spontaneous That Spontaneous and Elicite Actions evidence the distinction of the Soul from the Body Lucretius his Evasion very slight and weak That the Liberty of the Will is inconsistent with the Epicurean principles That the Conflict of Reason against the Sensitive Appetite argues a Being in us superiour to Matter pag. 85. Chap. V. The Third Argument for the Immortality of the Soul That Mathematical Notions argue the Soul to be of a true Spiritual and Immaterial Nature pag. 93. Chap. VI. The Fourth Argument for the Immortality of the Soul That those clear and stable Ideas of Truth which are in Man's Mind evince an Immortal and Immaterial Substance residing in us distinct from the Body The Soul more knowable then the Body Some passages out of Plotinus and Proclus for the further confirming of this Argument pag. 96. Chap. VII What it is that beyond the Highest and most subtile Speculations whatsoever does clear and evidence to a Good man the Immortality of his Soul That True Goodness and Vertue begets the most raised Sense of this Immortality Plotinus his excellent Discourse to this purpose pag. 101. Chap. VIII An Appendix containing an Enquiry into the Sense and Opinion of Aristotle concerning the Immortality of the Soul That according to him the Rational Soul is separable from the Body and Immortal The true meaning of his Intellectus Agens and Patiens pag. 106. Chap. IX A main Difficulty concerning the Immortality of the Soul viz. The strong Sympathy of the Soul with the Body answered An Answer to another Enquiry viz. Under what account Impressions deriv'd from the Body do fall in Morality p. 112. DISCOURSE V. OF THE EXISTENCE NATURE OF GOD. CHap. I. That the Best way to know God is by an attentive reflexion upon our own Souls God more clearly and lively pictur'd upon the Souls of Men then upon any part of the Sensible World pag 123. Chap. II. How the Contemplation of our own Souls and a right Reflexion upon the Operations thereof may lead us into the knowledge of 1. The Divine Unity and Omniscience 2. God's Omnipotence 3. The Divine Love and Goodness 4. God's Eternity 5. His Omnipresence 6. The Divine Freedome and Liberty p. 126. Chap. III. How the Consideration of those restless motions of our Wills after some Supreme and Infinite Good leads us into the knowledge of a Deity pag. 135. Chap. IV. Deductions and Inferences from the Consideration of the Divine Nature and Attributes 1. That all Divine productions are the free Effluxes of Omnipotent Love and Goodness The true Notion of God's glory what it is Men very apt to mistake in this point God needs not the Happiness or Misery of his Creatures to make himself glorious by God does most glorifie himself by communicating himself we most glorifie God when we most partake of him and resemble him most pag. 140. Chap. V. A second Deduction 2. That all things are supported and govern'd by an Almighty Wisdome and Goodness An Answer to an Objection made against the Divine Providence from an unequal distribution of things here below Such quarrelling with Providence ariseth from a Paedanticall and Carnall notion of Good and Evil. pag. 144. Chap. VI. A third Deduction 3. That all true Happiness consists in a participation of God arising out of the assimilation and conformity of our Souls to him and That the most reall Misery ariseth out of the Apostasie of Souls from God No enjoyment of God without our being made like to him The Happiness and Misery of Man defin'd and stated with the Original and Foundation of both pag. 147. Chap. VII A fourth Deduction 4. The fourth Deduction acquaints us with the true Notion of the Divine Justice That the proper scope and design of it is to preserve Righteousness to promote encourage true Goodness That it does not primarily intend Punishment but only takes it up as a mean to prevent Transgression True Justice never supplants any that it self may appear glorious in their ruines How Divine Justice is most advanced pag. 151. Chap. VIII The fifth and last Deduction 5. That seeing there is such an Entercourse and Society as it were between God and Men therefore there is also some Law between them which is the Bond of all Communion The Primitive rules of God's Oeconomy in this world not the sole Results of an Absolute Will but the sacred Decrees of Reason and Goodness God could not design to make us Sinfull or Miserable Of the Law of Nature embosom'd in Man's Soul how it obliges man to love and obey God and to express a Godlike spirit and life in this world All Souls the Off-spring of God but Holy Souls manifest themselves to be and are more peculiarly the Children of God pag. 154. Chap. IX An Appendix concerning the Reason of Positive Laws pag. 158. Chap. X. The Conclusion of this Treatise concerning the Existence and Nature of God shewing how our Knowledge of God comes to be so imperfect in this State while we are here in this Terrestriall Body Two waies observed by Plotinus whereby This Body does prejudice the Soul in her Operations That the better Philosophers and more contemplative Jews did not deny the Existence of all kind of Body in the other state What
being content to enjoy himself except he may enjoy God too and himself in God How he denyes himself for God To deny a mans self is not to deny Right Reason for that were to deny God in stead of denying himself for God self-Self-love the only Principle that acts wicked men The happy privileges of a Soul united to God pag. 385. Chap. III. 3. The Nobleness of Religion in regard of its Properties c. of which this is one 1. Religion enlarges all the Faculties of the Soul and begets a true Ingenuity Liberty and Amplitude the most Free and Generous Spirit in the Minds of Good men The nearer any Being comes to God the more large and free the further is slides from God the more streightened Sin is the sinking of mans Soul from God into sensual Selfishness An account when the most Generous freedom of the Soul is to be taken in its just proportions How Mechanical and Formal Christians make an Art of Religion set it such bounds as may not exceed the scant Measure of their Principles and then fit their own Notions as so many Examples to it A Good man finds not his Religion without him but as a living Principle within him God's Immutable and Eternal Goodness the Unchangeable Rule of his Will Pecvish Self-will'd and Imperious men shape out such Notions of God as are agreeable to this Pattern of themselves The Truly Religious have better apprehensions of God pag. 392. Chap. IV. The Second Property discovering the Nobleness of Religion viz. That it restores man to a just power and dominion over himself enables him to overcome his Self-will and Passions Of Self-will and the many Evils that flow from it That Religion does nowhere discover its power and prowess so much as in subduing this dangerous and potent Enemy The Highest and Noblest Victories are those over our Self-will and Passions Of Self-denial and the having power over our Wills the Happiness and the Privileges of such a State How that Magnanimity and Puissance which Religion begets in Holy Souls differs from and excells that Gallantry and Puissance which the great Nimrods of this world boast of pag. 397. Chap. V. The Third Property or Effect discovering the Nobleness of Religion viz. That it directs and enables a man to propound to himself the Best End viz. The Glory of God and his own becoming like unto God Low and Particular Ends and Interests both debase and streighten a mans Spirit The Universal Highest and Last End both ennobles and enlarges it A man is such as the End is he aims at The great power the End hath to mold and fashion man into its likeness Religion obliges a man not to seek himself nor to drive a trade for himself but to seek the Glory of God to live wholy to him and guides him steddily and uniformly to the One Chief Good and Last End Men are prone to flatter themselves with a pretended aiming at the Glory of God A more full and distinct explication of what is meant by a mans directing all his actions to the Glory of God What it is truly and really to glorifie God God's seeking his Glory in respect of us is the flowing forth of his Goodness upon us Our seeking the Glory of God is our endeavouring to partake more of God and to resemble him as much as we can in true Holiness and every Divine Vertue That we are not nicely to distinguish between the Glory of God and our own Salvation That Salvation is nothing else for the main but a true Participation of the Divine Nature To love God above our selves is not to love him above the Salvation of our Souls but above our particular Beings and above our sinfull affections c. The Difference between Things that are Good relatively and those that are Good absolutely and Essentially That in our conformity to these God is most glorified and we are made most Happy pag. 403. Chap. VI. The Fourth Property or Effect discovering the Excellency of Religion viz. That it begets the greatest Serenity and Composedness of Mind and brings the truest Contentment the purest and most satisfying Joy and Pleasure to every holy Soul God as being that Uniform chief Good and the One last End does attract and fix the Soul Wicked men distracted through a Multiplicity of Objects and Ends. How the restless Appetite of our Wills after some Supreme Good leads to the knowledge as of a Deity so of the Unity of a Deity How the Joys and Delights of Good men differ from and far excell those of the Wicked The Constancy and Tranquillity of the Spirits of Good men in reference to External troubles All Perturbations of the Mind arise from an Inward rather then an Outward Cause The Stoicks Method for attaining 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and true rest examined and the Insufficiency of it discovered A further Illustration of what has been said concerning the Peacefull and Happy State of Good men from the contrary State of the Wicked pag. 412. Chap. VII The Fifth Property or Effect discovering the Excellency of Religion viz. That it advanceth the Soul to an holy boldness and humble familiarity with God and to a comfortable confidence concerning the Love of God towards it and its own Salvation Fearfulness Consternation of Mind and frightfull passions are consequent upon Sin and Guilt These together with the most dismall deportments of Trembling and amazement are agreeable to the nature of the Devil who delights to be serv'd in this manner by his worshippers Love Joy and Hope are most agreeable to the nature of God and most pleasing to him The Right apprehensions of God are such as are apt to beget Love to God Delight and Confidence in him A true Christian is more for a solid and well-grounded Peace then for high raptures and feelings of joy How a Christian should endeavour the Assurance of his Salvation That he should not importunately expect or desire some extraordinary manifestations of God to him but rather look after the manifestation of the life of God within him the foundation or beginning of Heaven and Salvation in his own Soul That Self-resignation and the subduing of our own Wills are greatly available to obtain Assurance The vanity and absurdity of that Opinion viz. That in a perfect resignation of our Wills to God's will a man should be content with his own Damnation and to be the subject of Eternal wrath in Hell if it should so please God pag. 423. Chap. VIII The Sixth Property or Effect discovering the Excellency of Religion viz. That it Spiritualizes Material things and carries up the Souls of Good men from Sensible and Earthly things to things Intellectual and Divine There are lesser and fuller representations of God in the Creatures To converse with God in the Creation and to pass out of the Sensible World into the Intellectual is most effectually taught by Religion Wicked men converse not with God as shining out in the Creatures they
to all those that resist the Devil This grounded upon 1. The Weakness of the Devil and Sin considered in themselves 2. God's powerfull assisting all faithfull Christians in this warfare The Devil may allure and tempt but cannot prevaile except men consent and yield to his suggestions The Devil's strength lies in mens treachery and falseness to their own Souls Sin is strong because men oppose it weakly The Error of the Manichees about a Principium mali defended by men in their lives and practices Of God's readiness to assist Christians in their Spiritual Conflicts his Compassionate regards and the more special respects of his Providence towards them in such occasions The Conclusion discovering the Evil and Horridness of Magick Diabolical Contracts c. pag. 474. A DISCOURSE Concerning The true WAY or METHOD of attaining to DIVINE KNOWLEDGE Psal. 3. 10. The Fear of the Lord is the Beginning of Wisdome a good Understanding have all they that doe his Commandments John 7. 17. If any man will doe his Will he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God Clem. Alexandr Strom. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A PRAEFATORY DISCOURSE CONCERNING The true Way or Method of attaining to DIVINE KNOWLEDGE Section I. That Divine things are to be understood rather by a Spiritual Sensation then a Verbal Description or meer Speculation Sin and Wickedness prejudicial to True Knowledge That Purity of Heart and Life as also an Ingenuous Freedome of Judgment are the best Grounds and Preparations for the Entertainment of Truth Sect. II. An Objection against the Method of Knowing laid down in the former Section answered That Men generally notwithstanding their Apostasie are furnished with the Radical Principles of True Knowledge Men want not so much Means of knowing what they ought to doe as Wills to doe what they know Practical Knowledge differs from all other Knowledge and excells it Sect. III. Men may be consider'd in a Fourfold capacity in order to the perception of Divine things That the Best and most excellent Knowledge of Divine things belongs onely to the true and sober Christian and That it is but in its infancy while he is in this Earthly Body SECT I. IT hath been long since well observed That every Art Science hath some certain Principles upon which the whole Frame and Body of it must depend and he that will fully acquaint himself with the Mysteries thereof must come furnisht with some Praecognita or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that I may speak in the language of the Stoicks Were I indeed to define Divinity I should rather call it a Divine life then a Divine science it being something rather to be understood by a Spiritual sensation then by any Verbal description as all things of Sense Life are best known by Sentient and Vital faculties 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Greek Philosopher hath well observed Every thing is best known by that which bears a just resemblance and analogie with it and therefore the Scripture is wont to set forth a Good life as the Prolepsis and Fundamental principle of Divine Science Wisdome hath built her an house and hewen out her seven pillars But the fear of the Lord is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the beginning of wisdome the Foundation of the whole fabrick We shall therefore as a Prolegomenon or Preface to what we shall afterward discourse upon the Heads of Divinity speake something of this True Method of Knowing which is not so much by Notions as Actions as Religion it self consists not so much in Words as Things They are not alwaies the best skill'd in Divinity that are the most studied in those Pandects which it is sometimes digested into or that have erected the greatest Monopolies of Art and Science He that is most Practical in Divine things hath the purest and sincerest Knowledge of them and not he that is most Dogmatical Divinity indeed is a true Efflux from the Eternal light which like the Sun-beams does not only enlighten but heat and enliven and therefore our Saviour hath in his Beatitudes connext Purity of heart with the Beatifical Vision And as the Eye cannot behold the Sun 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unless it be Sun-like and hath the form and resemblance of the Sun drawn in it so neither can the Soul of man behold God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unless it be Godlike hath God formed in it and be made partaker of the Divine Nature And the Apostle S. Paul when he would lay open the right way of attaining to Divine Truth he saith that Knowledge puffeth up but it is Love that edifieth The knowledge of Divinity that appears in Systems and Models is but a poor wan light but the powerful energy of Divine knowledge displaies it self in purified Souls here we shall finde the true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the antient Philosophy speaks the land of Truth To seek our Divinity meerly in Books and Writings is to seek the living among the dead we doe but in vain seek God many times in these where his Truth too often is not so much enshrin'd as entomb'd no intrate quaere Deum seek for God within thine own soul he is best discern'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Plotinus phraseth it by an Intellectual touch of him we must see with our eyes and hear with our ears and our hands must handle the word of life that I may express it in S. John's words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Soul it self hath its sense as well as the Body and therefore David when he would teach us how to know what the Divine Goodness is calls not for Speculation but Sensation Tast and see how good the Lord is That is not the best truest knowledge of God which is wrought out by the labour and sweat of the Brain but that which is kindled within us by an heavenly warmth in our Hearts As in the natural Body it is the Heart that sends up good Blood and warm Spirits into the Head whereby it is best enabled to its several functions so that which enables us to know and understand aright in the things of God must be a living principle of Holiness within us When the Tree of Knowledge is not planted by the Tree of Life and sucks not up sap from thence it may be as well fruitful with evil as with good and bring forth bitter fruit as well as sweet If we would indeed have our Knowledge thrive and flourish we must water the tender plants of it with Holiness When Zoroaster's Scholars asked him what they should doe to get winged Souls such as might soar aloft in the bright beams of Divine Truth he bids them bathe themselves in the waters of Life they asking what they were he tells them the four Cardinal Vertues which are the four Rivers of Paradise It is but a thin aiery knowledge that is got by meer Speculation which is usher'd in by Syllogisms and
property he gives of it viz. to collogue with Heaven Lib. 10. de Legibus where he distinguisheth of Three kinds of Tempers in reference to the Deity which he there calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which are Totall Atheism which he saies never abides with any man till his Old age and Partial Atheism which is a Negation of Providence and a Third which is a perswasion concerning the Gods 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they are easily wone by sacrifices and prayers which he after explaines thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. that with gifts unjust men may find acceptance with them And this Discourse of Plato's upon these three kinds of Irreligious 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Simplicius seems to have respect to in his Comment upon Epictetus cap. 38. which treats about Right Opinions in Religion there having pursued the two former of them he thus states the latter which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as the other two as a conceit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quòd muneribus donariis stipis distributione à sententia deducuntur such men making account by their devotions to draw the Deity to themselves and winning the favour of Heaven to procure such an indulgence to their lusts as no sober man on earth would give them they in the mean while not considering 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Repentance Supplications and Prayers c. ought to draw us nearer to God not God nearer to us as in a ship by fastning a Cable to a firm Rock we intend not to draw the Rock to the Ship but the Ship to the Rock Which last passage of his is therefore the more worthy to be taken notice of as holding out so large an Extent that this Irreligious temper is of and of how subtil a Nature This fond and gross dealing with the Deity was that which made the scoffing Lucian so much sport who in his Treatise De sacrificiis tells a number of stories how the Daemons loved to be feasted and where and how they were entertained with such devotions which are rather used Magically as Charms and Spells for such as use them to defend themselves against those Evils which their own Fears are apt perpetually to muster up and to endeavour by bribery to purchase Heaven's favour and indulgence as Juvenal speaks of the Superstitious Aegyptian Illius lacrymae mentitaque munera praestant Ut veniam culpae non abnuat ansere magno Scilicet tenui popano corruptus Osiris Though all this while I would not be understood to condemn too severely all servile fear of God if it tend to make men avoid true wickedness but that which settles upon these lees of Formality To conclude Were I to define Superstition more generally according to the ancient sense of it I would call it Such an apprehension of God in the thoughts of men as renders him grievous and burdensome to them and so destroys all free and cheerfull converse with him begetting in the stead thereof a forc'd and jejune devotion void of inward Life and Love It is that which discovers it self Paedantically in the worship of the Deity in any thing that makes up but onely the Body or outward Vesture of Religion though there it may make a mighty bluster and because it comprehends not the true Divine good that ariseth to the Souls of men from an internall frame of Religion it is therefore apt to think that all it 's insipid devotions are as so many Presents offered to the Deity and gratifications of him How variously Superstition can discover manifest itself we have intimated before To which I shall onely adde this That we are not so well rid of Superstition as some imagine when they have expell'd it out of their Churches expunged it out of their Books and Writings or cast it out of their Tongues by making Innovations in names wherein they sometimes imitate those old Caunii that Herodotus speaks of who that they might banish all the forrein Gods that had stollen in among them took their procession through all their Country beating scourging the Aire along as they went No for all this Superstition may enter into our chambers and creep into our closets it may twine about our secret Devotions actuate our Formes of belief and Orthodox opinions when it hath no place else to shroud itself or hide its head in we may think to flatter the Deity by these and to bribe it with them when we are grown weary of more pompous solemnities nay it may mix it self with a seeming Faith in Christ as I doubt it doth now in too many who laying aside all sober and serious care of true Piety think it sufficient to offer up their Saviour his Active and Passive Righteousness to a severe and rigid Justice to make expiation for those sins they can be willing to allow themselves in A SHORT DISCOURSE OF ATHEISM Job 21. 14 15. They say unto God Depart from us for we desire not the knowledge of thy waies What is the Almighty that we should serve him and what profit should we have if we pray unto him Plutarchus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plutarch 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Contents of the ensuing Discourse That there is a near Affinity between Atheism and Superstition That Superstition doth not onely prepare the way for Atheism but promotes and strengthens it That Epicurism is but Atheism under a mask A Confutation of Epicurus his Master-notion together with some other pretences and Dogmata of his Sect. The true knowledge of Nature is advantageous to Religion That Superstition is more tolerable then Atheism That Atheism is both ignoble and uncomfortable What low and unworthy Notions the Epicureans had concerning Man's Happiness and What trouble they were put to How to define and Where to place true Happinesse A true belief of a Deity supports the Soul with a present Tranquillity and future Hopes Were it not for a Deity the World would be unhabitable A SHORT DISCOURSE OF ATHEISM WE have now done with what we intended concerning Superstition and shall a little consider and search into the Pedigree of ATHEISM which indeed hath so much affinity with Superstition that it may seem to have the same Father with it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Superstition could be well content there were no God to trouble or disquiet it and Atheism thinks there is none And as Superstition is engendred by a base opinion of the Deity as cruell and tyrannicall though it be afterwards brooded and hatcht by a slavish fear and abject thoughts so also is Atheism and that sowre and ghastly apprehension of God when it meets with more stout and surly Natures is apt to enrage them and cankering them with Malice against the Deity they so little brook provokes them to fight against it and undermine the Notion of it as this Plastick Nature which intends to form Living creatures when it meets
we shall adde but this one thing further to clear the Soul's Immortality and it is indeed that which breeds a true sense of it viz. True and reall goodness Our highest speculations of the Soul may beget a sufficient conviction thereof within us but yet it is onely True Goodness and Vertue in the Souls of men that can make them both know and love believe and delight themselves in their own Immortality Though every good man is not so Logically subtile as to be able by fit mediums to demonstrate his own Immortality yet he sees it in a higher light His Soul being purged and enlightned by true Sanctity is more capable of those Divine irradiations whereby it feels it self in conjunction with God and by a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Greeks speak the Light of divine goodness mixing it self with the light of its own Reason sees more clearly not onely that it may if it please the supreme Deity of its own nature exist eternally but also that it shall doe so it knows it shall never be deserted of that free Goodness that alwaies embraceth it it knows that Almighty Love which it lives by to be stronger then death and more powerful then the grave it will not suffer those holy ones that are partakers of it to lie in hell or their Souls to see corruption and though worms may devour their flesh and putrefaction enter into those bones that fence it yet it knows that its Redeemer lives and that it shall at last see him with a pure Intellectual eye which will then be clear and bright when all that earthly dust which converse with this mortal body filled it with shall be wiped out It knows that God will never forsake his own life which he hath quickned in it he will never deny those ardent desires of a blissfull fruition of himself which the lively sense of his own Goodness hath excited within it those breathings and gaspings after an eternal participation of him are but the Energy of his own breath within us if he had had any mind to destroy it he would never have shewn it such things as he hath done he would not raise it up to such Mounts of Vision to shew it all the glory of that heavenly Canaan flowing with eternal and unbounded pleasures and then tumble it down again into that deep and darkest Abyss of Death and Non-entity Divine goodness cannot it will not be so cruel to holy souls that are such ambitious suitors for his love The more they contemplate the blissfull Effluxes of his divine love upon themselves the more they find themselves strengthned with an undaunted confidence in him and look not upon themselves in these poor bodily relations and dependences but in their eternal alliances 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Arrianus sometimes speaks as the Sons of God who is the Father of Souls Souls that are able to live any where in this spacious Universe and better out of this dark and lonesome Cell of Bodily matter which is alwaies checking and clogging them in their noble motions then in it as knowing that when they leave this Body they shall then be received into everlasting habitations and converse freely and familiarly with that Source of Life and Spirit which they conversed with in this life in a poor disturbed and streightned manner It is indeed nothing else that makes men question the Immortality of their Souls so much as their own base and earthly loves which first makes them wish their Souls were not immortal and then to think they are not which Plotinus hath well observed and accordingly hath soberly pursued this argument I cannot omit a large recital of his Discourse which tends so much to disparage that flat and dull Philosophy which these later Ages have brought forth as also those heavy-spirited Christians that find so little divine life and activity in their own Souls as to imagine them to fall into such a dead sleep as soon as they leave this earthly tabernacle that they cannot be awakened again till that last Trumpet and the voice of an Archangel shall rouse them up Our Authors discourse is this Enn. 4. lib. 7. c. 10. having first premised this Principle That every Divine thing is immortall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Let us now consider a Soul saith he not such an one as is immerst into the Body having contracted unreasonable Concupiscence and Anger 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to which they were wont to distinguish between the Irascible and Concupiscible faculty and other Passions but such a one as hath cast away these and as little as may be communicates with the Body such a one as this will sufficiently manifest that all Vice is unnaturall to the Soul and something acquired onely from abroad and that the best Wisdome and all other Vertues lodge in a purged Soul as being allyed to it If therefore such a Soul shall reflect upon it self how shall it not appear to it self to be of such a kind of nature as Divine and Eternall Essences are For Wisdome and true Vertue being Divine Effluxes can never enter into any unhallowed and mortall thing it must therefore needs be Divine seeing it is fill'd with a Divine nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by its kindred and consanguinity therewith Whoever therefore amongst us is such a one differs but little in his Soul from Angelicall essences and that little is the present inhabitation in the Body in which he is inferiour to them And if every man were of this raised temper or any considerable number had but such holy Souls there would be no such Infidels as would in any sort disbelieve the Soul's Immortality But now the vulgar sort of men beholding the Souls of the generality so mutilated and deform'd with Vice and Wickedness they cannot think of the Soul as of any Divine and Immortall Being though indeed they ought to judge of things as they are in their own naked essences and not with respect to that which extraessentially adheres to them which is the great prejudice of knowledge Contemplate therefore the Soul of man denuding it of all that which it self is not or let him that does this view his own Soul then he will believe it to be Immortall when he shall behold it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fixt in an Intelligible and pure nature he shall then behold his own Intellect contemplating not any Sensible thing but Eternall things with that which is Eternall that is with it self looking into the Intellectuall world being it self made all Lucid Intellectuall and shining with the Sun-beams of eternall Truth borrowed from the First Good which perpetually rayeth forth his Truth upon all Intellectuall Beings One thus qualified may seem without any arrogance to take up that saying of Empedocles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Farewell all earthly allies I am henceforth no mortall wight but an Immortall Angel ascending up into Divinity and reflecting upon that likeness of it which I find
conveyed to it without which it could not expresse a due benevolence to that Body which peculiarly belongs to it therefore as the Motions of these Animal Spirits are more or less either disorderly and confus'd or gentle and compos'd so those Souls especially who have not by the exercise of true Vertue got the dominion over them are also more or less affected proportionably in their operations And therefore indeed to question whether the Soul that is of an Immortal nature should entertain these corporeal passions is to doubt whether God could make a Man or not and to question that which we find by experience in our selves for we find both that it doth thus and yet that the Original of these is sometimes from Bodies and sometimes again by the force of our Wills they are impress'd upon our Bodies Here by the way we may consider in a moral way what to judge of those Impressions that are derived from our Bodies to our Souls which the Stoicks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not because they are repugnant to Reason or are aberrations from it but because they derive not their original from Reason but from the Body which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and are by Aristotle more agreeably to the ancient Dialect called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 material or corporeal Idea's or impressions And these we may safely reckon I think amongst our Adiaphora in Morality as being in themselves neither good nor evil as all the antient Writers have done but onely are form'd into either by that stamp that the Soul prints upon them when they come to be entertain'd into it And therefore whereas some are apt in the most severe way to censure 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all those Commotions and Passions that first affect our Souls they might doe well more cautelously to distinguish between such of these motions as have their origination in our Bodies and such as immediately arise from our Souls else may we not too hastily displace the antient termini and remove the land-marks of Vertue and Vice For seeing the Soul could not descend into any corporeal act as it must doe while it is more present to one body then another except it could partake of the griefs and pleasures of the Body can it be any more sinful for it to sensate this then it is for it to be united to the Body If our Soul could not know what it is to eat or drink but onely by a meer ratiocination collecting by a drie syllogisticall discourse That meats and drinks preserve the health and fabrick of the Body repairing what daily exhales from it without sensating any kind of grief in the want or refreshment in the use of them it would soon suffer the Body to languish and decay And therefore as these Bodily infirmities and passions are not evil in themselves so neither are they evil as they first affect our Souls When our Animal Spirits begot of fine and good blood gently and nimbly play up and down in our Brains and swiftly flie up and down our whole Bodies we presently find our Phansies raised with mirth and chearfulness and as when our Phansies are thus exalted we may not call this the Energy of Grace so if our Spleen or Hypochondria swelling with terrene and sluggish Vapours send up such Melancholick fumes into our heads as move us to sadness and timorousness we cannot justly call that Vice nor when the Gall does degurgitate its bitter juyce into our Liver which mingling it self with the blood begets fiery Spirits that presently fly up into our Brain and there beget impressions of Anger within us The like we may say of those Corporeal passions which are not bred first of all by any Peccant humours or distemperatures in our own bodies but are excited in us by any External objects which by those idola and images that they present to our Senses or rather those Motions they make in them may presently raise such commotions in our Spirits For our Body maintains not onely a conspiration and consent of all its own parts but also it bears a like relation to other mundane bodies with which it is conversant as being a part of the whole Universe But when our Soul once mov'd by the undisciplin'd petulancy of our Animal spirits shall foment and cherish that Irrational Grief Fear Anger Love or any other such like Passions contrary to the dictates of Reason it then sets the stamp of sinfulness upon them It is the consent of our own Wills that by brooding of them brings forth those hatefull Serpents For though our Souls be espoused to these Earthly Bodies and cannot but in some measure sympathize with them yet hath the Soul a true dominion of its own acts It is not the meer passion if we take it in a Physicall sense but rather some inordinate action of our own Wills that entertain it and these passions cannot force our Wills but we may be able to chastise and allay all the inordinacy of them by the power of our Wills and Reasons and therefore God hath not made us under the necessity of sin by making us men subject to such infirmities as these are which are meerly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Greek Philosopher hath well called them the blossomings and shootings forth of bodily life within us which is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Humanity And if I mistake not our Divinity is wont sometimes to acknowledge some such thing in our Saviour himself who was in all things made like to us our sinfulness excepted He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefs as the Prophet Esay speaks of him and when he was in bodily agonies and horrours the powerfull assaults thereof upon his Soul moved him to petition his Father that if it were possible that bitter Cup might pass from him and the sense of death so much afflicted him that it bred in him the sad griefs which S. Peter expresseth by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Act. 2. the pangs or throes of death and that fear that extorted a desire to be freed from it as it is insinuated by that in Heb. 5. 7. he was delivered from what he feared for so the words being nothing else but an Hebraism are to be rendred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And we are wont to call this the language and dictate of Nature which lawfully endeavours to preserve it self though presently an higher principle must bring all these under a subjection to God and a free submission to his good pleasure as it was with our Saviour who moderated all these passions by a ready resignment of himself and his own Will up to the Will of God and though his Humanity crav'd for ease and relaxation yet that Divine Nature that was within him would not have it with any repugnancy to the supreme Will of God A DISCOURSE Concerning THE EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF GOD Agapetus ad Justinianum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 M. T. Cicero l. 1. De Legibus
Ex tot generibus nullum est animal praeter hominem quod habeat notitiam aliquam Dei ipsisque in hominibus nulla gens est neque tam immansueta neque tam fera quae non etiamsi ignoret qualem habere Deum deceat tamen habendum sciat OF THE EXISTENCE AND NATURE OF GOD. CHAP. I. That the Best way to know God is by an attentive reflexion upon our own Souls God more clearly and lively pictur'd upon the Souls of Men then upon any part of the Sensible World WE shall now come to the other Cardinal Principle of all Religion treat something concerning God Where we shall not so much demonstrate That he is as What he is Both which we may best learn from a Reflexion upon our own Souls as Plotinus hath well taught us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He which reflects upon himself reflects upon his own Originall and finds the clearest Impression of some Eternall Nature and Perfect Being stamp'd upon his own Soul And therefore Plato seems sometimes to reprove the ruder sor◠of men in his times for their contrivance of Pictures and Images to put themselves in mind of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Angelicall Beings and exhorts them to look into their own Souls which are the fairest Images not onely of the Lower divine Natures but of the Deity it self God having so copied forth himself into the whole life and energy of man's Soul as that the lovely Characters of Divinity may be most easily seen and read of all men within themselves as they say Phidias the famous Statuary after he had made the Statue of Minerva with the greatest exquisiteness of Art to be set up in the Acropolis at Athens afterwards impress'd his own Image so deeply in her buckler ut nemo delere possit aut divellere qui totam statuam non imminueret And if we would know what the Impresse of Souls is it is nothing but God himself who could not write his own name so as that it might be read but onely in Rationall Natures Neither could he make such without imparting such an Imitation of his own Eternall Understanding to them as might be a perpetual Memorial of himself within them And whenever we look upon our own Soul in a right manner we shall find an Urim and Thummim there by which we may ask counsel of God himself who will have this alway born upon its breast-plate There is nothing that so embases and enthralls the Souls of men as the dismall and dreadfull thoughts of their own Mortality which will not suffer them to look beyond this short span of Time to see an houres length before them or to look higher then these materiall Heavens which though they could be stretch'd forth to infinity yet would the space be too narrow for an enlightned mind that will not be confined within the compass of corporeal dimensions These black Opinions of Death and the Non-entity of Souls darker then Hell it self shrink up the free-born Spirit which is within us which would otherwise be dilating and spreading it self boundlesly beyond all Finite Being and when these sorry pinching mists are once blown away it finds this narrow sphear of Being to give way before it and having once seen beyond Time and Matter it finds then no more ends nor bounds to stop its swift and restless motion It may then fly upwards from one heaven to another till it be beyond all orbe of Finite Being swallowed up in the boundless Abyss of Divinity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 beyond all that which darker thoughts are wont to represent under the Idea of Essence This is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Areopagite speaks of which the higher our Minds soare into the more incomprehensible they find it Those dismall apprehensions which pinion the Souls of men to mortality churlishly check and starve that noble life thereof which would alwaies be rising upwards and spread it self in a free heaven and when once the Soul hath shaken off these when it is once able to look through a grave and see beyond death it finds a vast Immensity of Being opening it self more and more before it and the ineffable light and beauty thereof shining more and more into it when it can rest and bear up itself upon an Immaterial centre of Immortality within it will then find it self able to bear it self away by a self-reflexion into the contemplation of an Eternall Deity For though God hath copied forth his own Perfections in this conspicable sensible World according as it is capable of entertaining them yet the most clear and distinct copy of himself could be imparted to none else but to intelligible and inconspicable natures and though the whole fabrick of this visible Universe be whispering out the notions of a Deity and alway inculcates this lesson to the contemplators of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Plotinus expresseth it yet we cannot understand it without some interpreter within The Heavens indeed declare the glory of God and the Firmament shews his handy-work and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which may be known of God even his eternal power and Godhead as S. Paul tells us is to be seen in these externall appearances yet it must be something within that must instruct us in all these Mysteries and we shall then best understand them when we compare that copie which we find of them within our selves with that which we see without us The Schoolmen have well compared Sensible and Intelligible Beings in reference to the Deity when they tell us that the one doe onely represent Vestigia Dei the other Faciem Dei We shall therefore here enquire what that Knowledge of a Deity is which a due converse with our own naked Understandings will lead us into CHAP. II. How the Contemplation of our own Souls and a right Reflexion upon the Operations thereof may lead us into the knowledge of 1. The Divine Unity and Omniscience 2. God's Omnipotence 3. The Divine Love and Goodness 4. God's Eternity 5. His Omnipresence 6. The Divine Freedome and Liberty IT being our design to discourse more particularly of that knowledge of the Deity that we may learn immediately from our selves we shall observe First There is nothing whereby our own Souls are better known to us then by the Properties and Operations of Reason but when we reflect upon our own Idea of Pure and Perfect Reason we know that our own Souls are not it but onely partake of it and that it is of such a Nature that we cannot denominate any other thing of the same rank with our selves by and yet we know certainly that it is as finding from an inward sense of it within our selves that both we and other things else beside our selves partake of it and that we have it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 neither doe we or any Finite thing contain the source of it within our selves and because
restless appetite within our selves which craves for some Supreme and Chief good and will not be satisfied with any thing less then Infinity it self as if our own Penury and Indigency were commensurate to the Divine fulness and therefore no Question has been more canvas'd by all Philosophy then this De summo hominis bono and all the Sects thereof were antiently distinguish'd by those Opinions that they entertain'd De finibus Boni Mali as Tully phraseth it But of how weak and dilute a Nature soever some of them may have conceived that Summum Bonum yet they could not so satisfie their own inflamed thirst after it We find by Experience that our Souls cannot live upon that thin and spare diet which they are entertain'd with at their own home neither can they be satiated with those jejune and insipid morsels which this Outward world furnisheth their Table with I cannot think the most voluptuous Epicurean could ever satisfie the cravings of his Soul with Corporeal pleasure though he might endeavour to perswade himself there was no better nor the most Quintessential Stoicks find an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Self-sufficiency and Tranquillity within their own Souls arising out of the pregnancy of their own Mind and Reason though their sullen thoughts would not suffer them to be beholden to an Higher Being for their Happiness The more we endeavour to extract an Autarchy out of our own Souls the more we torment them and force them to feel and sensate their own pinching poverty Ever since our Minds became so dim-sighted as not to pierce into that Original and Primitive Blessedness which is above our Wills are too big for our Understandings and will believe their beloved prey is to be found where Reason discovers it not they will pursue it through all the vast Wilderness of this World and force our Understandings to follow the chase with them nor may we think to tame this violent appetite or allay the heat of it except we can look upward to some Eternal and Almighty goodness which is alone able to master it It is not the nimbleness and agility of our own Reason which stirs up these hungry affections within us for then the most ignorant sort of men would never feel the sting thereof but indeed some more Potent nature which hath planted a restless motion within us that might more forcibly carry us out to it self and therefore it will never suffer it self to be controll'd by any of our thin Speculations or satisfied with those aierie delights that our Fancies may offer to it it doth not it cannot rest it self any where but upon the Centre of some Almighty good some solid and substantial Happiness like the hungry childe that will not be still'd by all the mother's musick or change its sower and angry looks for her smiling countenance nothing will satisfie it but the full breasts The whole work of this World is nothing but a perpetuall contention for True Happiness and men are scatter'd up and down the world moving to and fro therein to seek it Our Souls by a Naturall Science as it were feeling their own Originall are perpetually travailing with new designs and contrivances whereby they may purchase the scope of their high ambitions Happiness is that Pearl of price which all adventure for though few find it It is not Gold or Silver that the Earthlings of this world seek after but some satisfying good which they think is there treasur'd up Neither is it a little empty breath that Ambition and Popularity soars after but some kind of Happiness that it thinks to catch and suck in with it And thus indeed when men most of all flie from God they still seek after him Wicked men pursue indeed after a Deity in their worldly lusts wherein yet they most blaspheme for God is not a meer empty Name or Title but that Self-sufficient good which brings along that Rest and Peace with it which they so much seek after though they doe most prodigiously conjoyn it with something which it is not nor can it be and in a true and reall strain of blasphemy attribute all that which God is to something else which is most unlike him and as S. Paul speaks of those infatuated Gentiles turn the glory of the uncorruptible God into the image of corruptible man of birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things God is not better defin'd to us by our Understandings then by our Wills and Affections He is not onely the Eternal Reason that Almighty Mind and Wisdome which our Understandings converse with but he is also that unstained Beauty and Supreme Good which our Wills are perpetually catching after and wheresoever we find true Beauty Love and Goodness we may say Here or there is God And as we cannot understand any thing of an Intelligible nature but by some primitive Idea we have of God whereby we are able to guess at the elevation of its Being and the pitch of its Perfection so neither doe our Wills embrace any thing without some latent sense of Him whereby they can tast and discern how near any thing comes to that Self-sufficient good they seek after and indeed without such an internal sensating Faculty as this is we should never know when our Souls are in conjunction with the Deity or be able to relish the ineffable sweetness of true Happiness Though here below we know but little what this is because we are little acquainted with fruition and enjoyment we know well what belongs to longings and languishment but we know not so well what belongs to plenty and fulness we are well acquainted with the griefs and sicknesses of this in-bred love but we know not what its health and complacencies are To conclude this particular 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Soul hath strong and weighty motions and nothing else can bear it up but something permanent and immutable Nothing can beget a constant serenity and composedness within but something Supreme to its own Essence as if having once departed from the primitive Fountain of its life it were deprived of it self perpetually contesting within it self and divided against it self and all this evidently proves to our inward sense and feeling That there is some Higher Good then our selves something that is much more amiable and desirable and therefore must be loved and preferred before our selves as Plotinus hath excellently observ'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Every thing that desires the enjoyment of the First good would rather be That then what it is because indeed the nature of that is much more desirable then its own And therefore the Platonists when they contemplate the Deity under these three notions of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and question which to place first in order of understanding resolve the preeminence to be due to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Simplicius tells us because That is first known to us
seeing how his own Glory can display and imitate it self in outward Matter 2. The second is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the aptness and capacity of those things which he hath made to receive a further influence of good ready to stream forth from himself into them 3. The last is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the sweet symmetry of his own forms with this capacity and as it were the harmonious conspiration and symphony of them when his own light pleasantly plaies upon those well-tuned instruments which he hath fitted to run the descants of his own Goodness upon And therefore it becomes us whom he hath endued with vitall power of action and in some sense a Self-moving life to stir up his good gifts within our selves and if we would have him take pleasure in us to prepare our own Souls more and more to receive of his Liberality 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that that stock which he is pleased to impart to us may not lie dead within us And this is the Application which he makes of this Particular CHAP. V. A second Deduction 2. That all things are supported and govern'd by an Almighty Wisdome and Goodness An Answer to an Objection made against the Divine Providence from an unequall distribution of things here below Such quarrelling with Providence ariseth from a Paedanticall and Carnall notion of Good and Evil. IN the next place we may by way of further Deduction gather That that Almighty Wisdome and Goodness which first made all things doth also perpetually conserve and govern them deriving themselves through the whole Fabrick and seating themselves in every Finite Essence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the same Philosopher expresseth it lest stragling falling off from the Deity they should become altogether disorderly relapsing and sliding back into their first Chaos As in all Motion there must be some First Mover from whence the beginning and perpetuation of all Motion is deduced so in Beings there must be some First Essence upon which all other must constantly depend And therefore the Pythagorean philosophy was wont to look upon these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they call this production of every thing that is not truly divine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as being alwaies in fieri For as no Finite thing can subsist by its own strength or take its place upon the stage of Space without the leave of an Almighty and Supreme power so neither can it remain here without licence and assistance from it The Deity indeed is the Centre of all finite Being and Entity it self which is Self-sufficient must of necessity be the Foundation and Basis of every one of these weak Essences which cannot bear up themselves by any Centrall power of their own as we may also be almost assured of from a sensible feeling of all the constant mutations and impotency which we find both in our selves and all other things And as God thus preserves all things so he is continually ordering disposing all things in the best way and providing so as may be best for them He did not make the World as a meer Exercise of his Almighty power or to trie his own strength and then throw it away from himself without any more minding of it for he is that Omnipresent Life that penetrates and runs through all things containing and holding all fast together within himself and therefore the antient Philosophy was wont rather to say that the World was in God then that God was in the World He did not look without himself to search for some solid foundation that might bear up this weighty building but indeed rear'd it up within him and spread his own Omnipotency under it and through it and being centrally in every part of it he governs it according to the prescript of his own unsearchable Wisedome and Goodness and orders all things for the best And this is one principall Orthodox point the Stoicks would have us to believe concerning Providence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that all things are here done in this World by the appointment of the Best Mind And now if any should quarrel with the unequall distribution of things here as if rather some blind Fortune had bestow'd her blessings carelesly till she had no more left and thereby made so many starvelings rather then some All-knowing Mind that deals forth its bounty in due proportions I should send them to Plutarch and Plotinus to have their Reasons fully satisfied in this point for we here deal with the Principles of Naturall light all these debates arising from nothing but Paedanticall and Carnall notions of Good and Evil as if it were so gallant a thing to be dealing with Crowns and Scepters to be bravely arrayed and wallow in that which is call'd the Wealth of this World God indeed never took any such notice of Good men as to make them all Rulers as the last of those forecited Authors tells us neither was it worth the while 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 neither is it fit for good men that partake of an higher life then the most Princely is to trouble themselves about lording ruling over other men as if such a splendid kind of nothing as this is were of so much worth It may be generally much better for us while we are so apt to magnifie court any Mundane beauty and glory as we are that Providence should disorder and deface these things that we might all be weaned from the love of them then that their lovely looks should so bewitch and enchant our Souls as to draw them off from Better things And I dare say that a sober mind that shall contemplate the state and temper of mens minds and the confused frame of this outward world will rather admire at the Infinite Wisdome of a gracious Providence in permitting and ordering that Ataxy which is in it then he would were it to be beheld in a more comely frame and order CHAP. VI. A third Deduction 3. That all true Happiness consists in a participation of God arising out of the assimilation and conformity of our Souls to him and That the most reall Misery ariseth out of the Apostasie of Souls from God No enjoyment of God without our being made like to Him The Happiness and Misery of Man defin'd and stated with the Originall and Foundation of both WE proceed now to another Deduction or Inference viz. That all True Happiness consists in a participation of God arising out of the assimilation and conformity of our Souls to him and the most reall Misery ariseth out of the Apostasie of Souls from God And so we are led to speak of the Rewards and Punishments of the Life to come Praemium and Poena 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Jewish Writers are wont to express them and it will not be any hard labour from what hath been said to find out the Originall and Nature of both of them and though perhaps we cannot dive into the bottome of them yet
Right and Equity by wholsome Laws and annexing Punishments as a mean to prevent transgression and not to manifest Severity The proper scope of Justice seems to be nothing else but the preserving and maintaining of that which is Just and Right the scope of that Justice which is in any Righteous Law is properly to provide for a righteous execution of that which is just and fit to be without intending punishment for to intend that properly and directly might rather seem Cruelty then Justice and therefore Justice takes not up Punishment but onely for a security of performance of Righteous Laws viz. either for the amendment of the person transgressing or a due example to others to keep them off from transgression For I would here suppose a Good and Righteous man who in some desolate place of the World should have the command of a 100 more and himself be Supreme under no command He prescribes Laws to this company makes it death for any one to take away another's life But now one proves a Murtherer kills one of his fellows afterwards repents heartily and is like to prove usefull among the rest of his fellows they all are so heartily affected one to another that there is no danger upon sparing this Penitent's life that any one of them should be encouraged to commit the like evil The Case being thus stated it will not seem difficult to conclude that the Justice of this Righteous and Good Commander would spare this poor Penitent for his Justice would have preserved that life which is lost and seeing there is nothing further that it can obtain in taking away this it will save this which may be saved for it affects not any blood and when it destroies it is out of necessity to take away a destructive person and to give example which in the Case stated falls not out Again Justice is the Justice of Goodness and so cannot delight to punish it aimes at nothing more then the maintaining and promoting the Laws of Goodness and hath alwaies some good end before it and therefore would never punish except some further good were in view True Justice never supplants any that it self might appear more glorious in their ruines for this would be to make Justice love something better then Righteousness and to advance and magnifie it self in something which is not it self but rather an aberration from it self and therefore God himself so earnestly contends with the Jews about the Equity of his own waies with frequent asseverations that his Justice is thirsty after no man's blood but rather that Sinners would repent turn from their evil waies and live And then Justice is most advanced when the contents of it are fulfill'd and though it does not and will not acquit the guilty without Repentance yet the design of it is to encourage Innocency and promote true Goodness CHAP. VIII The Fifth and last Deduction 5. That seeing there is such an Entercourse and Society as it were between God and Men therefore there is also some Law between them which is the Bond of all Communion The Primitive rules of God's Oeconomy in this world not the sole Results of an Absolute Will but the sacred Decrees of Reason and Goodness God could not design to make us Sinfull or Miserable Of the Law of Nature embosom'd in Man's Soul how it obliges man to love and obey God and to express a Godlike spirit and life in this world All Souls the Off-spring of God but Holy Souls manifest themselves to be and are more peculiarly the Children of God THE former Deduction leads me to another a-kin to it which shall be my last and it is that which Tully intimates in his De legibus viz. That seeing there is such an Entercourse and Society as it were between God and Men therefore there is also some Law between them which is the Bond of all Communion God himself from whom all Law takes its rise and emanation is not Exlex and without all Law nor in a sober sense above it Neither are the Primitive rules of his Oeconomy in this world the sole Results of an Absolute will but the Sacred Decrees of Reason and Goodness I cannot think God to be so unbounded in his Legislative power that he can make any thing Law both for his own Dispensations and our Observance that we may sometime imagine We cannot say indeed that God was absolutely determin'd from some Law within himself to make us but I think we may safely say when he had once determin'd to make us he could neither make us sinfull seeing he had no Idea nor shadow of Evil within himself nor lap us those dreadfull fates within our Natures or set them over us that might arcanâ inspiratione as some are pleas'd to phrase it secretly work our ruine and silently carry us on making use of our own naturall infirmity to eternall misery Neither could he design to make his creatures miserable that so he might shew himself Just. These are rather the by-waies of Cruell and Ambitious men that seek their own advantage in the mischiefs of other men and contrive their own Rise by their Ruines this is not Divine Justice but the Cruelty of degenerated men But as the Divinity could propound nothing to it self in the making of the World but the Communication of its own Love and Goodness so it can never swerve from the same Scope and End in the dispensation of it self to it Neither did God so boundlesly enlarge the appetite of Souls after some All-sufficient Good that so they might be the more unspeakably tortur'd in the missing of it but that they might more certainly return to the Originall of their Beings And such busie-working Essences as the Souls of men are could neither be made as dull and sensless of true Happiness as Stocks and Stones are neither could they contain the whole summe and perfection of it within themselves therefore they must also be inform'd with such Principles as might conduct them back again to Him from whom they first came God does not make Creatures for the meer sport of his Almighty arm to raise and ruine and toss up and down at meer pleasure No that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or good pleasure of that Will that made them is the same still it changes not though we may change and make our selves uncapable of partaking the blissfull fruits and effects of it And so we come to consider that Law embosom'd in the Souls of men which ties them again to their Creatour and this is called The Law of Nature which indeed is nothing else but a Paraphrase or Comment upon the Nature of God as it copies forth it self in the Soul of Man Because God is the First Mind and the First Good propagating an Imitation of himself in such Immortall Natures as the Souls of Men are therefore ought the Soul to renounce all mortall and mundane things and preserve its Affections chast and pure for God himself
to love him with a most Universall and Unbounded Love to trust in him and reverence him to converse with him in a free chearful manner as One in whom we live and move and have our Beings being perpetually encompassed by him and never moving out of him to resign all our Waies and Wills up to him with an equall and indifferent mind as knowing that he guides and governs all things in the Best way to sink our selves as low in Humility as we are in Self-nothingness And because all those scatter'd Raies of Beauty and Loveliness which we behold spread up and down all the World over are onely the Emanations of that inexhausted Light which is above therefore should we love them all in that and climb up alwaies by those Sun-beams unto the Eternall Father of Lights we should look upon him and take from him the pattern of our lives and alwaies eying of him should 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. as Hierocles speaks polish and shape our Souls into the clearest resemblance of him and in all our behaviour in this World that Great Temple of his deport our selves decently and reverently with that humility meekness and modesty that becomes his house We should endeavour more and more to be perfect as he is in all our dealing with men doing good shewing mercy and compassion advancing justice and righteousness being alwaies full of charity and good works and look upon our selves as having nothing to doe here but to display blazon the glory of our heavenly Father and frame our hearts and lives according to that Pattern which we behold in the Mount of a holy Contemplation of him Thus we should endeavour to preserve that Heavenly fire of the Divine Love and Goodness which issuing forth from God centres it self within us and is the Protoplastick virtue of our Beings alwaies alive and burning in the Temple of our Souls and to sacrifice our selves back again to him And when we fulfill this Royall Law arising out of the heart of Eternity then shall we here appear to be the Children of God when he thus lives in us as our Saviour speaks Matth. 5. And so we shall close up this Particular with that High privilege which Immortall Souls are invested with they are all the Off-spring of God for so S. Paul allows the Heathen Poet to call them they are all royally descended and have no Father but God himself being originally formed into his image and likeness and when they express the purity and holiness of the Divine Life in being perfect as God is perfect then they manifest themselves to be his Children Matth. 5. And in Matth. 7. Christ encourageth men to seek and pray for the Spirit which is the best gift that God can give to men because he is their Heavenly Father much more bountifull and tender to all helpless Souls that seek to him then any earthly parent whose Nature is degenerated from that primitive goodness can be to his children But those Apostate Spirits that know not to return to the Originall of their Beings but implant themselves into some other stock and seek to incorporate and unite themselves to another line by sin and wickedness cut themselves off from this divine priviledge and lose their own birth-right they doe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if I may borrow that phrase and lapse into another nature All this was well express'd by Proclus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All Souls are the Children of God but all of them know not their God but such as know him and live like to him are called the Children of God CHAP. IX An APPENDIX concerning the Reason of Positive Laws BUT here as an Appendix to the two former Deductions it may be of good use to enquire into the Reason of such Laws as we call Positive which God hath in all times as is commonly suppos'd enjoyn'd obedience to which are not the Eternall dictates and Decretals of the Divine Nature communicating it self to Immortall Spirits but rather deduce their Originall from the free will and pleasure of God To solve this Difficulty that of S. Paul may seem a fit Medium who tells us The Law was added because of transgression though I doubt not but he means thereby the Morall Law as well as any other The true intent and scope of these Positive laws and it may be of such an externall promulgation of the Morall seems to be nothing else but this to secure the Eternall Law of Righteousness from transgression As the Jews say of their decreta sapientum that they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an hedge to the Law so we may say of these Divine Decretals they were but cautionary and preventive of disobedience to that Higher Law and therefore Saint Paul tells us why the Morall Law was made such a Political business by an external promulgation c. 1 Tim. 1. 9. not so much because of righteous men in whom the Law of Nature lives who perform the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without any outward Law but it was given for the lawless and disobedient c. And therefore I doubt not but we may safely conclude that God gave not those Positive Laws meerly pro imperio if I may use that expression it was not meerly to manifest his Absolute Dominion Soveraignty as some think but for the good of those that were enjoyned to obey and this belief Moses endeavours almost throughout the whole Book of Deuteronomy to strengthen the Israelites in and therefore God was so ready upon all occasions to dispense with these Laws and requires the Jews to omit the observance of them when they might seem to justle with any other Law of Morall duty or Humane necessity as may be observ'd in many Instances in Scripture But for a more distinct unfolding of this point we may take notice of this difference in the notion of Good and Evil as we are to converse with them Some things are so absolutely and somethings are so onely relatively That which is absolutely good is every way Superiour to us and we ought alwaies to be commanded by it because we are made under it But that which is relatively good to us may sometime be commanded by us Eternall Truth and Righteousness are in themselves perfectly absolutely good and the more we conform our selves to them the better we are But those things that are onely good relatively and in order to us we may say of them that they are so much the better by how much the more they are conform'd to us I mean by how much the more they are accommodated and fitted to our estate and condition and may be fit means to help and promote us in our pursuit of some Higher good and such indeed is the matter of all Positive Laws and the Symbolicall or Rituall part of Religion And as we are made for the former viz. what is absolutely good to serve that so are these latter
entertain The World through wisdome as the Apostle speaks knew not God Those great Disputers of this world were too full of nice and empty Speculations to know him who is only to be discerned by a pacate humble and self-denying mind their Curiosity served rather to dazzle their Eyes then to enlighten them while they rather proudly braved themselves in their knowledge of the Deity then humbly subjected their own Souls to a complyance with it making the Divinity nothing else but as it were a flattering Glass that might reflect and set off to them the beauty of their own Wit and Parts the better and while they seemed to converse with God himself they rather amorously courted their own Image in him and fell into love with their own Shape Therefore the best acquaintance with Religion is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a knowledge taught by God it is a Light that descends from Heaven which is only able to guide and conduct the souls of men to Heaven from whence it comes The Jewish Doctors use to put it among the fundamental Articles of their Religion That their Law was from heaven 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I am sure we may much rather reckon it amongst the Principles of our Christian Religion in an higher way That it is an Influx from God upon the Minds of good men And this is the great designe and plot of the Gospel to open and unfold to us the true way of recourse to God a Contrivance for the uniting the Souls of men to him and the deriving a participation of God to men to bring in Everlasting righteousness and to establish the true Tabernacle of God in the Spirits of men which was done in a Typical and Emblematical way under the Law And herein consists the main preeminence which the Gospel hath above the Law in that it so clearly unfolds the Way and Method of Uniting humane nature to Divinity which the Apostle seems mainly to aim at in these words But Israel which followed after the Law of righteousness c. CHAP. II. An Enquiry into that Jewish Notion of a Legal Righteousness which is opposed by S. Paul That their notion of it was such as this viz. That the Law externally dispensed to them though it were as a Dead letter merely without them and conjoined with the power of their own Free-will was sufficient to procure them Acceptance with God and to acquire Merit enough to purchase Eternal Life Perfection and Happiness That this their Notion had these two Grounds First An Opinion of their own Self-sufficiency and that their Free-will was so absolute and perfect as that they needed not that God should doe any thing for them but only furnish them with some Law to exercise this Innate power about That they asserted such a Freedom of Will as might be to them a Foundation of Merit FOR the unfolding whereof we shall endeavour to search out First What the Jewish Notion of a Legal righteousness was which the Apostle here condemns Secondly What that Evangelical righteousness or Righteousness of Faith is which he endeavours to establish in the room of it For the First That which the Apostle here blames the Jews for seems to be indeed nothing else but an Epitome or Compendium of all that which he otherwhere disputes against them for which is not merely and barely concerning the Formal notion of Justification as some may think viz. Whether the Formal notion of it respects only Faith or Works in the Person justified though there may be a respect to that also it is not merely a subtile School-controversie which he seems to handle but it is of a greater latitude It is indeed concerning the whole Way of Life and Happiness and the proper scope of restoring Mankind to Perfection and Union with the Deity which the Jews expected by virtue of that Systeme and Pandect of Laws which were delivered upon Mount Sinai augmented and enlarged by the Gemara of their own Traditions Which that we may the better understand perhaps it may not be amiss a little to traverse the Writings of their most approved ancient Authors that so finding out their constant received opinions concerning their Law and the Works thereof we may the better and more fully understand what S. Paul and the other Apostles aim at in their disputes against them The Jewish notion generally of the Law is this That in that Model of life contained in that Body of Laws distinguished ordinarily into Moral Judicial Ceremonial was comprised the whole Method of raising Man to his perfection and that they having only this Book of Laws without them to converse with needed nothing else to procure Eternal life Perfection and Happiness as if this had been the only means God had for the saving of Men and making them happy to set before them in an External way a Volume of Laws Statutes and Ordinances and so to leave them to work out and purchase to themselves Eternal life in the observance of them Now this General notion of theirs we shall unfold in 2 Particulars First as a Foundation of all the rest They took up this as an Hypothesis or common Principle That Mankind had such an absolute and perfect Free-will and such a sufficient power from within himself to determine himself to Vertue and Goodness as that he only needed some Law as the Matter or Object to exercise this Innate power about and therefore needed not that God should doe any thing more for him then merely to acquaint him with his Divine will and pleasure And for this we have Maimonides speaking very fully and magisterially That this was one of their Radices fidei or Articles of their Faith and one main Foundation upon which the Law stood His words are these in Halacah teshubah or Treatise of Repentance Chap. 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Power of Free-will is given to every man to determine himself if he will to that which is good and to be good or to determine himself to that which is evil and to be wicked if he will Both are in his power according to what is written in the Law Behold Man is become as one of us to know good and evil that is to say Behold this sort of Creature Man is alone and there is not a Second like to Man in this viz. That Man from himself by his own proper knowledge and power knowes good and evil and does what pleaseth him in an uncontrollable way so as none can hinder him as to the doing of either good or evil And a little after he thus interprets those words in the Lamentations of the repenting Church ch 3. 40. Let us search and try our waies and turn unto the Lord 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Seeing that we who are endued with the power of Free-will have most wittingly and freely committed all our transgressions it is meet and becoming that we should convert our selves by repentance and forsake all our iniquities forasmuch as this
and ungrounded suspitions of his partiality with that Question If thou doest well shalt thou not be accepted Wheresoever God finds any stamps and impressions of Goodness he likes and approves them knowing them well to be what they indeed are nothing else but his own Image and Superscription Whereever he sees his own Image shining in the Souls of men and a conformity of life to that Eternal Idea of Goodness which is himself he loves it and takes a complacency in it as that which is from himself and is a true Imitation of himself And as his own unbounded Being Goodness is the Primary and Original object of his Immense and Almighty Love so also every thing that partakes of him partakes proportionably of his Love all Imitations of him and Participations of his Love and Goodness are perpetually adequate and commensurate the one to the other By so much the more acceptable any one is to God by how much the more he comes to resemble God It was a common Notion in the old Pythagorean and Platonick Theology 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. as Proclus phraseth it That the Divinity transformed into Love and enamour'd with it's own unlimited Perfections and spotless Beauty delighted to copy forth and shadow out it self as it were in created Beings which are perpetually embraced in the warm bosome of the same Love which they can never swerve nor apostatize from till they also prove apostate to the estate of their Creation And certainly it is true in our Christian divinity that that Divine light and goodness which flows forth from God the Original of all upon the Souls of men never goes solitary and destitute of Love Complacency and Acceptation which is alwaies lodg'd together with it in the Divine Essence And as the Divine Complacency thus dearly and tenderly entertains all those which beare a similitude of true Goodness upon them so it alwaies abandons from its embraces all Evil which never doth nor can mix it self with it The Holy Spirit can never suffer any unhallowed or defiled thing to enter into it or to unite it self with it Therefore in a sober sense I hope I may truly say There is no perfect or through-reconciliation wrought between God and the Souls of men while any defiled and impure thing dwells within the Soul which cannot truly close with God nor God with that The Divine Love according to those degrees by which it works upon the Souls of men in transforming them into its own likeness by the same it renders them more acceptable to it self mingleth it self with and uniteth it self to them as the Spirit of any thing mixeth it self more or less with any Matter it acts upon according as it works it self into it and so makes a way and passage open for it self Upon this account I suppose it may be that S. James attributes a kind of Justification to Good works which unquestionably are things that God approves and accepts and all those in whom he finds them as seeing there a true conformity to his own Goodness and Holiness Whereas on the other side he disparageth that barren sluggish and drowsie Belief that a lazy Lethargy in Religion began in his times to hugg so dearly in reference to acceptation with God I suppose I may fairly thus gloss at his whole Discourse upon this Argument God respects not a bold confident and audacious Faith that is big with nothing but its own Presumptions It is not because our Brains swim with a strong Conceit of God's Eternal love to us or because we grow big and swell into a mighty bulk with airy fancies and presumptions of our acceptance with God that makes us ere the more acceptable to him It is not all our strong Dreams of being in favour with Heaven that fills our hungry souls ere the more with it It is not a pertinacious Imagination of our Names being enrolled in the Book of life or of the Debt-books of Heaven being crossed or of Christ being ours while we find him not living within us or of the washing away of our sins in his bloud while the foul and filthy stains thereof are deeply sunk in our own Souls it is not I say a pertinacious Imagination of any of these that can make us ere the better And a mere Conceit or Opinion as it makes us never the better in reality within our selves so it cannot render us ere the more acceptable to God who judges of all things as they are No it must be a true Compliance with the Divine will which must render us such as the Divinity may take pleasure in In Christ Jesus neither Circumcision nor Uncircumcision availeth any thing nor any Fancy built upon any other External privilege but the keeping of the Commandments of God No but If any man does the will of God him will both the Father and the Son love they will come in to him and make their abode with him This is the Scope and Mark which a true Heaven-born Faith aims at and when it hath attain'd this End then is it indeed perfect and compleat in its last accomplishment And by how much the more ardency and intention Faith levels at this mark of inward goodness and divine activity by so much the more perfect and sincere it is This is that which God justifies it being just and correspondent to his own good pleasure and in whomsoever he finds this both it and they are accepted of him And so I come to the second Particular God's justifying of Sinners in pardoning and remitting their sins carries in it a necessary reference to the sanctifying of their Natures without which Justification would rather be a glorious name then a real privilege to the Souls of men While men continue in their wickedness they do but vainly dream of a device to tie the hands of an Almighty Vengeance from seizing on them No their own Sins like so many armed Gyants would first or last set upon them and rend them with inward torment There needs no angry Cherub with a flaming Sword drawn out every way to keep their unhallowed hands off from the Tree of life No their own prodigious Lusts like so many arrows in their sides would chase them their own Hellish natures would sink them low enough into eternal death and chain them up fast enough in fetters of darkness among the filthy fiends of Hell Sin will alwaies be miserable and the Sinner at last when the empty bladders of all those hopes and expectations of an aiery mundane Happiness that did here bear him up in this life shall be cut will find it like a Talent of Lead weighing him down into the bottomless gulf of Misery If all were clear towards Heaven we should find Sin raising up storms in our own Souls We cannot carry Fire in our own bosoms and yet not be burnt Though we could suppose the greatest Serenity without us if we could suppose our selves nere so much to be at
of sinners insatiably greedy after their prey never satisfied till they have devoured the Souls of men Lest we should by such dreadful apprehensions be driven from God we are told of the Bloud of sprinkling that speaks better things for us of a mighty Favourite solliciting our Cause with perpetual intercessions in the Court of heaven of a new and living way to the Throne of grace and to the Holy of holies which our Saviour hath consecrated through his flesh We are told of a great and mighty Saviour able to save to the utmost all that come to God by him We heare of the most compassionate and tender Promises that may be from the Truth it self that Whosoever comes to him he will in no wise cast out that They that believe on him out of them should flow streams of living water We hear of the most gracious invitations that Heaven can make to all weary and heavy-laden sinners to come to Christ that they may find rest The great Secrets of Heaven and the Arcana of Divine Counsells are revealed whereby we are acquainted that Glory to God in the highest Peace on earth Good will towards men are sweetly joined together in Heavens harmony and happily combin'd together in the composure of it's Ditties That the Glory of the Deity and Salvation of men are not allaied by their union one with another but both exalted together in the most transcendent way that Divine love and bounty are the supreme rulers in Heaven and Earth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is no such thing as sowre Despight and Envy lodged in the bosome of that ever-blessed Being above whose name is LOVE and all whose Dispensations to the Sons of men are but the dispreadings and distended radiations of his Love as freely flowing forth from it through the whole orbe and sphear of its creation as the bright light from the Sun in the firmament of whose benign influences we are then only deprived when we hide and withdraw our selves from them We are taught that the mild and gentle breathings of the Divine Spirit are moving up and down in the World to produce life and to revive and quicken the Souls of men into a feeling sense of a blessed Immortality This is that mighty Spirit that will if we comply with it teach us all things even the hidden things of God mortifie all the lusts of rebellious Flesh and seal us up to the day of redemption We are taught that with all holy boldness we may in all places lift up holy hands to God without wrath or doubting without any sowre thoughts of God or fretfull jealousies or harsh surmises We can never distrust enough in our selves nor ever trust too much in God This is the great Plerophory and that full Confidence which the Gospel every where seems to promote and should I run through all the Arguments and Solicitations that are there laid down to provoke us to an entertainment hereof I should then run quite through it from one end to another it containing almost nothing else in the whole Complex and Body of it but strong and forcible Motives to all Ingenuous addresses to God and the most effectual Encouragement that may be to all chearfull dependance on him and confident expectation of all assistance from him to carry on our poor endeavours to the atchievment of Blessedness and that in the most plain and simple way that may be sine fraude fuco without any double mind or mental reservation Heaven is not acquainted so feelingly with our wicked arts and devices But it is very strange that where God writes Life so plainly in fair Capital letters we are so often apt to read Death that when he tells us over and over that Hell destruction arise from our selves that they are the workmanship of our own hands we will needs understand their Pedegree to be from Heaven and that they were conceived in the Womb of Life and Blessedness No but the Gospel tells us we are not come to Mounts of burning nor unto blackness and darkness and tempest c. Hebr. 12. v. 18. Certainly a lively Faith in this Love of God and a sober converse with his Goodness by a cordial entertainment and through perswasion of it would warm and chafe our benummed Minds and thaw our Hearts frozen with Self-love it would make us melt and dissolve out of all Self-consistencie and by a free and noble Sympathie with the Divine love to yield up our selves to it and dilate and spread our selves more fully in it This would banish away all Atheisme and ireful slavish Superstition it would cast down every high thought and proud imagination that swells within us and exalts it self against this soveraign Deity it would free us from all those poor sorry pinching and particular Loves that here inthrall the Souls of men to Vanity and Baseness it would lead us into the true liberty of the sons of God filling our Hearts once enlarged with the sense of it with a more generous and universal love as unlimited and unbounded as true Goodness it self is Thus Moses-like conversing with God in the Mount and there beholding his glory shining thus out upon us in the face of Christ we should be deriving a Copy of that Eternal beauty upon our own Souls and our thirstie and hungry spirits would be perpetually sucking in a true participation and image of his glory A true divine Love would wing our Souls and make them take their flight swiftly towards Heaven and Immortality Could we once be throughly possess'd and mastered with a full confidence of the Divine love and God's readiness to assist such feeble languishing creatures as we are in our assays after Heaven and Blessedness we should then finding our selves borne up by an Eternal and Almighty strength dare to adventure courageously and confidently upon the highest designes of Happiness to assail the kingdome of heaven with a holy gallantry and violence to pursue a course of well-doing without weariness knowing that our labour shall not be in vain in the Lord and that we shall receive our Reward if we faint not We should work out our salvation in the most industrious manner trusting in God as one ready to instill strength and power into all the vital faculties of our Souls We should press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus that we may apprehend that for which also we are apprehended of Christ Jesus If we suffer not our selves to be robb'd of this Confidence and Hope in God as ready to accomplish the desires of those that seek after him we may then walk on strongly in the way to Heaven and not be weary we may run and not faint And the more the Souls of men grow in this blissfull perswasion the more they shall mount up like Eagles into a clear Heaven finding themselvs rising higher and higher above all those filthy mists those clouds and tempests of a slavish Fear
Despair Fretfulness against God pale Jealousies wrathfull and embittered Thoughts of him or any struglings or contests to get from within the verge of his Power and Omnisciency which would mantle up their Souls in black and horrid Night I mean not all this while by this holy Boldness and Confidence and Presence of Mind in a Believer's converse with the Deitie that high pitch of Assurance that wafts the Souls of good men over the Stygian lake of Death and brings them to the borders of life that here puts them into an actual possession of Bliss and reestates and reestablishes them in Paradise No That more general acquaintance which we may have with God's Philanthropy and Bounty ready to relieve with the bowells of his tender compassions all those starving Souls that call upon him for surely he will never doe less for fainting and drooping Souls then he doth for the young Ravens that cry unto him that converse which we are provoked by the Gospel to maintain with God's unconfined love if we understand it aright will awaken us out of our drowsie Lethargy and make us aske of him the way to Sion with our faces thitherward This will be digging up fresh fountains for us while we goe through the valley of Baca whereby refreshing our weary Souls we shall goe on from strength to strength until we see the face of our loving and ever-to-be-loved God in Sion And so I come to the next Particular wherein we shall further unfold how this God-like righteousness we have spoken of is conveighed to us by Faith and that is this A true Gospel-faith is no lazie or languid thing but a strong ardent breathing for and thirsting after divine Grace and Righteousness it doth not only pursue an ambitious project of raising the Soul immaturely to the condition of a darling Favourite with Heaven while it is unripe for it by procuring a mere empty Pardon of sin it desires not only to stand upon clear terms with Heaven by procuring the crossing of all the Debt-books of our sins there but it rather pursues after an Internal participation of the Divine nature We often hear of a Saving Faith and that where it is is not content to wait for Salvation till the world to come it is not patient of being an Expectant in a Probationership for it untill this Earthly body resignes up all it's worldly interest that so the Soul might then come into its room No but it is here perpetually gasping after it and effecting of it in a way of serious Mortification and Self-denial it enlarges and dilates it self as much as may be according to the vast dimensions of the Divine love that it may comprehend the height and depth the length and breadth thereof and fill the Soul where it is seated with all the fullness of God it breeds a strong and unsatiable appetite where it comes after true Goodness Were I to describe it I should doe it no otherwise then in the language of the Apostle It is that whereby we live in Christ and whereby he lives in us or in the dialect of our Saviour himself Something so powerfully sucking in the precious influences of the Divine Spirit that the Soul where it is is continually flowing with living waters issuing out of it self A truely-believing Soul by an ingenuous affiance in God and an eager thirst after him is alwaies sucking from the full breasts of the Divine love thence it will not part for there and there only is its life and nourishment it starves and faints away with grief and hunger whensoever it is pull'd away from thence it is perpetually hanging upon the arms of Immortal Goodness for there it finds its great strength lies and as much as may be armes it self with the mighty Power of God by which it goes forth like a Gyant refreshed with wine to run that race of Grace Holiness that leads to the true Elysium of Glory and that heavenly Canaan which is above And whensoever it finds it self enfeebled in its difficult Conflict with those fierce and furious Corruptions those tall sons of Anak which arising from our terrene and sensual affections doe here encounter it in the Wilderness of this world then turning it self to God and putting it self under the conduct of the Angel of his presence it finds it self presently out of weakness to become strong enabled from above to put to flight those mighty armies of the aliens True Faith if you would know its rise and pedegree it is begotten of the Divine bounty and fulness manifesting it self to the Spirits of men and it is conceived and brought forth by a deep and humble sense of Self-indigency and Poverty Faith arises out of Self-examination seating and placing it self in view of the Divine plenitude and Allsufficiency and thus that I may borrow those words of S. Paul we received the sentence of death in our selves that we should not trust in our selves but in him The more this Sensual Brutish and Self-Central life thrives and prospers the more divine Faith languisheth and the more that decays and all Self-feeling Self-love and Self-sufficiency pine away the more is true Faith fed and nourished it grows more vigorous and as Carnal life wasts and consumes so the more does Faith suck in a true divine and spiritual life from the true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who hath life in himself and freely bestowes it to all those that heartily seek for it When the Divinity united it self to Humane nature in the person of our Saviour he then gave mankind a pledge and earnest of what he would further doe therein in assuring of it into as near a conjunction as might be with Himself and in dispensing and communicating himself to Man in a way as far correspondent and agreeable as might be to that first Copy And therefore we are told of Christ being formed in us and the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us of our being made conformable to him of having fellowship with him of being as he was in this world of living in him and his living in us of dying and rising again and ascending with him into Heaven and the like because indeed the same Spirit that dwelt in him derives it self in its mighty Virtue and Energy through all believing Souls shaping them more and more into a just resemblance and conformitie to him as the first Copy Pattern Whence it is that we have so many waies of unfolding the Union between Christ and all Believers set forth in the Gospel And all this is done for us by degrees through the efficacy of the Eternal spirit when by a true Faith we deny our selves and our own Wills submit our seves in a deep sense of our own folly and weakness to his Wisdome and Power comply with his Will and by a holy affiance in him subordinate our selves to his pleasure for these are the Vital acts of a Gospel-Faith And according to this which hath been said I
suppose we may fairly gloss upon S. Paul's Discourses which so much prefer Faith above Works We must not think in a Gyant-like pride to scale the walls of Heaven by our own Works and by force thereof to take the strong Fort of Blessedness and wrest the Crown of Glory out of God's hands whether he will or no. We must not think to commence a suit in Heaven for Happiness upon such a poor and weak plea as our own External compliance with the Old Law is We must not think to deal with God in the Method of Commutative Justice and to challenge Eternal life as the just Reward of our great Merits and the hire due to us for our labour and toil we have took in God's Vineyard No God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble it must be an humble and Self-denying address of a Soul dissolved into a deep and piercing sense of its own Nothingness and unprofitableness that can be capable of the Divine bounty he fills the hungry with good things but the rich he sends empty away They are the hungry and thirsty Souls alwaies gasping after the living springs of Divine grace as the parched ground in the desert doth for the dew of Heaven ready to drink them in by a constant dependance upon God Souls that by a living watchfull and diligent Faith spreading forth themselves in all obsequious reverence and love of him wait upon him as the Eyes of an handmaid wait on the hand of her Mistress These are they that he delights to satiate with his goodness Those that being master'd by a strong sense of their own indigency their pinching and pressing povertie and his All-sufficient fulness trust in him as an Almighty Saviour and in the most ardent manner pursue after that Perfection which his grace is leading them to those that cannot satisfie themselves in a bare performance of some External acts of righteousness or an External observance of a Law without them but with the most greedy and fervent ambition pursue after such an acquaintance with his Divine Spirit as may breath an inward life through all the powers of their Souls and beget in them a vital form and soul of Divine goodness These are the spiritual seed of faithful Abraham the sons of the Free-woman and heirs of the promises to whom all are made Yea and Amen in Christ Jesus These are they which shall abide in the house for ever when the sons of the Bond-woman those that are only Arabian proselytes shall be cast out CHAP. VII An Appendix to the foregoing Discourse How the whole business and Undertaking of Christ is eminently available both to give full relief and ease to our Minds and Hearts and also to encourage us to Godliness or a God-like righteousness briefly represented in sundry Particulars FOR the further illustration of some things especially in the latter part of this Discourse it may not be amiss in some Particulars which might easily be enlarged to shew How the Undertaking of Christ that Great Object of Faith is greatly advantageous and available to the giving full relief and ease to our Minds and Hearts and also to the encouraging us to Godliness or a true God-like righteousness In the General therefore we may consider That full and evident assurance is given hereby to the world That God doth indeed seek the saving of that which is lost and men are no longer to make any doubt or scruple of it Now what can we imagine more available to carry on a Designe of Godliness and to rouze dul and languid Souls to an effectual minding of their own Salvation then to have this News sounding in their Ears by men that at the first promulgation thereof durst tell them roundly in the Name of God that God required them every where to repent for that his Kingdome of grace was now apparent and that he was not only willing but it was his gracious designe to save recover lost Sinners who had forsaken his Goodness Particularly That the whole business of Christ is very advantageous for this purpose and highly accommodate thereto may appear thus We are fully assured that God hath this forementioned designe upon lost men because here is one viz. Christ that partakes every way of Humane Nature whom the Divinity magnifies it self in and carries through this world in Humane infirmities and Sufferings to Eternal glory a clear manifestation to the World that God had not cast off Humane Nature but had a real mind to exalt and dignifie it again The way into the Holy of holies or to Eternal happiness is laid as open as may be by Christ in his Doctrine Life and Death in all which we may see with open face what Humane Nature may attain to and how it may by Humility Self-denial and divine Love a Christ-like life rise up above all visible heavens into a state of Immortal glory and bliss Here is a manifestation of Love given enough to thaw all the iciness of mens hearts which Self-love had quite frozen up For here is One who in Humane Nature most heartily every where denying himself is ready to doe any thing for the good of Mankind and at last gives up his life for the same pupose and that according to the good will and pleasure of that Eternal love which so loved the World that he gave this beloved and his only-begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life Whereas every Penitent Sinner carries a sense of Guilt upon his own Conscience is apt to shrink with cold chill fears of offended Majesty and to dread the thoughts of violated Justice He is assured that Christ hath laid down his life and thereby made propitiation atonement for sin That He hath laid down his life for the Redemption of him and so in Christ we have Redemption through his bloud even the forgiveness of sins Thus may the Hearts of all Penitents troubled at first with sense of their own guilt be quieted and fully establisht in a living Faith and Hope in an Eternal goodness seeing how their Sins are remitted through the bloud of Jesus that came to die for them and save them and through his bloud they may have free access unto God Seeing Sin and Guilt are apt continually to beget a jealousie of God's Majesty and Greatness from whom the Sinner finds himself at a vast distance he is made acquainted with a Mediator through whom he may address himself to God without this jealousie or doubting for that this Mediator likewise is one of Humane Nature that is highly beloved and accepted of God he having so highly pleased God by performing his Will in all things Certainly it is very decorous and much for the Ease of a Penitent's mind as it makes also for the disparagement of Sin that our Addresses to God should be through a Mediator The Platonists wisely observ'd that between the Pure Divinity and Impure Sinners as
〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to which this Quère of his seems to refer as if he had said Having kept all God's commandements sure my Good deeds cannot only over-ballance my Evil no but they rather fill both the scales of the Divine ballance I have no Evil deeds to weigh against them what therefore can I want of the end and scope of the Divine Law which is to make men perfect seeing I have guided my whole life from my youth up by the Precepts of it To which our Saviour replies If thou wilt be perfect go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor and thou shalt have treasure in heaven and come and follow me Which words I can neither think to be spoken as Consilium perfectionis in the Papal sense nor yet only as a particular and special Precept but rather by way of Conviction So that the full sense and importance of our Saviours speech seems to be this viz. A mere Conformity of the Outward man to the Law of God is not sufficient to bring a man to Eternal life but the Inward man also must deeply receive in the stamp and impression of the Divine Law so as to be made like to God True Perfection is not consistent with any Terrene loves or Worldly affections This Mundane life and spirit which acts so strongly and impetuously in this lower world must be crucified The Soul must be wholly dissolved from this Earthy body which it is so deeply immerst in while it endeavours to enlarge its sorry Tabernacle upon this material Globe and by a holy abstraction from all things that pinion it to Mortality withdraw it self and retire into a Divine solitude If thou therefore wert in a state of Perfection thou wouldest be able at the first call from God to resigne up all Interest here below to quitt all claim and to dispose of thy self and all worldly enjoyments according to his pleasure without any reluctancy and come and follow me And this I think was the true Scope of our Saviours answer which proved a real Demonstration as it appears in the sequel of the Story that this confident Pharisee had not yet attained to those mortified affections which are requisite in all the Candidates of true Blessedness but only cheated his own Soul with a bare External appearance of Religion which was not truly seated in his Heart and I doubt not but many are ready upon as slight Grounds and with as much confidence to take up his Quere What lack I yet We shall therefore in the first place according to what we promised inquire into some of those false Pretences which men are apt to make to Happiness and shew in four Particulars how Religion is mistaken CHAP. II. An Account of mens Mistakes about Religion in 4 Particulars 1. A Partial obedience to some Particular Precepts The False Spirit of Religion spends it self in some Particulars is confin'd is overswayed by some prevailing Lust. Men of this spirit may by some Book-skill and a zeal about the Externals of Religion loose the sense of their own Guiltiness and of their deficiencies in the Essentials of Godliness and fansy themselves nearly related to God Where the true Spirit of Religion is it informs and actuates the whole man it will not be confin'd but will be absolute within us and not suffer any corrupt Interest to grow by it THE First is A Partial obedience to some Particular Precepts of Gods law That arrogant Pharisee that could lift up a bold face to heaven and thank God he was no Extortioner nor unjust nor guilty of any Publican-sins found it easie to perswade himself that God justified him as much as he did himself It was a vulgar Rule given by the Jewish Doctors which I fear too many live by That men should single out some one Commandement out of Gods law and therein especially exercise themselves that so they might make God their friend by that lest in others they should too much displease him Thus men are content 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to pay God their Decimae and Septimae of their lives too if need be so that they may without fear of sacriledge or purloining as they suppose from him enjoy all the rest to themselves But they are not willing to consecrate their whole lives to him they are afraid lest Religion should incroach too much upon them and too busily invade their own rights and liberties as their Selfish Spirit calls them There are such that it may be think themselves willing that God should have his due so be it he will also let them enjoy their own without any lett or molestation but they are very jealous lest he should incroach too much upon them and are carefull to maintain a Meum and Tuum with Heaven it self and to set bounds to God's prerogative over them lest it should swell too much and grow too mighty for them to maintain their own Priviledges under it They would fain understand themselves to be free-born under the dominion of God himself and therefore ought not to be compelled to yield obedience to any such laws of his as their own private seditious Lusts and Passions will not suffer them to give their consent unto There be such who perswade themselves they are well-affected to God and willing to obey his Commandements but yet think they must not be uncivil to the World nor so base and cowardly as not to maintain their own credit and reputation with a due revenge upon those that seem to impair it or so much forget themselves as not to comply with the guise and fashion of this world so far as it may make for their own emolument or preferment Such as these that are no fast friends to Religion can easily find some Postern-dore to slip out by into this World and while they either doe some constant homage to Heaven in the exercise and performance of some Duties of Religion or abstain from such Vices as the common opinions of men brand with infamie or can fansie themselves to be marked out with some of those Characters which they have learned from Books or Pulpit-discourses to be the Notes of God's Children and justified persons they grow big with Self-conceit and can easily find out some handsome piece of Sophistry and cunning Topick to delude themselves by in indulging some beloved Lust or other They can sometimes beat down the price of other mens religion to inhance the value of their own or it may be by a burning and fiery zeal against the Opinions and deportments of others that are not of their own Sect they may loose the sense of all their own guiltiness The Disciples themselves had almost forgotten the mild and gentle Spirit of Religion in an over-hasty heat calling for Fire down from heaven upon those whom they deemed their Master's enemies Sometimes a Partial spirit in Religion that spends it self only in some Particulars mistakes the fair complexions of Good nature for the
will be as scant and sparing as may be here they will be as strict with God as may be that he may have no more then his due as they think like that Unprofitable servant in the Gospel that because his Master was an austere man reaping where he had not sown and gathering where he had not scattered was content and willing he should have his own again but would not suffer him to have any more This Servile spirit in Religion is alwaies illiberal and needy in the Magnalia Legis the great and weightier matters of Religion and here weighs out Obedience by drams and scruples it never finds it self more shrivell'd and shrunk up then when it is to converse with God like those creatures that are generated of slime and mud the more the Summer-sun shines upon them and the nearer it comes to them the more is all their vital strength dried up and spent away their dreadfull thoughts of God like a cold Eastern wind blasts all their blossoming affections and nips them in the bud these exhaust their native vigour and make them weak and sluggish in all their motions toward God Their Religion is rather a Prison or a piece of Penance to them then any voluntary and free compliance of their Souls with the Divine will and yet because they bear the burden and heat of the day they think when the evening comes they ought to be more liberally rewarded such slavish spirits being ever apt inwardly to conceit that Heaven receives some emolument or other by their hard labours and so becomes indebted to them because they see no true gain and comfort accruing from them to their own Souls and so because they doe God's work and not their own they think they may reasonably expect a fair compensation as having been profitable to him And this I doubt was the first and vulgar foundation of Merit though now the world is ashamed to own it But alas such an ungodlike Religion as this can never be owned by God the Bond-woman and her son must be cast out The Spirit of true Religion is of a more free noble ingenuous and generous nature arising out of the warm beams of the Divine love which first hatch'd it and brought it forth and therefore is it afterwards perpetually bathing it self in that sweetest love that first begot it and is alwaies refresh'd and nourish'd by it This Love casteth out fear fear which hath torment in it and is therefore more apt to chase away Souls once wounded with it from God rather then to allure them to God Such fear of God alwaies carries in it a secret Antipathy against him as being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Plutarch speaks one that is so troublesome that there is no quiet or peaceable living with him Whereas Love by a strong Sympathy draws the Souls of men when it hath once laid hold upon them by its powerfull insinuation into the nearest conjunction that may be with the Divinity it thaws all those frozen affections which a Slavish fear had congealed and lock'd up and makes the Soul most chearfull free and nobly resolved in all its motions after God It was well observed of old by Pythagoras 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we are never so well as when we approach to God when in a way of Religion we make our addresses to God then are our Souls most chearfull True Religion and an Inward acquaintance with God discovers nothing in him but pure and sincere Goodness nothing that might breed the least distaste or disaffection or carry in it any semblance of displeasingness and therefore the Souls of good men are never pinching and sparing in their affections then the Torrent is most full and swells highest when it empties it self into this unbounded Ocean of the Divine Being This makes all the Commandements of God light and easie and far from being grievous There needs no Law to compel a Mind acted by the true spirit of divine love to serve God or to comply with his Will It is the choice of such a Soul to endeavour to conform it self to him and draw from him as much as may be an Imitation of that Goodness and Perfection which it finds in him Such a Christian does not therefore obey his Commands only because it is God's Will he should doe so but because he sees the Law of God to be truly perfect as David speaks his nature being reconciled to God finds it all holy just and good as S. Paul speaks and such a thing as his Soul loves sweeter then the honey or the honey-combe and he makes it his meat and drink to doe the Will of God as our Lord and Saviour did And so I pass to the Fourth and last Particular wherein Religion is sometimes mistaken CHAP. V. The Fourth and last Mistake about Religion When a mere Mechanical and Artificial Religion is taken for that which is a true Impression of Heaven upon the Souls of men and which moves like a new Nature How Religion is by some made a piece of Art and how there may be specious and plausible Imitations of the Internals of Religion as well as of the Externals The Method and Power of Fancy in contriving such Artificial imitations How apt men are in these to deceive both themselves and others The Difference between those that are govern'd in their Religion by Fancy and those that are actuated by the Divine Spirit and in whom Religion is a Living Form That True Religion is no Art but a new Nature Religion discovers it self best in a Serene and clear Temper of Mind in deep Humility Meekness Self-denial Universal love of God and all true Goodness THE Fourth and last Particular wherein men mis-judge themselves is When a mere Mechanical and Artificial Religion is taken for that which is a true Impression of Heaven upon the Souls of men and which moves like an Inward nature True Religion will not stoop to Rules of Art nor be confin'd within the narrow compass thereof No where it is we may cry out with the Greek Philosopher 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God hath there kindled as it were his own Life which will move and act only according to the Laws of Heaven But there are some Mechanical Christians that can frame and fashion out Religion so cunningly in their own Souls by that Book-skill they have got of it that it may many times deceive themselves as if it were a true living thing We often hear that mere Pretenders to Religion may go as far in all the External acts of it as those that are best acquainted with it I doubt not also but many times there may be Artificial imitations drawn of that which only lives in the Souls of good Men by the powerful and wily Magick of exalted Fancies as we read of some Artificers that have made such Images of living creatures wherein they have not only drawn forth the outward shape but seem almost to have copied out the life
too in them Men may make an Imitation as well of those things which we call the Internals of Religion as of the Externals There may be a Semblance of inward Joy in God of Love to him and his Precepts of Dependance upon him and a filial Reverence of him which by the contrivance and power of Fancie may be represented in a Masque upon the Stage of the Animal part of a mans Soul Those Christians that fetch all their Religion from pious Books and Discourses hearing of such and such Signs of Grace and Evidences of Salvation and being taught to believe they must get those that so they may go to Heaven may presently begin to set themselves on work and in an Apish imitation cause their Animal Powers and Passions to represent all these and Fancie being well acquainted with all those several Affections in the Soul that at any time express themselves towards Outward things may by the power it hath over the Passions call them all forth in the same Mode and fashion then conjoin with them some Thoughts of God and Divine things which may serve thus put together for a handsome Artifice of Religion wherein these Mechanicks may much applaud themselves I doubt not but there may be such who to gain credit with themselves and that glorious name of being the Children of God though they know nothing more of it but that it is a Title that sounds well would use their best skill to appear such to themselves so qualified and molded as they are told they must be And as many times Credit and Reputation among men may make them pare off the Ruggedness of their Outward man and polish that so to gain their own good opinion and a reputation with their own Consciences which look more inwardly they may also endeavour to make their Inward man look at some times more smooth and comely and it is no hard matter for such Chamaeleon-like Christians to turn even their insides into whatsoever hue and colour shall best please them and then Narcissus-like to fall in love with themselves a strong and nimble Fancie having such command over the Animal spirits that it can send them forth in full troops which way soever it pleaseth and by their aide call forth and raise any kind of Passion it listeth and when it listeth allay it again as the Poets say Aeolus can doe with the Winds As they say of the force of Imagination that Vis Imaginativa signat foetum so Imagination may stamp any Idea that it finds within itself upon the Passions and turn them as it pleases to what Seal it will set upon them and mold them into any likeness and a man looking down and taking a view of the Plot as it is acted upon the Stage of the Animal powers may like and approve it as a true Platform of Religion Thus may they easily deceive themselves and think their Religion to be some Mighty thing within them that runs quite through them and makes all these transformations within them whereas the Rise and Motion of it may be all in the Animal and Sensitive powers of the Soul and a wise observer of it may see whence it comes and whither it goes it being indeed a thing which is from the earth earthy and not like that true Spirit of Regeneration which comes from Heaven and begets a Divine life in the Souls of good men and is not under the command of any such Charms as these are neither will it move according to those Laws and Times and Measures that we please to set to it but we shall find it manifesting its mighty supremacy over the Highest powers of our Souls Whereas we may truly say of all Mechanicks in Religion and our Mimical Christians that they are not so much actuated and informed by their Religion as they inform that the power of their own Imagination deriving that Force to it which bears it up and guides all its motions and operations And therefore they themselves having the power over it can new mold it as themselves please according to any new Pattern which shall like them better then the former they can furnish this domestick Scene of theirs with any kind of matter which the history of other mens religion may afford them and if need be act over all the Experiences of that sect of men to which they most addict themselves so to the life that they may seem to themselves as well experienc'd Christians as any others and so it may be soar so aloft in Self-conceit as if they had already made their nests amongst the stars and had viewed their own mansion in Heaven What was observed by the Stoick concerning the vulgar sort of men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may as truly be said of this sort of Christians their life is nothing else but a strong Energy of Fancy and Opinion But besides lest their Religion might too grosly discover it self to be nothing else but a piece of Art there may be sometimes such Extraordinary motions stirred up within them which may prevent all their own Thoughts that they may seem to be a true operation of the Divine life when yet all this is nothing else but the Energy of their own Self-love touch'd with some Fleshly apprehensions of Divine things and excited by them There are such things in our Christian Religion that when a Carnal and unhallowed mind takes the Chair and gets the expounding of them may seem very delicious to the fleshly appetites of men Some doctrines and notions of Free-Grace and Justification the magnificent Titles of Sons of God and Heirs of Heaven ever-flowing streams of Joy and Pleasure that blessed Souls shall swim in to all eternity a glorious Paradise in the world to come alway springing up with well-sented and fragrant Beauties a New Jerusalem paved with Gold and bespangled with Stars comprehending in its vast circuit such numberless varieties that a busie curiosity may spend it self about to all eternity I doubt not but that sometimes the most fleshly earthly men that fly their ambition to the pomp of this world may be so ravish'd with the conceits of such things as these that they may seem to be made partakers of the powers of the world to come I doubt not but that they may be as much exalted with them as the Souls of crazed and distracted persons seem to be sometimes when their Fancies play with those quick and nimble Spirits which a distempered frame of Body and unnatural heat in their Heads beget within them Thus may these blazing Comets rise up above the Moon and climbe higher then the Sun which yet because they have no solid consistencie of their own and are of a base and earthly allay will soon vanish and fall down again being only born up by an External force They may seem to themselves to have attain'd higher then those noble Christians that are gently mov'd by the natural force of true Goodness they may seem to
the Epicure by his inferior and Earthly part but by an Immortal Essence and that of him which is from above and so does 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 climbe up to the height of that Immortal principle which is within him The Stoicks thought no man a fit Auditor of their Ethicks till he were dispossess'd of that Opinion That Man was nothing but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as professing to teach men how to live only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they speak Perhaps their Divinity was in some things too rigid but I am sure a Good man acts the best of this their doctrine in the best sense and knows better how to reverence himself without any Self-flattery or admiration then ever any Stoick did He principally looks upon himself as being what he is rather by his Soul then by his Body he values himself by his Soul that Being which hath the greatest affinity with God and so does not seek himself in the fading Vanities of this life nor in those poor and low delights of his Senses as wicked men doe but as the Philosopher doth well express it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and when the Soul thus retires into it self and views its own worth and Excellency it presently finds a chast and Virgin-love stirr'd up within it self towards it self and is from within the more excited and obliged 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Simplicius speaks to mind the preserving of its own dignity and glory To conclude this Particular A Good man endeavours to walk by Eternal and Unchangeable Rules of Reason Reason in a Good man sits in the Throne governs all the Powers of his Soul in a sweet harmony and agreement with it self whereas Wicked men live only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being led up and down by the foolish fires of their own Sensual apprehensions In wicked men there is a Democracy of wild Lusts and Passions which violently hurry the Soul up and down with restless motions All Sin and Wickedness is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Sedition stirred up in the Soul by the Sensitive Powers against Reason It was one of the great Evils that Solomon saw under the Sun Servants on horseback and Princes going as servants upon the ground We may find the Moral of it in every wicked man whose Souls are only as Servants to wait upon their Senses In all such men the whole Course of Nature is turned upside down and the Cardinal points of Motion in this little world are changed to contrary positions But the Motions of a Good man are Methodical Regular and Concentrical to Reason It 's a fond imagination that Religion should extinguish Reason whenas Religion makes it more illustrious and vigorous and they that live most in the exercise of Religion shall find their Reason most enlarged I might adde that Reason in relation to the capacitating of Man for converse with God was thought by some to be the Formal Difference of Man Plutarch after a large debate whether Brutes had not Reason in them as well as Man concludes it negatively upon this ground Because they had no knowledge and sense of the Deity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In Tully's account this Capableness of Religion seem'd to be nothing different from Rationality and therefore he doubts not to give this for the most proper Characterism of Reason That it is Vinculum Dei Hominis And so with them not to name others of the same apprehensions animal Rationale animal capax Religionis seem'd to be of the like importance Reason as enabling and fitting Man to converse with God by knowing him and loving him being a character most unquestionably differencing Man from Brute creatures 3. A Good man one that is informed by True Religion lives above himself and is raised to an intimate Converse with the Divinity He moves in a larger Sphere then his own Being and cannot be content to enjoy himself except he may enjoy God too and himself in God This we shall consider two ways 1. In the Self-denial of Good men they are content and ready to deny themselves for God I mean not that they should deny their own Reason as some would have it for that were to deny a Beam of Divine light and so to deny God in stead of denying our selves for him It is better resolved by some Philosophers in this point that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to follow Reason is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to follow God and again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But by Self-denial I mean the Soul 's quitting all its own interest in it self and an entire Resignation of it self to him as to all points of service and duty and thus the Soul loves it self in God and lives in the possession not so much of its own Being as of the Divinity desiring only to be great in God to glory in his Light and spread it self in his Fulness to be fill'd alwaies by him and to empty it self again into him to receive all from him and to expend all for him and so to live not as its own but as God's The highest ambition of a Good man is to serve the Will of God he takes no pleasure in himself nor in any thing within himself further then he sees a stamp of God upon it Whereas wicked men are imprisoned within the narrow circumference of their own Beings and perpetually frozen into a cold self-Self-love which binds up all the Innate vigour of their Souls that it cannot break forth or express it self in any noble way The Soul in which Religion rules saies as S. Paul did I live and yet not I but Christ liveth in me On the contrary a Wicked man swells in his own thoughts and pleaseth himself more or less with the imagination of a Self-sufficiency The Stoicks seeing they could not raise themselves up to God endeavour to bring down God to their own Model imagining the Deity to be nothing else but some greater kind of Animal and a Wise man to be almost one of his Peers And this is more or less the Genius of Wicked men they will be something in themselves they wrap up themselves in their own Being move up and down in a Sphere of Self-love live a professed Independency upon God and maintain a Meum Tuum between God and themselves It 's the Character only of a Good man to be able to deny and disown himself and to make a full surrender of himself unto God forgetting himself and minding nothing but the Will of his Creator triumphing in nothing more then in his own Nothingness and in the Allness of the Divinity But indeed this his being Nothing is the only way to be all things this his having nothing the truest way of possessing all things 2. As a Good man lives above himself in a way of Self-denial so he lives also above himself as he lives in the Enjoyment of God and this is the very Soul and Essence of True Religion to unite the Soul in
into the Soul of man wasts and eats out the innate vigour of the Soul and casts it into such a deep Lethargy as that it is not able to recover it self But Religion like that Balsamum vitae being once conveighed into the Soul awakens and enlivens it and makes it renew its strength like an Eagle and mount strongly upwards towards Heaven and so uniting the Soul to God the Centre of life and strength it renders it undaunted and invincible Who can tell the inward life and vigour that the Soul may be fill'd with when once it is in conjunction with an Almighty Essence There is a latent and hidden virtue in the Soul of man which then begins to discover it self when the Divine Spirit spreads forth its influences upon it Every thing the more Spiritual it is and the higher and nobler it is in its Being the more active and vigorous it is as the more any thing falls and sinks into Matter the more dull and sluggish unwieldy it is The Platonists were wont to call all things that participated most of Matter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now nothing doth more purifie more sublimate and exalt the Soul then Religion when the Soul suffers God to sit within it as a refiner and purifier of Silver and when it abides the day of his coming for he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers sope Mal. 3. Thus the Soul being purified and spiritualliz'd and changed more and more into the glorious Image of God is able to doe all things out of weakness is made strong gives proof of its Divine vigour and activity and shews it self to be a Noble and Puissant Spirit such as God did at first create it CHAP. V. The Third Property or Effect discovering the Nobleness of Religion viz. That it directs and enables a man to propound to himself the Best End viz. The Glory of God and his own becoming like unto God Low and Particular Ends and Interests both debase and streighten a mans Spirit The Universal Highest and Last End both ennobles and enlarges it A man is such as the End is he aims at The great power the End hath to mold and fashion man into its likeness Religion obliges a man not to seek himself nor to drive a trade for himself but to seek the Glory of God to live wholy to him and guides him steddily and uniformly to the One Chief Good and Last End Men are prone to flatter themselves with a pretended aiming at the Glory of God A more full and distinct explication of what is meant by a mans directing all his actions to the Glory of God What it is truly and really to glorifie God God's seeking his Glory in respect of us is the flowing forth of his Goodness upon us Our seeking the Glory of God is our endeavouring to partake more of God and to resemble him as much as we can in true Holiness and every Divine Vertue That we are not nicely to distinguish between the Glory of God and our own Salvation That Salvation is nothing else for the main but a true Participation of the Divine Nature To love God above our selves is not to love him above the Salvation of our Souls but above our particular Beings and above our sinfull affections c. The Difference between Things that are Good relatively and those that are Good absolutely and Essentially That in our conformity to these God is most glorified and we are made most Happy THE Third Property or Effect whereby Religion discovers its own Excellency is this That it directs and enables a man to propound to himself the Best End and Scope of life viz. The Glory of God the Highest Being and his own assimilation or becoming like unto God That Christian in whom Religion rules powerfully is not so low in his ambitions as to pursue any of the things of this world as his Ultimate End his Soul is too big for earthly designes and interests but understanding himself to come from God he is continually returning to him again It is not worth the while for the Mind of Man to pursue any Perfection lower then its own or to aim at any End more ignoble then it self is There is nothing that more streightens and confines the free-born Soul then the particularity indigency and penury of that End which it pursues when it complies most of all with this lower world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as is well observed by an excellent Philosopher the true Nobleness and Freedome of it is then most disputable and the Title it holds to true Liberty becomes most litigious It never more slides and degenerates from it self then when it becomes enthrall'd to some Particular interest as on the other side it never acts more freely or fully then when it extends it self upon the most Universal End Every thing is so much the more Noble quò longiores habet fines as was well observ'd by Tully As low Ends debase a mans spirit supplant rob it of its birth-right so the Highest and Last End raises and ennobles it and enlarges it into a more Universal and comprehensive Capacity of enjoying that one Unbounded Goodness which is God himself it makes it spread and dilate it self in the Infinite Sphere of the Divine Being and Blessedness it makes it live in the Fulness of Him that fills all in all Every thing is most properly such as the End is which is aim'd at the Mind of man is alwaies shaping it self into a conformity as much as may be to that which is his End and the nearer it draws to it in the atchievement thereof the greater likeness it bears to it There is a Plastick Virtue a Secret Energy issuing forth from that which the Mind propounds to itself as its End to mold and fashion it according to its own Model The Soul is alwaies stamp'd with the same Characters that are engraven upon the End it aims at and while it converses with it and sets it self before it it is turned as Wax to the Seal to use that phrase in Job Man's Soul conceives all its Thoughts and Imaginations before his End as Laban's Ewes did their young before the Rods in the watering troughs He that pursues any worldly interest or earthly thing as his End becomes himself also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Earthly the more the Soul directs it self to God the more it becomes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God-like deriving a print of that glory and beauty upon it self which it converseth with as it is excellently set forth by the Apostle But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image from glory to glory That Spirit of Ambition and Popularity that so violently transports the Minds of men into a pursuit of Vain-glory makes them as vain as that Popular air they live upon the Spirit of this world that draws forth a mans designes after worldly interests makes him
as unstable unconstant tumultuous and perplex'd a thing as the world is On the contrary the Spirit of true Religion steering and directing the Mind and Life to God makes it an Uniform Stable and quiet thing as God himself is it is only true Goodness in the Soul of man guiding it steddily and uniformly towards God directing it and all its actions to the one Last End and Chief Good that can give it a true consistency and composedness within it self All Self-seeking and self-Self-love do but imprison the Soul and confine it to its own home the Mind of a Good man is too Noble too Big for such a Particular life he hath learn'd to despise his own Being in comparison of that Uncreated Beauty and Goodness which is so infinitely transcendent to himself or any created thing he reckons upon his choice and best affections and designes as too choice and precious a treasure to be spent upon such a poor sorry thing as himself or upon any thing else but God himself This was the life of Christ and is in some degree the life of every one that partakes of the Spirit of Christ. Such Christians seek not their own glory but the glory of him that sent them into this world they know they were brought forth into this world not to set up or drive a trade for themselves but to serve the will pleasure of him that made them to finish that work he hath appointed them It were not worth the while to have been born or to live had it been only for such a penurious End as our selves are it is most God-like and best suits with the Spirit of Religion for a Christian to live wholy to God to live the life of God having his own life hid with Christ in God and thus in a sober sense he becomes Deified This indeed is such a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Deification as is not transacted merely upon the Stage of Fancy by Arrogance and Presumption but in the highest Powers of the Soul by a living and quickning Spirit of true Religion there uniting God and the Soul together in the Unity of Affections Will and End I should now pass from this to another Particular but because many are apt to misapprehend the Notion of God's glory and flatter themselves with their pretended and imaginary aiming at the Glory of God I think it may be of good use a little further and more distinctly to unfold the Designe that a Religious mind drives on in directing it self and all its actions to God We are therefore to consider that this doth not consist in some Transient thoughts of God and his Glory as the End we propound to our selves in any Undertakings a man does not direct all his actions to the Glory of God by forming a Conception in his Mind or stirring up a strong Imagination upon any Action That that must be for the Glory of God it is not the thinking of God's glory that is glorifying of him As all other parts of Religion may be apishly acted over by Fancy and Imagination so also may the Internal parts of Religion many times be acted over with much seeming grace by our Fancy and Passions these often love to be drawing the pictures of Religion and use their best arts to render them more beautifull and pleasing But though true Practical Religion derives its force and beauty through all the Lower Powers of a mans Soul yet it hath not its rise nor throne there as Religion consists not in a Form of Words which signifie nothing so neither doth it consist in a Set of Fancies or Internal apprehensions Our Saviour hath best taught what it is to live to God's glory or to glorifie God viz. to be fruitfull in all holiness and to live so as that our lives may shine with his grace spreading it self through our whole man We rather glorifie God by entertaining the Impressions of his Glory upon us then by communicating any kind of Glory to him Then does a Good man become the Tabernacle of God wherein the Divine Shechinah does rest and which the Divine glory fills when the frame of his Mind and Life is wholy according to that Idea and Pattern which he receives from the Mount We best glorifie him when we grow most like to him and we then act most for his glory when a true Spirit of Sanctity Justice Meekness c. runs through all our actions when we so live in the World as becomes those that converse with the great Mind and Wisdom of the whole World with that Almighty Spirit that made supports and governs all things with that Being from whence all good flows and in which there is no Spot Stain or Shadow of Evil and so being captivated and overcome by the sense of the Divine loveliness and goodness endeavour to be like him and conform our selves as much as may be to him When God seeks his own Glory he does not so much endeavour any thing without himself He did not bring this stately fabrick of the Universe into Being that he might for such a Monument of his mighty Power and Beneficence gain some Panegyricks or Applause from a little of that fading breath which he had made Neither was that gracious contrivance of restoring lapsed men to himself a Plot to get himself some Eternal Hallelujahs as if he had so ardently thirsted after the layes of glorified spirits or desired a Quire of Souls to sing forth his praises Neither was it to let the World see how Magnificent he was No it is his own Internal Glory that he most loves and the Communication thereof which he seeks as Plato sometimes speaks of the Divine love it arises not out of Indigency as created love does but out of Fulness and Redundancy it is an overflowing fountain and that love which descends upon created Being is a free Efflux from the Almighty Source of love and it is well pleasing to him that those Creatures which he hath made should partake of it Though God cannot seek his own Glory so as if he might acquire any addition to himself yet he may seek it so as to communicate it out of himself It was a good Maxime of Plato 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 w ch is better stated by * S. James God giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not And by that Glory of his which he loves to impart to his Creatures I understand those stamps and impressions of Wisdom Justice Patience Mercy Love Peace Joy and other Divine gifts which he bestows freely upon the Minds of men And thus God triumphs in his own Glory and takes pleasure in the Communication of it As God's seeking his own Glory in respect of us is most properly the flowing forth of his Goodness upon us so our seeking the Glory of God is most properly our endeavouring a Participation of his Goodness and an earnest uncessant pursuing after Divine perfection When God becomes so great in our eyes
own happiness This is the best temper and composedness of the Soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Plotinus speaks when by a Conjunction with One Chief Good and Last End it is drawn up into an Unity and Consent with it self when all the Faculties of the Soul with their several issues and motions though never so many in themselves like so many lines meet together in one and the same Centre It is not one and the same Goodness that alwaies acts the Faculties of a Wicked man but as many several images and pictures of Goodness as a quick and working Fancy can represent to him which so divide his affections that he is no One thing within himself but tossed hither and thither by the most independent Principles Imaginations that may be But a Good man hath singled out the Supreme Goodness which by an Omnipotent sweetness draws all his affections after it and so makes them all with the greatest complacency conspire together in the pursuit and embraces of it Were there not some Infinite and Self-sufficient Goodness and that perfectly One 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Simplicius doth phrase it Man would be a most miserably-distracted creature As the restless appetite within Man after some Infinite and Soveraign Good without the enjoyment of which it could never be satisfied does commend unto us the Notion of a Deity so the perpetnal distractions and divisions that would arise in the Soul upon a Plurality of Deities may seem no less to evince the Unity of that Deity Were not this Chief Good perfectly One were there any other equal to it man's Soul would hang in aequilibrio equally poised equally desiring the enjoyment of both but moving to neither like a piece of Iron between two Loadstones of equal virtue But when Religion enters into the Soul it charms all its restless rage and violent appetite by discovering to it the Universal Fountain-fulness of One Supreme Almighty Goodness and leading it out of it self into a conjunction therewith it lulls it into the most undisturbed rest and quietness in the lap of Divine enjoyment where it meets with full contentment and rests adequately satisfied in the fruition of the Infinite Uniform and Essential Goodness and Loveliness the true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a noble Philosopher doth well express it The Peace which a Religious Soul is possessed of is such a Peace as passeth all understanding the Joy that it meets with in the ways of Holiness is unspeakable and full of Glory The Delights and Sweetnesses that accompany a Religious life are of a purer and more excellent Nature then the Pleasures of Worldly men The Spirit of a Good man is a more pure and refined thing then to delight it self in the thick mire of Earthly and Sensual pleasures which Carnal men rowle and tumble themselves in with so much greediness Non admittit ad volatum Accipitrem suum in terra pulverulenta as the Arabick Proverb hath it It speaks the degeneration of any Soul whatsoever that it should desire to incorporate it self with any of the gross dreggy sensual delights here below But a Soul purified Religion from all Earthly dreggs delights to mingle it self only with things that are most Divine and Spiritual There is nothing that can beget any pleasure or sweetness but in some harmonical Faculty which hath some kindred and acquaintance with it As it is in the Senses so in every other Faculty there is such a Natural kind of Science as whereby it can single out its own proper Object from every thing else and is better able to define it to it self then the exactest Artist in the world can and when once it hath found it out it presently feels it self so perfectly fitted and matched by it that it dissolves into secret joy and pleasure in the entertainment of it True Delight and Joy is begotten by the conjunction of some discerning Faculty with its proper Object The proper Object for a Mind and Spirit are Divine and Immaterial things with which it hath the greatest affinity and therefore triumphs most in its converse with them as it is well observed by Seneca Hoc habet argumentum divinitatis suae quòd illum divina delectant nec ut alienis interest sed ut suis and when it converseth most with these high and noble Objects it behaves it self most gracefully and lives most becoming it self and it lives also most deliciously nor can it any where else be better provided for or indeed fare so well A Good man disdains to be beholding to the Wit or Art or Industry of any Creature to find him out and bring him in a constant revenue and maintenance for his Joy and Pleasure the language of his Heart is that of the Psalmist Lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon me Religion alwaies carries a sufficient Provision of Joy and Sweetness along with it to maintain it self withall All the ways of Wisdom are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace Religion is no sullen Stoicisme or oppressing Melancholie it is no enthralling tyranny exercised over those noble and vivacious affections of Love and Delight as those men that were never acquainted with the life of it may imagine but it is full of a vigorous and masculine delight and joy such as advanceth and ennobles the Soul and does not weaken or dispirit the life and power of it as Sensual and Earthly joys doe when the Soul unacquainted with Religion is enforc'd to give entertainment to these gross earthly things for the want of enjoyment of some better Good The Spirit of a Good man may justly behave it self with a noble disdain to all Terrene pleasures because it knows where to mend its fare it is the same Almighty and Eternal Goodness which is the Happiness of God and of all Good men The truly-religious Soul affects nothing primarily and fundamentally but God himself his contentment even in the midst of his Worldly employments is in the Sun of the Divine favour that shines upon him this is as the Manna that lies upon the top of all outward blessings which his Spirit gathers up and feeds upon with delight Religion consists not in a toilesome drudgery about some Bodily exercises and External performances nor is it onely the spending of our selves in such attendances upon God and services to him as are onely accommodated to this life though every employment for God is both amiable and honourable But there is something of our Religion that interests us in a present possession of that joy which is unspeakable and glorious which leads us into the Porch of heaven and to the confines of Eternity It sometimes carries up the Soul into a mount of Transfiguration or to the top of Pisgah where it may take a prospect of the promised land and gives it a Map or Scheme of its future inheritance it gives it sometimes some anticipations of
already come into us CHAP. VIII The Sixth Property or Effect discovering the Excellency of Religion viz. That it Spiritualizes Material things and carries up the Souls of Good men from Sensible and Earthly things to things Intellectual and Divine There are lesser and fuller representations of God in the Creatures To converse with God in the Creation and to pass out of the Sensible World into the Intellectual is most effectually taught by Religion Wicked men converse not with God as shining out in the Creatures they converse with them in a Sensual and Unspiritual manner Religion does spiritualize the Creation to Good men it teaches them to look at any Perfections or Excellencies in themselves and others not so much as Theirs or That others but as so many Beams flowing from One and the Same Fountain of Light to love them all in God and God in all the Universal Goodness in a Particular Being A Good man enjoys and delights in whatsoever Good he sees otherwhere as if it were his own he does not fondly love and esteem either himself or others The Divine temper and strain of the antient Philosophy THE Sixth Property or Effect wherein Religion discovers its own Excellency is this That it Spiritualizes Material things and so carries up the Souls of Good men from Earthly things to things Divine from this Sensible World to the Intellectual God made the Universe and all the Creatures contained therein as so many Glasses wherein he might reflect his own Glory He hath copied forth himself in the Creation and in this Outward World we may read the lovely characters of the Divine Goodness Power and Wisdom In some Creatures there are darker representations of God there are the Prints and Footsteps of God but in others there are clearer and fuller representations of the Divinity the Face and Image of God according to that known saying of the Schoolmen Remotiores Similitudines Creaturae ad Deum dicuntur Vestigium propinquiores verò Imago But how to find God here and feelingly to converse with him and being affected with the sense of the Divine Glory shining out upon the Creation how to pass out of the Sensible World into the Intellectual is not so effectually taught by that Philosophy which profess'd it most as by true Religion that which knits and unites God and the Soul together can best teach it how to ascend and descend upon those golden links that unite as it were the World to God That Divine Wisdome that contrived and beautified this glorious Structure can best explain her own Art and carry up the Soul back again in these reflected Beams to him who is the Fountain of them Though Good men all of them are not acquainted with all those Philosophical notions touching the relation between Created and the Uncreated Being yet may they easily find every Creature pointing out to that Being whose image and superscription it bears and climb up from those darker resemblances of the Divine Wisdome and Goodness shining out in different degrees upon several Creatures 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Antients speak till they sweetly repose themselves in the bosom of the Divinity and while they are thus conversing with this lower World and are viewing the invisible things of God in the things that are made in this visible and outward Creation they find God many times secretly flowing into their Souls and leading them silently out of the Court of the Temple into the Holy Place But it is otherwise with Wicked men they dwell perpetually upon the dark side of the Creatures and converse with these things only in a gross sensual earthly and unspiritual manner they are so encompass'd with the thick and foggy mist of their own Corruptions that they cannot see God there where he is most visible the Light shineth in darkness but darkness comprehends it not their Souls are so deeply sunk into that House of Clay which they carry about with them that were there nothing of Body or bulky Matter before them they could find nothing to exercise themselves about But Religion where it is in truth and in power renews the very Spirit of our Minds and doth in a manner Spiritualize this outward Creation to us and doth in a more excellent way perform that which the Peripateticks are wont to affirm of their Intellectus agens in purging Bodily and Material things from the feculency and dregs of Matter and separating them from those circumstantiating and streightning conditions of Time and Place and the like and teaches the Soul to look at those Perfections which it finds here below not so much as the Perfections of This or That Body as they adorn This or That particular Being but as they are so many Rays issuing forth from that First and Essential Perfection in which they all meet and embrace one another in the most close friendship Every Particular Good is a Blossom of the First Goodness every created Excellency is a Beam descending from the Father of lights and should we separate all these Particularities from God all affection spent upon them would be unchast and their embraces adulterous We should love all things in God and God in all things because he is All in all the Beginning and Original of Being the perfect Idea of their Goodness and the End of their Motion It is nothing but a thick mist of Pride and self-Self-love that hinders mens eyes from beholding that Sun which both enlightens them and all things else But when true Religion begins once to dawn upon mens Souls and with its shining light chases away their black Night of Ignorance then they behold themselves and all things else enlightned though in a different way by one and the same Sun and all the Powers of their Souls fall down before God and ascribe all glory to him Now it is that a Good man is no more solicitous whether This or That good thing be Mine or whether My perfections exceed the measure of This or That particular Creature for whatsoever Good he beholds any where he enjoys and delights in it as much as if it were his own and whatever he beholds in himself he looks not upon it as his Property but as a Common good for all these Beams come from one and the same Fountain and Ocean of light in whom he loves them all with an Universal love when his affections run along the stream of any created excellencies whether his own or any ones else yet they stay not here but run on till they fall into the Ocean they do not settle into a fond love and admiration either of himself or any others Excellencies but he owns them as so many Pure Effluxes and Emanations from God and in a Particular Being loves the Universal Goodness Si sciretur à me Veritas sciretur etiam me illud non esse aut illud non esse meum nec à me Thus may a Good man walk up and down the World as in a Garden of Spices
correspondence and converse with the Devil The Fears and Horrors which infest both the Apostate Spirits and Wicked men The weakness of the Devil's kingdom Christ's success against it IT Hath been an antient Tradition received by the Gentile Philosophers That there are Two main Principles that spend and spread their influence through the whole Universe The one they call'd The Principle of Good the other they call'd The Principle of Evil and that these Two maintain a continual contest and enmity the one with the other The Principle of Goodness which is nothing else but God himself who derived himself in clear and lovely stamps and impressions of Beauty and Goodness through the whole Creation endeavours still to assimilate and unite it to himself And on the other side The Principle of Evil the Prince of darkness having once stained the Original beauty and glory of the Divine workmanship is continually striving to mold and shape it more and more into his own likeness And as there is such a perpetual and active Enmity between God and the Evil Spirit so whatsoever is from God is perpetually opposing and warring against that which arises from the Devil The Divine Goodness hath put enmity between whatsoever is born of him or flowes forth from it self and the Seed of the Serpent As at the beginning he divided between the Night and the Day between Light and Darkness so that they can never intermingle or comply one with another or be reconciled one to the other so neither can those Beams of Divine light and love which descend from God upon the Souls of men be ever reconciled to those foul and filthy Mists of Sin and Darkness which ascend out of the bottomless pit of Hell and Death That Spirit is not from God who is the Father of lights and in whom there is no darkness as the Apostle speaks which endeavours to compound with Hell and to accommodate between God and the Devil God himself hath set the bounds to darkness and the shadow of death Divine Truth and Goodness cannot contract themselves with any thing that is from Hell or espouse themselves to any Brat of darkness as it was set forth in the Emblem under the Old Law where none of the Holy seed might marry with the people of any strange God Though that Rule Touch not tast not handle not be abolished in the Symbolical rites yet it hath an immutable Mystery in it not subject to the laws or changes of Time He that will entertain any correspondence with the Devil or receive upon his Soul his Image or the number of his name must first devest and strip himself of all that which hath any alliance to God or true Goodness within him He must transform his Mind into the true likeness and similitude of those foul Fiends of darkness and abandon all relation to the Highest and Supremest Good And yet though some men endeavour to doe this and to smother all those Impressions of Light and Reason which God hath folded up in every mans Being and destroy all that which is from God within them that so they may reconcile themselves to Sin and Hell yet can they never make any just peace with them There is no peace to the wicked but they are like the troubled Sea when it cannot rest whose waters cast up mire and dirt Those Evil spirits are alwaies turbulent and restless and though they maintain continually a War with God and his kingdom yet are they alwaies making disquietings and disturbances in their own kingdom and the more they contest with God and are deprived of him the more full are they of horror and tumultuous commotions within Nothing can stand firm and sure nothing can have any true and quiet establishment that hath not the Everlasting arms of true Goodness under it to support it And as those that deliver over themselves most to the Devil's pleasure and devote themselves to his service cannot doe it without a secret inward Antipathy against him or dreadful thoughts of him so neither can those impure spirits stand before the Divine glory but being filled with trembling and horror continually endeavour to hide themselves from it and flee away before it as the Darkness flies away before the Light And according as God hath in any Places in any Ages of the world made any manifestations of himself to men so have those Evil spirits been vanquished and forced to quit their former Territories as is especially very observable in the ceasing of all the Graecian Oracles soon after the Gospel was promulged in those parts when those desolate spirits with horrid and dismal groans resigned up their habitations as Plutarch hath recorded of them Our Saviour hath found by good experience how weak a thing the Devil's kingdome is when he spoiled all the Principalities and Powers of darkness and made a shew of them openly triumphing over them in or by it that is his Crosse as the Apostle speaks and if we will resolutely follow the Captain of our salvation and fight under his banner as good souldiers of Jesus Christ we have full security given us for the same successe Resist the Devil and he will flee from you CHAP. II. The First observable That the Devil is continually busie with us The Devil consider'd under a double notion 1. As an Apostate Spirit which fell from God The great danger of the Devil's activity not onely when he presents himself in some corporeal shape but when he is unseen and appears not The weakness and folly of those who are afraid of him onely when he appears embodyed That the Good Spirit of God is active for the Good of Souls How regardless men are of the gentle motions of the Divine Spirit and how unwatchfull and secure under the Suggestions of the Evil Spirit How we may discover the Devil in his Stratagems and under his several disguises and appearances IN these words Resist the Devil and he will flee from you we shall take notice First of what is evidently implied viz. That the Devil is continually busy with us This may be considered under a double notion 1. By the Devil we are to understand that Apostate Spirit which fell from God and is always designing to hale down others from God also The old Dragon mentioned in the Revelation with his tail drew down the third part of the Stars of heaven and cast them to the Earth As true Goodness is not content to be happy alone so neither can Sin and Wickedness be content to be miserable alone The Evil Spirit told God himself what his imployment was viz. To goe to and fro in the earth and to walk up and down in it he is always walking up and down through dry places where no Divine influences fall to water it as our Saviour speaks seeking rest though always restlesse The Philosophy of the Antients hath observed That every man that comes into this world hath a good and an evil Genius attending upon him
them except they wilfully and shamefully deliver over their strength into the Enemies hand It is indeed nothing else but Hell it self in the Souls of men that gives the Devil such free entertainment there the Wills of men stamped with a Diabolicall form and bearing the Devil's image and inscription upon them declare his right over them Men are therefore so much captivated by him because they voluntarily take his yoke upon them Could we or would we resist Sin and Satan they could not hurt us Every thing is weak and impotent according to the distance it stands from God who is the onely Fountain of life and power and therefore it was well resolved by the Philosopher 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sin in it self is a weak and impotent thing and proceeds from weakness it consists not properly in any native power and strength which it hath within it self but in an impotency and privation of all true Being and Perfection and therefore wheresoever any thing of God appears it will destroy it He that is born of God shall overcome the World the Devil and Sin for the seed of God remaineth in him Let us endeavour to get our Minds enlightned with Divine Truth clear and Practical Truth let us earnestly endeavour after a true participation of the divine nature and then shall we find Hell and Death to slee alway before us Let us not impute the fruits of our own sluggishness to the power of the Evil spirit without or to God's neglecting of us Say not Who shall stand against those mighty Giants No arme thy self with the mind of Christ a fixt resolution to serve the will and pleasure of the Almighty and then fear not what Sin and Hell can doe against thee Open thy windows thou Sluggard and let in the beams of Divine light that are there waiting upon thee till thou awake out of thy Slothfulness then shalt thou find the shadows of the night dispell'd and scattered and the warm beams of Light and Love enfolding of thee which the higher they arise upon the Horizon of thy Soul the more fully they will display their native strength and beauty upon thee transforming thee more more from darkness to light from the similitude of Satan into a participation of the Divine image The Devil is not to be kept off from us by setting any Spell about us or driven away from us by any Magical charms We need not goe and beat the air to drive away those Evil spirits from about us as Herodotus reports the Caunians once to have beaten out the strange Gods from amongst them but let us turn within our selves and beat down that Pride and Passion those Holds of Satan there which are therefore strong because we oppose them weakly Sin is nothing else but a degeneration from true Goodness conceived by a dark and cloudy Understanding and brought forth by a corrupt Will it hath no consistency in it self or foundation of its own to support it What the Jews have observed of Errour is true of all Sin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mendacium non habet pedes it hath no feet no Basis of its own to subsist and rest it self upon Let us withdraw our Will and Affections from it and it will soon fall into nothing It was the fond Errour of the Manichees That there was some solid Principium mali which having an Eternal existence of its own had also a mighty and uncontrollable power from within it self whereby it could forcibly enter and penetrate into the Souls of men and seating it self there by some hidden influences irresistablie incline and inforce them to evil which Errour I wish were as well confuted by the lives and practices of men as it hath been by the Writings both of Fathers and Philosophers But it 's too apparent that men maintain that Lie by a compliance with the Diabolical powers We ourselves uphold that kingdome of darkness which else would tumble down and slide into that nothing from whence it came All Truth and Goodness are of an Eternal nature they are One and Unchangeable subsisting upon the strength of Omnipotency But all Sin and Vice is our own creature we onely give life to them which indeed are our death and would soon wither and fade away did we substract our concurrence from them Secondly We have a further Ground for our expectation of Victory in all contests with Sin and Satan from the powerful assistance of God himself who is never wanting to those that seek after him and never fails those that engage in his quarrels While we strive against Sin we may safely expect that the Divinity it self will strive with us and derive that strength and power into us that shall at last make us more then Conquerors God hath not forsaken the earth but as his Almightyessence runs through all things sustaining and upholding the frame of the whole Universe so more especially does it bear up in its Almighty armes those things that are more nearly related to himself always cherishing them with his own Goodness Wheresoever God beholds any breathings after himself he gives life to them as those which are his own breath in them As he who projects wickedness shall be sure to find Satan standing at his right hand ready to assist him in it so he that pursues after God and Holiness shall find God nearer to him then he is to himself in the free and liberal communications of himself to him He that goes out in God's battels fighting under our Saviour's banner may look upwards and opening his eyes may see the mountains full of horses and chariots of fire round about him God hath not so much delight in the death and destruction of men as to see them strugling and contending for life and himself stand by as a looker on No but with the most tender and fatherly compassions his bowels yern over them and his Almighty arme is stretched forth for them and in his strength they shall prevail they shall be born up as upon Eagles wings they shall walk in the might of his strength who is able to save and not faint Where there is any serious and sober Resolution against Sin any reall motion towards God there is the blessing of Heaven in it he that planted it will also water it and make it to bud and blossome and bring forth fruit Wherefore to shut up this Discourse by way of Application Let us make use of this as a further Argument to enforce the Apostles Exhortation upon our selves Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might and as the Psalmist speaks of his Enemies so let us say of our spiritual Enemies They compass me about they compass me in on every side but in the name of the Lord I will destroy them Let us set our selves with all our might to mortify the old man to crucify all the affections of the Flesh Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily
he burned it put him in a kind of fever and all this was easie to him because he had the bowels of a Father Such another was S. John who hath every where in his mouth My little children A good old Father he was who breathed forth nothing but Love to man And it need be no offence if I add there was a Socrates in Athens who had so much of this kind of Spirit in him that he stiled himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Servant of love and professed that he knew nothing but how to love He would often acknowledge himself to be an Ignoramus in all those things whereinto their wise men used to enquire and that he could say nothing in those Controversies that were agitated about the Gods and such like as Max. Tyrius expresly tells us but he durst not deny himself to have skill in that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Art of love wherein he was continually busied and imploied instructing of their Youth amending of their Manners and making them truely vertuous which thing the ungrateful wretches of the City called corrupting of their children And truly it is very often the Lot of these Fathers which I am speaking of who nourish up Youth in true piety and vertue to be esteemed by many the corrupters of the fountain Pestes rather then Patres of the places where they live But they fare no worse then Elijah did who was accounted the Troubler of Israel though he was the Chariot and Horsemen thereof a man so useful that they could not tell how to want him though they knew not how to value him And that is the third thing to which I am to proceed Only let me intreat you that you would think within yourselves in my passage Such an one was the party deceased 3. We have here observable the Usefulness of Elijah he was not only a Father but the Chariot and Horsemen of Israel the Security and Safeguard of the place where he was He calls him by this name in an allusion to the Chariot wherein he was fetched to heaven and would express by this form of speech the good service he did for Israel He was in stead of an Army to them like David worth ten thousand of the people He alone was able to fight with all their enemies and by his force to break all their Legions in pieces And indeed all Good men especially men of extraordinary Wisdome and Godliness such as I have been speaking of are the Guard and Defence of the towns where they reside yea of the Country whereof they are Members They are the Tutelar Angels of a Nation men that can doe more by their prayers and tears their vertuous and holy actions then an host of men wherein none is of less valour then Samson or the fam'd Hercules and Achilles How had it been with Israel had it not been for Moses the meekest man on earth and yet terrible as an army with banners And in what a case had Samaria often been if it had not been for this Elisha the son of Elijah who was encompassed about with Chariots and horses of fire to fight at his command What if I say of such men in the Platonists phrase That they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Keepers of the world that preserve it from being made like to Sodom and Gomorrah And if there had been but Ten of these holy Champions there they had shielded their heads from the arrows of the Almighty and kept the showers of fire and brimstone from raining upon them Good men are the Life-guard of the World next to God and good Angels they are the Walls and Bulwarks of a nation for by their strength they have power with God as it is said of Jacob. And so the Chaldee Paraphrast reads these words of my Text Thou wast better to Israel by thy prayers then Chariot and Horsemen They are the Glory of the world and without them it would be but a rude rabble a Beast with many heads and no brains a mere Chaos and Confusion And it is by reason of them that it doth not run into such disorder as a company of Children would doe without their Father or as a multitude of mad Souldiers without their skilful Leader and Commander And so I have briefly set before you what Elijah was what those who are Eminent for Godliness are what every good man ought in some measure to be and what you shall shortly hear our deceased Father was in an high degree Men of worth and great renown 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a good sense men of Name men that may be taken notice of in the world that shine by their Wisdome Justice and Goodness that chear the world by their Love and Fatherly care of all that heartily endeavour to doe good and would not for a world see men perish if they can help it in a word men that are as the Soul of the world without whom it would be a stinking and unsufferable place 2. Now let us look a while upon Elisha and see what he thought of such a man And 1. We meet with his great Affections expressed in the very Form of the Words My Father my Father Methinks I feel within my self with what pure dear and ardent love he spake these words what a glowing fire there was in his breast when he thought of his spiritual Father He burnt in love to him as if some spark had fallen from Elijah's fiery Chariot into his Heart He was all in a desire as if the Angels that fetcht his Father had lent him a waft of their wings whereby he strove to fly with him to Heaven There is not a child that can cry more after the breasts that give it suck and the arms of her that carried it in her wombe then he calls and cries after his Father O my Father my Father where shall I find my Father what will become of me without my Father A tender love and kindness there is to be in our Hearts to all men of what nature or nation soever no man ought to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a lover of himself but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a lover of mankind Yet a more singular cleaving of Souls there should be to those that are good but the most unspeakable and greatest adhaesion and union to those by whom we have profited in Wisdome and Godliness and whose lips have dropped the words of life into our Minds For as Solomon hath it There is Gold and a multitude of rubies but the lips of knowledge are a pretious Jewel We should stand affected to them as the Galatians to S. Paul who would have pull'd out their very eyes and given them unto him They ought to be to us oculis chariores as the ordinary phrase is dearer then our eyes by which speech God expresses his extraordinary love to his people Israel saying that he kept them as the apple of his eye And indeed it
can scarce be otherwise but that there should be an unknown love between such persons there being such a secret fascination in frequent converse and familiarity as entices a mans Soul and Heart out of himself Those Precepts which we imbibe from anothers mouth naturally call forth a strong affection to flow from us to him and he who inflames our Souls with love to God will certainly enkindle a subordinate love within us to himself The words of Wisdome smite an ingenuous Soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as with a dart if I may use Greg. Thaumaturgus his expression concerning Origen's Discourses and cannot but wound it both with a love to Wisdom him that shoots those piercing arrows into its Heart They bind a tractable Soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it werein indissoluble necessities so that it cannot but love those words kiss the mouth also from whence they flow unto it A teachable Mind will hang about a wise mans neck and thereby they come to cleave and cling as fast together as the Soul of Jonathan did unto the Soul of David So the aforesaid Gregory speaks of himself and Origen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. This David meaning Origen hath intangled and bound up my Soul in such necessary fetters of Love he hath so tyed and even knit me to him that if I would be disengaged I cannot quit my self No 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though we depart out of this world our love cannot die for I love him even as my own Soul and so my affection must remain for ever The words of the wise saith Solomon are as goads and as nails fastned by the Masters of the Assemblies Eccles. 12. 11. If a Master fix his Doctrine in his Scholars mind he nailes himself likewise with the same stroke quasi trabali clavo by a pin as strong as a beam to his Scholars heart They mingle Souls as they doe Notions and mutually pass into each other 2. We have here likewise the Sense which Elisha had of his great loss For these Words are Expressions of Sorrow and Lamentation as appears by the words following And he took hold of his own clothes and rent them in pieces and also from chap. 13. 14. where we find Joash weeping over this Elisha and saying these very words of my Text O my Father my Father the chariot of Israel and the Horsemen thereof And methinks I see Elisha himself here bedewing his cheeks with tears and hear these words sob'd and sighed out of his Heart having lost his dear Father one that took such special care of him whilst he was in the world Methinks I see his Heart rent as well as his Garments and there I see Elijah graven in letters as great as was his Love How could he look on himself and not lament to think that he had lost his Head how could he behold Israel unguarded and not throw off his own clothes as a token of his Sorrow It is said of Jehoiakim Jer. 22. 18. That they shall not lament for him saying Ah my Brother or ah my Sister they shall not lament for him saying Ah Lord or ah his Glory which both shews that this is a Form of speech to denote sorrow and that it is an Honour wicked men shall want that none shall bemoan their Departure But the Just shall be had in everlasting remembrance they shall die desired and those who can value them will not let them pass away in silence and with dry eyes No Tears are spent so well as for the want of God and a good Friend or a Good man especially such a one as i before described And indeed who can think of his gracious lipps his profitable and delightful converse his cordial love without a sigh and a tear without saying Ah my Father Ah his Glory No man will be sooner miss'd then such an one as he Ten thousand others may steal out of the world and no body scarce mind or inquire after them but let Elijah goe away and you shall have fifty men goe three days to seek him that if it be possible they may enjoy his company a while longer We find that Jesus himself wept for his friend Lazarus Joh. 11. 35. at which the Jews said Behold how he loved him Two Souls joined together in cordial love cannot part without a groan especially a Son and his Father a Scholar and his Master The Child cannot hold it self from crying when it wants the Breast that used to feed it nor can a Soul thirsty of knowledg but be pained when the Fountain is stop'd that used to quench it There are not so many of these men in the world but their loss will be as soon felt as the want of a stake in a rotten hedg or of a Buttress against a bowing wall He who knows one to have been a Light in the world and a Lamp unto him will surely be melancholy and sad when he sees that Light goe out and himself left in the dark without that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those chearful and beloved beams which used to shine upon him to illuminate and warm his Soul with a true knowledg and love of all real goodness 3. We may further take notice of the Honourable thoughts he had of Elijah of the Reverence Worship and Respect which he gave unto him For so we may look upon these Words as an Expression of the high Esteem he had of him and Regard he bare to him even after he was gone from this Earth and could do no more kindnesses for him Elisha who had been a minister to him when he was below and used to powre water upon his hands could not but have very reverend thoughts toward him now that the Angels came to wait upon him and in Flames of fire to carry him up above He could not but honour him as his Elder and Father as his Leader and Commander as the General of the Sons of the Prophets as the very Host and Army of Israel And indeed the Souls of those men that are as full of God as the name of Elijah is which includes Two if not Three of the Divine names in it cannot but draw our eyes toward them but then they so dazzle us with their lustre and brightness they strike us into such amazement at their Perfections that the weakness of mans nature hath been apt to give no less then Divine veneration to such persons It had not been lawful I know to have worshipped Elijah though he had been an Angel but yet methinks I see Elisha bowing down with some respect to the very Mantle which fel from his Master and taking it up as a precious Relique of so holy a man And I could very well pass some Civility upon the Gown in which this Holy man departed used for to walk out of the great honour which I bear to him There was so much of Divinity enshrined in this Excellent man's Soul that it made every thing about him
so much good among all my Books by a whole days plodding in a Study as by an Houres discourse I have got with him For he was not a Library lock'd up nor a Book clasped but stood open for any to converse withall that had a mind to learn Yea he was a Fountain running over labouring to doe good to those who perhaps had no mind to receive it None more free and communicative then he was to such as desired to discourse with him nor would he grudge to be taken off from his studies upon such an occasion It may be truely said of him That a man might alwaies come Better from him and his mouth could drop Sentences as easily as an ordinary man's could speak Sense And he was no less happy in expressing his Mind then in conceiving wherein he seems to have excelled the famous Philosopher Plotin of whom Porphyry tells us that he was something careless of his words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but was wholy taken up into his Mind He of whom we now speak had such a copia verborum a plenty of words and those so full pregnant and significant join'd with such an active Phansy as is very rarely to be found in the company of such a deep Understanding and Judgment as dwelt in him I have done with his Learning when I have told you That as he look'd upon Honours Riches and the eagerly-pursued things of this world as Vanities so did he look upon this also as a piece though a more excellent piece of Vanity as he was wont to phrase it if compared with the higher and more divine accomplishments of the Soul For he did not care to value himself by any of those things which were of a perishing nature which should fail and cease and vanish away but only by those things which were more solid and substantial of a Divine and Immortal nature which he might carry out of the world with him to which my Discourse shall not be long before it descend He was of very singular Wisdom and great Prudence of admirable skill and readiness in the managery of affairs which I make an account is an Imitation of that Providence of God that governs the World His Learning was so concocted that it lay not as an Idle notion in his Head but made him fit for any imploiment He was very full and clear in all his Resolutions at any debates a most wise Counseller in any difficulties and streights dextrous in untying any knot of great judgment in satisfying any scruple or doubt even in matters of Religion He was one that soon saw into the depth of any business that was before him and look'd it quite through that would presently turn it over and over in his Mind and see it on all sides and he understood things so well at the First sight that he did not often need any second thoughts but usually stood to the present resolution and determination of his Mind And adde to this his known Integrity Uprightness and Faithfulness his strong and lively his waking and truly-tender Conscience which joined with the former things I spoke of made him more then a Man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as men now goe He was as one of the Ancients speaks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Exemplar of true Christian Philosophy and Vertue and as it were the spiritual Rule Line and Square thereof of so poized and even a life that by his Wisdom and Conscience were it not that every man should know for himself one might live almost at a venture walking blindfold through the world and not miscarry He had incorporated shall I say or insoul'd all Principles of Justice and Righteousness and made them one with himself So that I may say of him in Antoninus his phrase he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dip'd into Justice as it were over head and eares he had not a slight superficial tincture but was dyed and coloured quite through with it so that wheresoever he had a Soul there was Justice and Righteousness They who knew him very well know the truth of all this And I am perswaded he did as heartily and cordially as eagerly and earnestly doe what appeared to be Just and Right without any Self-respect or particular reflections as any man living Methinks I see how earnest he would be in a good matter which appeared to be Reasonable and Just as though Justice her self had been in him looking out at his Eyes and speaking at his Mouth It was a Vertue indeed that he had a great affection unto and which he was very zealous to maintain in whose quarrel he was in danger to be angry and sometimes to break forth into a short passion But he was alwaies very urgent upon us that by the Grace of God and the help of the mighty Spirit of Jesus Christ working in us we would endeavour to purge out the corruption of our Natures and to crucifie the Flesh with all the affections and lusts thereof yea to subdue as much as it is possible even the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in our Souls those first motions that are without our consent and to labour after Purity of heart that so we might see God For his endeavour was not only to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 out of the pollutions of the world through lust but as Plotin speaks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to come to the true likeness of God and his Son or in the Apostles language to be partaker of the Divine nature And here now what words shall I use What shall I say of his Love None that knew him well but might see in him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Nazianzen I think speaks Love bubling and springing up in his Soul and flowing out to all and that Love unfained without guile hypocrisie or dissimulation I cannot tell you how his Soul was Universaliz'd how tenderly he embraced all God's creatures in his arms more especially Men and principally those in whom he beheld the Image of his heavenly Father There one might have seen running 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and he would ever have emptied his Soul into theirs Let any that were throughly acquainted with him say if I lie And truly my Happiness is that I have such a subject to exercise my young and weak Oratory upon as will admit of little Hyperbole His Patience was no less admirable then his Love under a lingering and tedious disease wherein he never murmured nor complained but rested quietly satisfied in the Infinite Unbounded Goodness and Tenderness of his Father and the Commiserations of Jesus Christ our merciful High Priest who can be touched with a feeling of our infirmities He still resolved with Job Though he kill me yet will I trust in him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Nazianzen in an Epistle to Philagrius O bravely done most noble Soul who canst play the Philosopher the Christian in thy sickness and sufferings who canst not only talk but doe not only doe but suffer
these Three our Respect Affection and Sense of our loss His name is most worthy to be had in a more especial remembrance and highly deserves to be rank'd among our Benefactors he having indowed our Library with all the Books that he had and we wanted and I have reason to believe that if he had not been so suddenly surprised by those forgetful Lethargick fits he intended to bestow more upon us then his Books which yet were both many and choise ones being above six hundred for number and many of them large and costly and for the matter of them many Hebrew Books besides some Arabick many Mathematick Books many Books of History both Ancient and Modern as also of Philosophy and Philology both Sacred and Profane And whensoever we commemorate his Love unto us let it be with some Encomium let us mourn quòd talem amiserimus that we are deprived of such a person but let us rejoice and give thanks to God quòd talem habuerimus that we ever had such an one who hath done us so much good they are the words of S. Hierom to Nepotian with a little alteration But let me tell you in conclusion of all that herein would be shown our greatest Love and Affection which we bare to him this would be the greatest Honour of him if we would but express his life in ours that others might say when they behold us There walks at least a shadow of Mr. Smith And O that I might beg with Elisha a double portion among those that I desire should share in the gifts and graces of this Elijah This is the highest of my ambition that many might but possess the riches that lodg'd in this one They disgrace their Master who have not skill in that which they say he professed but they who tread in his steps and excell in his Art shine back again upon him from whom first they received their light Let me seriously therefore exhort every one of us to imitate this Master in Israel Imitate him in his Industry if not in his Learning shake off all laziness and sloth do not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 embody and enervate your Souls by Idleness and base neglect do not emasculate them and turn them into flesh by drowsiness or vain pleasures Imitate his Temperance his Patience his Fortitude his Candour and Ingenuity his Holiness and Righteousness his Faith and Love his Charity and Humility his Self-denial and true Self-resignation to the will of God in a word all those Christian Vertues which lived in him let them live in us for ever Let us die to the world as he did before we die let us separate our Souls from our Bodies and all bodily things before the time of our departure and separation come Let us take an especial heed lest we doe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as most men doe lest we suffer this lower and earthly world lest we be drawn forcibly into its embraces and so held from rising aloft but let us turn up our Minds continually to Heaven and earnestly desire pati Deum to suffer God to be mightily and strongly attracted by him from all Earthy and Sensible delights to an admiration and love of his Everlasting Beauty and Goodness Let us labour to be so well acquainted with Him and all things of the Higher world and so much disingaged in our Affections from this and all that is in it that when we come to go out of this world we may never look back and say O what goodly things do I leave what a brave world am I snatched from would I might but live a little longer there Let us get our Hearts so crucified to the world that it may be an easie thing to us to shake hands with and bid a farwell to our Friends the dearest things we have our Lands Houses Goods and whatsoever is valuable in our eyes Let us use the world as though we used it not let us dye daily as our dear Friend did and so it was easie to him to dye at last Dye did I say shall I use that word or rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is flown away as Nazianzen speaks his Soul hath got loose and now feels her wings or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he hath changed his habitation he is gone into the other world as Abraam went out of Ur into Canaan or as the same Father saies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he hath taken his journey into another countrie a little before his Body He hath left his Body behind him awhile to take a sleep in the dust when it awakes at the Resurrection it shall follow also to the same place Then shall it be made a Spiritual body then shall it have wings given to it also and be lovingly married again to the Soul never any more to suffer any separation And at that time we shall all meet with our dear Father and Friend again who now are here remaining crying out O my Father my father c. Then shall all tears be wiped away from our eyes and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying neither shall there be any more pain Then we shall not need such a Light as he was for there is no night there and they need no candle neither light of the Sun for the Lord God giveth them light and they shall reign for ever and ever Amen Of this Edition Of the Author * Act. 7. 22. * Num. 12. 3. * Heb. 11. 24 c. * Rom. 4. Heb. 11. Jam. 2. * De Verbis Resipuit Noe. * Num. 12. 8. * Exod. 33. 11. * Ephes. 6. 6 7. * Rom. 5. 7. * Ephes. 6. Mat. ch 5 6 7. * Act. 26. 29. * Rom. 2 29. * Rom. 2. 29. * Luk. 16. 15. * Acts 7. 21 22. * Hebr. 11. * Psal. 16. Of the Discourses Page 347. Matth. 23. * Heb. 5. Rom. 8. Col. 3. 2 Tim. 3. * Titus 3. 3. Gal. 4. * This was of old confess'd and boasted of by Lucretius more then once in his Poems * Matthew 17. See also Acts 3. 22. Deut. 18. 15. 1 Tim. 1. * Page 280. 1 Kings 4. 29. * Psal. 51. 12. * 1 Cor. â—4 3 9. Matthew 23. 1 Thess. 5. * Ch. 4. 13. Ver. 8 9. Plotin En. 1. l. 6. â— Pet. â— * Eth. Nicom l. 1. 1. 2. 3. 4. * For so that word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 must here signifie if indeed it be not corrupted and to be read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a word which some other Lexicographers use in this case * as Lusian in his De Sacrificiis speaks too truly though it may be too profanely * Lib. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Satyr 6. Lib. 1. Lib. 5. * Lib. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sic Edit Complut * Cap. 38. * Chap. 23. 8. Psal. 4. 7. * Lucret. lib. 3. * Lib. 1. Lib. â— * Lib. 4. de placitis Philosophorum * Enn. 4. l.