stamp of in Nature no less than there is of Justice which all or most men agree to however each of them is become much obliterate But now since Charity is so much the chief spring and principle of Action it 's fit it should be so directed and assisted that it may either be preferr'd to its Regency where it is any ways obstructed or be preserved in it And the means hereunto will be the better discovered if it be considered that there is a certain connexion betwixt the Graces and Virtues of the Soul and a mutual light and assistance which they lend one to the other in their operation and therefore though Love doth appear to be the principal yet it is not alone in its motion but what doth depend upon and owe much of its vigour to the concurrence of the rest As for instance Humility doth not a little administer thereunto as it ariseth from a prospect into our own weakness and insufficiency and as there is somewhat greater and more perfect than our selves in the World so that shews our Love should be accordingly directed and that God who is the Author of our Being and preservation and is infinitely perfect in himself should therefore be loved by us with all the heart and all the Soul But because man may be lowly and humble and think meanly of himself and yet not presently find a ready rule for drawing his Lines to the circumference let us see if we can extract Love by the rule of Justice This is most certain that we would be loved of all that know us we would be aided and assisted in all our dangers and troubles we would be relieved and comforted in all our wants and needs why then let this be the rule To do so to all persons as we would in right reason they should do to us if their state and condition were ours and ours theirs This is a common rule but such as certainly deserves precedency of all the sage maxims the World has at any time afforded and might well without hurt to us like Aaron's Rod devour all those of the best Magicians and Enchanters that we might only make use of that upon all occasion He who has it once well engraven in the Tables of his heart will need little other precept or rule to walk by It is a rule that with variation of a word or two is applicable to the direction and government of our actions and passions too not only in relation to our fellow-members but in reference to all irrational creatures under us and I hope without offence I may say in reference to our actions towards our Creator For certainly had we power to create of nothing we should expect of our creatures love and reverence duty and obedience and therefore we ought by all ways we are able to pay them to our Creator What occurrence is there in man's life that this rule may not be laid to A man would think at first view and conjecture it were as far from being applicable to or having any thing in it Sovereign for my distemper of Sorrow as might be Facias quod fieri vis c. seems at first sight to have little probability of any sanative ingredient for that passion yet narrowly searched into it has If I interrogate my self whether having near Relation Friend or child whom I dearly loved I would they should for loss of me drown themselves in a floud of tears and sorrow I can readily make answer in the negative I would not I might be willing and content that in all their thoughts and words of me they carried some civil respect and esteem for me but proceeded no further And why then should I exceed that measure which I would have only meted out for my self All excess and excrescence springs from self-self-love Charity has none and this rule may as well help to frame it as any I can imagine When I have been alone and my thoughts have been at any time in travail to bring forth and frame or to find out already framed some short general rule by which the Soul might always move with least grief and offence and with greatest ease and pleasure I have ever pitched upon this quod tibi fieri non vis c. as the most exact and universally comprehensive and far beyond Epictetus his sustine abstine or any other as being the most effectual relief against all incursion and invasion from without and a firm Basis for Charity to be founded upon and it is indeed for the introduction of universal love and charity into our hearts that our Saviour lays down this rule As ye would that men should do to you do ye also to them likewise For the following words if ye love them which love you what thanks have ye for sinners also do even the same And St. Matthew setting down that precept in these words All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do ye even so to them adds by way of argument For this is the Law and the Prophets What the Law and the Prophets are and what they hang upon or mean our Saviour tells a Lawyer elsewhere that is Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and thy neighbour as thy self He who came not to destroy but to fulfil the Law puts us in mind of that first and great Commandment that Law of Nature I may say which till we fulfil in some measure our question will be vain as his was there who asked What shall I do to inherit eternal life and we can have no fitter reply that How readest thou But though in this progress of Love towards its perfection and Regency Humility and Justice which bear upon them the stamp of Nature do greatly contribute yet there is somewhat more necessary to purifie and refine it and to make it more powerful effectual and durable and that is Faith Faith I say that Divine Grace which doth present such objects to us as Reason either could not at all or but imperfectly discover but yet when discovered and approved by our Reason are of that nature and consequence that they forthwith excite attract and engage our Love and make it to be predominant And therefore it 's necessary to consult Revelation by which alone these objects are thus made known and to strengthen our Faith in it that so our love of them for their excellency and our hope of enjoying them with respect to our happiness may become an effectual means of life and action and give new strength to all the powers of our Soul in the prosecution of them Then will our Love grow great indeed and that which is here thus Regent in us will hereafter be Triumphant for Charity never faileth Charity then is the end of the rest and to which they do tend as Lines to their Center and as they do lend help unto that
make such a choice of a new one as that he may prove an old one and this requires circumspection and prudence in the doing The mutual view of Truth in two men as it is a most delectable prospect to each other and may be termed an happy interview between two Souls so it is in my opinion the most likely thing to engender between them a real and lasting Friendship I do not mean here by the sight of Truth Truth in the theory that thing of which we have sometimes a glimmering light only and no more and for which we proverbially reject Plato and Socrates's Friendship to admit her in our company and yet know not when we have her but naked Truth practick Truth Fidelity if you please so to call it or plain and upright dealing when a man upon no occasion will lie to deceive his Nieghbour nor be drawn or inticed to commit a falshood for the gain of the whole World and besides upon just occasion will open his mind plainly I know it is not prudent or requisite we should always speak what we think but if we do speak to speak as we think is ever best and most acceptable to a good man I do think that person whoever he was who first delivered it to us and set it down as an observable Maxim Obsequium amicos veritas odium parit to have been not only a Sycophant but ignorant of the ground of true Friendship and I would not advise any man to chuse his Friend from any Obsequiousness Fawning or Flattery If you can behold Truth naked in any man and can adjudge him to be of a setled mind and resolution not double-minded and so unstable in all his ways as St. Iames describes him we will render you the man if you please in Horace his words justum tenacem propositi virum and withall moderately wise such a man you ought to love and imbrace and with such an one you may safely contract Amity or Friendship But when you have so done you must trust in God to continue him such for I think you 'l love him no longer than he is such neither do I think it fit you should For I do think men are mutable and I do not look upon any League of Friendship how fast soever made like the Laws of the Medes and Persians but that the same is alterable and may be dissolved and abrogated without any just blame For though it be an human tye in the reciprocal aspect and mutual promise of each other yet having ever a respect to God as I said if we shall find our dearest Friend to sully the brightness of that Image which first invited us to love him and notwithstanding our admonition to cast off that and to assume and bear about him the image of Belial we may reject him Thus much I remember yet in Tully who would necessarily have all Leagues of Friendship inviolable and perpetual that he utterly condemns that Saying of Bias Ita amare oportere ut aliquando esset osurus and truly as a Christian I cannot commend it for that I believe we should hate no man upon any accompt much less that future hatred should possess our thoughts at the time we make a League of Friendship or begin to love in that sence But this I think may be a good rule herein and I will adventure to give it you in Latin Ita amare oportere ut cessante vel deficiente causâ originali amoris possis tuta fide non amare For Friendship should not be entred into by a vow and in such words as Marriage for better for worse Yet since it is an human and sacred League we should be careful not to be mutable herein though we are in other things the most mutable of any Creature but then only cease to love our Friend as our own Soul when 't is apparent to all the World as well as our selves that he bears no Love to his Soul himself nor will be prevailed with by any perswasion to regard it more It is a rare thing to find the heart of man to answer to man as in water face answereth face according to Solomon so much as for any short space much less to be of any continuance A man shall sometimes meet with St. Pauls case The more he loves the less he is loved But if men do now and then happen To take sweet counsel together and walk into the house of God as Friends according to David's expression Either of them may find the consequence thereof as he did there and elsewhere that the children of men are deceitful upon the weights And therefore there is little trust to be placed in this human tye or obligation but that is to be lodged chiefly or only in him who raises us up Friends beyond expectation and when even Our Father and Mother forsake us taketh us up This notwithstanding it may not be amiss for us though we never expect to tye that sure knot of Friendship so much talked of with any to see of what thred the Materials are or ought to be spun of which it is made to search out and view what kind of Love there is in man peculiar to man see the ground or inition of Friendship in what we call or most properly call Friendly Love and learn to reject no man who offers us this bond of Amity for want of that Authentickness we only imagine it requires viz. the Seal of Election and Grace which no man ever yet saw or could see I doubt in others unless in Imagination I have formerly thought and set down my thoughts in my Treatise de Anima which I exposed to your view Love to be the substantial part of an human Soul flowing from that immense Ocean of Love the great and wise Creator of the Universe and I do yet think it so and confined to or inclosed in an impure Earthly Body for some space of time where it does for the present necessarily work burns inward and sometimes flames outward and according to its motion or inflammation here either by Sense Reason or Grace we give it its denomination and attribute to it several names and sometimes call it Love sometimes Lust sometimes Charity and sometimes Friendship The Latines have the same names besides others viz. amor libido Charitas amicitia though they distinguish them not always according to that notion or in that sence I intend or mean to do in this place I say Love is the principal or sole proper active Ingredient if I may use that word of a Soul For as for Fear Envy Anger Hatred Malice or the like they are but induments or Apparel or Armour which Love puts on or bears about it as I said in its march or travel here It is that thing in man which has often possessed and taken up or imployed my thoughts how strangely diversly and variously it works in several men and no less diversly in
one and the same man at several times And therefore I am willing to behold it again and say somewhat more of it according to my capacity under the afore-mentioned heads of Love Lust Charity and of Friendship only orderly and in course When there is no motion in the Soul further than for the pleasing it self or the Body it inhabits or it has no other chief respect than to their worldly ease and pleasure only and looks no farther therein than the obtaining Riches Honour Children or the like I call it Lust or self-self-love When it beholds God alone as the only perfect good and the Author and giver of all goodness and places a trust and repose in him without taking any anxious thoughts or care for worldly things and delights the Soul in the Contemplation of his absolute and complete goodness I call it pure Love or Love in the abstract When from it or with it the Soul beholds all men as Gods special work and pays a just and due respect to every member as his Image howsoever deformed or which way soever defaced without any great respect to persons I call it Charity When it primarily respects and imbraces particular persons for some visible inherent goodness in them and God only secondarily as the Author of all good in man I call it Friendly Love or the inition of that mutual aspect or League we term or name Friendship The first of these is directed and guided by Sense only or Reason captivated the second by Grace the third and fourth by Reason at liberty with some assistance or help of Grace The first of these we may not improperly term Natural the second Supernatural and the third and fourth may be said to participate of or proceed from both viz. Nature and Grace The first works or burns inwardly only the second flames outwardly and directly ascendant the third and fourth flame laterally outward after several ways for the one is more intense upon particulars than the other but both point upward Love in man of it self good I have called and do call here when it greedily catches at or lays hold on any thing before it Lust or Concupiscence Cupiditas effraenata that is Love unbridled for so I take the meaning of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be and withal a greediness in it unbridled to be presently satisfied as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 aviditas cibi signifies Reason I have said before is the proper rein of human Affection though there be a hand above which sometimes guides or directs it and when that rein is laid aside as truly it is when we look no further than our present ease and pleasure and Love moves by Sense only or chiefly We may well call it Lust or an unbridled Desire and not Love The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is by some often referred to a peculiar fleshly desire but I take it more generally to signify a greedy desire of any Worldly thing whatsoever and so does Saint Iohn seem to make use of it according to my apprehension of his meaning where he opposes the Love of the World and the Love of God to each other Love not the World neither the things that are in the World if any man love the World the love of the Father is not in him says he and then immediately after makes use of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For all that is in this World the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father but is of the World and the World passeth away and the lust thereof but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever And St. Iames immediately after his speaking of a Crown of Life which the Lord hath promised to them that love him useth the word Lust as a degenerate Love by which we are drawn aside Which raised in the Soul and coupled to the flesh conceiveth and brings forth sin Now I have called this Lust natural because since our fall Reason being much clouded by the Flesh it is for want of Grace most prone to be led by Sense in every human Soul as well as bestial And because it chiefly respects our selves I have defined it to be an inward burning And truly human love thus pent in and a thing very vigorous of it self although it cannot be satisfied within shall never want any fuel to feed it which Sense is able to bring in with the Devil's assistance But this inward burning generally creates a smoak and a smother in the Soul sometimes visibly to a spectator and often feelingly to the owner and how ere it may sometimes warm or comfort for the present is never delightful or pleasant in the end When this Love in man is pure or purified as we cannot describe the manner so we cannot describe how joyful and delightful a thing it is Neither is any man able so much as to imagine it unless he have in some measure felt it and then perhaps he may cry out with David One day in thy courts is better than a thousand c. I know there is no man but would take it in great scorn to be told he loves not God every one pretends to that however he deal with his Neighbour but sure this kind of Love the most excellent will never be made visible in any to the wiser sort of the World but by some outward clear and manifest demonstration of the two following kinds of Love to our Neighbour and to our Friend And 't were heartily to be wished above all things that self-love did not often colourably set it up and march under its seeming Banner It may and has done so certainly which is so base and treacherous a self-love that the name of Lust or Concupiscence is too good for it neither can any man invent a name for it which may properly refer to man 'T is inhuman and worse than sensual it is Devilish neither can I call it other than Devilish when men once indeavour to open a way to their self ends with a scriptum est Towards our present ease and quiet in the World I have already declared my opinon that the observance or performance of that second great Commandment that is an Universal good aspect or the bearing about one a love and kindness for every individual Image of our Creatour let that Image never so much vary in opinion or fancy from our own we will again set it down in one word as before Charity is that unum necessarium And this is a thing which in my opinion every man might God assisting blow up and enliven in himself by his Reason so as his Love might flame out on every side as I have described But that is not the thing I am now upon neither was the consideration of it or of pure love or of self-love either my chief aim or design herein but Friendship or Friendly Love A thing which though it seem not so
this Love it obtains its denomination from the World If it be chiefly center'd in any man from the good opinion he has of himself we call it Pride if it chiefly run after the applause of men we call it Vain-glory if the common vain pleasures of the World Voluptuousness or Epicurism if Women Amorousness if we lodge it in our Children Fondness or Dotage if in Riches Covetousness and so for the like Now if this Love be exercised in the obtaining then it is termed Desire if in the fruition Joy if in the losing Fear if in the loss Sorrow For why does a man desire any thing but because he loves it or why does he rejoyce in the fruition but because he loves it why does he fear the losing it but because he loves it or why does he sorrow for the loss but because he loves it This one thing Love is the primum mobile as I may call it of all the other passions are but its necessary Attendants and whatever definitions are made of our Animal faculties 't is this like the principal Spring in a Watch that sets them all on going and whatever evil happens to us is from the ill motion or ill setting of the Spring for want of reason for as our Love is good or bad so are its Attendants If we chiefly place it on God and goodness it has its desires its joys its fears and its sorrows from which Philosophy need not exclude a wise man Surely a man may with St. Paul desire to be dissolved he may desire to persevere to the end and receive the crown of his warfare he may rejoyce in hope he may fear to offend he may sorrow for sin and all this without committing evil or folly for affects arising simply from the love of good cannot have any thing of evil in them These good affects or passions we see in the man according to God's own heart His soul brake out for very fervent desire he rejoyced as one that found great spoils his flesh trembled for fear and he was afraid of God's judgments he was horribly affrighted for the ungodly that forsook God's Law his soul melted away for very heaviness he was troubled above measure his eyes gushed out with water because men kept not God's Law trouble and heaviness had taken hold on him it grieved him when he saw the transgressors And all this proceeding from Love as it appears by the often expression of it in word in that excellent 119 th Psalm the title of one part whereof is Quomodo dilexi wherein he professes what he loved above gold and precious stones and what was dearer unto him then thousands of gold and silver But if our Love be chiefly placed on other things and too much wander and stray from the chief good though it take along with it the same concomitants of Desire c. yet they are in an amazed distracted and uneasie dress and can own nothing but a misguided Love to be their principal Captain and Leader For although as I said before Love may take its denomination from the thing it pursues yet still its proper attribute and name is Love And not only the Poet in case of Covetousness cries out Amor nummi but St. Paul himself gives it its true and proper definition for the root of all evil he plainly terms the love of money and when he reckons up a number of the greatest Vices Pride Blasphemy c. he begins them thus men shall be lovers of their own selves and concludes with these words lovers of pleasures more then lovers of God as if some sort of love were the mother of all Vices Indeed when any one Worldly thing has taken possession and as it were monopolized a man's heart it brings with it a number of disquiet Inmates as solicitous cares and fears c. and amongst the rest sorrow shall never be wanting For in that case of love of money as it causes men to err from the Faith by St. Paul's rule so it causes them to pierce themselves through with many sorrows and he might well say many for even in its first desire of obtaining besides what attend it in the fruition and loss sorrow often goes along with it as may be instanced in Ahab whose heart was sad and he could eat no bread in the very primary effect of this covetous Love viz. desire of Naboth's Vineyard And I think we may affirm vexing sorrow never yet entred into any mans heart without some precedent love to usher it in For take sorrow in both St. Paul's sences Worldly and Godly sorrow apart or both together the rise thereof is from Love for if we are first sorrowful for our sins it is because we shall one day feel the smart of them that proceeds from the love of our selves and then if we be further sorrowful that we have offended a gracious God though there were no punishment attending sin that proceeds from the love of God so as Love is the motive of all and we cannot but conclude that sorrow has its being and existence from Love But herein as to a vain sorrow from a misguided Love whether the inferiour and more brutish part of man the sensual appetite or the will which is in some sort in Brutes for they have choices as well as we though those choices are necessarily determined by their appetite for want of reason or the understanding be most to be blamed is to be enquired into Whereabout we must first acknowledge that the three prime faculties of the Soul to wit the Understanding the Will and the Affections do all concurr in every fault we commit yet so as though they be all faulty the chief obliquity springeth most immediately from the more special default of one of the three As in the present case of sorrow however the other faculties may be concerned yet the understanding is most to blame and this our error is through ignorance Indeed our ignorance is so far wilful that there being imprinted in us the common principles of the Law of Nature as well as the written Law if we had but carefully improved them we might in right reason have discerned that our Love ought more chiefly to tend to our Creator and Governour than our own natural product but yet I think no man will arraign the Will as principal unless in that case of noluit consolari where notwithstanding a mans reason inform him he ought not yet he is resolved like Iacob he will go mourning to his grave Neither are the affections chiefly to be blamed because Love of it self is good and only misled through ignorance and sorrow as I have said is but the consequent of a misguided Love Now then towards the cure our ignorance is to be discussed and our understanding cleared that so our wills and affections may become obedient and follow its dictates This right understanding is indeed an immediate influence of the Almighty by whose powerful rays
and his Son Solomon the wisest of men have assured us in sundry positions that understanding takes her possession of the Soul with it and that through his Commandments it is that we are wiser then our Teachers And surely if there were not some defect in every man of these Graces by the intetposition of Sin and Satan he would sooner or later hear that gracious and effectual Eccho resound in his Soul from the Spirit of all true love and comfort Let not your hearts be troubled This is the only rational way I think of cure Redire ad cor and to get that clean swept and garnished that the Spirit of true love may enter in and keep possession against all unruly passions and I dare say whoever tries it will subscribe his probatum to it SECT IV. The Remedies which are ordinarily prescribed against Sorrow considered with respect to their force and efficacy and how little Philosophy of it self can do towards the conquest of it BUt as I said let us not altogether reject every prescribed alleviating Medicine Indeed there are many from our common undertaking comforters and we are ready to catch at them like Reeds in a sinking condition Although they are firm Truths and such as have been used by the greatest Philosophers and Divines towards the cure yet barely and simply considered all or either of them have not the efficacy to bring a man to any safe or quiet Harbour They may keep a man from drowning but withall they may and do often leave him plunging in the deep without the co-operation of some more Sovereign Medicines and are some of them fitter ingredients for a complicated disease where murmuring and repining are joyned with it than bare sorrow which I bless God I never was infected with for I own his Judgments just and am more apt to have St. Gregory's noise in my ears Tu vero bona tua in vita tua c. than the contrary But I mention them as I thought on them and leave them to others to make their best use of them which are these following 1. That death is a common thing and a debt we all owe to Nature and must shortly pay and therefore it should not so much trouble us to behold it in another 2. That we cannot recall our Friends and Relations by our mourning and therefore our sorrow is vain 3. That they whom we love are at rest and happy which is rather cause of joy 4. That 't is not our case alone we are not single but others daily suffer the like As to the first the thing is very obvious to the meanest capacity and perhaps if we did in our serious thoughts oftner behold death he might prove like Aesop's Lion to his Fox not altogether so terrible but yet he will be a Lion still and as Aristotle calls him omnium terribilium terribilissimum and further if we did look upon him at hand ready to seize us then together with us all worldly things would change their hue and put on as it were another face 'T is sure that Death passeth upon all men but as St. Paul says because all men have sinned and from thence it is that death hath such a sting And 't is sin that has made sorrow and trouble attendants on death as well as death on it both for our selves and others And therefore the contemplation of the primary cause of our sorrow should rather take up our thoughts as I have already said than the secundary For the thought of death certainly was never wholly absent from any man in his sorrows nor ever cured any but the true sense of his own deserts have As to the second every man knows it as well as the other neither was there ever any man yet that had his reason left him who thought to revive his Friend or Relation thereby or to awake him with his shrieks and cries It is every mans deepest corrosive that there is no redemption from the Grave And though in truth it be a vain thing to persist in that which profiteth us nothing yet that vanity will not be driven away by anothers barely telling us so or our own thinking or knowing it so The faculties of the Soul will not cease to work though there is knowledge that the operation is oft-times in vain 't is in vain we know to fear death but that knowledge will not cure a man of his fear Certainly the wounds of the Spirit are sharper and more malignant than those of the Body and 't is the same reason must argue us into patience of both But let her set us upon the Rack 't is in vain to cry out it will profit us nothing we shall scarce hearken to her and keep silence This advice best comes when we begin to be weary of our mourning and not before and then only will this reason be hearkned unto In the mean time let us consider if we can All things are vanity which are the causes of our vexation of Spirit As to the third I look on it as a good Christian contemplation and may in the declination of the disease prove a pleasant Cordial but in the state thereof of little prevalence to a cure because it is a thing we never doubted of but upon the first departure of the Soul of him or her who lived well c. think it received into Eternal bliss And therefore if these thoughts had in them any present sanative virtue they would rather keep us from sorrowing at all since they possess us as soon as our sorrow and are contemporary with our distemper The wise Son of Syrach allows us a moderate sorrow bids us weep for the dead but not over-much because he is at rest And St. Paul's advice or caution is that we sorrow not as others which have no hope that is with a desperate faithless sorrow as if they were eternally lost and that Christ should not raise them up at the last day But surely no man will charitably deny but that a strong Faith and a deep worldly sorrow may sometimes possibly subsist together and that there may be spe dolentes as well as spe gaudentes For I cannot so discard my own charity as not to think some very good men have gone sorrowing to their Graves and yet have rejoyced too in the hopes that God will bring with him those that sleep and they shall meet together But for our present pensive thoughts and mourning 't is sure they arise not only for want of this belief or from any supposed detriment happened or like to happen to our Relation or Friend whom we once enjoyed and now are deprived of but to our selves from our present loss For 't is most certain with every man that whenever any object has stollen into and possessed his heart and taken root there if the same be eradicated and snatched away though he suppose it planted in a more pleasant Soil there will immediately
occasion to speak when I shall enquire which of the faculties of the Soul may seem primary in operation yet I think even native reason in some men is able so to throw a Vail over the senses and frame the imagination that there may be conceived in the imagination some more glorious and amiable thing than it can well conceive and from that conception it shall have readily attending it a sensitive love as we call it that is a motion of the heart from some Nerves or Tendons at least a fixation of the heart not to move too extravagantly but be readily obedient to the dictates of reason and I see no ground why we should with reason hope to quite discard them from its obedience or have our passions and affections clean rooted up lest by avoiding that which one kind of Philosopher resembled to the Itch that is be always desiring and joying loving and fearing c. we do light upon a kind of felicity which another Philosopher resembled to the felicity of a Stock or Stone I would not indeed willingly grieve but I had rather sorrow than never joy and the one can never be inherent without the other either rationatively or sensitively Reason I say has some ability and power yet left since our fall not only to correct and reduce the imagination but to direct and point it to seek after somewhat so that if all men should deny a pure rational love they may grant there may be a good sensitive love 'T is true the imagination from sense shews us no living creature better than our selves and we are apt to see through it as in a false glass some amiableness in our selves and so we become lovers of our selves more than lovers of God yet that little strength of reason does sometimes hinder and stop the imagination from presenting that false glass stays the affections from looking too much into it wins the imagination to take part with it self for a while in conceiving our vileness and then by consequence forces it to represent to the affections some amiableness in that being from whence all other things have their being and without which we cease to be any thing so as about some amiable good do the affections always move if they move From one of these two Mirrors I say do I think is the rise of the affections quatenus working in a Body the one of these Mirrors is clear yet false and only of the imaginations framing from sense the other is dark and cloudy unless amended by special grace but true and of reasons correcting The root of each Tree of affections whether bad or good springing from hence is Love Neither can I upon my review find cause to alter my opinion in my Treatise of comfort against loss of Children but do think that some innate faculty of love is the primary mover in the affections and thus I think it may sprout up and bring forth Trees of divers colour'd branches If we look in that false glass mentioned and by reflexion have a good opinion of our selves which is from a love of our selves there shoots out a branch called Pride or in short that is Pride If we become mounted in thoughts to exceed others that is Ambition if we see some cause as we think that others should have a good opinion of us that is Vain-glory if from this sight we are troubled that any other should seem to exceed us and withall there be an endeavour in us to exceed them that is Emulation but if it be only to supplant or hinder them that is Envy If we espy any opposition in another and behold that person as mean and not able to hurt us that is Contempt which is a kind of contumacy or immobility of the heart but if otherwise we discern an ability to hurt it is Frowardness Impatience Fretting Anger Hatred Malice or Revenge according to the nature of the Soil And here certainly Love must be agreed to be the root and to give being on either side There is no man ever opposes or does wrong for the wrongs sake it is to purchase to himself profit pleasure or repute and that is from the love of himself and therefore says Bacon wittily If a man do me wrong why should I be angry with him for loving himself better than me But to go on If we look after or espy ways or means to adorn beautifie and sustain our beloved selves be it by Money Lands or Goods that is Covetousness if we espy a failure in others of love mutual and reciprocal to our beloved selves where 't is expected that is Jealousie if we apprehend future danger or loss it is Fear if present Heaviness Sadness Sorrow if we espy any probable way or means of our acquiring or adding to our acquisitions Hope c. And after this manner might I reckon the springing or growth of all evil affections whatsoever On the other side if that true but dim glass be at any time presented or set before us and we receive any distant sight of an excellency and goodness in the Creator and continual preserver of the Universe our Love a little moves another way and raises a Tree of other manner of affections If we behold in that his Power his Justice or his Love there arises Fear if his Mercy then Hope Joy Comfort If we apprehend him a Protector against all injury Courage Trust and Fortitude if a Revenger of wrong Patience If we espy his providence and care there arises Contentedness if we discern our own inability Humility if our own evil dealings to others Meekness if our failings and errors Trouble Grief and Sorrow if affliction fallen on our Brethren Pity and Compassion and the like And were my opinion asked of the ground and cause of the most Heroick worthy or pious particular action ever done in the World I for my part should determine it in short to be the parties love to God or himself for if it be not the one that has made a man die willingly for his Country as the phrase goes I am sure 't is the other if not Charity some desire of a perpetual lasting Fame of his memory which is a love to and of himself Now whatever men pretend there neither is nor was nor will be any created Soul within a Body wholly exempt from any one passion or affection whatsoever And though some affections seem very contrary so as not to subsist together at least in any height or excess and therefore it was not without some wonder observed of Nero if I remember aright that he who singly beheld his Cruelty would believe he had no Lust and he who beheld his Lust apart would believe he had nothing of Cruelty in him yet they can and do subsist together And though some men may take their denomination from some one faculty or affection chiefly and most commonly predominant as for instance it may be said Moses was a meek man Nebuchadnezzar a proud man
has found out every root and string of their Affection and judges good perhaps to indeavour some mutual and interchangeable transplantation of Affection that thing I mean to speak of friendship for the melioration thereof had need be very wary and circumspect in his choice and rely upon a Divine watering and pruning too as well as his own planting or else perhaps though it grow and thrive with him it may bear him little or no good Fruit. The variety and diversity of human Souls with their several seeming inclinations and suddain alterations and that innate unsatiate love in man receiving its inflammation sometimes otherwise than by Sense from whence every one labours and travails to secure and advance it self by some means or other and especially the difficulty of discerning the motion of the Spirit in a mans self much more in another is the cause in my opinion why there is so little of true and real Friendship amongst us in the World and that there have been in all Ages so small a number of faithful Friends reckoned up and that our love is changeable mutable and unconstant When as we may daily espy in other Creatures of different Species even a Lyon and a Whelp bred up together a constant and continued love to each other during their lives I may say without design or without dissimulation Of Friendship I have read or been taught somewhat when I was a Boy which as I long since utterly forgot so I mean not now to have recourse thither again or to any other Author that treats thereof but having already adventured to meddle with the Soul I am minded to say somewhat of that league or union of Souls Friendship to you my Friend and to give you my natural thoughts of it only according to my plain rustick way and manner of delivery Friendship I take to be an union or knitting together of two Souls as is expressed of Ionathan and David in amity so as the one loves the other as it self Or more particularly An human yet sacred tye made and contracted between two Souls in the mutual and reciprocal aspect of some similitude and likeness in each other Each shining in some degree after the similitude and likeness of its Maker So that to the contracting thereof it is necessary the party who loves as a Friend do behold in the other some Image or shadow at least and Goodness Truth Justice Mercy Love especially and the like without this view or supposed view there can arise no such Love as is called Friendship Or if you please we will in short define it thus Whereas Charity is a general love to all men for God's sake So Friendship is a love to some particular person for the persons sake yet ever having a respect to God Friendship being a kind of alliance of two Souls resembles somewhat an alliance by blood or a consanguinity as we call it He who would make out that to any man must necessarily resort to some one fountain head or Ancestour and from thence trace and bring down the blood to himself and the other party without any corruption or attainter intervening And our Soul being a distinct gift and a distinct creation or breathing which we receive not from our Parents it is necessary in Friendship that as two Souls concenter in belief of one head and fountain of their being So there be no visible corruption thereof but that each participate somewhat of the Image of its Maker and leave not quite off to be Loving Just Merciful c. at least be not stigmatized with any Character of Uncharitableness Injustice Cruelty or the like whereby that Image seems defaced and therefore no Atheist can be a friend to any man nor any other man so to him For if there be such an human Creature in the World who verily believes there is no God he must consequently believe there is no such thing as Justice or Mercy or no need thereof towards our particular quiet or well-being and such man's kindness whatsoever he pretend is no other than a mere self-love and respecting himself barely and not Friendship neither can any one love that man who rejects or disowns the Wisdom of his Maker and attributes all to what we call Nature or Chance Besides this If there be any men who own a God and yet live as without God in the World though they readily perform all offices of kindness faithfully to each other that I hold not to be Friendship but call it rather a Satanical League than Friendship such as St. Iames terms enmity with God For a league of Friendship ever respects God because unless in respect to our selves there can be no other original cause to love one another but God alone who indowed us with a love extrinsick as I may say and such as is not natural or arising from the flesh The Soul of man in the Body is prone to cleave to Earthly things and many Leagues it makes and Alliances it doth contract Some upon considerations merely accidental and transient and which fail with those considerations such is that with respects the bounty of another as Solomon saith Every man is a Friend to him that giveth gifts or as the wise Son of Syrach Liberality pleaseth all men and so gains applause respect and Friendship improperly taken but the Friendship thereby obtained proves but like the Winter Brooks that Iob speaks of that what time they wax warm they vanish when it is hot they are consumed out of their place The paths of their way are turned aside they go to nothing and perish And when we stand in most need of their help will most surely deny it Sometimes again love proceeds from external relations as that which a man bears to his own natural Product which although it be usually real and lasting and is allowable good and lawful yet is not praise-worthy and commendable the like being to be found in Beasts and would be as great and lasting in them had they equall knowledge of their own with us nor can be called Friendship since it seldom and of it self begets a Love mutual and reciprocal and cannot indeed be termed other than love of our selves That which doth come nearest to it is the love in Marriage which being mutual and reciprocal when contracted upon fitting terms the Man and Wife thereby are as our great Lawyer thinks according to Scripture he has rightly defined that mystical knot Two Souls in one Body And when it respects Vertue chiefly they may be said to be one Soul in two Bodies When two Souls can place a repose in each other without distrust or diffidence when they dare trust each other as Gods though men that I call Friendship which can never be without some imaginary at least sight of Truth Justice Love c. the one in the other To such a love I will afford and affix the Attribute of good And doubtless such a mutual Love affords the
greatest pleasure of any thing our Souls are able to frame to themselves here and cometh nearest in delight to that pure love of God even for himself which of his mere love and goodness now and then as the earnest of everlasting love and joy he bestows on us for his Sons sake and is chiefly effected through faith This being premised that every love which is praise-worthy and which is able of it self to create an alternate true Love necessarily respects a Deity Let us behold if you please how far it ought to respect humanity too and with whom we may contract a Friendship By the very profession of Atheism notwithstanding any seeming kindness all obligation of mutual rational amity is become null and void for the cause aforesaid I may have charity for such a man and relieve him in his want but charity differs much from friendship and is somewhat of an higher Orb for charity respects God only or chiefly though rationally and we thereby pay a duty barely to him in his Image which we behold with our Reason as his however or which way soever defaced But this other love respecting man as well as God and man chiefly and God secondarily as I may say cannot arise without some apprehension of human recompence or expectation of a reciprocal kindness and that cannot be from an Atheist for how can I think that mans Soul will ever be knit to mine in amity who denies the very cause of its own existence and attributes that to chance which I do to Wisdom and Love Human love stirred through opinion with Reasons allowance necessarily requires an agreement in opinion about the Author of our being For where we vary in opinion about the manner of our Creation or Extraction there is no ground for rational Love as fellow Creatures or fellow Members But whether this kind of Love called Friendship requires any further consent in opinion than that there is one God eternally wise Maker and Creator of all things in Heaven and Earth and a just rewarder of Virtue and punisher of Vice and the like let us if you please inquire a little further Why truly I can see no just Reason why we may not contract Friendship with a Turk as well as Christian States and Princes make Leagues with them or having contracted Friendship with a Christian why I should dissolve that knot of amity imagine he turn Mahometan which I cannot so much as imagine at present if he ever were a true Christian provided I behold and continue to behold in such person according to the best judicature of my Reason the worship of a God and an unfeigned indeavour to be led by the clear light of truth and a continued resolution not to forsake those known and approved by all men paths of Justice Judgment Mercy and the like which tend towards her Friendship being a voluntary union of Affections between man and man and so of human product It is not requisite it should have the approbation and acceptance of Faith but it is sufficient it have the allowance of Reason which is the proper Judge of all human actions It is an human League or tye a duty if you please of loving one another as men and that not as men out of the Body though it be a conjunction of Souls but in the Body and therefore if we think and adjudge the Will and the Affections in man good in the main that is constantly bent and inclined towards some good we are not to reject such an one in point of Friendship because he believes not just as we do or because we think he wants those graces things out of an human rational prospect which we suppose we have We should friendly indeavour to inform his Reason and heartily pray for the further enlightning of his Spirit and so long as we behold faith in his practice whatever he want in the theory begin to love him and continue to love him If mercy and truth forsake not a man I know no Reason why he should not find favour in the sight of man as well as God according to Solomon or why we should relinquish virtue in the Race which doubtless is not in vain whatsoever it meet with at the Goal Our different opinions in point of Religion though they ought not prove often I confess a great obstruction to Friendship but yet there is a greater which puts a stop to it through the whole race of mankind of what temper soever or what opinion soever And that is besides the strange diversity of human Souls in point of opinion the difficulty of discerning anothers opinion and mans mutability too therein the difficulty of discerning the very right bent or inclination of a mans Affections or distinguishing that which is real from counterfeit ware by reason of that false vail which every human Soul the simplest and weakest has ready at hand and is able to put on and wear by looks and gesture as well as speech and that is Hypocrisie and Dissimulation which no other Creature but man how sage soever did or could ever yet put on Charity sometimes overlooks this natural habit in man but Friendship a thing of human product and expecting a return which charity does not trades abroad very seldom and sparingly upon this account of counterfeit wares and men are loth to venture for fear of false returns Of Dissimulation I mean to say somewhat in another place how little it ever advantaged any man and therefore let it suffice here only to say of it that it is the very bane of Friendship and whensoever 't is beheld as an habit in any man that man must not expect Love and Friendship from another That Love is the Loadstone of Love is a trite and true saying and therefore he who would attract it in this case had need carefully observe the Apostles rule and let his Love be without dissimulation It cannot be with it I am sure acceptable or pleasant but nauseous and loathsome Dissimulation seen in any man being a thing that gives an ill aspect and an ill relish and savour to that and other the best indowments in a Soul It was the variety of human tempers and the difficulty of knowing them that I principally respected in the writing of this Epistle Friendship and the want thereof came in accidentally to my thoughts Well perfect and complete Friendship between any two is as the Heathens feigned their antient God begotten of time notwithstanding this it must have a beginning and comes to pass many times on the suddain in an instant as soon as a man makes an end of speaking as we find that of Ionathan to David if we perceive or at least think there be integrity of heart in the Speech Yet in this league of Friendship sometimes too suddainly made and concluded we ought to take some care that it be such as may be lasting and that since as one says All old Friends were once new we
absolutely necessary towards our future or present well-being as Charity yet usually attends and accompanies it and may seem to be and proceed from one and the same head or cause in man therefore let us if you please a little behold it and inquire into that cause and find out if we can the true original fountain thereof in man and how love in man comes to be inflamed after this manner of way we call Friendship I have already said that towards contracting Friendship the raising Friendly Love or moving Love in man after that manner of way it is absolutely necessary we behold in each other some imperfect shadow at least of those excellencies which are complete and perfect in the Deity that is of Truth Justice Mercy or the like Now these being things as I said elsewhere which have no corporal shape and such as are no ways obvious to Sense It must be Reason solely that is able to behold them and judge of them And therefore friendly Love necessarily arises and moves from or with the sight of Reason and we may strictly and most properly call such a Love rational Love Now for that sensual Love in man having Reason in company with it and oft-times assisting it and contriving for it engenders such a mutual Love between men as very much resembles friendly Love nay for that sensual Love and friendly Love are often complicated and twisted together in man incorporated let us say if you think good 't will be necessary we find out the true original of each and the real difference between them that so we may rightly discern and distinguish bettween them First we say friendly Love properly and strictly is a motion of Love from the sight or judgement of Reason free and at liberty Where that of it self able only to behold and beholding some image of good in another is moved to stir towards that particular person as the cistern or receptory at least of that good without any expectation of recompence or reward other than a reciprocal Love upon a review of the like good in the party himself that loves Other love than this that is a love arising upon the bare view of good without other expectation than aforesaid whatever aid or assistance Reason in a manner captivated may afford towards it in the first motion or how far soever it may contribute towards the continuance thereof or the making it lasting or invitatory of a reciprocal Love although self ends occur not for the present to a mans thoughts but he is as it were insensibly drawn thereby the same is no other than a sensual or self-love And therefore all those seeming endearments of Liberality Wit pleasant demeanour or the like are no other and our ordinary mutual visits and associations in clubs and companies whatsoever Reason may seem to contribute towards them of themselves raise no other Love than such We are delighted in the company we hope to improve our parts thereby we expect advancement or we look to secure our present acquists or enjoyments and the like And this is no other than a self-love Which kind of Love though it seem sometime to burn outwardly and that with eagerness and violence yet it sits but on the top of the heart as we say 'T is shallow superficial and mutable seldom lasting longer than a man beholds an outward motive with his eyes or the like It changes upon every change of Sense is driven to and fro and sometimes presently vanishes For Sense not able to penetrate into the depth and nature of things cannot of it self make any deep impression into the affectionary part of an human Soul But Reason is able of it self to do it for when that shews to the Affection any thing truly lovely in man it informs man withal he ought to love and that with some trust and confidence in the party loved I do not think but that Reason in man may be so far debased as of it self to behold and judge that thing as good which in truth is not so through some mist which self-self-love full fed and pampered from Sense before has raised in the Soul and in that case Love though Reason seem to be the conduct of it may change upon every change of Sense But whenever Reason free and at liberty and withal clear does once direct or guide love to such an object Love in that case will not easily be moved but must be haled away by the same strength which directed and guided it thither neither shall Sense soon loosen it Fidelity in man or some ground whereon another may place a trust must be the foundation on which the first loving stone if I may so say of Friendship is laid and he who brings the second must do it on the like ground and so perhaps the Building will be united and raised to some height and 't is Reason only is able to shew us this ground Sense of it self is not capable to behold it nay let Sense but point out a foundation with Reason accompanying it and for a time assisting it if Reason once draw back a little and shew to the Affection any ground for distrust though we cannot say but a man may continue to love yet it will be but a weak and feeble Love and such as Friendship can never be raised thereon And therefore though a man heap all the kindness he can possibly invent and rain showers of Gold upon another If that other having his Reason about him free and at liberty do but once espy that he defrauds a third person by injustice towards the doing it Let him take my opinion for Oracle for I will deliver it as such in this case though he augment the gifts as Solomon says in another case That man shall never love him at the bottom of the heart and yet there may be and continue a mutual Love between these two grounded upon Sense but no interchangeable view for a trust which I say is the ground of Friendship This is the prospect of Reason only and within its Judicatory and not the view of Sense no nor of Grace for that is a special divine gift not inherent in us which ever bearing Charity in company with it through Charity is apt to pass too favourable a censure and condemning none beholds every man through it notwithstanding any inequality or the like a fit subject of Love Now because self-love or sensual Love Charity and friendly Love in man only may all subsist together at one and the same time and they are so complicated as we said and folded one in the other that we do not easily distinguish them and now and then a pretence only of the love of God is wrapped in amongst them I will further indeavour to distinguish them a little by a plain familiar instance or two I behold somewhat of truth and fidelity in a man by the judicature of my Reason I relieve him in his Wants I after confer many gifts
there is a gracious dissipation of these sublunary Mists and Fogs which hinder and obstruct the clearer prospect of our Souls And as I so in all humility own it I cannot rationally expect any one should take it barely by reverberation from me or by looking into these Papers He who is Brightness and the Mirrour of wisdom grant unto me and every man so much of true reason and understanding as that while it is time we may in some sort behold the errors and follies of our own ways For though I and others may cry out Why art thou so troubled O my Soul and why art thou so disquieted within me yet they and I shall never argue our selves into patience without trusting that he is the help of our countenance and our God But if I may in humility present my thoughts to others who may by his gift believe with me I cannot think any rule herein or hereabout to be observed of so much weight as this one in two words custodi cor The wisest of men after he has partly shewed us the manner of wisdoms entrance into the Soul and her excellencies that the merchandize thereof is better then silver and the gain thereof then gold that she is more precious then Rubies and all that can be desired in the three first Chapters of his Book And after divers commendations of her and exhortations to attention in the fourth he does as it were lay the first ground-work of attaining her in this precept Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life Surely God has placed that in the midst of us to be the magazine and treasury of our Soul and has required it for himself of every one in express terms My Son give me thy heart I will not here in this place and upon this occasion enquire whether the functions of the intellect or the affections do follow the cogitations or the cogitations are actuated and stirred by them or which is the most proper seat of either The Soul is of so subtle a composure that it self could never yet find out the manner of its own operations but this I hope may be affirmed here that if the heart be the more peculiar seat of the affections and Love the chief of the affections the aim thereof must be good and what that good is our Reason under God will certainly best direct us For Reason as in a Watch-tower beholding as well absent as present good and the affections only beholding the present it is Reason only that must reclaim the imagination and bring it in subjection to it self and place the affections upon a right object there And surely Reason tells every man that has her that That from which the Soul it self had its primary being and existence is the chief good and ought to take up the chief room in our Soul I for my part with my little reason cannot find any such Engine as will remove the whole World unless it be the Love of God nor any place to fix this Engine in more proper then the heart If this Love do once possess the Citadel of our Soul we are safe we all too truly find that while we are cloathed with flesh it will let in sometimes other more visible and sensible objects which may make some mutiny in her but still she has this Love as a safe and sure Captain that will keep her from taking Surely methinks if Reason be but consulted this Love must be the predominant affection Were it possible for us to give being to some Creatures and to endue them with Reason too should we not desert them for deserting us and for too close an union amongst themselves and to other Creatures without respect to us And if God had never instilled into us by his Word that he is a jealous God who would punish for admittance of a Rival to his love could we expect less And therefore ought not we in reason as much as may be to keep out all Rivals 'T is a strange fascination in us to confine all goodness which is the aim of Love within our own bowels and sometimes the bowels of the Earth too No wise man will think neither can we justly own the affections in us to be moved from any habitual or inherent goodness in our nature or that we do thereby express any similitude or likeness to that Image whose goodness is universally diffusive to all Since our Love though it be owing to the whole Race of mankind as we are made of one lump from one Eternal power is concentred in particulars From which cause as our Love does often thereby upon our loss convert into sorrow so should that sorrow in reason convert into shame For to say I think the truth we excessive mourners in this case may be defined to be persons who have locked up our hearts from the love of God and shut up our bowels from mankind in general and confined them to work only within our own imaginary Sphere And were we accosted with that rough speech of Ioab to David That we hereby declare that we regard neither Princes nor Servants but that the World may well perceive that if our Absalom had lived and an hundred else had died it had pleased us well we could find no sufficient reply to justifie our selves but must confess our own error And now if our gourd be withered shall we sit down in a sullen mood And if that perfect love that should have held place in us be dispossessed shall not reason and understanding struggle for her Sure the most rational way of cure is since we have given up our hearts to follow that which flies from us as a shadow to leave the pursuit and catch hold on something else if may be Though our Children are gone the World is yet full of various objects of delight But that which makes all or any of them so is God and from that original must they so glide into the heart and therefore we most of necessity reduce and bring back our wandring love to its proper state and original for which 't was first implanted in us and fix it upon that delightful object and through that Mirrour all things will have a more lovely aspect Understanding and the Love of God are always so coupled and linked together that the one cannot be or subsist without the other If a man love not his God and Creator 't is for want of understanding and if a man has not a right understanding of his present and future well-being it is alone because he wants that love For that love will infallibly fix every mans thoughts upon a hearty endeavour to perform the whole will of God Thus hath St. Iohn truly defined the love of God to be a keeping of his Commandments This is the love of God if we keep his Commandments And our Saviour himself has made that the test and tryal of love And both David
of Affections and call them by name Desire Joy Fear Grief Sorrow Love Anger Hatred Malice Enmity Strife Debate Frowardness Peevishness Curiosity Indignation Revenge Cruelty Lust Luxury Jealousie Pride Boasting Vainglory Ambition Envy Emulation Detraction Contempt Impudence Admiration Covetousness Miserableness Parsimony Care Doubt Desperation Lamentation Amazement Pensiveness Sadness Distrust Anxiety Shame and many others Now herein we often give several names to one and the same Affection according to its degree in working or the subject matter upon which or from which it worketh We have Pusillanimity Timorousness Dastardliness Cowardliness Fear Amazement Dread and Terrour as well as the Latines have metus formido timor pavor tremor terror horror exanimatio and we have Love Fondness and Lust as well as they have amor dilectio libido and we have Anger Wrath Fury as well as they have ira excandescentia furor and we have Sorrow Grief Pensiveness Mourning as well as they have dolor moeror aerumna luctus the first of which last to wit dolor when they come to define they call it aegritudo crucians the second aegritudo flebilis the third aegritudo laboriosa and the fourth aegritudo ex ejus qui carus fuerit interitu acerbo and all is but Sorrow Now besides that some of the aforementioned words denominating our passions may be taken in a good sence as Love Fear Sorrow Joy Indignation Care c. so may we reckon up and adorn the Affections on the contrary part with as many commendable and well-sounding words which are as proper and peculiar for them as the other as Charity Peace Gentleness Calmness Meekness Purity Benevolence Alacrity Chearfulness Constancy Courage Valour Pity Compassion Tenderness Humility Caution Frugality Liberality Mercy Modesty Sobriety Content Comfort c. And I think our so accounted Divine and Moral Virtues are no more than well tuned Affections or germins springing from them by native Reason and the superaddition of Grace And where either the one or the other is wanting the result from them is very harsh and grating and of an evil sound I will for instance pick one out of the former sort of a sound most abominated and detested the term we fix upon the Devil as a thing inherent most proper and peculiar in him and that is Envy The word it self is of no original evil signification the Latine expresses it best from whence we derive ours invidia is from in videre to pry or look into the estate being or condition of another creature Now if from this looking into we conclude him happy and are pleased with it that is Joy and I think a good Joy of the mind if from our insight we conclude him unhappy and miserable and we are any whit displeased or troubled at it that is Pity or Compassion and I think that good too and a true fruit of Love and Charity which Tree of Love flourishes the better by that dropping or excrescence from it But if we either sorrow at the apprehension of another's happiness which effect hath with us appropriated the word Envy to it self or rejoyce at the apprehension of his unhappiness which we may call malum mentis gaudium then is our affection wrong-tuned and evil yet all terminates in joy or sorrow and sorrow is indeed but a privation of joy and those other many words are Coins made by us to express our selves in For Hatred Malice or the like I cannot apprehend there is any such thing as either in Nature that is subsisting by it self separate and diverse from other passions that which we call Malice or Hatred is but an evil desire or wish tending to the weakning or depressing or removing that object which we imagine obstructs the joy or comfort we would have or should arise from the excessive evil Love of our selves or others And for Anger which always has for his object to work upon something or other offensive 't is defined but ulciscendi libido a desire of revenge and according to the height of that act unless where it lights on inanimate things and so accounted Folly it may be termed Hard-heartedness Oppression Cruelty or the like SECT III. Of the rise of the Affections COncerning the rise of our passions or affections my thoughts and conjectures at present are these That there naturally is in every thing and every creature but especially out of its place some secret hidden appetite desire endeavour propension proclivity inclination tendence or motion called which you will to some place of rest quiet or good but often receives lets or impediments in that its tendence And the Soul of man being an emanation from a Divine Essence and God as I may say being the Center to which naturally it tends until it come to that beatifick vision it cannot be at rest Now a rational Soul naturally working by Love and Joy in its fruition for want of that fruition necessarily and by consequence Desires and Sorrows so as I do think Love and Joy Desire and Sorrow to be of the Essence of a Soul wholly disjoyned from a Body and rational acts of it not properly passions but when the Soul works in that manner through a Body then are they called passions Now the Soul conjoyned to a Body may have yet notwithstanding some love purely intellectual and rational by some reflexion and drawing in some amiableness as through the imagination though it cannot fully by the imagination reach the proper object of love to it self and this may be upon some consideration a proper and peculiar act of an Humane Soul as I have said of some infinite power goodness and wisdom in the creation and preservation of the Universe of which it is a minute particle And certainly the Soul of man may be discerned now and then to act in the Body as if it were out of the Body summoning its powers and drawing its forces together from some tending affection as if it were about to take its flight ravish it self from the Body lay aside its senses for a time and have no manner of commerce with them but did see with other eyes and seem to it self for a while as disjoyned from a Body Which kind of motion has undoubtedly been selt as I may say and observed by some in a pleasant healthful state and more especially after waking from quiet rest These gracious kind of prospects of the Soul are cause sufficient to make any man cry out with St. Paul cupio dissolvi c. but these kind of extasies are short and rare and the Soul is straightways forced to a return and act again as usually in and through a Body Now were it granted that no affection can move but from the imagination and that sense is the general Port and entrance into the imagination which thing at present I cannot grant but believe the imagination may receive some stroke from that thing which I call a pure intellectual rational love of which I shall have fitter
any of the four things mentioned by Agur and I may confidently speak in the words of Solomon to any such diver As thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit nor how the bones do grow in the womb so thou knowest not the work of God who maketh all 'T is not a thing I dare undertake to discover nor a thing I have absolutely desired to know But only to quiet and satisfie my self I have endeavoured to make some little search or enquiry which of the faculties of the Soul may seem a visum est only primary or most potent in operation not which in truth are for that shall never man certainly define And therefore let no man till he be able to find out himself the circulation of the Soul and the origine of that circulation and be assured to convince others in reason of that his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 blame me of sloth or ignorance but allow me something of intellect if it be but in finding out my own defect therein And yet because I am willing in some degree to satisfie my self and others too but not wade herein further than some light from Scripture which I believe to be the true proper light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world may seem to direct and mark out I shall set down somewhat of my thoughts concerning the priority precedency or prevalency in the faculties of the Soul one before or above another Whereabout though I may seem to dissent from the received opinion and learning of the World and therein be exploded by some yet I trust and hope I shall in no wise wrench or screw that Sacred Word for my purpose nor much swerve from the true and genuine meaning of that which I alledge to be the principal if not the only ground of my opinion I am not able to find out any great ground of contest to arise between any faculties of the Soul for priority or precedency that is any dispute or question thereabout unless between the Imagination and the Affections barely Now that which we call the Imagination or cogitation in the Soul of man we find to be an unconstant fluttering as well as a restless faculty which at no time can be found settled or made to fix long nay much or often upon any one single object unless some affection do first seem to draw it and set it on work and in a manner fasten it as its attendant for a time though then also it have some momentary flyings out and extravagancies And though it be a thing undeniable that the imagination may often move or rouze some affection which was quiet before yet it is a thing as undeniable that the imagination or cogitation never created or made any affection more than any affection ever created that for we must agree they are contemporary in the Soul and so neither hath the precedency But yet where one seems to work more often in obedience and to some ends and designs or safe lodging or pleasing of another we may allow that other some kind of excellency and so priority And this I am ready to afford to some affection lodged in the center of the Body or innermost place of recess for the Soul there secretly fixed by its Creator with some reason to direct and guide as well as imagination to whet it Indeed the imagination and the affections when they are orderly or regularly working if not at all times and seasons do whet and as it were give edge to each other but surely as the Love of God far exceeds the thoughts of him so the Soul being an emanation at first from that Spirit of Love Love of him may be said to be a cause of thoughts of him and that if the Soul were not naturally capable to love and tend some whither we could not so much as think Sense must be agreed while we live in the Body to be the chief though not the only inlet or Port to the Soul and that every object by and through sense has some touch in its entrance upon the imagination or else we shall make a strange Chimaera of the Soul But not barely resting upon sense we may allow some prior inherent quality upon which by sense the imagination may seem attendant and in subjection to And though at some times the imagination do appear as the usher of the affections yet the least affection once kindled and something there must be allowed to be kindled whether of it self bursting out into flame or however inflamed or kindled will often hale the thoughts to the object without any farther help of sense But many things are presented to the imagination by sense upon which no affection seems to stir or move that we are able to discern and thereupon we may allow the imagination's work or motion to be chiefly from something occult whatever use it sometimes makes of sense to which it is or may be in subjection and not prior but rather posterior SECT II. That it seems to be in the Affections rather then any other from Scripture THere is a common saying how true I know not that life is first and last in that part of man's Body which we call the Heart and it is generally agreed and believed and I find no reason to dissent much from that opinion that there is the principal seat of the affections and that That is the Cell wherein they chiefly move and work Now nothing is so much called upon in Scripture as the Affections nor any part of man's Body so often named as the Heart the chief and principal seat thereof as if that part were taken for the whole and the content for the contained and whole man Soul and Body were included in that one word Heart and no act or thought of man were significant without affection or did arise or work but from an affection I shall not in this place going about to shew some peculiar prerogative the affections seem to have over the other faculties of the Soul scrape up together and cite the multitude of Texts wherein God by his Prophets and Apostles seems to strike only at the root of the affections the Heart and call upon that particularly to be given him or inclined or bent towards him they are obvious enough and I believe a thousand such are readily to be found But I shall only mention some peculiar places occurring at present to my thoughts which seem to allow not only a native or dative power in the affections over the whole intellective faculty whether Imagination Memory or Reason but also some primary influence which they have upon them all or as if the other faculties had their rise or spring from them Thus generally whensoever the intellect is mentioned in Scripture it is coupled with the seat of the affections and taken for them as if from thence it rose and had its influence For if the very imagination had any motion of it self or by sense
barely without the agitation or help of an affection and so were the first inlet of things to the affections by and of it self it s own peculiar seat were then the proper attribute and adjunct for it and it would or might be said the imagination of the Brain instead of the imagination of the Heart for there doubtless we imagine in dreams and when the affections are most quiet and may seem only to move if they do then move from the imagination But on the contrary we read in Scripture of the imaginations thoughts and conceptions the meditation and study the intents and devices the inditings and reasonings the understanding and errors of the heart After this manner speaks St. Paul that when in a whole days discourse from morning to evening he found he could not move the affections of some of his Countrymen cites them these words of Esaias the Prophet The heart of this people is waxed gross c. lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and should be converted As if the heart must be opened and the affections first move to let in understanding All which considered we shall not find it any absurdity in our Litany to pray against blindness of heart In these places with many more like the Holy Spirit of God pitching upon the affections or the chief seat of the affections for the whole Soul it seems to me to point out some potent if not some leading quality in them And therefore do I think we have not translated that Mandate of St. Paul to the Colossians amiss by these words Set your affections on things above not set your minds I know the original is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 superna sapite or de supernis cogitate and so primarily respects the mind But 't is also frequently applied in Scripture to the affections so our Saviour uses it to St. Peter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thou savourest not the things that be of God And although we render it Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Iesus yet it must needs be there meant rather of the affections viz. an humble mind and void of pride because of the immediate subsequent declaration of our Saviours humility And as the Scripture speaks after this manner of the Imagination so it doth also of the Memory which though I have in some sort before defined to be the Treasury or Storehouse of the Soul seated in the Brain yet the affections do seem to ingross that title too and that there is not only a savour or sense but a laying up and keeping in the heart as well as Brain So it 's expressed of the Virgin Mary and our Saviour seems to inferr it by telling us A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things As if all our good or evil acts had their stamp or coinage from the Affections SECT III. That it may seem to be in some affection from Humane conjecture and allowance HUmane thoughts and cogitations seem unto me like Clouds in the Air some vain and empty and like unto Smoak some full and weighty some bright and pleasant some black and dismal succeeding each other in time and place always in motion and sometimes quick and violently agitated upon divers occasions from divers quarters which though they may be said sometimes to refresh the Earth and make her good and fruitful and that without the fall of them upon her she were an insignificant dry heavy lump without activity or cause of vegetation yet certainly those Clouds were first insensibly created raised and sent up from her whom they again sometimes refresh and sometimes drown Indeed to me the affections do no otherwise appear than that Earthy part of the Soul and so we sometimes term it and that not improperly while 't is imployed on Earthly things which though it have not that splendor nor is beheld in any wise so admirable or excellent as those glorious Lights above from which it receives influence yet does rather seem to precede them in time And it may be no false assertion to say of them as the Scripture does of the other they were ordained to give light upon the Earth which was before them The intellect must be owned by all as the affections light and Reason as our present Sun able in some measure to correct their barren churlish nature and quality and now and then dispell those unwholesom and unpleasant mists and fogs springing or arising from them But yet this Earth of ours as all things was created good and in no wise to be wholly rejected contemned or despised and for ought I am able to perceive might be the chief cause why the others were at all Whoever shall tell me 't is some more noble faculty in my Soul than an affection that gives being to this very enquiry I must acknowledge somewhat of truth in the allegation and probably my suggestant may do no less in first acknowledging some kind of appetite or desire in my Soul to enquire and search Desire as it preceded our first unlucky knowledge so it continues surely a fermentation in all our learning at least some affection does and works that which our natural light would not attain to of it self We have a saying Si natura negat facit indignatio versum Indignation is an affection in the Soul and often at least helps aids and assists the more noble faculties to work and so do other affections too as well as Indignation The great pretended Rationalist of the World the Atheist has ready at hand another such like verse and if we talk of God will forthwith bring it out and tell us Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor That it was not our Reason was able to find them or our Imagination to conceive them of it self It may be true in some sort and it might be happy for these Rationalists too if fear could set their intellectuals on work as well as ours since love does not or will not However from them who deny the Author or Inspirer of the Soul 't is agreed that the passions if any part of the Soul must first find him and surely I might no less properly before have resembled Affection to a Whetstone than I did Reason to a Touchstone For though it be Reason which tries whether they be pure or impure false or currant yet 't is an Affection that always give an edge and vigour even to Reason as many of our quickest Wits have owned and that without the rubbing or motion of some Affection there would be little of sharpness or so much as brightness in any other faculty of the Soul SECT IV Of the potency of the Affections THough we should not or do not allow the affections precedency by
course They are these passions which metamorphose a man into a furious Beast 'T is they which are able to destroy that best faculty or light of the Soul Reason and therefore Solomon's maxim is to be observed above any Custodi cor But Reason was never yet found of ability to destroy or wholly mortifie any one passion It may somewhat from Divine assistance regulate or calm lead or direct but if it should wholly destroy the affections as some have pretended to do by it it would prove in the condition of a Prince without Subjects that is indeed no Prince or Governour at all but we find the Subjects able sometimes for want of his vigilancy to destroy their Sovereign and set up a strange confused Anarchy amongst themselves Whatever faculty of the Soul we may give precedency to we sometimes too sensibly find the strength and power of our passions For besides that they are able to destroy one another and that love or hatred can drive away fear and fear is able sometimes to suppress love or hatred so as it seems more difficult to determine which of the passions are strongest then it would be of those things Darius his Guard disputed about while he was asleep They are all strong and either of them is of power enough oft-times to make us destroy our selves or at least neglect our selves and work more hurt to our Bodies than any other faculties of the Soul whatsoever Reason never destroyed any man the imagination might help to do it but never did it of it self but sorrow has done it if we believe the wise Son of Syrach And this common experience will tell every man who lives and is not yet destroyed that the slightest of the passions is able to keep us waking by its proper strength when the imagination were it not for some affection would let us sleep By the strength of that only I mean the imagination we seldom so much as awake from our sleep unless by some terrible presentment it do irritate the affections and then they are the cause and not the imagination and if we do awake thereupon Reason forthwith shews us the folly of our imagination and our affections become quiet But when they have their rise from sense more peculiarly than from the imagination then is the combate dubious they then go on in their rebellion and there is no mastery to be obtained over them by power but by fraud as it were The Will they outlaw which was ordained the subject of Reason and that necessarily carries with it the Organs of the Body as its ministers The aim of the Will may be good in general but that is not of power to distinguish between reality and apparency of good neither good the end nor virtues the way to that end have any corporal shape and therefore cannot be shewed as so to the senses whereby the affections might be reclaimed and made to fix upon any real good Besides Sense is only judge of present things Reason of future as well as present the imagination is somewhat capable of both And therefore if ever the affections become fixed on a real good 't is not that they are mastered but that next and immediately under God's special Grace often leading and directing them they are deceived into good hoodwink'd a little from sense and caught as it were by a wile or stratagem The imagination is slily drawn away from taking part with them and somewhat of real good is first from Reason as it were darted into the imagination and by the imagination conveyed unto them Affections being native visibly working in us as soon as we are born without controul for a long while unless ab extra as we say and no Reason to govern till they have encamped and fortified themselves the wise man might well say He that ruleth them is better than he that ruleth a City The City where they inhabit is a deceitful place many Caves and Vaults in it for them to lurk in we find it but too true when we enter into it and search it and think we have wholly won it We may well wish that Ieremy were a false Prophet and somewhat deceived himself in telling us it is deceitful above all things and therefore we have a hard task to make those Citizens there good Subjects and fit for another City whose maker and builder is God If ever they prove so they must be dealt withall like as with men wedded to their affections as we term them proverbially and as they are usually dealt withall that is allured and led not thrust and driven they are too stubborn to move that way SECT V. That some Affection is the substantial part of the Soul I Have thought and do think and believe which is somewhat more then a thought it is a thought with the concurrence approbation and allowance of ones Reason that the Soul of man is immortal and that the very Essence or substantial part of an Humane Soul disrobed of a Body or subsisting of it self is some restless working however at some times invisible affection and that if those more noble faculties of our Soul next and immediately under that bright heavenly Star are the Pilots to conduct us unto rest some affection as it seems to me is the chief Passenger in this frail and weak Vessel of the flesh St. Paul in that admirable Encomium of his of Charity tells us that it abides when many other gifts fail And if we shall know as we are known as he tells us in another place there will be then little use of the Invention Memory Reason or the like which are but the Handmaids to knowledge Neither can I rationally imagine after return of the Soul to its place of rest or for default thereof in its banishment to everlasting wandring any use of other faculties than the affections unless towards the exalting or heightning them in their several degrees whether love and joy on the one side or sorrow fear c. on the other The Soul of man being an emanation from that Divine love must necessarily partake of it love and not able at present by any natural light it has to reach unto it self its proper object lays hold on any thing rather than seem to vanish or be extinct and withall that it happens to have such several inclinations in man while it is here is surely by reason of some false imaginary light or the want of a true one and that we want both power and skill in the setting or tuning some strings of the affections as I may call them And 't is want of a clear inspect into our nature and frame that we become as David speaks a stubborn generation a generation that set not their hearts aright and whose Spirit cleaveth not stedfastly to God And I do further believe that all the faculties strength and power of the Soul which we have are given us towards the performance of that
pardon and receive again into favour And 't is our only rational way in the like case to acknowledge our errors and get our affections somewhat hot and then melting in us that any dross contracted in our Souls any cankering rust cleaving to them may drop off that they may be somewhat bright and shine again The Heathens who had no other light but this to lead them had their purgations of which Socrates I think was the beginner which though after a vain manner may seem no ways to hurt them And certainly this manner of purgation that is melting into sorrow may do us good and prevent many sharp pains the Soul might otherwise feel even here in the Body I am not about to enquire and determine whether after thus doing we shall be at rest here or how far more or less from hence the Soul may become obnoxious to afflictions or crosses but certainly in all reason she will bear them better when she has done all she can towards a return and can find in her self no ground to think but that her boils proceed rather from some outward than any inward cause and that her disease is rather Epidemical than singular Having our Souls somewhat restored and cleansed somewhat at ease and calm we may I trust without offence and without rejection of more Sovereign Antidotes make use of our Reason towards the preventing of a Tempest in her for the future by finding out and judging if we can first the most probable and chief cause of her billows and why she is often thus tossed and almost shipwrack'd in the World and next espy out some ways or means for the future prevention of these storms But first by the way let us acknowledge that Reason in man such as it is and whereby we exceed all other visible creatures as it is the special gift of God and the thing we have least cause to term our own or too much think of the nativeness or inherency of it in us so it wants a more than ordinary daily support and supply for 't is that faculty or ability in the Soul which I have said man is most subject wholly to lose and be deprived and bereft of and without beholding through it that light which gave it being we may as I may say run mad with our Reason And such Rationalists there are in the World for why some men who have had a greater outward visibility and appearance of Reason than others have yet acted in the conclusion as if they had less if this presumption in them be not the cause or that they looked on their strength of Reason too much as an Habit and too little as a Grace I can find none If the Donor of the Talent be but owned it may surely as well be Traded with as laid up in a Napkin and not unlikely even from it may be found out too some other inherent gift in the Soul which if rightly disposed and ordered I will not say disposed or ordered by Reason may somewhat abate all excrescencies in the Soul and become the chief and only Foundation-stone for any Spiritual building spoken of before even that Tower of defence Faith Reason I say may point at or find out the proper corner-stone for building though she cannot move it of her self or erect any thing on it SECT II. Of Love SUrely he who created us neither gave us Invention to find out nor Reason to judge in vain I must acknowledge I am not able so much as to think a good thought nor well able to judge when my thoughts are as they should or might or ought to be yet that roving faculty of mine call it men what they best like labouring to introduce into my Soul divers and sundry causes of the disquietness tumults and disorders happening in her as well as others my weak Reason after rejection of some has seemed to rest satisfied and pitch'd upon this as the chief if not the only proper cause thereof That that essential part of the Soul Love from whence at some times we feel greatest delight suffers often too narrow an inclosure is pent up and imprisoned by some means or other and has neither that free scope and range or full and clear prospect abroad into the World which Reason is able to allow it and afford it whereby it loses that common acceptable title of Charity in a word Love is not rational but sensual Love may seem with the allowance of our Reason I think to be placed in every of our Souls like the Sun in the Firmament which though it may have peculiar Flowers that require more than its ordinary influence at least its visible rays and we are allowed some such things as we may more particularly call here Flowers of our Sun yet its circuit should be to the ends of the Earth and nothing hid from the heat thereof And then whatever becomes of those Flowers though they are cropt dead or withered it finds innumerable objects to exercise its rays upon and still shines bright and pleasant but if it become once eclipsed by the interposition of any peculiar objects there happens such an Aegyptian darkness in the Soul as most properly may be said to be felt Whenever we look into the Soul and find such a thing as Love there Reason though it be not able to quicken nor blow it up to any bright extensive flame for that is ever from Divine influence yet can demonstrate to us to what end and purpose that spark of Love is inherent in us that is to love the Author of our Being Now as we cannot see God but by his works so neither can we be properly said to love him but through his works Amongst which as there is nothing more deserves our love than such as bear his Image in common with our selves so there is no more certain way to judge of the sincerity of our love to him than by our love to them Thus the Apostle If we love one another God dwelleth in us and again He that loveth not his Brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen This is so much the dictate of Reason that I should have thus thought upon consideration had I never seen Scripture and it is to a certain Law antecedent to all that is written that the Scripture it self doth refer it Thus the Apostle speaks I write no new Commandment unto you but an old Commandment which ye had from the beginning and calls it the message from the beginning of the breach of which he gives an instance in Cain's unnatural murder of his Brother before there was any written Law so that the Apostle might in this sense say As touching brotherly love ye need not that I write unto you for ye your selves are taught of God by the light of Nature and the Law written in the heart to love one another Now if the obligation to this Charity ariseth
and condemn all men who receive it not as 't were from us and from our hands Indeed he who feels any blessed effect of his own Faith will not only wish all men believed as he did but endeavour without breach or rent of Charity they should But surely methinks he should not with ease or without feeling some smart undergo a rupture in his own Charity for the transplanting the same Faith into others since he will certainly find neither himself nor any man barely was the planter of it in himself nor think there should be any diminution of the one for the propagating as we call it of the other in other men Without some rent of this thing called Charity I doubt whether there can be an approbation of or assent to Cleonard's proposition to the Princes of Christendom that is without other just cause an endeavour to shew the Turk our Faith with Temporal Armour over it if we were able so to do and put part of his Nation to the Sword to draw or hale the remnant of them to the Faith and to heal some Souls through the wounds of others Bodies They are men as well as we of the same mould and their Souls of the same extraction and we might consider first how we could approve of the like conviction amongst our selves The Sword doubtless has often made a way for Faith and I believe it to be or happens sometimes through God's Eternal wise decree but I do much question the truth of those mens Faith who are upon such a reason at any time the immediate visible instruments of this preparative When a man shall once own the New Testament as the Word of Truth and stand convinced that all the Precepts laid down therein are righteous and grounded on Moral equity if he make his recourse to the New for his belief only and to the Old only for some of his actions I would ask a Stranger in that case whether he thinks that man's Reason or his Affections bear the greatest sway or be most predominant in his Soul It may seem strange how some men can step from Mount Gerizim to Mount Ebal as it were at will and pleasure settle a Tower of peace or defence for themselves on the one and raise a Tower of offence against others on the other let the one be the seat for their Reason and the other for their Affections and place Faith as they call it the attendant on both and that Reason all this while should not espy that the Affections lead it thither There is one esteemed a great planter or reformer of our Faith in these parts who to maintain the lawfulness of Malediction in some case I am sure against Christ's precept and his example who prayed for his persecutors and against St. Stephen's too who did the like would make a distinction between a persecution of man though for the Gospel and a persecution of the Gospel If it be against the persecutors of the Gospel according to his definition he then calls it Faiths malediction or cursing which says he rather than God's Word should be suppressed or Heresie maintained wisheth that all creatures went to rack If this be the work or effect of some mens Faith I hope I may say without offence I pray God deliver me from such a Faith Surely it may be questioned how and in what manner the Gospel of it self may suffer persecution and no less whether the believers therein would suffer so much from their common Enemies or one another were it not for their too positive condemnation sometimes of all who do not believe just as they do or profess themselves to do Theano a Heathen Nun had in my opinion more Divine thoughts in her than some of our late Reformers and 't was a better and far more charitable saying of hers when by publick Decree she was commanded amongst others to ban and curse Alcibiades for prophaning their reputed Holy mysteries That her profession was to pray and to bless not to curse I am so far from adhering to any party more than other and so far prone to blame all parties in this case that I am not like to receive the favour or good opinion of any But whatsoever I receive from man I trust and believe I shall never incur God's displeasure for declaring my sence of things only according to the best light of Reason he has endowed me with Some such thing I do believe there is on Earth as St. Augustine has intitled his Book A City of God that is a peculiar select number of people who so pass their lives here as that they shall be Eternally happy hereafter But for several men to frame and imagine such a peculiar City in any Nation or corner of the World different in some fashion form or mode from all others and then think that to be the Model or Platform upon which future happiness must necessarily be built or depend seems very strange to me and may do so perhaps to some others I cannot think those Citizens whoever they are require such a different habit or dress from all others but rather all of them generally use one special attire or ornament for the Soul whereof somewhat is to be found in all Nations and places and which men free of that City may be best known and distinguished by And that is that becoming ornament St. Paul seems to mention upon another account Good works that ornament which naturally arises from a meek and quiet Spirit which St. Peter seems to intimate the hidden man of the heart not outwardly worn in pomp but that whosoever privately wears or carries about him will not too narrowly dissect rend and tear much less suddenly condemn the Spirit of another man True Charity saith the Apostle beareth all things believeth all things hopeth all things endureth all things and if we put on that which is the bond of perfectness it will reconcile us to all mankind and be as useful to others as it is ornamental to us It will be like the Dove in the Ark as swift of wing and as fit to be sent abroad upon any employment as the Raven or Vulture and with that will bring a branch of Olive solid contentment and satisfaction to our selves we shall then have all the old leaven purged out and become a new lump and shall render unto God by such a restauration of his Image that which is Gods SECT III. How Love may be regent I May seem before to have undertaken a rational discourse of the Soul and to shew by what steps and degrees even that way it may be fitted to resist assaults from without and therefore in reason it may be expected that I should set down some rule some probable demonstrable way or means how this thing I call Charity which is ever the main principle of Action may be set up regent in the Soul which I have said and do think there is some
so that again doth give perfection to them and without which they are in St. Paul's phrase but as sounding Brass or a tinckling Cymbal that whatever noise they may make are of no benefit to us Thus the Apostle speaking of the abiding here of Faith Hope and Charity tells us the greatest of these is Charity of which reversing his method and order in placing of them I shall say thus much in short 't is Charity must guide and direct us 't is Hope must relieve and support us and 't is Faith by which we must enter into rest that must be the Key that must open to us and let us in after all our travails and if Faith do ever become a Crown and Hope an Helmet we must have before Charity for our Breast-plate badge or cognizance which we must always wear and never put off lest we be left open to divers and various assaults here and notwithstanding any Armour we think we have got on notwithstanding any allegation of prophecying in Christ's name or casting out Devils or doing other wonderful works if we be found to be without this Livery we shall be disowned and receive that sentence I never knew you depart from me ye c. from which Good Lord deliver us The Conclusion IN my entrance upon this subject I said how I had a desire to take some view of my Soul and see its operations and now this here is become its weak product perhaps more unfit for the World than that of my Body yet this I can say 't is not spurious and if my Brain has been the Father of it and gave it Being my Heart has been the Mother and lodged it and brought it forth without any other aim or design desire or affection whatsoever than the easing quieting or calming of her self unless that she desires or hopes it may through God's Grace have some mollifying or sanative quality towards some others I have not upon my own view of it so far transgressed as to fall in love with it I am conscious of its mis-shapes and deformities and doubtful nay very fearful of its defects and errors in many particulars and so have little reason to desire it should live long to my shame and disgrace But if man will not wink at those errors nor pass them over with charity I trust and hope that he who made me subject to errors and knows them best and their causes will pardon them which hope is to any man a sufficient Cordial against the fear or trouble of others censure I pretend to no supernatural Revelation in any of my thoughts and he who is free from error in them must necessarily have somewhat more than a pretence to it Let the World judge of me what they please I have been before-hand with them and I am sure no man can have meaner or more contemptible thoughts of me than I have sometimes had of my self and if there be any thing of true and unfeigned humility in man he can be as well content others should think meanly of him as he of himself but they are not always so proper Judges and I think that question What man knoweth the things of a man but the Spirit of man which is in him may not be altogether improperly applicable to the present purpose and for prevention of rash judging of other mens Spirits since we have been told by one who well knew We know not our own or of what Spirit we are I have lived to see often the vanity of my first thoughts from my second and may live to see the errors of these if I do I will acknowledge and amend them I have groaped in the dark to find out the easiest plain way towards content and quietness and rest even while I am a Traveller but I desire not to become an Ignis fatuus to lead other men out of their way and if this Hand point not right I beseech God any man who sees it may hear that gracious word behind him This is the way walk ye in it Search the Scriptures they are they which testifie of the God of power the God of peace and the God of consolation That Sacred Word has already received so clear an Humane rational vindication of its truth and excellency so plain a demonstration of its virtue and efficacy towards the health of Souls and such excellent methods have been lately prescribed towards the application and use thereof as there wants no additional assistance of so weak a Soul as mine I must confess and acknowledge I do believe it may and does often cause strange inflamations in many Souls and renders them not only painful and dangerous but malignant and infectious for want of a good digestion and all that I am able to advise any one further in the reading thereof is that he first observe the temper of that man according to God's own heart in the Old Testament who found that very Word Moses Law a lamp unto his feet and a light unto his path became wiser than his Enemies by it took comfort and delight in it and gives so large an Encomium of it in that most excellent Psalm as is not to be parallel'd wherein it has been observed there is mention made of it almost every line or verse that he do not exercise himself in things which are too high for him but refrain his Soul and keep it low like as a child that is weaned from his mother If he can but obtain that which certainly a man might do from the reflexion of the very light of Reason in beholding his own weakness I presume to say after he has read and seriously considered our Saviour's Precepts in the New Testament he will be at peace and in charity with all men and so by consequence within himself More I cannot say but that I beseech Almighty God the Lord and giver of Life in whom we live and move and have our Being the provident Ruler and Governour of all things one Eternal infinite wise power that Ens or Essence of it self that first cause that which we are in no wise able to comprehend that he would enlighten and purifie our understandings direct all our thoughts regulate the vain wandrings of our imaginations strengthen our memories so far as they may be retentive of all good make our Wills obedient and tractable allure and draw away all our affections from the vanities and false appearances of the World actuate and enliven them towards the pursuit of all good and the detestation of all evil that we may possess our Souls in patience and with one mind and one Soul glorifie God even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and out of the abundance of his mercy forgive us all the errors of our ways that he would not be extreme to mark what we have done amiss that as our sins and follies have abounded and do abound his Grace may superabound more especially to me
if they once agree as it were to trust each other they will soon undermine her power or at least render it useless And therefore Reason should as it were sow jealousie between them satisfie the Imagination that some corrupt affection set it idlely on work and shew the Affections that the Imagination labours for them in vain it should represent to each what drudges they often make of each other to their several disease and disquiet Thus it should raise a kind of suspition of each other and satisfie the whole Soul as it were in conference sometime that neither of them is to be trusted or relyed upon without her authority and mature and deliberate allowance that they are both deceitful and treacherous and strive as it were to delude and supplant each other by false presents or false imployment And surely whoever has his reason any whit clear free and at liberty will quickly see the dangerous consequence of the reliance of these faculties on each other For if ever their familiar intercourse and running long together without stop or stay as I may say and due examination of the subject-matter do bring peace to the whole Soul in the end I never yet had any reason in me or understood their motion But before I go about to talk of the Imagination and Affections in conjunction together and a remedy to prevent their united operation to our disquiet and perhaps final destruction I shall endeavour to lay open and plain an error or two as I conceive we constantly retain in point of opinion First That though our Imagination work and contrive methodically and orderly with a kind of connexion and coherence of things as if it had the present assistance of Reason as we conceive yet in many such cases it has not but such its work notwithstanding the method aforesaid connexion or coherence is without the allowance or approbation of Reason nay in direct opposition sometimes to true and perfect Reason and is by the impulse of some kind of affection with the assistance perhaps of an evil spirit Next That though it sometimes so work without the impulse of any evil affection or the suggestion of Satan yet it is ever accompanied and attended and stirred and moved with some kind of affection how inconsiderable or slight soever and if it do not directly aim at the advancement of Virtue Truth Justice or the like it has not the concurrence or approbation of Reason whatsoever it may seem to have 'T is a strange thing methinks that men should falsly arraign that Divine and Heavenly gift in us and impute our greatest faults to it make that which was given us to direct us in sobriety righteousness and godliness to be the cause of our exceeding Beasts in all voluptuousness debauchery wrong deceit falshood and profaneness that men should accuse that of actual guilt of which it is not guilty or capable to be guilty nor is blamable or culpable in any case but of sloth negligence or inadvertency That we could neither lye nor dissemble nor cheat handsomely and cleverly without being rational nay men of strong reason when 't is the very office of Reason to render all falshood fraud and deceit how cunningly soever hatched in the Imagination by the brooding of some affection detestable and abominable to the whole Soul Nay that some men should tell us that to every Politick contrivance in us Reason is so aiding and assisting that without it and depth of judgment we could not contrive a false story perhaps affirm a false story of anothers contrivance with any coherence or connexion and therefore if we can observe in a man any thing of collateral folly simplicity or weakness we must believe his allegation as grounded upon truth Surely such assertion with what flourish soever of words was not from the suggestion or allowance of Reason but the bare figment of the Imagination towards the gratifying some ambitious if not covetous desire and their own reason may one day tell them so Indeed I have heard of a late good Penitent who therein could have no design that he should on his death-bed accuse and condemn himself with this kind of Exclamation O that his reason which God had given him in some degree and measure above others should be exercised and imployed in deriding and vilifying the Author of his Being and him who gave it I must take leave to say it was his invention only a thing wherein few men seemed to exceed or excell him with the impulse of some sprightly passion that did it not his Reason but that the checks he confesses sometimes to have felt against that course was through Gods grace his Reason only That roving quick and lively fancy of his had it been obedient to Reason that is that had there been made some search and enquiry into that kind of involuntary check that kind of confusion in it self on the sudden notwithstanding the outward applause it received through Sense might have wheeled about as we say seen the sordid ugly visage of lust and the consequent of its rage beheld the luster and admirable beauty of a chaste and virtuous life the benefit and advantage from thence as well here as hereafter raised zeal and pure love again in the Soul and became the garnisher thereof with rare and all manner of delightful invention But running its own course as we say it approves its past motion supplies the place of reason and continuing that intimacy and familiarity it had got with corrupt affection was made at length the very Slave and drudg of lust 'T is our misery by a fatal kind of consequence that that faculty in us is so capable to supply the place of reason for that it is though given subservient to reason and is of equal Divine extraction with it and is as our affections able to work against nay contrary to Sense and capable of influence from above and subject to the delusion of infernal power but of that more in the end 'T is Passion and Imagination in conjunction together by which we err and commit the most foul and enormous crimes how cunning or advisedly soever we commit them and not Reason and Imagination in conjunction Or rather it is from Imagination attended with some kind of passion in rebellion to Reason I do not observe our Law grounded upon Reason as we say to accuse Reason in any case or to make any averment of rationality in us at the time of the fact although it excuses a man if he be wholly and totally deprived of Reason we have instigatione diabolicâ seductus we have imaginatus est thereupon we lay the fact in some cases to be done ex malitia praecogitata malice forethought and which I think is ill translated malice prepenced for there is no due weighing of the matter as if malice that sometimes subtle thing were hatched in and brought forth by the Imagination Now for this thing Malice improbitas or vitiositas an
as Reason in its greatest strength could not rectify or prevent though it strived to resist Nor are the Affections to be accused justly of any inflammation or disorder through the delusion of Satan or otherwise Neither can we justly think there has been any wilful defect or neglect in the Soul to occasion it Further thus when Pride or self-self-Love or Covetousness with their Off-spring and Darlings Anger Revenge Hatred Envy and the like distemper the Imagination and cause it to wander without any order or Government raising false and fictitious sights in the Soul the usual resort is abroad and in relation to others vileness or baseness overlooking all that is really or may be espied in Imagination at home and in this case we cannot so well impute the distemper to humors naturally bred in the Body as to the Devil and a wilful negligence in the Soul But when men without any great or visible Errors in the Affections condemn themselves falsly when the Imagination works at home and nothing seems vile or odious to a man but himself to himself I judge the fallacy to arise merely from dark and dusky vapours in the Body nay I cannot see how it should proceed from any unruly or depraved Passion by which the Soul shut up as it were a Prisoner from free communication with other Souls labouring of it self and in travail to be relieved for want of help a consternation is suddainly raised in the Affections and from them again the Imagination suddainly and violently set on work Sense before clouded is almost destroyed it becomes as useless as in a Dream the Imagination becomes without controul from without and is sole Master and will be sole Master till these vapours are dispelled or allayed which is best done as I think by Bodily Physick When I once see men come to Visions and Revelations and pronounce and proclaim them as given or sent to direct and instruct others thereby I shall very much suspect their Soul more nocent or more defective than their Body But if I find nothing but self-censure and self-condemnation in man unless in case of a very apparent wicked life before I have ever been so charitable as to think strange and dreadful seeming Apparitions in the Soul rather to be raised first in the Imagination through some defect or obstruction in bodily Sense than that the Imagination through Affection deludes Sense and that the Soul of it self is purer than we can well judge of through our Senses barely Most certain it is and experience tells us how subject this one faculty in us Imagination is to sudden change and mutation from things meerly Earthly received into the Body how a little Wine will sometimes clear and elevate it how the anointing with peculiar Oyls will dull and infest it how particular Herbs and Plants will presently distract and confound it Neither can we I think rationally observe the sudden alteration of any one faculty of the Soul from any distemper of the Body barely but this I neither cease to love what I loved nor hate what I hated nor believe what I believed nor will what I willed from any sudden fumes of the Body nor indeed until the Imagination by its continued disturbance from thence shall have raised and put on other colours on the Objects and through its influence it has over the other faculties in time subjected them to accept such Colours as true The Imagination is many times suddenly changed and altered distracted and confounded from meer Bodily Diseases and so it being as I have said the Eye of the Soul all the other faculties from thence are led into Error the evil consequents whereof the Body only or chiefly faulty certainly God in Mercy will not look upon as punishable or take vengeance thereof to which I shall speak somewhat more at large in the third place but first declare how far I think the work of this faculty is out of or beyond our power II. It is a common saying with every one of us when any Foreign Power lays a restraint upon our actions We can think what we please or what we list Which if it were universally true might perhaps in some cases render us more miserable than men of themselves can make us by disquieting those Affections which they cannot disquiet but through our own thoughts Which are often strangely diverted and the Soul at better ease than if that faculty were in our absolute power But blessed be God since our will is not generally so good as it should be the Will has no such native power over the Imagination 'T is not the strongest Reason the best Will nor any other inherent gift of a Soul placed in the most healthful athletick sound and clear Body that is able wholly to direct this faculty or guide it in any good or regular course for any space of time Whatever men pretend Indeed I have heard of some men who have so far gloried in their abilities this way and with all their devotion towards God for he is now and then formally brought in when we are minded to glory of our selves as to affirm They have been able to pray several hours in fervency of Spirit without the least wandring or extravagant thought Such are very divine men we may well think and happy were we all if we could be so in some less degree But yet I wish no man deceive himself herein and that through his own Imagination ex post facto as we may say chiefly and so have a belief thereof raised from the immediate work of that faculty rather than grounded on Reason or what indeed is the impress of a right Imagination perfect and sound memory Surely to raise this belief of and in a mans self a man must be in what we so call a Trance Sense must be closed and shut up for a time against all Battery In which case we 'll grant the Imagination to be sole or chief Master in the Soul and then 't is no marvel if it deceive men into such a temporary belief But I dare appeal to any such seeming devout Enthusiast if he has been at the receiving that holy Mystery a Spiritual Banquet whereat men usually are or should be as intent and careful to keep their thoughts from wandring as in any case whether presently after he were not able to tell me the colour of the Bread whether white or brown the fashion of the Chalice or the kind of Metal what Vestment the Priest had on what looks or gesture or action he used in the administration thereof and the like Now if he will confess the remembrance of any such thing which I dare say he cannot truly deny I may be bold to tell him His thoughts somewhat wandred For Memory being no other than the impress of Imagination or a cogitation renewed his cogitation did a little ramble and was through sense imployed about visible Earthly things And so long as we retain our Senses which I pray
on him You 'l say he has reason to love me I say so too but it will be but with a sensual Love notwithstanding his Reason for in the first case he may think and his Reason may well allow of such thoughts My Charity or kindness was with an eye to some praise to be seen of men c. or at least in expectation of some future reward and not from beholding any thing of good in him In the second case he may with the like reason conjecture my liberality flowed with expectation of a return and with some reference to my own Worldy advantage that I intended to make use of him or the like But if at any time there appear to this man a sight of truth in me that upon the greatest advantages or greatest offers and temptations to desert him I stuck to him and would not be drawn to do him the least injury or injustice for any gain whatsoever and he behold the principles of Justice and Honesty engraven in me He will then think it proceeded from my view of his deserts and some good I saw in him and seeing the like in me and placing some trust and confidence in this my Love he will make me a return and love me cordially as we say with the allowance of his Reason free and at liberty and this I call a rational Love or friendly Love and the inition of true Friendship We will imagine there are three persons before whom I have a Cause depending to corrupt whom I offer to each a Bribe the one refuses the other two accept and thereupon I have a Judgment by the two according to my sensual appetite or desire and am very well pleased therewith the question is whether of these I should love best from my heart root or soonest enter into a League of Friendship with Undoubtedly he who refused and yet I must necessarily love the other two who gave judgment for me according to my sensual desire best with a sensual Love Now in this case of my sensual Love to the two Reason was assistant towards the raising of it or else I could not have thought on a Bribe On the other side Reason free and at liberty must be the thing solely which causes me to love him who refused my Bribe and that in beholding his integrity for it is impossible I should do that by Sense his action being or working visibly against my interest There are two Litigants before me the one a Christian by the Seal of Baptism and outward profession as I know the other not but a Turk we will suppose These two I delay in point of judgment with some shew perhaps of my readiness to take a Bribe from either the Christian offers me one the Turk not but trusting to the merits and justice of his Cause and hating and detesting corruption in such case as I observe utterly refuses though upon hearing I were fully satisfied of the justice of the Christians cause and gave judgment for him whether of these two think you should I have the firmest or deepest Love for or soonest enter into a league of Friendship with upon occasion I will tell you the Turk For as concerning the Christian's action my Reason will inform me that there is no person that indeavours to corrupt me by Bribe but either thinks I am unjust or at least would have me so If I once suspect he thinks me unjust 't will be in vain to love him after the manner of a Friend for he can never love me so again or place any trust or repose in me If I perceive he would have me to be unjust he is most certainly so himself and then I can place no trust or repose in him Now if outward profession were to be the standard of this Love and my own Religion the guide I should sooner make choice of the Christian for my Friend For I behold him through Grace the better of the two and believe the Turk a Reprobate notwithstanding his hate of corruption and Love of Justice and that the Christian may be by repentance in the state of Grace notwithstanding this injustice in him yet beholding and condemning falshood in any man by my Reason I cannot in that man place a trust or repose with allowance of my Reason nor raise a trust in my Soul so as to confide in him which must be effected through Reason as the proper Judge of human Safety or felicity here for upon that is Friendship builded not on future hopes or Heavenly prospects And therefore Grace which is a kind of prospect through Faith of future felicity can neither create friendly Love nor judge rightly of a fit subject thereof but Reason Whoever would be my Friend I desire he may so be from the very formation as well as allowance of his Reason I know not what any man can behold in me whatever he see in himself worthy friendly Love by any other light than that of Reason Neither do I know if his love should move otherwise or by a greater gift how to repay him a burthen to every man till it be done but by such a return a Love from my Reason since I confess I have no other light to do it by nor without it can judge of the reality of his Love or any good in him I know there are some men who would confine their Love to move only by what they call the Spirit but whether it be not the Spirit of Delusion rather than Love will appear by its confinement within such a particular Sphere That Spirit of Love surely directs us not to reject any man in whom we behold just and upright dealing and other effects of a sincere and well-disposed mind by our Reason what falls not within the compass of that light viz. Reason may be beheld by him who infuses it through the merits of his Son not by us And whom I think we do ill to vouch in our ordinary familiar intercourses and to make him so much a party that he must love only as we whilst we love only as we please and as our own fancy doth direct us To love as Friends needs not the seal of adoption and Grace the seal of Creation is sufficient You have seen doubtless as well as I contracted mystical subscriptions in very familiar Epistles such as Yours or thine in the Lord only which though it be good and allowable in some Sense cannot be acceptable in the common notion as we are men neither can we rationally think such men will ever love us as sober men when once they seem to think themselves out of the flesh while they are in it But we may allow such as in our days use the salutation and who make bold thus to write in every Epistle to cloud their kindness in Divinity since there never was party some thereof at least that bore about them less of humanity But if such kind of men who would seem out of the flesh here and
reject all moral Vertue and Goodness as insignificant will not be drawn to affect or love us otherwise than aforesaid nor imbrace us for any Justice or Mercy shewed them for as for Spiritual Graces theirs and ours are equally invisible we shall do well so to frame our ways as to please our Maker that if they become our enemies because we do not take the same imaginary flight with them they may at least be at peace with us and that if it be possible as much as in us lyes we may have peace with all men In the Christian World I doubt nay I believe there is least visibility of Friendship and this I take to be the cause that the very outward noble badge or cognizance of Christianity I will not say true Christianity by the help of Satan has so much elevated many Souls in opinion and fancy as to make them think no others who wear it not outwardly for ostentation and shew as themselves worthy their common Friendship It is a seeming unhappiness in our nature that our Affection cannot be long at rest and that Love in man only has such several Pilots or Guides Sense would have it stay at home chiefly and please or work for the Body that at least it should not move far nor otherwise than to bring in freight for the ease and pleasure of that Reason would it should traffick abroad and imbrace whatsoever that heholds good and virtuous laudable and amiable in another man and the man withal therefore Grace now and then raises it to mount upwards and beholding that fixed bright Star by which we all move attracts it in some measure to bend and incline thitherward without regard to danger It moves at all these several Summons or calls wherein that in Beast never stirs otherwise than from Sense But yet upon every turn and occurrence so weak is our light of Reason and so uncertain and often clouded through our sins is that other bright and gracious light that it is apt to be drawn and haled home again by Sense and then it catches up every weapon offensive and defensive for the Body Anger Fear and the like Thus are we tossed to and fro as it were by contrary Winds and often shipwracked before we come to shoot that dreadful gulf of Death and we may well cry out before the time O wretched men that we are who shall deliver us from this Body of Death Reason sooner than Sense will shew us some ground whereon we may anchor and fix our Love as it were in a good and pleasant harbour for a time but it self will often loosen it again by shewing us it is sandy that there is no trust in man nor in the children of men and that whatsoever we see of Justice or Truth or any thing of goodness in them for the present those are not things of permanency in them Men are various fickle and mutable in their Habits and in their Affections too We cannot rationally trust our selves We have no power over our selves 't is most certain And we have beheld some seemingly very rational for want of Grace destroy that Body they best loved their own with their own hands And how then can we place any setled trust in another Faith must throw us out at last an anchor for the Soul sure and stedfast and that must be of Love not that it directs or should direct our Love quatenus human that is and ought to be guided by Reason But it may inflame our Love to that height towards our Maker that we shall not be troubled above measure though we behold the inconstancy of human Nature and the falshood and treachery of our dearest Friends though they deceive us and all the World forsake us nay Though the Earth be moved and though the hills be carried into the midst of the Sea We may wish perhaps but as much setledness of Affection and seeming constancy of Nature amongst our selves as in those poor Creatures which serve us and were created next to God's Glory for our use that we might find ground to trust each other here and lodge our Affection safe out of our selves for a time in any fellow-member since we can behold no better by our Sense nor comprehend what is above us by our Reason But his Wisdom is infinite and unsearchable and yet perhaps may appear to us herein that we should trust even while here in none but him who is for ever one and the same and Lord over all And who if we love him will withhold nothing he sees good for us and become himself our Comforter in all our Afflictions EPIST. VII Of the different vain pursuits of the Souls of Men wherein we are ready to accuse each other of Folly though not our selves and yet are all Fools in some degree That no pursuit of the Soul here is praise-worthy or commendable further than it intentionally advances God's Glory which is the mark set before us and which if we do not behold in all our travails our labour will not profit IN my Treatise of the Soul I made some glance at the various and different pursuits of it in man that is the affectionary or imbracing part of it but I could not but behold withal the several opinions that men seem to have of the pursuit of each others Affection how vain every man thinks that to be which he himself affects not or desires But the beholding the variety of opinions and judgments in the case with the folly and madness of all men would have conduced little to the present cure of any Soul diseased and therefore I needed not to insert my thoughts thereabout in such Treatise but have reserved and now sent them to you for your perusal Truth is all our courses as various as they are in any excess and not necessarily relating to some other end than what they seem to an ordinary Spectator to tend after are equally frivolous and vain and though we are every one of us very dimm-sighted towards any espial of our own follies and ridiculous eager and longing pursuits yet are we quick and apt enough to see and deride the same madness and folly in others and we never need with the Psalmist attribute laughter to him who dwelleth in the Heavens from his only or alone beholding our futile contrivances since we our selves are able to afford it one another from the weak inspection we do or are able to make into any mans madness or folly but our own I do think the Creator of all things who affords himself that blessed center of rest unto our Souls and to whom our best and chiefest Affections might from very gratitude rationally tend has of his abundant wisdom and gracious goodness permitted and allowed them not only a divers and innocent vagrancy towards various and several terrestrial objects but withal so framed the Intellect and Judgment as that each several person shall in some manner or measure approve and allow