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
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-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
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
is brought to look on the Stars and told so shall thy seed be Fruitfulness in this kind is all along promised as the reward of a virtuous life and barrenness pronounced as a curse and the taking away a mans posterity the severest Judgment not only all Male and Female but even Male alone as that of interficiam de Ahab mingentem ad parietem as may be seen by the destruction of the First-born throughout the Land of Egypt and in the case of Ely Ahab and others Yet even during the Law and the Prophets beside the instances in that particular affliction laid on good men as Iob and others David himself who had as large a promise as any man for the continuance of his posterity on an Earthly Throne did not look upon it as the only special mark of God's favour For in that 17 th Psalm where he speaks of the men of this World who have their portion in this life he says of them they are full of Children or have Children at their desire and leave the rest of their substance for their babes And his Son Solomon the wisest of men has made a counterpoize of that Earthly gift whether they are given us as a blessing always or as a punishment for if a wise Son make a glad Father a foolish one is the heaviness of his mother and Father too And even in that sense his saying may be verified that if a man beget an hundred Children and live many years yet an untimely birth is better than he But in the New Testament where we claim as Legatees only we find no promises of the inheritance of an Earthly Kingdom or Children to inherit it but are rather commanded by Christ to forsake all to follow him to set our affections on things above with this threatning caution that he that loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me and he that loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me nay St. Luke uses the word hate in the case of comparison and 't is observable that those who seemed to express it as a happiness in our very Saviour's parent with this acclamation Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps that gave thee suck received a very short and sharp reply from him And indeed this ought above all things to be our Sovereign comfort in this affliction of loss of Children that God spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all and therefore it should make us become true Sons of Abraham the Father of the faithful and readily part with our only Son when he is pleased to call for him And now if this severe punishment be no sign of God's forsaking us but may be taken as a Fatherly correction as well as others why then should we not look on it as an Alarm to Repentance An intent to wean us from the World and make us yield up our hearts and place our affections on that true object of love himself An invitation to more fixed joys then this World affords to find out and taste and see how good and gracious he is SECT II. Some Considerations offered to moderate our Passions TO help us whereto these following frail humane Considerations may be some furtherance or at least may somewhat abate the fury of our head-strong passions First That that great Creator Ruler and Governour of the Universe being infinitely wise whatever he does all his disposals all his Elections and choices for us besides the good of others and his own glory intended in them are really and truly most fit proper and better for us then our own For we looking no further then the painted outside of things spend our labour for that which in the end profiteth not But his thoughts being not our thoughts as the Prophet there speaks and he at one intuition beholding all things past present and to come does by an infinite unerring wisdom and beyond our conceptions so work as may in the end best tend towards the true and perfect happiness of every one of his Creatures Let us but recall to our memories our often eager pursuit after many things whereabout in the conclusion we have either rejoyced at the missing of them or been cloyed with their enjoyment and we shall better see and believe this wisdom of God in his disposals and find from thence our volumus is often let and hindred for a malumus Some of the very Heathen who never had any of those immediate precepts from God of taking no thoughts what they should eat or what they should drink or what they should put on nor were expresly commanded to cast all their care on God for he cared for them by the very light of Nature saw and rested in the wise disposal of a Deity Socrates his rule was to pray for blessings in general only because the gods knew best to chuse particulars for us And in this very case of Children the Poet amongst other things in that excellent Satyr could shew us the folly of our desires for them when the gods only knew what happiness would spring from them and doth advise us in all things to a perfect resignation of our will to that of the Divine power According to that saying of Iudas Maccabeus Nevertheless as the will of God in Heaven is so let him do or that of good old Ely It is the Lord let him do what seemeth him good Indeed our little knowledge as Children might properly acquiesce in God our Father's infinite wisdom since we our selves would take it as a character of stubborn wilfulness from our own not to do the like between whom and us there is not so vast a disparity And God beside his written Precepts to instruct us has given to most of us so much natural light and knowledge as a spark from his infinite wisdom though not to comprehend him yet to admire him And though the knowledge that he hath given us does in some sort quicken our sufferings by discussing all natural dulness and stupefaction upon every event yet our reason is not given us only to argue our selves into sorrow nor purposely to increase it by our knowledge according to the wise man's Essay thereof but to bend and incline our wills by its dictates For though they are free faculties and to will is present with us not to be forced yet thereby they may be perswaded to yield and surrender up themselves and cease to be in a manner Now does not reason dictate this to us That when we do see a will working contrary to ours and which there is no resisting that our commissionated wills should cease and yield themselves up in the presence of the greater and not combate with God's will contrary to our daily prayer And indeed our Saviour besides that form of prayer to direct us has given us a
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
it to produce more than an harsh unpleasant and not lasting fruit The fruits of the Spirit of which Love and Joy are by the Apostle reckoned as the principal come to us by gift and addition not by culture or alteration Nay if we have learn'd that Lesson of content and by consequence have sometime joy and peace with St. Paul it is so much the infusive document of a gracious Master and so far from being acquired by our native understanding that we daily want his reiterated Grace to call on us to learn and when we are heavy laden to come unto him for ease If we have learn'd to tred the waters and to walk upon a tempestuous Sea for some steps we shall notwithstanding find cause with St. Peter to cry out Lord save me or I perish which cry is yet my cry For I do declare unto the World that I have not at any time found the recovery from a disease to be a sufficient charm against its return It will come again sometimes and if it come there will lie a necessity upon us and we shall be forced for the cure to use over again the same sanative ingredients and the most approved Recipe in sorrow is and ever will be that of St. Iames If any man be afflicted let him pray call on him who works in us to think to will and to do according to his good will and pleasure and has said he is near to all them that call upon him yea that call upon him faithfully 'T is he from whom comfort springs as light out of darkness and 't is he from whom we must expect as it were a new creation and beg he may say Let there be light in us and there will be light And in his light as the Psalmist says there is life that is a vigorous active state able to dispell all the black clouds raised by Sin and Satan He is the comforter who must put true joy and gladness into our hearts by the merits of his Son and the secret inspiration of his Holy Spirit and they are his comforts alone which must refresh our Souls in the multitude of the sorrows we have in our hearts St. Paul is pleased to stile him the God of all comfort who comforteth us in all our tribulations that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we our selves are comforted of God And in one place he calls him the God of patience and consolation with a kind of inference that God ever crowns his Grace of patience with his Blessing of consolation And he does declare God to be the sole proper and peculiar Fountain of comfort in an instance of his gracious working upon himself Nevertheless says he God that comforteth those that are cast down comforted us by the coming of Titus For the coming of Titus out of Achaia into Macedonia at that time cannot seem to have in it any natural energy to work so much upon St. Paul for that coming appears to us a matter of no great consequence only St. Paul seems to shew us that God so disposed his heart at that time that that should work as a Cordial to him which of it self barely had no such natural operation Nay in one place God does as it were appropriate the issues of comfort to himself by a reiteration I even I am he that comforteth you From the diversity of humours in our natural temper has arose that Adage of fortuitum est placere and from the same diversity we may inferr and change the word à Domino est placere Because we daily see men affected and delighted not from any inherent quality in the subject because to effect that the thing per se must have somewhat of good in it but properly and peculiarly nothing is good save God only and therefore to make a thing seem good and delightful to us it must first have his stamp and impress upon it visible to us And if the Psalmist s demand should be applied to outward goods and one in that very notion should cry out who will shew us any good he will find no perfect solution without the effect in the sequent verse Lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance and then will Rod and Staff and Fire and Faggot comfort us The light of whose countenance that we may all have in some measure let us more especially pray to him and give praise with the best member we have David's own words and imitate somewhat that Divine Psalmist I must acknowledge I ever found some comfort in my sorrows by reading those Divine spiritual Soloquies of his and do not think but that every other man may and that however they may upon the reading in prosperity glide over his heart in adversity they will fix and settle there There is no pattern in them for stupidity nor no sullen expression of My punishment is greater then I am able to bear but this or the like Then cried I unto the Lord and he delivered me out of my distress And to cry unto him in the very words of that compendious excellent Prayer being the Collect appointed in our Church-Liturgy for the fourth Sunday after Easter for I cannot find a better may be no unfit conclusion Almighty God who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men grant unto us thy people that we may love the thing which thou commandest and desire that which thou dost promise that so amongst the sundry and manifold changes of the World our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found through Iesus Christ our Lord. Amen To which may not improperly be added that for the sixth Sunday after Trinity O God! who hast prepared for them that love thee such good things as pass mans understanding pour into our hearts such love towards thee that we loving thee above all things may obtain thy promises which exceed all that we can desire through Iesus Christ our Lord. Amen Amen These following Ejaculations were used in the state of the disease O Lord thy hands have made me and fashioned me thou art he that broughtest me out of my mothers womb and hast shewed thy strength in my weakness Many and grievous have been my infirmities since my youth up and yet walk I in the Land of the living I have been more infirm than my Brethren which are gone before me yet hast thou granted me length of days I have provoked thee more than they yet hast thou spared me out of the abundance of thy mercy Thou hast to the wonder of others spared me whose thoughts have been when shall he die and his name perish Thou hast taken away more righteous than my self and placed me in their rooms to take my pastime like Leviathan in this World But I have not rightly considered thy doings nor to what end thou hast done these things For thou hast enlightned
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
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-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
are not natural but consequential as I may say from somewhat that is good implanted in our nature although misguided and mislead For that God who is goodness and has attested every particle of his Creation to be very good would not naturally implant in us our turbulent passions which are evil But they are raised by our follies only in forsaking that Good with respect to which we were created Now that Good is God and God being Love as St. Iohn has defined him has in us his Image naturally implanted Love the tendency of which should be chiefly towards him and all other his Creatures in reference to him And this is the Epitome of our whole duty and that great natural Commandment of which the Law and the Prophets are but the Comment and Explanation But this natural plant of Love rooted in us from our Birth and growing in us necessarily finds out some object or other whereon to lodge its branches and to be the support and prop thereof which if it be wholly or chiefly lodged upon some Worldly object the decay and fall of that object leaves it withering on the ground and this is Sorrow But if it fix it self aright and spread its branches over mankind in general although it may more especially lean on some one or more particulars yet those failing it holds it self fresh and verdant and obtains the blessed title of Charity whose property is to bear all things and to endure all things so as I cannot define immoderate sorrow to be other than a drooping withering love or the spurious off-spring of a misguided love in the absence of perfect love and charity Neither can I resemble the product thereof to any more proper thing than Esau's Vine mentioned of God's planting who looked it should bring forth grapes and it brought forth wild grapes that which is planted in us for joy and delight when mislead produces only misery and sorrow Now if in holding this natural Love mislead or rather misguided by opinion and fancy to be the source of all our evils whatsoever and in talking thereof I shall seem to differ from the Judgment of the Learned and betray my ignorance in terms of Art all that I can say for my self is that I both thought and speak according to that ability of understanding God has endowed me with without any great improvement of it by study or much reading from a desire or endeavour to ease my self if I could in finding out the readiest and shortest way of cure which undoubtedly is best found out by discerning the original defect of some part of Nature out of order and not performing its office aright and so hindring and obstructing that perfect Harmony which otherwise might be in the Soul of man And whether that be it I leave to other men to weigh and consider from their own reason without any endeavour to confine them unto mine God has as I said in us and I think in every sensitive Creature being the workmanship of his hands too implanted some seeds and sparks of Love that they might have in them all some image or at least some impress of their Maker and as his universal love who is himself termed Love it self extends it self towards all the works of his Creation so every particular of his Creation has its bending and inclining by way of Love to somewhat according to the capacity given it This inclination of Love is visible in the most Savage Beasts towards their young ones and their Mates and others often of the same species And in some of them their Love is not terminated in their own kind and species but extends it self to others of a different kind as is observable and we have seen in Lions to Dogs and other Creatures bred up with them but especially in Dogs to Men. Now this Love works and moves only in these Creatures by a natural instinct or fancy and is terminated upon a few objects and is not capable to extend it self beyond sense and therefore is not found to be extreme upon any thing so as to work any great disturbance or to be of long continuance yet I think we may affirm that their mourning or their sorrow if I may so term it proceeds from their love to their young or the like and so their rage and fury to those who rob them thereof And so their fear must needs proceed from a love they have for themselves whereby every Creature has an inclination to self-preservation This same natural Spring or Fountain does man bring with him into the World which though it lie longer hid under ground usually breaks out into more various and rapid streams by reason of a more quick and roving fancy to help and assist it if not to stir it up yet 't is not long e're it be seen and the first discernible effect of the Soul besides motion is a love to it self by crying when any thing offends it and to its Nurse who nourishes it by cleaving to her and avoiding others which after by degrees shews its more peculiar inclination or tendance For whatsoever may be storied of Timon the Athenian 't is sure he loved himself and besides there is no one so inhumane but his love will find some other receptacle or reposure than himself though it be but some one person to whom he may shew that rancour or poison he bears towards others But man also being the more immediate hand-work of God and created more expresly after his own Image has not only this natural Spring of Love in him moved by sense and instinct and also by a roving conceit of imaginary goodness beyond that of other Creatures but Reason and Understanding also to guide and direct this Love and bend and incline it towards that chief good for which it was created That it should not stand as a Lake like that of Beasts nor yet water some adjacent parts only by violent out-lets but diffuse it self into several Streams and Channels leaving its fruits and effects towards the whole good of mankind and yet tending to that infinite Ocean which gave it its first being Now when it thus has its free passage although it may have some lets and stops that disquiet it somewhat in its course yet they never cause any great Billows or Surges to arise But when by opinion and fancy we too much confine it to some particular and forsake the fountain of living waters as Ieremy expresses it we hew us out Cisterns broken Cisterns that can hold no water so as from the ill-husbandry of this native Spring of Love arises the chief disquiet of the mind Love will be hunting after some good and often takes an imaginary one for a real For indeed nothing being properly good but God only and all other things in reference to him if they be aimed at in any other respect they lose that goodness they had as to us Now according as we by our foolish fancy direct
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
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
spring up in the room thereof grief and sorrow and the greater and deeper root the one had taken the more stubborn and fixed will be the other And therefore I think the Poets advice by way of caution and prevention if we could but warily observe it more of weight than these thoughts have at present by way of cure viz. That we take great and diligent care that these worldly objects of joy and delight do not creep in and too strongly possess our hearts lest if they should be cast out against our wills there enter in and spring up that bitter root of sorrow which will make our last thoughts more heavy than our first were lightsom Sorrow is a wound that is made by the separation of the thing beloved from the lover and though it be but temporary and that we believe with some that we shall again at the last be united together with the knowledge of each other where we shall sing Hallelujahs together and all tears shall be wiped from our eyes yet in the mean while our hearts may be troubled and sorrowful even unto death And since we have lost our present comfort the wound will not be healed but by sending another and better comforter We may still mourn for want of the enjoyment our affections never be absolutely reclaimed by believing the former subject of their Love is happy nor like mourning Widows forget the old but by finding a new subject of delight and complacency Therefore let us as well as hope in future presently recall them and endeavour as I said to fix them on some more stable object than they placed themselves on before Tell them there is nothing truly amiable but God and him we may enjoy here in measure And for the last of them the thoughts thereof as I have said are more proper to prevent murmurs than asswage sorrows For though fellowship in adversity be proverbially turned into and administred for comfort yet really to a good mind it has no such operation If another man loses his only Child as well as I I have thereby wherewith to stop my mouth from complaining of injustice but in no case to rejoyce my heart because I ought rather to rejoyce at anothers good than his evil And sure the true method of the cure of the mind does in many things resemble the cure of the body How far will it asswage my pain to see another more grievously tormented with the Gout very little I think unless as 't will enforce me to acknowledge God's mercy and goodness to me that I suffer in a less degree Nay if the beholding of another mans miseries should be of effect to mitigate mine by the same consequence the beholding anothers felicity which is as obvious to every man must increase mine which naturally few men have found true Many other prescriptions there are against sorrow but since I look on the continual presentment to our thoughts of the thing we take delight in and the rouling and chewing thereof in our mind to be the chief Pillar or Basis which supports and upholds our sorrows or the chief Spring which keeps them fresh and verdant I could not but think it worthy consideration how far it may be good for any man to endeavour to recall his thoughts from his present subject of grief by fixing them on and pleasing them with any other terrestrial object wherein my shallow Judgment has inclined me to think this That no such diverted thoughts whatever being properly efficient of a cure but Anodynes and Stupefiers for a time for then only can a man be said to be cured of his grief when he can think on the cause with comfort or at least without reluctancy of Spirit it is not good for any man in this case to hunt after a divertisement but rather suffer that to call on him and find him out I would advise any man in this case to embrace an old lawful vocation or imployment but not seek out a new one for that end and purpose nor by any means endeavour to charm his grief with the most innocent much less sinful recreation For whatever it may be for cares in general 't is a foolish thing to think forthwith to drown sorrow in the River Lethe for though it be an heavy passion yet none of the mind will get above it We shall often find it rise to verifie the Wise mans saying that even in laughter the heart is sorrowful and it will cause us to conclude with him that Songs sung to an heavy heart are like Vinegar poured upon Nitre do rather sharpen and exasperate than cure the disease This way of laying sorrow to rest is but to give it strength to combate with us with greater force when it awaketh as doubtless it may But besides the incertainty and danger this way we do not thereby at all answer God's designment in sending it Did he ever yet punish any man for no other end than that he should forget his strokes and rejoyce and not rather that he should think on it so far as to amend his faults or errors Can any man think there is an hand-writing on his walls to the end that after his beholding it he should forthwith avert his Eyes therefrom and leave his House and betake himself to the Fields or the Tavern If it be God that wounds us as we generally believe permissively at least as in Iob's case by his fiery Serpents it must be he that must heal us which will not be by flying from the sight of the Serpent but beholding it If it be he that casts us down it must be he that shall build us up And whatever Iob's Friends might otherwise fail in they gave him excellent sound counsel in this That if he returned to the Almighty he should be built up but forgetfulness of his calls is not the means to return and the Prophet David has told us that disregard is the ready way for us to lie buried in our ruines and has shewed it as the very cause Because they regard not the works of the Lord nor the operation of his hands he shall destroy them and not build them up If we think wilful forgetfulness be the way of cure it is but just God should forget us and leave us unbuilt or at least tortering and ready to fall again upon the least blast For I dare say by that way and without him there is danger that our hearts from melting may become frozen but never reduced to any calm or serene temper For besides and above what the World affords sometimes to wit a transmutation of passions that is her objects may cause the mind to lay aside its sorrow for a time and be wholly possess'd with another passion which may be almost as troublesom or is at best a light flashing joy we are capable of obtaining a conversion of passions of having our sorrow as 't is expressed in St. Iohn
are hidden but wilt thou refuse a present desire of return Shall I think of being forgot when I can say Lord remember me and all my troubles O let me not be forgot in the Land of the living If I have loved too much divert the current of that affection and let it return like a River to the Ocean of Love thy self Turn O Lord my affections as the Rivers in the South then shall I have hopes though I sow in tears to reap in joy Let me only desire thee rejoyce in thee fear thee and sorrow only for thy absence if but a moment Thou who assumedst flesh knowest how frail and weak our nature is thou hast said the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak Thy Servant Paul by thee hath said There is a Law of the flesh warring against the Law of the mind and that in him that is in his flesh there dwelt no good thing Thou art the only Physician of the Soul and Body thou canst enliven my Spirit towards thee thou canst mortifie my lust thou canst allay all the unruly passions of the mind inflamed from the humours of the body and actuated by Satan O make me a clean heart and renew a right Spirit within me a Spirit of meekness working by true love and charity and in all things a contented Spirit Let all my inherent passions move only towards the good of community and thy glory Thou hast made all things chiefly for thy glory and praise and cannot I look upon the praising and magnifying thee a sufficient and satisfactory end of my peculiar being without either Children Riches or Honour Thou hast given me understanding which is the greater gift shall that be for nought or that my condemnation should be the greater can he that goes down to the pit praise thee But I will praise thy name O let me live and declare thy merciful loving kindness to my Brethren Let me after death praise thee with thy glorious Saints and Angels for to that end didst thou make man of nought Though thou slay me yet will I trust in thee Let me lay so fast hold on thy mercy that no terrours whatsoever loose me therefrom Rather in this World wound and afflict me but be thou merciful unto me and deliver me at the hour of death and in the day of Judgment Prepare me O Lord for greater Judgments and if thou hast decreed to bereave me of all Worldly comforts yet be thou my comforter And if thou seest it good to punish me let me only be as it were a Sacrifice for my Family and let them praise thee in the Land of the living But if herein I know not what I ask grant only what thou knowest good for me whose care and love never forsook them who did not first forsake thee Thy will O Lord be done thy will be done yet thou canst draw me to thee by the cords of Love and spare the remnant which is left Out of the remnant which is left raise up a branch unto thy self that may be an example of piety and virtue unto others One who may fear thy Name and think it a Kingdom to govern himself and rule his passions One that may look on all Graces and Moral Virtues as the greatest Riches and Treasure so as he may flourish likewise here on Earth O accept of the perfect obedience of thine own Son who suffered for me and mine in the room of my disobedience It was not for my Childrens sins I know O Lord thou so soon reassumedst those Spirits of thy giving to leave the filth and rottenness of the flesh proceeding from me They were indeed conceived and born in sin but received a new generation by thy gracious washing in Baptism Thou wilt raise them up again at the last glorious Bodies and shall that Body from which thou causedst them to proceed go into the bottomless pit I have declared thy wisdom and mercy and providence to my Brethren O grant that while I preach to others I my self may not become a cast-away Grant me true wisdom being a pure influence from thee and a brightness of thy everlasting Light The fear of thee is the beginning of wisdom and that fear is to depart from evil O grant that I may depart from every evil way It is wisdom to know what is pleasing to thee it is wisdom to depend on thee and in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom Grant O Lord that I may be wise unto salvation then shall I see the vanity of being troubled at all other things Plant O Lord and water this root and I will not fear but that all other necessary goods will spring forth as the natural branches Grant me such sincere repentance and perfect hatred of all Vice that thou mayst be at peace with me then shall I not fear what man or Devil can do unto me Let my ways so please thee that mine Enemies may be at peace with me let me so live henceforth as that if any speak evil of me they may not be believed but at last be ashamed Let me provoke thee no more so that I and mine may be safe under the shadow of thy wings Thou art my shield and my buckler and the lifter up of my head Thou art that chiefest good which the wisest have so much puzzled themselves to find and the beams thereof here are rest and trust in thee The light of thy countenance here will bring more true joy and gladness to the heart than a multitude of Children or the abundant flowing of Riches and Honour Thou art the center of felicity and the nearer any one draws to thee he shall find the gleams of happiness I will flee unto thee with praises Praise the Lord O my Soul and all that is within me praise his holy Name while I have a being will I praise the Lord. Praise thou the Lord O my Soul praise the Lord. Amen A Treatise De ANIMA Containing several DISCOURSES OF THE Nature the Powers and Operations of the SOUL of MAN The Preface HAving received my Being Creation and Form like other men a lump of corruptible putrid Clay yet curiously and wonderfully framed and more wonderfully actuated by a reasonable Soul from whence I become enabled in some measure to consider and behold my self from that intuition there has often arose within me some limited desire that is so far as it should please my God and Creator to illuminate me therein in listening after the direction of the ancient Oracle to learn that Lesson of his and above all things else to Know my self The knowledge of the Soul if it might be known and its strange manner of operation has been that kind of worldly knowledge which by fits as it were I have most of all aspired after and my Soul seemed to will now and then to behold it self but being in conjunction with a Body it has in me as in others run wandring abroad to fulfil
dig about and dress it For though it be requisite our knowledge extend further than our selves yet there I think it ought to begin there we should first plant and water and expect the increase I am somewhat convinced that had we no other light than that of Reason the Lieutenant if not the Captain and Conduct of our first created Souls first imprinted in our Nature to guide us in this Vale of misery we could not justly complain of a total insufficiency And I am convinced further that we have in some sort and degree ability to blow up this covered spark to some light and flame and by its help to make a fair progress on our way and therefore that it is expedient if not necessary that every man try how far this light will direct him or if he make not use of it as a light make use of it as a Staff to feel out his way put some stress upon it and when he feels it weak and bend then cry out for other help and assistance but by no means lay his whole weight on it lest it break under him and wound him with its Splinters I am afraid it is too common an error amongst us wholly to reject the Lawyers maxim which suffers or allows no man to disable himself and when we are bid to work out our Salvation with fear and trembling expect it should be done with a bare contemplative Faith of ours without any other co-operation at all that we abolish and smother all Law written in our hearts and expect Grace should be sent us as a hoodwink to Reason as if that must necessarily obstruct Reason from seeing any thing her self which in truth is only to enlighten her anew and in that part only wherein she remains defective For though for want of such Grace the old Philosophers might be said not to see aright or so clearly as they might and so fail in the main yet if like some of us they had trusted only to a supernatural Light they might have failed in the mean as well as the end whereas the best of us might wish to tread in the same steps with them in Moral Virtues whatever they met with at their Journeys end I think we are apt and in danger to destroy our Souls by an extreme hot or an extreme cold Poison absolute power or absolute impotence whereas if we beheld our power and our impotence at one view and joyned the exercise of our past gift with the invocation of new we might make of them both together a Sovereign Cordial Indeed though I do look upon it as impossible that we should be perfectly restored again to the first image of the Father but by him only who is the Eternal image of the Father yet I think it very necessary to observe the character of his forerunner and Harbinger St. Iohn to prepare the way of the Lord make his paths straight to see every valley be filled and every mountain be brought low c. that we descend down into our Souls be somewhat acquainted with them and observe what rubs and lets there are what blemishes and bruises by our first Fall that he who is the Physician of Souls may be prayed to come in and heal them The nature and original of the Soul its faculties and operations its power and strength or weakness is the sight I have desired to behold it is the Jewel which I have held fit to be solely trusted with none but my self and its proper Physician as fot rhe Caskonet or Carkass I am very willing to leave it to the common Physician without great care or thoughts of knowing its composure or disposition I am willing to see its defects and have it healed and yet while I am a going about that I do not think my self capable of dissecting it so as to lay every part of it open to my own or others view or to find out every winding turn or motion of it I believe it to have originally so much of the image of its Maker that we shall confess upon search it is inscrutable and now since its defection is become such an obliterate and blurred Copy of that image that 't is scarce in part legible But yet withall it hath such marks of a Divine work still remaining in it as it is able in some measure to behold its own defects And I bless God mine is not so far in love with the first transgression as to repeat it over again or desire to know any thing further than may tend to God's glory and its own and others good and well-being and therefore what I aim at or desire to see or know is with all humility and submission and acknowledgment of my wants and needs of supply Yet if in the disquisition and search after my plain way and manner I shall prove any whit profitable or helpful to any other hereafter to know and thereby somewhat better to govern himself that God may be glorified thereby I shall not think I have herein exercised my little Talent altogether vainly and amiss I have in my search into this curious and admirable work of the Divine power the Soul of man endeavoured to move by the light of Truth a thing of which the Soul by and from the Divine goodness now and then receives some glimmering light or lively glance only even in the very inferiour works of Nature and things of a lower Orb than it self How much more Divine is that light which ariseth upon the search into her self If I have failed of this light or strayed from the truth I most humbly beseech that God of truth and Fountain of light which lightneth every one who cometh into the world to shine more graciously upon some other who may hereafter correct and amend my simple-meaning errors It is certainly the chiefest honour and highest dignity if not the greatest happiness Humane Nature is capable of here in this Vale below to have the Soul so far enlightned as to become the Mirrour or Conduit or Conveyer of God's truth to others And if men were able to discern her aright Truth would be readily embraced by all in any dress whatsoever nay plain and naked as she most often appears and presents her self But there are so many false lights and such a strange and various impression on or representation of things that neither he that gives nor he that receives can rest fully assured the Coin is pure however it may pass or become currant I dare not in any case recommend my thoughts or opinion as void of falshood and absurdity or seeming contradiction yet this I presume to say I have scraped together some such Materials as rightly placed and taken or a little better marshalled or beautified by some wise sober and judicious person might open a way in some measure to let in the light of God's truth into the Soul of men And to such a person I recommend and dedicate these my Papers without
thousands of men endued with more sprightly or lively Affection of clearer and quicker Invention of better and firmer Memory of stronger and sounder Judgement of every way greater abilities attended with fitter opportunities and greater leisure less pestered and troubled or sorrounded with wordly affairs or indeed the pleasures of the World And this at such times as I have strived to cast away the thoughts thereof and could willingly have pleased my self with sensible Objects even offering themselves as it were to my Affections and I shall adhere to him and become his Convert In the mean time I cannot believe the more than ordinary imployment of my thoughts on such subject proceeded from any peculiar humor in the Body nor that any stroke upon the Imagination through Sense at any peculiar instant before caused it Nor yet do I believe or so much as once think it to have been the immediate gracious influence or inspiration of that Holy Spirit I have always had so much strength of Reason left me as to keep me from that inflammation of Opinion and I pray God we may all so have howsoever he is pleased to work in us But this I think and find and know that mans thoughts are not always of himself and therefore I very well agree with the melancholy temper as it may be thought of those men who have prescribed us the following form of invocation of the Almighty Spirit of the World and that immediately before the hearing his Commands that it would please him Unto whom all hearts be open all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid to cleanse the thoughts of our hearts where I yet hold most of them are hatched or fostered at least our considerate thoughts by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit c. But I do not agree with that man that shall now a days affirm that his or any mans particular Thoughts are throughly cleansed at any time we cannot so judge by our Reason while we consider the vanity and folly of our Thoughts at most seasons and I am sure we have nothing else properly to judge by Some will tell me my Reason is carnal and cannot judge of Spiritual things I say Reason of it self is not carnal it is of Divine extraction I think I have made it so appear it is an heavenly gift already bestowed on us and by which chiefly we must try the Spirits wherher they are of God or no I and that too through Sense most commonly for he who tryes and judges otherwise does it from Imagination barely Some will tell us of their faith their zeal or love of God If it be pure and real I will readily admit it to proceed from that gracious Spirit But how can I or they themselves well judge it to be otherwise than by Reason from sensible and visible effects That may deceive us indeed but that is the best and safest Judge we have in us at any time I know not how to appeal to mens Spirits in that notion some accept the word viz. an immediate light or voice from Heaven that dictates but I appeal to the chiefest safest and best distinguishing faculty of their Spirit their Reason Whether in the case aforesaid relating to Gods express commands as well as those private ones written in our hearts If the thought of our Hearts were cleansed by the immediate inspiration of his Holy Spirit we should then look upon obedience towards our Superiors and Governours Chastity and Temperance towards our selves Truth and Justice nay Love and Charity towards all men as absolutely necessary and consequent as Zeal heat against Idolatry and Profaneness or our observation of days We cannot rationally think though that Spirit be not limited or confined that the good effect it has upon man will not be as visible in one equally known duty as another Or that we can be truly zealous though Imagination may sometimes render us so to our selves but we must be truly charitable I cannot yet think we ought to be so born again as afterwards to cast away our Reason or so much to neglect it as not duly to consult it a thing through which chiefly we are born again if we are born again but follow our Imagination only I do not think Reason was a thing given us directly to resist or oppose and wholly reject every stroke that first wounds or possesses the Imagination or Affections if it came not directly or apparently through Sense and presently conclude it the sole Embryo of the Imagination No Reason the best and strongest does many times give place for a trembling yet fast hold on Mercy from Eternal decrees But yet I think that in the most evident cases of an immediate work of some other Spirit than our own in and over our own we may nay we ought to retain and make use of our Reason by considering weighing and trying all sensible consequents that may happen whether good or evil and curb the Imagination and Affections for entertaining them in other colours than what upon due advice that only or chiefly puts upon them The worst enemy of mankind needs no greater advantage over mens Souls than to have them follow or be given up to follow their own Inventions or Imaginations without any dispute or struggling of present Reason within them to behold the deception and fallacy that may be therein He shall never want besides ordinary Sinners Enthusiasts Dreamers Visionists Prophets c. and with the help of some base Affection Statists and modellers of Governments enough to set the whole World in a flame and uproar And that they do not as the World now seems to go is God's wonderful providence over it If a man once come to lose the use of that rein or let it go or rather cast it away by the strength of some Affection that is devise and pursue that which he would not others should devise and pursue were his case theirs and that in justice too I doubt even his Prayers to God to direct the course of his thoughts or his present thinking only that that which he thinks is right will little avail him in the end For such particular persons as pretend and positively affirm to see visions and hear voices and declare them as senâ— of God I wonder there is any man of the least Reason that gives any credit to them or hearkens to or regards them further than with pity and commiseration when he observes the Imagination to be so far exalted as to be Master over and command Sense as well as Reason and to raise a fictitious Sense or conceive it self raised through Sense when indeed there is no such thing And yet we see such accepted for men in their wits as we say and allowed of by some Statists who would be angry perhaps we should tell them they wanted Reason although we may truly tell them without just cause of offence they do not lay aside all passion to exercise it If there were two
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
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
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
his name might be declared throughout all the Earth as St. Paul tells the Romans from that place Affection in man as in my thoughts of the Soul I have already touched seems often the most disorderly and irregular thing in the course of Nature And therefore could I once prevail with any man so far as seriously to consider the strange motion of it in himself or others I do think it might prove the readiest way to quiet it for a time and dispel those misty clouds which are raised in the Soul by the very restless struggling of the Affections and enlighten it to behold a constant working providence over all its faculties and especially to win and regain that very part of it for what is our understanding to our Creatour but to admire him but our Affections are given to embrace him and to have our Affections become inflamed thitherward Sometimes our Intellect cannot but observe how strangely and suddainly the Affections are cooled moved or restrained beyond its foresight or prospect We see or hear or read a thing an hundred times and it may be then think our Intellect clear and discerning too and yet not become affected with it And it may be these our waters at some other times are rapidly moved not from the Imagination I shall rather chuse to say from some Angel coming down at certain seasons that Assistant I mean or Framer of the Intellect that spirat quo vult Otherwise the same words could never strike so much deeper into one onely it may be of a great Auditory and he none of the quickest apprehension or naturally or usually most discerning Spirit and that to the subduing of an unruly Affection equally predominant in many others of the same Auditory I know there is no man but has loved and feared and joyed sometimes without any apparent or discernible cause to himself or any other and if he would or could but observe so much he might possibly discern somewhat more than chance in the disposition if not Creation of his Soul Some and not the meanest Wits have stood at a maze at the Affections motion especially And though they looked no higher than themselves yet terminated in some occult cause such as the blindness and sometimes edge and sometimes dulness of their Affections It may perhaps seem to many but a mean distich of the Poet Non amo te Sabadi nec possum dicere quare Hoc tantum possum dicere non amote but I must crave leave to judge otherwise of it and that he saw by that as far as ordinary human Reason is able to shew us and I take his meaning to be that such is the condition of man as that notwithstanding there be often presented to the Affections an invitation without exception and sufficient ground and reason offered to them to imbrace and accept yet they are stubborn and decline it and want something more than natural human light to bring them to compliance There are thousands doubtless have received all the endearments imaginable from particular persons and thought well of them but never heartily affected them And on the other side notwithstanding all the scorn and contempt injuries and affronts they could receive from others have yet heartily and truly loved them So as 't is no wonder the Heathen amongst all their Gods thought only Love blind and so represented him to us Indeed upon the beholding and consideration of any the least Plant or Insect there is a glance offered of some power wonderful and to be admired But that power is chiefly to be seen in ordering ruling and determining the Passions and Affections of men sometimes preventing them from breaking forth in an Insurrection and then suddenly quenching the fire that the World be not thereby in a greater flame This doth the Psalmist ascribe to him Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain I do think some rational accompt in Nature might be given of the motion of celestial Orbs and no less of the Spirits of Beasts Why there is so much and such apparency of gentleness and meekness and patience in the Lamb and in the Dove and why at all times the contrary and so quick and ready a will of revenge in the Bee and the Wasp that Passion and Affection in several Creatures should so much differ and yet the one not exceed the other in Intellect But why several men sprung from one and the same stock in Nature should now and then resemble each Creature in point of Affection and exceed them either way I know not unless by such a wise working Power as ordering the result of all human Affections to its glory in the end should permit the sometimes mad pursuit of them Whereof Reason as his present gift is sufficient to demonstrate their Error â—â—d so justly condemn them and Grace only to reclaim them That men should adventure their Lives and Fortunes yea their Souls too and hack and hew one anothers Bodies in pieces to please the appetite of an ambitious and covetous Prince nay perhaps some less apparent Meteor some one or two Subjects designing either to build on the ruins of others abroad or divert mens eyes for a while from looking into their own corrupt and base designs and practices at home or the like What is it but some base rubbish of Affection in the generality of mankind sympathetically as I may say kindled by the heat of some ambitious desire in particular Persons or highly inflamed in them at least by the Devil or some evil Spirit I am sure there is nothing of Reason or Prudence nay or Nature could lead the generality of mankind in companies into such design since you may quickly and easily convince almost every particular Person of them that it is safer and better to be quiet at home But when this fire is once throughly kindled in a Nation and every ones hand is against his Brother he knows not why How strangely and how suddainly do we see this fire when there 's apparent matter enough left put out and extinguished and those scattered who delight in Wars On the other side notwithstanding the fierceness of man which every way turns to Gods Praise as the Psalmist says how readily and easily do we often daily see a multitude governed by such Cobweb human Laws as they are able at any time to break through and want not the greatest part will to their power and yet they are led often all their days like sheep by the hands of weaker and worse shepherds than Moses and Aaron who feed them not but rather poll and sheer or fleece them without resistance For either of which rather than the stay of the raging of the Sea if any man can pierce so deep into that thing he calls Nature as to shew me any single undeniable cause therein nay I might say any colourable cause other than the Will of one single Eternal Wise Power for secret purposes
from a general Reason as we are born alike are of the same mould have our Being from and equally bear the Image of the same Father should not our Love be universal And may we stile our selves of Paul or of Apollos and then in assuming the Title cast away our Charity and our Reason too Must we in bandying for our Teraphim so far arm our passions and blind our Charity as to reject and contemn others persons for the sake of their Opinions which they differ from us in Whatsoever our Opinions are Truth is God's peculiar we may seek for it and pray for it but I question much whether we ought to run over and trample down one another in the finding of it We are all very apt to err in the pursuit and as I have once said our Liturgy is well begun in the acknowledgment of our errors so I now think it ends as well in our request That it would please God to grant us in this World some knowledge of his Truth and in the World to come life everlasting His it is and so locked up that I doubt no man yet ever had the certain infallible Keys to open it to others Though Pilate believed not our Saviour to be God yet if he had not known that he was taken and believed on for such I do not think he would ever have put that ironical question to him What is Truth He well knew man was not able to define it nor attain to any certain knowledge of it much less appropriate it to himself St. Paul never told us he himself was the Light or the Truth he rather assures us otherwise and that he was not crucified us and we are not very apt to believe St. Peter was But a sober Heathen that should see our heats would be prone to judge we almost thought some other men were who they are I will not go about to determine and that though Truth may be the colour and pretended yet 't is Mammon or Dominion are the Gods they fight for when for the sake of Truth they lose all Charity and in contending for and exalting of Faith the solid fruits of both Good Works are despised I would not be thought in the least to undervalue or reject that gift or tenure in Frankalmoign or Free-Alms a Lawyers term not improper for this place Faith since without it from all the labour and search I am able to make I cannot find sufficiency in man to attain to any possession of a present or reversion of a future happiness I do own it to be the most excellent gift which comes down from Heaven but I fear we are subject sometimes to relie too much on it or if it be not improper so to say put too much confidence in it place it always uppermost in the Soul to the starving of that otherwise vigorous and active quality of the Soul Charity I stand convinced that if the most righteous man on Earth did take a full and intire view of all his best actions whether proceeding from himself or of Grace such as we call gratis data we will not here dispute together with his wilful errors and deformities and make his Reason judge of the weight and merit of each he would distrust and deny himself and all he were able to do and expect his Justification if he expected any of God's mere favour and grace and therefore I am content it should stand for a received truth that the best works of an Infidel are not only unacceptable with God but sinful Yet as I believe the Scriptures excluding many men from the Kingdom of Heaven or future happiness under the divers titles of sinners and all under the notion of Infidels so since there is a salvo for penitents I know not who those sinners are much less do I know the faithful from any outward badge or cognizance they wear and therefore am unfit to judge any but my self For I could never yet nor shall I believe unless I become able first to reject and abandon that Reason I have or that Reason leaves and forsakes me find just cause to condemn in my thoughts any one Nation or People any one Sect or Party or any one single person in the World besides for the bare want of a publick profession I exclude here wilful denial or owning of Faith just according to that model as any one Nation or Council or selected number of men have framed it so long as I behold in him or them those works which are the usual concomitants and attendants of what I think and is generally held to be the true Faith I do not think it safe to wish my Soul with the Philosophers but had all my actions after some knowledge of good and evil been always conformable and agreeable to their Writings and such as the actions of some of them seem to have been I think I should never despair of future happiness or rest were my Faith weaker than some men perhaps will imagine it from my thus writing What was the cause of their good works was it Faith If it were not I am sure it was the Grace of God and to them who owned it so or the work of a Divine power that Grace was not likely to be in vain If any of them was withheld at any time from sinning against God 't was the same God withheld them as withheld Abimelech an Heathen as they and Abimelech and some of them might for ought I know at the last obtain from a bountiful and gracious God mercy and forgiveness as well as a restraint The sound of a Saviour of the World from the beginning and long before his bodily presence on Earth had gone into all the Earth for St. Paul borrows those words Their sound went c. out of the Psalm intitled Coeli enarrant the Heavens declare c. These men might look for some strange deliverer and God might please to shew them more than we can judge of We read of a good and charitable man a Gentile who so loved the Nation of the Iews that he built them a Synagogue concerning whose Faith at that time there is nothing more to be collected from the story of him than that having heard of the fame of Iesus he did believe he was able to heal his Servant and yet the Author and finisher of our Faith gives this testimony of him That he had not found so great Faith no not in Israel though there are others mentioned before who forsook all and followed him and owned him for that Christ the Son of the living God too Truly a Centurion's Faith may best become us an humble not an arrogant Faith and it may in some sort be safest for us to think that if he vouchsafe to come under our roof we are unworthy he should and unfit any manner of ways to entertain him We are apt not only to extol our Faith but to impose and force it upon others