at once and in a moment but there were distinct several days of their being created which Order should not be confounded but well observed as one good help to profitable Meditation on Aelohim's Works Particularly the sixth day must not be forgoten as the day of Man's creation and as preparatory to his remembring and sanctifying of the seventh day as the weekly Sabbath-day There was a separate Creation of things on several days that man might with more stayedness of Spirit and prosperingness of Soul consider of them distinctly And now Jehovah Aelohim declares that this shall be the absolute perfecting in the whole and in every part of them of those Heavens and of this Earth and of all the congregated Military Host of them in their Order Place and Function Thus do all the Creatures both in the Heavens and in the Earth stand as an Army in Order or an Host in Battle array ready to serve their Makers their Creators who is their Commander in chief he is the LORD of Hosts and the Empire over them is his They go forth or come in at the word of their Head-Captain Jehovah Christ as he will arm and commission them for his Friends or against his Enemies In the order of my pursuit after the refining and raising of useful Arts and profitable Knowledges I am now led to that day the seventh which is the last Day in the first created Week which first Week is the just standing measure of all after Weeks in their successive courses by the established Law of the Creation on which seventh Day Aelohim the Creator himself did Sabbatize on this Day he rested to contemplate his own Works For having now framed and disposed the glorious Fabrick and the goodly Structure of the whole Universe and having put it into its beautious oeconomy and regular Government he closeth the whole of his Work with a Day Blessed above all the other foregoing Days of the Week The Great Design of this Treatise being the Advancement and Augment of useful Arts and of profitable Sciences in a Scripture-way I shall propound some serious Inquiries to ingenious studious Believers to ingenuous diligent Saints Especially to such faithful humble Ones as have through Mercy and Grace attained to larger growing measures of holy Skill in the Original Languages and of excelling eminence in Inner Religion about the improvement of Experimental Christianity Inquiries concerning Jehovah Aelohim in Father Son and Holy Spirt Q. WHat is the true proper significancy of this great and glorious Name Jehovah And whether ought it not to be used And what is there in those Prophesies and Promises that do speak of the freer acknowledgement of this Name in the later days And how may a discerning Believer improve this Name as for many other holy uses and ends so particularly to make his presence more real and sensible for continuedness to the Believer Q. What is the true import of all the other Names of God in the Scriptures particularly of Aelohim And how may those be particularly improved Q. What are some of the most clear Testimonies and convincing proofs of the Doctrine of Father Son and holy Spirit and the Old Testament which is so fully and frequently taught in the New Q. What are the visional appearances and manifestations of Jehovah Aelohim in Father Son and holy Spirit in Heaven And how may these be improved by a Believer Q. Whether may the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit be distinctly prayed unto And if so how should a Believer suitably make his application to each of them distinctly and to all of them joyntly Q. What are the several Offices of the Father as Father of the Son as Son of the holy Spirit as holy Spirit with relation to the Covenant-people of Jehovah Aelohim and whether is a Believers Union and Communion to and with the Father and the holy Spirit as well as to and with the Son and how is this and which way may it be better improved Q. VVhat is the holy Spirits indwelling in a Believer and what are the Believers Dwelling in God and how are these more improveable Concerning the LORD Jesus Christ Jehovah-man the Mediator Q. WHen was it that Christ did first pass into his Mediatoral Office and after what manner was it and of what good use is it to find out and improve this Q. How may a Believer so injoy Christ's Jehovah-presence here on Earth as withal at the same time to injoy his Man-presence above in Heaven Q. Whether may a Believer actually resort in his spirit unto Christ's humane glorified Nature in any certain definite circumscribed local Place in the highest Heavens Q. How is the humane glorified Nature of Christ a fitted Instrument when quickned by the Power and Life of the Eternal Spirit for the actual conveyance of all suitable good to Believers according as their cases and capacities are And how may Believers apply what is in Christ's Spirit Soul and Body to their own spirit soul and body for proper supplies Q. How may a Believer so walk with God in Christ here as if Christ were visibly corporally present on Earth with the Believer and how may a Believer clear up and improve a mutual in-being in-living in-dwelling and in-abiding between Christ and him Q. How is a Believers Life hid with Christ in God and how may the Believer injoy and improve this for his natural spiritual and eternal Life Q. What are all Christ's Names as Mediator in the Old Testament as well as in the New And how may this be improved Q. How was Christ the first born of every Creature or of the whole Creation and the beginning of the Creation of God Q. What is there improveable by a Believer in the order and connexion of those four things when Christ is of God made to a Believer Wisdom and Righteousness and Sanctification and Redemption Q. Whether this be not one great truth of the present Age that Jesus Christ is the one and the only LORD and Lawgiver over and to the Spirits Souls and Bodies of his people Q. Whether are not these amongst others some of Christ's Royal Prerogatives by his Mediatoral Authority to grant and to pass acts of Grace to seal and to deliver particular Pardons to speak Peace and to give Comfort and how may this be practically improved Concerning the Word of God the Word of Christ. Q. VVHere is the true Authograph or the Divine own first Writings of the Original Scriptures and where is the exact Apographs or transcribed Copies of this And what Scriptures are there that do foretel and promise the restoring of this wholly uncorrupted And whether were not this a noble Work well becoming the greatest holiest Prince to search out this that he may write him out a complete Copy of its Law Q. In what Language was the New Testament originally spoken and written Q. How may the Original Scripture-Language be made the Universal Character all the inhabited Earth
Also whether Faith in the Creating Mashiach have not foundation in Created Nature 149 150 And whether clean Beasts and Cattel were not appointed and prepared as food for Adam at the beginning as well as Herbs and Fruits Page 150 151 That Prayer should â—egin and praise should end our Meals 151 That Adam Male and Female were the proper peculiar work of the Sixth Day 151 That Man should be much in self-examination 151 152 That it doth call for further and deeper inquiry yet what the distinct special Essences operations offices products and specifical differences of the Body Soul and Spirit in Man are with much more about this Subject-matter 152 to 158 That the knowledge of our selves as to our Humane Nature in our Natural Spirial and Eternal Estate is useful and necessary 152 to 158 That Man Science is a very spreading and fruitful and profitable Science 152 to 155 That the Medicional Art sought after in Ethnick Philosophy is but conjectural and very deficient 155 to 158 That the Medicinal Art cannot be promoted and perfected but only in Scripture way of which there are divers demonstrative evidence both as to diseases of the Body of the Soul of the Spirit and as to the conservation of Health and prolongation of Life 155 to 158 That there is an Emphatick Note of Demonstration prefixed to the Sixth Day to point out the immediately-next-succeding Day the Seventh which is the last Day of the Week as their weekly Sabbath-day 158 159 Inquiries for the promoting and improving of experimental Christianity are propounded unto the Ingeniosi and Virtuosi in Religion 160 to 171 The Ingenuous Reader is earnestly desired to correct the Errours in printing especially those that do much disturb the sense and quite alter the meaning Errours in the Margin are thus to be corrected FOr Mat. 11. 10. Page 9. Line 1. Read Mat. 11. 19. for Habak 3. p. 11. l. 4. r. Habak 2. f. 3 Tim 3. 15. p. 13. l. 1. r. 2 Tim. 3. 15. f. Jude 25. p. 13. l. 2. r. Jude v. 25. f. John 3. 3. p. 13. l. 3. r. John 3. 2. f. Acts 18. 20. p. 14. l. 24. r. Acts 18. 28. f. Luke 11. 19. p. 19. l. 3. r. Luke 11. 49. f. Tim. 3. 16 17. p. 19. l. 6. r. 2 Tim. 3. 16 17. f. Joel 2. 14. p. 19. l. 15. r. Joel 1. 14. f. Psal 18. 3. p. 19. l. 19. r. Psal 81. 3. f. 26. 21. p. 20. l. 18. r. 26. 22. f. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 20. l. 36. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 f. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 21. l. 6. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 f. Jerem. 44. 18. p. 21. l. 6 7. r. Isai 44. 6 8. f. Jerem. 22. 5 6. p. 22. l. 4. r. Jerem. 23. 5 6. f. Esai 24. 14 36. p. 25. l. 5. r. Esai 24. 14 16. f. Gen. 4. 4 21. p. 27. l. 4 5. r. Gen. 4. 21 f. Shusham-eduth p. 27. l. 29. r. Shusan-eduth f. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 27. l. 38. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 f. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 27. l. 55. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 f. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 28. l. 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 f. 20. p. 28. l. 16. r. 28. f. permeiat p. 28. l. 29. r. permeat f. thiore p. 28. l. 31. r. altiore f. 13 18. p. 29. l. 9 10. r. 13 14 18. f. 12 13. p. 29. l. 18. r. 12. f. 1 Chron. 20. 19. p. 29. l. 55. r. 2 Chron. 20. 19. f. to Psal p. 30. l. 2. r. to Psal 134. f. to quiver p. 31. l. 5 6. r. to quaver f. Ezra 3. 11. p. 31. l. 58. r. Ezra 3. 10 11. f. The 1 6 Psalm p. 31. l. 62. r. The 136 Psalm f. Zakef cotoâ— p. 32. l. 12. r. Zakef katoâ— f. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 32. l. 33. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 f. Chron. 16. 33. p. 32. l. 53. r. 1 Chron. 16. 33. f. Ps 128. 4. p. 32. l. 77. r. Ps 218. 14. f. Job 10. p. 32. l. 77. r. Job 35. 10. f. Acts 13. 35. p. 33. l. 34. r. Acts 13. 33 35. f. 23. 35. p. 33. l. 37. r. 13. 35. f. compare p. 34 l. 37. r. compared f. 3. 13 14. p. 34. l. 57. r. 3. Luke 2. 13 14. f. 249. p. 34. l. 63. r. 149. f. Acts 14. 14. p. 35. l. 16. r. Acts 14. 14 15. f. Ps 119. p. 35. l. 18. r. Ps 119. 54. f. Title 17. p. 35. l. 48. r. 55. Title v. 17. f. Luke 1. p. 37. l. 1. r. Luk. 2. f. Jer. 32. 19. p. 38. l. 33. r. Jer. 31. 39. f. Jer. 31. 28. p. 39. l. 3. r. Jer. 31. 38 39. f. Ps 19 5. p. 39. l. 4. r. Ps 19. 4. f. 2. Kin. 21. 14. p. 39. l. 5. r. 2 Kin. 21. 13. f. Esa 10. 14. p. 39. l. 32. r. Esa 10. 15. f. 26. 18. p. 39. l. 41. r. 27. 17. f. Isa 22 25 24 25. p. 39. l. 49. r. Isa 22. 23 24 25. f. Ps 22. 17. p. 39. l. 51. r. Psal 22. 16. f. Eccles 12. 13. p. 39. l. 53. r. Eccles 12. 11. f. 20. p. 40. l. 2. r. 19. f. Jer. 27. 19 22. p. 40. l. 31 32. r. Jerem. 27. 19. f. Job 36. 6. p. 40. l. 33. r. Job 38. 6. f. 2 King 16. 8. p. 41. l. 39. r 2 King 16. 10. Exod. 25. 9 40. 1 Chron. 28. 11 12 18 19. Ezek. 43. 10. Heb. 8. 5. f. Gen. 1. 30. p. 42. l. 7. r. Gen. 10. 30. f. Mat. 22. 11 c. p. 47. l. 12. r. Mat. 22. 1 c. f. Ps 49. 5. p. 47. l. 24. r. Ps 49. 4. f. Ps 79. 3. p. 47. l. 34. r. Ps 89. 36 37. f. 2 Pet. 2. 8 11 13. p. 48. l. 3 4. r. 2 Pet. 3. 7 11 13 14. f. Ps 19 4. p. 50. l. 12. r. Ps 19. 9. f. Esai 15. 20. p. 52. l. 4. r. Esai 5. 20. f. Ps 106. p. 59. l. 2 3. r. Psal 106. 35. f. Jerem. 10. 23. p. 59. l. 3. r. Jerem. 10. 2 3. f. Mat. 12. 26. p. 62. l. 4. r. Mar. 12. 26. f. Exod. 2. chapters p. 63. l. 2 3. r. Exod 2 3. chapters f. Dan. 5. 17 8. p. 64. l. 8. r. Dan. 5. 7 8. f. 1. 10 11 15. p. 66. l. 5. r. 1 10 11 13 15. f. 85 17. p. 66. l. 8. r. 15 17. f. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 67. l. 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 f. Jihejah p. 68. l. 10. r. Jihejeh f. 19. 30. p 6â— l. 21. r. 39. 30. f. Ps 95. 6 7 9. p. 69. l. 17. r. Ps 95. 6 7 8 9. f. Isai 43. 23. p. 70. l. 14. Esai 45. 23. f. Exod. 23. 29. 23. p. 70. l. 25 Exod. 23. 20 25 f. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 73. l. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 f. 9. 6. p. 75. l. 7. r. 9. 2 6. Ps 96. 10 13. John 17. 5. 24. f. John 5. 4.
In him that is in this Christ who is opposed to vain affecters of humane wisdom and humane traditionists dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead Bodily the one dwelleth in the other which do shew them to be distinguished yet joyned by a personal Union of both Natures in one Christ there is no need of any additaments here to supply any defect or imperfection to adjoyn them unto Christ and unto his Word-Doctrine the perfect Deity with all its glorious Attributes of Wisdom Power and other Excellencies inhabits in this Teacher what need therefore is there to seek other documentals or helps can Philosophy instruct us as Wisdom it self can inform us here the Plenitude of Deity resides as in a fixed and proper seat not a portion of the Godhead as the gentile idolaters were falsly perswaded of their false Gods nor only some eximious gifts and graces of the Spirit as in Angels Prophets and their holy ones but the true and perfect God with his infinite unmatchableness He himself indwells in this Humane Nature after a peculiar way and manner and barely by his Universal Presence and assistencie as he is in and with all things and places to conserve and to sustain them neither only by a special efficacie of the Spirit as he is in the Saints Sanctifying of Believers and enriching them with distinguishing charisms with gracious endowments but by a new mode of existing though the nature of him who thus exists remain the same it is by subsistential Union personally so as that the inhabiting or assuming God becomes one with the inhabited or assumed Humane Nature this Christ as concerning the flesh came from the Father being also over all God blessed for ever Gnimmanu-ael God-with-us this branch of David is Jehovah too If it be ask'd Whether the raising up of the dead Body of a man to life and to the sameness of subsistency again be an incredible thing Pagan Philosophers have determined this contrary to the Truth by asserting that from a privation to an habit there is no returning no regress is to be granted in such a case whereas the holy Scriptures do better teach us that the resurrection of the dead is a facible thing a believeable matter and that it is unreasonable to judge it incredible cannot an Almighty God do this cannot he restore being who gave being Cannot that Head Christ who raised himself from the dead raise up his Members also Ethnick Logick is no fit judge of many Scriptural predictions its Rules of ratiocination cannot measure these Mysteries such as God is Man The word was made flesh God with his blood redeemed the Church these and such like high Truths and Things which are necessary for us to believe for our Eternal Salvation were hid from the Wise Ones of that age for those Disparates here do come and agree together affirmatively God Eternal the Creator of all things and he who existed before all time was born in time He who is impassible did suffer The immortal one did die A man sits at the right hand of God God who is All-fulness is emptied The Omnipotent needeth the help of a Nursing-mother The All-knowledge All-wise one increased in Knowlede and in Wisdom The Every-where-present one was included in his Mothers Womb He that filled Heaven and Earth had not where to lay his head He that is transcending the most general of all kinds and of genus's is made a corporal individual the lowest of all substances He who made others rich was himself poor The Righteous one did justly bear both the fault and punishment of the unjust Here the LORD is made a servant and the servant is a LORD here the Mother is the Daughter of her own Son and the Son is Father of his own Father Here is the All-sufficient supplyer is himself ready Here contrary to the Ethnick Physical Science what was finite is made capable of what is infinite and what was infinite is circumscribed within narrow limits Here a Virgin conceives without Man Here the body is born in one place and is taken to him who is in many places in all places at once Here the Common Arithmetick must seek out new Rules for two are one and one is two in Christ three are one and one is three in Father Son and holy Spirit being the Almighty Jehovah What a loss is Pagan Philosophy at in all these Mysteries and in a multitude of more that might be added Men do never come on so far as to the capital beginning of all true knowledge of all sound Understanding of all useful Wisdom of all essential Science till they get the knowledge and the fear of Jehovah Aelohim who has revealed himself in his Word and manifested himself in his Works agreeably to Scripture-discoveries this is a gift from Christ It is word-understanding that is the true good understanding and our Tongues should answer to the Scripture-saying otherwise if we resort to merely humane Sophies we shall at the last by woful experience find after all our busie Inquiries and incessant Studies and attentive heedfulness that there are many weighty particulars in the works both of Creation and of Providence that are beyond the power of mans industry and above the reach of mans wisdom Who is as this wise man he was one of the wisest men even Solomon that did ask the question It is a question expressive of the Truth there is none that compared to him doth weigh equally in the Sanctuary-balance with him wouldest thou know who is he it is he and no other but he that knows the interpretation of a word who can so give sorth the true sense of the word in its original significancy as thereby to set out the right Nature of Things in their proper beings There is in the Word of Christ full comprehensiveness as of all other useful Learning so particularly of the knowledge of Natural Things of which it doth treat and speak purposely and professedly HOw great a part of the holy Scriptures must be transcribed who would write out all that is in them which doth treat of this subject matter Here is the History of the Creation originally and fully discovered which is not so made known in any or in all the Books of Humane Authors who though speaking to this particular point yet are no further sound than as they speak and write according unto this and wherein they ar sound they have borrowed and fetched from this here they lighted their Candle and from hence they have digged their treasure It is the special design and the main purpose of some particular passages in the holy Scriptures expresly and plainly to open the true state of Natural Things as the Book of Job in a great part of it many of the Psalms most of Ecclesiastes besides much of this nature which is frequently scattered through this Book of books How filled is this with Aelohim's essential Operations in
all these suited to his particular constitution This would make him observe in experience what food is hurtful and what is healthful for him This doth put an healthful soundness in saving Faith in wholesome Doctrine in a renewed mind The pardon of Sin is set out by its having an healing Virtue in it upon the pardoned The LORD Jesus Christ hath born the diseases of his people and there is a spiritual skill in laying of these upon him so as to draw healing Virtue from his humane glorified Body when quickned by the Spirit by a touch of Faith Ungoverned passions are Distempers and Diseases which the holy Spirit and Graces from him acted aright either doth prevent or remedy How many are those precious promises in which the LORD hath ingaged himself unto his dutiful Children that walk orderly in his Family and are always found doing of that which is well-pleasing unto him all which are to be pleaded with him by a Spirit of Faith with the Prayer of Faith in the Word of Faith as the Case doth call for and as the Matter doth require as otherwise sicknesses and diseases are threatned against the unperswadable How often in the Scriptures doth the cure of Diseases follow upon the remission of sins with which it is joyned Many Examples it doth afford us of this Converting Grace doth dispossess Satan who through the sufferance of God hath inflicted doth and still can inflict Diseases Hence infirmity or sickness has somewhat of his Name as a spirit of infirmity Intemperance Gluttony and Drunkenness do cause multitudes of Distempers which would not be did Grace exercised keep within due bounds of Moderate Sobriety The Spirit Soul and Body in man have a mutual influence upon each other and it is often well or ill with the one as it is well or ill with the other Physicians many times cannot heal because Jehovah is not sought unto Patients now and then do suffer much from them and do waste their substance to little or no good effect so that they are Physisicians of no value A wise Comforter is called a Physician in the Word of God there is an healing Virtue going along with his savoury seasonable suitable counsel A deliverer has the same name when Jehovah doth save his hands are said to heal his saved Ones do know and injoy the meaning of this healed ones are counselled in order to the continuance and further enjoyment of their health to avoid sin for time to come A thankful frame is preservative of health when all the glory of a cure is given unto Jehovah and when the end of a Cure is attained by a return with thankfulness and diligence to the function of our Office in our Place and in our Calling an eye of Faith towards Christ has been found to be actually healing Thus also sweet sensible satisfying Communion with God is of a nourishing Virtue and of an healing efficacy Spiritual Senses have Spiritual Objects suited and Heart Senses have Heart Objects fitted and outward Senses have outward Objects prepared The New Creature hence has its way of inward reviving and restoring The Spirit and Soul sees hears smells tasteth and the sensitive part has its congruous refreshments and all these have a tendency to Health This was Job's Food and Physick And O how sweet were these to the Psalmists pallat This Word of God has a purging curing efficacy so also has the Grace of God How healing are his comfortings to an wounded spirit and to a broken heart The Ministery of good Angels is sometimes used both in inflicting of Diseases and of Death as also in curing of Distempers It is a great sin in case of sickness to consult Dunghil-idols and not the God of Israel for cure and for health National sins do give Names to natural Diseases As the Botch of Egypt There is a Talio sometimes in some Diseases carrying along with them the resemblance of the provoking deserving cause of them the whole body sinning may be struck all over or some one particular member may be more smitten and pained when it is more in trespass Some Diseases are ineurable by any Medicinal Art until there be repenting and returning No Disease is so deadly but that Aelohim can cure it if he will prove his Skill and put forth his Power Healing would be a gift in the Churches of Christ were Churches more rightly constituted more regularly gathered and more orderly walking The perturbations and passions of the Heart are Morbifickcauses hurtful to the Body as well as to the Soul by operating causality When joy doth exceed the Heart forgets its Limits and leaps beyond its bounds and so loosneth it self that the spirits too frolickly fly out whereupon weakning fainting swooning and sickning do ensue Whereas joy moderated doth revive the heart chear the spirit quicken the body and comfort the whole man Over-sadness and undisciplin'd fear doth oppress the Heart and streighten the Spirit and imprison the Soul and weaken the whole Man so cooling natural heat and so freezing the radical moisture that the Limbs will tremble and the Heart palpitate the Appetite doth flat the Digestion is disturbed the the Distribution impeded kindly Motion is hindred distant Members are chilled and the whole man is distempered The flesh is dryed the strength is broken the Senses are weakned the Mind is darkned the Imagination is clouded and frighted the Blood is congealed and the Spirits are stupified It has many sickning affects upon the whole man Saving and sanctifying Graces and holy heavenly frames have a Specifick Remedy against distempered Passions I often find the sick Psalmist thus fetching in a timely cure A large Treatise might profitably be published upon this Subject It would be an Honour put upon the Learned in the Medicinal Knowledge if their Profession and Practice might no longer be only a conjectural Art a probable Doctrine of vain Philosophy but now at length an ascertaining Science of Scripture Verity For a further Advance and Augment of useful Science let it be inquired from the fourth Days Work Q. Whether the Celestial Phaenomena of the glorious Luminaries can ever be reduced to any certain satisfactory Art or improved into an advanced restaured Science by vain Philosophy Or must this be attained only by Scripture-Discovery in its pursued Light and followed Directions A. VAin Philosophy can never teach it it is only learn'd in the Scripture School Precious time will be prodigally wasted in fruitless Disquisitions whilst vain affecters of Humane Wisdom are our Teachers who would Dogmatize over us and impose their peremptory assertions upon the easie credulity of their hood-winck'd Disciples who have no wings to fore high enough for a confutation of their New Worlds in the Moon and in other Luminaries by a close ocular Demonstration to the contrary And thus they are hardened into a confidence of their
Original Hebrew hath its great use and may be put to a more growing and profitable improvement only special heed must be taken that they be all drawn to side with the Hebrew but not to put the Hebrew violently by force to be of their party against its own natural meaning In whatsoever Author you meet this disconsonancy to the Scriptures that would bring an alien sense to the Scriptures and doth not receive a genuine meaning from the Scriptures look upon it as one great cause of error these appositions and additaments from men are detractions and substractions from the Word Let the Learned in all their studious artificial Expatiations and liberal scientifick walks in these Fields of Nature gather and bring in as much of choice created Excellencies as they can whereby to contribute to the augment of this Art and the perfecting of this Science only let this be learn'd by reading in Scriptures Book and in Natures School For the rectifying of some common Philosophical mistakes let us by an inquiring Spirit make a deeper research into the Scriptures about this question The creeping living Creatures were not formed out of the Waters as their Pre-existent matter for they were and are distinct Creatures from the Waters of a different make and kind This doth but set out the manner of after productions in the watery places They have been some of the generally received mistakes that â—here was a common pre-existent Matter of the whole Creation That Matter and Motion are the Essences of things That the four Elements are the Original causes of things which have a mixtion of Elements in them That beaten axiom of Ethnick Philosophy that of nothing it is impossible any thing should come as if therefore there were a necessity of fore-existent matter to work upon because the ordinary course of Nature is now so doth discover in the assertors thereof their ignorance of the Scriptures For although out of absolute Nothing Nothing can be extracted converted or made to be yet that doth not necessarily infer that therefore there must be a first Matter and a Potency thereof to be the common Principle of all material things for Almighty Power can create that unto a Being which had no Being before That Ethnick Rationalist who maintained and defended this corrupt Tenet did reject all matters of Faith not only Humane but Divine also and examined all things only by his own Reason whose Writings therefore can afford no true good Commentary upon Scripture which doth not at all speak of any such pre-existent Matter The Scriptures of Truth do not assert any such prime confused Chaos out of which afterwards all Created Beings should come forth distinct neither can any man's Reason evince this to him who doth stand in awe under the Authority of God's Word was it not altogether as easie to Omnipotency and more glorious to all Wisdom at the first to create the several kinds of all Created Beings distinct and perfect than to frame and to form them afterward of matter made before hand is it not against the dictates of Natural Reason and Light that such a pretended first Matter should subsist separate by it self and there rest a while under some common and general Form yet so as withal to have in it such a multitude of specifical Forms of Natural Beings and after-created Essences of all future Bodies not distinct but in a confused lump and mingled heap all jumbled together one with another God is not the author of confusion and how can a rational Intellect understand that any one common Form could make specifically distinct Forms out of such a fancied first matter of corporal things The internal Forms of created Beings is that primitive force and original Nature which Aelohim did speak into and fasten in the several kinds of created Beings on the several days of the first Weak according to the particular Essence and specifick Being and different condition of every thing whereby they are some ways disposed and fitted strengthned and enabled to put forth their proper vertues and their special operations by the exercise of which natural powers they were orderly to move towards the right end in subserviency under and conformity to the will of their Maker which was their goodness and their perfection The Creatures could not cause themselves to be from Not-being neither was natural Generation the first Original of these Creatures but Creation or creating Causality or primitive and proper Creation Neither were their created Potentialities latent in a first Chaos produced into their Actualities on the six days but all and every of the Creatures were immediate distinct Works of Aelohim's Power He created in every one of the six days Any created Original or primary Womb out of which other Creatures were extracted or the material stuff whereof all things were framed which one Ethnick Philosopher calleth the first Matter as the Potential Principle of all Another names it Hyle a darkness somewhat invisible and without Form A third intitles it a fearful Shadow A fourth makes it a symbolical Unity A fifth doth stile it a deformed Chaos or universal troubled Mass without form or shape These and such like fancied Images of Humane Invention have no firm footing in Scripture All and every of the Works of the foregoing six days of the Week are proper Creatures each of them were new Creatures of distinct Essence or Entities There were no former Phaenomena or appearance of them Had there been any such one universal Body of Matter or Corps of the World and an universal created spirit as the soul of the World then all had been perfected in one day both the whole Body and the whole Spirit of the Universal World of Creatures and all this had been one Individuum Physically Really Naturally Not only was the first Creation in one day by the supernatural Power of Aelohim as if the after productions were by the Power of instituted Nature or application of Art But also all the Created Beings on the second third fourth fifth and sixth days which were then Essences when they were Existences and not Essences in Potentiality on the one day and Existences in Actuality on the other days as if only productions out of a former Essence If the Reader do observe any Phrases or Lines in this Treatise word for word in other Authors let him know that these Collections were made some years go when the Author made use of some Books as he could then be suffered to come at them which Books he had not then by him when he first framed this Treatise neither doth he readily know whither to go for the finding out of those citations or transcribings now that he hath most of these Books by him Sometimes he useth their own words where he apprehendeth the writers mind and expressions to be according to the Word and in several places he confutes their mistakes by the Original Text. Let the grand design be promoted of advancing of useful
of Church-members of regular exercise of Church Discipline And now if we further consider Adam or Man as to his own singular individual person how many advantageous Arts and Sciences might here pass under further inquiry The whole Adam and intire compositum of Man as to spirituals doth in its comprehension call for much skill in several Mysterious Sciences as of the excelling Prerogative of man's Primitive created Holy Happy Healthful State Of man's miserable condition under his fallen sinful state Of man's restaured Felicity in the New Created Converted State Of man's unexpressible summity of Happiness in his glorified Estate And as for Adam for Man in his Naturals the body of Man takes in the Art of Cookery for nourishment the Art of Medicine for Curing the Art of Chirurgery for Healing the Art of Anatomy for Dissection the Art Cosmetick for Clothing for comliness for cleanness for due-bounded Decoration The Art of Activity for all bodily lawful Exercises The Art of patient suffering And if I would crumble this into a multitude of particulars respecting the inward and out parts of the body how many under Arts do these contain Ear-art Eyeâ—art Tongueâ—art Heart-art besides many that I could mention about the Humours the Blood the proper Offices and Functions of every part with a multitude of more Get we into the soul or into the spirit of Adam or of Man Very profitable disquisitions might here be made what the specifick Natures and Differences of these are what their several Offices Functions Facuities Motions and such like What the several Objects of them are And how that these would take in many Arts and Sciences the Intellect of Man doth lead to the Art of Scripture-Logick His will and affections to the Art of Scripture Ethicks His invention and Judgement when it steps into Elocution to the Art of Scriptureâ—Rhetorick What shall I more say If the particular Arts and Sciences do so muitiply and there be so much in the holy Scriptures about every one of these as I could had I time and a call thereunto evidently demonstrate to any Spiritual Discerner and Judicious Inquirer is it not then clear that he who has a Purse and a mind proportionable to so great an undertaking might imploy scores of the most Learned men in the World about much of the most useful work in the World And now I could pity the great princely noble wealthy ones of this World who have so much and yet do so little who are intrusted with many Talents and yet do Trade so little with them for the promoting of so choice good in the Common-wealth of Learning How many thousands and Millions of pounds are there sinfully wasted and vainly expended about sensual Arts and voluptuary Sciences to the corrupting and undoings of hundreds of Souls One whereof is of more true solid-worth than an whole World Which if it were laid out and improved for the advancement of Scripture-Learning would pass both comfortably upon account at the last Judgement-day and in the mean time forward and spread some of the rarest Excellencies and choicest Fellcities that rational Creatures and Humine Intellects are capable of on this side of the heavenly glory But though I should even break my loyns with sighing and blind my eyes with Writing yet when once will it be otherwise till the LORD himself do open the Eyes and irradiate the minds and change the hearts and incline the wills and ingage the Spirits of some of the great ones of the Earth to appear more in so righteous a Cause At the present because it is a prosecuting of that subject matter which I am upon let me present somewhat to the view of men conversant in the Art and Practice of Medicine with respect to man which may if the LORD will bless it to that end ingage them to be more in the studious research into the Scriptures for the promoting and advancing of the Medicinal-Science which Ethnick Philosophy can never perfect In the general let it be pondered upon whether those who have a name to be great advancers of Learning particularly of this part of Learning the Medicinal Art â—have ever laid this Science upon a sound bottom who affirm that Medicine not grounded upon Philosophy is a weak thing and that the knowledge of Medicine has this wanting a true and active Natural Philosophy upon which the Medicine should be built That there is a defectiveness in this Art as commonly studied professed and practised is confessed by the Discerning and Ingenious So that some further Maturation and perfecting of it is much desired But that ever either old Ethnick Philosophy in Principles or new Experimental Philosophy in practice by Christians can attain this compleating augment without fetching of it out of the Scriptures of Truth that I deny For these being Philosophizings or vain affected Humane Reasonings according to outward senses which are very fallible in two great cases especially when either Objects are at too great a distance or when Objects are very secret and hidden at least in their inward Springs and Causes and Combinations shewing themselves outwardly only by some darker symptoms and deceitful signs These I say cannot give so right a judgement in many cases There are divers diseases of the Soul and of the Spirit in man which do also influence to the diseasing of the body which mere natural Philosophy cannot discover or remedy without the Word And there are several Diseases of the body which for the new kinds the unseen causes the complexâ—combinations of them the undiscerned Seat and Root of them in some of the inward bodily parts with more that might be added are neither knowable nor curable by mere Humane Wisdom It is only a Scriptural-thread that can lead into the cause and cure of these by a quick and piercing judgement given by the holy Spirit Are there not some Diseases which the most learned Philosophers in the Medicinal Art do count and call incurable which yet may find a remedy in the Word Here is an Al-Heal where the Patient has Faith in Christ and in his Word Let this also be considered whether those Philosophizers can or will ever restaur and consummate the Medicinal Art who make the body of man to be the subject of Medicine Whereas there is a multiplicity of Maladies in the Soul of Man and deep wounds in the Spirit of Man both which by natural causality do distemper the body and how can Ethnick Philosophers or other vain affecters of Humane Wisdom reach these or understand the right Methods of apt Remedies when without the Word they neither know what the Soul of Man is nor what his Spirit is nor what the specifick difference is between the Soul and the Spirit in man nor by what Medium of contract the Spirit and Soul in man do operate upon each other and both upon the body nor which way by what applications to come at them or what specifick Remedies are adapted to them Give me
liberty to be a little more particular and distinct yet with respect to the Body the Soul and the Spirit which are the three essential constitutive parts of Man How can the Medicinal Art in the Old or New Philosophical way be so satisfactory to any deep piercing serious Inquirer whilst in that way it is a mere conjectural deceiveable Art How many of their Recipes are there which when taken inwardly they understand not how they work upon the inward parts by what kind of causality and efficiency How it doth take hold of one part and not of another How it doth seize upon this humour and not upon that How any of the inwards parts do co-operate with the Medicine What the Faculties and Functions of the several inward parts are to promote the efficacy of the Recipe How many various commixt concurring unobserved accident as they call them may quite change and alter the operation and the effects of the Ingredients With much more that might be instanced in How great variety is there in a little space of time in â—he humours and temperament of one and the same body occastoned oâ— a sudden by some distempered passions or ungoverned affections or mis-sâ—apen apprehensions or transporting phrensies or deep imaginations which the most skilful and observing Physitian can neither prevent nor remedy And although som of the more wise and faithful of them do in their Methods and Rules about this Art treat of the effects of the inner Man of the unexpected changes suddenly befalling the mind as having an alterative affectiveness upon the outer Man either to speed on or to hold back the cure Yet how can their Counsel and Prescriptions be proper and pertinent here for the governing of the passions and for the ordering of the affections of their Patients without resorting to Scripture directions in particular Scriptures to enforce obedience to call forth Faith and to encourage prayers which the common exhortations from meer Philosophical Ethnicks cannot so do How many inward cases of Spiritual maladies are there which none of the common Medicinal Prescriptions can remove and remedy This kind of Patients the practicers of Physick do either send to the Minister for spiritual Cordials and healing Counsels or else sometimes they dismisâ— them to the Bedlam when it is outragious Phrensie or wolâ—ish Melancholy or diabolical possession and for a veil of their ignorance and a cover of their shame they conclude many Diseases to be obstinate against all remedies Whereas if the Scriptures were searched into about this much more would there be discovered of a Directory And if all else should fail the LORD would often effect cures even to wonderment were Faith acted aright upon a suitable Word There was a sick Maid given over by a Learned Practitioner in the Medicinal Art as gasping and dying and when a Pastor being present had drawn the Physician aside into the next Room the Physician told him that she had two or three mortal Diseases so far gone upon her that either of them would be her Death And yet when the Minister had cleared the Chamber of other by-standers himself and some few others in Church Fellowship with him acted according to that prescription and promise in James and the LORD immediately raised her up and a short time after she was seen walking in the streets healthful and well All the praise belongs to Jehovah Aelohim There is a Scriptural Art of Cure when the Shops of Apothecaries do afford no help There are many latent operations of Nature which meer Ethnick Philosophy cannot find out and there are divers unseen Inflicters of Diseases sometimes by good Angels other times by evil Spirits which must receive a Word cure if ever they be rightly cured The Holy Scriptures do expresly mention several particular Diseases as running Sores flowing Issues Boyls Feavers Consumptions Inflammations extreme Burnings Botch Emerods Scab Itch Leprosie the falling of the Thigh or Womb and divers others And they speak of Diseases in particular members of the Body as in the Feet in the Legs in the Knees in the Bowels in the Kidneys or Reins in the Loins in the Sinews in the Bones in the Liver in the Gall From the sole of the Foot unto the Head no soundness Wounds Bruises putrefying Sores And when the judicious and industrious of the Medicinal Art will make Scripture collections about this they might find out many particular Rules there which do direct unto proper specifick remedies If I should cull out this one particular inward part of Man's body the heart how many diseases and distempers is it subject unto the which no Philosophick Art can cure such as the Passion or the Palpitation of the Heart the Wounding of the Heart the Breaking of the Heart the Piercing of it the Faintings the Desolatings the Wastings and Minishings the Throbbings and Beatings about of the Heart so that it is even forsaking of a Person leaping awry and leaving its place and going out the Languidness of the Heart the Frettingness of the Heart the Troubles the Terrours the Tremblings the Despondings of the Heart Its Dissolvings and Flowings away as water its sinking and falling It s being moved as the Trees of the Wood are moved with the Wind Its melting as Wax and softning through fear its making a noise like Pipes its dyingness or perishing its Astonishment or Stupor its Smiting or Striking of him or of her in whom it is Its Madness its sorrowful Overwhelmings its Leavenings and Imbitterings and Swellings Its Groanings with a rumbling roaring Noise its excessive Heats as an Oven and as a burning Fire within it It s being covered over with Grief It s being blasted as withered Grass It s Wandering It s staggering its fluttering too and fro Its pains in its Walls its being beset straitned and besieged its unquietness as the raging restless Sea its boiling and working as Waters that become thick and miry when they are much stirred and troubled Its heaviness it s stooping as under an oppressing burden Its astonishments and amazements its being struck as with an Hammer It s being changed like as the heart of a Beast Its overgrownness and oppressedness with Fat Its Anguish Its Despair Its Out-cryes Its Plagues Its Stonyness Let me give one particular instance of an Heart-malady which is one of the most lamentable cases in all the book of the Lamentations It is such a complex distemper of heart as has these dreadful things in it grief and sorrow such grief and sorrow as doth cover the heart all over A cincture and compreâ—â—ion of Heart with deadly trouble and pain such a covering grief and sorrow of Heart as is totally overwhelming and quite discouraging It makes them even quite to give over all hope It is such an overwhelming grief and discouraging sorrow of Heart as has Obduration and obstinacy going along with it It further sets out the Hearts giving over of it self to its own overwhelming grief
according to those Scriptures Let the principle be admitted and pursued and then much more would be discovered As for the conservation of health the Learned in the Medicinal Art should search the Scriptures about the use of some and about the forbearing of other creatures for Food about the kinds of bodily exercises about the choice of Aromaticks of Spices of Olys of Wines and many more about the Regiment of passions and of affections with more directions that might be given Such as the actings of suitable graces the enjoying of proper comforts the improving of Holy Fellowship with Jehovah in Father Son and Holy Spirit and more might be added if advice from so mean a one be received in the Colledge of Physitians There is a further part of the Medicinal Art which doth respect the prolongation of days and the lengthning along of Life of which there is much in the Scriptures both by way of direction and of promise He that will industriously seek out where and how often in the Word that expression of length of days or prolongation of days or long of days and such like phrases that do set out this is used and will wisely observe to whom and in what way this is covenanted may find much to this purpose and end Then how should we be under Christ beholden unto such wise and faithful Physicians as would direct their patients for a cure to word prescriptions where we might pursue and follow their counsels in obedience and saith expecting Aelohim's blessing thereunto and therefore for the augment and advancement of this kind of Learning let it be yet farther inquired by men skilful in the Original and acquainted with the Giver of his Word how that knowledge may be perfected by a Scripture-discovery which doth respect the body of Man For hereby many other useful Arts would receive a great increase as the Art of Medicine for the prolongâ—ng of the days of man and for continuing on of his life in the conserving of his health and in the preventing or curing of Diseases the Art of Chirurgery the Art of the Apothecary and Compounder the Art of Opticks and Perspectives the Art of Sounds the Art of Gust the art of Odors the art of Tangibles to mention no more which a discerning eye may look somewhat deep into at the very naming of them Let a more narrow research also be made into the Soul of man Its Essence and Nature Its Substance and Operations Its Offices and Products How great its specifick difference from the Soul of Beasts Let the Spirit of Man be more studied in the Word of Truth What its proper Existence is what its specifick Difference what its Faculties what the Objects of those Faculties wherein differenced from the Soul whether separable from the Soul for some time yet so as the Body still lives what its work is what are the peculiat seats in Man for all the Faculties of the Soul and Spirit How many those Faculties are what their Original what their connaturalness what all the inward parts of Man are what their league of amity and friendly commerce is one with another and all together with the whole compositum and a multitude of other rare parts of this great Knowledge I wait if the LORD give me to live to see this glorious design to be received promoted and improved by others If so I expect that he will give men an heart willing to contribute what this way may be judged useful by such abler undertakers who would severally labour in a distinct handling of some particular Art and Science O how rare is the skill how choice the Priviledge so to improve this part of Experimental Christianity as even here to pass more into growing beginnings of that blessed State of the heavenly Glory by a more holy and healthful transforming likeness to the Humane Nature of Christ in Spirit in Soul and in Body In every one of these to feel a suitable conformity in Holiness unto Christ as our great Exempar It is a great thing to believe aright that the Humane Nature of Christ is then and not till then actually profiting when quickened by the Spirit making Christ's Words to be Spirit and Life How great an Honour hâ—th he put upon Man and how highly hath he advanced the Nature of Man who has laid hold on the Seed of Abraham and taken that to his Godhead He is one in Nature as to his Humanity with Believers he has had experience of all the Cases of Believers sin only excepted There is that in him that is suited to all the parts of Believers in his Spirit in his Soul in his Body in his Nature in his Life for their Regeneration Wisdom Righteousness Sanctification Redemption Acceptation Strength Joy Comfort and every other Good and his Humane Nature is a fitted Instrument of conveyance of this spiritual suitable good to Believers when so quickned by the Spirit There was a proper a peculiar Testimony given by the Creator to the Work of the sixth day a special owning and commendation of that excelling Master-piece Adam Therefore there is a significant word added to Good here whereby is set out the singular Good of this Part of the Creation If this particular approbation were given to all the Works of the Creation in common to all the six days put together then the formation of Man will want its distinguishing Honour and its signal Remark This special note of singular observation here doth affirm and confirm it as spoken of that which is well known and evidently manifest As in all the Creatures both singly and apart collected and put together there was an excellency of Perfection in them according to the capacity of their Natures and for the usefulness of their ends so more particularly and especially in man There is an emphatick Note of Demonstration prefix'd to this Sixth day pointing out the Work of that Sixth day to be somewhat more remarkable and that the adored Almighties had perfected all his Works which he propounded and purposed to create in the foregoing six days of this one Week of the created World It doth shew a thing known and signally illustrious and commendable and that that day only was the sixth day in the weekly Revolution and no other day of the Week And that the weekly Sabbath must be reckoned in order of created Time the immediately next succeeding day after that sixth which weekly Sabbath day was when created the seventh the last day of the week that and no other day of the same week which note of demonstration is remarkable in other Scriptures to point out the certian weekly Sabbath-day in all the following Weeks of the World in the successive courses of Weeks even the seventh which is the last for there is but only one seventh day in one Week progressively going on in the due order and according to the established Law of the Creation All the Creatures were not made
contrary unto it namely the Heresies Errours Schisms Divisions Apostasies scandals of the present Age Q. Whether is not Christ manifestly at refining perfecting Work under this Providence in regard that he doth ingage some of his servants in the same Work according to the Word as their Generation work to be purging out whatsoever is corrupt and to be bringing in whatsoever is pure that is yet defective in principles or practice among the Churches more particularly to be perfecting those six principles spoken of in the two first Verses of the sixth Chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews And whether this work have not been too much hindred by some of Note and of Name in their expressing and interpreting of perfecting perfect perfection by sincere and sincerity whereas sincerity is but one Work of one of the ten Words Q. How would Christ under this Providence have Nations Cities Parishes Villages Families and Persons to be modelled as to the Rule of governing Concerning Duties and Priviledges Q. HOw may a Believer now have every duty and priviledge to grow up into the spirituality and heavenliness of the duties and priviledges of the latter-day glory Q. How may a Believer improve some special passage or other in that Prayer of Christ recorded in the seventeenth Chapter of John in order to the attaining and promoting of the ends of every duty Q. How should a duty be well filled up Q. How should Bills or Papers of Cases be wisely and edifyingly managed that are brought into our Congregations And what is there in the Old Testament of bringing suitable sacrifices to the Priest according to particular cases which may give light to this matter that it may be spiritually managed under this new dispensation of Grace Q. Whether may and must a Believer pray rejoyce and give thanks not only in all Cases in all Places amongst all Persons but also at all Times and not only this in state and in frame but in acting also And if so how is this attainable practicable and improveable So to meditate upon Jehovah's Word all the day How is this with such like expressions concerning other duties reconcilable with the finite Spirit of Man who seems unto many to be able to do but one Work at one time Or has Man a capacity of doing several things at once And if so how may this be proved and improved Whilst the Spirit may enquire the Soul may desire the Body may act and work at the same instant Q. How is the Truth in Jesus and how should a Believer so learn the Truth as it is in Jesus Q. What are the gradual differences in the matters of duties and of priviledges between the several Ages of Saints Some being little Children and others young Men some others old Fathers in Christ and in Grace Q. What is the proper season of every duty And how may we discern and improve it Q. Whether is not Scripture Prophecying in a publick Congregation still a duty And if so by whom And what are the Laws and Rules by which it is to be carried on in Preaching in Praying in Singing and in other holy Services Q. How may Tzijons Blessings and Priviledges Joys and Comforts Peace and Purity be antedated by a Believer so as actually to injoy them before they are fulfilled Q. How may a Believer improve Mystical Membership with respect To Christ as the Head To blessed Angels To the Spirits of just men perfectly sanctified To sound Believers and excelling Saints that now are and that shall hereafter be as the Fellow-members Concerning other practical experimental Christanity Q. HOw may a Believer know distinctly when it is that it is his Spirit or his Soul or his Body which doth long after Jehoâ—ah Aelohim And of what use would this knowledge be And how may a Believer speak distinctly and severally to his Spirit to his Soul to his Body And which way is this improveable Q. How may Convictions be kept alive and improved Q. How may Christ in his Life Suffering Death Resurrection and Ascension and in all his Offices as also his Word in the whole of it and in all its parts commanding prohibiting prophesying promising threatning and the rest of it how may these he used and improved For the more through mortification of corruptions in all their secret deceitful â—lie motions For the more triumphing overcoming of Temptations in all their Methods and Devices and Assaults Q. How may a Believer carry pure Religion and practical Christianity through the whole of the conversation in the particular as well as the general Calling And how may all the Acts of our particular Functions be performed as acts of Worship in obedience to a command in faith on a promise so as to expect and to have assistance acceptance and a blessing Q. What is a Night-Religion And how may that be improved in the void spaces of the Night and even in Dreams Q. What is the right method of governing the Thoughts of ruling the Tongue and of ordering the Actions Q. How may a Believer make inward spiriritual Meals upon outward and common Meats and Drinks Q. How should Christian-visits be improved Q. How should Journeys and Travels in the way be improved Q. How should time be redeemed Q. How may the Christian Religion be made easie familiar delightful and spiritually natural Q. How are slanderous reproaches persecutions banishments confiscations and other crosses to be born and improved that when we suffer for Christ it may be a suffering with Christ and as Christ suffered And how may we in all other things so walk as Christ walked and so be in this World as he was in this World Q. How may we both give full time to our worldly imployments and necessary business and yet spiritualize it too Q. How may we get cut of deep-plunging distresses of spirit Q. How are we to treat our selves and to converse with our selves night and day And whether a translating of Hebrew Verbs of the self reflexive conjugation would not promote these self reâ—lecting meditations and acts Q. What are the Rules and Laws of Writing especially in matter of controversie Q. What may be the cause or causes of so much darkness and deadness doubting and distress and of the holy Spirits with-holding and withdrawing in Professors of Religion generally in this day that when they are discovered they may be removed Q. How may we know when we have audience and acceptance in the Court of Heaven And when a receit of Mercy is in answer to Prayer Q. What is the Art of Holy Silence in its proper seasons And how may it be improved Q. How may man's working out his own Salvation and God's in working of it be reconciled and improved Q. How may spiritual objects be made as evident to spiritual senses as outward objects are to outward senses And how should these spiritual senses be exercised And how should spiritual truths and things be made real and future ones present Q. What is
the inner part of experimental Christianity And how may a Believer be led into it and abide there Q. Whether is there not something in the cases of an experienced Believer which doth more or less directly answer to all the cases all the World over And if so how may this be improved Q. How may a Believer rightly distinguish and wisely difference between the motions of the holy Spirit the impulse of his own spirit and the suggestions of the evil spirit Q. What is the right method of mutual Espousing and Covenanting between Christ and the Believer Q. What is the holy Art and the Skill of Believers through submission to and contentful acquiescence in the Soveraign Will of our LORD when the Believer is much oppressed by a body of Death and by indwelling sin and is held somewhat short under greatly inlarged desires and very importunate endeavours after abounding measures of excelling Graces and after eminent serviceableness and after the glorious Liberty of the Sons of God Q. Whether that Wisdom Righteousness and Sanctification which the LORD Jesus Christ is made of God unto Believers be not specially specifick and of a distinct kind from that which was concreated with and in the first Adam and from what is but the common work of the Spirit of Grace now And how may this be improved Concerning saving-Grace and the sound evidences thereof Q. HOw may it be yet further cleared and proved that saving and sanctifying Grace in believing Christians doth specifically differ from the common vertues of the civilized Heathen And how is this to be improved Q. What is the spiritual Science of putting of saving Graces upon contributing of mutual help to each other And how doth this call for all diligence to be brought over unto it And what is the distinct Office and the proper Work of every such grace in a Believer What is the manner of their Influence upon each other What their Order Goverment and Discipline Q. How should Graces wisely and suitably act towards Christ and towards the Word of Christ Q. Whether is it not enough for the clear sound evidencing of an holy State of saving and of sanctifying Grace that we love nothing in preference in predominancy before Christ or in equality with Christ unless also we love not any Creature at all inordinately though inferiourly as to any the least competition with Christ So that there must be a loving of the LORD with our whole Mind our whole Soul our whole Heart our whole Strength and so too that he may not only have all our Love our Loves but we must also hate whatsoever else it be that would take off or hinder our through Discipleship to Christ Q. Whether to chuse God alone for our God above all and to chuse Christ for our only LORD and Saviour which are very great and largely comprehensive Truths Duties and Acts have all other evidences of Grace resolved only into them seeing that they both are properly but a part of one even the first of the ten Words Q. Whether is there any other general comprehensive sound satisfying evidence of Grace but only an universal holy growing conformity in Knowledge and Obedience in all things for more continuedness to an whole Christ and to the whole VVord of Christ Q. VVhen is Grace in its exaltation and triumph And how should a Believer get it up to this high pitch and there keep it use it and advance it Q. How may and ought a Believer still to grow up into Grace here as the glorified Saints are above who are perfected into Grace And will there be every Grace in Heaven someways acted and exercised And what is that obedience which will be to every one of the ten Words in Heaven Concerning Heaven and its Glory Q. HOw may a Believer on Earth converse in his Spirit in Heaven with the glorious inhabitants there as if he were actually there Q. How may a Believer be in a continued readiness and preparedness for Death and for Judgement and for the coming of Christ And how is he as to his Spirit and Soul to be directed in his passage into the other World after that these do depart from out of the Body Q. How hath a Believer eternal Life now in this life actually in possession And how may he and ought he to improve this Q. How may a Believer through Grace and Mercy so work up his spirit soul and body here into that transformation unto more of an holy healthful likeness of the Spirit and Soul of glorified Ones and as the Body will be at the last Resurrection and as the Spirit Soul and Body of Christ is Q. How may the purer Churches of Christ on Earth walk in that order here as the glorious Church in Heaven doth Q. How may a Sabbath be so kept on Earth as the Sabbatism is in Heaven Concerning such Scripture-Principles which if admitted and improved might have a direct tendency towards the healing and uniting of the broken and divided Churches and People of God Q. VVHether LORD Jesus Christ be not one and the same and the only Head of Peace and of Purity Q. Whether the holy Scriptures of Truth be not one and the same and the only Rule of Peace and of Purity Q. Whether the Christian Religion for sum and for substance be not one and the same both under the Old and New Testament administrations of Grace the Difference only in the manner of dispensing being duly observed Q. Whether should not the whole Scripture be brought as profitable for Doctrine for convincing Reproof for Correction for Instruction Q. Whether the Law of the Ten Words be not a standing unalterable Rule of Faith Worship and Life commanding all good forbidding all evil under the several dispensations of Grace Q. Whether the Analogy of Faith under the New Testament must not have somewhat proportionably answering to it out of the Old And must not all and every of the Types under the old pass into the Anti-types in the New Q. Whether perfecting work be to be asserted promoted and practised especially as to those six Principles Heb. 6. 1 2 and particularly as to the perfecting of Baptism in grown Believers Q. Whether the purer Churches of the later days should conform to the Prophetical Pattern shewn to Ezekiel and to Christs Directory in his Epistles sent to the seven Churches of Asia revealed to John as that which will make way for the fulfilling of other Prophesies and Promises Q. Whether Christ always had now have and still will have a Church and People somewhere or other in this World on Earth Q. Whether there be not different ages degrees forms sizes in the same state of saving Knowledge sanctifying Grace and holy Experience And whether therefore those who are in this holy State must not be received though they be not as yet come up to the height of others Q. Whether it be enough barely to be a true Church Or should we not work
such unfruitful Studies are so many and so tedious for they make art to be long and Life to be short whereas Word-Study and Scripture-Learning would make Art short and Life long that those who do waste their precious time in these worthless labours do find the prime of their day and the vigorousness of their age even decaying and dying away before they know aright what to know and how to live Some who have had that University honour put upon them to be called Masters of Arts yet have afterwards experienced that they had little else but the name and have look'd upon those years as the corrupted education then was to have been the void space of their life which would have been the choice season of their time if Tutors had put them in a right way of Scriptural Learning One of the skilfullest advancers of Humane Learning in one of the most laboured and best wrought Treatises upon that Subject has in the close of his Book given a short prospect of a new world of Sciences or the deficients of them fifty in number and he that shall make use of his Directory to attain these yet would though he lived to old age bring in an ignoramus for the Verdict when he comes to die Whereas all those and more so far as they are necessary and useful might have a clearer discovery and a fuller supplement in Scripture and in Nature according to Scripture were it throughly searched into for that end If Heathenish Philosophy did not strangely bewitch and awe young Scholars with a respect of the Authority and a greatning of the names of its Authors and an esteem of the multitude of its Books which do so fill the Shops and Libraries and with the difficulty of making many of its notions and distinctions and obscure terms reconciled to some degree of intelligent sense after so much dispending of Time and of Coyn its price would fall in the Printers Market and its trade go down in the Booksellers Shop How little can there be of certitude in that way where all must resolve into fallibleness of Authority and falaciousness of Testimony or into pretended evidence of forced experiments which may be variously effected whilst the intrinsick Natures and genuine causalities of created Beings and of their products are altogether hidden from such great adorers of Humane Wisdom as count themselves and would be so esteemed by others to be if not the only yet the mostly learned men in the world and who would have their dictates to be received as inerring and their traditions as incontrolable whereas their assertions do end in doubtfulnesses and their stating of questions is not definitively demonstrating but still the judgement of the pondering Reader must suspend it self and look further for satisfaction How many Essences and verities are there which Ethnick Philosophy cannot reach the clear understanding whereof it can never attain unto of its self neither are they any other way fully discovered unto us but by the Scripture revelation What meerâ— Philosopher by all his art and industry can with certitude inform my understanding what the System of the created World is how it was made and set up what the positure of the whole Creation is in what place and order every thing is which is the uppermost and what the lowermost part of it what there is above this blew visible expanse or extended Heaven or firm out-spread what kind of existencies the Heavenly Luminaries are what all the constitutive parts of men are particularly what the spirit of man is what his soul is and how these are distinct and whether separable so as that yet both may live apart from each other at the same time what the proper seats of the intellect faculties in man are where is the Wise where is the Scribe where is the Inquirer of this age who without word-light can lead me into the certain knowledge of the manner of the formation of all and every of beings what that was which put them into their first Essence what the beginning of the Creature which God created is and how many years have elapsed since that time to this present annual revolution where and when Chronologers must begin and how to carry on their Computation of time who amongst the Learned of this World can ascend into Heaven and infallibly assure me what Treasuries of Creatures there are there what the work and priviledges of the Elect Angels and of the perfectly Sanctified Spirits are there what the glorious appearances of the ever blessed Jehovah Aelohim in Father Son and Holy Spirit are there which of them can so descend into the Abyss as to bring me the truest information from thence where the great Gulph is that is between Heaven and Hell what and where the place of Hell is where are the several Chambers of darkness below and of light above For although the Gulph and Hell are open before the all-seeing Jehovah yet are they far out of sight and off from the knowledge of men on Earth by any mere humane disquisition or discovery Who of these Philosophers can by their own natural ability throughly convince me of the true Doctrine and of the real nature of invisibles which yet now they are revealed are not incredibles Can any of them return a satisfactory answer to those questions which the LORD propounded unto Job Do not they themselves judge divers things to be undiscoverable by any mere man as the essential forms and the true differences of things especially that of man What are all and every of the proper and real causes which are so productive of so many wonderful effects in the World How defectively imperfect how unsetledly conjectural are their inquiries concerning the Celestial Bodies about their Spheres their Orbs their divers Poles their first Moveable their contrary motion of Renitencie their Circles Eccentricks and Epicycles Interstellare Substances Progressions Stations Retrogradations Elevations Declinations Apogees Perigees Diurnal Motions which some do fancy of the whole Heavens and others do dream of the whole Earth with a multitude of such like Astronomical Suppositions which they would ground upon some Phaenomena cunningly devising how to defend their own invented Hypotheses against Objections and setting up such feigned Fabricks as may not be exposed to so many exceptions and contradictions as the fictitious conceits of others before them are liable unto So that they have been forward to triumph over others if their own excogitated opinions have not been confutable by the common received principles whilst themselves do not believe their own suppositions to be the true nature of the things themselves how then can they perswade others that their discoveries are real and profitable and that they might hold the World yet further on in ignorance and in darkness they daringly affirm the Scriptures not to afford light in these matters Whereas these alone can set mens understandings right about the verity of beings which cannot by
to constitute and establish an universal conclusion by these steps and degrees may we ascend into sound knowledge and with more speed ease and satisfaction learn the best part of profitable Arts and Sciences This doth set out the true real Nature of created Beings as they are in the things themselves whereas mere humane attemps this way have no certainty of demonstration nor infallibity of evidence no further convincingness than as they agree with this there is answeringness in this to the Nature of Existences which are printed in this Word and sealed in the Creation here the laws of words are one with the laws of things here the conducture of the word doth lead the way and the architecture of the Creation doth follow after whatsoever doth contradict the grounds of God-inspired Scripture and the reasons of created Nature must be rejected by us here Scripture revealeth Nature and Nature declareth Scripture the LORD's Mouth in his Word doth not gainsay his hand in his Works there are such inner secrets in created Beings as are separate from outward Senses and exempt from experimental discovery and withdrawn from mere humane inquisition which works of Nature are best contemplated in the word of Grace so sweetly doth this insinuate into and incorporate with those How is the Intellect of man likely to be receptive of useful Truths till it be first purified by Scripture-knowledge all the impresses of Wisdom of Truth and of Goodness that are in created things they are but the transcribed Characters of the Word and the visible representations of those shining perfections that are in the All-glorious Author of this Word who doth direct their Nature and govern their operations to bring about his own holy just ends for the good and benefit of particular Beings and of the whole Universe Scripture descriptions are most significative of created Natures and best expressive of their real Virtues let therefore these Philosophical Imperialists no longer exercise Lordship over the Faith of Christians however they have thus far usurped dominion over the Reason of Pagans let not our Understandings be commanded by their Laws of Arts nor ruled by their Decrees of Sciences who would have all Intellects to bow before them whilst they sit in the Throne and King it over mens Souls It is the Scripture Revelation that doth best preserve the due order of Christ's Supreme Soveraignty and of its own pre-eminent authority and of our regular subjection under both him and it by its winning commendations of Truths and of Realities in the demonstrativeness of their evidence and in the choiceness of their excellencies operations of Nature and efficiencies of Arts co-operating with Nature and drawing forth its working powers are as so many instances and interpretations of such Scripture as do speak of them Wisdom is justified of her Sons though the common cry of the mis-judging World be against her Knowledges in this Word have their universal conprehensiveness and if mens Studies in them were fitted to their particular inclinations and framed to their constitution-desires more able instruments better furnished for publick employments both in State and in Church both for Peace and for VVar would then be found the skilfullest Scripturians would prove the wisest Artists and the prudentest Counsellors VVere Lecturers in all Countries encouraged and appointed in fit places to read in the Mother Tongue on such Scripture-subjects it would make popular Judgements and common Auditors great proficients in Arts and progressors in Sciences which spreadingness of knowledge of Christians should not make it contemptible whereas now the Philosophers would keep Learning in a few hands amongst Scholars in the Universities and Readers of Colleges and Professors in the Schools who would be monopolizing of Original Languages and of Scientifick Skills and be driving on of their rich Trade of over-reaching sophistry I judge it to be an Affirmation according to Truth and an undertaking according to Reality that a plain Believer of discerning capacity may be righter taught many useful things about the History of the Creation in natural Beings in their proper Causations productive Workings and genuine Effects in one year than several years and yet more times seven in the common way of Philosophical Studies will or can attain unto In this Scripture path Believers may expect the teachings of the Holy Spirit and inlightnings from the Father of illuminations much of the written Word would then receive more evident and full interpretations when Christ's Works are made a paraphrase upon his Words Here particular Sciences are true fruitful and complete not as in Philosophical VVritings in false barren and empty If little Children were commonly taught the Original Language and if there were in the Mother-Tongues of the several Nations such an exact Scripture Lexicon composed as might shew the true meaning of all the Original VVords Roots and Branches and of all the Original Phrases relating to the several Arts and Sciences and if the whole of these VVords and Phrases were orderly and distinctly with their cited Scriptures put into a common place of these special knowledges in various professions and if the most accomplished the best gifted the most excellingly graced the most diligently and faithfully industrious and the most practically and skilfully experienced for every particular Art and Science did make it much of the work of their day and business of their life to studie the Scriptures for that peculiar end and special purpose putting not only general Rules but particular Directions all methodically together it would be a complete Summary and an exact Directory in that Art and Science Shall my growing waiting hopes be only of the next Generation that they may listen to this counsel who will give that I may reap some good fruit of my labours in the present age if the LORD by his secret inworking with wonderful efficacy will renew and irradiate mens minds if he will bend and bow their wills change and awe their hearts then self-conceit pride and prejudice will quickly vanish away and a teachable Frame will so imbrace and improve this advice as that the ingenuous and studious will not be so injurious to themselves or unkind towards Christ as to kick Him and His VVord out of their Schools for it will be made manifest in a little time that created Beings in their natural efficiencies have such an hidden way of secret operation as is beyond the most significant expressions of any Philosophical VVorders and therefore only the words of God can fully so accommodate them to inlightned Understandings as withal to make them properly declarative of real workings All true both definitions and descriptions of things by words must be rectified by Scripture Language VVhatever be the issue I have through Mercy and Grace obtained from the LORD done this part of my Generation work and in this I do rejoyce and give glory to Him VVhere doth the whole Scripture that speaks of this matter send us to any other way of getting
they here see Liberal Arts in their proper axioms made usefully Mechanical in their elicited operations If every one be to be credited in his own Art they must then learn this Art in the Scriptures and then also should Christ be believed in his Word who is the only Wise One a Teacher by Office from the Fathers Donation and by the Holy Spirits Unction This gives a great advantage to plain Believers for although they know not well how to evade Philosophical Juglings or to confute Sophistical Fallacies and cunning cheats of over-reaching Argumentation and insnaring syllogizing yet through this help and its secret suggestings they have so much perception as to discern things to be otherwise than colours and shews of carnal reasonings do make them seem to be so that when they have not their answers ready yet they will not suffer their Judgements to be misinformed by such impudent bafflings and if these vain affecters of Humane Wisdom be once taken off from their froward way of wrangling disputations to reason the case familiarly by Questions and Answers such as are proper and pertinent to the matter under debate and by a collating of the whole Scripture that doth speak of such a particular subject inquired about that sort of men would bewray themselves to be some of the most ignorant and sottish especially in the choicest Science of experienced Religion and in the best art of practical Christianity This way of arguing is the way of the Word which any diligent Reader of it particularly in that part of it by the four Evangelists may often observe hence disputing is set out by a word that doth signifie mutual inquiring by way of questioning in a friendly conference to search out the Truth by interrogations and responses examining of things by a disquiring reasoning about them in a familiar Colloquie and in an amicable manner where it is managed according to Rule hereby the understanding is weakned to attend and the mind is quickned to consider of the Arguments in disputation concerning that which is queried about hene also in Scripture we sometimes do find an answer at the beginning of a Speech of Debate which is as if somewhat were returned of satisfactory resolution to a secret question that did tacitely go before It would contribute much towards the increase of Learing if those practical Rules that are in the Word were well understood observed and improved for the right managing of an Holy Dispute and of a Spiritual reasoning about weighty Controversies in a Scripture way so as might tend to edification whereas in the Philosophick Modes argumentative exercitations are usually perverse brawlings interfering conflictations whereby Disputants do gaul one another and wear one another out corrupting the understandings of one another and depriving each other of the truth the right Scriptural dialectick logical Art of debating a question is to reason from out of the Scriptures to bring forth the Word of the LORD comparing of one word with another and putting of those words together that do speak of the same thing and then to discern how the whole Scripture doth say one and the same throughout about one and the same matter This were truly generous and would breed up a better and more noble race of arguers Let this be admitted and then put the most souly acute learned unregenerate Philosopher into the same room together with a serious believing discerning humble Saint and if the question be How may a Believer have access to the Father through Christ in one Spirit Or how may we have fellowship with Father Son and Holy Spirit in a distinct way as the Father as the Son and as the holy Spirit Or how should Grace be acted or what is the proper Grace to be acted in a particular case Or how doth one Grace operate upon another Or how should a duty be well filled up Or what is the true way of walking with God Or by what means and methods should such or such a corruption be mortified Or what is the Holy Skill of repelling and resisting a temptation and of overcoming of the World Or what is a Believers orderly applying of Christ to be Wisdom Righteousness Sanctification and Redemption Or what kind of frames should a Believer be always in Or how should Religion run into the whole of our Life in our particular as well as in our general Calling with many more such like as might be propounded and let some well-grown Fathers in Knowledge and in Grace over-hear and moderate between these two judging not according to the appearance but judging righteous Judgement giving their opinion and sentence according to the Scriptures upon a due searching of them Oh what empty mistaken insignificant unsavoury talk what prophane and vain babling would they conclude the Philosophers discourse to be and himself to be an ignorant unexperienced trifling pratler whilst the spiritual holy man has a name of honour proclaimed in their inner Court of spiritual Judicature they acknowledge him to be a knowing a discerning a skilful a God-taught one and they admire the gift and the graces of the Spirit in him the Believer so far as his attainment and acquaintances are has clear smooth equal representations of Truths and of things as they are in themselves directly reflected from the Word upon his inlightned Understanding and faithfully and sincerely taken in by him as his filling measures are whereas the Philosophizing contradicter has divers superstitious Conceits wrong Notions mis-shapen Opinions erroneous Apprehensions and deceitful Impostures about these matters In Scripture there is a perfect Analogie between Words and Truths and between Truths and Things so that as the Scripture is the written Revealer of Natural Beings and Powers so are Natural Beings and Powers the wrought Interpreters of Scripture The end of words is rightly to express the sense of the Mind and meaning of the Speaker matters and business to which our Religion is suited and fitted do require a significance in sayings Though man lost the Tree of Life by an inordinate lusting after the prohibited Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and of evil yet one good means to be restored to the Tree of Life again is by returning to taste the nourishing Fruit of the commanded Tree of Scripture-Knowledge and to grow thereby Scripture-Truths carrying their own evidence along with them do prove themselves as soon as a Spiritual discerner receives them because word Sciences are consonant to Primitive Light in Man and to concreated Nature in particular Beings Holy Scriptures unto renewed Natures do make suitable impressions of saving knowledges these discoveries unto serious inquiries and to considering spirits will in Jebovah's time upon a due pondering more manifest themselves to be solemn and grand matters and will yet more approve themselves in the pursuit and issue to be efficacious for operation and fruitful for use and will best season the minds of young Students whilst
forth the more in growing measures of glorious Holiness O what a day will that be when the New Heavens and the New Earth wherein dwelleth Righteousness shall be created for Christ's followers to see and to enjoy him in when the chosen among mankind shall be fully perfect in Vision and in Knowledge in Grace and in Glory in Holiness and in Happiness By this discovery I would remove that occasion of stumbling which some do lay as a stone of offence before them to stop and to hinder themselves in this further grand inquiry about the proficiency of Learning as if this would degenerate Christians into Pagans and Believers into Naturalists and send them from Christ to Creatures to the debasing of the true pure Religion whereas it would call off men from ignorant Paganism to a knowing Christianity and advance all profitable Learning into a spiritualized usefulness and work up the Scholars in Christ's School to a more refined heavenly raisedness both in Principle and in practice The Holy Scriptures in speaking of the Works of Creation and of Natural Things do speak of them as they really are and not as they seemingly only appear according to exactness of Truth as the Nature and Essence of them are and not according to the wrong conceits and ignorant mistakes of vulgar Minds and common Opinionists IEhovah Aelohim has put the Essence and the real Nature of created Beings into the aptest and most expressive words in their full and proper significancy and Adam gave the fittest names to the Beasts of the Field and to all the Fowls of the Air according to their quality and condition which was an evident discovery of his great Wisdom and what is a Word but such a Note whereby every thing is distinctly known both in it self and also wherein it doth differ from other things The Holy Scriptures do often from the Works of Creation and from Natural Things prove what they do affirm unto the outward senses confirming the Faith and incouraging the hope of Saints in Christ and in his Word and in his Covenant of Grace in this Word by these senses and confuting their incredulity and distrust from hence now what confirmation of the one or confutation of the other could this be if those means of probation were not real and sensible and self-evidencing in those Brings themselves which every man that has the right Exercise of his Reason and the due use of his Senses must acknowledge to be so as is said the Faith of the LORD's Covenant people grows confident concerning revealed Truths in what they do not see by those things which they do see and discern with their Senses Many a choice discovery about several of the Works of Creation have been revealed to some Spiritual Discerners in their private Studies under an imprisoned state by the holy Spirit from Christ's true Word before they ever made search after them by the use of their outer Senses into the nature of those Created Beings before they had any ocular Demonstration of them or made any visible Observations upon them which afterwards by comparing of these Creatures with those Scriptures they have found in experience exactly to agree so as no mere Humane Author no Pagan Philosopher either has discovered or can discern Of what Nature soever those things are which God hath revealed in his Word unto reasonable Creatures the same are they bound to believe them to be as he has there made them known unto such For they are thereby become a part of the complete Object of Faith so that we are not only to believe the Declarations of the Doctrines of the Christian Religion in those great Mysteries of Three in One of God manifested in the Flesh with such like and also the Prophesies to come in after-ages with a great deal more concerning Duties Graces Priviledges c. but also that grand History of matters of Fact past and gone such as the written Journal of Created Beings in the beginning of the Bible and all the after-discourses of Natural Things as they are contained in the Scriptures of Truth Created Nature is the copyed Transcript of Holy Scriptures What a bold daring attempt then is it for vain man to be such an Interpreter of the words of his Creator concerning the great Works which he has done and the Beings which he has formed as not to admit of the plain sense of those Scripture-words and expressions the original Letter and the proper significancy whereof he will not deny or contradict For there is great verity in and real answerableness between these words and those things The literal sense of the Word of Christ where it speaks positively of the Works of Creation of Natural things is not to be gone off from if an Allegorical or Mysterial sense be any where as to this pleaded for it must be proved that there is an evident necessity thereof in the same place either by the words and meaning of themselves or by the Context or else by comparing of it with other Scriptures where it can be evidenced by such expressions significations contexts or collations that any passages in or relating to the History of the Creation are symbolical signifying some other Mystery yet even there if that were admitted first of all must the sense of the Letter simply and the truth of the History in the plain meaning of the Narrative-Record be firmly established Translators should keep close to the proper meaning of the Original words otherwise they do expound the sense as they apprehend in Syntax and are not regular Etymologists to explain the significancy and to maintain the property of every word Scripture-words are to be turned into other Languages not as men suppose they mean in trope but as they naturally signifie in Truth The usefulness of a literal version in order to the advancement of Learning is very well worthy to be treated of in its place The Scriptures are not accomdated to vulgar received Errours or mere imaginary conceits or vain false appearances but they speak of things as the things themselves really are Is not the LORD Christ Truth it self how tremblingly afraid then should sorry man be of making him a lyar by speaking one thing and meaning a quite contrary There is no transmutation in him nor obumbration of turning no variation nor casting of shadows by his turning it is Blasphemy to charge him as a Teacher of Error He has given this testimony by his own Words to his own Works when he had taken a diligent survey of them that what he had made was every part and the whole of it when set in its beauteous frame Good so as he had expressed it to be Can infinite Wisdom and truthfulness mistake in his expressions would he who is so abundant in Goodness and in Truth tell his people otherwise than the real History is Christ's Words do all along speak of these matters affirmingly assertingly they speak of his Works
knowledge some witty Invention some singular Art some extraordinary thing which yet was but a fleshly understanding a carnal wit a corrupt reasoning a fly seduction taking them off from holding the Head Christ and from keeping close to his word to draw them aside to that vain false and deceitful Philosophy to such affected Creature-knowledge and Humane Wisdom as would make a prey of their Souls Reader let me take thee by the hand and lead thee through some parts of the Scripture Paths to shew thee in this walk how Philosophy has been corrupting and perverting the Word and the Works of Aelohim He that shall read the Ethnick stories about the Origine of the Universe may see how the Aristotelian pride rejected all Scriptural Revelation of Faith about this Worlds beginning affirming the Eternity of the World by his corrupt Reasoning and vain Philosophizing Thus also the Stoical conceitedness asserted an Eternal first Matter The Pagan Astronomers have fancied and argued that there are Nine Spheres in the Heavens The Pagan Poets made all created Productions to be out of a first Matter as a common stock and subject of all generated Beings out of which every thing was found This is the Ethnick Physiology of many others of them So confused were their Notions so fabulous their Narrations Some Pagan Naturalists do make a Primogenious Fire to be the first Light out of which they say the Celestial Lights were composed Others do make the Firmament or Heaven to be the fluid watery or aerial part of a formless Chaos Some would make the ancient Nature of men to be commixt of Male and Female Sex in one and the same man And others have made many feigned stories of his Golden Age. How many corrupt mixtures in Ethnick Poets about the Flood about Gods and Goddesses and their Generations which many young men are so defiled and tainted withal in the common Schools of Learning that it is long if ever before they get rid of them The Idolatries and Superstitions of Pagans which were defended by their Philosophizers what were they but corruptings of the Mosaick Platform of which they had received somewhat by Tradition Such a temptation was it even upon the Israel of God of old to learn the Modes the Forms the Ways the Philosophick-Learning of the Heathen What an Enemy to the Doctrine of Salvation by Faith in Christ was the Grecian Philosophy What a disfigured face has it put upon Religion by its mythologizing vanity How many of the Original Words and Phrases by which both persons and things are aptly named and called in the Scriptures hath it altered and abused by expressing them in a different equivocal manner What a mis-shapen Monster are its Religion and Laws whilst it would so apishly imitate the Scripture Tradition as to adulterate it if it could into a resemblance of its own ugliness and deformity The Corinthian Sophie and Sophistry received from and by the Spirit of this World would be contradicting the Wisdom of God in a Mystery The Logicks that Humane Wisdom taught were an Enemy to this that Physical Animal Man was the Physical Philosopher who did not comprehend those things which are of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually distinguished or judged Thus has the greatest part of the Sons and Daughters of Adam all the inhabited Earth over for many Generations been greatly imposed upon and still it is so even unto this day And what is yet further matter of more Lamentation those who have the name of the Scholastick Learned amongst Christians do still pertinaciously adhere unto many of the Philosophick Errors and fabulous Tenets He that heretofore would go into the Philosophy Schools here in England and hear the Lectures of the most might sit out a whole hour at a time and scarce hear one savoury sound word of Christ and of the Word of Christ And there is a design set on foot of late to make the vertues of Pagans to be fully equal to and specifically identical with the Graces of Christians as if to turn Christians into Pagans were an adapted means to turn Pagans into Christians I have long stood by and been a secret silent bewailer of this evil but the LORD hath now drawn forth my spirit to be an open declarer against it that this way I might be finishing of my Testimony There is such a Venerating Esteem in some of the Judgement of the Ancient and in others of the Learning of the Modern Philosophy that its likely I shall be thought not so prudently to have consulted either my own credit or my own quiet in undertaking to be such an Universal Controler of many Men Books Studies Arts and Sciences in such an Age wherein preconceived Opinions are heightned into such a settled confidence and grown into such a gigantick strength But I have long since committed my All to him who has taken the care of me and hath accepted of my acts of commitment and there my Soul injoyeth its sweet repose Neither am I altogether without expectation that the adored Almightiâ—s will use this Treatise to prevail with some serious Spirits to entertain a greater commerce with the Scriptures of Truth than hitherto they have And that the right apprehensions of mens minds will yet better transform into the true Nature of things Whilst Philosophick Arts are so over-prized there will be but little further inquiry and whilst Scripture knowledges are so undervalued progressions in useful Sciences will not be promoted If Rational Intellects may be better rectified and more informed according to the Laws of the written Word and the operation of Created Beings I shall rejoyce in the profit of any whilst I am exercised with contradictings from many with their perverse Brawlings or disputing Exercitations as the Scriptures do call such strifes of words It is not unknown to some what slye Artifices Satan has used in the several Ages to corrupt the Word especially in the more ignorant Ages under Antichristian darkness by Marginal addings and various readings unequal dividing altered printings and such other invented devices whereby to make Truths hidden or obscure and errors passable and plaufible a too deep digging into which and an over particular opening of which I judge at present to be no work of mine though some late reputed Criticks in Original Languages and in Scripture knowledges have been too prone upon any little occasion to set these before the eyes of such as too often have rather been shaken than settled upon them The sayings of Jehovah are pure sayings Silver refined in an Earthen-melting-Furnace Cruse or Oven purified seven times Whatever dross or impurity the Devil or any of his Instruments have immix'd with them they shall have a Fire to be throughly cleansed and perfectly cleared from it All and every saying of Aelohim shall be purified therefore it is that his servant loves his Word He is a Shield
the Man Christ Jesus And thus it was in the Figure and Type of Christ's Mediatory Office the true lawful high Priest was ever but only one in a course of succession who went into the Holy of Holies once a year not without blood which he offered for himself and for the misdeeds or ignorances of the people to make Atonement for them to cleanse them from all their sins before Jehovah whereby was signified that Christ that Faithful Great chief High Priest being once entred into Heaven by his own Blood hath found a Ransoming or obtained an Eternal Redemption For such an high Priest became us Holy Innocent Undefiled separate from sinners and becoming higher than the Heavens to whom it was not needful every day as to the High Priest to offer up Sacrifices first for his own sins afterwards for the fins of the people For that he did once when he offered up himself We have such an High Priest who is set at the Right Hand of the Throne of the Majesty in the Heavens He that is Malchitzedech the King of Righteousness is this Priest the Eternity of his Priesthood is established for ever by his Father by an Oath which Priesthood cannot pass over from one to another either by succession or by descent as that of the High Priests did of Old but it doth and will abide everlastingly in himself This Jesus Christ that Righteousâ— One is the Advocate of his people or their Spokesman who appears on their behalf before the Face of God ' and to make intercession for them Oâ— the blessedness of those who have this Mediator to be a Redeemer of them an Interceder for them He gave himself for them a Ransom for them that he might redeem them He reconciles them in the Body of his Flesh through his Death making peace by the Blood of his Cross He by the everlasting Spirit offered himself unblameable unto God! His Blood purgeth their conscience from dead works to serve the Living Godâ— For by one Oblation he hath Consecrated for ever those that are sanctified The chastisement of their Peace did lie upon him He is the Price of their Redemption He is their Surety He was faithful in all the House of God He sits at the Right Hand of the Majesty in the heavenly highest place far above all Principality and Power and Might and Dominion and every name that is named not in this world only but also in that which is to come all things being made subject under his feet Who shall condemn them Christ is able perfectly even unto the full end to save them by him only they come unto God! he always liveth to intercede for them He prayes not for the World but for those whome the Father has given him and who believe on him that they all may be One as the Father in Christ and Christ in the Father that they also may be one with the Father and with the Son that the World might believe that the Father sent Christ How earnest was Christ in his Prayer to his Father that he would Sanctifie these by his Truth that he would keep them in his Name from the Evil one that they might have his joy fulfilled in them It is Christ's desire that where he is there they also may be that they may behold his Glory which the Father hath given him and that the Love wherewith the Father hath loved Christ may be upon them Christ doth know that the Father heareth him always How ready are such as have Fellowship with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ praysingly to say as that multitude of the heavenly Host in their Song Glory to God in the highest heavens on earth peace good will towards men This Christ is the LORD Unto all Authoritative Power is given in Heaven and in Earth And O how much is there that doth depend on this That LORDship which is here intended and meant is Christ's Kingly Dominion his Royal Government into the Office whereof he is called it being one of his Glorious Names King of kings and LORD of Lords For so it is written in the Revelation that was made known unto John No man can say the LORD Jesus if not in the holy Spirit It is a gift in the holy Spirit even to acknowledge this believingly to apply it and obeyingly in all things to be subject to it Thus we read in the Prophet Isaiah A child shall be born unto us and a Son given to us upon whose shoulder the dominion shall lye and his name shall be called Wonderful Counseller The mighty strong God The Father of hidden ages The prince of peace Of the increase of his dominion and peace shall be no end upon the throne and in his kingdom to stablish it and to strengthen it with judgment and with justice from henceforth for ever The zeal of Jehovah of hosts shall do this This is applyed to him who is God-Man and can belong to no other Ezekiel saw this in that glorious Vision wherein was presented before him a Throne of Royal Majesty upon which was a likeness as the form of Man and this was the form of the likeness of the Glory of Jehovah This was the representation of him who is Jehovah-Man of Jesus Christ the ever Blessed LORD of Glory whose the ruling of the whole World is All the Creatures must stoop of him He is she Head-Captain of all the Hosts of Heaven and of Earth for so did the Scriptures bring him in To this doth that Revelation answer which was made known to John Who saw one like unto the Son of man He that calleth himself the first and the last and did appear as an absolute complete Governour wise for Counsel and strong for Power Like unto this was that which Daniel saw in the night-visions For behold there came one like the Son of man in the clouds of heaven after that he came to the ancient of days and they caused him to come near before and to him was given dominion and honour and the kingdom that all people nations and toâ—gues should honour him his dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not perish or be taken away and his kingdom shall not be destroyed This was the shining forth of Christ's Princely Honour of his Kingly Administration who was God-Man And by this was manifested the great Mystery of the Work of Redemption which doth further demonstrate the Mediatorship of Christ Who came from his Father in Heaven to Men on Earth and having finished his message here he ascended from men on Earth to his Father in Heaven there to present himself before him on the behalf of those whom the Father gave unto him This is he of whom the Prophet Jeremiah spake that he shall reign and prosper one of the stock of David as Man and yet withal he who should be called Jehovah-zidkenu Jehovah our Righteousness So that he is Jehovah-Man The same
Whether one sick may live or die what their Disease is and when recover Oh what bold daring attempts are these thus to intrude into the hidden Secrets of the Soveraign LORD Magnonem and Megnonenim were Planetaries such as by the contemplation of the Planets professed that they could know and foretel future things The Israelites were not to tolerate such from hence came in the idolatrous worshipping of the Planets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a Jugler a deluder of the eye-sight Cosheph by a transposition of the Letters is Auspex Auspicium a Sooth-sayer Sooth-saying and hence by conversion of the radical Letters is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fascino fascinum to transform or disfigure figure by Enchantment to Bewitch These do exercise Jugling and by Magick Arts they do mischievous acts changing somewhat natural to the beholding of the eye that it may appear somewhat else than it is Cocceius on this word doth confidently affirm that without doubt by these were noted the Prophets of Devils amongst the Heathen boasting of society and instinct or such as under the name of Natural Science did exercise diabolical Arts Exorcists Witches devilish Artizers They are expresly condemned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is one who doth prophesie and tell things to come by a devilish spirit that is in him swelling with it like a bottle when he uttereth his Oracles one that has an evil spirit speaking inwardly from his Belly Hence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Serpent the Devil speaking in the Serpent so it was in his tempting of Eve this is a kind of Divination or a sort of Magick Art when a man had an evil spirit in him giving forth answers whom some did worship as their God when the Devil out of a swollen big Belly gave forth answers to those who asked him concerning some past present or future things These Magicians or Witches being possessed by an evil unclean spirit spake his Oracles with an hollow voice as out of a Bottle sometimes in Statues othertimes in Caverns Dens or hollow places of the Earth and in the swollen bellies of men or in the joynts or armholes or armpits making the Devil to come up out of the Sepulchres of the dead or some underground place This is condemned in Scripture the Hebrew Pethen is Python Asp a kind of a very venemous Serpent which cannot be perswaded by Inchantment Those Monthly Prognosticators spoken somewhat of and against before do very much impose upon the credulity of the ignorant and superstitious such are the foretelling Almanakers The word Almanack in Low Dutch is said as it were Al-maen-acks that is a consideration or observation of all the Moons of an whole year or according to the opinion nf some others is said to signifie in the Arabick Chaldean and Hebrew Tongues a Number or Numeration Joseph Scaliger affirmeth that the Arabians called a Calendar so adding their Article Al for some are perswaded that it is not a mere Arabian word but only received into custom with the Arabians Calendries though Nicholas Fuller doth apprehend it to be more ancient from the Egyptians who were famous for Astrology The Roman Senators and Nobles were so bewitched by these Astrological devices that they would scarce do a common action without scrupulously consulting their Ephemeris about the Signs Planets and Stars and the Christian Emperours ran into the same guilt who would not attempt any change without first asking counsel of the Stars in their publick and private affairs resorting to the luminary Tables of Astrologers The Judiciary Astrology or Divination by Stars hath so far extended its prognosticating black Art as that it undertakes to determine not only probably but also certainly every man's Lot Portion Fortune as they Paganishly speak issues events and ends whereas there are no true necessary causes of these to be found in the Stars so that implicitely at least the practitioners therein do oblige themselves to the Devil and daringly fight against plain prohibions in Scripture How can they answer that expostulation of Jehovah with Job knowest thou the Ordinances of Heaven Canst thou dispose the Dominion thereof in the Earth These Artists do not know the certain moment of a man's Nativity at so great a distance of years when they were not present at it the arising of the Signs has a Latitude and a small difference in time they themselves do acknowledge doth make a great difference and some Astronomers do affirm that the same Aspect of Stars hath scarce returned from the beginning of this World Astrologers are yet at an uncertainty among themselves how the Houses are to be divided how far their influencing forces do reach and what Signs they should use How great a variety is there amongst them about the diffance of Planets between themselves with much more that might be added though Gaffarellus hath feigned an Hebrew Alphabet in the Coelestial Figures and that the putting of Letters together gives a certain meaning Thus the Devil abuseth them to whom as to a Doctor and Interpreter Judiciary Astrologers do apply themselves This consulting with such Diviners is very pernicious both in respect of its Original which is wicked as also of the event which doth often torment and vex men before the time for if evil be foretold shall befal a man the fears of it do sadden the spirit and make him miserable before the evil actually come and if it be some good that is promised the frustrating vain disappointing expectation thereof doth so bind up their deceived imagination that it leaves them in a sluggish distemper and they do not make out after better things and however what is so foretold doth sometimes come to pass yet it should be remembred that often times they miss Divers by the perspicacity of their Nature and by long experience may conjecture many things which they would have their disciples to ascribe to Stars Planets and Signs and the force of imagination is such that those who ask counsel of Astrologers do sometimes fall into the evil they fear and sometimes attain the good they pursue Sometimes the LORD in just judgement doth suffer Satan to inflict such evils as he foretold should come to pass Sometimes it is merely providential as to God and wholly conjectural as to men Thus some young men feigned themselves to be Mathematicians and they conjectured and foretold what was true and came to pass ◠and if they sometimes so fall out to be as is divined such consultings therefore are the more to be avoided for where there is neither institution in Scripture nor causality in Nature there is the greater suspicion of some latent diabolical fraud The Pythoniss in the Acts was a true Witness in that particular yet was she possessed with a spirit of divination Society and compacts with Devils both explicit and implicit are very formidable and altogether to be abhorred Consulting with such evil spirits is full of dangerous curiosity of tormenting
solicitude and of deadly slavery To consult the Devils Oracles in doubtful cases is Apostacy from and denying of the true God and to resort for divining unto one that hath a Familiar is a seeking to and a worshipping of the Devil So is Sorcery and Necromancy where the Devil is sought unto in the form of some dead man the Devil appeared in the likeness of Samuel it was not the true Samuel but mere illusion of Satan for God had refused to answer Saul by Prophets such as Samuel was Saul is said to have died for his Transgression principally in that he sought and asked counsel of a familiar spirit Sooth-saying by the flying and noise of Birds is also condemned usually the care of persons in this case is to avoid the seeing or the hearing of such kind of ominous signs which would signifie nothing as to good or evil in themselves in this matter were it not for the consent of the observer they have no force efficacy or operativeness at all this way were it not for the superstitious conceits of the mind when it is diligently bended and intentively turned to them whereby divers things do befal divers men according to the diversity of their thoughts and imaginations Of the like Nature is divination by looking into the entrails of Beasts so did the King of Babel who consulted with Idols and looked into the Liver so is star-gazing charms mumbling of words for such an end casting of Figures for this purpose and the like There should not be any found among us that useth witchcraft or is a regarder of times or a marker of the flying of Fowls or a Sorcerer or a Charmer or that consulteth with Spirits or a Sooth-sayer or that asketh counsel of the dead To a seeking unto these the holy Spirit doth oppose a Prophet as the only lawful Minister of God to know his Will by To ascribe such a special foreknowledge or foretellingness indicated by the positure of Stars which might rule over the consciences and wills of voluntary Agents is contrary to that Soveraign Authority which the LORD doth exercise over the wills of men bowing and bending moving and directing them which way he pleaseth and therefore such a power is not to be arrogated by any mere Creatures Angels themselves whether good or bad have not such an innate Light in them as of themselves to know future particular contingents before hand neither can the intellect of man so foreknow Astrologers therefore not having their pretended prescience and prognosticating skill either by Divine Revelation or by Natural Causalities they have it by diabolical suggestion That knowledge of determinate future things which any really have by Divine Revelation is Prophesie and not Divination Such prying curiosity as has neither Scripture or Nature to bottom upon is experienced and bewrayed to be the common disease of the vain itching mind of fallen unquiet man from hence has sprung this troublesome question about Judiciary Astrologers who would bind men to fatal Stars as if the body of man were composed and fashioned according to the twelve Signs of Heaven as if the Moon had dominion in man's body under the twelve Zodiacal Constellations placing Aries in the Head and Face Taurus in the Neck and Throat Gemini in the Arms and Shoulders and from thence running through the other Signs into the other parts of the body even to the very soles of the Feet which they ascribe to Pisces Did the Authority of Christ and of his Word take more sensible hold of mens hearts they would tremble more and not dare to adventure upon those prohibited evils which the LORD hath so dreadfully threatned with such sore judgements that the soul which turneth it self unto Diviners and Prognosticators shall be cut off from the midst of his people Man or Woman when there is in them a familiar Spirit or that is a Wizard they shall be surely put to death they shall stone them with stones their bloods shall be upon them their death shall be upon their own head their own sin is the just cause of it and the Statute Law of England doth make many of those practices to be Felony which yet are commonly used in this Nation In the day when the LORD will honour himself by reviving of his Judicial Laws and by raising up of such as Josiah was a None-such for reformation in this kind to put those Laws in due execution when these evils are espied out one such Example in such an age of speculative and practical Atheism and Infidelity may be a more forcible argument with some than ten Scriptural reasons now are The certain knowledge of future particular contingents is that by which the true God is differenced distinguished from Idols The LORD doth nippingly touch and sharply check the vanity of this Art and the cheatingness of its Arrists and the ignorance and credulity of those who do yield themselves to be deluded thereby He doth sttaitly charge and sorely threaten such confident boasters of their Astrological skill In the Apostles time when the Doctrine of the Gospel did more obtain and prevail these black Arts were condemned and the Books that treated of them were burnt Those kind of evil practitioners are described by a Syriack word and so is the word in Chaldee and Samaritan too which doth designate and denote not only such Magicians as are plainly and evidently given to diabolical arts but also to such arts of Inchantment of Jugling deceiving by slight conveyance deluding the eye-sight with Legerdemain such curious illusory Arts which though to the ignorant and vulgar may seem to be otherwise yet really are wicked Artifices such are the feigned devices of Planetaries and Casters of Nativities and the Constitutions of some of the Christian Emperours have ordered that such Books of such Astrologers should be burned A large Volume might be quickly written on this subject matter but if the Word of the LORD be not submitted unto Who am I that I should think to silence these Adversaries by the force of my reasoning with them I therefore leave it with the LORD to plead his own cause in his own way in his own time If I have Instanced in some evil Arts which the Reader may apprehend do not so properly belong to Judiciary Astrology let him consider that this black Art doth spread it self wide and far and besides when I was upon this I was willing to bring in my Testimony against all that evil which sought for some protection from Judiciary Astrology and had some ways a Relation to it I now proceed to the Scripture discovery The Darkness Evening and Night were divided more generally before as to Time Place and Nature from the Light Morning and Day in their created Beings and successive courses and now they were further specially distinguished and pointed out by the Heavenly Luminaries Time was not first measured by the Sun for there was