can we acknowledge a belief of a better fountain if so good in some of our present spiritualists without a breach upon our reason whateever our charity may incline us to I am so far from denying the often immediate blessed effects of that spirit of truth in the soul of a true believer that I would not be thought to make use of my reason in the least so as to interpose it as a cloud or mist between that and any mans Soul to obscure it if I could from the light thereof I would sooner wish or be content not barely to lose my reason but he changed into a brute as to visible shape than do it Yet since I challenge and own my very reason from one and the same Godhead however miraculously and diversly working as several persons I hope I may even from that without offence or grieving that Holy Spirit tell men they may possibly err in the opinion of its effects and through some inherent lurking pride have their conceit raised to that height as to believe and therefore would have us believe they bare the fruit of that spirit when Sedition a work of the flesh is more manifest to our reason Indeed Saint Paul has told us the works of the one are manifest but not the fruit of the other though it has its fruits and therefore why men should cry up their fruit to be the undoubted product of that ever blessed spirit until they can manifest the same so to be and be able to convince our reason by some infallible demonstration that it could not proceed from ought else I find no just or sufficient ground That true faith an invisible thing and best seen by works though by any outward work it cannot infallibly be known is the very effect of that blessed spirit we may safely affirm but further than so I cannot see how we can without danger affirm its immediate operation in us or retain a positive belief that any particular effect wrought by us or in us did proceed merely from the motion of that blessed spirit dwelling in us If any it may to my weak judgement be in some such particular case as this when the soul sometimes on the suddain beholds as it were at one intuition all earthly things as vanity and rejects them with a kind of longing desire to behold somewhat that is not such and to have some present fruition thereof And this at such time as the soul may seem at ease and quiet and is surrounded and as it were courted with all wordly affluence and prosperity and seems to have wordly honours laid down before it in its path not when it rejects and seems to contemn those things out of a sullen temper because it either cannot attain them or is crossed in the fruition of them When this happens I cannot think it to be the mere work of the Soul it self nor of the deity either in any ordinary providence and care over it but some special grace moving it and darted as it were into it from that blessed spirit towards beholding an everlasting true joy by faith Besides this there may be other cases happen which may induce us to think that there is something more than ordinary moves in us from above as this When a man shall by his reason with the invocation perhaps of divine assistance have weighed the good and evil of some particular action and all circumstances in relation thereto as near as he can and concluding of the lawfulness thereof perhaps through the fallacy of some covert and latent affection in him shall pursue the same If afterwards he chance to be stopped in his full cariere not by any audible voice or visible light as Saint Paul that is not to be expected now a days and whenever 't is averred I will determine it the effect of Melancholy or which is worse averred upon contrivance with an intent to deceive but by some secret whisper as it were or suddain conviction of his error and the light of the truth breaking out as at once upon his soul on the suddain which doubtless has happened to some men I should be ready to acknowledge it as the work of some extraordinary spirit from without and not his own For this cannot be said to be the effect or stroke of his own conscience that is the dictates of his reason contrary to what he acted before For in this case he no ways erred against that but as we put the case consulted it made the best use of it he could with an invocation of the divine power to enlighten the same Yet in neither of these cases do I think it safe or convenient the party in whom such effect is wrought should presently determine it in his own thoughts to be the undoubted immediate work of that good spirit within him lest if he should err those thoughts embolden him to continue therein against the plainest demonstration of truth in future much less to discourse and proclaim it to be the very light of that spirit of truth in him lest he induce others to be led away by every fantastick light their brain is able to forge within themselves They on whom God himself breathed they on whom tongues as of fire visibly sate they who saw Christ after his resurrection and had power to work wonders in his name might safely make use of their own tongues to declare their immediate knowledge of the will of that Almighty spirit and not be thought too familiar with the Deity in declaring its manner of working But for us to take the same liberty and casting aside all thoughts of moral goodness fall to talking and describing of that strange admirable effect that being born again of the spirit sometimes wrought in the soul of man which we cannot possibly comprehend how or when or where it is wrought may be of dangerous consequence I think and further to glory as if we were the only men in these latter days on whom this spirit is poured is such an arrogance in my apprehension that a sober Heathen might well think us distracted If we would needs glory let us make use of Saint Pauls own subject ready at hand our infirmities We shall find little else if we examine our selves that we have any tenure of or may call our own or that we can have such knowledge of True faith as I said which I take to be the peculiar work of that spirit in man is a trembling though a fast hold on the Deity and proclaims not the body to be the temple of the Holy Ghost otherwise than by the good works done therein the beholding of which and we can behold them as good though we cannot be infallibly assured they always proceed from that spirit is the readiest way to draw others to glorify that God whom we adore not to dissect it as I may say in ordinary discourse no not in the Pulpit and tell men exactly after what manner
only neither can there be ease or disease pleasure or displeasure in the Soul longer than Sense affords being to such Affection and this I think to be the case of Beasts because we never see them disquieted long or above measure nor refusing any grateful Object if some disease of the body resist it not we observe not their Imagination heightened by their lust nor their lust inflamed or raised from their Imagination but at such time only as Objects offer themselves through Sense and the one abstracted the other seem to vanish And surely were our degenerate lust and affections of the same extract it were impossible for us to be hurried away to that excess of any vile or base passion as to imploy our thoughts nights and days about a meaner or more sordid Object than Sense it self usually affords every moment But Affection in us is of another extract able to desire and imbrace what Sense cannot afford our Imagination of another capacity and reach penetrable and malleable as I may say otherwise than by sensible Objects Our Will and all other our animal Faculties subject to supernatural influences and that is the reason there is such daily combat between them and sometimes such lasting agony For the Imagination rowsed and called upon as it were from divers and sundry quarters and not able through Sense to work so as to satisfie one single affection It sometimes opposes Sense and raises a thousand Chimaera's to the astonishment and amazement of it self to the conclusion and distraction of the Affections and to the disquiet of the whole Soul so as whatsoever original cause we impute elsewhere the present apparent cause of our disease we may rightly impute to the Imagination and the rectifying thereof must needs be the readiest way towards a cure which I shall endeavour to speak of in the end of my following Discourse Do we not find our Imagination allured or inticed to work from the restless strugling of some affection Do we not again find it recalled by Reason arrested by our Will wrested at length by some foreign power from subjection to either and forced to work as we observe by consequence in obedience to some eternal decree leading all the others as captives And all this while Sense one and the same in all men might seem to offer it other subject matter for its present work Do we not or may we not observe in our selves at special seasons some mounting in desire to imbrace or lay hold on somewhat above the reach of Sense And would we not our Imagination could invent or find out some such thing Is it not thereupon set on work And though it cannot fully comprehend mere insensible things by any investigation yet is able to imagin or conceive there is something more glorious more pure more perfect c. that it can conceive whereby the Affections are a little quieted for the present and rest in a kind of hope and to this Reason freely consenting there is begat a kind of faith I would fain know how it were possible our own thoughts should be set on work in relation to what others thought of us or in what state we were in the eye of any righteous all-knowing Judg or argue and weigh or will in relation thereto or be concerned or troubled thereabout with fear or dread or ioy if sense were the only inlet to the Soul I am sure it cannot hurt us at present but from our desire to know and our imagination's presentation thereupon so as what our Imagination frames must be chiefly the cause of our disquiet or disease of mind if any happen Indeed as it is sometimes the window by which Heavenly light is admitted so it often proves the Postern-door by which some evil spirit sliely enters and the Key thereof is certainly some corrupt affection It is most subject to be turned about by every wind from within and from without most subject to be deluded and delude and since our Happiness here seems to depend very much upon its work we will endeavour to treat of it here a little more particularly than we have done either of it self or in conjunction with some other faculty of the Soul Indeed the several faculties of the Soul seem not many in number yet the Soul like some instrument of very few strings is capable to render such innumerable various sounds as are able to confound us in going about to distinguish them This we own upon trial to be the admirable work of our Provident Creator and Governour and judg it impossible to set any certain rules or bounds in its manner of work or so much as to fathom or know our own Yet this I think the sweet harmony or jarring discordance in this wonderful Instrument in relation to our selves and whether it renders a sound sweet and pleasant or harsh and grating consists very much as I conceive from the high or low or even straining that one string thereof in it the Imagination The Imagination is a most strange faculty and able to confound us and put us to a stand or a maze while we reflect on it 'T is that various and sometimes false light which puts the colours of good upon evil and evil upon good 'T is that strange resounding echo to the affections that renders their cry double and louder 'T is that which called upon by one affection to its help and assistance often raises and leads with it a thousand furies to disquiet us And if we may affirm as I think we truly may that the heat of the affections sometimes causes its work so also It is that bellows which increases their natural heat double and treble and driving them from their proper Object inflames them beyond all degree and measure to their utter destruction and confusion in the end I deny not but that Imagination in man continually and necessarily working is capable to work from divers causes it is diverted or called upon and imployed by various Objects minutely through Sense as we observe How else could we remember which is but an impress left in the Imagination for any time what we daily hear and see And when those windows of the Body seem shut up 't is often imployed upon such Objects as it formerly received thereby But I cannot but think that its work generally tends to the satisfying or feeding some affection not affection of its own creating from Sense as in Beast but some affection of equal extraction with it self originally pure and undefiled but now corrupt and depraved by its work through the slie insinuation or delusion of some evil Spirit and that from Sense alone the one nor the other nor both together could create in our soul those diseases we find and I may say often see and feel above the Beasts which perish This affection in us how pure soever or howsoever debauched is the thing ever chiefly aimed at in all addresses to the Soul as I have touched already and therefore
are hidden but wilt thou refuse a present desire of return Shall I think of being forgot when I can say Lord remember me and all my troubles O let me not be forgot in the Land of the living If I have loved too much divert the current of that affection and let it return like a River to the Ocean of Love thy self Turn O Lord my affections as the Rivers in the South then shall I have hopes though I sow in tears to reap in joy Let me only desire thee rejoyce in thee fear thee and sorrow only for thy absence if but a moment Thou who assumedst flesh knowest how frail and weak our nature is thou hast said the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak Thy Servant Paul by thee hath said There is a Law of the flesh warring against the Law of the mind and that in him that is in his flesh there dwelt no good thing Thou art the only Physician of the Soul and Body thou canst enliven my Spirit towards thee thou canst mortifie my lust thou canst allay all the unruly passions of the mind inflamed from the humours of the body and actuated by Satan O make me a clean heart and renew a right Spirit within me a Spirit of meekness working by true love and charity and in all things a contented Spirit Let all my inherent passions move only towards the good of community and thy glory Thou hast made all things chiefly for thy glory and praise and cannot I look upon the praising and magnifying thee a sufficient and satisfactory end of my peculiar being without either Children Riches or Honour Thou hast given me understanding which is the greater gift shall that be for nought or that my condemnation should be the greater can he that goes down to the pit praise thee But I will praise thy name O let me live and declare thy merciful loving kindness to my Brethren Let me after death praise thee with thy glorious Saints and Angels for to that end didst thou make man of nought Though thou slay me yet will I trust in thee Let me lay so fast hold on thy mercy that no terrours whatsoever loose me therefrom Rather in this World wound and afflict me but be thou merciful unto me and deliver me at the hour of death and in the day of Judgment Prepare me O Lord for greater Judgments and if thou hast decreed to bereave me of all Worldly comforts yet be thou my comforter And if thou seest it good to punish me let me only be as it were a Sacrifice for my Family and let them praise thee in the Land of the living But if herein I know not what I ask grant only what thou knowest good for me whose care and love never forsook them who did not first forsake thee Thy will O Lord be done thy will be done yet thou canst draw me to thee by the cords of Love and spare the remnant which is left Out of the remnant which is left raise up a branch unto thy self that may be an example of piety and virtue unto others One who may fear thy Name and think it a Kingdom to govern himself and rule his passions One that may look on all Graces and Moral Virtues as the greatest Riches and Treasure so as he may flourish likewise here on Earth O accept of the perfect obedience of thine own Son who suffered for me and mine in the room of my disobedience It was not for my Childrens sins I know O Lord thou so soon reassumedst those Spirits of thy giving to leave the filth and rottenness of the flesh proceeding from me They were indeed conceived and born in sin but received a new generation by thy gracious washing in Baptism Thou wilt raise them up again at the last glorious Bodies and shall that Body from which thou causedst them to proceed go into the bottomless pit I have declared thy wisdom and mercy and providence to my Brethren O grant that while I preach to others I my self may not become a cast-away Grant me true wisdom being a pure influence from thee and a brightness of thy everlasting Light The fear of thee is the beginning of wisdom and that fear is to depart from evil O grant that I may depart from every evil way It is wisdom to know what is pleasing to thee it is wisdom to depend on thee and in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom Grant O Lord that I may be wise unto salvation then shall I see the vanity of being troubled at all other things Plant O Lord and water this root and I will not fear but that all other necessary goods will spring forth as the natural branches Grant me such sincere repentance and perfect hatred of all Vice that thou mayst be at peace with me then shall I not fear what man or Devil can do unto me Let my ways so please thee that mine Enemies may be at peace with me let me so live henceforth as that if any speak evil of me they may not be believed but at last be ashamed Let me provoke thee no more so that I and mine may be safe under the shadow of thy wings Thou art my shield and my buckler and the lifter up of my head Thou art that chiefest good which the wisest have so much puzzled themselves to find and the beams thereof here are rest and trust in thee The light of thy countenance here will bring more true joy and gladness to the heart than a multitude of Children or the abundant flowing of Riches and Honour Thou art the center of felicity and the nearer any one draws to thee he shall find the gleams of happiness I will flee unto thee with praises Praise the Lord O my Soul and all that is within me praise his holy Name while I have a being will I praise the Lord. Praise thou the Lord O my Soul praise the Lord. Amen A Treatise De ANIMA Containing several DISCOURSES OF THE Nature the Powers and Operations of the SOUL of MAN The Preface HAving received my Being Creation and Form like other men a lump of corruptible putrid Clay yet curiously and wonderfully framed and more wonderfully actuated by a reasonable Soul from whence I become enabled in some measure to consider and behold my self from that intuition there has often arose within me some limited desire that is so far as it should please my God and Creator to illuminate me therein in listening after the direction of the ancient Oracle to learn that Lesson of his and above all things else to Know my self The knowledge of the Soul if it might be known and its strange manner of operation has been that kind of worldly knowledge which by fits as it were I have most of all aspired after and my Soul seemed to will now and then to behold it self but being in conjunction with a Body it has in me as in others run wandring abroad to fulfil
Air and the Fishes of the Sea too and so far as we can discern we find them agree in their desires and delights with one another of the same species They have each their particular Food and rest contented satisfied and pleased therewith during their whole course of nature 'T is not with them as with us what one loves another loathes 'T would be a difficult matter to find an hungry Ox that would refuse Hay either when he is young or old A man may well ask Iob's question Doth the wild Ass bray when he hath grass or loweth the Ox over his fodder 't is man doth only that or the like when he hath what his fleshly heart can desire The Beasts are more constant and content and their Soul seems settled and the inhabitant of its proper Region they neither fear nor joy in excess their choices and elections are still alike and every Cock like Aesop's Cock will yet to this day prefer the Barley-corn before a Jewel though amongst men some prefer the one and some the other I speak thus much for this cause only that viewing the Soul of man in its very inferiour faculties and finding it so various and disagreeing so little at a stay or at rest so fighting and combating so snatching and catching at it knows not what things neither useful nor profitable for the body or the mind it somewhat convinces me 't is a thing very capacious and that there is a place of fulness of joy or fulness of sorrow for it hereafter SECT VI. The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from the difference thereof between Parents and Children BEsides this some enquiry might be made into the different qualities of the Souls of men beyond those of Beasts in their ordinary workings though they inhabit or actuate Bodies which have their being from one and the same production For if the Soul of man were the ordinary work of Nature only a fine rarified vigorous quality in the Bloud Man receiving his body from his Parents by the ordinary course of Nature as other creatures do his Soul would always somewhat resemble that of his Parents too and Brethren twins especially would resemble one another in the faculties of their Souls as well as 't is often seen they do many ways in the Body But there is generally found as between Iacob and Esau such dissimilitude in the Spirits of Brethren and those of Father and Son Mother and Daughter as greater is not to be found between meer strangers in bloud which thing daily experience will not only demonstrate upon search but may be readily found in the Histories of Princes in all Ages Now the Soul of Beast being the bare product of flesh only and necessarily taking its rise and essence from the substance of its Parents if I may so call them for the word may be proper enough pario being only to bring forth or produce never varies much or altogether at any time from that of the Parent We shall never find an absolute Jadish Spirit in a Horse begot from free and well-bred ones nor a meer Curr from right good Hounds no not in one of his senses the Nose or smell But if in any case they excell or degenerate from their Stock 't is by degrees and not per saltum which thing per saltum may be found and observed in the Race of men And besides this variation of the Souls of men from Birth there sometimes happens on the sudden a strange kind of total Metamorphosis of the Soul of man so as one would scarce adjudge it the same but according to Scripture phrase that one becomes a new man and this without any alteration at all of the Bodies constitution Now if the Soul of man were not a substance of it self capable to be wrought on ab extra by somewhat without any introduction by the senses then no such alteration without the Bodies alteration could be made but through the senses and if such alteration were made from sense through the Organs of the Body then upon the shortest obstruction or letting in of prior forms again the Soul would consequently return to its pristine state according to that simile of the dog to his vomit c. which change or alteration in the Soul of man we see sometimes settled and remaining notwithstanding all interposition during a long following life Thus we find that men have utterly contemned and hated without any offence raised from the thing it self even with a perfect hatred that which was formerly their delight which kind of hatred never yet happened or was discernible in Beast Now if any man shall ask me At what time the Soul of man being a substance of it self distinct from the Body enters and possesses the Body I can make him a reply with as difficult a question At what instant doth this other arising product Soul from the Bloud begin its circulation and move If we know neither why should it seem more wonderful and strange to us for the God of Nature upon man's conception in the womb to create and have ordained a Spirit to actuate that conception which Spirit should continue for ever notwithstanding that conception should decay and perish for a time as well as that there should arise a Spirit from the Bloud to actuate move and govern the Body for a certain period of time which time we could never define certainly from any course of Nature And further that the wise Creator and Governour of all things should ordain that if the first created Spirit to inhabit a Body both together being Man should wander in disobedience from its Creator all others sent and entring into Bodies product from the Loyns of the first Body should be infected with the same wandring disease and have no cure but by Grace from the first Creator But I would not wander too much my self nor desire to pry into any of God's secrets further than he has thought fit to reveal by his Holy Word and so shall lay aside my thoughts of the manner of Man's creation every way wonderful as the Psalmist expresses it as also the consideration of the inferiour faculties for the present and try and see if there be not some sparks in the Soul of man which give such a light as can by no means naturally arise from any thing barely and simply terrestrial SECT VII The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from its unweariedness in searching c. and its reflex acts and operations WHy has the Soul of man in all Ages when it has been at any time withdrawn from that quick intromission of worldly objects by the senses and has not been hindred or obstructed by some mists fogs or lets of the flesh wherein at present 't is confined to work hunted after wearied and tired it self to find out and comprehend what it is not able to comprehend The first sin of man shewed at once the Soul's error and its
and inarticulate voices And so we find Trade and Commerce maintained betwixt us and the Indians and that Mutes do act and understand by signs to admiration But whatever faculty is in the Beasts or whatever necessity may have taught and brought Men to that could not converse by words yet all the dumb signs in the World though managed to the best advantage can never equal the benefit we enjoy by Speech when we can thereby communicate our thoughts and maintain converse with freedom ease and pleasure This indeed is the Soul and life of Society and by the means of which we do as much exceed the other creatures in the happiness of it as in the principle that guides it which is our Reason We often abuse this Heavenly gift as other noble faculties of our Soul and not only say in our hearts that is silently by our actions but some of us in our tongues and by our Pens That there is no such thing as an Immortal Soul in man but 't is a Chimaera first forged in some melancholick brain and by consequence that there is no God For I must agree that if it can be made out that the World is a fortuitous juggling of Atoms and our Souls are only a natural fine product from thence and to vanish again with our Bodies Nature as we call it and term it is no such revengeful Deity that we need fear the disobeying of her private dictates but may safely challenge our tongues for our own and say Who is Lord over them But surely we must want sense to let in so many various works of Nature into our Souls view or any thing of reason to consider or judge of them after they are let in or else we should be convinced from the wise disposition thereof that there is somewhat more than chance and that Nature it self which is but a Law made by God to work by has dependance upon some infinite eternal wise Being call it some men what they please which we call God And for our Souls immortality the seeds thereof sown in our hearts and arising now and then in every one into doubts and fears if not more must be strangely trampled on by some evil one who is willing to let self-valuation in man grow as rank as may be in any case but this of the Souls immortality when all besides it is vanity Otherwise man of himself would never so undervalue his own Original and instead of revering himself an excellent old precept of the Philosopher as if there were some petty Deity within him unman himself become in a wrong sense poor in Spirit for so we may well think that Spirit is which has its rise and essence from the flesh only sully the Word of God with his own and falsly conclude in generalities from particulars that what befalleth man befalleth beasts as the one dieth so dieth the other that they have all one breath and that man hath no preheminence above a beast All go to one place all are of the dust and all turn to dust again And some have been so afraid of living hereafter and so desirous surely of companions to die with them like Beasts that in their Writings and Arguments for their vanishing or vanity I have seen the words of the following verse misplaccd for their purpose and instead of Who knoweth the Spirit of man that goeth upward and the Spirit of beast that goeth downward to the Earth by changing that which was an affirmation of the place whither the Spirit goeth though an interrogation of the knowledge of the Spirit what it is which I say indeed is difficult into an interrogation they have set it down thus Who knoweth that the Spirit of man goeth upward c. as if allowing these words for Apocrypha God created man to be immortal and made him to be an image of his own Eternity the wise man in the following chapter where he expresly says Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was and the Spirit shall return unto God who gave it had quite forgot what he said before whose meaning there in comparing Man and Beast together and concluding a like end to both no sober man ever thought to extend further than their Bodies For he begins There is a time to be born and a time to die our Bodies are born as theirs are nourished as theirs feel pain like theirs and die and rot as theirs and so shall continue no doubt till it shall please God at the last day to raise them again in incorruption And therefore all provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof whether in reference to a mans self or to his posterity that wise man found and held to be vanity and acknowledgeth it in his great works and buildings in his Vineyards Gardens and Orchards in his variety of Trees and Plants in his Pools of Water in his Villains and Cattel in his Riches and Power c. And upon his review as well as at first sight confirming our Saviours question What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole World c. he agrees there was no profit under the Sun of his labour which term or words under the Sun he often uses after and gives his reason besides the vexation of Spirit to our selves while we live here we know not whether we shall leave our labour to a wise man or a fool But if he had had any thoughts of our utter extinction after death he would not immediately in the following verse after he had proposed the question Who knoweth the Spirit of a man that goeth upward c. have said Who shall bring man to see what shall be after him which supposes an existence somewhere nor have concluded his Book with the fear of God and keeping his Commandments as the whole duty and proper labour of man telling us God shall bring every work into judgment whether good or evil if all were to be finished under the Sun But these men only at present are about to ratifie and make good the only thing that Solomon found which indeed he affirms with an Ecce as nothing else so sure That God had made man upright but they had sought out many inventions Were there not a possibility of that which seems a contradiction viz. that a man may sometimes as we say cum ratione insanire none would believe that a man should strive to argue and reason himself into nothing and yet this we find to proceed from otherwise very rational men and who would be angry at peculiar seasons if we should compare them to the Beast that perish and therefore let us beg of them and humbly intreat them to become fools with us and to consider and think whether so much as Desire of the remembrance and good opinion of others can be fixed and inherent in a material earthly substance necessarily and certainly to vanish again
any of the four things mentioned by Agur and I may confidently speak in the words of Solomon to any such diver As thou knowest not what is the way of the Spirit nor how the bones do grow in the womb so thou knowest not the work of God who maketh all 'T is not a thing I dare undertake to discover nor a thing I have absolutely desired to know But only to quiet and satisfie my self I have endeavoured to make some little search or enquiry which of the faculties of the Soul may seem a visum est only primary or most potent in operation not which in truth are for that shall never man certainly define And therefore let no man till he be able to find out himself the circulation of the Soul and the origine of that circulation and be assured to convince others in reason of that his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 blame me of sloth or ignorance but allow me something of intellect if it be but in finding out my own defect therein And yet because I am willing in some degree to satisfie my self and others too but not wade herein further than some light from Scripture which I believe to be the true proper light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world may seem to direct and mark out I shall set down somewhat of my thoughts concerning the priority precedency or prevalency in the faculties of the Soul one before or above another Whereabout though I may seem to dissent from the received opinion and learning of the World and therein be exploded by some yet I trust and hope I shall in no wise wrench or screw that Sacred Word for my purpose nor much swerve from the true and genuine meaning of that which I alledge to be the principal if not the only ground of my opinion I am not able to find out any great ground of contest to arise between any faculties of the Soul for priority or precedency that is any dispute or question thereabout unless between the Imagination and the Affections barely Now that which we call the Imagination or cogitation in the Soul of man we find to be an unconstant fluttering as well as a restless faculty which at no time can be found settled or made to fix long nay much or often upon any one single object unless some affection do first seem to draw it and set it on work and in a manner fasten it as its attendant for a time though then also it have some momentary flyings out and extravagancies And though it be a thing undeniable that the imagination may often move or rouze some affection which was quiet before yet it is a thing as undeniable that the imagination or cogitation never created or made any affection more than any affection ever created that for we must agree they are contemporary in the Soul and so neither hath the precedency But yet where one seems to work more often in obedience and to some ends and designs or safe lodging or pleasing of another we may allow that other some kind of excellency and so priority And this I am ready to afford to some affection lodged in the center of the Body or innermost place of recess for the Soul there secretly fixed by its Creator with some reason to direct and guide as well as imagination to whet it Indeed the imagination and the affections when they are orderly or regularly working if not at all times and seasons do whet and as it were give edge to each other but surely as the Love of God far exceeds the thoughts of him so the Soul being an emanation at first from that Spirit of Love Love of him may be said to be a cause of thoughts of him and that if the Soul were not naturally capable to love and tend some whither we could not so much as think Sense must be agreed while we live in the Body to be the chief though not the only inlet or Port to the Soul and that every object by and through sense has some touch in its entrance upon the imagination or else we shall make a strange Chimaera of the Soul But not barely resting upon sense we may allow some prior inherent quality upon which by sense the imagination may seem attendant and in subjection to And though at some times the imagination do appear as the usher of the affections yet the least affection once kindled and something there must be allowed to be kindled whether of it self bursting out into flame or however inflamed or kindled will often hale the thoughts to the object without any farther help of sense But many things are presented to the imagination by sense upon which no affection seems to stir or move that we are able to discern and thereupon we may allow the imagination's work or motion to be chiefly from something occult whatever use it sometimes makes of sense to which it is or may be in subjection and not prior but rather posterior SECT II. That it seems to be in the Affections rather then any other from Scripture THere is a common saying how true I know not that life is first and last in that part of man's Body which we call the Heart and it is generally agreed and believed and I find no reason to dissent much from that opinion that there is the principal seat of the affections and that That is the Cell wherein they chiefly move and work Now nothing is so much called upon in Scripture as the Affections nor any part of man's Body so often named as the Heart the chief and principal seat thereof as if that part were taken for the whole and the content for the contained and whole man Soul and Body were included in that one word Heart and no act or thought of man were significant without affection or did arise or work but from an affection I shall not in this place going about to shew some peculiar prerogative the affections seem to have over the other faculties of the Soul scrape up together and cite the multitude of Texts wherein God by his Prophets and Apostles seems to strike only at the root of the affections the Heart and call upon that particularly to be given him or inclined or bent towards him they are obvious enough and I believe a thousand such are readily to be found But I shall only mention some peculiar places occurring at present to my thoughts which seem to allow not only a native or dative power in the affections over the whole intellective faculty whether Imagination Memory or Reason but also some primary influence which they have upon them all or as if the other faculties had their rise or spring from them Thus generally whensoever the intellect is mentioned in Scripture it is coupled with the seat of the affections and taken for them as if from thence it rose and had its influence For if the very imagination had any motion of it self or by sense
Heaven if I understand the word nor that reason can demonstrate what God is though it may tell us what God is not And therefore I think reason may be as well too blame for marching too far or soaring too high for its learning or knowledg as sitting quite still or groveling on the earth and permitting the imagination to introduce what forms of a Deity will or best may gratify any the most predominant present affection an habit which has been too much in fashion of late and now a little withdrawing makes way for the other excess I may have said too much my self in this little it has exceeded my original intent and purpose yet this further I must say and begg your pardon and others who shall chance to see it if I say amiss that my wishes are we may all in this great concern carefully avoid extreams and that as we do not set up such a God by faith as reason is able daily to confront so we set not up such a God by reason as there needs no faith to lay hold on For my weak opinion is nay my present resolution is As never wholly to desert my reason for the adoration of any God So never to adore any thing for God my reason is able fully to comprehend EPIST. II. Wherein he treats of the cause of Action or Motion under the notion of Spirit and endeavours to shew our often mistakes in applying our thoughts and actions to the operation of that Spirit of truth in us which though good in themselves may proceed from other cause and advises to solitude at particular seasons as the most ready and likely way to behold in some degree the light of truth BEcause Soul or Spirit hath been heretofore at special seasons the subject of my thoughts and because there are many amongst us who would seem to have great knowledge of a Deity and may be thought too familiar with God under a colour or pretence of being daily enlightened with his Holy Spirit affirming its constant working in them And others quite Aliens and strangers to God not barely by their life and conversation but by their outward profession too and who deny in words as much or more than in the deeds that there is any such thing as a Spirit which in St. Iohn our Saviour tells us God is and that what we term Spirit is a mere Chimaera fansied in our brains Both which kind of persons being equally to modest Society and civil conversation and I may say enemies to true Religion I have adventured with all submission to your more weighty thoughts and solid judgement to present you with my sometimes opinion in reference to what we most properly and peculiarly term Spirit and wherein I say ought in relation to that Spirit of truth I humbly implore its aid that nothing escape my Pen which may in any wise if seen lead others into error or in the least diminish the goodness power glory might Majesty c. dominion of the Almighty First I have thought and do think That we can not rationally attribute or impute the cause of any action or motion whatsoever to ought else than somewhat which we in no wise able to comprehend by our sense term or call a Spirit and that without some such thing the world were an insignificant Lump That from such thing all things live and move and have their being is not to be doubted whether we call it Nature or ought else This Spirit gone forth or sent into the visible world which now has visible effects as I take it to be some emission of that Eternal spirit at the Creation from the Word so I think it generally worketh unknown to its self the will of that Eternal Spirit neither can it cease of it self to work but if re-assumed or gathered again as is expressed in Iob all flesh would perish together c. And that all flesh and all other things Sun Moon c. do not perish is the work of Gods ordinary I trust I may so call it Providence the confirmation Seal of his Creation Such vivifying Spirit as this which men may call nature if they please is gone out into the world and shall continue working every where no doubt until the appointed end of the world yet not apprehensive of its being nor capable of understanding in the least to what end it works may probably cease to work after the manner it now worketh And this kind of Spirit receives no new influence nor seems capable of any new influence from above yet is ordered by what we call Providence But where there is any Spirit conscious of its own working and in some measure capable to conceive from whence it is or at least desirous to enquire after or know the original of its being that Spirit seems to me to be some special emission more than ordinary at the beginning or Creation of the visible world to be of duration and continuance A thing now as it were subsisting of it self and which vanishes not nor can vanish or will be re-assumed again But being as I may say the very Spirit or breath of the Almighty and able to look back towards its original and fountain is capable of some new influence and as I may say regeneration and such is the Spirit of man And therefore we in no wise deny but that the Spirit of man may receive some new light for its motion otherwise than barely and simply by sense the Organ of the body And that no other though intellectual Spirit inferiour thereto can so do or is capable so to do Now of created Spirits superiour to our selves or of greater capacity in point of intellect than our selves as I read or hear of none save Angels created all good as well as we so I cannot conceive that any created or circumscribed Spirit from any power of it self to intermix it self with our Spirit or so move in us as that it may be properly said we are possessed with any other Spirit than our own and therefore 't is most properly said When we are tempted we are drawn away of our own lusts Though I confess I think objects may be brought by the assistance of some such spirit and laid down before our senses or presented to our fancy whereby our lust may seem to begin to move though indeed our lusts be the original of our error But forasmuch as our own spirit is some image of and has its being from the Almighty that is one eternal all powerful spirit it being capable by its reason for no otherwise 't is so to distinguish between good and evil in some measure and to know the will of that almighty One It doubtless may be and is capable also not only to have its reason enlightned from thence but to receive some such new accession of light as that it may not only have a clearer sight of that bountiful Creator than reason is able to afford it but be
commission from thence too familiar with it Now whether this too often talking of the Spirit in Pulpits has been a feeding with milk or the same be not a thing of difficult digestion and may be of evil consequence if not well digested and whether they had not done much better only to have smoothed the way for the coming of that Spirit by instilling into men the principles of obedience justice and honesty and integrity of life and conversation than talk of its being and effects which are only known to God himself I leave to their Conscience that is their reason who have preached and do usually preach of it Such a salve there is as that of the Spirit to comfort us but if it be too often and ill applied it may cause a Lethargy in the soul rather than ought else And such a Sword there is as that of the Spirit to beat down our adversaries withall and indeed it may be said of it as that of Goliah There is none like it But if men be told of the force of that spiritual Sword and have not judgement to discern it They will be prone to catch up an imaginary one such a strange Weapon as they will be able to puzzle if not foile their very Masters with So as if God in his infinite and wonderful mercy prevent it not instead of a spiritual one every mans temporal Sword will be drawn against his brother at the last We have justly deserted without doubt that infallible Church with the head thereof for its strange arrogance of ingrossing the Holy Spirit and presumption that it cannot err But methinks it might be no imprudent caution or wariness in each of us particularly that we carry not about us every man a Pope as is said in our belly which will in time after some maturity if we take not good heed break forth and usurp the Chair with as great confidence as that whom at present we condemn and reject and at last for want of strength to defend it self yield the prerogative to and set up the old one again in his full power and strength Certainly did we believe some men enlightned or possessed after the manner they talk of averring as much a real presence of the Deity in themselves as the Papists do in the Sacrament we should adore them rather than the Host the adoration whereof we equally condemn and think gods were come down to us in the likeness of men And therein perhaps these kind of men would not blame us nor seem so angry as Paul and Barnabas with the men of Lycaonia Yet surely all men are men and of like passion with us And truly 't were to be wished 't were not the spirit of pride rather than ought else which makes some of us seem to our selves not like other men though we seem to thank God for it as well as that Pharisee The Scripture seems plain and I think there is no true Christian that ever questioned but that the very spirit of God that ever blessed third person in the Trinity may and does dwell in some men How else could a man constantly and cordially and pleasingly retain a belief of that thing which his reason is not able to comprehend nay that which it combates with and is sometimes ready to condemn since no belief can be without the consent of reason as I shall make plainly appear in another place and therefore my enquiry only is in relation to its effects Whether thereabout we do not often alledge that for its effect which is not its effect It is a dangerous thing we are told to sin against it and from that sin whatsoever it be good Lord preserve us Now this light of the Holy spirit and its special work in man further than that true faith with its necessary concomitants is certainly effected thereby No man in my opinion can have such an assurance of at this day as that he can safely and without danger avouch it in any particular cases of action or opinion to be his immediate present guide much less with ostentation challenge it for his peculiar and reject and condemn others as void of that true light For as without it I do believe there can be no true faith so too great a confidence in any man of its present infallible operation in him as to other matters which necessarily depend not thereon in some sign in my opinion that his faith is not true and such as it should be For surely he whose faith is such will daily and hourly pray for that enlightning grace and fear he has it not which he who seems assured of it neglects by consequence to do Saint Paul concerning spiritual gifts willing not to have us altogether ignorant and about to shew us that there are diversities of operations but it is the same God which worketh all in all Giveth us to understand that No man can say Iesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost which thing I do believe but yet I take his meaning there to be not a bare outward profession and confession by the tongue for surely there are many who have professed so much and uttered as much with a clear audible voice at that very instant they have intended to deceive and with a very intent to deceive which could never be the work of that good spirit of truth in them And therefore we cannot take his meaning there to be other than an intus dicens A cordial and total from the whole soul embracing and laying hold on that word by faith as the alone Saviour and so Lord of the whole world And this thing we cannot as of it self behold in any man He has given us to understand likewise in another place that there are fruits proceeding from the work of that spirit and enumerated some of them yet since no man now a days can or will I think pretend to any inmediate gift of discerning the spirits more than he can or will pretend to working of miracles prophecy divers kind of tongues without study and labour or the interpretation of tongues which Saint Paul has linked together in one verse and placed that gift of discerning the spirit in the very midst How shall we judge of the reality of those fruits otherwise than by our reason And therefore why do men talk to us so much of that blessed spirit and seem to take it unkindly we do not believe their works proceed from thence if at any time our reason as sometimes it do's inform and satisfy us they may be and often are without it Some of those fruits there mentioned by Saint Paul as temperance patience goodness c. have appeared much more real in many Heathen than some of us and yet our reason is not convinced that they proceeded from any thing more than that bountiful goodness of God in his providence over them nor until we have that special gift of discerning the spirits
out yea further though a wise man think to know it yet shall he not be able to find it But to believe there is wisdom and truth and justice and mercy in some one eternal mind and that the judge of all the earth must needs do right is almost a necessary consequence raised in the soul of man upon any humble search into himself and that the whole duty of man is no difficult thing to know That even Solomon whom we agree to be endowed with the spirit of truth as well as naturally wise appears to me in that excellent book intituled the Preacher to have had his soul at a stand and in a maze not knowing where to fix in the demonstration of any certain wordly course that ours might follow But that he seems to allow its guidance by the providence of God rather than his spirit For if it were guided by the latter it could not so often err neither then would he call all its works vanity That the spirits of men are then most keen and most sharp set towards the world and most likely to resemble the hawk or the birds of prey when there is most talk of the dove and that we are willing to hide our selves under that shadow though we have little of the light of truth That some mens outward profaneness and publick contempt of God seems ground sufficient in justice for our punishment by the hands of those who driving at wordly designs only pretend to honour him And that if those in authority took vigilant care to see the very form of godliness better observed those pretenders to it in humane probability could not have obtained those advantages of alluring and drawing the vulgar to their side as now they have That in the misery of civil dissension we shall be all more or less involved the Atheist the spiritualist c. and every of us more or less shall feel the smart of it in the end whatever any of us aim at present that though there seem a necessity of offences yet there is a consequent woe particularly attending every offender and therefore we should all indeavour to be void of offences towards God and towards man and prevent if we can that storm which seems to hang over us But if it be otherwise decreed then we who seem spectators only but spectators only we are not since we are sinners and neither deny God in word to provoke him to shew himself in our punishment nor boldly vouch him in his spirit to cover the lust of our flesh have this ready and open passage to fly unto God until our calamities are over-past His just and wise and merciful providence And this certainly must necessarily be the door or gate of the Lord as is expressed for every man if ever he enters to enter in and truly behold that stone which the builders of this world refuse For in the instant of personal affliction chastisement or correction I dare confidently aver the Atheist will neither boldly deny God nor the spiritualist boldly ingross him but both own him as he is just and wise and wonderful in all his doings and to be feared To whom be Glory c. EPIST. III. Wherein the Author sets down some further grounds and reasons of his opinion of the mortality or utter annihilation of the Souls of brutes upon their death And therein indeavours to clear himself of all seeds and principles of Atheism wherewith that opinion seems taxed in a certain Book presented him by the said Dean THat Soul which pries into things even below and inferior to its self do they seem at first never so ordinary mean and obvious and be it clear-sighted as may be and perhaps from the clearest sight the soonest will at length if it dwell long on any subject begin to stagger and suspect it self of dimness and weakness and that there is something more in every Creature than it is able to discern or comprehend and if it resolve not into a blind kind of chance or fall asleep in occult qualities it will own one Almighty wise and only all-knowing Being or existence and therein resting it self will dare to assume no knowledge but conjectural and seeming probable that is no more than belief This is my present thought and confession But because in my Treatise De Anima I might seem to you a little too positively to assert the soul of Beast to be no other than part of a body rarified to a proportion and with the body perishing and upon the dissolution thereof becoming annihilate and totally extinct I am now desirous to declare unto you a little more fully the grounds of my opinion thereabout And the rather because in that little discourse we had together I received this only Querie from you How an intellectual spirit could naturally arise out of a material or bodily substance And if the same were an infused spirit and not part of the body how the same with the body should cease to be or move A Querie perhaps only made to hear what answer a plain rational man without learning would make to it and though a curious one and such as I acknowledg my self altogether unfit to resolve or so much as to handle yet I have made this further adventure in reference thereto Truly Sir I am not or ever was so positive in any assertion of my own or so enamour'd therewith as not to suspect my self of fallibility and whenever I consider the soul of beast with those excellent faculties it is endowed I cannot but wonder at and admire and extol the God of Nature who was pleased to ordain That from such individual corporate substances there should spring so much of intellect especially to be seen in many of them as might seem to be rather a special gift and emanation from that Spirit alwayes and every where moving and which was once said more locally to move upon the face of the waters than any peculiar essence of so rare framed bodies But yet I am not satisfied nor methinks could easily be convinced in reason That therefore there is any duration of such Spirit after the body is again converted to earth That Spiritus Mundi if I may so term our God and Creator blessed for ever is every where and moves every where by his Original fiat His works are manifold in wisdom hath he made them all But yet without offence I hope or any breach in that reason he hath given us above other creatures we may conjecture his emanations are not all alike If in relation to brutes for of such David there speaks When he letteth his breath go forth they are created and so the face of the earth is renewed Yet there may be a reassumption and taking away again of that breath and then things die and are turned again to their dust and no local continuance of that breath remaining so as to be a spirit circumscribed There is no manifestation
as I may term it of any durable Spirit in any visible creature but us his Image because although those other Spirits are of him and from him yet they are not capable to conceive they are of him and from him nay from any thing else and though some of them seem to work with intellect and will yet they really work to his glory as meer machines or engines without any design and desire to fulfil or will to transgress his eternal purpose that we can discern Now let us a little behold God in his Creation That is in his several visible creatures which is indeed the proper mirrour for our reason to look into for that cannot ascend higher of it self and we may presently behold somewhat more than is obvious to common ordinary sense and see his spirit working every where though not alike in wisdom I know we distinguish between animate and inanimate bodies vegetation and sense and the like yet in all bodies there are Spirits insensibly included in the tangible parts as in an integumen which are never almost at rest but from them and their motion proceed Concoction Maturation Putrefaction and the like and even in those inanimate bodies to which we allow not vegetation or sense there is a perception far more subtile than sense That is a kind of election to imbrace what is agreeable and to exclude or expel what is ingrate or nauseous as we find between bodies electrick and some other bodies And especially between Magnetick bodies and others as the Loadstone and Iron in which or between which there is a very disposition conforming unto contiguity or coition or union with one another For we cannot impute any coition of these two bodies to a bare attractive quality in the Loadstone since those who have made their several Experiments thereof do deliver unto us that if a piece of Iron be fastned in a bowl of Water and a small Loadstone inclosed in a kind of Boat of Cork be put into the Water it will presently move and make way to the Iron Nay a Needle touched will move towards a great body of Steel untouched And the atoms or dust of a Loadstone finely filed will adhere unto Iron that was never touched And as there is a kind of desire of union in some bodies so there is an antipathy in or between others as may be observed by Iron put into Aqua fortis upon which there will forthwith be an ebulition with noise and emication such an antipathy is there and such a combat and contest between Sulphur and Iron when they meet As for Plants and all Vegetables not to speak any thing of the sensible Plant or the reason of its contraction upon touching though we allow them not sense or passion We cannot deny somewhat of appetite and aversion to be inherent in them which in all creatures of motion is the product and mother of all passions they do surely attract what is proper for their nourishment and reject or secern what is improper and nauseous There are multitudes of Plants which of themselves as weak and feeble shall seem to tend directly to some other next adjacent bodies which may support them and even as it were espy and feel them out as hath been observed of the Vine the Ivy the Hop our ordinary Ginny or Kidney Beans in Gardens and many more And although that observation of perception in Plants may sometimes be taken upon false grounds and that it is often in reality rather some attraction by the warm Sun-beams of the body supported to the body supporting than any perception in the body supported I my self have seen that Herb or Weed we commonly call Cliver rooted some little distance on each side of an Hedge from each side North and South bent and inclined to the same Hedge as to its prop and support What there is of affection in Plants is not altogether a fruitless inquiry We commonly say and it may be not improperly That Laurel loveth the shade or delighteth in the shade And other Plants love and affect such and such a kind of soil Now to say nothing of the Palm-tree strangers to our Climate of which it is reported That if two of them of some difference in kind for there is some distinction made between them of Male and Female as we do of some other Plants grow near together they will most apparently incline to each other with the imbraces as it were of Lovers There is most certainly a kind of agreement and disagreement between divers and sundry particular Plants So as some of several kinds shall thrive separate and asunder upon a like soil and yet not contiguous and together And on the other side there are divers peculiar Plants which will not thrive or be at all unless adjacent contiguous or intermixt with some other of another kind As from peculiar Weeds growing amongst Corn only we observe Some of which kinds of Weeds are never or rarely to be found elsewhere than amongst Corn Nor will the soil ready manured for Corn if the same be neglected to be sown with Corn from ill husbandry or otherwise ever produce them There is a kind of Envy and Emulation between Plants and as it were a striving for the mastery as is observable in Trees contiguous and adjacent which ever mount higher than when they are apart and distant some space one from each other and although some other reason may be given for their mounting in height in case of proximity viz. a more vigorous inclination and erection ascendently towards the Sun whose beams are laterally obstructed by the neighbouring Trees Yet that reason holds not in smaller bodies as Grass and Corn where thickness or near adjacency rather dwarfs than otherwise And yet between Corn and Weeds there is observable a kind of strugling for the mastery in the beginning of Summer and sometimes the one and sometimes the other robbing its rival of nourishment do's very much enfeeble it and cause it to lose its strength verdure and freshness if not totally destroy it which the Poet methinks prettily expresses in these if I forget not words Et steriles dominantur avenae as if after a superiority they lorded it as we say over one another Now as we observe God has by the universal frame of Nature implanted some kind of spirit in every of his Works and some kind of abhorrence of a dissolution together with a secret endeavour in every particular of his Works tending not only towards the preservation of its peculiar being barely but its exaltation and well-being too as far as may be So it is no ways dissonant to our reason to conjecture or imagine that that wise Creator of all things should from those bodies which he was pleased to have separate from the earth and to have local motion Ordain a Spirit to arise rarified in them to some greater proportion than the other which should be not only pervious as in Plants but have some peculiar
has been made and no allurement or invitation she can make shall draw them into the water An Element equally destructive to our nature and yet from which we are often inforced to use some care and industry to preserve our own young ones I speak all this to shew and to make it somewhat apparent and plain that that kind of Intellect which is in Animals how great soever it may seem to be is nothing else but a more curious kind of perception with sense and motion than that of Vegetables or inanimate bodies and arising in the blood or other such like thin fluid substance in Insects because as soon soever as it has its full current and motion the intellect of those creatures is at the highest unless some actions of theirs from our documents seem to make an improvement of it which in reality is no addition of intellect but the exercising a prior inherent Intellect some other way towards their acquiring food or the like But the Soul of man though chiefly seated in the blood and upon a total effusion or shedding thereof necessarily leaving the body do's not in the most florid and vigorous condition thereof and in youth so much shew it self nor is so quick in discerning things obnoxious to the body as theirs and therefore may seem rather some wonderful way inspired than to be connative and of the substance of the body for certainly a separate created Spirit though of a wonderful knowledg and apprehension as subsisting of it self yet sent into the gloomy dark vault or tabernacle of a body wants not only the introduction of species by sense as some inlet to work upon but also some considerable space of time to shew its intellectual power and vigour rather than a spirit raised in a body for the substance and government only of the same body without which speedy work in Nature to some perfection the body would not long submit in that state And therefore in the case of a first created and after infused spirit only it sometimes happens from the darkness or closeness of its mansion it has little other visible operation than the very carrying its Tabernacle about with it as I instanced in the case of an Ideot in my Treatise de Anima and yet as to its excellence and sublimity in point of its original being and intellective power were it freed and discharged of those obstructions ithas far exceeds that of the wisest Animal So as immaterial and from thence probably immortal spirits want but room to display themselves or having room want some space of time to recover and expel some mists of their present obstruction and then by gifts only break out in any lustre To will a Spirit endowed with some kind of preservative intellect to arise from a body is equally the wonderful work of an Omnipotent Power with the creation of a body and endowing the same with a spirit ab extra as I may say and no less than either to endow an inanimate body with peculiar operative Qualities or Vertues But if it be once admitted and granted that in Animals the blood is the life or that the spirit is essential with the body whereof there is some sufficient ground from the course of Nature to believe its motion and tendence regarding nothing else It will necessarily and consequently follow That the whole spirit and body how ever we divide it by particular names is subject to one and the same Fate Destiny or Period As to these spirits of ours If they were a part of and coessential with our bodies I cannot see how it were either natural or possible that there could at any time arise in the soul a desire of disunion or dissolution from that body of which it self was a part Which desire in certain humane spirits has most certainly at sometimes appeared nay often worked its desired effect Nor is it reasonable to conjecture that any thing can possibly will or endeavour its own destruction or annihilation and therefore if our Souls were of the very essence of our Bodies we must grant A man could never voluntarily or intentionally make away himself the contrary whereof is manifest As to those spirits of theirs if they were distinct or any way separable from the body and no part thereof since they labour and groan under the Creation as much or more than we and are no less subject to passions of fear and the like then at sometime or other upon some displeasure or other there would be espied a voluntary indeavour of its separation by its own act to ease it self of those flames it felt for the present But this could never be observed in any of them by any of us but alwayes such a voluntary resistance of Separation as there is usually in us unless at such times as this separable Soul of ours is ravished with Hopes and Joyes or tortured with Despairs and Fears At least if the Soul of beast were a distinct thing from the body and separable therefrom it might now and then as well as ours be observed naturally to act after such a manner as in no wise barely and simply tended towards the preservation of the same body but seeming to neglect the body were somewhat fixed for a while upon a subject matter altogether unnecessary to the bodies ease quiet or well being Now if any man could be able to satisfy me of so much as a voluntary abstinence in any creature save Man at any time from any thing which might seem to afford delectation or nourishment to the body or satiate or please the same at such instant as there was a present appetite or desire and when there was no impendent fear or other passion to obstruct so as the body might seem to be at the same instant voluntarily neglected for the pleasing or satisfaction of the mind Much more if I were able to discern any kind of motion of the spirit of beast the most subtle or wise tending out of its proper element the Flesh and the preservation thereof and exercising its passions about qualities or accidents as to love Justice or Mercy to fear ignominy or contempt to desire to know or the like whereby it might seem to be capable of or merit a future reward or punishment and be a just subject thereof for nothing uncapable to act voluntarily beyond the preservation of it self can so be I should then be inclinable to think that there is rather a continuation and some transmigration of that Soul than any evaporation thereof and vanishing into the soft air or a reduction thereof into Earth with the body But besides what has been alledged and some places of holy Scripture which might be alledged seeming to give a period to the soul or spirit of beast together with the body It will be difficult for our imagination so long as we have any reason left to go along with it aid or assist it or else but correct it to assign a place for the
residence or future habitation of these Souls when the body leaves them or they leave the body We shall scarce allow them any heavenly vision and though they are the work of God's hand as well as we and work to his glory and set forth his glory here on Earth we shall hardly admit them to do it locally in Heaven To what place shall we convey them or for what work or use shall we assign them in our thoughts If we leave them as thin aiery bodies wandring up and down in the Air or we know not where or whither neither animating or moving other bodies nor doing good or harm to man or ought else I think we derogate from the wisdom of that first cause wich can no more be thought to continue a thing altogether useless and unnecessary than to create a thing useless from the beginning which reason will not allow us to think If upon the separation of these Souls from the body we can imagine they forthwith enter into animate and reside in other bodies we must forthwith make enquiry whether such bodies only as are of the same Nature Quality and Species with those they inhabited before or else promiscuously of any kind or degree whatever Either of which will prove absurd to imagine with reason But before we come to view that absurdity in its particulars All living and moving Creatures would be a little considered together in their several Faculties or Intellects from which notion Intellect we raise our doubts of their Mortality or perishing Though the wisdom of the Almighty be apparent and imbraced by the reason he has given us in his willing the production of a more fine and subtle spirit for moving bodies than those fixed to the Earth touched before we cannot reasonably conjecture any vast disproportion of Intellect though some we find between living moving Creatures themselves whose voluntary operation seems to be and tend only towards acquiring Food and Sustenance to each particular individual and perpetuating it self by generation For our more immediate acquaintance or conversation with some of them more proper and fit for our use make the difference in their Intellect seem greater to us than in reality it is And we are apt to place the excellency generally in those creatures which necessarily depending on us next under God the Preserver and Feeder of all for preservation and sustenance do by that their dependance and familiarity with us shew their Intellect more apparently to us than other Brute Creatures But why we should hereupon imagine that there is not as much of Intellect in some Fishes of the Sea as either in Fowls of the Air or four-footed Beasts which we better know I find no reason since by their Intellect they both acquire their food and preserve themselves from danger equally with the others Nay I see no ground to deprive Insects from as large a share of Intellect in some cases as either By Insects I mean not only those reptilia and volatilia without parts and blood to us discernible but all creaturs whatsoever bred of heat and putrefaction as it may be Mice some kinds of Serpents Frogs and the like whereof some years seem to produce more and far greater numbers than can be thought to proceed from generation though I believe most Creatures bred of putrefaction at first do after generate These together do undoubtedly far exceed in number all quadrupedes and flying Fowls upon the face of the Earth Now some of these have already obtained from us the repute of very wise and provident Animals and we are apt to extol their Intellect sometimes beyond that of other Creatures of far greater bulk and dimension Truly it may be adequate in many cases Intellect we know no more how absolutely to deny them than other Creatures Certainly we cannot deny any sense to most of them for instance the Bee undoubtedly they see and hear too as may be observed and collected from their being stayed or allured with whistling or the ringing of a Bason And since we observe how they will find and know their way to a Field of Thyme or the like some Miles distant from their Hives and return directly to them again we cannot deny them voluntary motion and by consequence Imagination and further I am somewhat assured upon Experiment they will in few days certainly know and distinguish a person conversant about them and not at any time molesting him though he somewhat molest and disturb them and forthwith strike at any Stranger upon his or her approach And truly were Wasps and Hornets equally beneficial to man with them I doubt not but some who have wrote the Common-wealth of the one would soon have espied a Kingdom in the other more than Agur could discern in the Locusts and found as much of sense and Intellect in the one as in the other Since they are no less political creatures and work in select numbers and with no less order and it may be government than the other the like may be said of many other kinds of Insects The numerous excess of Insects beyond that of other creatures granted and likewise that there is in many of them which I know not well how it can be denyed as great a measure of knowledge as in some other creatures which thing Knowledg or Intellect in any or all is our ground to think why such their Spirit resolves not into Earth or Air but rather continues in some airy thin body or transmigrates into some other body for the animation thereof It will follow that the spirits of these insects cannot transmigrate into specifick quadrupede bodies or Fowls because it may be made almost apparent that there often are in one or two days space more of them in number destroyed and mortified than there are probably four-footed Beasts and Fowls upon the face of the whole earth But we must of necessity find out in our imagination some place for the spirits of these insects to rest in for a time or where they work or wander up and down for a certain space Or else conclude they do forthwith animate or transmigrate into bodies of the same or the like species with themselves to wit insects only Which to hold and maintain would be equally absurd to our reason unless we can rest convinced withall of some World in the Moon or at least a most accurate Antipodes to our selves and a Continent of land so placed where the Sun shall have a most lively vivifying influence too at that very time or instant we shall first feel our sharp Autumm frosts For besides the innumerable millions of divers kinds of our ordinary Flies whose spirits from thence cease to work any more in the same bodies between which and those Insects we attribute so much of prudence to it would be difficult to define any certain bounds in point of prudence or Intellect How many thousand millions of that sage provident creature the Ant do's one winter destroy
Since we often afford an helping hand to their destruction by laying their heaps and banks open to the power of Northern blasts and cold as being how ere so wise for themselves noxious to our grounds and fruit How many Spirits or Souls of that other wise creature the Bee do good Housewifes at a peculiar time toward the approach of the fall send together in transmigration by Brimstome to some other place Truly the Ant in great numbers may be thought as well to make a voluntary transmigration as that there is any transmutation of species in them as some hold since this is most certain that every kind of them at such an age or period of time become winged and leaving their heaps or banks to the younger Brood or Frye flee away and are seen no more But that they convert to a life of another species I believe no more than that there is a conversion of species of those little black Clobheads which we call Tadpoles bred in Ponds of the spawn of Frogs by the accession of legs and quite different features from what they had before As to that other most subtle and wise creature so termed in Scripture the Serpents if our Adders and Snakes may come under that notion How many of them do some Winters cast into a profound and lasting sleep as may be observed from the paucity of them seen in a Summer suceeding a sharp and tedious Winter So as those which have but shallow caverns or holes to sleep in are scarce thought ever to awake again These are but a species or two of many thousands for ought I could ever perceive as wise in their kind as they whose bodies Winter leaves altogether inanimate We make our predictions of a plentiful Summer from the sharpness of the Winter preceding and we give our reasons sometimes from some native or inherent warmth in Snow the contraction of the pores and keeping in the spirits in the earth by cold the retardation of all plants attraction of their sap and moisture too soon thereby and then their more vigorous operation and exhaleing of the same upon the more near approach of the Sun beams with the like which though they may be good reasons of our plenty too Yet I am apt to think the exanimation of innumerable Insects hurtful to plants and fruits from the sharpness of the winter or it 's imbecilitating their Eggs or Seed for production is a reason of more weight than all others usually given For he who will at the Spring time but walk into his Gardens or Fields with a light in the night season may espy a various multitude of little creatures who as the Psalmist expresses it all wait on God for their meat in due season Which as ordinary Earthworms and of them there are divers kinds too are not to be seen in the day time nay some of them so small and of colour earthy as they are not easily discernible but upon a green plant This every provident Gardiner is sensible of and does not impute the nipping off or little holes in his tender Plants like common Country people to Easterly Winds which may indeed wither or discolour but neither bite nor perforate To find out or imagine bodies ready prepared for all these spirits at an instant frosty time would puzzle the best Intellect or strongest imagination Should we pass by these spirits inherent in all these little creatures as insignificant and because we are not able with our eyes to see behold or distinguish any parts or blood in them laugh at those trite sayings Formicae sua bilis inest Habet musca splenem and find out some pretty distinction between their Spirits and the Spirits of Beasts of visible parts and greater bulk Certainly since their Shambles are fuller of their bodies in Winter than in Summer and most of them especially wild creatures bring forth young only in some peculiar Summer months We shall need the like help as in our case of Insects to salve the errors of a transmigrating imagination In case of oviparous creatures as all Fowl I would willingly know Whether after the Egg conceived and formed from treading or copulation there be not a spirit therein contained and included And yet they who can imagine an immortal spirit in the Chicken will hardly allow it I believe in the Egg or that upon corruption of the Egg or conversion of it to draught there is any transmigration and yet no doubt the spirit in the egg and the spirit in the chicken are one and the same only in the one case by gentle and proper heat continued for some space rarified to a greater degree and proportion than in the other and by consequence is subject to receive its termination and period with the body of one as well as of the other If we think the life and motion in the Chicken be a new peculiar spirit introduced by heat then do we allow our selves a power not only of sending spirits in transmigration to other bodies by our destruction and devouring of the present but creating I will not say alluring and drawing spirits from one body to another at our will and pleasure and so kill bodies at a distance which thing would have made a Lady I knew who hatched a Hawk in her bosome a little more proud of the act than she was and thought herself equal if not superior to Livia of whom Pliny relates a like story and I think it was but of a Chicken I am unwilling to move out of my own element and to indeavour any discovery about the spirit or souls of Fishes what becomes of them Those aquarious Spirits in our standing Lakes and Pools do usually in a very hard winter undergo the same fate of many Insects and want at that time a numerous company of bodies ready prepared to receive them and no less at other times that is in peculiar Summer months when they lay their spawn do they want innumerable spirits to animate the same more than that instant season can well afford either from the destruction of insects or any kind of moving body But I think we need not trace after these Spirits by Sea or Land or trouble our heads with any narrow search upon such a subject since whatever becomes of the souls of other living creatures is rather a curious and unnecessary enquiry than in any wise advantageous to our own any ways useful or profitable to our subsistence or any ways tending towards the well ordering or governing our Passions or Affections unless it may be in this only that from the assurance of the duration of the soul of Beasts as something more excellent than bare Earth or other Element we become more careful how we abuse or unnecessarily vex them Which without knowledge thereof we have sufficient ground to forbear and since beholding our selves and them together undoubtedly the workmanship of one and the same God of Nature we cannot but be if we be barely
an one notwithstanding all the disguise that can be put upon it either by frown or smile which yet is the Soul's work nay age shall not so wear out the lines of it but that to a curious eye upon comparison it may be known But truly to delineate or depaint any Soul by ones pen requires a far greater cunning than its window the face by a pencil there will be found no Apelles for that that Art indeed a man might wish for as the Poet did and to know men before we deal with them might prove some would think an happy thing But it is far safer to trust to a Divine Power in the present moulding of them than to think we our selves shall ever know of what frame and fashion they are or to what height we may screw them It is that alone which is both rough and smooth sweet and sowre and yet the same as the Poet pictures his companion and the fiction of Proteus no doubt had its rise from some other power over his Soul not from any power he had over his own Body Surely were there any Soul to be found that might appropriate to it self Queen Elizabeth's Motto of semper eadem I should adjudge it to be somewhat more than human and then believe a man might easily know himself but that is no such easie matter if it were every one would observe it of himself and we need not maintain as an Heathen says and avow that that saying or command came down from Heaven I know a Gentleman who was wont to say of himself that he merited not any praise for his being a just and honest man for that he had a plentiful estate left him which he enjoyed in peace Had I been poor says he I know not what I should have been to become rich I fear I should have been a knave which was a true saying in the main whether the good man feared it or not The knowledge of a mans self is more heavenly than the command and if ever man had such a gift as that I am sure he must receive it from Heaven There is certainly such a saying came down from Heaven as Ye know not of what Spirit ye are are though that speech as you seem to intimate in one place may receive some limitation or qualification and it may be manifest to any man upon search for the time past from whence his Soul had its motion and in what state and condition he at present stands yet surely no further than the very present for if any man could foresee his future thoughts or the motion of his Affections his consequent intentions and actions c. he must necessarily know more than himself and dive into the secrets of the Almighty after what manner he has preordained all things to work for his Glory Every particular Soul is so unlike every other and not subject to any course of Nature sometimes so unlike it self that it is not to be known by any but its Maker neither is any man able to declare or rightly conjecture his future manners And this is from the goodness of God that we might find just cause to ascribe all goodness if any such thing be found in us to him Rely on him trust in him solely and thither fly for relief in all our wants and for a cure in all our infirmities and not to ascribe any thing to our selves or any other Creature There are some perhaps who seem to think the Souls of men more similar in their original Creation or emanation than in truth they are And that of themselves they would be more quiet and bend or incline more one and the same way perhaps like those of Beasts were it not for some several Genius or instructor that every human Soul had for its concomitant whereby it is sometimes directed bended or inclined Indeed I do think there is such a thing as a Genius in every man that is some distinct or different character on every Soul in the manner and way of expressing and delivering it self out to others such as thereby a wise man when he comes to be familiarly acquainted with it will be able in some measure to distinguish it from any other as well as the face by any grace or feature and so a Soul may be outwardly distinguished though not inwardly known And the Soul has most properly this attribute bestowed on it or conjoyned to it when by some unusual sharp edge or smart stroke it enters with a kind of life into others nay gives life to Paper it self as he who had a very quick and piercing Genius seems to express it and not for being led it knows not whither for if by Genius men who talk of it mean any informing helping or assisting Spirit diverse in creation from our own and such as Socrates is said to have had whether by name Genius or Daemon I understand it not nor can find in Reason any manner of way how a man should become so well acquainted with any such Familiar I deny not from Scripture but that we may have tutelary Angels or Guardians And I believe besides vulgar sluggish ones which seldom gratify the innate appetite in themselves there are confident daring Spirits enough which for secret purposes best known to God find not always resistance though sometimes restraints like that of Mark Anthony's in Caesars presence and from thence men frame and fansie within themselves some brave discerning Spirit or Genius more than in truth they ever were indowed withal But if every Soul has necessarily this kind of Attendant to advise with and to inform him what were best to be undertaken or let alone whereon to place his Affections in this World or not to place them and the like My Genius has proved a very ignorant one or else deceitful and treacherous to me for this I can say whenever I have been confident to obtain or trusted in my own strength or wisdom I have ever had the worst success when I have feared or suspected the worst event things have succeeded better When I have placed my Affections too strongly on any thing it has never prospered so well as those I less regarded which is ground sufficient for me to believe not a Genius or familiar Spirit but a God on whom I might cast all my care and who careth for us And surely the Soul of every other man notwithstanding any liberty of Will it may now and then seem to it self to have upon diligent inspection and view of its own strange and sometimes weak and ignorant manner of operation and yet better than it self or its Genius could contrive may soonest terminate and rest in the opinion of one original Spring of all motion that sum non mutor without introducing any strange Spectrum Genius or Familiar or yet delivering it self up to the dominion of Necessity or Fortune These strange opinions we have in relation to our Souls and the impossibility to
2. By his merciful Providence or restraining Grace 3. By his bountiful Providence or common renewing grace 4. By his Spirit or special renewing Grace How God according to all these may be invocated The danger of applying the operation of the Spirit to every work in man And how fit it is to clear the mind of such Errour Of the use of solitude in some particular Seasons as the most ready and likely way to discover Truth page 13 EPIST. III. Wherein he sets down some further grounds and Reasons of his opinion of the Mortality or utter annihilation of the Souls of Brutes upon their death No durable Spirit in any visible Creature but man of Sympathies and Antipathies in Plants and Animals The soul of Beasts essential with the Body and so subject to the same fate The Intellect in them in its height at the first whereas that in man is gradual Acts peculiar to reasonable Creatures as desire of dissolution and voluntary abstinence The Spirit of Brutes determined by Sense No Creature besides man lays up more than is sufficient to maintain it self We attribute greater gifts and Sagacity to mere Animals than they have as in Ants. That there may be as much Intellect in Creatures we converse not with as those we do The opinion of the utter annihilation of the spirit of Brutes hath no tendency to Atheism page 39 EPIST. IV. Wherein the Author Treats of man's ignorance in his search into the most ordinary work of Nature and concludes how much more dim-sighted we are when we look into the frame and structure of man's Soul Solomon's knowledge of Nature not universal much in Nature found out accidentally No one work of it fully to be understood How Nature doth change in its operations Of change in Colours and that the variety in them is unaccountable That there is a transcendent Wisdom ruling and appearing in all far above our reach And so there is great Reason for caution in our enquiries or affirmations page 60 EPIST. V. Wherein he further illustrates the inherent or native Power and Predominancy of the Affections above the other faculties of the Soul but more particularly treats of the Imagination its deception in us our miseries thereby and the remedies against its delusion Imagination in Brutes ariseth only from Sense That in them receives its objects in their proper Nature they are seldom mistaken in the face of the Heavens c. they cannot revolve in their mind or recall Imagination Imagination in them changeth according to its objects Imagination in us sometimes supplies the place of Reason as in the case of Transubstantiation c. deceives the Affections Imagination and in Conjunction with them is the cause of Error as in malice c. The good man the only rational man The difference 'twixt Reason and ratiocination Reason deceives not and is the chief principle of governing the Thoughts The advantage of sorrow in curbing the Imagination The Imagination subject to infection from the humours of the Body When we are answerable for its transgressions Thoughts cannot arise from Sense page 68 EPIST. VI. Wherein he treats of the various impress of the Divine Power upon each particular created substance much more upon the Souls of men wherein there is great dissimilitude And further shews how prone we are from thence to mistake in judging of the temper of others and our own Thence he proceeds to discourse of the Nature grounds measure and ends of Friendship page 128 EPIST. VII Of the different pursuits of the Souls of men wherein we are ready to accuse each other of folly though not our selves and yet in a degree are all weak and foolish That no pursuit of the Soul here is praise-worthy or commendable further than it intentionally advanceth God's glory which is the mark set before us and which if we do not behold in all our travails our labour in the issue will prove of as little profit as comfort page 156 EPIST. VIII Compleat Happiness here is merely in speculation That natural endowments in the Soul do conduce to the ease peace and quiet of it and are therefore desirable though we attain not happiness thereby Learning and Knowledge Wisdom Prudence and subtilty considered That even Prudence the most likely conduct to Happiness was never yet the constant concomitant of the clearest human Soul No satisfaction without the belief of a Providence page 166 EPIST. IX Wherein the Author maintains a divine Wisdom and Providence ruling in and over the Soul of man more especially and more apparently if considered than any work of Creation And that the Affections in the heart of man seem that part of the Soul whereon God more especially exerciseth his Prerogative moulding and changing them on the sudden to his secret purposes beyond and even contrary to any foresight conjecture or Imagination of the Soul it self page 185 EPIST. X. Of Credulity and Incredulity the rise of both and that Credulity of the two is of more pernicious consequence And of the evil of imposing on others or creating or raising a Belief on false or uncertain Principles Of the word notion and grace of Faith Of the strange variety of Beliefs in the World Of Liberty of Conscience page 195 ERRATA PAge 21. l. 10. for Esau's vine r. Isaiah's vine p. 44. l. ult for Hawk r. Hare p. 45. l. 39. for Have r. Cave p. 46. l. ult for substance r. subsistence p. 47. l. 2. for submit r. subsist ibid. l. 14. for gifts r. Fits p. 52. l. 9. for life r. Fly p. 53. l. 15. for their r. the 54. l. 25. dele since p. 56. l. 11. for that r. they ibid. l. 30. for piece r. Pease CONSIDERATIONS AGAINST Immoderate care for a Man 's own Posterity and sorrow for the loss of Children SECT I. Of Afflictions in general their Usefulness and Necessity and in particular the loss of Children considered with the use and end of it THE first thoughts which presented themselves to me and what I ever before firmly believed were these That first as there is one Eternal wise God Creator of Heaven and Earth and all things therein So secondly the same God has a care over all the works of his Creation and continually rules and disposes all things according to his infinite wisdom which act of his we call Providence To doubt of this were not only to deny all Scripture and relinquish my profession of Christianity but even to abandon my very Reason For from this first part of my belief I think there are few dissenters and although this Age affords a number of David's jolly sanguine Fools who at some time think otherwise in their hearts yet those same hearts from afflictions will think the same with mine unless they have hardned them on purpose to shut out all Deity and since at first they would have none to serve now they are resolved to let in none so long as they can oppose it to punish As to the second part
and his Son Solomon the wisest of men have assured us in sundry positions that understanding takes her possession of the Soul with it and that through his Commandments it is that we are wiser then our Teachers And surely if there were not some defect in every man of these Graces by the intetposition of Sin and Satan he would sooner or later hear that gracious and effectual Eccho resound in his Soul from the Spirit of all true love and comfort Let not your hearts be troubled This is the only rational way I think of cure Redire ad cor and to get that clean swept and garnished that the Spirit of true love may enter in and keep possession against all unruly passions and I dare say whoever tries it will subscribe his probatum to it SECT IV. The Remedies which are ordinarily prescribed against Sorrow considered with respect to their force and efficacy and how little Philosophy of it self can do towards the conquest of it BUt as I said let us not altogether reject every prescribed alleviating Medicine Indeed there are many from our common undertaking comforters and we are ready to catch at them like Reeds in a sinking condition Although they are firm Truths and such as have been used by the greatest Philosophers and Divines towards the cure yet barely and simply considered all or either of them have not the efficacy to bring a man to any safe or quiet Harbour They may keep a man from drowning but withall they may and do often leave him plunging in the deep without the co-operation of some more Sovereign Medicines and are some of them fitter ingredients for a complicated disease where murmuring and repining are joyned with it than bare sorrow which I bless God I never was infected with for I own his Judgments just and am more apt to have St. Gregory's noise in my ears Tu vero bona tua in vita tua c. than the contrary But I mention them as I thought on them and leave them to others to make their best use of them which are these following 1. That death is a common thing and a debt we all owe to Nature and must shortly pay and therefore it should not so much trouble us to behold it in another 2. That we cannot recall our Friends and Relations by our mourning and therefore our sorrow is vain 3. That they whom we love are at rest and happy which is rather cause of joy 4. That 't is not our case alone we are not single but others daily suffer the like As to the first the thing is very obvious to the meanest capacity and perhaps if we did in our serious thoughts oftner behold death he might prove like Aesop's Lion to his Fox not altogether so terrible but yet he will be a Lion still and as Aristotle calls him omnium terribilium terribilissimum and further if we did look upon him at hand ready to seize us then together with us all worldly things would change their hue and put on as it were another face 'T is sure that Death passeth upon all men but as St. Paul says because all men have sinned and from thence it is that death hath such a sting And 't is sin that has made sorrow and trouble attendants on death as well as death on it both for our selves and others And therefore the contemplation of the primary cause of our sorrow should rather take up our thoughts as I have already said than the secundary For the thought of death certainly was never wholly absent from any man in his sorrows nor ever cured any but the true sense of his own deserts have As to the second every man knows it as well as the other neither was there ever any man yet that had his reason left him who thought to revive his Friend or Relation thereby or to awake him with his shrieks and cries It is every mans deepest corrosive that there is no redemption from the Grave And though in truth it be a vain thing to persist in that which profiteth us nothing yet that vanity will not be driven away by anothers barely telling us so or our own thinking or knowing it so The faculties of the Soul will not cease to work though there is knowledge that the operation is oft-times in vain 't is in vain we know to fear death but that knowledge will not cure a man of his fear Certainly the wounds of the Spirit are sharper and more malignant than those of the Body and 't is the same reason must argue us into patience of both But let her set us upon the Rack 't is in vain to cry out it will profit us nothing we shall scarce hearken to her and keep silence This advice best comes when we begin to be weary of our mourning and not before and then only will this reason be hearkned unto In the mean time let us consider if we can All things are vanity which are the causes of our vexation of Spirit As to the third I look on it as a good Christian contemplation and may in the declination of the disease prove a pleasant Cordial but in the state thereof of little prevalence to a cure because it is a thing we never doubted of but upon the first departure of the Soul of him or her who lived well c. think it received into Eternal bliss And therefore if these thoughts had in them any present sanative virtue they would rather keep us from sorrowing at all since they possess us as soon as our sorrow and are contemporary with our distemper The wise Son of Syrach allows us a moderate sorrow bids us weep for the dead but not over-much because he is at rest And St. Paul's advice or caution is that we sorrow not as others which have no hope that is with a desperate faithless sorrow as if they were eternally lost and that Christ should not raise them up at the last day But surely no man will charitably deny but that a strong Faith and a deep worldly sorrow may sometimes possibly subsist together and that there may be spe dolentes as well as spe gaudentes For I cannot so discard my own charity as not to think some very good men have gone sorrowing to their Graves and yet have rejoyced too in the hopes that God will bring with him those that sleep and they shall meet together But for our present pensive thoughts and mourning 't is sure they arise not only for want of this belief or from any supposed detriment happened or like to happen to our Relation or Friend whom we once enjoyed and now are deprived of but to our selves from our present loss For 't is most certain with every man that whenever any object has stollen into and possessed his heart and taken root there if the same be eradicated and snatched away though he suppose it planted in a more pleasant Soil there will immediately
it to produce more than an harsh unpleasant and not lasting fruit The fruits of the Spirit of which Love and Joy are by the Apostle reckoned as the principal come to us by gift and addition not by culture or alteration Nay if we have learn'd that Lesson of content and by consequence have sometime joy and peace with St. Paul it is so much the infusive document of a gracious Master and so far from being acquired by our native understanding that we daily want his reiterated Grace to call on us to learn and when we are heavy laden to come unto him for ease If we have learn'd to tred the waters and to walk upon a tempestuous Sea for some steps we shall notwithstanding find cause with St. Peter to cry out Lord save me or I perish which cry is yet my cry For I do declare unto the World that I have not at any time found the recovery from a disease to be a sufficient charm against its return It will come again sometimes and if it come there will lie a necessity upon us and we shall be forced for the cure to use over again the same sanative ingredients and the most approved Recipe in sorrow is and ever will be that of St. Iames If any man be afflicted let him pray call on him who works in us to think to will and to do according to his good will and pleasure and has said he is near to all them that call upon him yea that call upon him faithfully 'T is he from whom comfort springs as light out of darkness and 't is he from whom we must expect as it were a new creation and beg he may say Let there be light in us and there will be light And in his light as the Psalmist says there is life that is a vigorous active state able to dispell all the black clouds raised by Sin and Satan He is the comforter who must put true joy and gladness into our hearts by the merits of his Son and the secret inspiration of his Holy Spirit and they are his comforts alone which must refresh our Souls in the multitude of the sorrows we have in our hearts St. Paul is pleased to stile him the God of all comfort who comforteth us in all our tribulations that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we our selves are comforted of God And in one place he calls him the God of patience and consolation with a kind of inference that God ever crowns his Grace of patience with his Blessing of consolation And he does declare God to be the sole proper and peculiar Fountain of comfort in an instance of his gracious working upon himself Nevertheless says he God that comforteth those that are cast down comforted us by the coming of Titus For the coming of Titus out of Achaia into Macedonia at that time cannot seem to have in it any natural energy to work so much upon St. Paul for that coming appears to us a matter of no great consequence only St. Paul seems to shew us that God so disposed his heart at that time that that should work as a Cordial to him which of it self barely had no such natural operation Nay in one place God does as it were appropriate the issues of comfort to himself by a reiteration I even I am he that comforteth you From the diversity of humours in our natural temper has arose that Adage of fortuitum est placere and from the same diversity we may inferr and change the word à Domino est placere Because we daily see men affected and delighted not from any inherent quality in the subject because to effect that the thing per se must have somewhat of good in it but properly and peculiarly nothing is good save God only and therefore to make a thing seem good and delightful to us it must first have his stamp and impress upon it visible to us And if the Psalmist s demand should be applied to outward goods and one in that very notion should cry out who will shew us any good he will find no perfect solution without the effect in the sequent verse Lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance and then will Rod and Staff and Fire and Faggot comfort us The light of whose countenance that we may all have in some measure let us more especially pray to him and give praise with the best member we have David's own words and imitate somewhat that Divine Psalmist I must acknowledge I ever found some comfort in my sorrows by reading those Divine spiritual Soloquies of his and do not think but that every other man may and that however they may upon the reading in prosperity glide over his heart in adversity they will fix and settle there There is no pattern in them for stupidity nor no sullen expression of My punishment is greater then I am able to bear but this or the like Then cried I unto the Lord and he delivered me out of my distress And to cry unto him in the very words of that compendious excellent Prayer being the Collect appointed in our Church-Liturgy for the fourth Sunday after Easter for I cannot find a better may be no unfit conclusion Almighty God who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men grant unto us thy people that we may love the thing which thou commandest and desire that which thou dost promise that so amongst the sundry and manifold changes of the World our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found through Iesus Christ our Lord. Amen To which may not improperly be added that for the sixth Sunday after Trinity O God! who hast prepared for them that love thee such good things as pass mans understanding pour into our hearts such love towards thee that we loving thee above all things may obtain thy promises which exceed all that we can desire through Iesus Christ our Lord. Amen Amen These following Ejaculations were used in the state of the disease O Lord thy hands have made me and fashioned me thou art he that broughtest me out of my mothers womb and hast shewed thy strength in my weakness Many and grievous have been my infirmities since my youth up and yet walk I in the Land of the living I have been more infirm than my Brethren which are gone before me yet hast thou granted me length of days I have provoked thee more than they yet hast thou spared me out of the abundance of thy mercy Thou hast to the wonder of others spared me whose thoughts have been when shall he die and his name perish Thou hast taken away more righteous than my self and placed me in their rooms to take my pastime like Leviathan in this World But I have not rightly considered thy doings nor to what end thou hast done these things For thou hast enlightned
me with knowledge and hast left me no covering for my faults wherefore I am ashamed and confounded at my own follies Notwithstanding this thy gift and loving kindness towards me I have gone astray and provoked thee more than my Fathers have done wherefore I am become sore oppressed and grieved from thy heavy displeasure I have placed my affections on transitory things which though lighter than vanity have weighed thee down in the ballance of my Soul And notwithstanding my follies and transgressions I have said in my heart What evil happeneth unto me Not remembring that though thou art a God of patience and long-suffering yet thou wilt not leave sin unpunished Wherefore thou sentest out thine arrows of warning and destroyedst my first-born yet I considered not it was thy doing Thrice didst thou repeat thy summoning Judgments after in the same manner and though I was sore troubled yet returned I not with my whole heart to thee But was ready and willing to impute the cause to my own natural infirmities rather than my acquired sins still forgetting that death came by sin Notwithstanding thou of thy goodness and tender compassion towards me in this World didst leave me two Infants as a comfort and as a pledge not to abuse thy grace But I sinned yet more and rejoyced in the gift more than in thee the giver I set my affections on things below and not on things above and rather sought and endeavour'd the planting of my Name here than in the Book of Life Therefore hast thou destroyed my vain hopes by a sudden blast when I least expected it She was flourishing like a Flower of the Field and thy sudden blast went over her so as the place thereof knew her no more In the morning was she fresh and flourishing and in the evening cut down and withered O Lord it was thy immediate hand that did it enforced to strike from my daily continued provocations Neither can any that knows that thou art both just and merciful to all the works of thy Creation impute it to any ordinary natural cause O that my sins should be as the murtherers of my production whilst thou sparest the offender himself But here again hast thou shewed thy mercy and loving kindness in taking them to bliss rather than casting me into utter darkness Thou hast shewed thy mercy to the most loathsom and vilest of thy Creatures who is not only stench and rottenness but an infectious sore I am become a gazing-stock and the talk of all them that know me and live round about me They may say or at least be ready to think within themselves These things are fallen on him for his transgressions and thou punishest him in justice whilst they do not remember that thou art merciful But O Lord let not the evil wishes of the envious who behold my prosperity in other things prevail against me but pardon their offences and shew them that I and mine are under thy protection And out of the multitude of my sins and ttansgressions shew me which of them have more especially provoked thee to make me fruitless that I may more especially abhor them turning from every evil way Had I taken so much delight and joy and comfort in thy Word as in a frail Babe of flesh surely thou hadst not bereaved me thereof Had I honour'd my Father in the flesh I might have had joy in my own Children but now it is far from me Have I endeavoured to heap up Riches and knew not who should enjoy them Have I considered the vanity thereof and yet neglected to do good and distribute wherewith thou wouldst have been well pleased and art thou therefore angry with me and leavest me desolate Many O Lord have been the devices of my heart although I well knew thy counsel only would stand I have seen and read the destruction of other Families how their name has perished how thou pullest down one and raisest up another and yet my heart has rather inclined to the World than to thee my God and advancer But grant O Lord that neither the cares of this World nor the deceitfulness of Riches may choak any good Seed of well-doing either sowed or sprung up in my heart Thou hast commanded us not to set our hearts upon them O shew me thy ways and incline my heart unto thee and not unto covetousness And if I must part with all to follow thee give me an heart to do it I trust thou hast not increased my outward accessions to suffer me to be deceived therewithall or given me Riches because thou sawest I should not have been innocently poor I confess O Lord they are Briars and Thorns yet growing and ready to choak every good Plant but do thou raise in me from thence a plentiful Harvest of good works Make me a faithful Steward of what thou hast committed to my charge or else leave me naked as I came into the World For thou knowest I have ever acknowledged what I enjoy to be from thy gift and never sacrificed to my own Nets Thou hast given me what I never asked and bereaved me of what I most desired but who is able to comprehend the methods of thy Judgments Surely there is something to which our affections ought to tend in which the desire of man can have no excess Is there nothing to be found amiable but what is corruptible shall charity abide when all things cease and for the present know not where to fix it self Shall we at best behold the chequered and bright Clouds raised from the Earth and forget the Sun which gives them brightness and cause him at present to withdraw his beams and leave us in obscure darkness Shall he that gives us all things withdraw himself for want of our beholding him in that notion when we cannot do that but by his immediate gift too When thou O Lord dartest forth the light of thy countenance those little Rays we are capable to behold through the Vail of this flesh make all things amiable and particulars only seem so from a false light of our own imaginary creation He who endeavours to behold thee as thou art or further than thou hast been pleased to shew thy self deservedly becomes blind and perishes by his too near approaches We cannot behold thy light but by reflexion only let us see so much as that we may admire and love thee The invisible things of thee are understood only by the things that are made and thou art seen only by the beauty and greatness of thy Creatures or thy immediate free gift O shew me the light of thy countenance in some measure stablish me again by thy free Spirit and send some Balm into that Soul which thou hast wounded I know the Creator of all things cannot altogether shut up his mercy and loving kindness from his Creatures in displeasure I am as much the work of thy hands as the greatest Monarch Thy ways and methods and thy decrees O Lord
borrowing for a Patronage any Great man's name or daring to affix my own as a ground-work for him to build on and I should rejoyce to rest assured any one would undertake or undergo that labour I have but this I think reasonable request to any man about to quarrel with these Papers That he take some consideration and bethink himself whether he may not wrong or prejudice his own Soul Because I will affirm nothing in them as a matter of truth with so much confidence and assurance as this one thing here that is if he desire tranquility and peace of mind the greatest worldly blessing imaginable and the thing I seek after he shall never so readily attain it by any narrow search into the errors and extravagancies of my Soul for disputation sake as by passiug them with pity and commiseration for God's sake who best knows whereof we are both made remembreth our frame and how subject we are to mistakes And I hope that no man will before-hand from the Spirit of pride and contradiction raise up a Tower or Fortress for his own intellect from thence to summon all others to vail and come in but let mine or other such like pass as a poor Merchant that chiefly intends to see Countries bring back somewhat it may be for its own support and possibly too for the support of some others of a like or little inferiour capacity though its Wares have no such flourish or signature on them as may make them vendible or prized by the Merchants of this Age. PART I. SECT I. How far the Soul of man is similar with that of Brutes I Think it may appear somewhat plain and obvious to the meanest capacity that the Soul of man is endowed with three distinct prime or principal faculties whereby it appears to work and those are 1 st the Affections 2 ly the Will and 3 ly the Intellect or Understanding which last is more commonly reduced to and made to terminate in these three faculties 1. Imagination 2. Memory 3. Reason For to say more or make any further enumeration at present were to fall upon my second limited subject which I intend to handle more particularly in its proper place and might perhaps confound my self and others with strange notions in the beginning which I intend not All these distinct faculties or operations we cannot well deny to be inherent and discernible in the wiser if I may so say sort of Brutes The two first viz. Affections and Will I suppose every man will grant to be apparent in the less seeming intelligent Animals and therefore I 'le not trouble my self to demonstrate after what manner they love and fear or the like nor dispute about their voluntary motions nor whence that voluntary motion may proceed whether from sense or passion or sometimes intellect For though I believe there is not a Sparrow that lighteth upon the House-top without a Divine providence yet I think it had a will to light on the House-top as well as I to write and could not be said to have an involuntary motion like an Arrow shot thither out of a Bow for in all involuntary motion there is requisite a second discernible working cause as well as a first cause But my enquiry concerning them shall be only in those three faculties referred to the intellect viz. Imagination Memory and Reason none of which I know well how to deny to be in several kinds of creatures in some sort beside man And first for Imagination which is the representation of some image or apparence in the Soul not at present introduced by sight c. and therefore may as well be sleeping as waking Though otherwise there appear no ground to us of their imagination which is internal yet such an effect there is often seen in them as cannot proceed from any other cause but some internal image of an outward object And this is discernible in sleeping Hounds and Spaniels whose bodies from thence are moved and agitated with such kind of motion and accompanied noise as if they were in pursuit and quest of their imagined prey or game For Memory he who denies its being in the Soul of Beast either believes not or has forgot the story of Darius his Horse or has not seen or observed the common course of Dogs and other creatures in hiding and covering their acquired food and upon occasion going as readily or dexterously as I may say to the place as any man could or has not been himself a common Master or Rider of Horses some of which in a maze of ways and turnings shall with the liberty of his Rein bring his Master to his accustomed home and indeed it 's strange to see divers creatures brought from their usual and accustomed place of residence after some time of stay by reason of some let and hindrance to return again many miles to their old abode which they could never so readily do nor could be effected as I suppose without the aid and help of what we call Memory Our chief enquiry will be whether we shall in any case allow them Reason which we have already so appropriated to our selves that we have differenced our Nature and Being from theirs in that only notion Toward the resolution of which we must enquire and define what Reason is now if Reason be only a conception by speech whereby we are able to explicate our minds and thoughts as some would have it we may well deny it to all creatures but our selves but if it be a discerning faculty of the Soul by which we judge with any election or choice what is or may be good or hurtful to it or to the body what is good and what is evil what to embrace or avoid we cannot deny it in some measure to be in meer Animals Whatever distinction is made between Instinct and Intellect when the word Reason is taken away from them and the word Fancy allowed to supply the place I do not think it amiss to admire God in them and though the best of their faculties quite differ in the extract from ours yet they are the work of the same God in a different manner and wonderful it is to see such faculties as we must needs allow them by some title or other to proceed from a corporeal substance only attenuated and rarified as I shall say anon and so similar to ours They were created with us for our use and service and all for God's glory and if we made a right use of our own rational faculty we should neither sometimes vilifie them as we do nor at other times extoll and enlarge their faculties beyond their due limits and bounds seeming rather desirous of having our own understanding admired among our selves by amplification of theirs than making any true state of our different cases thereby shewing our invention rather than our knowledge This we cannot but truly acknowledge that they having had no such lapse or fall as we work more wisely
regularly and orderly in reference to the end they were created than we and whoever shall duly look into their manner of working and more narrowly observe what kind of cunning or stratagem some of them use either in acquiring their food or else preserving or saving themselves from dangers must needs afford them the attribute of Reason or somewhat tantamount to it What subtle ways do some of them use towards the obtaining their desired prey what intrigues and fetches to let pass ordinary stories may a man see in a poor imprisoned Fox how he will sometimes counterfeit himself dormant till a prey be within his reach what ways have many Fowls to uncase a poor Shell-fish I my self have seen a Crow not able to swallow a large Acorn nor break it with her Bill leave the Pasture Fields where she first found it and mounting with it a considerable height let it fall in a Stony ground as if the very place were chosen out of Reason and repeat that action near twenty times and till I have disturbed her in it I have credibly heard and once saw it at a Chalk-pit that a Hare in a course has taken directly to a precipice and upon a sudden stopping at the edge thereof has cast down head-long her pursuing Dogs and that this poor creature has repeated this action again at other times And what origine of this cunning or sagacity can I give but something like Reason it being a distinct act and not deducible from the common natural instinct of that creature whose every days and nights work for the preservation of her self visible in a Snow seems so prudent that it would puzzle the wisest of us to find out or contrive so safe ways of artifice Well if we cannot afford them Reason let us not take from them those attributes the Scripture has allowed them of subtilty and wisdom which in our selves we esteem but as the effects and fruits of Reason The Serpent in the beginning was said to be more subtle than any Beast of the Field and our Saviour has admonish'd us to assume the Serpent's wisdom with the Dove's innocency The Ant is an exceeding wise creature says Agur and to her Solomon sends his sluggard to School and some Philosophers have termed that creature amongst others Political And we are told in other places of Scripture of the Ox and the Ass and the Crane and the Turtle and the Swallow by way of exprobation as if those creatures did often exceed us in the foresight and knowledge of those things which tended towards their own preservation And surely there is such a kind of forecast and wisdom in most if not in all other creatures besides Man that I cannot well tell how to appropriate the word Reason to Man alone unless we distinguish our selves in the very work of our creation and allow our whole Soul to be a coelestial durable flame and Reason to be a connative inherent light therein given to guide and direct all the other faculties towards the attainment of some ultimate end or enjoyment of some future permanent bliss and happiness and not barely for the preservation of the visible Body nor arising or springing merely from any passion of mind by the bare inlet of sense Such a Reason I may call it Right Reason as beholds things at a distance and weighs future events and distinguishes us from all other creatures as Aesop has distinguish'd one of his Frogs from the other That is by our Reason we are capable to foresee a possibility of failure of all things here and thereby prevent our falling into those gulfs for the satisfaction of our present lusts from whence we cannot after get out which no other creature is Indeed many other creatures besides our selves from that natural instinct of self-preservation common with us and fear of destruction have had some short flashing light of ratiocination if I may so call it and by that sudden flash quickly extinct elected or chosen the most likely place for a present continuing preservation and upon failure of water in the Brook have got down into a Well but no creature save Man ever yet beheld events at a distance and so weighed time and place as before-hand to take care upon failure of water in the Well how to get out again as Aesop makes his later Frog to do which thing indeed is properly and peculiarly an act of Right Reason SECT II. Wherein the Soul of man exceeds that of Brutes and its Immortality considered and maintained from Scripture NOw at present to leave all other creatures acting according to their abilities more regularly than our selves it would not be amiss here humbly to search into and behold our own and see how we act by a distinct and separate gift with abilities beyond and exceeding the natural capacities of any other visible creature In search of which it will be needful that we have recourse to our original frame and because that is already set down to us according to my capacity beyond the invention or just exception or correction of the most subtle opponent I will search no furthet than the Books of Moses and behold the Creation as he has described and delineated it wherein it is observable that after the Creation of Heaven and Earth and the separation of light from darkness and the gathering together of the Waters and the appearance of dry Land when he speaks of the formation of living creatures 't is not expressed as before Let there be Light and Let there be a Firmament c. but Let the Earth bring forth the living creature after his kind c. plainly intimating that in their composition there was no addition of new Matter or Spirit added but only together with their Earthly visible Bodies a product Soul of a corporeate substance attenuated and rarefied and so not capable of acting beyond its native original But when he comes to the formation of Man it 's said God created him in his own image and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and says the Text Man became a living Soul So as there seems to be from thence not only a gradual but a specifick difference between the Soul of man and that of all other creatures for that of other creatures being immediately made out of the same Matter with the Body is no other than a fluid bodily substance the more lively subtle and refined part of the Bloud called Spirit quick in motion and from the Arteries by the branches of the Carotides carried to the Brain and from thence conveyed to the Nerves and Muscles moves the whole frame and mass of the Body and receiving only certain weak impresses from the senses and of short continuance hindred and obstructed of its work and motion vanishes into the soft air But the Soul of man being breathed into him by God and the main principle of his life being derived from that infusion must be consequently of
the like nature with that breath it proceeded from and so be immaterial and immortal And we shall find this difference further confirmed by the same Authority For whereas Moses gives no other Life or Spirit different from the bloud to other creatures but saith the bloud is their life or Soul and their Soul in the bloud when he speaks of that of man he calls it the bloud of their lives signifying by this variety of phrase the difference of the thing and that in man the bloud has rather its motion from the Soul than the Soul its origine from the bloud And in the ensuing verse where he forbiddeth the shedding mans bloud by a retaliative Law he adds again the words used in the Creation For in the image of God made he man So that the Souls of Brutes only appear as the Tongues mentioned in the Acts as it were of fire but that of Man as a spark of that Eternal Light real and durable and as Solomon says after the dust returns to Earth as it was the Spirit shall return to God that gave it SECT III. The Immortality of the Soul of man maintained and illustrated from its obstruction in its operation NOw though this Earthly rarified Spirit of Brutes may to sense often outshine the other and several other creatures may outstrip some such particular men as we call Naturals in knowledge that diminishes nothing from nor renders the Soul of man to be of a less noble extract than in truth it is but that the one still remains Divine and the other Natural For although real Fire may by hid and by reason of some obstruction impediment or interposition dart forth little or no light to the senses and an ignis fatuus may shew it self and appear more lucid and bright to them yet Fire is no less Fire when covered and the nature and quality of them still remains different The outward appearance does never infallibly demonstrate the inward excellency of things and there may be a change of our common Proverb and Gold found that glisters not It seems to me rather some Argument of the immortality of mans Soul that it sometimes remains so darkly as it were inclosed in some one particular trunk or carcass without any the least symptom of its being there more than outward heat and motion as well as that in some others it shews forth its wonderful capacity and faculties beyond that of all other creatures For if it did arise naturally or had its production from the flesh or the more fluid substance of that flesh the Bloud as that of Beasts there never could happen or be such a disparity such a distance and disproportion in its effects as now and then there appears The faculties of the Souls of Beasts wherein they are similar to those of Man do not much exceed or outshine one another of the same species For although one Horse may be more docible than another more lively quick or better spirited as we term it than another yet there never was that or any other kind of Brute so brutish as I may say but had some knowledge of his Feeder and like the Ox and the Ass none of the wisest Animals could know its Owner and its Master's Crib none that would not shew some endeavour to nourish and preserve it self be sensible of what was noxious and destructive to it self careful to avoid Fire and Water or the like know its Young if Female and love and nourish them and be somewhat useful in its kind to man and other creatures as if the Souls of Beasts only dwelt in their native and proper Country and were at liberty and ours were here Prisoners in Chains and Fetters and sometimes in a Dungeon waiting for their deliverance I knew a man born in a Village near me living to the age of twenty years very heathful of a good stature of perfect outward lineaments and features endowed with the senses of Hearing and Seeing of a sage countenance if at any time without motion and yet never as I or others could discern knowing any one person about him more than another never making any signs for meat or drink though greedily swallowing them when put to his mouth never could he be made sensible of the passage of his own ordure or of Fire or Water and yet might be kept at any time from the danger of those Elements by the interposition of Stools or a Line or Cord and within that circumscribed Sphere would move all day ridiculously Certainly if this inclosed Soul had its being from the Bloud and not the Bloud its motion from it whatever Physicians may alledge and however they may guess at some obstructions or defect in some part of the Brain and they can but guess at the one more then I do at the other for they can shew me nothing in a dissection it must in some degree equal that of Brutes in outward appearance But seeing there is such a disproportion in degree of knowledge as well by comparing the most stupid Man with the most stupid Animal as the wisest Man with the wisest Animal and Man is found to exceed both ways that very excess on our parts does more demonstrate the immediate work of God in our creation and somewhat different from Natures ordinary course which though his working too usually produces the same effects in all individuals of the same species and might prove a Medicine to allay our fears on the one hand and our spiritual pride on the other and shew what the Soul of man is capable of and yet how obscure it may be here on Earth till it shall please that Inspirer to receive it into Glory I do not look on knowledge in the Soul of man as a bare remembrance or that the mind of man is at present and while in the Body merely thereby let and hindred from the knowledge of all things yet some such notion may not seem to arise and be fixed now and then in our conceptions altogether without the allowance of Reason since as often as we attain to any intellectual knowledge of things that is from causes whereof we were or seemed before ignorant and that either from the bare labour and search of our intellective faculty or from others information through sense with its attention it will seem to us rather a recovery from some disease than any new being or existence in the Soul rather a dissipation of some Cloud than any new Light and that we knew as much before if we had but minded it as we are wont to say And besides the usual native weakness or blindness in the Soul of man which is a thing almost perpetually labouring and working in some men as it were for a cure if it recovers in some sort and measure yet it 's afterward very incident to a relapse and subject to an adventitious weakness or blindness doth contract infirmities and often lives long in the Body blinded with a
delirium dotage or frenzy whereas in all other creatures their life terminates quickly after the beginning of any visible delirium in them or decay of their native or natural homebred intellect as I may call it SECT IV. The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from the manner of its acting in the inferiour faculties similar with Brutes THe Soul of man does in many things shew its different Original and Extract from that of other creatures not only by its extent and contraction but by its manner of working in those very faculties wherein they are similar and which are proper and necessary both for Man and Beast For though Beasts see as we do hear as we do tast as we do c. and have the like passions of desire and joy fear and sorrow with their concomitants yet their senses may be satisfied and their passions circumscribed within the same Elements from whence they have their Original Ours alone seem to be Prisoners here and of us only it is that Solomon has truly said The eye is not satisfied with seeing nor the ear with hearing and then I cannot reasonably imagine the Creator of the Universe so unkind in his special work of Man as to make him with a desire inherent in him so capacious as never to be filled or satisfied and thereby allow a vacuum in the Soul of man which we admit not to be in Nature but must acknowledge and conclude that there is a possibility these very inferiour faculties of our Souls may be allayed and comforted with hopes at present and satiate hereafter with some fruition or else in their working we were of all creatures most miserable For I find no sufficient ground to think or believe that Man is endowed with two Souls the one consisting of motion sense passions or affections and natural the other rational supernatural and Divine For though while annexed to a Body here it shews its divers faculties whereof in another World it may not make the same use and some of the senses will need no imployment about such objects as they receive into them here yet so far forth as they can add any thing to our happiness hereafter we may imploy them and they are an essential part of this Divine and never-dying Soul and that in some sence and manner we may tast and see how good and gracious our Lord and Maker is We often term the inferiour faculties of the Soul brutish sensual and filthy not that they merely arise from the flesh but for the like reason as St. Paul calls Envy and Pride c. works of the flesh which yet are inherent in wicked Spirits as well as men as they are amongst men excited by carnal and sensible objects and are also perverted and turned aside by them from others of a more noble kind which they are capable of being affected with But they are still faculties of the Soul and as such are neither extinguished in the regeneration of it here nor as far as is consistent with the perfection of it and its state of separation in glory hereafter I think the Soul of man to be an Host or Army always in its march for the recovery of its proper Country in which march though some of the Rascal multitude will be laggering behind and be busie to make provision for the flesh yet they are accounted as part of the Army and triumph with the rest after Victory and acquiring their native Soil or else suffer with the rest upon an expulsion Undoubtedly we may love and joy and I know not why one kind of fear may not consist with great joy if we attain our end and the mark that is set before us and we shall have fear and sorrow shame and confusion of face weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth which are effects of passions if we miss that end Now because the very restlessness and inconstancy of the senses and affections here shews them part of a Soul that will have being and continuance after death I will therefore a little behold man in comparison with other creatures and try first how far our very senses and affections differ from those of Beasts and after see what more noble kind of faculties there are in us which they want SECT V. The Immortality of the Soul of man illustrated from its different operation in different persons WE differ in respect of our senses and passions not only from all other creatures but even from one another so much as might make a quaere whether they were not hunting after somewhat that no man could ever yet find out in this World There never was yet any one object grateful to any one sense of all men nor equally and alike to any two There are to be found those men who would not move out of their Cottage or be any whit pleased with the sight of the most glorious Pageantry the World affords One colour seems more beautiful and pleasing to one mans eye and another to anothers no one prospect is pleasing to all men some men will swoun at the sight of particular things That which we call Musick is harsh and grating to the ears of some men several men are taken most with peculiar Musicks some had rather hear the noise of the Cannons than the voice of the Nightingale and so è contra So that if that which is fabled of Orpheus his Art had been real and amongst the Beasts and Trees he had had several Men auditors the first might all have followed him but some of the latter would have staid behind Some men abominate Sweets as we call them and are ready to faint at the very smell of them and delight in what is generally termed stinking and noisome The tast in men is so different that it has raised a proverb and that varies in the same man several times in an Age. Our affections are various and wandring that which delights us to day may happen to vex us to morrow what we desire sometimes earnestly we presently spurn at like little Children What pleases at one time pleases not at another so as there is become a proverb of pleasing too Nay this pleasing and delight were it settled and fixed in men where it once takes hold and were there a calculation in this present Age besides that Ages differ of every Worldly thing some particular men did chiefly affect or principally delight in the things would not be concluded in a short Ode as I have touched but a Poet might run himself out of breath and be weary before he came to Me doctarum hederae c. Me gelidum nemus c. We have our Pannick fears and terrors or as the Text says are afraid where no fear is and we have flashing joys upon as small visible grounds and in short we are the only ridiculous creature here on Earth On the other side take the Beasts of the Earth the Fowls of the
barely without the agitation or help of an affection and so were the first inlet of things to the affections by and of it self it s own peculiar seat were then the proper attribute and adjunct for it and it would or might be said the imagination of the Brain instead of the imagination of the Heart for there doubtless we imagine in dreams and when the affections are most quiet and may seem only to move if they do then move from the imagination But on the contrary we read in Scripture of the imaginations thoughts and conceptions the meditation and study the intents and devices the inditings and reasonings the understanding and errors of the heart After this manner speaks St. Paul that when in a whole days discourse from morning to evening he found he could not move the affections of some of his Countrymen cites them these words of Esaias the Prophet The heart of this people is waxed gross c. lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their hearts and should be converted As if the heart must be opened and the affections first move to let in understanding All which considered we shall not find it any absurdity in our Litany to pray against blindness of heart In these places with many more like the Holy Spirit of God pitching upon the affections or the chief seat of the affections for the whole Soul it seems to me to point out some potent if not some leading quality in them And therefore do I think we have not translated that Mandate of St. Paul to the Colossians amiss by these words Set your affections on things above not set your minds I know the original is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 superna sapite or de supernis cogitate and so primarily respects the mind But 't is also frequently applied in Scripture to the affections so our Saviour uses it to St. Peter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thou savourest not the things that be of God And although we render it Let this mind be in you which was in Christ Iesus yet it must needs be there meant rather of the affections viz. an humble mind and void of pride because of the immediate subsequent declaration of our Saviours humility And as the Scripture speaks after this manner of the Imagination so it doth also of the Memory which though I have in some sort before defined to be the Treasury or Storehouse of the Soul seated in the Brain yet the affections do seem to ingross that title too and that there is not only a savour or sense but a laying up and keeping in the heart as well as Brain So it 's expressed of the Virgin Mary and our Saviour seems to inferr it by telling us A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things As if all our good or evil acts had their stamp or coinage from the Affections SECT III. That it may seem to be in some affection from Humane conjecture and allowance HUmane thoughts and cogitations seem unto me like Clouds in the Air some vain and empty and like unto Smoak some full and weighty some bright and pleasant some black and dismal succeeding each other in time and place always in motion and sometimes quick and violently agitated upon divers occasions from divers quarters which though they may be said sometimes to refresh the Earth and make her good and fruitful and that without the fall of them upon her she were an insignificant dry heavy lump without activity or cause of vegetation yet certainly those Clouds were first insensibly created raised and sent up from her whom they again sometimes refresh and sometimes drown Indeed to me the affections do no otherwise appear than that Earthy part of the Soul and so we sometimes term it and that not improperly while 't is imployed on Earthly things which though it have not that splendor nor is beheld in any wise so admirable or excellent as those glorious Lights above from which it receives influence yet does rather seem to precede them in time And it may be no false assertion to say of them as the Scripture does of the other they were ordained to give light upon the Earth which was before them The intellect must be owned by all as the affections light and Reason as our present Sun able in some measure to correct their barren churlish nature and quality and now and then dispell those unwholesom and unpleasant mists and fogs springing or arising from them But yet this Earth of ours as all things was created good and in no wise to be wholly rejected contemned or despised and for ought I am able to perceive might be the chief cause why the others were at all Whoever shall tell me 't is some more noble faculty in my Soul than an affection that gives being to this very enquiry I must acknowledge somewhat of truth in the allegation and probably my suggestant may do no less in first acknowledging some kind of appetite or desire in my Soul to enquire and search Desire as it preceded our first unlucky knowledge so it continues surely a fermentation in all our learning at least some affection does and works that which our natural light would not attain to of it self We have a saying Si natura negat facit indignatio versum Indignation is an affection in the Soul and often at least helps aids and assists the more noble faculties to work and so do other affections too as well as Indignation The great pretended Rationalist of the World the Atheist has ready at hand another such like verse and if we talk of God will forthwith bring it out and tell us Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor That it was not our Reason was able to find them or our Imagination to conceive them of it self It may be true in some sort and it might be happy for these Rationalists too if fear could set their intellectuals on work as well as ours since love does not or will not However from them who deny the Author or Inspirer of the Soul 't is agreed that the passions if any part of the Soul must first find him and surely I might no less properly before have resembled Affection to a Whetstone than I did Reason to a Touchstone For though it be Reason which tries whether they be pure or impure false or currant yet 't is an Affection that always give an edge and vigour even to Reason as many of our quickest Wits have owned and that without the rubbing or motion of some Affection there would be little of sharpness or so much as brightness in any other faculty of the Soul SECT IV Of the potency of the Affections THough we should not or do not allow the affections precedency by
course They are these passions which metamorphose a man into a furious Beast 'T is they which are able to destroy that best faculty or light of the Soul Reason and therefore Solomon's maxim is to be observed above any Custodi cor But Reason was never yet found of ability to destroy or wholly mortifie any one passion It may somewhat from Divine assistance regulate or calm lead or direct but if it should wholly destroy the affections as some have pretended to do by it it would prove in the condition of a Prince without Subjects that is indeed no Prince or Governour at all but we find the Subjects able sometimes for want of his vigilancy to destroy their Sovereign and set up a strange confused Anarchy amongst themselves Whatever faculty of the Soul we may give precedency to we sometimes too sensibly find the strength and power of our passions For besides that they are able to destroy one another and that love or hatred can drive away fear and fear is able sometimes to suppress love or hatred so as it seems more difficult to determine which of the passions are strongest then it would be of those things Darius his Guard disputed about while he was asleep They are all strong and either of them is of power enough oft-times to make us destroy our selves or at least neglect our selves and work more hurt to our Bodies than any other faculties of the Soul whatsoever Reason never destroyed any man the imagination might help to do it but never did it of it self but sorrow has done it if we believe the wise Son of Syrach And this common experience will tell every man who lives and is not yet destroyed that the slightest of the passions is able to keep us waking by its proper strength when the imagination were it not for some affection would let us sleep By the strength of that only I mean the imagination we seldom so much as awake from our sleep unless by some terrible presentment it do irritate the affections and then they are the cause and not the imagination and if we do awake thereupon Reason forthwith shews us the folly of our imagination and our affections become quiet But when they have their rise from sense more peculiarly than from the imagination then is the combate dubious they then go on in their rebellion and there is no mastery to be obtained over them by power but by fraud as it were The Will they outlaw which was ordained the subject of Reason and that necessarily carries with it the Organs of the Body as its ministers The aim of the Will may be good in general but that is not of power to distinguish between reality and apparency of good neither good the end nor virtues the way to that end have any corporal shape and therefore cannot be shewed as so to the senses whereby the affections might be reclaimed and made to fix upon any real good Besides Sense is only judge of present things Reason of future as well as present the imagination is somewhat capable of both And therefore if ever the affections become fixed on a real good 't is not that they are mastered but that next and immediately under God's special Grace often leading and directing them they are deceived into good hoodwink'd a little from sense and caught as it were by a wile or stratagem The imagination is slily drawn away from taking part with them and somewhat of real good is first from Reason as it were darted into the imagination and by the imagination conveyed unto them Affections being native visibly working in us as soon as we are born without controul for a long while unless ab extra as we say and no Reason to govern till they have encamped and fortified themselves the wise man might well say He that ruleth them is better than he that ruleth a City The City where they inhabit is a deceitful place many Caves and Vaults in it for them to lurk in we find it but too true when we enter into it and search it and think we have wholly won it We may well wish that Ieremy were a false Prophet and somewhat deceived himself in telling us it is deceitful above all things and therefore we have a hard task to make those Citizens there good Subjects and fit for another City whose maker and builder is God If ever they prove so they must be dealt withall like as with men wedded to their affections as we term them proverbially and as they are usually dealt withall that is allured and led not thrust and driven they are too stubborn to move that way SECT V. That some Affection is the substantial part of the Soul I Have thought and do think and believe which is somewhat more then a thought it is a thought with the concurrence approbation and allowance of ones Reason that the Soul of man is immortal and that the very Essence or substantial part of an Humane Soul disrobed of a Body or subsisting of it self is some restless working however at some times invisible affection and that if those more noble faculties of our Soul next and immediately under that bright heavenly Star are the Pilots to conduct us unto rest some affection as it seems to me is the chief Passenger in this frail and weak Vessel of the flesh St. Paul in that admirable Encomium of his of Charity tells us that it abides when many other gifts fail And if we shall know as we are known as he tells us in another place there will be then little use of the Invention Memory Reason or the like which are but the Handmaids to knowledge Neither can I rationally imagine after return of the Soul to its place of rest or for default thereof in its banishment to everlasting wandring any use of other faculties than the affections unless towards the exalting or heightning them in their several degrees whether love and joy on the one side or sorrow fear c. on the other The Soul of man being an emanation from that Divine love must necessarily partake of it love and not able at present by any natural light it has to reach unto it self its proper object lays hold on any thing rather than seem to vanish or be extinct and withall that it happens to have such several inclinations in man while it is here is surely by reason of some false imaginary light or the want of a true one and that we want both power and skill in the setting or tuning some strings of the affections as I may call them And 't is want of a clear inspect into our nature and frame that we become as David speaks a stubborn generation a generation that set not their hearts aright and whose Spirit cleaveth not stedfastly to God And I do further believe that all the faculties strength and power of the Soul which we have are given us towards the performance of that
and condemn all men who receive it not as 't were from us and from our hands Indeed he who feels any blessed effect of his own Faith will not only wish all men believed as he did but endeavour without breach or rent of Charity they should But surely methinks he should not with ease or without feeling some smart undergo a rupture in his own Charity for the transplanting the same Faith into others since he will certainly find neither himself nor any man barely was the planter of it in himself nor think there should be any diminution of the one for the propagating as we call it of the other in other men Without some rent of this thing called Charity I doubt whether there can be an approbation of or assent to Cleonard's proposition to the Princes of Christendom that is without other just cause an endeavour to shew the Turk our Faith with Temporal Armour over it if we were able so to do and put part of his Nation to the Sword to draw or hale the remnant of them to the Faith and to heal some Souls through the wounds of others Bodies They are men as well as we of the same mould and their Souls of the same extraction and we might consider first how we could approve of the like conviction amongst our selves The Sword doubtless has often made a way for Faith and I believe it to be or happens sometimes through God's Eternal wise decree but I do much question the truth of those mens Faith who are upon such a reason at any time the immediate visible instruments of this preparative When a man shall once own the New Testament as the Word of Truth and stand convinced that all the Precepts laid down therein are righteous and grounded on Moral equity if he make his recourse to the New for his belief only and to the Old only for some of his actions I would ask a Stranger in that case whether he thinks that man's Reason or his Affections bear the greatest sway or be most predominant in his Soul It may seem strange how some men can step from Mount Gerizim to Mount Ebal as it were at will and pleasure settle a Tower of peace or defence for themselves on the one and raise a Tower of offence against others on the other let the one be the seat for their Reason and the other for their Affections and place Faith as they call it the attendant on both and that Reason all this while should not espy that the Affections lead it thither There is one esteemed a great planter or reformer of our Faith in these parts who to maintain the lawfulness of Malediction in some case I am sure against Christ's precept and his example who prayed for his persecutors and against St. Stephen's too who did the like would make a distinction between a persecution of man though for the Gospel and a persecution of the Gospel If it be against the persecutors of the Gospel according to his definition he then calls it Faiths malediction or cursing which says he rather than God's Word should be suppressed or Heresie maintained wisheth that all creatures went to rack If this be the work or effect of some mens Faith I hope I may say without offence I pray God deliver me from such a Faith Surely it may be questioned how and in what manner the Gospel of it self may suffer persecution and no less whether the believers therein would suffer so much from their common Enemies or one another were it not for their too positive condemnation sometimes of all who do not believe just as they do or profess themselves to do Theano a Heathen Nun had in my opinion more Divine thoughts in her than some of our late Reformers and 't was a better and far more charitable saying of hers when by publick Decree she was commanded amongst others to ban and curse Alcibiades for prophaning their reputed Holy mysteries That her profession was to pray and to bless not to curse I am so far from adhering to any party more than other and so far prone to blame all parties in this case that I am not like to receive the favour or good opinion of any But whatsoever I receive from man I trust and believe I shall never incur God's displeasure for declaring my sence of things only according to the best light of Reason he has endowed me with Some such thing I do believe there is on Earth as St. Augustine has intitled his Book A City of God that is a peculiar select number of people who so pass their lives here as that they shall be Eternally happy hereafter But for several men to frame and imagine such a peculiar City in any Nation or corner of the World different in some fashion form or mode from all others and then think that to be the Model or Platform upon which future happiness must necessarily be built or depend seems very strange to me and may do so perhaps to some others I cannot think those Citizens whoever they are require such a different habit or dress from all others but rather all of them generally use one special attire or ornament for the Soul whereof somewhat is to be found in all Nations and places and which men free of that City may be best known and distinguished by And that is that becoming ornament St. Paul seems to mention upon another account Good works that ornament which naturally arises from a meek and quiet Spirit which St. Peter seems to intimate the hidden man of the heart not outwardly worn in pomp but that whosoever privately wears or carries about him will not too narrowly dissect rend and tear much less suddenly condemn the Spirit of another man True Charity saith the Apostle beareth all things believeth all things hopeth all things endureth all things and if we put on that which is the bond of perfectness it will reconcile us to all mankind and be as useful to others as it is ornamental to us It will be like the Dove in the Ark as swift of wing and as fit to be sent abroad upon any employment as the Raven or Vulture and with that will bring a branch of Olive solid contentment and satisfaction to our selves we shall then have all the old leaven purged out and become a new lump and shall render unto God by such a restauration of his Image that which is Gods SECT III. How Love may be regent I May seem before to have undertaken a rational discourse of the Soul and to shew by what steps and degrees even that way it may be fitted to resist assaults from without and therefore in reason it may be expected that I should set down some rule some probable demonstrable way or means how this thing I call Charity which is ever the main principle of Action may be set up regent in the Soul which I have said and do think there is some
so that again doth give perfection to them and without which they are in St. Paul's phrase but as sounding Brass or a tinckling Cymbal that whatever noise they may make are of no benefit to us Thus the Apostle speaking of the abiding here of Faith Hope and Charity tells us the greatest of these is Charity of which reversing his method and order in placing of them I shall say thus much in short 't is Charity must guide and direct us 't is Hope must relieve and support us and 't is Faith by which we must enter into rest that must be the Key that must open to us and let us in after all our travails and if Faith do ever become a Crown and Hope an Helmet we must have before Charity for our Breast-plate badge or cognizance which we must always wear and never put off lest we be left open to divers and various assaults here and notwithstanding any Armour we think we have got on notwithstanding any allegation of prophecying in Christ's name or casting out Devils or doing other wonderful works if we be found to be without this Livery we shall be disowned and receive that sentence I never knew you depart from me ye c. from which Good Lord deliver us The Conclusion IN my entrance upon this subject I said how I had a desire to take some view of my Soul and see its operations and now this here is become its weak product perhaps more unfit for the World than that of my Body yet this I can say 't is not spurious and if my Brain has been the Father of it and gave it Being my Heart has been the Mother and lodged it and brought it forth without any other aim or design desire or affection whatsoever than the easing quieting or calming of her self unless that she desires or hopes it may through God's Grace have some mollifying or sanative quality towards some others I have not upon my own view of it so far transgressed as to fall in love with it I am conscious of its mis-shapes and deformities and doubtful nay very fearful of its defects and errors in many particulars and so have little reason to desire it should live long to my shame and disgrace But if man will not wink at those errors nor pass them over with charity I trust and hope that he who made me subject to errors and knows them best and their causes will pardon them which hope is to any man a sufficient Cordial against the fear or trouble of others censure I pretend to no supernatural Revelation in any of my thoughts and he who is free from error in them must necessarily have somewhat more than a pretence to it Let the World judge of me what they please I have been before-hand with them and I am sure no man can have meaner or more contemptible thoughts of me than I have sometimes had of my self and if there be any thing of true and unfeigned humility in man he can be as well content others should think meanly of him as he of himself but they are not always so proper Judges and I think that question What man knoweth the things of a man but the Spirit of man which is in him may not be altogether improperly applicable to the present purpose and for prevention of rash judging of other mens Spirits since we have been told by one who well knew We know not our own or of what Spirit we are I have lived to see often the vanity of my first thoughts from my second and may live to see the errors of these if I do I will acknowledge and amend them I have groaped in the dark to find out the easiest plain way towards content and quietness and rest even while I am a Traveller but I desire not to become an Ignis fatuus to lead other men out of their way and if this Hand point not right I beseech God any man who sees it may hear that gracious word behind him This is the way walk ye in it Search the Scriptures they are they which testifie of the God of power the God of peace and the God of consolation That Sacred Word has already received so clear an Humane rational vindication of its truth and excellency so plain a demonstration of its virtue and efficacy towards the health of Souls and such excellent methods have been lately prescribed towards the application and use thereof as there wants no additional assistance of so weak a Soul as mine I must confess and acknowledge I do believe it may and does often cause strange inflamations in many Souls and renders them not only painful and dangerous but malignant and infectious for want of a good digestion and all that I am able to advise any one further in the reading thereof is that he first observe the temper of that man according to God's own heart in the Old Testament who found that very Word Moses Law a lamp unto his feet and a light unto his path became wiser than his Enemies by it took comfort and delight in it and gives so large an Encomium of it in that most excellent Psalm as is not to be parallel'd wherein it has been observed there is mention made of it almost every line or verse that he do not exercise himself in things which are too high for him but refrain his Soul and keep it low like as a child that is weaned from his mother If he can but obtain that which certainly a man might do from the reflexion of the very light of Reason in beholding his own weakness I presume to say after he has read and seriously considered our Saviour's Precepts in the New Testament he will be at peace and in charity with all men and so by consequence within himself More I cannot say but that I beseech Almighty God the Lord and giver of Life in whom we live and move and have our Being the provident Ruler and Governour of all things one Eternal infinite wise power that Ens or Essence of it self that first cause that which we are in no wise able to comprehend that he would enlighten and purifie our understandings direct all our thoughts regulate the vain wandrings of our imaginations strengthen our memories so far as they may be retentive of all good make our Wills obedient and tractable allure and draw away all our affections from the vanities and false appearances of the World actuate and enliven them towards the pursuit of all good and the detestation of all evil that we may possess our Souls in patience and with one mind and one Soul glorifie God even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and out of the abundance of his mercy forgive us all the errors of our ways that he would not be extreme to mark what we have done amiss that as our sins and follies have abounded and do abound his Grace may superabound more especially to me
them at least question a Deity and divine retribution from the like passion they say others believe one viz. Fear And if they are sensible of something invisible to be feared under some notion of justice and like Metrodorus I think the name is in Cicero fear what they deny there needs no conviction of opinion but rather extortion of confession which is the peculiar work of a Deity by distress affliction or the like If I could once prevail with any man to ransack as I may say his own Soul seriously to consider and observe the strange motions tendencies operations and sudden alterations therein I should have greater hopes of some clear manifestation to that man of an eternal wise working spirit in and through the same than from any outward prospect and beholding its work under what notion soever Atoms c. in and through the whole Universe beside Certainly God would shew himself to any one who did but seriously and humbly behold view and consider himself which we can never shew a man by any outward demonstration That sight must arise from within How some endowed with so great perfection of Intellect beyond the ordinary sort of men and able to discern a vast disproportion or difference of spirit and yet none of body between themselves and others should not fall into some admiration at some time or other with a kind of thankfulness to somewhat or other is to be wondered at Every mans Soul is not only an image of God but looked into of its self is the clearest glass to represent the most perfect shadow that can be of that Original There is some spark of fire in man beyond the reach or finger of chance which if he might be prevailed with to uncover and view himself would afford some light which all the raking or blowing from another cannot do God himself can and will shew himself so far as he sees good and none else can shew him to that person who will not vouchsafe humbly to look into himself If there be any such thing as a beast in the likeness of a man and one should fight with it I may ask St. Pauls question What advantageth it I begg your pardon and others c. for such an expression besides the meaning of the Text I am not prone to impose such a title or attribute upon the meanest human creature but surely if we once come to that pass as to reject an infinite wise just eternal Being a Reward and punishment hereafter and disclaim our own immortality our prerogative above beasts is very small and I am sure we may not improperly take up the subsequent words Let us eat and drink for to morrow we dye for which ends and purposes t is to be feared some men have owned though they have not been fully convinced of that opinion The world did and do's and will abound with Atheists that is persons living as without a God in the world or duly weighing divine retribution But whether those on whom we most commonly fix and impose that title best merit the same is some question There is no great distinction to be made between men denying God in constant daily works yet owning him in words and denying him in words yet owning him in some measure by works unless we should term the first sort real Atheists and the other professed ones only and conclude the latter are of more evil consequence because the first sort or kind require the intellect to discern or espy them and the latter only sense forasmuch as the tongue which is such an unruly member infects even through sense but actions do it not so readily but require the intellect to judge and discern whether the party be an Atheist or no. Had I not in beholding the Soul in an human body happened to consider that admirable power it has to frame an articulate noise given chiefly to magnify its Maker and withal how it is otherwise imployed I had not first so much as mentioned such a thing or called one Atheist and Davids dixit insipiens in corde I cannot intend much further For however it be spoken from the heart that is voluntarily and with some kind of affection going along with it yet I do verily think there never was man so confident or that ever so assuredly believed there was no God as I and thousands others do that there is one and that seeming negative opinion were at an end if every man would permit his tongue to declare his belief or at least his doubt and not use it to obey some appetite of being singular and thwart the general received opinion of the world from some desire to be esteemed wise or learned Methinks this question were enough to convince any man that he is not an Atheist in belief Why is he or how comes he to be at any time just and faithful Why a lover of truth Why do's he regard his promise and sometimes perform it to his disadvantage If he will not own this belief of a God by word others may espy it in him for I dare say never any man was yet able so to obliterate the image of God in himself but some mark or impress thereof might at some time be observed by another and therefore let us condemn nothing in man but that unruly member set on fire of Hell over which too there is now and then a kind of fatal necessity of contradicting it self in these reputed Atheists none sooner or more readily unworthily invocating that name they deny than they I have yet that good opinion of many professing or rather saying there is no God That they are actually in some measure just merciful liberal and charitable which is some owning him in their work however it happens they deny him with their lips and they must necessarily secretly own and confess the belief of a Deity from themselves and some of their own actions unless they are able to demonstrate to me or others how these excellent extracorporeal qualities as I may term them as justice mercy c. or a goodness of mind universally inclined or inclinable to all beyond and quite out of its individual self or progeny can possibly arise from a bare concretion of Atoms We have lived in I hope passed an age when generally the tongues of men owned a God publickly enough and might seem to have been a little too familiar with him given him high and excellent Attributes enough called on his divine providence and summoned it down for the justification of every wicked action When Reason God's vicegerent in the Soul seemed quite abandoned and Conscience was defined a new light from above to gratify the affections of some and the fancies of others And t is no great wonder if upon a sudden change and alteration some men run into the contrary extream That when reason begins to take place again there start up a philosophical generation of men upon the stage some say the world
led into the paths of truth and righteousness and become acquainted with his will And this we look upon as effected by his Holy Spirit through his Word one God blessed for ever Such new accession of light and such a blessed gift as this were the Writers of Holy Scripture no doubt endowed withal whose words and actions were in demonstration of the spirit and with power the effects whereof we have heard and beheld and felt in a great part of this visible world Now for that we have a promise this admirable strange effect in man shall not wholly cease but that God will be with us to the end of the world and we talk much now a days of the light of the Holy Spirit It may not be amiss since we have a caveat Not to believe every spirit and withall authority given us to try the spirits whether they are of God for every man to try his own spirit at least and see whether that of it self already sent be not the spirit only which he often mistakes and vouches for the immediate dictates of the Almighty and calls it a new light the spirit of God within him and so becomes a little too bold with the Almighty I am afraid it has in some men and that many a man has so little understood himself and less his Maker that he has mistaken the suddain and strange flashes of some kind of lightning from his own inherent affections for another spirit which feeding with conceit he has brought to such a flame in himself that at last his reason has given place and approved it to be something more than what is under its regiment or correction even the light of that spirit of truth whereas did a man by his reason keep a narrow watch over his affections it might observe every the most ordinary affection able to raise its peculiar spirit that is such a flame in the soul as with the assistance of the imagination shall hurry it with the body in obedience to it and force reason into a belief for the present that its motion is from the light of truth of which in time it may stand convinced to have been mislead and misguided We do not improperly call the product of that predominant affection in man Pride the spirit of pride and the consequent thereof the spirit of contradiction and these may be the spirits which for the present enthral our reason and make us believe better of our selves than others do of us and think God worketh in us immediately and of his gracious dispensation that which is effected by our own spirit through his most just and wise providence To exclude God that is One eternal omnipotent wise working spirit out of any action especially that which is good might prove of evil and dangerous consequence Yet since his way is in the sea his paths in the great waters and his footsteps are not known as is expressed We may be too presumptuous in being too confident of the knowledge of his present manner of working in our selves I do own it is he that hath endowed us all with an intellectual mind or Soul and given some of us that strength of reason which is in some measure capable to search after him and behold some of his ways and doubtless many of the heathen were not excluded from such a sight and he has enlightened others by his holy spirit to declare unto us his good will and pleasure which we call his Word And to others of us has he by that Holy spirit with which those holy Writers were inspired given grace to lay hold on that word and all the promises therein Notwithstanding which and a saving faith at the last we may not for the present safely challenge that good spirit of God to be the sole or chief guide of all our thoughts and actions for if it were so then were it impossible for us to err as I conceive which daily we do and grieve that Holy spirit as is expressed by which we are sealed to the day of redemption There are as I of my weakness am best able to conceive for I never saw or searched Writers on such subject either towards the enlightning or confirming me therein four more especial ways by which God worketh over us and in us 1. By his common and ordinary Providence 2. By his merciful Providence 3. By his liberal and bountiful Providence 4. By his Spirit His ordinary providence I call that which extends over all the works of his creation as well irrational as rational which though irrational bodies are no ways sensible of or its working yet has he therein an eye over them in their bodily preservation and feedeth the young ravens that call upon him And within this care or eye of his are we comprized too and no way excluded By his merciful providence I mean his withholding us from committing those enormous crimes to which we are prone by nature through the lusts of the flesh even against the very light of reason which thing perhaps you will term his common restraining grace and this he extends to Heathens as well as others as may be observed in the story of Abimelech and his withholding him from touching of Sarah By his liberal and bountiful providence I mean this That God having endowed our souls with that more than ordinary gift of reason by which we seem originally capable in some degree or measure to discern good from evil He more especially overlooks that gift of his and more especially worketh therein towards the enlightning thereof So that of his bounty and goodness alone it is that our humane reason is at any time brought to a clearer sight than ordinary of justice mercy temperance patience or the like and beholds the beauty thereof above their contraries whereby we imbrace them with our affections and this I hope I may without offence allow the name of his Common renewing grace to In which sence or notion if any shall alledge his capacity of coming to the knowledg of the present work of the spirit of God in him I mean not to contradict him because I behold every mans reason his rational soul to be in some sence the spirit of God which being enlightned from him a-new for the inclining the affections to imbrace that which is morally good we may more properly say then 'T is the spirit of God that worketh in us But many Heathens as well as Christians have doubtless in great measure participated of this grace for so I call it now it being from the mere good will and pleasure of God without any motive or inducement from man and owned the same to be his good work in them and yet never otherwise enlightned missed of the truth and could not be said to have any light from his Holy spirit but to err even to perdition notwithstanding the aforementioned grace I and justly to perish too For such is the wise just disposition
of our minds and consequently our actions by that Eternal Majesty from whose spirit David seems to infer we cannot well go that every man if there were not some default or neglect in him might receive the Seal of that other Spirit the Holy Ghost as we call it one God blessed for ever However in the end we shall all set forth his glory and if we miss of Eternal happiness we shall behold it so much our own fault as that we shall take upon our selves shame and confusion of face By Spirit which is the thing I conceive other men mean when they talk of their enlightning I mean something more than God's barely enlightning our reason or barely working through that His very light of truth above the reach of our reason viz. That Spirit which he has promised by his word to such as lay hold on that word by Faith and yet without which we cannot truly believe That Comforter co-equal and co-eternal with himself and with the word one God blessed for ever Which work in man by and from that good Spirit you ordinarily call as I suppose God's special renewing grace or his grace of Sanctification And truly if even words could be so laid open and plain to our capacity by you as that we might rightly distinguish things thereby 't were well and happy for us For certainly those three words Spirit Grace and Faith for want of distinguishing the true signification of each in the several places where they are found have caused many errors and begat no little disputes amongst us Now according to these several workings beforementioned do I think we may safely invocate the Divine Majesty For instance were I about to take a journy through some desart place frequented with Savage beasts or infested with Robbers or to pass some dangerous current I do believe I should invocate God in his Almighty power and providence over all his works to preserve me from bodily danger Were I about to resort to some place or company in which I suspected any allurement or enticement towards the committing of those facts I found my self most inclinable to by nature and which my reason had already judged of to be crimes or sins I do think I should beg of him in and through his goodness and mercy to lay some reine upon and over my Passion and withhold me from running into those snares to which I found my self most prone and more especially to keep me from presumptuous sins lest they should get the dominion over me Were I about to enter upon and execute some office or place wherein the good of others as well as my self might depend and which necessarily required a more than ordinary circumspection wisdom and prudence or foresight in the management Or were I about to deal with men in any action that might in my present opinion require the like I do then think I should implore him in and through his infinite wisdom to enlighten my understanding and reason that it might be profitable to others and that it become not clouded through any desire of gain or other passion whereby I should be hurried away to commit any unjust or unseemly action but that I might approve my self in the sight of all men discreet and righteous Were I about any present act whereupon I conceived my Eternal estate and well-being necessarily and consequently depended as whether I should go to Mass or suffer imprisonment and my reason had weighed both and could not well or readily determine I should earnestly beseech him through his infinite goodness and mercy to all mankind that believe in him to send the light of his Holy Spirit into my heart to direct and guide me therein Now in the first case were I preserved from imminent and apparent bodily danger I should readily without hesitation asscribe it to his mighty power who stilleth the rageing of the Sea and setteth bounds to the same saying hitherto shall thou pass and no further In the second case should I upon some consideration after find my self to have been as it were manacled or the course of my passion diverted by some unexpected accident so as I did not at that time perhaps what I would I should impute it to restrictive mercy which is always ready to withhold men from sinning against him In the third case should I not only receive applause from men but from some present comfort in my own heart be satisfied of my prudent and just managery of my affair I should readily impute it to his wisdom that giveth light and understanding to the simple But in the fourth and last case what ever Election I made although I owned my Election to be guided by God's good providence I durst not presume to say it was from his Holy Spirit though that might be for that it was or ought to be my reason which determined my Election in all appearance to my self It seems to me a matter of dangerous consequence to play with that fire and call for it down from Heaven upon any ordinary occasion or yet for a man to avouch its moving in himself almost upon any occasion But we have those of late days who in the decision of meaner points than those of Virginity and Marriage seem to exceed St. Paul and not only think but would seem to know in their determination thereof They have the Spirit of God These men I would undeceive if I were able or indeed any one whom I conceive to be in an error But first by the way give me leave to tell you without the least personal reflection on your self whom I never observed to go about to amuse men with strange notions but to inform their intellect in the plainest rational way you could for the introduction of truth This bold assertion of an habitual converse with God by his Holy Spirit has received I think if not its first rise and conception yet its strength and vigour from our Pulpits or little Pamphlets such I may call some of Godliness Where some men for want of force of argument and dint of reason to convince their Auditors or Readers of the falsity of the opinions of that Church they would they should desert and forsake have first endeavoured through strange mazes to elect and saint them in opinion and to quiet their reason often put them in mind of the promise of that Spirit to all Gods Elect and its light to lead them in the truth and by this means viz. other mens in estimation blowing strange notions into their heads has opinion in some men usurped the Chair of reason For I do not think that plain simple meaning men could ever of themselves or from barely reading of the Scriptures which condemns pride and every high thought have raised so good an opinon of themselves as to think they were led almost in all things by the very Spirit of God if they had not seen their teachers who we are ready to agree receive their
the spirit of God worketh or should work in us As if we were as familiarly acquainted with that spirit as our own which few of us little regard much less understand that eternal that omnipotent that incomprehensible that dreadful spirit I may say for certainly no man can seriously exercise his thoughts thereabout without fear and trembling by whose breath we are as easily consumed as made therefore let us fear to be too bold with it Well! can it be any offence against that good spirit for a man to behold his own unworthiness to doubt or fear its absence or to question whether we mistake not some pleasing motion of our own spirit for it 'T is not the present comfort we receive from our cogitations nor yet our actions that is any infallible sign that we have thought or acted from that good spirit merely 'T is an infallible sign rather that we have not wilfully acted against the present superintendent of our own spirit our reason and that is the utmost we can be assured from thence I may mean well and please my self with the sincerity of my present cogitations in relation to this very subject of the spirit think I have spoken the words of truth and soberness yet it would be a strange presumption in me though I acknowledge the favourable assistance of a divine power in every good thought to affirm that good spirit more especially working in me unless I could be able to convince the world and rest assured too my self of the indubitable truth of that which I have said But that I do not I rather fear I have in many particulars thought amiss and surely he who has not that fear always moving in him is very arrogant and who has it must necessarily discard such high thoughts in himself at least he must keep them from reigning in him Have not many men thought they have done God good service in some action and yet repented them of the action Have not every of us now and then pleased our selves with beholding as we thought the light of some divine truth which upon second cogitations and second weighing we have rejected as our own false conceipt and seemed to be angry and vexed with our selves which is the chief ingredient of repentance for receiving or allowing such an opinion Now as it is impossible to err from the immediate light of that good spirit so I am confident God was never so unkind to any as to suffer any inward vexation of mind in relation to the embracing of that he immediately inclined the mind to by his Holy spirit And therefore let not some honest well-meaning men as doubtless there are many from the present comfort they receive of the integrity or innocency of their own heart be induced through that song of requiem as I have mentioned chanted to them from others to think that all that which they for the present verily believe is the demonstration of that spirit of truth dwelling in them There is a vast and wide difference between God's working in and through our spirit by his providence as I have mentioned and by his Holy spirit We may err by the first and those errors foreseen by him are ordered to his glory but never by the second nay give me leave to say as well as think we may wilfully sin by God's providence Not that he is the author of sin but by leaving us sometimes unto our selves he so after a manner as it were leads us into temptation which we are taught to pray against by one that well knew our infirmities in the flesh though he sinned not And therefore 't were well we mistake not the one for the other There is no man that I know so uncharitable to think any good meaning Christian man wholly devoid of that good spirit But wishes that from thence he may in due time have a clear sight of the truth A thing at present very remote from the prospect of the best or wisest of us Let him be but so charitable to himself as to wish the same We have our desire He lays aside his present confidence and boasting There are many well-meaning men and of a seeming humble spirit to themselves who are ready perhaps therefore to impute all their good thoughts to the work of that good spirit in them but I wish their own spirit deceive them not For I take this delusion to arise not always or so commonly from humility and the love of truth as it does from secret pride and the love of liberty Saint Paul has told us Where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty and if we are led thereby we are not under the law This pleases us so in a literal sense that we are ready to let go our reason to believe we have the spirit to guide us in all things But we might rationally suspect that those who harp to us so much upon that string would rather enslave us to themselves As for liberty we have enough already in any sence and 't is well if we use it not either for an occasion to the flesh or for a cloke of maliciousness And for the Law we need not fear or desire to be exempt from it 't is fulfilled in one word the same Apostle tells us and that one word is Charity a thing chiefly to be recommended to all which I have insisted upon elsewhere and which I pray God send us through that spirit and then we shall not bite and devour one another under colour of I know not what spirit perhaps through the very spirit of delusion In all sins or offences we say the understanding the will and the affections are all more or less faulty but where the will is most too blame there is the offence ever the greater Now if it be an offence to vouch the Holy spirit upon every small occasion and to play with it as we may say in too familiar a discourse of it Men had need take great care and heed that their will be not most to blame in that case I think you will not and I dare not go about to define what that sin is which totally excludes us from mercy But if any man upon examination of that deceitful thing his heart shall chance to find he has at any time upon any wordly design whatsoever pretended some light from that Holy spirit Or so much as indeavoured to obscure the light of reason in others which is able to shew unto subjects their duty of obedience that there is no power but of God and the powers that be are ordained of God by amuzing them therewith and this for the advancement of himself in place power or dignity whether that we call temporal or that we call spiritual I will be bold to tell him he has been very presumptuous and has committed a great offence Well these two sorts of persons I first mentioned the mere Spiritualist and the mere Naturalist are
those whom we shall scarce meet with in company but we shall receive a challenge from As to the first I have said somewhat but properly to hold a dispute against him we cannot either we must deny his premisses which we are unwilling wholly to do or else we must necessarily grant him his conclusion For the other so much a Sadducee as not to believe Angel or Spirit other than his own if that and resolving to believe nothing without a plain demonstration We must not provoking that spirit of his of which he thinks himself the only master and we think he is therein deceived answer him at his own weapon reason and indeed we have none other as of our selves and argue with him in calm manner if at all not philosophically not Aristotelically but as rationally and as plainly and as perswasively as we can or are able leaving the success to the guidance of that good spirit in which we our selves already believe 'T is a strange thing a man should admit of any ordinary inference or any indifferent argument à probabili as we say to satisfy his reason and raise a belief in any case but that which is of greatest concern to him the belief whereof would only do him good and which could not if upon a false ground possibly prejudice him or do him hurt If I should begin to talk of the nature of the elements how each several one as we divide them hath in it some latent quality or virtue of the other And that some particular species of one participates so much with or is of such cognation as we may say with the other that from some little reflexion or light from that other it shall in a manner change its quality and seem to be quite another thing than what it was And then tell one of these kind of men some such strange story of Naptha as Plutarch do's A kind of a sulphureous fattish soil to be found which taken out of the body of the earth and brought to light shall forthwith at a great distance from any fire take flame from thence and become of the nature of fire it self consuming every thing about it there is little doubt but I might without demonstration to sense obtain credit therein Now since we cannot make out that our soul conscious of its being and capable to enquire after the nature or original of its own and other beings is the bare product of flesh and blood or that it can be actuated from thence towards these kind of enquiries Why should not these men as readily believe that there is some spirit or intellectual mind far above our own from whence our own receives some influence or agitation and by which it is disposed ordered or governed I dare appeal to the secrets of any one of these mens hearts their conscience if they please to allow of that term Whether or no if I should have done him some great or grievous injury such as after all ineffectual indeavour of revenge should lye heavy upon his spirit or leave a sting there he should not by a kind of secret wish seem to invocate for we will not imagine he has so much of the Christian Tenet in him yet as wholly to forgive all offences and return good for evil some Nemesis or resort to some secret revenger of evil to punish my injustice towards him On the other side should I bestow so many gifts heap so much kindness and do so many good turns to that man as after all indeavours of requital in point of gratitude he should find he were in no wise able to make me sufficient recompence or amends he should not by a like secret wish invocate some good power above his own for a reward upon me If in either of these cases he thinks he should so do or upon examination of himself finds he has at any time so done in like cases then surely he naturally as I may say believes that which in word he denies viz. That there is some spirit above our own for if he verily believed from his heart there were no such thing as some all-knowing all-powerful and all-sufficient spirit a just rewarder of good and evil superintendent over us it were the most ridiculous thing imaginable for him barely to wish nay he could not wish me good or evil But if he has unawares by his own spirit recourse to some invisible power why should he not confess which he often swears by unawares too that there is a God Now though it may seem here from the present purpose give me leave to say in this place that it is some confirmation of my opinion in relation to the soul of brutes proceeding barely from their blood and vanishing therewith which thing I mean to insist upon more at large in some other discourse that it makes no foreign appeal in any case nor uses any weapon but bodily I do here think that God may punish us for the abuse of brute creatures and that their blood may seem to cry for vengeance but it cries only silently not intentionally from them For although we do really perceive a kind of gratitude as well as revenge in many creatures besides man yet we cannot observe no nor suspect upon just ground any recourse they have in prosecution of their love or anger to any superior power above themselves I do not think my Spaniel ever wished me good or evil if I could conjecture there were imprecatory thoughts in any creature save man and the weakest of men has them I should forthwith renounce and recant my present opinion of the annihilation of their spirit after death For if that spirit of theirs can wander out of the body any other ways than directly by sense it certainly neither vanishes with the body nor can be said to be mortal There are many such like cases as aforementioned of some strange foreign work in the soul of man which have occurred to my mind sufficient as I thought to convince any Atheist of the falsity of his assertions in point of the original of all things and the government or guidance of all visible creatures more especially our selves But lest I seem guilty of what I condemned in my former Epistle I shall forbear to insist thereupon and leave all to that attribute that superabundant stream flowing from the Deity and which is over all its works its mercy and loving kindness towards man And however any of us think or believe either of our selves or ought else in relation to our selves for the present it can be no uncharitable wish or desire no nor foolish one I hope that before we cease to be as we are that is have finished the race of all flesh we may so think and act as that at the end of that race we miss not of eternal rest body and spirit But if these two kinds of men amongst us I have often thought could be brought to some moderation shall I say to a
reconcilation for they are opposites it might prove an happy thing for this Island And truly I cannot imagine a readier way to reconcile them than to perswade every of the Leaders in each opinion if we could prevail therein now and then to withdraw himself from all company and seriously consider himself our spiritualists with the invocation of divine assistance though the other not have some rational discourse or intercourse with himself alone in relation to his past actions or opinions after what strange manner his soul has worked Not only why his will and affections have pursued and imbraced that which his intellect has rejected but why his intellect without apparent cause from without should sometimes reject that which at other times it receives and receive that which at other times it rejects Whether that be not guided by affection sometimes as well as affection by that Or whether they with the imagination have not wrought together of themselves for want of a better guide rather than of any spirit from above And what is that we seem to drive at all our lives and why With many such like enquiries This I call a busy solitude and recommend it if that may move ought as the readiest way for some little light of truth which we pretend to but too much to break in upon the soul. And O that some men would with their reason and the spirit in conjunction together if that might be throughly and impartially view and consider their imperfections the daily errors and lapses of their own soul whether through the precipitance of passion or otherwise howsoever Then surely notwithstanding they might trust to the merits of a Saviour through that blessed Spirit I dare say they would not boast of its daily effects in themselves nor go about to perswade others of its daily motion in them clean contrary to reason and so much difference and distinguish themselves from all others by the spirit only I know no hurt this rational solitude could do our Anti-Atheists and such as almost deify themselves I do not observe those great spiritualists much given to melancholy a thing which sets the imagination on work without any reason at all and from which I confess there may be much danger in solitude they are generally busy and medling enough and over and above their inspiration assume and challenge to themselves a great deal of rationality beyond other men They have their reason ready at hand and surely we must needs allow them strength of reason if the greatest policy or subtilty be always the product of the strongest reason which I cannot think but the looking beyond and beholding all policy as vain to be it and then that reason of theirs if they would first lay aside all prejudice and passion might in an humble solitude work that effect which in the end might bring them truer comfort than what they at present feel or pretend to from the spirit But they are not the men to whom I would chiefly recommend solitude lest from thence they feed their passions through their reason rather than subdue them thereby as it often happens It is the plain downright Atheist resolved in company to believe nothing without a plain demonstration and who perhaps alone with himself might from himself receive a kind of demonstration Men may pronounce a vae soli but so long as a mans reason is able upon occasion to put a stop to the career of his imagination and not only suffer it to ramble beyond sense but even contrary to sense in which case only it is we are subject to destroy our own bodies We do think notwithstanding God's wise and provident care of a companion for man in the creation and the advantage and comfort we receive from company above all other creatures It may be good for man to be sometimes alone It matters not much who was the first Author of that saying Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus whether Scipio the African or any other if so be upon consideration it be found to have no less of weight in it than any of those of the Sages Surely we must needs think upon weighing it proceeded from a more than ordinary divine soul and one who from solitude found somewhat of enjoyment more than ordinary Scipio if we believe history received as great and publick applause from publick action as any man whatsoever and might have pleased and enjoyed himself we may well think in company as much as any man And therefore if it were he we might the rather give credit to the saying and hope to find that company and complacency in solitude we never yet found This let me tell any man that he who considers his past actions by himself searches rationally into himself if he once come to behold his own imperfections and that sight he will not miss of if his intellect be not strangly bewitched by his affections he will from thence fly in desire to find out and behold somewhat that is perfect which if he should not at present do as I am almost assured he will do in fine that little acquaintance he gets with himself will otherwise find him imployment sufficient to verify that saying of Scipio And this is the thing I would always have specially recommended to an Atheist We have an English expression in relation to a delirium or dotage of being besides our selves we so translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or insanis Paul and truly he who travels all the world over in quest of an original cause of all things and looks not into himself is in my opinion as well really and truly as literally so 'T is a strange thing one would think men in their search after God should go furthest from him run to the least and I think most inconsiderable particle of his creation and fansie atoms to be the cause of mind without a mind No it must be a greater mind that is the cause of a lesser mind and a perfect mind of an imperfect mind we our selves seem nearest to a Deity and what should we go further to search for it A man 's own soul is in my opinion that glass which narrowly looked into shews not only it self unto its self but something beyond it and above it Did ever any man observe the motion of his soul and not at that time see his ignorance and impute folly to some of his actions And can he behold ignorance and folly and not believe there is some such thing as knowledge or perfect wisdom Can he observe his own weakness without acknowledging some absolute power Can he find such a thing as falshood in himself and not believe there is truth Can he observe himself sometimes harsh and cruel and not acknowledge that there is such a thing as mercy Did he never injure man and if that escape not his sight how will he be able to deny but that there is such a thing as justice and so for the like
seats and cells fit for its proper work and operation towards the conservation of that body whereof it is a more refined part as necessary and requisite thereto and without which we cannot so much as imagine it were capable to have duration and continuance in that form it is But yet withal no ways comprehending or desiring any matter or thing further than in relation to the sustentation or preservation of the same body And therefore for such a Soul or Spirit to perish with the body and to resolve again into its first elements is not altogether incongruous to our reason And we may I think further conjecture in reason that though for his pleasure all things are and were created Yet he being worthy to receive glory and honour voluntary from some terrestrial creature For whose sake next and immediately after his own Glory and Honour it may seem to us all others were made He might endow the most excellent of his terrestrial creatures us men with such a spirit as might not only have some glimmering light of him here but might have continuance to magnify him for ever when the Earth and Heavens should be no more Yet herein again I must acknowledge that the thoughts of the immortality of our soul are more apt and ready to encounter and stagger our reason than the mortality or vanishing of that of Brutes Since we are not able with reason to imagine but that as I have already said in my Treatise de Anima whatsoever thing had a beginning may or will have an end and that there is nothing Eternal but God alone the Maker and Creator of all things out of nothing And therefore there is no perfect Medicine to cure those reeling cogitations of ours about our immortality but Gods promise in his Holy Word with his special grace to believe it to be his Word Nor any thing else to strengthen us therein more than some specifick and not barely gradual difference to be found out and espied between our Spirit and that of Beasts That is some acts or thoughts of man even extra-corporeal or peculiar to a soul or Spirit wholly separate and disjoined from a body and which indeed are no ways discernable in the wisest Animal whereof I have made some mention in my Treatise de Anima and which seriously and duely weighed and considered I leave to the World to judge of and shall repeat nothing of it here in relation to our present subject only or chiefly now inquiring about their Mortality or Immortality without questioning our own There are indeed many and various different kinds of operation between the soul of Beast and that of us in many things as not only sufficiently distinguish us without appropriating to our selves and wholly ingrossing the word rational but seem plainly to demonstrate their Soul rather essential with the Body and a peculiar substance of the body than ours and therefore more probably terminating in and with the body some whereof having now and then occurred to my thoughts and drawn my reason to accept and allow thereof I here present you and submit the weight and consequent thereof to your more serious or solid judgement though they have already somewhat prevailed over mine to conclude the Spirit of Beast though an admirable work in nature to be a thing only temporary and fading or mortal There is in all living Creatures whatever not humane either immediately upon their first being and motion or so soon as there is any vigorous bodily strength for motion a perfect clear and evident apparency of that intellect they at any time have or enjoy as a special present attendant of their being and subsistence And whatever Adages we have of a cunning old Fox or proverbial interdiction of catching old Birds with chaff I could never yet discern but that the young Fox or the young Hawk had the same compleat stratagems to preserve themselves as the old and that if they sooner fall as a prey to the Dog 't is want of strength rather then subtilty The Kitling sure needs no instruction to catch a Mouse with a kind of cunning watchfulness as soon as it hath strength and the young Bird makes her nest with as much curious art as the old one And what is somewhat wonderful most creatures at their first production into the world are able to distinguish sounds and capable to understand the very language of their kind I have observed a very young Lamb to distinguish the bleating of its Dam from twenty other doing the like almost at the same instant and to move at her bleat only and not otherwise 'T is observable in Fowls and I have taken more special notice of it in the Turky that whereas they use three or four several notes or tones to their young ones one of allurement for food another of attraction for covering with their wings a third for progression or motion along with them when they move a fourth of admiration and wonder or warning to preserve themselves upon apprehension of danger and approach of Birds of prey they have within an hour or two after they have been brought forth apprehended the differences of these several tones and readily observed the old one's dictates Especially it would almost amaze one to behold these little things of an hour or two old upon that alarm of danger how instantly they will couch down and approach the next covert to hide themselves Nay many of these Creatures need little of document from their Parents or Dams or yet our Mistress experience there being in them a Native intellectual perception as I may say of every special and more peculiar destructive nature or quality towards them in as much as we may observe Birds taken out of the Nest never so young and bred up in a Cage shall upon the first sight of an Hawk or other Bird of Prey brought into the room presently by their fluttering and otherwise discover a kind of knowledge of some approaching danger or adstant peril which upon the sight of any other Fowl or Beast they will not Whereas most probably or undoubtedly rather to a man brought up in a Have or otherwise never beholding before any creature save humane A Lyon and a Calf would prove equally terrible upon their first approach And whereas there are many Herbs Plants and Insects too of a poysonous nature and of an absolute destructive quality to Man and Beast if received into the body for food What creature is there to be found young or old except man not able by sense or otherwise to distinguish between what is agreeable and what destructive to his nature and will at all times most certainly avoid and reject the latter unless by man inserted or intermixt with some food agreeable to its nature We see many of these brute creatures even Physicians to themselves and all of them naturally avoiding such of the Elements as are destructive to them Let a Duck hatch Chickens trial whereof
Universal World to shew me how Nature in her Work often changes even as to visible mutation of colours and to set down any rationally undeniable or incontroulable cause for instance of black or blackness nay such as I am not able in Reason to convince him of the uncertainty and dubiousness thereof That she follows any certain especial course therein no man will maintain in things of the same species That not only in Sheep a thing most common white of both Sexes for many descents produce black we find but even Crows and Daws sometimes do the like or contrary and produce white as I have sometimes seen and I suppose at this day may be seen at Saint Iames's And though it might be rare it would not appear a miracle to me but the Work of Nature to behold a black Swan The like I could demonstrate in Fruit both Plums and Cherries from Stones of another colour'd Fruit set together in the same bed of Earth black from white or red and white from black Men may talk of some portion of Mercury Salt or Sulphur in every Body adust torrified sindged or the like but how this adustion works sometime in peculiar forms and figures only let any man tell me That alteration of colour is at any time an effect of the Imagination is a thing utterly exploded and never was other than the whimsy of some mens imagination or fancy surely never any man obtained fair or black Children from the greatest strength of his Imagination If it were able to work such an Effect we should be all very fair from hope or black from fear since Passions very much strengthen if not create or ingender an Imagination However if any such thing were thus wrought in living Creatures it cannot hold in Plants which have no Imagination I know men from their imagination have adventured to set down Causes of Colours and thought verily they hit on the right and yet have been corrected by another mans imagination rather than any solid Reason Aristotle tells us the cause why there are to be found more delicate and lively colours in the Feathers of Birds than in Hairs of Beasts is this For that Birds are more within the Raies or Beams of the Sun that Beasts are Another comes and corrects him and say's he gives a vain and frivolous Cause for it and tells us the true and real Cause of it is for that the excrementitious moisture of living Creatures which makes as well the Feathers in Birds as Hair in Beasts passeth in Birds through a finer and more delicate streiner for Feathers pass through Quills and Hair through Skin And surely his true and real Cause is as little exempt of vanity unless he had been pleased or could have shewed us a Cause too why there should be so adjacent such variety of delicate Colours about the neck of a Cock-Pheasant produced from such neighbourly and similar Streiners nay three of four delicate Colours in one and the same Feather through one and the same streiner Or why in a Peacocks train at such an exact and equal distance from the Body Nature should produce that curious and delectable Colour in a peculiar form and shape and the excrementitious moisture in its streining should fail of its Beauty not only in its first and next but in its furthest and most remote motion and produce but a dull Colour at either end of the Quill Of the two opinions or causes I will give that of Aristotle the precedency because I find not only in Feathers but all Flowers that I have seen and observed that side of the Feather Leaf or Flower which is most directly within the Suns raies to be ever most beautiful and that Eye of Argus in the Peacocks train to have but a shadow of its Beauty or form on the lower reversed side And yet doubtless there are most curious Colours to be found in the very bowels of the Earth And I for my own part am neither able to give nor do I expect further or other substantial cause to be given of the beauty and splendor in any part of a Creature than the will of the Almighty in his Creation either for our pleasure in beholding or admiration to draw us towards him in considering the variety ornament and excellency of his Works Neither do I think there is any undeniable cause to be rendred why Stones ground to powder should not nourish as well as bread if God's fiat had been upon them as Satan seemed to tempt him I do not from hence go about to perswade you or any man to transplant and remove back again all final causes particular effects and fix them only and barely upon the first original cause of all things I know there are exterior Causes to be given for the blackness of this very Ink I write with and such as may not only satisfy an ordinary Reason to accept thereof as indubitable but such as may frame an ingenious Spirit towards the finding out some like useful invention But this I say there is such an intricacy in the veriest ordinary Works of Nature to him who looks any thing deeply and not superficially therein as is sufficient to shew us both our own weakness and folly and a transcendent Wisdom far above our reach Upon which there should be always one Eye fixed and ready upon all occasions to recall the other and also all our other senses and faculties permitted sometimes lawfully to ramble after second Causes And surely unless we set up fancy as I have said rather than Reason for Umpire it would so be and we should be forced at last as to the main to terminate in some hidden Cause A Cause indeed not altogether hid from us but set aside as unregarded that is there necessarily is One only Eternal immutable unchangeable Essence abundant in Power and Wisdom through its abundance shewing it self in variety in the least of whose Works being infinite there is more than humanity can comprehend which by a Law of Nature binding all things but it self continually worketh all in all What defence or Apology shall I then make first for permitting my thoughts to ramble in quest of the Nature or extract of the Soul of Beasts as well as my own and next for setting down my opinion thereof and exposing the same to publick view thereby seeming to endeavour to impose the same belief on others which I hold and maintain my self Why truly for the first it might be occasioned or at least augmented from a late private rural life and a conversation as I may say with Beasts as well as men I cannot say with the Preacher I gave my heart to seek and search out by Wisdom concerning all things that are done under Heaven but the later part of the verse may not unfitly be applied to me or others This sore travel hath God given to the Sons of Man to be exercised therewith or to aflict them or as some Translations to humble
plentiful Harvest Sorrow I affirm is a melting of the Heart from above for 't is not any apparent cause can do it at all times and a new moulding all the affections through a rectified Imagination Now whether it arises at any time from the weight and sense of a mans Sins the loss of his Relations or other cause whatsoever if it be true and real without too much mixture of some other Passion I dare boldly and confidently affirm it will have this effect upon every man that he shall not for the present plot and contrive for the gratification of any evil affection whatsoever but that that thing we call Imagination shall render all its former Devices in such case abominable and loathsome to his Affections Those busie contriving Heads now abroad in the World who think they have Reason working in conjunction with their Imagination did they feel or had they ever felt this Affection or Passion truly regent in them were they or had they been once sorrowful for permitting their Affections to be wedded to their past Inventions I am perswaded they would not pursue their present designs with so much eagerness or greediness of Mind as perhaps they now do nor would they pass over so slightly and unregarded all those Bonds of Amity and Friendship Truth Justice Mercy Pity and Compassion and the like which God has imprinted in their Nature and given them Reason to enliven the same and by which plain Light they would almost necessarily walk did not the Imagination by Passions clean contrary to Sorrow dazle their Prospect by obstruction thereof Does not the Imagination upon the least reflection of Sorrow cease its working to supply or foment all Lusts of the Flesh and the Eyes nay strive as it were to suppress them Is it possible that any Pride of Life should so far infest the Imagination as to render it obedient thereto or to comply with it when Sorrow has possessed the Heart a thing necessarily attended with Humility that is a low esteem of ones self Can any man in Sorrow do or say that to his Neighbour which Reason forbids Let Envy Hatred Malice those pleasant Companions to some receive entertainment and compliance in the Imagination at such time if it be possible Nay let a man then so much as think evil of any man but himself the space of one moment I will tell him he either was not truly sorrowful or I understand not yet what true Sorrow means Whereas Love I mean not that which is pure sends the Imagination on a thousand idle Errands Fear disturbs it and distracts it Foolish Joy ravishes and confounds it and some of them make it raise a thousand Chimaera's Sorrow alone shews the folly of the Imaginations attendance on all other Passions while it holds a Glass to it self and although it be esteemed an heavy lumpish Passion which no ways quickens the Invention a faculty in whose work we much glory though it work our shame and confusion in the end but rather dulls it Nay though it be not of it self so active and sprightly abroad as some other Passions yet it is not altogether idle at home it sweeps the Soul clean of much Rubbish casts out and disburthens it of many foul things and invites as it were Love and Charity and Good Will to garnish it and possess it in the Conclusion To rectifie or cure our Imagination this way is most certainly out of our power we cannot melt our selves thus at our will and pleasure and therefore it may seem vain to commend it to any man I only mention it to this end That they who look upon it as terrible and grievous may prevent it before-hand if so be they can For he who can or will follow the plain dictates of Right Reason and not his own Invention shall never certainly fall into it But if any man shall have done otherwise Let him pray for it let him help to advance it and entertain it thankfully if he find it coming upon him and that is a thing may seem in mans power and look upon it as a most blessed Remedy sent in aid of Reason towards the cure of an unruly wandring Imagination and its Attendants unquiet and disorderly Passions and without which we cannot easily be relieved and cured of them A blessed weakness or sickness of the mind which if the Imagination through the delusion of Satan make it not to end in Despair will so help Reason as to render our Soul in a more perfect state of Health than ever it was before Humane Imagination is the most strange thing in Nature nothing so strangely working nothing so strangely set on work nothing so deceiving nothing so deceivable nothing so suddenly alterable changable or mutable nor by such various and divers ways and means I have often in my thoughts compared it to many things but to none so often as that thing which our Saviour has resembled the Kingdom of Heaven to viz. a Drag net which by the impulse of somewhat it may be sometimes that good Spirit we have mentioned it may be sometimes an evil one it may be our affections from the agitation of the one or the other gathereth and bringeth into this Land of ours things of every kind good and bad which if some other faculty of our Soul be not able to distinguish and sever the one from the other but that our whole Soul does embrace and greedily feed on whatsoever is brought in without any difference she is in a great deal of danger of being infected with many diseases And so much the rather as that the imagination being of equal divine extraction with our Reason and capable to work without regard to present sense it becomes the door if not well looked to or guarded by which Satan sliely enters in to the possession of our Souls with an Imaginary belief against Reason and Sense too and brings us to entertain error for truth evil for good There are many seeming ways so far to reclaim the Imagination and so far to stop the common usual course of its extravagancies as that we become not confounded nor greatly and grievously disturbed in the Soul thereby that have through that very faculty it self occurred to my mind I had once thoughts to set them down But when all is said that can be said or thought that can be thought and we proceed to make our Judgement thereupon That one chiefly Divine faculty Reason which God has placed as his substitute in our Souls tells us our thoughts of themselves are vain and shews us our insufficiency and informs us we are as of our selves a thing of naught and left to our Invention worse than naught It bids us cease our vain Imaginations if so be we can and humbly resign our selves to that very power from which we think so to think as may be most pleasing thereto and safest for us We are all God knows as to what is good dull of Invention frail of
Memory and weak of Judgment whatever our Will or Affections are or seem to be and the sight of that might well put a stop to my Writing But you and every man who finds and owns himself under that Notion will I hope pass by and pardon my infirmities if there appear any discrepancy between these and my former thoughts already set down in relation to this Subject And the rather because you well know all my former Papers were out of my custody whilst I was imployed and busied in these I have already exceeded the bounds of an Epistle and will trouble you no further save in relation to some former demonstration of my weak judgement relating to this faculty of the Soul the Imagination under these four several following heads distinct and a part and those I am bold to set down as follows I. That the Imagination of all the faculties of an human Soul is most subject to infection change and alteration from the humours of the Body II. That the guidance regulation or Government thereof is least in our power of any faculty of the Soul III. That it being a faculty the Government whereof is so much out of or beyond our Power We are not answerable for its Transgression unless where some other faculty more in the power of our will through the light of Reason does apparently concur or comply with it Or that through the negligence of our Reason it was the cause of the Imaginations incorrigible rambling errors IV. That it shews its Divinity and extraction as well as any other faculty of the Soul in the manner of its Work That set on work in relation to its own motion it necessarily terminates with the allowance of Reason in the thoughts of one Eternal Wise Being or Mind Governour and disposer of all things That from such thoughts we are necessarily stirred and incited in all the faculties of our Soul to fly thither for relief and to receive direction and guidance from thence chiefly That yet herein necessary care is to be had and taken that we retain and in some measure make use of our Reason lest we become ensnared through the delusion of Satan I. Notwithstanding my Opinion of the Souls extraction its Divinity and Immortality its power here in a Body from Heavenly influence to mount sometimes above sense its strength to resist all foreign delusion through sense by Reason Its capacity to work without a Body or the help of that more present inlet bodily sense Yet it is in my judgement while it remains in a Body so far subject to some Mists and Vapours arising there from that the Imagination the Eye of the Soul is thereby often deceived And so far deceived thereby that Reason though it remain in its native strength cannot correct its wandring but is forced to yield its allowance and consent and to be led as it were captive by the Imagination This faculty the Imagination the Eye of the Soul through sense as well as otherwise necessarily and perpetually working and in motion Upon any distemperature of the Body whereby sense is in any degree or measure clouded or disturbed is apt of it self to frame and raise strange Idea's and make strange representations to the other faculties to the amazement and confusion of Reason To the allurement inticement or attraction of other faculties from that which before they naturally were bent and inclined to and thereby at length to the captivation of Reason it self This happens not from every humour or in every disease of the Body but in such disease and from such humor only as by fumes sent into the brain clouds or darkens that port or inlet to the Soul Sense Or so disturbs or obstructs those passages that they cannot afford that assistance to Reason as usual against the deceit of the Imagination Sense I say a passage way or means by the perfect openness and clearness whereof Reason oft makes a better and truer judgment of things than it can when those passages are a little obstructed and yet to the Imagination seem open and clear In sleep when that port Sense is as it were wholly shut up through fumes Reason without blame leaves the Imagination as sole Master in the Soul to frame and introduce Idea's of it self which in reality are not Yet upon the opening of Sense again they vanish or are presently rejected and cast out of the Soul as idle But when that port of Sense is open and the Imagination presents to the other faculties of the Soul as if what it presented were rightly and truly formed through Sense with the allowance of Reason and thereby a vain belief a thing somewhat more than a Dream is raised perhaps to the terrour and affrightment of the Affections Reason not able absolutely to contradict the Imagination because it seemed to have the concurrence of Sense is sliely drawn into a kind of consent and this not seldom occasioned through gross humors in the Body In which case there is in my opinion a kind of defect lett or disease in Sense though not apparent as well as fault in the Imagination The Imagination is capable of distemper two manner of ways corporally or spiritually as we say But those two kind of distempers of the Imagination the one from the Body to the Imaginations deception of its fellow faculties in the Soul the other from those fellow faculties as violent Affections to the deception or rather confusion of the Imagination it self being often confounded together and the one not sedom mistaken for the other and the fault of the Body imputed to the Soul and the fault of the Soul imputed to the Body I have thought good to set down here some kind of mark by which they might be distinguished though I offer it not with any great confidence as the light of an infallible truth appearing to me and it is this That if at any time we find and observe a Body healthful as in most Lunaticks and withal the Affections very vigorous and active and every design and bent of them ready to be put in execution by the will and the instruments thereof bodily members There we may rationally adjudge the distemper of that Soul to be occasioned no otherwise than by its own default or neglect and the Original cause of the disease to have been the too familiar intercourse and trust between the Affections and the Imagination from the neglect of Reason and a thing which Reason might have prevented But if we find and observe the Body infirm heavy and lumpish and not active or ready with the Affections to put in execution those things which are framed in the Imagination but that there is a kind of Terror or Horror observable over the Spirits and a doubting and distrust in the Soul there we may impute every false gloss and fictitious formation and contrivance of the Imagination to have its rise or result from some gross humors in the Body such as we call Melancholy such
God we may make use of with our Reason for fear of a worse inconvenience we shall scarce be able to judge otherwise of our weakness and infirmities herein but have such a true sight of them as we ought to have and make us humble not proud in Spirit I do confess we seem to have some little power over our Affections from the very light or strength of Reason in us Not to let them move one way or other in relation to objects introduced in the Soul without some kind of precedent allowance because before they fix or indeed fly as it were out of the Body towards imbracing or rejecting any thing there is a kind of Consult But the Imagination in its first motion admits of no consult nor is capable of Reason's correction till after it has moved Nay 't is so swift and sudden of motion as nothing whatsoever can rightly be compared to it in velocity and swift rise 'T is well if we can any wise stop it or change it or alter its course in the end And surely whensoever that is done it is done by or through the Affections not Strength of Reason or power in Will immediately over it Affection first a little regulated by the light of Reason and made as it were to expect some directions towards the embracing true Happiness does much help towards the correcting our Imagination But in this correction we shall find or may observe the Imaginations better and more regular motion to be rather by the allurement of some Affection than the impulse of the Will or immediate strength of Reason Neither Reason nor Will can wholly reclaim it from following or complying with Sense nor force it to work clean contrary to a present affection So as we must resign it up to some Power or Will than our own if we expect it should be guided by any such thing as what we call Power or Will III. This being premised That we have no absolute Power or Dominion over the Imagination but that as it necessarily and perpetually worketh and we cannot quiet it so it sometimes worketh against our real Will and we cannot reclaim it for who is there who willingly as I may say lets it present death of Relations Friends and other losses c. sometimes before-hand and withal in such dreadful colours as it does and that all the rein that we may be said to have hold on is only from the power which our Reason hath over our Will not to let our Affections fasten on or long embrace what is presented to them by the Imagination if so be our Reason allow it not This I say premised Let us if you please here examine how far we may become liable to Divine Justice or Humane Justice either for our Errors happening or like to happen from the work of the Imagination as principal Whereabout having many times puzled my self in relation to the manner of the Souls working you shall here have my judgment or the allowance of my weak Reason with submission to a stronger your own But here again as all along in treating of the Soul we must suppose in the motion of any one faculty no other Principal faculty is wholly exempt and secluded but has some kind of seeming consequent motion with it As is observable in our very Dreams wherein men do not only imagine but seem at least to affect seem to argue and weigh and seem to will Nay some in pursuance thereof have bodily motion they talk they arise they walk c. For if the Imagination were not attended with those other faculties or did or could at any time work alone or singly of it self I should readily acquit it in most if not all cases as blameless Now then thus I think whatsoever false or naughty or vitious presentment of the Imagination that is a first entertainment in our thoughts what seems contrary to Gods revealed will or that law of his imprinted in our minds if search and inquiry were made is gratefully accepted by the Affections Reason then in its full power and strength though Reason so far restrain the will and them too as that there follows no overt Act thereupon I think doth make us culpable that is we sin Because were our Affections such as they should be or such as we might through our strength of Reason with the invocation of Divine assistance have made or rendred them they would not gratefully accept any thing that were evil but have a reluctancy against it and decline it from some prior instruction I may say rather than present correction But if the Affections upon the first touch of the Imagination do loath and abhor that evil the Imagination brings or lays before them We are in no wise answerable for the irregularity or evil contrivance of our Imagination If Reason be totally disabled to work in us that which is right the defect we call ideocy or perpetual madness without any negligence or default in us we are neither answerable as I think for our evil Imaginations evil Affections or Intentions nor consequently our evil Actions thereupon But if that disability came upon us by our own default or negligence I think of it otherwise in relation to God and punishable by him howe're it may be dispensed withal here by man If Reason be disabled naturally and inevitably though for some time only through the fumes of the Body and the very inlet Sense stopped as in case of sleep though the Imagination invent that which is evil and some of the Affections imbrace the same and the Will seems to agree and consent thereto yet is the Soul blameless before man I think and God too For that Sense being shut and the Imagination as well counterfeiting the same as supplying the place of Reason we may without any prior obliquity in our Soul seem only to have the consent of those other faculties to our Imagination Which other faculties will utterly abhor abominate and forsake what that contrived as soon as ever Sense is open again and that they have the influence of any clearer light to move by And therefore I cannot judge any man culpable for any Act of the Soul whatsoever in a Dream Let him seem to plot and contrive first then to strike wound or kill any man whatsoever I shall not condemn him Because it is not usually any natural malignity of Affection or any evil inclination in mans will that first forces the Imagination to conceive or entertain Evil against Sense but ardency a good and lawful Affection which forces the Imagination for the want of the light of Sense to raise a fear of deprivation of what we best love and they together such fear and fancy composing a Tragedy for there is no man but dreams oftner of the death of his Friends than of his Enemies often make us seem the Actors our selves I or any man may dream of the killing of his own most beloved Child without offence Nay a man may
faculty in mans Soul and the other faculties to be raised and created thereby and to work in obedience thereto as I hold it does in Beast But so long as I find I have willed I have affected I have imagined without the help beyond the reach and sometimes as it were in a direct opposition to Sense I shall continue to believe my Soul is somewhat more than an extracted quintessence of the Body and subject to the influence of some incorporeal power Nay were not the Imagination at least subject to the influence and stroke of some supernatural invisible insensible power II. There would necessarily be a certain concatenation of my thoughts and a dependance upon each other until they were interrupted and broke in sunder by some immediate stroke through Sense which happens not at all times as may be observed I do here agree that there is generally as I have touched a concatenation of all mens thoughts even at such time as they seem to ramble upon some prior inlets through Sense without any introduction or help through present Sense But yet narrowly inspected we shall find and observe the Imagination now and then to catch and lay hold on or rather to be caught with things strangely different from and independent of what it last entertained and that a thought may succeed a thought such as has neither the least dependance with the former nor yet can be found to proceed from the stroke of any Object through Sense present or prior For instance After a long sleep wherein the Imagination has roved some few hours and in those few hours has touched upon a thousand several things and each several prior thing might be found the cause of introduction of the subsequent if the impression were so deep or our memory so good in sleep as to afford us any ground for asearch and observation and judgment thereon we no sooner awake whether through a vain fear or joy attendant upon a vain Imagination or otherwise from a sufficient temporary refreshment of the Body c. but there is sometimes darted as it were into our Imagination we may say before our Reason is awake something as clean different from independent of and contrary to all our past thoughts as may be or is possible perhaps very divine thoughts such as were not in us at any time before possess us for a while and pass away again without due regard or examination perhaps good moral thoughts of Justice c. clean different from what we had at any time before arise in us and this in such dark and quiet silence of the night as no Sense could help it to catch hold on unless that of feeling by which these thoughts certainly could never arise Nay we will put this waking case of the Imagination if I were looking and lusting and withal contriving to satisfy my what some men may admit innocent Lust that is all my faculties were busied and imployed in the fulfilling thereof and no battery through Sense is made upon me nay no recollection from any former stroke through Sense occurs to me If I shall on the suddain be startled through Imagination and begin to think that which I never thought before my Will and Affectons still standing bent and inclined as they were before that the thing I am now about is evil be it Reason Conscience or Grace or whatsoever men are pleased to call it that is the cause of such thought most certainly my Imagination is not the Subject of a bare stroke through Sense only but somewhat more For to think clean contrary on the suddain to what a man thought without the help of Sense nay perhaps against the present delectancy of Sense shews more of a mere spiritual effect in the Soul than bare independency of thought can do And he who finds not and acknowledges this sometimes strange stroke upon his Spirit upon his Imagination at least if it go no further is wholly deprived of the custody of that seal or stamp of the Imagination which we call Memory or else is very stubborn The Soul is doubtless a good subject to think on If the very thoughts of it in general raise not such a sight and such a belief in man as shall make him endeavour to pursue that which is good and right in the sight of all men It will raise such a doubt attended with some kind of fear of its perpetuity as shall somewhat obstruct his pursuit of that which is evil and naught in the sight of all men But above all the very thought of his thoughts in particular how strangely they arise how inconsistently they work how insensibly they are imployed shall amaze him for the present and at length drive him to the invocation of some Spiritual Eternal Omnipotent being Lord evermore keep this door of our Soul this common passage that nothing enter thereby to the pollution or disfiguring this most admirable frame in Nature lodged in human Body for the present but made to endure after the dissolution thereof to thy Glory whether by misery or happiness and though parted from that Body for a time never to vanish Keep it shut against all deadly and destructive assaults from Satan and his Emissaries Never let it be wrought upon to contradict Sense directly and Reason too though it sometime surmount both through thy gracious influence When a man begins to think how far his thoughts are out of his power how little his own or of himself and who is there that now and then thinks not after this manner and that Sense is not the only inlet to the Soul but we are often led by the Spirit into temptation as well as guided to that which is good It is sufficient to make a man besides himself I confess and on the one hand if he pursue that which is palpably evil in the sight of most men to excuse his sloth with a kind of inability in himself to resist and on the other hand if he find out or light on that which is good but in his own conceit and Imagination to mount a little too much above himself and conclude he is graciously inspired This notion of an insensible Spirit working in man and this insensible thinking say some proceeds from a scurvy black humor in the Blood only called Melancholy Well let it be so thought by some for the present for it cannot be made out so long as we retain our Reason to correct our thought in some measure think not too highly nor too dejectly of our selves are not dismaid nor altogether confounded in thought And then in that thing called Reason Let any man first waving his objection of Melancholy as much a chimaera of his making in some cases as any God of mine shew me and convince me by any satisfactory argument why my thoughts if but thoughts alone have been thus intent and busied on this subject the Soul of man whence it is how and after what manner it works beyond many
thousands of men endued with more sprightly or lively Affection of clearer and quicker Invention of better and firmer Memory of stronger and sounder Judgement of every way greater abilities attended with fitter opportunities and greater leisure less pestered and troubled or sorrounded with wordly affairs or indeed the pleasures of the World And this at such times as I have strived to cast away the thoughts thereof and could willingly have pleased my self with sensible Objects even offering themselves as it were to my Affections and I shall adhere to him and become his Convert In the mean time I cannot believe the more than ordinary imployment of my thoughts on such subject proceeded from any peculiar humor in the Body nor that any stroke upon the Imagination through Sense at any peculiar instant before caused it Nor yet do I believe or so much as once think it to have been the immediate gracious influence or inspiration of that Holy Spirit I have always had so much strength of Reason left me as to keep me from that inflammation of Opinion and I pray God we may all so have howsoever he is pleased to work in us But this I think and find and know that mans thoughts are not always of himself and therefore I very well agree with the melancholy temper as it may be thought of those men who have prescribed us the following form of invocation of the Almighty Spirit of the World and that immediately before the hearing his Commands that it would please him Unto whom all hearts be open all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid to cleanse the thoughts of our hearts where I yet hold most of them are hatched or fostered at least our considerate thoughts by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit c. But I do not agree with that man that shall now a days affirm that his or any mans particular Thoughts are throughly cleansed at any time we cannot so judge by our Reason while we consider the vanity and folly of our Thoughts at most seasons and I am sure we have nothing else properly to judge by Some will tell me my Reason is carnal and cannot judge of Spiritual things I say Reason of it self is not carnal it is of Divine extraction I think I have made it so appear it is an heavenly gift already bestowed on us and by which chiefly we must try the Spirits wherher they are of God or no I and that too through Sense most commonly for he who tryes and judges otherwise does it from Imagination barely Some will tell us of their faith their zeal or love of God If it be pure and real I will readily admit it to proceed from that gracious Spirit But how can I or they themselves well judge it to be otherwise than by Reason from sensible and visible effects That may deceive us indeed but that is the best and safest Judge we have in us at any time I know not how to appeal to mens Spirits in that notion some accept the word viz. an immediate light or voice from Heaven that dictates but I appeal to the chiefest safest and best distinguishing faculty of their Spirit their Reason Whether in the case aforesaid relating to Gods express commands as well as those private ones written in our hearts If the thought of our Hearts were cleansed by the immediate inspiration of his Holy Spirit we should then look upon obedience towards our Superiors and Governours Chastity and Temperance towards our selves Truth and Justice nay Love and Charity towards all men as absolutely necessary and consequent as Zeal heat against Idolatry and Profaneness or our observation of days We cannot rationally think though that Spirit be not limited or confined that the good effect it has upon man will not be as visible in one equally known duty as another Or that we can be truly zealous though Imagination may sometimes render us so to our selves but we must be truly charitable I cannot yet think we ought to be so born again as afterwards to cast away our Reason or so much to neglect it as not duly to consult it a thing through which chiefly we are born again if we are born again but follow our Imagination only I do not think Reason was a thing given us directly to resist or oppose and wholly reject every stroke that first wounds or possesses the Imagination or Affections if it came not directly or apparently through Sense and presently conclude it the sole Embryo of the Imagination No Reason the best and strongest does many times give place for a trembling yet fast hold on Mercy from Eternal decrees But yet I think that in the most evident cases of an immediate work of some other Spirit than our own in and over our own we may nay we ought to retain and make use of our Reason by considering weighing and trying all sensible consequents that may happen whether good or evil and curb the Imagination and Affections for entertaining them in other colours than what upon due advice that only or chiefly puts upon them The worst enemy of mankind needs no greater advantage over mens Souls than to have them follow or be given up to follow their own Inventions or Imaginations without any dispute or struggling of present Reason within them to behold the deception and fallacy that may be therein He shall never want besides ordinary Sinners Enthusiasts Dreamers Visionists Prophets c. and with the help of some base Affection Statists and modellers of Governments enough to set the whole World in a flame and uproar And that they do not as the World now seems to go is God's wonderful providence over it If a man once come to lose the use of that rein or let it go or rather cast it away by the strength of some Affection that is devise and pursue that which he would not others should devise and pursue were his case theirs and that in justice too I doubt even his Prayers to God to direct the course of his thoughts or his present thinking only that that which he thinks is right will little avail him in the end For such particular persons as pretend and positively affirm to see visions and hear voices and declare them as senâ— of God I wonder there is any man of the least Reason that gives any credit to them or hearkens to or regards them further than with pity and commiseration when he observes the Imagination to be so far exalted as to be Master over and command Sense as well as Reason and to raise a fictitious Sense or conceive it self raised through Sense when indeed there is no such thing And yet we see such accepted for men in their wits as we say and allowed of by some Statists who would be angry perhaps we should tell them they wanted Reason although we may truly tell them without just cause of offence they do not lay aside all passion to exercise it If there were two
on him You 'l say he has reason to love me I say so too but it will be but with a sensual Love notwithstanding his Reason for in the first case he may think and his Reason may well allow of such thoughts My Charity or kindness was with an eye to some praise to be seen of men c. or at least in expectation of some future reward and not from beholding any thing of good in him In the second case he may with the like reason conjecture my liberality flowed with expectation of a return and with some reference to my own Worldy advantage that I intended to make use of him or the like But if at any time there appear to this man a sight of truth in me that upon the greatest advantages or greatest offers and temptations to desert him I stuck to him and would not be drawn to do him the least injury or injustice for any gain whatsoever and he behold the principles of Justice and Honesty engraven in me He will then think it proceeded from my view of his deserts and some good I saw in him and seeing the like in me and placing some trust and confidence in this my Love he will make me a return and love me cordially as we say with the allowance of his Reason free and at liberty and this I call a rational Love or friendly Love and the inition of true Friendship We will imagine there are three persons before whom I have a Cause depending to corrupt whom I offer to each a Bribe the one refuses the other two accept and thereupon I have a Judgment by the two according to my sensual appetite or desire and am very well pleased therewith the question is whether of these I should love best from my heart root or soonest enter into a League of Friendship with Undoubtedly he who refused and yet I must necessarily love the other two who gave judgment for me according to my sensual desire best with a sensual Love Now in this case of my sensual Love to the two Reason was assistant towards the raising of it or else I could not have thought on a Bribe On the other side Reason free and at liberty must be the thing solely which causes me to love him who refused my Bribe and that in beholding his integrity for it is impossible I should do that by Sense his action being or working visibly against my interest There are two Litigants before me the one a Christian by the Seal of Baptism and outward profession as I know the other not but a Turk we will suppose These two I delay in point of judgment with some shew perhaps of my readiness to take a Bribe from either the Christian offers me one the Turk not but trusting to the merits and justice of his Cause and hating and detesting corruption in such case as I observe utterly refuses though upon hearing I were fully satisfied of the justice of the Christians cause and gave judgment for him whether of these two think you should I have the firmest or deepest Love for or soonest enter into a league of Friendship with upon occasion I will tell you the Turk For as concerning the Christian's action my Reason will inform me that there is no person that indeavours to corrupt me by Bribe but either thinks I am unjust or at least would have me so If I once suspect he thinks me unjust 't will be in vain to love him after the manner of a Friend for he can never love me so again or place any trust or repose in me If I perceive he would have me to be unjust he is most certainly so himself and then I can place no trust or repose in him Now if outward profession were to be the standard of this Love and my own Religion the guide I should sooner make choice of the Christian for my Friend For I behold him through Grace the better of the two and believe the Turk a Reprobate notwithstanding his hate of corruption and Love of Justice and that the Christian may be by repentance in the state of Grace notwithstanding this injustice in him yet beholding and condemning falshood in any man by my Reason I cannot in that man place a trust or repose with allowance of my Reason nor raise a trust in my Soul so as to confide in him which must be effected through Reason as the proper Judge of human Safety or felicity here for upon that is Friendship builded not on future hopes or Heavenly prospects And therefore Grace which is a kind of prospect through Faith of future felicity can neither create friendly Love nor judge rightly of a fit subject thereof but Reason Whoever would be my Friend I desire he may so be from the very formation as well as allowance of his Reason I know not what any man can behold in me whatever he see in himself worthy friendly Love by any other light than that of Reason Neither do I know if his love should move otherwise or by a greater gift how to repay him a burthen to every man till it be done but by such a return a Love from my Reason since I confess I have no other light to do it by nor without it can judge of the reality of his Love or any good in him I know there are some men who would confine their Love to move only by what they call the Spirit but whether it be not the Spirit of Delusion rather than Love will appear by its confinement within such a particular Sphere That Spirit of Love surely directs us not to reject any man in whom we behold just and upright dealing and other effects of a sincere and well-disposed mind by our Reason what falls not within the compass of that light viz. Reason may be beheld by him who infuses it through the merits of his Son not by us And whom I think we do ill to vouch in our ordinary familiar intercourses and to make him so much a party that he must love only as we whilst we love only as we please and as our own fancy doth direct us To love as Friends needs not the seal of adoption and Grace the seal of Creation is sufficient You have seen doubtless as well as I contracted mystical subscriptions in very familiar Epistles such as Yours or thine in the Lord only which though it be good and allowable in some Sense cannot be acceptable in the common notion as we are men neither can we rationally think such men will ever love us as sober men when once they seem to think themselves out of the flesh while they are in it But we may allow such as in our days use the salutation and who make bold thus to write in every Epistle to cloud their kindness in Divinity since there never was party some thereof at least that bore about them less of humanity But if such kind of men who would seem out of the flesh here and
be building of Babels to get himself a name We shall find in every brave Spirit so intitled something of the Roman temper It would leave some mark of its being here and never considers of any such saying as Thou fool this night c. much less that the world may be and continue when neither the word Roman nor the name of any one Family or People now being on the face of the Earth unless what is already registred in Scripture shall be used in mens mouths or so much as known Let no man too confidently think of immortalizing his name either from Writing or the Press It was a bold thought as well as a saying which proceeded from one when he had finished his work that it should live in despight of Iupiters anger We may well think notwithstanding his elegance he never rightly understood his Iupiter that is an eternal power who making all things out of nothing is able to reduce all things to nothing and cause things which have been as if they never were This bold saying with some of the like of his fellow Poets though it be not actually confuted in our days is not therefore to be received as Oracular Though I believe the Creation of the World with others I find no firm or just ground to believe it is so near an end as some others have accounted it from Prophecies which I much doubt whether any of us ever yet rightly understood And then we may as well believe in Reason the future oblivion of all present actions as the present oblivion of most past ones and that of Nations for ought we know or can reasonably imagine indowed with as brave Spirits and as industrious to preserve their memory and deliver it over to Posterity as we our selves A thing the whole race of human Nature for want of truly beholding a present Vanity and another manner of future felicity has is and ever will be prone unto And I my self am prone to think that before any imaginary fifth Monarchy takes place that is before the World have an end there may be yet fifteen or more successively take place and amongst these 't is not altogether irrational to conjecture that God to punish us for our Pride and self-conceit here or other secret purposes best known to himself may raise up one of such power that he may give Laws unto the World One who may make such a destruction as that in after ages Learning and Arts may seem chiefly beholding to some of his Successors for its rise And yet in this rage and tempest to shew his own power and might according to his promise preserve intire his Holy word Some have imagined the Turk may do as much as I have said Well! we have authority to say Of that day and hour knoweth no man We reckon and account upon time while we live but as time is nothing to God so time will quickly be no more with us but we shall be swallowed up in Eternity Indeed upon a call to repentance St. Iohn Baptist's words are true and necessary the kingdom of Heaven is at hand Our passage is quick and speedy and our Souls now Earthly Inhabitants must in short space know their doom And were it imaginable that they with our Bodies could sleep and become as 't were insensible till that last day though they should sleep together Myriads of ages yet upon sound of the last Trump and their then awaking it could seem no otherwise to them than as yesterday Here do we often hunt after we know not what and think to catch hold on something stable and permanent but when our very Bodies awake again through their very instruments of Sense our Souls may behold themselves to have been here but in a dream This inscription on all things here Vanity whereof Solomon seems to have had a full and clear view and was the man who first delivered the same over to us in writing is a very good and I may say too a gracious sight and prospect and a very ready one I think to point us to inquire after if not find out something which is free and clear from such inscription But it is a further most gracious and glorious donative if we ever behold it and we must never expect to behold it as of our selves and from our own strength our Opticks are naturally too weak There have been many as well Heathens as others who have obtained a pretty fair view of the vanity of all things here below from their very light of Reason what any of them saw farther I cannot say nor will go about to determine but I should have thought that tenth Satyr of Iuvenal to have proceeded from somewhat more than an ordinary poetical rapture or fancy had it not been for the conclusion therein monstro quod ipse tibi possis dare When once we think we behold that sight as of and from our selves our eyes become weak and dazled and from too intent a view of this World we are disabled to see and contemplate the glory of another that sight must be reached unto us upon our humility in beholding the other and of our selves we cannot reach it But this is a needless instruction for you and improper for this place We were minded in our search to inquire and behold what and how far worldly imployments of the Soul were necessary and commendable Whereabout I never thought it good to indeavour to hang clogs and fetters on any mans but rather add wings to it Neither is it good to amaze men with speculative Notions but rather to incourage all men to be up and doing provided a way be opened first to behold that mark which every Soul should chiefly aim at and that is God's Glory And therefore if a man can behold that and place it as the prime object and make it the main end and chief Scope and design of all his work and motion Let him go on though he expect and promise himself thereby Power Honour Riches c. besides The Heathen in setting forth and painting of Virtue covered her with fair and rich outward ornaments and trappings because they thought no man would take hold on and imbrace her naked And 't is no more than what usually are found belonging to her Yet these appurtenances should not be looked on but in transitu and esteemed a dowry of Grace after Marriage not of necessary compact before But besides a good primary intention in every Souls motion it will be very necessary and requisite for every Soul to keep a due and constant watch over her self lest at any time unawares she sacrifice to her own nets For though her good motions like Springs may seem to proceed out of the Earth yet they are in truth from the Sea and though as the Earth we receive fruit and increase thereby we ought at no time to dam them up within our bowels lest they become putrid and unwholesome but allow
should I cannot conjecture any good it will do a man towards future Happiness how ere it pleases in present fancy Reason is a gift which no man that has it how sure soever he be to have it weakned by infirmity or age would at present part with to gain the whole present World And in relation to the future I trust he who has bestowed that gift on us will not be offended with the modest use of it thereabout since as to this present World we find it does not so far avail the best of us as to make us much happier than the Beasts that perish who generally make as good use of this present World from Sense as we do from our Reason So long as we trust not in our Reason neither suffer it to contend with or strike at or batter that Faith which it self of it self is not able to raise but let it stand by as a spectator methinks those men who ingross and appropriate to themselves the title of the Faithful as others do of Infallible need not make declamations against it nor go about to affright men out of their Reason But may allow it a good gift though not a perfect gift since we own both from above and have so much Charity as to think or if they please to believe other men may be saved with it as well as other men believe they may be saved without it or at least its strength Provided they do not wilfully sin against it continue to spurn it and colourably trample upon it to raise themselves rather than any saving Faith in other men Men look upon their Belief as a pretious and tender Plant however raised not to be touched and I would offend none in seeming to do it and therefore I shall say no more of it But pray God wherein I hope I cannot offend who has indowed us with Reason such a Reason as is capable to take an impress from Heaven as well as men and as it were to resolve and melt into a blessed happy and saving Faith That of his infinite mercy he would frame in us that Anchor of the Soul fure and stedfast which may secure us against all the raging waves of the World And yet continue to enlighten our Reason while we travail here that it may be able to espy and resist all the delusions of Satan and our own and others Affections marching under the notion and colour of Religion And preserve us ever from unreasonable men whatsoever or howsoever they say they believe as well as those we term and reject as Infidels The Soul of man considered in its ordinary faculties is wonderful and perhaps a dangerous subject to treat of but especially as it may be cloathed with graces from without And he who searches too narrowly into it may sooner lose himself than benefit others From all that I could think of it I adjudge it immortal and that is the main termination of my thoughts which I dare make publick We may please our selves sometimes with a conceit of knowledge of I know not what but all is so little and nothing that let go our tenure of immortality and cast away the thoughts thereof we are at best but the wisest Beasts that perish and need not a comparison with them Did I say cast away those thoughts They are so united I think to our Nature that I dare the boldest man who denies the subject matter of those thoughts and would willingly do it to cast them away or wholly and perpetually disburthen his Soul of them Such thoughts as these to wit of some future reward and punishment have been conjectured from some actions of theirs to be inherent and arising in Mutes whereof I my self from Sense and with concurrence of my Reason stand convinced And when I can in like manner be convinced that such thoughts can be made to arise in the Spirit or Soul of any the wisest or most intelligent Brute I shall not then think my self much undervalued to have such a Beast compared to me For unless it be to resolve that question What shall I do to inherit eternal life Mine or any mans knowledge signifies but very little The resolution of that quaery belongs to your office an office you have solemnly taken upon you the cure or care of no mans Soul but my own is commited unto me The office of King Philip's Crier might better have become me To tell men they are mortal which every man owns than to tell them they are immortal which is your duty Now having in a manner intruded my self into your office and yet referring my self therein to you If you incourage me to go on and proceed and so in a manner patronize any Error by me therein committed the fault as I told you at first will lye at your door Now to God Eternal and only of himself Immortal be adscribed all Praise and Glory Amen A PRAYER of the AUTHOR'S unto Almighty God for the Guidance and well government of our Souls and the discovery and prevention of such Mistakes and mischiefs whether publick or private arising from thence as in the foregoing Tracts and Epistles are more especially discoursed of O God from whom all Spirits receive their being and who art the lover of Souls favourably in mercy look upon the Souls of us men thy most apparent image Reform us all in that part or faculty thereof by which we chiefly go astray from thy truth and do amiss Give to every one of us such a sight and sense of our own particular defects and offences before those of others as may make us humble not proud in Spirit Create and raise in us such a Faith as may not only imbrace thee in thy wonderful works of mercy but be visible in all our works Moderate and rectify our Affections by our Reason and let them not so over-power our Imagination as to make us believe and disbelieve as may best gratify them Let us not suffer that Reason thou hast given us to be born down by the strength of an elevated fancy or the unruliness of a stubborn Will but what our Reason clearly dictates to us let us readily obey Let us not abuse thy sacred Name and holy Word to gratify any evil or ambitious Affection nor suffer us at length in these our days and in this our Island through our own precipitant madness and folly to become the scorn and derision of all that are round about us and to fall as a prey to some of them Grant we may be subject for conscience sake or rather for thy sake since whosoever will or endeavours disturbance and confusion doth set himself against thee the God of order Look down and behold in goodness our gracious Sovereign whom thou hast already from banishment restored to his just right and as it were miraculously again placed over us one who retains so much and so perfect an Image of thee as to be just to all men and merciful to
in us from thence than from the inforced motion of any outward humane application We may desire and request men to exercise their Reason we may lay down before them the benefit and advantage they may reap thereby but we cannot properly be said to perswade them to it For 't is not a belief upon a bare consideration that what we at present say to them is true that is an exercise of Reason though belief in a strict sence be the work of Reason but upon consideration whether what we alledg may not be false A narrow scrutiny and voluntary search after truth is an exercise of Reason And this is the work in the Soul as it were of it self rather than from our perswasion or indeed the work of Grace which I commend We have in one place a kind of assertion of this power and ability in man to me seeming from one who elswhere ascribes all his good thoughts and actions as much and as oft to the effect of Gods Grace in him as any man whatsoever and that is St. Paul in the defence of himself before Foelix when Tertullus had accused him as a Pestilent fellow a mover of sedition and a ring-leader of a Sect That he had exercised himself to have always a conscience void of offence towards God and towards men What can his meaning be herein by the words himself and exercise but by the one his Reason by the other a will and power annexed to that Reason given as a rein over the other faculties of the Soul that is for so I take his meaning to be that notwithstanding his opinion notwithstanding his Affections adhering cleaving to or going along with such opinion notwithstanding a subsequent will or desire that the World should imbrace that opinion or belief viz. of a Resurrection which he himself had entertained with the allowance and consent of Reason He endeavoured all along by his Reason so to keep those other faculties under subjection as that they became not offensive to God or man and from thence as I infer he implicitely avers That in entertainment of that opinion he neither imagined evil desired evil willed evil or prayed for evil to any man for dissenting from him in opinion that his Imagination was not hurried herein to gratifie any evil ambitious or vain affection that he neither meant or intended or could foresee the disturbance of the present Peace or Government of that Nation in the allowance or declaration of his belief that he neither desired or aimed at riches places preferment or popular applause or admiration thereby So as when he came to review and re-examine his past thoughts and actions in the judicatory of his Reason he doubted not but he should find quietness of mind and no disturbance amongst the faculties of his Soul nor God nor man justly offended thereby I wish we all in matter of belief endeavoured as much that is exercised our Reason therein I affirm we may and can and that is the readier way by this work from within to obtain and procure his words are there ad habendam a Conscience void of offence than by the Imagination raise a Chimaera in the Soul a Conscience vulnerable in complaint from without a thing only offended when the Imagination and Affections are crossed in their course together and not else I do not presume here to propose or offer this exercise of Reason which I affirm to be in the power of most of us to do as any absolute way or means by which our Imagination and Affections may be reduced to work and lay hold on that which is good only that I refer to the only fountain of all intellectual as well as other beings through our humble Address and application thereto in Prayer from some sense of our own weakness and reserve it for a Conclusion but as a preparative thereto Neither has my Imagination hitherto so far out run my Reason or so supplied the place thereof as to make me believe St. Paul or any other was ever wholly void of offence or trouble of mind thereby But my Reason I trust to say so informs me that did we make that use of it we could or should we might espy the fallacy of our Imagination in many particular if not most cases of our life And to endeavour to awake it in our selves or others if these Papers happen to be seen is my chief aim and I hope and trust it will prove no cause of offence Experience something more than memory for 't is a judgement passed upon memory methinks might help us a little 'T is to Reason as memory to the Imagination A Fort to resort to sometimes from which it makes its sally or exit usually with some greater strength and vigour than before And methinks if Reason were not Master in us before this thing Experience which is certainly Mistress in most of us might help to make it so To see we have been deceived by our Imagination and that from thence a kind of false or feigned belief has been raised in us is sure the readiest way to prevent deceit for the future and raise in us a more true and substantial belief from Reason How oft have we observed our Affection nay our whole Soul disturbed and disquieted through the delusion of this one faculty in us the Imagination Has not that often put divers and various colours upon Objects as it were through Sense at several times and upon several occasions while Sense continues one and the same to day and to Morrow Have we not as it were Yesterday beheld things as Delightful Beautiful and Pleasant through that false glass only which to day we do not Has not that alone and not Sense raised the Proverb of the Crow He who has at several times received favours and disgraces from Court He who has at several times received admission and denial to Church preferment with either of which I was never acquainted or concerned is better able to set forth to the life his various prospects through this glass than I and better describe how ugly or beautiful the feet of those men from whom he has received both denial and admittance obstruction and furtherance have seemed at several times and I wish some men would consider it Is it not the strength of this one faculty alone so predominant often in us that introduces various forms of one and the same thing Beasts do love and fear as well as we from sense of a particular Object but I can scarce conjecture the Imagination in them can so far alter the form of the Object as to make it seem various to several Beasts of the same species at one and the same time This we find and may observe it does in us Men a Bush at a distance will seem to one his appointed Friend to another his Lover to a Third a wild Beast to a Fourth a Thief to a Fifth an evil Spirit and to a Sixth a good Angel according as
a present fancy shall render with the assistance of some formerly debauched or deceived Affection Now howsoever I adjudge affirm or maintain Affection to be the original cause of motion or work in the Soul I do not adjudge it originally to blame or to be the chief and principal cause of every uneasy or evil motion in the Soul but that the Imagination is first and chiefly to be blamed and that Affection would never imbrace any thing as good or reject any thing as evil which are not so in their Nature if the Imagination did not first present them as such Human Affection originally good naturally tends in desire to that which is good But because the Imagination the perspective by which it looks abroad is not able of its own strength to afford it a full and true prospect of any such thing it many times presents unto it in haste things as good and beautiful which in truth are not which once accepted by the Affections as good from that false glass they adhere thereto and are not easily removed but disturb us whensoever we are informed the contrary by others beating upon our Reason through sense or indeed that our Reason of it self shall too late inform us otherwise 'T is from the checks of Reason at peculiar seasons that that saying of video meliora c. has arose not from the Imagination which is most apt to delude us that we follow and are most prone to follow and if we are once given up shall surely follow as Scripture it self seems to intimate placing the foolishness of our hearts subsequent and attending on the vanity of our Imagination And therefore we should strive as far as we are able to rectify that one faculty in the beginning Does not experience daily shew us this one faculty in the Soul has deluded every thing that may be called an Affection in us by representing things on the right hand in a far more pleasant and delightful and on the left in a far more horrid and uncouth dress than in truth they are or prove to be when we become really acquainted with them and by our Affections seem to taste them Every man who has promised himself Place or Power with the delight thereof to gratify Ambition or Revenge Honour to gratify Pride Riches to gratify a Covetous desire Fleshly pleasure to satisfy a more than Beastly lust and enjoyed either I am sure will own it to himself and that a Mahometan Paradise best agrees with fancy alone and by it self as it were for whatsoever may be called an Affection no sooner tasts it but it loaths it and wants the Imagination to put fresh colours on it again to raise a fresh or as it were a new desire The things which the Imagination at first presents as ingrateful to the Affections we are rarely so long and so well acquainted with because we shun them and turn from them in thoughts as often as we can as with the help of experience to make a true judgment of our Imaginations false gloss thereon and we are never willing to stand out the trial This I am verily perswaded that that most dreadful Gulph of Death is chiefly so framed from the Imagination and is not such without its deception And that those who have shot it if they could return to us again and declare what might be most for our ease and quiet in relation thereto would bid us not to read the Treatises thereof which some have made and framed by their Imagination but advise us to exercise our thoughts towards the performance of moral duties rather than busy them about that which serves but to aggravate and enhaunce terror And I do further believe how e're we accuse our Affections therefore that it never was suddain joy or suddain fear or grief as is storied that has killed men those Passions are not so much to be blamed how suddainly soever they are awaked they only imbrace or avoid as they seem directed but that it is a strange suddain exaltation of the Imagination a thing seated in the brain which from its violent heat and motion there is able to dissolve and dissipate our vital Spirits and stop this breath of life in our mortal Bodies I do not impute our common distractions and disturbance of mind grounded as may seem to most in fears and jealousies so much to the fault of mens Affections as their Imaginations though Affection be to blame too Affection in man is generally good and inclinable to peace and quiet and if it work the contrary 't is from some false light of things darted from the Imagination however raised or kindled therein There are many thousands no doubt who from the bottom of their hearts wish and desire the quiet and peace of their Country and Nation and yet at this instant very much help to foment its differences and are ready to bring upon it the contraries thereof Trouble and War and this from a false and vain Imagination only or chiefly that we might be happier than we are because we seem not at present so happy as we would be Which deceit of the Imagination men usually observe when 't is too late and wish themselves again but as happy as they have been But it is a strange thing that they who have once observed it and found themselves deceived thereby should a second time suffer their Affections to labour under the same fallacy and not observe from Reason back'd as it were from Experience that we may be deceived thereby and therefore carry such a suspicion of the Imagination in our Soul as not to let our Affections too deeply ingage with theirs who may possibly indeavour their own advancement rather than our reformation and amendment and aim at the delusion of our Imagination by mormo's and spectrum's raised and shot into it through sense absurdly enough rather than the enlightning our Reason by offering us any thing of weight or truth Nay when the Imagination without the least ground or concurrence of Reason has once framed a belief in some men and thereby captivated their Affections how ready are these faculties together to spread the infection through Sense in others by the most ridiculous ways and means that may be Every Apparition every Blazing-Star must portend if not infallibly denote to others as well as themselves Sedition Troubles Wars Subversion of Monarchy or what else men readily would And truly so every such thing does if we exercise not our Reason and it happens once to become a general belief amongst us from the fallacy of our Imagination by the Devils Emissaries that there is such a portent but if men would be prevailed with to make use of their Reason I affirm and they would see these Apparitions portend no such thing But that it is in our power at all times to change the seeming evil consequent of these Signs or Face of the Heavens and I will plainly tell you how Let every one of us