NO PRAEEXISTENCE. OR A Brief Dissertation Against The HYPOTHESIS OF human SOULS, Living in a State Antecedaneous to This.  
By E. W. A. M.  
{αβγδ}.  Coloss. 2. 8. 
LONDON, Printed by T. R. for Samuel Thomson at the Sign of the Bishops-Head in Duck-Lane.  
M DC LX VII.   

THE EPISTLE TO THE READER.  
HAving ventured thus publicly to engage against Praeexistence, I presume not a few will be apt to demand the Reason of it: And though to satisfy the inquisitive in this Circumstance, be not very materiate; yet because it will stand me but in little trouble, I shall not refuse the doing it.  
The Principal cause then, of my clashing thus openly with Praeexistence, was for that( in my apprehension) it seemed eccentric unto Verity, and I could never deem it any thing else but a figment and an Error; and I loved not to see, what I reputed a fable and Imposture, travail so confidently through the World, and every where vaunt itself for a genuine Truth, and exact the honour and respect, and Challenge the Credit and assent, which is due alone to veracious Principles; but must needs be questioning the Legitimacy thereof, and lifting up the Skirts of its painted veil to show it was a counterfeit. As many bog and sturdy Mendicants, who pretend themselves to be Persons of Quality, upon strict Examination are found but dissembling Vagrants; so I was half persuaded, that if this Opinion, which Apes and Personates the Generosity of Truth, were thoroughly sifted, it would appear no better than a Cheat and Fallacy: And something I have done to prove it such.  
Tis confessed I might have been as Prudent, if I had kept these Lines in secret, and never permitted them to have seen the Light, unless of those Flames which should have Consumed them: But being tempted a little to make them public, it was my weakness to be overcome; and now it is too late to Repent, it is my Wisest Course to Resolve I will not.  
E. W.   

NO PRAEEXISTENCE, &c.  

CHAP. I.  
1. The time of the Souls first emergencie out of nothing, doubtful, and incognoscible. 2. Three different Conjectures about it. 3. The Authors method in discoursing against Praeexistence. 4. The Hypothesis of it stated, and explained.  
1. AMongst the dubious Theories, so hotly disputed by the Sophies of the World, the time of human Souls production, is not the meanest: That they had a beginning, is a Truth of Mathematical certitude, and demonstrable by the soundest reasons; but when they were educed out of non entity, is a problem though fiercely debated, not satisfactorily resolved; nor indeed( considering the darkness, and perplexity of it,) can we hope to have it cleared up to our apprehensions in this life, by the most painful lucubrations; the head of slimy Nile is not so recondite and occult, nor of half so difficult investigation, as the time of Souls first immigration into being; such crass and pitchy Clouds of secrecy obnubilate and hid it, that the most sagacious and quick-sighted mortal( have he never such Lyncean eyes) must not pretend to penetrate them, and descry the veiled mystery; so that unless it be revealed by a {αβγδ} an audible voice from heaven, or proclaimed by a winged Herald, from the palace of the great JEHOVAH; we must utterly despair of knowing it, till death shall amplify our science, and make us more intelligent; this the profoundest of the Latin Theologists was sensible of; and therefore having wearied himself, in exploring the time, when Souls first issued into life, he resigned his fruitless disquisitions, and was content to be a sceptic in reference to the theorem; concluding that as understanding it, was no essential unto happiness; so ignorance of it, would infer no danger. Non est periculum si origo ainae lateat, dum redemptio clareat, St. Aug. Epist. 157.  
2. But though the time of our Souls first investiture, with life and being, cannot precisely be desired by any, yet it is fairly conjectured at by divers.  
Some hold the Souls of men, are of a later existence than their bodies; and that those being first made fit for organization, they are afterwards, at once created and infused into them; according to that known tradition; anima creando infunditur,& infundendo creature.  
Others opine they are coaetaneous with these fleshly machines, and conceive that together with them, they are propagated by certain seminal excrescencies, and prolifique emanations, derived from the Parents Souls; and that they are thus produced by way of faetification, by trifling and obstreperous arguments, they would prove unto the credulous.  
Others fetch their rise a great deal higher, and give their origin a far earlier date, they make them coaeval with the Angels, and tell us they were once copartners with them in their glories; till unfortunately sliding from the aethereall Paradise, they turned poor Pilgrims upon earth; and thus the Platonists rant it, bearing the World in hand, that their essences did not then commence, when they became incarnate, and by invisible Fetters were chained to these bulks of flesh; but that they were born together with the Universe, and had spent some Ages, in the purer habitable parts thereof, before they stooped to visit, these obscure and dusky Regions.  
3. This is that Romantick dogmatism we are to inquire into; and to the end its precariousness, and falsity, may the better be detected, I shall First, propound and explicate the Hypothesis itself; Secondly, refel the chiefest Arguments, alleged in confirmation of it; and Thirdly, object the most weighty Exceptions against it.  
4. As to the Hypothesis, it runs thus; that the Souls of men, did not then first sally forth from the profound Abyss of nothing, when they began to animate these lumps of day, and were confined to their earthly Tenements; but existed long before in a divine and blessed state, constipated with various privileges, and beset on all sides with unparallelled felicity, till at length being cloyed with the joys of Heaven, they longed for corporeal pleasures; and did not only give way to the soft and gentler vibrations of them, and imbibe them in allowed measures, and proportions; but grew inordinate admirers of them, and with too lax desires, and unbridled appetites, rioted on their luscious suavities, to a rash transilience of the bounds of temperance; and this was it which made them miserable; their immoderate ingurgitation of animal complacencies, drinking deep of that Circean, and intoxicative Cup, they took a surfet, fell sick, and died to their celestial happiness; the poisonous steams which rose from that accursed {αβγδ}, they had too frankly drunk of, soon struck them with a fatal dizziness, and made them topple from their primaeval glory, into a lower and less happy station; for having stained their spotless Essences, by the love and practise of impure delights, a great disharmony befell their nature; their vital aptitude to their first refined vehicles, forthwith decayed; their vigorous reason was bound up and stupefi'd, and they themselves made quiter incapable of an ethereal life: And being thus incapacitated to live above, and driven to relinquish their native habitation; they wandered in the search of courser matter, which might make them bodies congruous to their polluted beings: Now as many of these naked vagrants( so they may be called, being stripped of their celestial bodies) as chanced to descend within the Atmosphere of this Terrestrial globe; and still continued to degenerate, soaking themselves in sensuality, are supposed in tract of time, to lose the use of their reason, and then of their senses too; which for a time( while the rational powers lye cramped, and benumbed with a deadly sopor) are thought to concern themselves in action, till at last being tired out, with violent and assiduous exercise, they likewise fall asleep, leaving the forlorn, and drowsy Souls, to the conduct of the Spirit of Nature; and this is so much their friend, that it will not permit them to lodge for ever in a state of silence; but as oft as it meets with fit opportunities, clasping hold of their plastic parts, which are invigorated immediately upon the consopition of the sensual faculties; crowds them into carnal bodies, and intombs the half dead Creatures, in these living sepulchers: And this their tragical detrusion into earthly vehicles, like bifronted Janus, wears a double aspect; for as it may be reckoned a severe correction of their immortallities, in the praeexistent state; so it may be counted a signal favour to them; for hereby they are licenced to try their fortunes in this inferior World, and to return from whence they fell, if they industriously strive to do it.  
Thus have I briefly depainted the Hypothesis of Praeexistence, and I think in its genuine colours, and proportions; I shall now dip my pencil again, and go on to portray the principal Arguments, urged to authenticate it; subnecting respective confutations to each of them.   

CHAP. II.  
1. The first Argument for Praeexistence, drawn from the nature of Divine Goodness. 2. GODS Goodness though infinite, not always Active of what is best, because subject to the Regiment of his Will. 3. This subjection proved from Scripture. 4. From the late Creation of the World; 5. And the restriction of the Law, to the Jewish Nation. 6. From the serotinous Advent of CHRIST. 7. The Perpetuity of Hell. 8. And the lapse of human Souls, if they Praeexisted.  
1. THey that present the world with heterodoxes, and would have their specious errors, pass for sacred and infallible Truths; dress them up as well as they can, in the habit of Verity, how absonous soever they be from it; and are very anxious to confirm their vafrous Doctrine, by fucous or colourable reasons; which may be as so many Statumina or sure fulciments, to sustain and shore up its ruent credit; and here the Praeexistentiaries are no whit behind hand; for the wild Tenet they assert, they strive to establish by several Allegations; to encounter and enervate which is now my Province.  
The First then, and in truth the strongest Argument they press to militate in their quarrel, and maintain their opinion, is the sovereign and redundant Goodness of the ALMIGHTY, which they hold is strictly obliged by its own nature, ever to accomplish those things that are best; and to communicate itself to all Creatures, in measures adequate to their largest dimensions, and capacities: Now the Souls of men, being capable of existence, long before they were vested with this gross corporeity; and it being best for them to have existed, long before that time; hence it inevitably follows, that they did so.  
2. That GOD is infinitely Good; is a position as true as himself, nor can he that is furnished with the reason of a man, offer to dispute it; for he is {αβγδ}, the Prince and self originated Good: Goodness constitutes his very Deity, making him to be himself; for could he be arrayed with all his other Attributes, separate and abstract from this; they would be so far from denominating him a GOD, that he would be but a prodigious fiend, and plenipotentiary Devil: 'tis Goodness that is the Head and Glory of His perfect Essence; and therefore when Moses importuned him for a Vision of his Glory, he engaged 
Exod. 33. 19.  to display his Goodness to him: But granting him to be thus transcendently and Essentially GOOD; yet that he must therefore be fatally necessitated, to do always the best things; is no natural deduction from the Concession; no more than it is to aver, he must always be working the most stupendious Miracles, because he is omnipotent; indeed by reason of the perfection of his Goodness, he can do nothing save what is Good; and by virtue of the Infinity of the same, it is as natural to him to  shed abroad his Goodness; as it is to the Sun to ray forth his light, or the Fire to disfuse its heat; but that he always does what is best, and so can do no more good than he actually does, is hugely improbable; for it is obvious to any indifferent understanding, that there is some thing in GOD, which in many cases restrains the activity of his Goodness, and suspends its efficiency of divers things, that otherwise might be done, and if done would be incomparably good; and this coercive principle is undoubtedly his Will: For these two; the Will, and Goodness of GOD, have a mutual, and reciprocal agency upon each other; and as his Goodness so far influenceth the Praedominance of his Will, as to incline it always to noble achievements; so his Will again so far controls the exuberance of his Goodness, as to select the enterprises, in completing of which( praetermitting all others, though perhaps more excellent) it shall expend itself. And this Supremacy of the Will, over the Goodness of the Divine Nature, may be made out, both by Scripture, and other forcible Evidences.  
3. For to this agrees that Paragraph of the Psalmist, Psal. 135. 6. Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in Heaven, and in Earth, in the Seas, and all Deep places: Not those things that were simply, and superlatively best in themselves, were brought to pass; but those that he pleased; such as his Wisdom approved, and his Will appointed to be done: And parallel to this, we find another Text, St. mat. 20. 15. Is it not lawful for me, to do what I will with mine own? A plain intimation, that the exertions of GODS Goodness, are not Physical and necessary; but spontaneous and arbitrary; and that he hath power to dispense, or with-hold, to dilate or contract the gratuitous collations of his favour, as he thinks meet; and very remarkable it is, that at the same time when he owned Goodness for the Glory of his nature unto Moses, he proclaimed of himself; I will be gracious, to whom I 
Exod. 33. 19.  will be gracious. Thereby assuring us, that the exhibitions of his Goodness, are entirely dependent on his Will; and that notwithstanding he is infinitely Good, he can express his benevolence as he thinketh fit; and is not bound always to apportion the effusions of it, to the fullest amplitude, and capaciousness of created Recipients( which in reference to them is best) but may ampliate, or abate the same, according to his own beneplaciture.  
4. This is farther indigitated, by the late production of the World: For were it necessary for GOD to do always what is best, and not free for him to do what he will; how comes it to pass that the World is not yet( according to usual computation) full Seven thousand years old, whereas it might have stood as many Ages? If any to wade the dint of this objection, shall fix its initial period higher, and persuade that the story of the Creation, described by Moses in the beginning of his Pentateuch, relates only to the sublimary World, and this terrestrial Planet, which was then first made habitable and peopled; but that the great Universe was longer lived, and must have its Nativity calculated by an earlier Epoch: This will signify very little; for still the Argument will be the same; and admitting the Universe were Created never so soon, yet the same question will recur; why was it not produced sooner? For since the earliest existence we can assign it, is best for it; if it be fatal to GOD'S Goodness, to do always that which is best; why did this glorious frame of bodies, and the multigenous Creatures extant in the same, sleep so long in the Lap of nothing, before they were awakened into being? Certainly if Ens and Bonum be convertibles, and if it be good to be; then it is better that the machine of the World( so omnimodously august and splended, and so pregnant with accomplished pulchritude and harmony,) and the goodly beings therein contained,( which are as so many Ectypa, dim shadows, and dark resemblances of GOD'S Archetypal perfections, as stamped with lively signatures of his Attributes) it is better I say, that these should be, than not be; and if this Position be true of them now, it was as true concerning them Millions of ages before they were: Why therefore did they not then actually exist? and, why did that Ideal faecundity,( presumed to lodge in the Divine Intellect,) forbear so long to sprout forth, and flourish into real Entities? Nothing could impead this, but the dominion of GOD'S Will over his Goodness, and the power it hath to check and restrain the diffusiveness of it.  
5. And that it hath such a power, is farther apparent from the patefaction of the Law, but to one single People, namely the Jews: For when the Majesty of Heaven, stooped to the pedagogy of Mortals, and undertook to imbue their minds, with the principles of mortality, and to instil into them an excellent Religion;( such was the Law delivered in Sinai, though the duties of it were circumstantiated with servile Rites, and a discipline operous and irksome,) he did not congregrate the whole Posterity of Adam together, and reveal his Will promiscuously to them all, and indite his statutes for them in their respective Languages, that so they might understand and keep them; but he withdrew into the unfrequented Desert of Arabia, and there in an obscure place, remote from the notices of the World, by the praeconization of Angels, he published his holy Edicts to a few thousands of People, the afflicted progeny of Heber. Now I appeal to any competent Judge; if it had not been infinitely better, that GOD should have apertly dispensed his Ordinances to all mankind, and have sealed the truth and excellence of them, by mirificous tokens from above, so that they could not but have accepted them, for the Canon of their lives; than to have committed them only unto Israel, in so private and clancular a manner: 'tis confessed, they were impowred to proselyte those of all Nations, that would comform to their Law; and to adopt them into a participation of their Religious privileges: But though this was a mercy unto Aliens and Exoticks, yet nothing compatable to what the publication of the Law to them would have been: For whereas by this contrivance, very few Gentiles were won from their Ethmiscisme, to an association in the Jewish mode of Worship; had the Law been openly proclaimed to them, they would all( 'tis like) have received it with as much alacrity, and observed it with as great fidelity, as ever the claudicant and ficcle Hebrews did; for as many as should have been Auditors, and spectators of its delivery, being {αβγδ}, or instructed from heaven, must needs have yielded; if not a prompt obedience to its injunctions, yet an unanimous assent to the equity and worthiness of the same: And they hereby recommending them to their Children; and they again to theirs, and so on successively: The whole World would have been generally tenacious of, and many every where obsequious to, those venerable Institutes; till the Moral part of them had been reinforced, and the Ceremonial antiquated by the induction of a better economy. Since therefore the Law, had it been exhibited to all Nations, would probably have found a free and Universal reception, and have proved of singular advantage to them; the divine Goodness, were it always necessary effective of the best things; should not have cloistered it up in the Custody of a few Tribes, but rather have openly commonstrated it, to all the Families of the Earth; and proposed it with awakening pomp and awful solemnities, to their strictest observation. But now that this was not done; is to be imputed solely to GOD'S Will, which laid a restraint upon his Goodness in the case; and made him partial in communicating his mind unto his Creatures; causing him to choose the Jewish Congregation, for the depositary of his Oracles, though with the preterition of the whole World besides; nor can their assumption into that Prerogative, be deemed the result of any thing else but GOD'S free Will, which inclined his Goodness to Elect them, to such an eximious mercy; they had nothing to condecorate, and set them off in his sight more than others: No inherent worth or peculiar merit, that might attract this signal favour,( or if in point of virtue they did surpass their neighbours, GOD gave them that transcendency, and if he had willed it, all people should have been their Peers; and therefore his pleasure, here checked his Goodness also, and made the difference) only he loved them( Deut. 7.) and for that cause, choose them to such an eminent blessing; and the reason why other Nations shared not in it is, because he loved them not so well; and he loved them not so well, because he would not: His Will obstructed the effluxes of his Goodness towards them, in such a rare instance of mercy, as the alarming them out of their Gentilism, by the ebuccination of his Counsels to them.  
6. Another Argument of the Sovoraignty of GOD'S Will, over his Goodness; is his adhering the messiahs Nativity, and bringing it to pass not in the Worlds infancy, or adolescence, but {αβγδ}, ( Heb. 1. 1.) In its declining Age or grandaevity; but how this should be best, and most conducent to the happiness of Mankind, is to me a Mystery; for before CHRIST the {αβγδ}, or Morning-Starr, arose in the Haemisphere of this present World; we know a palpable darkness over-spread the greatest part of it; a piceous Cloud of Error and Ignorance circumtected it; and where the beams of divine Truth shone brightest, they yielded but a kind of diluculum, a faint and glimmering light: To throw abroad the open day, was to be his work, who is the Sun of Righteousness. Herein consisted a chief part of his prophetic Office, in that he was to replenish the Earth with a pure knowledge, and the glorious displays of Evangelical verities; in that he was to be the Expositor of his Fathers Will, and the Dispenser of his mind, and the great {αβγδ}, or wise Interpreter of Heavens Secrets; and therefore he is styled the counsellor, of the World, the Word, the Way and the Truth, the great Prophet, and the like. Now the World being enveloped with caliginous spissitudes, before the Incarnation of CHRIST; and these dense opacities, being not to be dispelled till his coming; because it was reserved for him as a principal piece of his prophetic function( as I have noted) to lighten the benighted World, and irradiate the minds of men with his luminous Doctrines: Who that is Master of his own reason, will not conclude it had been much better, that the Son of GOD had been incarnate sooner, and had assumed an human body in the Primitive Ages; that so being fitted to converse with men, he might have dictated that perfect Law unto them; the publishing of which was one main end of his exinanition, as the trite diverb goes, bis dat, qui cito dat, he duplicates his bounty, that imparts it speedily: Which if it hath any alliance with Truth, fairly intimates that if GOD had accelerated the Birth of his Son, and dispensed his Gospel in the Worlds Juvenility; he should thereby have added, considerably to the Magnitude of the benefit, and enhanced the mercy to an high pitch of optimacy, which was quiter lost by its tedious dilation, and taxdous accomplishment. And since GOD might thus have ingrandized the blessing of the Gospel, by an earlier mission of his Son to Preach the same; and so have amplified the signal mercy of our LORD'S Nativity, but did not; hence it is evident, that his Goodness in exerting itself, is not tied to observe the Origenists rule, of doing always what is best; but rather that it acts perpetually, in an even and harmonical compliance with the divine Will; and diffuseth itself in larger or lesser proportions, as that permits or commands: Nor know I what could prorogue and hinder the appearance of CHRIST, till within these Seventeen hundred years; except GOD'S volition of it, and the praevalence of his Will above his Goodness, determining it should be no sooner.  
If it be urged as a necessary Remora of his Advent, that there were sundry predictions, indigitating and pointing out the time of his coming; and therefore he was bound to step into the World, just when he did, that these might not be falsified and cluded. It may be Answered; that these Prophecies were Penned, long after the time of our SAVIOUR'S Incarnation, was pitched upon and prefixed: And being thus consequent to GOD'S immutable designation, of that happy juncture of time, in which his Son was to be revealed: They cannot properly be said to prevent and stave it off, but only to praemonstrate it. As an Astronomers praedicting an eclipse to happen the next year, is no cause why it does not fall out before; but only a Prognostication of the futurity of the accident, which would have been at the same time, though he had never fore-shown it. So the praenunciations of our REDEEMER'S Birth, were not the cause why it was no sooner, but only praeindications of its future completion, which happened no whit the later for these: For GOD first punctually defined when his Nativity should be; and then Prophesied of it, adapting his predictions to a just coincidence with it: So that though the Messiah could not possibly visit the World sooner, than it was foretold he should; because these Prophecies were made to relate, to the real time of his Advent; yet they were not causal of his so long demur, forasmuch as they were inspired and delivered, long after the period of his blessed Birth, was stated and fore-ordained by omniscient Providence.  
But admit it were yielded, that CHRIST desired his profection from the Father merely upon the account of these predictions, and that for the verification of them, he was Incarnate {αβγδ},( 1 Pet. 1. 20.) in these last times: Yet still his Chronical absence, will nevertheless be imputed wholly to the divine Will, because it extended these praemonitions of his Advent so far, and drew them out to such a length; whereas it might as well have limited them to a shorter tract of time, and made the compliment of them Synchronal with the Birth of JESUS,( so that it need not have clashed with Heavens veracity) though it had anticipated that, which proved the time of its event by many Ages.  
To sum up all in a few words: It had been best for the Sons of men, that the LORD JESUS should have been manifested much sooner than he was; and therefore the detainment of him( procured only by the divine Will) clearly evinceth, that the Goodness of GOD acts subordinately to his Will; and not according to its own infinite plenitude and fertility: For then the rich and Cardinal mercy of CHRIST'S Incarnation, should have been consummated sooner, a speedier completion of it, being most consonous to the nature of the Divine bounty, if it always does what is best.  
7. A farther confirmation yet of this Truth; that the Will of GOD presides over his Goodness, so that it cannot always do what is best; may be borrowed from the perpetuity of Hell, and the interminableness of those tortures, which after this life, shall incessantly vex the Impious: For had the penalties of mens sins here, been ranted by pure Goodness, free and uncontrolled by any other Principle; it is not probable that they should have been mulcted by an eternal calamity, the oblectations of them being so transient and fugitive: But since de facto, it is so; this convincingly argues that the Goodness of GOD was not left to itself in meeting out the punitive sorrows of delinquent Spirits; but by the authority of his Will, was led to a permission of the extremest severities upon them, and made to give way to their eternal sufferings. This black and rueful Phaenomenon of Providence, so plunged the great Origen, and seemed so very contradictious, and irreconcilable to that his doctrine, of GOD'S doing ever what is best; with the same necessity that a voracious Fire burns up injected combustibles; that to make it the more verisimilous and tenable, he was fain to broach that dangerous error, touching the temporariness of damnation; and to teach that the infernal miseries are not infinite, but after the tedious revolution of indefinite Ages, shall expire and have an end; that the torments of Hell are Cathartical, and when they have once wrought a thorough defaecation, of the excrutiated Patients; they shall all be reprieved from their igneous Prisons, and rescued from that fiery vengeance which involves them, into an anodynous and peaceable condition: From which false notion of Hell, 'tis like that confused and broken fancy of the pure blind Gentiles sprung up; who dreamed that the {αβγδ}, or woeful conflagration, which at the Worlds Catastrophe, shall betid {αβγδ}, false and deceitful men; shall be only {αβγδ}, to refine and purge them from their dross and faeculence, and by an exesion of their contracted guiltiness, to reduce them to a niveous innocence: But that the Penances of Reprobates are endless, I shall ever thus persuade myself; either the torments of Hell are eternal, or the felicities of Heaven are but temporary( which I am sure they shall never be) for the very same word that is used to express the permanence of the one, measures out the continuance of the other; and if {αβγδ}, denotes everlasting Life, a blessedness that 
Mat. 25. ult.  shall never end; what can {αβγδ},( in the same verse) signify, but perpetual Punishment, a misery that shall never cease?  
Now the main foundation upon which the presumptuous Hypothesis, of Hells temporariness is erected, is this; That GOD in all punishments inflicted on his Creatures, aims at nothing but their reformation; and therefore will only chastise their improbities in Hell, till they become better, and then release them: And since this is the chief Basis of the opinion, it will not be amiss a little to undermine it, in order to subverting the superstructed error; especially seeing it will require no great pains to do it; for it is so weak and lubricous, that it totters of its own accord, and is ready to reel without a push; to set it going therefore, I shall bestow one upon it.  
That GOD in chastening offendents, always designs their emendation, is palpably false; for many times he cuts them off in the midst of their crimes, by a surrepticious death; and the chastisement depriving them of all opportunities and means of amendment, consequently prevents the thing itself: But were it granted that all the punishment of criminals here, is intended to reform them; yet it does not follow from hence, that this shall be the scope of it hereafter: For between Hellish and Terrestrial penalties, there is as great difference, as betwixt ordinary Correction, and capital Execution: Correction( tis confessed) is used purposely to better Malefactors, and reclaim them from their exorbitancies. {αβγδ},( says the Theologer) {αβγδ}. 
Clem. Alex. Paedag. lib. 3.  But capital Execution is never destined to that end; it does not assist at all towards well doing for the future, but is only a sad recompense for evil actions already past. In like manner there are several Judgments let fall upon the impious in this life; that are merely corrective and curative, to castigate and deter them from illicit things, and so stimulate and spur them on, to the prosecution of nobler interests; but the torments of Hell are purely executive and destructive,( as I may say) and will be so far from meliorating those that feel them, that they will rather conduce to their pejoration; for the exquisite Acuteness, and deadly anguish of them will be such, that it will provoke them to rage and swell, with anger and impatience; to fret and fume against the Providence of GOD, and to curse and blaspheme the Majesty of Heaven for afflicting them; and so will sink them lower, and Chain them faster into that sulphureous Lake, and flaming Dungeon, rather than any way capacitate them for deliverance: We are much deceived if we think accursed Spirits, are made of such fusile Metal, as by the longest abode in the heat of Hell, to be melted into obedience unto GOD. No, the longer they burn, the more obdurate they will grow; and their acerbous miseries running parallel with their everlasting incorrigibleness, shall be a standing testimony of this Truth, that the Great GOD does not always do what is best, but sometimes what he will.  
8. But in the last place, to come closer to our purpose. If GOD'S Goodness be not under the command of his Will, but does always what is best; why did it not perpetuate the station of Praeexistent Souls, and hinder us( if ever we were happy in a sublimer state) from lapsing into these Regions of Sin and Death? If it be Answered that GOD could not prevent this, because the nature of men was from the beginning mutable, and if they would wilfully ruin themselves( a capacity of doing it being complicated with their nature) GOD could no way help it. I inquire then why GOD did not out of his ineffable Goodness, make them immutably blessed? If it be replied because he had already Created as many Species of immutable beings, as possibly he could, and therefore was constrained to make them as they were, or else must not have made them at all. Then I demand again, whether was this mutability essential to mans nature, or only a property and appendix interwoven with it? If it were essential, then how was CHRIST a perfect Man, his human nature being ever voided of that lapsibility, which is a constituent part, and prime ingredient of humanity? And what then will become of all men, that are at last translated to celestial happiness, and induced with a constant and inalterable nature? their essence must be quiter abolished and destroyed, and they transmuted into other Creatures: If it be but a property or adjunct, why did not GOD separate it from them in their first Creation; since the abstraction and removal of it, would not have mutilated their essence( it being but a superfluous appendage of it) but have left the same every way absolute and entire? This I am sure would have been best for us, admitting we Praeexisted; and therefore the non-performance of it, to me is a plain demonstration, that GOD does not always operate the best things.  
The result of the Premises is this; that though it had been best for the Souls of men, to have lived and acted in a divine state, Praecedaneous unto this upon Earth; yet GOD'S infinite Goodness is no conclusive Argument of the reality of the thing: Forasmuch as it is no Law of its nature, to do always what is best; but rather to be subject to the motions of his Will, and to have its emanations regulated by that: So that unless that gave the fiat for Praeexistence, it could not be the product of infinite Goodness.   

CHAP. III.  
1. The second Argument for Praeexistence, borrowed from its eminent usefulness, insolving that harsh Phaenomenon of Providence, the exclusion of the Heathen, from the knowledge of the Gospel. 2. That difficulty explicable without the aid of Praeexistence. 3. For GOD is not the cause of that their misery, but themselves. 4. Either by rejecting the Gospel when offered to them. 5. Or by refusing to seek after it. 6. Or else by incapacitating themselves to receive it. 7. And the evil being thus resoluble into their own efficiency, ought not to laid upon GOD. 8. But if any be debarred from acquaintance with the Gospel, without their own default, tis probable they may be saved by the Light of Nature. 9. It being near a kin not only to the Mosaick-Law, but the Gospel itself. 10. And able with the assistance of the HOLY-GHOST, to carry men on to such virtuous accomplishments, as will avail them to Eternal happiness. 11. Or if this cannot be effected without the intervention of the Gospel, they shall some way or other be Indoctrinated with it. 12. And that the ethnics in the state they are in, are capable of Felicity: The Sticklers for Praeexistence must aclowledge; and this very agnition supersedes the necessity of their own Hypothesis, as to unfolding that Cloudy aenigme of Providence, the sad plight of the Heathen World.  
1. A Second Argument that the Patrons of Praeexistence, furnish out in defence of their Hypothesis; and next to be encountered, assaults us thus. It is a necessary Key of divine Providence, without which those grand difficulties, that occur from the consideration of GOD'S rigid dealings with mankind, can never be fairly opened and unlocked; especially that epidemic blindness, brutishness and Paganism, that involves so many Nations, through the absence of the Gospel, will be a circumstance intricate and unaccomptable. It is too plain and manifest, that the case of most men is forlorn and lamentable; they are unacquainted with the Laws of CHRIST, and strangers to the means of Life and Salvation. The cursed Empire of Hell, extends itself over the biggest part of the Earth, and the Inhabitants of it are perfect Vassals to the Devils Tyranny: 'vice is enacted by their Laws, and Sin adopted into their Religion, and most nefarious Crimes received of them for solemn mysteries, and duties indispensible: And they are born under these unhallowed institutes, and trained up in obedience to them, and settled in the belief and affection of them, by custom and education, Chronical practise and a number of associates; besides the pertinaceous and inexpugnable tendencies and proclivities of their corrupted nature to them; so that 'tis hardly possible they should escape them, but must inavoidably swim down the smooth, but perilous stream of licentiousness, till they be swallowed up in the gulf of endless Perdition. And is it conceivable that GOD who hath proclaimed himself to be Love unto men, and whose Mercies are over all his Works, should in his menages of the World, so far forget his declared philanthropy, and the essential Compassionateness of his Nature, as to sand down myriad of untainted Souls, the immediate off-spring of his powerful Goodness( before they had any way offended) to dwell in Regions so miserable over-run with filthiness and barbarity; that in all probability they must be ensnared and captivated by it, and for ever perish in a fatal compliance with it? No for certain, such an heavy calamity could never befall them here, but as the deserved punishment of some horrid guilt of theirs, and notoriously criminous deportment in a Pristine-state. But I Answer;  
2. Though the Intriques of Providence be dark and mystical, and this in particular, deep and miserable; yet I doubt not but it may be cleverly explained, without recourse to that garish Invention we have under debate: For grant the case of most men be sad and lamentable; that they are under the black sceptre of the Prince of Darkness; that their minds are enslaved to Atheism, or Polytheism, Superstition, or profaneness; and that they have no intimacy with the Doctrine of Christianity, which should disentangle their illaqueated Consciences, and infranchise their Souls from the servitude of 'vice: Yet we need not introduce Praeexistence to solve the misfortune, nor father this their infelicity on the miscarriages of a former state, to prevent daring reflections on Providence, as if that were the Autrix of it; for in Truth it had no stroke at all in it, nor can it justly be entitled to an instrumentality in producing it, as I shall endeavour to evince.  
3. That GOD had no hand, in stretching out that sable Cloud of ignorance, which obtenebrates so great a part of the World, is palpably plain from his own most infallible Word, in the 1 Timothy, 2. 4. where he expressly tells us, that he would have all men come to the knowledge of the Truth; which implies that he has no mind to shut up any in Darkness and Error; but rather an unfeigned desire of their instruction, and scientifique illumination. Nor did he only {αβγδ}, wish and desire this, but graciously attempt the accomplishment of it too; for to this end he recommended his Gospel unto men, a Pandect of the richest notions, the most celebrious and concerning truths imaginable; and by such hands as might render it most operative and influential: For that the Promulgers credit, might conciliate to its authority, and make it more taking and impressive; he would have it first set on foot by no meaner one, than his own Blessed Son; and then carried on by the holy ministry of Chosen and peculiar Predicants, his Apostles and deputed Emissaries; Persons eminent for their exemplary simpleness and integrity; dignified with the power of working Miracles, divinely instructed from above; and able by verte of their inspired Wisdom, to baffle and guile the learnedest of the Age, and to nonplus and confounded the craftiest and nasutest Sophisters, that durst argue with them, from the Stock of human reason, and acquired Literature. And that celestial Gospel, which was planted by these famous Seminaries, still flourisheth in the World; and though they do not every where culminate to an equal procerity; yet there are few places into which that three of Life, hath not( at some time or other) dispread its verdant Branches, offering unto all its salutary Fruits, that will but take the pains to gather them: And if their be store of barren Wasts, and wild Deserts on the Earth, in which it never yet took Root and Fructified: These squalled Desolations must not be charged upon GOD'S Providence, as if that weighed out his Blessings with inequal balances, giving all to some, and none to others; surfeiting these climbs with satiety of knowledge, and famishing others for want of the same: But the real ground of the calamity, is to be sought for in the bosoms of men, and it will quickly appear to be of their own procuring: For wherever People are hood-winkt with a Pagan ignorance, and have the Word of Eternal truth concealed from them, I suppose they may thank themselves for it; it being for some of these reasons.  
4. Either in the first place, because they unworthily reject the tendries of it, refusing to admit it when it obtrudes itself upon their acceptance, and repelling it with churlish and Antichristian violence; when it importunes them for reception, when it offers to visit them as a Friend, they take it for an Enemy, entertaining it with boisterous hostilities, and charging upon it furious oppositions, and so check its kind advances towards them: They hug their Chains, and love their Fetters; admire their Thraldom, and Court their Shackles; strangely doting on their infelicity, in that they are Captives unto Sin; and when the Gospel proffers its helping hand, to rescue and assert them into liberty, they scorn Redemption, and will still be drudges to their Lusts, not from necessity, but perverse Election. This is one principal cause of mens stupid ignorance of the Gospel; they will not believe it, nor suffer themselves to be informed by it; the Sun of Truth in many places, shines gloriously on their dwellings, but they are shie of his Coruscant-beams, and shut their Windows against his light, choosing to spend their life in darkness, because it suits best with their will-Works, which are always shamefac't and lucifugous; and this says the Great Evangelist, is {αβγδ}, The Condemnation, that Light is come into the World, but Men love Darkness rather than Light, because their deeds are evil; So that 'tis not the want of Gospel Light, but the contempt and disaffection of it that undoes the World: Men might be saved by it, even heathens themselves, did they not hate and shun it's influence and disdain to be subject to it.  
5. Or else a second reason why so many are ingulphed in atheism and idolatry, while the glorious Gospel is latent and undiscovered to them may be, for that they incuriously neglect to seek it, and employ their abilities in searching after it: The most incultivate Heathens we know are Men, and are endowed with the natural perfections of Humanity; they have reason, and discourse, and understanding, and judgement; by the help of which they can Dive into the nature of things, and easily distinguish truth from falsehood, and discern the excellence of one Religion from another; so that if they would but rouz up themselves, and go in quest of the principles of Christianity, faithfully endeavouring to retrieve them, by their own industry, and the divine assistance( that would in so worthy a susception, edge their faculties with a keen sagacity) they should undoubtedly attain the knowledge of them, and return with ingeminated orations in their mouths, every one vaunting the success of his scrutiny, with a joyous and Triumphant {αβγδ}. But when GOD hath Graced mankind, with the publication of his Word unto some of them; and hath supplied the rest with requisite strengths, and means proper and idoneous to investigate it( else his affirming he would have all Men come to the knowledge of the Truth, is a flat and downright mockery) and they sottishly recuse to prosecute the discovery of it, and to engage their abilities in a sedulous inquisition after it; Providence must not be criminated, with their destitution of its knowledge. There are Scriptures in the World, containing a Religion of elevated principles, under the Conduct of which they might securely march to Heaven; but they are not so ambitious of its manuduction, as to seek the benefit of it; and while they so much vilipend and slight its guidance, no marvel if they lack it: For GOD expects they should studiously contrive, and( so far as their powers will extend) make way for their acquaintance with his Sacred Oracles; and if they think much to do this for it, they shall never gain it: He will not gratify their Idleness so far, as to Crown their sluggish and torpid oscitancies, with what he hath made the reward of diligence.  
6. Or Lastly, a third reason why whole Nations, and such multitudinous numbers of People, hear no tidings of the Gospel, is because they have incapacitated themselves, for the reception of it: They are immersed so deep in sensuality, and grown so perfectly brutish and animal, and have so debauched their persons, by low degeneracies from rational and human life; that they are become unmeet receptables of so divine a mercy, and have unquallified, and disabled themselves from reaping any profit by it: And GOD foreseing this, that Evangelical monitions bestowed on them, would prove insuccessfull and frustraneous; wisely detains them, and forbears the imparture of his Gospel to them, as Husbandmen do the proscision and culture of arenaceous Fields, of whose sterility they are well assured: And this I conceive was that, which occasioned the HOLY GHOSTS inhibition of St. Paul's Preaching in Asia, Acts 16. and his avocation from Bithynia, whither he assayed to go to that end, but by a nocturnal Vision had his purpose interrupted, and his course diverted another way. GOD( 'tis like) deemed the Asiatiques unworthy of his Word, and saw them incapable of receiving it, if it had been proposed to them; and therefore permitted it not to be then taught amongst them, because the attempt he knew would be unprosperous: Nor need it seem a thing improbable, that men by nequitious practices should arrive at such a rude and savage temper, as to become indisciplinable by the Gospel, and upon that score to be secluded from it; for we must know, that by their subjection to the tyrannies of Lust, and extraordinary violences offered to them, the powers of their minds may be so shattered and dissolved, and the common notions of indispensible Truths written on their hearts, so obliterated and effaced: Reason, the {αβγδ} of Good and evil, may be so debilitated and corrupted; and their whole nature moulded into such a strange incapacity, and contrariety to things Divine and excellent; that they shall by no means be wrought to embrace them, and close with them; but must remain as indocible by the Laws of GOD, as Brutes are by the Sanctions of men; and without a miraculous change of their blockish and ferine disposition, will never be able to deprehend them, though most forcibly inculcated. Now where the Eye of Providence sees people at so untractable a pass; so woefully discomposed in their nature and faculties; so sadly besotted and brutified; and so perfectly Alienated from true Goodness, as to be utterly senseless of the rules of honesty, and deaf to the precepts of Religion; no wonder if it denies them the radiant Gospel, and lets them wander in Cimmerian darkness, because Light to them would be offensive and troublesone, and instruction vain and fruitless; and they would still live wildly and at random, in spite of the choicest Lectures of sobriety, that Heaven itself could red them.  
7. Into these three Ranks I conclude the {αβγδ}, or generality of those Pagans reducible, who are unacquainted with the Sacred Volumes, and ignorant of those Laws of Righteousness, and methods of Salvation therein exhibited. Either they are such as have oppugued the Gospel, and kept it off when it hath been fairly approaching towards them: Or else such as have supinely slighted it, and never traveled according to their power, in a diligent search after it: Or Lastly, such as by living viciously, and much beneath the dignity of their nature, have so unmeasurably depraved themselves, as to become quiter incapable of relishing its pure Doctrines, and obeying its holy discipline, and therefore were never instructed with it. And this much considerately weighed, though the greatest part of mankind; be muffled up with blindness and infidelity, and possessed with an inscious and Atheistical spirit, and go on groping all their lives long in darkness and ignorance; yet their deplorable fate is at no hand to be imputed unto GOD, nor may his Providence be condemned as guilty of inflicting it: For it flows entirely from themselves, and that they have no knowledge of the Gospel, is owing to their own antipathy to it, disregard of it, or maliciously contracted ineptness for it.  
8. Now if there be any in the World of a fourth Classis, distinct from these three here remembered, who have kept their intellectuals sound and perfect, and their affections clear from all grosser inquinations: Whose reason is not so absorbed and drowned in the puddles of sense, nor numbed and deadened by the narcotic pleasures of the Body, and a constant and vehement love and attendance to carnal delights, as to render them unfit to receive the Gospel: And who never unkindly repulsed, or scornfully despised it, and so put in an Obex to hinder its accession to them; but so far as a plausible and civill Life could do it, have pursued it, and prepared themselves for it. If there be any such in the World I say, from whom the Gospel is with-held, and not through their own defaults, they doing what they can to invite and lure it to them, by praedisposing themselves, so far as they are able to comply with it, and entertain it. Yet neither will this infer a necessity of Praeexistence; to acquit Providence from injurious dealings with them; for though their condition be hugely pitiable, it is far from desperate; and if they live but up to that Light of Nature which is within them, and those {αβγδ}, or commune instincts of Good and evil( imprinted on their Souls, at their first Creation) we may presume that GOD hath a great mercy for them, and may save them through the All-sufficient merits of his Crucified Son, by ways and methods known to himself, though unrevealed to us.  
And here if I thought the Truth of this Doctrine, that Heathens may be saved by the Light of Nature, would be scrupled; I might call forth a number of able Advocates to pled for it; and confirm it by a copious induction of undeniable testimonies, out of choice and noted Writers, both antic and Neoterick; and to make it pass the more currently, it will not be amiss to stamp it with some of their authorities: Dyonisius the Areopagite, St. Pauls Disciple, and the first Bishop of Athens, held that all virtuous livers( though without the pale of Holy Church) might gain felicity, GOD illuminating them with a knowledge requisite thereunto, by the Ministry of Men or Angels. De celest. Hier. cap. 9. St. Chrysostom taught, that before the Incarnation the true acknowledgement of CHRIST was not exacted, but that the adoration of the true GOD would carry men to Heaven. Hom. 3. in Mat. St. Augustine thought that some living under the Law of Nature, obtained Salvation. Cont. Jul. lib. 4. cap. 3. Clemens Alexandrinus avers, that GOD gave two Testaments; the Law to the Jews, and Philosophy to the Gentiles, whereby to justify them. storm. lib. 6. Justin Martyr affirms, that the Gentiles who lived {αβγδ}, agreeably to their Reason, were real Christians; and such he esteemed Heraclitus, and other Heathens to be. Melancton thought very charitably of the sober and more refined ethnics; and Luther had hopes of Brentius and Cicero. Zuinglius speaks broad in the case, and says plainly that in Heaven he shall behold Hercules, Theseus, Socrates, Numa, with other Ancient Virtuosoes: And of the same mind was his Apologist Gualtherus. To these I might add the Suffrages of Epiphanius, Ludovicus Vives, Venator, Corvinus, Collius, Andradius, and many others( were it not superfluous to recite them) all which unanimously vote Salvation possible to the Heathen, by the Light of Nature; that is, in conjunction with the efficacious sufferings, and perfect obedience of CHRIST, though some would perversely insinuate that they mean otherwise: The last here nominated stiffly maintained the Paradox, in the Tridentine Council, and is most severely lashed for his pains by Chemnitius, in his Examen of the Decrees of its sixth Session; yet neither did that Council determine any thing against the point( though he put an occasion offered by the said Andradius, and others also of the same Senate, efflagitated their Censure and decision of it) but left it free and indifferent, as a Thesis of very high probability, if not unquestionable certitude.  
And to prove the Light of Nature, a sufficient guide to Blessedness( in the absence of a surer conduct) I might argue thus; that the mosaic Law inducted many Souls to happiness, is a truth of undoubted credit,( for this was the great and ultimate scope at which its whole subserviency was leveled) and what was that but the Law of Nature published, and drawn up into a methodical system of holy Mandates, and divine instructions? And if the Law of Moses, and the Law of Nature be the same; if GOD saved the Jews, under the Administration of the first, what hinders but he may save the Gentiles, under the pedagogy of the later?  
9. Now that these two Laws, are substantially the same, may be made good by most evictive evidence; for wherein do they differ, save that the Moral Law was openly promulged to a peculiar People, orderly digested into several Precepts, and distinctly engraven in Stony Tables; whereas the other was only inscribed in the minds of Men? And as for that other discrepance between them, that the Moral Law had many appendages fastened on it, which the Natural had not; various Rites and Ceremonies joined to it, that were Types and Symbols, Umbrages and Representations of future things, this did not at all hinder their Identity; for these were merely Thetical and Circumstantial, not at all essential to, or constitutive of, that immutuable Law whereunto they are annexed, which appears manifestly, in that the Law still remains entire, though these extrinsique and appendent Ordinances, be long since nulled and prescinded, by an eternal sublation.  
Besides, that the Law of Nature, and the Law of Moses, are one and the same, as to the chief stroke and contents of them, is colligible from Rom. 2. 14. where the Apostle says expressly that Nations without the Law, {αβγδ}, can do by Nature the things contained in the Law; but how could they, unless the prime duties of both were the same, and consequently the Laws themselves, as to the substance of them correspondent and identical? And the very next verse tells us, that they have {αβγδ}, The Work of the Law Written in their Hearts, which keeps their Consciences in so wakeful and roused a posture, that they are able upon all occasions, to accuse, or excuse them in their doings, according to the Nature of their Actions, as the same Text assures us; and if we look back to the first Chapter of the same Epistle, and consult the nineteenth, twentieth, and one and twentieth verses of it, we shall find that the most important duties of the mosaic Law( as the knowing GOD, the understanding of his Eternal Power and Goodness, the Glorifying, and Praising, and Worshipping, and Serving his Adorable Majesty) may be executed, and in a good measure fulfilled by the light and energy of reason and Conscience; and this still evinceth a great congruency of the Natural and mosaic Law, and mutual sameness of both, in their most weighty and essential Requisites.  
And farther the Law of Nature, having so near an Affinity with the Jewish, it must needs claim a propinquity and alliance to the Christian Law also, as indeed it does: For it is the Root and Basis of that dispensation, and the Grand Argument, upon which the New-Testament is in great part, a lucid Paraphrase: It is a compendious Epitome of those momentous Doctrines, more copiously taught by the Holy JESUS, and the Gospel itself, in its first and imperfect Edition; so that being thus nearly related, both to the Moral Law, and Evangelical, it would be more absurd, that Heathens by a vigilant observance of it, should not be saved, than that they should.  
10. Now if it be here objected, that the Reason of most Pagans is exceeding flat and low, and that their endeavours after virtue, must therefore be so tepid, that they will hardly ever be crwoned with such perfection in it, as is requisite to make them participants of future happiness. It will be Answered, let them do but what they can, and they shall be assisted in the acquisition of such Moral excellencies, as will be rewardable with Eternal Benedictions: For if they strive but sincerely to extricate themselves, from the entanglements of Sin, and set their faces towards Heaven, in the resolute aggressions of Justice and Honesty, they shall quickly feel their debility corroborated, and their imbecilled powers fortified by divine Auxilia, aids and subsidies from above; for I doubt not but if the HOLY GHOST, who is {αβγδ}, and intimately acquainted with all mens dispositions, once sees these poor Creatures verging towards the interests of Piety, though never so little; he will immediately strike in with them, confirm them in their choice, help forwad their intentions, direct them in their progress, and supply the place of Evangelical Precepts, Councils and admonitions to them; till they arise to such degrees of Purity, as may qualify them in GOD'S account to Life and Salvation: For we must not think that the Spirit of GOD, goes no farther than his Word, and that where the Bible is not red, its Operations are not felt. No, that as it finds occasion takes a larger Circuit; visits the darkest Regions of the World; and many times sallies forth in powerful influences on the Inhabitants thereof; as well as on them that live within the precincts of the Church, and sit under the gleams of Gospel Light. {αβγδ}, The Spirit bloweth where it listeth; and if it meets with the least spark of genuine Goodness, though raled up in never so many Ashes of Pagan corruptions, it will do what in reason can be desired, to ventilate and Fan it into a burning flamme: What the Author of the Book of Wisdom( Philo as some believe) excellently delivers of the HOLY GHOST, does most appositely quadrate with him; namely, That he is ready to do Good, kind to Man, and in all ages entering into Holy Souls, maketh them Friends of GOD. 
Wisd 7. 22. 23. 27.  He is not bound to time or place, or any such like Circumstance; but with a free and unconfined liberty, rangeth through all times and Countreys, and where he lights on any that are susceptible of them, he Seals them with divine impresses, and by his mighty Blessing secundates their pursuits of Virtue in this present life, and consigns them to the fruition of a better: So that grant the Light of Nature, which blinketh in the common Heathens, be dim and luridous; and that the exertions of their innate Reason, be faint and flaccid; yet being actuated by the HOLY GHOST, and cherished with his potent and benign Workings, they may thus wax bright and vigorous, and be able to exalt them to such a pitch of Goodness, as will carry them to Immortality.  
Thus is Providence abundantly justified in her dealings with the Heathen, and fairly vindicated from all calumniative obloquys, and just suspicions of tyranny and crudelity to their Souls, for placing them in so sad a constitution of things: For though they be surrounded with multifarious difficulties, and every where begird with huge encumbrances; yet GOD hath fixed such principles in them, that if they be true and faithful to them, by the adjument of the SPIRIT, they may emerge victoriously through them all, and maugre the strongest impediments in their way, ascend to Glory and Beatitude.  
11. But if it be too venturous and temerarious a dogmatizing, to vouch the Salvation of Heathens possible, without an explicit Knowledge of a Mediator, and the Holy Gospel( as I am forward to yield it is, if it shall be so rinsed by the judicious) then we may wave that, as a loud conjecture, and without offence conclude them capable of felicity, upon another Hypothosis; that is, the morigerous of them, and such as are truly obsequious to the commands of their inward Reason; for if their impotence be so great, that they cannot though aided by the ordinary concurrence of the HOLY GHOST( whose officious Goodness is ready to countenance the most frigid offers at virtue, and promote the sickliest endeavours after it) acquire such eminent portions of integrity, as may hallow their persons( through the meritorious across of JESUS) to an admission into Heaven: Then we may lawfully believe, that they shall be tenderly regarded of the Saviour of the World; and if they keep their pullulating virtues, in a florid and thriving condition, shall themselves at length be transplanted into a nobler Soil, where those hopeful germinations, that begin to bud and sprout within them, being seasonably irrigated with the faecundant showers, and kindly fostered with the benign influence of the Gospel, shall thereby ripen into high perfections, and the Graces of Christianity. Then GOD whose Providence superintends the World, and whose mercy hovers over the whole Creation, gently brooding it with indulgent Wings; who is Good, and does Good, and ever waiteth to be Gracious; will lovingly watch over their teeming Souls, and not suffer the injected seeds of Goodness, to starve in the Womb of their conception, for lack of knowledge to feed and nourish them; but by means usual or extraordinary, will reduce them within the sound of his Word, and afford them so full an insight and erudition in Evangelical Mysteries, as shall minister effectually to their progress in Religion, and advance them to such measures of Sanctity and Righteousness, as shall avail to their Eternal glorification, and together with the Key of CHRIST'S precious merits, open unto them the Gates of Paradise.  
12. And this much the asserters of Praeexistence, are from their own principles bound to concede, that the Heathen in the condition they are in, are capable of Salvation: For they persuade that GOD'S sending them down into this Terrestrial Life, is an instance of his singular kindness to them( to use their own Language;) an after Game of divine Goodness; and a 
Lux ●…ent. ●…  mercy: But wherein lies this Goodness, or consists this mercy, unless it be in that they are here made Candidates, and Probationers for their lost Felicity, and put in a possibility of regaining it? And if it be possible for them in the case they are in, to attain happiness in the Life to come; we need no other Key to unlock the Methods of Providence to them, than this Doctrine; for it clears it from all accessotines to their ruin, and if they miscarry in the future State, it transfers their destruction upon themselves, and brands them for the procurers of their own mischief. And thus the high pretended usefulness, of the Origenian Hypothesis, to explicate the recondit mysteries of Providence, in relation to the Heathens Misery, is by its own Abettors most unluckily over-turned, and the Opinion rendered quiter superfluous, as to that great work, for the transaction of which they hold it so very necessary: For if they once grant that the Heathen are in a capacity of aspiring to celestial Bliss( which they cannot deny, supposing this Life a mercy to them) then without any farther ado, the misery of Pagans in their want of the Gospel, and the equity of Providence in suffering this their misery, will from hence be made consistent, and reconcilable enough; though Praeexistence had never been excogitated, or were eternally exploded. The Circumstances they are in, are extremely sad, but so long as GOD has not praecluded to them the way to Heaven, his bounty towards them is Illustrious, and we need not fetch in Praeexistence, to justify his dealings with them. If he be accused as guilty of injuring them, we have evidence enough to prove him innocent, without suborning so false a Witness; I mean in that Court, where unfeigned Piety sits as Judge, and solid reason is of the Jury.   

CHAP. IV.  
1. A Third Argument for Praeexistence, fetched from its trim solution of that knotty Theological Problem; the Dispersion of Original Sin through the whole Stock of Mankind. 2. That this is sufficiently intelligible without that Hypothesis. 3. A succinct description of Adams Paradisiacal happiness. 4. And the evil consequents of his apostasy. 5. The seat and vehicle of Original Sin to his Posterity, may be only the depraved Bodies, they draw from him since his defection. 6. That this Supposal granted, the manner of its Universal diffusion is very conceivable. 7. That the uniting of Souls to these contaminant Bodies, does not entrench at all upon GOD'S Justice. 8. An objection touching our notion of Original Sin, Answered. 9. A brief recapitulation of the Principals of the Chapter.  
1. THE former Argument respected mans misery, this next relateth to his Sin; but is of a far larger extent and more comprehensive Latitude. For whereas the other pointed only at the Heathen; this referreth to the World collectively. And thus it runs;  
That Praeexistence is the only expedient, to unriddle the traduction of Original Sin, or rather the commune and epidemic contagion thereof: For thus, every one will be made the Author of his own primordial Guilt; and we need not have recourse to GOD'S Transactions with the person of Adam, and so run into a maze or Labyrinth of difficulties, out of which their is no extrication: Then we need not puzzle and perplex ourselves, about the secret and imperscrutable mode of its devolution upon us; nor make any presumptuous reflections on the Attribute of GOD'S Justice, for plunging immaculate Spirits into defiling Bodies; who did not in the least concur with Adam in his foul offence, nor any way consent to the perpetration of it, they not so much as potentially existing in him, at the time of his revolt. I Reply;  
2. That this is one way to expound that mystic Head in Divinity, it will freely be acknowledged: But to pronounce it the sole means of its enodation, is too elated and Thrasonick a glorying in the Hypothesis, and savours as much of falsehood, as Arrogance: For I doubt not but a very full, and plausible account of that arduous point, neither too difficil to be understood, nor diminutive of GOD'S most perfect Justice, is as inferrible from other principles, as from this; and to propose such a solution of that abstruse mystery, the propagation of Original guilt, as is free from the objected criminations, of too great difficulty and derogation from the Divine Equity, shall be my next endeavour.  
3. And that we may tread on the surer grounds in doing it, it will not be amiss to fetch a little the larger circuit, and cursorily to traverse the Felicity of Adam, in his state of innocence.  
The Great and High JEHOVAH then, being infinitely perfect, and so perfectly Blessed in himself; though he could not thereby gain any new accession, to his own intrinsic happiness; yet to demonstrate his Wisdom and Power, and to make himself receptacles of his boundless Goodness, which is ever prove to Benefactions; He resolved to Create several sorts of Beings, and to bless them with the Communications of his Paternal Bounty, according to their respective capacities. Hereupon he first of all produced, an immense moles of corporeal substance; which in the beginning, was one dark and confused Chaos; but being reduced into that Elegant and Concumous order in which now it stands, it became that goodly fabric called the World; which was no sooner reared, but the skilful Architect that framed it, took care to furnish and adorn it with Inhabitants, and to suit their Natures to the qualities of their provided Mansions. Thus because the Heavens, or supernal Regions, are fraught with nothing but GOD'S own presence, and a Spiritual, or Tenuious substance; he stored them with Angels, and Intelectual Powers, the Fines of whose Essence perhaps, abhors all vital Union with the purest matter. The Lower World, I mean the erratic Globe we live on, as being a lump of course and drossy Corporeity, he stocked with various Animals, whose crass and ruder constitutions, symbolized with the Elements of their appointed Residence. Thus, Fish were fitted for the Waters: Fowls and Beasts, &c. for the upper Cortex of the Earth, and ambient Air: Nor were the Interior Regions of our Planet, left a naked Desolation, but perhaps were peopled with their proper Incolae, and had their close Recesses, silent Vaults and hollow Caverns, garnished with such Beings, as love those Nightsom Cells, and subterraneous Dwellings.  
This done, he took in hand the efformation of Man, a Curious and most Noble piece of Workmanship. For him, he made the lively Transcript of himself, Characterizing his Person with the Image of his Deity: Which though it consisted mainly, in the rectitude and Integrity of his mind, yet some obscurer Lineaments of it, were conspicuous in the immaterial and Immortal Nature of his Soul; his rational and lofty faculties, and Dominion over his Fellow Creatures. For that he might bear the more exact similitude, and just resemblance of himself, GOD set him on a splendent Throne, and raised him to a kind of Royal Supremacy, over all the Bestial Communities: Who, so long as he held his primitive Station, were faithful in their due Allegiance to him, and greatly delighted to admire, and serve their deputed Lord and Emperour: Nor indeed could they Shift it; for such a placid refulgency sat upon his Countenance, and such sparkling and perstringent beams of Majesty fallied from his Eyes, that every Look he cast upon them, darted wonder into their Souls; awed them down to reverential prostrations, and extorted from them, tacit significations of their subjection to him: Nor had he more command, or less obedience without, than he had within himself: For then his Body was wholly swayed by the Empire of his mind, and naturally conspired with its regular and unerring motions: His Nerves abounded with agile Spirits, and his turgid Veins with well concocted Blood: His Heat was soft and gentle; and his Ferments smooth and unctuous; and all his Members vegete and lively; ready prest for the service of his Will, and free to execute the Mandates of it, without the least check, or contranitency to the same.  
And that his Habitation, might correspond to the dignity of his Person, he was seated in Paradise, a Promptuary of rich Felicities; a place confert and crowded full with innocent oblectations, and beset on all sides with such high contentments, that nothing but Heaven could be like it. Where besides the luscious gratifications, of his chast and wary senses, which he plentifully imbibed; he swam in Torrents of Diviner joys, that frankly flowed from the indulgence of his Maker: For ever and anon he was taken up into familiar converse with him, and saw his Glorious presence under some visible Form or other; the frequent sight and vived sense of which, threw him into such grateful ecstasies, and so transported his enravisht Soul, with Sentiments of angelic pleasure, vigorous emotions of mind, and strong Aspires of seraphic Love, as almost to heave her out of her new espoused Body. And though he was not always actuated with these pathetic Raptures, yet he had wherewith to stave off dampish Stupors, and to keep himself in a Triumphant posture; for when the alarums of delight were over, and the Tide of Consolations at an Ebb; yet the memory of them so lately past, and the lively hopes of their speedy return, could not but cause the lesser Springs of Joy, to rise and bubble in his Soul, and to continue gurgling through his heart, till fresh approaches of the Shechinah pulled up the sluice again, and delug'd him with new, and happy inundations. Thus transcendently Blessed was the Protoplast, when he first dropped out of his Creators hands: But he stood not long in this condition; the scene was quickly changed, and the Garland of Felicity that adorned his temples, instead of proving immarcescible, withered in a moment: How it came to do so I must next relate, together with the evil and deplorable circumstances, of his great Misfortune.  
4. What a rare and incomparable state of Life, the first man was honoured with, I have briefly hinted; and if he had but persisted in a due conformity to the Will of GOD, and cautelously shunned all sinister declensions from his Righteous Laws; he should thereby have insured to himself, and entailed on his Posterity, a continuation of those high prerogatives, which he enjoyed: And how really desirous GOD was of this, that Adam should have held his first station, and so have conveyed down the privileges of it, to succedent Generations; is plain, in that he did not only endue him with sufficient strengths, to discharge his incumbent duties; but to make him vigilant in acting of them; severely threatened, that if he failed in his obedience, he should surely die, Gen. 2. 17. But he indiscreetly slighting the denounced menaces, rashly complied with the Serpents suggestions, and notwithstanding the express interdiction of ALMIGHTY GOD, praevaricated his Holy Sanctions, inadvisedly rushing on the instances of disloyalty: But his delinquencies cost him dear; for thereby he incurred the forfeiture of all his happiness, and being made obnoxious to the minatory Sentence, died in most of his capacities. And that he did not die Eternally, is to be Attributed to Heavens pity, which interposed between him and Hell, and snatched the unworthy sinner from so dire a misery: But that which must be noted, as most pertinent to our purpose is, that his Fall was very destructive to his Body; that it changed the Temperature, corrupted the Habit, and mightily perverted the constitution of it: So that whereas, before it was of a flexible and yielding nature, and sequacious to the dictates of his unspotted mind; cool and calm, and entirely subject unto reasons conduct; he had no sooner transgressed the lines of Innocence, by unlucky combination with the Devil, but he found himself in another World: For presently unbridled passion, usurped the Throne of his deposed Understanding, cast off its Empire, and disseiz'd it of its just Dominion; turbulent affections tyrannized over his impotent Spirit; and brutish desires, impatient of control, hurried him on to unlawful objects, with most praecipitant and fierce impetuosity; his proclivities to 'vice were made well nigh insuperable; and his Antipathies to Virtue so strong and deadly, that he could never buckle to the practise of it, but by assiduous conflicts with his reluctant flesh, and frequent repetitions of most sharp Psycomachies: In a word, when he sinned, he came under the power of a raging Principle, whose fury as yet he never felt: Then petulant Sense, which before kept under Hatches, and lay bound in Fetters of a due restraint, broke loose and perkt aloft; and clambering into the Acropolis of his Soul, could make a shift to fool and baffle his nobler faculties, and to tempt him on to sad altaxies and miscarriages: So that whereas before he might vie Beatitude with the Angels, as being their Younger Brother, and near allied to their exalted Race and hierarchy; by infringing Heavens Statutes, he degenerated from his high perfections, and through his own preposterous folly, became a Companion of the Beasts that perish; was linked to a sensual noisome carcase, and made a Stage for Wanton appetites, and base carnality to act upon, as well as they.  
5. And thus perhaps we have discovered what is that true Vehiculum, and general Channel, which so faithfully derives the impure stream of Original guilt, to every Child of rebellious Adam; namely distempered, unwieldy, and predominant Bodies, which he propagated to them; for he having by his cursed Anomies, depraved his own Crasts, and being unable to transmit purer Bodies to his Issue, than he had himself; they receiving from him gross and feculent ones, from their very first unition to them, were inevitably tinctured with naughty propensions, and a vile concupiscence; and that the Body infects the Soul with Original Sin, the CHURCH of England plainly declares; for she calls it {αβγδ}, which according 
Articl● 9.  to those reditions of the Word, that she sets down; signifies the sensuality, affection, and desire of the Flesh; and clearly intimates, that she looks upon those vehement lustings, and filthy inclinations, that constitute Original Sin, as accrueing to us from our concrete Flesh, which sinks and weighs us down, and irresistibly hurries us away into those obliquities: And that these putid Dungeons which we dwell in, should thus strongly influence our Souls, as to infect them with the afore said guilt, is not strange at all; for if we consult our own experience, and mark how exactly our minds comform and answer to our Bodies, and change and vary with the same; and how much the distemper of the one, indisposeth the other, affecting it with dullness, frowardness, frenzy, &c. according to the nature of the regnant malignity; we cannot but confess, that the result of our Souls so intimate Union with these Trunks of Flesh, disordered grievously by the first Mans intemperance; may very well be an excessive Love to sensibles, and rank disgust of inward Purity, which two Evils integrate the Nature of Original Sin.  
6. And allowing this, to be a genuine Notion of it, which I have proposed; viz. That it is a discomposure of the Soul; a debilitation and deordination of her faculties, proceeding from that rude inert, and ungovernable Body, to which she is vitally United; it may easily be deprehended, how the Guilt of it should become so catholic as it is; and so generally descendent upon every Man: For Adam by his praevarication, having brought down the Curse of Heaven upon his Head, it wrought a dismal mutation in his Body, which made it stout and refractory, stubborn and Rebellious; and apt not only to hinder the Spirit in its motion upward, and retard it in doing what GOD requires; but also to press it down-ward with a mighty degravation, and to stimulate and spur it on, to Lawless disconformities, to the Heavenly Will: And he being the commune source, and Parent of Mankind, from whom our Bodies by way of Generation, were all derived; they must needs be of the same enormous temper with his own; and consequently productive of the like sinful exorbitancies in our Souls, immediately upon their Syzygie, or conjunction; so that hence it is apparent enough, how our Nature came to be poisoned with such head-strong proclivities, to sensual turpitude, and to affect such wide eccentricities to real Goodness; or which is all one, how we came to be besmeard with Original Sin: It was not done by any cryptick transmission, or unintelligible dissemination of it from Adam's Soul, as some would have it; for then his Virtues, might as well have been transfused into us, as his Sin; a good habit being as apt to migrate from the Father to the Children, as an evil one: Nor by any fatal Decrce transferring it upon us, by imputation; for Original Sin is not only an imputative, but a Physical and inherent thing, radicated and grounded in us; a Fault, Corruption, and infection 
Artic. 9.  of our Nature, as our Church hath solidly defined it: But it springs from the Souls copulation, with this lumpish fetid Body; which clogs her with a drowsy indisposition to Goodness, and alienating her mind, from the proper objects of her masculine faculties, draws her down into a slavish affectation of, and vigorous egression after animal delights, which we name Concupiscence.  
Nor need we wonder( as I said before) that our noisome Bodies, should so far over-power the indwelling Souls, as to determine them into sinful motions, and to slain them with such an early guilt: For such a potent agency have these muddy Prisons, on the Spirits immured in them; and with so strange a sympathy, do they bewitch and charm them into compliance with fordid and ignoble interests; that I am ready to believe; if Blessed Angels, Creatures of an higher order than ourselves( though some deny it) were incarcerated in them after the same manner that we are; they would be as deeply conscious of those innate pravities called Original Sin, as any of us all: I, and perhaps of actual impieties too, supposing they could forget their past felicities, and have their apprehensions of the other life, contracted into the narrowness of ours: For then were they to act in these eadaverous Bodies; I doubt not but external objects, and the dolose baits of Sin, would be as cogent illectives of their passions, as now they are of ours; and playing briskly upon their Spirits, through the meditation of their fleshly Organs, would Lord it over their intelligent part; and hazard with an high and domineering hand, to carry them Captive in the Chains of sense, unless they were extremely vigilant. But this is an excursion; I therefore stop it, and return.  
7. Now if it be here demanded, how it comports with the Justice of the GOD-HEAD, to immerse pure and upright Creatures, into such brutish and polluting vehicles, where they must necessary be touched with Concupiscence, and tied up to constant bickerings and colluctations with raging lusts, and violent passions? To the buffonery I shape out this Answer. Supposing GOD had created all men at once, and they had all existed at the same time with Adam; if then they had voluntarily lapsed together, and of their own accord, had slid down into the evil circumstances, and annoyances of their present state; GOD'S Justice should then have been acquitted by all, and every mouth would have proclaimed him innocent of their misery; nor is he more guilty of it now: For he clearly foresaw, that if he had brought them all into Being at once, and set them down in the same happy condition with Adam; they would all have fallen from it, as he did( and his evil Fate may serve as one good Argument to convince us of as much) and foreseing this, he did not make them coaetaneous with Adam( for all the Generations of Men, could not have subsisted on the Earth at once) but choose rather to create their Souls by piecemeal, and to let them derive their Bodies from him; that so they might live here successively one after another, in the same condition, into which they would infallibly have thrown themselves, if they had been Adams Contemporaries; so that the connexion of spotless Souls, with these foul and polluent Bodies, is no whit repugnant to divine Justice; for GOD herein did but inflict that calamity upon them, which if he had created them in a better state, and given them liberty of Election, would assuredly have been the Fruit of their own choice.  
So that instead of reputing it an injury, we have reason to sense it as a special kindness of GOD, that he was pleased to take an occasion from Adams disobedience, to Cloath us primarily with these collapsed, and ruinous Bodies: For if we had inchoated our lives in vehicles of a finer composition, and afterwards had vitiated, and despoiled them by Sin, like our first Progenitor, as most certainly we should; this would have exposed us to great inconveniencies, which are now prevented: For then in the First place, our Mansion in embased and discomposed Bodies, we being once joined unto better; would have been exceedingly more troublesone and uneasy, than now it is: As it is most grievous to such as have resided in stately Palaces, to be confined to nasty Cottages: And most intolerable to delicate livers, to come under the pressures, and pungent asperities of angust fortunes, and adverse contingencies. And again it would have aggravated, and ingrandized our Original Sin, and rendered it obnoxious to the severest penances; whereas by this means it is extenuated, and made less punishable and flagitious; for we receiving the guilt of it at second hand, by derivation from our Representative, it must needs be less heinous, than if it had been contracted by personal curvities, and malicious declensions from the Rules of Sanctity, into which we should undoubtedly have swerved: And since we have both less Sin, and less Punishment, by our conjugation with these vile {αβγδ}, than would have redounded to us, if we had been united to Bodies more defaecate; GOD is not so unjust, as meroiful in the Dispensation.  
8. I should here have put an end to this Chapter, but that a pert objection tuggs me by the sleeve, and will not be pacified without an Answer. It expresseth itself in these terms: If what I presume of Original Sin, be true concerning it; namely that it results immediately, from the conjunction of the Soul with a carnal Body; then how could CHRIST evade the pollution of it, and stand( as it is certain he did) in a complete immunity from it?  
To this I reply first, that his Body( 'tis like) was of a more sedate and castigate temper, and came a great deal nearer the pure Adamical Crasis, than ours; and upon this Hypothesis, he might remain free from the vile deformities of Original Sin, necessary imprinted on our Souls, the Sanguine, choleric, Phlogmatick, and Melancholy Principles, whose uneven mixtures and complications in us, dispose us to 'vice, and betray us to disorder, met in his complexion in just proportions, and an equilibrious ponderancy; so that he felt not the inconveniencies of their intestine strugglings, and pugnacious dimications, nor of the tyrannical pvissance of one above the rest; for being fitly tempered, they subsided peaceably within him, and dwelled together in an amicable concord; and though he could evocate them as he listed, to the ministry of their proper functions, and cause them as he pleased, to serve the ends of Godliness, and purposes of the Spirit; yet they never offered to break forth into vile and brutish displays of themselves, or to shoot up into any tiresome and peccant efflorescencies; so that though the Holy JESUS had such a concupiscence planted in him, as is connatural to humanity, and always grows up in an inseparable coalition with it( such as Adam had in the state of his Innocence) yet he might be far enough from all uncomely desires and appetites, sinful and exorbitant.  
Or if this be not enough, I may farther add, that he was {αβγδ}, GOD as well as Man: That he was united to the second Hypostasis of the Triune Deity; and thereby became of so extraordinary and sublimated an Holiness, that though his suscepted Body were of the same constitution with ours, yet he could very well extinguish, and subdue those pernicious inordinacies of it, from whence Original Corruptions flow; and with as much ease by his superlative and prevailing sanctity, work a thorough subaction and compescation of them, to keep his Soul from Sin; as he could by his Power, Metamorphose the Figuration of his Visage, to save his Person from violence.  
9. The sum of all is this; Adam so long as he was Innocent, was incomparably happy; but when he sinned his Fall superinduced a miserable alteration on his Body: And whereas before it was of a delicate, even, and commendable temper, it made it cumbersome and unruly, and sadly procreative of tumultuous motions, protervous passions, turbulent affections, and vagrant desires in his Spirit; from his Loins issued our Bodies, which being made of Adams, were of the same degenerate nature with it; and consequently occasioned the like irregularities, and fatal tendencies to illicit things in our Souls, as soon as they were infused into them, which are truly and properly Original Sin: And thus the method or way of its wide diffusion, and oecumenick contagion( without the help of Praeexistence to evolve and unravel the difficulties of it) is rendered obvious and explicit, and that without any rude and indecorous justling, with GOD'S inviolable Equity; for admitting crazed Bodies, to be the Seat and deferent of them ( i.e. of those virulent influences which provoke and kindle them) it is as easy to understand, how untoward Passions, and anomalous dispositions, should be traduced from Adam to his Sons, as it is to conceive how weal-public qualities, should pass from Ancestors to Posterity, and any distemper prove hereditary. If therefore there be no farther use to be made of the Hypothesis, than intelligibly to enucleate this perplexed circumstance, the epidemic and unbounded vagation of Original Guilt, through the Souls of Men, and to facilitate the explanation of it; we need not adopt it into the Articles of our Faith, nor rank it amongst the indispensible Credenda of our Religion.   

CHAP. V.  
1. The Fourth Argument for Praeexistence, from Mens various Inclinations. 2. That these cannot proceed from any tinctures, imbided in a Former Life; for two Reasons. 3. But are advenient from the Body, custom, or Education. 4. Or it may be from an occult and inobserved Principle, which is safe to Conclude.  
1. I Pass now to another Argument, whereby the Favourers of Praeexistence, would legitimate their fancy, and Court us into a credit of their Hypothesis: It is raised from the variety of human Dispositions, in reference to Speculations and ingenuous Practices; and is set down to this sense. That Mens inward complexions, are as discolour as their outward; and the Crasis of their Minds, as multiform, as those of their Bodies; that as their are {αβγδ}, or radical Tempers, proper to their Corporal parts; so their are Mental and Animary Propensions, congenite with their Souls, wherewithal they descend Sealed and impregnated into the World. Thus it is easy to note, that some Men are strangely prove to some opinions; that they hastily grasp and catch at them, and greedily fly and fasten on them, at their very first Proposal: Whereas on the contrary; others, every whit as Learned as they; of as nimble parts, and solid Judgments, and sprightly apprehensions, haesitate and boggle at them; and though they be stated to them with an equal clearness, and backed with the same convincing evidences, yet they can by no means approve and relish them, but are utterly and incurably set against them, and their averseness to them seems to be complicated and woven into the very frame and contexture of their Natures. Now from whence springs this intellectual Congruity to some Dogmata, and coyness and antipathy to others, unless their Souls Praeexisted, and so slid down into this state; praepossessed with entire affections to some Principles, and an engrafted odium unto others?  
And the like is observable of the Geniusses of Men; that they eagerly propend to peculiar employments, and are strongly vergent to particular exercises; of which native determinations, and congenerous tendencies, no tolerable account can be given; but that their Souls trod another Stage, before they appeared on this, and were there addicted to some kind of Transactions, analogous to these which they here affect; and being much delighted with, and long habituated to them then, they still retain some little touches, strictures, and relics of them; and as their Reason and Faculties, mature and ripen, are here awakened into a fresh choice, renewed Love, and postlimineous recovery of them.  
2. But against these confident allegations it may be considered; First, how the fore-mentioned propensities are not Universal, and blended with the constitution of every Person; but are thin sown and grow up sparsedly, here and there a few, and as for the generality of People, they are strangers to them, and feel nothing of their strength and praevalence: For where there are five naturally bent to any one kind of Craft, and remarkably taken with any special Notions; there are as many Millions that are free to all, indifferent to the reception of any, that are first and upon best grounds recommended to them; and this seems to null and evacuate the foregoing Ratiocinations, which at first view appeared so nervous and forcible: For if some descend into this life, bog with aptnesses and proclivities to peculiar Arts and Theories; why then should not all( supposing they Praeexisted together) do the like? For then they could not but be devoted every one, to some certain speculations and employments in that condition; and these having gained there affections there, their Souls should be stamped with permanent aptitudes to them, and as soon as they are capable of it upon Earth, should always break out into vehement pronesses, and delightful essays to those Opinions and undertakings, which are most consimilous and proportionate, to such as they were Ancient admirers, and Practitioners of: But common experience proves it is otherwise, and well assures us that very few have a natural, and ingenite kindness, for one Notion or Exercise above another; but are alike prompt to all, and can close affectionately with this, or that, or any that comes next, and solicits their compliance upon fairest terms, and most rational accounts; which makes me strongly surmise, that mens spontaneous forwardnesses, and complacent leanings to determinate Objects, in this present state, are not reviviscencies, of any Predispositions they had to analogous instances in a former; for then they would not be so rare and infrequent as they are; but all as well as some, would fancy peculiar Notions and Professions, and we should see every one by nature inclining to such Theories and Practices, as are most agreeable to those they were heretofore enured to.  
But then again, there are several things here below, which the Geniusses of men pursue and follow with the hottest chase, that can have nothing in the upper Regions to typify or resemble them, in the least shadow of anology; as Planting, Building, Husbandry, the working of Manufactures, &c. Thousands drink in the Love of these, together with their Parents milk, and are enamoured on them from their very Cradles; yet I am sure the affectations of these Arts, cannot be derived from Praeexistence; they cannot possibly be any new expergefactions of dormient propensions, or reflorescencies of obsolete and forgotten Customs, contracted in a superior life; because there is nothing parallel to them above, about which Praeexistent Spirits could be busied: For who is so frantic or foolish, as to dream Gardening, Brick-laying Agriculture, Weaving, &c. Or any callings like them, to be in fashion in the celestial Countries? And if Men may have natural desires, and radicated inclinations to those exercises, which they could not take any cognoscence of, nor of any thing answerable to them, in the state of Praeexistence; it is plain that all the propensities originally planted in them, were not brought from thence: And if not all, what necessity of granting that any were?( For where some took their Rise, the rest might do so too) and if none were drawn from thence, then he that goes about to prove Praeexistence, by this variety of human inclinations, argues from a false topic, and his Reasonings are ill applied.  
3. But when I disprove one, it will be expected, that I should assign another cause of these pretty effects, and point out something else as a likely Principle, to give Life and Being to them: And methinks none stands so fair for this office as the Body, whose influence must questionless have a great stroke, in the causation of these dissimulous propensities; that it can produce effects cognate and equivalent to these, and so probably these also, is most apparent.  
From whence springs the odd diversity of Mens Palates and Appetites? This Mans meat( as the Diverb runs) is another Mans poison; that which I love and relish with the highest gust, my Companion perfectly abhors, and cannot endure to put it in his mouth, nor may be to touch it with his fingers: And again, what he deemeth most delicious, is to me as odious; and the very thought of his appetitious Dish, clogs my stomach with a nausea, and provokes to squeamishness and loathings; that which the Father dotes on, the Son abominates; and what the Master accounts most pure Ambrosia, the Servant hearty detests; and it moves no more longings in him, than if it were a Mess of condited Night-Shade, or a Cup of lethiferous Aconite.  
Whence come our different Judgments in Hearing? That which is ravishing melody to me, is an ugly noise, and offensive grating to him that stands next; and what my Friend esteems the most exquisite and delightful Harmony, moves me to nothing but distaste and anger: With what raised passion, and attentive wonder, do some receive those despicable sounds, of which disdain makes others heedless, and stops their Ears with deafness to them? So have I known some, listen to the wild modulations of the Canorous Thrush, as if he chanted Anthems; and cry up garrulous Progne, Summers Pedissequent, for a perfect Siren: Others I have seen admire the coactions of sallacious Frogs; and applaud the inharmonious rehearsals of the one-ton'd cuckoo, as well composed consorts: Some envy the Crane for his harsh vociferations, more than Philoxenus did for his extended Neck; and others marvel as much, at the scurvy Hollowings of the Weak-ey'd Owl, as the Birds do at her mopish Visage, when she peeps abroad by Day-light: Some prefer the inauspicious crocitations of the raucous Night-Raven, before sweet-noted Philomela's music, and the pleasantest Ditties of the winged Choristers; and others had rather attend to the rueful yawlings of Juno's bide, prinkt up with varicolour gaieties, the spoils of drowsy Argus; than the farewell Tunes of the solitary Swan, when sitting on his watery Hearse, he Sings his own Dirge's: Some again value the Bagpipe-Drone, above the Altisonous Organ, and others had as live hear the dolesome threnes of departing Clinicks, or piteous out-Cries of vagient Infants, as a Lesson on the Lute or Dulcimer. But not to be tedious; that which to one Mans hearing is Pleasant, to anothers is intolerable.  
And the like may be said of the rest of the Senses: Some hate the most aromatic Odours, as much as the Fumigations of the Death-Bed: Others have had their Skins blistered with the touch of a Rose, as if it had been a plaster of Cantharides: And others again have swooned at the sight of wholesome Diet; and that which should have releiv'd their Spirits, has afflicted them with a Syncope.  
Now what is the cause I say, that we affect these things so diversely( our Souls being all alike) but only that our Bodies differing a little in their respective Craseis or Composures, strangely vary our Sensations? And if the Body can thus cause us, to Love, and Dislike Sensibles; why not as well to Approve, and disrelish Trades, and Sciences, which are conversant about them?  
How easy is it to conceive( me-thinks) that he, whose Crasis favours judgement, should delight in the Rimation of Natures Secrets, and the Studies of Physiologie, wherein that Faculty is so useful? And that another, whose Constitution is advantageous unto fancy, should take a special liking unto music, Limning, Poetry, and Romancing, where Invention is so concerned? And that a Third, whose Temperament is perfective of Memory, should fall in Love with Arithmatique, Historiography, and Chronology, which a tenacious Reminiscency renders most facile and practicable? And that a Fourth, excelling in none of these Properties, should be indifferently given to any of these Studies, and able by an Ingenuous sedulity, to gain a competent Knowledge in them all? And from some influence of the Body it may very well be,( especially if Custom, or Education be found in conjunction with that Corporal praedominance) that Aesculapius, Mars, Vulcan, &c. Should have their proper Devoto's, and Zealous Sectators.  
Yea farther, it seems very probable to me, that the Corporeal part, should sway the Mind in reference to repudiating, or embracing the sublimest, and most abstracted Notions; whether of mathematics, metaphysics, or Theology: Who knows not that the soundness of the Intellect, and the perfection of Reason, depend much upon the fabric, and modification of Mens Organs? That some are perfect Innocents, and idiots, and others stupid Dunces, and invincible Ignorants, merely from the imperfection of those alone? And if the Frame of the Body, by its redundancy or defectiveness, can thus pervert the Understanding, and after the clearness and perspicacity thereof; I think we may well pronounce it, the likely occasion of those free intellectual compliances, and shie aversations, which show themselves in different Persons, to the same Opinions; for every one must conclude concerning them, according to their own ideas and perceptions of them: And the apprehensions of some, by reason of the rectitude of their Bodies, being more quick and penetrative; and those of others, because of the depravedness of the same, hebete and torpid; hence it happens, that some on their first hearing, are passionate amourists of those Dogmata, which before they were unacquainted with, they instantly comprehending their pulchritude and rationality; while others, are fain to suspend their assent for a long time, and cannot become their hearty Proselytes, till they have more thoroughly sifted their warrantableness and solidity; and so by a slacken and tardigradous progress, finally arrive at the approbation of them.  
But when all perplexities are quiter unfolded, and difficulties removed, and obscurities banished, and the presented Theories are laid naked and bare to the understandings of Men, and reason pleads for their admission into the affections; if then they cannot embrace and love them, but still( when their truth and sincerity, is as clear as the Meridian Sun) repulse and shun them; yet neither does this at all evince, that their Souls sunk down hither out of another life, prepossessed with any prejudicies, against the proposed speculations: For this there scrupulosity and irreconcileableness to them, may arise purely from those anticipations, and preconceptions, which custom and Education have instiled into them; whereby their affections are so ensnared, and captivated with extreme fondness to adverse Principles, that they cannot for their lives, discard their old Favourites, to take in novel Sentiments in their room, though they have much greater reason to be kindly entertained, than those glozing Sycophants, and less veracious Principles, which have so long been the welcome Guests. custom we know is a second Nature; and if once absurdities come to be naturalised, by use and education; it will be hard to eradicate them, and to disabuse the mind from those prepossessions she labours under, though never so nonsensical and ridiculous: And if it be hard to emancipate the thoughts, when servilely enslaved to false Prolepses; it must upon the same score be difficult also, to make them fasten upon genuine apprehensions of those things, whereof they have hitherto been misperswaded: For contrary opinions cannot dwell together in the same mind at once; we must therefore be divorced from the false, before we can be espoused to the true; and if a Customary dilection of spurious notions, makes the first work uneasy, it must necessary make the latter so too: Wherefore we need not ascribe our perverse reluctancies, to close with palpable Truths, to any congenial dislikes or incongruities to them, born into the World with us; but only to our non-intellections of them; or else to our familiarity, and long addictedness to opposite Doctrines, whereby we are obfirmed, and holden in an inexpugnable disaffection of them: And for the farther confirmation of this, I challenge any Man to speak, when ever he met with an Ingenious Philosopher, and propounded a rational maxim to him, in prejudice of which he never red, nor heard, nor observed any thing; and he did not readily own it, and without the least tergiversation amicably fall in and comply with it, notwithstanding his stiffest natural indispositions thereunto; provided that he had full, and right conceivings of it?  
4. But when all is done, if this Hypothesis proves too weak and narrow, to bottom these Phaenomena upon; if the influence of the Body, custom and Education, will not satisfactorily explicate, the great diversity of mens insitous vergencies and propensions; they may then be imputed to a secret Causality, and pronounced the effects of a Latent and incognite Principle: And though this may seem less Philosophical, yet I am sure it is a far safer Course, than to deduce them from Praeexistence; for thus we do but modestly confess our own Blindness and Ignorance, which perhaps at last the Studies of the Ingenuous, may enlighten and abolish; whereas they that Right or Wrong, will make Praeexistence the source of these inclinations, and think they have thereby completely solved them; run themselves upon bigger Prejudicies, and become guilty of the Tinkers error, that in mending one hole, makes two; for while by this means, they( in their own apprehensions) boult one door against a Rout of Absurdities, they fling open another to numerous inconveniences, and let in such a train and rabble of audacious Errors, as do not only tumult and mutiny amongst themselves, to the great disparagement of the Hypothesis; but daringly confront the Churches Authority, and rudely insolence Religion her self, contemerating her hallowed Institutions. This charge I might make good, by a large Enumeration of the Antistaechal, or inconsistent Notions coincident with Praeexistence; and its huge disconformities to the HOLY CHURCH, in her professed Doctrines; but the digression would be too tedious and unseasonable; I forbear it therefore, and go on where I left.  
I say then, if our bodily Tempers, and the Usages and Assuefactions of Life, in which we have been trained up and nurtured, seem not adequate Causes, of our different Inclinations and Geniusses; we may securely believe there is something else, though we cannot positively determine what, that is concurrent to the production of them: And for my own part, I am half persuaded, that the same active Principle which Rules in the diversimodous Nidulations of Birds; and elegant Glomerations of Industrious Silk-Worms, that directs Ingenious Arachne, in her pretty Weavings, and prompts laborious infects, in rearing their mellifluous Combs: That guides the Brutes to such peculiar Games; and instructs them in the crafty insidiations of their Preys: That sows the Seeds of Love and Enmity, between things voided of Passion; in Kind and Amorous Sympathies, and across, discordant, fell Antypathies. Some such thing I say( though I cannot think it that Prodigious Hobgoblin, the Spirit of Nature) which produceth these strange effects; where the Genius is naturally bent to any special exercise, may put a Bias in the fancy, and wind and draw it to the same.   

CHAP. VI.  
1. A Fifth Argument, from the Praeexistence of the messiahs Soul; 2. Refuted.  
1. THE Next Argument to confirm the Hypothesis, is the Praeexistence of our Saviours Humanity: His Soul( say our Antagonists) was in Being long before he assumed Flesh, and actuated a Terrestrial Body: He appeared to the patriarches of Old, and transacted with Moses, about freeing Israel from the egyptian Bondage; and when he had broken the Yoke of their intolerable Thraldom, and lead them into liberty; he gave them a Law from Heaven, and became their Mighty Patron and Protector, all along governing and conducting them, in their tedious Marches to the Land of Promise. And least this Argumentation should fail of success, and be rejected as an empty Fiction, and vain Conjecture, of the Phansiful and Opinionative; it is backed with a number of Holy Scriptures, and there is scarce a Text in the sacred Book, which speaks of his Deserting his Glory, his Descent from above, his Profection from the Father, and his Return to him again; but is deemed an authentic evidence of this Supposition, that the Soul of JESUS existed before his Incarnation.  
2. Now not to squabble about the truth of this ( which is very doubtful) I shall quickly yield, that the Soul of CHRIST was long extent, before it was Incarnate. But then certainly this is a very rotten and lubricous Foundation, for a General Praeexistence; and to conclude that from hence, would be an Inference guilty of shameful presumption and inconsequence: For there are divers ponderous Reasons for our LORD'S {αβγδ}, which cannot be alleged for ours.  
As First; He was the incomparable and peerless Favourite of the GOD-HEAD, and immeasurably endeared to the HOLY TRIAD: He was {αβγδ}, the BELOVED Son, and was affencted by 
Mat. 3. ●… ult.  the DIVINITY, with an infinite tenderness, such as no {αβγδ} mere Man, no nor the loftiest Angel must expect; and being thus highly advanced in the Divine Love, no marvel if he were dignified with extraordinary Kindnesses, and raised to a participation of such matchless Prerogatives( of which Praeexistence might be one) as were never to be indulged to the common sort of Mortals.  
Again, one prime End of his Mission hither, was to suffer bitter and terrible things, for the Sons of Men; he was to be despised and mocked, persecuted and betrayed, slandered and reviled, spit upon and buffeted; he was to be falsely accused, unjustly condemned, and ignominiously Crucified: And on his across he was to bear the Sins of all the World; and to grapple with the wrath of an incensed Deity; and to sustain the heavy malediction of the Law; and to be made a Victim to his Fathers JUSTICE, and a perfect Holocaust to expiate our high offences, and atone the Majesty of Heaven to us; it was but just therefore that he should Praeexist, that so these his Passions might be ushered in with a previous Happiness; and that he might possess the Beatitude of the celestial Life, as an Ante-praemium, to sweeten and alleviate his ensuing Miseries.  
But then besides( for I Study brevity) it was requisite he should Praeexist upon another account; namely, that he might be the Head and Husband of the CHURCH, to instruct and guide it, superintend and moderate the affairs of it; that so those Souls, which were in the End, to be bought with the effusion of his Blood, might from the beginning, be ruled by his Power and Goodness, and live under his Tutelary Care and Providence.  
So that grant our Redeemer's Soul to have Praeexisted; yet there being not the same Reasons for us to do as he did; his Praeexistence cannot be Conclusive of ours.   

CHAP. VII.  
1. Another Argument for Praeexistence, from the great Right it does the ALMIGHTY, consisting of two Branches. 2. The first Branch urged, 3. And answered. 4. The second Branch urged, 5. And answered.  
1. A Sixth Argument which stands up for Praeexistence, and offers to maintain its Interest, delivers itself to this effect; That it speaks more true and honourable things of GOD, than the Hypothesis of immediate Creation; and does not bespatter him with such foul indignities, as that profanely throws upon him; but clearly wipes off all ill-favoured Dotches, and uncomely Macula's, wherewith it slurs his brightest purity, and denigrates the whiteness, and sullies the splendour of his Glory; so that the Plea divides itself into two Branches: Let us see how each is vibrated against the commune Hypothesis, and how that behaves itself in the rencontre, so as to come off invulnerate: for the grand design of this Argument, is to subvert the opinion of Immediate Creation, and then to triumph in its overthrow, erecting Praeexistence on the ruins of it. Which  
2. In the First place, is conceived( by such as would have it do so) to utter most Truth of GOD; for it accurately 
1. Br●…urg. ●…  coheres with his own Declaration, of resting from his Work on the Seventh Day, and according to the Tenor of inspired Testimony, consigns his Creative operations, within the space of the first Hebdomade: after which, his Power of making Creatures ceased to act, and retired into himself for ever, celebrating an Holy Sabbath, never to terminate or expire; and though it hath been ever since employed in sustaining the Universe, and the various essences therein contained, and in managing the same, in conformity to the Rules of exactest Prudence; yet it hath always desisted from new productions, and hath hitherto super-added nothing, to those primitive Substances, to which the first Senarie, or six dayes space, allotted being. This as the HOLY GHOST by the infallible Pen, of his first and great Amanuensis teacheth, was GOD'S method in fabricating the World, he made all things together in the Beginning, and never augmented them by an after Creation: and this plausibly argues the truth of Praeexistence, that it is so concinnous, and very accommodate to the sacred Story of the Creation, allowing GOD to have completed the same in his six dayes Work, and then to change his Labour into eternal Rest. Whereas if we take up the General Faith, we must believe quiter another thing; that GOD did not put a period to his Works, and inchoate his Rest at six dayes end, according to Scripture evidence, and the express declaration of the Spirit in that behalf; but is daily busied in Creating Souls, which employment he seems to have resigned thousands of years ago.  
3. To this I briefly overdo, that the Opinion of Souls immediate creation, as to the Instance given, complies as fairly with the mind of the Bible, as Praeexistence does: And as that releaseth GOD from his Works, at the end of six dayes, so does this, though with a lawful Difference; for whereas that binds him to cease from Creating at all, after the term of six Dayes; this supposeth that after that time he acquiesced from creating new Species only, but alloweth him still to multiply some of their Individuals, according to his own Beneplaciture; nor needs this hinder him from sanctifying a perpetual Sabbath in himself; for if as great a work as this be compatible to his declared Rest, this may be consistent with it; and we all know, that though he Rests for ever, yet he is daily active in regenerating souls, which is as great a Work as daily to create them, and therefore it is styled {αβγδ}, and the subject of it {αβγδ}; so that for ought appears, the Hypothesis of Daily Creation belies the Deity as little as Praeexistence. But they complain it dishonours him more; how justly will be seen, when we have heard the Charge drawn up against it, and its own apology.  
4. The Accusation is framed after this sort; that it 
2. B●…urg.  puts the Majesty on high to very servile and unworthy Offices, and tasks him to such homely and invenust employments, as are scarce consistent with his verecundous Holiness: for if that be true, when ever the lascivious consent to uncleanness, and are pleased to join in unlawful mixtures and embraces, GOD is forced to stand a Spectator of their vile impurities, and to assist their bestial pleasures, with no less than a special act of Creation; then when ever any lustful Mates combine to gratify their vicious Passions, and unite in shameful and forbidden Copulations, Omnipotence itself must stoop from its Throne, to attend their unholy practices, and rain down showers of Souls from above, to actuate the Emanations of their base Concupiscence, and all this to a goodly purpose: lest Natures Excrements should miscarry, and the Rudiments and Inchoations of life, laid by venereous Wantons, should prove effoete and perish. And is not this a fine seemly undertaking for the Great JEHOVAH? to wait upon the Libidinous in their Fornications, Adulteries, Incests, and Buggeries; and to engage his Power in Creating Souls, to animate those vital preparations, which their detestable filthiness ministers? Should we study for ever to disgrace him, and to confront his loftiness and purity, by an indign exercise, what could we task him to, more sordid and inglorious?  
And moreover it condemns him of strange oversight and insipience, and supposeth him to act very ineptly in many Cases; in that he often includes the Souls of men in inconvenient Habitations, and sentenceth them to monstrous and misshapen Bodies, notwithstanding he was well ware of the supervening obliquities, and deformities; this, were it true, would be no small scandal to his unbounded Sapience. But here again Praeexistence vindicates him to the full; for that transfers the fate of the afflicted Spirits, upon Secondary Causes, and blames their Exorbitancies and miscarriages, for framing their Bodies so imperfect and anomalous, and then for drawing them down into them.  
5. These are the black and opprobrious Calumnies, which onerate the Hypothesis of Souls immediate Creation, in the second place: It sacrilegiously detracts from GODS infinite Holiness, and foully blemisheth his perfect Wisdom; but it is chargeable with nothing less than these reproachful Characters; and deserves them no more, than that other Opinion, for the justification and establishment of which, it is thus aspersed. What dehonestation of GOD'S Integrity, can possibly result from his providing Souls for spurious Issues, more than for those of a legal Generation? He gave Mankind a Power of begetting their like, after such a manner; and when by virtue of this Power, their spermatic Principles are sitted for animation, he is determined by his own Goodness( which from the beginning prescribed him such an economy, or method of acting) to infuse Souls into them: And when he comes to supply their prolifique substances, with Souls from himself, he regards not their procreative Applications, whether they were lawful or not; but considers them barely in their Natural respects, and so can with as much Honour, and as little infamy to his own Sacredness, prepare Souls for illegitimate Faetusses, as for those of an honester propagation: For he looks upon them as devested of all Moral Circumstances, and as the pure Natural Fruits, of that harmless Faculty, which He at first implanted in his Creatures. 'tis true, if People abuse this Faculty, and make it inservient to dishonest Procreations; in this there is filthiness and shane enough( because the thing is diametrically opposite to the Laws of Chastity, which should be kept inviolate) but then the ignominy and pollution lights upon the Criminals only, and though GOD furnisheth the illicit Conceptions, with Souls inspired from above; yet in thus doing, he is as clean from all dedecorous conspurcations and defilements, as if they were legitimate off-springs of the Conjugal Bed: For he eyes them only in their Physical habitudes, and capacities; in reference to which they are no way sinful, nor can GOD'S attendance on them be dishonourable; so that this Argument against immediate Creation, might as well have been urged from his vigilance over Innocent, as Unlawful Coitions; they being both alike, so far as they are Natural, and so far as he intermeddles with them, when he formeth Souls to vivify the productions of them: But as our Adversaries deemed not the First, a convenient topic, so neither do I the Latter; for if it be duly preached, it will be found, to cast as little indignity, and profanation upon GOD, as Praeexistence itself. To illustrate this, imagine GOD should Create one Soul, and as soon as He had done, instantly pop it into a base-begotten Body: And then Create another, the matter of an hours space before its precipitation into such a Receptacle: Which of these actions, would be most diminutive of the Creators Honour? Would not the difference be insensible, and the scandal, if any, the same in both? Yet thus lies the case just, betwixt Praeexistentiaries and Us: We say GOD inliveneth the genital Seed of voluptuous Carnalists, with new Created Souls: They hold, they were made some thousands of Ages ago; which in respect of GOD, and the Eternity he enjoys, was not an hour before: Which of these Tenets now, conciliates most veneration to our Maker? Do they not both speak things equally worthy, or unworthy of Him? And if both favour him alike, what a doughty Argument is this, to vouch the Interest of Praeexistence, above the other Hypothesis; by telling us it allows more honourable apprehensions of GOD, than That? What does it speak of him, but what it well beseems himself to own, and every Good Man to believe concerning Him? Admit that his watchful Providence, waits upon dissolute voluptuaries, in their unmeet conjunctions, and sends down fresh Created Spirits, to actuate their obscene Emissions; what is here done, which is not very high and becoming GOD, and most congruous and proportionate, to his immense Grandeur and Majesty? For in the First place, his condescension is hereby made signal and eximious: He is Gloriously humble beyond a Parallel; and by his own example, Lessons us to perform the meanest Works, if fit and profitable; and to be content even to drudge for the common Benefit of the World. And Secondly, hereby he elicits Good out of evil, causing famous and heroic Persons, to take their Origin from base occasions; and so converts the Lusts of sensual Varlets, to nobler Ends than they designed them. And then Thirdly, hereby he often detects the lewdness of Sinners, which otherwise would be smothered; and brings them to condigue punishment, which otherwise would be evaded; and makes their exemplary penance and infamy, a notable Corrective to the like vices in them, that otherwise would commit them. Now are not all these actions and concerns( to be illustriously condescensive; to bring Good out of evil; to discover, punish, and prevent Sin) very graceful and agreeable unto GOD? Yet to entitle him to these offices, is all the dishonour our Hypothesis does him; and therefore I hope, it credits him as much as its invidious Rival, Praeexistence.  
But I had almost forgotten the other noted blemish, wherewith it is said to avile and criminate him: namely, imprudence and stolidity; for if GOD creates all Souls, just before they are united unto Bodies, he must incorporate some in very incommodious Dwellings: That is, where there Bodies are disfigured with grievous distortions, or cumbered with sad monstrosities, or mutilated with unnatural deficiencies, or laden with superfluous protuberancies and excrescencies; to think GOD should immure new Created Spirits, in such deformed and incongruent Bodies, would penned hard upon the Attribute of his Wisdom, and be very exitious to the Repute thereof.  
But I Answer in a word; He that can rescue himself from dormitation and prejudice, and with an advertent and unbiased mind, rightly perpend this gloomy passage of the Divine Providence; will easily construe it to a better sense. Many of GOD'S Judgments are {αβγδ}, deep and inscrutable; and his ways {αβγδ}, invious and investigable; and so may this be 
Rom. 11. ●… 3.  we are now discoursing: When he Creates the Souls of men, and immediately consigns to them ill-featur'd Mansions, there may be vast profundities of Wisdom in the Affair, which our shallow Natures cannot fathom: GOD may sand these Judgments on some secret Errands, and important messages, to the afflicted parties, or their nearest Relatives; and convince their Consciences why they came, though the World be unacquainted, with the purposes of their mission: Perhaps he may make them Heralds of his Anger, or Monitors of their sins, or Censers of their manners, to reprove and castigate those close Enormities, which never fell under public Cognoscence; or to redress those apart Extravagancies, which are offensive unto every Eye: It may be he intends them for Ministers of Good, and Instruments of Mercy to them; for excitements to Virtue, and refraenations of Wantonness; for wholesome Alexicaca, and commodous absolutories from sinful pravities, which otherwise might be more apt to encroach upon them; at least this good effect, they may accomplish upon all such as are spectators of them, and have their hearts touched with any sense of Piety and Religion: They cannot choose but set them a glorifying GOD, and fill their mouths with the loudest Hymns of Praise, and tune their hearts to the highest Key of gratitude, in consideration of their own bodily rectitude and indolence, and that natural symmetry and perfection, which adorns themselves. And since the inclusion of new Created Souls, in such ill contrived and disadvantageous Bodies, may proceed upon such excellent designs of Wisdom as these, and others also to us indiscernible; there is no reason, why GOD should be blasphemed with Ineptness in the Dispensation; or have his {αβγδ}, in reference to it, called in question by insulse and maledicous blaterations.  
In fine therefore, this Argument Conludes nothing for Praeexistence, in as much as it does not discourse most plausibly of GOD: For the Hypothesis of immediate Creation, is every whit as veriloquous, and speaks as decorous things of Providence, as that, for all its bog pretensions.   

CHAP. VIII.  
1. Another Argument from the joint suffrage of the Learned; 2. Answered. 3. Why Scripture Proofs are silently praetermitted.  
1. THE Last Argument for Praeexistence, which I shall take notice of, is founded upon the general consent of the Ancient Sophy; all which agree in the approbation of it, unanimously voting, and agnizing it to be true. It was the Opinion of the egyptian Gymnosophists, the Persian Magi, the Indian Brachmans, the Jewish rabbis, the grecian Philosophers, the British druids, and some of the Christian Fathers: The Hebrew Sages made it a part of their Cabbala, and pretend it a Doctrine primarily delivered from their Great Legislator Moses; and being Stamped with such great and venerable Authorities, it must needs pass for a currant Truth.  
2. But to stop the mouth of this Sonorous Allegation, I Answer; that it makes an huge noise to little purpose: Like a Cannon charged with Powder, it goes off with a loud report, but does no execution, because voided of its murderous load.  
For First, I conceive that some of the fore-cited Sects, were Persons but indifferently Learned; their Renown did much exceed their Knowledge, and their famed by far out-went their Wisdom: They were some of them perhaps, no better than flat Daemonolaters, in strict League with Diabolical Spirits, and maintained too close an amity and familiar intercourse, with the Aereal Principality; and being favoured and abetted by them, they could by Theurgical Rites, and Inchantations, do strange feats, and amuse and awe the People, by their Sorceries and Necromancies, Magical tricks and Praestigious collusions; but as for their acquaintance with sober Philosophy, 'tis like it was not over deep nor intimate; so that their Authority, is but a slender prop to underset Praeexistence withal.  
And in the Second place, that of the Circumcised Doctors, is not so strong as to bear it up by main force: For though they had the Law of GOD amongst them, and so had their Minds enlightened with a purer science, than the gentle Sophists; yet they were friends to many gross and monstrous Errors, of which in all likelihood this was one. The Sacred Volume informs us, that some of them peremptorily asserted, {αβγδ}. That there was neither Resurrection, nor Angel, nor Spirit. And Maimonides one of the principal Masters, believed that Immortality, was the Prerogative of Just and Righteous Souls only; and as for the Impious, they perished together with their Bodies. And this R. Kimchi stoutly argues from those words in the first Psalm. {αβγδ} The Ungodly shall not rise, or stand in the judgement: And because it is said in the 17. v. of 115. Psal. {αβγδ} The Dead praise not the LORD, nor any that descend into silence, or the Grave: This forsooth he makes another Proof of it; and from the same Text he might as wisely have concluded, that every ones Soul is Mortal, and extinct at Death, it being spoken of the {αβγδ} or Dead in General, and not of the Improbous alone. And Cousin-German to this was that notorious Mistake, which Elias Levita sets down, for the common Opinion of the cabalists, touching the {αβγδ}, or Transanimation, called by them {αβγδ} or the Revolution of Souls: For they Childishly conceited, that every Soul must be incorporated in three several Bodies; and the fancy they confirm with a proper testimony Job. 33. 29. {αβγδ} See how God Worketh all these things thrice with Man: And because the word {αβγδ} contains the three Initial letters, of Adam, David, Messiah; from thence they vainly infer, that these three, had but one Soul commune to them all, which first dwelled in Adam's Body, then in Davids, and lastly in the Messiahs. A goodly conjecture, and as likely as that which would fetch an Indication of a Trinity, from the second word of Genesis {αβγδ} because it is compounded of the Inchoative letters of {αβγδ} nor did they only hold the transmigration of Souls, from one human Body to another; but fond imagined that they passed out of the Bodies of Men, into those of Birds and Brutes, as R. Bechai declares: To which odd and ridiculous fancies, I shall adjoin but one more as fond, and extravagant as the rest; I mean their {αβγδ} or Revolution of the Dead; wherewith they were generally possessed, firmly believing that all the carcases of the Jews, interred out of Palestine, should roll under ground into the Holy Land, that so they might rise in their own Country, at the day of judgement, together with the rest of their Compatriots. Now they that could swallow all these absurdities, and hundreds besides, without chewing: Why should Praeexistence go against their Stomachs? Or what reason have we to take it up upon their credit, and to believe it for a truth, because they taught it?  
Nor will its being a Branch of the Cabbala, free it from the suspicion of falsehood, but rather make it more obnoxious to it: For that being delivered down by Oral tradition, from one to another, till the days of R. Jehuda; who is thought to have first collected it into Writing; no wonder if in so long a decurse of time, many counterfeit and subdititious things were foisted into it, and Praeexistence for one; all which he might publish for weighty truths, as thinking them primarily imparted from the mouth of Moses, though he never spent his breath, in recommending such nugacities to Posterity  
As for the grecian Philosophers, and Christian Fathers that asserted Praeexistence; though they were worthy and famous Persons, yet their owning of the Tenet, is not enough to authorize and establish it: For they could speculate falsely as well as others, and patronise notorious Errors. Let any sober and judicious Man, but seriously reflect upon the strange and garish whimsies, the toyish and absurd futilities, the silly and delirous fopperies of admirable Plato; who for his stupendious Learning and variety of Knowledge, is all along of his Biographers, styled {αβγδ}, and {αβγδ}: And now adored as a petty Numen, by many philosophic Zealots of the present Age. And let him consider the enormous Dogmata of inclytous Origen, who Wrote above Nine thousand Volumes, and before whom Plotinus himself, revering his prudence 
Vid. Porphyx. in vit. Plotin.  and sagacity, durst not continue his Lecture. And then let him speak, whether the best of grecian Philosophers, and the choicest of Christian Fathers, were not very deceivable; and might not easily be misled in this, as well as in other instances.  
Briefly therefore to apply a general Answer to the Argument: Admit it be an ancient Doctrine, and countenanced and maintained by renowned scholars; yet this will hardly prove it true. For the greatest Clerks have faulty Pens, and writ not without their blots. The wisest Authors are but Men, and we know humanum est errare, by their Nature they are fallible, and made obnoxious to Hallucinations: So that for all their consenting to, and approving of, any such particular Notion or Opinion, it may still be false and erroneous. And that the most incomparable Virtuosoes, have had their slips and Errors, I might demonstrate by a large induction of Examples, and weary both myself and Reader with their numerositie; but let us take one for all, I mean Des-Cartes: And when I recollect his unlucky oversights, how he makes all Motion to be Reciprocal; and holds the same Degree of it to be always in the Universe; and confidently affirms that Omnipotence itself can never effect a Vacuum; but above all, when I call to mind his internecine Hylolatry, and bloody dotage upon Matter, whereby he makes it to be {αβγδ}, and so opens a wide gap to Atheism; and at one blow massacres all the Brute-Animals in the World; supposing them to be mere {αβγδ}, or Mechanical Engines, endued with no immaterial Principle, but absolving all their Actions by virtue of the scite of their Organs, and confirmation of their members; without the assistance of any Soul at all: And so treads counter to the mind of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Empedocles, Democritus, porphyry, and other noted Antiquities, who rightly contended that they had not only Souls, but Souls exalted to some degree of Rationality. When I say, I revolve in my thoughts the egregious failures of this Excellent Philosopher; and perceive his Placita to be so faulty and exorbitant: I cannot but conclude it hugely unsafe, to pin our Faith upon any mans sleeve; and that we have but little cause to aclowledge this Dogma for a Truth, because the Great ones so pronounce it.  
And now to draw towards a Conclusion. If there have been many of the Learned for Praeexistence; yet I am sure there have been as many of them, that never subscribed to it: So that putting in one against the other, we shall bring the balance to an even poise; and the Argument that seemed so very ponderous, will weigh just nothing at all.  
3. I should here take in hand the Scripture Arguments, which are made to favour the Opinion: But I find the principal of them, dexterously Answered already by an Ingenious Pen; and therefore I shall spare myself that Labour.   

CHAP. IX.  
1. The First Objection against Praeexistence, that it is Grounded upon odd presumption, of Heterogeneity in the Souls of Men; 2. Which is very incertain, 3. And also Improbable, because attended with gross Absurdities. 4. The First Absurdity. 5. The Second. 6. The Third. 7. The Fourth. 8. The Fifth. 9. The Sixth.  
1. I Pass now to the Third and Last thing proposed; namely to give in such Objections against the Hypothesis, as my hasty thoughts shall suggest: And without the Cunctation of any praeliminary Ambages, the First shall be this: That it is built upon an incertain and unlikely Conjecture: It supposeth an Heterogeneity in the Soul of Man; that it consists of a primary substance, and a Secondary emanative from that: Of a perceptive, and plastic part; in which latter resides a triple vital Congruity, to a three-fold Vehicle, viz. ethereal, Aereal, and Terrestrial.  
2. Now that this is a thing extremely dubious, is manifest: For our acquaintance with Spirits is so little, and our ignorance of their Nature so great, that we can positively and certainly conclude no such matter concerning them. He that pretends to a graphical description, a punctual and explicit account, of their Beings and Properties, does but fond Platonize, in offering at that which is above his reach, and falls not within the compass of his abilities to perform: And when he hath beat his Brains, and wearied his fancy, and tired himself in musing on the imaginary Phaenomena of their Essence; and hath made a shift to coin some pretty fantastic notions of it, and to connect them together in an handsome Method, and elegant contexture: Yet in the conclusion, all will amount but to a philosophic Legend or Romance; which the Wise and Learned will as soon believe, as they will the famed Exploits of Don Quixot; or the pranks of noted Hudibras. The Man that attempts a distinct explication, of the Nature of the Soul in this life, does but tread a confounding Maze, and lose himself in a Labyrinth of difficulties; out of which there is no extrication: It is enough if in the next World, we have such a Clue of Knowledge put into our hands, as will guide us safely through the Maeandrian flexures, Anfractuous Circles, and Sinuous Nooks and Angulosities thereof.  
3. And that there should be such an Heterogeneity in human Souls, as is confidently asserted; is moreover a thing very improbable; for it implies many prodigious Absurdities, a Specimen of which I shall next relate.  
4. First, if the Souls of Men be made Heterogeneous, and their plastic part, be the Seat of a three-fold vital aptitude; this will charge GOD with great unkindness to them, or unseemly oversight, in Creating them: Not becase by this frame of their Nature, they were made peccable( for a mere peccability, if withall they had been invested with a power of retaining their Innocence, would have been no injury to them) but because they were hereby obliged, and necessitated to transgress: Their Will was not so much in fault, that they revolted from GOD, as the structure and constitution of their Essence. Hear the Reviver of Origens Opinions, who speaks truth in the Case: They being originally made with a capacity, to join with 
●… count. Origen, ●…. pag 49.  this Terrestrial matter, it seems necessary according to the Course of Nature, that they should sink into it, and so appear Terrestrial Men. So that Men by the very mode and fashion of their Nature( supposing it endued with a triple Congruity of life) were constrained to unite with Earthly Bodies; and consequently to violate the Laws of Innocence, that so their capacity of living in conjunction, with Terrestrial substance, might be awakened and excited. For without antecedent obliquities, and the practise of illicit things, no Soul according to the Hypothesis of Praeexistence, can become fit to actuate a fleshly Vehicle: For so long as the mind is unpolluted, and free from the contagion of 'vice and Sin, the ethereal Congruity maintains its Empire, binding up the Terrestrial one in a dormant condition, which nothing can let loose to domineer in the Soul, but viciousness and immorality: So that if the Nature of Mankind, necessitated their union with Terrestrial matter, it did also as an indispensible Praeparative thereunto, necessitate their Lapse into Impiety. And if the GOD of Heaven Transacts at this rate with his Creatures; if he so contrives their Beings, as that the very fabric and Composure of them, irresistibly hales them into unrighteousness, and subjects them to sin and misery, I think for giving them such a Nature, He may well be said to act unkindly towards them, which he cannot do.  
Not will it mend the matter to say, he intended not that their plastic powers, should involve them in so great misfortunes: For this were to accuse him of strange Folly and inadvertency; as if when he formed Man, he did not mind or understand his Frame, but fixed a Principle in his Nature unawares, that he never meant should be exercised and made use of: Which yet at length exalting itself, against the Superior faculties of his Soul, Naturally and Fatally plunged him into Sin, and an Union with the dorssiest Corporeity.  
5. Secondly, it makes one Created substance, generative and productive of the Essence of another; which in my apprehension is a thing impossible, it perfectly exceeding the Nature and Capacity of it, so to do. There is nothing that I can think on in the World, Omnipotence excepted; that can be the Efficient Cause of the Essence, of any substantial Being. 'tis true the Sun is emissive of light, and the Fire of heat; but I hope none are so inconsiderate, as to take Light and Heat for substances: Yet this vast and admirable power of producing substantial Essence in itself, is ascribed to the Soul of Man, by the Hypothesis of its Heterogeneity. For if I rightly understand the Learned 
See ●… More'● Immortality. Book. ●… Chap. ●… Sect. ●…  Author of the Notion, the Radical, Central, Primary, and Perceptive part of the Soul, is the object of Creation: But the secondary, and plastic flows entirely from that, as an Emanative effect; and yet is held for a true and proper substance nevertheless. This to me is a thing very absurd and inconceivable, that one finite Substance should beget the Essence of another. But that which farther perplexeth the Mystery, and renders it more obscure and unintelligible is, that the Secondary substance of the Soul, differs widely from the Primary, though it be an immediate Emanation of it: For whereas the Primary part is Intelligent, and perceptive; the Secondary or plastic, is 
goody the ●… e Im●… rtali●… Book ●… C. 11. ●… ct. 10.  destitute both of Reason and Sensation. And how this should come to pass, is another great Riddle: For if one Substance produceth another by emanative Causality, the Substance so produced, must necessary be an Emanation of the very Essence of the Efficient: And if it be an Essensial Emanation of it, it must be the very same with it( for the Essence of a thing cannot vary from itself) and consequently must have all those endowments, faculties, and perfections in it, which are existent in that. To affirm, the percipient part of the Soul can display itself in a substantial efflux, voided of Sense; is methinks, just as if one should say, the Solar Orb can shine forth beams of Darkness, and hath a power of darting mid-night through the Hemisphere it resides in: For Darkness is not a more absolute privation of the Suns Excellence, which is Light, than senselessness is of the perfection of the Souls Central part, which is Rationality and Perception.  
And amongst other reasons, this is one, that persuades me the Material World is not an Emanative Effect of the Deity; because then it must have been Homogeneal with the Divine Essence; and so not matter, but a Spiritual Substance. For that such a moles of Corporeity, should proceed from GOD, without any intermediate act of his, or any other Causality, but his bare Existence, considering he is a Spirit; and so in a principal Attribute of his Nature, viz. Immateriality, opposed unto Body, looks like a flat impossibility.  
6. Thirdly, it overthrows the Article of the Bodies Resurrection: For no sooner does the Soul by death quit her Terrestrial habitation, but according to the tenor of this Hypothesis, she is incorporated in an Aerial Vehicle; and when her vital congruity to that expires, she is united to one of Aether. So that having once put off her carnal Body, she shall never be reinvested with it more: And though we are assured by an infallible Word, that {αβγδ}, This very Corruptible, shall put on incorruption; and {αβγδ}, This very Mortal, shall put on immortality. Yet the vouchers of Praeexistence, as if they felt a degree of Inspiration, above the great Apostle, tell us bluntly there is no such matter. But though virtuous Spirits, shall at length obtain incorruptible, immortal, and celestial Bodies; yet those which they now wear, are not like to be made such: For it shall not be incorruptible, immortal, and celestial flesh, wherewith they shall be clothed in the Mansions of Eternity, but something else. Thus the Author of that anonymous Piece, the Account of Origen, &c. delivers himself: That the Body we now have, is therefore Corruptible, because it is Flesh; and therefore if it put on incorruption and immortality, it must put off itself first, and cease to be Flesh, page., 120. And again Pag. 125. If the Body of Flesh be a Mortal Body; if it be quickened, and made a living and immortal one, it must be made something else intrinsically than what it was: But it being Flesh before, it must not be Flesh when it is enlivened too. So that by this device of a triple Congruity of Life, engrafted in the plastic of the Soul; the Resurrection of these identical Bodies, which we deposit at Death, is very fairly exploded. For if the Soul hath three such vital aptitudes, as before were name, and the ethereal be the last that is invigorated; while it is so, it is impossible that she should actuate any other Vehicle, than what is of an ethereal Consistency. In Heaven therefore there is no such thing as Glorified Flesh, nor consequently should our fleshly Bodies, ever be resuscitated in order to Glorification: Yet the word RESURRECTION plainly implies thus much; that the same Bodies, which we leave behind us at our departure hence, shall rise again in their numerical Identity: But then to illude this, we are  told a fine Story; that {αβγδ}, is a word of a lax and ambiguous signification; that it denotes Eternal Life, or a blessed Immortality; and according to this sense and reddition of it, we may have a true Resurrection, though our Bodies after our Analysis, sleep for ever in the Dust. But what a pitiful subterfuge, and helpless evasion is this? For if {αβγδ}, be properly Eternal Life, then whoever partake of the Resurrection( which all the Dead shall do) should participate of Immortality and Blessedness: And then what shall we make of the Evangelists {αβγδ}, Resurrection of Condemnation spoken of St. John 5. 29? And that which farther mars this Notion of Resurrection is, that our Church ties us to believe not the Resurrection simply, but the Resurrection of the Body( which surely we cannot Interpret the Blessedness and Immortality of the Soul) agreeable to what our SAVIOUR professeth for his Will, St. John 6. 40. This is the Will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have Everlasting Life; and I will raise him up at the last Day. And what will he raise up the Soul? That riseth into another Life, as soon as it departeth this: And therefore the Body must be the subject of the last days Resurrection; whence by the way we may take notice also, that Resurrection, and Everlasting Life, are not synonimous terms, but signify two distinct things; for believers shall have Everlasting Life given them, and be Raised up besides.  
7. Fourthly, it confines departed Souls, to very Comfortless and inconvenient Dwellings: For being released from their luggages of flesh, and toilsome burdens of Mortality( though they have done worthy things in this present State, and cordially served the Interests of JESUS) yet an immediate transition into Glory, must not be their recompense. No, the expergefaction of their Aereal Congruity( which rouseth itself, upon their first solution from these cadaverous Bodies) prevents their so early passage to the highest Regions; that, as this Hypothesis will have it, just upon their egression out of these terrene ergastula, catcheth hold on the proximate Air; and forming it into suitable Vehicles, forthwith claps them up therein, and secures their abode in vicinous places. And till they purify themselves to such a degree, as to become fit for Union with ethereal receptacles, they must be penned up in this inferior World, and never think of emerging above the Terrestrial Atmosphere. Except it be a few of the Heroically Virtuous, and Men of extraordinary Goodness and Religion( one in a Million perhaps) this is the Fate of Christians in general, at their dismission hence: They are removed but a little distance from the surface of the Earth, and must Hover about in the Circumfluent Air, till by their own industry, they can work themselves up aloft, and gradually ascend into a purer Element. And methinks the Air is a very unmeet habitation, for Holy Souls deceased, both in respect of their Society, and other evils, that will their incommodate and molest them.  
First, their Company must needs be irksome and ingratefull: For the Air is the Devils Territory, the Seat of his Empire, and Metropolis of his Dominion: And therefore he is styled {αβγδ}, The Prince of the Power of the Air. There the supreme 
●… hes. ●… 2.  Magnifico, and Principal head of the Daemoniacal Body keeps his Court, as I may say, and sits upon his Throne, attended with his black and grisly Legions: And from thence he issues his Edicts, and dispenseth his Commands, to the inferior Ministers, and subordinate members of the Cursed Polity; and these again, have their under-Agents, which they constantly employ in the menage of their Interests, and sand abroad into the several Quarters of the World, to propagate and establish their Hellish Kingdom. So that we must conclude the Aereal Regions to be fraught with Multitudes of malignant Genii, that are continually passing, repassing, and flying about from one place to another, upon mischievous Errands and Designs; and let the separate Souls of Good Men bestow themselves where they can; yet still so long as they are within the ambit of this fuliginous Air, they must always be mingled with these lewd and malevolent Spirits, that will perpetually be intruding into their company. And though Providence has so hampered the malice, of this Rebel Rout, that they can by no means harm and injure them: Yet to be pestered and haunted with their evil presence, and to have them incessantly superintending, and inspecting their Actions; observing and prying into their carriage; mocking and scoffing at their Religion, and the like; must needs be wondrous burdensome and offensive to them: As it would be to the Righteous in this Life, to have their insolent contumelious and implacable Enemies, always at their heels, to watch their behaviour, and take cognoscence of their doings, and to deride, and reprobate them upon all occasions.  
But besides, if they be cooped up, within the Atmosphere of the Earth, they must be obnoxious to many violences and extremities, from Natural causes: sometimes they will be parched with intemperate Heat, sometimes almost frozen with excessive could, according to the Nature of the Climates they inhabit: Sometimes the Air is cloyed with smoky Fumes and Vapours: Sometimes filled with foggy Mists and Exhalations: Sometimes constipated with Dense and Pitchy Clouds, which every foot discharge themselves in hideous Storms and Tempests; in flashes of Lightning, and claps of Thunder; in showers of Rain and Hail, &c. And if these in their rapid descent, chance to pervade their diaphanous Bodies, they must needs put them to intolerable torture. For their airy Vehicles, being as intimately united to them, as our Terrestrial ones are to us; for them to have their tender Bodies pierced and dilacerated, with boisterous showers of Rain or Hail, will be all one in point of misery, as if we should have our Bodies, transfixed with Darts and Arrows, or shot through with little pellets of led or Iron: For look what execution these do upon our, the same they do upon their Vehicles.  
To avoid all these annoyances therefore, there is an expedient proposed, which I cannot but smile at, while I set it down; it is this: When they foresee Storms approaching, They might take shelter as other living Creatures do, in Houses, behind Walls, in Woods, Dales, Caverns, Rocks, and other obvious Places. A pretty conceit, and fit to make sport, for such as can think it worth the laughing at. As often as the Heavens lowr, and scowl upon the Earth with an angry Countenance; the poor harbourless Souls, must presently betake them all to their shifts: Some must shrig into dirty Stables; others must crowd into hollow Trees; others must antimonarchical behind rotten Hedges; others must nestle into Cony-burrows; and not dare to look out till the Storm be over, for fear they be rapt on the pate with Rain-drops, or have their Tiffany Vests blown off their backs, with the rufling Winds that threaten them: Others must sneak under the bellies of Cattle, to save themselves from the Weather; and others must squeeze through the Key-holes of Doors, to get into mens Houses, unless they durst venture down the attorneys, or crawl up the Sinkholes. But not to be too impertinent: All the provisions they can make for themselves, will not secure them from one inconvenience; the frequent returns of Night and Darkness: For once in twenty four hours, they must necessary lose the Light and Influence of the Sun, and be enveloped in the conical shadow of the Earth; where unless it be the rays of the twinkling stars, or the languid beams of the pale-faced Moon( which in every Interlunium, or conjunction with the Sun, absconds her self) they have no light at all, to guide and cherish them; so that except they can see in the dark( which I presume they cannot, because then their visive Organs would be bright and radiant, and visible unto Men, as oft as they come near, or pass by them in the Night-time) their condition in this respect, is exceeding forlorn.  
Wherefore it is to be hoped, there is a better place of residence, prepared for Divine and Holy Souls, when they relinquish this, than the Air. And thus much, I think is easily colligible from the inspired Writings; in the 23. of St. Luke, we red of a flagitious Malefactor upon the across; and how he there commenced his repentance, just at his Death; so that he could not possibly arrive, at such an intrinsic and habitual Purity, before he was dissolved; as according to this Hypothesis, is requisite to fit a Man, for an immediate ascent to the sublimest Regions, and the animation of an ethereal Body: Yet our Blessed SAVIOUR there tells him, this day thou shalt be with me in Paradise: And that Paradise, is a place distinct from, and more excellent than the Air; may be gathered out of the twelfth Chapter, of the second Epistle to the Corinthians; there the Apostle informs us of a Man, caught up {αβγδ}, into the Third Heaven; which at the fourth Verse, he affirms to be Paradise: So that Paradise must be the Third Heaven; that is the most lofty, and glorious Heaven of all: For it is denominated the Third Heaven, not ratione numeri, but dignitatis. As we say, that Man is thrice Happy, and thrice Blessed, whose condition is most prosperous and fortunate. So Paradise is said to be the Third Heaven, as being the most eminent, and superlative in Dignity and Excellence. And for the same reason it is termed {αβγδ} The most Heavenly Heavens. 1. Kings 8. 27. Psalm 148. 4. Now if this Penitent thief, whose sanctity( by reason of the short space of time, intercurrent betwixt his Conversion and departure) was very imperfect; was notwithstanding translated into Paradise, the Third Heaven, or seeds Beatorum, upon the day of his Crucifixion: it is clear from hence, that not only the eminently, and heroically Virtuous; but also the competently, if sincerely Religious, shall instantly upon their separation from the Body, be admitted into the most Blessed place, and perfect Felicity, that they can be capable of, before the General Resurrection and Final judgement. and if so, the Aereal Regions can be no permanent receptacle of them after Death; nor have they such a Congruity in them, as does fatally Chain them to Airy Bodies, and so necessitate their abode in those places: If they had, our Church is guilty of vile uncharitableness, in that she does not supplicate for the Dead; who then are in a capacity of bettering themselves by virtuous endeavours, and our interpellations for them might help considerably towards their improvement.  
8. Fifthly, it supposeth Men may die more than once: For as many as are forced into the other World, while their Terrestrial Congruity is in the height of invigoration, have no other remedy but to return hither, to get its Petulance quelled and abated; for so long as that continues strong and predominant, the two other aptitudes are consopited and benumbed; and therefore they cannot unite to Aerial, or ethereal Vehicles: Nor can they meet with any Terrestrial ones, in which to have the invigorated Principle castigated and debilitated, unless they be Born anew into this Life, and tread that Stage again, of which they were turned by a praemature exit: And till a fit opportunity invites them to re-enter it, they must rest, GOD knows where, in a state of silence and stupidity. This one of the Champions of Praeexistence delivers in plain terms, though in a sceptical 
See Lux Orientalis page. 159. 160.  manner. Those that pass out of these Bodies, before the Terrestrial Congruity be spoiled, weakened, and orderly unwound; must return into the state of inactivity: For the plastic in them, is too highly awakened, to inactuate only an Aerial Body; and there being no other more congruous, ready at hand for to enter; it must needs step back into its former state of insensibility, and there wait its turn, till befiting matter call it forth again, into Life and Action. All therefore at least that die Infants, or by violence, their Earthly Congruities being not orderly unraveled, and naturally dissolved and extinguished; must back again into this World, time after time, till they hit upon mature and kindly expirations: So that it seems Praeexistence and Transanimation go hand in hand: And the Samian Philosopher might not be so much mistaken, as some think he was, when he Sang of himself,  
— Trojani tempore belly,  
Panthoides Euphorbus eram.—  
For the Trojan falling by the hand of Menelaus, and his dispossessed Soul being to seek for a Body, might haply wind itself into Pythagoras's: But surely then Interpreters are grossly out, in their Expositions of that speech of St. Pauls, It is appointed for men, once to die. And the Holy man was hardly ware of what he said, when he  told his Friends. {αβγδ} When the years of number are come, I shall go the way I shall not return. For, for ought he knew, he might have been cut off by a violent Death, and then a remigration hither would have been inevitable, or else this Hypothesis is false: And were it true, it would give but small encouragement to Martyrs and Souldiers, who lay down their Lives for Religion, and their Country, to think that as a recompense for their Magnanimous Pieties, they should be remanded back into this miserable state, where perhaps they may die in the same Circumstances again, and so lay a new train of infelicities, and entail upon themselves a fresh calamity: Though I doubt not but it would render Malefactors, exceeding venturous and daring in their nefarious abridgement: And when they are apprehended, and sentenced to suffer Capitally for their delinquencies, it would cheer them hugely, and make them jog on merrily to their Execution, could they believe they should only sleep a while after Death, and then recover their forfeited lives again: They would never scruple to Rob and to Kill; nor when they have done, dread the Ax or the Halter, did they think that nothing would follow, but a short intercision of life, and then a recuperation thereof, whereby they shall be enabled to resume the practise of their so gently mulcted villainies, and to commit them over again, for the same Punishment.  
9. In the last place, it makes the Glory of Heaven Transient and Amissible: For grant that Millions of Souls, reascend the ethereal Elysium, and be installed anew in their Pristine beatitude; yet if Praeexistence speaks truth, they enjoy no more now, than what they possessed long ago: And the same enticements, that tempted them to Sin, and betrayed them to misery at first, may do it a second time: For their condition being but the same it was, they are liable to be wrought upon by the same seducements, that before trepanned them out of it. What though at present the plastic be tamed, and subjugated, and the Intellectual Powers, be lively and vigorous? Yet in tract of time their sensitive faculties, that are now wound up and laid asleep, may revive and stir afresh. When they have snored a while, and taken a considerable Nap, they may start out of their drowsy Fit, and becoming regnant as once they were, exile them from the Kingdom of the Blessed; 'tis like the Phansiful Platonist can delight himself in thinking, it shall be thus indeed: That the Rational and plastic principles shall act by turns through endless Vicissitudes, and rule alternatim in the Souls of Men to infinite Ages; the one still flagging and intermitting, when the other are most intended. But then the Great Question will be, how these Spirits, when they have deserted their happiness a second time, shall be able to regain it: For though the Son of GOD came down Heaven, and suffered once for our Redemption; yet to imagine that he should restore us again, by the same means; and as often as we fall, be Crucified for our recovery, would be a strange surmise, and Contradictory to the Scripture.  
I could reckon up several other Absurdities, of the like Nature with the precedent; but because I think those already specified, are more than enough to evince, that the Souls Heterogeneity, as above stated, is but an empty fiction; and not so much the Daughter of Truth, as the spurious Issue of a working Brain, and too parturient fancy: I here take leave of this Objection, and proceed to the next.   

CHAP. X.  
1. Another Objection against Praeexistence, is our utter forgetting it in this Life. 2. A tripartite Evasion of the Objection propounded. 3. An Answer to the first Part. 4. An Answer to the Second Part. 5. An Answer to the Third Part of it.  
1. THat which in the Second place makes against Praeexistence is, that men upon Earth, are no whit Conscious to themselves of their living in a former State, nor of any thing therein represented to them: They remember not the Polity there erected and established; nor the Laws there enacted and ordained; nor the Customs there used and observed: The situation of their Dwellings, the fashion of their Bodies, the nature of their employments, the manner of their Converse, and the quality of their Company, are all clearly out of their thoughts, nor can they for their hearts schismatical them. And it seems incredible, that we should have enjoyed a Blessed life, before our banishment into this, where we had our Reason perfect, and our Faculties entire; our Spirits passive, and our Minds attentive( such as now they are) apt to entertain the Scaenes of things, with ready notices, and deep resentments; and yet during our whole continuance here, be unable to recollect, and give the least account of those commune occurrencies, which were there most frequent and obvious to us. Had we ever inhabited the ethereal Paradise, it would scarce have been forgotten; we should still have kept old Records of it, filled in our memories, which though they might have been much oblitterated and defaced, yet a curious search and examination of them, would discover something in them legible, as to the splendour and rare Felicities of the place.  
2. But to take off this Objection it is replied; that the Souls of Men in their descent from above, run through all those Inconveniences, that are most Prejudicial and Pernicious unto Memory: And therefore 'tis no wonder they forget the Circumstances of the superior Life; Nay, it would be a miracle if they should do otherwise.  
The things most fatal unto Memory, are observed to be Three. viz. Want of being reminded of a Matter. Desuetude, of thinking on it. And Extraordinary change in the Body. And of all these there is a joint influence, and most eminent concurrence, to blurr and eat out the fair Ideaes, and memorial Characters of things, wherewith the Soul was stamped and impregnated, in an higher State: So that the Evasion contains three Creep-holes, out at which the Defenders of Praeexistence would slink away, and slily convey themselves, to avoid the force of this Objection: But I think the muces may easily be stopped, and their escape prevented.  
3. For though the fore-cited accidents, which are confessedly diminutive and destructive of Memory, betid us in our Confinement to these fleshly Prisons; yet they are not sufficient to abolish our Remembrance of our ancient Condition, and to sink us down into a perfect Oblivion of all the passages and concerns thereof.  
First, the want of being reminded of them, is not enough to do it. There are many trifles in the World, which passing but once under our Observation, cleave fast unto our memories ever after; nor can we finally eject them, though we never meet with any like occurrencies, to revoke them into our thoughts: And if our hasty notation of mere trivials, can cause so permanent impressions; we must needs be more retentive and memorious, of those Objects that entertained our notices above. For their Glory and remarkableness, could not but draw us to solemn and studied animadversions of them; and our long continuance amongst them, induce us often to reiterate the same, and so fix them Eternally in our minds. And indeed were these two particulars but well considered, what sumptuous and affecting Objects, adorn and beautisie the ethereal palace: And what a tedious while we spent( according to the platonic Hypothesis) in conversing with them, and musing on them, in viewing and re-viewing, and passionately admiring their splendour and magnificence; that we should forget them all, for lack of being Remembered of them, would seem impossible.  
But to come closer to the purpose; this first member of the Evasion, we want opportunities, and occasions to remind us of our Praeexistence is a pure pretence and palpable Figment. For imagine the supposal were true, that we were once loose from these uneasy Clods, that now afflict and burden us; and free to Range through the transparent Skies, in company with glittering Angels: Admit we were once near Neighbours to the Sun, or dwelled in those Serene and Lightsome Countries, situate beyond the Course of Saturn: Yet is the scene of that World, so different from this, that there is no resemblance at all between them? Can we here spy no Analogous Objects, to be fit Memorandums of those, with which we were there acquainted? Certainly here are some very consimilous to them( if not the same) the occursions of which, could not possibly miss of bringing them to our mind, if they were more than fantastic and Imaginary: For grant we were once possessed of those Remote and Lucid habitations now mentioned; What in all likelihood, was our employment there? Was it not to contemplate and adore the Deity? To mark and study the Works of the Creation? To search and dive into the Phaenomena of Nature? And to entertain one another with friendly Converse, and the profitable discourses of Religion and Philosophy? And if these were our exercises, in the ethereal Tracts( as without dispute they were) to say we are here destitute, of apt Mementoes of our living there, would be a complaint unjust and frivolous: Because we are engaged now, in the very same affairs, that we then attended; which undoubtedly would revive our Memory of them, if they had ever of old been familiar to us, and consequently of our Native Stations, wherein they were practised and often repeated. And besides, if the Advocates of Praeexistence deceive us not, they have given us a just representation of the place of our first abode; of the Bodies we wore, and of the Causes of our denudation of them. And these again are fair hints, and proper Items, to remind us of that place, and those Bodies, and the evil Contingencies, that deprived us of both: But since notwithstanding we are thus prompted to it, by variety of occasions, we can remember nothing of our Primitive Life; it is shrewdly to be suspected, that it, together with all the Circumstantiations thereof, is but Fictitious and Poetical.  
4. Nor Secondly, will such a desuetude of thinking on the occurrencies of our Pristine State, as is pretended to seize us, in our descent from thence, be able to expunge and raise them out of our Remembrance: For it is not so much a bare dis-use of ruminating on things, that makes us forget them; as the Ebullition of fresh thoughts, and new Phantasms into our minds, which dash out all former Images, and representations there delineated. So that I am apt to believe, if a Man should fall into a profound sleep, and rest securely in the same, for many years together; yet at his evigilation, he would find his head fraught with lively Ideaes of such things, as he practised and observed before his repose. And the probability of this methinks, is something warranted, by what hath happened to Chronical Sleepers; who having lain for several Dayes, yea Weeks together, in the Arms of dull and heavy slumbers; at their expergefaction, have returned instantly to those negotiations, they had in hand when they fell to rest, and have related exactly how they left them in every little Circumstance. If therefore in descending from the upper World, we were intercepted( as they would make us believe) in a state of silence, and kept bound a while in the Chains of senselessness and inactivity, and an absolute cessation from thinking on all past concerns; yet there is no necessity from this, of our being overwhelmed with a total Oblivion of them: For we meeting in that state with no new series of cogitations, to disturb our minds, and discompose our memories, and crowd out those Notices, that before were fixed and recorded in them; they cannot be worn off, by a mere desuetude of reflecting on them; especially considering they were deeply radicated, and that this desuetude was but short and transient: For though Lapsed Souls may( as the Platonists conceive) remain a long time in a stupid and inert condition; yet if the time of their lodging there( according to their own computation of it) be compared with their abode( as they measure it) in the spacious Aether, it will be very inconsiderable; scarce bearing the proportion of an hours sleep, to a dayes wakefulness: And as it is impossible that an hours sleep should blot all that business out of a Mans mind, which he dispatched the whole day before: So it is improbable, that their lying dozed a while in the Air, should rob them of the Remembrance of those Transactions, about which they were employed all the precedent part of their life: Or if the Aerial pernoctation, be not generally thus short, to all that drop into it; yet( which will serve our turn) it is acknowledged to be some: For as the Grand Propugnator of the Opinion confesseth, many by the procuration and assistance of the Spirit of Nature, 
See Dr. More his Immor. B. 3. C. 13. S. 10.  may be fetched from the purest ethereal Regions, into a human Body, without serving any long apprenticeship in the intermediate Air: And consequently then, they should be able to bring some intelligence with them from the other World, they deserting it so lately, and their desuetude of thinking on the affairs thereof, being not very lasting.  
5. To the third cause of forgetfulness above noted, I Answer; that though extraordinary Changes in Body, be Labefactive of Memory; yet it does not follow that the Souls shifting of her Vehicle, should throw all those objects out of her mind, the memorative semblances of which, were there limmed out( as I may say) and pictured: For her egression out of one Body, and susception of another, fitly prepared to entertain her, is not so baneful unto Memory, as divers Mutations, to which this Earthly carcase is obnoxious: And though external Casualties, Diseases, and Senitude, work not so great a Change; yet they may be more disadvantageous to that faculty, than Death itself, which disseizeth us of our Body. This I know our Adversaries will not allow of: They tenaciously hold the contrary; that the dislodging of the Soul out of the Body, is more hurtful to the Memory, than those Changes which are superinduced to it: And hereupon they conclude, that if Changes wrought in the Body, by old Age, Sickness, or Disasters, can root out the Memory of things in this life, as they have sometimes done; then much better may the Memory of Praeexistence, be done away by the Souls descent out of that state, because therein she undergoes a bigger Change, being forced to forsake the Vehicle, to which she was united; but I shall hardly be brought over to their persuasion; for though Changes in Body, may often imbecill, and sometimes utterly despoil the Memory of things past; yet it is not necessary, that the Souls Changing of her Body, should therefore do so, because it is not so injurious to her Faculties: For the aforesaid evils, Violence, Aegritude, and Senility, may occasion a leisure of the Organs, or Distemperature of the Spirits, useful and subservient to the supreme and Intellectual Functions; and thus Memory must needs be weakened and destroyed, till the inflicted mischief be repaired. And no wonder; for so even Reason itself, by accidental rudenesses and mischances, may be much debilitated, yea quiter shattered and dissolved into brutishness and frenzy: But since it was not so served, by our Removal into these squallid Dungeons; from thence what I said even now, is fully verified: that if the supposed Passage of the Soul, out of a Praeexistent Body, were real and true, yet it could be nothing so prejudicial to her, as some Changes that are incident to this Body, during her residence here: If it were, not only our Memory, but Reason too, should have been calheired and lost, by our migration out of those Vehicles we formerly actuated, into these which we now campaign; but that still remaining sound and entire, and specificating our being by its eminence in us; it is manifest( I say) that the wrong and violence, sustained by Praeexistent Souls, in the Change of their habitations, is not so great as that which they suffer, from the tragical Disorders that frequently afflict their Earthly Tabernacles: And therefore though some decays and ruins, which fall out in those, may denude Men of Memory, by perverting the frame and constitution of them; yet it does not follow, that their first immersion into them, should Cloud them with a black Oblivion of that life, which they are presumed to have spent on high: For then they sliding peaceably out of one Body into another, whose Organs were rightly framed, and Spirits duly tempered, their bare translocation could not be effective of such a thing; if it could, the immediate consequent of it would be monstrously absurd and impious; for thence it would instantly be inferred, that when People by Death are summoned hence into unknown Regions provided for them; they shall quiter be bereaved of their Memory, and carry neither applause nor remordency of Conscience into the succeeding World; but if they have done well, their Benefactions shall be forgotten; and if they have done amiss, the sense of their Impieties shall be butted with them; and as for the never-dying Worm, so much talked of by us, this one blow knocks out all his teeth, which are said to corrode the guilty: If the premised Doctrine be true, this is a Natural consequent of it; for it being granted, that the mere Translation of Souls, out of airy into Earthly Bodies, is enough to make them oblivious of all the Circumstances of their Praeexistent life: We have reason to conclude, that their Return back out of these, into them again, will have the same influence and effects upon them, in reference to the passages of this present State. Were this deduction as true, as some conceive that Tradition to be, which is the foundation of it; it would give Piety and Goodness such a mortal wound, that they would quickly bleed to Death: Then Virtue might meet with some store of Flatterers, but very few Friends; for it would proclaim Religion but a sorry Scare-Crow, and an empty shadow; and pronounce Men ridiculous Fools, that should be affrighted with it, or alured by it: Supposing therefore that we Praeexisted, we must either Remember something in this present life, of what we knew and acted, in that which is past; or else we must ground upon it, that we shall perfectly forget, that ever we were in this World, at our departure out of it; and who that is not a professed Atheist can do it? Thus for ought I perceive, the Objection yet stands unshaken, notwithstanding the foregoing Batteries made against it; and is so far from reeling into a ruinous heap, that it holds as firm as ever, and Triumphs in its own impregnables.   

CHAP. XI.  
1. A Third Objection. 2. A Fourth Objection.  
1. IN the Third place it may be Objected against Praeexistence, that it makes it possible, nay necessary, that many Souls should enter into one Body: For before the Soul descends {αβγδ}, and comes to be joined with a Terrestrial Vehicle, it supposeth both her {αβγδ}, that is the supreme and Intellectual Powers, and also her sensitive Faculties, to be Sunk into a very low condition of Lassitude and Debility; yea to be even quiter consopited and stupefied: So that now only her plastic is exalted, and displays itself in a rampant energy, which puts her upon hunting( as I may say) after fitly prepared matter, into which to convey and incorporate her self; and at last being touched with invisible reeks, and steams of Atoms, that Issue from the new-Conceptions of the Womb; and being delightfully wooed by these Histerical Effluviaes, she still moves nearer and nearer towards the source out of which they fly, and never rests, till her Bridal with the Body be Consummated, and she be wholly absorbed of that slimy Spirituous Mass, whence flowed those grateful and attractive emissions. But now this plastic Principle, which rules the Stupid and Imperceptive Souls, being blind and senseless, what hinders but two, or three, or more of them, following the conduct of its heedless impetus, may be hurried down together, and jumbled into the same lump of Spumous Matter, and so jointly exercising their efformative Power upon it, shape it into a Bipartite, or Tripartite Monster, according to the number of the Inmates? Nay, the thing is not only possible, but thus methinks it must inevitably happen in most Generations: For the expirations of life in the Air, being far more numerous than the Bodily preparations upon Earth, almost every little Corner of it, will be full of Dormant Spirits: And the Ambient Air being thus thronged with them, every Atmosphere arising from the Principles of Generation, must include a good Company: And they all Lying within the compass of its activity, why should not the same influence that Charms down one, to Unite to those Rudiments of life, tempt the rest to do so too,( they in every respect being as fit and easy to be wrought upon) and so all Co-enter into one Body? Nor will the Spirit of Nature, which is said to have a great hand in Conducting Souls, to their Earthly Prisons, afford any help at all, at this dead lift: For that is a substance without Sense and Animadversion too, and so more like to promote the Error we now discourse of, than any way to prevent it; though truly to speak my own thoughts, I believe there is no such Creature in Being: And this very Clause of her Definition, that she is a Substance without Sense and Animadversion, seems to prove as much, it being little less in my apprehension, than a Contradiction; as much as to say, a material Spirit: For there, the want of Sense and Animadversion, the immediate and inseparable property of Matter, is ascribed to the Soul of the World; which argues plainly she is no Spirit; for a Spirit is opposite to Matter in Essence, and therefore must be the like, in all its Essential and immediate Attributes; which the Spirit of Nature is not, if she be rightly defined, as before was noted, to be devoid of Sense and Animadversion.  
2. Lastly, Praeexistence will be excepted against, in that it supposeth the rest of the Planets, to be Peopled with Mankind: For if the whole Caetus of Praeexistent Souls, did Originally Cohabit in those tranquillous Regions, that are stretched out beyond the height of Saturn; it cannot be that their apostasy should transmit them all directly to this little Globe of Earth, and that they should miss of the other Planets in the way, whose bulks are Vaster, and situations nearer to the Happy place of their first abode: And yet if they chanced to light into any of them, what will be their Fortune there? Shall they ever be redeemed, and put in a Capacity of recovering their forfeited Blessedness, or not? To say they shall not, would be to scandalise Providence, and to tax GOD who declares himself, to be no {αβγδ}, with a base Partiality, in that he paid a price for our Ransom, but grudges to do the like for them, who are every way as deserving as ourselves. Redeemed therefore they must be; but how? He cannot deposit the same {αβγδ} for them, that he did for us; For CHRIST dieth no more: Death hath no more Dominion over HIM; nor can another so precious be thought on; nor can one of less value serve the turn: So that what will become of them I know not; only they will be very miserable, or else I Conclude( which is most likely) that there is no PRAEEXISTENCE.   
FINIS.