LIBRAEY OF tiik Theological Seminary PRINCETON, N. J. BX 9315 .H6 1835 <&* Howe, John, 1630-1705. Shel Theological treatises Boo A DON A T I O N ft ilfCfibcb ESPECIAL PATB0 THE RECONCILEABLENESS God can do ? And whereas to the former the an- swer would be, — whatsoever is not in itself repug- nant to be done ; to the latter, it must only be, — whatsoever it becomes or is agreeable to a being every way perfect to do. And so it is to be attri- buted to the excellency of his nature, if, amongst all things not simply impossible, there be any which it may be truly said he cannot do. Or, it proceeds not from the imperfection of his power, but from the concurrence of all other perfections in him. Hence his own word plainly affirms of him that he cannot lie. And by common consent it will be acknowledged, that he cannot do any un- just act whatsoever. To this I doubt not we may with as common suffrage (when the matter is considered) subjoin, that his wisdom doth as much limit the exercise of his power, as his righteousness or his truth doth ; and that it may, with as much confidence and clearness, be said and understood, that he cannot do an unwise or imprudent act as an unjust. Further, that as his righteousness corresponds to the justice of things, to be done or not done, so doth his wisdom to the congruity or fitness. So that he cannot do what it is unfit for him to do, be- cause he is wise ; and because he is most perfectly and infinitely wise, therefore nothing that is less fit. But whatsoever is fittest, when a comparison is made between doing this or that, or between doing and not doing, that the perfection of his nature renders necessary to him, and the opposite part impossible. Again, that this measure must be un- derstood to have a very large and most general ex- tent unto all the affairs of his government, the ob- ject it concerns being so very large. We, in our OF god's prescience, &c. 61 observation, may take notice, that fewer questions can occur concerning 1 what is right or wrong, than what is fit or unfit. And whereas any man may in a moment be honest, if he have a mind to it; very few (and that by long experience) can ever attain to be wise. The things about which justice is con- versant being reducible to certain rules, but wisdom supposes very general knowledge of things scarce capable of such reduction. It is, besides, the primary requisite, in any one that bears rule over others : and must therefore most eminently in- fluence all the managements of the Supreme Ruler. Sect. XXIV. It is moreover to be considered, that innumerable congruities lie open to the Infi- nite Wisdom, which are never obvious to our view or thought : as, to a well-studied scholar, thou- sands of coherent notions, which an illiterate per- son never thought of; to a practised courtier, or well-educated gentleman, many decencies and in- decencies, in the matter of civil behaviour and conversation, which an unbred rustic knows no- thing of; and to an experienced statesman, those importancies, which never occur to the thoughts of him who daily follows the plough. What govern- ment is there that hath not its arcana, profound mysteries and reasons of state, that a vulgar wit cannot dive into ? And from whence, the account to be given, why this or that is done or not done, is not, always, that it would have been unjust it should be otherwise, but it had been imprudent. And many things are, hereupon, judged necessary not from the exigency of justice, but reason of state. Whereupon men of modest and sober 62 THE RECONCILEAJBLENESS minds, that have had experience of the wisdom of their governors and their happy conduct, through a considerable tract of time ; when they see things done by them, the leading reasons whereof they do not understand, and the effect and success comes not yet in view, suspend their censure, while as yet all seems to them obscure, and wrapt up in clouds and darkness; yea though the course that is taken have, to their apprehension, an ill aspect; accounting it becomes them not, to make a judg- ment of things so far above their reach, and con- fiding in the tried wisdom of their rulers, who, they believe, see reasons for what they do, into which they find themselves unable to penetrate. With how much more submiss and humble vene- ration, ought the methods of the Divine govern- ment to be beheld and adored , upon the certain assurance we have, that all things therein are managed by that wisdom, which could never in any thing mistake its way ! Whereas, there was never any continued administration of human govern- ment so accurate and exact, but that after some tract of time, some or other errors might be re- flected on therein. Again, it may further be said, without presuming beyond due bounds, that though infinite congruities must be supposed to lie ojDen to the divine under- standing, which are concealed from ours, yet that these two things in the general are very manifestly congruous to any sober attentive mind, that di- rectly concern, or may be applied to the case un- der our present consideration, viz. That the course of God's government over the world, be, for the most part, steady and uniform, not interrupted by very frequent, extraordinary, and anomalous of god's prescience, &c. 63 actions ; and again, That he use a royal liberty, of stepping out of his usual course, sometimes, as he sees meet. It cannot but appear to such as attend, highly incongruous, should we affirm the antithesis to either of these ; or lay down counter- positions to them, and suppose the course of the Divine government to be managed agreeably there- unto. Sect. XXV. For, as to the former; what con- fusion would it make in the world, if there should be perpetual innovations upon nature — continual or exceeding frequent impeditions, and restraints of second causes. In the sphere of nature, the vir- tues and proper qualities of things, being never certain, could never be understood, or known. In that of policy, no measures, so much as probable, could ever be taken. How much better is it, in both, that second causes ordinarily follow their in- clinations ! And why is it not to be thought con- gruous, that, in some degree, things should be pro- portionally so, in the sphere of grace ? whereto, by and by, we shall speak more directly. We pray, when our friends are sick, for their recovery. What can be the sober meaning and design of such prayers ? Not that God would work a miracle for their restitution, (for then we might as well pray for their revival after death,) but, that God would be pleased so to co-operate, in the still and silent way of nature, with second causes, and so bless means, that they may be recovered, if he see good : otherwise that they and we may be prepared to undergo his pleasure. And agreeable hereto ought to be the intent of our prayers, in reference to the public affairs, and better posture of the world. 64 THE RECONCILEABLENESS And we may take notice, the Divine wisdom lays a very great stress upon this matter, the preserving of the common order of things; and cannot but observe a certain inflexibleness of Providence herein ; and tbat it is very little apt to divert from its wonted course. At which weak minds are apt to take offence : to wonder, that against so many prayers and tears God will let a good man die, or one whom they love ; or that a miracle is not wrought to prevent their own being wronged at any time ; or, that the earth doth not open and swallow up the person that hath done them wrong: are apt to call for fire from heaven, upon them that are otherwise minded, and do otherwise than they would have them. But a judicious person would consider, if it be so highly reasonable that my desires should be complied with so extraordi- narily, then why not all men's ? And then were the world filled with prodigies and confusion. The inconveniences would soon be to all equally dis- cernible and intolerable; (as the heathen poet takes notice, should Jupiter's ear be over-easy;) yea, and the impossibility were obvious of gratify- ing all, because of their many counter-desires. And for the other ; it were no less incongruous, if the Supreme Power should so tie its own hands, and be so astricted to rules and methods, as never to do any thing extraordinary, upon never so im- portant occasion. How ill could the world have wanted such an effort of omnipotency, as the re- striction upon the flames from destroying Shad- rach, Meshach, and Abednego! or the miracles wrought in our Saviour's and the next following days! Such things are never done, but when the all-comprehending wisdom sees it most congruous ; OF GODS PRESCIENCE, &C. 65 and that the cause will over-recompense the de- flection from the common course. If no such thing did ever fall out, what a temptation were it to mankind, to introduce into their belief an unin- telligent fate instead of a Deity ! Besides that the convincing testimony were wanting, which we see is so necessary for the confirmation of any par- ticular revelation from God, which comes not within the compass of nature's discovery, (upon which ac- count also, it is as apparently necessary such extraor- dinary works should not be over-frequent, for then they become ordinary, and useless to that special end,) so that here the exertions both of the ordinate and absolute power of God (as some distinguish) have their so appropriate, and so visibly apt and congruous, uses, that they are discernible to a very ordinary understanding, how much more to the in- finite wisdom of God ! Sect. XXVI. Now hereupon we say further, there is the like congruity, upon as valuable (though not altogether the same) reasons that, in the affairs of grace, there be somewhat corre- spondent; that, ordinarily, it be sought and ex- pected, in the use of ordinary means; and that, sometimes, its sovereignty show itself in prevent- ing exertions, and in working so heroically, as none have, beforehand, in the neglect of its ordi- nary methods, any reason to expect. And we may fitly add, that where sovereignty is pleased thus to have its exercise and demonstrate itself, it is suffi- cient that there be a general congruity, that it do so sometimes, as an antecedent reason to the doin^ of some such extraordinary things; but that there should be a particular, leading congruity or ante- F 66 THE RECONCILEABLENESS cedent reason, to invite those extraordinary ope- rations of grace to one person more than another, is not necessary. But it is most congruous, that, herein, it be most arbitrary ; most agreeable to the supremacy of God ; to the state of sinful man, who hath infinitely disobliged him, and can deserve no- thing from him; yea, and even to the nature of the thing. For, where there is a parity, in any ob- jects of our own choice, there can be no leading- reason to this, rather than that. The most prudent man, that is wont to guide himself by never so ex- quisite wisdom, in his daily actions, where there is a perfect indifferency between doing this thing or that, is not liable to censure, that he is not able to give a reason why he did that, not the other : wis- dom hath no exercise in that case. But that the blessed God doth ordinarily proceed in, these affairs, by a steady rule, and sometimes show his liberty of departing from it, is to be re- solved into his infinite wisdom, it being, in itself, most fit he should do both the one and the other; and therefore to him most ncessary. Whereupon, the great apostle, St. Paul, discoursing upon this sub- ject, doth not resolve the matter into strict justice, nor absolute sovereignty; (both which have their place too, in his proceedings with men, as the sa- cred writings do abundantly testify;) but we find him in a transport, in the contemplation of the Divine wisdom, that herein so eminently shines forth : O the depths of the riches both of the wis- dom and knowledge of God ! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!' 1 Rom. xi. 33. See to the same purpose, ch. xvi. 25, 26, 27; and Eph. i. 5, 6, /, with the 8th. of god's prescience, &c. 67 Sect. XXVII. To sum up all, we conclude it ob- vious to the apprehension of such as consider, that it was more congruous the general course of God's government over man should be by moral instru- ments. And howsoever it were very unreasonable to imagine, that God cannot in any case extraordi- narily oversway the inclinations, and determine the will of such a creature, in a way agreeable enough to its nature, (though we particularly know not, as we are not concerned to know, or curiously to inquire in what way,) and highly reasonable to ad- mit that in many cases he doth ; it is notwith- standing manifest, to any sober reason, that it were very incongruous, this should be the ordinary course of his conduct towards mankind, or the same persons at all times. That is, that a whole order of intelligent creatures should be moved only by inward impulses ; that God's precepts, promises, and comminations, whereof their nature is capa- ble, should be all made impertinencies, through his constant overpowering those that should neglect them ; that the faculties, whereby men are capable of moral government, should be rendered, to this purpose, useless and vain ; and that they should be tempted to expect to be constantly managed as mere machines, that know not their own use. Nor is it less apprehensible, how incongruous it were also, on the other hand, to suppose that the exterior frame of God's government should be to- tally unaccompanied with an internal vital energy ; or exclude the inward motions, operations, and in- fluences, whereof such a creature is also fitly capa- ble ; or that God should have barred out himself from all inward access to the spirits of men, or commerce with them : that the supreme, universal, f2 68 THE RECONCILEABLENESS paternal mind (as a heathen called it) should have no way for efficacious communications to his own offspring, when he pleases; that so (unsuitably to sovereignty) he should have no objects of special favour, or no peculiar ways of expressing it. It is manifestly congruous that the Divine government over man, should be (as it is) mixed or composed of an external frame of laws, with their proper sanctions and enforcements, and an internal effu- sion of power and vital influence, correspondent to the several parts of that frame; and which might animate the whole, and use it, as instrumental, to the begetting of correspondent impressions on men's spirits : — that this power be put forth, not like that of a natural agent, ad ultimum, (which if we would suppose the Divine power to be, new worlds must be springing up every moment,) but gradually, and with an apt contemperation to the subject, upon which it is designed ; to have its operations and withal arbitrarily, as is becoming the great Agent from whom it proceeds, and to whom it therefore belongs to measure its exertions, as seems meet unto him : — that it be constantly put forth (though most gratuitously, especially the dis- obligation of the apostacy being considered) upon all to that degree, as that they be enabled to do much good, to which they are not impelled by it : — that it be ever ready (since it is the power of grace) to go forth in a further degree than it had yet done, wheresoever any former issues of it have been duly complied with. Though it be so little supposable that man should hereby Lave obliged God thereto, that he hath not any way obliged himself, otherwise, than that he hath implied a readiness to impart unto man what shall be neces- OF GODS PRESCIENCE, &C. 69 sary to enable him to obey, so far as, upon the apostacy, is requisite to his relief; if he seriously endeavour to do his own part, by the power he already hath received : agreeably to the common saying-, homini facienti quod in se est, fyc. That, according- to the royal liberty wherewith it works, it go forth, as to some, with that efficacy, as not- withstanding whatever resistance yet to overcome, and make them captives to the authority and love of Christ. Sect. XXVIII. The universal, continued recti- tude of all intelligent creatures had, we may be sure, been willed with a peremptory, efficacious will if it had been best. That is, if it had not been less congruous than to keep them some time (under the expectation of future confirmation and reward) upon trial of their fidelity, and in a state wherein it might not be impossible to them to make a de- fection. And so it had easily been prevented, that ever there should have been an apostacy from God, or any sin in the world. Nor was it either less easy, by a mighty irresistible hand, universally to expel sin, than prevent it ; or more necessary or more to be expected from him. But if God's taking no such course, tended to render his go- vernment over the world more august and awful for the present, and the result and final issue of all things more glorious at length, and were con- sequently more congruous; that could not be so willed, as to be effectually procured by him. For whatsoever obligation strict justice hath upon us, that congruity cannot but have upon him. And whereas it would be concluded, that whatsoever any one truly wills, they would effect if they 70 THE RECONCILEABLENESS could, we admit it for true, and to be applied in the present case ; but add, that as we rightly esteem that impossible to us which we cannot justly do, so is that to him, not only which he can- not do justly, but which, upon the whole matter, he cannot do most wisely also ; that is, w r hich his infinite wisdom doth not dictate is most congruous and fit to be done. Things cohere and are held together, in the course of his dispensation, by congruities as by adamantine bands, and cannot be otherwise. That is, comparing and taking things together, espe- cially the most important. For otherwise, to have been nicely curious about every minute thing, singly considered, that it might not possibly have been better, (as in the frame of this or that indi- vidual animal or the like,) had been needlessly to interrupt the course of nature, and therefore, itself, to him an incongruity; and doth, in them that expect it, import more of a trifling disposition than of true wisdom. But to him whose being is most absolutely perfect, to do that which, all things con- sidered, would be simply best, i. e. most becoming him, most honourable and Godlike, is absolutely necessary ; and consequently, it is to be attri- buted to his infinite perfection,, that, unto him, to do otherwise is absolutely impossible. And if we yet see not all these congruities which to him are more than a law, it is enough that they are obvi- ous to his own eye, who is the only competent judge. Yet, moreover, it is finally to be consi- dered, that the methods of the Divine government are, besides his, to be exposed to the view and judgment of other intellects than our own, and we expect they should to our own, in another state. of god's prescience, &c. 71 What conception thereof is already received and formed in our minds, is but an embryo, no less imperfect than our present state is. It were very unreasonable to expect, since this world shall continue but a little while, that all God's managements and ways of procedure, in ordering the great affairs of it, should be attem- pered and fitted to the judgment that shall be made of them in this temporary state, that will so soon be over, and to the present apprehension and capacity of our now so muddied and distempered minds. A vast and stable eternity remains, wherein the whole celestial chorus shall entertain them- selves with the grateful contemplation and ap- plause of his deep counsels. Such things as now seem perplex and intricate to us, will appear most irreprehensibly fair and comely to angelical minds ; and to our own, when we shall be vouchsafed a place amongst that happy community. What discovery God affords of his own glorious excellencies and perfections, is principally intended to recommend him in that state wherein he, and all his ways and works, are to be beheld with everlasting and most complacential approbation. Therefore, though now we should covet the clearest and most satisfying account of things that can be had, we are yet to exercise patience, and not precipitate our judg- ment of them before the time : as knowing our pre- sent conceptions will differ more from what they will be hereafter, than those of a child from the maturer thoughts of the wisest man; and that many of our conceits, which we thought wise, we shall then see cause to put away as childish things. 12 THE RECONCILEABLENESS, &C. The disorder, Sir, of this heap rather than frame of thoughts and discourse, as it cannot be thought more unsuitable to the subject than suitable to the author; and the less displease, by how much it could less be expected to be otherwise, from him, even in the best circumstances ; so it may lay some claim to your easier pardon, as having been mostly huddled up in the intervals of a trouble- some, long journey; wherein he was rather willing to take what opportunity the inconveniences and hurry of it could allow him, than neglect any, of using the earliest endeavour to approve himself, as he is your great admirer, Most honoured Sir, Your most obedient humble servant, H.W. 73 A POSTSCRIPT TO THE LATE LETTER. Finding that this discourse of the ' Reconcile- ableness of God's Prescience of the Sins of Men, with the wisdom and sincerity of his counsels, ex- hortations, &c.' hath been misunderstood and mis- represented ; I think it requisite to say somewhat briefly in reference thereto. I wrote it upon the motion of that honourable gentleman to whom it is inscribed ; who apprehended somewhat of that kind might be of use to render our religion less exceptionable to some persons of an inquiring dis- position, that might perhaps be too sceptical and pendulous, if not prejudiced. Having finished it, I thought it best the author's name should pass under some disguise, supposing it might so better serve its end : for knowing my name could not give the cause an advantage, I was not willing it should be in a possibility of making it incur any disadvantage. And therefore, as I have observed some in such cases, to make use only of the two last letters, I imitated some other, in the choice of 74 A POSTSCRIPT the penultimate. But perceiving that discourse now to fall under animadversion, I reckon it be- coming to be no longer concealed. It was un- avoidable to me, if I would, upon reasonable terms, apply myself to the consideration of the matter I had undertaken, of showing the consistency of God's prescience of the sins of men, with the pre- ventive methods we find him to have used against them, to express somewhat of my sense of (what I well knew to have been asserted by divers school- men) God's predeterminative concurrence to the sins of men also. For it, had been (any one may see) very idle and ludicrous trifling, to offer at reconciling those methods with God's prescience, and have waved that manifestly greater difficulty, of reconciling them with his predeterminative con- course, if I had thought there had been such a thing; and were a like case, as if a chirurgeon, undertaking a wounded person, should apply him- self, with a great deal of diligence and address, to the cure of a finger slightly scratched, and totally neglect a wound feared to be mortal in his breast. And whereas I reckoned God's prescience of all whatsoever futurities, and consequently of the sins of men, most certain and demonstrable, (though it was not the business of this discourse to demon- strate it, but supposing it, to show its reconcileable- ness with what it seemed not so well to agree with,) if I had believed his predeterminative concurrence to the sins of men to be as certain : perfect despair of being able to say any thing to purpose in this case, had made me resolve to say nothing in either. For, to show how it might stand with the wisdom and sincerity of the blessed God, to coun- sel men not to sin, to profess his hatred and detes- TO THE LATE LETTER. 75 tation of it, to remonstrate to men the great danger they should incur by it ; with so great appearance of seriousness to exhort, warn, expostulate with them concerning it ; express his great displeasure and grief for their sinning, and consequent mise- ries ; and yet all the while act them on thereto, by a secret, but mighty and irresistible, influence, — seemed to me an utterly hopeless and impossible undertaking; — the other, without this, (supposing, as to this, the case to have been as some have thought it,) a very vain one. But being well as- sured, that what seemed the greater difficulty, and to carry most of terror and affright in the face of it, was only a chimera, I reckoned the other very superable ; and therefore directed my discourse thither, according to the first design of it, which was in effect but to justify God's making such a creature as man, and governing him agreeably to his nature. Now judging it requisite, that he who should read that discourse concerning this designed sub- ject with any advantage, should have the same thoughts of the other, which was waved, that I had ; I apprehended it necessary to communicate those thoughts concerning that, as I did. Not operosely, and as my business, but only on the bye, and as was fit in reference to a thing that was to be waved, and not insisted on. Now I perceive that some persons, who had formerly entertained that strange opinion of God's predeterminative concurrence to the wickedest actions, and not purged their minds of it, have been offended with that letter, for not expressing more respect unto it ; and yet offered nothing themselves, (which to me seems exceeding strange,) for the solving of that great difficulty and 76 A POSTSCRIPT encumbrance, which it infers upon our religion. Nor do I much wonder, that this opinion of pre- determinative concourse to sinful actions, should have some stiff adherents among- ourselves. For having been entertained by certain Dominicans, that were apprehended in some things to approach nearer us than others to the Roman church, it came to receive favour and countenance from some of our own, of considerable note for piety and learning, whose name and authority cannot but be expected to have much influence on the minds of many. But I somewhat wonder, that they who have had no kindness for this letter, upon the ac- count of its dissent from them, in this particular, should not allow it common justice. For, because it hath not said every thing they would have had it say, and that would have been grateful to them- selves, they impute to it the having said what it said not, and what they apprehended would be most ungrateful to all pious and sober men. The sum is, they give out concerning it, that it denies the providence of God about sin, which all good men ought to abhor from ; and insinuate that it falls in with the sentiments of Durandus, which they know many think not well of. All that I intend to do, for the present, upon this occasion, shall be to show wherein the letter is misrepresented, and charged with what it hath not in it; to remark what is said against that sup- posed sense of it, and give the true sense of what it says touching this matter, with a further account of the author's mind herein than it was thought fit to insert into so transient and occasional a dis- course as that part of the letter was ; whereby it may be seen, wherein he agrees with those of that TO THE LATE LETTER. 71 opposite persuasion, and what the very point of difference is. Further than this, I yet intend not to go, till I see further need. There have two dis- courses come to my view that have referred to that letter. The one in manuscript only ; which, be- cause it is uncertain to me whether the reputed author of it will own it or no, and because it says little or nothing, by way of argument, against the true sense of the letter, I shall take no further pre- sent notice of. The other is printed, and offers at somewhat of argument, which therefore I shall more attentively consider. It doth this letter an honour, whereof its author never had the least ambition or expectation, to insert the mention of it into the close of a very learned, elaborate work ; ' with which it might, yet, easily be imagined, its simplicity, and remoteness from any pretence to learning, would so ill agree, that a quarrel could not but ensue. It is from one, who having spent a great part of his time in travelling through some regions of literature, and been peaceable, as far as I have understood, in his travels, it might have been hoped would have let this pamphlet alone; when, for what I can observe, he finds no fault with it but what he makes, and is fain to accuse it of what is no where to be found in it, lest it should be innocent. It is an unaccountable pleasure which men of some humours take, in depraving what is done by others, when there is nothing attempted that doth interfere with them ; nothing that can, righteously, be understood to cross any good end, which they more openly pretend to, nor the more concealed 1 Court of the Gentiles, part ii. page 522. 78 A POSTSCRIPT end (if Ihey have any such) of their own glory. Common edification seems less designed, when every thing must be thrown down which is not built by their own hands, or by their own line and measure. I plead nothing of merit in this little essay ; only I say for it, that I know not what it can be guilty of towards this learned man, that can have occasioned this assault upon it by his pen. By how much the less it keeps his road, the more I might have thought it out of the way of his notice. I am sure it meant him no harm, nor had any de- sign to pilfer from him any part of his collections. But he says, he may not let it pass. Then there is no remedy. But I wonder what he should mean by he may not. It must either mean, that he thought it unlawful to let it pass, or that he had a mighty strong and irresistible inclination to squab- ble a little with it. The former cannot be ima- gined. For then, for the same reason, he would have attempted sundry others of former and later days, that have said much to the purpose, which this letter doth but touch obiter, and on the bye, in its way to another design. But those were giants, whom it was not so safe to meddle with : therefore he could very wisely let them pass, though they have wounded his beloved cause, be- yond all that it is in the power of his (or any) art to cure. Whence it is consequent, that the whole business must be resolved into the latter. And this inclination cannot but owe itself to some pe- culiar aspect and reference he had to the author; whom, though he was in incognito, yet (as I have been informed) he professes to have discoursed with upon the same subject many times. And so, therefore, he might once more, before this public TO THE LATE LETTER. 79 rencounter, if he had thought fit, and nature could have been repelled awhile. It is true, he hath found me not facile to enter- tain his sentiments in this matter. And, indeed, I have deeply dreaded the portentous imagina- tions which I found had more lightly tinctured his mind, as to this thing, concerning the blessed God; than which, upon deliberation, I do believe, no human wit can ever devise worse ; as I have often freely told divers of my friends, and it is very likely, among them, himself. Though I do not suspect the contagion to have infected his vitals ; by a privilege, vouchsafed to some, that they may possibly drink some deadly thing that shall not hurt them. But why must an impatiency of this dissent break out into so vindictive an hostility ? I will not say I expected more friendly dealing ; for, as I do well know it was very possible such a public contest might have been managed with that candour and fairness, as not at all to entrench upon friendship ; so, as it is, I need not own so much weakness, as upon many years' experience, not to be able to distinguish and understand, there are some tempers less capable of the ingenuities that belong to that pleasant relation. But it was only a charitable error, of which I repent not, that I expected a more righteous dealing. He pretends to give my sense in other words, and then gravely falls to combating his own man of straw, which he will have represent me ; and so I am to be tortured in effigy. It can never be proved, that it implies a contradiction for God to make a creature which should be capable of acting with- out immediate concourse. This he puts in a dif- ferent character, as if I had said so much. And 80 A POSTSCRIPT why might not my own words be allowed to speak my own sense, but that his understanding and eyes must then have conspired to tell him, that the sense would have been quite another ? It is a predeterminative concurrence to all actions, even those that are most malignantly wicked, and again, God's concurring by a determinative influence unto wicked actions, which is the only thing I speak of; as what I cannot reconcile with the wisdom and sincerity of his councils and exhortations against such such actions. And if he had designed to serve any common good end, in this undertaking of his, why did he not attempt to reconcile them himself? But the wisdom and sincerity of God are thought fit (as it would seem) to be sacrificed to the reputation of his more pecu- liarly admired schoolmen. If there be such a universal determination, by an irresistible divine influence, to all even the wickedest actions, (which God forbid !) methinks such a difficulty should not be so easily passed over. And surely the reconciling such a determinative influence, with the Divine wisdom and sincerity, had been a performance worth all his learned labours besides, and of greater service to the Christian name and honour. But it seems the denying concurrence by such predetermining influence, is the denying of all im- mediate concurrence. And I am sent to the Thomists, Scotists, Jesuits, and Suarez more espe- cially, to be taught otherwise ; as if all these were for determinative concourse ; which is very plea- sant, when the very heads of the two first-men- tioned sects were against it, as we shall see further anon; the third generally, and Suarez particularly, whom he names, have so industriously and strongly TO THE LATE LETTER. 81 opposed it. Yea, and because I assent not to the doctrine of predeterminative concourse, I am re- presented (which was the last spite that was to be done me) as a favourer of the hypotheses of Du- randus. And he might as truly have said of Henry Nicholas, but not so prudently, because he knows whose opinions have a nearer alliance to that family. Now I heartily wish J had a ground for so much charity towards him, as to suppose him ignorant that immediate concourse, and determi- native, are not wont to be used by the schoolmen, in this controversy, as terms of the same significa- tion. If he do himself think them to be all one, what warrant is that to him to give the same for my sense ; when it is so well known they are not commonly so taken, and that determinative con- course is so voluminously written against, where immediate is expressly asserted ? Let him but soberly tell me, what his design was, to dash out the word determining from what he recites of that letter, and put in immediate, which he knows is not to be found in any of the places he refers to in it. Or what was the spring of that confidence that made him intimate the Scotists, Thomists, the Jesuits, and particularly Suarez, to be against what is said in the letter, in this thing ? If he could procure all the books in the world to be burnt, besides those in his own library, he would yet have a hard task to make it be believed in the next age, that all these were for God's efficacious determi- nation of the wills of men unto wicked actions. I need not, after all this, concern myself as to what he says about the no medium between the ex- tremes of his disjunctive proposition. Either the human will must depend upon the divine inde- G 82 A POSTSCRIPT pendent will of God, &c. (as he phrases it in the excess of his caution, lest any should think the will of God was not a divine will,) or God must depend on the human will, &c. ; unless he can show that the human will cannot be said to depend on the divine, as being enabled by it, except it be also determined and impelled by it to every wicked action. A created being that was entirely from God, with all the powers and faculties which be- long to it ; that hath its continual subsistence in him, and all those powers continued and main- tained by his influence every moment ; that hath those powers made habile, and apt for whatsoever its most natural motions and operations, by a suitable influence whensoever it moves or operates : can this creature be said not to depend, as to all its motions and operations, unless it be also unavoid- ably impelled to do every thing to which it is thus sufficiently enabled ? I again say, was it impossible to God to make such a creature that can, in this case, act or not act ? It is here oddly enough said, that the author gives no demonstration hereof. Of what ? Why, that it can never be proved (as the reference to the foregoing word shows) that it implies a contradic- tion, &c. It seems, it was expected that author should have proved by demonstration, that it can never be proved that it implies a contradiction for God to make a creature, which should be capable of acting (as he feigns him to have said) without immediate concourse. By what rule of rea- soning was he obliged to do so ? But if the proving there is such a creature, as, in the case before ex- pressed, can act without determinative concourse, will serve turn to prove that it cannot be proved it TO THE LATE LETTER. 83 implies a contradiction there should be such a one, I may think the thing was done; and may think it sufficiently proved, that there is such a creature ; if it appear (whereof there is too much proof) that there are such actions done by creatures, as, for the reasons that were before alleged, it could not stand with the nature of God to determine them unto. And was nothing said tending to prove this, that it could not consist with the nature of God to determine men unto all the wicked actions they commit ? It seems unless it were put into mood and figure, it is no proof. Nor was it the de- sign of those papers to insist upon that sub- ject; but there are things suggested in transitu, as such a discourse could admit, that, whether they are demonstrative or no, would puzzle a consi- dering person : — that God should have as much in- fluence and concurrence to the worst actions as to the best; as much or more than the sinner or the tempter: that the matter of his laws to Adam, and his posterity, should be a natural impossibility : and,! now add, the irreconcileableness of that de- termination, with God's wisdom and sincerity, &c. These I shall reckon demonstrations, till I see them well answered. However, if mine were a bad opinion, why was it not as confutable without the mention of Duran- dus ? But that was, w r ith him, an odious name ; and fit, therefore, to impress the brand which he desired I should wear for his sake. This is a likely way to clear the truth ! Yet if it serve not one design, it will another, he thinks, upon which he was more intent. Are all for Durandus's way that are against a predeterminative influence to wicked actions ? I could tell him who have shown more g 2 84 A. POSTSCRIPT strength in arguing against Durandus than I find in all his arguments, who yet have written, too, against determinative concourse to such actions, more than ever he will be able to answer, or any man. The truth is, when I wrote that letter, I had never seen Durandus; nor indeed did I consult any book for the writing of it, (as I had not oppor- tunity, if T had been so inclined,) except, upon some occasions, the Bible : not apprehending it necessary to number votes, and consider how many men's thoughts were one way, and of how many the other, before I would adventure to think any of my own. But I have this day, upon the view of his animadversions, taken a view of Durandus too : and really cannot yet guess what should tempt him to parallel my conceptions with Durandus's, but that he took his for somewhat an ill-favoured name. Durandus flatly, in several places, denies .God's immediate concourse to the actions of the creatures; 1 which I never said nor thought ; but do really believe his immediate concourse to all actions of his creatures, both immediatione virtutis and suppositi, (that I may more comply with his scholastic humour, in the use of such terms, than gratify my own,) yet not determinative unto wicked actions. Again, Durandus denies immediate concourse, universally, and upon such a ground as where- upon the denial must equally extend to good ac- tions as to bad ; viz. that it is impossible the same numerical action should be from two or more agents immediately and perfectly, except the same numerical virtue should be in each ; but he says the same numerical virtue cannot ^e in God and in the creature, &c. 2 Whereas he well knows the con- 5 L. ii. Disc. 1. Q. 5. D. 37. Q. 1 . 2 Disc 1, 2, 5, ut supr. TO THE LATE LETTER. 85 course or influence (for I here affect not the cu- riosity to distinguish these two terms, as some do) which I deny not to be immediate to any actions, I only deny to be determinative as to those which are wicked. Yea, and the authors he quotes, 1 Aquinas and Scotus, though every body may know they are against what was the notion of Du- randus, yet are as much against himself, if he will directly oppose that letter, and assert determina- tive concourse to wicked actions. They held im- mediate concourse, not determinative. The former, though he supposes divine help in reference to the elections of the human will, yet asserts the elec- tions themselves to be in man's own power, and only says that in the executions of those elections men can be hindered; that (whatsoever influence he asserts of the first cause) men still, habent se indif- fer enter ad bene vel male eligendumr The other, though he also excludes not the immediate effi- cacy of God in reference to the actions of men, yet is so far from making it determinative, that the reason he gives why, in evil actions, man sins and God does not, is that the one of those causes posset rectitudinem dare actui quam tenetur dare : et tamen non dat. Alia autem, licet non teneatiir earn dare : tamen quantum est ex se daret, si voluntas creata co- operaretur ; 3 in the very place which himself refers to : wherein they differ from this author toto carlo, and from me, in that they make not determinative influence necessary in reference to good actions, which I expressly do. Thus far it may be seen what pretence or colour he had to make my opinion the same with Duran- dus's, or his own the same with that of Thomas 1 Sect. xi. 2 1 Q. 83. 3 L. iii. Disc. 27. Q. 2. 86 A POSTSCRIPT and Scotus. But if he knew in what esteem I have the schoolmen, he would hardly believe me likely to step one foot out of my way, either to gain the reputation of any of their names, or avoid the dis- reputation. He, notwithstanding-, supposed his own reputation to be so good (and I know no rea- son why he might not suppose so) as to make it be believed I was any thing he pleased to call me, by such as had not opportunity to be otherwise in- formed. And thus I would take leave of him, and permit him to use his own reflections upon his usage of me, at his own leisure; but that civility bids me (since he is pleased to be at the pains of catechising me) first to give some answer to the questions wherein he thus expostulates with me. Q. 1. Whether there be any action of man on earth so good, which hath not some mixture of sin in it ? And if God concur to the substrate matter of it as good, must he not necessarily con- cur to the substrate matter as sinful ? For is not the substrate matter of the act, both as good and sinful, the same ? A. 1. It seems, then, that God doth concur to the matter of an action as sinful. Which is ho- nestly acknowledged, since by his principles it cannot be denied ; though most of his way mince the business, and say the concurrence is only to the action which is sinful, not as sinful. 2. This I am to consider as an argument for God's predeterminative concurrence to wicked ac- tions ; and thus it must be conceived, that if God concur by determinative influence to the im- perfectly good actions of faith, repentance, love to himself, prayer; therefore to the acts of enmity against himself, cursing, idolatry, blasphemy, &c. And is it not a mighty consequence ? If to ac- TO THE LATE LETTER. 87 tions that are good quoad substantiam, therefore to such as are in the substance of them evil ? We ourselves can, in a remoter kind, concur to the ac- tions of others : because you may afford, yourself, your leading concurrence to actions imperfectly good, therefore may you to them that are down- right evil ? because to prayer, therefore to cursing and swearing ? and then ruin men for the actions you induced them to ? You will say, God may rather, but sure he can much less do so than you. How could you be serious in the proposal of this question ? We are at a loss how it should consist with the divine wisdom, justice, goodness, and truth, to de- sign the punishing man, yet innocent, with ever- lasting torments, for actions which God, himself, would irresistibly move him to ; whereas his mak- ing a covenant with Adam in reference to himself and his posterity, implied there was *a possibility it might be kept ; at least that he would not make the keeping of it, by his own positive influence, impossible. And you say, if he might concur to the substrate matter of an action as good, which tends to man's salvation and blessedness, he must necessarily concur (and that by an irresistible de- terminative influence, else you say nothing to me) to the substrate matter of all their evil actions, as evil, which tend to their ruin and misery, brought upon them by the actions which God makes them do. I suppose St. Luke, vi. 9, with Hos. xiii. 9, show a difference. If you therefore ask me, why I should not admit this consequence ? I say it needs no other answer, than that I take wisdom, righte- ousness, goodness, and truth, to belong more to the idea of God, than their contraries. 88 A POSTSCRIPT Q. 2. Is there any action so sinful that hath not some natural good as the substrate matter thereof? A. True. And what shall be inferred ? That therefore God must, by a determinative influence, produce every such action whatsoever reason there be against it? You might better argue thence the necessity of his producing every hour, a new world ; in which there would be a great deal more of positive entity, and natural goodness. Certainly, the natural goodness that is in the entity of an ac- tion, is no such invitation to the holy God, by de- terminative influence to produce it, as that he should offer violence to his own nature, and stain the justice and honour of his government, by mak- ing it be done, and then punish it being done. Q. 3. Do we not cut off the most illustrious part of divine providence in governing the lower world, &c. ? A. What ? by denying that it is the stated way of God's government, to urge men, irresistibly, to all that wickedness for which he will afterwards punish them with everlasting torments ? I should least of all ever have expected such a question to this purpose, and am ashamed further to answer it. Only name any act of providence I hereby deny, if you can. In the next place, that my sense may appear in my own words ; and that I may show how far I am of the same mind with those that ap- prehend me at so vast a distance from them, and where, if they go further, our parting point must be ; I shall set down the particulars of my agree- ment with them, and do it in no other heads than they might have collected, if they had pleased, out of that letter. As, TO THE LATE LETTER. 89 1. That God exerciseth a universal providence about all his creatures, both in sustaining and go- verning 1 them. 2. That, more particularly, he exerciseth such a providence about man. 3. That this providence about man extends to all the actions of all men. 4. That it consists not alone in beholding the actions of men, as if he were a mere spectator of them only, but is positively active about them. 5. That this active providence of God about all the actions of men consists not merely in giving them the natural powers, whereby they can work of themselves, but in a real influence upon those powers. 6. That this influence is in reference to holy and spiritual actions (whereto since the apostacy the nature of man is become viciously disinclined) ne- cessary- to be efficaciously determinative ; such as shall overcome that disinclination, and reduce those powers into act. 7. That the ordinary, appointed way for the communication of this determinative influence, is by our intervening consideration of the induce- ments which God represents to us in his word, viz. the precepts, promises, and comminations, which are the moral instruments of his government. No doubt but he may (as is intimated in the letter) extraordinarily act men in some rarer cases, by in- ward impulse, without the help of such external means, as he did prophets or inspired persons ; and when he hath done so, we were not to think he treated them unagreeably to their natures, or so as their natures could not, without violence, admit. But it hath been the care and designment of the 90 A POSTSCRIPT divine wisdom, so to order the way of dispensa- tion towards the several sorts of creatures, as not only not, ordinarily, to impose upon them what they could not conveniently be patient of; but so as that their powers and faculties might be put upon the exercises whereof they were capable, and to provide that neither their passive capacity should be overcharged, nor their active be unemployed. And whereas the reasonable nature of man renders him not only susceptible of unexpected internal impressions, but also capable of being governed by laws, which require the use of his own endeavour to understand and obey them ; and whereas we also find such laws are actually made for him, and propounded to him with their proper enforcements ; if it should be the fixed course of God's govern- ment over him, only to guide him by inward im- pulses, this (as is said in that letter) would render those laws and their sanctions impertinencies ; his faculties, whereby he is capable of moral govern- ment so far, and to this purpose, useless and vain : and would be an occasion, which the depraved na- ture of men would be very apt to abuse into a temptation to them, never to bend their powers to the endeavour of doing any thing that were of a holy and spiritual tendency, (from which their aversion would be always prompting them to de- vise excuses,) more than a mere machine would apply itself to the uses which it was made for, and doth not understand. Therefore, lest any should be so unreasonable, as to expect God should only surprise them, while they resolvedly sit still and sleep ; he hath, in his infinite wisdom, withheld from them the occasion hereof, and left them destitute of any encourage- TO THE LATE LETTER. 91 ment (whatsoever his extraordinary dealings may have been with some) to expect his influences, in the neglect of his ordinary methods, as is dis- coursed already and at large in the following pages ; and which is the plain sense of that admonition , Phil. ii. 12, 13. Yea, and though there be never so many instances of merciful surprisals, preventive of all our own consideration and care, yet those are still to be accounted the ordinary methods which are so de jure, which would actually be so if men did their duty, and which God hath obliged us to observe and attend unto as such. 8. That in reference to all other actions which are not sinful, though there be not a sinful disin- clination to them, yet because there may be a slug- gishness and ineptitude to some purposes God in- tends to serve by them, this influence is also always determinative thereunto, whensoever to the im- mense wisdom of God shall seem meet, and con- ducing to his own great and holy ends. 9. That, in reference to sinful actions, by this in- fluence God doth not only sustain men who do them, and continue to them their natural faculties and powers, whereby they are done ; but also, as the first mover, so far excite and actuate those powers, as that they are apt and habile for any congenerous action, to which they have a natural designation, and whereto they are not sinfully dis- inclined. 10. That, if men do then employ them to the doing of any sinful action ; by that same influence, he doth., as to him seems meet, limit, moderate, and, against the inclination and design of the sinful agent, overrule and dispose it to good. But now 92 A POSTSCRIPT if, besides all this, they will also assert, that God doth, by an efficacious influence, move and deter- mine men to wicked actions ; this is that which I most resolvedly deny. That is, in this T shall differ with them, that I do not suppose God to have, by internal influence, as far a hand in the worst and wickedest actions, as in the best. I assert more to be necessary to actions to which men are wickedly disinclined ; but that less will suffice for their doing of actions to which they have inclination more than enough. T reckon it suffi- cient to the production of this latter sort of actions, that their powers be actually habile, and apt for any such action, in the general, as is connatural to them ; supposing there be not a peccant aversion, as there is to all those actions that are holy and spiritual ; which aversion a more potent (even a de- terminative) influence is necessary to overcome. I explain myself by instance : — A man hath from God the powers belonging to his nature, by which he is capable of loving or hating an apprehended good or evil. These powers being, by a present divine influence, rendered ha- bile and apt for action, he can now love a good name, health, ease, life; and hate disgrace, sickness, pain, death ; but he doth also by these powers, thus habilitated for action, love wickedness and hate God ; I say, now, that to those former acts God should over and besides determine him, is not abso- lutely and always necessary ; and to the latter, is impossible. But that, to hate wickedness univer- sally, and as such, and to love God, the depraved- ness of his nature, by the apostacy, hath made the determinative influence of efficacious STace neces- TO THE LATE LETTER. 93 sary. Which, therefore, he hath indispensable obligation (nor is destitute of encouragement) ear- nestly to implore and pray for. My meaning is now plain to such as have a mind to understand it. Having thus given an account wherein I agree with them, and wherein, if they please, I must differ; it may perhaps be expected I should add further reasons of that difference on my part : but I shall for the present forbear to do it. I know it may be alleged, that some very pious as well as learned men have been of their opinion ; and I seriously believe it. But that signifies nothing to the goodness of the opinion : nor doth the badness of it extinguish my charity nor reverence towards the men. For I consider, that as many hold the most important truths, and which most directly tend to impress the image of God upon their souls, that yet are never stamped with any such impres- sion thereby ; so, it is not impossible some may have held very dangerous opinions, with a notional judgment, the pernicious influence whereof hath never distilled upon their hearts. Neither shall I be willing, without necessity, to detect other men's infirmities : yet if I find myself any way obliged further to intermeddle in this matter, I reckon the time I have to spend in this world can never be spent to better purpose, than in discovering the fearful consequences of that rejected opinion, the vanity of the subterfuges whereby its assertors think to hide the malignity of it, and the inefficacy of the arguments brought for it; especially those two which the letter takes notice of. For, as so ill- coloured an opinion ought never to be admitted without the most apparent necessity, so do I think it most apparent there is no necessity it should be 94 A POSTSCRIPT. admitted upon those grounds, or any other ; and doubt not but that both the governing providence of God, in reference to all events whatsoever, and his most certain knowledge of them all, may be de- fended, against all opposers, without it. But I had rather my preparations to these purposes should be buried in dust and silence, than T should ever see the occasion which should carry the signi- fication with it of their being at all needful. And I shall take it for a just and most deplorable oc- casion, if I shall find any to assert against me the contradictory to this proposition : — That God doth not by an efficacious influence, universally move and determine men to all their actions; even those that are most wicked : — which is the only true and plain meaning of what was said, about this busi- ness, in the before-mentioned letter. THE VANITY THIS MORTAL LIFE OF MAN, CONSIDERED IN HIS PRESENT MORTAL STATE. EPISTLE DEDICATORY. TO THE DESERVEDLY HONOURED JOHN UPTON, OF LUPTON, ESQ. Since it is the lot of the following pages to be exposed to pub- lic view, there is somewhat of justice in it, to yourselves or me, that the world do also know wherein divers of you have con- tributed thereto ; that if any thing redound hence to public ad- vantage, it may be understood to be owing in part to you ; or if it shall be reckoned a useless trouble, in this way to represent things so obvious to common notice, and whereof so much is already said, all the blame to the publication be not imputed (as it doth not belong) tome only. But I must here crave your excuse, that, on this account, I give you a narrative of what (for the most part) you already know and may possibly not delight to remember ; both because it is now become convenient that others should know it too, and not necessary to be put into a distinct preface ; and because to yourselves the review of those less pleasing passages may be attended with a fruit which may be some recompence for their want of pleasure. Therefore give the reader leave to take notice, and let it not be grievous to you that I remind you, that after this your near relation (whose death gave the occasion of the ensuing medita- tions) had from his youth lived between twenty and thirty years of his age in Spain, your joint importunity had at length ob- tained from him a promise of returning ; whereof, when you were in somewhat a near expectation, a sudden disease in so fev, r days landed him in another world, that the first notice you had of his death or sickness, was by the arrival of that vessel (clad H 98 EPISTLE DEDICATORY. in mourning attire) which, according to his own desire in his sickness, brought over the deserted body to its native place of Lupton ; that thence it might find a grave, where it first re- ceived a soul ; and obtain a mansion in the earth, where first it became one to a reasonable spirit. A little before this time, the desire of an interview among yourselves (which the distance of your habitations permitted not to be frequent) had induced divers of you to appoint a meeting at some middle place, whereby the trouble of a long journey might be conveniently shared among you. But, before that agreed resolution could have its accom- plishment, this sad and most unexpected event intervening, altered the place, the occasion, and design of your meeting ; but effected the thing itself, and brought together no less than twenty, the brothers and sisters of the deceased, or their con. sorts, besides his many nephews and nieces and other relations, to the mournful solemnity of the interment. Within the time of our being together upon this sad account, this passage of the Psalmist here insisted on, came into discourse among us ; being intro- duced by an occasion, which (though then, it may be unknown to the most of you) was somewhat rare, and not unworthy observa- tion ; viz. that one of yourselves having been some time before surprised with an unusual sadness, joined with an expectation of ill tidings, upon no known cause, had so urgent an inculca- tion of these words, as not to be able to forbear the revolving them much of the former part of that day, in the latter part whereof the first notice was brought to that place of this so near a relation's decease. Certain months after, some of you with whom I was then conversant in London, importuned me to have somewhat from me in writing upon that subject. Whereto I at length agreed, with a cautionary request, that it might not come into many hands, but might remain (as the occasion was) among yourselves. Nor will I deny it to have been some inducement to me to apply my thoughts to that theme, that it had been so suggested as was said. For such presages and abodings, as that above mentioned, may reasonably be thought to owe themselves to some more steady and universal principle than casualty or the EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 90 party's own imagination : by whose more noble recommen- dation (that such a gloomy premonition might carry with it not what should only afflict, but also instruct and teach) this subject did seem offered to our meditation. Accordingly, therefore, after my return to the place of my abode, I hastily drew up the substance of the following discourse ; which, a year ago, I trans- mitted into their hands who desired it from me, without re- serving to myself any copy. Hereby it became difficult to me presently to comply (besides divers considerations I might have against the thing itself) with that joint request of some of you, (in a letter, which my removal into another kingdom occasioned to come long after to my hands,) that I would consent these papers might be made public For as I have reason to be con- scious to myself of disadvantages enough to discourage any un- dertaking of that kind ; so I am more especially sensible, that so cursory and superficial a management of a subject so import- ant, (though its private occasion and design at first might render it excusable to those few friends for whom it was meant,) can- not but be liable to the hard censure (not to say contempt) of many whom discourses of this kind should more designedly serve. And therefore, though my willingness to be serviceable in keeping alive the apprehension and expectation of another state, my value of your judgments who conceive what is here done may be useful thereto, and my peculiar respects to your- selves, the members and appendants of a family to which (be- sides some relation) I have many obligations and endearments, do prevail with me not wholly to deny ; yet pardon me that I have suspended my consent to this publication, till I should have a copy transmitted to me from some of you, for my neces- sary view of so hasty a production, that I might not offer to the view of the world, what, after I had penned it, had scarce passed my own. And now after so long an expectation, those papers are but this last week come to my hands, I here return them with little or no alteration ; save, that what did more directly concern the occasion, towards the close, is transferred hither ; but with the addition of almost all the directive part of the use : which I submit together to your pleasure and dispose. ti 9 100 EPISTLE DEDICATORY. And I shall now take the liberty to add, my design in con- senting to this request of yours (and I hope the same of you in making it) is not to erect a monument to the memory of the de- ceased, (which how little doth it signify !) nor to spread the fame of your family ; (though the visible blessing of God upon it, in the fruitfulness, piety, and mutual love, wherein it hath flourished for some generations, do challenge observation, both as to those branches of it which grow in their own more natural soil, and those, as I have now occasion to take further notice, that I find to have been transplanted into another country ;) but that such into whose hands this little treatise shall fall, may be induced to consider the true end of their beings ; to examine and discuss the matter more thoroughly with themselves, what it may or can be supposed such a sort of creatures was made and placed on this earth for : that when they shall have reasoned themselves into a settled apprehension of the worthy and im- portant ends they are capable of attaining, and are visibly de- signed to, they may be seized with a noble disdain of living be- neath themselves and the bounty of their Creator. It is obvious to common observation, how flagrant and intense a zeal men are often wont to express for their personal reputa- tion, the honour of their families, yea, or for the glory of their nation : but how few are acted by that more laudable and en- larged zeal for the dignity of mankind ! How few are they that resent the common and vile depression of their own species ! Or that, while in things of lightest consideration they strive with emulous endeavour, that they and their relatives may excel other men, do reckon it a reproach if, in matters of the greatest consequence, they and all men should not excel beasts ! How few that are not contented to confine their utmost designs and expectations within the same narrow limits ! through a mean and inglorious self despiciency, confessing in themselves (to the truth's and their own wrong) an incapacity of greater things ; and with most injurious falsehood, proclaiming the same of all man- kind besides. If he that, amidst the hazards of a dubious war, betrays the in- terest and honour of his country be justly infamous, and thought EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 101 worthy severest punishments, I see not why a debauched sen- sualist, that lives as if he were created only to indulge his appe- tite ; that so vilifies the notion of man, as if he were made but to eat and drink, and sport, to please only his sense and fancy ; that in this time and state of conflict between the powers of this present world, and those of the world to come, quits his party, bids open defiance to humanity, abjures the noble principle and ends, forsakes the laws and society of all that are worthy to be esteemed men, abandons the common and rational hope of man- kind concerning a future immortality, and herds himself among brute creatures ; I say, I see not why such a one should not be scorned and abhorred as a traitor to the whole race and nation of reasonable creatures, as a fugitive from the tents, and deserter of the common interest of men ; and that both for the vileness of his practice and the danger of his example. And who, that hath open eyes, beholds not the dreadful in- stances and increase of this defection ; when it hath prevailed to that degree already, that in civilized, yea, in Christian coun- tries, (as they yet affect to be called,) the practice is become fashionable and in credit, which can square with no other prin- ciple than the disbelief of a future state, as if it were but a mere poetic or (at best) a political fiction ? And as if so impudent in- fidelity would pretend not to a connivance only but a sanction, it is reckoned an odd and uncouth thing for a man to live as if he thought otherwise ; and a great presumption to seem to dis- sent from the profane infidel crew. As if the matter were already formally determined in the behalf of irreligion, and the doctrine of the life to come had been clearly condemned in open council as a detestable heresy. For what tenet was ever more exploded and hooted at, than that practice is which alone agrees with this ? Or what series or course of repeated villanies can ever be more ignominious than (in vulgar estimate) a course of life so transacted as doth become the expectation of a blessed immortality ? And what, after so much written and spoken by persons of all times and religions for the immortality of the hu- man soul, and so common an acknowledgment thereof by pagans, Mahomedans, Jews, and Christians, is man now at last 102 EPISTLE DEDICATORY. condemned and doomed to a perpetual death, an it were, by the consent and suffrage even of men ; and that too without trial or hearing ; and not by the reason of men, but their lusts only ? As if (with a loud and violent cry) they would assassinate and stifle this belief and hope, but not judge it. And shall the matter be thus given up as hopeless ; and the victory be yielded to prosperous wickedness, and a too successful conspiracy of vile miscreants against both their Maker and their own stock and race ? One would think whosoever have remaining in them any con- science of obligation and duty to the common Parent and Author of our beings, and remembrance of our divine original, any breathings of our ancient hope, any sense of human honour, any resentments of so vile an indignity to (he nature of man, any spark of a just and generous indignation for so opprobrious a contumely to their own kind and order in the creation, should oppose them- selves with an heroic vigour to this treacherous and unnatural combination. And let us (my worthy friends) be provoked, in our several capacities, to do our parts herein ; and, at least, so to live and converse in tins world, that the course and tenour of our lives may import an open asserting of our hopes in another ; and may let men see we are not ashamed to own the belief of a life to come. Let us, by a patient continuance in well-doing, (how low designs soever others content themselves to pursue,) seek honour, glory, and immortality to ourselves ; and by our avowed, warrantable ambition in this pursuit, justify our great and bountiful Creator, who hath made us not in vain, but for so high and great things ; and glorify our blessed Redeemer, who amidst the gloomy and disconsolate darkness of this wretch- ed world, when it was overspread with the shadow of death, hath brought life and immortality to light in the Gospel. Let us labour both to feel and express the power of that religion which hath the inchoation of the (participated) divine life for its principle, and the perfection and eternal perpetuation thereof for its scope and end. Nor let the time that hath since elapsed be found to have worn out with you the useful impressions which this monitory EPISTLE DEDICATORY. 103 surprising instance of our mortality did first make But give me leave to inculcate from it what was said to you when the occasion was fresh and new : that we labour more deeply to apprehend God's dominion over his creatures ; and that he made us principally for himself, and for ends that are to be compassed in the future state ; and not for the temporary satis- faction and pleasure of one another in this world. Otherwise Providence had never been guilty of such a solecism, to take out one from a family long famous for its exemplary mutual love, and dispose him into so remote a part, not permitting to most of his near relations the enjoyment of him for almost thirty years (and therein all the flower) of his age ; and at last, when we were expecting the man, send you home the breathless frame wherein he lived. Yet it was not contemptible that you had that, and that dying (as Joseph) in a strange land, he gave also command- ment concerning his bones ; that though in his life he was (mostly) separated from his brethren, he might in death be ga- thered to his fathers. It was some evidence (though you wanted not better) that amidst the traffic of Spain he more esteemed the religion of England, and therefore would rather his dust should associate with theirs, with whom also he would rather his spirit should. But whatever it did evidence, it occasioned so much, that you had that so general meeting with one another, which otherwise probably you would not have had, nor are likely again to have, (so hath Providence scattered you,) in this world ; and that it proved a more serious meeting than otherwise it might : for however it might blamelessly have been designed to have met together at a cheerful table, God saw it fitter to order the meeting at a mournful grave ; and to make the house that re- ceived you (the native place to many of you) the house of mourn- ing rather than of feasting. The one would have had more quick relishes of a present pleasure, but the other was likely to yield the more lasting sense of an after profit. Nor was it an ill errand to come together (though from afar for divers of you) to learn to die ; as you might, by being so sensibly put in mind of it, though you did not see that very part acted itself. And 104 EPISTLE DEDICATORY. accept this endeavour, to further you in your preparations for that change, as some testimony of the remembrance I retain of your most obliging respects and love, and of my still continu- ing Your affectionate and respectful kinsman, and servant in our common Lord, J. HOWE. Antrim, April 12, 1671. 105 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. Psalm lxxxix, 47, 48. Remember how short my time is: wherefore hast thou made all men in vain? What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death P shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave P We are not concerned to be particular and curious in the inquiry, touching- the special reference or occasion of the foregoing complaints, from the 37th verse. It is enough to take notice, for our present purpose, that besides the evil which had already befallen the plaintiff, a further danger nearly threatened him, that carried death in the face of it, and suggested somewhat frightful ap- prehensions of his mortal state, which drew from him this quick and sensible petition in reference to his own private concern, ' Remember how short my time is ;' and did presently direct his eye with a sudden glance from the view of his own, to re- flect on the common condition of man, whereof he expresses his resentment, first, in a hasty expostu- lation with God, ' Wherefore hast thou made all men in vain ? ' — Then, secondly, in a pathetic dis- 106 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. course with himself, representing the reason of that rough charge, ' What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death ? shall he deliver,' &c. q. d. When I add to the consideration^ my short time, that of dying mankind, and behold a dark and deadly shade universally overspreading the world, the whole species of human creatures va- nishing, quitting the stage round about me, and disappearing almost as soon as they show them- selves ; have I not a fair and plausible ground for that (seemingly rude) challenge ? Why is there so unaccountable a phenomenon, such a creature made to no purpose ? the noblest part of this in- ferior creation brought forth into being without any imaginable design ? I know not how to un- tie the knot, upon this only view of the case, or avoid the absurdity. It is hard sure to design the supposal, (of what it may yet seem hard to sup- pose,) that all men were made in vain. It appears, the expostulation was somewhat pas- sionate, and did proceed upon the sudden view of this disconsolate case very abstractly considered, and by itself only ; and that he did not in that instant look beyond it to a better and more com- fortable scene of things. An eye bleared with pre- sent sorrow, sees not so far, nor comprehends so much at one view, as it would at another time, or as it doth, presently, when the tear is wiped out, and its own beams have cleared it up. We see he did quickly look further, and had got a more light- some prospect, when in the next words we find him contemplating God's sworn loving-kindness unto David ;' the truth and stability whereof he at 1 Verse 49. THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 107 the same time expressly acknowledges, while only the form of his speech doth but seem to import a doubt — 'Where are they!' But yet— they were sworn in truth. Upon which argument he had much enlarged in the former part of the psalm ; and it still lay deep in his soul, though he were now a little diverted from the present conside- ration of it : which, since it turns the scales with him, it will be needful to inquire into the weight and import of it. Nor have we any reason to think, that David was either so little a prophet or a saint, as in*his own thoughts to refer those magnificent things (the instances of that loving-kindness, con- firmed by oath, which he recites from the 19th verse of the psalm to the 38th, as spoken from the mouth of God, and declared to him by vision) to the dignity of his own person, and the grandeur and perpetuity of his kingdom ; as if it were ulti- mately meant of himself, that God would make him his first-born, higher than the kings of the earth, 1 when there were divers greater kings, and (in comparison of the little spot over which he reigned) a vastly spreading monarchy that still overtopped him all his time ; (as the same and successive monarchies did his successors ;) or that it was intended of the secular glory and stability of his throne and family ; that God would make them to endure for ever, and be as the days of heaven ; that they should be as the sun before him, and be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven. 8 That God himself meant it not so, experience and the event of things hath shown ; and that 1 Verse 27. 2 Verses 29, 36, 37- 108 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. these predictions cannot otherwise have had their accomplishment, than in the succession of the spi- ritual and everlasting- kingdom of the Messiah 1 (whom God raised up out of his loins to sit on his throne) unto his temporal kingdom. Wherein it is therefore ended by perfection rather than cor- ruption : these prophecies being then made good, not in the kind which they literally imported, but in another (far more noble) kind. In which sense God's covenant with him must be understood, which he insists on so much in this psalm, 2 even unto that degree, as to challenge God upon it, as if in the present course of his providence he were now about to make it void ; though he sufficiently expresses his confidence both before and after, that this could never be. 3 But it is plain it hath been made void long enough ago, in the subversion of David's kingdom, and in that we see his throne and family have not been established for ever, not endured as the clays of heaven ; if those words had no other than their obvious and literal meaning. And if any, to clear the truth of God, would allege the wickedness of his posterity, first making a breach and disobliging him, this is prevented by what we find inserted in reference to this very case : ' If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judg- ments, &c. then will I visit their iniquity with the rod, &c. 4 : Nevertheless, my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faith- fulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.' All which is solemnly sealed up with this, 'Once have I sworn in my holiness, that I will not lie unto 1 Acts, ii. 30. 2 Verse, 28—34. 3 Verse 39. « Verse 30-34. THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 109 David.' 1 So that they that will make a scruple to accuse the holy God of falsehood, in that which with so much solemnity he hath promised and sworn, must not make any to admit his further in- tendment in these words. And that he had a further (even a mystical and spiritual) intendment in this covenant with David, is yet more fully evi- dent from that of the prophet Isaiah : ' Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,' &c. ' In- cline your ear and come unto me. And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Behold I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander,' &c- What means this universal invitation to all thirsty persons, with the subjoined encouragement of making with them an everlasting covenant, (the same which we have here, no doubt, as to the prin- cipal parts, and which we find him mentioning also, 2 Sam. xxiii. 5. with characters exactly cor- responding to these of the prophet,) even the sure mercies of David ? The meaning sure could not be, that they should be all secular kings and princes, and their posterity after them for ever; which we see is the verbal sound and tenour of this covenant. And now since it is evident God intended a mystery in this covenant, we may be as well as- sured he intended no deceit, and that he designed not a delusion to David by the vision in which he gave it. Can we think he went about to gratify him with a solemn fiction, and draw him into a false and fanciful faith ; or so to hide his meaning from him, as to tempt him into the belief of what he never meant ? And to what purpose was this so special 1 Verse 35. 2 Isa. lv. 1—5. 110 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. revelation by vision, if it were not to be under- stood truly, at least, if not yet perfectly and fully ? It is left us therefore to collect that David was not wholly uninstructed how to refer all this to the kingdom of the Messiah. And he hath given suf- ficient testimony in that part of sacred writ, whereof God used him as a penman, that he was of another temper than to place the sum and chief of his expectations and consolations in his own and his posterity's worldly greatness. And to put us out of doubt, our Saviour (who well knew his spirit) expressly enough tells us, 1 that ■ he inspirit called him Lord, when he said, The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand, till I make thy enemies thy foot-stool.' 2 A plain disco- very how he understood God's revelation touching the future concernments of his kingdom, (and the covenant relating thereto,) viz. as a figure and type of Christ's, who must reign till all his ene- mies be subdued. Nor was he in that ignorance about the nature and design of Christ's kingdom, but that he understood its reference to another world and state of things, even beyond all the successions of time, and the mortal race of men ; so as to have his eye fixed upon the happy eter- nity which a joyful resurrection must introduce, and whereof Christ's resurrection should be the great and most assuring pledge. And of this we need no fuller an evidence than the express words of the apostle St. Peter 3 , who after he had cited those lofty triumphant strains of David, Psal. xvi. 8 — 11, 'I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be 1 Matt. xxii. 2 Psal. ex. 3 Acts, ii. v. 25, &c. THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. Ill moved : therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth : my flesh also shall rest in hope : for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, (or in the state of darkness,) neither wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life ; in thy presence is fulness of joy, at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.' All which, he tells us, was spoken concerning Christ. 1 He more expressly subjoins, that David, ' being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne ; he seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, (it appears he spake not at random, but as knowing and seeing before what he spake,) that his soul was not left in hell,' &c. ; 2 nor can we think he thus rejoices in another's resurrection, forgetting his own. And yet we have a further evidence from the apostle St. Paul, who affirms, that the promise made to the fathers, God had fulfilled to their children, in that he had raised up Jesus again ; 3 as it is also written in the second psalm, « Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.' And as concerning that he raised him up from the dead, now no more to return to corruption ; he said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David. Which it is now apparent must be understood of eternal mercies; such as Christ's resurrection and triumph over the grave doth insure to us. He therefore looked upon what was spoken concerning his kingdom here, as spoken ultimately of Christ's, the kingdom whereby he governs and conducts ' Verse 25. * Verses 30, 31. 3 Acts xiii. 32—34. 112 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. his faithful subjects through all the troubles of life and terrors of death (through both whereof he himself, as their king and leader, hath shown the way) unto eternal blessedness; and upon the covenant made with him as the covenant of God in Christ, concerning thra blessedness and the re- quisites thereto. And (to say no more in this argument) how otherwise can we conceive he should have that fulness of consolation in this co- venant when he lay dying, as we find him ex- pressing, 2 Sam. xxiii. 5: (for these were some of the last words of David, as we see, verse 1 :) 'He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, or- dered in all things and sure ; for this is all my sal- vation, and all my desire.' What so great joy and solace could a dying man take in a covenant made with him, when he had done with this world, and was to expect no more in it, if he took it not to concern a future blessedness in another world ? Was it only for the hoped prosperity of his house and family when he was gone? This (which is the only thing we can fasten on) he plainly secludes in the next words, ' although he make it not to grow.' Therefore it was his reflection upon those loving-kindnesses mentioned in the former part of the psalm, contained in God's covenant, and con- firmed by his oath, but understood according to the sense and import already declared, that caused this sudden turn in David's spirit ; and made him that lately spoke as out of a Golgotha, as if he had nothing but death in his eye and thoughts, to speak now in so different a strain, and (after some addi- tional pleadings, in which his faith further recovers itself,) to conclude this psalm with solemn praise: THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 113 Blessed be the Lord for evermore, Amen and Amen. We see then the contemplation of his own and all men's mortality, abstractly and alone consi- dered, clothed his soul with black, wrapped it up in gloomy darkness, makes the whole kind of human creatures seem to him an obscure shadow, an empty vanity ; but his recalling- into his thoughts a succeeding state of immortal life, clears up the clay, makes him and all things appear in another hue, gives a fair account why such a crea- ture as man was made ; and therein makes the whole frame of things in this inferior world look with a comely and well-composed aspect, as the product of a wise and rational design. Whence therefore we have this ground of discourse fairly before us in the words themselves : — that the short time of man on earth, limited by a certain un- avoidable death, if we consider it abstractly by itself, without respect to a future state, carries that appearance and aspect with it, as if God had made all men in vain. — That is said to be vain, accord- ing to the importance of the word here used, 1 which is either false, a fiction, an appearance only, a shadow, or evanid thing; or which is useless, unprofitable, and to no valuable purpose. The life of man, in the case now supposed, may be truly styled vain, either way. And we shall say somewhat to each ; but to the former more briefly. 1 . It were vain, i. e. little other than a show, a mere shadow, a semblance of being. We must in- deed, in the present case, even abstract him from himself, and consider him only as a mortal, dying Nlttf. 114 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL, thing; and as to that of him which is so, what a contemptible nothing is he ! There is an appear- ance of somewhat ; but search a little, and inquire into it, and it vanishes into a mere nothing, is found a lie, a piece of falsehood, as if he did but feign a being, and were not. And so we may sup- pose the Psalmist speaking, upon the view of his own and the common case of man, how fast all were hastening out of life, and laying down the being which they rather seemed to have assumed and borrowed, than to possess and own : Lord, why hast thou made man such a fictitious thing, given him such a mock-being? Why hast thou brought forth into the light of this world such a sort of creatures, that rather seem to be than are; that have so little of solid and substantial being, and so little deserve to be taken for realities; that only serve to cheat one another into an opinion of their true existence, and presently vanish and con- fess their falsehood ? What hovering shadows, what uncertain entities are they ! In a moment they are and are not ; I know not when to say I have seen a man. It seems as if there were some such things before my eyes; I persuade myself that I see them move and walk to and fro, that I talk and converse with them, but instantly my own sense is ready to give my sense the lie. They are on the sudden dwindled away, and force me almost to acknowledge a delusion. I am but mocked with a show ; and what seemed a reality proves an imposture. Their pretence to being is but fiction and falsehood, a cozenage of over-credulous, un- wary sense. They only personate what they are thought to be, and quickly put off their very selves as a disguise. This is agreeable to the language THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 1 ! "• of Scripture elsewhere, • Surely men of low degree are vanity, and men of high degree are a lie/ 1 &c. In two respects may the present state of man seem to approach near to nothingness, and so admit this rhetorication of the Psalmist, as if he were in this sense a vain thing, a figment, or a lie, viz. in re- spect to the minuteness, and instability of this, his material and perishable being. 1. The minuteness, the small portion or degree of being which this mortal part of man hath in it. It is truly said of all created things, Their non-esse is more than their esse ; they have more no-being than being. It is only some limited portion that they have, but there is an infinitude of being which they have not. And so coming infinitely nearer to nothingness than fulness of being, they may well enough wear the name of nothing. Wherefore the first and fountain-being justly appropriates to him- self the name, I am ; yea, tells us, he is, and there is none besides him ; therein leaving no other name than that of nothing unto creatures. And how much more may this be said of the material and mortal part, this outside of man, whatever of him is obnoxious to death and the grave ! which alone (abstractly looked on) is the subject of the Psalmist's present consideration and discourse. By how much any thing hath more of matter, it hath the less of actual essence. Matter being ra- ther a capacity of being, than being itself, or a dark umbrage or shadow of it, actually nothing, but evctoXov, \pevcog, (as are the expressions of a noble philosopher, 2 ) a mere semblance, or a lie. And it is the language not of philosophers only, 1 Psalm lxii. 9. • Plotin. En. ii. 1, 6. 1 2 116 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. but of the Holy Ghost concerning all the nations of men : * They are as nothing-, less than nothing, and vanity.' 1 What a scarcity then, and penury of being, must we suppose in each individual ! es- pecially if we look alone upon the outer part, or rather the umbrage or shadow of the man. 2. The instability and fluidness of it. The visi- ble and corporeal being of man hath nothing steady or consistent in it. Consider his exterior frame and composition, he is no time all himself at once. There is a continual defluence and access of parts ; so that some account, each climacteric of his age changes his whole fabric. Whence it would fol- low, that besides his statique individuating princi- ple, (from which we are now to abstract,) nothing of him remains: he is another thing; the former man is vanished and gone ; while he is, he has- tens away, and within a little is not. In respect to the duration as well as the degree of his being, he is next to nothing. • He opens his eye, and is not.' 4 Gone in the twinkling of an eye. There is nothing in him stable enough to admit a fixed look. So it is with the whole scene of things in this material world ; as was the true maxim of an ancient, " All things flow, nothing stays; after the manner of a river : " 3 the same thing which the apostle's words more elegantly express : * The fashion of this world passeth away;' 4 the scheme, the show, the pageantry of it. He speaks of it but as an appearance, as if he knew not whether to call it something or nothing, it was so near to vanishing into nothing. And therefore he there requires, that the affections which mutual nearness ' Isaiah, xl. 2 Job, xxvii. 19. 3 Heracl. 4 1 Cor. vii. THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 117 in relation challenges, be as if they were not; that we rejoice in reference to one another, (even most nearly related, as the occasion and scope of his discourse teach us to understand him,) but as if we rejoiced not, and to weep as if we wept not : which implies, the objects merit no more, and are themselves as if they were not. Whence, therefore, a continued course of intense passion were very in- congruous towards so discontinuing things. And the whole state of man being but a show, the pomp and glittering of the greatest men make the most splendid and conspicuous part of it ; yet all this we find is not otherwise reckoned of, than an image, a dream, a vision of the night; every man at his best state is altogether vanity, walketh in a vain show, disquieteth himself in vain, 1 &c. Of all, without exception, it is pronounced, ' Man is like to vanity, his days are as a shadow that passeth away.' As Ecclesiastes often, of all sublunary things, ' Vanity of vanities,' &c. 2. But yet there is another notion of vain, as it signifies useless, unprofitable, or to no purpose. And in this sense also, if we consider the universal mortality of mankind without respect to a future state, there was a specious ground for the expos- tulation, ' Why hast thou made all men in vain ? Vanity in the former notion speaks the emptiness of a thing, absolutely and in itself considered ; in this latter relatively, as it is referred to and mea- sured by an end. That is, in this sense, vain, which serves to no end ; or to no worthy and valu- able end, which amounts to the same. For inas- 1 Job, xx. 7, 8, 9 ; Psalm lxxiii. 20; xxxix. 5, 6. 118 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. much as all ends, except the last, are means also to a further end; if the end immediately aimed at be vain and worthless, that which is referred to it, as it is so referred, cannot but be also vain. Whereupon now let us make trial what end we could in this case think man made for; which will be best done by taking some view, — 1. Of his nature ; 2. Of the ends for which, upon that sup- position, we must suppose him made. 1. Of the former (neglecting the strictness of philosophical disquisition) no more is intended to be said than may comport with the design of a popular discourse : it shall suffice, therefore, only to take notice of what is more obvious in the nature of man, and subservient to the present pur- pose. And yet we are here to look further than the mere surface and outside of man, which we only considered before ; and to view his nature, as it is in itself, and not as the supposition of its having nothing but what is mortal belonging to it, would make it : for as the exility (and almost nothing- ness) of man's being, considered according to that supposition, did best serve to express the vanity of it, in the former notion that hath been given of a vain thing; so the excellency and solid substan- tiality of it, considered as it is in itself, will con- duce most to the discovery of its vanity in this latter notion thereof. That is, if we first consider that, and then the supposition of such a creature's being only made to perish. And if what shall be said herein, do in the sequel tend to destroy that above-mentioned disposition, (as it, being establish- ed, would destroy the prime glory of human na- ture,) it can only be said magna est Veritas, fyc. In THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 119 the meantime we may take a view, in the nature of man, 1. Of his intellective powers. Hereby he frames notions of thing's, even of such things as are above the sphere of sense ; of moral good and evil, right and wrong, what is virtuous and what is vicious; of abstract and universal natures ; yea, and of a first being and cause, and of the wisdom, power, goodness, and other perfections, which must pri- marily agree to him. Hereby he affirms and de- nies one thing of another, as he observes them to agree and disagree, and discerns the truth and falsehood of what is spoken or denied. He doth hereby infer one thing from another, and argue himself into firm and unwavering assent to many things, not only above the discovery of sense, but directly contrary to their sensible appearances. 2. His power of determining himself, of choosing and refusing, according as things are estimated, and do appear to him. Where also it is evident how far the objects which this faculty is sometimes ex- ercised about, do transcend the reach of all sensi- ble nature ; as well as the peculiar nobleness and excellency is remarkable of the faculty itself. It hath often for its object things of the highest nature, purely spiritual and divine; virtue, religion, God himself. So as that these (the faculty being re- paired only by sanctifying grace, not now first put into the nature of man) are chosen by some, and, where it is not so, refused (it is true) by the most; but not by a mere not-willing of them, (as mere brutal appetite also doth not-will them, which no way reaches the notion of a refusal,) but by re- jecting them with a positive aversion and dislike, wherein there is great iniquity and sin : which 120 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. could not be but in a nature capable of the oppo- site temper. And it is apparent, this faculty hath the privilege of determining itself, so as to be ex- empt from the necessitating influence of any thing foreign to it; upon the supposal whereof, the managery of all human affairs, all treaties between man and man, to induce a consent to this or that, the whole frame of government, all legislation and distribution of public justice, do depend. For take away this supposition, and these will pre- sently appear most absurd and unjust. With what solemnity are applications and addresses made to the will of man upon all occasions! How is it courted, and solicited, and sued unto ! But how absurd were it so to treat the other creatures, that act by a necessity of nature in all they do! to make supplications to the wind, or propound arti- cles to a brute! And how unjust, to determine and inflict severe penalties for unavoidable and necessitated actions and omissions ! These things occur to our first notice, upon any (a more sudden and cursory) view of the nature of man. And what should hinder, but we may infer from these, that there is further in his nature, 2. A capacity of an immortal state ; i. e. that his nature is such, that he may, if God so please, by the concurrent influence of his ordinary power and providence, without the help of a miracle, subsist in another state of life after this; even a state that shall not be liable to that impairment and decay that we find this subject to. More is not (as yet) contended for ; and so much methinks none should make a difficulty to admit, from what is evidently found in him. For it may well be supposed, that the admitting of this, at least, will seem much THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 121 more easy to any free and unprejudiced reason, than to ascribe the operations before instanced in, to alterable or perishable matter, or indeed to any matter at all : it being justly presumed, that none will ascribe to matter, as such, the powers of rati- ocination or volition ; for then every particle of matter must needs be rational and intelligent (a high advance to what one would never have thought at all active.) And how inconceivable is it, that the minute particles of matter, in them- selves, each of them destitute of any such powers, should, by their mutual intercourse with one an- other, become furnished with them! that they should be able to understand, deliberate, resolve, and choose, being assembled and duly disposed in counsel together; but, apart, rest all in a deep and sluggish silence ! Besides, if the particles of mat- ter, howsoever modified and moved, to the utmost subtlety or tenuity, and to the highest vigour, shall then become intelligent and rational, how is it that we observe not, as any matter is more subtle and more swiftly and vigorously moved, it makes not a discernibly nearer approach, propor- tionably, to the faculty and power of reasoning ? and that nothing more of an aptitude or tendency towards intelligence and wisdom is to be perceived in an aspiring flame or a brisk wind, than in a clod or a stone ? If to understand, to define, to dis- tinguish, to syllogize, be nothing else but the agi- tation and collision of the minute parts of rarified matter among one another, methinks some happy chemist or other, when he hath missed his design- ed mark, should have hit upon some such more noble product, and by one or other prosperous sub- limation have caused some temporary resemblance, 122 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. at least, of these operations. Or, if the paths of nature, in these affairs of the mind, be more ab- struse, and quite out of the reach and road of arti- ficial achievement, whence is it, that nature her- self (that is vainly enough supposed by some to have been so happy, as by some casual strokes to have fabricated the first of human creatures, that have since propagated themselves) is grown so effete and dull, as never since to hit upon any like effect in the like way ; and that no records of any time or age give us the notice of some such creature sprung out of some Epicurean womb of the earth, and elaborated by the only immediate hand of nature so disposing the parts of matter in its constitution, that it should be able to perform the operation belonging to the mind of man ? But if we cannot, with any tolerable pretence or show of reason, attribute these operations to any mere matter, there must be somewhat else in man to which they may agree, that is distinct from his corruptible part, and that is therefore capable, by the advantage of its own nature, of subsisting here- after, (while God shall continue to it an influence agreeable to its nature, as he doth to other crea- tures.) And hence it seems a modest and sober deduction, that there is in the nature of man, at least, a capacity of an immortal state. 2. Now, if we yet suppose there is actually no such state for man hereafter, it is our next busi- ness to view the ends for which, upon that suppo- sition, he may be thought to have been made: whence we shall soon see, there is not any of them whereof it may be said, this is that he was created for, as his adequate end. And here we have a double agent to be accommodated with a suitable THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 123 end; — Man now made; and — God who made him. 1. Man himself. For it must be considered, that inasmuch as man is a creature capable of pro- pounding to himself an end, and of acting know- ingly and with design towards it, (and indeed in- capable of acting otherwise as a man,) it would therefore not be reasonable to speak of him in this discourse, as if he were merely passive, and to be acted only by another : but we must reckon him obliged, in subordination to his Maker, to intend and pursue, himself, the proper end for which he appointed and made him. And in reason we are to expect that what God hath appointed to be his pro- per end, should be such as is in itself most highly desirable, suitable to the utmost capacity of his nature, and attainable by his action ; so carrying with it sufficient inducements, both of desire and hope, to a vigorous and rational prosecution of it. Thus we must, at least, conceive it to have been in the primitive institution of man's end, unto which the expostulation hath reference, — ' Where- fore hast thou made, all men in vain ?' And we can think of no ends which men either do or ought to propound to themselves, but by the direction of one of these principles, sense, reason, or religion. 1. Sense is actually the great dictator to the most of men, and de facto, determines them to the mark and scope which they pursue, and animates the whole pursuit. Not that sense is by itself capable of designing an end, but it too generally inclines and biasses reason herein. So that reason hath no other hand in the business, than only as a slave to sense, to form the design and contrive the methods which may most conduce to it, for the 124 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. gratification of sensual appetite and inclination at last. And the appetitions of sense, wherein it hath so much mastery and dominion, are but such as we find enumerated, 1 John, ii. 16: 'The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life.' Or, if we understand the apostle to use the name of lust objectively, the objects sufficiently connote the appetitions themselves. All which may fitly be referred to sense : either the outward senses, or the fancy or imagination, which as deservedly comes under the same common denomination. Now, who can think the satisfying of these lusts the commensurate end of man ? Who would not, upon the supposition of no higher, say with the Psalmist, * Wherefore hast thou made all men in vain ?' To what purpose was it for him to live in the world a few years, upon this account only, and so go down to the place of silence ? What is there in the momentary satisfaction of this mortal flesh ! in his pleasing view of a mass of treasure, (which he never brought with him into the world, but only heaped together, and so leaves not the world richer or poorer than he found it,) what is there in the applause and admiration of fools, (as the greater part always are,) that we should think it worth the while for man to have lived for these things ? If the question were put, Wherefore did God make man ? who would not be ashamed so to answer it, — He made him to eat, and drink, and take his pleasure; to gather up wealth for he knows not who ; to use his inventions, that each one may be- come a talk and wonder to the rest; and then when he hath fetched a few turns upon the theatre, and entertained the eyes of beholders, with a short scene of impertinencies, descend and never be THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 125 heard of more ? What, that he should come into the world furnished with such powers and endow- ments for this ? It were a like case, as if one should be clad in scarlet to go to plough, or cu- riously instructed in arts and sciences to tend hogs. Or, 2dly, If we rise higher, to the view of such ends as more refined reason may propose, within the compass only of this present state: we will suppose that it be either the acquisition of much knowledge, the furnishing his understanding with store of choice and well-digested notions ; that he may please himself in being (or in having men think him) a learned wight; — death robs away all his gain ; and what is the world the better ? How little shall he enrich the clods, among which he must shortly lie down and have his abode ! or how little is the gain, when the labour and travail of so many years are all vanished and blown away with the last puff of his dying breath, and the fruit that remains, is to have it said by those that sur- vive, "There lies learned dust !" That any part of his acquisitions, in that kind, descends to others, little betters the case, when they that succeed are all hastening down also into the same ignoble dust ; besides, the increase of sorrow, both be- cause the objects of knowledge do but increase the more he knows, do multiply the more upon him, so as to beget a despair of ever knowing so much as he shall know himself to be ignorant of; and a thousand doubts, about things he hath more deeply considered, which his more confident (undiscovered J ignorance never dreamt of or sus- pected ; and thence an unquietness, an irresolu- tion of mind, which they that never drove at any such mark are (more contentedly) unacquainted 126 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. with. And also, because that by how much know- ledge hath refined a man's soul, so much it is more sensible and perceptive of troublesome impressions from the disorderly state of things in the world ; which they that converse only with earth and dirt, have not spirits clarified and fine enough to receive. So that, except a man's knowing more than others were to be referred to another state, the labour of attaining thereto, and other accessary disadvan- tages, would hardly ever be compensated by the fruit or pleasure of it ; and unless a man would sup- pose himself made for torment, he would be shrewd- ly tempted to think a quiet and drowsy ignorance a happier state. Or if that man's reason, with a peculiarity of temper, guide him to an active negociating life, rather than that of contemplation; and determine him to the endeavour of serving mankind, or the community to which he belongs ; by how much the worthier actions he performs, and by how much more he hath perfected and accomplished himself with parts and promptitude for such actions, the loss and vanity is but the greater thereby, since he and those he affected to serve are all going down to the silent grave. Of how little use are the poli- tician, the statesman, the senator, the judge, or the eloquent man, if we lay aside the consideration of their subserviency to the keeping the world in a more composed and orderly state, for the prosecu- tion of the great designs of eternity, when ere long all their thoughts shall perish ? What matter were it what became of the world, whether it be wise or foolish, rich or poor, quiet or unquiet, governed or ungoverned ? Whoever should make their order and tianquillity their study, or that should intend their thoughts and endeavours to the finding out the ex- THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 127 actest methods and rules of government and policy, should but do as they that should use a great deal of pains and art in the curious adorning and trim- ming up of a dying person ; or as if some one, among many condemned persons, should be very solicitous to have them march with him in very ex- act order to the place of execution. If the world be not looked upon as a tiring room to dress one's self in, for an appearance on the eternal stage ; but only as a great charnel-house, where they undress and put off themselves, to sleep in everlasting dark- ness ; how can we think it worth a thought, or to be the subject of any rational design or care ? Who would not rather bless himself in a more rational neglect and regardlessness of all human affairs; and account an unconcerned indifTerency the high- est wisdom ? Yea, 3dly, If we suppose religion (which we need not, because it is mentioned in this order, conceive exclusive of reason, but rather perfective of it; reason having first found out God, religion adores him) to become with any the ruling princi- ple, and to have the direction and government of the man, as to his way and end, how would even that languish with the best, were the consideration of a future state laid aside, which with so few, not- withstanding it, hath any efficacy at all to com- mand and govern their lives ! Religion terminates upon God ; and upon him under a double notion, either as we design service and honour to him, or as from him we design satisfaction and blessedness to ourselves. Now if a man's thoughts and the in- tention of his mind be carried towards God under the former notion, how great an allay and abate- ment must it needs be to the vigour and zeal of 128 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. his affection, who shall, with the most sincere devo- teclness, apply himself to serve his interest and glory, to reflect upon the universal mortality of himself and mankind, without any hope of com- pensation to it by a future immortality ! It is agreed on all hands, that the utmost con- tributions of creatures can add nothing to him ; and that our glorifying him doth only consist, ei- ther in our acknowledging him glorious ourselves, or representing him so to others. But how little doth it signify, and how flat and low a thing would it seem, that I should only turn mine eye upwards and think a few admiring thoughts of God this hour, while I apprehend myself liable to lose my very thinking power and whole being the next ! Or if we could spread his just renown, and gain all the sons of men to a concurrence with us in the adoring of his sovereign excellencies, how would it damp and stifle such loyal and dutiful affection, to consider, that the universal testimony, so de- servedly given him, shall shortly cease for ever, and that infinitely blessed Being be ere long (again, as he was from eternity before) the only witness of his own glory ! And if the propension of a man's soul be towards God under the latter notion also, in order to a satisfaction that shall thence accrue to himself, (which design, both in the pursuit and execution of it, is so conjunct with the former that it cannot be severed,) it cannot but be an unspeakable diminution and check to the highest delights in this kind, to think how soon they shall have an end ; that the darkness and dust of the grave shall shortly obscure and extin- guish the glory of this lightsome scene. To think every time one enters that bessed pre- THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 129 sence, for aught I know I shall approach it no more ! — this is possibly my last sight of that plea- sant face, my last taste of those enravishing plea- sures ! — what bitterness must this infuse into the most delicious sweetness our state could then admit ! And by how much more free and large grace should be in its present communications, and by how much any soul should be more expe- rienced in the life of God and inured to divine de- lights, so much the more grievous and afflictive re- sentments it could not but have of the approaching end of all ; and be the more powerfully tempted to say, Lord, why was I made in vain ? How faint and languid would endeavours be after the know- ledge of that God whom I may but only know and die ! How impotent and ineffectual would the at- tractions of this end be to man in this terrene state, to raise him above the world, and rescue him from the power of sensible things, to engage him in the pursuit of that sanctity and purity which alone can qualify him for converse with God, to bear him out in a conflict against the (more natural) inclinations of sense, when if, with much labour and painful striving, much self-denial and severity to the flesh, any disposition should be attained to relish divine pleasures, it be considered all the while, that the end of all may be as soon lost as it is gained ; and that possibly there may be no more than a mo- ment's pleasure to recompense the pains and con- flicts of many years ! Although, in this case, the continual hope and expectation of some further ma- nifestation and fruition might much influence a person already holy, and a great lover of God, unto a steadfast adherence to him ; yet how little would it do to make men such, that are yet unsuitable K 130 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. and disaffected to him ! or even to recover such out of their lapses and drowsy fits, that are not alto- gether so ! And it is further to be considered, that since God hath given man a being capable of subsisting in another state ; (as doth appear by what hath been already said ;) and since he is therefore capa- ble of enjoying a greater happiness than his pre- sent state can admit of; that capacity will draw upon him a most indispensable obligation to in- tend that happiness as his end. For admit that there be no future state for him, it is however im- possible any man should know there is none ; and upon an impartial view of the whole case, he hath enough to render it (at least) far more likely to him that there is. And certainly he cannot but be obliged to pursue the highest good (even by the law of nature itself) which his nature is capable of; which probably he may attain, and which he is nowhere forbidden by his Creator to aspire unto. Whence therefore, if we now circumscribe him within the limits of this present mortal state ; or if, for argument's sake, we suppose eventually there is no other ; we must not only confess that capacity to be given him in vain, but that he is obliged also to employ the principal endeavours of his life and all his powers in vain ; (for certainly his principal endeavour ought to be laid out in or- der to his principal end ;) that is, to pursue that good which he may attain, but never shall ; and which is possible to him, but not upon any terms future. And if it be admitted, that the subject state of man must silence all objections against any such incon- sistencies, and make him content to act in pure obedience to his Maker, (whether he signify his THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 131 will by the law of nature only, or by any positive precept,) though he shall not hereafter enjoy any permanent state of blessedness as the consequent reward ; that virtue and goodness, a holy rectitude of inclinations and actions, are reward enough to themselves; that there is that justice and sweetness in religion, to oblige him to love and reverence and adore the Divine Majesty this moment, though he were sure to perish for ever and be reduced to no- thing the next : — I say, admitting all this, yet, 2. Since the blessed God himself is to be consi- dered as the principal Agent and Designer in this inquiry, ' Why hast thou made all men in vain ?' it is with modest and humble reverence to be con- sidered, What end worthy of that infinitely perfect Being, he may be supposed to have propounded to himself in forming such a creature of so improv- able a nature, and furnished with so noble facul- ties and powers, for so transient and temporary a state ? and how well it will consist with the most obvious and unquestionable notions we can have of an absolutely perfect being and the attributes which he most peculiarly challenges and appro- priates to himself, (so as not only to own, but to glory in them,) that he should give being, not to some iew only, but to the whole species of human creatures, and therein communicate to them a na- ture capable of knowing, of loving, and enjoying himself in a blessed eternity, with a design to con- tinue them only for some short space on earth, in a low imperfect state, wherein they shall be liable to sink still lower, to the vilest debasement of their natures ; and yet not for their transgression herein, (for it is the mortality of man, not by sin, but by creation or the design of the Creator only, that is k*2 132 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. now supposed,) but for his mere pleasure to bereave them of being-, and reduce them all again to no- thing ? It is to be considered, Whether, thus to resolve and do, can any way agree to God, accord- ing to our clearest and most assured conceptions of him ; not from our reasoning only, but his disco- very of himself ? For otherwise we see the impu- tation falls where we should dread to let it rest, of having made man in vain. He is, in common account, said to act vainly, who acts beneath himself, so as to pursue an end altogether unworthy of him, or none at all. It is true, that some single acts may be done by great persons as a divertisement, without dishonourable reflection, that may seem much beneath them. And if any do stoop to very mean offices and em- ployments to do good, to help the distressed and relieve the miserable, it is a glorious acquest; and the greater they are, the higher is the glory of their condescending goodness. Benignity of na- ture and a propension to the most unexpected acts of a merciful self-depression, when the case may require it, are the most comely ornaments of princely greatness, and outshine the glory of the richest diadem. But a wonted habitual course of mean actions in great persons, that speak a low de- sign, or no design at all, but either a humour to trifle, or a mischievous nature and disposition, would never fail to be thought inglorious and infa- mous ; as may be seen in the instances of Sardan- apalus's spinning, and Domitian's killing of flies. When wisdom and goodness are in conjunction with power and greatness, they never persuade a descent but upon such terms and for such purposes that a more glorious advancement shall ensue ; THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 133 wisdom foreseeing that end, and goodness readily taking the way, (which though it were most unde- signed, or not aimed at as an end) could not fail to effect it. Nor are any attributes of the Divine Being more conspicuous than these ; more testified by himself, or more generally acknowledged by all men that have not denied his existence. Or if any have done that violence to their own minds, as to erase and blot out thence the belief of an existing Deity, yet at least, while they deny it, they cannot but have this notion of what they deny, and grant that these are great perfections, and must agree to God, upon supposition that he do exist. If there- fore he should do any thing repugnant to these, or we should suppose him to do so, we should therein suppose him to act below a God, and so as were very unworthy of him. And though it becomes us to be very diffident of our own reasonings concern- ing the counsels and designs of that eternal Being ; so, as if we should find him to assert any thing ex- pressly of himself, which we know not how to reconcile with our preconceived thoughts, therein to yield him the cause, and confess the debility of our understandings; yet certainly, it were great rashness, and void of all pretence, to suppose any thing which neither he saith of himself, nor we know how, consistently, to think. Nor are we, in judging of his designs, to bring him down to our model, or measure him by man, whose designs do for the most part bespeak onl y his own indigency, and are levelled at his own advantage and the bet- tering some way or other of his present condition. Whatsoever the great God dotli towards his crea- tures, we must understand him to do, though with 134 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. design, yet from an exuberant fulness of life and being, by which he is incapable of an accession to himself. And hence that he can, in reference to himself, have no other inducement to such action, besides the complacency which he takes in diffus- ing his free communications, (for he exercises lov- ing-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, because he delighted in these things, 1 ) and the maintaining the just honour and reputation of his government over his creatures, who, as they are of him, and through him, must be all to him, that he may have glory for ever. 2 Now, though it be most undoubtedly true, that the sovereignty of his power and dominion over his creatures (of which he hath no need, and to whom he so freely gave being) is so absolute and unlimited, that if we consider that only, we must acknowledge, he might create a man or an angel, and annihilate him presently ; yea, that he might, if he so pleased, raise up many thousand worlds of intelligent and innocent creatures into being in one moment, and throw them into nothing again the very next moment ; yet how unwarrantably should we maim the notion of God, if we should conceive of him only according to one attribute, secluding the consideration of the rest ! How mis- shapen an idea should we bear of him in our minds ! and how would it deform the face of providence, and spoil the decorum of his adminis- trations, if they should be the effects of one single attribute only, the other having no influence on the affairs of the world ! If nothing but mercy 1 Jer. ix. 24. 2 Rom. xi. 36. THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 135 should appear in his dispensations towards sinful man, so that every man might do what were good in his own eyes, without cause of fear to be called to account ; if the most dissolute and profane were equally assured of his favour, with those who are most holy and strictly regular in all their conver- sation, what would be thought of God and reli- gion ? Or how should we savour the notion of an impure deity, taking pleasure to indulge the wick- edness of men ? And if justice alone have the whole management of affairs, and every act of sin be followed with an act of sudden vengeance, and the whole world become a flaming theatre, and all men held in a hopeless expectation of fiery indig- nation, and of judgment without mercy, what would become of that amiable representation, and the consolatory thoughts we have of God, and of that love and duty which some souls do bear towards him ? Or if power should affect daily to show itself in unusual appearances and effects, in changing every hour the shapes of the terrestrial creatures, in perpetual quick innovations of the courses of the celestial, with a thousand more kinds of prodigious events that might be the hourly effects of unlimited power, how were the order of the world disturbed, and how unlovely an idea would it beget in every intelligent creature of him that made and rules it ! Yet is it from no defect of mercy, that all men are not equally favoured and blessed of God ; nor of justice, that a speedy vengeance is not taken of all; nor of power, that the world is not filled with astonishing wonders every day ; but rather from their unexcessiveness, and that they make that blessed temperature where 136 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. they reside, and are exercised in so exact propor- tion, that nothing is ever done unworthy of him, who is, at once, both perfectly merciful, and just, and powerful, and wise, and hath all perfections eminently comprehended and united in his own most simple being-. It were therefore besides the purpose to insist only what sovereign power, consi- dered apart, might do ; but we are to consider what may be congruous to him to do, who is infi- nitely wise and good, as well as powerful. 1. And, first, let it be weighed, how it may square with the divine wisdom, to give being to a world of reasonable creatures, and giving them only a short time of abode in being, to abandon them to a perpetual annihilation. Wisdom in any agent must needs suppose the intention of some valuable end of his action. And the divine wis- dom, wherein it hath any end diverse from that which his pure goodness and benignity towards his creatures would incline him to, (which also we must conceive it most intent to promote and fur- ther,) cannot but have it chiefly in design ; it being determined that his goodness should open itself and break forth into a creation, and that of reason- able creatures, so to manage his government over these (which indeed are the only subjects of go- vernment in the strict and proper notion of it) as may most preserve his authority, and keep up his just interest in them, both by recommending him to their fear and love ; to possess them with that due and necessary reverence of him that may restain them from contemptuous sinning ; and so endear his government to them, as to engage them to a placid and free obedience. But how little THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 137 would it agree with this design of the divine wis- dom, to have made man only for this temporary state ! For, ] . How little would it tend to the begetting and settling that fear of God in the hearts of men, that were necessary to preserve his authority and go- vernment from a profane contempt ; whereas daily experience shows, that there is now no difference made between them that fear God and them that fear him not, unless wherein the former are worse dealt with and more exposed to sufferings and wrongs : that, at least, it is often (yea for the most part) so, that to depart from iniquity is to make oneself a prey ; that those who profess and evidence the most entire devotedness to God, and pay the greatest observance and duty to him, become a common scorn upon this very account, and are in continual clanger to be eaten up as bread by those that call not upon God ; while in the meantime the tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure, are not plagued as other men, nor in trouble as other men ; and judgment is not here executed for wicked works in this world. If also nothing is to be expected, either of good or evil, in another, who is likely to be induced, in this case, to fear God or to be subject to him? And how unlike is this to the wisdom of the Supreme Ruler, to expose his most rightful and sovereign authority to the fearless and insolent affronts of his own revolted creatures, without any design of fu- ture reparation to it : as if he had created them on purpose only to curse him and die ! But he hath prevented the occasion of so reproachful a censure, and thought fit to fill his word and the consciences of guilty sinners with threats and dreadful presages 138 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL of a- future j udgment and state of punishment ; to which he is no less concerned, both in point of wisdom and veracity, (and I may add of legal jus- tice,) to make the event correspond, that he may neither be found to have omitted any due course for preventing or redress of so great an evil ; and that, if the threatening do not effectually overawe sinners, the execution may at least right himself : and that, in the meantime, he do not (that which would least of all become him, and which were most repugnant to his nature) made use of a so- lemn fiction to keep the world in order, and main- tain his government by falsehood and deceit ; that is, by threatening what he knows shall never be. 2. Nor were there (in the case all along sup- posed) a more probable provision made, to conci- liate and procure to the divine majesty the love which it is requisite he should have from the chil- dren of men. And this cannot but be thought another apt method for his wisdom to pitch upon, to render his government acceptable, and to engage men to that free and complacential subjection which is suitable to God. For how can that filial and dutiful affection ever be the genuine product or impress of such a representation of the case be- tween God and them ; that is, that they shall be most indispensably obliged to devote their whole being and all their powers entirely to his service and interest; exactly to observe his strictest laws, to keep under the severest restrain their most innate, reluctant inclinations ; and in the meantime expect the administrations of providence to be such, to- wards them, that they shall find harder usage all their days than his most insolent and irreconcil- able enemies, and at last lose their very beings, THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 139 they know not how soon, and therewith (neces- sarily) all possibilities of any future recompence ? Is this a likely way to procure love, and to capti- vate hearts into an affectionate and free obedience ? Or what is it probable to produce, but a sour and sullen despondency, the extinction of all generous affection, and a temper more agreeable to a forced enthralment to some malignant, insulting genius, than a willing subjection to the God of all grace and love ? And every one will be ready to say, There is little of wisdom in that government, the administration whereof is neither apt to beget fear nor love in those that are subject to it; but either through the want of the one to be despised, or to be regretted through the want of the other. And this being the very case, upon supposition of no future state, it seems altogether unworthy of the Divine wisdom, that such a creature should ever have been made as man, upon which no end is attainable, (as the course of providence commonly runs in this world,) in comparison whereof, it were not better and more honourable to his Maker, (whose interest it is the part of his wisdom to con- sult,) that he had never been. And therefore, as to God and the just and worthy designs of his glory, he would seem, upon this supposition, wholly made in vain. 2. And secondly, How congruous and agreeable would this supposition prove to the goodness of God ? As that other attribute of wisdom doth more especially respect his own interest, so doth this the interest of his creatures : that is, if it be understood, not in a metaphysical, but in a moral sense ; as it imports a propensity and steady bent of will unto benefaction, according to that of the 140 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. Psalmist, ' Thou art good and dost good.' 1 And this free and generous principle it is, which gives the first rise and beginning to all the designs any way respecting the well-being and happiness of creatures ; which then infinite wisdom forms and manages to their full issues and accomplishment, guiding (as it were) the hand of almighty power in the execution of them. That there should be a creation, we may con- ceive to be the first dictate of this immense good- ness, which afterwards diffuses itself through the whole, in communications agreeable to the nature of every creature. So that even this inferior and less noble part, the earth, is full of the goodness of the Lord. 2 It creates first its own object, and then pours forth itself upon it with infinite delight, rewarding the expense with the pleasure of doing good. Now if we should suppose such a creature as man made only for that short time and low state which we see to be allotted him in this world, it were neither difficult nor enough to reconcile the hypothesis with strict justice, which upon the ground of absolute dominion may do what it will with its own ; but the ill accord it seems to have with so large and abounding goodness, renders it very unlike the dispensation of the blessed God ; no enjoyment being in that case afforded to this sort of creatures, agreeable to their common nature and capacity, either in degree or continuance. Not in degree : for who sees not, that the nature of man is capable of greater things than he here enjoys ? And where that capacity is rescued from the corruption that narrows and debases it, how 1 Psalm cxix. 68. 8 Ibid, xxxiii. 5. THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 141 sensibly do holy souls resent and bewail their pre- sent state, as a state of imperfection ! With how fervent and vehement desires and groans do they aspire and pant after a higher and more perfect ! ' We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being bur- dened ; not for that we would be unclothed/ (that is not enough — to be delivered out of the miseries of life, by laying down this passive part, is not that which will terminate their desires,) 'but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.' ' Theirs are not brutal groans, the complaint of op- pressed sensitive nature under a present evil ; but rational and spiritual, the expressions of desire strongly carried to pursue an apprehended suitable good. The truest notion we can yet have of the primitive nature and capacity of man, is by be- holding it in its gradual restitution. And is it agreeable to the goodness of God, to put such a nature into any, and withhold the suitable object ? As if it were a pleasure to him to behold the work of his hands spending itself in weary strugglings towards him, and vexed all the while it continues in being, with the desire of what it shall never enjoy ; and which he hath made it desire, and therein encouraged it to expect ? Nor in continuance : for I suppose it already evident, that the nature of man is capable (in respect of his principal part) of perpetuity, and so of enjoying a felicity hereafter that shall be perma- nent and know no end. And it seems no way congruous to so large goodness, to stifle a capacity whereof it was itself the author, and destroy its own work. For if the being of man is intended for so 1 2 Cor. v.4. 142 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. short a continuance, either he may have the know- ledge of this determination concerning him, or not. If he cannot have the knowledge of it, why should any one say what they cannot know ; or put such a thing upon God, that is so vilely reflecting and dishonourable to him ? If he may have the know- ledge of it, then doth he seem a creature made for torment, while by an easy reflection upon himself he may discern, he is not incapable of a perpetual state, and is yet brought forth into the light to be ere long extinguished and shut up in everlasting darkness. And who can think this a thing worthy of infinite and eternal goodness ? Besides, (as hath been insisted before,) that this torture, proceeding from so sad an expectation, cannot but be most grievous and afflictive to the best. Whence the apostle tells us, that Christians, if in this life only they had hope, were of all men most miserable : ' so that it were more desirable never to have been. If any yet fall hereafter into a state to which they would prefer perpetual annihilation, inasmuch as it is wholly by their own default, it no way reflects upon Divine goodness. But it would be a dishonourable reflection rather upon that Author and Fountain of all goodness, if he should not express himself wise and just as well as good ; as it would upon a man, especially a ruler over others, if that which we call good nature were conjunct with stolidity, or an insensibleness of whatsoever affronts to his person and government. Upon the whole, there- fore, it seems most repugnant to these great attri- butes of the Divine Being, to have made man only for this present state ; that to think so, were to Cor. xv. 19. THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 143 conceive unworthily of him, as if he had acted much beneath himself, and done a vain thing in making such a creature, no end being attainable by it, which we can suppose either his wisdom or goodness to aim at. If any would imagine to themselves an expe- dient, by supposing an eternal succession of hu- man generations, upon whom the wisdom and goodness of God might have a perpetual exercise in the government and sustentation of them for their appointed times, this would be far from satisfying as to either, but would rather increase the difficulty ; for there would be the same tempt- ation upon all the individuals, to contemn or re- gret the government of their Maker. So that he should hereby even eternize his own reproach; and should avvays, in every succession, have still the same craving appetites returning, and expecta- tions never to be satisfied, which were as repug- nant to all he hath discovered to us of his nature, as any thing we can suppose. Though some persons of a light and desultory humour, might imagine to themselves a pleasure in it, if they had the power to make such a rotation of things, rising and falling, coming and passing away, at their beck and command; and such as were of a san- guinary temper, might sport themselves in raising up and lopping off lives at pleasure, with an ar- bitrary hand : yet sure they would never gain by it the esteem of being either wise or good ; and would, it is like, in time grow weary of the sport. But to form to ourselves such ideas of the blessed God, were an injury not inferior to the very denial of his being. His providence towards the inferior creatures hath no resemblance of any such thing; whom his 144 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. bounty sustains agreeably to their natures, who have no foresight of their own cessation from be- ing, to keep them in a continual death by the ex- pectation of it; and who serve to valuable and reasonable purposes while they are continued ; for they are useful, partly to the sustentation of man, and partly to his instruction, in order to his higher ends. And though each individual of them do not actually so, it is sufficient that the several kinds of them are naturally apt thereto, which are propagated according to a settled course and law of nature, in their individuals. And if all imme- diately serve not man, yet they do it mediately, in serving those that more immediately do. Besides, that when such a work was to be done, as the fur- nishing out and accomplishing this lower world, it was meet all things should be in number, weight, and measure, and correspond in every part. As if one build a house for entertainment, though the more noble rooms only do come in view, yet all the rest are made answerably decent, on supposition that they may. It was becoming the august and great Lord of this world, that it have in it, not only what may sustain the indigent, but gratify the contemplative by fresh variety; who would be apt to grow remiss by conversing only with what were of every day's observation. Nor was that a low end, when such contempla- tion hath so direct a tendency to raise a consider- ing mind to the sight, and love, and praise of the Supreme Being, that hath stamped so lively sig- natures and prints of his own perfections upon all his works. If it be said, man might be in the same kind serviceable to the contemplation of angels, though he were himself never to know any other THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 145 than this mortal state; it is true that he might so ; but yet the incongruities were no way salved, of God's putting a capacity and expectation into his nature of a better state ; of his dealing so hardly with them, that he hath procured to love him ; of his never vindicating their high contempt that spent their days in rebellion against him : be- sides, that these were ill precedents, and no plea- sant themes for the view of an angelical mind. And if they see a nature extinct, capable of their state, what might they suspect of their own ? So that, which way soever we turn our thoughts, we still see that man's mortality and liableness to an unavoidable death, abstracted from the thoughts of another state, carry that constant aspect, as if all men were made in vain. What remains then, but that we conclude hence, we ought not too much, or too long, thus to ab- stract, nor too closely confine our eye to this dark and gloomy theme, death and the grave, or with- hold it from looking further. For far be it from us to think the wise and holy God hath given be- ing to man — and consequently exercised a long- continued series of providence, through so many successive ages towards him, in vain. Nothing but a prospect of another state can solve the knot and work through the present difficulty, can give us a true account of man and what he was made for. Therefore since it would be profane and impious, sad and uncomfortable, a blasphemy to our Maker, a torture to ourselves, to speak it as our settled apprehension and judgment, that God hath made man to no purpose ; we are obliged and concerned, both in justice to him and compassion to ourselves, so to represent the case, as that we may be able to L 146 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. remove so unworthy and black a thought to the greatest distance from us, both in itself and what- soever practice would be consequent thereto : that is, to conclude, that certainly there must be ano- ther state after this, and accordingly steer our course. The improvement then of the foregoing discourse will have a double aspect : — on our judg- ments and practice. I. On our judgments ;;to settle this great prin- ciple of truth in them : — the certain futurity of another state after this life is over, unto which this present state is only preparatory and introductive. For whereas we can never give a rational account why such a creature as man was made, if we con- fine all our apprehensions concerning him to his present state on earth : let them once transcend those narrow limits, fly over into eternity and be- hold him made for an everlasting state hereafter, and the difficulty now vanishes, the whole affair looks with a comely and befitting aspect. For we may now represent the case thus to our- selves : — that man was put into this terrestrial state and dwelling, by the wise and righteous designa- tion of his great Creator and Lord, that his loyalty to him, amidst the temptations and enticements of sensible things, might be tried awhile ; that revolt- ing from him, he is only left to feel here the just smart of his causeless defection ; that yet such further methods are used for his recovery, as are most suitable to his so impaired state. An allayed light shines to him in the midst of darkness, that his feebler eye may receive a gradual illumination, and behold God in those more obscure discoveries which he now vouchsafes of himself, till by degrees he be won to take up good thoughts of him, and THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 147 return into an acquaintance and friendship with him ; which once begun here, shall be hereafter perfected in eternal fruitions. The offence and wrong done to his Maker, he in a strange un- thought-of way makes compensation of to himself; and testifies his reconcileableness, and persuades a reconciliation upon such terms, and by so endear- ing mediums, as might melt and mollify hearts of adamant; and shall effectually prevail with many to yield themselves the subjects and instances of his admired goodness for ever; while others lie only under the natural consequents and just re- sentments of their unremedied enmity and folly. So are the glorious issues of God's dispensation to- wards man, and the wise and merciful conduct of his equal government, worthily celebrated through the days of eternity with just acclamation and praises. We can fasten upon nothing exception- able or unaccountable, yea, or that is not highly laudable and praiseworthy, in this course of pro- cedure. Therefore, though now we behold a dark cloud of mortality hanging over the whole human race ; though we see the grave still devouring and still unsatisfied, and that all are successively drawn down into it ; and we puzzle ourselves to assign a reason why such a creature was made a reasonable being, capable of an everlasting duration, to visit the world only and vanish, to converse a short space with objects and affairs so far beneath it, and retire we know not whither: if yet our eye follow him through the dark paths of the re- gion of death, till at the next appearance we be- hold him clothed with immortality, and fitted to an endless state, the wonder is over, and our amazement quickly ceases. l2 148 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. Wherefore let us thus bethink ourselves, and consider : Surely he that made this great universe, and disposed all the sorts, stations, and motions of creatures in it in so exquisite order and method, cannot but be a most perfectly wise and intellec- tual agent, and therefore cannot be supposed to have done any thing to no purpose; much less when all the inferior creatures have ends visibly answering the exigency of their natures, to have made so excellent a creature as man, the nobler part of his lower creation, in vain ; that he only should be without his proportionable end, and after a short continuance in being, return to no- thing, without leaving it conjecturable what he was made for. This were so intolerable an incongruity, and so unlike the footsteps that every where else appear in the Divine wisdom and goodness, that we cannot but inquire further into this matter, and conclude at last, that he was made for some higher purposes than are within the reach of our sight, and hath his principal part yet to act upon an- other stage, within the veil, that shall never be taken down. The future immortality of man seems, therefore, so certainly grounded upon what is discovered and generally acknowledged touch- ing the nature of God and his most peculiar and essential perfections, that unless we were further put to prove the existence of a God, which to them that are rational need not, and to them that are not were in vain, there can no reasonable doubt remain concerning it. 2. Wherefore the further use we have to make of the matter proposed, is in reference to our prac- tice ; which it may fitly serve both to correct and reprove, and also to direct and guide. THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 149 1. It administers the ground of just rebuke, that since, if we terminate our thoughts and de- signs upon things only on this side the grave, it would seem we were wholly made in vain ; and we do yet so generally employ our cares and endea- vours about such things, and even the vilest and most despicable of these ; and so live not to our own dishonour only, but to the reproach of our Maker, as if he made us for no more worthy ends. And let us but impartially debate the matter with ourselves. Can we, in sober reason, think we were made only for such ends as the most only pursue ? have we any pretence to think so ? or can it enter into our souls to believe it ? Would not men be ashamed to profess such a belief; or to have it written in their foreheads, these are the only ends they are capable of? Then might one read, such a man was born to put others in mind of his predecessor's name, and only lest such a family should want an heir : such a one to con- sume such an estate, and devour the provenue of so many farms and manors : such a one to fill so many bags and coffers, to sustain the riot of him that succeeds : some created to see and make sport ; to run after hawks and dogs, or spend the time which their weariness redeems from converse with brutes, in making themselves such, by drinking away the little residue of wit and reason they have left; mixing with this genteel exercise, their im- pure and scurrilous drolleries, that they may be- friend one another with the kind occasion of prov- ing themselves to be yet of human race, by this only demonstration remaining to them, that they can laugh ; which medium, if the wisdom of the just were known, would be found so pregnant as 150 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. to afford them a double conclusion, and be as effec- tual, oftentimes, to prove them fools as men. Others one might read born to trouble the world, to disquiet the neighbourhood, and be the common plague of all about them ; at least, if they have any within their reach and power that are wiser and more sober than themselves, or that value not their souls at so cheap a rate as they : others made to blaspheme their Maker, to rent the sacred name of God, and make proof of their high valour and the gallantry of their brave spirits, by bidding a defi- ance to Heaven, and proclaiming their heroic con- tempt of the Deity and of all religion. As if they had persuaded themselves into an opinion, that because they have had so prosperous success in the high achievements of conquering their hu- manity and baffling their own fear, and reason, and conscience, death also will yield them as easy a victory, or be afraid to encounter men of so re- doubted courage ; that the God of heaven, rather than offend them, will not stick to repeal his laws for their sakes, or never exact the observance of them from persons of their quality ; that they shall never be called to judgment, or be complimented only there with great respect, as persons that bore much sway in their country, and could number so many hundreds or thousands a year ; that at least, the infernal flames will never presume to touch so worthy personages; that devils will be awed by their greatness, and fear to seize them, lest they should take it for an affront. No conceit can be imputed to these men absurd enough to overmatch the absurdity of their practice. They can them- selves think nothing more gross and shameful than what they daily are not ashamed to act. For what THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 151 absurdity can be compassed in a thought greater than what appears in a course of life managed in perpetual hostility to all principles of reason and humanity ? And either they must own all the impious folly of such thoughts, or confess upon other accounts, an equal infatuation in their think- ing faculty itself. For either they think their course justifiable, or they do not. If they do, how fatally are all things inverted in their depraved minds ! Wisdom and folly, virtue and vice, good and evil, seem to them transformed into one an- other, and are no longer to be known by their own names. The common notions of all mankind are but blind fancies in comparison of their later and clearer illumination ; and the ancient religious sentiments of all former ages, dreams and follies to their admired new light. Their wise and rare discoveries, that they and all things came by chance, that this world hath no owner or Lord, (because they never had wit or patience to con- sider the nonsense of them ; and though they ne- ver, any of them, had the luck to see one clod of earth, or grain of sand, start up into being out of nothing ; much less ground to think, that such a world should of itself do so,) are reason enough with them, to mock at the Eternal Being, and at- tempt to jeer religion out of the world, and all other men out of their reason and wits, as they have themselves. And sure this must be their only pretence, and their atheism the best reason, upon which to justify their constant practice: for who can think, while he sees them not yet in chains, they should be so perfectly mad, as to ac- knowledge only such a Deity, the author and 152 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. ruler of all things, whose favour were worth no- thing, or to be procured by affronts; to whom con- tempt were a sacrifice, and the violation of whatso- ever is sacred, the most effectual propitiation ? or acknowledge him for a God, whom they hope to overpower, and to prosper in a war against him ? And if they acknowledge none at all, and this be the fundamental article of their creed, that there is indeed none; then can no man charge them with any thought more grossly foolish than their own ; nor can they devise to say any thing, by which more certainly to argue themselves be- reft of the common understanding of men. For who that is not so, if he only take notice of his own being, may not as certainly conclude the existence of a God, as that two and two make four ? Or what imagination can be too absurd to have place in that mind, that can imagine this creation to be a casualty ? He would be thought beside himself that should say the same of the composition of a clock or a watch, though it were a thousand times more supposable. But if they do not justify them- selves, to what purpose is it further to press them with absurdities, that persist in constant self-con- tradiction ; or that have not so much left them of rational sensation, as to feel in their own minds the pressure of the very greatest absurdity ? If they only presume they do well, because they have never asked themselves the question, or spent any thoughts about it ; this speaks as much a besotted mind as any of the rest, and is as unworthy of a reasonable creature. Why have they the power of thinking ? Or who do in any case more generally THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 153 incur the censure of imprudence and folly, than they who have only this plea for their actions, that they did not consider ? especially when the case is so plain, and the most sudden reflection would discover the iniquity and danger of their course. And one would think nothing should be more ob- vious, or more readily occur to the mind of a man, than to contemplate himself; and taking notice there is such a creature in the world, furnished with such abilities and powers, to consider, what was I made for? what am I to pitch upon as my proper end ? nor any thing appear more horrid to him, than to cross the very ends of his creation. 2. It may also be improved to the directing of our practice. For which purpose we may hence take this general rule, that it be such as becomes the expectation of a future state : for what else is left us, since in our present state we behold no- thing but vanity ? We see thus stands our case, that we must measure ourselves by one of these ap- prehensions — either we are made in vain, or we are made for a future state. And can we endure to live according to the former, as if we were im- pertinencies in the creation, and had no proper business in it ? What ingenuous person would not blush to be always in the posture of a useless hang-by ; to be still hanging on, where he hath no- thing to do; that if he be asked, Sir, what is your business here ? he hath nothing to say ? Or can we bear it, to live as if we came into the world by chance, or rather by mistake, as though our crea- tion had been a misadventure, a thing that would not have been done had it been better thought on ? And that our Maker had overshot himself, and been guilty of an oversight in giving us such a 154 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. being ? Who, that hath either just value for him- self, or any reverence for his Maker, could endure either to undergo the reproach, or be guilty of the blasphemy, which this would import ? And who can acquit himself of the one or the other, that lives not in some measure agreeably to the expectation of somewhat beyond this present life ? Let us, therefore, gird up the loins of our minds, and set our faces as persons designing for another world ; so shaping our course, that all things may concur to signify to men the greatness of our expectations. We otherwise proclaim to the world (to our own and our Creator's wrong) that we have reasonable souls given us to no purpose. We are, therefore, concerned and obliged both to aim at that worthy end, and to discover and make it visible that we do so. Nor is a design for an immortal state so mean and inglorious, or so irrational and void of a solid ground, that we have any cause either to decline or conceal it ; either not to retain, or to be ashamed of our hope. Nor is there any thing to be done in prosecution of it, so unworthy as to need a cor- ner, or merit to be done as a work of darkness. Neither yet is it a vain-glorious ostentation, or the affectation of making show of an excellency above the vulgar pitch, that I persuade to; but a modest sober avowing of our design and hope; neither making any near approach to a proud arrogance on the one hand, nor a mean pusillanimity on the other. Truly great and generous spirits know how to carry under secular honour with that prudent and graceful decorum, as shall signify a just own- ing of themselves without insolence towards others. Real worth, though it do not vaunt, will show it- THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 155 self; and while it doth not glare, yet cannot forbear to shine. We should endeavour the excellency of a spirit refined from earth and dross, and as- piring towards a state of immortality, may express itself, and shine in its native lustre ; with its own, not with borrowed beams; with a constant, even, natural, not an unequal artificial light; that all that will may see, by the steady tendency of our course, that we are aiming at the great things of another world ; though we all the while are not so much solicitous to have our end and purpose known, as to obtain it. And, verily, since the vile sons of the earth, the men of sense, that aim at no other end than to gratify their brutal appetite with such pleasure as is only to be compassed within a short life's time in this world, and who live to the reproach of their Maker and of mankind ; do not go about to hide the infamy of their low design, or conceal the degene- rous baseness of their mean spirits; but while they make their belly their God, and only mind earthly things, do also glory in their shame ; how much were it beneath the state and spirit of the sons of God, that are worthily designing for a glorious im- mortality, to be ashamed of their glory, or think of stealing a passage to heaven in the dark ! No : let them know, it is not only too mean a thing for them to involve themselves in the common spirit of the sensual world, but even to seem to do so : and that this is so foul and ignominious a thing, as whereof they are concerned, not to be free from the guilt only, but the suspicion. Those worthy souls that in former and darker days were engaged in seeking the heavenly country, thought it be- came them to confess themselves pilgrims and 156 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. strangers on the earth; 1 and thereinto declare plainly, that they were seeking that better country. Which confession and plain declaration we need not understand to be merely verbal, but practical and real also ; such as might be understood to be the language of their lives, and of a constant uni- form course of actions agreeable to such a design. Let us, therefore, bethink ourselves, what temper of mind and manner of life may be most conform- able to this design, and best become persons pre- tending to it; whereupon we should soon find our own thoughts instructing us, that such things as these would be most becoming and fit in reference thereto; and which we may therefore take as so many particular directions how to govern our spirits, and behave ourselves answerably to so great an expectation. 1. That we endeavour for a calm indifferency and dispassionate temper of mind towards the various objects and affairs that belong to this pre- sent life. There are very narrow limits already set, by the nature of the things themselves, to all the real objective value that such things have in them ; and it is the part of wisdom and justice to set the proportionable bounds to all the thoughts, cares, and passions we will suffer to stir in our minds in reference to them. Nothing is a more evident acknowledged character of a fool, than upon every slight occasion to be in a transport. To be much taken with empty things betokens an empty spirit. It is a part of manly fortitude to have a soul so fenced against foreign impressions, as little to be moved with things that have little in 1 Heb. xi. THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 157 them; to keep our passions under a strict and steady command, that they be easily retractable and taught to obey ; not to move till severe reason have audited the matter, and pronounced the occa- sion just and valuable. In which case the same manly temper will not refuse to admit a proportion- able stamp and impress from the occurring object. For it is equally a prevarication from true manhood to be moved with everything and with nothing: the former would speak a man's spirit a feather, the latter a stone. A total apathy and insensibleness of external occurrents hath been the aim of some, but never the attainment of the highest pretenders. And if it had, yet ought it not to have been their boast ; as upon sober thoughts it cannot be reckoned a perfection. But it should be endea- voured, that the passions which are not to be rooted up, (because they are of nature's planting,) be yet so discreetly checked and depressed, that they grow not to that enormous tallness as to over- top a man's intellectual power, and cast a dark shadow over his soul. A rational authority must be maintained, a continency and dominion of one's-self, that there be not an impotent profusion, and we be never so affected with any thing, but that the object may still be able to warrant and justify the affection, both for the nature and de- gree of it. Which rule, if we strictly observe and apply it to the present case, we shall rarely meet with any temporal concern that ought to move us much, both for the littleness of such things them- selves, and that we have so unspeakably greater things in our view and design. In conformity, therefore, to our so great expec- tation, we ought more particularly to watch and repress our inclinations, appetites, and affections 158 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. towards each several sort and kind of objects, which time and this present state hath within the confines of it. As, how contemptuously should we look upon that empty vanity of being rich ! How coldly and carelessly should we pursue, how unconcernedly should we lose, any thing that might entitle us to that name ! The pursuit of so despicable a trifle, with violent and peremptory desire, so as hereby to suffer a diversion from our design for another world, as to make our eternal hope less than nothing, (for to any man's calm and sober thoughts, this will be found as little,) and so will amount to a total quitting of all our preten- sions to a better, future state ; that is, when so we indulge this^ odd, irrational, this wildly fanciful, and purely humoursome appetite, (of which no man can give any tolerable account,) that it be- comes ravenous, when it devours a man's time, his thoughts, the strength and vigour of his spirit, swallows up his nobler designs, and makes an idle doting about he knows not what, or why, his main business. Especially when conscience itself be- comes a sacrifice to this impure unhallowed idol ; and the question is wholly waved, " Is this thing just and honest?" and nothing is considered, but that it is commodious and gainful. Yet, (if herein we will take upon us to pass a judgment upon other men,) it will be no way ingenuous or just, that in smaller and disputable matters, we make our own apprehensions a measure and standard to them. They are commonly aptest to do so, who have least studied the matter, and have nothing but their ignorant confidence to entitle them to the dictator's chair; where, however, having placed themselves, they liberally bestow their censures and reproaches on all that think it not fit to throw THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 1 -30 away their own eyes, and see with their bad ones ; and conclude them to have no conscience, who go not according- to theirs ; and that they cannot but have some base design, who in any thing presume to swerve from their judgment, especially if the advantage, in any temporal respect, happen to lie on that side from which they dissent. Nothing can indeed so comport with the spirit and design of one who believes himself made for another world, as a brave and generous disdain of stooping to the lure of present emolument, so as thereby to be, drawn into any the least thing which he judges not defensible by the severest rules of reason and religion ; which were to quit a serene heaven for mire and dirt. There is nothing in this world of that value, or worthy to be bought so dear, as with the loss and forfeiture of the rest and repose of a mind, quiet, benign, peaceful, and well pleased with itself. It is enough, if one find him- self, by difficulties which he cannot master, con- strained to dissent from persons above exception wise and pious, placidly, and without unbecoming confidence, to go on in the way which his present judgment allows, carrying with him a modest sense of human infirmity, and how possible it is, the error may lie on his own part; having yet to relieve him against that supposition, the clearness of his own spirit, the conscience of his innocency of any ill disposition or design, of his instructibleness and preparedness to admit a conviction if he err. And be he never so fully persuaded about the thing in difference, yet to consider the smallness of it, and how little cause he hath of glorying, if he know in this matter more than others, who pos- sibly know ten times more than he, in far greater 160 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. and more important matters. But, in matters clearly determined by common agreed principles, to prevaricate out of an indulgence to mere appe- tite, to give up oneself to practices apparently im- moral and flagitious, only to comply with, and lest he should not satisfy sensual desires, is the character of one who hath abandoned the common hope of all good men ; and who, that he may have his lot with beasts in this world, dreads not to have it with devils in the other. And it is upon the same ground, equally unbecoming them that pretend to this hope, to be visibly concerned and discomposed for losses and disappointments they may meet with in this kind, when unexpected events withstand their having much of this world, or deprive them of what they have. It becomes them that reckon their good things are to come hereafter, to show by their equal deportment and cheerful aspect in any such case, that they appre- hend not themselves touched in their most consi- derable interests. Yea, though they suffer not losses only, but injuries; and besides that they are damnified, (as much as such things can signify,) they find themselves wronged; and though further trouble and danger threaten them in the same kind, they should evidence how much it is above the power either of chance or malice, not only to make them miserable, but even to disturb or make them sad ; that they are not happy by a casualty ; and that their happiness is not in the command of them who cannot command their own ; that it only de- pends on the inward constitution and frame of their own spirits, attempered to the blessed objects of the invisible world, whereby they have the as- surance of enjoying them fully hereafter, and the THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 161 present grateful relishes thereof in the meantime. And hence, that they can be happy without the world's kindness, and in despite of its unkindness; that they have somewhat within them, by which they are enabled to rejoice in tribulation ; being- troubled on every side, yet not to be distressed ; to " take joyfully the spoiling of their goods, know- ing within themselves they have in heaven a better and enduring substance ;" not to suffer or discover any perturbation or disquiet ; not to have their souls ruffled, or put into disorder ; nor let any cloud sit on their brow, though dark and dismal ones seem to hang over their heads. And the same absurdity it would be to indulge to themselves an unbounded liberty of sensual pleasures. For that looks like a despair of futurity ; as if a day were a mighty gain for eating and drinking, because to-morrow we must die. An abstemious shyness here is comely ; a tasting only the delights, whereof others suffer themselves to be ingulfed; a prudent reservedness and restraint, so as that what shall cause with others an unbe- seeming transport and diffusion of themselves, be entertained not with a cynical morosity, but a pleasant composure and well-ordered complacence ; keeping a due and even distance between levity and sourness. Yet there is a natural retiredness in some men's tempers ; and in others an aversion to pleasures, proceeding only of a rational esti- mate of their emptiness and vanity in themselves, which may, however, much fall short of what the present case requires ; the exigency whereof is no way satisfied, but where such a moderation is the product of a comparative judgment between the delights of the present and those of the future M 162 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. state; when one so enjoys any thing in this world, as to be under the power of nothing because of the more prevailing influence he is under from the power of the world to come; when his faith is the parent of his sobriety, and his denial of worldly lusts flows from the expectation of the blessed hope ; when, because he more highly prizes, and lest he forfeit eternal pleasures, he so behaves himself towards all temporary ones, as neither to abuse those that are lawful, nor to be abused by the unlawful ; not to exceed in the one, nor to touch with the other. Thus also ought we to look upon secular honours and dignity ; neither to make them the matter of our admiration, affectation, or envy. We are not to behold them with a libidinous eye, or let our hearts thirst after them ; not to value ourselves the more for them, if they be our lot, nor let our eye be dazzled with admiration, or distorted with envy, when we behold them the ornaments of others. We are not to express that contempt of them, which may make a breach on civility, or disturb the order and policy of the communities whereto we belong. Though this be none of our own country, and we are still to reckon ourselves but as pilgrims and strangers while we are here ; yet it becomes not strangers to be insolent or rude in their behaviour, where they sojourn, how much soever greater value they may justly have of their own country. We should pay to secular greatness a due respect, without idolatry, and neither despise nor adore it ; considering, at once, the requisite- ness of such a thing in the present state, and the excelling glory of the other. As, though in pru- dence and good manners we would abstain from THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 163 provoking affronts towards an American sachim, or sagamore, if we did travel or converse in their country ; yet we could have no great veneration for them, having beheld the royal pomp and gran- deur of our own prince ; especially he who were himself a courtier and favourite to his much more glorious sovereign, whom he is shortly to attend at home, could have no great temptation to sue for offices and honours, or bear a very profound in- trinsic homage, to so mean and unexpressive an image of regality. It can surely no way become one who seeks and expects the honour and glory which is conjunct with immortality, 1 to be fond of the airy titles that poor mortals are wont to please themselves with ; or to make one among the obsequious servile company of them whose business il is to court a vanishing shadow, and tempt a dignified trifle into the belief it is a deity ; to sneak and cringe for a smile from a supercilious brow, and place his heaven in the disdainful favours of him, who, it may be, places his own as much in thy homage, so that it befalls into the supplicant's power to be his creator, whose creature he affects to be. What eye would not soon spy out the grossness of this absurdity ? and what ingenuity would not blush to be guilty of it ? Let then the joyful expectants of a blessed immortality pass by the busy throng of this fan- ciful exchange ; and behold it with as little con- cern, as a grave statesman would the sports and ludicrous actions of little children ; and with as little inclination of mind as he would have to leave his business and go play with them; bestowing there only the transient glance of a careless or a 1 Rom. ii. 7- M 2 164 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. compassionate eye, and still reserving their intent steady views for the glorious hope set before them. And with a proportionable unconcernedness should they look on, and behold the varied alterations of political affairs, no further minding, either the constitution or administration of government, than as the interest of the universal Ruler, the weal and safety of their prince or country, are concerned in them. But how many, under the specious pretence of a public spirit, make it their whole business to inspect and pry into these affairs, even with a most meanly private and interested one ; watching over the public beyond the bounds of their own calling; and with no other design, than to catch at an opportunity of serving their own turns ! How many that stand perpetually at a gaze, in a sus- penseful expectation how things will go ; either joying or hoping to behold any favourable prog- nostics to the party whereto they have thought fit to addict themselves; glad or desirous to see it engross power, and grasp the sum of things, not from any sense of duties towards God's vice- gerents, not from love of justice or study of public advantage, but that the happier lot may befal or remain to themselves. These men are absorbed, and swallowed up of the spirit of this world, con- tempered only to this sublunary region, concor- porate with the earth, so as to partake in all its pangs and paroxysms, and tremulous motions. By the beating of their pulse you may know the state of things in this lower world, as if they were of the same piece, and had but one soul with it. Let them see times and a state of things on earth suitable to their genius, and you put a new life and soul into them. Reduce them to a despair THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 165 here, and (so little communion have they with the affairs of that other country) the most specious in- viting representation that can be made to them of the world to come hinders not, but their hearts languish and die, and become as stones within them. But that lofty soul that bears about with it the living apprehensions of its being made for an ever- lasting state, so earnestly intends it, that it shall ever be a descent and vouchsafement with it, if it allow itself to take notice what busy mortals are doing in their (as they reckon them) grand nego- ciations here below. And if there be a suspicion of an aptness or inclination to intermeddle in them to their prejudice to whom that part belongs, can heartily say to it, (as the philosopher to the jealous tyrant,) We of this academy are not at leisure to mind so mean things ; we have somewhat else to do than to talk of you. He hath still the image before his eye, of this world vanishing and passing away ; of the other, with the everlasting affairs and concernment of it, even now ready to take place and fill up all the stage : and can represent to himself the vision (not from a melancholic fancy or crazed brain, but a rational faith and a sober well-instructed mind) of the world dissolving, monarchies and kingdoms breaking up, thrones tumbling, crowns and sceptres lying as neglected things. He hath a telescope through which he can behold the glorious appearance of the Supreme Judge ; the solemn state of his majestic person ; the splendid pomp of his magnificent and vastly numerous retinue; the obsequious throng of glo- rious celestial creatures, doing homage to their eternal King ; the swift flight of his royal guards, 166 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. sent forth into the four winds to gather the elect, and covering the face of the heavens with their spreading wings ; the universal silent attention of all to that loud sounding trumpet that shakes the pillars of the world, pierces the inward caverns of the earth, and resounds from every part of the encircling heavens ; the many myriads of joyful expectants arising, changing, putting on glory, taking wing, and contending upwards, to join themselves to the triumphant heavenly host : the judgment set, the books opened, the frightful amazed looks of surprised wretches ; the equal administration of the final judgment ; the adjudi- cation of all to their eternal states ; the heavens rolled up as a scroll ; the earth and all things therein consumed and burnt up. And now, what spirit is there any more left in him towards the trivial affairs of a vanishing world? How indifferent a thing is it with him who bears himself highest in a state of things whereof he foresees the certain hastening end ! Though he will not neglect the duty of his own place, is heartily concerned to have the knowledge and fear of God more generally obtained in this apostate world, and is ready to contribute his utmost regu- lar endeavours for the preservation of common peace and order in subserviency hereto ; yet ab- stractedly from these considerations, and such as have been before mentioned, he is no more con- cerned who is uppermost, than one would, passing by a swarm of flies, which hath the longest wings, or which excels the rest in sprightliness or brisk- ness of motion. And for himself, he can insert this amongst his most serious thanksgivings, that while the care is incumbent on others, of watching THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 167 over the public peace and safety, he may sit still and converse with God and his own more sedate thoughts. How secure is he in this, that infinite wisdom governs the world ! that all things shall be disposed the best way, to the best and most valu- able ends! that an afflicted state shall never befal unto good men, but when it is fittest and most conducible it should do so ! that the prosperity carnal appetite covets, is never denied them, but when it would be pernicious ! How calm is he in the midst of external troubles! how placid and se- rene a spirit inhabits his peaceful breast ! When all things are shaken round about him, he is not shaken. He bears all sorts of troubles, but creates none to others, nor is disturbed by any himself. But they that delight to see this world rolling or fixed, as they most serve their private purposes, and have a perpetual quarrel with it, while it looks not kindly upon them; their life is bound up in it, and their pretences to another are but the languid, faint notions of what they never heartily believe nor desire. Upon the whole matter, nothing is more agreeable to this great expectation, than a steady restraint and moderation of our passions towards things without us ; that is, all the several sorts of external objects and affairs, that so vari- ously invite and tempt our observation and regard in this our present state. 2. I next add : a further congruity, if we pre- tend to this expectation, is, that we be not over- much taken up in minding the body. For this looks like a design (or that inconsistent wish) tc have our present state perpetuated ; and that the thoughts are remote from us of a change for a bet- ter. As if notwithstanding all that the Divine 168 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. goodness bath promised concerning the future in- heritance of the free and heaven-born seed, this did still lie nearest to our hearts, O that Ishmael might live in thy sight ! and that the belief did miser- ably languish with us, of any better portion than what our eyes do already behold; together with the apprehension of a spiritual being in us, to be ripened into a complete and actual capacity of en- joying what is better. It is true, that all the exor- bitant workings of those meaner and ignoble pas- sions that are moved by objects and occasions with- out and foreign to us, have the body for their first and last, their spring and source, their centre and end. But thence it becomes the more proper and requisite, that we draw nearer this their seat and centre, and strike at the root ; and in killing that inordinate love and solicitude for the body, mortify them all at once. We are indeed so far to comply with the pleasure of our Maker, as not to despise the mean abode which he hath assigned us for awhile in the body : but withal, to take heed lest we so cross and resist it, as to make caring for the body our whole business; which he hath only en- joined us in subserviency to an unspeakably greater and more important business. Its health and wel- fare ought, upon very valuable accounts, to be care- fully preserved by all prudent means; but to in- dulge its slothful desires, and comply with its licentious wild cravings, is far beneath us, a base unmanning of ourselves, and would signify, as if so absurd a conceit had passed with us into a settled judgment, that a reasonable immortal spirit was created only to tend and serve a brute. It is monstrous to behold, with how common consent multitudes that professedly agree in the belief of THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 169 the immortal nature of their souls, do yet agree to debase and enslave them to the meanest servility to their mortal bodies ; so as these are permitted to give laws to them, to prescribe them rules of living, and what their daily employment shall be. For observe the designs they drive, and what is the ten- dency of their actions and affairs, (whence the judgment is to be made concerning their inward thoughts, deliberations, and resolves,) and is not the body the measure and mark of them all ? What import or signification is there in this course, of a design for futurity ? And (which increases the folly of it to a wonder) they can make a shift to go on thus from year to year, and take no notice of the absurdity ! They agree to justify each one himself, and one another. The commonness of the course takes away all sense of the horrid mad- ness of it. And because each doth as the rest do, they seem to imagine they all do well, and that there is nothing exceptionable in the case ; and go on, as the silly sheep, " not the way they ought, but which they see others go before them." l But, if any place could be found for calm and sober thoughts, what would be reckoned a greater impertinency, than to be at so great pains for maintaining a bodily life, without considering what that life shall serve for ? to employ our utmost care to live, but to live for we know not what ? It be- comes us to be patient of the body, not fond, — to treat and use our bodies as things shortly to be put off and laid aside, — to care for them, not for their own, but the work's sake we have to do in them, and leave it to them to indulge and pamper the 1 Non qua eundum est sed qua itur. — Sen. 170 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. body, who expect never to live out of it, — not to concern ourselves, that the circumstances of our bodily state be such as will gratify our appetites, but answer the ends for which our Maker thought fit we should live awhile in the body, — reckoning with ourselves, we are lodged in these mean re- ceptacles (though somewhat commodiously, yet) but for a little while, and for great purposes; and more minding our journey and home, than our en- tertainment in our inn, — contentedly bearing the want of bodily accommodations that are not easily to be compassed, and the pressure of unavoidable bodily infirmities; not much pitying ourselves be- cause of them ; nor deeply regretting it, if wants and pains pinch our flesh ; nay, though we see the outward man perishing, so we can but find the in- ward renewing day by day. 3. That we set ourselves with the whole intention of our souls, to mind the concernments of the future state, the invisible things of the other world ; and direct the main stream of our thoughts, de- sires, hopes, and joys thitherward. For how highly justifiable and becoming is it, that we principally mind the state and things we are made for ! We should therefore make these familiar to ourselves, and use our spirits to those more noble and plea- sant themes; recounting often, how unworthy it is of them to grovel in the dust, or choose the objects of their converse by such measures only as are taken from sense. It is an iniquity which, though God may be so gracious to us as to forgive, we should not easily forgive to ourselves, that we have so often chosen to converse with empty trifles, while so great things have invited our thoughts in vain. Their remoteness from sense hath little of THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 171 excuse in it, and unworthy a reasonable creature. Methinks they should be ashamed to allege it, who consider themselves furnished with an intellectual power, that doth, in many other instances, control the judgment of sense, and impeach it of false- hood. Would we not blush to profess it for a principle, that there is nothing real that exceeds the sphere of our sense ? We would reckon it a part of modesty not to ascribe too much to our own understandings, or presume too far upon our intel- lectual ability, against the judgment of sage and knowing persons. How is it then, that we think it not immodest to oppose the apprehensions of our dull and incapacious sense to the common faith and reason of all good and wise men that are or have been in the world, as well as our own ? If we have not seen what the state of things is in the other world, are we not told ? and have we not enough to assure us, that, it is he hath told us, whose nature cannot suffer him to impose upon us, or represent things otherwise than they are ? Who else can be the author of so common a persuasion ? If any man had been the first inventor of the opinion, — that there is another state of things to suc- ceed to this, would he not have assumed it to him- self, that he was so ? would he not have owned it, and gloried in it ? Or would not some or other of his proselyted disciples have preserved his name and memory, and transmitted them to posterity ? Could so vast a sect be without a head or master, known and celebrated among men ? Less plausible opinions find some owners ; why is it not said, who was the first broacher of this ? And if he can find no other parent for it, but he who was the Parent of our beings, how grateful 172 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. should such a discovery be to us, both for his sake and its own ? Upon his account, we should surely think it worthy to be believed ; and upon its own, to be considered and seriously thought on, with greatest delight and sense of pleasure. Many things that we reckon considerable upon much lower accounts, we so believe, as to let them engage our hearts, and influence our practice, upon much lower evidence. How entirely are men's spirits taken up many times about meaner matters, whereof they have only a (much more uncertain and fallible) report from one another? What pre- tence can we have, less to regard the testimony of him that made us, discovering to us things so great, so important, so rational in themselves, even though they had not been so expressly revealed ? Let us therefore drive the matter to a clear and short issue, and come to a resolution with ourselves : — Have we reason to believe such things, or no ? If we can so far impose upon ourselves, as to think we have not; or be tempted into so abject, so un- required, and so unwarrantable a self-denial, so base an esteem of our own beings, as to account the things of this earth and present world have enough in them to answer any ends we can sup- pose ourselves made for; let us no longer mock the world, by pretending to believe what we believe not. But if this be our settled judgment, and we will avow and own it, that we believe these things; let us no longer expose and make ourselves ridicu- lous, by counteracting our own professed belief in matters of such moment, pretending to believe and disregarding them at the same time. It is ab- surd and foolish, to believe such things and not mind them much, or not let our souls and our THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 173 practice be commanded and governed by them : not to have our desires, and cares, and hopes, and joys influenced thereby to the uttermost. How rational is it, here to be deeply solicitous, that by the unsuitableness of our own spirits we defeat not our own expectations ! How pleasant and delect- able (that danger being provided against) to sit down and compare our present with our expected state, what we are, with what we hope to be ere long ! to think of exchanging shortly, infirmity, pollution, darkness, deformity, trouble, complaint; for power, purity, light, beauty, rest, and praise ! How pleasant, if our spirits be fitted to that state ! The endeavour whereof is a further congruity in the present case, viz. 4. That we make it our principal business to in- tend our spirits, to adorn and cultivate our inward man. What can more become us, if we reckon we have somewhat about us made for immortality, than to bestow our chief care upon that immortal part ? Therefore, to neglect our spirits, confessedly capable of so high an estate, to let them languish under wasting distempers, or lie as the sluggard's field, overgrown with thorns and briers, is as vile a slur as we can put upon ourselves and our own profession. We should therefore make this the matter of our earnest study : — what would be the proper improvements and ornaments of our spirits, and will most fitly qualify them for the state we are going into; and of our daily observation how such things thrive and grow in us. Especially, we should not be satisfied, till we find in ourselves a refinedness from this earth, a thorough purgation from all undue degrees of sensual inclination and affection, the consumption of our dross by a sacred 174 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. fire from heaven, a spirit of judgment and of burn- ing, an aptitude to spiritual exercises and enjoy- ments, high complacency in God, fervent love, a worshipping posture of soul, formed to the venera- tion of the eternal wisdom, goodness, power, holi- ness ; profound humility and abnegation of our- selves, a praiseful frame of spirit, much used to gratulations and thanksgivings, a large and univer- sal love, imitating as much as is possible the di- vine, a proneness to do good to all, a steady com- posure and serene temper of spirit, the repose and rest of a contented mind, not boisterous, nor apt unto disquiet, or to create storms to ourselves or the world, every way suitable to the blissful re- gions, where nothing but perfect purity, entire de- votedness to God, love, goodness, benignity, well- pleasedness, order, and peace, shall have place for ever. This we ought to be constantly intent upon, as the business of our lives, our daily work, to get our spirits so attempered and fitted to heaven, that if we be asked, What design we drive ? What are we doing ? we may be able to make this true answer, We are dressing ourselves for eternity. And since nothing is required hereto that is simply impossible, nothing but what is agreeable to our natures, and would be a perfection to them, how worthy and commendable an ambition were it, to be always aspiring ! not to rest or take up beneath the highest pitch of attainable excellency in these kinds ! reckoning every degree thereof a due to our natures, and that they have not what belongs to them, while any thing of real intrinsic moral good- ness is yet wanting; and not only due but neces- sary, and what we shall have need of in reference THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 175 to the state we are shortly to enter upon ; that ex- cept such things be in us, and abound, we cannot have an abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom. And should we, pretending to such an expectation, omit such endeavours of preparing ourselves, it were a like thing as if an unbred pea- sant should go about to thrust himself, with an ex- pectation of high honours and preferments, into the prince's court; or as if a distracted man should ex- pect to be employed in the greatest and most intri- cate affairs of state ; or an uninstructed idiot take upon him to profess and teach philosophy. Therefore let us consider : are we conscious of no unfitness for that blessed state ? to dwell in the presence of the holy God ? to be associated with the heavenly assembly of pure intellectual spirits ? to consort and join with them in their celebrations and triumphant songs ? Can we espy no such thing in ourselves as an earthly mind, aversion to God, as pride, disdain, wrath, or envy, admiration of ourselves, aptness to seek our own things with the neglect of others, or the like P And do not our hearts then misgive, and tell us we are unready, not yet prepared to approach the divine presence, or to enter into the habitation of his holiness and glory ? And what then have we to do, but set our- selves to our preparatory work ; to set our watches, make our observations, take strict notice of all the deflections and obliquities of our spirits, settle our methods, hasten a redress? Do not we know this is the time and state of preparation ? And since we know it, how would the folly torture us by re- flection, of having betrayed ourselves to a surprisal ! None are ever wont to enter upon any new state without some foregoing preparation. Every more 176 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. remarkable turn or change in our lives, is commonly (if at all foreknown) introduced by many serious forethoughts. If a man be to change his dwelling, employment, condition, common discretion will put him thinking how to comport with the place, business, converse, and way of living he is next to betake himself to. And his thoughts will be the more intense, by how much more momentous the change. If he be to leave his country, with no probability of returning; if he be designed to a station, the circumstances whereof carry any thing of awfulness in them ; if to public business ; if on court attendances ; with what solemnity and ad- dress are such things undertaken ! How loath and ashamed would one be to go into such a condition, being totally unapt, not at all knowing how to be- have himself in it ! But what so great change as this can the nature of man admit, that a soul, long shut up in flesh, is now to go forth from its earthly mansion, and return no more ; expecting to be re- ceived into the glorious presence of the Eternal King, and go act its part among the perfected spirits that attend his throne ! How solicitous en- deavour of a very thorough preparation doth this case call for ! But how ill doth the common course of men agree to this, who never have such matters in their thoughts, who so much neglect not their very hogs as they do their spirits ! 5. That we have much conversation with God. He is the only full and permanent good ; therefore the endeavour of becoming very inward with him. doth best agree with the expectation of a state per- fectly good and happy. To expect this, and con- verse only with shadows and vanishing things, is to expect to be happy without happiness; or that our THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 1// happiness should betide us as a casual thing, or be forced upon us at last whether we will or no. But since our happiness in God is on his part not necessary, but vouchsafed and gratuitous, depend- ing on mere good pleasure ; is it our best way of ingratiating ourselves with him, to neglect him and live as without him in the world ; to keep ourselves strangers to him all our days, with a purpose only of flying to him at last, when all things else that were wont to please us are vanished and gone ? And if we could suppose his wisdom and justice to admit his forgiving so provoking contempt of him, and receiving an exiled soul forced out of its earthly abode, that to the last moment of it would never look after him, or have to do with him ; yet, can it be supposed that its own habitual aversation to him could allow it to be happy in him ; espe- cially being increased and confirmed by its con- sciousness and sense of guilt ? How can these but make it banish itself, and in a sullen enmity and despair perpetually flee the divine presence ? What can in this case be more natural to it, than to give up itself to eternal solitary wanderings, as a fugitive from God ; to affect to be ever inwrapt in its own darkness, and hidden from his sight, and be an everlasting tormenter to itself? Can we be happy in him whom we do not love ? or love whom we will not know, or be acquainted with ? What sure ground of hope can we imagine to ourselves, that our reconciliation and acquaintance with God shall ever be brought about, if it be not done while we are here in the body ? Will we be so vain as to cherish a hope that not only affronts the visible import of God's revelation, but the very N 178 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. reason of things, and the natural tendency of our own spirits ? Nor indeed^(if we would consider bet- ter) can we possibly hope for what we desire not, or whereto our hearts are in an habitual disaffection, otherwise than, in the present case, negatively, and that our infidelity permits us not to fear the con- trary. Yea, and the lively hope of a blessedness in God, as it includes desire, would certainly infer that purity (the image of his own) that could never fail to incline our hearts to him, and which would habituate us to a course of walking with him in inward communion. And this were comely and agreeable to our pretences, if, while we profess our- selves made for another state, we retire ourselves from the fading things that put a vanity into this, and single out, by our own choice, the stable good which we expect ever to enjoy. How befitting is it, to pass by all things with neglect, and betake ourselves hither with this sense ! " Lord, I have viewed the world over, in which thou hast set me ; I have tried how this and that thing will fit my spirit and the design of my creation ; and can find nothing in which to rest, for nothing here doth itself rest, but such things as please me for awhile, in some degree, vanish and flee as shadows from before me. Lo, I come to thee, the eternal Being, the spring of life, the centre of rest, the stay of the creation, the fulness of all things ! I join myself to thee ; with thee I will lead my life and spend my days, with whom I am to dwell for ever ; expecting, when my little time is over, to be taken up ere long into thy eternity." And since we who live under the gospel, have heard of the Redeemer, of the dignity of his per- THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 179 son, of his high office and power, of his merciful design and great achievements for the restoring of lapsed and lost souls, 6. It is most agreeable to our apprehensions of the vanity of this present state, and our expectations for the future, that we commit ourselves to him; that with entire trust and love, devoted ness and subjection, we give ourselves up to his happy con- duct, to be led by him to God, and instated into that eternal blessedness which we look for. His kingdom is not of this world ; as we profess not to be. We cannot be innocently ignorant, that its constitution and frame, its laws and ordinances, its aspect and tendency in itself, and the whole course of its administration, are directed to that other state. He hath overcome death, and him that had the power of it; hath brought life and immor- tality to light ; is the first-begotten from the dead, and the first-fruits of them that slept ; hath opened heaven to us, and is himself ascended and entered as our victorious, triumphant captain and fore- runner. He is adorned with highest power, and hath set up a universal kingdom, extended to the utmost bounds of this apostate world, and the vaster regions of innocent and constantly loyal spirits. His proclamations are issued out, his en- signs displayed, to invite and call in whosoever are weary of the sin and vanity of this wretched world, of their alienation from the life of God, of living in the midst of death ; to join themselves to him, the Prince and Lord of life, and be led by him to the immortal state. If the present state of things appear dismal to us ; if we reckon it a woful spec- tacle to behold sin and death reigning, wickedness and immorality acting their combined parts, to n2 180 THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. waste the world and lay it desolate; if we would deliver ourselves and escape from the common ruin, are seriously designing for heaven, and that world in which death hath no place, nor any shadow of death ; let us betake ourselves to him, enrol our names, put ourselves under his banners and discipline, strictly observing the laws and fol- lowing the guidance of that our invisible Lord, who will be author of eternal salvation to them that obey him, and save to the utmost all that come to God through him. How dear should he be to us ! How cheerfully should we trust him, how dutifully serve him, how faithfully adhere to him, both for his own sake, and that of the design he hath in hand for us, and the pleasant savour of heaven and immortality which breathes in both ! But if we neglect him, and disown our relation to him ; or if we let days or years go over our heads, wherein we drowsily slumber ; roll ourselves in the dust of the earth ; and while we call ourselves Christians, forget the reason and importance of our own name, and think not of our being under his call and conduct to the eternal kingdom and glory ; this is per- versely to reject what we say (only) we seek; to disclaim and renounce our pretences to immor- tality ; to blast and damn our own great hopes. 7. Lastly, it is congruous to our expectation of so great things after death, that we live in a cheer- ful, pleasant expectation of it. For what must ne- cessarily intervene, though not grateful in itself, should be reckoned so, for the sake of that which is. This only can upon the best terms reconcile us to the grave, that our greatest hopes lie beyond it , and are not hazarded by it, but accomplished. Al- though, indeed, nothing were to be expected here- THE VANITY OF MAN AS MORTAL. 181 after ; yet so little suitable entertainment doth this world afford to a reasonable spirit, that the mere weariness of beholding 1 a scene of vanity and folly, might well make a recess acceptable. For is it so grateful a thing to observe the confused scramble and hurry of the world ? how almost every one makes it his business to catch from another what is worth nothing ? with what toil, and art, and violence men pursue, what when they embrace they find a shadow ?— to see deluded mortals, each one intent upon his own particular design, and most commonly interfering with another's; some imposed upon by others' overreaching wit, and all by their own folly ; some lamenting their losses, others their short and unsatisfying acquisitions ; many pleasing themselves with being mocked, and contentedly hugging the empty cloud, till death comes and ends the story, and ceases the busy agitation ; that is, with so many particular persons, not with the world : a new succession still spring- ing up, that continue the interlude, and still act over the same parts, ad t ffftiv) " not in our power," or which we cannot help ; that to be destitute of it is neither possible nor fit ; that an apathy, or insensibleness, in such a case, is no more desirable than that we should endure to have a limb, a part of ourselves, cut or torn off from us, without feeling it. But yet affirms, that immoderate sorrow, upon such an occasion, is (7rapd iiox, using the genitive, as here, after iy, as hath been usual, on the mentioned account. And though his books were burnt by the Athenians, because of the dubious title of one of them con- cerning the gods, so that we have not opportunity to know what his opinion of hades was, we have reason more than enough, to think he understood it not of a state of torment only for evil spirits. p2 212 the redeemer's dominion judge of their fidelity and ability who go our way. 1 Upon the whole, it being most evident that hell is but a small and mean part of what is signified by hades, it will be very unreasonable to represent or conceive of the power here ascribed to our Lord, according to that narrow notion of it ; and would be a like incongruity, as if, to magnify the person of highest dignity in the court of a mighty prince, one would say, " he is the keeper of the dun- geon." The word itself, indeed, properly taken, and ac- cording to its just extent, mightily greatens him ; 1 Primate Usher's judgment may be seen in his Answer to the Jesuits' Challenge, that this word properly signifies the other world, the place or state of the dead — so that heaven itself may be comprehended in it. Grot, on Luke xvi. 23, makes hades most certainly to signify a place withdrawn from our sight ; spoken of the body, the grave; of the soul, all that region wherein it is separate from the body. So that as Dives was in hades, so was Lazarus too, but in separate regions : for both paradise and hell, or, as the Grecians were wont to speak, Elysii, and Tartara, were in hades. You may have in him more quotations from the poets, the sense of the Essenes from Josephus, and passages from divers of the fathers to the same purpose. Dr. Hammond's mind was the same, copiously expressed on Matt. xi. 23 ; but differs from Grot, in ascribing to Philemon the iambics above recited, which the other gives to Diphilus. Dr. Lightfoot is full to the same purpose, on the 4th Article of the Creed. And though Bellarmine will have this word always signify hell ; (which, if it do, with sheol the correspondent word, Jacob de- sired to go to hell to his son/as Dr. H. argues ;) Camero, as good a judge, thinks, except once, it never does. If any desire to see more to this purpose with little trouble to themselves, let them peruse Martinius's Lexic. on the word inferus, or infernus. I could refer to many more whom I forbear to mention. Only, if any think in some or other text of Scripture this word must signify hell only, since it is of that latitude as to signify heaven in other places, an impartial view of the circum- stances of the text must determine whether there it be meant of the one, or the other, or both. OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 213 i. e. it is as much as to say, his dominion is of un- known limits ; such as no eye can measure. We think with a sort of veneration, of what is repre- sented as too big for our knowledge. We have a natural awe and reverence for unsearchable dark- ness. But in the meantime we herein suffer a just diminution of ourselves, that when our inquiry stops, and can proceed no further, it being but a very little part of the universe that lies within our compass, having tired our inquiring eye and mind ; upon all the rest we write, hades ; call it unseen, or unknown. And because we call it so, in re- ference to us, God himself calls it so too ; it being his way, (as is observed by that noted Jew, 1 ) speak- ing to men, to use the tongue of the children of men, to speak to them in their own language, and allow them to coin their own words : which at first they often do very occasionally ; nor, as to this, could they have a fairer or a more urgent occasion, or that is more self-justifying, than in one word to say of that other world, that it is hades, or invisible, when that is truly all that they have to say, or can have any immediate notice of about it. It hath, therefore, its rise from ourselves, and the penury of our knowledge of things ; and is at once both an ingenuous confession, with some sort of modest cover, and excuse of our own ignorance : as with geographers, all that part of this globe which they cannot describe, is terra incognita; and with philosophers, such phenomena in na- ture as they can give no account of, they resolve shortly and in the most compendious way into some or other occult quality, or somewhat else, as occult. 1 Maimonides. 214 THE redeemer's dominion How happy were it, if in all matters that con- cern religion, and in this, as it doth so, they would shut up in a sacred venerable darkness what they cannot distinctly perceive; it being once by the undeceiving word expressly asserted that it is, without therefore denying its reality because they clearly apprehend not what it is. With too many their religion is so little, and their pride and self-conceit so great, that they think themselves fit to be standards ; that their eye or mind is of a size large enough to measure the creation, yea, and the Creator too. And by how much they have the less left them of mind, or the more it is sunk into earth and carnality, the more capable it is of being the measure of all reality, of taking the compass of all being created and un- created. And so that of the philosopher takes place in the worst sense that can be put upon it; " To see darkness is to see nothing." All is nullity that their sense reaches not. Hades is, with such, indeed, empty, imaginary darkness ; or in plainer English, there is neither heaven nor hell, because they see them not. But we ought to have the greater thoughts of it, not the less for its being too big, too great, too glorious for our present view; and that it is must as yet rest as to us, and so let it rest awhile, under the name of hades, the unknown dominion of our great Lord ; according to that most express ac- count he at his ascension gave of the existence of both parts together, that less known to us, and that more known, Matt, xxviii. 18. All power is given to me both in heaven and earth. That death is added, as contained also within the limits of our Lord's dominion, doth expressly OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 215 signify his custody of the passage from this visible world to the invisible, viz. as he commands the en- trance into each distinct part of hades, the invisi- ble world, consisting of both heaven and hell, so he hath power over death too, which is the com- mon outlet from this world, and the passage unto both. But it withal plainly implies his very absolute power over this visible world of ours also ; for it signifies he hath the power of measuring every one's time here, and how long each inhabitant of this world shall live in it. If it belong to him to determine when any one shall die, it must by con- sequence belong to him to assign the portion and dimensum of time that every one shall live. Nor is there any conceivable moment in the time of any one's life, wherein he hath not this power of putting a period by death thereunto, at his own pleasure. He is therefore signified to have the power of every man's life and death at once : and the power of life and death is very high and great power. He therefore herein explicitly claims, what is elsewhere expressly ascribed to him, Rom. xiv. 7 — 9. None lives to himself, (i. e. de jure, no man should,) or dies to himself: for ' whether we live, we live unto the Lord, or whether we die, we die unto the Lord ; whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died and rose again, and revived, that he might be Lord, both of the dead and living.' In sum, here is asserted to him a dominion over both worlds ; this in which we live, and that into which we die, whether the one or the other part of it. And so in reference to men, who once have inhabited this world, the sense of this text, and 216 THE redeemer's dominion that we are insisting on, is the same. Though hades is of vastly larger extent than only to be the receptacle of such as have lived here; it having also, in both the parts of it, innumerable inha- bitants who never had a dwelling assigned them in this world of ours at all. But thus far we have the vast extent of our Lord Christ's dominion competently cleared to be the proper intendment of this text; and that it never meant so faint and minute a representation of it, as only to make him keeper of the bottom- less pit ; though of that also he hath the key, as we shall further take notice : but we are now to in- quire of what will take up less time : — III. The kind of that power over so vast a realm, or manifold realms, signified by this emblematical expression, of ' having the keys,' &c. Every one knows that the keys are insignia : some of the tokens of power; and according to the peculiarity of the object, may be of Divine power. The Jews, as some writers of their affairs say, appropriate the keys of three, others of four things, to God only : — of life, or the entrance into this world ; of the rain, or the treasures of the clouds ; of the earth say some 1 as of the granary of corn, and of the grave; " Of which," says one of their own, 2 '* the Holy Blessed One hath the keys of the sepulchres in his hand," &c. And as we may be sure he admits thither, so he admits from thence; and as he says, " In the future age, the H. B. One will unlock the treasures of souls, and will 1 Weems. * Pirke. R. Eliezer. Edit, per G. H. Vorst. C. F. OVER THE INVISIKLE WORLD. 217 open the graves, and bring every soul back into its own body," &c. Nor is this key of the vast hades, when it is in the hand of our Redeemer, the less in the hand of the holy blessed One; for so he is too. But it is in his hand as belonging to his office of Mediator between God and man, as was before said. And properly the phrase signifies minis- terial power, being a manifest allusion to the com- mon usage, in the courts of princes, of intrust- ing to some great minister the power of the keys ; as it was foretold of Eliakim, (Isa. xxii.) that he should be placed in the same high station in Heze* kiah's court, wherein Shebna was, of whom so se- vere things are there said, and that the key of the house of David should be laid upon his shoulder, &c. verse 20 — 22. And the house of David being a known type of the house or church of God, and he himself of Christ, who, as the Son, hath power over the whole house, according to this typical way of speaking, our Lord is said (Rev. iii. 7,) to have the key of David, to open so as none can shut, to shut so as none can open ; i.e. to have a final, decisive power in all he doth, from which there is no appeal. Nor could any thing be more congruous, than that having the keys of the celestial house of God, the heavenly palace of the Great King, the habita- tion of his holiness and glory, (in which are the everlasting habitations, the many mansions, the places prepared for his redeemed,) he should also have the keys of the terrestrial Bethel ; which is but a sort of portal, or vestibulum, to the other; ' the house of God, and the gate of heaven.' And as he is implied to have the keys of this introduc- 218 THE redeemer's dominion tive, preparatory kingdom of heaven, (as the keys of the king's palace, where is the throne or seat of government, and the keys of the kingdom, must mean the same thing,) when he is said to give them to the apostle Peter, and the other apostles ; this was but a prelude, and a minute instance of his power of those keys of hades, and of the glo- rious heavenly kingdom itself contained therein, which he was not to delegate, but to manage him- self immediately in his own person. If moreover he was signified by the angel, (Rev. xx. I,) who was said to have the key of the bot- tomless pit; that almost must import a power, though great in itself, very little in comparison of the immense hades, of which he is here said to have the keys. So remote is it, that the power ascribed to him there, should be the measure of what he here asserts to himself; and the difference must be vastly greater than it is possible for us to conceive, or parallel by the difference between having power over the palace, and all the most delightful and most spacious territories in the vastest empire of the greatest prince, and only having power over a dun- geon in some obscure corner of it; which, for the great purposes whereto all this is to be applied, we can scarcely too much inculcate. And to such application let us now, with all possible seriousness and intention of spirit, ad- dress ourselves. Which will consist in sundry in- ferences or deductions, laying before us some suit- able matter, partly of our meditation, partly of practice; the former whereof are to prepare and lay a ground for the latter. 1. Divers things we may collect, that will be very proper for deep meditation ; which I shall OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 219 propose not as things that we can be supposed not to have known before, but which are too com- monly not enough thought on or considered. And here we shall somewhat invert the order wherein things lie in the text, beginning with what is there latter and lower, and thence arising, with more advantage, to what is higher and of greater concernment; as, 1. That men do not die at random, or by some uncertain, accidental by-stroke, that, as by a slip of the hand, cuts off the thread of life; but by an act of divine determination and judgment, that passes in reference to each one's death. For as the key signifies authority and power, the turning this key of death, that gives a man his exit out of this world, is an authoritative act. And do we con- sider in what hand this power is lodged ? We cannot but apprehend every such act is the effect of counsel and judgment. What philosophers are wont to discourse of for- tuitous events in reference to rational agents, or casual, in reference to natural, must be understood but with relation to ourselves, and signifies only our own ignorance of futurities, but can have no place in the all-comprehending mind, as if any thing were a contingency unto that. For them that live as if they thought they came into this world by chance, it is very natural to them to think they shall die and go out of it by chance too, but when as it happens. This is worse than pa- ganish blindness; for besides what, from their poets, the vulgar have been made to believe con- cerning the three fatal Sisters, to whom they as- scribed no less than deity concerned in measuring every one's life, the grave discourses which some of them have writ concerning Providence and its 220 THE redeemer's dominion extent to the lesser intermediate concerns of life, much more to that their final great concern of death, will be a standing testimony against the too prevailing Christian scepticism (they ought to excuse the solecism who make it) of this wretched age ! But such among us as will allow them- selves the liberty to think, want not opportunity and means by which they may be assured, that not an imaginary, but real deity is immediately and constantly concerned in measuring our time in this world. What an awful thought is this! And it leads to a 2. Inference. That it is a great thing to die. The Son of God, the Redeemer of man, hath an immediate presidency over this. He signalizes himself by it, who could not suppose he should be magnified by a trifle ! We slightly say, Such a one is dead ! Consider the matter in itself, and it is great. A reasonable soul hath changed states! An intelligent spirit is gone out of our world ! The life of a gnat, a fly, (those little automata, or self-moving things,) how admirable a production is it! It becomes no man to despise what no man can imitate. We praise the pencil that well de- scribes the external figure of such an animalculum, such a little creature: but the internal, vital, self- moving power, and the motion itself, what art can express ! But a human life, how important a thing is it ! It was one of Plato's thanksgivings, that God had made him a man ! How careful a guard hath God set over every man's life, fencing it by the severest law ! ' If any man sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed ;' and how weighty is the annexed reason : — f For in the image of God he made man.' This then highly greatens this matter. He therefore reserves it wholly to himself, as one OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 221 of his peculiarities, to dispose of such a life : ' I am he that kills and makes alive.' We find it one of high titles — ' The God of the spirits of all flesh.' He had what was much greater to glory in, that he was ' the Father of spirits,' indefinitely spoken. When he hath all the heavenly regions, the spa- cious hades, peopled with such inhabitants ' whose dwelling is not with flesh ;' and, for vast multi- tudes of them, never was, that yet, looking down into this little world of ours, this minute spot of his creation, and observing that here were spirits dwelling in flesh, he should please to be styled also the God of those spirits, signifies this to be with him too an appropriate glory, a glory which he will not communicate further than he commu- nicates Godhead ; and that he held it a divine right to measure the time unto each of them of of their abode in flesh, and determine when they shall dislodge. This cannot be thought on aright, without a be- coming most profound reverence of him on this account. How sharp a rebuke is given to that haughty prince, ' The God in whose hands thy breath is, hast thou not glorified.' 1 That would prepare the way, and we should be easily led on, were we once come to think with reverence, to think also with pleasure of this case, that our life and every breath we draw are under such a divine superinten- dency. The holy Psalmist speaks of it with high complacency, as the matter of his song, that he had a God presiding over his life. So he tells us he would have each w^Ovfiepoy, composed not more of night and day, than of prayer and praise, directed 1 Dan. v. 23. 222 THE REDEEMERS DOMINION to God under this notion, as the God of his life, Psal. xlii. 8. And he speaks it not grudgingly, but as the ground of his trust and boast, Psal. xxxi. 14, 15 : — ' I trusted in thee, O Lord ; I said, Thou art my God, my times are in thy hand.' That this key is in the hand of the great Emmanuel, God with us, will be thought on with frequency, when it is thought on with delight. 3. Our life on earth is under the constant strict observation of our Lord Christ. He waits when to turn the key, and shut it up. Through the whole of that time, which, by deferring, he measures out to us, we are under his eye as in a state of proba- tion. He takes continual notice how we quit our- selves. For his turning the key at last is a judicial act; therefore supposes diligent observation, and proceeds upon it. He that hath this key, is also said in the next chapter, (verse 18,) to have eyes like a flame of fire. With these he observes what he hath against one or another, (verse 20,) and with most indulgent patience gives a space of re- pentance, (verse 21,) and notes it down if any then repent not, as we there also find. Did secure sinners consider this, how he beholds them with a flame in his eye, and the key in his hand, would they dare still to trifle ? If they did apprehend how he, in this posture, stands over them, in all their vain dalliances, idle impertinences, bold ad- ventures, insolent attempts against his laws and government, presumptuous affronts of his high authority ; yea, or but in their drowsy slumber- ings, their lingering delays; did they consider what notice he takes how they demean themselves under every sermon they hear, in every prayer wherein they are to join with others, or which, OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 223 perhaps, for custom's sake, they put up alone by themselves; how their hearts are moved, or un- moved, by every repeated call that is given them to turn to God, and get their peace made by application of their Redeemer's reconciling blood ; in what ago- nies would they be, what pangs of trembling would they feel within themselves, lest the key should turn before their great work be done ! 4. Whatsoever ill designs by this observation he discovers, it is easy to him to prevent. One turn of this key of death, besides the many other ways that are obvious to him, disappoints them all, and in that day all their thoughts perish. It is not, therefore, from inadvertency, indifferency, or irn- potency, but deep counsel, that they are permitted to be driven on so far. He that sitteth in the heavens laughs, and he knows their day is coming. He can turn this key when he will. 6. His power as to every one's death cannot be avoided or withstood. The act of this key is defi- nite, and ends the business. No man hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; nor hath he power in death, EccJ. viii. 8. It is in vain to struggle when the key is turned ; the power of the keys, where it is supremely lodged, is absolutely decisive, and their effect permanent and irrevo- cabable. That soul, therefore, for whose exit the key is turned, must thereupon then forthwith de- part, willing or unwilling, ready or unready. 6. Souls that go out of this world of ours, on the turn of this key, go not out of being. He that hath this key of death, hath also the key of hades, a key and a key. When he uses the former to let them out from this, he uses the latter to give them their inlet into the other world, and into the one or the 224 the redeemer's dominion other part of it ; into the upper or the lower hades, as the state of their case is, and doth require. Our business is not now with Pagans, to whom the oracles of God are unknown. If it were, the best and wisest of them who so commonly speak of souls going into hades, never thought of their going no-whither ; nor therefore that they were nothing. They had reasons, then, which they thought cogent, that induced them, though unas- sisted with divine revelation, to conclude they sur- vived their forsaken bodies. And what else could any unbribed understanding conclude or conceive? When we find they have powers belonging to them, which we can much more easily apprehend ca- pable of being acted without help from the body than by it, we are sure they can form thoughts, purposes, desires, hopes; for it is matter of fact they do it; and coherent thoughts, and thoughts arising from thoughts, one from another : yea, and thoughts abstracted from any thing corporeal, the notions of right and wrong, of virtue and vice, of moral good and evil, with some agreeable resolves; thoughts quite above the sphere of matter, so as to form a notion of the mind itself of a spiritual being, as unexceptionable a one as we can form of a body ; yea, of an original self-subsistent Mind and Spirit, the Former and Maker of all other. It is much more apprehensible, since we certainly know that all this is done, that it is done without any help of the body, than how flesh, or blood, or bones, or nerves, or brains, or any corporeal thing, should contribute to such methods of thinking, or to any thought at all. And if it can be conceived that a spirit can act without dependence on a body, what should hinder but we may as well con- OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 225 ceive it to subsist and live without such depen- dence ? And when we find this power of thought belongs to somewhat in us that lives, since the deserted carcass thinks not, how rea- sonable is it to suppose, that as the body lives not of itself, or life is not essential to it, for life may be retired and gone, and it remain, as we see it doth, the same body still ; that the soul to which the power of thought belongs, lives of itself, not independently on the first cause, but essentially, so as to receive life and essence together from that cause, or life included in its essence, so as that it shall be the same thing to it to be and to live. And hereupon how obvious is it to apprehend that the soul is such a thing as can live in the body, which when it doth, the body lives by it a preca- rious, borrowed life ; and that can live out of the body, leaving it, when it doth so, to drop and die. These sentiments were so reasonable, as gene- rally to prevail with the more deeply-thinking part of mankind, philosophers of all sorts, (a few excepted, whose notions were manifestly formed by vicious inclination,) in the pagan world, where was nothing higher than reason to govern. But we have life and immortality brought to light in the gospel, 1 and are forewarned by it that these will be the measures of the final judgment — to give eternal life at last to them who, by. a patient con- tinuance in well-doing, seek honour, glory, and im- mortality ; 2 to the rest, indignation and wrath,' &c. because there is no respect of persons with 1 Tim. i. 10. 2 Rom. ii. 7- 3 lb. v. 8. Q 226 THE REDEEMERS DOMINION God. 1 As supposing the discovery of another world, even by natural light, much more by the addition of supernatural, to be so clear, as that the rule of the universal judgment, even for all, is most righteously to be taken from hence, and that there is nothing but a resolution of living wickedly to be opposed to it. It is also no slight consideration, that a suscep- tibleness of religion should, among the creatures that dwell on earth, be so appropriate and peculiar to man, and (some rare instances excepted) as far diffused as human nature ; so as to induce some very considering men, of the ancients as well as modems, both pagans and Christians, to think religion the more probable specifying difference of man than reason. And whence should so common an impression be, but from a cause as common ? or how can we avoid to think that this signature upon the soul of man, — a capacity of religion, — should be from the same hand that formed the spirit of man within him, and that a natural re- ligiousness, and human nature itself, had the same Author ? But who sees not that religion, as such, hath a final reference to a future state ? 2 He was no despicable writer, though not a Christian, that positively affirmed hope towards God to be essen- tial to man ; and that they that had it not, were not partakers of the rational nature. It is so much the more a deplorable and mon- strous thing, that so many, not only against the light of their own reason, but of divine revelation, 1 Rom. vii. 11. 9 Philo Judaeus, Quod deter, potiori insid. soleat, wg tu>v /n) OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 227 are so industrious to unman themselves : and hav- ing- so effectually in a great degree done it, really and in practice, aim to do it in a more compendi- ous way, notionally and in principle too ; and make use or show of reason to prove themselves not to be reasonable creatures ; or to divest them- selves of the principal dignity and distinction of the rational nature ; and are incomparably herein more unnatural than such as we commonly count fe- lons upon themselves, who only act against their own bodily life, but these against the much nobler life of their soul ; they against the life of an individual, these against their own whole species at once. And how deplorable is their case, that count it their in- terest to be in no possibility of being happy ! when yet their so great dread of a future state, as to urge them upon doing the most notorious violence to their own faculties to rid themselves of it, is a very convictive argument of its reality ; for their dread still pursues and sticks close to them. This shows it lies deep in the nature of things which they can- not alter. The terrible image is still before their eyes; and their principal refuge lies only in divert- ing, in not attending to it. And they can so little trust to their sophistical reasonings against it, that when they have done all they can, they must owe what they have of ease and quiet in their own minds, not so much to any strength of reason they ap- prehend in their own thoughts, as in not thinking. A bold jest may sometimes provoke others' laugh- ter, when it doth not extinguish their own fear. A suspicion a formido oppositi will still remain ; a misgiving that they cannot nullify the great hades, pull down the spacious fabric of heaven, or under- mine the profound abyss of hell, by a profane 'q 2 228 THE redeemer's dominion scoff. They will in time discern the difference between the evanid passion of a sudden fright, that takes its rise from imagination, and the reason of things ; as one may between a fright in a dream, and the dread of a condemned criminal, with whom, sleeping and waking, the real state of his case is still the same. Nor are the things themselves remote or uncon- nected : God's right to punish a reasonable creature that hath lived in contempt of him, and his own reasonable apprehension hereof, of his conscience both of the fact and desert, they answer as face to face, as the stamp on the seal, and the impres- sion on the wax. They would fain make their rea- son a protection against their fear; but that cannot serve both ways ; the reason of the thing lies against them already, and there cannot be an eternal war between the faculty and the object. One way or other the latter will overpower the former, and draw it into consent with itself; either by letting it see there is a just, true cause of fear, or, assisted by Divine grace, prevail for the change of the sinner's course ; whereupon that troublesome fear and its cause will both, upon the best terms, cease together. And that what hath been proposed to consideration under this head may be the more effectually considered, to this blessed purpose, I add that, 7. The discovery of the invisible world, and the disposal of affairs there, have a most encouraging aspect upon this world ; for both the discovery and the disposal are by our blessed Redeemer, in whom mercy and might are met in highest perfection. How fragrant breathings of grace, how glorious a display of power, are there in what he here says ! OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 229 ■ Fear not! I am the first and the last; I am he that liveth and was dead, and I am alive for ever- more. Amen. And I have the keys of hades and of death.' He hath opened the celestial hades to our view, that it might be also open to our safe en- trance and blissful inhabitation. He who was dead, but liveth, and had made his victorious triumphant entrance before us, and for us; he who had overcome him that had the power of death, — conquered the gigantic monster at the gate, gained the keys, and designed herein their deliverance from the fear of death, who were thereby subject to bondage ; (Heb. ii. 14, 15 j) — he who hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light in the gospel; (2 Tim. i. 10;) it is he who bids us lift up our eyes, and behold the heavens opened, and him- self standing at the right hand of God. The hor- rid infernal hades he hath discovered too, only that we might fear and shun it. But yet more distinctly consider, why doth he here represent himself under this character, ' He that liveth and was dead/ but that he might put us in mind of that most convict- ive argument of his love, his submitting to die for us : ' Greater love hath no man ;' and that he might at once put us out of doubt concerning his power, that he yet survives, and is sprung up alive out of that death, victorious over it ? How amiable is the representation of such power in conjunction with such love ! The same person having a heart so replenished with love, a hand so armed with power, neither capable of unkind design, nor unable to effect the most kind : behold him in their repre- sentation ! Who would not now fall at his foot and adore ? Who would hesitate at resigning to him, 230 THE redeemer's dominion or be appalled at his disclosure of this unknown world ? Do but consider him who makes the discovery, and who would not expect from him the utmost efforts of love and goodness ? from him who is the Brightness of his Father's glory, and the express Image of his person ? his essential Image, who is Love ! From him who came into this wretched world of ours, full of grace and truth ! and who could not have come but by the inducement of compassion to oar miseries. From him who knows all things, and whose eye penetrates into every re- cess of the vast hades — all his own empire — in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge ; but who only knows not to deceive ; who hath told us, in his Father's house are many mansions, and if it were not so, would have told us that, John,xiv. 2. From him into whose mouth guile never entered, but into whose lips grace was poured, and is poured out by them ; so that the ear that hath heard him hath borne him witness, and filled with wonder those that heard the gra- cious words which came out of his mouth ; who hath told us all concerning that unseen world, that in this our present state it was fit for us to know ; and enough, in telling all that will be his follow- ers, that where he is, there he will have them be, John, xvii. 24. And consider the manifest tendency of the dis- covery itself: — what doth it mean or tend to, but to undeceive miserable mortals, whom he beholds from his high throne mocked with shadows, be- guiled with most delusive impostures, and easily apt to be imposed upon ? foolish, deceived, serving OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 231 divers lusts and pleasures ; feeding- upon ashes, and wearying themselves for very vanity ; sporting themselves in the dust of this minute spot of earth; wasting their little inch of time, wherein they should prepare for translation into the regions of unseen glory. To these he declares he hath formed a kingdom for all that covet to mend their states, and that his kingdom is not of this world ; that for such as will be of this kingdom, he will provide better, having other worlds, the many heavens, above all which he is ascended, at his dispose, Eph. iv. 10. But they must seek this kingdom and the righteousness of it in the first place, and desist from their care about other things. He counsels and warns them not to lay up their trea- sure on earth, but in heaven ; and to let their hearts be there with their treasure. And what can with- stand his power, who, having been dead, liveth victorious over him that had the power of death, and is alive for evermore, possessed of an eternal state of life ? And have we not reason to expect the most equal and most benign disposal of things in that unseen world, when he also declares, I have the keys, rightful authority, as well as mighty power, to reward and punish ? None but who have a very ill mind can fear from him an ill manage- ment. He first became capable of dying, and then yielded himself to die, that he might obtain these keys for gracious purposes. He had them before to execute just vengeance, as he was originally in the form of God, and without robbery equ.al with God; an equal sharer in sustaining the wrong that had been done by apostate rebels, and an equal sharer in the right of vindicating it. 232 the redeemer's dominion But that he might have these keys to open the heavenly hades to reduced apostates to penitent, believing, self-devoting sinners, for this it was ne- cessary he should put on man, be found here in fashion as a man, take on him the form of a ser- vant, become obedient to death, even that servile punishment the death of the cross, Phil. ii. 7, 8. For this he is highly exalted into this power, that every knee might bow to him, in hope of saving mercy, v. 9, 10, compared with Isa. xlv. 22, 23. He had the keys without this of the supernal hades, to shut out all offenders, and of the infernal, to shut them up for ever. But that he might have them to absolve repenting believers, admit them into heaven, and only to shut up in hell implacable enemies — for this he must die, and live again. He was to be slain and hanged on a tree, that he might be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance and re- mission of sin, Acts v. 30, 31; that to this intent he might be the Lord of the dead and the living, he must both die and rise, and live so as to die no more, Rom. xiv. 9. These keys, for this purpose, he was only to have upon these terms. He had a right to punish as an offended God, but to pardon and save as a mediating, sin-expiating God-man. But as he was to do the part of a Mediator, he must act equally between the disagreeing parties : — he was to deal impartially on both sides; to ren- der back entire to the injured Ruler of the world his violated rights, and to obtain for us his forfeited favour, as entire: and undertook therefore, when as a sacrifice he was to be slain, to redeem us to God by his blood, Rev. v. 9 ; to give him back his revolted creature, holy, pure, subject, and serviceable, as by his methods he shall be at last ; OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 233 and procure for him pardon, acceptance, and eter- nal blessedness. When, therefore, he was to do for us the part of a Redeemer, he was to redeem us from the curse of the law, not from the command of it ; to save us from the wrath of God, not from his government. 1 Had it been otherwise, so firm and indissoluble is the connexion between our duty and our felicity, that the sovereign Ruler had been eternally injured, and we not advantaged. Were we to have been set free from the preceptive obligation of God's holy law, then most of all from that most funda- mental precept, ■ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, soul, might, and mind.' Had this been redemption, which supposes only what is evil and hurtful, as that we are to be redeemed from ? This were a strange sort of self-repugnant redemption, not from sin and misery, but from our duty and felicity. This were so to be redeemed as to be still lost, and every way lost, both to God and to ourselves for ever. Redeemed from loving God! What a monstrous thought! Redeemed from what is the great active and fruitive principle; the source of obedience and blessedness; the eter- nal spring, even in the heavenly state, of adoration and fruition ! This had been to legitimate ever- lasting enmity and rebellion against the blessed God, and to redeem us into an eternal hell of hor- ror and misery to ourselves ! This had been to cut off from the Supreme Ruler of the world for ever, so considerable a limb of his most rightful do- minion, and to leave us as miserable as everlasting separation from the Fountain of life and blessed- ness could make us. 1 Gal. iii. 13, 14 ; Rom. viii. 3, 4. 234 the redeemer's dominion When, therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ was to redeem us from the curse of the law, it was that the promised Spirit might be given to us, (Gal. iii. 13, 14,) who should write the law in our hearts; (Jer. xxxi. 33; Ezek. xxxvi. 27,) fulfil the righte- ousness of it in us, by causing us to walk after his dictates, according to that law ; regenerating us, begetting us after God's image, and making us partakers of a Godlike nature. So we through the law become dead to the malediction and curse of it, that we may live to God more devoted lives than ever, Gal. ii. 19. Thus is God's lost creature given back to him with the greatest advantage also to itself. With this design it is apparent our Lord re- deemed us, and by his redemption acquired these keys. Nor are we to doubt, but in the use of them he will dispense exactly according to this just and merciful design. And what a perverse distorted mind is that, which can so much as wish it should be otherwise ! viz. that he should save us to the eternal wrong of him that made us, and so as that we should be nothing the better ; i. e. that he should save us without saving us. And hath this no pleasant comfortable aspect upon a lost world, that he who hath these keys will use them for such purposes ? i. e. to admit to eternal bliss, and save to the uttermost, all that will come to God by him ; (not willing to be ever- lastingly alienated from the life of God ;) because he ever lives to make intercession, or to transact and negociate for them, (as that word signifies,) and that in a rightful way, and even by the power of these keys ! 8. That there must be some important reason OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 235 why the other world is to us unseen, and so truly bears the name of hades. This expresses the state of the case as in fact it is, that it is a world lying out of our sight, and into which our dim and weak eye cannot penetrate. That other state of things is spoken of therefore as hidden from us by a veil. When our Lord Jesus is said to have passed into the heavens, (Heb. iv. 14,) he is also said to have entered into that within the veil; (Heb. vi. 19, 20;) alluding to that in the temple of Solomon, and be- fore that in Moses's tabernacle ; but expressly sig- nifying, that the holy places into which Christ entered, not those made with hands, which were the figure of the true, but heaven itself, filled with the glorious presence of God, where he appears for us, (Heb. ix. 24,) is also veiled from us. As also the glory of the other state is said to be a glory as yet to be revealed, Rom. viii. 28; and we are told, (Job, xxvi. 9,) the great God holdeth back the face of his throne; and above, v. 6, it is represented as a divine prerogative, that sheol, which is there ground lessly rendered hell, the vast hades, is only naked before him, lies entirely open to his view; and therein the dark and horrid part of it, destruc- tion, by which peculiarly must be meant hell, is to him without a covering, not more hidden from his eye. Which shows this to be the Divine pleasure $- so God will have it be, who could have exposed all to common view, if he had pleased. But because he orders all things according to the counsel of his will, (Eph. i. 11,) we must conceive some weighty reason did induce hereto, that what- soever lies beyond this present state of things should be concealed from our immediate view, and 236 the redeemer's dominion so come, uno nomine, to be called hades. And if the reason of God's conduct, and the course of his dispensation herein, had been equally hidden, as that state itself is, it had been a bold presumption to inquire and pry into it ; modesty and reverence should have restrained us. But when we find it holds a manifest agreement with other parts of his counsel, that are sufficiently revealed ; and that the excellency of the Divine wisdom is most conspi- cuous, and principally to be beheld and admired, in ordering the apt congruities and correspondencies of things with each other, and especially of the ends he proposes to himself, with the methods and ways he takes to effect them ; it were very great oscitancy, and an undutiful negligence, not to observe them, when they stand in view, that we may render him his due acknowledgments and honour thereupon. It is manifest that as God did not create man, at first, in that which he designed to be his final state ; but as a probationer, in a state of trial, in order to a further state ; so when he apostatized and fell from God, he was graciously pleased to order for him a new trial, and put him into the hands of his merciful Redeemer, who is intrusted with these keys, and with the power of life and death over him, to be managed and exercised ac- cording to the terms plainly set down and declared in his Gospel. Wheresoever he is with sufficient evidence revealed and made known, men imme- diately come under obligation to believe in him ; to intrust and commit themselves into the same hands ; to rely upon the truth of his word in every thing he reveals, as the ground of their sub- mitting to his authority in every thing he requires. OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 237 What concerns their present practice he hath plainly shown them; so much as it was requisite they should pre-apprehend of future retributions, rewards and punishments, he hath revealed also; not that they should have the knowledge hereof by immediate inspection, but by taking- his word. That as their fi rst transgression was founded in infidelity, that they did not believe God, but a lying spirit against him ; their first step in their recovery and return to God should be to believe him, and take his word about things they have themselves no imme- diate sight or knowledge of. This point was by no means to be quitted to the first apostates. As if God's saying to them, " If you transgress, you shall die, or go into hades, was no sufficient enforcement of the precept, unless he had given them a distinct view of the state of felicity or misery, which their obedience or disobedience would lead them into. This had been to give away the whole cause to the revolted rebels, and rather to confess error and oversight in the Divine government, than impute fault to the impugners of it ! This being the state of the case, how suitable had it been to the design of this second trial to be made with men, to withdraw the veil, and let every one's own eyes be their informers of all the glories of the heavenly state ; and hereupon proclaim and preach the Gospel to them, that they should all partake herein that would entirely deny themselves, come off from their own bottom, give themselves up absolutely to the interest, love, service, and communion of their Redeemer, and of God in him ? to fortify themselves against the assaults and dangers of their earthly pilgrimage, by reversing- 238 the redeemer's dominion that rule, The just shall live by faith, even that faith which is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen ; l or by invert- ing the method, that in reference to such things we are to walk by faith, not by sight, 2 and letting it be, We are to walk by sight, not by faith; and that, lest any should refuse such compliance with their great Lord, whole hades should be no longer so, but made naked before them, and the covering of hell and destruction be taken oft', and their own eyes behold the infernal horrors, and their own ears hear the shrieks and howlings of accursed creatures, that having rejected their Re- deemer, are rejected by him ? We are not here to consider, what course would most certainly effect their salvation, but what most became the wise, holy God, to preserve the dignity of his own government, and save them too ; otherwise Al- mighty power could save all at once. As there- fore we have cause to acknowledge the kindness and compassion of our blessed Lord, who hath these keys, in giving us for the kind, such notices as he hath, of the state of the things in hades ; so we have equal cause to admire his wisdom, that he gives us not those of another kind, that should more powerfully strike the sense and amaze us more, but instruct us less ; that continues it to be hades still, a state of things to us unseen as yet. As the case would have been, on the other suppo- sition, the most generous, noble part of our religion had been sullied or lost; and the trial of our faith, which is to be found unto praise, honour, and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ, even upon 1 Heb. x. ch. xi. 1. 2 2 Cor. v. 7- OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 239 this account ; that they who had not seen him in his mean circumstances on earth, nor did now see him, amidst all the glories of his exalted state, yet believing, loved him, and rejoiced in him with joy unspeakable, and full of glory, 1 Pet. i. 7, 8. This faith, and all the glorious trials of it, with its ad- mirable achievements and performances, whereby the elders heretofore obtained so good a report, and high renown on earth, 1 and which filled the world with wonder, had all vanished into obscurity and darkness ; i. e. if they had believed no more, or no greater things, than every man besides had the immediate view of his own eye-sight. And yet the trial had been greater, on another account, than the Divine wisdom, in conjunction with goodness and compassion, thought fit ordi- narily to put sincere Christians upon. For who could with any tolerable patience have endured longer abode on earth, after they should once have had the glory of the heavenly state immediately set in view before their eyes ? especially consi- dering, not so much the sufferings, as the impu- rities, of their present state ? What, for great reason, was a special vouchsafement to one apostle, was, for as great, to be common to all Christians. How great is the wisdom and mercy of our blessed Lord in this partial concealment of our future state, and that while so much as is sufficient is re- vealed, there is yet a hades upon it, and it may still be said, it doth not yet appear what we shall be, 1 John, iii. 2. But as these majestic life-breathing words of our great Lord do plainly offer the things that have 1 Heb. xi. 2. 240 the redeemer's dominion been mentioned, and many more such that might occur to our thoughts and meditation ; so will they be thought on in vain, if they be not followed and answered by suitable dispositions and actions of heart and life. Therefore the further use we are to make of this great subject will be to lay down, 2. Divers correspondent things to be practised and done, which must also suppose dispositions and frames of heart and spirit agreeable thereto. 1. Let us live, expecting a period to be ere long put to our life on earth. For remember, there are keys put into a great hand for this very purpose, that holds them not in vain. His power is of equal extent with the law he is to proceed by. And by that it is appointed for all once to die. ' Therefore, as in the execution he cannot exceed, so he will not come short of this appointment : when that once shall be, it belongs to him to determine. And from the course we may observe him to hold, as it is uncertain to all, it can be very remote to none. How short is the measure of a span ! It is an absurd vanity to promise ourselves that which is in the power of another. How wise and pru- dent a thing to accommodate ourselves composedly to his pleasure, in whose power we are ; and to live as men continually expecting to die ! There are bands of death, out of which, when they once take hold, we cannot free ourselves. But there are also bands of life, not less troublesome or dange- rous. It is our great concern to be daily, by de- grees, loosening and disentangling ourselves from these bands, and for preventing the necessity of a violent rupture, to be daily disengaging our hearts 1 Heb. ix. 27- OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 241 from an ensnaring world, and the too close em- braces of an over-indulged body. Tell them reso- lutely, I must leave them whensoever my great Lord turns the key for me ; and I know not how soon that may be. It is equally unhappy and foolish to be engaged in the pursuit of an impos- sibility, or in a war with necessity; the former whereof cannot be obtained, the latter cannot but overcome. We owe so much to ourselves, and to the ease and quiet of our own minds, to be recon- ciled, at all times, to that which may befal us at any time. How confounding a thing is surprisal by that which ourselves regret and dread ! How unaccountable and ignominious must it be to pre- tend to be surprised with what we have so great reason always to expect, and whereof we are so oft forewarned ! Is it no part of Christian watch- fulness to wait for such an hour? Though that waiting all the days of our appointed time, men- tioned Job, xiv. 14, refers to another change than that of death, viz. (as the foregoing and following verses show,) that of the resurrection, yet it can- not but be equally requisite, upon a no less im- portant reason. And the requests that the Lord would make us know our end, and the measure of our days, that we may know how frail we are, (Ps. xxxix. 4,) and that he would teach us so to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom, (Ps. xc. 12,) are equally monitory to the same purpose, as the most express precepts; as also the same directions we have to watch and wait for our Lord's appearance and coming are as ap- plicable to this purpose ; for, whensoever his key opens our passage out of this world and these bodies, hades opens too, and he particularly ap- R 242 the redeemer's dominion pears to us in as decisive a judgment of our case as his universal appearance and judgment will at last give for all. The placid agreement of our minds and spirits with divine determination, both as to the thing and time of our departure hence, will prevent the trouble and ungratefulness of being surprised ; and our continual expectation of it will prevent any surprisal at all. Let this then be an agreed resolution with us, to endeavour being in a posture, as that we may be capable of saying, " Lord, whensoever thou shalt move thy key, and tell me, this night, or this hour, I will require thy soul, thou shalt not, O Lord, prevent mine expec- tation, or ever find me counting upon many years' enjoyment of any thing this world can entertain me with." In further pursuance hereof, 2. Be not over-intent on designs for this present world, which would suppose you to count upon long abode in it. Let them be always laid with a supposition, you may, this way, even by one turn of this key, be prevented of bringing them about : and let them be pursued with indifferency, so as that disappointment even this way may not be a griev- ance. A thing made up of thought and design, as our mind and spirit naturally is, will be design- ing one way or other ; nor ought we to attempt that violence upon our own natures, as to endea- vour the stupifying of the intelligent, designing mind, which the Author of nature hath put into us. Only let us so lay our designs, as that how many soever we form that may be liable to this sort of disappointment, we may still have one greater and more important, so regularly and surely laid, that_ no turn of this a key shall be in OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 243 any possibility to frustrate, but promote it rather. The design for the kingdom of God to be first sought, with his righteousness, (Matt. vi. 33,) or which is pursued by seeking glory, honour, and immortality, to the actual attainment of eternal life, (Rom. ii. 7,) may, if prescribed methods be duly observed, have this felicity always attending it, to be successfully pursued while we live, and effected when we die. But this is an unaccountable vanity under the sun, that men too generally form such projects, that they are disappointed both when they do not compass them, and when they do. If they do not, they have lost their labour ; if they do, they are not worth it : they dream they are eating and en- joying the fruit of their labour, but they awake, and their soul is empty. And if at length they think of laying wiser and more valuable designs, the key turns, and not having fixed their resolution, and begun aright, they and all their thoughts, foolish or more wise, perish together. Because there is a fit season for every fit undertaking, a time and judgment for every purpose, or a critical time, such as is by judgment affixed to every such purpose, (Eccl. viii. 6,) and because also men know not their time, (ch. ix. 12,) therefore their misery is great upon the earth, and as birds caught in a snare, they are snared in an evil time that falleth suddenly upon them. O miserable, mise- rable mortals ! so are your immortal spirits mis- employed and lost! Their most valuable design for another world is seldom thought on in season : their little designs for this world they contrive and prosecute with that confidence, as if they thought the world to be r2 244 THE REDEEMER'S DOMINION theirs, and themselves their own, and they had no Lord over them. This rude insolence that holy- apostle animadverts upon, of such as say, ' To- day or to-morrow we will go to such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell and get gain, whereas they know not what shall be on the morrow : and what is their life ? A vapour,' ' &c. So much of duty and becoming behaviour is in the meantime forgotten, as to say, " If the Lord will we shall live," &c. This is to bear themselves as absolute masters of their own lives. How bold an affront to their sovereign Lord ! They feel themselves well in health, strength, and vigour, and seem resolved it shall be a trial of skill who hath the power, or to whom the keys belong, till it come to the last irrefragable demonstration, that he changes their countenance, and sends them away; (Job, xiv. 20 ;) and then they go, driven, plucked, and torn away from their dwelling-place, rooted out from the land of the living, Ps. lii. 5. But if any premonitory decays make them doubt the perpetuity of their own abode here, they some- what ease their minds by the pleasure they take in thinking, when they have filled their own bellies, (Ps. xvii. 14,) what they shall leave of their sub- stance to their babes, and to them that shall come after. And ' their inward thought is, that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling- places to all generations ; and they call their lands after their own names, and their posterity approve their sayings,' think and act as wisely as they. (Ps. xlix. 11, 12.) Thus they take upon them and reckon they for their time and theirs after them, 1 James, iv. 13 — 15. OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 245 shall still dwell in their own. A wise thought ! They are the owners, when another keeps the keys. Several other things of like import I shall more lightly touch, that may be collected from what hath been already more largely said, and leave to be further enlarged upon in your own thoughts, and shall dilate more upon some other, as they are either more material, or less thought on by the most. 3. Be not prodigal of your time on earth, which is so little in your power. Because you are not to expect much, make the best use you can of your little. It is so precious a thing that it is to be redeemed; it is therefore too precious to be em- bezzled and trifled away. The connexion of those two precepts, (Eph. v. 15, 16,) of walking circum- spectly, not as fools, but as wise, and that of re- deeming the time, more than intimates, that to squander time is a foolish thing. Of the several sorts of things that we make ourselves, their shape and frame show their use and end. Are we to make a less judicious estimate of the works of God ? If we therefore contemplate ourselves, and consider what a sort of production man is, can we allow ourselves to think God made him a reason- able creature on purpose to play the fool ? or can we live as if we thought so, without reproach- ing our Maker ? But whereas he who hath been the Author to us of such a law, requiring us to redeem time; the reproach will be wholly turned off from him upon ourselves, and our consequent ruin be upon our own guilty heads. And he will find some among ourselves, who by the advantage only of the reasonable nature, common to us and them, 246 the redeemer's dominion that are instructors to us not to waste our days in vanity, and will be witnesses against us if we so foolishly consume what we cannot command. Some such have unanswerably reprehended the common folly of those that dread the thought of throwing away their whole life at once, that yet have no regret at throwing it all away by parcels and piecemeal ; and have told us, " A wise man can find nothing of that value, for which to barter away his time." ' And we are to consider, that as we are reason- able creatures, we are accountable ; — that we are shut up in these bodies as in workhouses; — that when he that keeps the keys lets us out, we are to ' receive the things done in the body, according to what we have done, whether good or evil,' 2 2 Cor. v. 10 ; — that it belongs to him that measures our time to censure it too, and the use we have made of it. 4. Let him be at once both great and amiable in our eyes, who hath so absolute power over us, and so gracious propensions towards us ; i.e. who hath these keys, and who acquired them with so merci- ful intentions, even upon such terms as could not but signify the greatest compassion and good will towards such as we. Reconsider what hath been offered as matter of meditation, to both these purposes. And now, hereupon, let us endeavour to have a correspondent sense inwrought into our hearts, and to bear our- selves towards him accordingly. The power and efficacy of whole Christianity depends upon this, and do very principally consist in it. What a faint, impotent, languishing thing is our religion, 1 Neque quicquam reperit dignum, quod cum tempore suo permutaret. Sen. OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 247 how doth it dwindle into spiritless, dead form, without it! The form of knowledge is nothing else but insipid, dead notion, and our forms of worship only fruitless, unpleasant formality, if we have not a vivid sense in our hearts both of his glorious greatness, and of his excellent loving-kind- ness. As much as words can signify towards the impressing such a sense into our hearts, we have in these words, uttered from his own mouth; so that he may say, as that memorable type of him once did, You may plainly perceive, ' It is my mouth that speaketh to you. 1 I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore :' and hereto he now sets his solemn ratifying seal, Amen ; wherewith he leaves us to pause, and collect, that thus it was brought about that he could add, ' And I have the keys of the vast hades, the whole unseen world, and of death.' And God forbid that, now, these words should be with us an empty sound, or a dead letter ! Let us cast in our minds what manner of salutation this should be ! Doth the Son of God thus vouch- safe to bespeak miserable abjects, perishing lost wretches ? How can we hereupon but bow our heads and worship ? What agitations of affection should we feel within ! How should all our inter- nal powers be moved, and our whole souls made as the chariots of Amminadab ! What can we be now unwilling of, that he would have us be, or do ? and as that, whereof we may be assured he is most willing, 5. Let us entirely receive him, and absolutely 1 Gen. xlv. 248 THE REDEEMER'S dominion resign ourselves to him, as our Prince and Saviour. Who would not covet to be in special relation to so mighty and so kind a Lord ? And can you think to be related to him upon other terms ? And do you not know that upon these you may, when in his gospel he offers himself, and demands you ? what can that mean, but that you are to receive him, and resign yourselves ? The case is now brought to this state, that you must either comply, or rebel. And what ! rebel against him who hath these keys, who is in so high authority over the whole unseen world, who is the head of all princi- pality and power, who is gone into the heavens, the glorious upper hades, and is at the right hand of God, angels, authorities, powers, being made subject to him ! 1 Pet. iii. 22. We little know or can conceive, as yet, the several orders and distinctions of the celestial inhabitants, and their great and illustrious princes and potentates, thrones, dominions, &c. that all pay him a dutiful and a joyful subjection and obedience. But do we not know God hath given him a name above every name ? and that in his name, or at it, as it may be read, i.e. in acknowledgment of his sove- reign power, every knee must bow, of things in heaven, on earth, and under earth, and all confess that he is Lord, to the praise and glory of God the Father ? And who art thou, perishing wretch ! that darest dispute his title ? or that, when all the creation must be subject to him, wilt except thy- self? And when it cost him so dear, that his vast power might be subservient to a design of grace, and thou must at last be saved by him, or lost for OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 249 ever, what can tempt thee to stand out against such power and such grace ? If thou wert to gratify thy ambition, how glo- rious a thing is it to be a Christian, a subject, a devoted homager, to so mighty a Prince! Tf to provide against thy necessity and distress, what course can be so sure and successful, as to fly for refuge to so compassionate a Saviour ? And dost thou not know there must be, to this purpose, an ex- press transaction between him and thee ? Wonder he will condescend to it ! To capitulate with dust and ashes ! To article with his own creature, with whom he may do what he will ! But his merciful condescension herein is declared and known ! If there shall be a special relation settled between him and thee, he hath told thee in what way it must be, i. e. by way of covenant-transaction and agreement, as he puts his people of old in mind his way was with them : ' I entered into covenant with thee, and thou becamest mine,' Ezek. xvi. 8. This I insist upon and press, as a thing of the greatest importance imaginable, and the least thought of: nor the strange incongruity animadverted on, viz. that we have the seals of such a covenant among us ; but the covenant itself slips through our hands. Our baptism soon after we were born, with some federal words then, is thought enough, as if we were a nation of always minors. Whoever therefore thou art, that nearest these words, or readest these lines, know that the great Lord is express towards thee in his gospel proposal, " Wilt thou accept me for thine, and resign thyself as mine ?" He now expects and requires thy express answer. Take his gospel as from the cross, or take it as from the throne, or as from both, it is the same gospel, in- 250 the redeemer's dominion terwoven of grace and authority ; the richest grace, and the highest authority, at once inviting and re- quiring thee to commit and submit thyself unto him. Take heed lest his key turn before thou hast given thy complying answer, importing at once both thy trust and thy subjection. Give not over pleading with thyself, with thy wayward stupid heart, till it can say to him, " Lord, I yield ; thou hast overcome ;" — till with tender relentings thou hast thrown thyself at his feet, and told him, " Lord, I am ashamed, I am confounded within myself, that thou shouldst die upon a cross to obtain thy high power, and that thou art not now ready to use it for the saving so vile a miscreant as I : that when thou hast so vast an unknown world, so numberless myriads of ex- cellent creatures in thy obedience, thou shouldst yet think it worth thy while to look after me ; and that I should so long have withstood thy kind and gracious overtures and intendments ! O forgive my wicked aversion ! I now accept and resign." And now this being sincerely done, with fulness of consent, with deep humility, with yearning- bowels, with unfeigned thankfulness, and an in- ward complacency and gladness of heart ; 6. Let your following course in this world be ordered agreeably hereto, in continued depen- dence and subjection. As we have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so we are to walk in him, Col. ii. 6. Take him according to the titles here given him, as Christ, a Person anointed, authorized, qualified to be both Jesus, a Saviour, so we are to walk, ac- cording to our first reception of him, in continual dependence on his saving mercy, and to be a Lord, or, as it is here expressed, with eminency, the Lord, OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 251 so we are to walk in continual subjection to his governing- power. Otherwise our receiving him, at first, under these notions, hath nothing in it but mockery and collusion. But if his obtaining these keys, upon the terms here expressed, as having been dead, and now living, and having overcome death, as it is also Rom. xiv. 9, did signify his having them for saving purposes, as it must, since for other purposes he had them sufficiently before ; and if we reckon this a reasonable inducement to receive him, and commit and intrust ourselves to him as a Saviour, that he died, and overcame death ; (for his grace in yielding to die, had not rendered him a compe- tent object of trust, otherwise than in conjunction with his power in overcoming death, and so gain- ing into his hands these keys;) then, the same reason still remaining, how constant an encourage- ment have we to continue accordingly walking in him all our days ! How potent an argument should it be to us, to live that life which we live in the flesh, by faith in the Son of God, who loved us, and gave himself for us ! (Gal. ii. 20,) i. e. inas- much as having been crucified with him, (which is also there expressed,) we feel ourselves to live nevertheless ; yet so as that it is not so much we that live, as Christ that liveth in us, who could not live in us, or be to us a spring of life, if he were not a perpetual spring of life in himself. And consider, how darest thou live otherwise in this flesh, in this earthly house, whereof he keeps the keys, and can fetch thee out at his pleasure ? when he hath warned thee to abide in him, that when he shall appear, thou mayst have confidence, and not be ashamed at his coming, 1 John, ii. 28, 252 the redeemer's dominion He will certainly then appear, when he comes to open the door, and dislodge thee from this flesh ; (though there be here a further and final reference to another appearance and coming of his ;) and if he then find thee severed and disjoined from him, (thy first closure with him not having been sincere, truly unitive and vital,) how terribly will he look, how confoundedly wilt thou look, in that hour! Neither hast thou less reason to live in continual subjection to him, considering that as he died, and overcame death, that he might have these keys, so he now hath them, and thou art under his govern- ing power. The more thou considerest his right to govern, the less thou wilt dispute it. When he was spoken of as a Child to us born, that he might become a Man of sorrows, and be sorrowful unto the death, and have all the sorrows of death come upon him, he is at the same time said to be the mighty God, and it was declared the government should be upon his shoulders. 1 As he was the first- begotten from the dead, viz. both submitting to death, and conquering h% so he was the Prince of the kings of the earth, (a small part of his king- dom too,) his throne being founded on his cross, his governing power in his sacrifice ; i. e. the power whereby he so governs, as that he may also save ; making these two things, the salving the rights of the Godhead, injured by sin, and the delivering of the sinner from an eternal ruin, to agree and consist with one another. What an endearing obligation is this to obey ! —that he will be the author of eternal salvation to 1 Isa. ix. 6. OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 253 them that obey him ! inasmuch as, while our obedience cannot merit the least thing from him, yet his vouchsafing to govern us doth most highly merit from us. For he governs by writing his law in the heart, which makes our heart agree with the law ; and by implanting divine love in us, which vanquishes enmity and disaffection, and virtually contains in itself our obedience, or keeping his commandments, John, xiv. 15, 23, and 1 John, v. 3. Therefore this government of his, over us, is natu- rally necessary to our salvation and blessedness, and is the inchoation and beginning of it ; as our perfected love to God, and conformity to his nature and will, do involve and contain in themselves our complete and perfect blessedness, with which a continued enmity, or a rebellious mutinous dispo- sition against God, is naturally inconsistent, and would be to us, and in us, a perpetual, everlasting hell. There can therefore be no enthralling servitude in such obedience, but the truest liberty, that by which the Son makes us free indeed, John viii.36. Yea, a true sort of royalty : for hereby we come, in the most allowable sense, to live as we will, our will being conformed to the will of God. Where- upon that was no high extravagant rant, but a so- ber expression, " We are born in a kingdom ; to serve God is to reign." And we know this to be the will of God, that all should honour the Son, as they honour the Father. 1 Herewith will the evangelically obedient comport with high complacency; accounting him most highly worthy that it should be so. Wherein 1 John, v. 23. 254 THE redeemer's dominion therefore the Christian law seems strictest and most rigorous in the enjoined observance of our Lord Christ, herein we shall discern an unexceptionable reasonableness, and comply with a complacential approbation. And let us put our own hearts to it, and see that without regret or obmurmuration they can readily consent to the equity of the pre- cept. It is enjoined us, constructively at least, that because Christ died for us, when we were dead, quite lost in death, we that live, hereupon should settle this with ourselves as a fixed judgment, and upon that intervening judgment yield to the con- straint of his love, so as henceforth no more to live to ourselves : q. d. God forbid we should hence- forth be so profane ! We must now for ever have done with that impious, unlawful way of living. What ! after this, that we have so fully understood the state of our case, that we should be so assum- ing as ever again to offer at such a thing as living to ourselves, to make ourselves deities to ourselves; or to live otherwise than unto him who died for us, and rose again! 2 Cor. v. 14, 15. This is high and great, and may seem strict and severe. What! to have the whole stream of all the actions and aims, the strength and vigour of our lives, to be carried in. one entire, undivided current unto him, and (as it must be understood, Gal. ii. 19,) to God in him, so as never more to live to ourselves, a divided, separate life apart from him, or wherein we shall not finally and more principally design for him ! How high is his claim, but how equal and grateful to a right mind! With what a ple- nitude of consent is every Divine command (taking this into the account) esteemed to be right OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 255 in all things ! So as that whatsoever is opposite, is hated as a false way, Psal. cxix. 128. And as the precept carries its own visible reason, the keep- ing- of it carries its own reward in itself, Psalm xix. 11. And is it too much for him who bears these keys, and obtained them on such terms, and for such ends, to be thus affected towards him ? We are required, without exception, without li- mitation or reserve, whatsoever we do, whether in word or work, to do all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Col. iii. 17. Inquire we, Do our hearts repine at this law ? Do not we, doth not this world, owe so much to him ? Why are we allowed a place and a time here ? Why is not this world a flaming theatre ? Is it not fit every one should know under whose government they live; by whose beneficence, under whose protection, and in whose name they may act so or so, and by whose authority ; either obliging, or not restraining them, requiring, or licensing them to do this or that ? Doth this world owe less to him that bears these keys, than Egypt did to Joseph, when thus the royal word went forth in reference to him, ■ I am Pharaoh, and without thee shall no man lift up his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt!' How pleasant should it be to our souls, often to remember and think on that name of his which we bear, (Isa. xxvi. 8, Mai. iii. 16,) and draw in as vital breath, the sweet odours of it, 1 Cant. i. 3. How glorious a thing should we count it, because he is the Lord our God, to walk in his name for ever and ever ! as all people will walk every one in the name of their god, Mic. iv. 5. 1 Psalm xlv. 6—11 : John, xx. 28. 256 the redeemer's dominion And then we shall account it no hard law, what- ever we do, to do all in the name of our Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father by him, and for him ; blessing- God every day, that we are put by him under the mild and merciful govern- ment of a Redeemer. Then we shall rejoicingly avow, as the apostle doth, (1 Cor. ix. 21,) that we are not without law to God, but under law to Christ. Whereupon, when you find your special relation is thus settled and fixed unto the great Lord both of this present visible world and of hades, or the invisible world, also by your solemn covenant with him, and evidenced by the continued correspon- dency of your heart and life, your dispositions and actions, thereunto. 7. Do not regret or dread to pass out of the one world into the other at his call, and under his conduct, though through the dark passage of death ; remem- bering the keys are in so great and so kind a hand ; and that his good pleasure herein is no more to be dis- trusted, than to be disputed or withstood. Let it be enough to you, that what you cannot see yourself, he sees for you. You have oft desired your ways, your motions, your removals from place to place, might be directed by him in the world. Have you never said, if thou go not with me, carry me not hence ? How safely and fearlessly may you follow him blindfold or in the dark any whither; not only from place to place in this world, but from world to world ; how lightsome soever the one, and gloomy and dark the other may seem to you. Dark- ness and light are to him alike. To him hades is no hades, nor is the dark way that leads into it to him an untrodden path. Shrink not at the OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 257 thoughts of this translation, though it be not by escaping- death, but even through the jaws of it. We commonly excuse our aversion to die, by alleging that nature regrets it : but we do not enough consider, that in such a compounded sort of creature as we are, the word nature must be am- biguous. There is in us a sensitive nature that re- grets it ; but taking the case as it is now stated, can we think it tolerable, that it should be regretted by the reasonable nature ? unto which, if we appeal, can we suppose it so untrue to itself, as not to as- sert its own superiority ? or to judge it fit that an intelligent, immortal spirit, capable of so great things in another world, should be content with a long abode here, only to keep a well-figured piece of flesh from putrefying, or give it the satisfaction of tasting meats and drinks that are grateful to it for a few years ? and if for a few, why not for many ? and when those many were expired, why not for as many more ? and the same reason always remaining, why not for always ? The case is thus put, because the common meaning of this allegation, that nature regrets or abhors this disso- lution, is not that they are concerned for their souls how it may fare with them in another world, which the most little mind or trouble themselves about ; but that they are to have what is grateful to them in this world. And was this the end a reasonable spirit was made for, when, without reason, sense were alike capable of the same sort of gratifications ? What law, what equity, what rule of decency, can oblige the soul of a man, capable of the society and enjoyment of angels, to this piece of self-denial, for the sake of his incompara- bly baser body ? or can make it fit that the nobler 258 the redeemer's dominion and more excellent nature should be eternally sub- servient to the meaner and more ignoble ? Espe- cially, considering that if, according to the case supposed, the two last foregoing directions be com- plied with, there is a sort of divine nature super- added to the whole human nature, that cannot but prompt the soul ennobled by it, to aspire to suit- able, even to the highest operations and enjoyments whereof it is capable, and which are not attainable in this present bodily state. And if there were still a dispute between nature and nature, it is enough that the great Lord of hades, and of this present sensible world too, will determine it. In a far lower instance, when the general of an army commands it upon an enter- prise, wherein life is to be hazarded, it would be an ill excuse of a cowardly beginning, to say, their nature regrets and dreads the adventure. The thing is necessary. Against what is so una- voidable as death, that is an abject mind that re- luctates. 1 Come, then, let us embolden ourselves; and, when he brings the key, dare to die. It is to obey and enjoy him, who is our life and our all. Say we cheerfully each of us, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ; into thy hands I commit it, who hast redeemed it. 8. Let us quietly submit to divine disposal, when our dear friends and relatives are by death taken away from us : for, consider into what hands this affair is put, of ordering every one's decease, and removal out of this into the other world, and who hath these keys. It is such a one, whose right, if we use our thoughts, we will not allow ourselves 1 Miser est quicunque non vult, Mundo secum morientej mori. — Sen. Tr. OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 259 to dispute; or to censure his administration. His original right is that of a Creator and a God : 'For all things were created for him, and by him/ Col. i. 16; 'and without him was nothing made that was made,' John, i. 3. He is ' the first and the last' to all things, Rev. i. 17. His supervening right was that of a Redeemer, as hath been already noted from this context, and as such he had it by acquisition ; dying to obtain it, and overcoming death ! ' I am he that liveth and was dead.' And then, as he elsewhere declares, by constitution, ' All power is given me both in heaven and on earth,' Matt, xxviii. 18. The word ifeola imports ' rightful power/ And who are we, or any relatives of ours, whom all the power of heaven and earth hath no right to touch ? What exempt juris- diction can we pretend ourselves to belong unto ? Or will we adventure to say, not denying his right, he did not use it well in this case ? Who is more fitly qualified to judge, than he that hath these keys ? And let this matter be yet more thoroughly discussed. What is it that we find fault with in the removal of this or that person, that was near and delightful to us ? Is it that he was to die at all ? or that he died so soon ? If we say the former ; do we blame the constitution appointing all men once to die, by which this world is made a portal to another, for all men ; and whence it was necessary none should stay long in this, but only pass through, into that world wherein every one is to have his everlasting abode ? or is it that, when we think it not unfit this should be the general and common course, there should yet have been a parti- cular dispensation for this friend or relation of mine ? s 2 260 THE REDEEMERS DOMINION Let the former be supposed the thing we quarrel at, and consider the intolerable consequences of the matter's being- otherwise, as the case is with this apostate sinful world. Such as upon second, better- weighed thoughts, we would abhor to admit into our minds, even as the matter of a wish. What! would we wish to mankind a sinning immortality on this earth, before which a wise heathen 1 pro- fessed to prefer one day virtuously spent ? Would we wish this world to be the everlasting stage of in- dignities and affronts to him that made it ? Would we wish there should never be a judgment-day, and that all the wise and righteous counsels of heaven should be transversed and overturned, only to com- port with our terrene and sensual inclinations ? Is this our dutifulness and loyal affection to our blessed Lord, the author of our beings, and the God of our lives, whose rights and honours should be infinitely dearer to us than ourselves ? Is it our kindness to ourselves, and all others of our kind and order, that are all naturally capable, and many, by graci- ous vouchsafement, fitly qualified, to enjoy a per- fect felicity in another world, that we would have altogether confined for ever to this region of dark- ness, impurity, and misery ? Or if it displease us, that our relatives are not, by some special dispensation, excepted from the common law of mortality, we would surely as much have expected an exemption ourselves ; otherwise, our dying away from them, would make the so much regretted separation, as well as theirs from us. And what then, if we were required to draw up our petition, to put it into express words, 3 Cicero. OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 261 to turn our wish for ourselves, and all our relatives and peculiar friends, into a formed, solemn prayer, to this effect, that we are content the law stand in force, that all the world should die, with only the exception of some few names, viz. our own, and of our kindred and more inward friends ? What ashamed confounded creatures should we be upon the view of our own request! Would we not pre- sently be for quelling and suppressing it, and easily yield to be nonsuited, without more ado ? What pretence can we have not to think others as apt to make the same request for them and theirs ? And if all the rest of the world shall die, would we and our friends dwell here alone, or would we have this world be continued habitable only on this pri- vate account, to gratify a family ? And if we and our friends be holy, heavenly-minded persons, how unkind were it to wish to ourselves and them, when fit for the society of angels and blessed spirits above, a perpetual abode in this low earthly state ! Would we not now, upon riper, second thoughts, rather be content that things should rest as they are, and he that hath these keys, use them his own way ? But if by all this we are put quite out of conceit with the desire of a terrestrial immortality, all that the matter finally results into is, that we think such a relative of ours died too soon. We would not have coveted for him an eternity on earth, but only more time. And how much more ? or for what ? If we were to set the time, it is like that when it comes, we should be as averse to a separa- tion, if coexistent, then, as now ; and so we revolve into the exploded desire of a terrestrial immortality back again at last. If we were to assign the rea- 262 THE redeemer's dominion son of our desire, that would seem, as in the pre- sent case, a plausible one to some, which is men- tioned by Plutarch in his consolation to Apollonius for the loss of his son, concerning another such case, (as he instances in many,) of one Elysius an Italian, whose loss of his son Euthynous was much aggravated by this, that he was a great heir. But what was said to that, there, and what is further to he said to any thing of that kind, I shall reserve to a more proper place. It is a more weighty allegation, and of more common concernment, when a useful person is gone, and one very capable of becoming very emi- nently so. And this requires deeper consideration, and sundry things ought to be considered, in order to the quieting their minds, who are apt to behold such darker dispensations, in the course of provi- dence, with amazement and disturbance of spirit, i. e. when they see persons of excellent endowments and external advantages beyond the most, cut off in their prime, while the world is cumbered with drones never likely to do good, and pestered with such as are like to prove plagues to it, and do great hurt and mischief to the age wherein they live: an ancient and not uncommon scruple to pious ob- servers heretofore. ' Wherefore,' says holy Job, ' do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power ? Their seed is established in their sight,' ch. xxi. 7, 8, when his seed was cut off before his eyes. And here let us consider, 1 . That this world is in apostacy from God ; and though he is pleased to use apt means for its re- covery, he doth what he thinks fit herein, of mere grace and favour, and is under no obligation to do all that he can. His dispensation herein must cor- OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 263 respond to, and bear upon it, the impress of other divine perfections, his wisdom, holiness, justice, as well as grace. And for grace itself, whereas all since the apostacy lie together in a fearful gulf of impurity and misery ; and some, made more early sensible hereof than the most, do stretch out a craving hand, and cry for help; if now a merciful hand reached down from heaven take hold of them, and pluck them sooner out ; is this disagreeable to the God of all grace, to make some such instances, and vouchsafe them an earlier deliverance ; though they might, being longer delayed, be some way helpful to others, that continue stupid and insen- sible ? 2. When he hath done much, in an age still ob- stinately unreclaimable, he may be supposed to let one appear, only with a promising aspect, and in just displeasure presently withdraw them, that they may understand they have forfeited such a blessing to this or that country, as such a one might have proved. 3. This may awaken some, the more to prize and improve the encouragements they may have from such as remain, or shall spring up in their stead, who are gone ; and to bless God that the weight of his interest, and of the cause of religion, doth not hang and depend upon the slender thread of this man's life. ' The God of the spirits of all flesh' can raise up instruments as he pleases ; and will, to serve his own purposes, though not ours. 4. He will have it known, that though he uses instruments, he needs them not. It is a piece of divine royalty and magnificence, that when he hath prepared and polished such a utensil, so as to be 264 THE redeemer's dominion capable of great service, he can lay it by without loss. 5. They that are most qualified to be of greatest use in this world, are thereby also the more capa- ble of blessedness in the other. It is owing to his most munificent bounty, that he may vouchsafe to reward sincere intentions, as highly as great ser- vices. He took David's having it in his heart to build him a house, as kindly as Solomon's building him one : and as much magnifies himself in testi- fying his acceptance of such as he discharges from his service here, at the third hour, as of them whom he engages not in it till the eleventh. 6. Of their early piety he makes great present use in this world, testifying his acceptance of their works, generally in his word, and particularly by the reputation he procures to them in the minds and consciences of such as were best able to judge, and even of all that knew them, which may be truly accounted a divine testimony; both in respect of the object, which hath on it a divine impress, and speaks the self- recommending power of true good- ness, which is the image of God, and in respect of the subject, shows the dominion God hath over minds; engaging not only good men to behold with complacency such pleasant, blooming good- ness, correspondent to their own, but even bad men to approve in these others what they entertain not in themselves. ' The same things are accepted with God, and approved of men,' 1 Rom. xiv. 18, 'Thus being dead, they, as Abel, yet speak.' 7. And it is a brighter and more unsullied testi- 1 Heb. xi. 4. OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. - 266 mony, which is left in the minds of men, concern- ing- such very hopeful persons as die in their youth. They never were otherwise known, or can be re- membered, than as excellent young persons. This is the only idea which remains of them. Had they lived longer, to the usual age of man, the remem- brance of what they were in youth would have been in a great degree effaced and worn out by latter things; perhaps blackened, not by what were less commendable, but more ungrateful to the greater part, especially if they lived to come into public stations. Their just zeal and contestations against the wickedness of the age, might disoblige many, and create them enemies, who would make it their business to blast them, and cast upon their name and memory all the reproach they could in- vent. Whereas the lustre of that virtue and piety which had provoked nobody, appears only with an amiable look, and leaves behind nothing of such a person but a fair, unblemished, alluring, and in- structive example ; which they that observed them might, with less prejudiced minds, compare with the useless, vicious lives of many that they see to have filled up a room in the world, unto extreme old age, either to no purpose, or to very bad. And how vast is the difference in respect of usefulness to the world, between a pious young gentleman dying in his youth, that lived long in a little time, untainted by youthful lusts and vanities, and victorious over them, and an accursed sinner of a hundred years old ; (Isa. lxv. 20,) one that was an infant of days, and though an hundred years old, yet still a child, that had not filled up his days with any thing of real value or profit to himself or others, (as some very judicious expositors understand that text,) 266 THE redeemer's dominion that, as he aptly speaks, " had nothing besides grey hairs and wrinkles to make him be thought a long liver;" 1 but who might truly be said not to have lived long, but only to have been long in the world. How sweet and fragrant a memory doth the one, how rotten and stinking a name doth the other leave behind him to survivors! Therefore such very valuable young persons as are taken hence in the flower of their age, are not to be thought, upon that account of usefulness to this world, to have lived in it that shorter time in vain. They leave behind them that testimony which will turn to account, both for the glory of God's grace, which he hath exemplified in them, and which may be improved to the good of many who shall have seen that a holy life, amidst the tempta- tions that the youthful age is exposed to, is no im- practicable thing ; and that an early death is as possible also to themselves. But, besides their no little usefulness in this world which they leave, we must know, 8. That the affairs and concernments of the other world, whither they go, are incomparably greater every way, and much more considerable. And to this most unquestionable maxim must be our last and final resort in the present case. All the perturbation and discomposure of mind which we suffer upon any such occasion, arises chiefly from our having too high and great thoughts of this world, and too low and diminishing thoughts of the other ; and the evil must be remedied by ' Non est quod quenquam propter canos aut rugas, putes diu vixisse. Non ille diu vixit, sed diu fuit. — Sen. OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 267 rectifying our apprehensions in this matter. Be- cause that other world is hades, unseen, and not within the verge of our sense, our sensual minds are prone to make of it a very little thing, and even next to nothing, as too many will have it to be quite nothing at all. We are concerned, in duty to our blessed Redeemer and Lord, and for his just honour, to magnify this his prefecture, and render it as great to ourselves as the matter re- quires, and as our very narrow minds can admit ; and should labour to correct it as a great and too common fault, a very gross vulgar error, to con- ceive of persons leaving this world of ours, as if they hereby became useless ; and, upon the matter, lost out of the creation of God. So is our fancy prepossessed and filled with delusive images, that throng in upon it through our unwary senses, that we imagine this little spot of our earth to be the only place of business, and all the rest of the crea- tion to be mere vacuity, vast empty space, where there is nothing to do, and nothing to be enjoyed. Not that these are formed positive thoughts, or a settled judgment with good men, but they are floating imaginations, so continually obtruded upon them, from (what lies next) the objects of sense, that they have more influence to affect the heart, and infer suitable, sudden, and indeliberate emotions of spirit, than the most formed judgment, grounded on things that lie without the sphere of sense, can outweigh. And hence when a good man dies, elder or younger, the common cry is, among the better sort, (for the other do less concern themselves,) " O what a loss is this ! Not to be repaired ! not to be borne !" Indeed this is better than the com- 268 the redeemer's dominion mon stupidity, not to consider, not ' to take it to heart, when the righteous man perisheth,or is taken away/ And the law of our own nature obliges and prompts us to feel and regret the losses which afflict us. But such resentments ought to be fol- lowed and qualified by greater thoughts, arising from a superior nature, that ought presently to take place with us, of the nobler employments which God calls such unto, ' of whom this world was not worthy,' Heb. xi. 38 ; and how highly his great and all-comprehending interest is to be preferred before our own, or the interest of this or that family, country, or nation on earth ! And at once both to enlarge and quiet our minds, on such occasions, we should particularly consider, 1. The vast amplitude of the heavenly hades, in comparison of our minute spot of earth, or of that dark region, wheresoever it is, reserved for the just punishment of delinquents, according to such in- timations as the Holy Scriptures give us hereof; which being writ only for the use of us on earth, cannot be supposed to intend the giving us more distinct accounts of the state of things in the up- per world, than were necessary for us in this our present state. But it is no obscure hint that is given of the spaciousness of the heavenly regions, when pur- posely to represent the Divine immensity, it is said of the unconfined presence of the great God, that even heaven, and the heaven of heavens, cannot contain him, 1 Kings, viii. 27; 2 Chron. vi. 18. How vast scope is given to our thinking minds, to conceive heavens above heavens, encircling- one another, till we have quite tired our faculty, and OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 269 yet we know not how far short we are of the utmost verge ! And when our Lord is said to have as- scended far above all heavens, (Eph. iv. 10,) whose arithmetic will suffice to tell how many they are ? whose uranography to describe how far that is? We need not impose it upon ourselves to judge their rules infallible, who, being of no mean un- derstanding, nor indiligent in their inquiries, have thought it not improbable that there may be fixed stars within view, at that distance from our earth, that an object movable in as swift motion as that of a bullet shot from a cannon, would be fifty thou- sand years in passing from one to the other. 1 But how much remoter that star may be from the utmost verge of the universe is left altogether unimagin- able. I have been told that a very ingenious ar- tist going about, in exact proportions, to describe the orb or vortex to which our sun belongs, on as large a table as could be convenient for him to work upon, was at a loss to find a spot not too big, in proportion, for our earth, and big enough, •whereupon to place the point, made very fine, of one foot of his compasses. If any suspect extravagancy in our modern com- putations, let him take a view of what is discoursed to this purpose by a writer of most unexceptionable wisdom and sobriety, as well as most eminent sanctity, in his time. 2 Now when the Lord of this vast universe beheld 1 Computation by the Hon. Francis Roberts, Esq. Philoso- phical Transactions for the months of March and April, 1 694. 2 Bolton, in his Four last Things, who, speaking of heaven, directs us to guess the immeasurable magnitude of it (as other- wise, so) by the incredible distance from the earth to the starry firmament; and adds, " If I should here tell you the several computations of astronomers, in this kind, the sums would seem 270 the redeemer's dominion upon this little spot intelligent creatures in trans- gression and misery, that he did so compassion- ately concern himself for the recovery of such as should, by apt methods, be induced to comply with his merciful design ; and appoint his own eternal Son to be their Redeemer, in order where- to, as he was God with God, he must also become Man among men, one of themselves ; and so, as God-man, for his kindness to some, be constituted universal Lord of all ; shall mere pity towards this world greaten it above the other ? But we are not left without ground to appre- hend a more immediate reason for his being, as Redeemer, made Head and Lord of all those crea- tures that were the original inhabitants of the in- visible world. For when it had been said, (Col. i. 16,) that all things were created by him, not only the visible things on earth, but the invisible things in heaven, here is a regression to these latter, who were before, for their greater dignity, generally first mentioned, and now some enumeration given of them, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; and all things again repeated, that these might appear expressly in- cluded ; said over again to be created by him, and for him, which was sufficient to express his crea- to exceed all possibility of belief." And he annexes in his mar- gin sundry computations which I shall not here recite : you may find them in the author himself, p. 21- And yet besides, as he further adds, the late learnedest of them place above the eighth sphere, wherein all those glorious lamps shine so bright, three moving orbs more. Now the empyrean heaven comprehends all these : how incomprehensible, then, must its compass and great- ness necessarily be ! But he supposes it possible, the adventure of mathematicians may be too audacious and peremptory, &c. and concludes the height and extent of the heavens to be beyond all human investigation. OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 271 tive right in them. It is presently subjoined, verse 17,) 'And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.' All owe their stability to him ; viz. the mentioned thrones, dominions, &c. as well as other things. But how ? or upon what terms ? That we might understand his redemp- tory right was not here to be overlooked, it is shortly after added, ' And having made peace by the blood of his cross, it pleased the Father' (to be repeated out of what went before) ' by him to reconcile all things to himself;' and this ' by him' iterated ; q. d. ' By him shedding his blood on the cross, whether they be things on earth, or things in heaven;' lest the thrones and dominions, mentioned before, should be forgot. And a word is used ac- commodable enough to the several purposes before expressed, a-KoKaraWc^ai, which doth not always suppose enmity, but more generally signifies, upon a sort of commutation, or valuable consideration to procure or conciliate, or make a thing more firmly one's own, or assure it himself; though it is after- wards used in a stricter sense, verse 21. I have often considered with wonder and plea' sure, that whereas God is called by that higher and far more extensive name, ' the Father of spi- rits,' he is also pleased so graciously to vouchsafe, as to be styled ' the God of the spirits of all flesh ,' and thereby to signify, that having an order of spirits so meanly lodged, that inhabit frail and mortal flesh, though he have a world of spirits to converse with whose dwelling is not with flesh, yet he disdains not a relation to so mean and ab- ject spirits, his offspring also, in our world. And that, because this was the place of offending delin- quents that he would recover, the Redeemer should 272 THE redeemer's dominion sort himself with them, and as they were partakers of flesh and blood, himself likewise take part of the same! This was great and Godlike, and speaks the largeness and amplitude of an all-comprehend- ing mind, common to Father and Son, and capa- ble of so applying itself to the greatest things, as not to neglect the least; and therefore so much the more magnifies God and our Redeemer, by how much the less considerable we and our world are. But that hence we should so over-magnify this world, as if nothing were considerable that lies without its compass, is most perversely to miscon- strue the most amazing condescension. The Spirit of God by holy David, teaches us to reason the quite contrary way ; and from the con- sideration he had of the vastness and splendour of the upper world, of the heavens, the moon and stars, &c. not to magnify, but diminish, our world of mankind, and say, What is man ?' m And let us further consider, 2. The inexpressible numerousness of the other world's inhabitants, with the excellencies wherein they shine, and the orders they are ranked into, and how unlikely is it, that holy souls that go thither should want employment ! Great concourse and multitudes of people make places of business in this world, and must much more do so, where the creatures of the most spiritual and active natures must be supposed to have their residence. Scrip- ture speaks of ' myriads,' which we read, ' an innumerable company,' of angels, besides all the spirits of just men ; (Heb. xii.;) who are sometimes said to be more than ' any one' — which we cause- lessly render ' man,' ' could number, Rev. vii. And 1 8#£(£. OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 273 when we are told of many heavens, above all which our Lord Jesus is said to have ascended, are all those heavens only empty solitudes ? uninhabited glorious deserts? When we find how full of vi- tality this base earth of ours is ; how replenished with living creatures, not only on the surface but within it; how unreasonable is it to suppose the nobler parts of the universe to be less peopled with inhabitants, of proportionable spirituality, activity, liveliness, and vigour to the several regions, which, the remoter they are from dull earth, must be sup- posed still the finer, and apt to afford fit and suit- able habitations to such creatures ? Whether we suppose pure unclothed spirits to be the natives in all those heavens, all comprehended under the one name of angels ; or whether, as some think, of all created spirits, that they have all vital union with some or other vehicles, ethereal or celestial, more or less fine and pure, as the region is to which they belong, having gradually associated unto them the spirits of holy men gone from us, which are said to be laayyeXoi, ' angels' fellows,' (Luke, xx. 36,) it is indifferent to our purpose. Let us only consider them all as intelligent spi- ritual beings, full of holy light, life, active power, and love to their common Lord and one another ; and can we imagine their state to be a state of torpid silence, idleness, and inactivity, or that they have not much higher and nobler work to do there, than they can have in such a world as this, or in such bodies as here they lug to and fro ? And the Scriptures are not altogether silent, concerning the distinct orders of those glorious creatures that inhabit all the heavens which this upper hades must be understood to contain ; T 274 THE redeemer's dominion though it hath not provided to gratify any one's curiosity, so far as to give us particular accounts of their differences and distinctions. And though we are not warrantable to believe such conjectures concerning them as we find in the supposititious Dionysius's Celestial Hierarchy, or much less the idler dreams of Valentinus and the Gnosticks about their Mones, with divers more such fictions; yet we are not to neglect what God hath expressly told us, viz. that, giving us some account of the crea- tion in the hades, or the invisible part of it, there are thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, an- gels, (and elsewhere archangels,) authorities; (Col. i. 16, with I Pet. iii. 21,) which being terms that import order and government, can scarce allow us not to conceive, that of all those numberless mul- titudes of glorious creatures that replenish and peo- ple those spacious regions of light and bliss, there are none who belong not to some or other of those principalities and dominions. Whence therefore, nothing is more obvious than to conceive that whosoever is adjoined to them, ascending out of our world, presently hath his sta- tion assigned him, is made to know his post, and how he is to be employed, in the service and adoration of the sovereign Lord of all, and in pay- ing the most regular homage to the throne of God and the Lamb : it being still to be remembered, that God is not worshipped there or here, as an ivfcfjg, or as though he needed any thing, since he gives to all breath and being, and all things; (Acts xvii. ;) but that the felicity of his most excel- lent creatures doth in great part consist in acting perpetually according to the dictate of a just and right mind ; and that therefore they take highest OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 2?5 pleasure in prostration, in casting down their crowns, in shrinking even into nothing, before the original, eternal, subsistent Being, that he may be owned as the All in all ; because they follow herein a most satisfied judgment, and express it when they say, ' Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power, for thou hast cre- ated all things, and for thy pleasure they are, and were created,' Rev. iv. 11; and « worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive riches, and wisdom, and strength,' &c. ch. v. 12. And they that rest not night or day from such high and glorious employments, have they nothing to do ? Or will we say or think, because we see not how the heavenly potentates led on their bright legions, to present themselves before the throne, to tender their obeisance, or receive com- mands and despatches to this or that far remote dynasty ; or suppose to such and such a mighty star, (whereof there are so numberless myriads; and why should we suppose them not replenished with glorious inhabitants?) whither they fly as quick as thought, with joyful speed, under the All- seeing Eye, glad to execute wise and just com- mands upon all occasions. But, alas ! in all this we can but darken counsel with words without knowledge. We cannot pretend to knowledge in these things; yet if from Scripture intimations, and the concurrent reason of things, we only make suppositions of what may be, not conclusions of what is; let our thoughts ascend as much higher as they can. I see not why they should fall lower than all this. And because we cannot be positive, will we therefore say or think there can be no such thing, or nothing but dull inactivity, in those re- T 2 276 the redeemer's dominion gions ? Because that other world is hades, and we see nothing, shall we make little or next to nothing of it ? We should think it very absurd reasoning, (if we should use it in reference to such mean trifles in comparison, and say,) There is no such thing as pomp and state, no such thing as action or business, in the court of Spain or France, of Persia or Japan, because no sound from thence strikes our ear, or the beams of majesty there daz- zle not our eye. I should indeed think it very unreasonable to make mere magnitude, or vast extent of space, fill- ed up with nothing but void air, ether, or other fine matter, (call it by what name you will,) alone, or by itself, a very considerable note of excellency of the other invisible world, above this visible world of ours. But I reckon it much more unrea- sonable and uninforced, (to say no more,) by any principles, either of philosophy or religion, finding this world of ours, a baser part of the creations, so full of life, and of living inhabitants, of one degree or another ; to suppose the nobler parts of the universe, still ascending upwards, generally unpeopled, and desert, when it is so conceivable in itself, and so aptly tending to magnify our Creator and Re- deemer, that all the upper regions be fully inha- bited with intelligent creatures ; whether mere spi- rits, unclothed with any thing material, or united with some or other matter, we need not deter- mine. And whereas Scripture plainly intimates, that the apostate revolted spirits that fell from God, and kept not their first stations, were vastly numerous; we have hence scope enough for our thoughts to conceive, that so spacious regions being replenish- OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 277 ed with intelligent creatures, always innocent and happy, the delinquents, compared with them, may be as despicable for their paucity, as they are de- testable for their apostacy : and that the horrid hades, wherein they are reserved to the blackness of darkness for ever, may be no more in proportion, nay, unexpressibly less, than some little rocky island, appointed as a place of punishment for criminals, in comparison of a flourishing, vast em- pire, fully peopled with industrious, rich, sober- minded, and happy inhabitants. 3. The high perfection they presently attain to, who are removed, though in their younger years, out of this into that other world. The spirits of just men are there said to be made perfect Waving the Olympic metaphor, which is, at most, but the thing signifying ; that which is signified cannot be less than the concurrence of natural and moral perfection : the perfecting of all our faculties, — mind, will, and active power, and of all holy and gracious excellencies, — knowledge, wis- dom love, holiness. The apostle makes the dif- ference be, as that of a child, and that of a man, 1 Cor. xiii. And would any one that hath a child he delights in, wish him to be a child always, and only capable of childish things ? Or is it a rea- sonable imagination, that by how much we are more capable of action, we shall be the more use- less, and have the less to do ? We may further (lastly) add, that which is not the least considerable, 4. That all the active services and usefulness we are capable of in this world, are but transitory, and lie within the compass of this temporary state of things, which must have an end. Whereas the 278 THE REDEEMER'S DOMINION business of the other world belongs to our final and eternal state, which shall never be at an end. The most extraordinary qualifications for service on earth, must hereafter, — if not by the cessation of the active powers and principles themselves, as tongues, prophecies, and such knowledge as is uncommon, and by peculiar vouchsafement afford- ed but to a few, for the help of many, — these en- dowments, designed for the propagation of the Christian faith, and for the stopping the mouths of gainsayers, must in the use and exercise, at least by the cessation of the objects and occasions, fail, and cease, and vanish away, 1 Cor. xiii. 8. The like may be said of courage and fortitude to con- tend against prevailing wickedness ; skill, ability, with external advantages, to promote the impugned interest of Christ and Christian religion ; of all these there will be no further use in that other world. They are all to be considered as means to the end. But how absurd were it to reckon the means of greater importance than the end itself! The whole present constitution of Christ's king- dom on earth, is but preparatory and introductive to the celestial kingdom. And how absurd were it to prefer this temporary kingdom to the eternal one, and present serviceableness to this, to per- petual service in the other ! It is true, that service to God and our Redeemer in this present state, is necessary in its own kind, highly acceptable to God, and justly much valued by good men. And we ought ourselves willingly to submit to serve God in a meaner capacity in this world, while it is his pleasure we shall do so; especially if God should have given any significa- tion of his mind, concerning our abode in the OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 279 flesh some longer time, as it is likely he had done to the apostle Paul, (Phil. i. 24,) because he says, he was confident and did know, that so it should be, (verse 25,) we should be abundantly satisfied with it, as he was. But to suppose an abode here to be simply and universally more eligible, is very groundless and unreasonable ; and were a like case, as if a person of very extraordinary abilities and accomplishments, because he was useful in some obscure country village, is to be looked upon as lost, because his prince, being informed of his great worth, calls him up to his court, and finding him every way fit, employs him in the greatest affairs of state ! To sum up this matter, whereas the means are always, according to usual estimate, wont to de- rive their value from their end; this judgment of the case, that usefulness in this present state is of greater consequence and more important than the affairs of the other world, breaks all measures, overturns the whole frame, and inverts the order of things ; makes the means more valuable than the end ; time more considerable than eternity ; and the concernments of a state that will soon be over, greater than those of our fixed, permanent, ever- lasting state, that will never be over. If we would allow ourselves the liberty of rea- soning, according to the measure and compass of our narrow minds, biassed and contracted by pri- vate interest and inclination, we should have the like plausible things to think, concerning such of ours as die in infancy, and that when they have but newly looked into this world, are presently again caught out of it; that if they had lived, what might they have come to ! How pleasant and di- 280 THE redeemer's dominion verting might their childhood have been ! how hopeful their youth ! how useful their riper age ! But these are commonly thoughts little wiser than theirs, and proceed from general infidelity, or mis- belief, that whatsoever is not within the compass of this little, sorry world, is all emptiness and nul- lity ! Or if such be pious and more considering, it is too plain they do not, however, consider enough, how great a part it is of Divine magnifi- cence, to take a reasonable immortal spirit from animating a piece of well-figured clay, and pre- sently adjoin it to the general assembly above! How glorious a change is made upon their child in a moment! How much greater a thing it is to be adoring God above, in the society of angels, than to be dandled on their knee, or enjoy the best pro- visions they can make for them on earth ! that they have a part to act upon an eternal stage ! and though they are but lately come into being, are never to go out of being more, but to be ever- lasting monuments and instruments of the glory of their great Creator and Lord ! Nor, perhaps, is it considered so deeply as it ought, that it hath seemed meet to the Supreme Wisdom, upon a most important reason, in the case lengthening or shortening the lives of men, not ordinarily, or otherwise than upon a great occa- sion, to interrupt the tendencies of natural causes; but let nature run its course : for otherwise, very frequent innovations upon nature would make miracles cheap and common, and consequently useless to their proper, great ends, which may be of greater significancy in the course of God's go- vernment over the world, than some addition to this or that life can be worth. And therefore OVER THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 281 should this consideration repress our wonderment, why God doth not, when he so easily can, by one touch upon this or that second cause, prevent or ease the grievous pains which they often suffer that love him, and whom he loves. He reckons it fitter, — and they will in due time reckon so too themselves, when the wise methods of his govern- ment come to be unfolded and understood, — that we should any of us bear what is ungrateful to us, in point of pain, loss of friends, or other unpleasing events of providence, than that he should make frequent and less necessary breaches upon the common order and course of government which he hath established over a delinquent, sinful world. Whereupon it is a great piece of wisdom and dutifulness towards our great Lord, not to pray absolutely, peremptorily, or otherwise than with great submission and deference to his wise and holy pleasure, for our own or our friends' lives, ease, outward prosperity, or any external or temporary good thing. For things that concern our spiritual and eternal welfare, his good and acceptable will is more expressly declared, and made known al- ready and beforehand. But as to the particular case of the usefulness of any friend or relative of ours in this or the other state, the matter must be finally left to the arbitre- ment and disposal of him who hath the keys of hades and of death. And when by his turn of them he hath decided the matter, we then know what his mind and judgment are, which it is no more fit for us to censure, than possible to dis- annul. Whatever great purposes we might think one cut off in the flower of his age capable of serv- 282 THE redeemer's dominion ing in this world, we may be sure he judged him capable of serving greater in the other. And now, by this time, I believe you will expect to have somewhat a more particular account of this excellent young gentleman, whose early decease hath occasioned my discoursing so largely on this subject ; not more largely than the importance, but much less accurately than the dignity of it did challenge. He was the eldest son of Sir Charles Hoghton, of Hoghton-Tower, in the county of Lancaster, baro- net, and of the lady Mary, daughter of the late Lord Viscount Massarene, his very pious consort ; a family of eminent note in that northern part of the kingdom, for its antiquity, opulency, and in- terest in the country where it is seated ; and which hath intermarried with some or other of the nobility, one generation after another; but hath been most of all considerable and illustrious, as having been itself, long the immemorial known seat of religion, sobriety, and good order, from father to son ; giving example, countenance, and patronage to these praiseworthy things to the country round about; and wherein, hitherto, through the singular favour and blessings of heaven, there hath not been that visible degeneracy that might be so plainly observed, and sadly deplored, in divers great families; as if it were an exemp- tion from what was so anciently remarked by the poet, Mtas parentum, pejor avis,