A

DISCOURSE

CONCERNING

THE EXISTENCE AND NATURE

OF

GOD.

*

OF THE

EXISTENCE AND NATURE

OF

GOD.

CHAP. 1:

That the best pray to know God is by an attentive Reflection upon our own Souls. God more clearly and lively pictured upon the Souls of Men than upon any Part of the sensible World.

WE now come to the other principle of all religion, and treat something concerning God. Where we shall not so much demonstrate that he is, as what he is. Both which we may best learn from a reflection upon our own souls. He which reflects upon himself reflects upon his own Original, and finds the clearest impression of some eternal nature and perfect Being stamped upon his own soul. And therefore Plato seems sometimes to reprove the ruder sort of men in his times for their contrivance of pictures and images to put themselves in mind of the One, or angelical beings, and exhorts them to look into, their own souls, which are the fairest images not only of the lower divine natures, but of the Deity itself; God having so copied himself in the whole life and energy of man's soul, as that the lovely characters of divinity may be most easily seen and read of all men within themselves: as they say of Phidias, the famous statuary, after he had made the statue of Minerva with the greatest exquisiteness of art, to be set up in the Aeropolis of Athens, impressed his own image so deeply in her buckler, that none could raise it out. And if we would know what the impress of souls is, it is nothing but God himself, who could riot write his own name so as that it might be read but only in rational natures. Neither could he make such without imparting such an imitation of his own eternal understanding to them as might be a perpetual memorial of himself within them. And whenever we shall look upon our own soul in a right manner, we shall find a Urim and Thummim there, by which we may ask counsel of God himself, who will have this always borne upon its breast-plate.

There is nothing that so embases the souls of men, as the dreadful thoughts of their own mortality, which will not suffer them to look beyond this short span of time, or to look higher than these material heavens; which though they could be stretched forth to infinity, yet would the space be too narrow for an enlightened mind, that will not be confined within the compass of corporeal dimensions. These black opinions of death, and the nonentity of souls, (darker than hell itself,) shrink up the free-born spirit which is within us, which would otherwise be dilating and spreading itself boundlessly beyond. all finite being. And when these mists are once blown away, it finds this narrow sphere of being to give way before it; and having once seen beyond time and matter, it finds then no more bounds to stop its restless motion. It may then fly upwards from one heaven to another, till it be beyond all orb of finite being, swallowed up in the boundless abyss of divinity, beyond all that which darker thoughts are wont to represent under the idea of essence. Those dismal apprehensions which pinion the souls of men to mortality, check and starve that noble life thereof, which would-always be rising upwards, and spread itself in a free heaven. And when once the soul has shaken off these, when it is once able to look through a grave, and see beyond death, it finds a vast immensity of being opening itself more and more before it, and the ineffable light and beauty thereof shining more and more into it; when it can rest and bear up itself upon an immaterial center of immortality within, it will then find itself able to bear itself away by a self-reflection into the contemplation of an eternal Deity.

For though God has copied forth his own perfections in this visible and sensible world, according as it is capable of entertaining them; yet the most clear and distinct copy of himself could be imparted to none but intelligible natures. And though the whole fabric of this visible universe be whispering out the, notions of a Deity, and always inculcates this lesson to the contemplators of it, God made me; yet we cannot understand it without some interpreter within. The heavens indeed declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handy work, and that which may be known of God, even his eternal power and Godhead, as St. Paul tells us, is to be seen in these external appearances: yet it must be something within that must instruct us in all these mysteries, and we shall then best understand them, when we compare that copy which we find of them within ourselves, with that which we see without us, The schoolmen have well compared sensible and intelligible beings in reference to the Deity, when they tell us that the one only represents the footsteps, the other the face of God. We shall therefore here inquire what that knowledge of a Deity is, which a due converse with our own naked understandings will lead us into.

How the Contemplation of our own Souls, and a ri he Reflection upon the Operations thereof, may lead us into the Knowledge qf, 1. The Divine Unity and Omniscience; God's Omnipotence, 3. The Divine Lave and Goodness, 4. God's Eternity, 5. His Omnipresence; Cr: The Divine Freedom and Liberty.

IT being our design to discourse more particularly of that knowledge of the Deity that we may learn immediately from ourselves, we shall observe, First, There- is nothing whereby our own souls are better known to us than by the-properties and operations of reason. Bat when we reflect upon our own idea of pure and perfect reason, we know that our own souls are not it, but only partake of it; and yet we know certainly that it is, as finding from an inward sense of it that both we and other things else beside ourselves partake of it, neither do we nor any finite thing contain the source of it within ourselves. And because we have a distinct notion of the most perfect mind and understanding, we own our deficiency therein. Arid as that idea of understanding which- we have within us points not out to us this or that particular, but something which is neither this nor that, but total understanding; so neither will any elevation of it serve every way to fit and answer that idea.. And therefore when we find that we cannot attain to science but by a discursive deduction of one thing from another, that our knowledge is confined, and is riot adequate and commensurate to the largest sphere of being, it not running quite through it-, nor filling the whole area of it; or that our knowledge is successive,, and cannot grasp all- things at once, but works by intervals, and runs out into division and multiplicity; we know all this is from want of reason and understanding,: and that a pure and simple mind is free from all these restraints and imperfections, and therefore can be no less than infinite. As this idea which we have of it in our own souls will not suffer us to rest in any conception thereof which represents it less than infinite; so neither will it suffer us to conceive of it any otherwise than as one simple being. And could we multiply understandings into never so vast a number, yet should we be again collecting and knitting them up together in some universal one. So that if we rightly reflect upon our own minds, and the method of their energies, we shall find them to be so framed as not to admit of any other than one infinite source of all that reason and understanding which themselves partake of, in which they live, move, and have their being. And therefore, in the old theology, an original and untreated Monx, or Unity is made the fountain of all peculiarities and numbers, which have their existence from the efflux of its almighty power.

And that is the next thing which our own understandings will instruct us in concerning God, viz. his eternal power. For as we find a will and power within ourselves to execute the results of our own reason, so far as we are not hindered by some potent cause: so we know it must be a mighty inward strength that must enable our understandings to their, proper functions, and that life, energy, and activity can never be separated from a power of understanding. The more unbodied any thing is, the more unbounded also is it in its effective power: body and matter being the most sluggish and unwieldy thing that may be, having no power from itself nor over itself and therefore the purest mind must also needs be the most almighty life and spirit; and as it comprehends all things, and sums them up together in its infinite knowledge, so it must also comprehend them in all its own life and power. Again, that which produced that substantial life and mind by which we know ourselves, must be something much more mighty than we are, and can be no less indeed than omnipotent, and must also be the first architect of all other beings, and the perpetual supporter of them.

We may also know from the same principles, that an almighty love, every way commensurate to that most perfect being, eternally rests in it, which is as strong as that is infinite, and as full of life and vigor as that is of perfection. And because it finds no beauty nor loveliness but only in that and the issues thereof, therefore it never does nor can fasten upon any thing else. And therefore the divinity always enjoys itself and its own infinite perfections, seeing it is that eternal and stable sun of goodness that neither rises nor sets, is neither eclipsed nor can receive any increase of light and beauty. Hence the Divine love is never attended with those turbulent passions whereby our love is wont to unfold its-affections towards its object. But as the Divine love is perpetually most infinitely ardent and potent, so it is always calm and serene, unchangeable, having no such ebbings and flowings as that love path in us which arises from the weakness of our understandings, that do not present things to us always in the same luster and beauty: neither we nor any other worldly thing, (all which are in a perpetual flux,) are always the same. Besides, though our love may sometimes transport us and violently rend us from ourselves and from all self enjoyment, yet the more forcible it is, by so much the more it will be apt to torment us, while it cannot center itself in- that which it so strongly endeavors to attract to it; and when it possesses most, yet is it always hungry and craving, it may always be filling itself, but, like a leaky vessel, it will be always emptying itself again. Whereas the infinite ardor of the Divine love, arising from the unbounded perfection of the Divine being, always rests satisfied within itself, is wrapped up and rests in the same central unity in which it first begins.

When we reflect upon all this, which signifies some perfect essence, as a mind, wisdom, understanding, omnipotency, goodness, we may also know God to be eternal and omnipresent, not because he fills either place or time, but rather because he wants neither. That which first begets the notion of time in us, is nothing else but that succession and multiplicity which we find in our own thoughts, which move from one thing to another, as the sun in the firmament is said to have his several stages to pass by. And therefore where there is no such vicissitude or variety, as there can be no sense of time, so there can be nothing of the thing. This world is indeed a great clock to itself, and is continually numbering out its own age; but it cannot lay any sure hold upon its own past revolutions, nor can it gather up its infancy and old age, and couple them together. Whereas an infinitely comprehensive mind has a simultaneous possession of its own never-flitting life; and because it finds no succession in its own immutable understanding, it cannot find any thing whereby to measure its own duration. And as time hes in the basis of all finite life, whereby it is enabled by degrees to display all the virtue of its own essence, which it cannot do at once; so such an eternity hes at the foundation of the divinity, whereby it becomes one” without any shadow of turning,” as St. James speaks, without any variety or multiplicity within himself, which all created beings that are carried down in the current of time partake of.

As we conceive of God's eternity, we pray in a correspondent manner apprehend his omnipresence; not so much by an infinite expanse or extension of essence, as by an unlimited power. For as nothing can ever stray, out of the bounds, or get out of the reach of an almighty mind; so when we barely think of mind or power, or any thing else peculiar to the Divine essence, we cannot find any of the properties of quantity mixing themselves with it: and as we cannot -confine it in regard thereof to any one point of the universe, so neither can we well conceive it extended through the whole, or excluded from, a y past' of it. It is always some material being that contends for space. Bodily parts will not lodge together, and the more bulky they are, the more they jostle for room one with another. Bodily beings are great only in bulk, but Divine essences in virtue and power.

We may in the next place consider that freedom and liberty which we find in our own souls, which is founded in our reason and understanding; and this is therefore infinite in God, because there is nothing that can bound the first mind, or disobey an almighty power. We must not conceive God to be the freest agent, because he can do and prescribe what he pleaseth, and so set up an absolute will which, shall make both law and reason as some imagine. For as God cannot know himself to be any other than what he is; so neither can he will himself to be any thing else than what he is, or that any thing else should swerve from those laws which his own eternal nature prescribes to it. For this were to make God free to dethrone himself, and set up a liberty within him that should contend with the royal prerogative of his own boundless wisdom.

To be short: when we converse with our own souls, we find the spring of all liberty to be nothing else but reason; and therefore no unreasonable creature can partake of it. And that it is not so much any indifference in our wills of determining without, much less against, reason as the free choice of that which our understandings propound to us as most expedient. And our liberty -most appears, and flows forth in the fullest stream, when its object is most full, and the acquaintance with it most ample: all liberty in the soul being a kind of liberality in bestowing of our affections, and the want or scarce measure of it parsimoniousness arid niggardness. And therefore the more the results of our judgments tend to an indifferency, the more we find our wills in suspense what to choose; contrary inclinations arising and falling within interchangeably, as the scales of a balance equally laden with weights; and all this while the soul's liberty h nothing else but a fluctuation between uncertainties, and languishing away in the impotency of our understandings. Whereas the Divine understanding beholding all things most clearly, must needs beget the greatest freedom that may be; which freedom as it is bred in it, so it never moves without the compass of it. And though the Divine will be not determined away to this or that particular, yet it is never bereft of eternal light and truth to act by. Arid therefore though we cannot see a reason for all God's actions, yet we may know they were neither done against it nor without it.

CHAP. 3:

How the Consideration of those restless Motions of our Wills after some supreme Good, leads us to the Knowledge of a Deity.

WE shall once more take a view of our own souls, and observe how the motions thereof lead us to the knowledge of a Deity. We always find a restless appetite within, which craves some supreme good, and will not be satisfied with any thing less than infinity itself; as if our own penury and indigency were commensurate to the Divine fullness. We find by experience our souls cannot live upon that thin diet they are entertained with at home; neither can they be satiated with those insipid morsels which this outward world furnishes their tables with. I cannot think that the most voluptuous Epicurean could ever satisfy the cravings of his soul with corporeal pleasure, though he might endeavor to persuade himself there was no better: nor the Stoicks find a self-sufficiency and tranquility within their own souls, arising out of the pregnancy of their own reason; though their sullen thoughts would not suffer them to be beholden to an higher Being for their happiness. The more we endeavor, to extract self-sufficiency out of our own souls, the more we torment them, and force them to feel their own pinching poverty. Ever since our minds became so dim-sighted as not to pierce into that primitive blessedness which is above, our wills are too big for our understandings, and will believe their beloved prey is to be found where reason discovers it not. They will pursue it through all the vast wilderness of this world, and force our understandings to follow the chase with them: nor may we think to tame this violent appetite, to allay the heat of it, except we can look upward to some eternal and almighty goodness which is alone able to master it.

It is not the nimbleness of our own reason which stirs up these hungry affections within us, (for then the most ignorant sort of men would never feel the sting thereof,) but indeed some more potent nature which has planted a restless motion within us that might more forcibly carry us out to itself; and therefore it will never suffer itself to be controlled by any of our thin speculations, or satisfied with those airy delights that our fancies offer to it: it doth not, it cannot, rest itself any where but upon the centre of some almighty good, some solid and substantial happiness; like the hungry child that will not be stilled by all, the mother's music, or change its angry looks for her smiling countenance; nothing will satisfy it but the full breasts.

The whole work of this world is nothing but a perpetual contention for true happiness, and men are scattered up and down in the world, moving to and fro therein to seek it. Our souls, by a natural science as it were feeling their own original, are perpetually travailing with their new designs and contrivances whereby they nay purchase high ambitions. Happiness is that pearl of price which all adventure for, though few find it. It is not gold or silver that the earthlings of this world seek after, but some satisfying good which they think is there treasured. Neither is it a little empty breath that ambition soars after, but some kind of happiness that it thinks to catch with it.

And thus when men most of all fly from God, they still seek after him. Wicked men pursue indeed a deity in their worldly lusts, wherein yet they most blaspheme; for God is not a mere empty name, but that self-sufficient good which brings the rest with it which they so much seek after, though they join it with something which it is not, and in a true and real strain of blasphemy, attribute all that which God is to something else which is most unlike him, and,” turn the glory of the incorruptible God into the image of corruptible man, of birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.”

God is not better defined to us by our understandings than by our wills and affections. He is not only the eternal reason, that almighty mind and wisdom which our understandings converse with; but he is also that unstained beauty and supreme good which our wills are perpetually catching after. And wheresoever we find true beauty, love, and goodness, we may say, here or there is God. And as we cannot understand any thing of an intelligible nature, but by some primitive idea we have of God, whereby we are able to guess at the elevation of its being, and the pitch of its perfection; so neither do our wills embrace any thing, without some latent sense of him, whereby they can taste and discern how near any thing comes to that self-sufficient good they seek after. And indeed without such a faculty as this is we should never know when our souls are in conjunction with the Deity, or be able to relish the ineffable sweetness of true happiness. Though here below we know but little what this is, because we are little acquainted with enjoyment; we know well what belongs to longings and languishment, but we know not so well what belongs to plenty and fullness; we are well acquainted with griefs and sicknesses of this inbred love, but we know not what its health and complacencies are.

To conclude this particular, the soul has strong and weighty motions, and nothing can bear it up but something permanent and immutable. Nothing can beget a constant serenity within, but something supreme to its own essence; as if, having once departed from the primitive fountain of its life, it were deprived of itself, perpetually contesting within itself and divided against itself. And this evidently proves to our inward sense, that there is some higher good than ourselves, something that is more amiable and desirable, and therefore must be loved and preferred before ourselves.

CHAP. 4:

INFERENCES FROM THE CONSIDERATION OF THE DIVINE NATURE AND ATTRIBUTE

1. That all Divine Productions are the free Effluxes of omnipotent Love and Goodness. The true Notion of God's Glory what it is. Men very apt to mistake in this Point. God needs not the Happiness or Misery of his Creatures to make himself glorious by. God does most glorify himself by communicating himself we most glorify God when we resemble him most.

WE have seen how we may rise up to the understanding of the Deity by the contemplation of our own souls and now it may seem worthy of the best attention of our minds to consider some inferences which naturally flow from the true knowledge of the Divine nature and attributes.

The first is this, “That all Divine productions or operations that terminate in something without him, are nothing else but the free effluxes of his own omnipotent love and goodness,” which always moves along with them, and never willingly departs from them. When God made the world it was not out of a piece of self-interest, as if he had had any design to advance himself, or to enlarge his own stock of glory and happiness; for what beauty or perfection can be in this whole creation which was not before contained in himself as the free fountain of all. Or what could he see out of -himself that could add any thing to his own stature. I know not how it comes, that some bring in God as it were casting about how he might erect a new monopoly of glory to himself, and so making the world, that he might have a stock of glory going in it. I doubt we are wont sometimes to paint him too much in the likeness of corrupt and impotent men, that by a fond ambition please themselves with their own praises chanted out to them by their admirers, and another while as much applaud their own greatness, to hear what hideous cries the severity of their power can extort from those they have a mind to make miserable.

We all speak much of the glory of God, and entertain a common belief that it is the only end for which we were all made. And I wish we were all more inwardly moved with a true and lively sense of it. There can be nothing else that either God could propound to himself, or that we ought, if it be rightly understood. But we must not think that God, who is infinite fullness, would seek for any thing without himself. He needs neither our happiness nor our misery to make himself more illustrious by; but being full in himself, it was his good pleasure to communicate of his own fullness. “How can be look without himself, being a pure mind; always encompassed with its own glorious brightness But the good pleasure of his will being filled with bounty, and the power of a most gracious Deity proceeding from it, liberally dispensed themselves, and distributed those gifts of grace that might make all created being resemble themselves.” God himself being infinitely full, and having enough and to spare, is always overflowing; and goodness and love issue forth from him by way of redundancy. When he made the world, because there was nothing better than himself, he shadowed forth himself therein, and, as far as might be,. was pleased to represent himself and manifest his own eternal glory and perfection in it. When he is said to seek his own glory, it is indeed nothing else but to ray and beam forth, as it were, his own lustre, in the happiness of him creatures.

God does then glorify and exalt himself in the most triumphant-way that may be, when he most of all communicates himself, and when he erects monuments of his majesty wherein his love and goodness may live and reign. And We then most of all glorify him, when we partake most of him, when our serious endeavors of a true conformity to his image declare that we think nothing better than he is; and are therefore most ambitious of being one with him by an universal resignation of ourselves unto him. This is his glory in its lowest humiliation, while it beams forth out of himself; and our happiness in its exaltation, which heaven never separates, though earth doth. His honor is his love and goodness in paraphrase, spreading itself over all those that receive it; and this he loves and cherishes wheresoever he finds it, as something of himself therein.

CHAP. 5:

A SECOND DEDUCTION.

II. That all Things are supported and governed Ail an Almighty Wisdom and Goodness. An Answer to an Objection made against the Divine Providence from an unequal Distribution of Things here below.

IN the next place we may gather, that Almighty Wisdom and Goodness, which first made all things, doth also perpetually conserve and govern them;” deriving themselves through the whole fabric, and seating themselves in every finite essence, lest falling off from the Deity, they should become altogether disorderly, relapsing and sliding back into the first chaos. As in all motion there must be some first mover, from whence the beginning and perpetuation of all motion is deduced: so in beings there must be some first essence upon which all others must constantly depend. For, as no finite thing can subsist by its own strength, or take its place upon the stage of space without the leave of an almighty and supreme Power: so neither can it remain here without license and assistance from it. The Deity is the center of all finite being, the foundation and basis of every one of these weak essences, which cannot bear up themselves by any central power of their own; as we may be assured from a sensible feeling of the constant mutations and impotency which we find both in ourselves and all other things.

And as God thus preserves all things, so he is continually ordering and disposing all things in the best way; and providing so as may be best for them. He did not make the world as a mere exercise of his almighty power, or to try his own strength, and then throw it away from himself without any more minding of it; for lie is that omnipresent life that penetrates and runs through all things, containing and holding all fast together within himself; and therefore the ancient philosophy was wont rather to say, that the world was in God, than that’ God was in the world. He did not look without himself to search for some solid foundation that might bear up this weighty building, but indeed reared it up within him, and spread his own omnipotency under it and through it. And being centrally in every part of it, he governs it according to his own unsearchable wisdom and goodness, and orders all things for the best.

And now if any should quarrel with the unequal distribution of things here, as if some blind fortune had bestowed her blessings carelessly till she had no more left, rather than some all-knowing mind that deals forth its bounty in due proportions, I should send them to Plutarch and Plotinus to have their reasons fully satisfied in this point, (for we here deal with the principles of natural light) all these debates arising from nothing but carnal notions of good and evil: as if it were so gallant a thing to be dealing with crowns and sceptres, to be bravely arrayed, and wallow in that which is called the wealth of this world. God indeed never took any such notice of good men as to make them all rulers, as the last of those fore-cited authors tells us; neither was it worth the ,*, neither is it fit for good men that partake of an higher life than the most princely is, to trouble themselves about lording and ruling over other men; as if such a splendid kind of nothing were of so much worth. It is much better for us, that Providence should disorder and deface these things, that we might be weaned from the love of them, than that their lovely looks should so enchant our souls as to draw them off from better things. And I dare say that a sober mind, that shall contemplate the temper of men's minds, and the confused frame of this outward world, will admire the infinite wisdom of a gracious Providence in permitting that disorder which is in it.

CHAP. 6: A THIRD DEDUCTION.

III. That all true Happiness consists in a Participation of God, arising out of the Conformity of our Souls to him; and, that the most real Misery ariseth out of the Apostasy of Souls from God.

We proceed now to another inference, viz.” That all true happiness consists in a participation of God, arising out of the conformity of our souls to him; and the most real misery arises out of the apostasy of souls from God.” And so we are led to speak of the rewards and punishments of the life to come. And it will not be hard, from what bath been said, to find out the original and nature of both of them; and though perhaps we cannot dive into the bottom of them, yet we may tell how in a general way to define and distinguish them.

Happiness is nothing else but the enjoyment of some chief good; and therefore the Deity is so boundlessly happy, because he is every way one with his own immense perfection: and every thing so much the more feelingly lives upon happiness by how much the more it comes to partake of God, and to be made like to him. And as it is impossible to enjoy happiness without a fruition of God, so it is impossible to enjoy him without an assimilation and conformity of our natures to him in true goodness and god-like perfection. It is a maxim of Socrates, *, ”It is not lawful for any impure nature to touch pure Divinity.” For we cannot enjoy God by any external conjunction with him. Divine fruition is not by a mere kind of apposition or contiguity of our natures with the Divine, but it is an internal union, whereby a Divine Spirit informing our souls, derives the strength of a Divine life through them. It must be some Divine efflux running quite through our souls, awakening and exalting all the vital powers of them into an active sympathy with some absolute good, that renders us completely blessed. It is not to sit gazing upon a Deity by some thin speculations; but it is an inward feeling and sensation of this mighty goodness displaying itself within us, melting our fierce and furious natures, that would fain be something in contradiction to God, into an universal compliance with itself, and wrapping up our minds wholly into itself, whereby God comes to be all in all to us. And therefore, so long as our wills and affections endeavor to fix upon any thing but God and true goodness, we do but endeavor to wring happiness out of something that will yield no more than a flinty rock to all our pressing. The more we endeavor to force out our affections to rest themselves- upon any finite thing, the more violent will they recoil upon us. It is only a true sense and relish of God that can tame and master that rage of our insatiable and. restless desires which is still forcing us out of ourselves to seek some perfect good, which, from a latent sense of our own souls, we feel ourselves to want.

The foundation of heaven and hell is laid in men's own souls, in an ardent and vehement appetite after happiness, which can neither attain to it, nor miss finally of it, without a quick and piercing sense. Our souls are not like so many lumps of dead and senseless matter, they are not like these dull clods of earth which scent not the good or ill savour of those plants that grow upon them. Gain and loss are very sensibly felt by greedy minds. The soul of man was made with so large a capacity, that it might be better fitted to entertain a full happiness, that the Divine love and goodness might more freely spread itself in it, and unite it to itself. And accordingly, when it misses of God, it must feel so much the more the fury and pangs of misery, and find a severe pain arising out of its guilty conscience, which, like a fiery scorpion, will fasten its stings within it. And thus, as heaven, ’love, joy, peace, serenity, and all that which happiness is, buds and' blossoms out of holy and god-like spirits; so also hell and misery (were there no other hell,) will perpetually spring out of impure minds, distracted with envy, malice, ambition, self-will, or any inordinate loves to any particular thing.

This is that fatal law made in heaven, That holiness shall be happy, and vice and sin miserable. Holiness of mind will more and more attract God to itself, as vice will slide more and more from him. The more pure our souls are, the more sincerely will they endeavor the nearest union that may be with God, the more they will pant and breathe after him alone, leaving the chase of any other delight. There is such a noble and free-born spirit in true goodness, seated in immortal natures, as will not be satisfied merely with innocence, nor rest itself in this mixed bodily state, though it could converse with bodily things without sinking to a vicious love of then; but would always be returning to a more intimate union with that Being from whence it came, and which will be drawing it more and more to itself.

CHAP. 8:

A FOURTH DEDUCTION.

IV. The true Notion of Divine Justice,’ That the proper Design of it, is to preserve Righteousness, to promote and encourage true Goodness. That it does not primarily intend Punishment, but only as a Means to prevent Transgression.

In the fourth place, we may collect the notion of Divine justice, the scope whereof is nothing else but to assert and establish eternal law and right, and to preserve the integrity thereof; it is no design of vengeance which, though God takes on wicked men, yet he delights not in it. The Divine justice first prescribes that which is most conformable to the Divine nature, and mainly pursues the conservation of righteousness. We would not think him a good ruler that should give laws to ensnare his subjects with an even indifferency of mind whether his laws were kept, or punishments suffered; but such a one who would make the best security for right and equity by wholesome laws, and annexing punishments as a mean to prevent transgression, and not to manifest severity. The proper scope of justice seems to be nothing else but the preserving that which is just and right. The scope of that justice which is in any righteous- law, is properly to provide for a righteous execution of that which is just and fit to be, without intending punishment; for to intend that properly and directly, might rather seem cruelty than justice. And therefore justice takes not up punishment, but only for a security of performance of righteous laws, viz. either for the amendment of the person transgressing, or an example to others to keep them from transgression.

Again, justice is the justice of goodness, and so cannot delight to punish; it aims at nothing more than the maintaining and promoting goodness, and has always some good end before it, and therefore would never punish except some further good were in view.

True justice never supplants any, that it may appear more glorious in their ruins; for this would be to make justice love something better than righteousness, and to magnify itself in something which is not itself, but rather an aberration from itself. And therefore God himself so earnestly contends with the Jews about the equity of his own ways, with frequent asseverations that his justice is thirsty after no man's blood, but rather that sinners would repent, turn from their evil ways, and live. And then justice is most advanced, when the contents of it are fulfilled; and though it does not, and will not acquit the guilty, without repentance, yet the design of it is to encourage innocency, and promote true goodness.

CHAP. VIII.

THE LAST DEDUCTION.

V. That, seeing there is such an intercourse between God and Men, there is also some Law between them, which is the Bond of all Communion.” The Primitive Rules of God's Economy in this World, were not the sole Result of an absolute Will, but the sacred Decrees of Reason and Goodness. God could not design to make us sinful and miserable. Of the Law of Nature embosomed in Man's Soul, how it obliges Man to love and obey God, and to express a God-like Spirit and Life in this World.

The former deduction leads me to another, viz. ”That seeing there is such an intercourse between God and men, there is also some law between them, which is the bond of all communion.” God himself, from whom all law takes its rise, is not without all law, nor, in a sober sense, above it. Neither are the primitive rules of his economy in this world the sole result of an absolute will, but the sacred decrees of reason and goodness. I cannot think God to be so unbounded in his legislative power, that he can, make any thing law, that we may sometimes imagine. We cannot say indeed that God was absolutely determined, from some law within himself, to make us but 11 think we may safely say, when he had once determined to make us, he could neither make us sinful, seeing he had no shadow of evil within himself, nor lay up those dreadful fates within our natures; or set them over us, that might, arcana inspiratione, by a conceited influence, (as some are pleased to phrase it) secretly work our ruin, and silently carry us on, making use of our own natural infirmity, to eternal misery. Neither could he design to make his creatures miserable, that so he might shew himself just. These are rather the by-ways of cruel and ambitious men, that seek their own advantage in the mischiefs of other men, and contrive their own rise by their ruins: this is not Divine justice, but the cruelty of degenerated men.

But as the Divinity could propound nothing in the making the world but the communication of his own love and goodness; so he can never swerve from the same end in the dispensation of himself to it. Neither did God so boundlessly enlarge the appetite of souls after some all-sufficient good, that they might be the more unspeakably tortured in the missing of it; but that they might more certainly return to the Original of their beings. And such busy-working essences as the souls of men are, could neither be made as dull and senseless of true happiness as stocks and stones are, neither could they contain the whole sum and perfection of it within themselves: therefore they must also be informed with such principles as might conduct them back to him from whom they came. God does not make creatures for the mere sport of his almighty arm, to raise and ruin, and turn up and down at pleasure. No; the good pleasure of that will which made them is the same still; it changes not, though we may change, and make ourselves incapable of partaking the blissful effects of it.

And so we come to consider that law embosomed in the souls of men which ties them again to their Creator, and this is called, The law of nature; which indeed is nothing else but a paraphrase or comment upon the nature of God, as it copies forth itself in the soul of man.

Because God is the first mind and the first good, propagating an imitation of himself in such immortal natures as the souls of men are; therefore ought the soul to renounce all mortal things, and preserve its affections chaste and pure for God himself; to love him with an unbounded love; to trust in him, and reverence him; to converse with him in a free and cheerful manner, as one “in whom we live, and move, and have our being;” being perpetually encompassed by him, and never moving out of him; to resign all our ways and wills to him with an equal and indifferent mind, as knowing that he guides and governs all things in the best way.

And because all those scattered rays of beauty and loveliness which we behold spread up and down all the world over, are only the emanations of that inexhausted light which is above; therefore should we love them all in that, and climb up always by those sun-beams unto the eternal Father of lights. We should look upon him, and take from him the pattern of our lives, and always eyeing of him should polish and shape our souls into the clearest resemblance of him; and in all our behavior in this world, (that great temple of his,) deport ourselves decently and reverently, with that humility,, meekness, and modesty, that become his house. We should endeavor, more and more, to be perfect, as he is; in all our dealings with men, doing good, showing mercy and compassion, advancing justice and righteousness, being always full of charity and good works; and look upon ourselves as having nothing to do here but to display the glory of our heavenly Father, and frame our hearts and lives according to that pattern which we behold in the mount of a holy contemplation of him. Thus we should endeavor to preserve that heavenly fire of the Divine love and goodness, (which, issuing forth from God, centers itself within us,) always alive and burning in the temple of our souls, and to sacrifice ourselves to him. And when we fulfill this royal law, arising out of the heart of eternity, then we shall here appear to be”the children of God,” as our Savior speaks, Matt. 5:

We shall close up this particular with that high privilege which immortal souls are invested with: They are all the offspring of God; so St. Paul allows the heathen poet to call them. They are all royally descended, and have no father but God himself, being originally formed in his image and likeness; and when they express the purity of the Divine life in being perfect, as God is perfect, then they manifest themselves to be his children. And Christ encourageth men to seek and pray for the Spirit, (which is the best_ gift that God can give to men,) because he is their heavenly Father; much more bountiful and tender to all helpless souls that seek him, than any earthly parent, whose nature is degenerated from that primitive goodness, can be to his children. But those apostate spirits, that know not to return to the Original of their beings, but implant themselves into some other stock, and seek to unite themselves to another line by sin and wickedness, cut themselves off from this Divine privilege, and lose their own birth-right.

But here it may be of use to inquire into the reason of such laws as we call positive, which are not the eternal dictates of the Divine nature communicating itself to immortal spirits, but rather deduce their original from the free will and pleasure of God. The true intent of these positive laws seems to be to secure the eternal law of righteousness from transgression. They were but, cautionary and preventive of disobedience to that higher law. We may safely conclude that God gave not those positive laws merely pro imperio, not merely to manifest his absolute dominion and sovereignty, as some think, but for the good of those that were enjoined to obey; and this belief Moses endeavors, almost throughout the whole Book of Deuteronomy, to strengthen the Israelites in: and therefore God was so ready upon all occasions to dispense with these laws, and required the Jews to omit the observance of them, when they might seem to jostle with any other law of moral duty, or human necessity.

For a more distinct unfolding of this point, we may take notice of this difference in the notion of good and evil. Some things are so absolutely, and some only relatively. That which is absolutely good, is every way superior to us, and we ought always to be commanded by it: but that which is relatively good to us, may sometimes be commanded by us. Eternal truth and righteousness are in themselves absolutely good, and the more we conform ourselves to them, the better we are. But those things that are only good relatively, are so much the better, by how much the more they are conformed to us, I mean, by how much the more they are fitted to our condition, and may be means to help us in our pursuit of some higher good. And such is the matter of all positive laws, and the ritual part of religion.

What I have observed concerning the things absolutely good, I conceive to be included in that mentioned Dan. 9: “Everlasting righteousness,” which the prophet there says should be “brought in” by Messiah. This ,*, is the righteousness which is of an eternal and immutable nature, as being a conformity with eternal and unchangeable truth. For there is a righteousness which is not thus eternal, but positive, and at the pleasure of God that dictates it. And such was the righteousness which Christ said it became him to fulfill, when he was baptized. But the foundation of this” everlasting righteousness” is something unalterable. To speak more particularly,” That the highest good should be loved in the highest degree; that dependent creatures; who borrow all they have from God, should never glory in themselves, or admire themselves, but ever admire and adore that unbounded goodness, which is the source of their beings, and all the good they partake of; that we should always do that which is just and right, according to the measure we would others should do with us.” These, and some other things, which a rectified reason will easily supply, are immutably true and righteous; so that it never was, nor can be true, that they are unnecessary. And whoso path his heart molded into a delight in such a righteousness, and the practice thereof, bath this eternal righteousness brought into his soul; which righteousness is also true and real; not like that imaginary external righteousness of the law, which the Pharisees boasted in.

CHAP. 9:

The Conclusion of this Treatise concerning the Existence and Nature of God; spewing how our Knowledge of God comes to be so imperfect in this State.

For the concluding of this discourse, we shall a little consider how inconsistent a thing a perfect knowledge of God is with this state which we are in here. While” we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord;” as St. Paul speaks, and that, (I think) without a mystery. Such bodies as ours are, being fitted for an animal state, and pieces of this whole machine of sensible matter, are perpetually drawing down our souls, when they should raise up themselves by contemplation of the Deity; and the caring more or less for the things of this body, so exercises the soul in this state, that it cannot attend upon God without distraction. Such a body as this we carry about us, is the dark den and sepulchre in which souls are imprisoned and entombed; and Proclus tells us, that the abode of the soul in such a body as this, is, according to the common vote of antiquity, nothing else but “a dwelling or pitching its tabernacle in the valley of oblivion and death.” But Plotinus, searching more strictly into this business, tells his own and their meaning in plainer terms, that this body is an occasion of evil to the soul two ways; 1. As it hinders its mental operations, presenting its false images continually to it: 2. as it calls forth its advertency to its own passions, about which while it exercises itself, it falls into a sinful inordinacy.

Yet did not the Platonists, or the more contemplative Jews deny the existence of all kind of body in the other state, as if there should be nothing residing there but naked souls totally divested of all corporeal essence; for they held that the soul should, in the other world, be united with a body, not such an one as it did act in here, but such as should be most agreeable to the soul, which they called” the spiritual vehicle of the soul;” and by Zoroaster it was called a kind of umbra, or aerial mantle, in which the soul wraps herself, which, he said, remained with her in the state of glory.

But to return; the Platonists have pointed out a threefold knowledge of God, the last of which they affirmed to be unattainable by us, it being that ineffable light whereby the Divinity comprehends its own essence penetrating all that immensity of being which itself is. That is, that I may phrase it in the Scripture words,” a beholding of God face to face,” which is that arcanum facierum the Jewish writers speak of, which we cannot attain to while we continue in this bodily state. And so when Moses desired “to behold the face of God,” that is, as the Jews understand it, that a distinct idea of the Divine essence might be imprinted upon his mind, God told him,” No man can see me and live;” that is, no man in this corruptible state is capable of attaining to this sight of God, as Maimonides expounds it,” The understanding of the living man, who is compounded of body and soul, is utterly unable clearly to apprehend the Divine essence, to see it as it is.” And so St. Paul distinguishes the knowledge of this life as taken into this complex sense, and of the life to come: that” now we see in a glass,’ which is continually sullied and darkened, while we look into it, by the breathing of our passions and imaginations upon it: but we shall see” then face to face.” And in like manner does a Greek philosopher compare these two sorts of knowledge which the soul has of God in this life and in that to come.” The soul will reckon all this knowledge of God which we have here but like a fable or parable, when once it is in conjunction with the Father, feasting upon truth itself, and beholding God in the pure rays of his own Divinity.”