Of the Nature of the Divine Goodness.

HAving briefly explain'd the Nature and full Extent of Gods Sovereigne Prerogative, we come in the next place to give an ac­count of his Goodness and Benignity; of which Attribute we must be careful to assign such a no­tion as is not inconsistent with the former: Cheif­ly because the Idea of God consists mainly in Do­minion and Sovereignty; The notion of him in Scripture never refers to his Essence, but always to his Power and Empire; and the names by which he is there expressed do not so much denote his Nature, as his Supream and Almighty Prero­gative: for all his Appellatives (except Iah and Iehovah, which express his constancy and veracity) [Page 26] import only a Supream and Almighty Sovereign; so that the Scripture represents God under no o­ther notion, then as the Supream Lord and Sove­reign of the Universe; and therefore we must be wary of attributing any thing to him, that either lessens or quite destroys the freedom and uncon­troulableness of his Dominion; and may withal conclude, that no property which complies not with it, can be attributed to him, and consequent­ly that that's a false notion of his goodness, that in­terferes with his Dominion. And therefore they that assert Gods goodness to be a necessary Agent, that cannot but do that which is best, and so make all the Divine actions the necessary results of his goodness, directly supplant, and destroy all the rights of his Power and Dominion: For if all the effects of Gods power be the natural Emanations of his goodness, and depend not upon the free de­terminations of his will, it will follow that God can have no liberty or dominion in relation to them, because necessity is altogether inconsistent with the liberty or freedom of Sovereign power; Sovereign­ty bottoming upon a liberty and freedom of acting; For how can he that has no Power and Dominion over his own Actions, have power over any one else, for in that there can be no power without a liberty to use and exercise it, nor any exercise of power but by acting, it necessarily follows that [Page 27] that Agent that has no liberty or freedom of acting, is utterly uncapable of any Power or Dominion. And therefore if all Gods actions were the neces­sary Emanations of his goodness, it must necessa­rily destroy all the rights and liberties of his Sove­reignty and Dominion.

The Platonists assert, that Gods infinite goodness necessitates him to do always that w ^ch is best, [...], In Timaeo. (sayes Plato) and therefore that all the Divine works were produced by an irresistible necessity, and that he had no more power not to do what he has done, then the Sun has to withhold his influ­ences, or an overflowing fountain to keep back its streams. And upon this foundation they erect any Hypotheses that sute with their own fancies, but cheifly that of the Pre-existence of Souls: Because (say they) 'tis better they should Pre-exist, and therefore Divine goodness, which does always that which is best, must of necessity have given them a better and happier state of life and self-enjoy­ment, before they descended into these bodies. But these mens minds are so excessively possessed with thoughts of Gods goodness, as to neglect all his other Attributes, advancing it to such an exor­bitant Preheminence, as to make it not onely Usurp upon, and invade the Rights and Priviledges of other Attributes, but also to banish all other Per­fections [Page 28] from the Divine nature, and engross the Deity wholly to it self. For this notion of Gods goodness is most apparently inconsistent, not only with his Power and Dominion, but with all his o­ther moral Perfections. But in order to a further satisfaction herein, I shall give you a breif account of the Divine goodness, and shew it to be not a ne­cessary, but a free and self-moving Agent.

The Divine goodness then is of three sorts, either as 'tis taken for the perfection of his nature, or for the sanctity and holiness of his mind, or for the free bounty and beneficence of his will; Though the two latter are properly but branches of the for­mer; Justice and Beneficence being absolutely ne­cessary to the Infinite perfection of the Divine na­ture. The first sort I shall omit to discourse of, as being impertinent to our present purpose, and onely account for the two last, and first of the former.

Gods Sanctity or Holiness, is that natural or essential Goodness, whereby he cannot but act suitably to the excellence and dignity of his Ratio­nal nature: For the dignity of the Divine nature, consisting in Reason and Wisdom, this is prefer­ed the measure and rule of his Actions; and there­fore 'tis nothing else but that natural Justice, E­quity and Rectitude, which is the measure of all Gods transactions with his Creatures, and con­sists [Page 29] in doing every thing that right Reason requires, and not doing any thing, that it forbids. Now the Relation this Goodness has to the Divine Domi­nion, is to bound and regulate it in the exercise of its Rights and Liberties; because God has power to do any thing not inconsistent with it; so that the true way to find out how far the Divine Preroga­tive extends, is to discover what is repugnant to the Nature of goodness and equity; for every thing beside is subject to the free disposal of the Divine Will. Thus God cannot delight in the eternal miseries and calamities of Innocent Creatures, he cannot secretly resolve and take care that his crea­tures shall act those Impieties, which himself o­penly hates, forbids and threatens: he cannot lay upon us Impossible Commandements: he can­not violate his Faith, and not perform his Promi­ses, Oaths, and Covenants, because they are all of them essentially evil, and contrary to the Natural and Eternal Laws of Equity and Right Rea­son.

But Goodness, as its Equivalent with Benignity, Bounty, or Benificence, is a free, constant and ha­bitual propension of will to do Good. And being sea­ted in the Divine Will as one of its main Proper­ties, it must not be supposed to destroy the free­dome of its Nature, but rather to participate of it. For the Divine will is endued with the highest [Page 30] kind of Libertie, as it imports a freedome not only from Forreign Violence, but also from inward ne­cessity; For spontaneity or immunity from coaction without indifferency carrys in it as great necessity as those motions, that proceed from violence or me­chanism: and a Beast, that of its own accord goes to Pasture, would have as much Freedom as God has, if his actions were only spontaneous, and procee­ded not from a choosing and self-determining Principle. And therefore when I assert the Divine will to be Free, I mean that it is a Rational and Active Facultie, that has Power and Dominion over its own actions, and that can be determined only by its own intrinsick energie, in so much that all the external incentives requisite to its acting being supposed, it yet remains so indifferent and undetermined in it self, as that it is able either to exert or suspend its action. For unless the divine will enjoy this kind of freedom, it had as good have none at all, all other sorts of Libertie being fettered and determined by fatal Necessities. And the Fatalist do but loose their Labour, when they endeavour to invent ways of reconciling Liber­ty with Necessity, unless they can also make Indifferency consistent with it; because all neces­sity of what nature soever implies a detemin'd and unavoidable Fatalitie, which apparently destroys all the foundations of Religion and Moralitie; For [Page 31] necessity is not inconsistent with moral Goodness, because 'tis of this or that sort, but simply because 'tis necessity: for the only cause why a necessary Agent is not capable of Moralitie, is because 'tis not able to determine it self to Good or Evil, and consequently not capable of being directed and governed by Laws, Rewards and Punishments. For what other reason can there be imagined, why any Agent is incapable of being thus governed, then that it has no power and command over its own Actions, the Office of Laws being to enjoyn them, to whom they are prescribed, that they de­termine themselves to act according to their Pre­scriptions? But to require this of a principle void of any such power of self-determination, is as ab­surd as to require it of Stones & Trees, because the absurdity of both consists in requiring obedience, where there is no principle or capacity able to ren­der it. And therefore unless they can reconcile ne­cessity & indifferency so, as that the same Principle shall be necessarily determin'd to one extream, and yet remain so indifferent, as to be able, if i [...] please to determine it self to the other, it will be altogether fruitless to make other sorts of liberty not inconsi­stent with necessity. But this they can never do, unless they can bring the extreams of a contradi­ction together, and make it all one to be determi­ned and undetermined in reference to the same [Page 32] Action. Thus (for Instance) that Principle that is endued with no other Liberty, then what consists in meer spontaneity and immunity from violence is, without indifferency and a power of self-deter­mination, at as great a distance from moral Good or Evill, as it would be, if it were acted meerly by external force and violence, because the reason why that which is moved only by force, is not a principle capable of morality, is because it has no power at all over its own motion, and so is moved with a fatal and unalterable necessity, but a spontaneus or unforced Action, if it proceed not from an indifferent but necessary Agent, is as fatal, and as necessary, as if it were forced, and as little subject to the determination of the Prin­ciple, from whence it flows, as it would though it proceeded from a forreigne and violent one, and by consequence is equally incapable of mora­lity. And so that principle, which is not only at liberty from Co-action, but is also endued with Reason and Understanding is, without indifferency and a power of self-determination, not less unca­pable of moral Good and Evil, then that which is quite devoid of Rational faculties; because 'tis acted by an equal necessity. For if the Judgement and definitive sentence of the understanding be na­tural and necessary (as it not only is, but is also u­nanimously acknowledged to be) and if the wills [Page 33] following this Judgement be as natural and as ne­cessary as its self; then 'tis as extravagant to com­mand the will not to embrace the object commen­ded to it by the understanding, as 'tis to command the understanding to judge otherwise of it then it does, which is the same absurdity as to command the eye to see an object, after another manner then its represented to it, because they are both deter­mined by an equal necessity. From all which it follows by all the Laws of Inference, that if Gods goodness should take away the Indifferency of his will, it would certainly destroy not only his Free­dome, but all his moral Perfections and Accom­plishments: which is my first Argument.

2. If the Divine goodness or Benificence were a necessary Agent, it would not only destroy the na­ture of the subject, in which it resides, but also, what is more absurd, its own: for 'tis absolutely necessary to the nature of Beneficence and Good­ness, that it proceed from a free and elective prin­ciple. No courtesie can oblige, but what is free and chosen, and the obligation of benefits is only then acknowledg'd, when they are received from one, that had a power not to bestow them, for o­therwise they are owing not to his favour and good­will, but to chance or necessity. We make no re­turns of gratitude to the Sun for his kind visits, and benigne Influences, because his emanations [Page 34] flow from a bare necessity of Nature: And Io­shuah thank'd him not for standing still at his re­quest and interest: I should think it a strange So­lecisme in Courtship, if any one should make me retributions for a favour, that proceeded only from some necessity of nature & not from choise of will. Because the reason of the obligingness of benefits is, that they argue Benevolence and good Intentions in the donor towards the person, on whom he bestows them, but when they are the Issues of a necessary and unelective cause, they flow not from Good­will, and argue no benevolence in their Principle, but are the pure Results of Nature. And therefore if all the Communications of Gods goodness be necessary, they may argue the fulness of his nature, but cannot the goodness of his will, because that is founded upon choice and freedome. I have in my former reason endeavoured to evince that a neces­sity of acting, of what sort soever, is not capable of moral Good or Evil, because 'tis inconsistent with a Dominion over ones own actions, in which all morality is founded, for an Agent that has no power and command over its own Actions, and that acts because it must, whatsoever excellent and commendable effects it may produce, is as unca­pable of morality as those senseless Machins, that move by the Laws of matter and motion, because it produces its effects after the same manner as [Page 35] mechanical causes do, namely, by a necessity of na­ture. And if any artificial Automata were endued with deliberative, elective and self-moving Princi­ples, so as to have power over their own motions, they would in degrees of proportion be capable of doing well or ill, but because they have no elective and self-moving power, that's the Reason why their motions are uncapable of being good or evil; and consequently all causes, whose effects result from the same necessity of Nature, and that have no power, to restrain their emanations, are as uncapable of morality as these liveless Engines, be­cause they lye under the same incapacity. Now then Beneficence being a moral Excellency, it must loose its morality, and consequently its nature, when 'tis natural and necessary, and therefore if all the emanations of the Divine Bounty be such, it will unavoidably follow, that there is no such, vertue or Beneficence and Goodness in God, so that we may safely conclude that though the Com­munications of Gods Goodness to his Creatures be exceedingly agreeable to his Nature, yet to make them necessary and naturall Results, is by denying their being free, to deny their being Good.

3. God can never act contrary to his necessary and essential properties, as because he is essentially wise, just & holy, he can do nothing that is foolish, unjust and wicked. And therefore if Gods Beneficence [Page 36] and Bounty were so natural, as that all its exerti­ons were necessary, he could never act otherwise; but that he frequently does, as is evident in all the Instances of his Anger and Severity, which not only Reason but Scripture opposes to Benignity, Rom. 11. 22. Behold therefore the Goodness and Seve­rity of God; on them which fell severity; but towards thee Goodness. And Rom. 9. 13. Iocob have I loved, but Esau have I hated: The reason whereof is, v. 15. Because I will have mercy, on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion, on whom I will have com­passion. The sole cause then why God shewed greater bounty to Iacob then to Esau, was a free de­termination of his own will, without the interven­tion of any extrinsique motive to incline it: For v. 11. the Children were yet unborn, and had done nei­ther good nor evil, that the purpose of God according to Election [or choice] might stand. The Argument suggested by the Apostles Discourse, beside his express resolving Gods Beneficence into his free­will, is this, that if the flowings forth of Gods Goodness were necessary, then Esau must have been blest with as great expressions of favour as Iacob, because there could be no cause, that could make a difference: Not Gods Goodness, for its exertions being necessary, it would stream forth e­qually into equal Capacities, and therefore if they were equally capable, the emanations of the divine [Page 37] Goodness must have been equal, so that there was nothing could put a difference, unless the Persons themselves, but the difference was made before they could make it, viz. before they were born, or had done any good or evil, but were in all re­spects equal. The Spirit of God has recorded in Scripture almost as many instances of his severity, as of his clemency, because the exercise of these contrary vertues depends on his free will, which being indifferent to either, sometimes displays the one, and sometimes the other; whereas those at­tributes that are Physical and Necessary, are de­termin'd one way antecedently to the determinati­ons of his Will.

From all which premises, we see (1.) that Gods benignity, goodness, and beneficence, consist in a gracious Propensity to let forth the Commu­nications of his fulness to his Creatures, which be­ing lodged in the Divine will, does not only suppose its freedom, but is also subject to its determinati­ons, so that though it may incline, yet it cannot either command or destroy its liberty, because if it should, it would not only interfere with Gods moral accomplishmets, but would withal be inconsistent with it selfe. And therefore it rather approaches to the nature of a habit seated in the Divine will, then to the condition of an Essential faculty; whence a habit and custome of goodness and clemency are [Page 38] frequently attributed to God in Scripture, but on­ly acts and single instances of severity; for though contrary habits cannot lodge together in the same faculty, yet single actions of the one may sometimes issue from that Power, in which its contrary is en­tertained: and therefore though the expressions of Gods bounty be his usual and constant work, yet he sometimes lets forth the eruptions of anger and severity, though with some unwillingness and re­luctancy: for (Lament. 3. 33.) He does not willingly (or from his heart) afflict the children of men; and therefore the holy Ghost (Esa. 21. 21.) stiles it his strange work, as if by reason of its seldom exercise, he were unacquainted with it: so that though Gods inclinations to acts of Beneficence and Goodness be vastly great and vigorous, yet they are free, and depending upon the determinations of his will, and are upon this score consistent with Gods dealing sometime with us by more severe and rigorous measures, which God is pleased at certain seasons to dispense according to the unsearchable Counsels of his own will. (2.) That the Communications of Gods goodness consist in the use and exercise of his Dominion, for the good and benefit of his Creatures; for they being all originally nothing, all the advantages they enjoy to render their con­dition more desirable then Non-existence, are the free gifts and effects of Divine goodness, which be­ing [Page 39] free and unconstrained, has distributed its fa­vours with an infinite variety, having made innu­merable kinds of Beings, and endued them all with perceptive faculties and capacities proportion'd to their respective natures, and provided suitable ob­jects in order to their gratification, so that although he has, according to the free pleasure of his own will, created some in a more imperfect state then others, yet he has provided liberally for the happi­nesse of them all, having furnished each order with objects agreeable to their respective faculties, in the perception and enjoyment of which, consists all pleasure and satisfaction.

Now, if we will measure how large and ample the communications of Divine goodness are, they are as vast as free, Psal. 145. 9. The Lord is good to all, and his tender Mercies are over all his Workes. Psal. 38. 5, 6. Thy goodness (O Lord) reacheth to the Heavens, and thy faithfulness to the clouds. Thy Righteousness is like the great Mountains; thy Iudg­ments (or works of Providence) are a great deep; thou preservest man and beast, &c. i.e. Gods good­ness is of equal extent with his works, as vast and wide as the Universe, running through all parts of the Creation. But to speak only of that goodness which concerns our selves: how free and unstreit­ned have been the expressions of Gods bounty to mankind? Not to mention the pleasures and en­joyments [Page 40] of life it self, in which the Divine mu­nificence has made provision, not only for our ne­cessity, but for our delight and curiosity too; nor the great variety of perceptive faculties he has en­dued us with; nor the innumerable instancies of his Mercy, Clemency, Patience, Long-suffering to­wards the sons of men, his slowness and unwilling­ness to punish, and his readiness to pardon our Im­pieties; nor his demanding only such homage and service from us, as cannot be more our duty, then tis our happiness, with infinite more inestimable vouchsafements, and expressions of his tenderness and good inclinations towards mankind. I will on­ly instance in his rewarding that obedience that is our debt, with such great and inestimable blessings, viz. not only earthly and secular, but spiritual and eternal pleasures: He might have sent us into the world to act our parts a while, and have endear'd our duty to us only by its own appendant delights, and then have remanded us back into our pre-ex­istent state of not being: But that he should re­compence the bare discharge of our duties, with the rewards of Heaven and Eternity, is such a stupen­dious height of goodnesse, as not only puzzles con­ceit, but outreaches wonder and admiration. And yet that which enhances the value of the Reward, is not more its greatnesse then its freenesse, though some are so arrogant as to challenge a natural and [Page 41] necessary right in it: Arrogant, I say, because if it were our due, we must derive it not from Gods goodness, but from our own desert, for no­thing beside Gods goodness, can create us a right to future happiness, but our own Merits, which from a Creature to its Maker implies the greatest contradiction. And if in any respect Heaven be our due, God would be obliged by the natural measures of Equity to bestow it, and so our hap­pinesse would not derive from the free grant of Di­vine goodness, but from the prime and intrinsique Laws of Justice. For if there were any natural and eternal necessity that Happinesse should wait on Vertue, that the Vertuous are happy, would be no thanks to the Divine favour, because that cannot be an act of favour, which is demanded by Justice and natural Right. And therefore those passages in Scripture, that seem to make our fu­ture reward just and due, speak upon supposition of Gods gracious Promise and Covenant with mankind, as Heb. 6. 10. For God is not unrighteous, to forget your work & labour of love, which ye have shewed towards his Name. 2 Tim. 4. 8. Henceforth is laid up for me a Crown of Righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Iudge, shall give me at that day; and not un­to me only, but unto all them also that love his appear­ing. In which, and other passages, the assured hope of our future reward is therefore argued from Gods [Page 42] Justice, because 'tis essentially just that he should perform his Promises, and therefore, although Gods Promise or Covenant were not an act of Ju­stice, but of Grace, (for 'tis impossible for God to enter into any Covenant with his creatures, but a Co­venant of Grace) yet its performance, when made, is absolutely just and necessary, and that in which God cannot fail without gross deceit and falseness, he having engaged his Veracity to discharge all the debts of his Grace. And therefore (as some lear­ned Men have noted) this Justice in Scripture is promiscuously expressed by Justice, Truth, and Faithfulness, Rom. 3. 3, 4, 5. they are all used to express the same thing; And 1 Ioh. 1. 9. If we con­fess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins; Because if he be just and faithful, he will per­form his Promise.

If I were to prove the necessity of future Re­wards and Punishment, from the nature of any of the Divine Attributes, I should rather fetch my Arguments from the Attributes of Wisdom then any else; because they are (as might easily be evinced) so hugely useful, and well-nigh necessary to the Government of the World; whence the Rabins reckon Paradice and Hell among those se­ven Pillars, upon which they say God founded the world, supposing it could not subsist without them: But yet no one sort of means being absolutely ne­cessary [Page 43] to Almighty Power and Wisdom, in order to any end, God could have found out in finite ways to engage us to obedience, though he had never ac­quainted us with future Rewards and Punish­ments. So that whatsoever Rationalities may be drawn from the Divine Attributes, to prove a fu­ture state, yet it depending wholly on the Divine will, and the Divine will being absolutely free, we can have no rational inducements to bring us to any sufficient knowledge of it, but by a clear Revela­tion of the Divine will, and therefore God (to com­pleat the Instances of his Goodness) sent the bles­sed Jesus into the world to bring life and immor­tality to light, and to encourage us to Vertue and Goodness by greater Rewards then were before proposed to mankind. So that though we could enhance the expressions of Gods love and bounty to mankind, to their utmost pitch and value, yet we have just reason to conclude, that the peculiar and unequal'd eminency of the Divine benignity, con­sists not so much in the greatness, as in the freeness of its Emanations, as streaming forth from a foun­tain of free and self-moving Goodness.

Of the Preexistence of Souls.

THough the foregoing Discourses are as use­ful and important Theories as any in Divi­nity, (there being not any other Articles so univer­sally interested in Theological Speculations as these; nor any thing that has occasioned so much Errour and Ignorance in other points, as false and confused conceits, concerning these two grand At­tributes of Dominion and Goodness:) Yet they cannot be more important and concerning in them­selves, then they will be useful and necessary for the successful management of this ensuing discourse against Preexistence; because the most plausible Argument alleadged, on behalf of this Hypothesis, is grounded upon such mistaken notions of the Di­vine goodnesse, as I have already (I think) evident­ly enough disproved in what I have discoursed con­cerning that Attribute; so that I am so far before hand in the Dispute, as to have prevented the stron­gest Objection I am liable to be Assaulted with. This premised, I immediately proceed (1.) to give an account of the Hypothesis it self, and the grounds on which it bottoms; and then (2.) to give in my exceptions both against it and them. And that you may be sure of my faithfulness in the first, I will perform it as near as I can, in the very words [Page 45] of its most Peremptory assertours. Their account then is this,

That the Souls of men are not then first pro­duced, when they are united to the Bodies prepa­red for them by generation, but were created all at first in an incomparably more Blessed and Divine Condition of Life, then that they are now con­demned to in this sad Region of sin and misery, but that at several times and occasions by their Revolt from God & his righteous laws they forfeited their better life and condition, and so were thrust down into these terrestial Bodies, partly to be punished for their former prevarications, and partly that by acting their parts well here, they might recover that more happy state from which they lapsed into this. And this they endeavour to prove,

1. from the nature of Divine Goodness, which (say they) is constrained alwaies to do what is best; for the Souls of men being capable of eternall exi­stence and happiness backward as well as forward, and it being much better that they should have en­joyed the pleasure of their life and actions from eternal Ages, then either to have layn so long in the comfortless night of nothing, or to have been at first created in so mean and wretched a condition, as that is which they suffer in this Region of Death and Misery; and then God being infinitely good and gracious, and infinite Goodness doing by the [Page 46] same necessity that which is best, as infinite fire will necessarily burn whatever is combustible, if put to it, it clearly and unavoidably follows (say they) that they must have existed of old before they came into these Bodies.

2. From the Actions of Providence, which will not otherwise correspond to those holy Attributes in the Deity, Righteousness and Benignity, accor­ding to which he Governs and Orders the affairs of all the World. And this Argument they make use of two waies, viz. in respect of the place and time wherein we are born, and of the temper and disposition of the body, wherewith we are born.

As to the first of these, there is no man doubts but that education, institution, and company, are of such wonderful moment to the making us good or bad, as that where vice and wickedness are in use and practise, there seems little less then a necessity of swimming down in the stream of our Countrys Vices: And then the greatest part of the World having been always over-run with all manner of Lust and Barbarity, for God to send out of his pure and holy hands an immaculate soul, capable of living elsewhere, and fit for all virtue and heaven­ly Wisdom, into an habitation in such parts of the Earth, where reigns nothing but gross Ignorance and Vice by which she cannot fail without a mi­racle [Page 47] to be over-born, what is this, say they, but to betray his own off-spring unto unavoidable miseries?

As to the second of these they argue thus, seeing there are in mankind strange & fatal propensities to all manner of vice & wickedness, that flow from the very intrinsick constitution of their Bodies, how can it be consistent with the Goodness and Righteous­ness of God, the blessed spring of all virtue and Holiness, and tender lover of all his Creatures, to put innocent souls into such foul and untamed bo­dies, which so fatally and necessarily hurry them to that which alone of all things in the world he disapproves of, and which he knows will be their utter bane and miserable ruin.

And here some of them argue more particularly from the absurdity of the two opinions of the souls immediate creation, or seminal traduction; for if it begins neither of these waies, it must have pre­existed, therefore (1) against the first of them, they use the forementioned Argument, viz. that it seems inconsistent with the Goodness and Benig­nity of God, to put pure and immaculate spirits in­to such Bodys as will presently defile them, pervert all their powers and faculties, and incline them to all manner of vice and impiety. And then (2) a­gainst the second, viz. seminal Propagation of souls, they argue from the nature of the soul it self, for [Page 48] (say they) if the soul be generated then it must be made of the soul of the Parent, which is against the nature of an immaterial Being, the cheif proper­tie of which is to be indiscerpable. These are the most material considerations urged in behalf of Preexistence, others that either depend on these, or are less considerable, I shall have occasion to men­tion as I proceed, and withal, to replie to a few passages of Scripture, that for the better counte­nance of the business, they press to serve in the cause of this Controversie. Having given you this brief, but comprehensive account of the Hypothesis it self, I now proceed to give in my Exceptions.

First then, although I am not oblig'd by vertue of what I have discoursed in my fifth exception against the Platonick Philosophie, to oppose this Hypothesis by Counter-arguings, because 'tis out of the sphere of Humane knowledge, and to be ranked among Epicurus's [...], things meerly possible, and meerly contingent, and so is sufficiently confuted by destroying the grounds on which it stands, yet, to render my Triumph over it more full and entire, I shall make my first onset from an objection drawn from its ill corre­sponding with the divine Attributes of Wisdome, Justice, and Goodness, and that upon a twofold account.

1. In that it supposes God to inflict the severi­ties [Page 49] of his Justice without attaining the ends there­of; for to what purpose is it to inflict penalties upon any Person for offences, of which he is as ig­norant, as he could have been, though they had never been committed? For assign they what ends of Justice they please, this is most undenyably cer­tain that to punish a guilty Person, that is invin­vincibly ignorant of his sins, is as far from attaining the ends of Justice, as to inflict the same Punish­ments upon one that's guiltless, for if he has no knowledge of his miscarriages, he has the same rea­son to be faultless in his own esteem as he that is really so: But for God to chastise with the rods of his vengeance any Creature that is in the same condition with the Innocent and guiltless (in refe­rence to the ends of Justice and Punishment) bids not a less defiance to the Reputation of his Attri­butes, then to inflict the same Punishments upon one that never deserved it. I conclude therefore that if the calamities of this life were inflicted up­on us only as punishments of sins committed in an­other, Providence would have provided some effe­ctual means to preserve them in our Memories; and therefore because we find no remainders of any such Records in our minds, 'tis (I think) sufficient evidence to all sober and impartiall enquirers, that our living and sinning in a former state is as false as inevident.

[Page 50] 2. In that it would be an invincible Temptati­on to mankind to have hard and jealous thoughts of Gods dealings with them. For when they see themselves environed with miseries and punish­ments, and feel the heavie strokes of divine Anger, and yet are utterly ignorant that they have offen­ded him, what more just and reasonable grounds can they have not only to call in question but flat­ly to denie his Goodness and Equity. For if it will not comport with Gods Righteousness and Be­nignity to place us in these sad Circumstances we are in, unless thereby to punish us for our former prevarications (as the patrons of Preexistence fiercely and clamarously contest) when we know our selves to be in this sad plite, and yet are utterly destitute of all knowledge how we deserved it, what can we more naturally infer, then that God has, contrary to all the Laws of Justice and Equity, made us Wretched and Miserable? Should he take the most lewd and debauched Vilain upon Earth, and thrust him into the Dungeons of endless misery, but withal take away all sence and memo­ry of his former state and wickedness, would not that miserable wretch have just reason to exclaim against the Crueltie of his Maker, as supposing himself created in that sad & deplorable state? And suppose it possible for God to have produced any being in the same miserable condition the damned [Page 51] in Hell are supposed to suffer, that wretched Crea­ture might as well argue for a state of Preexistence, in which it had deserved the Torments it endures, as any other being, that finds it self in that forlorn condition, but is deprived of all knowledge of any former scene of Life? Now God cannot in Reason expect we should acknowledge his Justice and Righteousness contrary to his actings; and therefore if he has inflicted upon us those Calamities, that cannot justly be inflicted upon any but sinners, and yet not let us know we are such, what else can we conclude but that we innocents are unjustly doom'd to the sad and miserable Portion of the Wicked? Perhaps it would not be difficult to in­vent many other not inconsiderable Objections, but these are all that occurr to my thoughts at present, & all those I have met with in Authors are most lamentably frivolous and impertinent. And therefore I shall immediately pass on to the main and only needful part of my Task, viz. to evince the Groundlesness of this Hypothesis I oppose, for if I can shew the Ratiocinations from whence they conclude its Truth and Reality to be appa­rently vaine and frivolous, I shall thereby sufficient­ly evidence the vanity of the Hypothesis it self, as being built upon vain and trifling Pretences. But before I descend to their particular Examination, it will not be impertinent to observe,

[Page 52] 1. That it would be no difficult task to erect other much different or quite contrary Hypothe­ses. Methinks that purely Phisical account which Porphiry some where gives of the Souls descent into these Terrestrial Bodies, is as neat and handsome as the Origenian or Moral one, for as this de­rives our lapse Originally from our voluntary and chosen Immoralities, that other derives them meerly from a Physical necessity, which it illu­strates by this similitude. As a fruitful field, though it may for a certain period of years yield good Grain, yet at length it is exhausted and grows bar­ren, and then if sit be laid fallow though it brings forth nothing but weeds and tares, yet it thereby recovers its ancient vigour and fruitfulness; so our Souls having been for many ages impregnated with the seed of Divine Ideas, by degrees spent, them­selves in bringing forth large returns of contempla­tion, till at length their Intellectual powers decay­ing, the higher part falls into a swoon, and they can exert no acts but of Imagination, whence spring forth the powers of the Vegetal life, which cause in them strong and irresistible propensities to an union with these inferior and terrestrial Bodies, in order to the awaking of the higher Powers, for because every thing in the Etherial Regions is too calme and serene to awake them, they are therefore conveyed into this place of noi­ses [Page 53] and disturbance, and invessel'd in a body full of rude and impetuous passions, by which they may be chafed into life and sensation again. Or what if I would, out of a perverse humour of contradi­ction, assigne a quite contrary Hypothesis of Pre­existence, and as they will have this world a place of Punishment, and maintain the Soul came into it by lapsing from a happier and more excellent condition, so why may not I assert that 'tis a place of Reward, and that God sends us hither to re­ward our vertuous actions in a lower and less hap­py condition of life, or that they that had miscar­ried in a weaker and less advantageous state, might once more try their fortunes in better and more ad­vantageous circumstances? Which Hypothesis would be as much, and perhaps more consistent with it self, then the contrary. For seeing they will needs have it the design of Providence, in thru­sting the Soul down into this Region of Misery, to amend and reform, as well as chastise it, it seems much more consonant to effect this, by raising it to a more perfect state, then dooming it to a worse, for 'tis a very preposterous way to Reformation, to put the soul into such fatal propensities of sinning, (as they say 'tis in here;) this being the directest course utterly and irrecoverably to undo it. And now had I a mind to set up for a Maker of Hypo­theses, (which you see is but an easie trade) I might [Page 54] so trim and adorn this with artificial and affected Phrases, and so support it with a set of Theorems, Pillars, and Fundamental Principles, as to make it appear a competently handsome and well built Structure. And withal, I think it would be able to stand the shock of those Objections and Counter-evidences, that would shrewdly shake, if not ut­terly demolish the Origenian Hypothesis: But if any Origenist shall disapprove my Hypothesis, I only challenge him to confute it, for I am sure the like arguments will confute his own: and there­fore to shew him the Vanity of inventing ground­less and imaginary Hypotheses, I will be so cross-grain'd as not to abandon mine, as long as he shall persist peremptory in his.

2. The second thing I am to observe, is, that they (which is the usual oversight of unwary dis­putants) dispute not more against their Adversaries then themselves, in that the Arguments they use to destroy all other Hypotheses and confirm their own, do as evidently oppose it as them. For their own account of our descent into this world is, that 'tis onely a merciful provision and contrivance of the infinite Wisdom and Goodness of God (the end of all whose Councils is his Creatures Happinesse) to put lost and delinquent Souls into a capacity of acting their parts anew, Lux. Orient. p. 41. that so, so many of his excellent creatures, might not be lost [Page 55] and undone irrecoverably, but that they might be in a condition to recover the old happiness of their Celestial state. Now is it not highly derogatory to the in­finite and unbounded Wisdome of God, that he should detrude those souls, which he so seriously designs to make happy, into a state so hazardous, wherein he seeth it to be ten thousand to one, but that they will corrupt and defile themselves, and so make them­selves more miserable here, and to Eternity hereafter? A strange method of Recovery this, to put them into such a fatal necessitie of perishing. 'Tis but an odd contrivance for their Restauration to happiness, to use such means to compass it, which tis ten thou­sand to one but will make them infinitely more mi­serable. This is such a contrivance of Mercy, that puts us in a worse condition, then it abandons the Devils to, for if the conditions of our Recovery be so near being impossible, our state is as bad as theirs, and if the non-performance of these condi­tions be punisht with greater penalties, 'tis worse. Better be abandon'd to an eternal dispair, then have hopes to be rescued onely by such means, as 'tis ten thousand to one but will exceedingly encrease our Torment and Misery. The Account of Orig. &c. pag. 27. Again, If we call to mind the sad accounts we have met withal in History, of times and places almost all the world over, over-run with all manner of barbarity and lust, adopted even into their Laws, and [Page 56] practised in their most solemn Religions, how can we but think that the Soul then and there born and living, is inevitably condemned to all Iniquity and Impiety? But can we imagine that infinite Wisdom seriously pur­poses to restore us to our ancient. Holiness and Pu­rity, when it places us in such a state, in which we are inevitably condemned to all Iniquity and Im­piety? If God had contrived to betray us into all manner of vice and wickedness, how could he more effectually have accomplish't it, then by putting us into such a condition, as should inevitably condemn us to all Iniquity and Impiety? That Father would take a strange course to reform a debauch'd and wretchless Child, that should go about to ef­fect it by abandoning him to the Society of Ro­gues and Villains. Pag. 28. For God therefore to send an immortal Soul (whose happinesse is his greatest design and contrivance) into an habitation in such parts of the Earth, where reigns nothing but gross ig­norance and vice, by which she cannot fail without a miracle to be over-born, what is this but to betray his own off-spring (for he is the Father of Spirits) unto unavoidable misery, whilest he pretends to plot and contrive their happiness, and so govern the world with less prudence, then an ordinary discreet man would do. Once more in their own words, Pag. 35. I would aske them whether or no the condition of our nature consi­dered, the strong inclinations naturally to that which is [Page 57] evil, and those strengthned and further confirmed for se­veral years before we can come to have any considerable use of our Reason, or arrive to any command over our selves. Lastly, the way and manner how the Elections of our will are performed, which we never find free, where there is a custome or passion against it, and how corporeal motions determine the thoughts and passions of our minds; I ask them whether these things being con­sidered, it be not hundreds to one odds, that we shall choose the ways of Vice rather then Vertue? Or let the proportion be as little as they can with any colour pre­tend, they cannot clear the Wisdom and Discretion of Divine Providence by their Hypothesis, which thrusts the Spirits (it intends to make for ever happy) into so great a danger of being defiled and corrupted by the passions of the Body, and of soundly smarting for it hereafter. Thus you see what strong Objections, the Arguments they urge with most noise and cla­mour, are against themselves, if therefore these Phaenomena be inexplicable without the Origenian Hypothesis, they are so too with it; and if so, then the result of all is, that they are not so much Ar­guments of Preexistence, as Aspersions of Provi­dence. For whatever Hypothesis is true, they charge Gods Transactions with mankind either of Injustice or Folly; and therefore I shall attempt their solution not so much to oppose the Hypothe­sis of Preexistence, as to vindicate the Divine Pro­vidence [Page 58] from so many contumelious and unworthy Reproaches. After these more general conside­rations against the Hypothesis it self: I come now to a particular Examination of the Arguments on which 'tis founded.

First then, as for that strong Demonstration (as they stile it) taken from the Nature of Gods good­ness, which they suppose constrain'd to do always that which is best, 'tis so fully, not only answered, but confuted, in what I have already discoursed, of the nature and extent of Gods Goodness and Do­minion, that to subjoyn any formal Reply, would be but a needless and troublesome Repetition. For having made it apparently evident, that any state, better then that of Non-existence, may be the ob­ject of Gods Dominion, and the effect of his Goodness; every condition of Being, preferable to that of Not-being, is not onely consistent with the Divine Goodness, but a Product of it; and therefore if they will make good this Argument drawn from the Divine Goodness for their Hypo­thesis, they must first either disprove the Truth and Validity of my preceding discourses, or else make it appear that the condition of Souls in this life is more deplorable and less desirable, then the state of Annihilation. And when they shall have done either, they will deserve a farther reply, but not till then.

[Page 59] And yet I cannot forbear to super add this one Consideration more, viz. that the boundless In­finity of the Divine Goodness is consistent with the existence of different Ranks and Orders of Crea­tures, God being not constreined to make every Creature the most Perfect he can, for then there would have been but one sort of Beings, viz. the highest and most consuminate Rank of all, where­as we see the World replenish'd with divers species of Creatures, some more, some less perfect. Now, if notwithstanding the Infiniteness of the Divine Goodness, there may be various kinds of Creatures of various and unequal Perfections; then what ne­cessity or Reason imaginable is there, the Divine Goodness should be constrain'd to let forth its lar­gest Emanations to mankind; for why may not our species be of an inferiour Rank in the Order of Beings? And if so, then what necessity is there we should be endued with all possible Perfections? Are there not several Ranks of Spirits or Immaterial Beings? And are not the Assertors of Preexistence the most Zealous Patrons thereof? And do they not Marshal the Souls of Men in one of the lowest and most imperfect Orders, as being united to the grossest and most ignoble Body, viz. Terrestrial matter, whilst all the rest reside in Bodies of Aire or Aether? and therefore for men to deem the Di­vine Goodness less infinite, because its Communi­cations [Page 60] are not so great to them as they are to o­thers, is as absurd as it was for the Figs in the Fa­ble, that complain'd to Iupiter, because he had not made them Grapes. Again, why might not all these several Ranks of immaterial Beings be at first created in the same estate they are in at present, without lapsing from a higher to a lower condition of life, as well as several sorts of material creatures, which were at first disposed in the same order they still hold? If God could, his Goodness notwith­standing, create such an innumerable variety of In­sects, which are but imperfect and half Animals; then why might he not also, notwithstanding the same Goodness, create among spiritual Essences a species not more perfect then humane Souls? For if the boundlesness of Gods goodness does not hin­der but that some Creatures may exist in a much more imperfect Condition then others, then neither can it hinder but that the Souls of men might be placed in a much lesse perfect con­dition then other immaterial Beings. From all which it followes, that it cannot with the least pretence of Reason, be argued from the Nature of Gods Goodness, that the Souls of men did once preexist in the happiest state, which Beings of their Nature are possibly capable of enjoying. As for their Arguments taken from the Provi­dence of God, their whole force Centers in this [Page 61] one difficulty, that God has not taken sufficient care for the happiness of his Creatures, but has left them too obnoxious to Sin and Miserie; now to assoil and clear this Objection, I need only evince that the Divine Providence has made not only suf­ficient but large provisions for the Happiness of Mankind. But I shall not be content nakedly to answer their Objections, unless I can confute them too; In order to which, I shall undertake to do these two things, (1.) To propose a plain and easie Hypothesis, that gives a rational and satisfactory account of all the forementioned Phaenomina of Providence. And then (2.) To shew that Man­kind is not only endued with such Faculties, by the use whereof he may arrive at the highest de­grees of Vertue and Happiness; but also that we have the greatest Endearments and Advantages in the world, to engage and assist us in a diligent and vigorous prosecution thereof.

My Hypothesis is this, That it has pleased Pro­vidence to place mankind here in an immature and more imperfect state, that so we might in a way congruous to free and rational Agents by degrees be fitted for, and at length arrive at a better and more raised condition of life. As in nature all things commence their Beings in a rude and immature state, and make orderly progressions, to farther de­grees of maturity, 'till they arrive at the utmost [Page 62] perfections their Beings are capable of; so is man­kind Created and born into the World as it were in the Spring, in a Budding and Blossoming season, that so we may by proceeding forward in the dif­fering Periods of our lives, grow up to higher and more excellent Capacities, till at length we ripen into a state of maturity and perfection. Our na­tures are at first somewhat rough-cast, to the end that they might be refined and polished by Vertue and Religion; so that 'tis the main (and perhaps only) designe of Religion to perfect and advance our Natures, and make us capable of a higher and more noble condition of life. Now I need not de­claim and expatiate upon the neatness and consi­stency of this Hypothesis, when we know by ex­perience that 'tis the way and method pitch'd upon by Providence to conduct mankind to its Perfecti­on, it being an Oeconomy hugely agreeable to all the designes and purposes of Religion, the Natural tendency whereof is to raise us to higher Capaci­ties and nearer approaches to the Divine Nature. This gives a more general Reason of the present, low and imperfect condition of mankind, but that I may give a more certain and perspicuous account thereof, and more close to the main Origenian objection ( viz. why God should put pure and im­maculate Souls into these disorderly Bruitish Bo­dies) I shall make my Hypothesis more distinct and particular.

[Page 63] Mankind then is an order of Beings placed in a middle state between Angels and Brutes, made up of contrary principles, viz. Matter and Spirit, en­dued with contrary Faculties, viz. Animal and Rational, and encompass'd with contrary Objects proportion'd to their respective faculties, that so they may be in a capacity to exercise the Vertues proper and peculiar to their compounded and he­terogenial Natures. For the perfection of humane Souls does not consist in an effeminate Beauty, and Physical proportions, but in a manly courage and moral accomplishments, as at the Olympick Games there was no regard had to Beauty and Neatness, they only were capable of honour and reputation, who had courage and patience enough to combate. And the life of man in this world is nothing else but an Olympick exercise, God ha­ving placed us here not to admire the native Beauty and Perfection of our Beings, but to exercise our selves in the conflicts and difficulties of Vertue; therefore the worth and praise of the Soul, consists in a Braveness and Gallantry of Spirit, when it scorns to be usurp'd upon by those faculties that ought to obey her, and checks and controules all their unruly and tumultuous exorbitances by her own sovereign and imperial Laws, and resolutely defends its own Authority and Prerogative against all the furious and rebellious attempts of Passion [Page 64] and Concupiscence. And therefore though humane Souls be capable of subsisting by themselves, yet God has placed them in Bodies full of bruitish and unreasonable Propensions, that they might be capable of exercising many choice and excellent Vertues, which otherwise could never have been at all; such as Temperance, Sobriety, Chastity, Patience, Meekness, Equanimity, and all other Vertues that consist in the Empire of Reason over Passion & Appetite, Religion is common to Men and Angels, appertaining to them purely as Spirits, but Vertue is proper to man alone, and belongs to him as a Being made up of contrary principles, whence spring contrary desires and inclinations, in the good or bad Government whereof consists the Nature of Vertue and Vice, & upon this score 'tis that Vertue is never attributed to God, because be­ing of a simple & purely spiritual nature, he has no unruly passions and sensual Appetites to Govern.

And therefore the Platonists, though they place all Intellectual Vertues [...] in the abstracted Soul, yet they will have all moral ones reside [...] in the Composition, denying the naked Soul to be capable of moral Good or Evil, these belonging only to the whole which results from Soul and Body; [...] saies Plotinus. And this (by the way) is their meaning, when they unanimously resolve that grand perplexing en­quiry [Page 65] [...] into the terrestrial Hyle; because our material Principle, by reason of its intrinsique dulness and stupidity, naturally hinders and ob­structs the intellectual efforts of the mind, and in­clines it to the love of material and sensual objects, which if it suffer it self to be so far immerst into matter as to persue only or chiefly the satisfaction of its gross and sottish Propersities, thence natu­rally spring all those Irregularities that pass under the name of Moral Vices. And this account of the Origine of Evil, is not so devoid of Reason, as some Learned men would perswade us. For (1) it does not (as is objected) make matter to be essen­tially evil, but rather the occasion thereof from its extra essential union with the soul. Nor (2▪) does it make the existence of evil natural and necessary, for it dos not assert that it results from the nature of matter (as they would make us believe) but only an accidental effect thereof after its union with the soul, in that from the sluggishnesse of its na­ture, it inclines the soul to the love of gross and material objects; and if the soul be so carelesse as to yeild to its inclinations, it becomes the voluntary cause of its own evil. But you will think my Pen very unruly if it be so apt to flie out into Digressi­ons, when 'tis in so great speed, and therefore I return.

Now because the nature of Vertue consists in [Page 66] the minds governing the Bruitish and Animal ap­petites and motions of the body, Providence has furnish'd it with instruments convenient for that purpose; for having its principal and commanding residence [...], where the Nerves that convey all motions and impressions backward and forward, have their Original, 'tis able by its immediate in­fluence upon them to command and bridle all the Animal motions of the Body. Thus because all ex­cess of Passion consists in an irregular motion of the blood; the Nerves (which the soul uses as its reins) are twisted about the veins and arteries, that so by contracting them, it may be able to refrain and check the Impetuosity of the Bloods motion, and consequently curb the eager and unruly passion; as when for example such an object is presented to us, that naturally provokes to anger, which main­ly consists in a violent ebullition and fervor of the blood about the Region of the Heart, which vio­lently hurrying from thence into the Brain, disor­ders the motions of the Spirits there, and so by confounding the phautasms that lodge therein, di­sturb all its conceptions and operations; then does it concern the Soul to abate and cool this unruly heat, which is effected by restraining the violence of the Torrent, which is effected by its influence upon those Nerves that are the passage and high way from the Brain to the Heart. And therefore [Page 67] the Providence of nature has made a peculiar passage for commerce between the Head and the Heart in Man, V. Willis Cereb. Anat. cap. 26. where it has made none in Beasts, viz. whereas the Praecordia of Beasts are furnished with nervous branches only from the Par vagum to supply the vital functions with spirits, in man there are peculiar large branches, derived from the Intercostal Nerve into the same region, only for a way of commerce between the Brain and the Heart, and passage of the Animal spirits from the one to the other, as need shall require. In so much that we may define Prudence and Virtue to be nothing else but a due commerce between the Brain & the Heart (which Plotinus only expresses more abstra­ctedly, when he describes it to be [...]) of which the fore-cited machless Au­thor supplys us with a clear Example, viz. that dissecting a Changeling or Natural Fool, the chief defect he could discover in him was, that this Plexus of the Intercostal Nerve, which is proper to the body of Man, and is the way of commerce for the Animal spirits between the Heart and the Brain was exceeding small, and its branches very thin. By reason whereof, his Soul could have but very little command over his Passions and Appe­ties, in the impotency and irregularity whereof consists the nature of Folly.

[Page 68] The result of all is this, that mankind is com­pounded of contrary Principles, endued with con­trary desires and inclinations, to the end that there might be an order of Beings in the world (without which there would perhaps have been one Species wanting to compleat the Universe) capable of all those Heroick Vertues, which consist in the Empire of Reason over the brutish and sensual Fa­culties. As also that by the right use and emprove­ment of our superiour Powers, we might be raised to greater Capacities, and qualified for higher and more divine Accomplishments. So that man seems to differ from the Angels only in this, that he must by conquest and industry win the happiness, which is entail'd on their Natures; for when we be­come [...] in our dispositions, we shall be made so too in our enjoyments; the Divine Goodness having graciously appointed, that when the Soul is so far advanced in Vertue, as to live above the reach of all its Passions and Desires, that then it shall be translated into a more free and disintangled state, where it shall be neither enticed nor vex'd with the importunity of these lower and bruitish Appetites, but shall enjoy the Serenity and Pleasures of a pure and intellectual Being, as the Reward of its for­mer Pains and Industry. As on the contrary, when any man suffers his Passions and Brutish Appetites [Page 69] to beat Reason out of its Throne, and to run head­long into an ungovernable Anarchy, he degenerates from humanity, grows incorrigible in sin, and sinks so deep into the Animal life, as to be made unca­pable of acting Vertuously, and suitably to the ends of his Being; and thence is congruously doom'd to the Portion of degenerate and apostate Spirits, as being fit for nothing else. So that the whole designe of Providence, in sending us into this world, is only that we may in a way congruous to ratio­nal Agents, prepare our selves for another; and therefore the Souls of men shall at their departure hence, be stated in a condition proportion'd to their good or bad Qualifications. I am apt to be posi­tive and dogmatical in this Hypothesis, not so much because it gives a rational and satisfactory account of Gods sending pure and innocent Souls into Bo­dies full of brutish and irregular Inclinations, as be­cause it exactly agrees with the Condition of our Natures, with the natural tendency of Vertue and Religion, and with the whole Oeconomy of Provi­dence in conducting mankind to their future hap­piness. Not to mention its consonancy with Saint Pauls Hypothesis, in his Account of the Civil and Intestine War between the law of the Mind and the law of the Members.

And now having laid my Hypothesis, I come to shew (1.) that mankind is endued with such fa­culties, [Page 70] by the use whereof, he may attain to the highest degrees of Vertue and Happiness; (2) that we have the greatest endearments and advantages in the world to push us forward to a diligent and vigorous Prosecution thereof. And if Vertue and Happiness be in our own power, and if we are in­vited to pursue and endeavour after them by the greatest endearments and perswasions, then certain­ly Providence has placed us in a sufficient capacity of being happy, and if it happen that we should at last be abandoned to Misery, we must owe it to our own choice and prodigious folly.

1. First then, Mankind is furnished with such faculties, by the use whereof he may arrive at Ver­tue and Happiness. To evidence this, I require no other Postulatum, then that which is the great foun­dation of all Religion and Morality, viz. that the Mind of man is endued with Reason and Under­standing, able to discern the essential differences of Good and Evil; and with Liberty and Election, able to choose and pursue the one, and eschew the other. This (I say) is a Postulatum so just and e­vident, as that it cannot be denyed without de­stroying not onely the Nature of Good and Evil, but of Man himself; For if in any thing we differ from Brutes, 'tis in the Reason and Liberty of our minds, all our other faculties we have in common with them, 'tis these alone that are the peculiar [Page 71] Prerogatives of humane Nature, and therefore with­out them we may be Sheep or Oxen, but not Men.

However these are the efficient Causes and neces­sary Foundations of all Morality; for no Action can be morally Good or Evil, but what we can choose, and concerning which we can deliberate, because without them all our Actions would be either Casual or Fatal, and the meer Issues of Chance or Necessity, and by consequence, as un­capable of being moral, as those motions that re­sult purely from Mechanical Powers, as I have al­ready (I think) demonstrated, in what I have dis­coursed concerning the Freedom of the Divine Goodness. And now, if the mind of man be a de­liberative and elective Principle, able to discern be­tween Good and Evil, Happiness and Misery, and to choose the one and refuse the other, then 'tis at its own choice, and in its own power to be Ver­tuous and Happy; for no body questions but that Goodness and Happiness are much more eligible then Vice and Misery, and therefore if men are a­ble to discern, and choose that which is best, their [Page 72] Happiness and Misery depend upon their own wills and their Portion, whether good or bad, is the re­sult of their own choice; and certainly they that can be vertuous and happy if they will, are in a fair capacity of being so.

From hence it follows, that the mind and ratio­nal part of man is Superior and Predominant, not only endued with Power, but also invested with Authority to Govern the inferiour and brutish part, which is of a slavish and servile nature, and made to obey. Reason is uppermost, and has the bri­dle in its own hands, and is strong enough to ma­nage the wildest and most untractable Passions. There's no appetite within us uncontroulable, no inclinations so strong and fatal, which reason cannot master; natural Propensities can only tempt, but not command our Souls; they may encline, but can­not force them; and our minds are never vanquish­ed, but when they betray themselves. Briefly, none of the charms of Concupiscence are so power­ful and irresistible, but that Wisdom and Discre­tion can easily dissolve and disenchant them. The Truth and Reality whereof, I thus Argue, Either the rational Part of man is able to command the lower Appetites, or 'tis not; if it is, then is he suf­ficiently able to live well and happily, because Vertue and Happiness are obtain'd by living up to Reason, and being conducted by its Laws and mea­sures; [Page 73] and therefore if our superiour Powers are able to give check and controule to our brutish Lusts and Passions; 'tis in our own Power to attain to vertue & happiness. But if the Superior part be not strong enough to Govern the Inferiour, it destroys the very Being and Existence of Good and Evil, and renders mankind utterly uncapable of Goodnesse and Morality. For (1.) our Irrational faculties are unanimously acknowledged to be uncapable of Moral goodness, because they are acted purely by a necessity of Nature; and their Exertions, like the Appetites of Brutes, and the Motions of Arti­ficial Engines, result meerly from the Mechanical Powers of Matter. And hence 'tis that our Im­perate Actions (i.e. those that do not issue imme­diately from the Will it self, but are exerted at its command, by some of the inferiour faculties that owe it subjection) are devoid of all moral Capa­cities, as considered abstractedly in themselves, or as proceeding from their immediate Cause, and without respect to the wills Authority, because when so considered, they are not free and volun­tary; and therefore their being Morally good or evil, is entirely derived from the Will, because they act only in obedience to its Commands. Nor (2.) would our Rational faculties in this case, be capa­ble of Morality, as being fatally determined by the stronger and irresistible motions of Lust and Passi­on; [Page 74] But the Actions that proceed meerly from force and forreign Violence, are of all others least capable of being moral, because they do not only not issue from a free and self-determining Princi­ple, which is the greatest and most necessary foun­dation of all Morality, but also because they are not at all determined from their own Principle, but are forced thence barely by the Power of an exterior Agent. Besides this, the moral Goodness our Superior faculties are capable of, would consist in their Commanding and Governing the Inferiour, but if they are not able to master and rule them, they cannot be supposed to be enjoyn'd to governe them, because nothing can be obliged to impossi­bilities; and therefore if our Superior Powers are commanded to govern the Inferiour, they must have strength enough to do it. Wherefore, how­soever fatal and boisterous our Bruitist propensions are, if there be any such thing as Religion and Mo­ral goodness in the world, they must be subject to the command and discipline of our Superior and Governing faculties. From all which 'tis evident, by a plain and undeniable deduction, that mankind, notwithstanding the force of their brutish Inclinati­ons, is placed in a fair capacity of living well & hap­pily, which utterly destroys all the forementioned Arguments alleadged from this Phaenomenon of Providence, on the behalf of Preexistence.

[Page 75] As for the other part of their Argument, taken from the customary Vices and Impieties of the World, viz. seeing that Custome and Education have a great influence upon the manners of men, to make them good or bad, as also that the greatest part of the world has been always over-run with all manner of lust and barbarity; for God to send an Immaculate Soul into an habitation into such parts of the Earth, where reigns nothing but Vice and Wickedness, by which she cannot fail without a Miracle to be over-born, is to betray his own of­spring unto unavoidable Misery. 'Tis an objecti­on sets too mean a value upon humane Nature, and supposes mankind no better then Mushrooms, as if all men were but so many Engines moved by the wheels of Custome, and had not faculties within them able to discern of the good and evil of Cu­stomes, as well as of other things. I confess cu­stome has acquired great Power and Authority o­ver the life of Man; because the lives of most men are disposed of by chance and casual Principles, they pursue those things with which custome pre­sents their Fancies, without ever deliberating of their Goodness and Decency. You know who has Pictured mankind comming into the World upon Hobby-horses; and truly (Sir) the Emblem would perhaps have been as true, if he had represented most of them going out so. Seneca long since com­plain'd, [Page 76] that the World was not govern'd so much by Reason, as by Custome; Men accounting that most Honest, which is most in Practise; and Error when it becomes Publick, becomes Truth. Cu­stome is almost every where so confident, as to out­face Reason, and charge it of singularity, as indeed the Wisest men are the greatest Rebels to her Usurped Empire, whilst she rides upon the shoul­ders of the People, who are almost universally, not only, her Slaves, but her Idolaters: For the rude and vulgar sort of people, every where, judge of things barely by their conformity to the Modes and Fashions of their own Country, and esteem all for­reign Customes and Usages inept and barbarous, purely for their disagreement with their own Do­mestick manners; and therefore I account the Boors of Attica, and the common people of Greece (in its most refined age) not less barbarous then the wild and unpolish'd Scythian, because they were e­qually Idiotical, and lived by no other Rule then Prescription, preferring the Customes of Greece, as the Standard of Decency, and judging of the good­ness of things by their Correspondence with the Manners and Fashions of their own Country, and condemning all strange and forreign usages of bar­barity, because they agreed not with the Munici­pial laws and customes of the Town they lived in. But the plain and evident Reason of all this is, be­cause [Page 7] the Idiotical sort of Mankind are Fools, and live below the dignity of their Natures. For cer­tainly Reason ought to take the upper hand of pre­scription, & men that are wise & considerate [i.e. those that live as becomes men) will examine the nature & reasonableness of customs, & not relie upon their Warrantie till they are satisfied of their Goodness, and adopt only those which they judge to be inno­cent and laudable. Opinion is the guid of Fools, and to yield ones self up to the Government of Custome is one of the the grossest instances of Folly; and 'tis but a silly Apologie for fond or vicious Practices, to plead that 'tis the Custome of the World: For no man can tamely resigne up the Authority of his Judgment to the power of this little Monosyllable Tyrant (as Erasmus accor­ding to the quibling wit of his age terms Mos) un­less he renounce his allegiance to his Reason, & live the life of brutes that alwaies follow one another for company. And therefore if Custome be the Empress of the world, tis because men delight in slavery, and abandon their Liberty to live in Chains, for if they would continue faithful to their own faculties, and own no other guide but their Reasons, (which doubtlessly is the prime and fundamental duty of mankind) they would scorn to suffer themselves to be oppressed and imposed upon by so silly a thing as Custom. So that if men would but live suitably [Page 78] to their Rationall Natures, the corrupted and vicious manners of the Age and Place they live in, could have no Influence upon their Practices; for Custom is a thing without us, of the good or evil, whereof we are as well able to judge, as of other things, (for we are not Parrots, but men born with rational Faculties) and therefore if we impotently permit our selves to be seduced by it, we act un­worthy the Faculties God has given us, and so deservedly forfeit the Happiness that is due to our Rational Nature. Here I might argue that if mens Reasons were not able to bear them up against the Torrent of their Countries Vices, it could be no crime to be borne down by the violence of the stream, but I have already prevented my self in this, in what I have argued concerning the predominan­cy of our Rational Part over our lower Appetites; for how great soever the power of Custom may be, it cannot be more forcible then natural Inclina­tions, and 'tis much more easie to devest our selves of superinduced habits, then to alter that which is radicated in our Natures; and therefore if we are able to correct the Vicious inclinations that flow from the structure and composition of our Bodies, we are much more able to reclaim or quit those vicious habits, we have contracted only by casual and accidental usages. We esteem it indeed a migh­ty business for any man to discharge his mind from [Page 79] the prepossessions of Custom and Education be­cause 'tis so rarely practised; but if we consider the nature of the thing it self, nothing can appear more easie and practicable; in that all men are en­dued with rational and reflecting Faculties, and no action costs less pains then a reflecting thought, and nothing more obvious and palpable then the different Natures and Consequences of Vertue and Vice; and therefore every man that does not choose a stupid In-advertency may with an ordina­ry dilligence disabuse himself from all the false and groundless Preconceptions of a customary Belief; Superinduced disciplines may corrupt, but cannot evacuate our natural Faculties, and therefore though they may delude and inveagle our Infant Reasons, yet when we are grown to an Age capa­ble of Rellishing morality, 'tis then as easie to ca­shire all absurd Customs, as it was before to be cajol'd by them. As the Earth may steam forth vapours gross enough to cloud the Sun, and for a­while check the radiations of his light, yet the energy of his Rays will at length vanquish, and in spite of all their Resistance break through the thickest of those benighting clouds, and enlighten that Globe, which endeavour'd to darken him; And thus though Custom, Prejudice, and Education, may for a while cloud our Understandings, and intercept the displays of our Reasons, yet so prevailing is [Page 80] their innate Brightness and Vigour, that (unless we our selves stifle their emanations) they will both discover and dispel the grossest delusions.

Having hitherto treated of the Forces within us, I come now to discover our Auxiliaries without, and to shew that as we are endued with Faculties, by the use whereof we may attain at Virtue and Happiness, so also that we are aided and asisted herein by the greatest endearments and encourage­ments in the world, which is the next Theme I proposed to discourse of.

As Pleasure then is mans chiefest good, so Vir­tue is his highest Pleasure, the Divine Goodness has made it our duty to be happy, all the restraints that God has tied upon Mankind are so many en­gagements to confine them within the compass of their own Happiness, and whatsoever lies be­yond the lines of our liberty, lyes beyond the limits of our content, and to transgress them is to step into continual hazzards & disquietudes. The divine Wisdom has made the Portions of Vertue & Vice to be as distant as their Natures, having en­tail'd on the one nothing but Sorrow and Calamity and on the other nothing but Joy and Satisfaction. The evil effects of evil Practices are so spontane­ous and natural, that though there were no super­induced Penalties, Wickedness would be its own Executioner. Malitia ipsa maximam partem veneni sui [Page 81] bibit; every vice exacts the Pennance of its own folly. All Criminal Pleasures conclude in Re­pentance, and if men would but resolve to pursue only [...], pleasures that expire not in Repenting (which is all that Socrates prescribed for the making men both vertuous and happy) we should soon see wonderful alterations in the lives of Men in spite of all those fatal Propensities, concern­ing which the Patrons of Preexistence make such Tragical Declamations. Tranquility of mind and Indolency of body, are the most natural, most easie, and most durable pleasures in the world, these two combined together, compose the most sovereigne and standing delight of the life of man: And that man that is so expert in moral Wisdom, as to be able out of the Mass of all his transient delights, to extract health and contentedness, is as happy as this world can make him: And yet 'tis the very designe of all moral Virtues, first to render us ca­pable of this state and then to procure it. Whereas they that intemperately indulge to their transient delights, because they are more sensual, do but ex­change constant stable Pleasures for perishing un­certain ones, and such as conspire to create lasting and permanent miseries. And therefore Epicurus, who having casheir'd Providence and the Souls Immortality, was consequently obliged to discard all moral Goodness, yet set as high an estimate [Page 82] upon Vertue as any Philosopher of them all, be­cause he apprehended it so highly conducive to Indolency of Body and Tranquility of Mind, in which alone he expected his sovereign Felicity: so big a lye is it that he placed mans supream Hap­piness in Bruitish Pleasures.

If in any respect Vertue and Religion intrench upon the liberty of our Natures 'tis in the Instan­ces of sensuality, and yet in these there is no other restraint laid upon us, then that we live by the Rules and Measures of nature; and the Natural Appetites of a Man are temperate and reasonable; Nature desires nothing but what's useful and con­venient, and its satisfactions are as innocent as necessary: So that whilst we follow the dictates and appetites of humane nature, we do nothing contrary to Vertue and Religion: But when the Man is divided from the Beast, and his Reason se­parated from the inferior and Bruitish Appetites, then arise irregular and unreasonable desires, but these proceed meerly from the bruitish part, and are preter-natural and violent to the man: so that till we abandon Reason and the better part of our selves, Lust is a violence to our Natures and so far from gratifying our natural Propensities, that 'tis their greatest contradiction. But if we should suppose that Vertue consisted in a perpe­tual Violence to all our Appetites and Inclinations, [Page 83] yet its future reward being so great and glorious, there is no advised and reflecting man, but would exchange a short satisfaction of his present desires, for the hopes and assurance of Infinite felicities hereafter. It must be a strange piece of Folly and Indiscretion to prefer the enjoyment of a short, cheap, imperfect delight, before the hopes of the Joyes of Heaven and Eternity: For sensual gratifi­cations are so low & unsatisfying that to want them can amount but to an inconsiderable miserie, whereas the future pleasures that entertain our hopes are as great as endless; and therefore to miss them must needs be the saddest disaster man can suffer. So that though I should grant the object of our hopes to be inevident & uncertain, yet any man, that acts beyond the Indiscretion of a Child, will rather choose to foregoe the present Enjoyment of cheap and little pleasures, then the probable hopes of the greatest and most satisfying Felicities: For the naked hope and expectation of so great a Blessedness, is more pregnant with present content and satisfaction to the mind of man, then the en­joyment of the highest and most exquisite delights of sense. But when the waies of Virtue are so plea­sant, reasonable, and advantageous in themselves, as though they procure, yet they need not promise the Blessings of another world, and yet are so en­deared to us by their inesteemable appendant re­wards, [Page 84] as to make them delightful, though they were unpleasant in themselves, then certainly are they recommended to our choice by the strongest motives and allurements that can work upon a Ra­motional Nature. Though the Prosecution of this Argument be as pleasant as 'tis copious, yet (beside that I have not now leasure to pursue it through all its particular instances) the Pulpit has of late afforded enough excellent discourses upon this Theme, to su­percede the necessity of any farther Performance of it. But if you desire to see it discoursed of in a more Philosophick way, I refer you to Tully's Books de Finibus, where 'tis as Rationally as Largely asser­ted by Torquatus the Epicurean. And now, If Hu­mane Nature be endued with Rational and refle­cting Faculties, if it be most natural and easie for these Faculties to choose and pursue those objects that are most agreeable to their own Natures, and most conducive to Humane Felicity; If Vertue be most natural, easie, and reasonable; if it be en­dear'd to us by present and future delights; If vice be contrary to the Nature, Interest, and Rea­son of men; if men have all the inducements and Persuasions in the World to pursue Virtue and Goodness, and as great discouragements to scare and deter them from the Prosecution of Vice and Impietie; if I say these things are so, then I appeal to all Mankind whether the Divine Providence can [Page 85] be justly charged for leaving them too obnoxious to sin and misery. But I easily foresee that you will enquire, if all men have such pregnant engage­ments to Vertue, what is the Reason of the almost unanimous viciousness of mankind, and that when they have all the Reason in the world to engage them in an indefatigable pursuit of Goodness? whence comes it to pass, that they should with so much eagerness thwart both their Reason & their Interests for the love of Vice and Wickedness. I answer, that though sensual Inclinations, false Prin­ciples, vicious Examples, and wicked Customes, may be inducements and occasions of it, yet the only proper cause is the wilful or stupid Inadver­tency of men. Inconsiderateness is that [...] (as the Rabins speak) the root whence all mischiefs grow: 'tis the spring & head of that torrent of wickedness, that has always overflown the greatest part of the world. For if men would but look to the end of all criminal Pleasures, they would easily discover in them much more to avert, then to entice and court their Passions; but when their Appetites are pas­sionately set upon them, they grow wild and im­patient, and will enjoy though they know tis death and misery they embrace. That no man miscar­ries but by bruitishness and inconsideration, I might demonstrate out of my precedent discourse; for if every man be endued with Rational faculties; if he [Page 86] can reflect upon the Essential differences of good and evil, together with their natural Products; if he can observe what things tend to his dammage, and what minister to his advantage; And if it be most apparent that vertuous Practices are infinite­ly more conducive to the interests and happiness of man then Vice and Luxury; then what other Reason can possibly be assigned, why men are so unanimously vicious, but only because they are wil­fully or carelesly unreasonable? But I need not put my self to the Charge of an Elaborate Dispute to prove a thing that is evidenced by the surest and most obvious of Demonstrations, viz. an Inducti­on of particular Instances. For if we consider the single Obliquities of every Individual man, 'tis not only easie to observe how they descended from care­lesness and inadvertency, but also to convince the man himself, that had he but reflected upon the natural results and events of his Criminal actions, he would never have committed them: Take the pevishest Humorist in his hottest and most trans­ported fits, and ask him whether it was not in his own power to have refrain'd the folly of his Impa­tience; I never yet met with any person so unrea­sonable, whom I could not at lenghth force to own them as avoidable Indiscretions; but if any person should be so cross-grain'd as to plead a brutish ne­cessity, it were very easie by laying afore him the [Page 87] circumstances, upon which his Anger kindled, to convince him that the Provocation was not irresisti­ble. How few are so wise as to avoid a fruitless greif and anxiety for past, and therefore not avoidable disasters? And yet what proposition in Euclid more pregnant with conviction then this, that 'tis the ab­surdest folly in the world to greive for losses and misfortunes; in that nothing can be more evidently irrational, then by labouring in matters gone and irrecoverable; to double our miseries to no purpose? And what Councel can be more unquestionably ra­tional then the Advice of the Son of Syrach, about Mourning for Deceased Freinds. Take no greif to heart, for there is no turning again: thou shalt not do him good, but hurt thy self, Eccles. 38. 17. And yet all men are so foolishly inconsiderate, as upon such contingencies, to afflict themselves with a greif equally fruitless and troublesome. What Vice assaults us with more peremptory and impor­tunate Temptations then Intemperance, yet any man that will be but at the pains of a Thought, to represent to himself its unpleasant and direful con­sequences, cannot but confess, that its invitations are so far from being irresistible, that no man can comply with them without the imputation of the most apparent Madness and Folly. For who but Mad-men can be enamour'd of Gouts, Dropsies, Catarrhs, Consumptions, broken Sleeps, restless [Page 88] Nights, loathing Stomacks, and every thing that is destructive of health or life? And that these un­easie Symptomes are the natural Appendages of Intemperance, both Philosophy and Experience assure us. Whereas Temperance is a healthful and delicious Vertue, moderate diet creates no in­disposition either to the Body or the Mind; the Temperate man rises from the Table light and chearful, and truly relishes the pleasures that the Epicure designs; But Luxury, as it adds nothing to the pleasures of Temperance, so it both afflicts us with a present dulness, by loading the Brain with crudities, and lays up materials for future di­seases, by loading the blood with raw and indigested humours. Though I am not so Stoically vaine, as to vye Power and Majesty with Kings and Em­perours, yet sure am I that all the sumptuous En­tertainments of Pallaces, afford not such exquisite dainties as are serv'd up by Temperance; Con­stant satiety makes us loath the most refined deli­cates, whilst hunger prepares such sawces, as Api­cius with all his witty Gluttony, could never tast of; and therefore Epicurus (that great Exemplar of a Philosophick Temperance) was wont to say, that give him but Hunger, Pulse, and Water, and he would vye delicates with Iove himself. Now cer­tainly, if men would but represent to themselves the troublesome Appendages of intemperate eating [Page 89] and drinking; no morsel could appear so delicious, or wine so pleasant, which they could not with much less trouble forbear, then suffer all the un­easie symptoms of a tired and overloaded Appetite. And although this is obvious from every days ex­perience to every mans observation, yet how few are they, that can stint their Appetites at the ne­cessities of Nature, though they are certain that all they devour beyond the satisfaction thereof, ends in surfet and oppression, only because most men are so bruitishly sottish, as to sacrifice all the contents of their lives to a moments tickling of their Palates, and like Beasts, grow wild and impatient to enjoy a trifling pleasure, which they know will expire in loathing and restlesness.

The Mass and Community of Mankind, is but an Aggregate of Individual men, of whom the com­mon and mechanical sort of people (a word of a vast extent) are incomparably the greater number; who yet are utterly senseless and inconsiderate, and suffer themselves to be disposed of purely by chance and accidental Principles, and are so prodigiously regardless, that they will not put themselves to the trouble of thinking, whether the usages Custome has taught them, are wise and rational. And hence it is that they are always floating between contrary Vices, and are not a less contradiction to themselves then to Vertue; one while they are base and ser­vile, [Page 90] another proud and insolent; now stubborn and refractory, anon inconstant and changeable; envious and malicious, yet sordid and senseless to honour; credulous and talkative, yet morose and sullen; ignorant and stupid, yet censorious and scornful; Idolaters of custome, yet Seditious and desirous of novelties: and hence as they chance to be swayed by custome, or any accidental emergen­cies they rowl to any extream without setting bounds to their unruly progress; and if they be suffered to run without restraint, they will break down all the banks of Law & Government; and therefore tis the main wisdom and policy of Governors (who are de­puted by Divine Providence to understand and consi­der for them) to check the violence of the Tide, by swaying them backwards by contrary laws, & to keep them fluctuating between both Extreams, & so by alternate Fluxes & Refluxes, to preserve the Com­mon-wealth from popular Inundations. Thus they must be kept from sinking into too much ig­norance, or rising to too much knowledge in mat­ters of—for the former renders them salvage, which is apparently destructive to Government; the latter makes them proud, conceited, and zea­lous, that breeds contempt of Governours, and sets them upon headless plots and designs of Reforma­tion, that usually proceed to Rebellion, and end in a deluge of civil Wars, as the experience of all ages [Page 91] sufficiently attests, and our own too sadly demon­strates. But the Reason of all this, and much more, is because they are unreasonably wilful and inconsiderate, for nothing but inadvertency distin­guishes them from the wise and understanding part of mankind. To conclude therefore, if a sottish and regardless stupidity be the proper cause of eve­ry single obliquity (of which every man will be satisfied, that shall consider of every actions parti­cular circumstances) 'tis evident by a very easie In­ference, that all the wickedness in the world must be its effect: For the cause of every Individual, and the whole species is the same, and therefore if every particular sin be the effect of Inadvertency, all sin must be its issue.

Of which the wisest and most experienced of men, was long since eminently sensible, whence it was that he has so earnestly recommended to man­kind consideration and advertency, for the wisdom, he parabolically represents in his Book of Proverbs, imports nothing but consideration, discretion, and weighing of things in opposition to that folly and stupidity which betrays men to those immoralities, from which he there so assiduously dehorts the sons of men. And that this is the only true and genu­ine sense of that Book, any one that shall but read it over with a mind clear of those rash and unwar­rantable glosses Commentators have fastned upon [Page 92] it, will easily acknowledge, both by the Tenour of the discourse, and by the original signification of those terms, by which he expresses the wisdom there Celebrated; and cheifly by those peculiar Proper­ties he attributes to it, many whereof can very hard­ly be applied to any thing else. And now, if folly and inconsiderateness be the Origine of the general and unanimous Apostacy of mankind, then judge whether their crime be not of all others (not excep­ting even Peevishness and moroseness themselves) the hainousest and most inexcusable, for beside that 'tis aggravated by all the circumstances that can enhance its guilt, nothing can be baser and more un­worthy of a man; for if the dignity of humane na­ture consists in Reason, then certainly nothing can be more bruitish and unmanly then to abandon its use, and thereby to disrobe our selves of our highest Prerogative, to renounce the Glory and Priviledge of our Natures, and in difiance of our Creatours Goodness, who made us Men, to prefer the con­dition of Bruits and unreasonable Creatures, and in a word to dismount our Reasons, that Provi­dence has placed in the Sadle, that the Bruit might Ride the Man.

Thus (Sir) have I replyed to, and clear'd off, the main Ratiocinations urged on behalf off Preexi­stence, and have not declined or shuffled of any Argument for its difficultie, but have been careful [Page 93] that the Account I have given you might be as faithful as satisfactory: If therefore I have omitted any objections, 'twas not because I could not, but because I need not answer them, either upon the score of their being too inconsiderable, or of their entire dependance on the Arguings, I have here encountred; and therefore having undermined and ruin'd their Foundation, I suppose it would be but a fruitless and impertinent piece of service to be­leager them by a particular onset. I have (Sir) so strong an antipathy against all Impertinency, that in all enquiries I have the patience only to examine the most weighty and considerable reflections, af­ter which the less concerning matters will as little want as merit Consideration, and therefore I have not only waved all their pretty gay Probabilities, apprehending them subjects too frivolous for seri­ous and rational discourses; but have also forborne all Duels or Personal Combats, having all along only opposed the Hypothesis, not its Patrons; for I have taken no notice of the particular miscarriages of any Adversary, and have no where objected the Inconsistency either of any Author with himself, or of more of them with one another, unless where it is apparently the fault of the Hypothesis, and not the oversight of the Men. For I must confess (Sir) I am so far from quarrelling either with the Anci­ent or Modern Patrons of Preexistence, that I pe­culiarly [Page 94] esteem and honour them as Persons more then ordinarily Learned and Ingenious; and there­fore though I might perhaps have triumphed over some weak passages of particular Authors, yet I have scarce been less careful to pass by their weakest then I have been to assault their strongest objecti­ons.

The most remarkable things I have purposely omitted are those conclusions they draw from the Nature and Substance of the Soul, all which I have slighted, because we are so utterly ig­norant of the nature of the Soul that 'tis impos­sible to deduce any sure & solid Speculations from it: 'Tis I know as easie a business to imagine Hy­potheses concerning things, whose natures are pla­ced beyond the Reach of Humane Inquisition, as 'tis for the Rosi-Crucians (for the confirmation of their Frenzies) to tell us of strange Books, Monu­ments, Inscriptions found in the inmost and remo­test parts of China, Iapan, and Tartarie, because in such stories they are secure from all Contradiction: But the difficultie is to give us evidence of the Truth and realitie of their Conjectures; For when they have contrived and polish'd a neat and inge­nious Idea of the Soul, how can they assure either me or themselves of its agreement with the thing it self? And therefore of them that pretend to ac­quaint the world with true and real notions of its [Page 95] Nature, I demand by what means or methods they attain'd their knowledge; for if they came by it in a Rational way, they are able to shew by what steps and Ratiocinations they arrived at it, but be­cause this they have never performed, they must give us leave to look upon their Hypotheses as the meer Issues and contrivances of their own Fancies. 'Tis not therefore enough to coyn Ideas of the Soul, and stamp it, with what essential Characters and Properties they please, unless they can assure us of their real Conformity to the thing it self (it being otherwise precarious and uncertain) but as no such assurancew as as yet ever given, so when I consi­der the waies and methods of gaining acquaintance with the Natures of things, I despaire that it ever will: For though I may by Rationacination obtain a clear and certain evidence of the Real Existence of many things, of the Essential Ideas whereof I am utterly ignorant, yet am I assured by diligent and impartial Trials, that all the Objects and Ideas I could ever with all my Industry understand were conveyed to my mind through the Organs of sense. But whether any certain knowledge of the Nature and Substance of the Soul be attain­able or not, I am sure 'tis as yet undiscover'd, and so altogether unqualified to be the Ground of any true and certain Knowledge, in that where the first and Fundamental Principles are inevident, all the [Page 96] Ratiocinations depending on them (how coherent soever in themselves) must of necessity be so too. And therefore, for Instance, when they conclude against the seminal Propagation of Souls, because 'tis one of the prime and cheifest Properties of a Spiritual essence to be indiscerpible, they argue at a high rate of confidence and impertinency, because, though perhaps the soul may be indivisible, yet they are not able to produce the least tollerable Evidence thereof, being utterly unacquainted with its Nature and Essence; and then though perchance it may be indiscerpible in its primary and central substance, yet who knows but it may, as well as the Body, have its seminal Excrescencies? I am not more concern'd for the Hypothesis of seminal Tradu­ction, then for the other of Immediate Creation, for they are both to me equally uncertain, and conse­quently indifferent. For as the only material obje­ction they assault the former with, is that ground­less one I but now mention'd, so they object no­thing singly against the latter, but its inconsistency with the Divine Goodness to place pure and spot­less souls in such evil and sad Circumstances, as in­viron us in this life; but this objection as it equally concerns all the Adversaries of Preexistence, what other soever particular Hypothesis they adopt, so 'tis already abundantly answered. So that 'tis not at all material whether the reality of either or nei­ther [Page 97] of the forementioned Hypotheses be sure or evident, for notwithstanding all that is objected either of them may, and therefore 'tis of no concernment which is.

And now (Sir) though both my Patience and my Pen begin to fail me, yet am I obliged as well by my Promise as my Method, to consider the most plausible passages of Scripture the Patrons of Preexistence alledge on behalf of their Hypo­thesis; but the application of the Texts, they pro­duce to their designe, is so lamentably forced & fri­volous, that it will scarce excuse a serious answer from being useless and impertiment. I know not any one Theological speculation, that cannot boast of more Favour and Countenance from Scripture, then this pretends to. And if you will but parallel the periods of Scripture made use of, in a small Pamphlet you have, to prove Mulieres non esse Homines, I am confident you will discern so vast a disproportion in their evidence, as to acknowledge that if the latter may be accounted probable inducements, the former will amount to Demonstrations. And therefore perhaps I may render my self not less ridiculous by encountring them with a serious Reply, then that grave Dutch Doctor, who has with mighty transports of zeal opposed himself to that waggish Pamphlet, and has conjured up all his Dutch or Systematick Ortho­doxy [Page 98] to confound that blasphemous Heresy as him­self stiles it. But having begun, I must to avoid all suspicion of shufling, plunge through; And though their Scipture-evidences do not merit a refutation, yet through some mens Ignorance and others Par­tiality they need it. Had I been left to my own choice, I should not have at all concern'd the Au­thority of the Divine Oracles in this dispute. For so sensible am I of that violence and injury they suffer from our presumptuous forcing them to be parties in our own trivial and imaginary speculati­ons, that I am exceedingly averse from making any use of their suffrage, unless it be in matters of grand importance, and with all very evident and conso­nant to its main intendment. 'Tis the fashion a­mongst Opinionists to Argue in a reversed order, first they contrive Opinions and then Arguments, they adopt Hypotheses, and then suborn Testimo­nies out of the sacred Volume to vouch them: like Chrysippus, who (as Laertius records) was wont to say, that he only wanted opinions to vent, but would never want Arguments to defend his opini­ons. And thus the Assertors of Preexistence seem first to be enamoured with the Prettiness of their Hypothesis, and then to seek our for Scripture expressions to countenance it. For all the testimo­nies they alledge would never have afforded the least intimation of it, had it not first prepossest their [Page 99] Fancies: Of which some of them are so sensible as to confess, that though they do not perswade their Hypothesis, yet they are applicable to it. But I wish they could name any opinion, howsoever vain and unwarrantable, that cannot boast as much; what's more easie then for Fancie to make pretty applications of Scripture to purposes vastly di­stant from its own, especially if we consider how large and miscellaneous a composure the Holy Vo­lume is? They who are acquainted with the Customes and Tenets of the Modern Jews, know what pretty Analogies they fetch from Scripture to abet their fond and ridiculous usages, indeed their prettiness is so odd and surprising, that were it in any other matter, they would be as delightful as impertiment.

But tis time to advance to a closer and more par­ticular engagement, the few hours that remain obli­ging me to a quick and (I fear) overhasty dispatch: but before I clear off the Texts they object, I will represent a passage or two on my own behalf. And first methinks that's a shrew'd one Rom. 9. 11. For the Children being not yet born, neither having done ei­ther good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of him that calleth. They that were not in a Capacity of doing either good or evil before they were born, neither existed nor sin'd before; But neither Iacob nor Esau were [Page 100] in a capacity of acting well or ill, before they were born into this life, and therefore nor they, nor (by consequence) any others preexisted. For (1.) 'tis too pittiful a shift to say that all other men, Iacob and Esau only excepted, were in Being before their Appearance upon this stage of life. And (2.) 'tis most expresly against the whole designe of the A­postles Argument; the Purpose of whose Di­scourse is to shew that Gods vouchsafing greater Instances of his Favour to Iacob then to Esau pro­ceeded not from any extrinsique motive of greater merit in him, but purely from the free deter­mination and beneplaciture of his own will, [...] but [...]: Now this he proves because the Choice was pitch'd upon before they were born, and so before they had done either good or evil. But if the souls of men had been in a ca­pacity of acting morally, before their descent into this life, then has the Apostle argued at a strange rate of inconsequence, when he concludes that Gods different dealing with Iacob and Esau depen­ded not on their own Actions, because the diffe­rence was resolved on before they were born, and consequently before they had done good or evil. If therefore the Apostles conclusion be consonant to the Laws of Inference, it must be unquestionably certain that the Souls of men never acted before they were born into these Bodies.

[Page 101] There are a brace of Texts more, that I con­ceived would, without any torturing, give in evi­dence against Preexistence, but I find that its Pa­trons have already suborn'd them to speak in their Cause, and therefore I that am a modest man must be content to give up my Right in their Testimony, and to Encounter them as objections. The first is our Saviours reply to his Disciples enquiry about the man born blind, Ioh. 9. 3. Nei­ther has this man sin'd nor his Parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. In which words he expresly affirms, that that mishap was not inflicted upon the man as a Penalty for a­ny miscarriages he had been guilty of in any for­mer state, but that it was design'd by the Divine Providence upon a special score, namely, that he might be a fit object to evidence our Saviours mi­raculous Power. And yet from this very passage they argue with no small confidence against us, in that the question supposes the man might have sin'd before his Terrestrial Birth, and that the Hypo­thesis of Preexistence was an Opinion much in Vo­gue among the Jews, and therefore when our Sa­viour had so fair an occasion of rectifying the com­mon belief, and yet said nothing against it, his si­lence is almost as argumentative in favour of it as a positive Approbation. I answer (1.) 'tis far from being evident that the Disciples question supposes [Page 102] him capable of sinning before his birth: for might they not, if they had any notions of the Divine Pre­science, suppose that God foreknowing what kind of person this blind man would prove, had ante­dated his punishment. Or why might they not intend his Original sin, which the Jews supposed to be the [...] in every individual man; so that when they enquired whether the man was born blind for his own or his Parents sin, they might on­ly ask whether that particular Judgment was the effect of any miscarriage in his Parents, or of his own original Pravity. (2.) It was not the Pre­existence, but the Metemphychosis or Transmigra­tion of Souls that was the common Opinion of the Jews; 'tis stiled by the Rabins [...] the Re­volution of Souls in opposition to their [...] Revolution of the Dead, whereby they meant the Rowling of the Carcasses of Jewes, (that hap­pen to be Interred in the polluted Earth of the Gen­tiles) through the secret Caverns of the Earth to Palestine, where they believe all Jews shall arise at the last Resurrection; and hence some of them have in their old age travelled to the Holy Land to lay their Bones there, to avoid the disturbance of their Subterraneous Pilgrimage; and R. Salomon tells us the Reason why Iacob charg'd his Son Io­seph to conveigh his Corps from Egypt to Canaan, was partly that his dust might not afterwards be [Page 103] turn'd into Lice, (a cleanly old man!) and partly to escape the trouble of this posthumous Journey: But their impertinencies tempt me to be so too. Now that the opinion of Transanimation obtain'd among the Jews, is proved from the testimony of Iosephus lib. 2. de Bello Iud. cap. 7. where he relates among the dogmata of the Pharisees, that the souls of good men did not perish, but did [...]; and Tisbi relates that 'tis the common opi­nion of the Circumcised Doctors that every Soul animates three Bodies, which they (after their usual rare of arguing) prove from that passage in Iob. 33. 29. All these things God worketh with man, [...] tribus vicibus. And by vertue of this Vicissitude, they assert the Soul of Adam to have inform'd the Body of King David, and that the Soul of David will by secret Revolutions, wind it selfe into the Messiah, which they think is clearly intimated by the word [...] being compounded of the Initial Let­ters of Adam [...], David [...], Messiah [...]. As also that those two mighty zealots Phinees & Elias, were ani­mated with the same spirit because of the resemblance of their Zeal; and that Labans Soul was translated into Balaams, Abels into Seth; and Abravanel that bold Jew asserts, that it was Esau's Soul that pos­sest our Saviour. Manasse Ben Israel cites several of their old Books and Authors to this purpose. And therefore, if this passage proves any thing, it [Page 104] proves too much, viz. not onely the Preexistence, but also the [...] or perpetual revolution of Souls: For if they can infer any thing in favour of Preexistence from our Saviours silence in so apt an occasion to have rectified the common Errour concerning it, they may with the same reason con­clude his Approbation of the Transmigration of Souls, this being the common Opinion of the Jews, and so as probably implyed in the Disciples Quere. (3.) It was not our Saviours custom to take notice of every impertinent Question, much less the sup­positions on which they relyed. Thus when his Apostles asked him, Acts 1. 6. Lord wilt thou at this time restore again the Kingdom to Israel. Though it was an important Question, and bottom'd upon a grand and dangerous mistake, he makes no reply to it, but only takes occasion thence to discourse of matters of a widely distant nature, but that more closely toucht their concerns. And therefore no­thing can be fairly inferred from our Saviours si­lence; especially when he had replyed so fully to the direct scope of the Question, there was not any necessity he should take notice of the Theories it collaterally implied: And if the Hypothesis of Preexistence were so principally implied in the main scope of the question as is pretended, then is it expresly enough destroyed by our Saviours plain and unlimited Negation. To conclude, he had as [Page 105] good ground to take occasion from their Enquiry, to discourse of the Equity of punishing Posterity for their Ancestors sins, it being one of the main Phaenomena of Providence, and of as grand impor­tance as they can presume the Hypothesis of Pre­existence to be, and yet, notwithstanding the fair­ness of the opportunity, and the weightiness of the subject, 'tis evident he took no notice of it. The other Resembling Passage I meet with in Iob 38. 4. where the Almighty undertakes to pose Iob through all the Phaenomena of Nature, and among other particulars of the true Origine of things, and to con­vince him of his ignorance, he tells him he was so far from being acquainted with it, that he was then shut up in the dark state of Non-existence, Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth, &c. Now, if all Spirits had been in Being when the foundations of the Earth were laid, as our Adver­saries conclude from the ensuing words, When the morning Stars sang together, and all the Sonnes of God shouted for Ioy. By the former whereof (say they) is intended the Angels, by the latter the blessed un­tainted Souls. But if this gloss were as true as 'tis precarious, then Iob might have justly replied to the Almighty, that himself was present among the Sons of God at the laying the Foundations of the earth, and joyn'd in that great and unanimous Acclama­tion [Page 106] And then the Almighty having discoursed of each particular mystery and contrivance of Nature, he concludes with this bafling Ironie, Knowest thou them because thou wast then born, because the number of thy days is great? And yet they conclude from hence for Preexistence, because the 70 render it without the Interrogation, I know that thou wast then born, for the number of thy days is many. A various Reading may serve for a subterfuge to escape the force of an objected Testimony, but certainly 'tis a pitiful Argument that relies barely on the Autho­rity of a Version, when it not only contradicts the Original, but the plain design of its own Context. For if Iob had then been born, how could God have convinced him of his unacquaintedness with the Origine of things, because he was not then in Being? so that unless Reason it self be out in its Logick, our Adversaries are.

Having thus gain'd back these Texts to our side, I pass on to the rest of their objections. And first, as for that pasage Ier. 1. 5. urged with so much Jewish confidence by Manasse Ben Israel, Before I form'd thee in the Belly, I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the Womb I sanctified thee, and I or­dain'd thee a Prophet unto the Nations. It implies no­thing else but Gods designment of Ieremy to the Prophetick Office; for his knowing of him im­ports [Page 107] in its native and most unstrained sense, meerly his foreordaining him to that employment, and then his sanctifying of him signifies in its genuine and most proper use, only the separating or devoting of him to that peculiar Office, which is exegetically expressed in the last branch of the Period. I ordained thee to be a Prophet. Besides, this passage is pecu­liarly applied to the Prophet Ieremy in opposition to any other, but should it have referred to his Pre­existence, there had been no peculiarity, forasmuch as God would not only have known him, but the whole Mass of mankind before they were formed in the Belly. And now what shadow of favour do these words cast upon the Origenian Hypothesis, No man could ever have discern'd the least colour for Preexistence here, whose mind was not afore­hand tinctured with its belief. Here's not the least foundation for an Argument, unless this supposi­tion were first laid, viz. That God cannot fore­ordain a Person to any special employment before he exists. And therefore to conclude, that because God had consign'd Ieremy to the Prophetick Office before he was born, that therefore he preexisted, is an Inference fit for none but a Rabbi, and upon that score I have taken notice of it only as his, though o­ther men have urged it with as great a grace as he.

And for that passage, Phil. 2. 5. Let this mind be [Page 108] in you which was in Christ Iesus, who being in the form of God, did not think equality with God a prey or spoil, but made himself of no Reputation, and took upon him the form of a Servant, and was made in the likeness of men, &c. Its plain and palpable meaning is onely this, That though the Blessed Jesus was invested with the Divine Power and Authority, and su­stain'd the person of a Deity, being made Sovereign Lord of all (in which alone consists the Scripture notion of God) yet he did not boast and triumph in his Greatness, but made his appearance to the world only in a servile condition of Poverty, and made himself so subject to those that seem'd his Superiours, that in obedience to their Authority he yielded himself up to a most reproachful death, not opposing his Almighty and Irresistible Power to rescue himself from their equally ignominious and merciless Decrees. And what's all this to Preexistence?

In the next place they urge us with some passa­ges out of Saint Iohn, And now O Father Glorifie me with thine own self, with the Glory I had with thee before the world was. I come forth from the Father, and am come into the world: Again I leave the world, and goe to the Father, &c. Whence they argue, that the Glory our Saviour prays to be restored to, seems to concern his Humane nature only, for the [Page 109] Divine could never be disrobed of it, and therefore it supposeth that he existed in his Humanitie before, and that his Soul was of old before its ap­pearance in a Terrestriall Body. Ans. (1.) The most these places can pretend to prove, is barely our Saviours Preexistence, but to conclude thence the Preexistence of all mankind is a very wide and gaping Inference; and we may as well prove we were all born of Virgin-Mothers because he was. Our Saviour was a singular person designed for an extraordinary Employment, and therefore may be supposed to have transacted with his Father about it, before he undertook it, and therefore we may as well Attribute all his personal Properties to Mankind in general, as argue for their Preexistence from his. (2.) Those Praedicates that in a strict and rigorous Acceptation agreed only to his Di­vine Nature, might by a communication of Idioms [as they phrase it] be attributed to his humane; or at least to the whole Person compounded of them both: Then which nothing is more ordi­nary in things of a mixt and heterogeneous Nature, as the whole man is stiled immortal from the deathlesness of his soul. We ought not therefore to understand these and the like passages in a nice and metaphisical rigour of this or that nature, but in a familiar sence of the Person of Jesus Christ. [Page 110] The instances hereof in Scripture are so frequent, that few texts concerning our Saviour (supposing his double nature can well be understood without it. (3.) Methinks Grotius's sence is very easie and na­tural viz. that the Glory he had with his Father before the world began, was only in the intend­ment of the Divine decree: as, 1 Pet. 1. 20. Revel. 13. 8. he is said to be a Lamb slain from the foundati­ons of the world, not that he was really slaughtered, but because he was then marked out in the divine decree to be a sacrifice for Mankind. It being a Pro­verbial from of speech among the Jews, to express matters of great moment only resolved upon in the Divine Decree, as if they were really existing: thus they say the Messias is ancienter then the Sun, and the Mosaick law older then the world, not as if they apprehended them really so, but only to express their absolute usefulness and necessity. Now Scriptures are not to be interpreted in an exact and strictly literal sence, but in a familiar manner suitably to the Idiom and manner of speaking used in the Age and Place, in which they were written. This there­fore being a vulgar form of speech to express the Important usefulness of a thing existing only in decree, as if it had been as long in actual existence, as it was in Futurity; the glory our Saviour here prays for, and which he had before the world was, [Page 111] as it could not, so it need not be his essential lustre, but was that honour, with which God had from all eternity design'd to dignisie the Messias. Thus have I satisfied all their Scripture Objections, that can need an answer, but as for their Applications of Parables and Cabalistical interpretations, they are too impertinent to bear one.

And now (Sir) having evinced the Precarious­ness of the Origenian Hypothesis from the Nature of the thing it self, and its uncouthness from some of the Divine Attributes, having shewn the appa­rent and lamentable defiency of that evidence they produce for it, having engaged the suffrage of the Divine Oracles against it, and having given a hansome, rational and certain account of the Phae­nomina of providence without it. I hope 'tis sufficient to convince your self or any other ingenious and unpossest inquirer, that for any thing we are able to know, this is the first Stage upon which the Souls of men ever appeared and that there is no need of recurring to a former scene, to solve the perplexed difficulties of Providence, and to make the plot thereof seem neat and consistent enough to be a contrivance not unworthy the Divine Wisdome.

And now Sir methinks I ought not bluntly to conclude this tedious Discourse, and it would be but good manners to complement you with unne­cessary [Page 112] excuses, or some other little pieces of Court-ship; but you know I have long since re­monstrated to these common ceremonies of the world. And though I had a mind to trouble you with Apologies, or News, or anyother impertinen­cies, yet I have not time (being just now upon the very point of my departure for London) to add any more, then that I am as much as I ought or can be