Annotations UPON LƲX ORIENTALIS.

THese two Books, Lux Orientalis and the Discourse of Truth, are luckily put together by the Publisher, there being that sui­tableness between them, and mutual support of one another. And the Ar­guments they treat of being of the greatest importance that the Mind of man can enter­tain herself with, the consideration thereof has excited so sluggish a Genius as mine to be­stow some few Annotations thereon, not very anxious or operose, but such as the places easi­ly suggest; and may serve either to rectifie what may seem any how oblique, or illustrate what may seem less clear, or make a supply or adde strength where there may seem any fur­ther need. In which I would not be so un­derstood as that I had such an anxiety and [Page 2] fondness for the Opinions they maintain, as if all were gone if they should fail; but that the Dogmata being more fully; clearly, and pre­cisely propounded, men may more safely and considerately give their Judgments thereon; but with that modesty as to admit nothing that is contrary to the Judgment of the truly Catholick and Apostolick Church.

Chap. 2. p. 4. That he made us pure and in­nocent, &c. This is plainly signified in the general Mosaick History of the Creation, that all that God made he saw it was good; and it is particularly declared of Adam and Eve, that they were created or made in a state of Innocency.

Pag. 4. Matter can do nothing but by motion, and what relation hath that to a moral Conta­gion? We must either grant that the figures of the particles of Matter and their motion, have a power to affect the Soul united with the Body, (and I remember Josephus some­where speaking of Wine, says, it does [...], regenerate, as it were, the Soul into ano­ther life and sense of things) or else we must acknowledge that the parts of Matter are al­terable into qualifications, that cannot be resol­ved into mere mechanical motion and figure; whether they be thus altered by the vital pow­er of the Spirit of Nature, or however it comes to pass. But that Matter has a considerable [Page 3] influence upon a Soul united thereto, the Au­thor himself does copiously acknowledge in his fourth Chapter of this Book; where he tells us, that according to the disposition of the Body, our Wits are either more quick, free, and sparkling, or more obtuse, weak, and sluggish; and our Mind more chearful and contented, or else more morose, melancholick, or dogged, &c. Wherefore that he may ap­pear the more consistent with himself, it is likely he understands by this Moral Contagion the very venome and malignity of vitious In­clinations, how that can be derived from Mat­ter, especially its power consisting in mere motion and figuration of parts. The Psal­mist's description is very apposite to this pur­pose, Psal. 58. The ungodly are froward even from their mothers womb; as soon as they are born they go astray and speak lyes. They are as venomous as the poyson of a serpent, even like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear. That there should be such a difference in the Nativity of some from that of others, and haply begot al­so of the same Parents, is no slight intimation that their difference is not from their Bodies, but their Souls; in which there is so sudden Eruptions of vitious Inclinations which they had contracted in their former state, not re­pressed nor extinct in this, by reason of Adam's lapse, and his losing the Paradisiacal body in which he was created, and which should, if it [Page 4] had not been for his Fall, been transmitted to his Posterity; but that being lost, the several measures of the pristine Vitiosity of humane Souls discover themselves in this life, accor­ding to the just Laws of the Divine Nemesis essentially interwoven into the nature of things.

Pag. 5. How is it that those that are under continual temptations to Vice, are yet kept with­in the bounds of Vertue, &c. That those that are continually under temptations to Vice from their Childhood, should keep within the bounds of Vertue, and those that have per­petual outward advantages from their Child­hood to be vertuous, should prove vitious not­withstanding, is not rationally resolved into their free will; for in this they are both of them equal: and if they had been equal also in their external advantages or disadvantages, the different event might well be imputed to the freedom of their Will. But now that one, notwithstanding all the disadvantages to Ver­tue should prove vertuous, and the other, notwithstanding all the advantages to Vertue should prove vitious; the reason of this cer­tainly to the considerate will seem to lie dee­per than the meer liberty of Will in man. But it can be attributed to nothing, with a more due and tender regard to the Divine At­tributes, than to the pre-existent state of hu­mane Souls, according to the Scope of the Au­thor.

[Page 5] Pag. 9. For still it s [...]ms to be a diminutive and disparaging apprehension of the infinite and immense goodness of God, that he should detrude such excellent Creatures, &c. To enervate this reason, there is framed by an ingenious hand this Hypothesis, to vie with that of Pre-exi­stence: That Mankind is an Order of Beings placed in a middle state between Angels and Brutes, made up of contrary Principles, viz. Matter and Spirit, indued with contrary fa­culties, viz. Animal and Rational, and encom­passed with contrary Objects proportioned to their respective faculties, that so they may be in a capacity to exercise the Vertues proper and peculiar to their compounded and hetero­geneal nature. And therefore though hu­mane Souls be capable of subsisting by them­selves, yet God has placed them in Bodies full of brutish and unreasonable Propensions, that they may 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 and Appe­tite. And therefore he conceives that the creating of humane Souls, though pure and immaculate, and uniting them with such bru­tish Bodies, is but the constituting and con­tinuing such a Species of Being, which is an Order betwixt Brutes and Angels; into which [Page 6] latter Order, if men use their faculties of the Spiritual Principle in them well, they may as­cend: Forasmuch as God has given them in their Spiritual Principle (containing Free Will, and Reason to discern what is best) a power and faculty of overcoming all their in­ordinate Appetites.

This is his Hypothesis, mostwhat in his own words, and all to his own sence, as near as I could with brevity express it: And it seems so reasonable to himself, that he profes­ses himself apt to be positive and dogmatical therein. And it might very well seem so to him, if there were a sufficient faculty in the Souls of men in this World, to command and keep in order the Passions and Appetites of their Body, and to be and do what their Reason and Conscience tells them they should be and do, and blames them for not being and doing. So that they know more by far than they find an ability in themselves to perform. Ex­treamly few there are, if any, but this is their condition: Whence all Philosophers (that had any sense of Vertue and Holiness) as well as Jews and Christians, have looked upon Man as in a lapsed state, not blaming God, but deplo­ring the sad condition they found themselves in by some foregoing lapse or fault in Mankind. And it is strange that our own Consciences should flie in our faces for what we could ne­ver have helped.

[Page 7] It is witty indeed which is alleadged in the behalf of this Hypothesis, viz. That the Ra­tional part of man is able to command the lower Appetites; because if the superiour part be not strong enough to govern the inferiour, it destroys the very being of moral Good and Evil: Forasmuch as those acts that proceed out of necessity cannot be moral, nor can the su­periour Faculties be obliged to govern the in­feriour, if they are not able, because nothing is obliged to impossibilities. But I answer, if in­abilities come upon us by our own fault, the de­fects of action then are upon the former ac­count moral, or rather immoral. And our Consciences rightly charge us with the Vitio­sities of our Inclinations and Actions, even be­fore we can mend them here, because they are the consequences of our former Guilt.

Wherefore it is no wonder that there is found a flaw in a subtilty that would conclude against the universal Experience of men, who all of them, more or less, that have any sense of Morality left in them, complain that the inferiour powers of the Soul, at least for a time, were too hard for the superiour. And the whole mass of Mankind is so generally corrupt and abominable, that it would argue the wise and just God a very unequal Matcher of in­nocent Souls with brutish Bodies, they being universally so hugely foiled or overcome in the conflict, if he indeed were the immediate [Page 8] Matcher of them. For how can that be the effect of an equilibrious or sufficient Free Will and Power, that is in a manner perpetual and constant? But there would be near as many Examples one way as the other, if the Souls of men in this state were not by some precedent lapse become unable to govern, as they ought, all in them or about them that is to be subje­cted to their Reason. No fine Fetches of Wit can demolish the steady and weighty structure of sound and general Experience.

Pag. 9. Wherein he seeth it, ten thousand to one but that they will corrupt, &c. The Ex­pression [ten thousand to one] is figurative, and signifies how hugely more like it is that the Souls would be corrupted by their Incor­poration in these Animal or▪ Brutish Bodies, than escape Corruption. And the effect makes good the Assertion: for David of old (to say nothing of the days of Noah) and Paul after him, declare of Mankind in general, that they are altogether become abominable; there is none that doth good, no not one. Wherefore we see what efficacy these Bodies have, if inno­cent Souls be put into them by the immediate hand of God, as also the force of Custom and corrupt Education to debauch them; and therefore how unlikely it is that God should create innocent Souls to thrust them into such ill circumstances.

Pag. 10. To suppose him assistent to unlawful [Page 9] and unclean Coitions, by creating a Soul to ani­mate the impure Foetus, &c. This seemed ever to those that had any sense of the Divine Pu­rity and Sanctity, or were themselves endued with any due sensibleness and discernment of things, to be an Argument of no small weight. But how one of the more rude and unhewen Opposers of Pre-existence swaggers it out of countenance, I think it not amiss to set down for a pleasant Entertainment of the Reader.

Admit, says he, that Gods watchful Provi­dence waits upon dissolute Voluptuaries in their unmeet Conjunctions, and sends down fresh crea­ted Spirits to actuate their obscene Emissions, what is here done which is not very high and becoming God, and most congruous and proportio­nable to his immense Grandeur and Majesty, viz. To bear a part amongst Pimps and Bawds, and pocky Whores and Woremasters, to rise out of his Seat for them, and by a free Act of Creation of a Soul, to set his Seal of Conni­vance to their Villanies; who yet is said to be of more pure Eyes than to endure to behold Wickedness. So that if he does (as his Phrase is) pop in a Soul in these unclean Coitions, certainly he does it winking. But he goes on: For in the first place, says he, his condescen­sion is hereby made signal and eximious; he is glo­riously humble beyond a parallel, and by his own Example lessons us to perform the meanest works, if fit and profitable, and to be content even to [Page 10] drudge for the common bénefit of the World. Good God! what a Rapture has this im­pure Scene of Venerie put this young Theo­loger into, that it should thus drive him out of his little Wits and Senses, and make him speak inconsistences with such an affected Grace and lofty Eloquence! If the act of Gods freely creating Souls, and so of assisting wretched Sinners in their foul acts of Adulte­ry and Whoredom, be a glorious action, how is it an Abasement of him, how is it his Humili­ation? and if it be an humbling and debasing of him, how is it glorious? The joyning of two such [...], are indeed without parallel. The creating of an humane Soul immortal and immaculate, and such as bears the Image of God in it, as all immaculate Souls do, is one of the most glorious actions that God can perform; such a Creature is it, as the Schools have judged more of value than the frame of the whole visible World. But to joyn such a Creature as this to such impure corporeal mat­ter, is furthermore a most transcendent Speci­men of both his Skill and Soveraignty; so that this is an act of further Super-exaltation of himself, not of Humiliation. What remains then to be his Humiliation, but the condescen­ding to assist and countenance the unclean en­deavours of Adulterers and Adulteresses? Which therefore can be no Lessons to us for Humility, but a Cordial for the faint-hearted in [Page 11] Debauchery, and degeneracy of Life; wherein they may plead, so instructed by this rural Theolog, that they are content to drudge for the common profit of the World. But he proceeds.

And secondly, says he, hereby he elicits Good out of Evil, causing famous and heroick persons to take their Origine from base occasions; and so converts the Lusts of sensual Varlets to nobler ends than they designed them. As if an▪ hero­ick Off-spring were the genuine effect of A­dultery or Fornication, and the most likely way to People the World with worthy Perso­nages. How this raw Philosopher will make this comply with his Profession of Divinity, I know not; whenas, it teaches us, that Marriage is honourable, but Whoremongers and Adulterers God will judge; and that he punishes the Iniquities of the Parents on their Children. But this bold Sophist▪ makes God adjudge the noblest Off-spring to the defiled Bed, and not to punish, but reward the Adul­tery or Whoredom of debauched persons, by giving them the best and bravest Children: Which the more true it could be found in ex­perience, it would be the stronger Argument for Pre-existence; it being incredible that God, if he created Souls on purpose, should crown Adultery and Whoredom with the choicest Off-spring.

And then thirdly and lastly, says he, hereby [Page 12] he often detects the lewdness of Sinners, which o­therwise would be smothered, &c. As if the All-wise God could find no better nor juster means than this to discover this Villany. If he be thus immediately and in an extraordi­nary way assistant in these Coitions, were it not as easie for him, and infinitely more deco­rous, to charge the Womb with some Mola or Ephemerous Monster, than to plunge an imma­culato humane Soul into it? This would as effectually discover the Villany committed, and besides prevent the charge Parishes are put to in maintaining Bastards. And now that we have thus seen what a mere nothing it is that this Strutter has pronounced with such sonorous Rhetorick, yet he is not ashamed to conclude with this Appeal to I know not what blind Judges: Now, says he, are not all these Actions and Concerns very graceful and a­greeable to God? Which words in these cir­cumstances no man could utter, were he not of a crass, insensible, and injudicious Consti­tution, or else made no Conscience of speaking against his Judgment. But if he speak accor­ding to his Conscience, it is manifest he puts Sophisms upon himself, in arguing so weak­ly.

As he does a little before in the same place, where that he may make the coming of a Soul into a base begotten Body in such a series of time and order of things as the Pre-existen­tiaries [Page 13] suppose, and Gods putting it immedi­ately upon his creating it into such a Body, to be equally passable, he uses this slight Illustra­tion: Imagine, saith he, God should create one Soul, and so soon as he had done, instantly pop it into a base begotten Body; and then create ano­ther the matter of an hours space before▪ its pre­cipitation into such a Receptacle: which of these Actions would be the most dimin [...]tive of the Creators honour? would not the difference be insensible, and the scandal, if any, the same in both? Yet thus lies the case just betwixt the Pre-existentiaries and us. Let the Reader consi­der how senseless this Author is in saying the case betwixt the Pre-existentiaries and him is just thus, when they are just nothing akin: for his two Souls are both unlapsed, but one of the Pre-existentiaries lapsed, and so subjected to the Laws of Nature. In his case God acts freely, raising himself, as it were, out of his Seat to create an immaculate Soul, and put into a foul Body; but in the other case God onely is a looker on, there is onely his Permis­sion, not his Action. And the vast difference of time, he salves it with such a Quibble as this, as if it were nothing, because thousands of Ages ago, in respect of God and his Eternity, is not an hour before. He might as well say the difference betwixt the most glorious Angel and a Flea is nothing, because in comparison of God both are so indeed. Wherefore this [Page 14] Anti-Pre-existentiary is such a Trifler, that I am half ashamed that I have brought him up­on the Stage.

But yet I will commend his Craft, though not his Faithfulness, that he had the wit to o­mit the proposing of Buggery as well as of A­dultery, and the endeavouring to shew how graceful and agreeable to God, how congruous and proportionate it were to his immense Grandeur and Majesty, to create a Soul on purpose (im­maculate and undefiled) to actuate the ob­scene Emissions of a Brute having to do with a Woman, or of a Man having to do with a Brute: For both Women and Brutes▪ have been thus impregnated, and brought forth humane Births, as you may see abundantly testified in Fortunius Licetus; it would be too long to produce Instances.

This Opinion of Gods creating Souls, and putting them into Bodies upon incestuous and adulterous Coitions, how exceeding absurd and unbecoming the Sanctity of the Divine Ma­jesty it seemed to the Churches of Aethiopia, you may see in the History of Jobus Ludol­phus. How intolerable therefore and execra­ble would this Doctrine have appeared unto them, if they had thought of the prodigious fruits of successful Buggery? The words of Ludolfus are these: Perabsurdum esse si quis Deum astrictum dicat pro adulterinis & incestuo­ [...]is partubus animas quotidie novas creare. Hist. [Page 15] Aethiop. lib. 3. cap. 5. What would they then say of creating a new Soul, for the Womb of a Beast bugger'd by a Man, or of a Woman bugger'd by a Beast!

Pag. 12. Methinks that may be done at a cheaper rate, &c. How it may be done with more agreeableness to the Goodness, Wisdom, and Justice of God, has been even now hinted by me, nor need I repeat it.

Pag. 13. It seems very incongruous and un­handsome, to suppose that God should create two Souls for the supply of one monstrous Body. And there is the same reason for several other Mon­strosities, which you may take notice of in Fortunius Licetus, lib. 2. cap. 58. One with seven humane heads and arms, and Ox-feet; others with Mens bodies, but with a head the one of a Goose, the other of an Elephant, &c. In which it is a strong presumption humane Souls lodged, but in several others certain. How does this consist with Gods fresh crea­ting humane Souls pure and innocent, and putting them into Bodies? This is by the a­foresaid Anti-Pre-existentiary at first answered onely by a wide gape or yawn of Admiration. And indeed it would make any one stare and wonder how this can consist with Gods imme­diately and freely intermeddling with the Ge­neration of Men, as he did at first in the Crea­tion. For out of his holy hands all things come clean and neat. Many little efforts he [Page 16] makes afterwards to salve this difficulty of Monsters, but yet in his own judgment the surest is the last; That God did purposely tye fresh created Souls to these monstroûs shapes, that they whose Souls sped better, might humbly thank him. Which is as wisely argued, as if one should first with himself take it for granted that God determines some men to monstrous Debaucheries and Impieties, and then fancy this the use of it, that the Spectators of them may with better pretence than the Pharisee, cry out, Lord, we thank thee that we are not as these men are. There is nothing permit­ted by God, but it has its use some way or o­ther; and therefore it cannot be concluded, because that an Event has this or that use, therefore God by his immediate and free Om­nipotence effected it. A Pre-existentiary easily discerns that these Monstrosities plainly imply that God does not create Souls still for every humane Coition, but that having pre-existed, they are left to the great Laws of the Ʋniverse and Spirit of Nature; but yet dares not con­clude that God by his free Omnipotence de­termines those monstrous Births, as serviceable as they seem for the evincing so noble a The­ory.

Pag. 15. That God on the seventh day rested from all his works. This one would think were an Argument clear enough that he cre­ates nothing since the celebration of the first [Page 17] seventh days rest. For if all his works are rested from, then the creation of Souls (which is a work, nay a Master-piece amongst his works scarce inferiour to any) is rested from also. But the above-mentioned Opposer of Pre-existence is not at a loss for an Answer; (for his Answers being slight, are cheap and easie to come by:) He says therefore, That this supposeth onely that after that time he ceased from creating new Species. A witty Invention! As if God had got such an easie habit by once creating the things he created in the six days, that if he but contained him­self within those kinds of things, though he did hold on still creating them, that it was not Work, but mere Play or Rest to him, in comparison of his former labour. What will not these men fancy, rather than abate of their prejudice against an opinion they have once taken a toy against! When the Author to the Hebrews says, He that has entred into his rest, has ceased from his own works, as God ceased from his; verily this is small comfort or instructi­on, if it were as this Anti-Pre-existentiary would have it: for if God ceased onely from creating new Species, we may, notwithstanding our promised Rest, be tyed to run through new instances of labours or sins, provided they be but of those kinds we experienced before. To any unprejudiced understanding, this sence must needs seem forced and unnatural, thus to [Page 18] restrain Gods Rest to the Species of things, and to engage him to the dayly task of creating Individuals. The whole Aethiopian Church is of another mind: Qui animam humanam quoti­diè non creari hoc argumento asserunt, quòd Deus sexto die perfecerit totum opus Creationis. See Ludolfus in the place above-cited.

Chap. 3. pag. 17. Since the Images of Ob­jects are very small and inconsiderable in our brains, &c. I suppose he mainly relates to the Objects of Sight, whose chief, if not onely I­mages, are in the fund of the Eye; and thence in vertue of the Spirituality of our Soul ex­tended thither also, and of the due qualification of the Animal Spirits are transmitted to the Perceptive of the Soul within the brain. But how the bignesses and distances of Objects are conveyed to our cognoscence, it would be too tedious to signifie here. See Dr. H. Moore's Enchiridion Metaphysicum, cap. 19.

Pag. 17. Were it not that our Souls use a kind of Geometry, &c. This alludes to that pretty conceit of Des Cartes in his Dioptricks, the solidity of which I must confess I never un­derstood. For I understand not but that if my Soul should use any such Geometry, I should be conscious thereof, which I do not find my self. And therefore I think those things are better understood out of that Chapter of the Book even now mentioned.

[Page 19] Pag. 17. And were the Soul quite void of all such implicit Notions, it would remain as senseless, &c. There is no sensitive Perception indeed, without Reflection; but the Reflection is an immediate attention of the Soul to that which affects her, without any circumstance of No­tions intervening for enabling her for sensitive Operations. But these are witty and ingeni­ous Conjectures, which the Author by reading Des Cartes, or otherhow, might be encoura­ged to entertain. To all sensitive Objects the Soul is an Abrasa Tabula, but for Moral and In­tellectual Principles, their Idea's or Notions are essential to the Soul.

Pag. 18. For Sense teacheth no general Pro­positions, &c. Nor need it do any thing else but exhibit some particular Object, which our Un­derstanding being an Ectypon of the Divine In­tellect necessarily, when it has throughly sif­ted it, concludes it to answer such a determi­nate Idea eternally and unalterably one and the same, as it stands in the Divine Intellect, which cannot change; and therefore that I­dea must have the same properties and respects for ever. But of this, enough here. It will be better understood by reading the Discourse of Truth, and the Annotations thereon.

Pag. 18. But from something more sublime and excellent. From the Divine or Archety­pal Intellect, of which our Understanding is the Ectypon, as was said before.

[Page 20] Pag. 21. And so can onely transmit their na­tural qualities. They are so far from trans­mitting their Moral Pravities, that they trans­mit from themselves no qualities at all. For to create a Soul, is to concreate the qualities or properties of it, not out of the Creator, but out of nothing. So that the substance and all the properties of it are out of nothing.

Pag. 22. Against the nature of an immaterial Being, a chief property of which is to be indiscer­pible. The evasion to the force of this Ar­gument by some Anti-Pre-existentiaries is, that it is to philosophize at too high a rate of con­fidence, to presume to know what the nature of a Soul or Spirit is. But for brevities sake, I will refer such Answerers as these to Dr. H. Moore's brief Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit, printed lately with Saducismus Trium­phatus; and I think he may be thence as sure that Indiscerpibility is an essential property of a Spirit, as that there are any Spirits in the Universe: and this methinks should suffice any ingenuous and modest Opposer. But to think there is no knowledge but what comes in at our Senses, is a poor, beggarly, and precarious Principle, and more becoming the dotage of Hobbianism, than men of clearer Parts and more serene Judgments.

Pag. 22. By separable Emissions that pass from the flame, &c. And so set the Wick and Tal­low on motion. But these separable Emissi­ons [Page 21] that pass from the flame of the lighted Candle, pass quite away, and so are no part of the flame enkindled. So weak an Illustration is this of what these Traducters would have.

Chap. 4. pag. 32. Which the Divine Piety and Compassion hath set up again, that so, so many of his excellent Creatures might not be lost and undone irrecoverably, but might act anew, &c. To this a more elegant Pen and refined Wit objects thus: Now is it not highly derogatory to the infinite and unbounded Wisdom of God, that he should detrude those Souls which he so seriously designes 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 them more mi­serable here and to eternity hereafter? A strange method of recovering this, to put them into such a fatal necessity 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 he ob­jects in reference to what the Author of Lux Orientalis writes, chap. 2. where he says, It is a thousand to one but Souls detruded into these bodies will corrupt and defile themselves, and so make themselves miserable here and to eternity hereafter.

And much he quotes to the same purpose [Page 22] out of the Account of Origen. Where the Souls great disadvantages to Vertue and Holiness, what from the strong inclinations of the Body, and what from National Customs & Education in this Terrestrial State, are lively set out with a most moving and tragical Eloquence, to shew how unlikely it is that God should put inno­cent and immaculate Souls of his own creati­on immediately, into such Bodies, and so hard and even almost fatal condition of miscarry­ing. Upon which this subtile Anti-Pre-exi­stentiary: Thus you see, saith he, what strong Objections and Arguments the Pre-existentia­ries 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 Pre-existence as Aspersi­ons of Providence. This is smartly and sur­prizingly spoken. But let us consider more punctually the state of the matter.

Here then we are first to observe, how cun­ningly this shrewd Antagonist conceals a main stroke of the Supposition, viz. That the Di­vine Pity and Compassion to lapsed Souls, that had otherwise fallen into an eternal state of Si­lence and Death, had set up Adam for their relief, and endued him with such a Paradisiacal body of so excellent a constitution to be trans­mitted to all his Posterity, and invested him, [Page 23] in vertue of this, with so full power non peccan­di, that if he and his Posterity were not in an happy flourishing condition as to their eternal interest of Holiness and Vertue, it would be long of himself. And what could God do more correspondently to his Wisdom and Goodness, dealing with free Agents, such as humane Souls are, than this? And the thing being thus stated, no Objections can be brought against the Hypothesis, but such as will invade the inviolable Truths of Faith and Orthodox Divinity.

Secondly, We are to observe, how this cun­ning Objector has got these two Pre-existen­tiaries upon the hip for their youthful flow­ers of Rhetorick, when one says, it is hundreds to one; the other, ten thousand to one, that Souls will miscarry put into these disadvanta­ges of the Terrestrial state, by which no can­did Reader will understand any more, than that it is exceeding difficult for them to escape the pollutions of this lower World once incorpo­rated into Terrestrial Bodies. But it being granted possible for them to emerge, this is a great grace and favour of the Divine Good­ness to such peccant wretches, that they are brought out of the state of eternal Silence and Death, to try their Fortunes once more, though incumbred with so great difficulties which the Divine Nemesis suffers to return upon them. That therefore they are at all in a condition [Page 24] of recovery, is from the Goodness and Mercy of God; that their condition is so hard, from his Justice, they having been so foully pec­cant. And his wisdom being only to contrive what is most agreeable to his Mercy and Ju­stice, it is not at all derogatory to the infinite and unbounded Wisdom of God thus to deal with lapsed Souls. For though he does seri­ously intend to make them happy, yet it must be in a way correspondent to his Justice as well as Mercy.

Thirdly and Lastly, Besides that the Spirit of the Lord pervades the whole Earth ready to assist the sincere; there is moreover a mighty weight of mercy added in the Reve­lation of our Lord Jesus Christ to the world, so that the retriving of the Souls of men out of their Death and Silence into this Terrestri­al state, in which there is these helps to the sincere, it is manifestly worthy the Divine Wis­dom and Goodness. For those it takes no ef­fect with, (they beginning the world again on this stage) they shall be judged onely ac­cording to what they have done here, there be­ing an eternal obliteration as well as oblivi­on of the acts of their Pre-existent state; but those that this merciful Dispensation of God has taken any effect upon here, their sincere desires may grow into higher accomplishments in the future state. Which may something mitigate the horrour of that seeming univer­sal [Page 25] squalid estate of the Sons of men upon earth. Which in that it is so ill, is rightly imputed by both Jews and Christians and the divinest Philosophers to a Lapse, and to the Mercy and Grace of God that it is no worse. From whence it may appear, that that argu­ment for Pre-existence, that God does not put newly created innocent Souls into such disad­vantageous circumstances of a terrestrial In­corporation, though partly out of Mercy, part­ly out of Justice, he has thought fit lapsed Souls should be so disposed of, that this I say is no aspersion of Divine Providence.

Pag. 36. And now I cannot think of any place in the sacred Volume more, that could make a to­lerable plea against this Hypothesis, &c. It is much that the ingenious Author thought not of 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.] This is urged by Anti-pre-existentiaries, as a notable place against Pre-ex­istence. For, say they, how could Esau and Jacob. be said neither to have done good nor evil, if they pre-existed before they came in­to this world? For if they pre-existed, they acted; and if they acted, they being rational Souls, they must have done either good or evil. This makes an handsome shew at first sight; but if we consult Gen. 25. we shall plain­ly [Page 26] see that this is spoke of Jacob and Esau yet strugling in the Womb; as it is said in this Text, For the Children being not yet born; but strugling in the Womb, as you may see in the other. Which plainly therefore respects their actions in this life, upon which certainly the mind of St. Paul was fix'd. As if he should have expresly said: For the Children being not yet born, but strugling in the Womb, neither having done either good or evil in this life as being still in the Womb, it was said of them to Rebeckah, The elder shall serve the younger. Which sufficiently illustrates the matter in hand with St. Paul; that as Jacob was prefer­red before Esau in the Womb, before either of them was born to act here on the Earth, and that therefore done without any respect to their actions; so the purpose of God touching his people should be of free Election, not of Works.

That of Zachary also, Chap. 12. 1. I have heard alledged by some as a place on which no small stress may be laid. The Lord is there said to be the Former of the Spirit of Man within him. Wherefore they argue, If the Spi­rit of Man be formed within him, it did never pre-exist without him. But we answer, That [...] is but the same that [...]. And then the sence is easie and natural, that the Spirit that is in man, God is the Former or Creator of it. But this Text [Page 27] defines nothing of the time of forming it. There are several other Texts alledged, but it is so easie to answer them, and would take up so much time and room, that I think fit to o­mit them, remembring my scope to be short Annotations, not a tedious Commentary.

Pag. 41. Mr. Ben Israel in his Problems De Creatione assures us, that Pre-existence was the common belief, &c. That this was the com­mon opinion of the wiser men amongst the Jews, R. Menasse Ben Israel himself told me at London with great freedom and assurance, and that there was a constant tradition thereof; which he said in some sence was also true con­cerning the Trinity, but that more obscure. But this of Pre-existence is manifest up and down in the Writings of that very ancient and learned Jew Philo Judaeus; as also something toward a Trinity, if I remember aright.

Chap. 5. Pag. 46. We should doubtless have retained some remembrance of that condition. And the rather, as one ingeniously argues, be­cause our state in this life is a state of punish­ment. Upon which he concludes, That if the calamities of this life were inflicted upon us only as a punishment 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, says he, sufficient [Page 28] evidence to all sober and impartial inquirers, that our living and sinning in a former state is as false as inevident.

But to this it may be answered, That the state we are put in, is not a state only of pu­nishment, but of a merciful trial; and it is suf­ficient that we find our selves in a lapsed and sinful condition, our own Consciences telling us when we do amiss, and calling upon us to amend. So that it is needless particularly to remember our faults in the other world, but the time is better spent in faithfully endeavour­ing to amend our selves in this, and to keep our selves from all faults of what nature so­ever. Which is a needless thing our memo­ry should discover to us to have been of old committed by us, when our Consciences urge to us that they are never to be committed; and the Laws of holy Law-givers and divine Instructers, or wise Sages over all the world, assist also our Conscience in her office. So that the end of Gods Justice by these inward and outward Monitors, and by the cross and afflicting Rancounters in this present state, is to be attained to, viz. the amendment of De­linquents if they be not refractory.

And we were placed on this stage as it were to begin the world again, so as if we had not existed before. Whence it seems meet, that there should be an utter obliteration of all that is past, so as not to be able by memory [Page 29] to connect the former life and this together. The memory whereof, if we were capable of it, would be inconsistent with the orderly pro­ceedings of this, and overdoze us and make us half moped to the present Scene of things. Whenas the Divine Purpose seems to be, that we should also experience the natural pleasures and satisfactions of this life, but in an orderly and obedient way, keeping to the prescribed rules of Virtue and Holiness. And thus our faith­fulness being exercised [...] in those things which are more estranged from our no­bler and diviner nature, God may at last re­store us to what is more properly our own.

But in the mean time, that saying which the Poet puts in the mouth of Jupiter, touching the inferiour Deities, may not misbeseem the mercy and wisdom of the true God concer­ning lapsed Souls incorporate into terrestrial Bodies.

Let them not be distracted betwixt a sensible remembrance of the Joys and Glories of our exteriour Heaven above, and the present frui­tion of things below, but let them live an ho­ly and heavenly life upon Earth, exercising their Graces and Vertues in the use and enjoy­ment of these lower earthly Objects, till I call [Page 30] them up again to Heaven, where, after this long swoond they are fallen into, they will more seasonably remember their former Para­disiacal state upon its recovery, and reagnize their ancient home. Wherefore if the remem­bring or forgetting of the former state depend absolutely upon the free contrivance of the Divine Wisdom, Goodness, and Justice, as this ingenious Opposer seems to suppose, I should even upon that very point of fitness conceive that an utter oblivion of the former state is interwoven into the fate and nature of lapsed Souls by a Divine Nemesis, though we do not conceive explicitely the manner how. And yet the natural reasons the Author of Lux Ori­entalis produces in the sequel of his Discourse, seem highly probable.

For first, As we had forgot some lively Dream we dreamt but last night, unless we had met with something in the day of a peculiar vertue to remind us of it, so we meeting with nothing in this lower stage of things that lively resembles those things in our former state, and has a peculiar fitness to rub up our Memory, we continue in an utter oblivion of them. As suppose a man was lively entertain'd in his sleep with the pleasure of dreaming of a fair Crystal River, whose Banks were ador­ned with Trees and Flags in the flower, and those large Flies with blue and golden-colour'd Bodies, and broad thin Wings curiously [Page 31] wrought and transparent, hovering over them, with Birds also singing on the Trees, Sun and Clouds above, and sweet breezes of Air, and Swans in the River with their wings sometimes lifted up like sails against the wind. Thus he passed the night, thinks of no such thing in the morning, but rising goes about his occa­sions. But towards evening a Servant of a Friend of his presents him with a couple of Swans from his Master. The sight of which Swans striking his Perceptive as sensibly as those in his Dream, and being one of the most extraordinary and eximious Objects of his Night-vision, presently reminds him of the whole scene of things represented in his sleep. But neither Sun, nor Clouds, nor Trees, nor any such ordinary thing could in any likeli­hood have reminded him of his Dream. And besides, it was the lively resemblance betwixt the Swans he saw in his sleep, and those he saw waking, that did so effectually rub up his memory. The want therefore of such occur­rences in this life to remind us of the passages of the former, is a very reasonable account why we remember nothing of the former state.

But here the Opposers of Pre-existence pre­tend that the joyous and glorious Objects in the other state do so pierce and transport the Soul, and that she was inured to them so long, that though there were nothing that resembled [Page 32] them here, the impression they make must be indelible, and that it is impossible she should forget them. And moreover, that there is a similitude betwixt the things of the upper World and the lower, which therefore must be an help to memory.

But here, as touching the first, they do not consider what a Weapon they have given into my hand against themselves. For the long inuredness to those Celestial Objects abates the piercingness of their transport; and before they leave those Regions, according to the Platonick or Origenian Hypothesis, they grow cooler to such enjoyments: so that all the ad­vantages of that piercing transport for memo­ry, are lost. And besides, in vertue of that piercing Transport, no Soul can call into me­mory what she enjoyed formerly, but by re­calling herself into such a Transport, which her Terrestrial Vehicle makes her uncapable of.

For the memory of external Transactions is sealed upon us by some passionate corporeal impress in conjunction with them (which makes them whip Boys sometimes at the boundaries of their Parish, that they may bet­ter remember it when they are old men;) which Impress if it be lost, the memory of the thing it self is lost. And we may be sure it is lost in Souls incorporate in Terrestrial Vehicles, they having lost their Aereal and [Page 33] Celestial, and being fatally incapacitated so much as to conceit how they were affected by the External Objects of the other World, and so to remember how they felt them. And therefore all the descriptions that men of a more Aethereal and Entheous temper adven­ture on in this life, are but the Roamings of their Minds in vertue of their Constitution to­wards the nature of the heavenly things in ge­neral, not a recovery of the memory of past Experience; this State not affording so lively a representment of the Pathos that accompani­ed the actual sense of those things, as to make us think that we once really enjoyed them be­fore. That is onely to be collected by Rea­son; the noble exercise of which faculty, in the discovering of this Arcanum of our Pre-exi­stence, had been lost, if it could have been de­tected by a compendious Memory. But if ever we recover the memory of our former State, it will be when we are re-entred into it; we then being in a capacity of being really struck with the same Pathos we were before, in vertue whereof the Soul may remember this was her pristine condition.

And therefore to answer to the second, Though there may be some faintness of resem­blance betwixt the things of the other State and this, yet other peculiarities also being re­quired, and the former sensible Pathos to be recovered, which is impossible in this State, it [Page 34] is likewise impossible for us to remember the other in this.

The second Argument of the Author for the proving the unlikeliness of our remem­bring the other State is, the long intermission and discontinuance from thinking of those things. For 'tis plain that such discontinuance or de­suetude bereaves us of the memory of such things as we were acquainted with in this World. Insomuch as if an ancient man should read the Verses or Themes he made when he was a School-boy, without his name subscri­bed to them, though he pumpt and sweat for them when he made them, could not tell they were his own. How then should the Soul re­member what she did or observ'd many hun­dreds, nay thousands of years ago?

But yet our Authors Antagonist has the face to make nothing of this Argument nei­ther: Because, forsooth, it is not so much the desuetude of thinking of one thing, but the thinking of others, that makes us forget that one thing. What a shuffle is this! For if the Soul thought on that one thing as well as on other things, it would remember it as well as them. Therefore it is not the thinking of o­ther things, but the not thinking of that, that makes it forgotten. Ʋsus promptus facit, as in general, so in particular. And therefore disuse in any particular slackens at first, and after a­bolishes the readiness of the Mind to think [Page 35] thereof. Whence sleepiness and sluggishness is the Mother of Forgetfulness, because it disuses the Soul from thinking of things. And as for those seven Chronical Sleepers that slept in a Cave from Decius his time to the reign of The­odosius junior, I dare say it would have besotted them without a Miracle, and they would have rose out of their sleep no more wise than a Wisp; I am sure not altogether so wise as this awkward Arguer for memory of Souls in their Pre-existent state after so hugely long a discon­tinuance from it. But for their immediately coming out of an Aethereal Vehicle into a Ter­restrial, and yet forgetting their former state, what Example can be imagined of such a thing, unless that of the Messias, who yet seems to remember his former glorious condition, and to pray that he may return to it again? Though, for my part I think it was rather Di­vine Inspiration than Memory, that enabled him to know that matter, supposing his Soul did pre-exist.

Our Authors third and last Argument to prove that lapsed Souls in their Terrestrial condition forget their former state, is from observation how deteriorating changes in this earthly Body spoils or quite destroys the Me­mory, the Soul still abiding therein; such as Casualties, Diseases, and old Age, which chan­ges the tenour of the Spirits, and makes them less useful for memory, as also 'tis likely the [Page 36] Brain it self. Wherefore there being a more deteriorating change to the Soul in coming in­to an earthly Body, instead of an aereal or ae­thereal, the more certainly will her memory of things which she experienced in that state, be washed out or obliterated in this.

Here our Authors Antagonist answers, That though changes in body may often weaken, and sometimes utterly spoil the memory of things past, yet it is not necessary that the Souls changing of her body should therefore do so, because it is not so injurious to her facul­ties. Which if it were, not onely our Memory, but Reason also should have been casheered and lost by our migration out of those Vehicles we formerly actuated, into these we now en­liven; but that still remaining sound and en­tire, it is a signe that our Memory would do so too, if we had pre-existed in other bodies be­fore, and had any thing to remember. And besides, if the bare translocation of our Souls out of one body into another, would destroy the memory of things the Soul has experien­ced, it would follow, that when People by death are summoned hence into the other state, that they shall be quite bereaved of their Me­mory, and so carry neither applause nor re­morse of Conscience into the other World; which is monstrously absurd and impious. This is the main of his Answer, and mostwhat in his own words. But of what small force it is, we shall now discover, and how little perti­nent to the business.

[Page 37] For first, we are to take notice that the de­teriorating change in the Body, or deteriora­ting state by change of Bodies, is understood of a debilitative, diminutive, or privative, not depravative deterioration; the latter of which may be more injurious to the faculties of the Soul, though in the same Body, such a deterio­rating change causing Phrensies and outragi­ous Madness. But as for diminutive or pri­vative deterioration by change, the Soul by changing her Aereal Vehicle for a Terrestrial, is (comparing her latter state with her for­mer) much injured in her faculties or opera­tions of them; all of them are more slow and stupid, and their aptitude to exert the same Phantasms of things that occurred to them in the other State, quite taken away, by reason of the heavy and dull, though orderly constitu­tion of the Terrestrial Tenement; which weight and stupor utterly indisposes the Soul to recall into her mind the scene of her former state, this load perpetually swaying down her thoughts to the Objects of this.

Nor does it at all follow, because Reason is not lost, therefore Memory, if there were any such thing as Pre-existence, would still abide. For the universal principles of Reason and Mo­rality are essential to the Soul, and cannot be obliterated, no not by any death: but the knowledge of any particular external Objects is not at all essential to the Soul, nor conse­quently [Page 38] the memory of them; and therefore the Soul in the state of silence being stript of them, cannot recover them in her incorpora­tion into a Terrestrial Body. But her Reason, with the general principles thereof, being es­sential to her, she can, as well as this State will permit, exercise them upon the Objects of this Scene of the Earth and visible World, so far as it is discovered by her outward senses, she loo­king out at those windows of this her earthly Prison, to contemplate them. And she has the faculty and exercise of Memory still, in such a sense as she has of sensitive Perception, whose Objects she does remember, being yet to all former impresses in the other state a mere A­brasa Tabula.

And lastly, it is a mere mistake of the Op­poser, or worse, that he makes the Pre-existen­tiaries to impute the loss of memory in Souls of their former state, merely to their coming into other Bodies; when it is not bare change of Bodies, but their descent into worser Bodies more dull and obstupifying, to which they im­pute this loss of memory in lapsed Souls. This is a real death to them, according to that an­cient Aenigm of that abstruse Sage, [...] We live their death, namely of separate Souls, but are dead to their life. But the changing of our Earthly Body for an Aereal or Aethereal, this is not Death, but Reviviscency, in which all the ener­gies [Page 39] of the Soul are (not depressed, but) ex­alted, and our Memory with the rest quicken­ed; as it was in Esdras after he had drunk down that Cup offered to him by the Angel, full of Liquor like Fire, which filled his Heart with Understanding, and strengthned his Memory, as the Text says.

Thus we see how all Objections against the three Reasons of lapsed Souls losing the me­mory of the things of the other state, va­nish into smoak. Wherefore they every one of them single being so sound, all three put together methinks should not fail of convincing the most refractory of this Truth, That though the Soul did pre-exist and act in another state, yet she may utterly forget all the Scenes thereof in this.

Pag. 46. Now if the reasons why we lose the remembrance of our former life be greater, &c. And that they are so, does appear in our An­swer to the Objections made against the said Reasons, if the Reader will consider them.

Pag. 50. And thereby have removed all pre­judices, &c. But there is yet one Reason a­gainst Pre-existence which the ingenious Au­thor never thought of, urged by the Anti-Pre-existentiaries, namely, That it implies the rest of the Planets peopled with Mankind, it being unreasonable to think that all Souls descended in their lapse to this onely Earth of Ours. And if there be lapsed Souls there, how shall they [Page 40] be recovered? shall Christ undergo another and another death for them? But I believe the ingenious Author would have looked up­on this but as a mean and trifling Argument, there being no force in any part thereof. For why may not this Earth be the onely Hospi­tal, Nosocomium or Coemeterium, speaking Pla­tonically, of sinfully lapsed Souls? And then suppose others lapsed in other Planets, what need Christ die again for them, when one drop of his Bloud is sufficient to save myriads of Worlds? Whence it may seem a pity there is not more Worlds than this Earth to be redee­med by it. Nor is it necessary they should historically know it. And if it be, the Eclipse of the Sun at his Passion by some inspired Pro­phets might give them notice of it, and de­scribe to them as orderly an account of the Redemption, as Moses does of the Creation, though he stood not by while the World was framed, but it was revealed to him by God. And lastly, it is but a rash and precarious Po­sition, to say that the infinite Wisdom of God has no more ways than one to save lapsed Souls. It is sufficient that we are assured that this is the onely way for the saving of the Sons of Adam; and these are the fixt bounds of re­vealed Truth in the Holy Scripture which ap­pertains to us Inhabitants on Earth. But as for the Oeconomy of his infinite Wisdom in the other Planets, if we did but reflect upon [Page 41] our absolute ignorance thereof, we would have the discretion not to touch upon that Topick, unless we intended to make our selves ridicu­lous, while we endeavour to make others so.

Chap. 6. pag. 51. Now as the infinite good­ness of the Deity obligeth him always to do good, so by the same to do that which is best, &c. To elude the force of this chief Argument of the Pre-existentiaries, an ingenious Opposer has de­vised a way which seems worth our consider­ing, which is this; viz. By making the Idea of God to consist mainly in Dominion and So­veraignty, the Scriptures representing him un­der no other notion than as the Supream Lord and Soveraign of the Universe. Wherefore nothing is to be attributed to him that enter­feres with the uncontroulableness of his Domi­nion. And therefore, says he, they that assert Goodness to be a necessary Agent that can­not but do that which is best, directly sup­plant and destroy all the Rights of his Power and Dominion. Nay, he adds afterwards, That this notion of Gods goodness is most ap­parently inconsistent, not onely with his Pow­er and Dominion, but with all his other moral Perfections. And for a further explication of his mind in this matter, he adds afterwards, That the Divine Will is indued with the highest kind of liberty, as it imports a freedom not onely [Page 42] from foreign Violence, but also from inward Ne­cessity: For spontaneity, or immunity from coacti­on, without indifferency, carries in it as great ne­cessity as those motions that proceed from Violence or Mechanism. From whence he concludes, That the Divine Will cannot otherwise be deter­mined than by its own intrinsick energie. And lastly, Forasmuch as no Courtisie can oblige, but what is received from one that had a pow­er not to bestow them, if God necessarily acted according to his Goodness, and not out of mere choice and liberty of Will, there were no thanks nor praise due to him; which therefore would take away the duties of Religion. This is the main of his Hypothesis, whereby he would defeat the force of this Argument for the Pre-existence of Souls, taken from the Goodness of God. Which this Hypothesis certainly would do, if it were true; and there­fore we will briefly examine it.

First therefore I answer, That though the Scriptures do frequently represent God as the Lord and Soveraign of the Universe, yet it does not conceal his other Attributes of Good­ness and Mercy, and the like. But that the former should be so much inculcated, is in re­ference to the begetting in the People Awe and Obedience to him. But it is an invalid conse­quence, to draw from hence that the Idea of God does mainly consist in Dominion and So­veraignty; which abstracted from his other [Page 43] Attributes of Wisdom and Goodness, would be a very black and dark representation of him, and such as this ingenious Writer could not himself contemplate without aversation and horror. How then can the Idea of God chiefly consist in this? It is the most terrifying indeed, but not the most noble and accompli­shing part in the Idea of the Deity.

This Soveraignty then is such as is either bounded or not bounded by any other Attri­butes of God. If bounded by none, then he may do as well unwisely as wisely, unjustly as justly. If bounded by Wisdom and Justice, why is it bounded by them, but that it is bet­ter so to be than otherwise? And Goodness being as essential to God as Wisdom and Ju­stice, why may not his Soveraignty be boun­ded by that as well as by the other, and so he be bound from himself of himself to do as well what is best as what is better. This consists with his absolute Soveraignty, as well as the o­ther. And indeed what can be absolute Sove­raignty in an intelligent Being, if this be not? viz. fully and entirely to follow the will and inclinations of its own nature, without any check or controul of any one touching those over whom he rules.

Whence, in the second place, it appears that the asserting that Gods goodness is a necessary Agent (in such a sense as Gods Wisdom and Justice are, which can do nothing but what is [Page 44] wise and just) the asserting, I say, that it can­not but do that which is the best, does nei­ther directly nor indirectly supplant or destroy any Rights of his Power or Dominion, foras­much as he does fully and plenarily act accor­ding to his own inclinations and will touching those that are under his Dominion. But that his Will is always inclined or determined to what is best, it is the Prerogative of the Di­vine Nature to have no other Wills nor Incli­nations but such.

And as for that in the third place, That this notion of Gods Goodness is inconsistent with all his other moral Perfections, I say, that it is so far from being inconsistent with them, that they cannot subsist without it, as they re­spect the dealings of God with his Creatures. For what a kind of Wisdom or Justice would that be that tended to no good? But I suspect his meaning is by moral Perfections, Perfecti­ons that imply such a power of doing or not doing, as is in humane actions; which if it be not allowed in God, his Perfections are not moral. And what great matter is it if they be not, provided they be as they are and ought to be, Divine? But to fancy moral actions in God, is to admit a second kind of Anthropo­morphitism, and to have unworthy conceits of the Divine Nature. When it was just and wise for God to do so or so, and the contrary to do otherwise, had he a freedom to decline [Page 45] the doing so? Then he had a freedom to do unjustly and unwisely.

And yet in the fourth place he contends for the highest kind of liberty in the Divine Will, such as imports a freedom not onely from for­reign Violence, but also from inward Necessi­ty, as if the Divine Will could be no other­wise determined, than by its own intrinsick Energie, as if it willed so because it willed so; which is a sad principle. And yet I believe this learned Writer will not stick to say, that God cannot tye, cannot condemn myriads of innocent Souls to eternal Torments. And what difference betwixt Impossibility and Ne­cessity? For Impossibility it self is onely a Ne­cessity of not doing; which is here internal, a­rising from the excellency and absolute perfe­ction of the Divine Nature. Which is nothing like Mechanism for all that; Forasmuch as it is from a clear understanding of what is best, and an unbyassed Will, which will most cer­tainly follow it, nor is determined by its own intrinsick Energy. That it is otherwise with us, is our imperfection.

And lastly, That Beneficence does not o­blige the Receiver of it to either Praise or Thanksgiving when it is received from one that is so essentially good, and constantly acts according to that principle, when due occasion is offered, as if it were as absurd as to give thanks to the Sun for shining when he can do [Page 46] no otherwise; I say, the case is not alike, be­cause the Sun is an inanimate Being, and has neither Understanding nor Will to approve his own action in the exerting of it. And he be­ing but a Creature, if his shining depended up­on his Will, it is a greater perfection than we can be assured would belong to him, that he would unfailingly administer Light to the World with such a steadiness of Will, as God sustains the Creation.

Undoubtedly all Thanks and Praise is due to God from us, although he be so necessarily good, that he could not but create us and pro­vide for us; forasmuch as he has done this for our sakes merely (he wanting nothing) not for his own. Suppose a rich Christian so inu­red to the works of Charity, that the Poor were as certain of getting an Alms from him, as a Traveller is to quench his thirst at a pub­lick Spring near the Highway; would those that received Alms from him think themselves not obliged to Thanks? It may be you will say, they will thank him, that they may not forfeit his Favour another time. Which An­swer discovers the spring of this Misconceit, which seems founded in self-love, as if all Du­ty were to be resolved into that, and as if there were nothing owing to another, but what im­plied our own profit. But though the Divine Goodness acts necessarily yet it does not blindly, but according to the Laws of Decorum [Page 47] and Justice; which those that are unthankful to the Deity, may find the smart of. But I cannot believe the ingenious Writer much in earnest in these points, he so expresly decla­ring what methinks is not well consistent with them. For his very words are these: God can never act contrary to his necessary and essen­tial properties, as because he is essentially wise, just and holy, he can do nothing that is foolish, unjust, and wicked. Here therefore I demand, Are we not to thank him and praise him for his actions of Wisdom, Justice, and Holiness, though they be necessary?

And if Justice, Wisdom, and Holiness, be the essential properties of God, according to which he does necessarily act and abstain from acting, why is not his Goodness? when it is expresly said by the Wisdom of God incarnate, None is good save one, that is God. Which must needs be understood of his essential Goodness. Which therefore being an essential property as well as the rest, he must necessarily act accor­ding to it. And when he acts in the Scheme of Anger and Severity, it is in the behalf of Goodness; and when he imparts his Goodness in lesser measures as well as in greater, it is for the good of the Whole, or of the Ʋniverse. If all were Eye, where were the Hearing, &c. as the Apostle argues? So that his Wisdom mo­derates the prompt outflowings of his Good­ness, that it may not outflow so, but that in [Page 48] the general it is for the best. And therefore it will follow, that if the Pre-existence of Souls comply with the Wisdom, Justice, and Holiness of God, that none of these restrain his prompt and parturient Goodness, that it must have caused humane Souls to pre-exist or exist so soon as the Spirits of Angels did. And he must have a strange quick-sightedness that can discern any clashing of that act of Goodness with any of the abovesaid Attributes.

Chap. 7. pag. 56. God never acts by mere Will or groundless Humour, &c. We men have un­accountable inclinations in our irregular and depraved Composition, have blind lusts or de­sires to do this or that, and it is our present ease and pleasure to fulfil them; and there­fore we fancy it a priviledge to be able to exe­cute these blind inclinations of which we can give no rational account, but that we are plea­sed by fulfilling them. But it is against the Purity, Sanctity, and Perfection of the Divine Nature, to conceive any such thing in Him; and therefore a weakness in our Judgments to fancy so of him, like that of the Anthropomor­phites, that imagined God to be of Humane shape.

Pag. 59. That God made all things for himself. It is ignorance and ill nature that has made some men abuse this Text to the proving that God acts out of either an humourous or selfish [Page 49] principle, as if he did things merely to please himself as self, not as he is that soveraign un­self-inreressed Goodness, and perfect Rectitude, which ought to be the measure of all things. But the Text implies no such matter: For if you make [...] a Compound of a Preposi­tion and Pronoun, that so it may signifie [for himself] which is no more than propter se, it then will import that he made all things to sa­tisfie his own Will and Pleasure, whose Will and Pleasure results from the richness of his e­ternal Goodness and Benignity of Nature, which is infinite and ineffable, provided always that it be moderated by Wisdom, Justice, and De­corum. For from hence his Goodness is so stinted or modified, that though he has made all things for his own Will and Pleasure who is infinite Goodness and Benignity, yet there is a day of Evil for the Wicked, as it follows in the Text, because they have not walked answer­ably to the Goodness that God has offered them; and therefore their punishment is in behalf of abused Goodness. And Bayns ex­presly interprets this Text thus: Ʋniversa propter seipsum fecit Dominus; that is, says he, Propter bonitatem suam; juxta illud Augustini, DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA, Quia bo­nus est Deus, sumus & in quantum sumus boni sumus.

But [...] may be a Compound of a Par­ticiple and a Pronoun, and then it may signifie [Page 50] [for them that answer him] that is, walk an­serably to his Goodness which he affords them, or [for them that obey him] either way it is very good sence. And then in opposition to these, it is declared, that the Wicked, that is, the Disobedient or Despisers of his Good­ness, he has (not made them wicked, but they having made themselves so) appointed them for the day of Evil. For some such Verb is to be supplied as is agreeable to the matter, as in that passage in the Psalms; The Sun shall not burn thee by day, neither the Moon by night. Where [burn] cannot be repeated, but some other more suitable Verb is to be supplied.

Chap. 8. pag. 63. Since all other things are inferiour to the good of Being. This I suppose is to be understood in such a sence as that say­ing in Job, Skin for skin, and all that a man has, will he give for his life. Otherwise the condi­tion of Being may be such, as it were better not to be at all, whatever any dry-fancied Meta­physicians may dispute to the contrary.

Pag. 67. Indeed they may be morally immu­table and illapsable; but this is Grace, not Nature, &c. Not unless the Divine Wisdom has es­sentially interwoven it into the natural con­stitution of our Souls, that as after such a time of the exercise of their Plaistick on these Ter­restrial Bodies, they, according to the course of Nature, emerge into a plain use of their Rea­son, [Page 51] when for a time they little differed from Brutes; so after certain periods of time well improved to the perfecting their Nature in the sense and adherence to Divine things, there may be awakened in them such a Divine Plai­stick faculty, as I may so speak, as may eternally fix them to their Celestial or Angelical Vehi­cles, that they shall never relapse again. Which Faculty may be also awakened by the free Grace of the Omnipotent more maturely: Which if it be, Grace and Nature conspire to­gether to make a Soul everlastingly happy. Which actual Immutability does no more change the species of a Soul, than the actual exercise of Reason does after the time of her stupour in Infancy and in the Womb.

Pag. 67. I doubt not but that it is much better for rational Creatures, &c. Namely, such as we experience our humane Souls to be. But for such kind of Intellectual Creatures as have nothing to do with matter, they best under­stand the priviledges of their own state, and we can say nothing of them. But for us under the conduct of our faith [...]ul and victo­rious Captain, the Soul of the promised Messi­as, through many Conflicts and Tryals to e­merge out of this lapsed state, and regain again the possession of true Holyness and Vertue, and therewith the Kingdom of Heaven with all its Beauty and Glories, will be such a gra­tification to us, that we had never been capable [Page 52] of such an excess thereof, had we not experi­enced the evils of this life, and the vain plea­sures of it, and had the remembrance of the en­dearing sufferings of our blessed Saviour, of his Aids and Supports, and of our sincere and conscientious adhering to him, of our Conflicts and Victories to be enrolled in the eternal Re­cords of the other World.

Pag. 69. Wherefore as the Goodness of God o­bligeth him not to make every Planet a fixt Star, or every Star a Sun, &c. In all likelihood, as Galilaeus had first observed, every fixed Star is a Sun. But the comparison is framed accor­ding to the conceit of the Vulgar. A thing neither unusual with, nor misbecoming Philo­sophers.

Pag. 69. For this were to tye him to Contra­dictions, viz. to turn one specifical form or es­sence into another. Matter indeed may re­ceive several modifications, but is still real Matter, nor can be turned into a Spirit; and so Spirits specifically different, are untransmu­table one into another, according to the di­stinct Idea's in the eternal Intellect of God. For else it would imply that their essential properties were not essential properties, but loose adventitious Accidents, and such as the essence and substance of such a Spirit, could subsist as well without as with them, or as well with any others as with these.

Pag. 69. That we should have been made pe [...] ­cable [Page 53] and liable to defection. And this may the more easily be allowed, because this defection is rather the affecting of a less good, than any pursuing of what is really and absolutely evil. To cavil against Providence for creating a Crea­ture of such a double capacity, seems as unrea­sonable as to blame her for maki [...]g Zoophiton's, or rather Amphibion's. And they are both to be permitted to live according to the nature which is given them. For to make a Crea­ture fit for either capacity, and to tye him up to one, is for God to do repugnantly to the Workmanship of his own hands. And how little hurt there is done by experiencing the things of either Element to Souls that are re­claimable, has been hinted above. But those that are wilfully obstinate, and do despite to the Divine Goodness, it is not at all inconsi­stent with this Goodness, that they bear the smart of their obstinacy, as the ingenious Au­thor argues very well.

Chap. 9. pag. 73. Have asserted it to be impossible in the nature of the thing, &c. And this is the most solid and unexceptionable An­swer to this Objection, That it is a Repugnan­cy in Nature, that this visible World that con­sists in the motion and succession of things, should be either ab aeterno, or infinite in ex­tension. This is made out clearly and amply in Dr. H. Moore's Enchiridion Metaphysicum, [Page 54] cap. 10. which is also more briefly toucht up­on in his Advertisements upon Mr. Jos Glan­vil's Letter written to him upon the occasion of the Stirs at Tedworth, and is printed with the second Edition of his Saducismus Triumpha­tus. We have now seen the most considera­ble Objections against this Argument from the Goodness of God for proving the Pre-exi­stence of Souls, produced and answered by our learned Author.

But because I find some others in an Im­pugner of the Opinion of Pre-existence urged with great confidence and clamour, I think it not amiss to bring them into view also, after I have taken notice of his acknowledgment of the peculiar strength of this Topick, which he does not onely profess to be in truth the stron­gest that is made use of, but seems not at all to envy it its strength, while he writes thus.

That God is infinitely good, is a Position as true as himself; nor can he that is furnished with the Reason of a man, offer to dispute it. Good­ness constitutes his very Deity, making him to be himself: for could he be arayed with all his other Attributes separate and abstract from this, they would be so far from denominating him a God, that he would be but a prodigious Fiend, and ple­nipotentiary Devil. This is something a rude and uncourtly Asseveration, and unluckly di­vulsion of the Godhead into two parts, and calling one part a Devil. But it is not to be [Page 55] imputed to any impiety in the Author of No-Pre-existence, but to the roughness and boarish­ness of his style, the texture whereof is not onely Fustian, but over-often hard and stiff Buckram. He is not content to deny his as­sent to an Opinion, but he must give it dis­graceful Names. As in his Epistle to the Rea­der, this darling Opinion of the greatest and divinest Sages of the World visiting of late the Studies of some of more than ordinary Wit and learning, he compares it to a Bug and sturdy Mendicant, that pretends to be some Person of Quality; but he like a skilful Beadle of Beggars, lifting up the skirts of her Veil, as his Phrase is, shews her to be a Coun­terfeit. How this busie Beadle would have behaved himself, if he had had the opportunity of lifting up the skirts of Moses's Veil when he had descended the Mount, I know not. I dare not undertake for him, but that according to the coarsness of his phancy he would have mi­staken that lucid Spirit shining through the skin of Moses's face, for some fiery Fiend, as he has somewhere the Spirit of Nature for an Hobgobling. But there is no pleasure in insi­sting upon the rudenesses of his style; he is best where he is most unlike himself, as he is here in the residue of his Description of the Di­vine Goodness.

'Tis Goodness, says he, that is the Head and Glory of Gods perfect Essence; and therefore when [Page 56] Moses importuned him for a Vision of his Glory, he engaged to display his Goodness to him. Could a man think that one that had engaged thus far for the infiniteness of Gods Goodness, for its Headship over the other Attributes, for its Glory above the rest, nay for its Constitutive­ness of the very Deity, as if this were the onely [...], or God himself, the rest of Him divided from this, a prodigious Fiend, or plenipoten­tiary Devil, should prove the Author of No-Pre-existence a very contradiction to this De­claration? For to be able to hold No-Pre-exi­stence, he must desert the [...] of God, and betake himself to the Devil-part of him, as he has rudely called it, to avoid this pregnant proof for Pre-existence taken from the infinite Goodness of God. And indeed he has pickt out the very worst of that black part of God to serve his turn, and that is Self-will in the worst sence. Otherwise Goodness making God to be himself, if it were his true and genuine Self-will, it were the Will of his infinite Good­ness, and so would necessarily imply Pre-exi­stence.

But to avoid the dint of this Argument, he declares in the very same Section for the Su­premacy of the Will over the Goodness of the Divine Nature. Which is manifestly to con­tradict what he said before, That Goodness is the Head and Glory of Gods perfect Essence. For thus Will must have a Supremacy over the [Page 57] Head of the Deity. So that there will be an Head over an Head, to make the God­head a Monster. And what is most insuffe­rable of all, That he has chosen an Head out of the Devil-part of the Deity, to use his own rude expression, to controul and lord it o­ver what is the onely God himself, the rest a Fiend separate from this, according to his own acknowledgment. These things are so infi­nitely absurd, that one would think that he could have no heart to go about to prove them; and yet he adventures on it, and we shall briefly propose and answer what he produ­ceth.

And this Supremacy of the Will, saith he, over the Goodness of the Divine Nature, may be made out both by Scripture and other for­cible Evidences. The Scriptures are three; the first, Psal. 135. 6. Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in heaven, and in the earth, and in the seas, and in all deep places. Now if we remember but who this Lord is, viz. he whom Goodness makes to be himself, we may easily be assured what pleased him, namely, that which his Wisdom discerned to be the best to be done; and therefore it is very right, that whatsoever he pleased he should do through­out the whole Universe. The second place is Mat. 20. 15. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Yes I trow, every one must acknowledge that God has an [...] (for [Page 58] the word is [...] in the Original) to dispose of what is his own; and indeed all is his. No one has either a right or power to controul him. But this does not prove that he ever disposes of any thing otherwise than according to his Wisdom and Goodness. If his Goodness be ever limited, it is limited by his Wisdom, but so then as discerning such a limitation to be for the best. So that the measure of Wis­doms determination is still Goodness, the only Head in the Divine Nature, to which all the rest is subordinate. For that there are diffe­rent degrees of the Communication of the Divine Goodness in the Universe, is for the good of the Whole. It is sufficient to hint these things; it would require a Volume to enlarge upon them. And then for the last place, Exod. 33. 19. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious. This onely implies that he does pro suo jure, and without any motive from any one but himself, communicate more of his Goodness to some Men or Nations than others. But that his Wisdom has not disco­vered this to be best for the whole constitu­tion of things, I challenge any one to prove. But of this we shall have occasion to speak more afterward. These are the Scriptures.

The other forcible Evidences are these: The first, The late Production of the World. The second, The patefaction of the Law but to one single People, namely, the Jews. The third, [Page 59] The timing the Messias's Nativity, and bringing it to pass, not in the Worlds Infancy or Ado­lescence, but [...], Heb. 1. 2. in its declining Age. The fourth, the perpetuity of Hell, and interminableness of those Tor­tures which after this life shall incessantly vex the impious. The fifth and last, God's not perpetuating the Station of Pre-existent Souls, and hindering them from lapsing into these Regions of Sin and Death. These he pretends to be forcible Evidences of the Soveraignty of Gods Will over his Goodness, forasmuch as if the contrary to all these had been, it had been much more agreeable to the Goodness of God.

As for the first of these forcible Arguments, we have disarmed the strength thereof alrea­dy, by intimating that the World could not be ab oeterno. And if it could not be ab oeter­no, but must commence on this side of Eter­nity, and be of finite years, I leave to the Op­poser to prove that it has not been created as soon as it could be; and that is sufficient to prove that its late Production is not inconsi­stent with that principle, that Gods Goodness always is the measure of his Actions. For sup­pose the World of as little continuance as you will, if it was not ab oeterno, it was once of as little; and how can we discern but that this is that very time which seems so little to us?

[Page 60] As for the second, which seems to have such force in it, that he appeals to any competent Judge, if it had not been infinitely better that God should have apertly dispensed his Ordi­nances to all Mankind, than have committed them onely to Israel in so private and clan­cular a manner; I say▪ it is impossible for any one to be assured that it is at all better. For first, If this Priviledge which was peculiar, had been a Favour common to all, it had lost its enforcement that it had upon that lesser num­ber. Secondly, It had had also the less sur­prizing power with it upon others that were not Jews, who might after converse with that Nation, and set a more high price upon the Truths they had travelled for, and were com­municated to them from that People. Third­ly, The nature of the thing was not fitted for the universality of Mankind, who could not be congregated together to see the Wonders wrought by Moses, and receive the Law with those awful circumstances from Mount Sinai or any Mount else. Fourthly, All things hap­pened to them in Types, and them [...]elves were a Type of the true Israel of God to be re­deemed out of their Captivity under Sin and Satan, which was worse than any Aegyptian Servitude: Wherefore it must be some pecu­liar People which must be made such a Type, not the whole World. Fifthly, Consider­ing the great load of the Ceremonial Law [Page 61] which came along with other more proper Pri­viledges of the Jews, setting one against ano­ther, and considering the freedom of other Nations from it, unless they brought any thing like it upon themselves, the difference of their Conditions will rather seem several Modifica­tions of the communicated Goodness of God to his Creatures, than the neglecting of any: Forasmuch as, sixthly and lastly, though all Nations be in a lapsed condition, yet there are the Reliques of the Eternal Law of Life in them. And that things are no better with a­ny of them than they are, that is a thousand times more rationally resolved into their de­merits in their pre-existent state than into the bare Will of God, that he will have things for many Ages thus squalid and forlorn, merely because he will. Which is a Womans Reason, and which to conceive to belong to God, the Author of No-Pre-existence has no reason, un­less he will alleadge that he was styled [...] of the Ancients for this very cause.

Wherefore the Divine Nemesis lying upon the lapsed Souls of men in this Terrestrial State, whose several Delinquencies in the other World and the degrees thereof God alone knows, and according to his Wisdom and Ju­stice disposes of them in this: It is impossible for any one that is not half crazed in his Intel­lectuals, to pretend that any Acts of Provi­dence that have been s [...]nce this Stage of the [Page 62] Earth was erected, might have been infinitely better otherwise than they have been, or in­deed better at all.

This Poetical Rapture has more solid truth in it than the dry Dreams and distorted Fan­cies, or Chimerical Metamorphoses of earthly either Philosophers or Theologs, that prescin­ding the rest of the Godhead from his Good­ness, make that remaining part a foul Fiend or Devil; and yet almost with the same breath pronounce the Will of this Devil of their own making, which is the most poysonous part of him, to have a Supremacy other the [...], o­ver the Divine Goodness; which makes God to be Himself, that is, to be God, and not a ple­nipotentiary Devil. Wherefore we see from these few small hints, (for it were an infinite Argument fully to prosecute) how feeble or nothing forcible this second Evidence is.

Now for the third Evidence, The timing of the Messiah's Nativity, That it was not in the Infancy of the World, but rather in its decli­ning Age, or in the latter times. In which [Page 63] times the Ancient of Days, according to his counsel and purpose, (which the Eternal Wis­dom that was to be incarnate assented and sub­scribed to) sent his Son into the World, the promised Messiah. This did the Ancient of Days and the Eternal Wisdom agree upon. But oh the immense Priviledge of Youth and Confidence! The Author of No-Pre-existence says, it had been better by far, if they had a­greed upon the Infancy of the World. As if this young Divine were wiser than the Ancient of Days, or the Eternal Wisdom itself. I, but he will modestly reply, That he acknowledges that the Ancient of Days and the Eternal Wis­dom are wiser than he, but that they would not make use of their Wisdom. They saw as clearly as could be, that it was far better that the Messiah should come in the Infancy of the World; but the Father would not send him then, merely because he would not send him: That his Will might act freely as mere Will prescinded from Wisdom and Goodness. This is the plain state of the business, and yet ad­mitted by him, who with that open freeness and fulness professes, that prescind the Divine Goodness from the Godhead, what remains is a prodigious Fiend or Devil. What is then: mere Will and Power left alone, but a blind Hurri­cane of Hell? which yet must have the Su­premacy, and over-power the Divine Wisdom and Goodness itself. His Zeal against Pre-existence [Page 64] has thus infatuated and blinded this young Writers Intellectuals, otherwise he had not been driven to these Absurdities, if he had been pleased to admit that Hypothesis.

As also that Wisdom and Justice, and Fit­ness and Decorum attend the Dispensation of Divine Goodness; so that it is not to be com­municated to every Subject after the most am­ple manner, nor at every time, but at such times, and to such Subjects, and in such mea­sures as, respecting the whole compages of things, is for the best. So that Goodness bears the Soveraignty, and according to that Rule, perpetually all things are administred, though there be a different Scene of things and parti­culars in themselves vastly varying in Goodness and Perfection one from another as the parts of the Body do. And so for Times and Ages, every season of the year yield disserent Com­modities: nor are we to expect Roses in Win­ter, nor Apples and Apricocks in Spring. Now the infinite and incomprehensible Wisdom of God comprehending the whole entire Scene of his Providence, and what references there are of one thing to another, that this must be thus and thus, because such and such things prece­ded; and because such things are, such and such must be consequent; which things past and to come lie not under our eye: I say, if this hasty Writer had considered this, he need not have been driven to such a rude solution of [Page 65] this present Problem, why the Messiah came no sooner into the World, viz. Merely because God willed it should be so, though it had been far better if it had been otherwise; but he would have roundly confessed, that undoubted­ly this was the best time and the fittest, though it was past his reach to discover the reasons of the fitness thereof.

This as it had been the more modest, so it had been the more solid solution of this hard Problem. I but then it had not put a bar to this irrefragable Argument from the Goodness of God, for proving Pre-existence: Which he is perswaded in his own Conscience is no less than a demonstration, unless it be acknowled­ged that the Will of God has a Supremacy over his Goodness; and therefore in spight to that abhorred Dogma of Pre-existence, he had ra­ther broach such wild stuff against the glory of God, than not to purchase to himself the sweet conceit of a glorious victory over such an Opinion that he has taken a groundless toy against, and had rather adventure upon gross Blasphemies than entertain it.

The devout Psalmist, Psal. 36. speaking of the Decrees of God and his Providence over the Creation, Thy righteousness, says he, is as the great mountains, thy judgments are a great deep. And St. Paul, Rom. 11. after he has treated of intricate and amazing points, cries out, [...], Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom [Page 66] and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! Now according to the rudeness of our young Wri­ter, there is no such depth of Wisdom, or un­searchableness in the Judgments and Decrees of God and his Providences in the World that most amaze us, but the reasons of them lie ve­ry obvious and shallow. Where we fancy that things might have been better otherwise, (though of never so grand import, as the co­ming of the Messiah is) it is easily resolved in­to the Supremacy of the Will of God, which it has over his Wisdom and Goodness. He willed it should be so, because he would it should be so, though it had been sar better if the Messiah had come sooner. But see the difference be­twixt an inspired Apostle, and a young hot­headed Theologist: This latter resolves these unsearchable and unintelligible Decrees of God and passages of Providence, into the mere Will of God, lording it over the Divine Wisdom and Goodness: But the Apostle, by how much more unsearchable his Judgments and Decrees are, and the ways of his Providence past fin­ding out, the greater he declares the depth of the richness of his Wisdom, which is so ample, that it reaches into ways and methods of doing for the best beyond the Understandings of men. For most assuredly, while the depth of the Wisdom of God is acknowledged to carry on the ways of Providence, it must be also ac­knowledged [Page 67] that it acts like itself, and chuseth such ways as are best, and most comporting with the Divine Goodness; or else it is not an act of Wisdom, but of Humour or Oversight.

But it may be the Reader may have the cu­riosity to hear briefly what those great Argu­ments are, that should induce this young Wri­ter so confidently to pronounce, that it had been far better that the Messiah should have come in the Infancy of the World, than in the times he came. The very quintessence of the force of his arguing extracted out of the ver­bosity of his affected style, is neither more nor less than this: That the World be [...]ore the coming of Christ, who was to be the Light of the World, was in very great Darkness; and therefore the sooner he came, the better. But to break the assurance of this Arguer for the more early coming o [...] Christ,

First, we may take notice out of himself, chap. 3. That the Light of Nature is near akin not onely to the Mosaick Law, but to the Gospel itself; and that even then there were the assi­stances of the Holy Ghost to carry men on to such vertuous Accomplishments as might avail them to eternal Salvation. This he acknowledges pro­bable, and I have set it down in his own words. Whence considering what a various Scene of things there was to be [...]rom the Fall of Adam to the end of the World, it became the great and wise Dramatist not to bring upon the Stage [Page 68] the best things in the first Act, but to carry on things pompously and by degrees; something like that Saying of Elias, Two thousand years under the Light of Nature, two thousand un­der the Law, and then comes the Nativity of the Messiah, and after a due space the happy Millennium, and then the Final Judgment, the compleated Happiness of the Righteous in Heaven, and the Punishment of the Wicked in Hell-fire. But to hasten too suddenly to the best, is to expect Autumn in Spring, and Virility or Old Age in Infancy or Childhood, or the Catastrophe of a Comedy in the first Act.

Secondly, we may observe what a weak Disprover he is of Pre-existence, which like a Gyant would break in upon him, were it not that he kept him out by this false Sconce of the Supremacy of the Divine Will over his Wisdom and Goodness; which Conceit, how odious and impious it is, has been often enough hinted already. But letting Pre-existence take place, and admitting that there is, according to Di­vine Providence, an orderly insemination of lapsed Souls into humane Bodies, through the several Ages of the World, whose lapses had several circumstantial differences, and that men therefore become differently fitted Ob­jects of Grace and Favour; how easie is it to conceive God according to the fitnesses of the generality of Souls in such or such periods of [Page 69] times, as it was more just, agreeable, or need­ful for them, so and in such measures to have dispensed the Gifts of his ever-watchful and all-comprehending Providence to them, for both time and place. This one would think were more tolerable than to say, That God wills merely because he wills; which is the Character of a frail Woman, rather than of a God, or else, as this Writer himself acknow­ledges, of a Fiend or Devil. For such, says he, is God in the rest of his Attributes, if you seclude his Goodness. What then is that acti­on which proceeds onely from that part from which Goodness is secluded? So that himself has dug down the Sconce he would entrench himself in, and lets Pre-existence come in upon him, whether he will or no, like an armed Giant; whom let him abhor as much as he will, he is utterly unable to resist.

And thirdly and lastly, Suppose there were no particular probable account to be given by us, by reason of the shortness of our Under­standings, and the vast fetches of the all-com­prehensive Providence of God, why the co­ming of the Messiah was no earlier than it was; yet according to that excellent Aphorism in Morality and Politicks, Optimè praesumendum est de Magistratu, we should hope, nay be as­sured it was the best that he came when he did, it being by the appointment of the infinite good and all-wise God, and cry out with St. [Page 70] Paul, Oh the depth of the riches of both the wis­dom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! And in the Psalmist, Thy judgments are like a great deep, O Lord, thou preservest man and, beast. And so acknowledge his Wisdom and Goodness in the ordering his Creatures, even there where his ways are to our weak and scant Understandings most inexplicable and un­searchable. Which Wisdom and Goodness as we have all reason to acknowledge in all mat­ters, so most of all in matters of the greatest concernment, that there most assuredly God wills not thus or thus merely because he wills, but because his Wisdom discerns that it is for the best. And this is sufficient to shew the weakness of this third Evidence for proving the Supremacy of the Divine Will over his Wis­dom and Goodness.

His fourth Evidence is, The Perpetuity of Hell, and interminableness of those Tortures which after this life vex the Wicked. For, says he, had the penalties of mens sins here been rated by pure Goodness, free and uncon­trouled by any other principle, it is not pro­bable that they should have been punished by an eternal Calamity, the pleasures of them be­ing so transient and fugitive. Thus he argues, and almost in the very same words; and there­fore concludes, that the authority of Gods Will interposed, and pro suo jure, having the [Page 71] Supremacy over his Goodness, over-swayed the more benign Decree; and Will, because it would have it so, doomed sinners to these e­ternal Torments. But I would ask this Sophi­ster, Did the Will of God in good earnest sen­tence sinners thus in Decree, merely because he willed it, not because it was either good or just? What a black and dismal Reproach is here cast upon the Divine Majesty! That he sentences sinners thus because he will, not because it is just. The sence whereof is, So he will do, right or wrong. But the Patriarch Abraham was of another mind, Shall not the Judge of the whole Earth do right? This he said even to Gods face, as I may so speak. Wherefore God doing nothing but what is just, does nothing but what is also good. For Justice is nothing but Goodness modified.

Nor is it asserted by those that make Good­ness the measure of Gods Providence, that the modification and moderation thereof is not by his Wisdom and Justice. So that this Sophister puts [pure] to Goodness, merely to obscure the sence, and put a Fallacy upon his Reader. The sins of men here are not rated by pure Goodness, but by that modification of Goodness which is termed Justice; which is not a distinct principle from Goodness, but a branch thereof, or Goodness it self under such a modification, not mere Will acting because it will, right or wrong, good or evil. Where­fore [Page 72] the state of the Question is not, whe­ther the eternal Torments of Hell are con­sistent with the pure Goodness of God, but with his Justice. But if they are eternal mere­ly from his Will, without any respect to Ju­stice, his Will does will what is infinitely be­yond the bounds of what is just, because end­less is infinitely beyond that which has an end. Such gross Absurdities does this Opposer of Pre-existence run into, to fetch an Argument from the supposititious Supremacy of the Will of God over his Wisdom and Goodness.

But as touching the Question rightly pro­posed, whether the Perpetuity of Hell to sin­ners consists with the Justice of God, a man ought to be chary and wary how he pronoun­ces in this point, that he slip not into what may prove disadvantageous to the Hearer. For there are that will be scandalized, and make it serve to an ill end, whether one declare for eternal Torments of Hell, or against them. Some being ready to conclude from their E­ternity, that Religion itself is a mere Scarecrow that frights us with such an incredible Mormo; others to indulge to their Pleasures, because the Commination is not frightful enough to deter them from extravagant Enjoyments, if Hell Torments be not eternal. But yet I can­not but deem it a piece of great levity in him that decided the Controversie, as the comple­sant Parson did that about the May-pole; they [Page 73] of his Parish that were for a May-pole, let them have a May-pole; but they that were not for a May-pole, let them have no May-pole. But this in sobriety one may say, that the use of [...] and [...] in Scripture is indif­ferent to signifie either that which is properly everlasting, or that which lasts a long time. So that by any immediate infallible Oracle, we are not able to pronounce for the Eternity or Perpetuity of Hell-torments. And the Creeds use the phrase of Scripture, and so some may think that they have the same latitude of interpretation. But it is the safest to adhere to the sence of the Catholick Church, for those that be bewilder'd in such Speculations.

But what the Writer of No-Pre-existence ar­gues from his own private Spirit, though it be not inept, yet it is not over-firm and solid. But that the Penancies of Reprobates are end­less, I shall ever thus perswade my self, saith he, either the Torments of Hell are eternal, or the Felicities of Heaven are but temporary (which I am sure they shall never be:) for the very same word that is used to express the permanence of the one, measures out the continuance of the other; and if [...] denotes everlasting life, a blessed­ness that shall never end, (Mat. 25. ult.) what can [...] in the same verse signifie, but per­petual punishment, a misery that shall never cease? This is pretty handsomly put together, but as I said, does not conclude firmly what is driven [Page 74] at. For it being undeniably true that [...] signifies as well that which onely is of a long continuance, as what is properly everlasting; and it being altogether rational, that when words have more significations than one, that signi­fication is to be applied that is most agreeable to the subject it is predicated of, and [...] in that higher sence of property and absolutely e­verlasting, not being applicable to [...], but upon this Writers monstrous supposition that the Will of God has a Supremacy over his Wis­dom, Goodness, and Justice (as if the righteous God could act against his own Conscience, which no honest man can do) it is plain, that though [...] in [...] signifie properly e­verlasting, that there is no necessity that it should signifie so in [...], but have that other signification of long continuance, though not of everlastingness, and that continuance so long, as if considered, would effectually rouze any man out of his sins; and Eternity not considered, will not move him. This one would think were enough to repress the confi­dence of this young Writer.

But I will adde something more out of his fellow Anti-Pre-existentiary. That Commina­tions are not, though Promises be obligatory. Forasmuch as in Comminations the Comminator is the Creditor, and he that is menaced the Debtor that owes the punishment (with which that Latine Phrase well agrees, dare poenas) [Page 75] but in Promises, he that promiseth becomes Debtor, and he to whom the Promise is made, Creditor. Whence the Promiser is plainly o­bliged to make good his Promise, as being the Debtor: But the Comminator, as being the Cre­ditor, is not obliged to exact the punishment, it being in the power of any Creditor to remit the Debt owing him if he will. Wherefore in this Commination of eternal fire, or everlasting punishment, though [...] signifie here proper­ly everlasting, as well as in everlasting life, yet because this latter is a Promise, the other onely a Commination, it does not follow, that as surely as the Righteous shall be rewarded with ever­lasting life, so surely shall the Wicked be pu­nished with everlasting fire, in the most pro­per and highest extent of the signification of the word. Because God in his Comminations to the Wicked is onely a Creditor, and has still a right and power to remit either part or the whole Debt; but to the Righteous, by vertue of his Promise, he becomes a Debtor, and cannot recede, but must punctually keep his word.

To all which I adde this Challenge: Let this Writer, or any else if they can, demon­strate that a Soul may not behave herself so perversely, obstinately, and despightfully a­gainst the Spirit of Grace, that she may de­serve to be made an everlasting Hackstock of the Divine Nemesis, even for ever and ever. And if she deserve it, it is but just that she have [Page 76] it; and if it be just, it is likewise good. For Justice is nothing else but Goodness modified in such sort, as Wisdom and sense of Decorum sees fittest. But the Election of Wisdom being al­ways for the best, all things considered, it is plain that Justice and the execution thereof, is for the best; and that so Goodness, not mere Will upon pretence of having a Supremacy o­ver Goodness, would be the measure of this sen­tencing such obdurate sinners to eternal pu­nishment. And this eternal punishment as it is a piece of vindicative Justice upon these ob­durate sinners, so it naturally contributes to the establishment of the Righteous in their Celestial Happiness. Which, this Opposer of Pre-existence objects somewhere, if Souls ever fell from, they may fall from it again. But these eternal Torments of Hell, if they needed it, would put a sure bar thereto. So that the Wisdom and Goodness also of God is upon this account concerned in the eternal punishments of Hell, as well as his Justice. That it be to the unreclaimable, as that Orphick Hemistichi­um calls it,

The fifth and last forcible Argument, as he calls them, for the proving the Soveraignty of Gods Will over his Goodness, is this. If Gods Goodness, saith he, be not under the command of his Will, but does always what is best, why did it not perpetuate the Station of Pre-exi­stent [Page 77] Souls, and hinder us (if ever we were happy in a sublimer state) from lapsing into these Regions of Sin and Death? But who does not at first sight discern the weakness of this Allegation? For it is plainly [...], an absurd thing, and contrary to Reason, to create such a species of Being, whose nature is free and mutable, and at the first dash to dam up or stop the exercise of that freedom and ca­pacity of change, by confining it to a fixt Sta­tion. As ridiculous as to suppose a living Creature made with wings and feet, and yet that the Maker thereof should take special care it should never slie nor go. And so like­wise, that the mere making of such an Order of Beings as have a freedom of Will, and choice of their Actions, that this is misbecoming the Goodness of God, is as dull and idiotical a con­ceit, and such as implies that God should have made but one kind of Creature, and that the most absolutely and immutably happy that can be, or else did not act according to his Goodness, or for the best: Which is so obvi­ous a Falshood, that I will not confute it. But it is not hard to conceive that he making such a free-willed Creature as the Souls of men, si­mul cum mundo condito, and that in an happy condition, and yet not [...]ixing them in that Station, may excellently well accord with the Soveraignty of his Goodness, nor any one be constrained to have recourse to the Supremacy [Page 78] of his Will over his Goodness, as if he did it because he would do it, and not because it was best.

For what can this freedom of Will consist in so much as in a temptableness by other Ob­jects that are of an inferiour nature, not so di­vine and holy as the other, to which it were the security of the Soul to adhere with all due con­stancy, and therefore her duty. But in that she is temptable by other Objects, it is a signe that her present enjoyment of the more Di­vine and Heavenly Objects, are not received of her according to their excellency, but ac­cording to the measure and capacity of her present state, which though very happy, may be improved at the long run, and in an orderly series of times and things, whether the Soul lapse into sin or no. For accession of new improvements increaseth Happiness and Joy. Now therefore, I say, suppose several, and that great numbers, even innumerable myriads of pre-existent Souls, to lapse into the Regions of Sin and Death, provided that they do not sin perversely and obstinately, nor do despight to the Spirit of Grace, nor refuse the advantage­ous offers that Divine Providence makes them even in these sad Regions, why may not their once having descended hither tend to their greater enjoyment, when they shall have re­turned to their pristine Station? And why may not the specifical nature of the Soul be [Page 79] such, that it be essentially interwoven into our Being, that after a certain period of times or ages, whether she sin or no, she may arrive to a fixedness at last in her heavenly Station with greater advantage to such a Creature, than if she had been fixed in that state at first.

The thing may seem least probable in those that descend into these Regions of Sin and Mortality. But in those that are not obsti­nate and refractorie, but close with the gra­cious means that is offered them for their re­coverie, their having been here in this lower State, and retaining the memorie (as doubt­less they do) of the transactions of this Ter­restrial Stage, it naturally enhances all the en­joyments of the pristine felicitie they had lost, and makes them for ever have a more deep and vivid resentment of them. So that through the richness of the Wisdom and Goodness of God, and through the Merits and conduct of the Captain of their Salvation, our Saviour Je­sus Christ, they are, after the strong conflicts here with sin and the corruptions of this lower Region, made more than Conquerours, and greater gainers upon the losses they sustained before from their own folly. And in this most advantageous state of things, they be­come Pillars in the Temple of God, there to remain for ever and ever. So that unless stray­ing Souls be exceedingly perverse and obsti­nate, the exitus of things will be but as in a [Page 80] Tragick Comedy, and their perverseness and ob­stinacie lies at their own doors: for those that finally miscarrie, whose number this confident Writer is to prove to be so considerable that the enhanced happiness of the standing part of pre-existent Souls and the recovered does not far preponderate the infelicitie of the others condition. Which if he cannot do, as I am confident he cannot, he must acknowledge, That God in not forcibly fixing pre-existent Souls in the state they were first created, but leaving them to themselves, acted not from the Supremacy of his Will over his Goodness, but did what was best, and according to that Soveraign Principle of Goodness in the De­itie.

And now for that snitling Dilemma of this eager Opposer of Pre-existence, touching the freedom of acting and mutabilitie in humane Souls, whether this mutabilitie be a Specifick properly and essential to them, or a sepa­rable Accident. For if it were essential, says he, then how was Christ a perfect man, his humane nature being ever void of that lapsa­bilitie which is essential to humanitie? and how come men to retain their specifick nature still, that are translated to Celestial happiness, and made unalterable in the condition they then are? To this I answer, That the Pre-existentiaries will admit, that the Soul of the Messiah was created as the rest, though in an [Page 81] happie condition, yet in a lapsable; and that it was his peculiar merit, in that he so faithfully, constantly, and entirely adhered to the Divine Principle, incomparably above what was done by others of his Classis, notwithstanding that he might have done otherwise; and therefore they will be forward to extend that of the Au­thor to the Hebrews, chap. 1. v. 8. (Thy Throne, O God, is for ever and ever, the Scepter of Righ­teousness is the Scepter of thy Kingdom. Thou hast loved Righteousness, and hated Iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the Oyl of Gladness above thy Fellows) to his behaviour in his pre-existent state, as well as in this. And whenever the Soul of Christ did exist, if he was like us in all things, sin one­ly excepted, he must have a capacitie of sin­ning, though he would not sin; that capacitie not put into act being no sin, but an Argu­ment of his Vertue, and such as if he was al­ways devoid of, he could not be like us in all things, sin onely excepted. For posse peccare non est peccatum.

And as for humane Souls changing their Species in their unalterable heavenly happi­ness, the Species is not then changed, but per­fected and compleated; namely, that facultie or measure of it in their Plastick, essentially la­titant there, is by the Divine Grace so awaken­ed, after such a series of time and things, which they have experienced, that now they are [Page 82] [...]irmly united to an heavenly Body or ethereal Vehicle for ever. And now we need say lit­tle to the other member of the Dilemma, but to declare, that free will, or mutability in hu­mane Souls, is no separable Accident, but of the essential contexture of them; so as it might have its turn in the series of things. And how consistent it was with the Goodness of God and his Wisdom, not to suppress it in the beginning, has been sufficiently intimated a­bove. Wherefore now forasmuch as there is no pretext that either the Wisdom or Justice of God should streighten the time of the crea­tion of humane Souls, so that their existence may not commence with that of Angels, or of the Universe, and that this figment of the Su­premacy of Gods mere Will over his other At­tributes is blown away, it is manifest that the Argument for the Pre-existence of Souls drawn from the Divine Goodness, holds firm and ir­refragable against whatever Opposers.

We have been the more copious on this Ar­gument, because the Opposer and others look upon it as the strongest proof the Pre existen­tiaries produce for their Opinion. And the other Party have nothing to set against it but a fictitious Supremacy of the Will of God over his Goodness and other Attributes. Which be­ing their onely Bulwark, and they taking San­ctuary nowhere but here, in my apprehension they plainly herein give up the cause, and esta­blish [Page 83] the Opinion which they seem to have such an antipathy against. But it is high time now to pass to the next Chapter.

Chap. 10. p. 75. To have contracted strong and inveterate habits to Vice and Lewdness, and that in various manners and degrees, &c. To the un­byassed this must needs seem a considerable Ar­gument, especially when the Parties thus irre­claimably profligate from their Youth, some as to one Vice, others to another, are found such in equal circumstances with others, and advantages, to be good; born of the same Pa­rents, educated in the same Family, and the like. Wherefore having the same bodily Ex­traction, and the same advantages of Educati­on, what must make this great difference as they grow up in the Body, but that their Souls were different before they came into it? And how should they have such a vast difference in the proclivity to Vice, but that they lived be­fore in the state of Pre-existence, and that some were much deeper in rebellion against God and the Divine Reason, than others were, and so brought their different conditions with them into these Terrestrial Bodies?

Pag. 75. Then how a Swallow should return to her òld trade of living after her Winter sleep, &c. Indeed the Swallow has the advantages of Memory, which the incorporate Soul has not in her incorporation into a Terrestrial [Page 84] Body after her state of Silence. But the vital inclinations, which are mainly if not onely fit­ted in the Plastick, being not onely revived, but (signally vitious of themselves) revived with advantage, by reason of the corruption of this coarse earthly Body into which the Soul is in­corporate, they cannot fail of discovering themselves in a most signal manner, without any help of memory, but from the mere preg­nancie of a corrupt Body, and formerly more than ordinarily debauched Plastick in the state of Pre-existence.

Pag. 76. Whenas others are as fatally set a­gainst the Opinions, &c. And this is done, as the ingenious Author takes notice, even where neither Education nor Custom have interposed to sophisticate their Judgments or Sentiments. Nay, it is most certain, that they sometime have Sentiments and entertain Opinions quite contrary to their Education. So that that is but a slight account, to restore this Phaenome­non into Education and Custom, whenas Opi­nions are entertained and stiffly maintained in despight of them. This I must confess implies that the aerial Inhabitants philosophize, but conjecturally onely, as well as the Inhabitants of the Earth. And it is no wonder that such Spirits as are lapsed in their Morals, should be at a loss also in their Intellectuals▪ and though they have a desire to know the truth in Specu­lations, it suiting so well with their pride, that yet they should be subject to various errours [Page 85] and hallucinations as well as we, and that there should be different, yea opposite Schools of Philosophie among them. And if there be a­ny credit to be given to Cardans story of his Father Facius Cardanus, things are thus de fa­cto in the aereal Regions. And two of the Spi­rits which Facius Cardanus saw in that Vision (left upon Record by him, and of which he often told his Son Hieronymus while he was living) were two Professors of Philosophie in different Academies, and were of different Opinions; one of them apertly professing himself to be an Aven-Roist. The story is too long to insert here. See Dr. H. Moore his Im­mortality of the Soul, book 3. chap. 17.

So that lapsed Souls philosophizing in their Aerial State, and being divided into Sects, and consequently maintaining their different or opposite Opinions with heat and affection which reaches the Plastick, this may leave a great propension in them to the same Opini­ons here, and make them almost as prone to such and such Errours, as to such and such Vi­ces. This, I suppose, the ingenious Author propounds as an Argument credible and plau­sible, though he does not esteem it of like force with those he produced before. Nor does his Opposer urge any thing to any purpose against it. The main thing is, That these Propensi­ties to some one Opinion are not universal, and blended with the constitution of every [Page 86] person, but are thin sown▪ and grow up spa­ringly. Where there are five, says he, natu­rally bent to any one Opinion, there are ma­ny millions that are free to all. If some, says he, descend into this life big with aptnesses and proclivities to peculiar Theories, why then should not all, supposing they pre-existed to­gether, do the like? As if all in the other Ae­real State were Professors of Philosophie, or zealous Followers of them that were. The solution of this difficulty is so easie, that I need not insist on it.

Pag. 78. Were this difference about sensibles, the influence of the body might then be suspected for a cause, &c. This is very rationally allead­ged by our Author, and yet his Antagonist has▪ the face from the observation of the di­versity of mens Palates and Appetites, of their being differently affected by such and such strains of Musick, some being pleased with one kind of Melodie, and others with another, some pl [...]ased with Aromatick Odours, others offended with them, to reason thus: If the Bodie can thus cause us to love and dislike Sen­sibles, why not as well to approve and dislike Opinions and Theories? But the reason is ob­vious why not; because the liking or disliking of these Sensibles depends upon the grateful or ungrateful motion of the Nerves of the Bodie, which may be otherwise constituted or quali­fied in some complexions than in other some [Page 87] But for Philosophical Opinions and Theories' what have they to do with the motion of the Nerves? It is the Soul herself that judges of those abstractedly from the Senses, or any use of the Nerves or corporeal Organ. If the dif­ference of our Judgment in Philosophical The­ories be resolvible into the mere constitution of our Bodie, our Understanding itself will ha­zard to be resolved into the same Principle al­so: And Bodie will prove the onely difference betwixt Men and Brutes. We have more in­tellectual Souls because we have better Bodies, which I hope our Authors Antagonist will not allow.

Pag. 78. For the Soul in her first and pure nature has no Idiosyncrasies, &c. Whether there may not be certain different Characters proper to such and such Classes of Souls, but all of them natural and without blemish, and this for the better order of things in the Uni­verse, I will not rashly decide in the Negative. But as the Author himself seems to insinuate, if there be any such, they are not such as fatal­ly determine Souls to false and erroneous ap­prehensions. For that would be a corruption and a blemish in the very natural Character. Wherefore if the Soul in Philosophical Specu­lations is fatally determined to falshood in this life, it is credible it is the effect of its being in­ured thereto in the other.

Pag. 79. Now to say that all this variety [Page 88] proceeds primarily from the mere temper of our Bodies, &c. This Argument is the less valid for Pre-existence, I mean that which is drawn from the wonderful variety of our Genius's, or natural inclinations to the employments of life, because we cannot be assured but that the Divine Providence may have essentially, as it were, impressed such Classical Characters on humane Souls, as I noted before. And be­sides, if that be true which Menander says,

That every man, as soon as he is born, has a Geni­us appointed him to be his Instructer and Guide of his Life: That some are carried with such an impetus to some things rather than others, may be from the instigations of his assisting Genius. And for that Objection of the Au­thor's Antagonist against his Opinion touch­ing those inclinations to Trades, (which may equally concern this Hypothesis of Menander) that it would then be more universal, every one having such a Genius; this truth may be smothered by the putting young people pro­miscuously to any Trade, without observing their Genius. But the Chineses suppose this truth, they commonly shewing a Child all the Employs of the Citie, that he may make his own choice before they put him to any.

But if the Opinion of Menander be true, that [Page 89] every man has his guardian Genius, under whose conduct he lives; the Merchant, the Musician, the Plowman, and the rest; it is ma­nifest that these Genii cannot but receive con­siderable impressions of such things as they guide their Clients in. And pre-existent Souls in their aereal estate being of the same nature with these Daemons or Genii, they are capable of the same Employment, and so tincture themselves deep enough with the affairs of those parties they preside over. And there­fore when they themselves, after the state of Silence, are incorporated into earthly Bodies, they may have a proneness from their former tincture to such methods of life as they lived over whom they did preside. Which quite spoils the best Argument our Author's Anta­gonist has against this Topick; which is, That there are several things here below which the Geniusses of men pursue and follow with the hottest chase, which have no similitude with the things in the other state, as Planting, Buil­ding, Husbandrie, the working of Manufa­ctures, &c. This best Argument of his, by Menander's Hypothesis, which is hard to con­fute, is quite defeated.

And to deny nothing to this Opposer of Pre-existence which is his due, himself seems un­satisfied, in resolving these odd Phaenomena in­to the temper of Bodie. And therefore at last hath recourse to a secret Causality, that is, to [Page 90] he knows not what. But at last he pitches upon some such Principle as that whereby the Birds build their Nest, the Spider weaves her Webs, the Bees make their Combs, &c. Some such thing he says (though he cannot think it that prodigious Hobgoblin the Spirit of Na­ture) may produce these strange effects, may byass also the fancies of men in making choice of their Employments and Occupations. If it be not the Spirit of Nature, then it must be that Classical Character I spoke of above. But if not this, nor the preponderancies of the Pre-existent state, nor Menander's Hypothesis, the Spirit of Nature will bid the fairest for it of a­ny besides, for determining the inclinations of all living Creatures in these Regions of Gene­ration, as having in itself vitally, though not intellectually, all the Laws of the Divine Pro­vidence implanted into its essence by God the Creator of it. And speaking in the Ethnick Dialect, the same description may belong to it that Varro gives to their God Genius. Genius est Deus qui proepositus est, ac vim habet omnium rerum gignendarum, and that is the Genius of e­very Creature that is congenit to it in vertue of its generation. And that there is such a Spi­rit of Nature (not a God, as Varro vainly makes it, but an unintelligent Creature) to which belongs the Nascency or Generation of things, and has the management of the whole matter of the Universe, is copiously proved to [Page 91] be the Opinion of the Noblest and Ancientest Philosophers, by the learned Dr. R. Cudworth in his System of the Intellectual World, and is demonstrated to be a true Theorem in Philo­sophie by Dr. H. Moore in his Euchiridion Me­taphysicum, by many, and those irrefutable Ar­guments; and yet I dare say both can easily pardon the mistake and bluntness of this rude Writer, nor are at all surprized at it as a No­veltie, that any ignorant rural Hobthurst should call the Spirit of Nature (a thing so much be­yond his capacitie to judge of) a prodigious Hobgoblin.

But to conclude, be it so that there may be other causes besides the pristine inurements of the Pre-existent Soul, that may something for­cibly determine her to one course of life here, yet when she is most forcibly determined, if there be such a thing as Pre-existence, this may be rationally supposed to concur in the effici­encie. But that it is not so strong an Argu­ment as others to prove Pre-existence, I have hinted alreadie.

Pag. 79. For those that are most like in the Temper, Air, Complexion of their Bodies, &c. If this prove true, and I know nothing to the contrarie, this vast difference of Genius's, were it not for the Hypothesis of their Classical Character imprinted on Souls at their very creation, would be a considerably tight Argu­ment. But certainly it is more honest than [Page 92] for the avoiding Pre-existence to resolve the Phaenomenon into a secret Causality, that is to say, into one knows not what.

Pag. 82. There being now no other way left but Pre-existence, &c. This is a just excuse for his bringing in any Argument by way of overplus that is not so apodictically conclu­ding. If it be but such as will look like a plau­sible solution of a Phaenomenon (as this of such a vast difference of Genius's) Pre-exi­stence once admitted, or otherwise undeniably demonstrated, the proposing thereof should be accepted with favour.

Chap. 11. pag. 85. And we know our Savi­our and his Apostles have given credit to that Translation, &c. And it was the authentick Text with the Fathers of the Primitive Church. And besides this, if we read according to the Hebrew Text, there being no object of Job's knowledge expressed, this is the most easie and natural sence: Knowest thou that thou wast then, and that the number of thy days are many? This therefore was reckoned amongst the rest of his ignorances, that though he was created so early, he now knew nothing of it. And this easie sence of the Hebrew Text, as well as that Version of the Septuagint, made the Jews draw it in to the countenancing of the Tra­dition of the [...], that is, the Pre-existence of Souls, as Grotius has noted of them.

[Page 93] Pag. 85. As reads a very credible Version. R. Menasse Ben Israel reads it so: [I gave thee Wisdom,] which Version, if it were sure and authentick, this place would be fit for the de­fence of the Opinion it is produced for. But no Interpreters besides, that I can find, follow­ing him, nor any going before him, whom he might follow, I ingenuously confess the place seems not of force enough to me to infer the conclusion.

He read, I suppose, [...] in Piel, whence he translated it, Indidi tibi Sapientiam; but the rest read it in Cal.

Pag. 86. And methinks that passage of our Sa­viours Prayer, Father, glorifie me with the glorie I had before the World began, &c. This Text, without exceeding great violence, cannot be evaded. As for that of Grotius interpreting [that I had] that which was intended for me to have, though it make good sence, yet it is such Grammar as that there is no School-boy but would be ashamed of it; nor is there, for all his pretences, any place in Scripture to countenance such an extravagant Exposition by way of Parallelism, as it may appear to a­ny one that will compare the places which he alleadges, with this; which I leave the Rea­der to do at his leisure. Let us consider the Context, Joh. 17. 4. I have glorified thee upon earth, during this my Pilgrimage and absence from thee, being sent hither by thee. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do, [Page 94] and for the doing of which I was sent, and am thus long absent. And now, O Father, glorifie me, [...], apud teipsum, in thine own pre­sence, with the glorie which I had before the world was, [...], apud te, or in thy presence. What can be more expressive of a Glorie which Christ had apud Patrem, or at his Fathers home, or in his presence before the world was, and from which for such a time he had been absent?

Now for others that would salve the busi­ness by communication of Idioms, I will set down the words of an ingenious Writer that goes that way: Those Predicates, says he, that in a strict and vigorous acception agreed onely 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, than which nothing is more ordinarie in things of a mixt and heterogeneous nature, as the whole man is stiled immortal from the deathlessness of his Soul: thus he. And there is the same reason if he had said that man was stiled mortal (which certainly is far the more ordinarie) from the real death of his Bodie, though his Soul be immortal. This is wittily excogitated. But now let us apply it to the Text, expounding it according to his communication of Idioms, affording to the Humane Nature what is onely proper to the Divine, thus.

[Page 95] Father, glorifie me [my Humane Nature] with the glorie that I [my Divine Nature] had before the world was. Which indeed was to be the Eternal, Infinite, and Omnipotent bright­ness of the Glory of the Father [...]. This is the Glory which his Divine Na­ture had before the World was. But how can this Humane Nature be glorified with that Glory his Divine Nature had before the world was, unless it should become the Divine Na­ture, that it might be said to have pre-existed? (But that it cannot be. For there is no con­fusion of the Humane and Divine Nature in the Hypostasis of Christ:) Or else because it is hypostatically united with the Divine Nature; but if that be the Glory, that he then had al­ready, and had it not (according to the Oppo­sers of Pre-existence) before the world was. So we see there is no sence to be made of this Text by communication of Idioms, and there­fore no sence to be made of it without the Pre-existence of the Humane Nature of Christ. And if you paraphrase [me] thus, My Hypostasis consisting of my Humane and Divine Nature, it will be as untoward sence. For if the Di­vine Nature be included in [me] then Christ prays for what he has aleady, as I noted above. For the Glory of the eternal Logos from ever­lasting to everlasting, is the same, as sure as he is the same with himself.

Pag. 86. By his expressions of coming from the [Page 96] Father, descending from Heaven, and returning thither again, &c. I suppose these Scriptures are alluded to, John 3. 13. 6. 38. 16. 28. I came down from Heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world; again I leave the world, and go to the Father. Whereupon his Disciples said unto him, Lo now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no Para­ble. But it were a very great Parable, or Aenigm, that one should say truly of himself, that he came from Heaven, when he never was there. And as impossible a thing is it to conceive how God can properly be said to come down from Heaven, who is alwaies pre­sent every where. Wherefore that in Christ which was not God, namely his Soul, or Hu­mane Nature, was in Heaven before he appea­red on Earth, and consequently his Soul did pre-exist. Nor is there any refuge here in the communication of Idioms. For that cannot be attributed to the whole Hypostasis, which is competent to neither part that constitutes it. For it was neither true of the Humane Nature of Christ, if you take away Pre-exi­stence, nor of the Divine, that they descended from Heaven, &c. And yet John 3. 13, 14. where Christ prophesying of his Crucifixion and Ascension, saith, No man hath ascended up to Heaven, but he that came down from Heaven, even the Son of man, [ [...]] who was in [Page 97] Heaven. So Erasmus saith, it may be rendred a Participle of the present tense, having a ca­pacity to signifie the time past, if the sence re­quire it, as it seems to do here. Qui erat in Coelo, viz. antequam descenderat. So Erasmus upon the place.

Wherefore these places of Scripture touch­ing Christ being such inexpugnable Argu­ments of the Pre-existence of the Soul of the Messiah; the Writer of No Pre-existence, me­thinks, is no where so civil or discreet as in this point. Where, he saies, he will not squab­ble about this, but readily yield that the Soul of Christ was long extant before it was incarnate. But then he presently flings dirt upon the Pre-existentiaries, as guilty of a shameful presumpti­on and inconsequence, to conclude the Pre-exi­stence of all other Humane Souls from the Pre-existence of his. Because he was a peculiar fa­vourite of God, was to undergo bitter sufferings for Mankind; and therefore should enjoy an happy Pre-existence for an Anti-praemium. And since he was to purchase a Church with his own most precious Bloud, it was fit he should pre-exist from the be­ginning of the world, that he might preside over his Church as Guide and Governour thereof; which is a thing that cannot be said of any other soul be­side.

This is a device which, I believe, the Pre-existentiaries, good men, never dreamt of, but they took it for granted, that the creation of [Page 98] all Humane Souls was alike, and that the Soul of Christ was like ours in all things, sin onely excepted; as the Emperour Justinian, in his Discourse to Menas Patriarch of Constantinople, argues from this very Topick to prove the Non-pre-existence of our Souls, from the Non-pre-existence of Christs, he being like us in all things, sin onely excepted. And therefore as to Existence and Essence there was no diffe­rence. Thus one would have verily thought to have been most safe and most natural to conclude, as being so punctual according to the declaration of Scripture, and order of things. For it seems almost as harsh and re­pugnant to give Angelical Existence to a Spe­cies not Angelical, as Angelical Essence. For according to them, it belongs to Angels onely to exist a mundo condito, not to Humane souls. Let us therefore see what great and urgent oc­casions there are, that the Almighty should break this order.

The first is, That he may remonstrate the Soul of the Messiah to be his most special Fa­vourite. Why? That is sufficiently done, and more opportunely, if other souls pre-existed to be his corrivals. But his faithful adhesion above the rest to the Law of his Maker, as it might make him so great a Favourite: so that tran­scendent priviledge of being hypostatically united with the Godhead, or Eternal Logos, would, I trow, be a sufficient Testimony of [Page 99] Gods special Favour to him above all his fel­low Pre-existent Souls.

And then, which is the second thing for his Anti-praemial Happiness (though it is but an Hysteron Proteron, and preposterous conceit, to fancie wages before the work) had he less of this by the coexistence of other souls with him, or was it not rather the more highly encreased by their coexistencie? And how oddly does it look, that one solitary Individual of a Species should exist for God knows how many ages alone? But suppose the soul of the Messiah, and all other souls created together, and seve­ral of them fallen, and the Soul of the Messiah to undertake their recovery by his sufferings, and this declared amongst them; surely this must hugely inhance his Happiness and Glory through all the whole order of Humane souls, being thus constituted or designed Head and Prince over them all. And thus, though he was rejected by the Jews and despised, he could not but be caressed and adored by his fellow­souls above, before his descent to this state of humiliation. And who knows but this might be part at least of that Glory which, he says, he had before the world was? And which this ungrateful world denied him, while he was in it, who crucified the Lord of life.

And as for the third and last, That the Soul of the Messiah was to pre-exist, that he might preside over the Church all along from the be­ginning [Page 100] of it: What necessity is there of that? Could not the Eternal Logos and the Ministry of Angels sufficiently discharge that Province? But you conceive a congruity therein; and so may another conceive a congruity that he should not enter upon his Office till there were a considerable lapse of Humane Souls which should be his care to recover; which im­plies their Pre-existence before this stage of the Earth: And if the Soul of the Messiah, united with the Logos, presided so early over the Church; that it was meet that other unlapsed souls, they being of his own tribe, should be his Satellitium, and be part of those ministring Spirits that watch for the Churches good, and zealously endeavour the recovery of their si­ster-souls, under the conduct of the great Soul of the Messiah, out of their captivity of sin and death.

So that every way Pre-existence of other souls will handsomly fall in with the Pre-exi­stence of the soul of the Messiah, that there may be no breach of order, wherias there is no oc­casion for it, nor violence done to the Holy Writ, which expressly declares Christ to have been like to us in all things (as well in Exi­stence as Essence) sin onely excepted; as the Em­perour earnestly urges to the Patriarch Menas. Wherefore we finding no necessity of his par­ticular pre-existing, nor convenience, but what will be doubled if other Souls pre-exist with [Page 101] him; it is plain, if he pre-exist, it is as he is an Humane soul, not as such a particular soul; and therefore what proves his soul to pre-exist, proves others to pre-exist also.

Pag. 87. Since these places have been more diffusely urged in a late discourse to this purpose. I suppose he means in the Letter of Resolution concerning Origen, Where the Author opens the sense of Philip. 2. 6. learnedly and judici­ously, especially when he acknowledges Christs being in the form of God, to be understood of his Physical Union with the Divine Logos. Which is the Ancient Orthodox Exposition of the Primitive Fathers, they taking this for one notable Testimony of Scripture, for the Divi­nity of Christ. Whenas they that understand it Politically of Christs Power and Authority onely, take an excellent weapon out of the hands of the Church wherewith she used to oppose the Impugners of Christs Divinity. But how can Christ being God (verus Deus, as Vatablus expounds [...],) empty himself, or any way deteriorate himself as to his Di­vinity, by being incarnate, and taking upon him [...] the form of the terrestrial Adam? For every earthly man is [...], as the A­postle seems to intimate, Rom. 8. 21. as this ingenious Writer has noted; and the Apostle likewise seems so to expound it in the Text, by adding presently by way of Exegesis, [...], and was made in the likeness of [Page 102] men; like that Gen. 5. 3. Adam begot a son in his own likeness, a terrestrial man as himself was. Wherefore the Incarnation of Christ being no exinanition to his Divinity, there was an Humanity of Christ, viz. his Soul, in a glori­ous state of Pre-existence, to which this volun­tary exinanition belonged.

Pag. 87. Was it for this mans sin, or his fa­thers, that he was born blind? For the avoiding the force of this Argument for proving that Pre-existence was the Opinion of the Jews; and that Christ when it was so plainly implied in the Question, by his silence, or not reproving it, seemed to admit it, or at least to esteem it no hurtful Opinion: They alledge these two things: First, That these Enquirers having some notions of the Divine Prescience, might suppose that God foreknowing what kind of person this blind man would prove, had antedated his punishment. The other is, That the Enquirers may be conceived to un­derstand the blind mans original sin. So that when they enquired whether the man was born blind for his own or his Parents sin, they might onely ask whether that particular Judgment was the effect of his Parents, or of his own original pravity. This is Came­rons.

But see what sorced conceits Learned men will entertain, rather than not to say some­thing on a Text. What a distorted and pre­posterous [Page 103] account is that found, that God should punish men before they sin, because he foresees they will sin? And he onely produces this example, and a slight one too, That Jero­boams hand was dried up as he stretched it forth to give a sign to apprehend the Prophet. And the other is as fond an account, That God should send such severe Judgments on men for their original Pravity, which they cannot help. And original Pravity being so common to all, it could be no reason why this particular man should be born blind, more than others. Where­fore Grotius far more ingenuously writes thus upon the place: Quoerunt ergo an ipse peccaverit, quia multi Judoeorum credebant [...] anima­rum. And as our Saviour Christ passed it for an innocent Opinion, so did the Primitive Church, the Book of Wisdom being an allowable book with them, and read in publick, though it plainly declare for Pre-existence, Chap. 8. 20.

Chap. 12. p. 93. Therefore let the Reader, if he please, call it a Romantick Scheme, or imaginary Hypothesis, &c. This is very discreetly and judi­ciously done of the Author, to propose such things as are not necessary members or bran­ches of Pre-existence, and are but at the best conjectural, as no part of that otherwise-useful Theory. For by tacking too fast these unne­cessary tufts or tassels to the main Truth, it [Page 104] will but give occasion to wanton or wrathful whelps to worry her, and tug her into the dirt by them. And we may easily observe how greedily they catch at such occasions, though it be not much that they can make out of them, as we may observe in the next Chap­ter.

Chap. 13. pag. 96. Pill. 1. To conceive him as an immense and all-glorious Sun, that is conti­nually communicating, &c. And this as certainly as the Sun does his light, and as restrainedly. For the Suns light is not equally imparted to all subjects, but according to the measure of their capacity. And as Nature limits here in natural things, so does the Wisdom and Justice of God in free Creatures. He imparts to them as they capacitate themselves by improving or abusing their Freedom.

Pag. 100. Pill. 3. Be resolved into a Prin­ciple that is not meerly corporeal. He suspects that the descent of heavy bodies, when all is said and done, must be resolved into such a Principle. But I think he that without preju­dice peruses the Eleventh and Thirteenth Chapters (with their Scholia) of Dr. Mores En­chiridion Metaphysicum, will find it beyond suspition, that the Descent of heavy bodies is to be resolved into some corporeal Principle; and that the Spirit of Nature, though you should call it with the Cabalists by that astart­ling [Page 105] name of Sandalphon, is no such prodigi­ous Hobgoblin, as rudeness and presumptuous ignorance has made that Buckeram Writer in contempt and derision to call it.

Pag. 101. As naturally as the fire mounts, and a stone descends. And as these do not so (though naturally) meerly from their own intrinsick nature, but in vertue of the Spirit of the Ʋniverse; so the same reason there is in the disposal of Spirits. The Spirit of Nature will range their Plasticks as certainly and orderly in the Regions of the World, as it does the matter it self in all places. Whence that of Plotinus may fitly be understood, That a Soul enveigled in vitiousness, both here and after death, according to her nature [...], is thrust into the state and place she is, [...], as if she were drawn thither by certain invisible or Magical strings of Na­tures own pulling. Thus is he pleased to ex­press this power or vertue of the Spirit of Na­ture in the Universe. But I think that tran­sposition she makes of them is rather [...], than either [...] or [...], a transvection of them, rather than pulsion or traction. But these are over­n [...]ce Curiosities.

Pag. 101. As likely some things relating to the state of Spirits, &c. That is to say, Spirits by the ministry of other Spirits may be carried in­to such regions as the Spirit of Nature would not have transmitted them to, from the place [Page 106] where they were before, whether for good or evil. Of the latter kind whereof, I shall have occasion to speak more particularly in my Notes on the next Chapter.

Pag. 102. Pill. 4. The souls of men are capa­ble of living in other bodies besides terrestrial, &c. For the Pre-existentiaries allow her succes­sively to have lived, first, in an Ethereal body, then in an Aereal; and lastly, after the state of Silence, to live in a Terrestrial. And here I think, though it be something early, it will not be amiss to take notice what the Anti-pre-existentiaries alledged against this Hypothesis; for we shall have the less trouble afterwards.

First, therefore, they say, That it does not become the Goodness of God to make Mans Soul with a triple Vital Congruity, that will fit as well an Aereal and Terrestrial condition, as an Aethereal. For from hence it appears, that their Will was not so much in fault that they sinned, as the constitution of their Essence: And they have the face to quote the account of Origen, pag. 49. for to strengthen this their first Argument. The words are these: They being originally made with a capacity to joyn with this terrestrial matter, it seems necessary accord­ing to the course of nature that they should sink in­to it, & so appear terrestrial men. And therefore, say they, there being no descending into these earthly bodies without a lapse or previous sin, their very constitution necessitated them to sin.

[Page 107] The second Argument is, That this Hypo­thesis is inconsistent with the bodies Resur­rection. For the Aereal bodie immediately succeeding the Terrestrial, and the Aethereal the Aereal, the business is done, there needs no resuscitation of the Terrestrial body to be glo­rified. Nor is it the same numerical body or flesh still, as it ought to be, if the Resurrection-body be Aethereal.

The third is touching the Aereal Body; That if the soul after death be tyed to an Aere­al body (and few or none attain to the Aethe­real immediately after death) the souls of very good men will be forced to have their abode amongst the very Devils. For their Prince is the Prince of the Air, as the Apostle calls him; and where can his subjects be, but where he is? So that they will be enforced to endure the com­panie of these foul Fiends; besides all the in­commodious changes in the Air, of Clouds, of Vapours, of Rain, Hail, Thunder, tearing Tempests and Storms; and what is an Image of Hell it self, the darkness of Night will over­whelm them every four and twenty hours.

The fourth Argument is touching the Ae­thereal state of Pre-existence. For if souls when they were in so Heavenly and happy an estate could lapse from it, what assurance can we have, when we are returned thither, that we shall abide in it? it being but the same Hap­piness we were in before: and we having the [Page 108] same Plastick with its triple Vital Congruity, as we had before. Why therefore may we not lapse as before?

The fifth and last Argument is taken from the state of Silence. Wherein the Soul is sup­posed devoid of perception. And therefore their number being many, and their attracti­on to the place of conception in the Womb being merely Magical, and reaching many at a time, there would be many attracted at once; so that scarce a Foetus could be formed which would not be a multiform Monster, or a clu­ster of Humane Foetus's, not one single Foetus. And these are thought such weighty Argu­ments, that Pre-existence must sink and perish under their pressure. But, I believe, when we have weighed them in the balance of un­prejudiced Reason, we shall find them light e­nough.

And truly, for the first; It is not only weak and slight, but wretchedly disingenuous. The strength of it is nothing but a maimed and fraudulent Quotation, which makes ashew as if the Author of the Account of Origen, bluntly affirmed, without any thing more to do, that souls being originally made with a capacity to joyn with this terrestrial matter, it seems ne­cessary, according to the course of nature, that they should sink into it, and so appear terrestri­al men: Whenas if we take the whole Para­graph as it lies, before they cast themselves in­to [Page 109] this fatal necessity, they are declared to have a freedom of will, whereby they might have so managed their happy Estate they were created in, that they need never have faln. His words are these: What then remains, but that through the faulty and negligent use of them­selves, whilst they were in some better condition of life, they rendred themselves less pure in the whole extent of their powers, both Intellectual and Animal; and so by degrees became disposed for the susception of such a degree of corporeal life, as was less pure, indeed, than the former; but ex­actly answerable to their present disposition of Spi­rit. So that after certain Periods of time they might become far less fit to actuate any sort of body, than the terrestrial; and being originally made with a capacity to joyn with this too, and in it to exercise the Powers and functions of life, it seems necessary, &c.

These are the very words of the Author of the Account of Origen, wherein he plainly affirms, that it was the fault of the Souls them­selves, that they did not order themselves then right when they might have done so, that cast them into this terrestrial condition. But what an Opposer of Pre-existence is this, that will thus shamelesly falsifie and corrupt a Quo­tation of an ingenious Author, rather than he will seem to want an Argument against his O­pinion! Wherefore briefly to answer to this Argument, It does as much become the Good­ness [Page 110] of God to create souls with a triple Vital Congruity, as to have created Adam in Paradise with free Will, and a capacity of sinning.

To the Second, the Pre-existentiaries will an­swer, That it is no more absurd to conceive (nor so much) that the soul after death hath an Airy body, or it may be some an Ethereal one, than to imagine them so highly happy after death without any body at all. For if they can act so fully and beatifically without any body, what need there be any Resurrecti­on of the body at all? And if it be most natu­ral to the soul to act in some body, in what a long unnatural estate has Adams soul been, that so many thousand years has been without a body? But for the soul to have a body, of which she may be the [...], certainly is most natural, or else she will be in an unnatural state after the Resurrection to all Eternitie. Whence it is manifest, that it is most natural for the soul, if she act at all, to have a body to act in. And therefore, unless we will be so dull as to fall into the drouzie dream of the Pyschopannychites, we are to allow the soul to have some kind of body or other till the very Resurrection.

But those now that are not Psychopannychites, but allow good Souls the joys and glories of Paradise before the Resurrection of the Body, let them be demanded to what end the soul should have a Resurrection-body; and what [Page 111] they would answer for themselves, the Pre-existentiaries will answer for their position that holds the Soul has an Aethereal body al­ready, or an Aereal one which may be chang­ed into an Aethereal body. If they will alledge any Concinnity in the business, or the firm promise of more highly compleating our Hap­piness at the union of our terrestrial bodies with our souls at the Resurrection; This, I say, may be done as well supposing them to have bodies in the mean time as if they had none. For those bodies they have made use of in the interval betwixt their Death and Resurrection, may be so thin and dilute, that they may be no more considerable than an Interula is to a Royal Robe lined with rich Furrs, and em­broidered with Gold. For suppose every mans bodie at the Resurrection framed again out of its own dust, bones, sinews and flesh, by the miraculous Power of God, were it not as easie for these subtile Spirits, as it is in the [...], to enter these bodies, and by the Di­vine Power assisting, so to inactuate them, that that little of their Vehicle they brought in with them, shall no more destroy the individuation of the Body, than a draught of wine drunk in, does the individuation of our body now, though it were, immediately upon the drink­ing, actuated by the Soul. And the soul at the same instant actuating the whole Aggre­gate, it is exquisitely the same numerical bo­die, [Page 112] even to the utmost curiosity of the School­men. But the Divine Assistance working in this, it is not to be thought that the soul will loose by resuming this Resurrection-body, but that all will be turned into a more full and saturate Brightness and Glory, and that the whole will become an heavenly, spiritual, and truly glorified Body, immortal and incor­ruptible.

Nor does the being thus turned into an hea­venly or spiritual Body, hinder it from being still the same Numerical body, forasmuch as one and the same Numerical matter, let it be under what modifications it will, is still the same numerical matter or body; and it is gross ignorance in Philosophie that makes any conceive otherwise.

But a rude and ill-natured Opposer of Pre-existence is not content that it be the same nu­merical body, but that this same numerical body be still flesh, peevishly and invidiously thereby to expose the Author of the Account of Origen, who, pag. 120. writes thus: That the bodie we now have, is therefore corruptible and mortal, because it is flesh; and therefore if it put on incorruption and immortality, it must put off it self first, and cease to be flesh. But questionless that ingenious Writer understood this of natural [...]lesh and bloud, of which the Apostle declares, That flesh and bloud cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. But as he says [Page 113] [...], There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body: So if he had made application of the several kinds of Flesh he mentions, of Men, of Beasts, of Fishes, and Birds, he would have presently subjoyned. [...], There is a natural flesh and there is a spiritual flesh. And 'tis this spi­ritual Flesh to which belongs incorruption and immortality, and which is capable of the King­dom of Heaven. But for the [...], the natural flesh, it must put off it self, and cease to be natural flesh, before it can put on immorta­lity and incorruption.

So little inconsistency is there of this Hypo­thesis (as touching the souls acting in either an Aereal or Aethereal Vehicle, during the inter­val betwixt the Resurrection and her depar­ture hence) with the Resurrection of the bodie. But in the mean time, there is a strong bar thereby put to the dull dream of the Psycho­panychiles, and other harshnesses also eased or smoothed by it.

Now as for the third Argument, which must needs seem a great Scare-crow to the illi­terate, there is very little weight or none at all in it. For if we take but notice of the whole Atmosphere, what is the dimension thereof, and of the three Regions into which it is distribu­ted, all these Bugbears will vanish. As for the Dimension of the whole Atmosphere, it is by the skilful reputed about fifty to Italick miles [Page 114] high, the Convex of the middle Region thereof about four such miles, the Concave about half a mile. Now this distribution of the Air into these three Regions being thus made, and the Hebrew tongue having no other name to call the Expansum about us, but [...] Heaven, here is according to them a distribution of Heaven into three, and the highest Region will be part of the third Heaven.

This therefore premised, I answer, That though the souls of good men after death be detained within the Atmosphere of the Air, (and the Air it self haply may reach much higher than this Atmosphere that is bounded by the mere ascent of exhalations and vapours) yet there is no necessity at all that they should be put to those inconveniencies, which this Argument pretends, from the company of De­vils, or incommodious changes and disturban­ces of the Air. For suppose such inconvenien­cies in the middle and lowest Region, yet the upper Region, which is also part of the third Heaven, those parts are ever calm and serene. And the Devils Principality reaching no fur­ther than through the middle and lowest Re­gion next the earth, (not to advertise that his quarters may be restrained there also) the souls of the departed that are good, are not liable to be pester'd and haunted with the un­grateful Presence or Occursions of the defor­med and grim Retinue, or of the vagrant vas­sals [Page 115] of that foul Feind, that is Prince of the Air, he being onely so of these lower parts thereof, and the good souls having room enough to consociate together in the upper Region of it.

Nor does that promise of our Saviour to the thief on the Cross, that that very day he should be with him in Paradise, at all clash with this Hypothesis of Aereal Bodies, both because Christ by his miraculous power might confer that upon the penitent thief his fellow­sufferer, which would not fall to the share of other penitents in a natural course of things; and also because this third Region of the Air may be part of Paradise it self: (In my Fathers house there are many Mansions) and some learned men have declared Paradise to be in the Air, but such a part of the Air as is free from gross Vapours and Clouds; and such is the third Region thereof. In the mean time we see the souls of good men departed, freed from those Panick fears of being infested either by the un­welcome company of Fiends and Devils, or incommodated by any dull cloudy obscurati­ons, or violent and tempestuous motions of the Air.

Onely the shadowy Vale of the Night will be cast over them once in a Nycthemeron. But what incommodation is that, after the brisk active heat of the Sun in the day-time, to have the variety of the more mild beams of the [Page 116] Moon, or gentle, though more quick and chearful, scintillations of the twinkling Stars? This variety may well seem an addition to the felicity of their state. And the shadowyness of the Night may help them in the more compo­sing Introversions of their contemplative mind, and cast the soul into ineffably pleasing slumbers and Divine extasies; so that the trans­actions of the Night may prove more solacing and beatifick sometimes, than those of the day. Such things we may guess at afar off, but in the mean time be sure, that these good and se­rious Souls know how to turn all that God sends to them to the improvement of their Happiness.

To the fourth Argument we answer, That there are not a few reasons from the nature of the thing that may beget in us a strong pre­sumption that souls recovered into their Cele­stial Happiness will never again relapse, though they did once.

For first, it may be a mistake that the Hap­piness is altogether the same that it was before. For our first Paradisiacal Bodies from which we lapsed, might be of a more crude and dilute Aether, not so full and saturate with Heavenly glory and perfection as our Resurrection-body is.

Secondly, The soul was then unexperienced, and lightly coming by that Happiness she was in, did the more heedlessly forgo it, before [Page 117] she was well aware; and her mind roved af­ter new adventures, though she knew not what.

Thirdly, It is to be considered, whether Re­generation be not a stronger tenour for endu­ring Happiness, than the being created happie. For this being wrought so by degrees upon the Plastick, [...], with ineffable groans and piercing desires after that Divine Life, that the Spirit of God co-operating exciteth in us; when Regeneration is perfected and wrought to the full by these strong Agonies, this may rationally be deemed a deeper tincture in the soul than that she had by mere Creation, whereby the soul did indeed become Holy, innocent and happie, but not coming to it with any such strong previous conflicts and eager workings and thirstings after that state, it might not be so firmly rooted by far as in Regeneration begun and accomplished by the operation of Gods Spirit, gradually but more deeply renewing the Divine Image in us.

Fourthly, It being a renovation of our Na­ture into a pristine state of ours, the strength and depth of impression seems increased upon that account also.

Fifthly, The remembrance of all the hard­ships we underwent in our lapsed condition, whether of Mortification or cross Rancoun­ters, this must likewise help us to persevere when once returned to our former Happiness.

[Page 118] Sixthly, The comparing of the evanid plea­sures of our lapsed or terrestrial life, with the fulness of those Joys that we find still in our heavenly, will keep us from ever having any hankering after them any more.

Seventhly, The certain knowledge of ever­lasting punishment, which if not true, they could not know, must be also another sure bar to any such negligencies as would hazard their setled felicity. Which may be one reason why the irreclaimable are eternally punished, name­ly, that it may the better secure eternal Hap­piness to others.

Eighthly, Though we have our triple Vital Congruity still, yet the Plastick life is so throughly satisfied with the Resurrection-body, which is so considerably more full and saturate with all the heavenly richness and Glorie than the former, that the Plastick of the soul is as entirely taken up with this one Bodie, as if she enjoyed the pleasures of all three bodies at once, Aethereal, Aereal, and Terrestrial.

And lastly, Which will strike all sure, He that is able to save to the utmost, and has pro­mised us eternal life, is as true as able, and therefore cannot fail to perform it. And who can deny but that we in this State I have de­scribed, are as capable of being fixed there, and confirmed therein, as the Angels were after Lucifer and others had faln?

And now to the fifth and last Argument a­gainst [Page 119] the state of Silence, I say it is raised out of mere ignorance of the most rational as well as most Platonical way of the souls immedi­ate descent [...]. For the first Mover or stir­rer in this matter, I mean in the formation of the Foetus, is the Spirit of Nature, the great [...] of the Universe, to whom Plotinus somewhere attributes [...] The first Predelineations and pro­drome Irradiations into the matter, before the particular soul, it is preparing for, come into it. Now the Spirit of Nature being such a spirit as contains Spermatically or Vitally all the Laws contrived by the Divine Intellect, for the management of the Matter of the World, and of all Essences else unperceptive, or quatenus unperceptive, for the good of the Universe; we have all the reason in the world to suppose this Vital or Spermatical Law is amongst the rest, viz. That it transmit but one soul to one pre­pared conception. Which will therefore be as certainly done, unless some rare and odd casualty intervene, as if the Divine Intellect it self did do it. Wherefore one and the same Spirit of Nature which prepares the matter by some general Predelineation, does at the due time transmit some one soul in the state of Silence by some particularizing Laws (that fetch in such a soul rather than such, but most sure but one, unless as I said some special casualty happen) into the prepared Matter, act­ing [Page 120] at two places at once according to its Syn­energetical vertue or power.

Hence therefore it is plain, that there will be no such clusters of Foetus's and monstrous deformities from this Hypothesis of the souls being in a state of Silence. But for one to shuffle off so fair a satisfaction to this difficulty, by a precarious supposing there is no such Being as the Spirit of Nature, when it is de­monstrable by so many irrefragable Arguments that there is, is a Symptome of one that phi­losophizes at random, not as Reason guides. For that is no reason against the existence of the Spirit of Nature, because some define it A Substance incorporeal, but without sense and ani­madversion, &c. as if a spirit without sense and animadversion were a contradiction. For that there is a Spirit of Nature is demonstrable, though whether it have no sense at all is more dubitable. But though it have no sense or perception, it is no contradiction to its being a Spirit, as may appear from Dr. H. Mores Brief Discourse of the true Notion of a Spirit. To which I direct the Reader for satisfaction, I having already been more prolix in answer­ing these Arguments than I intended. But I hope I have made my presage true, that they would be found to have no force in them to overthrow the Hypothesis of a threefold Vital Congruity in the Plastick of the soul. So that this fourth Pillar, for any execution they can do, will stand unshaken.

[Page 121] Pag. 103. For in all sensation there is corpo­real motion, &c. And besides, there seems an essential relation of the Soul to Body, accor­ding to Aristotles definition thereof, he defi­ning it [...], that which actuates the bo­by. Which therefore must be idle when it has nothing to actuate, as a Piper must be silent, as to piping, if he have no Pipe to play on.

Chap. 14. pag. 113. The ignobler and lower properties or the life of the body were languid and remiss, viz. as to their proper exercises or act­ing for themselves, or as to their being regar­ded much by the Soul that is taken up with greater matters, or as to their being much re­lished, but in subserviency to the enjoyment of those more Divine and sublime Objects; as the Author intimates towards the end of his last Pillar.

Pag. 114. And the Plastick had nothing to do but to move this passive and easie body, &c. It may be added, and keep it in its due form and shape. And it is well added [accordingly as the concerns of the higher faculties required] For the Plastick by reason of its Vital Union with the vehicle, is indeed the main instrument of the motion thereof. But it is the Imperium of the Perceptive that both excites and guides its motion. Which is no wonder it can do, they being both but one soul.

Pag. 114. To pronounce the place to be the [Page 122] Sun, &c. Which is as rationally guessed by them, as if one should fancy all the Fellows and Students Chambers in a Colledge to be contai­ned within the area of the Hearth in the Hall, and the rest of the Colledge uninhabited. For the Sun is but a common Focus of a Vortex, and is less by far to the Vortex, than the Hearth to the Ichnographie of the whole Colledge, that I may not say little more than a Tennis-ball to the bigness of the earth.

Pag. 115. Yet were we not immutably so, &c. But this mutability we were placed in, was not without a prospect of a more full confirmation and greater accumulation of Happiness at the long run, as I intimated above.

Pag. 116. We were made on set purpose defa­tigable, that so all degrees of life, &c. We being such Creatures as we are and finite, and taking in the enjoyment of those infinitely perfect and glorious Objects onely pro modulo nostro, according to the scantness of our capacity, di­version to other Objects may be an ease and relief. From whence the promise of a glori­fied body in the Christian Religion, as it is most grateful, so appears most rational. But in the mean time it would appear most irrati­onal to believe we shall have eyes and ears and other organs of external sense, and have no suitable Objects to entertain them.

Pag. 117. Yea, methinks 'tis but a reasonable reward to the body, &c. This is spoken some­thing [Page 123] popularly and to the sense of the vulgar, that imagine the body to feel pleasure and pain, whenas it is the soul onely that is perce­ptive and capable of feeling either. But 'tis fit the body should be kept in due plight for the lawful and allowable corporeal enjoyments the soul may reap therefrom for seasonable di­version.

Pag. 117, That that is executed which he hath so determined, &c. Some fancy this may be extended to the enjoying of the fruits of the Invigouration of all the three Vital Con­gruities of the Plastick, and that for a soul or­derly and in due time and course to pass through all these dispensations, provided she keep her self sincere towards her Maker, is not properly any lapse or sin, but an harmless ex­periencing all the capacities of enjoying them­selves that God has bestowed upon them. Which will open a door to a further Answer touching the rest of the Planets being inhabi­ted, namely, That they may be inhabited by such kind of [...]ouls as these, who therefore want not the Knowledge and assistance of a Redeemer. And so the earth may be the one­ly Nosocomium of sinfully lapsed souls. This may be an answer to such far-fetched Objecti­ons till they can prove the contrarie.

Pag. 118. Adam cannot withstand the inor­dinate appetite, &c. Namely, after his own re­missness and heedlessness in ordering himself, [Page 124] he had brought himself to such a wretched weakness.

Pag. 121. The Plastick faculties begin now fully to awaken, &c. There are three Vital Con­gruities belonging to the Plastick of the Soul, and they are to awake orderly, that is, to ope­rate one after another downward and upward, that is to say, In the lapse, the Aereal follows the Aethereal, the Terrestrial the Aereal. But in their Recovery or Emergency out of the lapse, The Aereal follows the Terrestrial, and the Aethereal the Aereal. But however, a more gross turgency to Plastick operation may hap­ly arise at the latter end of the Aereal Period, which may be as it were the disease of the soul in that state, and which may help to turn her out of it into the state of Silence, and is it self for the present silenced therewith. For where there is no union with bodie, there is no opera­tion of the Soul.

Pag. 121. For it hath an aptness and propensi­ty to act in a Terrestrial body, &c. This aptness and fitness it has in the state of Silence▪ accor­ding to that essential order of things interwo­ven into its own nature, and into the nature of the Spirit of the World, or great Archeus of the Universe, according to the eternal counsel of the Divine Wisdom. By which Law and ap­poyntment the soul will as certainly have a fit­ness and propensity at its leaving the Terrestrial body to actuate an Aereal one.

[Page 125] Pag. 122. Either by mere natural Congruity, the disposition of the soul of the world, or some more spontaneous agent, &c. Natural Congruity and the disposal of the Plastick soul of the world (which others call the Spirit of Nature) may be joyned well together in this Feat, the Spirit of Nature attracting such a soul as is most con­gruous to the predelineated Matter which it has prepared for her. But as for the sponta­neous Agent, I suppose, he may understand his ministry in some supernatural Birth. Unless he thinks that some Angels or Genii may be im­ployed in putting souls into bodies, as Gardi­ners are in setting Pease and Beans in the beds of Gardens. But certainly they must be no good Genii then that have any hand in assist­ing or setting souls in such wombs as have had to do with Adulterie, Incest, and Bugge­ry.

Pag. 123. But some apish shews and imitati­ons of Reason, Vertue and Religion, &c. The Reason of the unregenerate in Divine things is little better than thus, and Vertue and Re­ligion which is not from that Principle which revives in us in real Regeneration, are, though much better than scandalous vice and profa­ness, mere pictures and shadows of what they pretend to.

Pag. 123. To its old celestial abode, &c. For we are Pilgrims and strangers here on the earth, as the holy Patriarchs of old declared. [Page 126] And they that speak such things, saith the A­postle, plainly shew [...], that they seek their native country, for so [...] properly signifies. And truly if they had been mind­ful of that earthly country out of which they came, they might, saith he, have had oppor­tunity of returning. But now they desire a better, to wit, an heavenly, Hebr. 11.

Pag. 124. But that they step forth again in­to Airy Vehicles. This is their natural course, as I noted above. But the examples of Enoch and Elias, and much more of our ever Bles­sed Saviour, are extraordinary and supernatu­ral.

Pag. 125. Those therefore that pass out of these bodies before their Terrestrial Congruity be spoyled, weakened, or orderly unwound, accor­ding to the tenour of this Hypothesis, &c. By the favour of this ingenious Writer, this Hy­pothesis does not need any such obnoxious Ap­pendage as this, viz. That souls that are outed these Terrestrial bodies before their Terrestri­al Congruity be spoiled, weakned, or orderly unwound, return into the state of Inactivity. But this is far more consonant both to Reason and Experience or Storie, that though the Ter­restrial Congruity be still vigorous, as not having run out it may be the half part, no not the tenth part of its Period, the soul immediately upon the quitting of this body is invested with a bodie of Air, and is in the state of Activity [Page 127] not of Silence in no sense. For some being murdered have in all likelyhood in their own persons complained of their murderers, as it is in that story of Anne Walker; and there are ma­ny others of the same nature.

And besides, it is far more reasonable, there being such numerous multitudes of silent souls, that their least continuance in these Terrestrial bodies should at their departure be as it were a Magical Kue or Tessera forthwith to the Ae­real Congruity of life to begin to act its part up­on the ceasing of the other, that more souls may be rid out of the state of Silence. Which makes it more probable that every soul that is once besmeared with the unctuous moisture of the Womb, should as it were by a Magick Oyntment be carried into the Air (though it be of a still-born Infant) than that any should re­turn into the state of Silence or Inactivity up­on the pretence of the remaining vigour of the Terrestrial Congruity of life. For these Laws are not by any consequential necessity, but by the free counsel of the Eternal Wisdom of God consulting for the best.

And therefore this being so apparently for the best, this Law is interwoven into the Spi­rit of the World and every particular soul, that upon the ceasing of her Terrestrial Union, her Aereal Congruity of life should immediately operate, and the Spirit of Nature assisting, she should be drest in Aereal robes, and be found [Page 128] among the Inhabitants of those Regions. If souls should be remanded back into the state of Silence that depart before the Terrestrial Period of Vital Congruity be orderly unwound, so very few reach the end of that Period, that they must in a manner all be turned into the state of Inactivity. Which would be to weave Penelope's Web, to do and undo because the day is long enough, as the Proverb is, when▪ as it rather seems too short, by reason of the numerosity of Silent souls that expect their turn of Recovery into Life.

Pag. 125. But onely follow the clew of this Hypothesis. The Hypothesis requires no such thing, but it rather clashes with the first and chiefest Pillar thereof, viz. That all the Divine designs and actions are laid and carried on by Infinite Goodness. And I have already intima­ted how much better it is to be this way that I am pleading for, than that of this otherwise-in­genious Writer.

Pag. 125. Since by long and hard exercise in this body, the Plastick Life is well tamed and de­bilitated, &c. But this is not at all necessary▪ no not in those souls whose Plastick may be deemed the most rampant. Dis-union from this Terrestrial body immediately tames it, I mean, the Terrestrial Congruity of Life; and it [...] operation is stopt, as surely as a string of a Lut [...] never so smartly vibrated is streightways si­lenced by a gentle touch of the finger, and ano­ther [Page 129] single string may be immediately made to sound alone, while the other is mute and silent. For, I say, these are the free Laws of the Eter­nal Wisdom, but fatally and vitally, not intellectu­ally implanted in the Spirit of Nature, and in all Humane Souls or Spirits. The whole Uni­verse is as it were the Automatal Harp of that great and true Apollo; and as for the general striking of the strings and stopping their vi­brations, they are done with as exquisite art as if a free intellectual Agent plaid upon them. But the Plastick powers in the world are not such, but onely Vital and Fatal, as I said be­fore.

Pag. 126. That an Aereal body was not e­nough for it to display its force upon, &c. It is far more safe and rational to say, that the soul deserts her Aereal Estate by reason that the Period of the Vital Congruity is expired, which according to those fatal Laws I spoke of before is determined by the Divine Wisdom. But whether a soul may do any thing to abbreviate this Period, and excite such symptoms in the Plastick as may shorten her continuance in that state, let it be left to the more inquisitive to define.

Pag. 128. Where is then the difference be­twixt the just and the wicked, in state, place, and body? Their difference in place I have suffici­ently shewn, in my Answer to the third Argu­ment against the triple Congruity of Life in the [Page 130] Plastick of Humane Souls, how fitly they may be disposed of in the Air. But to the rude Buffoonry of that crude Opposer of the Opi­nion of Pre-existence, I made no Answer. It being methinks sufficiently answered in the Scholia upon Sect. 12. Cap. 3. Lib. 3. of Dr. H. Mores Immortalitas Animae, if the Reader think it worth his while to consult the place▪ Now for State and Body the difference is ob­vious. The Vehicle is of more pure Air, and the Conscience more pure of the one than of the other.

Pag. 130. For according to this Hypothesis, the gravity of those bodies is less, because the quan­tity of the earth that draws them is so, &c. This is an ingenious invention both to salve that Phaenomenon, why Bodies in Mines and other deep subterraneous places should seem not so heavy nor hard to lift there, as they are in the superiour Air above the earth; and also to prove that the crust of the earth is not of so conside­rable a thickness as men usually conceive it is. I say, it is ingenious, but not so firm and sure. The Quick-silver in a Torricellian Tube will sink deeper in an higher or clearer Air, though there be the same Magnetism of the earth un­der it that was before. But this is not alto­gether so fit an illustration, there being ano­ther cause than I drive at conjoyned there­to.

But that which I drive at is sufficient of it [Page 131] self to salve this Phaenomenon. A Bucket of water, while it is in the water comes up with ease to him that draws it at the Well; but so soon as it comes into the Air, though there be the same earth under it that there was before, it feels now exceeding more weighty. Of which I conceive the genuine reason is, because the Spirit of Nature, which ranges all things in their due order, acts proportionately strongly to reduce them thereto, as they are more hete­rogeniously and disproportionately placed as to their consistencies. And therefore by how much more crass and solid a body is above that in which it is placed, by so much the stronger effort the Spirit of Nature uses to re­duce it to its right place; but the less it exceeds the crassness of the Element it is in, the effort is the less or weaker.

Hence therefore it is, that a stone or such like body in those subterraneous depths seems less heavy, because the air there is so gross and thick, and is not so much disproportionate to the grossness of the stone as our air above the earth here is; nor do I make any doubt, but if the earth were all cut away to the very bot­tom of any of these Mines, so that the Air might be of the same consistency with ours, the stone would then be as heavy as it is usual­ly to us in this superioor surface of the earth. So that this is no certain Argument for the proving that the crust of the earth is of such [Page 132] thinness as this Author would have it, though I do not question but that it is thin enough.

Pag. 131. And the mention of the Fountains of the great Deep in the Sacred History, &c. This is a more considerable Argument for the thinness of the crust of the earth; and I must confess I think it not improbable but that there is an Aqueous hollow Sphaericum, which is the Basis of this habitable earth, according to that of Psalm 24. 2. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the flouds.

Pag. 131. Now I intend not that after a cer­tain distance all is fluid matter to the Centre; That is to say, After a certain distance of earthly Matter, that the rest should be fluid Matter, namely, Water and Air, to the Cen­tre, &c. But here his intention is directed by that veneration he has for Des Cartes. Other­wise I believe if he had freely examined the thing to the bottom, he would have found it more reasonable to conclude all fluid betwixt the Concave of the Terrestrial Crust and the Centre of the Earth, as we usually phrase it, though nothing be properly Earth but that Crust.

Pag. 131. Which for the most part very like­ly is a gross and foetid kind of air, &c. On this side of the Concave of the Terrestrial Crust there may be several Hollows of foetid air and stagnant water, which may be so many parti­cular lodgings for lapsed and unruly Spirits [Page 133] But there is moreover a considerable Aqueous Sphaericum upon which the earth is founded, and is most properly the Abyss; but in a more comprehensive notion, all from the Convex thereof to the Centre may be termed the Abyss, or the Deepest place that touches our imagi­nation.

Pag. 131. The lowest and central Regions may be filled with flame and aether, &c. That there was the Reliques of a Sun after the In­crustation of the Earth and Aqueous Orb, is according to this Hypothesis reasonable e­nough. And a kind of Air and Aether be­twixt this diminished Sun and the Concave of this Aqueous Orb, but no crass and opake concamerations of hard Matter interposed be­twixt.

Which is an Hypothesis the most kind to the ingenious Author of Telluris Theoria Sacra, that he could wish. For he holding that there was for almost two thousand years an opake earthy Crust over this Aqueous Orb unbroke till the Deluge, which he ascribes to the break­ing thereof, it was necessary there should be no opake Orb betwixt the Central Fire and this Aqueous Orb; for else the Fishes for so long a time had lived in utter darkness, having eyes to no purpose, nor ability to guide their way or hunt their prey. Onely it is supposed, which is easie to do, that they then swam with their backs toward the Centre, whenas as now [Page 134] they swim with their bellies thitherward; they then plying near the Concave, as now near the Convex of this watry Abyss. Which being admitted, the difference of their posture will necessarilly follow according to the Laws of Nature, as were easie to make out, but that I intend brevity in these Annotations.

Onely I cannot forbear by the way to ad­vertise how probable it is that this Central Fire which shone clear enough to give light to the Fishes swimming near the Concave of this Watry Orb, might in process of time grow dimmer and dimmer, and exceeding much a­bate of its light, by that time the Crust of the Earth broke and let in the light of the Sun of this great Vortex into this Watry Region, with­in which, viz. in the Air or Aether there, there has been still a decay of light, the Air or Aether growing more thick as well as that lit­tle Central Fire or Sun, being more and more inveloped with fuliginous stuff about it. So that the whole Concavity may seem most like a vast duskish Vault, and this dwindling over­clouded Sun a Sepulchral Lamp, such as, if I remember right, was found in the Monuments of Olybius and Tulliola. An hideous dismal forlorn Place, and fit Receptacle for the Methim and Rephaim.

And the Latin Translation, Job 26. 5. ex­cellently well accords with this sad Phaenome­non. Ecce Gigantes gemunt sub Aquis, & qui [Page 135] habitant cum eis. Here is that [...], or [...], as Symmachus translates the word. And it follows in the verse, Nudus est Infernus coram eo, Hell is naked before God. And Symmachus in other places of the Proverbs puts [...] and [...] together, which therefore is the most proper and the nethermost Hell. And it will be [...] in the highest sense, whenever this lurid Light (as it seems probable to me it some­time will be) is quite extinct, and this Central Fire turned into a Terrella, as it may seem to have already happened in Saturn. But we must remember, as the Author sometimes reminds us, that we are embellishing but a Romantick Hypothesis, and be sure we admit no more than Reason, Scripture, and the Apostolick Faith will allow.

Pag. 132. Are after death committed to those squalid subterraneous Habitations, &c. He seems to suppose that all the wicked and dege­rate souls are committed hither, that they may be less troublesom to better souls in this air a­bove the earth. But considering the Devil is call'd the Prince of the Air, & that he has his Cli­ents and Subjects in the same place with him; we may well allow the lower Regions of the Air to him, and to some wicked or unregenerate souls promiscuously with him, though there be subterraneous Receptacles for the worst and most rebellious of them, and not send them all packing thither.

[Page 136] Pag. 132. That they are driven into those Dungeons by the invisible Ministers of Justice, &c. He speaks of such Dungeons as are in the bro­ken Caverns of the Farth, which may be so many vexatious Receptacles for rebellious Spi­rits which these invisible Ministers of Justice may drive them into, and see them commited; and being confined there upon far severer pe­nalties if they submit not to that present pu­nishment which they are sentenced to, they will out of fear of greater Calamity be in as safe custody as if they were under lock and key. But the most dismal penalty is to be car­ried into the Abyss, the place of the Rephaim I above described. This is a most astonishing commination to them, and they extreamly dread that sentence. Which makes the Devils, Luke 8. 31. so earnestly beseech Christ that he would not command them [...] to pack away into the Abyss.

This punishment therefore of the Abyss where the Rephaim or [...] groan, is door and lock that makes them, whether they will or no, submit to all other punishments and con­finements on this side of it. Michael Psellus takes special notice how the Daemons are frigh­ted with the menaces [...], with the menaces of the sending them away packing into the Abyss and subterrane­ous places. But these may signifie no more than Cavities that are in the ruptues of the [Page 137] earth, and they may steal out again if they will adventure, unless they were perpetually watched, which is not so probable. Where­fore they are imprisoned through fear of that great horrid Abyss above described, and which as I said is an iron lock and door of brass upon them.

But then you will say, What is the door and lock to this terrible place? I answer, The invio­lable Adamantine Laws of the great Sandal­phon or Spirit of the Ʋniverse. When once a rebellious Spirit is carried down by a Minister of Justice into this Abyss, he can no more re­turn of himself, than a man put into a Well for­tie [...]athoms deep is able of himself to ascend out of it.

The unlapsed Spirits, it is their priviledge that their Vehicles are wholly obedient to the will of the Spirit that inactuates them, and therefore they have free ingress and egress eve­ry where; and being so little passive as they are, and so quick and swift in their motions, can per­form any Ministries with little or no incom­modation to themselves. But the Vehicles of lap­sed Spirits are more passive, and they are the very chains whereby they are tyed to certain Regi­ons by the iron Laws of the Spirit of the Uni­verse, or Hylarchick Principle, that unfailingly ranges the Matter everie where according to certain orders. Wherefore this Serjeant of Ju­stice having once deposited his Prisoner with­in [Page 138] the Concave of the Aqueous Orb, he will be as certainly kept there, and never of himself get out again, as the man in the bottom of the Well above-mentioned, For the Laws of the same Spirit of Nature that keeps the man at the bottom of the Well (that everie thing may be placed according to the measure of its con­sistencie) will inhibit this Captive from ever returning to this Superiour Air again, because his Vehicle is, though foul enough, yet much thinner than the Water; and there will be the the same ranging of things on the Concave side of the Aqueous Orb, as there is on the Convex.

So that if we could suppose the Ring about Saturn inhabited with any living creatures, they would be born toward the Concave of the Ring as well as toward the Convex, and walk as steadily as we and our Antipodes do with our feet on this and that side of the earth one against another. This may serve for a brief intimation of the reason of the thing, and the intelligent will easily make out the rest them­selves, and understand what an ineluctable fate and calamity it is to be carried into that dus­kish place of dread and horrour, when once the Angel that has the Keys of the Abyss or bot­tomless pit has shut a rebellious Spirit up there, & chained him in that hideous Dungeon.

Pag. 133. Others to the Dungeon, and some to the most intolerable Hell the Abyss of fire. The Dungeon here, if it wer [...] understood with an [Page 139] Emphasis, would most properly denote the Dungeon of the Rephaim, of which those parts nearest the Centre may be called the Abyss of Fire more properly than any Vulcano's in the Crust of the earth. Those souls therefore that have been of a more fierce and fiery nature, and the Causers of Violence and Bloodshed, and of furious Wars and cruel Persecutions of inno­cent and harmless men, when they are com­mitted to this Dungeon of the Rephaim, by those inevitable Laws of the sub [...]eraqueous Sandalphon, or Demogorgon if you will, they will be ranged nearest the Central Fire of this Hellish Vault. For the Vehicles of [...]ouls symbolizing with the temper of the mind, those who are most haughty, ambitious, fier [...]e, and fiery, and therefore, out of Pride and con­tempt of others in respect of themselves and their own Interest, make nothing of shedding innocent bloud, or cruelly handling those that are not for their turn, but are faithful adherers to their Maker, the Vehicles of these being more thin and fiery than theirs who have transgressed in the Concap [...]c [...]ble, they must needs surmount such in order of place, and be most remote from the Concave of the Aqueous Orb under which the Rephaim groan, and so be placed at least the nearest to that Abyss of Fire, which our Author terms the most intolerable Hell.

Pag. 133. Have a strict and careful eye upon them, to keep them within the confines of their [Page 140] Goal, &c. That this, as it is a more tedious Pro­vince, so a needless one, I have intimated above, by reason that the fear of being carried into the Abyss will effectually detain them in their confinements. From whence if they be not released in time, the very place they are in may so change their Vehicles, that it may in a man­ner grow natural to them, and make them as uncapable of the Superiour Air as Bats and Owls are, as the ingenious Author notes, to bear the Suns Noon-day-Beams, or the Fish to live in these thinner Regions.

Pag. 134. Ʋnder severe penalties prohibit all unlicensed excursions into the upper World, though I confess this seems not so probable, &c. The Author seems to reserve all the Air above the earth to good souls onely, and that if any [...]ad ones appear, it must [...]e by either stealth or li­cense. But why bad souls may not be in this lower Region of the Air as well as Devils, I understand not. Nor do I conceive but that the Kingdom of Darkness may make such Laws amongst themselves, as may tend to the ease and safety of those of the Kingdom of Light. Not out of any good-will to them, but that themselves may not further smart for it if they give license to such and such exorbi­tancies. For they are capable of pain and pu­nishment, and though they are permitted in the world, yet they are absolutely under the power of the Almighty, and of the Grand Mi­nister [Page 141] of his Kingdom, the glorious Soul of the Messiah.

Pag. 137. The internal Central Fire should have got such strength and irresistible vigour, &c. But how or from whence, is very hard to con­cei [...]e: I should rather suspect, as I noted above, that the Fire will more and more decay till it turn at last to a kind of Terrella, like that ob­served within the Ring of Saturn, and the Dungeon become utter Darkness, where there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, as well as in the furnace of Fire.

Pag. 141. And so following the Laws of its proper motion shall fly away out of this Vortex, &c. This looks like an [...]eedless mistake of this ingenious Writer, who though he speak the language of Cartesius, seems here not to have recalled to mind his Principles. For the Earth according to his Principles is never like to be­come a Sun again. Nor if it had so become, would it then become a Comet. Forasmuch as Comets according to his Philosophie are incr [...] ­stated Suns, and Planets or Earths in a manner, and so to be deemed so soon as they settle in any Vortex, and take their course about the Centre thereof. Nor if the Earth become a Sun again, is it like to leave our Vortex accor­ding to the Cartesian Principles, but rather be swallowed down into the Sun of our Vortex, and increase his magnitude; the ranging of the Planets according to Des Cartes Mechanical [Page 142] Laws being from the difference of their solidi­ties, and the least solid next to the Sun. Whi­ther then can this Sol redivivus or the Earth turned wholly into the Materia subtilissima again be carried, but into the Sun it self? This seems most likely, especially if we consider this Sol Redivious or the Earth turned all into the Materia subtilissima, in itself. But if we take into our consideration its particular Vortex which carries about the Moon, the business may bear a further debate which will require more time than to be entred upon here. But it seems plain at first sight, that though this Sol Redivivus should by vertue of its particu­lar Vortex be kept from being swallowed down into the Sun and Centre of the great Vortex, yet it will never be able to get out of this great Vortex, according to the frame of Des Cartes Philosophy. So that there will be two Suns in one Vortex, a Planetary one and a fixt one. Which unexpected monstrositie in Nature will make any cautious Cartesian more wary how he ad­mits of the Earths ever being turned into a Sun again; but rather to be content to let its Central Fire to incrustrate it self into a Terrel­la, there seeming to be an example of this in that little Globe in the midst of the Ring of Saturn; but of an Earth turned into a Sun no example at all that I know of.

Pag. 142. So that the Central Fire remains unconcerned, &c. And so [...]t well may, it being [Page 143] so considerable a distance from the Concave of the Aqueous Orb, and the Aqueous Orb it self betwixt the Crust of the Earth and it. But the Prisoners of this Gaol of the Rephaim will not be a little concerned. This Hell of a sud­dain growing so smothering hot to them all, though the Central Fire no more than it was. And whatever becomes of those Spirits that suffer in the very Conflagration it self, yet Ab hoc Inferno nulla est redemptio.

Pag. 147. Those immediate births of unassist­ed nature will not be so tender, &c. Besides, the Air being replenisht with benign Daemons or Genii, to whom it cannot but be a plea­sant Spectacle to behold the inchoations and progresses of reviving Nature, they having the Curiositie to contemplate these births, may also in all likelihood exercise their kind­ness in helping them in their wants; and when they are grown up, assist them also in the me­thods of Life, and impart as they shall find fit the Arcana of Arts and Sciences and Religion unto them, nor suffer them to symbolize over­much in their way of living with the rest of their fellow terrestrial Creatures. If it be true that some hold, that even now when there is no such need, every one has his [...], his Genius or Guardian Angel, it is much more likely that at such a season as this, every tender Foetus of their common Mother the Earth, would be taken into the care of some good [Page 144] Daemon or other, even at their very first bud­ding out into life.

Pag. 148. But all this is but the frolick ex­ercise of my Pen choosing a Paradox. And let the same be said of the Pen of the Annotator, who has bestowed these pains not to gain Pro­selytes to the Opinions treated of in this Dis­course, but to entertain the Readers Intellectu­als with what may something inlarge his thoughts; and if he be curious and anxious, help him at a pinch to some ease of mind touching the ways of God and his wonderful Providence in the World.

Pag. 149. Those other expressions of Death, Destruction, Perdition of the ungodly, &c. How the entring into the state of Silence may well be deemed a real Death, Destruction and Per­dition, that passage in Lucretius does marvel­ously well set out.

And again in the same book he says, though we were again just as we were before, yet we having no memory thereof, it is all one as if we were perfectly lost. And yet this is the condition of the soul which the Divine Nemesis [Page 145] sends into the state of Silence, because after­wards she remembers nothing of her former life. His words are these:

Pag. 150. In those passages which predict new Heavens and a new Earth, &c. I suppose he alludes especially to that place in the Apoca­lypse, Chap. 21. where presently upon the De­scription of the Lake of Fire in the precedent Chapter which answers to the Conslagration, it is said, And I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth. But questionless that passage, as in o­ther places, is Politically to be understood, not Physically, unless this may be the ingenious Authors meaning, That the Writer of the A­pocalypse adorning his style with allusions to the most rouzing and most notable real or Phy­sical Objects (which is observable all along the Apocalypse) it may be a sign that a new Heaven and a new Earth succeeding the Con­flagration, is one of those noble Phaenomena true and real amongst the rest, which he thought fit to adorn his style with by alluding thereto. So that though the chief intended [Page 146] sense of the Apocalypse be Political, yet by its allusions it may countenance many noble and weighty Truths whether Physical or Metaphy­sical. As, The existence of Angels, which is so perpertually inculcated all along the Book from the beginning to the ending: The Divine Shechina in the celestial Regions: The Dread­ful Abyss in which rebellious Spirits are chain­ed, and at the commination whereof they so much tremble: The Conflagration of the Earth; and lastly, The renewing and restoring this Earth and Heaven after the Conflagrati­on.

Pag. 150. The main Opinion of Pre-existence is not at all concerned, &c. This is very judi­ciously and soberly noted by him. And there­fore it is by no means fairly done by the Op­posers of Pre-existence, while they make such a pudder to confute any passages in this Hy­pothesis, which is acknowledged by the Pre-existentiaries themselves to be no necessary or essential part of that Dogma. But this they do, that they may seem by their Cavils (for most of them are no better) against some parts of this unnecessarie Appendage of Pre-exi­stence, to have done some execution upon the Opinion it self; which how far it extends, may be in some measure discovered by these Notes we have made upon it. Which stated as they direct, the Hypothesis is at least possible; but that it is absolutely the true one, or should be [Page 147] thought so, is not intended. But as the in­genious Author suggests, it is either this way or some better, as the infinite Wisdom of God may have ordered. But this possible way shews Pre-existence to be neither impossible nor improbable.

Pag. 151. But submit all that I have writ­ten to the Authority of the Church of England, &c. And this I am perswaded he heartily did, as it is the duty of every one, in things that they cannot confirm by either a plain demon­stration, clear authority of Scripture, Mani­festation of their outward Senses, or some rou­zing Miracle, to compromise with the Decisi­ons of the National Church where Providence has cast them, for common peace and settle­ment, and for the ease and security of Gover­nours. But because a fancy has taken a man in the head, that he knows greater Arcana than others, or has a more orthodox belief in things not necessarie to Salvation than others have, for him to affect to make others Prose­lytes to his Opinion, and to wear his badge of Wisdom, as of an extraordinarie Master in matters of Theory, is a mere vanitie of Spirit, a ridiculous piece of pride and levitie, and un­beseeming either a sober and stanched man or a good Christian. But upon such pretences to gather a Sect, or set up a Church or Indepen­dent Congregation, is intolerable Faction and Schism, nor can ever bear a free and strict ex­amination [Page 148] according to the measures of the truest Morals and Politicks.

But because it is the fate of some men to believe Opinions, to others but probable, nor it may be so much (as the motion of the Earth suppose, and Des Cartes his Vortices, and the like) to be certain Science, it is the interest of every National Church to define the truth of no more Theories than are plainly necessa­ry for Faith and good manners; because if they either be really, or seem to be mistaken in their unnecessary Decisions or Definitions, this with those that are more knowing than ingenuous will certainly lessen the Authori­ty and Reverence due to the Church, and hazard a secret enmity of such against her. But to adventure upon no Decisions but what have the Authority of Scripture (which they have that were the Decisions of General Councils before the Apostasie) and plain use­fulness as well as Reason of their side, this is the greatest Conservative of the Honour and Authority of a Church (especially joyned with an exemplary life) that the greatest Prudence or Politicks can ever excogitate. Which true Politicks the Church of Rome having a long time ago deserted, has been fain, an horrid thing to think of it! to support her Autho­rity and extort Reverence by mere Violence and Bloud. Whenas, if she had followed these more true and Christian Politicks, she would [Page 149] never have made herself so obnoxious, but for ought one knows, she might have stood and retained her Authority for ever.

In the mean time, this is suitable enough, and very well worth our noting, That foras­much as there is no assurance of the Holy Ghost's assisting unnecessary Decisions, though it were of the Universal Church, much less of any National one, so that if such a point be de­termined, it is uncertainly determined, and that there may be several ways of holding a necessa­ry Point, some more accommodate to one kind of men, others to another, and that the Decisi­ons of the Church are for the Edification of the people, that either their Faith may be more firm, or their Lives more irreprehensible: these things, I say, being premised, it seems most prudent and Christian in a Church to de­cline the Decision of the circumstances of any necessary point, forasmuch as by deciding and determining the thing one way, those other handles by which others might take more fast hold on it are thereby cut off, and so their assent made less firm thereto.

We need not go far for an example, if we but remember what we have been about all this time. It is necessarie to believe that we have in us an Immortal Spirit capable of Salvation and Damnation, according as we shall behave ourselves. This is certainly revealed to us, and is of indispensable usefulness. But though [Page 150] this Opinion or rather Article of Faith be but o [...]e, yet there are several waies of holding it. And it lies more easie in some mens minds, if they suppose it created by God at every conception in the Womb; in othersome, if they conceive it to be ex Traduce; and lastly in others, if it pre-exist. But the waies of holding this Article signifie nothing but as they are subservient to the making us the more firmly hold the same. For the more firmly we believe it, the greater influence will it have upon our lives, to cause us to live in the fear of God, and in the waies of Righteousness like good Christians.

Wherefore now it being supposed that it will stick more firm and fixt in some mens minds by some one of these three waies, ra­ther than by either of the other two, and thus of any one of the three; It is manifest, it is much more prudently done of the Church not to cut off two of these three handles by a needless, nay, a harmful Decision, but let every one choose that handle that he can hold the Article fastest by, for his own support and Edification. For thus every one laying firm hold on that handle that is best fitted for his own grasp, the Article will carry all these three sorts of believers sa [...]e up to Heaven, they living accordingly; whenas two sorts of them would have more slippery or uncertain hold, if they had no handle offered to them but [Page 151] those which are less suitable to their grasp and Genius.

Which shews the Prudence, Care, and Accu­racy of Judgment in the Church of England, that as in other things, so in this, she has made no such needless and indeed hurtful Decisions, but left the modes of conceiving things of the greatest moment, to every ones self, to take it that way that he can lay the fastest hold of it, and it will lie the most easily in his mind without doubt and wavering. And therefore there being no one of these handles but what may be useful to some or other for the more easie and undoubted holding that there is in us an Immaterial and Immortal Soul or Spirit, my having taken this small pains to wipe off the soil, and further the usefulness of one of them by these Annotations, if it may not merit thanks, it must, I hope, at least deserve excuse with all those that are not of too sowre and tetrick a Genius, and prefer their own humours and sentiments before the real bene­fit of others.

But now if any one shall invidiously object, that I prefer the Christian Discretion of my own Church the Church of England, before the Judgment and Wisdom of a General Council, namely, the fifth Oecumenical Council held at Constantinople in Justinians time under the Patriarch Eutychius, who succeeded Menas late­ly deceased, to whom Justinian sent that Dis­course [Page 152] of his against Origen and his errours, amongst which Pre-existence is reckoned one: In answer to this, several things are to be con­sidered, that right may be done our Mo­ther.

First, What number of Bishops make a ge­neral Council, so that from their Numerosity we may rely upon their Authority and in­fallibility that they will not conclude what is false.

Secondly, Whether in whatsoever matters of debate, though nothing to the Salvation of mens souls, but of curious▪ Speculation, fitter for the Schools of Philosophers than Articles of Faith for the edification of the people (whose memory and conscience ought to be charged with no notions that are not subservient to the rightly and duly honouring God and his onely begotten Son our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the faithful discharging their duty to man) the assistance of the Spirit of God can rational­ly be expected; or onely in such things as are necessary to be professed by the people, and very useful for the promoting of Life and God­liness. And as Moses has circumscribed his Nar­rative of the Creation within the limits of Mundus Plebeiorum, and also the Chronology of time according to Scripture is bounded from the first Adam to the coming again of the se­cond to Judgment, and Sentencing the wicked to everlasting punishment, and the righteous to [Page 153] life everlasting: so whether the Decisions of the Church are not the most safely contained within these bounds, and they faithfully dis­charge themselves in the conduct of Souls, if they do but instruct them in such truths only as are within this compass revealed in sacred Scripture. And whether it does not make for the Interest and Dignity of the Church to decline the medling with other things, as unprofitable and unnecessary to be deci­ded.

Thirdly, Whether if a General Council meet not together in via Spiritus Sancti, but some stickling imbitter'd Grandees of the Church out of a pique that they have taken against some persons get through their interest a Ge­neral Council called, whether is the assistance of the Holy Ghost to be expected in such a meeting, so that they shall conclude nothing against truth.

Fourthly, Whether the Authority of such General Councils as Providence by some no­table prodigie may seem to have intimated a dislike of, be not thereby justly suspected, and not easily to be admitted as infallible de­ciders.

Fifthly, Whether a General Council that is found mistaken in one point, anathematizing that for an Heresie which is a truth, forfeits not its Authority in other points, which then whether falshoods or truths, are not to be dee­med [Page 154] so from the Authority of that Council, but from other Topicks.

Sixthly, Since there can be no commerce be­twixt God and man, nor he communicate his mind and will to us but by supposition, That our senses rightly circumstantiated are true, That there is skill in us to understand words and Grammar, and schemes of speech, as also com­mon notions and clear inferences of Reason, whether if a General Council conclude any thing plainly repugnant to these, is the Con­clusion of such a Council true and valid; and whether the indeleble Notices of truth in our mind that all Mankind is possessed of, whe­ther Logical, Moral, or Metaphysical, be not more the dictates of God, than those of any Council that are against them.

Seventhly, If a Council, as general as any has been called, had in the very midnight of the Churches Apostasie and ignorance met, and concluded all those Corruptions that now are obtruded by the Church of Rome, as Tran­substantiation, Invocation of Saints, Worshipping of Images, and the like, whether the Decisions of such a Council could be held infallible or va­lid. What our own excellently well Reformed Church holds in this case, is evident out of her Articles. For,

Eighthly, The Church of England plainly declares. That General Councils when they be gathered together, forasmuch as they be an As­sembly [Page 155] of men whereof all are not governed with the Spirit and Word of God, they may err, and sometimes have erred even in things pertaining to God. Wherefore, saith she▪ things ordained by them as necessary to Salvation have neither strength nor Authority, unless it may be declared that they be taken out of Holy Scripture. Artic 21.

Ninthly, And again, Artic. 20. where she allows the Church to have power to decree Rites and Ceremonies, and Authority in Con­troversies of Faith, but with this restriction, That it is not lawful for the Church to ordain any thing that is contrary to Gods Word written, neither may it so expound one place of Scripture that it be repugnant to another: she concludes: Wherefore although the Church be a Witness and Keeper of Holy Writ, yet as it ought not to de­cree any thing against the same, so besides the same ought it not to inforce any thing to be be­lieved for necessity of Salvation. What then, does she null the Authority of all the General Councils, and have no deference for any thing but the mere Word of God to convince men of Heresie▪ No such matter. What her sense of these things is, you will find in 1 Eliz. cap. 1. Wherefore,

Tenthly and lastly, What General Councils the Church of England allows of for the con­viction of Hereticks you may understand out of these words of the Statute: They shall not [Page 156] adjudge any matter or cause to be Heresies, but onely such as heretofore have been adjudged to be Heresie by the Authority of the Canonical Scrip­tures, or by the first four General Councils or any of them, or by any other General Council wherein the same was declared Heresie by the express and plain words of the said Canonical Scrip­tures.

By brief reflections upon some of these ten Heads, I shall endeavour to lessen the Invidi­ousness of my seeming to prefer the Discretion of the Church of England before the Judgment of a General Council, I mean of such a General Council as is so unexceptionable that we may relie on the Authority of their Decisions, that they will not fail to be true. Of which sort whether the fifth reputed General Council be, we will briefly first consider.

For reflecting on the first head, It seems scarcely numerous enough for a General Coun­cil. The first General Council of Nice had above three hundred Bishops; That of Chal­cedon above six hundred: This fifth Council held at Constantinople had but an hundred sixty odd. And which still makes it more unlike a General Council, in the very same year, viz. 553, the Western Bishops held a Council at Aquileia, and condemned this fifth Council held at Constantinople.

Secondly, The Pre-existence of Souls being a mere Philosophical Speculation, and indeed [Page 157] held by all Philosophers in the affirmative that held the Soul incorporeal; we are to consider whether we may not justly deem this case re­ferrible to the second Head, and to look some­thing like Pope Zacharies appointing a Coun­cil to condemn Virgilius as an Heretick, for holding Antipodes.

Thirdly, We may very well doubt whether this Council proceeded in via Spiritus Sancti, this not being the first time that the lovers and admirers of Origen for his great Piety and Knowledge, and singular good service he had done to the Church of Christ in his time, had foul play plai'd them. Witness the story of Theophilus Bishop of Antioch, who to revenge himself on Dioscorus and two others that were lovers of Origen and Anti-Anthropomorphites, stickled so, that he caused Epiphanius in his See, as he did in his own, to condemn the Books of Origen in a Synod. To which con­demnation Epiphanius an Anthropomorphite, and one of more Zeal than Knowledge, would have got the subscription of Chrysostome the Pa­triarch of Constantinople; but he had more Wis­dom and Honesty than to listen to such an in­jurious demand.

And as it was with those Synods called by Theophilus and Epiphanius, so it seems to be with the fifth Council. Piques and Heart­burnings amongst the Grandees of the Church seemed to be at the bottom of the business. Bi­nius [Page 158] in his History of this fifth Council takes notice of the enmity betwixt Pelagius, Pope Vigilius's Apocrisiarie, and Theodorus Bishop of Caesarea Cappadociae an Origenist. And Spon­danus likewise mentions the same, who says, touching the business of Origen, that Pelagius the Popes Apocrisiarie, eam quaestionem in ipsius Theodori odium movisse existimabatur. And truly it seems to me altogether incredible, un­less there were some hellish spight at the bot­tom, that they should not have contented them­selves to condemn the errours supposed to be Origens (but after so long a time after his death, there being in his writings such choppings and changings and interpolations, hard to prove to be his) but have spared his name, for that un­speakable good service he did the Church in his life-time. See Dr. H. Mores Preface to his Collectio Philosophica, Sect. 18. where Origens true Character is described out of Eusebius. Wherefore whether this be to begin or carry on things in via Spiritus Sancti, so that we may rely on the Authority of such a Council, I leave to the impartial and judicious to consi­der.

Fourthly, In reference to the fourth Head, That true wisdom and moderation, and the holy assistance of Gods Spirit did not guide the affairs of this Council, seems to be indica­ted by the Divine Providence, who to shew the effect of their unwise proceedings in the [Page 159] self-same year the Council sate, sent a most ter­rible Earthquake for forty days together upon the City of Constantinople where the Council was held, and upon other Regions of the East, even upon Alexandria it self and other places, so that many Cities were levelled to the ground. Upon which Spondanus writes thus: Haec verò praesagia fuisse malorum quae sunt prae­dictam Synodum consecuta, nemo negare poterit quicun (que) ab eventis facta noverit judicare.

This also reminds me of a Prodigy as it was thought that happened at the sixth reputed Ge­neral Council, where nigh three hundred Fa­thers were gathered together to decide this nice and subtile Point, namely, whether an o­peration or volition of Christ were to be dee­med, Ʋna operatio sive volitio [...], according to that Axiom of some Metaphysicians, that Actio est suppositi, and so the Humane and Di­vine Nature of Christ being coalescent into one person, his volition and operation be accoun­ted one as his person is but one; or because of the two Natures, though but one person, there are to be conceived two operations or two voli­tions. This latter Dogma obtained, and the other was condemned by this third Constanti­nopolitan Council: whereupon, as Paulus Diaco­nus writes, abundance of Cobwebs or Spiders webs fell or rained, as it were, down upon the heads of the people, to their very great asto­nishment. Some interpret the Cobwebs of [Page 160] Heresies; others haply more rightfully of troubling the Church of Christ with over­great niceties and curiosities of subtile Specu­lation, which tend nothing to the corrobora­ting her Faith, and promoting a good Life; and are so obscure, subtile, and lubricous, that look on them one way they seem thus, and another way thus.

To this sixth General Council there seemed two Operations and two Wills in Christ, because of his two Natures. To a Council called after by Philippicus the Emperour, and John Patri­arch of Constantinople, considering Christ as one person, there appeared Numerosissimo Orienta­lium Episcoporum collecto Conventui▪ as Sponda­nus has it: but as Binius, Innumerae Orientalium Episcoporum multitudini congregatae, but one will and one operation. And certainly this nume­rous or innumerable company of Bishops must put as fair for a General Council as that of less than three hundred. But that the Authority of both these Councils are lessened upon the account of the second Head, in that the mat­ter they consulted about tended nothing to the corroboration of our Faith, or the pro­motion of a good Life, I have already intima­ted.

These things I was tempted to note, in re­ference to the tenth Head. For it seems to mean undeniable Argument, that our First Reformers, which are the Risen Witnesses, were [Page 161] either exquisitely well seen in Ecclesiastick History, or the good Hand of God was upon them that they absolutely admitted onely the four first General Councils; but after them, they knew not where to be, or what to call a General Council, and therefore would not ad­venture of any so called for the adjudging any matters Heresie. But if any pretended to be such, their Authority should no further prevail, than as they made out things by express and plain words of Canonical Scripture. And for other Synods, whether the Seventh, which is the second of Nice, or any other that the Church of Rome would have to be General in defence of their own exorbitant points of Faith or Practice, they will be found of no validity, if we have recourse to the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth Heads.

Fifthly, In reference to the fifth Head. This fifth Council loseth its Authority in anathe­matizing what in Origen seems to be true ac­cording to that express Text of Scripture, John 16. 28. (especially compared with others. See Notes on Chap. 11.) I came forth from the Fa­ther, and am come into the world; again I leave the world, and go to the Father. He came forth from his Father which is in Heaven, according­ly as he taught us to pray to him (the Divine Shechina being in a peculiar manner there) He leaves the world and goes to the Father, which all understand of his Ascension into Heaven, [Page 162] whence his coming from the Father must have the same sense, or else the Antithesis will plain­ly fail. Wherefore it is plain he came down from Heaven (as he signifies also in other pla­ces) as well as returns thither. But he can neither be truly said to come from heaven, nor return thither, according to his Divine Nature. For it never left Heaven, nor removes from one place to another; and therefore this Scripture does plainly imply the Pre existence of the Soul of the Messiah, according to the Doctrine of the Jews, before it was incarnate. And this stricture of the old Cabala may give light to more places of St. Johns Writings than is fit to recite in this haste; I will onely name one by the by, 1 John 4. 2. Every Spirit that confesseth [...], that Jesus is the Christ come in the flesh, that is to say, is the Christ incarnate, is of God. For the Messiah did exist, viz. his Soul, before he came into the flesh, ac­cording to the Doctrine of the Jews. Which was so well known, that upon the above-cited saying (John 16. 28.) of our Saviour, they presently answered, Lo, now speakest thou plain­ly, and speakest no Parable; because he clear­ly discovers himself by this Character to be the expected Messias incarnate. Nor is there any possible evasion out of the clearness of this Text [...]rom the communication of Idioms, because Christ cannot be said to come down from Heaven according to his Humane Nature be­fore [Page 163] it was there, therefore his Humane Na­ture was there before it was incarnate.

And lastly, The Authority of the Decision of this Council (if it did so decide) is lessened, in that contrary to the second Head (as was hinted above) it decides a point that Faith and Godliness is not at all concerned in. For the Divinity of Christ, which is the great point of Faith, is as firmly held supposing the Soul of the Messias united with the Logos before his in­carnation, as in it. So that the spight onely of Pelagius against Theodorus to multiply Ana­thematisms against Origen, no use or necessity of the Church required any such thing. Whence again their Authority is lessened upon the ac­count of the third Head.

These things may very well suspend a care­ful mind, and loth to be imposed upon, from relying much upon the Authority of this fifth Council. But suppose its Authority entire, yet the Acts against Origen are not to be found in the Council. And the sixth Council in its Anathematisms, though it mention Theodorets Writings, the Epistle of Ibas and Theoda­rus Mopsuestenus who were concerned in the fifth Council; yet I find not there a syllable touching Origen. And therefore those that talk of his being condemned by that fifth Council, have an eye, I suppose, to the Ana­thematisms at the end of that Discourse which Justinian the Emperour sent to Menas. Patri­arch [Page 164] of Constantinople, according to which form they suppose the errours of Origen condemned. Which if it were true, yet simple Pre-existence will escape well enough.

Nor do I think that learned and intelligent Patriarch Photius would have called the sim­ple Opinion of Pre-existence of souls [...], but for those Appendages that the injudiciousness and rashness of some had affix­ed to it. Partly therefore re [...]lecting upon that first Anathematism in the Emperours Dis­course that makes the pre-existent souls of men first to be [...] as if their highest felicity con­sisted in having no body to inactuate (which plainly clashes with both sound Philosophy and Christianity, as if the [...] and Rephaim were all one, and they were not [...] till they were [...], grown cold to the Divine Love, and onely gathered body as they gathered corruption, and were alienated from the Life of God; which is point-blank against the Christian Faith, which has promised us, as the highest prize, a glorified body:) And partly what himself adds, that one soul goes into several bodies; Which are impertinent Appendages of the Pre-existence of the soul, false, useless and unnecessary; and therefore those that add these Appendages thereto, violate the sincerity of the Divine Tradition to no good purpose.

But this simple Doctrine of Pre-existence is so unexceptionable and harmless, that the [Page 165] third collection of Councils in Justellus, which is called [...], though it reckon the other errours of Origen condemned in the fifth Council, omits this of Pre-existence. Cer­tainly that Ecclesiastick that framed that Dis­course for the Emperour, if he did it not him­self, had not fully, deliberately and impartial­ly considered the Dogma of Pre-existence ta­ken in its self, nor does once offer to answer any Reasons out of Scripture or Philosophy that are produced for it. Which if it had been done, and this had been the onely errour to be alledged against Origen, I cannot think it cre­dible, nay scarce possible, though their spight had been never so much against some lovers of Origen, that they could have got any Ge­neral Council to have condemned so holy, so able, so victorious a Champion for the Christi­an Church in his life-time for an Heretick, up­on so tolerable a punctilio, about three hun­dred years after his death. What Father that wrote before the first four General Councils, but might by the Malevolent, for some odd passage or other, be doomed an Heretick, if such severity were admittable amongst Chri­stians?

But I have gone out further than I was a­ware, and it is time for me to bethink me what I intended. Which was the justifying of my self in my seeming to prefer the Discretion of our own Church in leaving us free to hold the [Page 166] Incorporeity and Immortality of the soul by any of the three handles that best fitted every mans Genius, before the Judgment of the fifth General Council, that would abridge us of this liberty. From which Charge I have en­deavoured to free my self, briefly by these two ways: First, by shewing how hard it is to prove the fifth Oecumenical Council so called, to be a legitimate General or Oecumenical Council, and such as whose Authority we may relie on. And secondly, if it was such, by shewing that it did not condemn simply the Pre-existence of souls, but Pre-existence with such and such Appendages. So that there is no real clashing betwixt our Church and that Council in this.

But however this is, from the eighth and ninth Heads it's plain enough that the Church of England is no favourer of the Conclusions of any General Council that are enjoyned as necessary to Salvation, that be either repug­nant to Holy Scripture, or are not clearly to be made out from the same; which Non-pre-existence of Souls certainly is not, but rather the contrary. But being the point is not suf­ficiently clear from Scripture either way to all, and the Immortality of the Soul and subsi­stence after death is the main useful point; that way which men can hold it with most firmness and ease, her Candour and Prudence has left it free to them to make use of.

[Page 167] And as for General Councils, though she does not in a fit of Zeal, which Theodosius a Prior in Palestine is said to have done, anathe­matize from the Pulpit all people that do not give as much belief to the four first General Councils as to the four. Gospels themselves; yet, as you may see in the tenth Head, she makes the Authority of the first four General Councils so great, that nothing is to be ad­judged Heresie but what may be proved to be so either from the Scripture or from these four Councils. Which Encomium might be made with less skill and more confidence by that Prior, there having been no more than four General Councils in his time. But it was singular Learning and Judgment, or else a kind of Divine Sagacity in our first Refor­mers, that they laid so great stress on the first four General Councils, and so little on any o­thers pretended so to be.

But in all likelihood they being perswaded of the truth of the prediction of the Apostasie of the Church under Antichrist how univer­sal in a manner it would be, they had the most confidence in those General Councils which were the earliest, and that were held within those times of the Church which some call Symmetral. And without all question, the two first General Councils, that of Nice, and that other of Constantinople, were within those times, viz. within four hundred years after [Page 168] Christ; and the third and fourth within the time that the ten-horned Beast had his horns growing up, according to Mr. Mede's compu­tation. But the Definitions of the third and fourth Councils, that of Ephesus, and that other of Chalcedon (which are to establish the Divini­ty of Christ, which is not to be conceived with­out the Union of both Natures into one person; as also his Theanthropy, which cannot consist with the confusion of both Natures into one) were vertually contained in the Definitions of the first and second Councils. So that in this regard they are all of equal Authority, and that unexceptionable. First, because their De­cisions were concerning points necessary to be decided one way or other, for the settlement of the Church in the objects of their Divine Worship. And therefore they might be the better assured that the assistance of the Holy Ghost would not be wanting upon so weighty an occasion. And secondly, in that those two first Councils were called while the Church was Symmetral, and before the Apostasie came in, according to the testimony of the Spirit in the Visions of the Apocalypse.

Which Visions plainly demonstrate, that the Definitions of those Councils touching the Triunity of the Godhead and Divinity of Christ are not Idolatrous, else the Apostasie had be­gun before the time these Oracles declare it did; and if not Idolatrous, then they are most [Page 169] certainly true. And all these four Councils driving at nothing else but these necessary points to be decided, and their decision being thus plainly approved by the suffrage of the Holy Ghost in the Apocalypse, I appeal to any man of sense and judgment if they have not a peculiar prerogative to be believed above what other pretended General Council soever; and consequently with what special or rather Di­vine sagacity our first Reformers have laid so peculiar a stress on these four, and how consi­stent our Mother the Church of England is to herself, that the decisions of General Councils have neither strength nor Authority further than the matter may be cleared out of the Holy Scrip­tures. For here we see, that out of the Holy Scriptures there is a most ample testimony given to the Decisions of these four General Councils. So that if one should with Theodo­sius the Prior of Palestine in a fit of Zeal ana­thematize all those that did not believe them as true as the four Evangelists, he would not want a fair Plea for his religious fury.

But for men after the Symmetral times of the Church, upon Piques and private quarrels of Parties, to get General Councils called as they fancy them, to conclude matters that tend neither to the confirmation of the real Articles of the Christian Faith, or of such a sense of them as are truly useful to life and godliness, and herein to expect the infallible [Page 170] assistances of the Holy Spirit, either upon such terms as these, or for rank worldly interest, is such a presumption as to a free Judgment will look little better than Simony, as if they could hire the assistance of the Holy Ghost for mo­ney.

Thus have I run further into the considera­tion of General Councils, and the measure of their Authority, than was requisite upon so small an occasion; and yet I think there is no­thing said, but if seriously weighed may be use­ful to the intelligent Reader, whether he fa­vour Pre-existence or not. Which is no fur­ther to be favoured than is consistent with the known and approved Doctrines of the Chri­stian Faith, nor clashes any thing with the soundest Systemes of Divinity, as Dr. H. More shews his way of exhibiting the Theorie does not, in his General Preface to his Collectio Philo­sophica, Sect. 19. whose cautious and castigate method I have imitated as near as I could in these my Annotations. And he has indeed been so careful of admitting any thing in the Hypothesis that may justly be suspected or ex­cepted against, that his Friend Mr. Glanvil m [...]ght have enlarged his Dedication by one word more, and called him Repurgatorem Sa­pientiae Orientalis, as well as Restauratorem, un­less Restaurator imply both: It being a piece of Restauration, to free an Hypothesis from the errours some may have corrupted it with, and [Page 171] to recover it to its primeval purity and sinceri­ty.

And yet when the business is reduced to this harmless and unexceptionable state, such is the modesty of that Writer, that he declares that if he were as certain of the Opinion as of any demonstration in Mathematicks, yet he holds not himself bound in conscience to profess it any further than is with the good-liking or permission of his Superiours. Of which tem­per if all men were, it would infinitely contri­bute to the peace of the Church. And as for my self, I do freely profess that I am altoge­ther of the self-same Opinion and Judgment with him.