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The First Part.Section V.
Section V.
XLVI. Now to determine the day and year of this inevitable time, is not
onely convincible^109 and statute-madness,^110 but also manifest impiety. How
shall we interpret Elias six thousand years,^111 or imagine the secret
communicated to a Rabbi, which God hath denyed unto His Angels? It had been an
excellent Quaere^112 to have posed the Devil of Delphos,^113 and must needs
have forced him to some strange amphibology.^114 It hath not onely mocked the
predictions of sundry Astrologers in Ages past, but the prophesies of many
melancholy heads in these present; who, neither understanding reasonably
things past or present, pretend a knowledge of things to come: heads ordained
onely to manifest the incredible effects of melancholy, and to fulfil old
prophecies rather than be the authors of new. In those days there shall com
Wars and rumours of Wars, to me seems no prophecy, but a constant truth, in
all times verified since it was pronounced. There shall be signs in the Moon
and Stars; how comes He then like a Thief in the night, when He gives an item
of His Coming? That common sign drawn from the revelation of Antichrist, is as
obscure as any: in our common compute He hath been come these many years: but
for my own part, (to speak freely,) I am half of opinion that Antichrist is
the Philosopher`s stone in Divinity, for the discovery and invention whereof,
though there be prescribed rules and probable inductions, yet hath hardly any
man attained the perfect discovery thereof. That general opinion that the
World grows near its end, hath possessed all ages past as nearly as ours. I am
afraid that the Souls that now depart, cannot escape that lingring
expostulation of the Saints under the Altar, Quousque, Domine? How long, O
Lord? and groan in the expectation of that great Jubilee.
XLVII. This is the day that must make good that great attribute of God,
His Justice; that must reconcile those unanswerable doubts that torment the
wisest understandings; and reduce those seeming inequalities and respective
distributions in this world, to an equality and recompensive Justice in the
next. This is that one day, that shall include and comprehend all that went
before it; wherein, as in the last scene, all the Actors must enter, to
compleat and make up the Catastrophe of this great piece. This is the day
whose memory hath onely power to make us honest in the dark, and to be
vertuous without a witness.
Ipsa sui pretium virtus sibi,^115
[Footnote 115: Claudian, "De Mallii Theod. Consul." v. 1.]
that Vertue is her own reward, is but a cold principle, and not able to
maintain our variable resolutions in a constant and setled way of goodness. I
have practised that honest artifice of Seneca, and in my retired and solitary
imaginations, to detain me from the foulness of vice, have fancied to my self
the presence of my dear and worthiest friends, before whom I should lose my
head, rather than be vitious: yet herein I found that there was nought but
moral honesty, and this was not be vertuous for His sake Who must reward us at
the last. I have tryed if I could reach that great resolution of his, to be
honest without a thought of Heaven or Hell: and indeed I found, upon a natural
inclination and inbred loyalty unto virtue, that I could serve her without a
livery,^116 yet not in that resolved and venerable way, but that the frailty
of my nature, upon an easie temptation, might be induced to forget her. The
life, therefore, and spirit of all our actions is the resurrection, and a
stable apprehension that our ashes shall enjoy the fruit of our pious
endeavours: without this, all Religion is a Fallacy, and those impieties of
Lucian, Euripides, and Julian, are no blasphemies, but subtle verities, and
Atheists have been the onely Philosophers.
[Footnote 116: Reward.]
[Footnote 117: Turning.]
[Footnote 118: Seed.]
[Footnote 119: Restoration to its own form.]
[Footnote 120: Individual.]
XLVIII. How shall the dead arise, is no question of my Faith; to believe
only possibilities, is not Faith, but meer Philosophy. Many things are true in
Divinity, which are neither inducible by reason, nor confirmable by sense; and
many things in Philosophy confirmable by sense, yet not inducible by reason.
Thus it is impossible by any solid or demonstrative reasons to perswade a man
to believe the conversion^117 of the Needle to the North; though this be
possible, and true, and easily credible, upon a single experiment unto the
sense. I believe that our estranged and divided ashes shall unite again; that
our separated dust, after so many Pilgrimages and transformations into the
parts of Minerals, Plants, Animals, Elements, shall at the Voice of God return
into their primitive shapes, and joyn again to make up their primary and
predestinate forms. As at the Creation there was a separation of that
confused mass into its species; so at the destruction thereof there shall be a
separation into its distinct individuals. As at the Creation of the World, all
the distinct species that we behold lay involved in one mass, till the
fruitful Voice of God separated this united multitude into its several
species; so at the last day, when those corrupted reliques shall be scattered
in the Wilderness of forms, and seem to have forgot their proper habits, God
by a powerful Voice shall command them back into their proper shapes, and call
them out by their single individuals. Then shall appear the fertility of Adam,
and the magick of that sperm^118 that hath dilated into so many millions. I
have often beheld as a miracle, that artificial resurrection and
revivification^119 of Mercury, how being mortified into a thousand shapes, it
assumes again its own, and returns into its numerical^120 self. Let us speak
naturally and like Philosophers, the forms of alterable bodies in these
sensible corruptions perish not; nor, as we imagine, wholly quit their
mansions, but retire and contract themselves into their secret and
unaccessible parts, where they may best protect themselves from the action of
their Antagonist. A plant or vegetable consumed to ashes to a contemplative
and school-Philosopher seems utterly destroyed, and the form to have taken his
leave for ever; but to a sensible Artist the forms are not perished, but
withdrawn into their incombustible part, where they lie secure from the action
of that devouring element. This is made good by experience, which can from the
Ashes of a Plant revive the plant, and from its cinders recall it into its
stalk and leaves again. What the Art of man can do in these inferiour pieces,
what blasphemy is it to affirm the finger of God cannot do in these more
perfect and sensible structures! This is that mystical Philosophy, from whence
no true Scholar becomes an Atheist, but from the visible effects of nature
grows up a real Divine, and beholds not in a dream, as Ezekiel, but in an
ocular and visible object, the types of his resurrection.
[Footnote 121: Perhaps for eloquent.]
[Footnote 122: St. Paul.]
XLIX. Now, the necessary Mansions of our restored selves are those two
contrary and incompatible places we call Heaven and Hell. To define them, or
strictly to determine what and where these are, surpasseth my Divinity. That
elegant^121 Apostle,^122 which seemed to have a glimpse of Heaven, hath left
but a negative description thereof; which neither eye hath seen, nor ear hath
heard, nor can enter into the heart of man: he was translated out of himself
to behold it; but, being returned into himself, could not express it. St.
John`s description by Emerals, Chrysolites, and precious Stones, is too weak
to express the material Heaven we behold. Briefly therefore, where the Soul
hath the full measure and complement of happiness; where the boundless
appetite of that spirit remains compleatly satisfied, that it can neither
desire addition nor alteration: that, I think, is truly Heaven: and this can
onely be in the enjoyment of that essence, whose infinite goodness is able to
terminate the desires of it self, and the unsatiable wishes of ours: wherever
God will thus manifest Himself, there is Heaven, though within the circle of
this sensible world. Thus the Soul of man may be in Heaven any where, even
within the limits of his own proper body; and when it ceaseth to live in
the body, it may remain in its own soul, that is, its Creator: and thus we may
say that St. Paul, whether in the body, or out of the body, was yet in Heaven.
To place it in the Empyreal, or beyond the tenth sphear, is to forget the
world`s destruction; for, when this sensible world shall be destroyed, all
shall then be here as it is now there, an Empyreal Heaven, a quasi vacuity;
when to ask where Heaven is, is to demand where the Presence of God is, or
where we have the glory of that happy vision. Moses, that was bred up in all
the learning of the Egyptians, committed a gross absurdity in Philosophy, when
with these eyes of flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his Maker, that
is, Truth it self, to a contradiction. Those that imagine Heaven and Hell
neighbours, and conceive a vicinity between those two extreams, upon
consequence of the Parable, where Dives discoursed with Lazarus in Abraham`s
bosome, do too grosly conceive of those glorified creatures, whose eyes shall
easily out-see the Sun, and behold without a perspective^123 the extreamest
distances: for if there shall be in our glorified eyes, the faculty of sight
and reception of objects, I could think the visible species there to be in as
unlimitable a way as now the intellectual. I grant that two bodies placed
beyond the tenth sphear, or in a vacuity, according to Aristotle`s Philosophy,
could not behold each other, because there wants a body or Medium to hand and
transport the visible rays of the object unto the sense; but when there shall
be a general defect of either Medium to convey, or light to prepare and
dispose that Medium, and yet a perfect vision, we must suspend the rules of
our Philosophy, and make all good by a more absolute piece of opticks.
[Footnote 123: Telescope.]
L. I cannot tell how to say that fire is the essence of Hell: I know not
what to make of Purgatory, or conceive a flame that can either prey upon, or
purifie the substance of a Soul. Those flames of Sulphur mention`d in the
Scriptures, I take not to be understood of this present Hell, but of that to
come, where fire shall make up the complement of our tortures, and have a body
or subject wherein to manifest its tyranny. Some, who have had the honour to
be textuary in Divinity, are of opinion it shall be the same specifical fire
with ours. This is hard to conceive; yet can I make good how even that may
prey upon our bodies, and yet not consume us: for in this material World there
are bodies that persist invincible in the powerfullest flames; and though by
the action of fire they fall into ignition and liquation, yet will they never
suffer a destruction. I would gladly know how Moses with an actual fire
calcined or burnt the Golden Calf unto powder: for that mystical metal of
Gold, whose solary^124 and celestial nature I admire, exposed unto the
violence of fire, grows onely hot, and liquifies, but consumeth not; so, when
the consumable and volatile pieces of our bodies shall be refined into a more
impregnable and fixed temper like Gold, though they suffer from the action of
flames, they shall never perish, but lye immortal in the arms of fire. And
surely, if this frame must suffer onely by the action of this element, there
will many bodies escape; and not onely Heaven, but Earth will not be at an
end, but rather a beginning. For at present it is not earth, but a composition
of fire, water, earth, and air; but at that time, spoiled of these
ingredients, it shall appear in a substance more like it self, its ashes.
Philosophers that opinioned the worlds destruction by fire, did never dream of
annihilation, which is beyond the power of sublunary causes; for the last and
proper action of that element is but vitrification, or a reduction of a body
into glass; and therefore some of our Chymicks facetiously affirm, that at
the last fire all shall be christallized and reverberated into glass, which is
the utmost action of that element. Nor need we fear this term, annihilation,
or wonder that God will destroy the works of His Creation; for man subsisting,
who is, and will then truely appear, a Microcosm, the world cannot be said to
be destroyed. For the eyes of God, and perhaps also of our glorified selves,
shall as really behold and contemplate the World in its Epitome or contracted
essence, as now it doth at large and in its dilated substance. In the seed of
a Plant to the eyes of God, and to the understanding of man, there exists,
though in an invisible way, the perfect leaves, flowers, and fruit thereof;
for things that are in posse to the sense, are actually existent to the
understanding. Thus God beholds all things, Who contemplates as fully His
works in their Epitome, as in their full volume; and beheld as amply the whole
world in that little compendium of the sixth day, as in the scattered and
dilated pieces of those five before.
[Footnote 124: Solar. Astrology associated gold with the sun.]
LI. Men commonly set forth the torments of Hell by fire, and the
extremity of corporal afflictions, and describe Hell in the same method that
Mahomet doth Heaven. This indeed makes a noise, and drums in popular ears; but
if this be the terrible piece thereof, it is not worthy to stand in
diameter^125 with Heaven, whose happiness consists in that part that is best
able to comprehend it, that immortal essence, that translated divinity and
colony of God, the Soul. Surely, though we place Hell under Earth, the Devil`s
walk and purlue is about it: men speak too popularly who place it in those
flaming mountains, which to grosser apprehensions represent Hell. The heart of
man is the place the Devils dwell in: I feel sometimes a Hell within my self;
Lucifer keeps his Court in my breast, Legion is revived in me. There are as
many Hells, as Anaxagoras conceited worlds.^126 There was more than one Hell
in Magdalene, when there were seven Devils, for every Devil is an Hell unto
himself; he holds enough of torture in his own ubi, and needs not the misery
of circumference to afflict him: and thus a distracted Conscience here, is
a shadow or introduction unto Hell hereafter. Who can but pity the merciful
intention of those hands that do destroy themselves? the Devil, were it in his
power, would do the like; which being impossible, his miseries are endless,
and he suffers most in that attribute wherein he is impassible,^127 his
immortality.
[Footnote 125: In opposition to.]
[Footnote 126: I. e., an infinite number. The doctrine belongs to
Anaxarchus.]
[Footnote 127: Exempt from decay.]
LII. I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of Hell,
nor never grew pale at the description of that place. I have so fixed my
contemplations on Heaven, that I have almost forgot the Idea of Hell, and am
afraid rather to lose the Joys of the one, than endure the misery of the
other: to be deprived of them is a perfect Hell, and needs, methinks, no
addition to compleat our afflictions. That terrible term hath never detained
me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof. I fear God, yet
am not afraid of Him: His Mercies make me ashamed of my sins, before His
Judgements afraid thereof. These are the forced and secondary method of His
wisdom, which He useth but as the last remedy, and upon provocation; a course
rather to deter the wicked, than incite the virtuous to His worship. I can
hardly think there was ever any scared into Heaven; they go the fairest way to
Heaven that would serve God without a Hell; other Mercenaries, that crouch
into Him in fear of Hell, though they term themselves the servants, are indeed
but the slaves, of the Almighty.
LIII. And to be true, and speak my soul, when I survey the occurrences of
my life, and call into account the Finger of God, I can perceive nothing but
an abyss and mass of mercies, either in general to mankind, or in particular
to my self. And (whether out of the prejudice of my affection, or an inverting
and partial conceit of His mercies, I know not; but) those which others term
crosses, afflictions, judgements, misfortunes, to me, who inquire farther into
them then their visible effects, they both appear, and in event have ever
proved, the secret and dissembled favours of His affection. It is a singular
piece of Wisdom to apprehend truly, and without passion the Works of God, and
so well to distinguish His Justice from His Mercy, as not to miscall those
noble Attributes: yet it is likewise an honest piece of Logick, so to dispute
and argue the proceedings of God, as to distinguish even His judgments into
mercies. For God is merciful unto all, because better to the worst than the
best deserve; and to say He punisheth none in this World, though it be a
Paradox, is no absurdity. To one that hath committed Murther, if the Judge
should only ordain a Fine, it were a madness to call this a punishment, and to
repine at the sentence, rather than admire the clemency of the Judge. Thus,
our offences being mortal, and deserving not only Death, but Damnation, if the
goodness of God be content to traverse and pass them over with a loss,
misfortune, or disease, what frensie were it to term this a punishment,
rather than an extremity of mercy, and to groan under the rod of His
Judgements, rather than admire the Scepter of His Mercies! Therefore to adore,
honour, and admire Him, is a debt of gratitude due from the obligation of our
nature, states, and conditions; and with these thoughts, He that knows them
best, will not deny that I adore Him. That I obtain Heaven, and the bliss
thereof, is accidental, and not the intended work of my devotion; it being a
felicity I can neither think to deserve, nor scarce in modesty to expect. For
these two ends of us all, either as rewards or punishments, are mercifully
ordained and disproportionably disposed unto our actions; the one being so far
beyond our deserts, the other so infinitely below our demerits.
LIV. There is no Salvation to those that believe not in Christ, that is,
say some, since His Nativity, and, as Divinity affirmeth, before also; which
makes me much apprehend^128 the ends of those honest Worthies and Philosophers
which dyed before His Incarnation. It is hard to place those Souls in Hell,
whose worthy lives do teach us Virtue on Earth; methinks, amongst those many
subdivisions of Hell, there might have been one Limbo left for these. What
a strange vision will it be to see their Poetical fictions converted into
Verities, and their imagined and fancied Furies into real Devils! How strange
to them will sound the History of Adam, when they shall suffer for him they
never heard of! when they who derive their genealogy from the Gods, shall
know they are the unhappy issue of sinful man! It is an insolent part of
reason, to controvert the works of God, or question the Justice of His
proceedings. Could Humility teach others, as it hath instructed me, to
contemplate the infinite and incomprehensible distance betwixt the Creator
and the Creature; or did we seriously perpend that one simile of St. Paul,
Shall the Vessel say to the Potter, "Why hast thou made me thus?" it would
prevent these arrogant disputes of reason; nor would we argue the definitive
sentence of God, either to Heaven or Hell. Men that live according to the
right rule and law of reason, live but in their own kind, as beasts do in
theirs; who justly obey the prescript of their natures, and therefore cannot
reasonably demand a reward of their actions, as onely obeying the natural
dictates of their reason. It will, therefore, and must at last appear, that
all salvation is through Christ; which verity, I fear, these great examples
of virtue must confirm, and make it good how the perfectest actions of earth
have no title or claim unto Heaven.
[Footnote 128: Contemplate with fear.]
LV. Nor truely do I think the lives of these, or of any other, were
ever correspondent, or in all points conformable, unto their doctrines. It is
evident that Aristotle transgressed the rule of his own Ethicks. The Stoicks
that condemn passion, and command a man to laugh in Phalaris^129 his Bull,
could not endure without a groan a fit of the Stone or Colick. The Scepticks
that affirmed they knew nothing, even in that opinion confute themselves,
and thought they knew more than all the World beside. Diogenes I hold to be
the most vain-glorious man of his time, and more ambitious in refusing all
Honours, than Alexander in rejecting none. Vice and the Devil put a Fallacy
upon our Reasons, and, provoking us too hastily to run from it, entangle
and profound us deeper in it. The Duke of Venice, that weds himself unto the
Sea by a Ring of Gold, I will not argue of prodigality, because it is a
solemnity of good use and consequence in the State; but the Philosopher that
threw his money into the Sea to avoid Avarice, was a notorious prodigal. There
is no road or ready way to virtue: it is not an easie point of art to
disentangle our selves from this riddle, or web of Sin. To perfect virtue,
as to Religion, there is required a Panoplia, or compleat armour; that, whilst
we lye at close ward against one Vice, we lye not open to the venny^130 of
another. And indeed wiser discretions that have the thred of reason to conduct
them, offend without pardon; whereas underheads may stumble without dishonour.
There go so many circumstances to piece up one good action, that it is a
lesson to be good, and we are forced to be virtuous by the book. Again, the
Practice of men holds not an equal pace, yea, and often runs counter to their
Theory: we naturally know what is good, but naturally pursue what is evil: the
Rhetorick wherewith I perswade another, cannot perswade my self. There is a
depraved appetite in us, that will with patience hear the learned
instructions of Reason, but yet perform no farther than agrees to its own
irregular humour. In brief, we all are monsters, that is, a composition of
Man and Beast, wherein we must endeavor to be as the Poets fancy that wise
man Chiron,^131 that is, to have the Region of Man above that of Beast, and
Sense to sit but at the feet of Reason. Lastly, I do desire with God that all,
but yet affirm with men that few, shall know Salvation; that the bridge is
narrow, the passage strait, unto life: yet those who do confine the Church
of God, either to particular Nations, Churches, or Families, have made it far
narrower than our Saviour ever meant it.
[Footnote 129: A Sicilian tyrant of the 6th century B. C., who sacrificed
human beings in a heated brazen bull.]
[Footnote 130: Assault.]
[Footnote 131: The Centaur.]
LVI. The vulgarity of those judgements that wrap the Church of God in
Strabo`s cloak,^132 and restrain it unto Europe, seem to me as bad
Geographers as Alexander, who thought he had Conquer`d all the World, when
he had not subdued the half of any part thereof. For we cannot deny the
Church of God both in Asia and Africa, if we do not forget the
Peregrinations of the Apostles, the deaths of the Martyrs, the Sessions of
many and (even in our reformed judgement) lawful Councils, held in those parts
in the minority and nonage of ours. Nor must a few differences, more
remarkable in the eyes of man than perhaps in the judgement of God,
excommunicate from Heaven one another; much less those Christians who are in a
manner all Martyrs, maintaining their Faith in the noble way of persecution,
and serving God in the Fire, whereas we honour him but in the Sunshine. "Tis
true we all hold there is a number of Elect, and many to be saved; yet, take
our Opinions together, and from the confusion thereof there will be no such
thing as salvation, nor shall any one be saved. For first, the Church of
Rome condemneth us, we likewise them; the Subreformists and Sectaries
sentence the Doctrine of our Church as damnable; the Atomist,^133 or
Familist,^134 reprobates all these; and all these, them again. Thus, whilst
the Mercies of God do promise us Heaven, our conceits and opinions exclude
us from that place. There must be, therefore, more than one St. Peter:
particular Churches and Sects usurp the gates of Heaven, and turn the key
against each other; and thus we go to Heaven against each others wills,
conceits, and opinions, and, with as much uncharity as ignorance, do err, I
fear, in points not only of our own, but one anothers salvation.
[Footnote 132: Strabo compared the known world of his time to a cloak.]
[Footnote 133: Apparently a sect of Browne`s time.]
[Footnote 134: One of the sect called "The Family of Love."]
LVII. I believe many are saved, who to man seem reprobated; and many are
reprobated, who, in the opinion and sentence of man, stand elected. There
will appear at the Last day strange and unexpected examples both of His
Justice and His Mercy; and therefore to define either, is folly in man, and
insolency even in the Devils. Those acute and subtil spirits, in all their
sagacity, can hardly divine who shall be saved; which if they could
Prognostick, their labour were at an end, nor need they compass the earth
seeking whom they may devour. Those who, upon a rigid application of the
Law, sentence Solomon unto damnation, condemn not onely him, but themselves,
and the whole World: for, by the Letter and written Word of God, we are
without exception in the state of Death; but there is a prerogative of God,
and an arbitrary pleasure above the Letter of His own Law, by which alone we
can pretend unto Salvation, and through which Solomon might be as easily
saved as those who condemn him.
LVIII. The number of those who pretend unto Salvation, and those infinite
swarms who think to pass through the eye of this Needle, have much amazed me.
That name and compellation of little Flock, doth not comfort, but deject,
my Devotion; especially when I reflect upon mine own unworthiness, wherein,
according to my humble apprehensions, I am below them all. I believe there
shall never be an Anarchy in Heaven; but, as there are Hierarchies amongst
the Angels, so shall there be degrees of priority amongst the Saints. Yet is
it (I protest,) beyond my ambition to aspire unto the first ranks; my desires
onely are (and I shall be happy therein,) to be but the last man, and bring
up the Rere in Heaven.
[Footnote 135: Good pleasure.]
LIX. Again, I am confident and fully perswaded, yet dare not take my
oath, of my Salvation. I am as it were sure, and do believe without all doubt,
that there is such a City as Constantinople; yet for me to take my Oath
thereon were a kind of Perjury, because I hold no infallible warrant from my
own sense to confirm me in the certainty thereof. And truly, though many
pretend an absolute certainty of their Salvation, yet, when an humble Soul
shall contemplate her own unworthiness, she shall meet with many doubts, and
suddenly find how little we stand in need of the Precept of St.Paul, Work out
your salvation with fear and trembling. That which is the cause of my
Election, I hold to be the cause of my Salvation, which was the mercy and
beneplacit^135 of God, before I was, or the foundation of the World. Before
Abraham was, I am, is the saying of Christ; yet is it true in some sense, if
I say it of my self; for I was not onely before my self, but Adam, that is,
in the Idea of God, and the decree of that Synod held from all Eternity. And
in this sense, I say, the World was before the Creation, and at an end
before it had a beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive: though my
grave be England, my dying place was Paradise: and Eve miscarried of me
before she conceiv`d of Cain.
LX. Insolent, zeals,^136 that do decry good Works and rely onely upon
Faith, take not away merit: for, depending upon the efficacy of their Faith,
they enforce the condition of God, and in a more sophistical way do seem to
challenge Heaven. It was decreed by God, that only those that lapt in the
water like Dogs, should have the honour to destroy the Midianites; yet could
none of those justly challenge, or imagine he deserved, that honour
thereupon. I do not deny but that true Faith, and such as God requires, is
not onely a mark or token, but also a means, of our Salvation; but where to
find this, is as obscure to me as my last end. And if our Saviour could object
unto His own Disciples and Favourites, a Faith, that, to the quantity of a
grain of Mustard-seed, is able to remove Mountains; surely, that which we
boast of, is not any thing, or at the most, but a remove from nothing. This
is the Tenor of my belief; wherein though there be many things singular, and
to the humour of my irregular self, yet if they square not with maturer
Judgements, I disclaim them, and do no further father them, than the learned
and best judgements shall authorize them.
[Footnote 136: Zealots.]
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