to say,

(4.) The souls of all men are immortal. Though they had a beginning, yet [they] shall never cease to be; therefore must, while they be, be in some state; and because they be eternal, must be in some eternal state. This eternal state must be either in the soul's enjoyment of God, or in separation from him; for the wit of man cannot find out a third. For the soul, continuing to be, must be with God, or not with God; shall enjoy him, or not enjoy him: for, "He shall, and shall not," or to say, "He shall not, and yet shall," is a contradiction; and to say, "He neither shall, nor shall not," is as bad. If, therefore, the soul be eternal, and, while it shall be, shall perfectly enjoy God, it shall be eternally happy: if it shall for ever be, and that without God, it shall be eternally miserable; because God is the Chiefest Good, the Ultimate End and Perfection of man. The great work in this, then, is to prove that the soul is eternal, and shall for ever be. For which I offer these things:

(i.) There is nothing within or without the soul, that can be the cause of its ceasing to be.-(Here except God, who, though he can take away the being of souls and angels too, yet he hath abundantly assured us that he will not.) Nothing within it, because it is a spiritual being, and hath no internal principle, by contrary qualities, causing a cessation of its being. And because it is simple and indivisible, it is immortal and incorruptible: for that which is not compounded of parts, cannot be dissolved into parts; and where there is no dissolution of a being, there is no corruption or end of it. There is no creature without it that can cause the soul to cease: "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul." (Matt. x. 28.) "Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do." (Luke xii. 4.) If they would kill the soul, they cannot; when they have killed the body, they have done their worst, their most, their all.

:

(ii.) The soul of man hath not dependence upon the body, as to its being and existence.—It hath certain actings and operations which do not depend upon the body and if the operations of the soul be independent from the body, such must the principle be from whence such operations do arise; and if it can act without dependence on the body, then it can exist and be without the body. In the body, without dependence on the body, it hath the knowledge of immaterial beings, as God and angels; which were never seen by the eye of the body, nor can [be], because there must be some proportion between the object and the faculty. And the soul doth know itself; wherein it hath no need of the phantasy [fancy]; for when it is intimately present to itself, it wanteth not the ministry of the phantasy [fancy] to its own intellection. Besides, it can conceive of universals, abstracted from its singulars; in which it doth not depend upon the phantasy [fancy]; for phantasmata sunt singularium, non universalium.* Therefore, since it can act in the body without dependence on the body, it can exist without the body, and not die

• “Fancies or imaginations relate to particulars, and not to generals.”— EDIT.

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when the body doth. Which yet is more plain and certain from the scripture; which telleth us that the soul of Lazarus, after death, was carried by angels into Abraham's bosom; (Luke xvi. 22;) but they did not carry it dead or alive, but alive and not dead. Stephen, when dying, expected the continuance of his soul in being, and its entrance into bliss: "Saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." (Acts vii. 59.) The thief upon the cross had a promise from Christ, that that day he should be with him in Paradise. In his body he is

not yet; therefore, in his soul without the body: therefore the soul doth exist without the body. Paul believed the immortality of his soul, and its existence after the death of his body: "I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better." (Phil. i. 23.) If his soul had not existed, he had not been a moment sooner with Christ. Nay, his soul in the body had some communion with Christ: if it died with the body, it had none; and that was not "far better," but worse.

(iii.) The original of the soul by immediate creation is usually brought as an argument of the immortality and continuance of it to eternity. To assert the creation of the soul, hath this difficulty attending on it,-how to clear the propagating of original sin: to affirm [that] the soul is ex traduce, "propagated by generation," hath this knot to be untied,-how it doth consist with the immortality of the soul, when that which is generable is corruptible. But I for [the] present shall take their arguing who prove it shall exist for ever, because it is created immediately by God; according to the worn axiom, "Whatsoever is ingenerable, is also incorruptible." The soul cannot be from the matter or bodies of the parents, because that which is spiritual and immaterial cannot be produced out of that which is a corporeal and material substance: for then the effect would be more noble than its cause, and the cause would give and impart something to the effect which itself hath not; but that which any thing hath not, it cannot give to another. As in a spiritual, so in a natural, sense, "that which is born of the flesh is flesh;" (John iii. 6;) but the soul is a spirit.

Nor are the souls of the children from the souls of the parents, either by multiplication or division. Not by division; that part of the souls of the parents should be communicated and pass from the parents to the children: because it is a spirit; and therefore indivisible into parts, because it hath none; being without matter, therefore without quantity, therefore without divisible parts. Not by multiplication for this must be by participation of something from the parents' souls, or not. If not, then it inferreth creation; for that which is brought out of nothing into being, is created: if by participation of something of the substance of the parents' soul, this infers division; which, before was showed, cannot be.

(iv.) That the soul shall never die, but abide to all eternity.—I argue, Either God neither can nor will maintain the soul in eternal duration; or he would, but cannot; or he could, but will not; or he both can and will. If he cannot, then God is not omnipotent; for,

the soul being a spirit, it no more implies a contradiction that the soul should live for ever, than that angels and devils should live for ever. If he can, and any say he will not, I desire a reason of this assertion. How shall any man know God's will, but by what he hath revealed? And God hath not revealed that he will not maintain the souls of men in eternal being, but the contrary. It follows, then, that God both can and will; and therefore they must live to all eternity.

(5.) The certainty of an eternal state in the other unseen world is evident from the innate appetite universally in all men after eternal happiness.-There is no man but would be happy, and there is no man that would have his happiness cease. A man might as soon cease to be a man, as cast away all desires of happiness, or will to be for ever miserable; though most mistake what their happiness is. This innate appetite cannot be filled with all the good things in this world; for though the rational appetite be subjectively finite, yet it is objectively infinite. God, therefore, and nature, which do nothing in vain, have put unsatisfied, restless desires after happiness into the hearts of men; which cannot be any thing among things seen and temporal. There must be something that must be the object of this appetite, and able to quiet and fill it in the other world; though most, by folly, blindness, and slothfulness, miss of it.

(6.) The absurdities which follow the denial of an eternal state of men (though now unseen) demonstrate the certainty of it.

(i.) For, then the lives of men, even of the best, must needs be uncomfortable.-And the life of reason would, as such, be subject to more fears and terrors than the life of sense; which is against all sense and reason. For beasts must die, but do not foresee that they must die: but the rational foresight of death would embitter all his sweetest delights of life, if there were no reason to hope for another after this; and the more the life of man, as man, is more noble than the life of beasts, the more the foresight of the certain loss thereof, without another after this, would affright, afflict, torment. Now it is not rational to think, that God, who made man the chiefest and the choicest of all his visible works, should endue him with such powers and faculties as understanding and will, to make his life, as man, more burdensome, by being filled with fretting fears, racking griefs, and tormenting terrors, more than any beasts are liable to or capable of. Nay, and add, that the more any man did improve, exercise, and use his reason in the frequent meditations of death, the more bitter his life would be, to consider that all the present good [which] he doth enjoy must certainly and shortly be lost by death, and he not capable of any good after death in the stead and room thereof.

(ii.) Then the condition of many wicked, yea, the worst of, men would be better than the condition of the godly that are the best.—If the wicked have their good things here, and no evil hereafter; and the people of God their evil things here, and no good hereafter: "If

in this life only we had hope, we were of all men most miserable." (1 Cor. xv. 19.)

(iii.) Then the chiefest and greatest encouragements to undergo sufferings and losses for God's sake were taken away.—Why did Moses refuse the honours of Pharaoh's court, and choose to suffer afflictions with the people of God, but because he had his eye to "the recompence of the reward?" (Heb. xi. 25, 26.) Why did Paul endure such conflicts, but for the hope of life and immortality which the gospel had brought to light? (2 Tim. i. 10, 12.) And well might he ask, what it would advantage him that he fought with beasts at Ephesus, if the dead rise not to eternal happiness. (1 Cor. xv. 32.) Might not, then, the suffering saints repent, when they come to die, that they had been so imprudent and unwise, to endure so much, and lose so much; and say, they have been losers by obeying God, and by their holy walking; for there is no happiness after death to be hoped for? "Wherefore I do repent that I did not take my pleasures while I might." But did you ever hear a serious, godly man, when dying, utter such words? But on the contrary on their dying beds [they] do grieve and groan, mourn and lament, that they have been no more holy and obedient; and in suffering times, if they had gold as dust, they would count it all as dross; and if they had a thousand lives, they would lose them all to keep in the favour of God, and to gain the crown of everlasting life.

(iv.) Then would the flood-gates of sin and profaneness be plucked up, to let-in an inundation of all manner of gross abominations.-For if men will not be affrighted from their sin with all the threatenings of the sorest pains of hell, nor allured to leave them with all the promises of the sweetest pleasures of heaven; if they were sure there were no torments of hell to be adjudged to, nor glory in heaven to be rewarded by; they would run with greater greediness to the commission of the worst of sins that the devil should tempt them, or their wicked hearts incline them, to.

QUESTION II. How should we eye eternity, or look at unseen, eternal things?

They are said to be " unseen,' as they are not the objects of our external sense; for in this sense they are not to be seen: but we must look at eternal things that are unseen with an eye that also is unseen; and the several things denoted by "the eyes" in scripture, will give some light to see with what eyes we must look at unseen, eternal things; namely, with an eye of knowledge, faith, love, desire, hope. Our looking at eternal things comprehends these acts of the soul:

1. It includes a sure and certain knowledge of them.-As things not understood are said to be "hid from our eyes; so, what we know we are said to "see" "I sought in mine heart to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was that good for the sons of men." (Eccles. ii. 3.) Taking away of knowledge is called "the putting out of the eyes; (Num. xvi. 14;) and the enlightening [of] the mind, "the opening of the eyes." (Acts xxvi. 18.) And "looking" is put for certain

knowing, (Job. xiii. 27; 1 Peter i. 12,) and expressed by "seeing." (Acts vii. 34.) So that the looking at and eyeing of eternal things with the eyes of the understanding, includes,

(1.) The bending of the mind to study them; as, when a man would look at any object, he bends his head, and turns his eyes, that way.

(2.) The binding of the mind to them; as a man, when he looks earnestly at any thing, fixeth his eye upon it.

(3.) The exercise of the mind thus bent and bound to eternal things; that it is often thinking on the unseen, eternal God, Christ, heaven, and the life to come.

2. This looking is by an eye of faith.-Looking is believing: "Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live." (Num. xxi. 8.) The object and the act are both expounded by Christ: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." (John iii. 14, 15.)

3. This looking is with an eye of love.-Though in philosophy the affections, as well as the will, are blind powers; yet in divinity "the eyes are put for the affections: "Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not?" (Prov. xxiii. 5.) And "the eye of the Lord" denotes his love; (Psalm xxxiii. 18;) and believers, that "love" the coming of the unseen Saviour, (2 Tim. iv. 8,) are said to "look for" it. (Phil. iii. 20.) Ubi amor, ibi oculus: "We love to look at what we love."

4. This looking is with an eye of desire.-Which is expressed by "the eye:""That ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes." (Num. xv. 39.) "Every thing desirable in thine eyes." (1 Kings xx. 6.) "If I have withheld the poor from their desire, or have caused the eyes of the widow to fail." (Job xxxi. 16.) The eye is an index of the desires of the heart.

5. This looking is with an eye of hope.-" The eye" is put for hope, Job xi. 20; Lam. iv. 17; 2 Chron. xx. 12; Psalm cxlv. 15; XXV. 15. And things not seen are looked for by hope; (Rom. viii. 24, 25;) and things hoped for are the objects of our looking: "Looking for that blessed hope." (Titus ii. 13.) In short, the sum is as if it had been said, While we have a certain knowledge of unseen, eternal things, a firm belief of them, fervent love unto them, ardent desires after them, lively hope and patient expectation of them, we faint not in all our tribulations."

Having opened the eyes with which we are to look at eternal things, I proceed to the manner of our looking: there is a looking unto them. (Psalm xxxiv. 5; Micah vii. 7.) There is a looking into them, by studying the nature of them, to know more of the reality, necessity, and dignity of them: "Which things the angels desire to look into." (1 Peter i. 12.) If angels do, men should. There is a looking for them; either as we look for things that we have lost,-look till we find; as the man for his lost sheep, or the woman for her lost silver,