Part 3 (1/2)

We're all deluded, vainly searching ways To make us happy by the length of days; For cunningly, to make's protract this breath, The G.o.ds conceal the happiness of death.

There be many excellent strains in that poet, where- with his stoical genius hath liberally supplied him: and truly there are singular pieces in the philosophy of Zeno,<61> and doctrine of the stoics, which I perceive, delivered in a pulpit, pa.s.s for current divinity: yet herein are they in extremes, that can allow a man to be his own a.s.sa.s.sin, and so highly extol the end and suicide of Cato. This is indeed not to fear death, but yet to be afraid of life. It is a brave act of valour to contemn death; but, where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live: and herein religion hath taught us a n.o.ble example; for all the

* , iv. 519.

valiant acts of Curtius, Scaevola, or Codrus, do not parallel, or match, that one of Job; and sure there is no torture to the rack of a disease, nor any poniards in death itself, like those in the way or prologue unto it.

I would not die, but care not to be dead. Were I of Caesar's religion,<62> I should be of his desires, and wish rather to go off at one blow, than to be sawed in pieces by the grating torture of a disease. Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their const.i.tutions for being sick; but I, that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabrick hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and, considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my G.o.d that we can die but once. 'Tis not only the mischief of diseases, and the villany of poisons, that make an end of us; we vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death:--it is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every one we meet, he doth not kill us. There is therefore but one comfort left, that though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death. G.o.d would not ex- empt himself from that; the misery of immortality in the flesh he undertook not, that was immortal.

Certainly there is no happiness within this circle of flesh; nor is it in the opticks of these eyes to behold felicity. The first day of our jubilee is death; the devil hath therefore failed of his desires; we are hap- pier with death than we should have been without it: there is no misery but in himself, where there is no end of misery; and so indeed, in his own sense, the stoic is in the right.<63> He forgets that he can die, who complains of misery: we are in the power of no calamity while death is in our own.

45.--Now, besides this literal and positive kind of death, there are others whereof divines make men- tion, and those, I think, not merely metaphorical, as mortification, dying unto sin and the world. There- fore, I say, every man hath a double horoscope; one of his humanity,--his birth, another of his Christianity,-- his baptism: and from this do I compute or calculate my nativity; not reckoning those ,<64> and odd days, or esteeming myself anything, before I was my Saviour's and enrolled in the register of Christ.

Whosoever enjoys not this life, I count him but an apparition, though he wear about him the sensible affections of flesh. In these moral acceptions, the way to be immortal is to die daily; nor can I think I have the true theory of death, when I contemplate a skull or behold a skeleton with those vulgar imaginations it casts upon us. I have therefore enlarged that commoninto a more Christian memorandum, ,--those four inevitable points of us all, death, judgment, heaven, and h.e.l.l.

Neither did the contemplations of the heathens rest in their graves, without a further thought, of Rhada- manth<65> or some judicial proceeding after death, though in another way, and upon suggestion of their natural reasons. I cannot but marvel from what sibyl or oracle they stole the prophecy of the world's destruction by fire, or whence Lucan learned to say--

*

There yet remains to th' world one common fire, Wherein our bones with stars shall make one pyre.

* , vii. 814.

I believe the world grows near its end; yet is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles. As the work of creation was above nature, so its adversary, annihilation; without which the world hath not its end, but its mutation. Now, what force should be able to consume it thus far, with- out the breath of G.o.d, which is the truest consuming flame, my philosophy cannot inform me. Some believe there went not a minute to the world's creation, nor shall there go to its destruction; those six days, so punctually described, make not to them one moment, but rather seem to manifest the method and idea of that great work of the intellect of G.o.d than the manner how he proceeded in its operation. I cannot dream that there should be at the last day any such judicial pro- ceeding, or calling to the bar, as indeed the Scripture seems to imply, and the literal commentators do con- ceive: for unspeakable mysteries in the Scriptures are often delivered in a vulgar and ill.u.s.trative way, and, being written unto man, are delivered, not as they truly are, but as they may be understood; wherein, notwith- standing, the different interpretations according to dif- ferent capacities may stand firm with our devotion, nor be any way prejudicial to each single edification.

46.--Now, to determine the day and year of this inevitable time, is not only convincible and statute madness, but also manifest impiety. How shall we interpret Elias's six thousand years, or imagine the secret communicated to a Rabbi which G.o.d hath de- nied unto his angels? It had been an excellent quaere to have posed the devil of Delphos, and must needs have forced him to some strange amphibology. It hath not only mocked the predictions of sundry astrologers in ages past, but the prophecies of many melancholy heads in these present; who, neither understanding reasonably things past nor present, pretend a know- ledge of things to come; heads ordained only to mani- fest the incredible effects of melancholy and to fulfil old prophecies,* rather than be the authors of new. ”In those days there shall come wars and rumours of wars”

to me seems no prophecy, but a constant truth in all times verified since it was p.r.o.nounced. ”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 revela- tion 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 lingering expostulation of the saints under the altar,how long, O Lord? and groan in the expectation of the great jubilee.

47.--This is the day that must make good that great attribute of G.o.d, 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 complete and make up the catastrophe of

* ”In those days there shall come liars and false prophets.”

this great piece. This is the day whose memory hath, only, power to make us honest in the dark, and to be virtuous without a witness.that virtue is her own reward, is but a cold principle, and not able to maintain our variable resolutions in a constant and settled way of goodness. I have practised that honest artifice of Seneca,<66> and, in my retired and solitary imaginations to detain me from the foulness of vice, have fancied to myself the presence of my dear and worthiest friends, before whom I should lose my head rather than be vicious; yet herein I found that there was nought but moral honesty; and this was not to be virtuous for his sake who must reward us at the last. I have tried if I could reach that great resolution of his, to be honest without a thought of heaven or h.e.l.l; and, indeed I found, upon a natural inclination, and inbred loyalty unto virtue, that I could serve her without a livery, yet not in that resolved and venerable way, but that the frailty of my nature, upon an easy 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 subtile verities; and atheists have been the only philosophers.

48.--How shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere 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 im- possible, by any solid or demonstrative reasons, to per- suade a man to believe the conversion 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 pilgrim- ages and transformations into the parts of minerals, plants, animals, elements, shall, at the voice of G.o.d, return into their primitive shapes, and join again to make up their primary and predestinate forms. As at the creation there was a separation of that confused ma.s.s into its pieces; 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 ma.s.s, till the fruitful voice of G.o.d separated this united mult.i.tude into its several species, so, at the last day, when those corrupted relicks shall be scattered in the wilderness of forms, and seem to have forgot their proper habits, G.o.d, by a power- ful 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 that hath dilated into so many millions.

I have often beheld, as a miracle, that artificial resur- rection and revivification of mercury, how being morti- fied into a thousand shapes, it a.s.sumes again its own, and returns into its numerical self. Let us speak naturally, and like philosophers. The forms of alter- able 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 them- selves 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.<67> What the art of man can do in these inferior pieces, what blasphemy is it to affirm the finger of G.o.d cannot do in those 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 resur- rection.

49.--Now, the necessary mansions of our restored selves are those two contrary and incompatible places we call heaven and h.e.l.l. To define them, or strictly to determine what and where these are, surpa.s.seth my divinity. That elegant apostle, which seemed to have a glimpse of heaven, hath left but a negative descrip- tion 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 re- turned into himself, could not express it. Saint John's description by emeralds, 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 appet.i.te of that spirit remains completely satisfied that it can neither desire addition nor alteration; that, I think, is truly heaven: and this can only be in the enjoyment of that essence, whose infinite goodness is able to terminate the desires of itself, and the unsatiable wishes of ours. Wherever G.o.d will thus manifest him- self, there is heaven, though within the circle of this sensible world. Thus, the soul of man may be in heaven anywhere, 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 Saint Paul, whether in the body or out of the body, was yet in heaven. To place it in the empyreal, or beyond the tenth sphere, 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, avacuity; when to ask where heaven is, is to demand where the presence of G.o.d 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 philo- sophy, when with these eyes of flesh he desired to see G.o.d, and pet.i.tioned his Maker, that is truth itself, to a contra- diction. Those that imagine heaven and h.e.l.l neighbours, and conceive a vicinity between those two extremes, upon consequence of the parable, where Dives discoursed with Lazarus, in Abraham's bosom, do too grossly con- ceive of those glorified creatures, whose eyes shall easily out-see the sun, and behold without perspective the extremest distances: for if there shall be, in our glori- fied eyes, the faculty of sight and reception of objects, I could think the visible species there to be in as un- limitable a way as now the intellectual. I grant that two bodies placed beyond the tenth sphere, 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.

50.--I cannot tell how to say that fire is the essence of h.e.l.l; I know not what to make of purgatory, or conceive a flame that can either prey upon, or purify the substance of a soul. Those flames of sulphur, men- tioned in the scriptures, I take not to be understood of this present h.e.l.l, but of that to come, where fire shall make up the complement of our tortures, and have a body or subject whereon 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 powerfulest 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 into powder: for that mystical metal of gold, whose solary and celestial nature I admire, ex- posed unto the violence of fire, grows only hot, and liquefies, 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 lie immortal in the arms of fire. And surely, if this flame must suffer only by the action of this element, there will many bodies escape; and not only 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 itself, its ashes. Philosophers that opinioned the world's 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 gla.s.s; and therefore some of our chymicks facetiously affirm, that, at the last fire, all shall be crystalized and reverberated into gla.s.s, which is the utmost action of that element. Nor need we fear this term, annihilation, or wonder that G.o.d will destroy the works of his crea- tion: for man subsisting, who is, and will then truly appear, a microcosm, the world cannot be said to be destroyed. For the eyes of G.o.d, and perhaps also of our glorified selves, shall as really behold and contem- plate 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 G.o.d, and to the under- standing of man, there exists, though in an invisible way, the perfect leaves, flowers, and fruit thereof; for things that are into the sense, are actually existent to the understanding. Thus G.o.d 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.

51.--Men commonly set forth the torments of h.e.l.l by fire, and the extremity of corporal afflictions, and describe h.e.l.l 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 with heaven, whose happiness consists in that part that is best able to com- prehend it, that immortal essence, that translated divinity and colony of G.o.d, the soul. Surely, though we place h.e.l.l under earth, the devil's walk and purlieu is about it. Men speak too popularly who place it in those flaming mountains, which to grosser apprehensions re- present h.e.l.l. The heart of man is the place the devils dwell in; I feel sometimes a h.e.l.l within myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my breast; Legion is revived in me. There are as many h.e.l.ls as Anaxagoras<68> conceited worlds. There was more than one h.e.l.l in Magdalene, when there were seven devils; for every devil is an h.e.l.l unto himself,<69> he holds enough of torture in his own ; and needs not the misery of cir- c.u.mference to afflict him: and thus, a distracted con- science here is a shadow or introduction unto h.e.l.l here- after. 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 im- possible, his miseries are endless, and he suffers most in that attribute wherein he is impa.s.sible, his im- mortality.

52.--I thank G.o.d, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of h.e.l.l, nor ever grew pale at the description of that place. I have so fixed my contempla- tions on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea of h.e.l.l; 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 h.e.l.l, and needs methinks no addition to complete our afflictions. That terrible term hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof. I fear G.o.d, yet am not afraid of him; his mercies make me ashamed of my sins, before his judgments 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 wors.h.i.+p. I can hardly think there was ever any scared into heaven: they go the fairest way to heaven that would serve G.o.d without a h.e.l.l: other mercenaries, that crouch unto him in fear of h.e.l.l, though they term themselves the servants, are indeed but the slaves, of the Almighty.

53.--And to be true, and speak my soul, when I survey the occurrences of my life, and call into account the finger of G.o.d, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and ma.s.s of mercies, either in general to mankind, or in particular to myself. 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, judgments, misfortunes, to me, who inquire further into them than 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 pa.s.sion, the works of G.o.d, and so well to distinguish his justice from his mercy as not to miscall those n.o.ble attributes; yet it is likewise an honest piece of logick so to dispute and argue the proceedings of G.o.d as to distinguish even his judgments into mercies. For G.o.d 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 com- mitted murder, if the judge should only ordain a fine, it were a madness to call this a punishment, and to re- pine at the sentence, rather than admire the clemency of the judge. Thus, our offences being mortal, and deserving not only death but d.a.m.nation, if the goodness of G.o.d be content to traverse and pa.s.s them over with a loss, misfortune, or disease; what frenzy were it to term this a punishment, rather than an extremity of mercy, and to groan under the rod of his judgments rather than admire the sceptre of his mercies! There- fore to adore, honour, and admire him, is a debt of grat.i.tude 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.